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Archive [Retired Book Clubs]
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RETIRED THREAD: Vagabond Treehouse Book Club
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Timelord Iain, Tech Support
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Sep 11, 2021 06:37AM
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Brian, did you buy the audiobook or reading the paperback? Let me know how #3 is. I liked the new guy that ended up dying. Josten is the best character. I wish the author had told the story from his POV throughout.
Iain, that story sounds totally over the top! LOL
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I liked the new guy that ended up dying. Josten is the best character. I wish the author had told the story from ..."
Goodreads compares Hard Luck Hank to Space Team... I'd say it's Space Team crossed with the machismo of a Larry Correia book... Hank has similar nigh-indestructible powers to the MC of the Hard Magic book/series...
8 books and 2 backstory anthologies, so far... I've been loving it... just been slowed a bit by my break from Terraria and return to idle games for a bit, while I binged Community... on season 3 already... think I'm nearing the end of the episodes I watched before...
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=D Keeps you wanting more huh?
Though, I don't agree that Expanse necessarily has game changers? I feel like that happens right at the beginning or in the middle for Expanse.
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The intro is fun! It's gloomy and funny at the same time. =D
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Heh, so two of my GR friends did not enjoy Peculiar Peril at all. Hope it doesn't suck! It's definitely tongue in cheek.
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Portal fantasy isn't new. I'm not sure why it's getting more of a niche than it has been. Like Mode series by Piers Anthony, Alice in Wonderland, Sandman by Neil Gaiman, etc. Listening a bit slower today because busy, but the story seems to be a solid YA with fanciful details that should get answers. It's definitely not as obtuse as some of his other work. lol
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Listening a bit slow..."
Yea... Portal Fantasy goes all the way back to Narnia and Alice in Wonderland, for sure... before, I just compared those series to Narnia and Alice in Wonderland... and I think I heard the term Portal Fantasy for awhile before putting 2 & 2 together... this summer, not only have I read a fair bit of Portal Fantasy/Horror, but a surprising amount of it had Hollow in the name, too...
I'm somewhere around 75% and I think it's a fun kid story. Fun characters, weird stuff and all of it is an adventure. Nice mix of internal monologues and active scenes linked together.
Peculiar Peril: FinishedI loved Raphael Corkhill's narration! It was really good! I looked him up and I think he's new to the narration world. He hasn't worked on a lot of good books. There were a few that had a bit of promise. I'll look them up later.
Cover: All of the stuff on the cover are in the story as far as I can tell.
The book is actually a duology. I didn't realize that and suprised when I got to the first epilogue. lol
I think it's a fun YA. It's a weird adventure story like Labryinth or Alice in Wonderland. The humor was there from the get go. The MC is more of an important side character vs the main headliner. The writing was pretty and easy to envision.
Definitely a different kind of writing/work from VanderMeer. It has his style of psychology & weird, but on a lighter note than his adult books.
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I loved Raphael Corkhill's narration! It was really good! I looked him up and I think he's new to the narration world. He hasn't worked on a lot of good books. There were ..."
Sounds like a good intro book then, before getting into his adult stuff?...
Planning on pushing ahead on this later today... I started Ethan of Athos at work yesterday and it's short... finished Season 6 of Lucifer last night and went to bed...
I knew it was a duology going in, from looking at book page, and Hoopla calling it book 1 in a series... only came out last October... hopefully book 2 isn't too far away...
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I can clearly see why this is YA and not adult... the tone makes Crowley ruling this other Earth seem almost comical, instead of the dark tone I kinda expected from the blurb and my other portal fantasy/horror reads this summer...
And yea, the narrator has good voices for characters, too... especially given the tone of the book...
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If you haven't read VanderMeer's other work, Peculiar Perils is a decent intro to the way he thinks, but it's like the light version. I read four of his books, the Annihilation trilogy and Hummingbird Salamander. Hummingbird Salamander was a disappointment. I'm glad I was able to get that from the library. Annihilation was disturbing and great. It's like Twilight Zone & X-Files with a darker bent on psychological side.
I'm a little surprised that people didn't enjoy Peculiar Perils, but maybe that's due to it being a true YA novel with (snarky) but silly humor.
