What Book Are You Reading XV - The Pile Keeps Growing!

[EgonSpengler]

I read Throne of the Crescent Moon by Saladin Ahmed over the weekend. It is the author's first book, and for a debut novel it is a pretty fun high fantasy adventure set in a 1001 Arabian Nights world. Everything about the book could be described as "competent, with enough flair to keep it interesting". Apparently the author saw it as the first book in a trilogy, though it has been over a decade and no sequel has been released. That isn't a huge problem as the main characters plots are wrapped up nicely enough.
Worth tracking down if you are interested in a fantasy book set in the Middle East, or are looking for a higher quality book to read when traveling.

I've been awaiting the sequel, but it seems he's in no great hurry...

 

[Valka D'Ur]

I read Throne of the Crescent Moon by Saladin Ahmed over the weekend. It is the author's first book, and for a debut novel it is a pretty fun high fantasy adventure set in a 1001 Arabian Nights world. Everything about the book could be described as "competent, with enough flair to keep it interesting". Apparently the author saw it as the first book in a trilogy, though it has been over a decade and no sequel has been released. That isn't a huge problem as the main characters plots are wrapped up nicely enough.
Worth tracking down if you are interested in a fantasy book set in the Middle East, or are looking for a higher quality book to read when traveling.

I've been awaiting the sequel, but it seems he's in no great hurry...

This isn't unusual with books or movies that are meant to be a trilogy but the storyline wraps up in an acceptably finished way at the end of the first one. Star Wars would have been acceptably finished if there had never been any sequels, as it ticked all the major boxes needed for a "happy ending, no major plot points left unfinished".

The first Dragonlance novel, Dragons of Autumn Twilight, could have been left as the end of the story if it hadn't sold well (fortunately it sold well enough that we got decades' more of it). That book was intended to be the first of a trilogy, but a fourth book was added many years later, involving the next generation of adventurers (children of the first Heroes of the Lance). So maybe sales weren't enough to make a sequel viable?


Ten years is a long time to go without a sequel, though. It drives me nuts sometimes with the fanfic stories. I'm re-reading one of the best Merlin fanfics I've ever seen - an adventure that's focused on Gwaine and his mysterious past (turns out he lied about his father dying in the service of Caerleon). There's no 'shipping, no smut, just a solid adventure with a few of the traditional Arthurian characters included who weren't in the TV show... that ground to a halt at chapter 15 and hasn't been updated since 2021. That might not seem so bad, as it's just over 2 years, right? Well, this story was begun in 2012, a month or so before the series finale. So it's been in the works for many years, and I could see the author being disillusioned after the series finale, but the updated material was published long after the series finale. So the author did continue for awhile...

I just wish they'd at least post a note to say if it will ever be finished. Some fanfiction authors do this - saying whether it's on an extended hiatus, or some will offer it for adoption to anyone who wants to finish it (with appropriate credit to the author they took it over from). I've got several ideas of where this could go, and it's maddening not to know if I'm right or not.

 

[EnglishEdward]

Yesterday I finished a hard copy I bought in a charity shop of:

Fight

by

Harry Hill

Copyright 2021

which he wrote during lockdown. I found it quite enjoyable.

He is an English standup-comment, and presenter.

Harry Hill - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[Bonyduck Campersang]

Reading The Terror by Arthur Machen, set during WW1, a fictional account of a mysterious phenomenon terrorising Britain.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

The Battle of Actium will start in earnest in the chapter I'm reading, Antony's people have been deserting him, going over to Octavian, and Cleopatra has finally had a 25-watt lightbulb go off in her self-obsessed mind and realized that the Romans, other than Antony himself, really hate her (partly due to Octavian's relentless propaganda efforts, partly because she's a woman who they see as meddling in the affairs of men, and partly because she's just really unlikeable).

It's interesting how different historical fiction authors can either make the reader despise the people they're writing about, or think of them sympathetically. Margaret George's version of Cleopatra is very different, and far more sympathetic as a character.

