YouKneeK’s 2018 SF&F Overdose Part 2

I thought I’d start the second quarter off with a new thread since my old one was getting a little long.

A longer introduction with excessive detail is in this year’s “Part 1” thread linked above, but here’s the short version:

• I read mostly science fiction and fantasy, with a heavier emphasis on fantasy.
  
• I tend to read slightly older books versus the newest releases.
  
• I hate spoilers. Any spoilers in my reviews should be safely hidden behind tags.
  
• I prefer to read a series after it’s complete, and I read all the books pretty close together.
  
• I’m 42, female, and live in the suburbs of Atlanta, GA in the U.S where I work as a programmer.
  
• My cat’s name is Ernest and he’s a freak.

2018 Reading Index

Clicking on the Date Read will take you to the post containing the review.

   Date Read/
 # Review Link	Title				Author(s)		
 1 2018-01-03	The Anubis Gates		Tim Powers
 2 2018-01-13	A Crown of Swords		Robert Jordan
 3 2018-01-15	Armada				Ernest Cline
 4 2018-01-22	The Path of Daggers		Robert Jordan
 5 2018-01-30	Winter's Heart			Robert Jordan
 6 2018-02-07	Crossroads of Twilight		Robert Jordan
 7 2018-02-10	The Adventures of Tom Sawyer	Mark Twain
 8 2018-02-14	New Spring			Robert Jordan
 9 2018-02-22	Knife of Dreams			Robert Jordan
10 2018-02-27	The Gathering Storm		Brandon Sanderson
11 2018-03-09	Towers of Midnight		Brandon Sanderson
12 2018-03-18	A Memory of Light		Brandon Sanderson
13 2018-03-19	Fahrenheit 451			Ray Bradbury
14 2018-03-24	Good Omens			Terry Pratchett and 
						Neil Gaiman
15 2018-03-27	The Fifth Season		N. K. Jemisin
16 2018-03-31	The Obelisk Gate		N. K. Jemisin
17 2018-04-05	The Stone Sky			N. K. Jemisin
18 2018-04-08	Among Others			Jo Walton
19 2018-04-12	Lord of Light			Roger Zelazny
20 2018-04-15	The Last Policeman		Ben H. Winters
21 2018-04-18	Kindred				Octavia E. Butler
22 2018-04-22	The Summer Tree			Guy Gavriel Kay
23 2018-04-27	The Wandering Fire		Guy Gavriel Kay
24 2018-04-30	The Darkest Road		Guy Gavriel Kay
25 2018-05-08	The Iliad			Homer
26 2018-05-19	The Passage			Justin Cronin
27 2018-05-24	The Silent Tower		Barbara Hambly
28 2018-05-27	The Silicon Mage		Barbara Hambly
29 2018-06-01	Alif the Unseen			G. Willow Wilson
30 2018-06-03	Brave New World			Aldous Huxley
31 2018-06-09	City of Stairs			Robert Jackson Bennett
32 2018-06-13	City of Blades			Robert Jackson Bennett
33 2018-06-17	City of Miracles		Robert Jackson Bennett
34 2018-06-29	1Q84				Haruki Murakami

I don’t read enough books to justify a monthly stats post, but I thought it might be worth doing a quarterly one. Below are the current stats my database is spitting out at me. I’ve read a lot of great books so far this year, so my average star rating is higher than usual.

Happy new thread!

So your reading has doubled since '14. Was that when you got back into reading as a hobby? Or was that when the aliens hybridized you and suddenly you had super-human powers? ;-)

>4 humouress: Thanks!

>5 BookstoogeLT: Ha, if the aliens think they’ve given me super-human powers, I want a refund! :) I didn’t start tracking my reading dates until late 2013, so I just don’t have any good data before 2014. My reading time had slowly started picking back up a couple years before that when I became reacquainted with the concept of “spare time”. I’d like to have more time to read now, but I’m pretty happy with the balance I currently have when I consider what it was like a few years ago.

>6 YouKneeK: No refunds without a detailed, itemized receipt, sorry!
Looking at those numbers, you're getting in almost 2 books a week. That's a significant time investment, so I'm glad you're happy with it :-) I think a lot of people would be very happy to do that much.

And I just realized your current average is 4.3? That is crazy good!!! Someone I follow on wordpress has a 5star tbr list (where they have added books that they think have a real good shot at being 5 stars) and I am wondering about trying to do something like that. The only problem is that I know I'm just too picky and I'll give a book 4.5stars twice before admitting that it's good enough to get a coveted 5star :-D

>7 BookstoogeLT: Yeah, that average is high even for me. I usually hover around 3.8 or less and figure I’m a little generous with my ratings. All those WoT books that I rated so highly are largely responsible, plus the trilogy I’m reading now. I’ve already rated four books at five stars this year, which is more than I gave in the entire year of 2017.

The 5-star TBR list sounds like a fun idea! If nothing else, even if they don’t all earn the 5 stars, it would increase the chances of a high-quality reading year.

>3 YouKneeK: Congratulations on the reading stats. I keep on check out that pages per book number, which is close to doubling my own. Looking forward to seeing what you'll read next.

>9 mattries37315: Thanks! My average pages per book is at an all-time high this year thanks to Wot. :) It is sure to shrink as the year progresses, though.

Love your bar & pie charts!
I might try to prod you to add more woman authors to that mix, though.

>11 clamairy: Yeah, the pie charts look really skimpy right now. I have more female authors planned this year, but they will probably still be outweighed by male authors in the end. A variety of things affect which books I choose to read, but the author’s gender isn't one of them.

I’m more disappointed at how few new-to-me authors I’ve read so far this year. I enjoy trying different authors and, in the past, that number has been quite a bit higher. It should improve now that I’m back to reading smaller series and standalones, but I think it will still end up lower than usual this year.

Review: The Stone Sky by N. K. Jemisin



The Stone Sky is the final book in the Broken Earth trilogy. It is a good wrap-up to the series, and I enjoyed the whole series a lot. I thought the first book was the best, maybe in part because the world and characters were new and I really enjoyed getting to know them. The other two books were also very good, but not as impossible to put down as the first one.

The first book ended with a lot of questions that started getting answered in the second book. By the end of third book, I was pretty satisfied by how the questions were all answered. I especially enjoyed finally getting a more coherent bit of back story. There were a couple of cases where the most obvious question about a particular event was one that not even the characters could answer, though. For example, how Hoa and the other soon-to-be stone eaters got from the moon back to the earth. That was the first thing I wondered when I learned they were going to the moon, especially since I knew the moon was going to get “lost” – how were they going to get back? I can speculate, but it was a little disappointing to be told by Hoa that he couldn’t answer the very question I was asking.

The author set up the groundwork for the conclusion very well, but it may have been done almost a little too well because I had some issues with this last book feeling predictable. There were surprises, but there really wasn’t too much about the main events that felt like a surprise by the time it happened. I think that may really be the main thing I enjoyed more about the first book; I was more surprised by events in the story, in large part because I didn’t know enough about the world or the characters yet to predict what would happen.

I have a couple more comments in the spoiler tags…
Nassun’s POV started to get a little tiresome for me. Every chapter felt like more of the same – more anger and resentment along with more desperate affection for Schaffa, the only good thing in her life.

The little snippets of journal entries that Alabaster wrote were great. I’m not entirely convinced that keeping a journal was really in character for him, but I enjoyed reading the entries too much to care and I would have enjoyed more of them. I really liked Alabaster.

Over-all, even though I liked some parts of the series better than others and had a few complaints, this was a really good series and I look forward to trying more of Jemisin’s work at some point in the future.

Next Book
Among Others by Jo Walton. I don’t know anything about this book, but I did enjoy the author's Thessaly trilogy a lot.

>13 YouKneeK: I'll be interested in hearing what you think of Among Others. It was a very good read for me.

Thanks for the spoiler-free reviews BTW... I have these Jemisin books on my list and am looking forward to getting to them (hopefully) soon.

>14 ScoLgo: Thanks, that’s good to hear! I’m getting ready to (finally) start reading it now. The day got a little more hectic than I anticipated.

I would be really interested to hear what you think once you try the Jemisin books.

