Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ

New month, almost halfway through the year.

It's so hard to believe!

I'm still working through my Vlad Taltos series re-read. I'm just about finished with Phoenix.

Reading an ARC, Light-Years From Home.

I finished Phoenix last night and had a walkabout through my kindle library to pick another genre to read before the next Vlad book. I settled on Bernard Cornwell's War of the Wolf, #11 in the Saxon Tales. It's good to be back with Uhtred.

Just finished way of kings today, starting words of radiance

Excess by Jacob Holo and H.P. Holo

Lance wrote: "Just finished way of kings today, starting words of radiance"

I really enjoyed Words of Radiance.

I've finished Future Shop by Gideon Burrows


Very interesting! Here is my 4 star review: /review/show...

Finished Sal & Gabi Fix the Universe. Silly with a lot of fart jokes, but it had me laughing. Also finished the first Aldebaran graphic novel.

Back to Dune (waaaaayyyy back) with The Butlerian Jihad by Brian Herbert and the second Aldebaran book - La blonde by Luiz Eduardo de Oliveira (Leo). I began to question if the book was originally French since there was English text in the pictures (usually bubbles get translated but not background art) but I guess that was intentional on the author's part. To confuse things the author is Brazilian :) But a little Google seems to confirm that French was the original.

I finished The Savage Sword of Conan, Volume 14. A slight change of direction occurs during this volume - previously the Savage Sword stories had been primarily single issue stories, or maybe two issues. About halfway through this volume they started doing a continuing storyline, based on the article "A Probable Outline of Conan's Career".

Completed:
text:


Audible:

==========================================
Authors:
Emma BamfordP.J. Manney, Dervla McTiernan, J.M. Miro, Adrian Tchaikovsky
Narrators:
Sophie Aldred

Holdouts by Thomas Doscher

Uncivil Affairs by Thomas Doscher

I have finished The Song of Roland. As an example of heroic literature it bears little resemblance to actual historical events, but is a good read.

Repatriation by Thomas Doscher

I have started reading Swords Against the Shadowland. This is an addition to the chronicles of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser that is approved by the estate of Fritz Leiber

I've finished a great book: Upgrade by Blake Crouch


Here is my five star review: /review/show...

Finished reading Krillion City by Joseph Bunkoczy. Its actually originally written in French though I couldn't find a French edition on Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ. It was a random thing I picked up at the library. I wasn't too impressed with it though, felt independently published (though some indie books are better than professionally published ones, this one was...well...indie) and without depth, maybe ok for YA but characters were adults and the main guy, well he gets kidnapped and separated from his girlfriend so he hooks up with the first girl that flings herself at him, and then when he finally finds his original girlfriend and brings her home, he's relieved the other girl got bored waiting for him and wandered off elsewhere...hmm. Unexpected ending though. Worldbuilding was unclear, characters uninteresting. It had good ideas, but the execution lacked.

I finished reading The Sins of Our Fathers (The Expanse Book #9.5) by James S.A. Corey. It is a novella set after the final novel of the series. It gives the series a nice coda. I wish it was longer but appreciate what was written. I am reading It by Stephen King. Amazingly enough, I’ve never read it before. I suppose it’s because the novel is over one thousand pages long but I did read The Stand which is almost as long, so that might not be the reason. I plan to read Black Sun Rising by C.S. Friedman, next. I’ve read great reviews about it and want to find out how good it is for myself.

I haven't read much King. Some people say they like the abridged version of The Stand better as it makes a tighter story.

I have started Serafina and the Black Cloak (children's) as well as re-reading The Thousand Deaths of Ardor Benn (a new favorite).

Finished The Witch's Heart -- pretty good. Based on Norse mythology.

Audrey wrote: "I haven't read much King. Some people say they like the abridged version of The Stand better as it makes a tighter story.

And I felt even that could have used a couple hundred pages shaved off :) It's like 600 pages of people wandering about after a plague, and 200 pages of actual stuff happening. But then I find all these post-apocalypse "people wandering around finding what's left of humanity" to be kind of boring and dragged out. But since there are so many like this, I'm guessing other people like it so take my opinion with a grain of salt

Audrey wrote: "as well as re-reading The Thousand Deaths of Ardor Benn (a new favorite)...."

I intend to get around to this one of these days!

I liked King's early books, but he got wordier as he aged. In one of the last books I read, he spent a page describing a very common sort of room which the character walked through without anything happening. Why? It added nothing to the story. I thought I'd find some answers in On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft, but he spent way too much time about getting hit by the drunk in the van. I'll agree, it was horrible, but a book about writing wasn't the place for that. I haven't read anything by him since & won't.

