Kerry's comments (member since Apr 29, 2009)

Kerry's comments from the Beyond Reality group.

I've just bought a historical mystery, The Ninth Daughter An Abigail Adams Mystery by Barbara Hamilton, after seeing a review on the Tor.com site, telling me it is both a good story and actually by Barbara Hambly.

Speaking of whom, Hambly has just put up four short stories on her website that can be bought in pdf format for $5 each that are futher adventures of some of her characters. At the moment, two are Benjamin January stories that have been previously published, one is a convention story and the last is a new story about Antrgy and Joanna from the Windrose Chronicles.

I have bought the latter, but haven't had a quiet moment to read it yet.

I splurged and bought all the Vorkosigan compilations I didn't have from Baen's ebooks site. I have them all in paperback/hardcover already, but these days I find it a lot easier to read on my iPhone so it's nice to have electronic versions as well.

I do love Baen's policy on ebooks (all around $5 or $6, no DRM and they sell all over the world) and will be buying up Lee and Miller's Liaden books (which I also have in dead tree versions) next time I have some spare cash.

I finished up Daughter of the Forest and thought it was a wonderful book.

I've since read Nightlife by Rob Thurman and reread Barrayar.

I love the Vorkosigan books and was delighted when the group decided to read them, but because I was struggling with reading, I quickly got behind. I'm trying to catch up so I can join in with the conversation, and have started The Warrior's Apprentice.

Of course, as soon as I made that plan a bunch of requests arrived for me at the library, so I've also started Leviathan by Scott Westerfeld and hope to get both of them read over the next week.

Stefan, I'm going to ask a strange question here. If the first book in a series has been read by the group, does that mean that number 2 has to be nominated next?

To be more specific, I'm thinking of Joan D. Vinge's Tiamat series. Book 1 is The Snow Queen and as best as I can tell, has been read twice by the group. The second is World's End which is a smaller book about an important incident where most of the action is perepheral to the main story except the very end. Finally there is the third book, The Summer Queen which I believe completes the story.

I've read the first two books, but never made it through the third, so ideally I'd like to nominate that one.

If that is possible, I nominate The Summer Queen for SF. If it's not, then I'll go back and nominate World's End instead.

For fantasy I nominate Moon Called by Patricia Briggs for something different.

At the moment I'm slowly reading my way through Daughter of the Forest by Juliet Marillier. It's my first book by the author and I'm really enjoying it. It's not always an easy read, but I'm finding it deft, all internally consistent and satisfying.

A good friend raved about how good the fourth book, Heir to Sevenwaters, was and I was interested, but being me I had to start at the beginning. I'm feeling it was worth it. I have the book from the library, but I think I'll buy my own copies of the series in paperback.

I'm books and books behind you in the Bujold series, which is very frustrating as I love all the books and was so looking forward to rereading them. But somehow it just hasn't happened. Maybe I just need to load up Cordelia's Honor on the iPhone and dive into reading Barrayar regardless of the fact I'm currently reading other books as well.

Cool, thank you. It was puzzling me.

Janny, thank you for you comments. That's really interesting about the outward bound. I didn't know that. I have Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and have had it for 20 years, so my own resources are pretty limited. That may have something to do with my struggle with relating to keeping going to that extent. It is so far beyond my own experience.

Thank you for taking time to reply. I appreciate it and I'm certainly not trying or intending to slag off either you or the book.

The more I think about it (and I'm still thinking about it which is the sign of a good book) the more I wonder why it didn't work for me. All the right things are there and I can totally see why other members of the group loved it. I think I'll have to stick with the way it felt like two different kinds of books to me.

I guess I'm just one of the readers who didn't connect with the book. But I'm certainly not sorry I read it.

Talking of character names, I have a question. Is the a reason the prince of Devall never got a name?

I feel like I'm spoiling the party, coming in to comment, but I'm afraid the book didn't work for me.

My review is here in which I try to explain some of why. If you want to read all the (lengthy) notes I made as I read, they are up on my "notes" blog here.

In short, for me, the perfect fantasy happy ending (which on its own merit, was lovely) and the contrivances required for that betrayed the stark power of the first half. The first half felt painfully real, so to shift to a more standard, over the top kind of fantasy fare in the second half was a huge disappointment. As much as I like a happy ending, the second half wasn't in tune with what the first half set up and promised the reader.

This was a schizophrenic book for me. Or perhaps more a case of multiple personality disorder with two distinctly differently toned books inside the one binding. I think I would have prefered either a second half that matched the first half (hard though that would have been to read) or a first half that matched the second half, rather than the mix that I actually got.

I don't think it was a bad book, just that it felt like two different books. I would have liked either, but not the half-and-half that it felt like to me.

I made it to the end! It's been a long read for me, but I'm glad I read it. I shall now marshall my thoughts and tomorrow I will go and read the other threads.

I'd like to nominate Endless Blue by Wen Spencer for SF. It's a lot lighter than many of the nominations but I thought I'd toss in a change of pace.

There are so many good fantasy books with several I'd like to read already that I'm not going to add to my indecision by nominating something myself.

Sandi, I agree Children of the Company would have been better as short stories.

I'd like to thank Janny publically for sending me the pages missing from my library edition of the book. They arrived today and I will be keeping them safe and returning them to the library with the book so that it can be repaired for the next reader.

I haven't been able to do any reading ni the past few days, but I'm hoping to get back to it soon. I will finish this book before the end of the month. I will. I will. I will.

Just picked up Fledgling by Sharon Lee and Steve Miller from my favourite specialist bookshop.

Stefan, as a slower reader than I was before I got sick, the enormous length of Wars of Light and Shadow terrifies me. I do have (or at least, I know I had) the first book, although I remember stopping reading it for some reason. I did really enjoy the Cycle of Fire books many years ago.

It frustrates me that for health reasons, my brain doesn't process as well as it used to, meaning some books just get too much for me and I'm afraid the "Wars" books may fall into that category. I know I generally read easier reads than I used to. I realise I'm missing out on some good books, but I don't know that there's much I can do about it.

I'm getting close to halfway and I'm finding it hard work. However, I say that as a compliment to the author as I'm having to pay attention and I find myself very invested in what is going on. I have CFS and a five year old home for the school holidays (a very bad combination) so I have no energy to spare and yet I still need to keep reading and find out what happens. So although I think it will take me a while yet to get to the end, so far I'm impressed.

Janny - fascinating trivia! So do you also know why driving in some places switched to the right? You've made me curious now.

It's a media tie in, but surely that counts too? To Dream in the City of Sorrows

Thank you Janny. I will do that. I have read the missing pages on your website (hooray for excerpts) and will move on to the book now.

Thanks Stefan. I found Janny's link to the excerpt in her post. I am indeed missing the first two pages, but they are within that excerpt, so I can read the missing bit on the website and then move back to the book. Phew.