 

[lymond]

I will bring up a great series yall may not be familiar with, but I plan to reread here soon. The series is called The Camulod Chronicles in the US and, I believe, The Dream of Eagles elsewhere, and written by Jack Whyte. It's Arthurian Legend set during the collapse of the Roman Empire in Britain and based in historical realism. It is really not fantasy at all. I read this quite some years ago. Another set of books my Granny introduced me too - she loved Arthur stuff and history. The series starts out with characters from the Roman army based in Britain as the decline is in process. These characters decide to stay in the land they love and are the great-grandfathers of Arthur, who does not come into play until like book 3 or 4, if I recall. I think Merlyn is not introduced until Book 3 and takes over as the central character and narrator. He is also a Roman Brit and leader of his colony. Great series that anyone who enjoys historical fiction and Arthur stuff would appreciate. There's no magic here - everything is based on plausible explanations including Excalibur and Merlyn.

As far as I know, this series was never widely popular. It kept me up many a night.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

I remember enjoying the First Knight movie (Sean Connery as Arthur and Richard Gere as Lancelot) precisely because there was no magic in it. It was a straightforward adventure/romance that focused on Lancelot, his past, his reasons for becoming a wanderer, and why he was at first reluctant to settle down at Camelot.

I looked this series up on Amazon, and... some of it's pricey.

It does support a recent Merlin fanfic I read in which Arthur treated Gwaine as though he was only semi-literate, telling him that of course he didn't know this/that/the other because "you had no education."

And then Gwaine trotted out a conversation with Leon - in Latin! (in the show Merlin, Gwaine and Arthur are not related, and Gwaine is the son of a knight who was killed in battle and the king turned his mother away when she asked for her widow's portion; as a result, Gwaine ends up in a life of wandering and generally leading a somewhat irresponsible life until the day he intervenes in a bar fight, saving Arthur from a thug's dagger. By this point, Gwaine doesn't have much respect for the nobility, yet several episodes later circumstances happen that result in Arthur knighting Gwaine, Lancelot, Percival, and Elyan. Gwaine never does tell Arthur of his true lineage; only Merlin knows that. As a knight's son, of course Gwaine would have had a good education, including Latin.)

 

[lymond]

Yep, I noticed the Kindle versions of Camulod Chronicles are not cheap and I do want to get them on my Kindle. I used to have all the paperbacks but just last year I sold all my hundreds of books to a used book store as part of a decluttering effort. (It was painful..I loved my books, but use my Kindle exclusively now) I wish-listed them on Amazon which often gives some deeper discounts on ebooks at times.

By the way, if ya did not notice, Jack Whyte was a Canadian author . He passed a coupla years ago.

Also, note that the series is deeply historical and can be quite violent. I find that era so interesting as it is basically the transition from the more enlightened Classical period into the early Middle/Dark Ages with not much historical record, but where much of the Arthurian stuff is considered to have originated. Arthur himself is never a central character, but more of a secondary character that events lead toward or revolve around once he does appear on the scene. The story also involves the transition from Roman Britain to a more Brit/Celt society on to the arrival of the Anglo-Saxons.

It has been so long that I can't remember how Gawaine was handled in the series. This is def not a romanticized depiction of the legend and the knights, but at some point later some of those characters are represented. Whyte also wrote a standalone novel about Uther, who is a character as well in the earlier parts of the series, that goes deeper into his story. I can't recall exactly how Uther was depicted - he is generally more of an unsympathetic character in legend - but pretty sure he is depicted with some positive qualities, i.e., a more conflicted character.

 

[Bonyduck Campersang]

Finished The Terror. It was well-written, but anticlimactic.

(Re)started The Lord of the Rings. Have already read the first volume but had to drop the rest due to myriad reasons. Now I'm rereading The Fellowship of the Ring all over again.

 

[Ajidica]

I didn't actually enjoy the Camulod Chronicles all that much. The books took forever to get anywhere, the author was a big fan of introducing problems only to have them fix themselves, and happened to write some absolutely terrible sex scenes.
The history was only mediocre, with stirrups introduced to post-Roman Britain a good 300-400 years before they were in Europe, let alone Britain. I think they were also introducing flails and this sword-spear-halberd combo that never sounded not-silly to me.
The only reason I got through as many of them as I did was that I picked up almost the complete set right before Covid lockdown hit.

