Books read recently
24 Feb 2012 04:53 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
salineaBeen a while, right?
So having a Kobo did work very well to help get back on the voracious book reading bandwaggon.
I started with Dominion by Celia Friedman,
the novella set in the Coldfire trilogy universe. It was hardly bad, but as far as further exploration of this setting and characters it was hardly what I would have picked first. Adequate for the fans, I guess, but not much more.
Then I read the Hand of Isis by Jo Graham,
a History novel about Cleopatra from the point of view of one of her handmaiden (and half sister). I love Jo Graham's writing a lot, so this was a very pleasant read, and certainly she draws characters and setting in a gorgeous and very entrancing way. OTOH, I didn't think it was quite as good as her previous novel Black Ships, possibly because the latter had more of a focused plot while this one being framed more heavily by the biographical aspect had less leeway to do its own plot. I also thought the reincarnation aspect played a bit too heavily into the story, which is weird because I usually love reincarnation as a story element. Or perhaps it's the cross chronological aspect that stumbled me since most of the refenreces were to Stealing Fire although it is next in the published order (I have no idea whether there is a recommended reading order separate from the published one).
Dauntless by Jack Campbell, had this one from the public library actually. It's basic military SF, with a premise strongly reminescent of BSG. I'd call it barely decent a read, as it was reasonably entertaining although it is very... drab and clichéd in various ways. I especially was amused by how the villains are the evil Sovietic Union IN SPACE (I checked the data of publication, it's 2007, I guess ti's a sort of retro kind of thing) and they are very EVIL. And you can tell the good guys because they are all COMPETENT.
Call for the Dead by John Le Carré, is cross between a murder mystery and a spy novel. It is very good in a very harsh, merciless way, being very much a Cold War story that is in the shadow of WW2 and the Shoah. I found the writing style to be sometimes a bit hard to follow, not because it was bad, but it has a sort of allusive, idiomatic bent to it that harmed its flow. For a random note, I kind of want to throw the book at various XMFC fanfic writers for how contemporary people would talk about Jews and the Holocaust at the time (its publication date is 1961).
The Andrien English series by Josh Lanyon which is a set of 5 M/M romance/mystery about an amateur sleuth who is a mystery bookshop owner. They were a very fun read, although I wouldn't call them very good. The mysteries are average-ish - they start out pretty crappy but get a bit better with every novels. Mainly I enjoyed the main character, who is a sarcastic smartass, and his voice, and although I didn't exactly like his love interest much, the fact that he is a deeply closeted cop put an interesting spin on the story overall. Several of the secondary characters were also pretty good and interesting. There is some hilarious meta-ish stuff that sometimes threaten to be a bit too *winkwink* in a cheesy way though/
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy by John Le Carré.![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
marryblack told me the movie was loooooooooooong with a lot of boring talking scenes, which now that I've read the book I'm not surprised of, this has to be a hard to adapt to a movie story XD. I'm not gonna lie, I'm not exactly well acquainted with spy novels, in fact those (and the one above) may be the first I've read unless you wanna count Tim Powers' Declare; but I really liked it a lot. The plot and the storytelling really were a beautiful mechanic to have unfold, different storyline coming from a variety of sources and flashbacks all crossing with one another to build the whole pictures - I love a well structured novel. The characterizations is also excellent. I also found the writing to flow more easily despite having some issues with some idiomatic turn of phrases still here and there. Although if the next Le Carré book again as a Tragic minority character I'm going to start giving him some serious side eyes.
Jack of Shadow by Roger Zelazny, a fantasy novel in the inimitable style of Zelazny. It's an interesting story, with, as always with Zelazny, some pretty damn awesome world building. Not quite sure what i thought of the characterizations, though, especially for a book about a trickster, I was not all that interesting. The writing is good, but not Zelazny's best.
Fire by Kristin Cashore, a YA fantaszy novel that came heavily reccomended byharemstress. I'd already read Graceling (although I didn't review it) which I liked but wasn't overly blown away with. This one is good and perhaps a bit better plotted. It's a very interesting deconstruction of the So Beautiful It's a Curse trope, and the world building around that is very solid and intriguing, and arguably makes it a very interesting feminist book. The characters are well drawn and very sympathetic, and Cashore continues to be successful at making traditional romance more interesting to me than it ever is asides from some mangas and fanfics. I especially loved the themes around heavily dysfunctional parents-children relationship - I guess it's my love for tragic family relationships striking again, and I think that's what made the book most successful to me.
I also tried to read Tiger Eye, Marjorie Liu's first novel in the Dirk & Steel series which I went almost halfway before I decided it just wasn't a book for me, as my eyes were glazing over with boredom. Quite disappointing.