>13 YouKneeK: Yup, I agree with you completely. I still enjoyed it, but there were certain aspects of the tale I grew weary of, and a few that even started to grate on me a bit by the middle of the third book. The Nassun & Schaffa bits really got to me, to the point where I wasn't picking up my kindle when I had the opportunity. That's never a good sign. Plus, the Essun & Lerna relationship didn't ring true for me. (Whereas the threesome in book one did, oddly enough.)

>16 clamairy: It sounds like we had a really similar reaction to this series, because I agree with everything you said in your spoiler tags. :)

>17 YouKneeK: I've got book 1 in my TBR pile, but haven't got round to it (been busy reading a lot of Mary Gentle - I'm currently on Rats and Gargoyles and took time out to read the new Lindsey Davis amongst others. Paul's read it and thinks it pretty good - and reckons she's got a strong chance of getting 3 Hugos for that series.

I don't think we have the other two as ebooks but we may well get them as part of the Hugo short list pack. However, it looks like a distinct possibility that my reading will revert back to short stories on the train - I have an interview in London next week (finally - it's only taken over 2 months to get that far) and assuming the T&Cs are right I may well accept the contract (it costs me £56 to travel, and 90 minutes each way so I have to weigh up the work/life balance). So my longer length reading will suffer - my train journey is 50 minutes so short stories suit me on the daily commute, especially in the morning as I put my make-up on after getting on the train.

>13 YouKneeK: Thanks again, I've added this series to my wish list. I would also like to read more current sci-fi and fantasy, I looked at the Locus awards list and Nebula and Hugo nominations for 2017 and I wasn't familiar with very many of the books. I have read some current Tad Williams and Brandon Sanderson, but that's a small percentage.

>18 Maddz:, >19 Karlstar: I hope both of you enjoy it if/when you try it!

>18 Maddz: Good luck with this week’s interview. I usually find short stories unsatisfying in general, but I can see how they might work better for commuting.

>19 Karlstar: I haven’t tried Tad Williams yet. I’ve read some of Sanderson’s stuff and enjoyed it, but so much of it is part of an ongoing series. That’s the main reason I don’t usually read brand new releases; they’re usually part of some ongoing series which makes them less of a priority for me. The Stone Sky was the first book I’ve read that was published in 2017.

Review: Among Others by Jo Walton



This book was really different from what I typically read these days. I have some complaints about the ending, but it was a difficult book to put down. It isn’t that it had a riveting plot, really. It barely even has a plot and is more about the main character herself. It’s more a coming-of-age story than anything, I guess. It held my attention though, and I usually couldn’t bring myself to put it down at the beginning of a new section, even if I had intended to. My eyes would absorb the first few sentences in the new section before I could quite close the cover of my Kindle and then I would forget to close it.

The story is told in a diary format, written by a girl named Mori. The very first entry takes place when Mori is 10. We learn that she has a twin sister, the girls can see fairies, and the fairies help them do magic. In the next entry Mori is 15, and just about everything in her life has changed except for the part about the fairies and the magic. The remainder of the story takes place over the course of a few months and slowly reveals all of the details about what happened while also showing us how she copes with the changes in her life. Mori is a likeable character and I cared what happened to her. Aside from my love of reading I really didn’t have much in common with her when I was her age, but I still found her easy to identify with.

The magic is very subtle. It’s a sort of magical realism that leaves you wondering how much of what happens is actual magic and how much is just coincidence or misperception. I really liked this book's take on the effect magic has. There are also a lot of references to older science fiction and fantasy books. (Most of the story takes place in 1979.) Although I recognized many of them, I still have a lot of catching-up to do in the SF&F genre so some of the references and discussions about the books went over my head. I usually felt like I understood what she was saying through the context, even if I didn’t follow the specific references. For those intimately familiar with them, I imagine the story has more layers of meaning that I didn’t even really know I was missing out on.

I have a couple more comments, mostly about the ending, that will have to go behind spoiler tags.

The ending seemed a little abrupt, but my biggest complaint was with the inconsistencies. Throughout the book magic was subtle, as I mentioned above. Things happen as a result of the magic that could be completely dismissed as coincidence. Yet here at the end we have Mori turning into flame, Mori’s mother essentially throwing fire bolts, and Mori turning individual pages of books into trees. It was like somebody pasted the end of a more traditional fantasy book at the end of this magical realism book. Maybe someday I’ll find my magical realism ending pasted to the end of some other traditional fantasy book in turn if I read enough of them.

Aside from that, I also found it unrealistic when Wim, Daniel, and Sam coincidentally showed up at the bus stop where Mori managed to get to after the confrontation with her mother. First of all, it seemed unrealistic that Daniel would have come, and unfathomable that Sam came also. But even more importantly, how did they show up there? They had no idea where Mori would be. I would expect they probably took Daniel’s car, rather than the bus, which makes it even stranger that they ended up at a bus stop. Even if they had taken the bus, and even if they had miraculously gotten off the bus at the very stop that Mori ended up at, how did they manage to get there at exactly the right time? I guess it could be blamed on magic, but it’s just too much inexplicableness piled on top of inexplicableness, and all happening within a paragraph, without further explanation.

Next Book
Lord of Light by Roger Zelazny. Coincidentally, Zelazny is mentioned quite a bit in Among Others, and I’ve never read him before. I’d already been planning to read this book next before I ever started Among Others.

(Actually, since I typed this post up yesterday, I'm about 40 pages into it so far. I'm not quite sure what to make of it yet...)

>21 YouKneeK: best of luck with Lord of Light. I was already not a Zelazny fan due to Amber (even though I own it and recommend people read it) but LoL really put me off my feed. However, I'm on the fence of whether you'll like it or not :-)
(talk about covering my bases, eh?)

>22 BookstoogeLT: Does this mean I can look forward to finding a scathing review from you once I’m done? ;) I can’t remember the last time I’ve felt so completely disconnected from a plot, but I’m still not very far into it so maybe it will all start to come together soon. I suspect I’d be digesting it better as an e-book, but I borrowed a physical book from the library since it isn’t on Kindle. The stupid paper pages won’t give me definitions or wiki entries no matter how hard I poke at them. :)

I have Nine Princes in Amber on my list also, and A Night in the Lonesome October, so I’ll try him again eventually even if I end up hating this one. I only chose to read this one now because the group I’m in over on GR chose it for one of this month’s reads, I've been wanting to try his work for a while, and the timing was convenient.

>23 YouKneeK: Nah, more of a renunciation of a putrefying corpse and it stench upon the nostrils...

>24 BookstoogeLT: LOL, I look forward to reading it.

On the bright side, the story is starting to make more sense now.

>20 YouKneeK: You have to try some Tad Williams! He's underrated but an awesome epic fantasy writer. I very much recommend the Memory, Sorry and Thorn trilogy and the Otherland series. Really excellent stuff.

>23 YouKneeK: and >22 BookstoogeLT: I've always wondered why Lord of Light is so admired. I own it, though it was destroyed in the Great Flood and its on my list to replace. Maybe I'm wasting my money replacing it?

>27 Karlstar: I think it's admired because it's very much modern mythologising and in it's day, was very much groundbreaking. At some point I must re-read it, but sadly it's not one of Zelazny's works available in ebook. I think you do have to have some perspective to appreciate it; I first read it in my late 20s which is probably when you have the maturity to appreciate Zelazny's writing. If I had first read it in my late teens I think I would have hated it - at that point I preferred whizz-bang space operas for my SF reading.

A lot of Zelazny's work is most certainly not YA material, and LoL is one of them. If you read his bio on Wikipedia, you'll understand why his writing is so densely structured.

>27 Karlstar: In my opinion, it would be a waste of money.

>26 Karlstar: Thanks, I’ll add him to the ever-growing TBR list and make a note of those series! :)

>28 Maddz: No idea if this is a legal site or not but Lord of Light can be found in e-book form here...
https://www.e-reading.club/book.php?book=71413

Used paperback copies can also be delivered for around $4.00 to $5.00 from sites like Abe Books, Biblio.com, etc. In my opinion, it's a well-crafted story that is worth that sort of price.

EtA: >30 YouKneeK: I too will vouch for the Otherland series. I haven't read anything else by Williams but I did enjoy that one. The two middle books seemed to suffer a bit from bloat but I remember really liking how he wrapped things up at the end of book #4. Good rec from >26 Karlstar:!