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For sure... I don't understand how goats are a viable alternative to coal/combustion... maybe I just don't understand the scope, or what it takes to maintain goat populations under this system...
But that resistance speech was hilarious... "there is no more patriotic thing you can do than make goat stew, for while there is untold things Crowley can do with goats, the only thing he can do with a carrot is SHOVE IT UP HIS HAIRY ASS!!!"... that one made me laugh out loud...
Jonathan feels a bit like the MC in Hitchhiker's guide, stumbling into events he's unequipped to deal with...
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I swing between thinking Crowley is a moron to feeling sorry for him. lol
Latest Audible sale has some goodies, but I have most of them. I decided to not get anything this time around. Still have a bunch I bought earlier in the year and I'm pretty sure I only made a 30% dent in that. Well, maybe more. I did get whole series. lol
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It's funny, how some weird books can be fun and others boring/offputting... I never had much luck with China Mieville for some reason, but love A. Lee Martinez... and I'm liking this book... to some extent, it's reminding me of that steampunk book packed with famous people and a hunt for Jack the Ripper...
Right now I'm listening to a snail orgy that sounds more like them Katamari Damacy games where you build a big sticky ball that grows bigger and bigger... they're getting bigger while the Fuuuuuck for some reason, lol...
I definitely had some sympathy for Crowley after the truth about Retch started coming out... the Schoolmarm and Napolean are interesting, too... everything is, really, if weird...
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Early game, you're like a ball of lint in a bedroom trying to get bigger, until you can pickup marbles and pencils... mid-game you're picking up cars... endgame you're circling the planet in seconds picking up trees/buildings... I think the game ends when you become a planet or black hole?... I only played the first game, there were like a dozen sequels...
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When I hit that Napoleon epilogue around hour 12/22, and then the questionnaire and Interlude, I had to rewind and check Audible's runtime real quick, in case there was an issue with the Hoopla version uploaded, or something...
My app has been force closing all day. Anyone else having problems ?
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Goodreads app?... I uninstalled that forever ago... I just use the browser app to access website, and alternate between mobile version and desktop version as needed...
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More Lambshead Crew, tho... and Ruth Less... I really like Ruth Less... I could read a whole book about her trying to navigate normal life, lol...
Brian wrote: "My app has been force closing all day. Anyone else having problems ?"Don't use the app. It's terrible. Just use a browser on your phone/tablet/etc. In desktop mode. I like Firefox for PCs and use Brave for mobile.
If you use the right browser, you don't get all the ads & crap.
LOL Peculiar Perils is a duology of books 1 & 2. I'm not sure how the next books will come out but maybe it'll be a 3 & 4?
Normally, I'm not a huge fan of well known figures populating a story because it's 50-50 on how they're going to sound within the story context. This story is so off the wall and goofy that I'm cool with how everyone is presented. The way they are portrayed fit within the story context and they have little resemblance to the actual figures used but enough similarities to make it plausible. lol
Back to have connection issues so I've been using a my phone as a mobile hot spot to get stuff done.
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Peculiar Perils is a duology of books 1 & 2. I'm not sure how the next books will come out but maybe it'll be a 3 & 4?
Normally, I'm not a huge fan of well known figures populating a story ..."
Yea... for all these characters are famous people, they're not, really... they have barely any resemblence to their inspirations, after Retch/etc are done reanimating them and keeping them functional... Crowley, HG Wells, Jules Verne, Charlemagne/Charlie Mange, Napoleon.... it also muddies the water on whether or not this Aurora-Earth is present day or sometime in the past a bit... all the big names makes me feel like it could/should be the 1800s... even if some of those characters are 1700s/1200s...
I'm at 90%-ish... will finish tomorrow, either at work or after... book returns to Hoopla at 3am Friday...
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Maybe you should set a mental note to update the tracker every week or so? We read fast enough that it's a pain to update in large chunks. Lots of digging into GR/etc to see what happened when. I enjoyed Peculiar Perils. The story & title fit very well together. =D
Sorry peeps. I’m in Dallas on vacation and haven’t had much time to catch up on buddy reads. Hopefully catch up and chat about them this weekend.
