So, What Are You Reading?

Darius the Great Is Not Okay by Adib Khorram. It's got Tolkien, the Shahnameh and depression, so it's 100% my jam.

Just finished Queen of Air and Darkness by Cassandra Clare, and started Predator's Gold by Philip Reeve.

Just finished Predator's Gold by Philip Reeve, and started Lethal White by J. K. Rowling.

I'm currently reading a small novel "The wind through the keyhole", between 4th and 5th books of "The Dark Tower" by beloved Stephen King The series is really great and if you enjoy long and twisted adventure stories - you'd love it. But be sure to read "The Shining" and "The Stand" before, you'll then understand much more in the series itself.

I'm rereading Wicked for the third or fourth time. I'm noticing so many things I didn't in my previous reads, both because I'm older and because I know more of Land of Oz canon now. You can read The Wicked Years with only knowledge of The Wizard of Oz, but it's much, much better when you know about the little book references here and there.

A collection of short stories by William Sansom, an influential but sadly now-obscure writer influenced by the Surrealists and Kafka, whose works he was among the first in the Anglosphere to champion. "The Wall" may be one of the first stories to realistically explore adrenalin-induced "bullet time" perception—it was inspired by his experiences as a firefighter during the Blitz—and it is utterly haunting.

I am reading a Light Novel call When Hikaru was on Earth. It character is base on characters in The Tale of Genji. It basically about the Genji equivalent character died at the beginning of the story and then become a ghost and ask the Genji retainer equivalent character to make amend with his still alive lovers for him. I find it quite entertaiment and i find the ghost and the main character dynamic quite interesting in their respective view on relationship and the opposite sex, the main character it just not a lady man, he rude, straight forward but was forced to interacting and try to do the ghost over-elaborate gesture with may of his former love interest.

Renegades by Marissa Meyer. Just as good as her Lunar Chronicles books, albiet much different as this is about Superheroes. Interesting characters and plot twists, and I love how one of the heroes has the ability to bring their drawings to life.

The Golem and the Djinni by Helene Wecker, the exposition dumps can be grating since there are so many of them but the endgame twist and its climax is what really made the narrative click together.

It's really fucked up that Chava can't regain her former personality or really reflect on Schallmann the same way she did with Rotfeld so that's my main reason to see how the sequel goes.

"News" by Jackie Harrison

Currently reading On Basilisk Station (first Honor Harrington book), as well as Mira Grant/Seanan McGuire's Alien: Echo.

Edited by SlackerSpice on Apr 12th 2019 at 2:22:32 PM

I've just finished "The Handmaid's Tale". Atmospheric, it conveys a complex and well-thought world without going into many details or info-dumps; it is almost devoid of action but it is psychologically rich and nuanced. It is noteworthy that the narrator and main character is a common person, not particularly heroic, whose reactions and adjustements to the situation could be those of ourselves. The ending is maybe a little bit too rushed, but otherwise a well written novel and an original take on the dystopic genre.

I haven't seen the TV series yet. I didn't want before reading the novel, and now I'm afraid of spoiling the effect of the written work.

I finished Dread Nation by Justina Ireland yesterday and... wow. It both was and wasn't what I expected, and often made me sick to my stomach but it was a very interesting read.

The basic premise is that the Battle of Gettysburg brought a nasty surprise to everyone when the dead soldiers stood back up as zombies. After pulling an Enemy Mine, the Confederates and Unionists both agreed to establish camps/schools where black and Native American kids are taught to fight the undead on behalf of the white people.

o_0

Yeah. It came as a compromise after an initial wave of zombies was dealt with.

Why at least some white people didn't want to train to fight themselves, too, is beyond me (this is the biggest headscratcher I have about the book), but there were one or two of them fixated on finding the reason for the zombie outbreak/ a cure for it.

I just started reading the first two books in the Circle of Magic series, Sandry's Book and Tris's Book. I like it so far! I'll definitely read more of it when I can.

Edited by TwilightPegasus on May 31st 2019 at 1:16:19 PM

Dublinesque by Enrique Vila-Matas

I'm pretty ambivalent so far on the book because on the one hand there's an incredibly vivid and uncomfortable melancholia given to old age, Google, interactions with media, and growing up to be as old as your parents, but the other half veers between excuse to show off all the stuff he read in a thin narrative stringing them together and old man yells at cloud.

Edited by Nouct on May 31st 2019 at 11:50:06 AM

At the moment, about a third of the way through Noir Fatale, an anthology published by Baen last month, which focuses on femme fatales in noir-ish settings (hence the anthology name). The works are all new stories, including an Honor Harrington piece by Weber, and an Anita Blake story by Hamilton.

Endless Blue by Wen Spencer. It's interesting. The characters are well written people in their own right, and the story really focuses on multi-culturalism and the difficulties of communicating between species in a scifi setting. All in all so far it's been well done. Some moments are definitely dark and sickening, but I'm glad to be reading it. I had just finished most of the Myth-Adventures books by Robert Asprin and Jody Lynn Nye before this, but I need to track down the last three.

Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita, a comic novel burlesquing life under Stalinism. It wasn't allowed to be published in the USSR for more than a generation, but thrived as a piece of underground samizdat.

Satan and his retinue come to Moscow and launch an anarchic reign of mischief. Making his job even easier, no one in town is officially supposed to admit believing in him.

Currently reading Jade War by Fonda Lee - a fantasy gangster novel that's basically classic Hong Kong crime movies but what if jade was a magical stone that gave people with the right aptitude magical Wuxia powers like super strength and speed, the ability to perceive auras and deflect bullets.

Pretty good so far, took me a little while to get into it, but a POV character has just died, so that should spice things up a little. Still a little lukewarm on it though, I don't feel super immersed in the world or super attached to the characters or (as a result) care that much how the plot turns out, and the action isn't super exciting to read either. I'm starting to wonder how this book won the 2018 Word Fantasy Award to be honest - maybe the plotlines come together in a cool way in the third act? Because at the moment we're following 4-5 characters with no real idea of who the "main" character is, and even though a POV character has died I don't feel any real stakes here. They don't feel real, they feel like bad actors that have been given a character sheet of goals and attributes and told to ad-lib their way through the script.

I'm reading The Lyra Chronicles by Patricia C. Wrede. I was surprised when the second one in the series wasn't still about Alkyra and their troubles, because I wanted to see more of that, but I guess it's nice to see what's going on elsewhere in the world.

Just finished Jade City by Fonda Lee. Kinda disappointed, since it was an award-winning book by a new author I wanted to root for, and the worldbuilding and plot was objectively good - unfortunately I never cared about any of the characters enough for the story to pull me along and it felt like I had to push myself through each chapter to finish it. That, and the story ends with a lot of plot lines loose for book 2, which leaves a little bit of a sour taste in my mouth, since the book's climax doesn't really feel like one at all.

I'm reading Izana, the prequel novel to the manga Kasane, written by the author herself. I was honestly surprised − I first expected a somewhat disposable light-novel tie-in like other mangas have, but this is a genuinely well-written and compelling story that perfectly complements the manga, with some really poignant scenes.

What's more, it can be enjoyed just as much, maybe even more, if you haven't read the manga.