>31 ScoLgo: Thanks for seconding the Otherland recommendation! :) I checked out the synopsis for the first book and it does sound really interesting.

>32 YouKneeK: Thirded for Otherland. That and Memory, Sorrow, Thorn were the only series of books that I really enjoyed by Williams. I'm reserving judgement on his sequel to MST until it is all done...

>33 BookstoogeLT: Maybe try the stand alone prequel to the next trilogy, The Heart of What Was Lost. I liked it. https://www.librarything.com/topic/247373 is my review from last January. Does this also mean you are not a Bobby Dollar fan?

>31 ScoLgo: It looks like a Russian site, so at best it's samizdat. At worst, it's a front for a pirate site or comes with attached malware. To my knowledge, LoL is affected by the issues surrounding Zelazny's estate which means for a legitimate ebook we may have to wait until his wife dies if not longer.

>34 Karlstar: I'll be waiting until the trilogy is wrapped up. I've got enough books that I can afford to wait :-)
And you are right, I am not a fan of Bobby Dollar. After Williams War of the Flowers, any urban fantasy by him was an automatic pass for me.

>33 BookstoogeLT: Ha, thanks!

I also recommend the Otherland series by Tad Williams, with the same caveat as mentioned in >31 ScoLgo: (that the pace slows in the middle books). I think Williams came up with so many cool ideas that he didn't want to leave any out. I also loved MST and think of it as among the best of the many "pig-boy" fantasies out there. >34 Karlstar:, >36 BookstoogeLT: I wanted to like the Bobby Dollar trilogy as there were a lot of interesting ideas and great secondary characters in it, but as the books progressed I loathed Bobby himself more and more, to the point where the good stuff couldn't outweigh the bad.

>13 YouKneeK: I've read and loved the first two books of the Thessaly trilogy. Annoyingly, there don't seem to be any plans to release book 3 in paperback in the UK, but I found a used copy of the omnibus edition with all 3 books in, so will be working my way through that during the year.

>38 Sakerfalcon: I have to agree with you on Bobby Dollar. I really love The Dirty Streets of Heaven, but the 2nd book gets a big 'do not read' vote from me and the third book just wasn't very good, though strangely, the audiobook version of it was better.

>38 Sakerfalcon: I had to Google “pig-boy fantasy” – I’d never heard it referred to quite that way before! I like it.

I hope you enjoy the end of the Thessaly trilogy. I’ll look forward to reading what you think once you finish it.

Note to self: Everybody thinks I should read the Otherland series. ;)

>40 YouKneeK: Obviously everybody has really good taste in this thread :-)

I'm going to put in my recommendation for Williams' MST trilogy, though I would suggest reading the two book version of To Green Angel Tower not the single-book version.

Since I haven't read Otherland, I can't add my voice to those recommendations.

>41 BookstoogeLT: I’ll reserve judgment until I’ve tried the first book. I might decide you are all nuts instead…

>42 mattries37315: Thanks! Allow me to speak for Karlstar, ScoLgo, BookstoogeLT, and Sakerfalcon (did I miss anybody?) in recommending that you read Otherland ASAP. ;)

Review: Lord of Light by Roger Zelazny



Clearly a lot of people love this book. The average rating on both LibraryThing and Goodreads is 4.1, and it has over 23,000 ratings on Goodreads. I, on the other hand, was not a fan. I didn’t hate it, I just mostly felt apathetic about it.

This story takes place on an alien planet in the far future, where technology has enabled certain men and women to set themselves up as gods. They’ve chosen to mimic the Hindu gods in particular, probably because there are so many to choose from. These gods are able to give themselves new bodies when their current bodies grow old, and they control the general public’s ability to be “reincarnated” into new bodies. They also severely restrict access to technology for the general public, to prevent them from gaining too much power and potentially overthrowing their gods. The “hero” of the story is Siddhartha, the man who became the Buddha of the Buddhist religion. He’s presented as a bit of a charlatan, but one who cares about humanity and selflessly opposes the gods regardless of the cost to himself.

Authors take different approaches to world building. Some give lots of exposition, and others drop in the info you need a little more subtly. With this book, I felt like the world-building was missing altogether. After 50 pages or so, my understanding of the setting was so fuzzy that I finally gave in and did something I rarely do – I read the synopsis for the book on the back cover. It was only a short paragraph, but it provided crucial context for some things that were barely hinted at in the book. I usually look at a synopsis as something to be avoided when possible because they reveal too many details that are fun to learn for oneself by just reading the story. In this case, the synopsis seemed like a mandatory reading prerequisite.

I usually enjoy stories that explore cultures I’m less familiar with. I’m not remotely an expert on Hinduism or Buddhism, but I did take an introductory course on Eastern religions, so I was at least familiar with the basic concepts and terminology. I was reasonably familiar with the story of Siddhartha, although I didn’t remember much about any of the Hindu gods. I also usually do pretty well with books that leave me to slowly figure out what everything means through context. In fact, I usually prefer that type of a story to one that spells everything out from the beginning. I guess the point I’m trying to make is that my problem with this book wasn’t centered on its exploration of concepts that are foreign to me.

I did grasp that there were Messages and Nuances and Thoughts to the story, and they were probably far less common to readers when this book was published in the 60’s. I found them somewhat interesting, but they’re hardly new today. They weren’t enough by themselves to hold my interest when I didn’t enjoy the story itself. The book does have a fair amount of humor though, particularly in the dialogue, so I enjoyed some of that. In general, I enjoyed the dialogue bits more than the interminable action bits. Those were the parts that often made me contemplate giving up on the book, which may have been the wiser course of action. I think Zelazny’s writing style just might not be very compatible with my brain. I do plan to try more of his work eventually, though. It may help that I’ll go into the next attempt with better expectations.

Next Book
The Last Policeman, the first book in a trilogy by Ben H. Winters. I’m going into this one blind also, but I’m guessing from the title that it’s either pre- or post-apocalyptic. Or maybe it’s just about a policeman who’s always late…

>24 BookstoogeLT: So now that I’ve read your review, I realize that I read it only a few months ago when you first posted it! At the time, this book wasn’t on my list and I didn’t expect to read it anytime remotely soon. Based on what you said, I suspect I may end up with the same conclusion after I try some of his other work.

>44 YouKneeK: I will say that Roger Zelazny was rather a literary writer - there's parallels with Avram Davidson (although less rooted in Mittel Europe), Tim Powers and James Blaylock. I seem to recall you mentioning before that you didn't care for magical realism? Although not really a magical realist, I'd say that a lot of the tropes from that genre appear in his works, especially the more mystical or philosophical works which Lord of Light is.

The Amber series is more of a straightforward fantasy, especially the first series. (You can really treat the 2 series as separate works, and totally ignore the John Betancourt authored prequels.) Changeling & Madwand and Dilvish the Damned & The Changing Land (which are 2 different duologies) may be better if you can find them. Unfortunately, only Madwand is available as an ebook.

>46 Maddz: I think you and others had suggested that his Amber series would be the better starting point, and that was my intention, but I got lured away when the group I’m in on GR chose it for one of their April reads and the timing was so convenient. :) I’ll make it the next thing I try by him, though. Maybe it will work for me a little better.

I haven’t really read enough magical realism to have a firm handle on what its tropes are or whether I like it. I liked Among Others quite a bit, and I’d consider that magical realism. I also liked The Ocean at the End of the Lane which I think is typically classified as magical realism. I’m not actually sure what else I’ve read that would count. Probably not much, but I've surely read others that I didn't think of in those terms at the time. I really wasn’t aware of the term until maybe three or four years ago.

>45 YouKneeK: Yeah, if this was how you felt about LoL then I question whether you'll like Amber better, or even the same. I can't get over his style of writing at all.

Best of luck with the Last Policeman. I read the reviews when they were coming out and just from them I knew that the trilogy was not for me.

>48 BookstoogeLT: The one good thing about Amber is that the first book is only 175 pages. So at least if I don’t like it I can just stop there and not be out much time. It will probably be at least a year before I try it, though.

I’ve only read a few pages of The Last Policeman so far, more so I can mark it as “currently reading” with a clear conscience than anything. I wouldn’t want to lie about my reading status; lightning might strike my computer! ;) I think this is going to turn out to be a murder mystery based on the few pages I read so far, but my interpretation of something the author wrote in the second paragraph turned it into an entirely different type of mystery for me at first -- the mystery of the species of the main character.

