What we're reading, the SFF edition

I want to read those too but I haven't found any of them in a bookshop here yet. May have to bite the bullet and go to Amazon.

Eh, might as well procrastinate a bit...

The last SF/F book I finished was Dragon Love, a picture book by Stephen Parlato that creates dragons out of composited themed images: a butterfly dragon, a flag dragon, a book dragon (that I've seen online for a while without knowing the source), etc. My personal favorite is the one used in the cover, the dragon made from pieces of fancy suits of armor. Great, inspiring stuff.

Currently, I'm still picking my way through Now Write! Fantasy, Science Fiction and Horror, edited by Laurie Lamson. A collection of essays and exercises for the genre writer, it's a bit of a mixed bag, which is part of the reason why it's taking so long to push through.

I've also just started Carmilla, by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, an early (1871ish) vampire novelette with some lesbian overtones that read ahead of their time... or, at least, ahead of my perception of the 19th century. A young lady and her father live in a remote castle in Styria, and are visited by a mysterious woman whose odd obsession with the daughter has sinister overtones. Meanwhile, young girls around the countryside are falling deathly ill after reporting encounters with a malevolent spirit... So far, it's not so bad, and it's moving significantly faster than Bram Stoker's Dracula.

And I'm roughly halfway or further through Matt Youngmark's hilarious Time Travel Dinosaur, a "Chooseomatic" book in the vein of the classic CYOA series. You star as a college kid earning eleven bucks an hour as a time travel agent (generally as dull a job as the paycheck implies), whose latest mission goes horribly wrong. I haven't laughed out loud at a book in a while; this one's pulled it off more than once. Plus, weird as the thing gets, it's internally consistent. One choice-branch runs you into a stranger who seems to have evolved from a Labrador Retriever; another choice-branch shows you how this happened. The more you read, the more seemingly random encounters start to click together. There are over 70 possible outcomes; I'm trying to hit as many as possible before rendering my official rating and review, but thus far it's headed straight for the five-star slot.

I just finished the first two books of Robin Hobb's Farseer trilogy. For some reason none of my local bookstores/libraries have the last book, Assassin's Quest. I think today I'll start looking for it online.

Alessandra Kelley said:

Might your bookstores do special orders? Most around here seem happy to do so.

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They do, but I so seldom get into town that they'd be sitting on it for a month before I could pick it up which doesn't really seem fair to them.

Today was one of the rare days I *did* get into town, so obviously I went to Waterstones. I would now be happily reading our own Fancis Knight's Fade to Black but once again, they had books 2 and 3 on the shelf but not book 1. Not helpful Waterstones, not helpful. Amazon time again.

I picked up Seven Forges by James A Moore and Hang Wire by Adam Christopher instead. Making a start on Seven Forges now.

I'm halfway through Station Eleven by Emily St John Mandel. Quite lovely, but a little too easy to put down.

Expanse series by James Corey.
Really like what I've read so far.
Leviathan Wakes is a kind of horror/crime story, but in a scifi setting, and it's awesome.
Caliban's War takes a much more political-drama leaning (and expands the character roster). I wish it had a little more of the horror from the first, but that's just a preference, the writing, story, and characters are all still pretty top-notch.

I love the Expanse series. I wish there were more science fiction stories like it, but I'm having trouble finding them. So many stories that feature somewhat similar plots don't do the characters as well.

rwm4768 said:

I love the Expanse series. I wish there were more science fiction stories like it, but I'm having trouble finding them. So many stories that feature somewhat similar plots don't do the characters as well.

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If you haven't read it yet you could try the Commonwealth Saga.
I don't recommend the Void Trilogy portion of it though. It squanders a lot of what the initial duology builds.

LOG said:

If you haven't read it yet you could try the Commonwealth Saga.
I don't recommend the Void Trilogy portion of it though. It squanders a lot of what the initial duology builds.

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I liked the Commonwealth Saga (thought not as much as the Expanse series). I felt kind of meh toward the first Void book and had to return the second to the library when I was only 200 or so pages into it.

Currently reading Fire Study by Maria Snyder. It's the third in the trilogy. Overall the series is engaging and they're easy reads, but by this point her writing starting to bug me. It's very tell-y and the POV is kind of shallow.

Just started The Name of The Wind. Magicians and demons and badass lady money-lenders. Pretty sweet so far. I grew up reading mostly sci-fi, I'm trying to dive more into fantasy

Finished The Providence of Fire by Brian Staveley. This was a great book. I think I enjoyed it even more than I did The Emperor's Blades. In this one, the pace goes along a bit faster, and there are interesting revelations galore. I'm really excited to see where it goes from here.

Started The Dragon's Path by Daniel Abraham.
Seems like it might be interesting, but so far it's doing that thing where it feeds me political drama as a main course and then tries to satisfy me with little bits of fantasy for appetizer and dessert.

If it wants to be a political drama in an alternate medieval world that's fine. But don't call it a epic or high fantasy.

LOG said:

Started The Dragon's Path by Daniel Abraham.
Seems like it might be interesting, but so far it's doing that thing where it feeds me political drama as a main course and then tries to satisfy me with little bits of fantasy for appetizer and dessert.

