What are you currently reading?

[Nora]

Just finished the Library At Mount Char and holy shit on a cracker is it an excellent book!! 10/10 on originality! It's about as gory in parts as it is funny in others. The concept is fresh, the twists and turns of the story are thrilling and keep you engaged. The prose is crisp, the characters interesting... The "magic" – which isn't magic! – is awesome.
Many things will be even better on a re-read I think.
I'm gonna order the paperback and face it out at work and put it in everyone's hands!

[Alex Hormann]

So. Finished Senlin Ascends. It's a weird one, since the more I thought about it, the less I enjoyed it. On the one hand, it's a really entertaining story of a man lost in a strange land looking for his wife. But the presentation itself is a sprawling mess. In a way I found it like the tv version of American Gods; a collection of brilliant scenes that weren't really held together by anything. The worldbuilding varies between stunningly original and frustratingly vague. Each layer of the Tower has its own quirks, and sort of meshes with those above and below it. But the world outside is oddly lacking. Technology levels are all over the place, with no real sense of a world history. It also features my pet peeve in secondary-world fantasy, with diary entries using real months and days.

The prose itself flows nicely for the most part, a lot like The Name of the Wind, but there are parts where it becomes almost self-indulgent. if you're looking for beautiful prose, you'd probably like it, but I felt it got in the way of the story. There are also a lot of tangents and ruminations on various aspects of human existence. Some of them were wryly amusing, while others felt pretensious.

Despite all this though, I did enjoy the book. Senlin himself is likeable, determined, and a lot less violent than most modern fantasy protagonists, which was a refreshing change. The book has problems, but if you can look past them, there's a lot to enjoy as well.

[Lady Ty]

Thanks Alex, your conclusions bear out other comments earlier.  I will return to Senlin Ascends, it deserves a fair chance, but not yet.

[CameronJohnston]

I've been hearing lots of good things about both Library At Mount Char and Senlin Ascends - I might have to give those both a try at some point.

[Nora]

I've been hearing lots of good things about both Library At Mount Char and Senlin Ascends - I might have to give those both a try at some point.

I hope you have a kindle for Library At Mount Char, because in the UK at least, it was never published as a paperback. It is, however a pure joy romp, so go for it, in any shape or form you can get it.

I don't know what's doing here, but I've been getting a stream of crap books.

First, Longbourn was doing fantastic and then had the weakest plot turn ever, with a totally unrealistic and disappointing ending.
Then Hobb gave me anxiety with her depressing Ships of Magic had decided to DNF. Then picked up Eragon and dropped it like a hot potato as soon as it was clear it sported the blandest MC I'd beholden in a while, besides being a copy-pasta of Lotr...

And now 56% in Mark Lawrence's Red Sister, and I'm getting fed up with it! It's my first book by him. I'm not a fan of his prose. It's like it doesn't stick to me, I sometimes have to re-read passages to make sense of them and comprehend them, as if I'd read it thinking of something else. It's not very enjoyable, though the man definitely went at the school of punchy first lines.
But anyway, 56% in, and LAWRD almighty, but is this a gimmicky book! Let's pile it up on the MC! Let's twist logic beyond reason to make it harder and harder for her... She is hard to like besides! She is this super poor peasant chick from the back end of nowhere, and never speaks but to spit threats, until all of a sudden she has long passages where she waxes lyrical, turning into an over-educated Keats. These felt so unrealistic I was tempted to skim them to keep the author from entirely putting me off.

YAWN!

Nothing is good any more! 

[J.R. Darewood]

Has anyone read the Bone Witch?

[ScarletBea]

Currently reading Anthony Ryan's The Waking Fire (72%). It's tightly-written, very fast-paced (good) and filled with awesome characters and action. So, pretty much my favorite kind of book.

If I had to describe it, I'd say it's Pirates of the Caribbean (the movie, not the ride) with ****ing dragons. Recommended.

I'm around the same place in my reading, and I'll add "female James Bond" to this description - I love Lizanne!

(and I've never seen Pirates of the Caribbean, but if it's similar to this book/plot, I'll definitely go check them out)

[Ryan Mueller]

I recently finished two books.