At the very beginning of the book, the main character is staring at a dead body, but the reader hasn’t yet been told the person being looked at is dead, nor have we been told what position the body is in, or what position the main character is in. And then the character “shifts on his haunches”. So I’m thinking, “Is the main character a dog? Maybe some sort of genetically enhanced doggy policeman?” And I spent the first few pages watching for clues as to the main character’s species. “Oh, now he’s worried about leaving fingerprints. Maybe he is human.” And then “Oh wait, he’s rubbing his eyes with his knuckles. Is he a monkey?” Then “Oh, he has a mustache. Ok, probably human.” Then finally on page 15 he “stands up straight” and I decide he’s a human who had squatted down to get a better look at the body, and he was shifting his position while still squatted.

So I really have no real impression yet about whether I’ll like this book, but now I have all these crazy images in my head based on that first mistaken impression. :)

>49 YouKneeK: hahahahaa. Now that is some serious analyzing! I hope you don't do that for the whole book but can enjoy it. Unless you enjoy going that deep into the guts of a story while you're reading it :-)

>50 BookstoogeLT: For me, it’s part of the fun of starting a book completely blind -- anything goes for the first few pages. :) But yeah, I did eventually settle down and just focus on the actual story, after I had the scene and characters more firmly in my head. So far it’s holding my interest.

Review: The Last Policeman by Ben H. Winters



The Last Policeman is the first book in a trilogy that focuses on a detective, Hank, who’s living in a pre-apocalyptic setting. An asteroid is headed for earth and humanity only has about six months left. A lot of people have been committing suicide, and the book opens up with Hank examining the dead body of a man who appears to represent yet another suicide. Everybody expects him to write it off as suicide and move on, but Hank thinks something feels off and launches into an investigation.

I liked the story pretty well. The writing style and the story held my interest and I liked the main character. I also liked the way the pre-apocalyptic setting affected the mystery, because everybody’s motives are affected by it. Hank wasn’t the stereotypical, hard-boiled detective who seems to populate most of the mystery-type books I run across. Those characters are inevitably chain smokers, current or former alcoholics, jaded and perpetually depressed, but still carrying on with their job by force of habit and because it’s the Right Thing to Do. I get impatient with them. Hank, on the other hand, is more of the young and fresh-faced variety. He’s still pretty new to this detective job that he had wanted to do since he was a kid. He’s inexperienced and sometimes misses stuff, but he has his head on reasonably straight in a world full of people who are going off the deep end.

I’m not sure the author realistically portrayed the extent to which the world's impending doom would affect the economy. He didn’t ignore it, but there were some things I didn’t buy into. For example, aside from the many people who are killing themselves, there are also many people who are running off to the beach or wherever to live out their last six months in a big vacation. In a normal situation, a lot of us probably do have a sufficient emergency fund to survive for six months without any new income, but this is not a normal situation. Prices on everything should be going through the roof with so few workers to supply even the most basic of necessities, especially in the resort-type areas where so many people are heading. If people were all staying home, I might have bought into it more, because they already possessed their homes and who's going to bother evicting them for not paying their bills? Of course, the book didn’t follow any of the people who ran off, so it isn’t as if the author was trying to claim that they did in fact live their last few months in relaxed luxury as they had intended, but just the fact that so many people thought this was a viable option seemed unrealistic. This didn’t really play much of a role in my rating of this book, though, since it really was a pretty minor aspect of the plot.

Despite liking the book, I got a little restless with it and took frequent breaks from reading it. Mystery stories aren’t really favorites of mine. I enjoy them sometimes, but I seem to get more impatient with some of their tropes than I do with the tropes of other genres. The twists and misdirection, for example, are inevitable and can make the story feel predictable even when you don’t really know what the answers are. This book did tell a complete story in terms of resolving the main mystery, although there are some other aspects of the plot that will likely be spread out over the entire series. I’m somewhat curious to learn how everything plays out with the asteroid aspect of the plot, but I think I’m going to go ahead and stop here rather than finishing the series.

Next Book
Kindred by Octavia E. Butler. I read and loved her Xenogenesis series, also known as Lilith’s Brood, but I wasn’t as thrilled with Wild Seed. It’s been a year and a half since I last read her any of her work, so I’ve been planning to fit in another one this year.

“shifts on his haunches” : ah, now I immediately knew what that meant because whenever I kneel or squat, I tweak all kinds of muscles and can’t stay in that position for very long. Although now you’ve made me think about it, I have to go and google “haunches”. :0)

>52 YouKneeK: Funnily enough I've just re-read On the Beach which is a similar set-up; the apocalypse has happened and everyone is waiting to die. However, this was written in the 50s, so in general people didn't go off the deep end until the last days or weeks. I remember reading it in my teens - Nevil Shute was one of the authors I graduated to when I outgrew the children's section of my local library.

>53 humouress: LOL, I think for some reason I typically associate the word haunches with animals rather than humans, even though it applies to both. I’d never have been confused though if the author had just told us from the beginning that he was squatting.

>54 Maddz: I don’t think I’ve heard of that one. It does sound like it would have a similar tone in terms of reading about how people react to inevitable doom.

>55 YouKneeK: You can read it online here: https://fadedpage.com/showbook.php?pid=20131214

It's public domain in Canada but not elsewhere. It's been made into a film twice (1959 and 2000).

>46 Maddz: I recently re-read Dilvish the Damned and it wasn't bad, wasn't great. It's more of a collection of barely connected short tales, but still had some fun aspects. His horse might be the best part.

I also recommend On the Beach as a classic that's worth reading. Its an interesting, old-fashioned take on nuclear war.

Review: Kindred by Octavia E. Butler



This book was a fast and engrossing read, but definitely not light in terms of its content. The story is about a black woman named Dana living in 1976, who somehow becomes connected to a young boy, Rufus, who is the son of a slaveholder in the 1800’s. When Rufus’ life is in danger, Dana somehow gets pulled back in time so she can help him. While in that time period, she’s a direct witness to and a victim of some of the horrors of slavery.

The time travel is just a plot device and isn’t explained in any significant way. We know what triggers it, and we learn what Dana’s connection to Rufus is, but there isn’t any sort of a tangible explanation about how or why it happens. At one time that might have bothered me, but I’m starting to realize that time travel stories just don’t ever make complete sense if you think about them too hard. It’s almost better when the time travel is just a device with minimal explanation, because then I’m less likely to focus on picking holes in the attempted explanation.

Of course, the story has to be good to make the device worthwhile. In this case, the story was definitely good, and the plot device allowed for a portrayal of slavery that felt very real and painful, seeing it through the eyes of a more modern woman. I did still have a few niggling complaints here and there about some of the time-travel-related logic, aside from the question of how and why it happened, but for the most part I was able to overlook it as I read.

I have some spoiler-filled comments in the tags.
Even though I know it really wouldn’t have fit into this story at all, I couldn’t help thinking how fun it would have been to see Rufus brought forward in time with Dana in the same manner that Kevin was brought back in time with her.

One of my biggest time-travel-related complaints was the manner in which Dana reappeared in her own time. In all of her jumps back to her own time, when she was conscious enough to notice, she rematerialized in a different place than she was in when she had left. Every time she came back to her own time, I kept wondering how she always managed to land in a clear space. At one point she landed laying down in her bathroom doorway. That’s a rather narrow margin for error. It was hard for me to believe she didn’t get hurt sooner by materializing inside another object, especially since that idea was planted into my head in the beginning when we learned what happened to her arm during her final jump. Of course, it’s strongly implied at the end that her arm materialized in the wall because Rufus was holding that arm, trying to keep her from going back. But it just doesn’t make any logical sense. I can appreciate the metaphorical idea behind it, but the illogic of it still annoys me a little. :)

During the earlier parts of the book, I was hoping that Rufus would turn out to be a better person as a result of Dana’s influence and his friendship with Alice, but I guess I was being naïve. Besides, I think a lot of the impact would have been lost if this had turned into a fluffy, sweet story. After Rufus raped Alice, I definitely gave up all of my illusions in that regard. He could act nice when nobody was trying to oppose him, and I could understand Dana’s mixed feelings toward him, but he ended up with a bad combination of his father’s compassionless cruelty and his mother’s clingy possessiveness.

