SciFi and Fantasy Book Club discussion
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What Else Are You Reading?
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What Else Are You Reading in 2019?
Allison wrote: "Welcome, Leah! Sounds like you've got some great books in front of you right now!! Way of Kings is one of my all time favorites, can't wait to hear what you think :D"Thank you Allison! I can see why Way of Kings is considered one of the tops, it is absolutely stunning thus far. It blows my mind that someone could keep coming up with some many unique ideas and then create such a large saga around them. The goal is to be through the first three before the 4th comes out in 2020.
Joon wrote: "I've actually been eyeballing City of Brass. One of those books that keeps popping up in recommended lists. Might have to make room for that at some point this year."I would definitely give it a try, its such a rich and textured world with some interesting concepts. Plus a little romance, a little political intrigue a bit of good old fashioned violence...can't go wrong. :)
John wrote: "I am working my way through The Wheel of Time series, including all the shorts that likely didn't exist 25 years ago. On Book 4. I will likely reread a bunch that I had read way back "Hats off to you good sir, I went through a phase about 5 years ago where I was super into the series and read through the first 7 in like 2-3 months, then got stuck in the middle of book 8 and haven't made any progress since. (Got ticked off at Rand's antics and put it down for too long lol) It's one of my great embarrassments that I haven't finished it yet. But at this point I would either have to read a re-cap on the beginning novels or just start all over again.
Several years ago I got through the first four WoT books, and decided I need a break. Then enough time went by that I knew I'd have to start the series over again anyway, because I remember basically nothing of what happened. I might take another run at it this year, though instead of all in a row maybe I'll do one a month or something, or even one every other month.
I started A Dragon's Guide to the Care and Feeding of Humans. It's cute so far, and it has illustrations by Mary GrandPré, which is nice.
I just finished Six Wakes which is on our group shelve and was quite blown away by the creepy atmosphere and intense contemplation of life.
Finished Cast In Courtlight, the second book in the Chronicles of Elantra series. There are things I love about this series so far, and other things that drive me up the wall. Their vibe is very similar to Becky Chambers' books, only secondary world fantasy--cozy, supportive, found family--and the world-building is fascinating. (review)Next: Sorcerer to the Crown
Leah wrote: "...But at this point I would either have to read a re-cap on the beginning novels or just start all over again..."Wikipedia has excellent summaries of all the novels.
Beth, I love Chronicles of Elantra! Ahhhhhhh! One of my all time fav series. I'm very excited about the new release coming out next week. Wee~~~
Let's see. I've read about 50 books. Infinite has the honor of being the first book I DNF. RC Bray was the narrator and he was doing a great job but the story was terrible.
System Apocalypse series (books 1-6) has been added to my Top LitRPG list. The setup is a little different. This one is SF&F. Earth and it's inhabitants get super lucky! Yay! An alien race decides to change Earth into a Dungeon World. It takes about a year for the Mana infusion to complete and transformations to take hold. The series has some hiccups that could be cleaned up with a bit more editing but the strengths totally outshine the flaws. Great characters (good/bad/both), awesome game system, loads of layered lore, great action and a fun over arcing plot line. I'm a total fan of John Lee and his insane ideas that work because he doesn't mind planning and putting his neck on the line. Books 1-4 are on audio and Nick Podehl did a great job narrating. This is my fav work of his to date.
The Wayward Bard - I had to listen to this LitRPG because I used to play a Bard in one of my old games. Great intro, fun game world, lots of quirky characters, humor + bad puns and neat ways to play a bard. I'm just sad that there's only one book out. I really didn't like the MC for half of the book because he does... well, you'll see. Fun & smart story.
Iliad Update: Finished two audiobooks. 1st was Alexander Pope. 2nd Richmond Lattimore. Charlton Griffin did a fantastic job narrating Lattimore's translation. It was like a radio drama. This is my current fav for listening to the Iliad and that's mostly due to Griffin's performance.
The Wicked King had a slow start but it totally had me captivated by the end. I couldn't believe it was over! Ahhhhh! I love the way Black creates multi-layered characters and put them in their paces. Very well done. I already made plans to re-read the books when the 3rd one comes out. Great, dark fae series with flawed but lovable characters.
