What else are you reading - May 2024

[Francis x]

I'm listening to Terry Pratchett book, Sorcery on kindle/audible.

[terpkristin]

I'm mostly listening to A Court of Wings and Ruin while reading The Jinn Daughter with my eyes. The Jinn Daughter was written by a local author and she was at both the bookstore crawl I went to and the boozy bookfair. I'm enjoying it so far but curious which way the story will go.

[Stephen]

I have started the The Silverblood Promise by James Logan,

[Jerimy]

Making progress, almost done with my 8-book goal this month. Finished:

The Tavern Knight
Footprints Under the Window
Tarzan the Magnificent
The Phantom Ship
The Gladiators from Capua
Lucky Infantryman
Travels with a Donkey in the Cévennes


Still working on:
Henderson the Rain King
BERIC THE BRITAIN: A STORY OF THE ROMAN INVASION: 19th Century Classic Adventure
Warfighting

[Phil]

Just finished Orson Scott Card's InterGalactic Medicine Show: An Anthology edited by Edmund Schubert and Orson Scott Card. This is an anthology of 18 short stories taken from the online magazine of the same name. 4 of them were about tertiary characters in the Enderverse by Card himself and the rest were by people I had never heard of. Almost all were SF.
I've got to say this was probably the best collection of stories I've read in the last 20 years outside of Ted Chiang's books. What a nice surprise it was. Anthologies are usually hit and miss but almost all of these were good solid hits. From the authors' afterwords it seems like a lot of them started as writing workshop assignments.
It looks like the online magazine folded in June 2019 with issue 69 but is still available to read if you need a short story fix.

Next up is The Glass Magician by Charlie Holmberg.

[John (Taloni)]

Reading Julian May's The Many-Colored Land. At the 40% mark and not sure I'll finish. If I do it's not likely I'll go on to the other three books in the series or the related four book series.

After an intriguing 1st chapter/prologue, we go into tedious character intros for a hundred pages. It's a literary style feel. Then a bizarre "Mars Needs Women" riff straight out of 40s/50s pulp. That's followed by a discussion of Hollow Earth fiction which somehow leaves out Edgar Rice Burroughs and Perelandra. I'm left with the feeling this author is trying out some kind of weird theory and I'm not interested in finding out why.

[John (Taloni)]

Buuut before that was a fun run through the first four books in the Court of Thorns and Roses series. I've already mentioned reading the first one. They continue on with some solid action and political intrigue in a secondary Earth populated with humans and various kinds of Fae. Much of it seems like a continuation of themes in Twilight. There's a Wolf shifter and a Night/Flying group that stands in for vampires. Holds together well. I kept reading them on one week quick-loans and finishing early. Don't wanna do my usual multi paragraph riff, just will say that it's good reading. Okay, more internal-monologue romance and sex than I like, but hey, I'm not the core audience. I'll gladly put up with that for the other parts of the story.

[John (Taloni)]

Filling in as well, the second Posleen book by John Ringo, Gust Front. This is well loved by MilSF fans. I found it tedious and overlong. So much minutiae of military life. It reminded me of Lucifer's Hammer, another book I should have enjoyed based on subject matter, but had too much excruciating detail. Except that Lucifer's Hammer was one book and this is four. Plus followup books. Yeah, maybe not. I finished this one, skimming quite a bit.

[terpkristin]

John (Taloni) wrote: "Buuut before that was a fun run through the first four books in the Court of Thorns and Roses series. I've already mentioned reading the first one. They continue on with some solid action and polit..."

It's more sex than I like but I concur, love the heroine and really enjoying these books.

[Ruth]

I’ve just finished The Familiar by Leigh Bardugo and now I’m starting the sequel to our April pick, Emily Wilde’s Map of the Otherlands.

[Clyde]

John (Taloni) wrote: "Filling in as well, the second Posleen book by John Ringo, Gust Front. This is well loved by MilSF fans. I found it tedious and overlong. So much minutiae of military life. It reminded me of Lucife..."

I read several of Ringo's Posleen books and then gave up on them and him. Got too silly for me.

[Seth]

Read When Women Were Dragons and thought it was very good, though fairly emotionally taxing.

[Misti]

Finally getting around to reading Red Side Story and listening to Tales from the Folly: A Rivers of London Short Story Collection while it's still included on Audible without using a credit.

[John (Taloni)]

I speed skimmed the rest of Julian May's The Many-Colored Land. The story brought in a techno reason for elves, dwarves, goblins, and humanoid otherwise-supernaturals of every kind. Even a reason for an Iron weakness. There was more action, but still excruciating detail. I slowed down for the last 10% and the ending was more or less satisfying. Just tediously dull getting there. While I dislike giving up on a story, I don't think I can read three more of these.

[Chris K.]

I've started listening to the second of Stephen Fry's Greek retellings, Heroes: Mortals and Monsters, Quests and Adventures.