Next Book
The Summer Tree by Guy Gavriel Kay, the first book in the Fionavar Tapestry series. I really enjoyed the first two GGK books I read (Tigana and The Lions of Al-Rassan), so I’ve been planning to read more of his work this year. It’s been just under a year since I read the last one. I don’t know anything about this story, but I’m going to be bracing myself as I go into it because my impression so far is that the author loves bittersweet endings a whole lot more than I do.

>52 YouKneeK: Are you going to continue with this series? I'm pretty sure it was recommended (possibly by Bookmarque) in our Apocalyptic & Post-Apocalyptic Appreciation Thread*. The first of the three was my favorite.

* https://www.librarything.com/topic/224476

(Edited to add: Don your Kevlar garb before entering that thread!)

>59 clamairy: I decided against it. I liked the first one, but not enough that I wanted to read two more books in the setting. I could always say I might go back to it in the future, and there is that possibility, but the reality is that I rarely go back to a series after I've stopped.

I checked the “Mentions” list from the work page after I finished it and saw a lot of positive reviews and comments about it on various threads in this group. :)

>60 YouKneeK: As I said above I felt the first was the best of the three, so stopping where you did is not a bad idea. :o)

>58 YouKneeK: I do hope you plan on reading the complete trilogy; reading the components won't make a lot of sense. There's also a sort-of sequel to the trilogy, set a number of years later, as well: Ysabel

>62 Maddz: I read your reply before I had started consuming any caffeine this morning, and for a minute I thought you were talking about Kindred. I was getting ready to run search for info about more books. :)

But as far as The Summer Tree goes, yes. I nearly always start a series with an intent to read the entire series at that time. I will abandon it if I’m not enjoying it enough to keep going but, based on my previous Guy Gavriel Kay experience, I’d be surprised if that happens here. I didn't know about Ysabel, though, thanks!

>63 YouKneeK: It's not a direct sequel, but some of the characters from TFT appear in Ysabel, so it can be safely read as a stand-alone.

>58 YouKneeK: The Fionavar Tapestry is awesome! I really didn't enjoy Tigana much, after reading TFT. However, he's written some very good novels after that. I also thought his 2 book series, The Sarantine Mosaic, was really, really great.

>65 Karlstar: I’m really enjoying the first book so far. I’ll probably finish it either today or tomorrow depending on how much reading time I can find today.

>66 YouKneeK: The first two books are better than book 3, but it is still an excellent series.

Review: The Summer Tree by Guy Gavriel Kay



The Summer Tree is the first book in Guy Gavriel Kay’s trilogy, The Fionavar Tapestry. I’ve enjoyed Kay’s work in the past, so I’m not at all surprised to be saying how much I enjoyed this. It looks like it's one of his first books and the writing felt a little less polished to me than the others I’ve read, but it still sucked me right in and made me care about the characters and the story.

The book introduces us to five relatively normal men and women in their early twenties who are picked out during an event here on Earth by a mage and dwarf from another world. I’ll leave all the details for the reader to discover, but these people are taken to the world where the mage and the dwarf are from. It was supposed to just be a simple visit, but they get caught up in major epic-fantasy-type events.

There are several traditional fantasy tropes here. The Lord of the Rings clearly had an influence. Also, even though this book was written first, it reminded me of The Wheel of Time in a few ways. There’s maybe a touch too much melodrama, and more than a little angst, and characters becoming surprisingly skilled in minutes with things they have no experience with. But the writing still sucked me in. I enjoyed the friendships and camaraderie, and there’s also some humor and banter mixed in occasionally to break up the tension.

There’s a bit too much head hopping, which is a practice I always find distracting. It’s written clearly enough that I was never confused, but my preference is to stay inside one character’s head per section break. I did like the few scenes where we had the opportunity to see how things played out from one character’s perspective, and then we saw that same scene again from a different perspective.

The book ended with a bit of a cliff hanger, and clearly this is just the first part of a story, but I also felt like a lot of the storylines and character arcs had some decent closure by the end. I felt pretty satisfied with what I was given in this book, but I also started it with the intention of reading the entire trilogy at once. I look forward to jumping straight into the next book!

Next Book
The Wandering Fire, the second book in this series. I snuck a peek at the beginning before I left for work this morning, and that was almost a mistake. I wanted to keep reading. :)

>68 YouKneeK: Glad you liked it. I think I've read this trilogy 4 times.

>68 YouKneeK: That was Kay's first published book, so yes, there is a little bit of Mary Sueism in the story, but for at least one character the super-competence is appropriate.

This series was the inspiration for a role-playing campaign I played in back in the 80s. If I recall correctly, the world-switch fantasy was quite popular back then; there was also Thomas Covenant (which I hated) and various stand-alones.

>68 YouKneeK: You're making me want to reread this trilogy!

>69 Karlstar: and >71 Sakerfalcon: Have you read the related Ysabel book >62 Maddz: mentioned? It looks like reviews are really mixed, but I was trying to read the reviews with my eyes closed for fear of spoilers so I really didn’t pick up any useful info about why. :)

>70 Maddz: After last year, the first book that comes to mind when I think 80’s fantasy is Weaveworld which does also have the world-switching, and the strongest 80's vibe of any book I remember reading. The Summer Tree is waaay better, at least in my opinion. I see Thomas Covenant mentioned pretty often, usually negatively, but haven't read it.

>72 YouKneeK: I made the mistake of reading both the Thomas Covenant series and very much regretted it. I found them too depressing overall; oddly I may appreciate them better now I'm older, but it pretty well put me off Stephen Donaldson as an author (although I rather like his short stories).

I must go back to Weaveworld at some point - I was trying to read it last summer and not getting into it, probably because I was trying to read it on the commute. (Trouble is, if I get the job someone contacted me about yesterday I still won't get back into as I'll be commuting by bus and I can't read in cars or buses.)

Most world switch fantasies I've read end up 90% or more in the other world; Weaveworld is unusual in that the action is split 50:50. Of course, there are earlier world switch fantasies - Witch World (originally published 1963) is one.

>72 YouKneeK: I read Ysabel and enjoyed it. I could see why fans of GGK were disappointed - it does feel more like a YA novel than his usual work, with a teenage protagonist who can be immature at times, and references to pop bands and technology that will be dated by now. I thought Kay did a good job at portraying how Ned is torn between wanting to be independent and yet still needing the emotional support of the adults around him. The prose isn't poetic like his adult fantasies, but it is still a cut above the average, and the setting of Provence is so vivid you can imagine you are there. I hope my comments are helpful to you!

>73 Maddz: I have a copy of Weaveworld but it's still on Mount Tbr. I'm sure it will get to the top one day!

>74 Sakerfalcon: Don't worry, you're not missing much. To my mind, it's dated badly (think a glam rock backdrop and you'll understand).

>73 Maddz: Good luck on the job!

>74 Sakerfalcon: That is helpful, thank you! I’ll probably put off my decision until after I finish the main trilogy, but at least now I have some basis for making that decision.

Regarding Weaveworld, I agree with >75 Maddz:. I gave it 3 stars, but my memory of it is less favorable. I think I did like the general story, and was particularly interested in the beginning, but it started to grate on me after a while. I’ll forever remember it as “the menstruum book”.

>72 YouKneeK: I am a big fan of the Thomas Covenant books, have been for a long time. Saltheart Foamfollower may be the best Giant character ever. I liked the world, I liked the plot, I love the characters. Covenant is by definition a depressing character. If you want something similar but a bit lighter, try the Mordant's Need duology.

>77 Karlstar: Thanks, maybe I'll give Donaldson a try at some point.

Review: The Wandering Fire by Guy Gavriel Kay



The Wandering Fire is the second book in Guy Gavriel Kay’s Fionavar Tapestry trilogy. I enjoyed this book, but a little less than I did the first book.

The story picks up several months after the first book left off, with our main characters from Earth back home after Kim brought them back in the process of rescuing Jennifer. At the beginning, they're trying to find a way back to Fionavar, among other things. I noticed some improvements with the writing in this book. In particular, I didn’t notice any unexpected head-hopping whereas that happened a lot in the first book.