If it wants to be a political drama in an alternate medieval world that's fine. But don't call it a epic or high fantasy.

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The fantasy elements become more prevalent as the book (and series) go along. Overall, it's fantasy in a similar vein as ASoIaF. There are fantasy elements, but it can take a while to get to them.

Abraham's other series, The Long Price Quartet, has more fantasy elements right from the beginning. I found the first books in both series were a little difficult to get through, but I've really enjoyed the subsequent books.

I'm about to finish The First Book of Lost Swords - Woundhealer's Story by Fred Saberhagen. I don't think I'll continue the series. The author didn't make me care about the characters at all. Shame, because I really wanted to like it. I was in the mood for a high fantasy story.

Sometimes I wonder what use the advice on these forums are worth because if a published book can have that much filtering, than what's the point in being so picky about filtering in my unpublished work? It's frustrating in a way, ya know?

It's a common problem among undiscovered geniuses.

Blinkk said:

Sometimes I wonder what use the advice on these forums are worth because if a published book can have that much filtering, than what's the point in being so picky about filtering in my unpublished work? It's frustrating in a way, ya know?

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Some people get away with sins because of who they are, or when they wrote. IIRC, Saberhagen's one of the "old guard" writers. Today's audiences tend to be less forgiving of filtering and such, but when his rep was made, tastes were different.

Plus neither you or I are Fred Saberhagen, any more than we're Stephen King, J. K. Rowling, Danielle Steele, James Patterson, or anyone else. We're us, for better or worse. Just like some people can wear mixed plaids and polka-dots and get away with it, and the rest of us just can't, no matter how hard we try. But we may be able to pull off stripes and zigzags...

Still, one always should take any criticism with a grain of salt; they're not canonical edicts from the halls of Heaven, but the opinions of a particular reader. You've still got gut instincts, and they're still worth listening to. (Unless many people point to the same problem. Then your gut could use a tune-up...)

Blinkk said:

Sometimes I wonder what use the advice on these forums are worth because if a published book can have that much filtering, than what's the point in being so picky about filtering in my unpublished work? It's frustrating in a way, ya know?

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I think a lot of people take good guidelines and use them to an extreme. You'd be hard-pressed to find any book that doesn't use at least a little filtering. It has its place. For example, the phrase "I think" in my first sentence is filtering. You might argue that I could remove it, but I'm using it deliberately, to emphasize that this is just my opinion so it doesn't feel confrontational. Also, if your sentence is incredibly awkward without it, it might be the right way to write the sentence.

LOG said:

Started The Dragon's Path by Daniel Abraham.
Seems like it might be interesting, but so far it's doing that thing where it feeds me political drama as a main course and then tries to satisfy me with little bits of fantasy for appetizer and dessert.

If it wants to be a political drama in an alternate medieval world that's fine. But don't call it a epic or high fantasy.

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Thanks for the warning. I'll be putting it on my Stay Away list.

Blinkk said:

...
Sometimes I wonder what use the advice on these forums are worth because if a published book can have that much filtering, than what's the point in being so picky about filtering in my unpublished work? It's frustrating in a way, ya know?

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Yes. I see the same thing. I notice it because of all the advice against it that I've read. And, EVERY damn time I filter, I catch it. That's a good thing. It makes me rethink what I've written. Usually, I change it, but not always. So there.

Been powering through some novellas I've been meaning to read.

Shadows for Silence in the Forests of Hell by Brandon Sanderson:Perfect State by Brandon Sanderson:A Fire in the Heavens by Mary Robinette Kowal:

Finished A Warrior's Path by Davis Ashura. I know the author from a couple of other forums, so I thought I'd give it a try. Overall, it was an enjoyable book. It would probably appeal to some fans of Brandon Sanderson. Ashura did a good job of integrating his world's magic with the society he created.

There were a few minor editing issues, but nothing that distracted me from the story. I'm looking forward to reading the next one.

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins: I think it's a better movie than a book. Thing is, I couldn't tell you specifically why. There's just something about the writing that leaves me unfulfilled.
The Scroll of Years by Chris Willrich: It's definitely . . . interesting. I don't know if it's good though. I'll probably pick up the next one out of curiosity if nothing else.
The Hunt of the Unicorn, C.C. Humphreys: I was expecting something much more interesting than what I got, though that wasn't bad per se, just not very good.
The Magicians, Lev Grossman: A lot of interesting ideas, some complex characters--it could have been such a good book/series. But my gosh, the arcs. The arcs (what little exist) are just not good. We don't get an actual antagonist until the end of part 1--that's the halfway point of the book, and it isn't a short book. That antagonist is immaterial and actually could have made for an intensely psychological and emotional second half . . . but then part 2 ends really, really quickly and we move to part 3 wherein we finally get some real challenge and antagonists, but the inconsequential nature of part 1 and shortness of part 2 just don't let me really feel anything about it. Then there's a part 4 that's also pretty short and ends on a note that barely even feels like it's leading to a sequel, even though it is.

I finished Seven Forges by James A Moore. It was... okay. I'm not sure I'd go any further than that, but I'll probably pick up the second one when it comes out.

I'm currently about a third of the way through Hang Wire by Adam Christopher and I'm really liking this one so far.