I read him when I was very young. As a consequence, I don't do horror any more!

Jim wrote: "I liked King's early books, but he got wordier as he aged."

Yeah, I find his earlier stuff better. He reached a point at which he was popular enough to be able to say to his publisher that he didn't need an editor, or that the editor wasn't allowed to make substantial cuts. His ideas are still good, but his stuff is generally overwritten.

Wordiness seems to be a common problem among authors as they age. Heinlein did the same, also ignored the editor, & it did no favors for his writing either. Some authors start out wordy. While their books don't seem to get any longer, I think most of that is due to the limits of book binding. The stories don't move along nearly as fast. That's a real problem for me since my favorites have always been short & I've gotten less patient with padding as I've aged. Martin is a good example with his Game of Thrones books. The first 3 were excellent even though they were long. A lot happened in them. The 4th & 5th books expanded the world, but the characters & story didn't advance much. Far less bang for the buck.

I think the other problem Martin was having was that he had pretty much killed off all the characters that the readers cared about by the end of the 3rd book. Yes, he had introduced some new characters, but I don't think they grabbed the audience to the same degree.

Jim wrote: "I thought I'd find some answers in On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft, but he spent way too much time about getting hit by the drunk in the van. I'll agree, it was horrible, but a book about writing wasn't the place for that."

I think you need to take this book as being about his life and not about how to write bestsellers; if you expect a book full of writing advice it's not for you because you'll be disappointed (what advice there is could be summed up on a few pages), if however you're interested in the man then you might like this book. I enjoyed it because I find him interesting, and the van accident has obviously had a tremendous impact on him and his writing, especially the later Dark tower books.
What's ironic, though, is that he does say to "cut whatever's unnecessary" (and shows examples from his own work) but he himself indulges sometimes.


Tony wrote: "I think the other problem Martin was having was that he had pretty much killed off all the characters that the readers cared about by the end of the 3rd book."

It's a dangerous game to kill off great characters, and I think he pulled it off because there are still characters left I care about (I find it very impressive how he managed to turn the character of Jamie around in the eyes of the readers), but he's probably reached the point where some people just stop caring altogether because what's the point, any character they like will probably die.

There's also the issue with say the Eragon series or with the two most recent Dresden books, they take what was meant to be one book, but when it started getting a little too long it becomes two, and it's obvious to the reader that it's really one book split in two. And in the case of Eragon, kind of made the last book go on, and on, and on, with a wrap up that is by itself as long as some novels, or in the case of Dresden, the books were kind of shorter than usual.

The worst of course is when movies do it, like in Harry Potter's last movie where they just wanted to milk the audience for as much as they could, since the last book really fit in a single movie, so the characters spent a lot of time doing a whole lot of nothing in the first half.

Anyway, I finished reading the five Alderban books and just picked up the first two Betelgeuse La planète by Luiz Eduardo de Oliveira (Leo)

Bryan wrote: "I think you need to take this book as being about his life and not about how to write bestsellers;..."

That's good advice, but I still think there was too much whining about the accident & not enough about the writing. I think it failed to live up to either part of its title.

I mean "whining", too. Yes, it was horrific, but bad things happen to innocents all the time. I've endured a few such events over the course of my life, too. If you need to express them, do so & move on. He didn't. IIRC, he mentioned it quite a few times throughout the book & was repetitious about it. That's whining.

Bryan wrote: "...but he's probably reached the point where some people just stop caring altogether because what's the point, any character they like will probably die."

There are also a lot of people who have just given up on waiting for him to finish Winds of Winter. The HBO series provided a resolution to the story (however unsatisfactory it was) and George seems to have lost interest in continuing the book series. They have always taken him a long time to write (the series started in 1989), but it has been over a decade since Dance with Dragons. I'm not sure Winds of Winter will get finished (by him, at least), and I certainly don't expect the 2 or 3 books he has planned to finish the series will ever get written.

Tony wrote: "I think the other problem Martin was having was that he had pretty much killed off all the characters that the readers cared about by the end of the 3rd book. Yes, he had introduced some new charac..."

I was always getting them out of the library rather than buying them, but one book didn't advance the story until the second half, and when I saw the next volume, I went "Meh" and didn't take it out.