In this book, so many problems are solved by miraculous intervention or by the discovery of abilities that the characters themselves didn’t really know they had. I guess I should apply this complaint to the first book also, but it didn’t seem like such a frequent plot device to me then. I don’t think it’s done in a way that would bother everybody, but it became a bit too much for me. I have a few more comments along those lines, but they’re a little less general so I’ll need to put them behind spoiler tags.

I don’t think there’s necessarily any one thing that frustrated me, but rather the accumulation of so many little things. Every main character from Earth has some sort of previously-unknown special identity, or latent special ability, or they develop some special connection with the gods on Fionavar. Nearly every time there was a problem, one of the characters would suddenly discover some new latent ability or previously-forgotten knowledge that could help. Often the characters would join a mission with no idea how they could help, then of course they would be the one to pull a rabbit out of their hat in the nick of time. The Arthurian stuff was a bit much too, at least when added on top of all the rest.

I still enjoyed reading it despite my complaints. My complaints are mostly story-based whereas I still really like most of the characters, so that helps. A 3.5-star rating was an easy decision, but I had trouble deciding whether to round up or down on Goodreads. Given my complaints I should probably round down, but I enjoyed it enough that I’m going to round up. I plan to finish out the trilogy to see how things end.

Next Book
The Darkest Road, the last book in this trilogy.

>79 YouKneeK: I agree completely with your thoughts here. Overall for me, the original concept and characters carried this trilogy as the quality decreased. It is still one of my favorite trilogies. Luckily, he was smart enough to keep them short and stop at book three. His writing has continued to improve with time.

>80 Karlstar: I guess he has to be a pretty good writer to hold my attention through a book with so many story elements I didn't care for. :) I did like the more recent things I've read by him better, though. I'm about 25% into the third book and starting to feel restless for the end.

>81 YouKneeK: Parts of book 2 and book 3 were.. tough to read.

>82 Karlstar: Ha, yeah. For me, it’s the Guinevere, Arthur, and Lancelot melodrama I’m having the most trouble with. Did you like that aspect of the story, or did it annoy you? I’m about 80% done now and it picked up after a slow start, but I’ve more than reached my limit on the aforementioned parts. I thought we were finally going to lose one of them after the challenge by Uathach, so I was not very happy with Diarmuid’s sacrifice since I liked him much better. That was the last part I read and then I had to walk away from the Kindle for a while!

>83 YouKneeK: Yes, that annoyed me too! It sort of ruined book 3 for me. Sort of, in the sense that while I really like books 1 and 2, I really wish book 3 was better.

>84 Karlstar: I’m glad it wasn’t just me. :) I just finished the last book a little bit ago and will be posting my review here next. It doesn’t say anything I haven’t already said in my previous reviews for the series, though.

Review: The Darkest Road by Guy Gavriel Kay



The Darkest Road is the final book in The Fionavar Tapestry. This series started off really strong. The first book had a few rough patches, but I had no problem overlooking them due to my interest in the characters and the story and the newly-introduced setting. The second and third books became more problematic for me. I did still enjoy them, but I enjoyed each book less than the one before.

The second and third books rely to an increasingly heavy extent on real-world myths and legends, and that’s a large part of what became tiresome to me. Some of it was really angsty and melodramatic, made worse in my eyes by the fact that I wasn’t at all interested in that aspect of the story. Resolutions to problems were often unrealistic, relying a great deal on coincidences and intuition, or special abilities discovered at precisely the moment they were needed.

It wasn’t all as bad as I might be making it sound, though. I still liked most of the main characters, and I was often absorbed by the story aside from the unrealistic and/or melodramatic moments. Based on what I’ve read from him so far, which includes this series plus two other books, Kay has a way with words that draws me into a story, and he’s especially good at writing characters and friendships that I care about. I intend to read more of his work in the future.

Next Book
I considered reading Ysabel which >62 Maddz: had alerted me to, but I think I’ve had enough for now. Actually, I suspect my next read will be far more torturous than the most torturous parts of Fionavar. It’s time to start my second quarter classic selection for this year, The Iliad. I’m expecting lots and lots of mythology and probably a good dose of melodrama, two things I just finished complaining about in my above review. :)

I think The Iliad will be a difficult read for me, surely in comparison with the other quarterly classics I’ve read up to this point. I’m reading it for edification and not just entertainment though, so hopefully that “higher purpose” will help carry me through. I plan to take it as slowly as needed so I can absorb as much of it as possible, so my thread might get a little extra quiet over the next several days. Worst case, if I’m really having trouble getting through it, I could assign myself a certain # of pages per day and then spend the rest of my reading time on something else. I’m usually a one-book-at-a-time person though, so that will be a last resort.

Researching the different translations to try to choose which one I should read was a contradictory and frustrating experience. Ultimately I decide to go with Lattimore. It sounds like his version isn’t necessarily one of the easier options, but it seems like it’s considered to be pretty faithful to the original which is what I'm most concerned about. And of course I chose an edition with some commentary and footnotes that I can reference if needed.

>86 YouKneeK: The overall vibe I got from the Fionavar Tapestry when I re-read it a couple of years ago was that it was what would be now considered Young Adult reading, whereas his later books weren't. Still, I enjoyed it very much despite the angst and melodrama.

Re The Iliad, you may also consider watching Troy: The Fall of a City if it's available in the US. It's a reasonably accurate mini-series (8 episodes) although it mixes other Greek literature in with it. We were watching it on the BBC iPlayer earlier this year.
The only jarring thing I noticed was stirrups, but I suppose the production company couldn't get insurance otherwise, and some of the female costumes were a bit on the odd side. They also missed the Dendra panoply, and boar's tusk helmets.

>87 Maddz: Thanks for that mini-series suggestion! Amazon is the only streaming service I currently have access to, and they don’t have it. I’ll keep it in mind, though. It looks like it was co-produced between BBC and Netflix, so I assume it’s on Netflix.

>77 Karlstar: I've read all the Donaldson I've encountered, and while I would seldom want to enter his worlds he explores really horrendous individuals and actions without the sense of exploitation I've encountered from other authors who dip into such materials. Mordant's Need is the work of his that I've re-read the most.

>86 YouKneeK: In recent years I read this translation of The Illiad and found it quite painless. Except for all the stabbing. There was a lot of stabbing.

>89 quondame: That’s great to know! So far I have found it far more readable than I expected it to be. I’m only on book 4 of 24, but I hope to get more reading time this weekend. I’ve been reading most of it out loud to try to get the rhythm of it since I’m not good at reading poetry, so reading out loud is also slowing me down a lot.

I’m sure I’m reading it with the completely wrong rhythm, but I do settle into one that works for me after a while. The problem is that it’s really hard to get back out of that rhythm after I put the book down. My thoughts start sounding like they’re in the same rhythm, and I find myself re-thinking my thoughts with different words so they'll fit better. It’s really annoying!

>90 YouKneeK: It's unlikely the rhythms of pre-Hellenic Greece are suitable for English. I'd go with English speach patterns.

>91 quondame: Lattimore’s translation is in a verse format; it isn’t straight prose. Unfortunately, I’m not good with poetry written in English either, but I think it’s worth the attempt. It's good to stretch yourself now and then.

Edited to fix post numbering reference.

Review: The Iliad by Homer



I have read all 15,691 lines of this epic poem so that my white arms can bring these winged words to your ox eyes, which I now share with good intention toward all…

The Iliad is an epic poem from about 2800 years ago that focuses on an episode near the end of the Trojan War. Basically the story is about a lot of men going through a lot of trouble because men treated women like trophies. This trouble is compounded by fickle and illogical gods. Ok, I know, that’s a major over-simplification, but that’s my description and I’m sticking to it. :)

I chose to read Lattimore’s translation, which is in verse format and is supposedly a fairly literal translation of the original. I’m not good at reading poetry at all, but I wanted to make the effort to appreciate it in something as close to its original format as possible. This means my throat is now raw from doing a lot of reading out loud, because that was usually the only way I could keep any sort of poetic rhythm, even though I’m sure I had it all wrong anyway. This also resulted in a painfully slow reading speed.

