The Gaming Den

Avoraciopoctules wrote:I picked up The Curse of Chalion cheaply at a local bookstore a few months ago. Recently, I discovered that the library I visit at least weekly had further books in the series. I just finished Paladin of Souls and am working on The Hallowed Hunt.

I am definitely enjoying the books, but I have found that they are much better if I do not read the summaries on the jackets. Much of The Curse of Chalion's plot was spoiled for me by the summary.

Damn, is everyone reading Bujold now?

I mean, I actually did chapter-by chapter review for a website for the first book of the Sharing Knife. A few days after it went up, Frank said he was reading the books.

Just, damn.

Interesting. The Curse of Chalion was the first book of hers I read, and I wouldn't have picked it up at all if it weren't for interesting cover art and a significantly marked-down price.

How are her other books? Right now, I'm trying to decide between The False Mirror ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Damned_Trilogy ) and Sly Mongoose ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sly_Mongoose (Ironically, I only learned that Crystal Rain was another book in this series just now when I linked Wikipedia)), but I could use an addition to the to-read pile if there's anything else by Bujold you recommend.

Maxus wrote:
Damn, is everyone reading Bujold now?

We can only hope.



As to her other books (for Avoraciopoctules), generally, they are really, really good. The two collected in Cordelia's Honor (Shards of Honor and Barriyar) are collectively my favorite book. Read the damn things. They are more than worth the time.

Thank you, I shall.

Just finished The Athoritarians.

Very interesting, not to mention free.

http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~altemey/

From my fantasy section, Scott R. Bakker - The Darkness that comes before. It's readable.

From the SF part, Bruce Sterling - Distraction. I've been trying to get through that one for 2 months. Damn Bruce. Annoying in writing as he is in RL.

Bujold is among my favorite authors, both SF and Fantasy.

Damn it, so many of these books aren't at my library. For example it doesn't have much Bujold, with a total of 0 copies of The Curse of Chalion across the whole county and about 50 libraries, and several others with only one copy. It also doesn't have Grunts by Mary Gentle which I'd heard good things about.

Thanks ckafrica for reminding me about Locke Lamora. I really enjoyed that book and keep looking for it at the library then forget to look for it online and reserve it.

@ A_Cynic: Mike Carey seems to have written some John Constantine so that could be why it's similar. I'll try picking that up though: I found some ideas of Crossing Midnight (another comic he wrote for) interesting so this could be pretty good. Or a straight take off of Hellblazer.

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Personally, I really like Charles Stross. The Atrocity Archives is absolutely amazing, I loved Halting State and I think the rest of his stories are reliably very good and imaginative. I'm just about to read Singularity Sky at the moment. Just about all of his work is Sci-Fi.

Another Sci-Fi I'm reading is Broken Angels by Richard Morgan. I read the sequel a while back and really enjoyed it, but was never sure if it was a sequel or not.

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Has anyone managed to read much Steven Erikson? Its a huge fantasy series I really enjoyed, but the focus of each book changes so much and the books get so large that I kept forgetting what happened in each story and lost track of it. Together with C. Esslemont (also writing in the same universe) its probably about as big as the Wheel of Time. I keep thinking about going back over the series again.

I just finished the 5th volume of the "Lost Fleet" series yesterday. Nicely entertaining series.

Koumei wrote:I've been mowing through the Discworld series again, because it's nice, light reading. Other than that, every now and then I read a chapter of "How to rule the world" and "The Art of War" (with commentaries)

I find the commentaries are often better than the actual art of war.

A_Cynic wrote:My wife and I disagree on "the Dark Tower" set quite a bit. I loved the feel of the first book and loved the rest of the books as well until the author showed up and then it went downhill.

I couldn't agree more. I'm about half way through book seven now. Book six sucked hard, but book seven is recovering somewhat.

Game on,
fbmf

@Parthenon

Altered Carbon, Broken Angels and Woken Furies have the same main character, Takeshi Kovacz, but that is the only thing uniting them(and some background info scattered arround). The same as it is in Bujolds Vorkosigan saga.

So, anyone read the Riftwar Cycle? I read something about it on TV Tropes, and pinpointed Drow, Yuan Ti and Mershaulk, so I checked the specific page on it, and the writer actually created it as a campaign setting.

Please tell me it's good...

Prak_Anima wrote:So, anyone read the Riftwar Cycle? I read something about it on TV Tropes, and pinpointed Drow, Yuan Ti and Mershaulk, so I checked the specific page on it, and the writer actually created it as a campaign setting.

Please tell me it's good...

I've only read a few books. My impressions were that it was dense, but enjoyable. There were a number of ideas I liked.

@Prak_Anima:
I read it a while back and quite liked it. Yes, it has uberelves, stereotypical dwarves, incredibly noble dragons and so on, but it is pretty fun.

However, there seems to be a love of Deus Ex Machina with the characters being told/taught things by a hugely powerful magician or by themselves from the future, to take but two examples.