 

[SS-18 ICBM]

Jamer Hunt's Not to Scale discusses a few concepts relating to scale, a nonphysical, quantitative, measured infrastructure that gives form to experiences and things. The overall theme is how scalar concepts are being decoupled from human perspectives. Scales in various fields are examined such as physical, economic, and social, along with complicating notions such as scale variance (behavior changes at different scale levels) and scale invariance (the difficulty of cognitively understanding different scaling levels). To handle complex systems with nonlinear responses and unanticipated outcomes, there must be a focus on the proper scalar framing, scaffolding approaches that balance top-down and bottom-up, and a shift to continuous redesigning of systems to match desired outcomes. While the book does introduce interesting ideas, it does not elaborate much due to its length.

 

[Josu]

Ended Dr. Zhivago by Boris Pasternak
Russian classics are not for me.

Started The Gendarme by Mark Mustian

 

[bene_legionary]

I've started Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy by John le Carré, don't usually read spy novels.

A lot of people in my English class have been studying The Hunger Games for a short seminar we all had to work on, but they were all studying the film... So I grabbed the book off the library bookshelf instead.

I've already watched the movie to know the story so nothing came as too much of a surprise. Personally I thought the internal dialogue was disjointed... the whole thing is in first person, but at some points the book just tells you what Katniss is thinking in italics and then it didn't make sense... I would have thought the first-person was the thoughts. It also made it seem a bit childish, but it is a young-adult novel, I guess I should have expected that.

It was fine, at least compared to the film. Things made more sense as they usually do in the book. For example, Katniss' attitude towards life and the Games, why the Games exist (there's the civil war and the 13th District that I don't think was mentioned in the film, and 13's destruction is why the other districts continue to accept the Games), and those dogs at the end of the Games that literally just appear into existence in the film (but have a lot more meaning in the book). I've always thought films have a harder time doing exposition and explanation simply because you can't get someone in the text to think it into existence for the audience to read.

 

[Smellincoffee]

I'm reading Carrying the Fire by Mike Collins. I've read close to 20 astronaut memoirs or NASA histories based on astronaut interviews, and of the memoirs this has gotta be the best. A Man on the Moon is still my favorite Apollo book, but Carrying the Fire has a superb mix of detail, humor, and poetic description.

 

[Ajidica]

I've started Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy by John le Carré, don't usually read spy novels.

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is a fun book, but quite confusing. When reading it, I found it best to almost approach it as a gothic horror novel and just let the ambience and tone wash over you.

 

[Kyriakos]

I tried to read a couple of Carr novels (eg The Burning Court), but imo he simply doesn't have a literary style.

 

[Kyriakos]

Rereading Ward number 6. After many years.
Primarily because I need a few good examples of character-based plot calculations for my latest seminar, and Chekhov tends to do that. Though I still prefer his more idea-based plots - which tend to be shorter stories.
Still, it's a capable author, not Carr who barely comes across as literature. At least he could spare the reader from having to go through hundreds of pages (I am in the middle of the Burning Court and it didn't need to be a large novel).

 

[Smellincoffee]

Just finished Tom Stafford's We Have Capture, which is an interesting mix of biography and memoir that tells Stafford's story along with that of Alexsei Leonov, the first man to walk and space and a man with whom Stafford later worked during the Apollo-Soyuz project. When Stafford told the Flat Earth Society (which apparently was a thing before the internet) that the Earth was definitely not flat, they replied with the equivalent of "Nuh-uhhhh!"

 

[warpus]

I spent a weekend in Hamtramcktdkhzp, Michigan for a friend's wedding and brought a new book with me to read on the train & other modes of transport. It's really good so far!

I'm reading The Lives of Tao by Wesley Chu.

It's about a guy who's body gets taken over by an alien who has done the same to various historical and non-historical figures over the ages and helped them with various things.. The context in which this all happens makes more sense, but I don't really want to say too much, lest I spoil too much to anyone who might want to pick this up and give it a try. I'm about 120 pages in, the book is well written and thought out, the characterization is great, the dialogue is solid, the story is engaging so far. I'm glad I picked it up

 

[Arakhor]

Your keyboard seems to have sneezed violently when typing that place in Michigan!