The Joy of Erudition > Recent Status Updates

I don't know if I'm supposed to be hoping this guy will get caught (as I am), but it's called "The Demolished Man", so chances are good that he's going to get demolished.

Just like in The Stars My Destination, Bester isn't giving me a likeable protagonist.

A super gothic tale about families of German-inspired nobility invited to a dinner party by an old man who traps them in the castle to be murdered one by one for revenge.

I'm reading the 20-chapter 1961 version this time. Later I'll read the original 25-chapter 1931 version with its entirely different plot and cast of characters. These early entries in the series that were rewritten in the 1960s really should have different entries on Goodreads, because they're completely different books, not different editions or revisions of the same book.

I like this just as much as, if not more than, Neuromancer.

Disorientingly non-linear. They're in the middle of rushing in like a SWAT team, then it cuts to weeks later and they're nursing their injuries and talking about their career options, and only after completing that whole scene and leaving you wondering what the hell you missed, it narrates what actually happened after they rushed in. Didn't like it. Next chapter finally switches to Chevette's perspective.

So far just getting to know the characters and the world, and it's enjoyable. It took a while to really understand we were following 2 different characters, though, because there's not much to distinguish them. One of them seems strangely naive for an ex-cop. From the blurb, I know there must be a 3rd PoV character soon, and I thought she would be the main character, not these two guys.

Temm the Riven is the best of the stories so far, but I don't think it needed that extra plot complication.

Every story so far, by different authors, has mentioned quicksilver or mercury. Two of them were describing eyes, and the other was describing a mirror.

So far I haven't seen anything in this issue that I'd consider sword & sorcery. This is general fantasy. One of them even had an adventuring party going through a deathtrap dungeon on a quest for a magic sword.