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As we start heading towards Halloween at the end of the month I know I'm pulling out some darker fantasies for the colder nights.

I'll start this one off with A Night in the Lonesome October by Roger Zelazny

Technically I started it yesterday since the first couple of pages are from before the official "October 1st" chapter. I look forward to reading this a chapter a day, should be fun.

I have some crazy plan to read about 10 books this October, going to be a challenge, especially with the extra research needed for Lonesome :)

I'm excited to be doing my "spooookkyy October" reading list again this year :P I'm currently still reading Assassin's Quest by Robin Hobb, but once I'm done that one I'm gonna jump right into my October ghost/horror reading. I also just made a big Indigo order for some of those books. I hope to get through most of if not all of:

- Thin Air (I read Dark Matter by her as well last year and is easily one of my favourite books)

- The Ballad of Black Tom (Retelling of Horror at Red Hook...will probably reread Horror at Red Hook before diving in)

- The Winter People

- Rebecca (quite excited for this! Been a long time coming)

- The Turn of the Screw and Other Ghost Stories

- A Song for Quiet (for some more Lovecraftian horror. Read the first book this summer and really liked it)

- Rosemary's Baby

- Meddling Kids

The last two are kind of "alternatives" I already have at home that I'll read depending on when I receive the other books.

NekroRider wrote: "- Rebecca (quite excited for this! Been a long time coming)..."

I'm reading that one too this month. Slow going in the beginning.

On the SF/F front, I'm reading:


Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll


A Night in the Lonesome October by Roger Zelazny


Sign of the Unicorn by Roger Zelazny (I'll be starting this one around the 10th of October for our discussion)

Randy wrote: "NekroRider wrote: "- Rebecca (quite excited for this! Been a long time coming)..."

I'm reading that one too this month. Slow going in the beginning."

Yeah I'd read before that the first half of it is fairly slow, but from what I've heard the second half basically explodes and is very creepy and gripping.

The Idea of the Labyrinth: from Classical Antiquity through the Middle Ages by Penelope Reed Doob

Completed:
Longs:


Shorts:

Finished Sign of the Unicorn but of course waiting for the group discussion to say what I thought. In the end it took me two days instead one to read it :) Must admit it was a bit odd reading those last 30 pages while at the same time reading the 2-3 pages of the Oct 1'st chapter of Lonesome October, it's not just two Zelazny's in a month but two in one day!

Starting on the closest thing to a dragon halloween read I could find. Usually I do vampires and those are often urban fantasy, so here's a dark urban fantasy dragon tale - The Dragon Delasangre by Alan F. Troop

Started Camber the Heretic by Katherine Kurtz I read this originally back in 1981. A grim book as I recall, lots of bad things are going to happen to good people.

Finished Dragon DelaSangre...ok, I'm glad it didn't win the nomination, wouldn't have wished to make other people read this. I had high expectations that this might be a unique urban fantasy but really the only things the dragons did was eat humans and have sex. Yeah, sure the main character sometimes felt a little bad about eating a little kid but otherwise they were rather despicable protagonists, even for dragons. Still, it was yet another take on dragons I hadn't seen before (they were extreme shapeshifters, don't appear to be able to breath fire, and have their own history/culture/worldbuilding) and it fills in one of my Bingo slots - Fantasy in the Modern World.

Now you might wonder why am I then reading Dragon Moon by Alan F. Troop...well, I just hate giving away a book I bought without reading it first. Maybe it will be a little more fun given there's a baby dragon involved?

Working my way (slowly) through the Foundation series, currently on Foundation and Empire, also enjoying the second book in a series, Theories of Flight.

I finished reading The Falls, the 5th "Diving Universe" novel by Kristine Kathryn Rusch.
It's actually a stand-alone far-prequel novel that involves none of the characters in the main series (set far in the future of this one.) It's also a crime mystery with a bunch of characters, written in half a dozen parallel threads that mostly had me wondering when these various investigators would finally compare notes. Sort of CSI: Sector Base E2 (which is located on a planet, BTW.)

