What are you currently reading?

[Alex Hormann]

I've finished Oathbringer! There's a lot going on here, and I'm pretty sure more will become apparent as the Cosmere develops. There are also a lot of answers, which is a nice change. Though this being book 3 of 10, I have my doubts about the veracity of those answers. There are points when it seems like there are just too many things being juggled, but not to the point where it bothered me.

All in all, another strong entry for a brilliant series.

[Lanko]

I'm reading The End of Sparta by Victor Davis Hanson.

I actually thought it was an History book, but it's actually historical fiction of the events...

The author says he wanted to write it like a Greek classic, and other reviews said it has a Homer feel to it. I never read Homer, all I can say is that at times the writing is a little heavy and at others is actually pretty brilliant.

Let's see how this goes.

[Rostum]

Finished The Emperors Blades on kindle. While I usually DNF a book I am not enjoying I persevered with this one, I know not why. To be fair to Brian Staveley he has great ideas and the storytelling is good. It is constantly let down by appalling character actions and motivations and an utter lack of research into lifelike situations in his familiar surroundings. The story focuses largely on two brothers and to a lesser extent on their sister, The royal family to an empire stretching 2 continents. The sister is at home just promoted to minister of finance. The younger brother has spent 8 years training to be Ketteral, a sort of highly mobile medieval special forces operating in groups of 5 and the heir apparent is an acolyte at a monastery so far removed from the would it is outside the empire. Where he is beaten, abused and starved on a regular basis with the aim of making him, or at least his ego into nothing

Just think on how easy it is to kill the next emperor assuming the monks don't manage it on their own.

No military ever took 8 years to complete basic training the suicide rate alone would make it non functional, believe me you need to know the physical and psychological reassembly is going to end. 
and there is a good reason you don't work 10 year olds to near death while there bodies and bones are still growing ask any sports coach. I could go on for pages about the utter lack of comprehension the author has on the military mind, but suffice to say these highly trained and motivated soldiers go to extraordinary lengths to throw away any tactical advantage and when captured their foes knowing what they are tie them up instead of just killing them so of course they can escape later.
Not freezing to death on the week long jaunt through the mountains without food, equipment or rational thought I found perplexing considering you die of exposure in around 36 hours without all the snow and icy winds 2 monks in robes and sandals a bed slave in what amounts to a nightie and no shoes and a death sworn assassin who would have been truer to character if she had killed and eaten the others.

Hey its fantasy set in a very normal earth like world where the physics of any event  can be ignored or changed to suit. I don't get on with that at all world build or don't but abide by the rules you make.

[Eli_Freysson]

I'm working on the last in the Star Wars: Aftermath trilogy. Like the previous book it's a good take on the setting, and details the immediate aftermath of The Return of the Jedi. Where I left off the plot is heading towards the battle that left all those Imperial ships crashed on Jakku.

And... remember Jar Jar Binks? That incredibly hated anti-comedy space frog who served as a one-person mascot for everything wrong with the prequel trilogy?

Well, the Aftermath books are peppered with interludes showing how the gradual disintegration of the Empire is affecting people in various corners of the galaxy. And on Naboo there's a shelter for refugee war orphans. One interlude focuses on a little kid who eyes no hope of being adopted because he's disfigured and crippled. But at this shelter there's this somewhat sad old Gungan who spends him time entertaining the orphans with clownish hijinks. And he and the kid get to talking, among other things about how people don't seem to like either of them. And they become pals.

I was... really surprised at finding a scene with Mister Comedy Failure really sweet. 

[ScarletBea]

I'm now reading Eriksson's Gardens of the Moon, joining the Malazan bandwagon

After a scary map and huge list of characters that I decided to ignore, and a wobbly prologue, I got into the story and now it's looking quite interesting - no longer waiting to DNF, hehe

[Eclipse]

Finished The Emperors Blades on kindle. While I usually DNF a book I am not enjoying I persevered with this one, I know not why. To be fair to Brian Staveley he has great ideas and the storytelling is good. It is constantly let down by appalling character actions and motivations and an utter lack of research into lifelike situations in his familiar surroundings. The story focuses largely on two brothers and to a lesser extent on their sister, The royal family to an empire stretching 2 continents. The sister is at home just promoted to minister of finance. The younger brother has spent 8 years training to be Ketteral, a sort of highly mobile medieval special forces operating in groups of 5 and the heir apparent is an acolyte at a monastery so far removed from the would it is outside the empire. Where he is beaten, abused and starved on a regular basis with the aim of making him, or at least his ego into nothing

Just think on how easy it is to kill the next emperor assuming the monks don't manage it on their own.

