March's Mystical Musings Upon Mouth-Watering Manuscripts

[Grunkins]

I finished Stephen Baxter's Vacuum Diagrams last night. The book has some truly bad dialogue, thin characters with confused motivations, and I loved it. To me a book like this is pure imagination porn. Every few minutes while reading I would stare off into space for a bit as the ideas in the book set off little explosions in my brain.

The book is made up of short stories from his Xeelee Sequence published in various magazines, but it reads well as a single book. The scope is huge, taking us all the way to the end of baryonic life in the universe (and a few scenes in another universe all together--actually two other universes, but it doesn't explicitly say that).

And it coined the neologism "fartjets." (And what emits fartjets? Microscopic flying pigs that live in the crust of a neutron star, of course.)

I really enjoy Baxter.

 

[BigBadBob141]

Have just finished two books by William Sanders, neither too outstanding but not bad, both worth a read.
The first is an alternative 1st World War, "The Wild Blue And The Gray", in which the Confederate States Of America fight with there English & French allies.
This one is mainly about flying, if your interested about WW1 Fighters & Bombers then this is the one for you, I am as I like military aviation history, I used to collect the Airfix models.
The other is "The Ballard Of Billie Badass & The Rose Of Turkistan", the title is a bit of a mouthful but don't let that put you off.
It's a very well written fantasy about modern day American Indians which I greatly enjoyed, I highly recommend this one.
Happy reading to everyone.

 

[wam]

I've taken to reading shorter books of late. "The Sword in the Stone" (T H White) was my idea for the book group this month as it's short, fun, and undemanding. A little thin on plot and character in places but it does hold up.
Followed with "The Stepford Wives" (Ira Levin) and was surprised to find that it (probably) isn't science fiction. I suppose there's a case that social theory is science and you could call it SF for that but it's not much of a case.
Followed with "The Ipcress File" (Len Deighton). The central character (unnamed) is different to the film and you lose the mechanical device but you gain a bigger conspiracy and much more detail on the science of brainwashing although that's the appendix.

 

[Stephen Palmer]

I finished Inverted World by Christopher Priest which was enjoyable.

great book, that.

 

[Mouse]

Glitterland by Alexis Hall. And still The Death Collector.

 

[Lord Soth]

Finished Myke Cole's Control Point -a quick and easy read, enjoyable if you can ignore the fact that the protagonist is a bloody idiot you have no sympathy for..

Now reading Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie. Ill be honest its not grabbed me so far, have nearly put it down and chose something else 2 or 3 times but hopefully things are about to turn for the better.

Right, I tried - I really did but I couldn't finish Ancillary Justice. Various reasons but the main being that by the half way point I still didn't have an interest in what was happening. So I put that down and i'm now ploughing through The Thousand Names by Django Wexler. Still early days but already I know its more my style, mix of muskets and magic and some great characters to follow.

 

[elvet]

I started Hugh Howey's omnibus Shift. I think it is very good. Finally something to drag me away from the TV.

 

[Connavar]

Im reading two books at the same time and they are very different in levels of literary ability.

From CK Chesterton in The Innocence of Father Brown to The Power of Six by Pittacus Lore the sequel to the I Am Number which is YA SF.

Chesterton put so much quality language, so much wit and so much of his literary ability in what should be simple classic mystery stories. Father Brown stories work well as mysteries of the elegent classic type but i like the avreage smart priest but mostly i respect and rate his great use of the english language, the way he puts in his views, political ideas in some of the stories. One of the stories had very socialist, very radical dislike for aristocrats that are born in the money and is only good for wasting money. I enjoyed the harsh treatment on the old values of his time.

 

[Grunkins]

Finished Vernor Vinge's A Fire Upon the Deep last night. Having come off of a Stephen Baxter novel previously, I thought I was in for essentially more of the same, a Big Idea book that sacrificed on writing quality and characters. I was wrong. What I got instead was a book that was not so big on Big Ideas, but a compelling, very tightly written space opera, with deep characterizations. I really enjoyed it, more than I suspected I would going in.

 

[Connavar]

I finished The Power of Six by Pittacus Lore

This book was exactly as good as i expected, i wanted more from the first book when it came to alien story, more superpowered action, more compelling characters other than the lead hero. I got more than enough of those in this book.

Its so refereshing reading entertaining YA SF series when its good enough. Its so easy to read, so fast paced. I had to stop myself from picking up book 3 from the library so i can finish more serious books im reading right now.

 

[ratsy]

I finished Words of Radiance by Sanderson. It is a big book full of big ideas...where the ideas will lead the series...I am not sure but I did really enjoy it. Some really cool scenes highlighted a soon to be classic Sanderson epic.

