What did you just read?

Er this book is pretty good so far. Er.. I mean I'm enjoying it. Er.. Yeah.

I redid all of Sanderson at the beginning of the summer minus his conclusion to the WoT series...so now my OCD is making me read the WoT series so I can finish all the Sanderson stuff in order to move on to the next reading project.

Being bored is awesome.

Gask_sl said:

Just finished Justin Cronin's "The Passage" and it was... an abomination of filler, absurdity, and Deus ex Machina. This is the worst novel that I have read since Peter Bretts The Daylight War, a dubious accomplishment but one nonetheless; most bad books tend to start out with at least an interesting premise then lose their way and steadily become dull and mediocre, The Passage had the distinction of starting well and then getting worse and more ridiculous exponentially throughout the course of its bloated span. I love large books when they are filled with content that warrant their length, this was not, instead it was stuffed to the brim with the details of throwaway characters, repetitive dream sequences, irrational motivations and episodes of seemingly divine intervention.

Avoid unless you are desperate for something to kill hours of your life on and are adept at the art of suspending your disbelief for abnormally long stretches of time.

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I just finished reading The Passage on recommendation (from this thread, I thought) and I have to agree. It started out incredibly interesting, hard resets a few hundred pages in, gets really interesting again, and then finishes so terribly it made me regret reading the book. Specifically:

Finished book 9 of Shadows of the Apt.War Master's Gate. As much as I enjoy the world and some of the characters I can hardly convince myself to read the last one. Book 8 was an absolute chore. 600 pages and it felt like 450 of them were describing the flying dogfights, and that shit is interesting for maybe one or two chapters, not 40. Oh is there an air raid siren waking the characters up....again? I guess it's time for 15 pages of them trying to line each other up in the sky and shoot each other down....again.

Then book 9 starts with more of the same then it gets in to the magic of the world. Except the magic is so vaguely defined and arbitrary it just turns in to another chore. Someone will grasp magic, or hurl magic, or deflect magic, but magic is just some nebulous force with no substance. In this world where every single race has some interesting magical ability that is strictly defined and makes sense the over-arching magic that magic users use is just some random hunk of power that gets used to magic stuff...with magic...somehow. Oh and on top of the boring magic stuff the rest of the book is MORE OF THE SAME FUCKING SIEGES FROM THE LAST FUCKING BOOK!

I appreciate the author cranking out a 600+ page book every year(or faster, 10 books in 6 years) for 10 straight books, but it really feels like he ran out of steam partway through book 6. Someone could edit these 10 books in to 4 or 5 books that would be really compelling and engrossing.

Barbie: I can be (a computer engineer) (an actress)

Just for the sheer comedy value of the massive sexism. Christmas gift for my sister, who works at Microsoft.

I just finished Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie. It was a contender for the book club, but wasn't picked. I liked it a lot. Sci-Fi with drones and stuff. A lot of the content felt a bit like star wars, anachronistic fantasy elements in space, but the story was strong enough for me to dismiss that.

My Own Kind of Freedom, a shortFireflynovel(168 pages) by Steven Brust, author of the Vlad Taltos books. He does a really good job with the dialogue, which is like 80% of what's needed for something like this. It's basically just a good longer episode of Firefly in text form. I'd highly recommend it if you are Jonesing for some Firefly action.

Gilgamel_sl said:

Legend is one of my five or six favorite stories ever. I found the Chronicles underwhelming, and that's coming from a huge Gemmell fan who has read everything he ever wrote. Legend needs to be a fucking movie.

Also, to add to The Martian praise, I just finished it last night. What a great book. That needs to be a movie too. I can't think of who I would cast to play the lead though.

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Replying to an old post, but I just finished the audiobook last week and fully agree, amazing book; especially considering it's his first one.

My understanding is that a movie is in the works, with Ridley Scott slated to be the director. I heard Matt Damon's name as the lead, but I have no idea how true that is. Can't wait.

Legend was the one where Druss basically comes out of retirement and takes control of the fortress to fight off the savages, right? That whole book read like a movie=) SNAGA MOTHERFUCKERS!

Grimmlokk_sl said:

First Law trilogy and the 3 stand alone follow ups. DO IT!

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Just finished the Trilogy, I really don't want to read the stand alones. Seems kinda meh idea. Loved the Trilogy though. Need something else.

The stand alones are better. Especially The Heroes.

If you are looking for something new just to break it up I always suggest theVlad Taltosbooks. Especially the first 5-6 when they're focusing more on Vlad and the city. Each book is stand alone but still part of the ongoing series, similar to the Dresden Files.

Steven Brust was doing an AMA for his latest book last year and I asked about the next Vlad book and he said

"The next Vlad novel, Hawk is tentatively scheduled for fall of 2014. And, yes, he's in Adrilankha for this one."

It came out in October but I haven't opened it yet. I'm hopeful, it's supposed to be him back in the city dealing with the fallout of the previous books. No longer on the run from the Jhereg etc.

The damnation of Pythos, pretty good Horus Heresy book.

Grimmlokk_sl said:

The stand alones are better. Especially The Heroes.

If you are looking for something new just to break it up I always suggest theVlad Taltosbooks. Especially the first 5-6 when they're focusing more on Vlad and the city. Each book is stand alone but still part of the ongoing series, similar to the Dresden Files.

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I can't find these on Kindle. Or at least Jhereg.

Draegan_sl said:

I can't find these on Kindle. Or at least Jhereg.

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Huh, weird. I just assumed any fairly well known author would have all their books on Kindle now. No dice. Oh well...

In that case, if you enjoyed the whole No One Is TrulyGoodthemes in the First Law trilogy, try theBroken Empirebooks by Mark Lawrence. Jorg Ancrath is one of my favorite true anti-heroes of all time. And one of the few who truly lives up to the title from start to finish. Even when he's good he's bad, and when he's bad? Fuuuuck.

I found all of them on a certain somewhere.

Draegan_sl said:

I found all of them on a certain somewhere.

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Draegan right now

I laughed ^.

Finished the WoT project in record time so now I've re-read all of Sanderson this fall. Knocked out Prince Lestat, which was much better than the last few Lestat PoV books. She really needs to figure out a new Claudia moment though, I find myself not really giving a shit about any of the characters who suffer. Next is going to be the David Dalglish Shadowdance stuff.