No military ever took 8 years to complete basic training the suicide rate alone would make it non functional, believe me you need to know the physical and psychological reassembly is going to end. 
and there is a good reason you don't work 10 year olds to near death while there bodies and bones are still growing ask any sports coach. I could go on for pages about the utter lack of comprehension the author has on the military mind, but suffice to say these highly trained and motivated soldiers go to extraordinary lengths to throw away any tactical advantage and when captured their foes knowing what they are tie them up instead of just killing them so of course they can escape later.
Not freezing to death on the week long jaunt through the mountains without food, equipment or rational thought I found perplexing considering you die of exposure in around 36 hours without all the snow and icy winds 2 monks in robes and sandals a bed slave in what amounts to a nightie and no shoes and a death sworn assassin who would have been truer to character if she had killed and eaten the others.

Hey its fantasy set in a very normal earth like world where the physics of any event  can be ignored or changed to suit. I don't get on with that at all world build or don't but abide by the rules you make.

Why didn’t you tell me this two years ago and then I could have avoided it ?

[Rostum]

Why didn’t you tell me this two years ago and then I could have avoided it ?

just my opinion. What did you think of it?

[ultamentkiller]

Finished The Emperors Blades on kindle. While I usually DNF a book I am not enjoying I persevered with this one, I know not why. To be fair to Brian Staveley he has great ideas and the storytelling is good. It is constantly let down by appalling character actions and motivations and an utter lack of research into lifelike situations in his familiar surroundings. The story focuses largely on two brothers and to a lesser extent on their sister, The royal family to an empire stretching 2 continents. The sister is at home just promoted to minister of finance. The younger brother has spent 8 years training to be Ketteral, a sort of highly mobile medieval special forces operating in groups of 5 and the heir apparent is an acolyte at a monastery so far removed from the would it is outside the empire. Where he is beaten, abused and starved on a regular basis with the aim of making him, or at least his ego into nothing

Just think on how easy it is to kill the next emperor assuming the monks don't manage it on their own.

No military ever took 8 years to complete basic training the suicide rate alone would make it non functional, believe me you need to know the physical and psychological reassembly is going to end. 
and there is a good reason you don't work 10 year olds to near death while there bodies and bones are still growing ask any sports coach. I could go on for pages about the utter lack of comprehension the author has on the military mind, but suffice to say these highly trained and motivated soldiers go to extraordinary lengths to throw away any tactical advantage and when captured their foes knowing what they are tie them up instead of just killing them so of course they can escape later.
Not freezing to death on the week long jaunt through the mountains without food, equipment or rational thought I found perplexing considering you die of exposure in around 36 hours without all the snow and icy winds 2 monks in robes and sandals a bed slave in what amounts to a nightie and no shoes and a death sworn assassin who would have been truer to character if she had killed and eaten the others.

Hey its fantasy set in a very normal earth like world where the physics of any event  can be ignored or changed to suit. I don't get on with that at all world build or don't but abide by the rules you make.

I'm thankful for my blissful ignorance in this case. The only thing I couldn't ignore was when a character swam underwater with a grenade in her hand, and somehow it still blew up. Didn't make sense to me. That was in book two though.

[Lanko]

I'm thankful for my blissful ignorance in this case. The only thing I couldn't ignore was when a character swam underwater with a grenade in her hand, and somehow it still blew up. Didn't make sense to me. That was in book two though.

This made me curious and I researched it, and grenades actually perfectly explode underwater. The fuse is internal and it contains it's own oxidizer so water will not stop it from exploding. The chemical composition carries its own oxygen and will happily burn underwater, whether you thrown it in the water from land or pull the pin underwater.

Though of course, considering that book is probably Medievales-que it comes to question what type of grenade was, tech levels and etc.

[Elfy]

I'm working on the last in the Star Wars: Aftermath trilogy. Like the previous book it's a good take on the setting, and details the immediate aftermath of The Return of the Jedi. Where I left off the plot is heading towards the battle that left all those Imperial ships crashed on Jakku.

