salinea | Entries tagged with a: cs friedman

Been 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,
( Read more... )

Then I read the Hand of Isis by Jo Graham,
( Read more... )

Dauntless by Jack Campbell, had this one from the public library actually. ( Read more... )

Call for the Dead by John Le Carré, is cross between a murder mystery and a spy novel. ( Read more... )

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. ( Read more... )

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy by John Le Carré. ( Read more... )

Jack of Shadow by Roger Zelazny, a fantasy novel in the inimitable style of Zelazny. ( Read more... )

Fire by Kristin Cashore, a YA fantaszy novel that came heavily reccomended by

haremstress. ( Read more... )

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.

Crossposts: http://etrangere.livejournal.com/419952.html

"Going Native" sf, anthropology and colonialism by

coffeeandink

There's a recent survey done by the Anti Defamation League about antisemitism in Europe http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3669706,00.html
A lesson in modern antisemitism and this other post by

chopchica talks about it and about her own experience with antisemitism while travelling in Europe. As a French Jew, it's a little bit odd for me to see a post talking about this from the experience of an American on a trip, but actually it's a bit of an eye opener because there are many things I taught myself not to pay attention to just because I'm used to them. I'm also used to see my concerns dismissed and being treated like a pain in the ass when I insist on complaining about the lack sandwich with chicken rather than three different choices of pork or cheese at local RPG conventions.

Over at the westeros board (yes, I still read it, just lurking, shut up), Scott Bakker insists on showing his ass to the public in a thread (and its sequel) about the treatment of women in his books and people who think it's sexist (and people who think any reading about sexism and misogynism in a book is a grave insult that should never be done because it's so awful!! yeahhhhhhh right). On the same thread, several people, especially Kalbear, Maia and needle are being awesome.

There's a Celia Friedman interview at Pat's Fantasy Hotlist with some interesting discussions about sexism in fantasy as well, especially in the comments.

Current Mood: cynical
Current Music: Michael Nyman - The Promise

It's been too long since my lattest review of books ^_^
so there we go :

( Phoenix Guard and Five Hundred Years After by Stephen Brust )

( Scavenger trilogy by KJ Parker )

( Spin by Robert Charles Wilson )

( Forgotten Beasts of Eld and Solstice Wood by Patricia McKillip )

( A Feast of Souls by CS Friedman )

Current Mood: sick

contaminated by

nataku_chan ( What does Jesus think of me ? )

Stolen at spearpoint from

graymm

( layer meme )

Snow today over Paris. It's cute. And cold. I hate the cold. Feeling a bit better in general.

( finished re-reading the Coldfire Trilogy yesterday )

Current Mood: devious

*stares at the screen* Hmmm, I should update shouldn't I ?

My connection went broken last week end. I was much busy nonetheless. Had a roleplaying game (Nephilim), and spent the saturday night to sunday morning watching the Lord of the Ring, long version, with a friend.

T'was the first time I was watching the long version, and it did improve on some points (Faramir isn't completely as bad as he was before, but still not on par with the book version) There was much fun, and much making fun of the movie as we went, and much cheering at the apparition of my favourite character (which is the Balrog, in case you wonder ;) and much comments about the slashiness of some scenes (and that though the friend in question is very much a straight male... I strive to corrupt where i can)

Classes on monday, we were supposed to give our topic for for the Method of Research and Analysis, and I still didn't have one, so like an idiot I said fanfictions. Stupid me. Not that it doesn't make a good subject, in general, just imagining explaining to my teacher that a lot of what I'm going to write about is porn.

Reading, I finished re-reading This Alien Shore by Friedman, which concluded by great re-reading cycle of that amazing writer. This book is still as fucking good, and still makes me wish there was a roleplaying game adapted from it, because, wow, I love the society descripted, especially the Guerans, and the use of the myth of Babel; and the rationalization for aliens that are nonetheless humans. There's very few books that explore so well the theme of otherness - and how people are always alien to each others - and the so many compromises and codes we need to use to relate to each others. I was stricken re-reading it, by some similarities with the Culture verse (by Ian Banks) and with Aristoi by Walter Jon Williams. Not thematics, but technicological and ideas... i think those might be recent trends in current Space Opera with a flair for hard science.