Ritualist series by Dakota Krout is another fun LitRPG that I've added to the Top List. It has a great epic fantasy vibe and lots of smart game play. Nice balance of game world mechs, rich in lore and a crafty main character that keeps me on my toes.
The Alloy of Law has great characters and I loved how Sanderson used the cases to show off the world, connect to the earlier books and insight into Wax, Wayne, Marasi, etc. It was a lot of fun and quick read. I don't like the narrator but it worked out ok at 2x speed.
Soo wrote: "Beth, I love Chronicles of Elantra! Ahhhhhhh! One of my all time fav series. I'm very excited about the new release coming out next week. Wee~~~"Soo, it's great to see that there's an Elantra fan in the group. :) It'll be quite some time before I'm caught up, but I do have the third book and will read it a little later this year.
Have you read any of Sagara/West's epic fantasy, like her Broken Sword series? (Elantra's my only experience with her so far.)
I read The Lathe of Heaven, which I loved. I'm more into UKLG's sf novels than into her fantasy novels. This one especially had a lot of the Sturgeon vibe that I adore.A full five stars read also was Red Mars, yet this is also a book that I wouldn't recommend. Probably only readers who love reading about 1/3 of a book full of landscape and terraforming descriptions will like this. Fortunately I'm one of those readers who can blissfully get lost in chapters upon chapters of alien geology and such.
A real suprise was The Prince of Morning Bells. I picked this one, because it sits on my shelf since the early 80ies. My sister bought it, and I never read it, cause I didn't like the cover (German edition). So when the prompt "ugly cover" for the TBR clearing challenge came up, this was the perfect choice. It was Nancy Kress' first published novel and it was really, really good! A weird fairytale about a woman on the quest for herself.
I have been traveling and am almost done with The Collapsing Empire and will probably continue with The Consuming Fire afterward. I enjoy most of the books from John Scalzi and this series is pretty good so far. I am trying to alternate non-fiction and fiction so may read something between these two.
I found a couple weeks ago that I'd read "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" years ago, and had only started "Through the Looking-Glass." I re-read the first and yesterday finished the other. I quite enjoyed reading both of them. Fun little books, and two more classics are taken care of. I'm going to pause for a bit to think about what I want to read next. It will probably be something much more recent.
Beth, start with the Hunter's Oath & Hunter's Death before Broken Sword. I've read most of Michelle Sagara's work. My fav were the duology out of this particular world. Great series, action & politics. A wider overview than Elantra. It follows a handful of characters.
I haven’t posted in this thread yet this year, so this will be a little long. Here’s what I’ve read so far in 2019.* I finished up the very last two books in Robin Hobb’s Realm of the Elderlings series from the final Fitz and the Fool trilogy. I really enjoyed the whole series. Some of these characters already had a permanent residence in my head (and my heart) from when I read the first three trilogies several years ago, but now they’ve added additional wings to their home. I wasn’t 100% happy with how everything ended up, but my complaints had more to do with style than content. I’m still not completely past the series hangover yet. My reviews of the last two books are below:
Fool’s Quest
Assassin’s Fate
* Next, I read The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain. I had read Adventures of Tom Sawyer around this time last year, so it was time for the follow-up. This was fun, and it served as a nice change of pace. Sometimes certain jokes or storylines got carried too far and grew tedious, but there was one decision Huck made that I liked so much that it single-handedly earned the book an extra star. My review.
* Then I read Margaret Atwood’s MaddAddam trilogy, starting with Oryx and Crake. I liked this quite a bit. I tend to enjoy these sorts of non-linear storytelling methods in which the reader is taken back and forth between the past and the present. I like taking what I know so far from each end of the story and trying to predict what happened in the middle. The first two books held my attention really well. I enjoyed the third book and its various revelations and wrap-ups, but somehow the story didn’t hold my attention as well. My reviews:
Oryx and Crake
The Year of the Flood
MaddAddam
Next up I plan to read The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August by Claire North. I really liked Touch when I read it last summer, so I’ve been wanting to try some of her other work.
Aargh! I started a group read here that looked so good, but it is NOT for me (sighing loudly). I will say no more until the discussion starts, but I didn't get through two chapters.
I started The Raven Tower by Ann Leckie with great expectations but it is falling a bit flat. I wish she had stuck to sci fi. This is fantasy and although it is building up to possibly a great climax some of the book has been quite tedious.