And... remember Jar Jar Binks? That incredibly hated anti-comedy space frog who served as a one-person mascot for everything wrong with the prequel trilogy?

Well, the Aftermath books are peppered with interludes showing how the gradual disintegration of the Empire is affecting people in various corners of the galaxy. And on Naboo there's a shelter for refugee war orphans. One interlude focuses on a little kid who eyes no hope of being adopted because he's disfigured and crippled. But at this shelter there's this somewhat sad old Gungan who spends him time entertaining the orphans with clownish hijinks. And he and the kid get to talking, among other things about how people don't seem to like either of them. And they become pals.

I was... really surprised at finding a scene with Mister Comedy Failure really sweet. 

I agree Eli. They made a good call getting a talented writer like Wendig to do the trilogy.

[Eclipse]

Why didn’t you tell me this two years ago and then I could have avoided it ?

just my opinion. What did you think of it?

Well I got to the end of the book so I gave it 2/5 , I though it was a bit silly with some of the going on’s


Have you read the powdered Mage trilogy? That was hyped up as well, Promise of Blood was a DNF for me, everyone else loved it.

[Peat]

I don't have an objection to mad military training regimes for kids. What Rostum describes doesn't sound significantly worse than the Spartans.

What I did object to with The Emperor's Blades was the distinct whiff that everything the author had learned about writing fantasy, he learned from other fantasy books. That's why I DNF'ed it after a few chapters and I now feel very vindicated.


I've recently finished reading Mythago Wood by Robert Holdstock. Great story with some fascinating ideas that deserved to be more influential on the genre than they probably are. It suffers slightly for a change of tone and focus about halfway through but not enough to dent my enthusiasm for it.


I'm now currently alternating between Jade City by Fonda Lee and Snakewood by Adrian Selby. I'm not enjoying either as whole heartedly as I like, which is a shame as there's a lot of awesome ideas and moments in both. To a certain extent, I think both books are trying to do too much too quick - they each cover a tremendous range of ground in terms of characters and world building. Lee's explanations are a little too frequent and artless; Selby seems more of the Malazan "They'll figure it out" school. Which is a tad annoying because while it is making sense, I suspect showing more of how the world works would have been really interesting.

But I think that with time I'll get sucked into both properly.

But I might just go and read Small Gods before I do.

[xiagan]

I'm now reading Eriksson's Gardens of the Moon, joining the Malazan bandwagon

After a scary map and huge list of characters that I decided to ignore, and a wobbly prologue, I got into the story and now it's looking quite interesting - no longer waiting to DNF, hehe

Yay!

And no, sorry Bradley I did not mention FF to Sanderson. Maybe he's already here among us though?

He has an account and posted a few times. Not in the last year(s), though.

We have quite a long list with authors who are/were forumites.

And... remember Jar Jar Binks? That incredibly hated anti-comedy space frog who served as a one-person mascot for everything wrong with the prequel trilogy?

You mean the most badass sith lord?

[Rostum]

l I got to the end of the book so I gave it 2/5 , I though it was a bit silly with some of the going on’s
Have you read the powdered Mage trilogy? That was hyped up as well, Promise of Blood was a DNF for me, everyone else loved it.

Yeah 2/5 would be my score. I have not read the powder mage series but haven't rule it out for any reason.

I struggle with illogical goings on in err fantasy books, sounds sort of silly but if you make your world and default to earth physical laws you must abide by them or have previously stated the differences. People doing silly stupid stuff is fine but not when it endangers themselves or others for no good reason.

[DrNefario]

I finished Assassin's Charge by Claire Frank yesterday. It was one of the finalists for the second SPFBO. It didn't do much for me. It was competent, but uninspired, and a bit second-generation (by which I mean the knowledge of horses, ships, etc seems to come from other fantasy.) The main character's arc was quite well portrayed, but I didn't really buy it. This was my kindle lending library loan for November, and I mainly picked it because it was short. Also, it has just about enough ship-time for me to pencil it in for the Seafaring square in the reddit fantasy bingo, which is a bonus.

Next is The Five Red Herrings by Dorothy L Sayers, for my consecutive numbers challenge. Trying to get this lined up is why I switched my monthly classic murder from Agatha Christie to Dorothy Sayers a few months ago.

After that I'm planning to start Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton, representing 1990 in my chronological SF challenge.