The Land: Founding by Aleron Kong. This was my first ever foray into LitRPG. As a fan of RPGs, I'm still intrigued by the genre, but I thought this one was merely solid. Maybe I'll grow into the genre more if I sample a few other authors. Rating: 6.5/10

With Blood upon the Sand by Bradley P. Beaulieu. This was a very good read. I didn't like it quite as much as the first book, as I thought there were some pacing issues in the middle. Rating: 8.5/10

[Nora]

Finished Mark Lawrence's Red Sister. A mediocre book that offers a lot of originality and lets you down time and again with worn out tropes and unlikable characters. I felt stuck with them, the world-building being the most interesting aspect of the book, and even then not anything to crow over.
The prose was often painful, and the dialogues were bad.
I'll rate that 2/5 in GR. I skimmed through the last 1/4, focusing on "interesting moments", so as not to DNF it out of rage.

Now I feel like re-reading something of quality. Anything to break this vicious circle of mediocrity I've been caught in recently.

[DrNefario]

I finished The Red Knight by Miles Cameron earlier. I liked it. It was a bit of a struggle at the start - lots of short disconnected segments from different viewpoints - but as it started to coalesce into a single story it became quite gripping.

I'm moving on to End of the World Blues by John Courtenay Grimwood next, winner of the BSFA award in, er, 2000-and-something. I've ended up with three of his to read this year - he's had two winners, but the other is book 3 in a series and I read book 1 a few months ago - so I need to get started.

[J.R. Darewood]

I just finished "Steering the Craft" by Ursula Le Guin and on @The Gem Cutter 's recommendation 'The irresistible novel" by Jeff Gerke, "The Writer's Guide to Everyday Life in the Middle Ages: the British Isle from 500 to 1500" by Sherrilyn Kenyon and "Building Believable Characters" by Marc McCutcheon as well as some narratology books like "Word Music" but i actually just skimmed the narratology stuff b/c it was mostly academese being vomitted on top of stuff they read, simplified in all the wrong ways.

This has nothing to do with reading but just now I passed a dude on a street corner panhandling and selling DVDs crammed into a wooden tray at the same time (5$ for a movie, 1$ if you want to help him eat). He was dressed as a wizard in a blue flowing robe with a staff and an awesome jeweled white hat. He told me he made the hat himself.  Anyway, I just thought I'd mention that, because it happened.

[The Gem Cutter]

So Bradley, the burning questions I have: did you find the book useful or interesting? And: did you support your neighborhood Gandalf?

[Lanko]

Finished Mark Lawrence's Red Sister. A mediocre book that offers a lot of originality and lets you down time and again with worn out tropes and unlikable characters. I felt stuck with them, the world-building being the most interesting aspect of the book, and even then not anything to crow over.
The prose was often painful, and the dialogues were bad.
I'll rate that 2/5 in GR. I skimmed through the last 1/4, focusing on "interesting moments", so as not to DNF it out of rage.

Now I feel like re-reading something of quality. Anything to break this vicious circle of mediocrity I've been caught in recently.

Try Wolf Winter by Cecilia Eckback!

[Nora]

Finished Mark Lawrence's Red Sister. A mediocre book that offers a lot of originality and lets you down time and again with worn out tropes and unlikable characters. I felt stuck with them, the world-building being the most interesting aspect of the book, and even then not anything to crow over.
The prose was often painful, and the dialogues were bad.
I'll rate that 2/5 in GR. I skimmed through the last 1/4, focusing on "interesting moments", so as not to DNF it out of rage.

Now I feel like re-reading something of quality. Anything to break this vicious circle of mediocrity I've been caught in recently.

Try Wolf Winter by Cecilia Eckback!

Meh. Sounds like historical crime/thriller. Sorry but I'm barely reaching time when the sun rises when I do, yet is still setting or set when I leave work, so I'm not inclined on reading about the long winter just now.

[S. K. Inkslinger]

Currently reading Anthony Ryan's The Waking Fire (72%). It's tightly-written, very fast-paced (good) and filled with awesome characters and action. So, pretty much my favorite kind of book.

If I had to describe it, I'd say it's Pirates of the Caribbean (the movie, not the ride) with ****ing dragons. Recommended.

I've been meaning to ask about this book before, so I love it that someone got around to reading The Waking Fire.  I am a fan of the Pirates of the Caribbean, so this book definitely deserved a place in my TBR list now.