What is this world we live in? Mark Lawrence and Brandon Sanderson are writing sci-fi and Ann Leckie is writing Fantasy. I’m a few chapters into Provenance by Ann Leckie. Taking me a bit to get into it. Took me a couple to get my head around Ancillary Justice too.
Karin wrote: "I've been reading the William Shakespeare's Star Wars books, although I've only ever seen two of the movies (the first and third that ever came out, so 4 & 6 in the series). I started with 4-6 with..."Maybe you should give the Klingon version of Hamlet a look.
Michele wrote: "Scribe and The Library at Mount Char. Both a bit dark, I may need to follow with some P.G. Wodehouse as an antidote."P.G. Wodehouse is quite the character when it comes to writing. I really enjoyed the Jeeves and Wooster show.
Phrynne wrote: "I started The Raven Tower by Ann Leckie with great expectations but it is falling a bit flat. I wish she had stuck to sci fi. This is fantasy and although it is bui..."Did you get an advanced copy? I thought this wasn't released yet. This is good for me to hear, though, I will try to temper my expectations. I loved her others so much, so I'll try not to expect too much.
Jacqueline wrote: "What is this world we live in? Mark Lawrence and Brandon Sanderson are writing sci-fi and Ann Leckie is writing Fantasy. "“The city is flying, okay? The city is flying. We're fighting an army of robots. And I have a bow and arrow. None of this makes sense.” — Hawkeye, Avengers: Age of Ultron
https://youtu.be/zWLwP9pEWB8
@Phrynne: Thanks for the heads up. Like Ariana, I will have to adjust my expectations. I've been trying to decide between ebook or audiobook for Raven's Tower, but if it might be tedious I'll listen so at least I have Adjoa Andoh's narration to keep me entertained.
Sanderson is writing science fiction? Which books?!
Ariana wrote: "Phrynne wrote: "I started The Raven Tower by Ann Leckie with great expectations but it is falling a bit flat. I wish she had stuck to sci fi. This is fantasy and al..."Yes I read an advance copy. It was available on Netgalley and I was lucky enough to get it.
I finished The Raven Tower by Ann Leckie
. It was good but not as good as I had hoped. It is getting lots of five star reviews though so maybe it was just me:)My review
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
FictionEpic: Legends of Fantasy. This one has been collection dust since sometime in 2013 and I decided to start reading it in late 2018. So far, my overall experience with this anthology has been positive, but (as to be expected) there has been a few ones that I didn't like.
The Shadow Rising. It was a while since I read book 3 of WoT, so I am currently reading chapter summaries of the earlier books to get up to speed (Done with book 1 there).
Non-fiction
Bigger Leaner Stronger. I'm overweight and want to lose weight (and get into better physical shape in general). Found some really useful tips here.
Mod
I just had I think 3 bagels this weekend, anything in your book about what to do about that?
I seem to be doing books with the same titles:Glimpses by Lewis Shiner
and
Glimpses by Lynn Flewelling
oddly enough, even though I love the Nightrunner series, I wasn't thrilled with the collection as at least three of the stories had a lot of erotic content (in one case more eroticism than plot). The Shiner book has more "magic" to it
Finally finished The Bear and the Nightingale, which I've been reading since December. I ended up liking it a lot, it was just a really slow read for me because it seemed like the entire book was mostly set-up. I've got the second book ready to go on audio. It's definitely a great wintery read.I also finished listening to In an Absent Dream, which was just as good if not better than the rest of her Wayward Children series. I think I'd definitely end up in more of a logic world like the Goblin Market than lots of the previously seen worlds. A nonsense world would drive me nuts after a while.
Yes, the Goblin Market is the first of the Wayward Children worlds where I would have any slim chance of surviving! Although I liked Sticks and Bones better, but would never ever want to live on the Moors.
Anna wrote: "Yes, the Goblin Market is the first of the Wayward Children worlds where I would have any slim chance of surviving! Although I liked Sticks and Bones better, but would never ever want to live on th..."I could probably survive the Moors, but Confection would have been a nightmare for me.