The poetic format actually grew on me after a while, though. I also liked the various repeated phrases that made it feel more poetic to me. Not only the constantly-repeated phrases like the ones I opened up this review with, and the repeated messages that were passed from character to character, but also those sections where several lines were repeated almost word-for-word in similar-but-different situations, many pages apart. I can’t really say why I liked it, as it surely would have annoyed me in prose, but it appealed to me somehow.

Most of the main characters are really quite awful. For example, in the beginning, Achilleus gets in a snit because Agamemnon takes from him the woman he had been given as a prize of war. This is an internal struggle; both characters are on the same side fighting against the Trojans. As a result of his snit, Achilleus actually asks the gods to teach Agamemnon a lesson by convincing him to go into battle and then let lots of his people get slaughtered. Ah yes, who doesn’t long to see hundreds of people murdered when one person has pissed you off? The gods are just as bad as they switch sides, and argue, and break promises, just adding confusion and trouble for the poor humans they’re supposedly helping.

The battle scenes, of which there are a great many, were pretty tedious for me, as well as the scenes leading up to battle. More often than not, these were little more than long lists of names of battle participants, along with a little bit of family history and surprisingly detailed and gory descriptions of how they died. Often there would be a nice simile, usually involving a lion or possibly water. Oh, and occasionally the individuals fighting would pause to tell each other their life stories, or at least list a few generations of their genealogy, before trying to kill each other. All the better to brag about who you killed later, I guess.

As far as large numbers of named characters go, The Iliad may give the entire Wheel of Time series some competition. I really didn’t even try to keep the names straight since many people were mentioned and then promptly killed. The most important characters were usually given some sort of recurring description, like “Achilleus of the swift feet”, so I used that as an indicator that I should remember a character. For the most part, that served me well enough. To anybody reading this for the first time, I’d recommend paying extra attention to who the fathers of the main characters are. Throughout the poem, the characters aren’t always referred to by name. For example, Achilleus’ father was Peleus. Sometimes Achilleus was called Achilleus, but many times he was just called the son of Peleus, and sometimes he was called Peleides, which I guess is another way of saying “son of Peleus”. This caused me some confusion at first and I didn’t see it explained in the commentary.

The commentary in my edition seemed more focused on expounding on the story, providing additional historical context, listing other myths, etc. There wasn’t much explanation of terms or phrases, I guess because Lattimore’s translation is fairly recent (1950’s), but I would have liked a little more of that. I usually avoid a classic’s introduction until after I finish the book since they’re always full of spoilers as the story is discussed in detail from a scholarly perspective. This time I decided to read the introduction first, because I know very little about ancient history, very little about Greece, and very little about Greek mythology. And, as I said before, I’m terrible at reading poetry. With all those strikes against me, I expected this to be a really difficult read for me so I thought I needed as much advance help as possible to understand the story.

I’m still not sure if reading the introduction first was the best choice. On the positive side, I think it did help that I went into it with some context, especially in the beginning when I was still adjusting to the verse format itself. It also allowed me to notice more foreshadowing than I might have otherwise. On the negative side, it reduced the impact of pretty much every important scene because I already knew everything that was coming. I also robbed myself of the satisfaction of figuring things out for myself which is very important to me in general, not just in my reading. I don’t know. I think, in the future, I’ll probably stick with my usual preference to go into something as blind as possible and trust my own brain to figure things out as needed. I may not catch as much on my own in the case of a more difficult read like The Iliad, but I’ll probably enjoy the process more and feel more satisfied with it.

I’m rating this a little on the low side, 2.5 stars, rounded up to 3 for literary merit on Goodreads. I realize The Iliad is a very impressive work of literature, but my ratings are mostly based on my own subjective enjoyment. From an enrichment perspective, I’m glad I read this, and happy that it wasn’t as painful as I expected. I learned more than I expected about Greek history and mythology. From an entertainment perspective, I had fun with the poetic format and I enjoyed some of the non-battle parts. I enjoyed the way some things were phrased, and I will forever forward be speaking with “winged words” in the privacy of my own mind. ;) But it was also a little painful, and there were large chunks of boring, name-filled passages that literally put me to sleep. I’ve never taken so many naps as I have in this past week! So maybe I should also give it some credit for helping me catch up on my sleep. Since I survived this without too much torment, I suspect I might fare at least a little better with The Odyssey. I intend to read that also, maybe next year.

Next Book
The Passage by Justin Cronin. I’m going into this blind, although I have vague memories of reading reviews about it and a generally favorable impression. I only hope that it has very little mythology in the story. After Lord of Light by Zelazny, The Fionavar Tapestry by Guy Gavriel Kay, and now The Iliad, I’m feeling very much burnt out on real-world mythology and legends. :)

Well, I'm glad you have this under your belt now. I don't think I could do a poetic version of this.

But to then jump into the Passage? Man, I don't know what to say.

I tried to read The Odyssey a few years back and DNF. I wasn't sure if it was the translation or if I'm not into epic poetry. Your review of the poetic version of The Illiad... yeah I don't think I could get very far in it either and is making me think it's more the epic poetry aspect. Great review I might add.

>94 BookstoogeLT: LOL, it wasn’t exactly a barrel of fun, but it was nowhere near as torturous as I expected it to be. I guess there’s something to be said for having low expectations. :)

>95 Narilka: Thanks! Yeah, the poetry aspect was pretty rough, especially at first. It kind of grew on me by the end, but I’m looking forward to getting back to prose. From what very little I know of The Odyssey, it seems like its story might be a bit more interesting to me than The Iliad was. Do you remember which translation you read?

I had to laugh when I glanced down my home page and noticed LT's most recent automatic recommendations, clearly inspired by The Iliad. They recommended 7 Greek books all at once, including The Odyssey and The Aenid, of course. And The Canterbury Tales. Gotta love algorithms. :)

>93 YouKneeK: I think a lot of the illogicality comes from the fact that Illiad was originally an oral tale - so it's effectively a series of set-pieces stitched together with some linking narrative. If you look into oral story-telling techniques, you'll find many of the same tropes - each 'scene' would have been a single narrative event, the 'bardic' descriptions of characters (you see the same in Beowulf), the 'kennings'... At lot is to do with the actual narration - it's actually easier to remember the story with these constructions, and often they're used to pad a line or, as you mentioned, to foreshadow.

A narrative event would be tailored to the audience, so what is effectively the same story would be emphasised and recounted differently. In effect what has come down to us today is a series of narrative events, and there's quite likely as much again that was never captured. It's the same as reading a Shakespeare play, and watching different interpretations from different companies.

>96 YouKneeK: Actually, The Aneid is Roman, but it's based on the same Greek story. It was one of my set books for Latin at school (along with Erasmus - which was full of horrible medieval constructions).

>93 YouKneeK: Well done for finishing The Iliad! I gave up around a third of the way in, because I was fed up of all the battle scenes and Achilles' ridiculous sulking. I really like The Odyssey though. I read a prose translation, the old Penguin classics one by E.V. Rieu but I'd like to try a verse one. The story is far more engaging and entertaining than The Iliad in my opinion.

>97 Maddz: Ah, thanks for the clarification on The Aeneid. The other books might not have all been Greek either then, and just looked Greek to my ignorant eyes. I thought LT wanted me to read all things Greek, and then diversify with Canterbury. :)

Most of what I had in mind when I referred to the illogical gods had more to do with illogical reactions within single scenes. It seemed like the characters, gods included, valued strong emotion far more than logical, reasoned decisions. Whenever a character tried to speak sense, they were quickly scorned. Of course, that’s from the perspective of a 21st century woman with completely different values.

I did find it really interesting to consider that this was originally an oral tale, though. It was fun to speculate how much of what I was reading was the way it was actually told in the past (language difference discounted) and how much was revised or smoothed out after it was written down.

>98 Sakerfalcon: Thanks! I can definitely understand giving up on The Iliad. I’m very glad to hear you liked The Odyssey better. I’ll probably slot that in for around the same time next year, and I’ll probably go with a verse translation again.

>96 YouKneeK: According to my catalog I have the Signet Classics edition translated by W. H. D. Rouse.

>93 YouKneeK: Great review! You are a better woman than I. I did not finish it, although my memory is such that I thought I had. I became too annoyed with the gods interference apparently. FWIW, I enjoyed the Odyssey more. I think. Who knows? I'll have to look up my review for that when you read it.