So having a Kobo did work very well to help get back on the voracious book reading bandwaggon.
I started with Dominion by Celia Friedman,
the novella set in the Coldfire trilogy universe. It was hardly bad, but as far as further exploration of this setting and characters it was hardly what I would have picked first. Adequate for the fans, I guess, but not much more.
Then I read the Hand of Isis by Jo Graham,
a History novel about Cleopatra from the point of view of one of her handmaiden (and half sister). I love Jo Graham's writing a lot, so this was a very pleasant read, and certainly she draws characters and setting in a gorgeous and very entrancing way. OTOH, I didn't think it was quite as good as her previous novel Black Ships, possibly because the latter had more of a focused plot while this one being framed more heavily by the biographical aspect had less leeway to do its own plot. I also thought the reincarnation aspect played a bit too heavily into the story, which is weird because I usually love reincarnation as a story element. Or perhaps it's the cross chronological aspect that stumbled me since most of the refenreces were to Stealing Fire although it is next in the published order (I have no idea whether there is a recommended reading order separate from the published one).
Dauntless by Jack Campbell, had this one from the public library actually. It's basic military SF, with a premise strongly reminescent of BSG. I'd call it barely decent a read, as it was reasonably entertaining although it is very... drab and clichéd in various ways. I especially was amused by how the villains are the evil Sovietic Union IN SPACE (I checked the data of publication, it's 2007, I guess ti's a sort of retro kind of thing) and they are very EVIL. And you can tell the good guys because they are all COMPETENT.
Call for the Dead by John Le Carré, is cross between a murder mystery and a spy novel. It is very good in a very harsh, merciless way, being very much a Cold War story that is in the shadow of WW2 and the Shoah. I found the writing style to be sometimes a bit hard to follow, not because it was bad, but it has a sort of allusive, idiomatic bent to it that harmed its flow. For a random note, I kind of want to throw the book at various XMFC fanfic writers for how contemporary people would talk about Jews and the Holocaust at the time (its publication date is 1961).
The Andrien English series by Josh Lanyon which is a set of 5 M/M romance/mystery about an amateur sleuth who is a mystery bookshop owner. They were a very fun read, although I wouldn't call them very good. The mysteries are average-ish - they start out pretty crappy but get a bit better with every novels. Mainly I enjoyed the main character, who is a sarcastic smartass, and his voice, and although I didn't exactly like his love interest much, the fact that he is a deeply closeted cop put an interesting spin on the story overall. Several of the secondary characters were also pretty good and interesting. There is some hilarious meta-ish stuff that sometimes threaten to be a bit too *winkwink* in a cheesy way though/
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy by John Le Carré.
marryblack told me the movie was loooooooooooong with a lot of boring talking scenes, which now that I've read the book I'm not surprised of, this has to be a hard to adapt to a movie story XD. I'm not gonna lie, I'm not exactly well acquainted with spy novels, in fact those (and the one above) may be the first I've read unless you wanna count Tim Powers' Declare; but I really liked it a lot. The plot and the storytelling really were a beautiful mechanic to have unfold, different storyline coming from a variety of sources and flashbacks all crossing with one another to build the whole pictures - I love a well structured novel. The characterizations is also excellent. I also found the writing to flow more easily despite having some issues with some idiomatic turn of phrases still here and there. Although if the next Le Carré book again as a Tragic minority character I'm going to start giving him some serious side eyes.Jack of Shadow by Roger Zelazny, a fantasy novel in the inimitable style of Zelazny. It's an interesting story, with, as always with Zelazny, some pretty damn awesome world building. Not quite sure what i thought of the characterizations, though, especially for a book about a trickster, I was not all that interesting. The writing is good, but not Zelazny's best.
Fire by Kristin Cashore, a YA fantaszy novel that came heavily reccomended by
haremstress. I'd already read Graceling (although I didn't review it) which I liked but wasn't overly blown away with. This one is good and perhaps a bit better plotted. It's a very interesting deconstruction of the So Beautiful It's a Curse trope, and the world building around that is very solid and intriguing, and arguably makes it a very interesting feminist book. The characters are well drawn and very sympathetic, and Cashore continues to be successful at making traditional romance more interesting to me than it ever is asides from some mangas and fanfics. I especially loved the themes around heavily dysfunctional parents-children relationship - I guess it's my love for tragic family relationships striking again, and I think that's what made the book most successful to me.I also tried to read Tiger Eye, Marjorie Liu's first novel in the Dirk & Steel series which I went almost halfway before I decided it just wasn't a book for me, as my eyes were glazing over with boredom. Quite disappointing.
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Date: 24 February 2012 09:22 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 24 February 2012 09:23 pm (UTC)