Which book are you reading currently? #8

The Legendeer: Shadow of the Minotaur by Alan Gibbons. The protagonist and his father gets stuck in a Greek mythology themed video game which tries to kill them. I wish I was the protagonist.

 

"Red Country" by Joe Abercrombie. I absolutely loved it. If you have read the first law trilogoy and is a fond of the old spaghetti westerns this is a must read.

 

wow, i haven't posted in ages! but i'm about to start "Ready Player One" by Ernest Cline. I've heard great things about it. Prior to this, I read "Booty Nomad" (awesome and hilarious, I definitely recommend it) and then the sequel, "The Big Happy" both by Scott Mebus

 

GOing to be reading some of the Dragonlance books I have yet to read. Mainly some of the later ones. Dark Disciple for starters since it is right after War of Souls.

 

Apocalypse Z, The beging of the end

Just finished this one by Manel Lureiro. Pretty dark but and interesting read. About the dead but undead trying to take over the earth. Worth a read.

 

Just finished A Memory of Light, wich is the final Wheel of Time book. Fantastic finale. Sanderson nailed it. Without a doubt the best and most complex fantasy story ever written.

 

Way to many books that I want to read that I do not know where to begin. Most are on my Nook Tablet but I have a couple of paperbacks that I need to read as well. Far to many books and not enough time to read them all and I honestly do not know what to read next.

 

W00t! Rawgrim, it is out? Since when?

 

Fall of Giants

This is the 1st book in Ken Folletts new trilogy. The thing I like about Folletts works is his research. The characters are fictional but the places and events are real. Fall of Giants starts with the events leading up to the first world war and then the war itself. This is a well written book that keeps your interest as well as moving along..... i'm about 1/2 way through. It's a 900 pager so I'm glad
I'm reading it on a kindle because it doesn't hurt as much when I fall asleep and smack myself in the face.

 

Just ordered it from amazon yesterday, new for 16 bucks american. Should be here Tuesday. Can't wait.

 

Ordered it as soon as I saw Rawgrim's post. Thought I had my eyes on the date but apparently not. Pleasant surprise.

 

Ok currently finishing up Peter V. Brett's The Desert Spear before the next book The Daylight War comes out in a couple of weeks. Feburary 12th for the new one and I needed to finish up the 2nd book.

 

For twenty years, give or take, "The Wheel of Time" has been a part of my life. Sometimes a pretty big part as books and stories go and sometimes a very small part but it has been there. It got a worthy ending and I think I will find myself rereading it every decade or so for the rest of my life.

 

Have you tried Steven Erikson's The Malazan Book of the Fallen yet, Rawgrim? If you like complexity, visceral grittiness and sheer utter awesomeness, that should keep you occupied for a while (there are 10 in that series, and 5 in his mate Ian Esslemont's series Tales of the Malazan Empire, plus some extra bits, bobs and side stories, and most recently Erikson has started a new series: The Kharkanas Trilogy; all set in the pair's beautifully realised and detailed universe).

As to what I'm reading, Iain M. Banks's latest: The Hydrogen Sonata has once again captivated me and fed my longing to blast off to interstellar space at greater-than-light-speed, converse with god-like AI Minds, destroy planetary systems with impunity, experience reality with hugely augmented senses and perceptions, and generally have a bloody excellent time.

 

Malazan is good, very good in many ways much better than Wheel of Time but except for both being fantasy they are not really comparable. Very very different. WoT is much more classic and you could say simple while Malazan is different. My heart prefers WoT while my mind prefers Malazan.

 

From the sound of it, that might be something I'd enjoy reading. And from the sound of it, you might enjoy some of Neal Asher's work. He is very good at creating a gritty sci-fi universe in which a lot of worlds have fauna that's highly deadly and hostile, with AI ruling the human universe and of course great big spaceships. He has a dry humour in his writing too, that I appreciate.

The thing about Steven Erikson's writing is mostly that it's so very good. I can switch from any book by any other writer, switch to a book by Erikson and just be amazed at how well he writes. Makes everyone else seem like children in their use of language. And he knows how to put humour into his work as well.

The Wheel of Time series sounds interesting, though, so I'll give it a go as well.

 

If you want to try Banks, for your first I'd check out Consider Phlebas; it really lays down the groundwork for the Culture setting. After that, any are excellent follow-ons and in general there's no real fixed order in which you should read them. Including the two already mentioned, my favourites of his are: (from the Culture universe) Use of Weapons, The Player of Games, Matter and Surface Detail; (from his non-Culture settings) The Algebraist and Against a Dark Background. He also writes fantastic dark and humourous regular fiction under Iain Banks (without the "M."): The Crow Road and The Wasp Factory spring to mind.

I shall definitely look into Neal Asher. Are there any particular books of his you'd recommend? I much prefer series as opposed to standalones.

I've heard mixed things about Wheel of Time: they start off excellently and continue thus for the first 5 or 6 parts, at which point they start to lose their way, and by the end it just seems as if the author has entirely forgotten what he was writing about in the first place! I suppose I should just try them myself and see, though.

I agree completely on Erikson's writing style; there aren't many who can emulate or match it, though in my opinion Banks is one of the few. I also recently re-read my childhood favourite The Lord of the Rings, which under my more critical adult eye has majestically withstood the test of time: Tolkien is still easily the match of his modern-day contemporaries.

 

A friend of mine gave me Robert Heinlein's Tunnel in the Sky for Christmas, which was the last book I read. I really enjoyed the book and look forward to reading more of Heinlein's works. Right now I'm about a quarter of a way through Frank Herbert's Dune and plan on finishing that at some point.

 

Most of the books he's written are pretty much stand-alone with one or two exceptions. Most of his books are about the Polity - the human universe set some hundred years into the future, ruled by powerful AIs and spread over many different worlds. Most of the books in this universe follow either Ian Cormac - a sort of secret agent for the polity - or some person(s) from the planet Spatterjay - a rather peculiar and very hostile world. So there's some interrelation between the books.

For the Ian Cormac novels, I really liked the Line of Polity, though I'd still recommend reading it's predecessor, Gridlinked. Brass Man is also quite good. Polity Agent forms a mini-serie together with Line War, but suffers a bit from being the starting book and I can't say I really liked it that much. Line War is pretty neat, though.

For the Spatterjay novels, The Skinner is one of his funniest books I've read so far. Very dry humour, I like it. It's the first too, so if you like it, you can continue with The Voyage of the Sable Keech and Orbus.

Prador Moon is a stand alone, in that it deals with some events prior to both the other series, and I really liked it as well.

All that being said, I have to say that even his worst novels are still better than most others I've read. In my opinion, of course.

I have managed to get through that one, but when I tried to read to the rest of his Dune series, I just couldn't continue.