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Main BR I think you missed was Blood Hollow?... good thing I didn't ask if Tammie was ready to move on to the next Alex Benedict :D
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I..."
Been thinking about updating my spreadsheet for the past week or 2... was only 6 weeks behind this time, altho I never went back and added audiobook lengths for April to July, last time, either...
My vague plans included updating GR and my personal spreadsheets as well... hopefully get to that in the next couple days...
You scoundrel you! Not putting in audio length is like sacrilegious? lolHave fun on vacation, Brian! We'll be here when you're up to chat. =)
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Have fun on vacation, Brian! We'll be here when you're up to chat. =)"
you jest... but with the way I rewrote my spreadsheet, I'm pretty much required to to negate the ebook bonus...
Brian wrote: "Sorry peeps. I’m in Dallas on vacation and haven’t had much time to catch up on buddy reads. Hopefully catch up and chat about them this weekend."Have a great trip :D
Usually, I'm more about a genre jump between books (unless I'm on a series spree), but lately I've needed narrator voice/accent/tone change ups to go with the potential genre jump. I started Empire of the Vampire, Winterlight and Wizard & Glass, but I didn't want to listen to the narration voice. Ha!
Which is why I'm listening to Whispers by Dean Koontz. Thus far, couple of cool characters and unpredictable killer.
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Did the narrator hiccup back when reading the chapter number for 64?... or was the book deliberately trying to say the title in a tipsy manner?... hard to tell, really...
In the end, didn't feel like much of anything resolved, really... just reached a stopping point, with a ton of new questions/reveals...
Story was in episodic format. I got used to it? There was a topic for each chapter and cool things to discover between the weird/dorky stuff.
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I accepted the format and the journey/wackiness as the main source of enjoyment, long before reaching the end... just a comment I had after finishing...
Read half of Shadows of the Apt #4 at work yesterday... and half of Skulduggery Pleasant #8 today... need to finish both, still...
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Skulduggery Pleasant has been a drawn-out series read... mostly because I read the first book and turned it into a Buddy Read, then my first buddy disappeared, then my second buddy disappeared, because they got busy, and I didn't want to continue without...
I finally gave up a few months ago, and then never made time for the books, now that I felt I could just continue alone... I at least want to finish the first 9 book storyline soon... 2nd 6 book storyline isn't quite published yet, but getting close to done... I think there's a 6 year jump between arcs in-world, and 3-4 in real life...
The Skulduggery Pleasant books also feel super long (and they kinda are... this one is longer than the Shadows of the Apt book)... they're long because so many other issue creep up along the way... for all the books have multiple POVs, ~80% of the story follows a sequence of events from the POV of Valkyrie and Skulduggery... so I'm 1/3 or 1/2 through a book and feel like I've read a whole book already, and there's still so much left to resolve... the series is also broken into sub-trilogies, like Sandman Slim... and isn't afraid to kill off characters...
I almost think the series kills off too many characters... it leaves me with a feeling that the world has to be running out of mages/etc, so many important characters have been killed off by the neverending bad luck in Ireland (the main setting of the series)... the books are on their 3rd round of Elders in Charge, at this point, I think...
Where are you getting the audiobooks for Skuldruggery? I have it on my TBR to read. Going by the added date, probably due to GGG. I'll see if my library has the first book.
Finally (re)started Broken Council #10 and about 50% done. Man. Tao Wong is going to take a bunch of leaps to end the series on #12. Some weirdo on GR already rated #12 with 1 star. The book hasn't been published yet. lolI like most of the events that are happening in Broken Council, but it's uneven clumps of info dumps and action scenes.
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I'll see if my library has the first book."
I picked up most of them through alternative sources we've discussed before... I started reading the series a couple years ago, from seeing Sonja and other talk about it in GG&G... back then, the audio was mostly available in the UK... with the release of the second story arc, I guess they finally released the audiobooks in the US, over the past 2 years... still missing the anthology and Maleficent Seven, tho...
You can get an omnibus of the first 3 books: https://www.audible.com/pd/Skuldugger...
It's only 22hrs, I think... the early books are short... book 8 is 19hrs alone...
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