Then the other day, I was suddenly reading with voracity a great number of (very good)Good Omens fics, for some reason, with a spare Harry Potter or Coldfire thrown in the middle of it. I still have a great trouble believing any slash set in the Coldfire trilogy, for several reasons (biggest among those is that Coldfire is made to be both a paramount of a certain type of gothic novel and a certain type of antihero, and a satire of thereof.. which includes the debunking of redemption by romantic love in such cases) On the other hands, there's no reason it would be totally out of the question,... but in the fics I read - though they were well written and in character - didn't convince me one bit and it was all coming out of the blue.
So I went from reading those fics to take Black Sub Rising out of the shelf and start reading it. Which is bad - Friedman's too good a writer and with way too few books out for me to read so much of her that I might get burned out. Arrgh. Then it was bad timing because I got a call from my bookstore, they have recieved Howl's Moving Castle at last and kept a copy for me. And of course, once I was there, I had to buy Ursula Leguin's Changing Planes (damnit I don't even know what this book's about !) and LK Hamilton's Seduced by Moonlight (because, even though the Merry Gentry book are bad pseudo-porn with little plot thrown in and way too many pretty men in love or lust with the ~~Mary Sue~~ main character it's just got enough good ideas about the world to make you wish it wasn't. And keep you hoping. Oh, and it's the kind of enterteining crap you read very quickly and easily too.) Well, I also got myself Banks' lattest book (the Algebrist) to offer my dad for his birthday (which was yesterday, but i'll give it to him tomorrow evening, we're going out with the family for the occasion)

All those recent purchase left me but with one conclusion : I need money. Therefore today I was working with my mum - which was very tiring and very fastidious. And to make things better, Kraken's exalted game online, which is on Thursday evening, has still as many players as last time showing, which is to say, only Mayumi and I. So, no game. *dead*
And tomorrow I get to do more boring and wearisome work.
Great.
Well, at least I can finish reading Black Sun Rising...

And then of course, I've got this impression that my lattest fandom is currently falling apart. Well, people have been saying they were getting tired of it quite often lately, but it's like a little implosion of it right now. Or maybe I'm just more sensitive to it because I am starting to get weary of it as well. Cute fandom, you know, but the wank made my head hurt. And it's only nearly one year I started getting into it. Much less I was /succeeding/ getting into it. That's got to be one of my shortest time with a fandom; if I don't have the time to write some of those fics I wanted to do, I'll be sad, still. But I'm starting to feel very blased and cynical about it.
And there's lots of self-loathing in that, as well.

Current Mood: cynical

I better make a review of this before it goes fuzzy in my head.

All over I'd say the new book by CS Friedman, the Wildling, was without surprises. It was an excellent book, very well written, with themes very cleverly woven into it, but it lacked a certain spark of 'wow'.
In great part, I think it may be just because it was a sequel. Unlike her other SF books, it didn't make us discover a whole universe (and universe/society building is one of the thing Friedman is the most skilled at), it just plundged us into one we already knew and liked. Sure, we discovered a little bit more about the Braxin society, and that from another point of view, which was very interesting. We also learned about what became of the psychics, but I thought that part was too little unexplored, even though there were lots of awesome ideas about it. Overall, we were given new nuances, new details, more complexities, but we didn't learn anything really new and offputting. It was a pleasure getting back in this world, but disapointing to only get what we expected.
The characters were good and interesting to read about, but they did lack the charisma IMO of previous characters.
The most successful part of the book, IMO, was how the themes of the books were used and incorporated in the story. As in In Conquest Born, Friedman uses small quotes at the beginning of each chapter, and each of those quotes informed and were extrapolated in the chapter in a very elegant way. Eventualy, the novel's point, which was Identity, just as This Alien's Shore was Otherness, the Season of Madness was Change and In Conquest Born was Opposition, was achieved in a magistral way.
My last criticism was that the end was rather abrupt. If this book was made so as to close the loose ends that In Conquest Born had, I'm not very satisfyed because I feel like this one got quite as many loose ends.
A wonderful book, then, but slightly disapointing at the ending because I was expecting something more. Maybe I should blame it on the waiting.

but not by much ^_^

anyway; I'm now the proud owner of a wonderful volume of the Wildling by CS Friedman. Now if that name doesn't ring a bell for you, go quickly and buy the Coldfire Trilogy especially if you're a vampire fan. If you prefer something less fantasy, she's got several wonderful science fiction books out, In Conquest Born (to which the Wildling ties), Season of Madness and This Alien Shore.
Friedman's one of my all around favourite Sci Fi writer, and it's been years I was waiting for the Wildling to be out, so you can imagine I'm happy ^_^

On the same kind of "oh ! shiny new thing are out", I just came back from reading the 9th volume of Nana. I love that Shoujo ^_^

There were bargain sales at the book store, so I also snatched a copy of The Visitor by Sheri Tepper; and a book by Barbra Hambly - though I think it's historical / Crime book, not SF / fantasy.