A terrifyingly large amount of the plot seems to have been orchestrated by this ubermage who refuses to die and be removed from the series. There are a couple of other characters who flat out refuse to die.

Here's what I will be reading...

My favorite artist-author has a book coming out next month. Two more are in line to be published. And, according to her, the publishers want a fourth and fifth one, before the first in the series is even out. And the first one has gotten a starred review from Kirkus Reviews.

So, in the spirit of helping one of my favorite people eat, I'll be ordering the book, and probably the rest of them when they come out.

For those who care, the author is Ursula Vernon. Her website is www.metalandmagic.com. The book is Dragonbreath.

Edit: Oh, yeah. You may recognize some of her work.

LOL WUT?

I saw the 2008 Elric : the stealer of souls at my local library when I showed up for my weekly volunteer hours. Since I'm going to be spending a substantial amount of time sitting in automotive transportation devices during the next couple days, I grabbed it and a couple other books. Since almost all my knowledge of the series comes from skimming Wikipedia and TVtropes (the rest being the discovery that Arioch was a name used in more than just Drakengard) it should be mostly new to me.

The intro was a bit off-putting, but I'll give it at least half an hour of reading time before I go back to playing Jeanne d'Arc.

Avoraciopoctules wrote:I saw the 2008 Elric : the stealer of souls at my local library when I showed up for my weekly volunteer hours. Since I'm going to be spending a substantial amount of time sitting in automotive transportation devices during the next couple days, I grabbed it and a couple other books. Since almost all my knowledge of the series comes from skimming Wikipedia and TVtropes (the rest being the discovery that Arioch was a name used in more than just Drakengard) it should be mostly new to me.

The intro was a bit off-putting, but I'll give it at least half an hour of reading time before I go back to playing Jeanne d'Arc.

Bah, new elric stories suck ass.

serious Moorcock still does his thing but the Elric world has become so frigging huge and stretched thin, the stories aren't very edible.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elric

In 2008, Del Rey Books reprinted the original, classic Elric material as a series of three illustrated books: The Stealer of Souls, To Rescue Tanelorn, and The Sleeping Sorceress. Subsequent volumes appearing in 2009 (Duke Elric and Elric in the Dream Realms) and 2010 (title to be confirmed) will reprint later material.

Elric is best seen in the stories contained in the DAW books Elric of Melnibone, Weird of the White Wolf, and Stormbringer.

All the other stories are not only of lower quality IMO, but also suspect as authentic Elric stories, because there was a distinct tendency at the time for stories to be submitted for publication, and then sent back to be rewritten with another, more popular, main character in the lead role.

After finishing Pynchon's V., I've now moved on to his Crying of Lot 49. I personally find everything by him to be roughly equivalent to Jesus on a Stick.

After that I'll probably read Gene Wolfe's new short story collection.

The Stormcaller and The Twilight Herald by Tom Lloyd- Pretty sweet so far, I'm hoping the series goes somewhere with the next book which is due to come out late September. The series seems fairly original, although I'm not the best judge as I haven't read much fantasy.

The Night Angel Trilogy by Brent Weeks- I picked up the first one because it had such a cool cover and wasn't too impressed, but I'm glad I persevered because the series really takes off in the next two books. I would highly recommend these to anyone who likes dark gritty fantasy.

Zodiac: an Eco-Thriller by Neal Stephenson- Wow, just wow this guy is probably one of the best contemporary authors around. If you haven't read any of his stuff you are missing out. Diamond Age, Snowcrash, Cryptonomicon, The Baroque Cycle, Anathem (haven't read this one yet)

The Innocent Mage and The Awakened Mage by Karen Miller- Total crap, how anyone can make a high fantasy epic so dull and convoluted is beyond me. I hate to be so negative about a book but these are total rubbish, some of the only books I have ever read that I considered the time spent reading a total waste.

Sorry for the pithy post, hope it helps someone find something they enjoy reading.

double post

I could actually read the Mage books. The first 2/3rds of the first book was pretty good, then the ending of the first book sucked in every way. After that the second book got even worse. I only finished it because I'd got most of the way through already.

But it was the Godspeaker series that really pissed me off. I couldn't get into them whatsoever. I actually preferred her writing as KE Mills. Well, the one I read anyway.

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Oh, isn't that oh so brilliant. The whole county has two copies of Stormcaller, both out on loan. And three copies of the first Night Angels. With 1 reservation current on the Night Angel and all currently loaned. Urgh, its going to be a month or so before I get hold of them if I reserve them now... If its not really worth my while I'll be so pissed off... (well, I was probably going to try and get hold of the Night Angel anyway at some point)

I read the "Southern Victory" series from Turtledove last month (missed one volume though), and now started the Honor Harrington series. I bought all as e-books. Those from Baen I got as RTF docs, so I can esily read them on my smartphone while commuting.