I'd somehow skipped this when it was published 2 years ago, but picked it up before reading Rusch's latest from last month, Searching for the Fleet. (I'd read the intermediary novel The Runabout when it appeared in Asimov's SF Magazine last year, and since the prequel was so out of the main story line, I didn't notice I'd missed one. :)

I'm starting the latest Diving Universe novel, Searching for the Fleet, now. I found I'd already read the story arc in Part I, though I'm not sure where....

Ah well, won't get any reading done today.

Women in the Days of the Cathedrals by Régine Pernoud

Finished Assassin's Quest yesterday. 4.5/5 stars (4/5 GR rating). Really amazing book for the most part just one small part that dragged and felt diminished the book just a tad. But otherwise such an epic and awesome book! Loved it.

Anyway I'm having Canada Post/Indigo drama right now as it looks like one of my packages for my October reading was possibly delivered to the wrong person. Annoyed cause that package had all the books I'm most excited to read in it :( Hopefully Indigo can replace them. So for now I'm reading The Turn of the Screw and Other Ghost Stories in the mean time to kick off my October/Halloween reading.

Dragon Moon turned out to be less offensive than Dragon DelaSangre (or maybe I'm just getting used to the idea of eating humans?). Anyway, halfway through this series.

Mustn't fall behind in Pern though, I'm reading Dragonheart by Todd McCaffrey now. Which revisits the exact same events as Dragonsblood but from a different character's POV, which was already done with Moretta, only Moretta/Nerilka was better (especially since the second was just a short novella, not something longer than the original). I swear, Todd wanted to write post-apocalypse plague novels but he got stuck writing in his mother's world so he had to make do with repeatedly killing everyone on Pern (there is both a human and dragon plague 12 years apart), and then once done, repeat, since he couldn't leave this time era.

And I don't like plague novels...

But I refuse to give up now so close to the end! There are only 3 more after this, 4 if you count the one that was just published a few days ago :)

Just read the new Murderbot novella, Exit Strategy by Martha Wells. These are a lot of fun. Murderbot is a fun POV character ((view spoiler)[ I wasn't always sure how believable I found Murderbot as the voice of an AI; the emphasis on its organic components helped convince/suspend disbelief -- the question of Sec/Combat/Comfort Units' "humanity" is explored to some extent in every volume; this latest includes a brief, interesting aside about AI development in an earlier age of space exploration (hide spoiler)]); along with Murderbot's personal story, corporate ethics or lack thereof are a consistent theme. Each novella has at least two significant "action sequences"/fight scenes--not something I necessarily go looking for, but I've found these very enjoyable. I'm appreciative that each of the novellas comes to a satisfactory end, even when there are continuing threads. Exit Strategy wraps up a bit more than most, reuniting Murderbot with some of the characters from All Systems Red.

Wells has been on my radar for a while, but the novellas are the first things I've read by her. I may try The Element of Fire next.

This month, I also finished Jo Walton's Thessaly trilogy with Necessity. Strange, keeping a certain distance from its characters despite first person POVs, and with an unusually matter-of-fact approach to divinities, it's a thought experiment about a thought experiment about a thought experiment. I enjoyed thinking along.

Rusch's Searching for the Fleet was an enjoyable read and brings me up to date with her Diving Universe story. this certainly lays some groundwork for future stories as well.

I finished a couple books which I guess you could call fantasy if you squint your eyes just so:


Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
Rating: 3 stars
Review: /review/show...


The Metamorphosis and Other Stories by Franz Kafka
Rating: 4 stars
Review: /review/show...

Metamorphosis depends on whether you think the narrator is crazy or he really did turn into a cockroach, after all you're kind of left wondering in the end.

I guess you could argue the same for Alice, did she really go to a magical world or just have one really funky dream? (And then use a mirror to go back again later...maybe Wonderland is where the Lonesome October mirror things come from? The Caterpillar slithers and should be a little sticky...)

Andrea wrote: "Metamorphosis depends on whether you think the narrator is crazy or he really did turn into a cockroach, after all you're kind of left wondering in the end.

I guess you could argue the same for A..."

I thought The Metamorphosis was purely allegorical. Alice was dreaming according to the final chapter, although many readers find deeper meaning than I did in the nonsense world of Wonderland.

Dream frames were a common convention to justify fantasy tales. Though Alice was more dream-like than most.

