What else are you reading - February 2024

[Paul]

Oaken wrote: "I started Prophet Song by Paul Lynch a few days ago. It won the Booker award last year. I'm not finished but loving the way he writes, I'll need to go back and read his other works..."
I'm also reading this and also really enjoying the writing style, even though I thought I wouldn't. Dialogue, description and everything in between is all in one paragraph, which was a little jarring at first, but I find it very propulsive and immersive.

And yeah, while not sci-fi, it's pretty darned speculative. I'd definitely say it dances with genre.

Regarding doorway, I'd also put prose/writing style as a big one. But I see the character appeal. It does a very good job of asking that big question when you hear about devastating civilian losses in wars: Why didn't they leave?
Also, unfortunately a very timely book in that aspect.

[Steve]

Finished Light Chaser, which was a fun novella, but, oh boy, with a lot of hand-waving. I am curious which of Hamilton or Powell was the main author; I suspect Powell, with Hamilton added for polishing and name-recognition.

Now I plan to fit in Witch King before moving onto the next BOTM...

(in the background, on audiobook, the sequel to the current BOTM - The Hunger of the Gods - lumbers its way towards, hopefully, some sort of conclusion)

[Ruth]

Just finished the latest in my Discworld read, Moving Pictures. Now I’m moving on to another Ben Aaronovitch novella I picked up from my local library, What Abigail Did That Summer.

[Calvey]

I had shoulder surgery last week and I can't focus/sit long. So started a quickly little fantasycozy The Vampire Knitting Club - it got me through staying busy with out going crazy in this sling.

[Trike]

Calvey wrote: "I had shoulder surgery last week and I can't focus/sit long. So started a quickly little fantasycozy The Vampire Knitting Club - it got me through staying busy with out going crazy ..."

I hope you feel better soon!

[Steve]

Finished listening to The Hunger of the Gods, the best I can say about which is: if you liked the first book and want another 600+ pages, this delivers exactly that. Personally, for that length, I would have preferred the plot needle to have been moved slightly more forward than it is; as it stands, the characters have all done a lot of walking and lots of people have died, but there is very little difference between the end of the first book and the end of the second book; most significant events happen in the last 5% of the book. Hopefully the final entry in the trilogy, when it appears, will take all of the chess pieces and throw them into an exciting Sandersonesque conclusion, but I don't hold out a great amount of hope...

Anyhow, next up on my audiobook backlog is either Dawnshard or The Utterly Uninteresting and Unadventurous Tales of Fred, the Vampire Accountant, both of which are commendably short. Probably Fred, since I could do with some lightness after all that the nordic seriousness.

[Seth]

Read The Regional Office is Under Attack! and was mostly entertained, but there felt like there was just something a little off for me. Maybe some literary pretension, or maybe it just slowed down after the first 100 pages.

[Jonathan]

Finished The Will of the Many! I thought the story was fantastic and gripping from beginning to end. Looking forward to the next book when it is released. Just started reading The Waking Fire.

[Seth]

Just finished Iron Widow faster than I figured and liked it. Found A Most Agreeable Murder in the 'available now' section on Libby and really liked it - it's mostly a murder/Austen spoof with only a bit of fantasy.

[Oaken]

I finished Vita Nostra, one of the March Madness contenders. It’s decent, reminds me a lot of Carlos Castaneda’s Rings of Power series in that the core is about a student learning a transformative magic system/philosophy that requires them to work to unlearn what they know and who they are. Admittedly a little heavy on the magic system for me but YMMV.

[Joseph]

Started The Book of Ile-Rien: The Element of Fire & The Death of the Necromancer, Martha Wells' new collection of two of her very early novels.