I think I will start on Republic of Thieves now by Scott Lynch. I have had it since December but have been too busy with other books to get to it.

 

[Ogma]

Finished Childhood. Enjoyed the first third a lot, the rest less so, though the explanation for the Overlords' impact on human society was clever.
Started Food of the Gods, which is a lot more humorous than I expected.

 

[Bick]

Finished Vernor Vinge's A Fire Upon the Deep last night. Having come off of a Stephen Baxter novel previously, I thought I was in for essentially more of the same, a Big Idea book that sacrificed on writing quality and characters. I was wrong. What I got instead was a book that was not so big on Big Ideas, but a compelling, very tightly written space opera, with deep characterizations. I really enjoyed it, more than I suspected I would going in.

Yes its a cracker isn't it. I've been meaning to read A Deepness in the Sky too for ages; the only thing in the way is the TBR pile. I thought there were two really good 'big ideas' new to me [spoilerised in white]:
1. The aliens that gain sentience only in a pack
2. The galactic levels of possible intelligence and speed

 

[JunkMonkey]

If you actually make it through this one, [Wagner the Wehr-Wolf (1847) by G. W. M. Reynolds] you will be the first person I've encountered (aside from a handful of writers writing about it) who has... aside from myself. And I've actually managed to read the darned thing twice!

I am full of admiration for you - unless of course you were in a foreign jail with nothing else to read. In that case I think you probably have a good case to take to the International Court of Human Rights.

SPOILERS AHEAD

Well, I got to the end of it and what an amazingly great steaming pile of poo it was too. I loved it! As I said before I found laugh out loud moments in just about every chapter - even the deathly dull 'Adam and Eve' (complete with snakes and Satan) interlude on the desert island when Reynolds was obviously treading water trying to think of a way to get a grip on the floundering story and get characters out of the various wholes he had painted them - having God rewrite history so no one remembered many of them was a master-stroke. A real Bobby Ewing in the shower moment. I'm pretty sure as I read it that Reynolds had no idea at all where he was going with the plot/s and just bashed out the next Penny Dreadful episode. The literal skeletons in the closet ending was a hoot.

I think it's a measure of the book that the proof reading on the copy I read (a Wordsworth edition) gets noticeably shoddier towards the end of the book. There are many more typos in the last quarter than the rest of the book combined. Almost as if they knew no one would be reading by then. I Particularly liked:
'...and he implored me, by everything I doomed sacred, to hasten thither and fetch you to him...'

Very Gothic. I need to find more of this guys stuff.

 

[JunkMonkey]

Double post deleted - though my repeated post would have fewer typos; 'wholes' indeed - tut tut.

 

[Bick]

I think it's a measure of the book that the proof reading on the copy I read (a Wordsworth edition) gets noticeably shoddier towards the end of the book. There are many more typos in the last quarter than the rest of the book combined. Almost as if they knew no one would be reading by then.

This is hilarious!

 

[j d worthington]

This is hilarious!

It is also quite possibly true....

*takes a bow* No, I wasn't in such a position; I just originally read it solo; later I read it in the context of going through the works mentioned in the chapter on "The Aftermath of the Gothic Tale" in HPL's essay, "Supernatural Horror in Literature"; at the same time that I was reading things like The Lancashire Witches and The Phantom Ship, which also suffer from many of the same faults (though, to be honest, the first also has some rather good touches of atmosphere now and again as well). And yes, your comments on how he composed this thing are not at all off, at least according to E. F. Bleiler's introduction to the two-volume Dover edition of Varney the Vampire (see pp. x-xiv of vol. I)....

 

[Victoria Silverwolf]

Bill the Galactic Hero Volume 1: The Planet of the Robot Slaves (1989) by Harry Harrison

Confusingly titled sequel to Bill, the Galactic Hero (1965), Harrison's classic spoof of Starship Troopers. It's volume one because there were later sequels written by other folks and carrying the "with" credit that you see so often under "sharecropped" SF series. Anyway, this one is by Harrison himself. The satire is lighter here, nearly a quarter of a century later, and it's more of a wacky comedy. The level of humor is shown by having a character named "Cy Berpunk." It's a jolly romp if you're in the mood for that sort of thing.

 

[Jo Zebedee]

I gave up on American Gods, wrote lots so didn't read, and am about to embark on Robertson Davies Cornish Trilogy. I think it'll take a bit of getting through... Anyone read it?

 

[HareBrain]

Since I've got quite a lot of time on my hands at the moment, something inspired me to go back to Stephen King's The Dark Tower series. (I've only read The Gunslinger before, maybe a year ago.) So far I've raced through The Drawing of the Three and am now near the end of The Waste Lands. It's pretty bonkers but brutally compelling.