Andrea wrote: "Metamorphosis depends on whether you think the narrator is crazy or he really did turn into a cockroach, after all you're kind of left wondering in the end."

It seemed pretty obvious to me. (view spoiler)[Turning into a cockroach was a metaphor for him getting sick. His family was at first somewhat sympathetic but disgusted by it, when it became obvious that he wasn't getting any better they just stuck him in a room and waited for him to die, then eventually he did. (hide spoiler)]

My re-reading of Frank Herbert's Dune books hit a snag when, after searching my home high and low, I couldn't find Heretics of Dune. My Library didn't have it either but they did have Red Sister by Mark Lawrence which I recalled G33z3r saying some good things about in last months thread. Just getting started, but so far so good. Love the appendix in front.

I'm reading Redshirts. I'm almost 100 pages in and I'm calling it now: it's a virtual reality game. The captain and main crew are players while the main characters in the book are AIs that have become self aware.

Hillary wrote: "Just read the new Murderbot novella, Exit Strategy by Martha Wells. These are a lot of fun...."

Read it last night, 4th in the series. Could that be the conclusion? It rather felt like an ending, though didn't preclude further stories. I suppose it depends on sales. (I'm tentatively counting it toward my Completist Challenge :)

I wasn't sure if it was technically a novella or just a very short novel. (At 175 pages, it's only 17 pages short of Sign of the Unicorn, which I'm reading as part of our Amber series discussion this month.) I have to say the publisher is charging novel prices at $9.99 each. If combined into one 700 page opus, that'd be $39.96 for the set.

Regarding Murderbot- the publisher appears to have ordered a full novel so.....

G33z3r wrote: "one 700 page opus..."

Also known as a "short novel" by Neal Stephenson

The Shadow Prison by Jonathan Moeller

This week I've finished The Turn of the Screw and Other Ghost Stories - which I finished today and rated 2/5 stars (real rating 2.5/5 stars) - and The Horror at Red Hook - which I also finished today.

Horror at Red Hook is a re-read I did because I'm now about to start The Ballad of Black Tom. One of Lovecraft's most conflicting stories for me. As usual a skillful writer, but this story is absolutely drenched in his poisonous and insidious racism and anti-immigrant sentiments. Anyways, I'm looking forward to seeing how LaValle plays on those elements and turns them upside down.

Finished The Ballad of Black Tom and absolutely loved it. Initially rated it 4/5 stars (4.5/5) but it may well become 5/5 the more I think about it. What really made the book for me was the last 2-3 chapters. Then rereading earlier chapters everything just got that much better. Thoroughly enjoyed.

Now in the first few pages of Rebecca. Love the vivid descriptions in the first chapter.

NekroRider wrote: "Now in the first few pages of Rebecca. Love the vivid descriptions in the first chapter."

If you like that then you're going to love the rest of the book. The first two chapters tried my patience but the story picks up after that.

Finished Dragonheart, wasn't as plague based as I was worried about and got to see some interesting more day-to-day interactions between the riders, even if it was under strained circumstances. One thing that Todd McCaffrey did was write in a very similar manner to his mother, even reading the books back to back I don't feel the writing style changed (and I still tear up whenever a dragon dies and the rest of them keen!).

Back to the Dragon Delasangre series with The Seadragon's Daughter by Alan F. Troop. So far I'm more or less still on track to get through my challenging to-read list for the month, still have 5 to go, 6 if I count my ebook (Varney) but I'm already pretty sure I won't finish that one, it's loooong, and I only read it whenever I'm out of the house.

Book Nerd wrote: "I'm reading Redshirts. I'm almost 100 pages in and I'm calling it now: it's a virtual reality game. The captain and main crew are players while the main characters in the book are A..."
(view spoiler)[Wrong!
I like mine better. (hide spoiler)]

Book Nerd wrote: "[spoiler redacted]..."

Me too.

I'm getting my Rothfuss on, finished The Name of the Wind a couple of weeks ago, and I am a hundred pages away from wrapping up The Wise Man's Fear.