I might also survive the Moors, but I'd be pretty depressed. Confection was hard to read about, I needed so many showers! :D
Jordan wrote: "I also finished listening to In an Absent Dream, which was just as good if not better than the rest of her Wayward Children series. I think I'd definitely end up in more of a logic world."Good to hear! I have In an Absent Dream on hold at the library, hoping it comes in soon.
I ended up binge-reading books 2-4 in The Queen's Thief over the last couple days. It wasn't really planned, but I've been doing a lot of planned reading recently and needed to do something else. Books 2&3 were instant favorites, and even though I didn't love book 4 as much, I think as a series it's fantastic. My other taking-a-break book was Witchmark, which I started last year but put down because it was due back to the library. It wasn't marketed this way, but it felt a lot like a Sherlock Holmes variation, and I thought the author did a good job with that, even if it wasn't intentional. The big reveal wasn't all that surprising, but I don't think that lessened my enjoyment of the book overall.
Jordan wrote: "Finally finished The Bear and the Nightingale, which I've been reading since December."I recently read #2, The Girl in the Tower. It has all the good stuff of #1, and the pace is much livelier. Highly recommended for those who like The Bear and the Nightingale.
I also have Absent Dream in hold at library! Excited for the next. Also love that they are Novellas
Here's the latest books I've finished. One with my eyeballs and one in audio.The Fall of Io - Another good entry in this world, although I still enjoyed the original Tao trilogy better. It started a bit slow, but then it got really good and finished strong. - ★★★★☆ - (My Review)
Bloody Rose - I ended up not liking this as much as I expected. Many people seemed to enjoy this more than the first book, but for me it was the opposite. I found it a bit slow at times, but overall still enjoyable. - ★★★☆☆ - (My Review)
Just started The Mysterious Affair at Styles, my first Agatha Christie book. Wanted to breeze through one more book before the end of the month, and this one's surprisingly short.
I'm just freaking out over The Three-Body Problem! Thank you so very much to everybody who recommended this to me after hearing about my enthusiasm for "Hyperion". Only drawback: it's another series. I didn't realise that when I started reading. My (non-existing) kingdom for authors who are capable to bring their ideas across in stand-alones.Perchance, but utterly fitting, my audiobook at the same time was Alice's Adventures in Wonderland & Through the Looking-Glass, for the time travel challenge. The mind-boggling ideas in both novels went hand in hand and had my brain delightfully spinning over the weekend.
I read a bunch of novellas this weekend:City of Truth - didn't really like this one
In Calabria - fairly good
Glimpses - really enjoyed this one
All Systems Red - ditto
also read Emergence - really good once you get past the different writing style. The protagonist is an 11 year old girl, but this book is not meant for MG children, in the aftermath of Armageddon. The writing style makes it a very quick read
Allison wrote: "For now I got the Whispersync of Gardens of the Moon"Excessively belated thanks for the reminder that whispersync exists. I was balking at buying this a third time (already have it in paper and ebook) but $7.50 could well be worthwhile to finish a book that I'm invested in completing, but am also having a grueling upward climb with.
Unfortunately "grueling upward climb" is also my current experience with the much shorter Sorcerer to the Crown. Going to push to the midway point and hope.
Mod
I am a bit stalled.
I'm annoyed at Deadhouse Gates doing all the things I think authors shouldn't do when writing about trauma in fiction. I'm told it doesn't stay that way so I'm waiting until my feathers unruffle. Unfortunately, I'd given myself a week headstart to get this mammoth out of the way before starting my next books, so they are still in transit!
I read Welcome to Your Authentic Indian Experience with the new short fiction club which I quite liked though it was maybe not an anecdote for righteous fury.
So, I am picking at The Candle in the Wind, because who doesn't like a little heartwrenching treachery if you need a bit of a time out?
Gabi wrote: "I'm just freaking out over The Three-Body Problem! Thank you so very much to everybody who recommended this to me after hearing about my enthusiasm for "Hyperion". Only drawback: it's another series. I didn't realise that when I started reading. My (non-existing) kingdom for authors who are capable to bring their ideas across in stand-alones."
FWIW, the first two books form an entirely complete story on their own. The third book is amazing, but if it hadn't been written, I would never have noticed that the series wasn't done.
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Lol yeah I have a "to read in 2019" and a "to read next" and I'm still constantly shuffling things into and out of both of them.