I gave up before A Dance with Dragons. The sad thing is that I own it, but I just didn't care anymore. I guess one of these days I should read it otherwise it's a big fat waste of money.

Andrea wrote: "But then I find all these post-apocalypse "people wandering around finding what's left of humanity" to be kind of boring and dragged out. But since there are so many like this, I'm guessing other people like it so take my opinion with a grain of salt"

Yeah, I find books with lots of wandering around to be pretty boring. Post-apocalyptic and survival stories do this the most, so I'm hesitant to read those.

Been reading a lot slower than normal this year, but I recently finished Prospero Burns by Dan Abnett. It's the 15th book of the Horus Heresy series (Warhammer). It was good and I did enjoy it, but it was nowhere near as great as its counterpart A Thousand Sons by Graham McNeill. The book deviates a bit from Horus Heresy tradition by being entirely from the PoV of one character, Kasper Hawser (aka The Upplander, aka Ahmad Ibn Rustah). He's a human historian who somehow made his way to Fenris, home world of the Space Wolves Legion. The reader is basically introduced to the Space Wolves culture through his eyes as he becomes the Legion's skjald/historian. We also get several flashbacks from his previous life leading up to his decision to travel to Fenris. Those elements made up maybe 60-75% of the book, while the last quarter was the Space Wolves side (again through Kasper's eyes) of Nikaea and Prospero. Anyway, I liked it, it just didn't click with me to the same level as most other Heresy books.

I'm going for more Horus Heresy next with the short story collection, Age of Darkness. So far only early into the first story, Rules of Engagement. It's an Ultramarines story and though I've only read a couple of their novels/stories I usually like them. So far so good!

About GRRM, imo I think he bit off more than he could chew with the scale and probably didn't plan it properly. He always seemed to want to write a massive world that was very multi-pov and not focused on a set cast of characters throughout. But I don't think he ever actually plotted it out properly for execution. I think he's got himself stuck and doesn't know what to do with the series anymore at all. On top of that, he seems like he's pretty much stopped caring. He always wanted to write something of that scale for TV, but at the time there wasn't much interest. Since he finally got that with GoT, I doubt he cares much about finishing the book series. I lost interest a long time ago, so not really invested in whether he finishes or not, but probably better to just be honest with fans. It seems like every time people are generally forgetting/moving on he comes out in another interview to say it's still in the works.

I agree with Tony's take on Martin. I'll definitely read more books in the series since there are quite a few characters I'm curious about. Arya is a favorite. I was really hoping the books would fix up the ending of the TV show. That last season was such a let down especially the big battle episode which was too dark to see. It was absolutely crazy that they blew such a large chunk of the season's budget on it.

Martin really offended me when he flipped off his fans who asked if he'd made arrangements for another to finish the series if he had health issues.

If you read that brief article, note the likely publication dates for the next books at the end.

Does an author owe their fans anything? I think they do to some extent. It's just polite to be nice to the people who support & cheer your efforts. It's also a good practice for future sales & helps other authors, too. Martin has obviously made his fortune &, in my opinion, betrayed his craft & his fans. I've been one since I read Fevre Dream in the 1980s, but he's lost me now.

When it comes to "owe your fans" I guess the question is, if you announce from day 1 that "I will write 3 books out of a planned 5 but not more" do you think people would actually buy your first 3 books? Some might, but very few people start into a series in the expectation they *won't* find out how the story ends :)

Would you pay a portrait artist to draw your outline but not add the paint?

Would you pay a roofer to build the framework and not add the shingles?

And frankly by doing that you make it hard for other authors. I now rarely buy books in a series until the series is complete. But series cannot be completed if the earlier books don't sell (the publishers won't invest since no one is buying, and the author needs to eat between book 1 and book 10).

So no, the fans don't have the right to say "Give me 1 book a year", since yes, it is a creative process, and yes, authors get sick, stuff happens in real life, and yeah, I don't want them to write junk just because they are under pressure.

But does that mean the author can make a ton of money off the first efforts, get a TV show, a musical and all this other stuff that he's probably making enough royalties off of to live the rest of his life without writing another word...but he only got to that point because some people went out and took the risk to start the series, and buy those books when nobody knew who he was and he needed to put food on his table.

I think he should just hand the series off to someone else if he doesn't want to do it himself.

I don't know the story behind Rothfuss or Scotty Lynch and why they haven't continued their respective series. I mean there are valid medical and other things that can happen that can make it impossible to write. Martin though, as far as I know is that he just got too busy doing things he found more "fun", and the money kept rolling in anyway, so why bother doing the hard stuff.