After that I am not sure, I am torn between The Fifth Season and Free the Darkness

October reading - so far, I've completed a re-read of the Crystal Singer trilogy by Anne McCaffrey, plus Sign of the Unicorn for our group read and Swordspoint by Ellen Kushner

Current I am reading Everfair by Nisi Shawl which is a alt steam punk version of a particular time period of African history - which I would probably enjoy much more if I knew anything about the period of time its set in and if there weren't so many narrators....

Which brings me to: officially abandoned - group read New York 2140. I just couldn't stand it in the end. The multiple narrators really didn't do it for me and I thought it was a lot of waffle. I skipped huge sections and only made it to 50%. I decided to give it a break for a while and have decided that I have zero motivation to continue to read it.

Upcoming reads: for the rest of the month - I am going to get my hands on A Night in the Lonesome October because the discussion has roused my curiousity. The Fall of the Kings by Ellen Kushner to finish my my reading of that series. I've been given The Fifth Season which I know quite a few group members have read - has it ever been a group read?

Then I'm going to get on top of my challenges (specifically authors from different geographical places) and read: Rift Breaker, Huntress (I'm not at all disappointed that it didn't win the nomination for group read because now I get to read it earlier, yay!) and Kalpa Imperial: The Greatest Empire That Never Was

Cat wrote: " I've been given The Fifth Season which I know quite a few group members have read - has it ever been a group read?..."

Nope. (It's the start of a trilogy, by the way, which snagged 3 Hugo Awards & one Nebula Award.)

Record of a Spaceborn Few by Becky Chambers is her 3rd novel in the universe of The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet & A Closed and Common Orbit, and like those this entry has only the most tenuous connection to the others. Yet it wasn't the kind of novel I was expecting.

If like Cat you aren't into multiple narrators, this isn't for you. It swaps between the almost quotidian stories of five people on the Exodus Fleet, the final refugees from a depleted Earth. At the half-way point I was still waiting for a plot to develop, or some of the characters to meet or have their stories cross. It finally dawned on me there wasn't going to be any special plot, though eventually some of the stories intersect. This is Chamber's Utopia, a bit in the mold of Le Guin's The Dispossessed, but heavier on ecology rather than economics, though there's a bit of the latter, too. And everyone is just so doggone nice.

"Make sure people remember that a closed system is a closed system even when you can’t see the edges."

I'm starting Ball Lightning now, for our group read in a couple of days.

I’ll be Starting Ball Lightening as soon as I finish The Sparrow

Cat, G33z3r, I'm down for doing a buddy read of The Fifth Season anytime

Saha wrote: "Cat, G33z3r, I'm down for doing a buddy read of The Fifth Season anytime"

Why not nominate it for December contemporary read, I'd vote for it then (my library has three copies but all are on loan so I'll have to get into the hold line so will need a bit of time to get my hands on it anyway)

Same with Ball Lightning, my library didn't have it at the time of the nominations but it soon will. I'm second in line so it will probably be a month so before I get my hands on it so will be late to the discussion :) Been wanting to read a Liu Cixin book for a while now.

Saha wrote: "Cat, G33z3r, I'm down for doing a buddy read of The Fifth Season anytime"

I'm game for a discussion. I've been curious to re-read it since finishing the trilogy.

Finished The Seadragon's Daughter, and to finish Alan F. Troop's Dragon DelaSangre series, started reading A Host of Dragons

The Witch: A History of Fear, from Ancient Times to the Present by Ronald Hutton

Trying to read through Winters Daughter from Michael J Sullivan and Mother Night by Kurt Vonnegut

Child of the Ghosts by Jonathan Moeller

I finished The Fifth Season and liked it a great lot, I am now starting The Obelisk Gate and hope to find it as good as the first book ef the series.

Early in the week I finished Thin Air by Michelle Paver. I read it within 24 hours or so. I had loved her book Dark Matter so much and zipped through that one in a day or less, so I wanted to have the same opportunity to read almost straight through with Thin Air. I didn't enjoy Thin Air as much as Dark Matter, I think in large part because of the setting. But as the book went on it got more intense and I did really like the ending a lot. Still debating between 3 and 4 stars.

Am currently 108 pages into Rebecca and hoping to make a good dent in it this weekend if not finish it. Still enjoying it, but think I needed to take that break for Thin Air.