Finished reading The Butlerian Jihad...I didn't care for it much, I guess I liked the Prelude to Dune trilogy since I knew the characters. But here while some family names are familiar, all the dynamics are different, the tech is different...I kind of like the origins of Arrakis parts, but honestly the book was waaay too long, and there are two more books to go covering this story arc. Gah.

I struggled to find this in a used bookstore so ended up going to the library to get Robot Dreams by Isaac Asimov

Andrea wrote: "When it comes to "owe your fans" I guess the question is, if you announce from day 1 that "I will write 3 books out of a planned 5 but not more" do you think people would actually buy your first 3 ..."

Yeah. Fans are customers. Most writers and other business can't afford to ostracize them or blow them off.

To be fair to old George RR, writing isn't plumbing, no one ever had "plumbers block." It must be very hard to go back to a story that essentially, someone has finished for you, albeit not as you would have finished it. It must feel over and done, at least on some level. The longer you leave a story, the harder it is to come back to it... A bit like trying to eat yesterday's cold potatoes for breakfast. Even with my own modest little series I am struggling somewhat. (Not an advert just an observation). I had to shelve it for a while, coming back to it is difficult and slow and I feel the pressure of its being the final part, without the enthusiasm to carry me through. I will get back into it and eventually, George RR likely will too if everything remains equal. However, just saying that if I am struggling with zero pressure (basically, the world would not give two hoots if I never write another word) he must be experiencing a huge weight of expectation focussing on a project he must now have mixed feelings about to say the least. Should be finish it? Well, yes, he should. Does he have an obligation to finish it? Well, yes he does, if he is able to. Is at easy as "just buckling down to it," no, it's not. I don't know the guy, or even much about him to be honest but I doubt he is just being cynical and taking the money. Anyway , what do I know... And why am I defending multi millionaire authors? I have no idea...☺☺�

Because you're being kind, that's why. Nothing wrong with that!

Andrea wrote: "Finished reading The Butlerian Jihad...there are two more books to go covering this story arc. Gah."

Are you aware that there are 3 short stories in that arc as well? One set before each of the 3 main books - Hunting Harkonnens, Whipping Mek, and The Faces of a Martyr.

I've read several different things of late since the last time I posted.

Lord Valentine's Castle, which was a good classic fantasy
H. Paul Honsinger's two prequels to the most excellent, but sadly truncated, Man of War series: Deadly Nightshade and The Hunters of Vermin
Rachel Neumeier's fun and entertaining Keraunani
And Steven Brust's Orca, which is number 7 in the Vlad Taltos series.

I'm now in the middle of Brust's Dragon.

I finished Eyes of the Void, the second book in the Final Architecture series, which is supposed to go to 3 books. I found it good but a bit less so than the first volume. I started Thin Air by Richard Morgan; that book was lent to me by a relative in dead tree form.

I just finished Berserker. It was my first Fred Saberhagen, and I really liked his writing. I picked it up at the Old Book Sale simply because I recognized his name from various lists. I like the format (several short stories set in the same universe where giant killer spaceships are trying to exterminate all life), and I really like his direct, crisp writing style. I want to read more, so if you're a fan of his, let me know which ones I should try.

Tony wrote: "Andrea wrote: "Finished reading The Butlerian Jihad...there are two more books to go covering this story arc. Gah."

Are you aware that there are 3 short stories in that arc as well? One set before..."

I knew there was some on Tor.com but I didn't pay attention to where they fit in the timeline though. Thanks for pointing out they are part of this trilogy arc so I'll add those to my "read soon" shelf

Kivrin wrote: "I just finished Berserker. It was my first Fred Saberhagen, and I really liked his writing. I picked it up at the Old Book Sale simply because I recognized his name from various lists..."

They are good. Several other authors wrote other novels & short stories in the series. You might also like the various Bolo books & series. Originally an anthology by Keith Laumer, others have also added to the series in the same way as the Berserkers. It's about tanks controlled by AI, though.

Wizard and Glass: The Dark Tower IV

Dressing the Past edited by Margarita Gleba, Cherine Munkholt, and Marie-Louise Nosch

One of my GR friends, Don, sent me a military SciFi recommendation: A Choice of Treasons, and my gosh, what an opener! The marines had to extract some VIPs and civilians from an embassy and there was a heck of a fight. I didn't even notice how tense I was reading that until the scene was over. And it was a really long and riveting scene. Good book!