>99 YouKneeK: Yeah, The Aeneid was Virgil sucking up to the Emperor Augustus (not that it saved him from exile to the Black Sea when Augustus objected to his immoral love poetry). You might want to try out Lavinia as that covers part of The Aeneid. Also, some of Thomas Burnett Swann's books cover the same area (although more to do with Romulus & Remus rather than Aeneas).

>93 YouKneeK: Nice review. I'm happy that you were able to finish it and found it okay. Personally I read a prose version that I believe was written in the late 1800s/early 1900s, while it was prose it still have a rhythm to it that made it an easy read and I believe as a result the translator took out many of the unnecessary titles of various individuals unless the context of the passage would have been diminished.

As for the Odyssey, I'll agree with others that say you'll like it more.

>100 Narilka: Ah, ok, I don’t think I had even heard of that translator yet. But I only did research on Iliad translators, and that was a frustrating enough experience that I didn’t spend a lot of time on it.

>101 MrsLee: It would probably be more accurate to state that I’m more masochistic than you are. :) I looked up your review, and I definitely agree with your reaction to the gods’ interference. That became frustrating to me also, the way it made most of the mortals’ actions and plans meaningless because it was ultimately the gods’ actions that determined the real outcomes. I’m glad to read that you also enjoyed The Odyssey more! I’m kind of looking forward to trying it.

>102 Maddz: Thanks!

>103 mattries37315: Thanks. It would be interesting to read it in a prose version to see how it compares in tone. Not interesting enough that I intend to actually do that anytime soon, though! :) It does make sense that prose would give the translator more leeway to clean up some of the extraneous stuff and reduce the repetition, making it less painful to read.

As a random side note, I’m enjoying The Passage a lot so far. I’m only 100 pages in, but I’m happy to report that so far it doesn’t involve people impersonating the Hindu pantheon, nobody from the Arthurian legends has shown up, and I haven’t heard a peep out of any Greek gods.

>104 YouKneeK: I take it back again. Looked in my catalog and apparently I haven't actually read the Odyssey yet. I've read many stories about it, and the most recent one was The Wanderings of Odysseus by Rosemary Sutcliff, as illustrated by Alan Lee. *hmm, touchstones are hard this morning, must be something wonky* Anyway, that gave me the essence of the story, so considering my impatience with reading lately, I probably won't be tackling the actual story any time soon.

I was all set to add The Fionavar Tapestry to my Summer reading pile, but now that's you've rated all three I think I'll wait. There are other more highly rated* books of his that I think I'll tackle first. Thanks for the reviews! :o)

* On LT at least.

>106 clamairy: I had a hard time getting started on the Fionavar, but will go back to it some day. I switched to the Saranium, and am glad I did - they were excellent!

>107 Darth-Heather: I might opt for that series instead then. Thank you!

>108 clamairy: OTOH, I loved the series. So YMMV.

>109 majkia: Thanks. I see it's rated very highly here on LT. I'll admit sometimes I am desperately in the mood for books in which things work out because people discover they have the very power they need. (And sometimes I'm not!)

>105 MrsLee: I had some exposure to The Odyssey myself back in 7th grade, in the form of those school English textbooks with various short stories and such. I remember really enjoying it at the time, although it was written in a much easier format and I think only included a few of the stories. I only remember bits and pieces of them, now.

>106 clamairy: I hope you do enjoy whichever one you choose! I really loved Lions of Al-Rassan and Tigana which are each standalones, but I haven’t tried any of his other work yet. I’ll probably keep cycling back to him every year or so because I do really like his writing.

>107 Darth-Heather: I agree, while I still love the Fionavar trilogy, the Sarantium books are better - and there's only 2.

>112 Karlstar: Ah, but they're bigger - so the 2 equate to the 3 (based on amazon page counts):

Fionavar: 404 + 404 +448 = 1256
Sarantium: 624 +640 = 1264

All you're doing is reading 2 books instead of 3.

>113 Maddz: Way too much logic there! :) Good point though.

>114 Karlstar: Much like the Spice, the Logic Must Flow, too...

I thought I should make a quick post to say that I'm still here, and still working my way through The Passage. It’s almost 900 pages and I’m at about 650. I was really enjoying it for the first couple hundred pages, but I’m feeling less absorbed now. I'm still interested, just not glued to it.

I may be a little slower with the reading and posting for a couple weeks. I’m supporting the newer people in my department's On Call rotation this week and next week, plus I have a family event on Saturday that will have me tied up most of the day and I usually get the larger portion of my reading done on weekends.

Edited to remove a redundant sentence... I must be tired! And hot. It's the annual Broken Air Conditioner event at my house. Last year it was the unit for the downstairs air, this year it's upstairs which is way worse. Fortunately it's cooled down to the 80's (F) so it's unpleasant but not miserable. Yesterday was in the 90's and much worse.

>116 YouKneeK: Really enjoyed that series, but I didn't remember the first one being that long!
Good luck with all of your Real Life™ challenges and events. :o)

(That first book is on sale at Amazon right now, btw. Just in case anyone wants to snag it for $1.99.)

>117 clamairy: I’m glad to read you enjoyed the whole series! I haven’t been able to make my mind up yet about whether to read the rest, although that was the original plan. I’ll decide for sure after I finish this one.

If your AC had to die, at least it was yesterday and not over the weekend!

>119 Narilka: I think it actually broke or started to break at some point on Sunday, but I was busy running around so I figured I was just hot because of the running around and I didn’t check. When I got home from work on Monday, it was 85 upstairs and then I knew I had a problem. :)

But at least it’s May and not August or something! Actually, it’s cooled down so much today that it almost feels comfortable. I keep my thermostat on 77 in the summer (75 at night), so my inside temperature right now is only a couple degrees higher than what I’m used to.

Review: The Passage by Justin Cronin



Whew… this one took me a while. I was really interested in the first 200 pages, but my interest in the next 700 pages was more sporadic. It’s hard for me to say, though, how much of my mediocre reaction was influenced by my schedule and lack of energy while reading it and/or by my tendency toward impatience with this sub-genre.

The book starts off showing us how the apocalypse comes about. I won’t explain anything about that aside from saying this is an apocalypse caused by monsters, which is apparent by chapter two. After we learn in detail how the apocalypse happened, there's a time gap and then the rest is a post-apocalyptic monster book.

I liked the pre-apocalypse parts best. I’ve read several post-apocalyptic books where the cause is never really fleshed out to any satisfying extent, but I'm usually interested in that part. My interest fluctuated more after the story got to the post-apocalyptic part, although parts of it did still grab my attention.

I liked the writing style, and I liked the characters but never got very attached to them. I liked that the story had more meat to it than what my experience has normally been with this sub-genre. It wasn’t just an endless cycle of run/find refuge/get found by the monsters/run again. There was a lot more going on as we saw how pockets of people had learned how to survive and make lives for themselves in their current environment. It just didn’t always hold my interest very well for some reason.

The main story in this book is wrapped up pretty well and there’s a clear indicator of what the next book will involve. However, the very ending is, at best, a cliffhanger. I went into this with the intention of reading the whole trilogy if I liked the first book well enough, but moving on to the second book sounds a bit like torture right now so I’m going to call it quits and move onto something else.

Next Book
The Silent Tower by Barbara Hambly, the first book in the Windrose Chronicles. I think I read a Star Trek book by Hambly a couple decades ago but, aside from that, this will be my first time reading her work. I’m going into this blind, but I have a vague impression from somewhere that it’s Urban Fantasy. UF is a fantasy subgenre that tends to be hit or miss for me, so we’ll see how it goes.

If this was your reaction to The Passage, I really wouldn't bother with the remaining 2. Not that I'm unbiased here, as I dnf'd the final book pretty quickly.

Good luck with the Silent Tower. I read the original duology in highschool I think and ended up buying them in hardcover in college. And have never read them again, ha!

>122 BookstoogeLT: Thanks, it’s good to know I’m probably not missing out on anything too amazing by skipping the rest of the series. :)

LOL, well, at least I know you liked the Hambly series well enough to spend your hard-earned money on hardcovers even if you haven't ever re-read them.

>121 YouKneeK: It’s not really Urban Fantasy, despite the modern setting - there’s certainly no elves or supernatural creatures living in our world. I’d call it more of a multi-world fantasy, one of which happens to be our world. I’ve tagged it as a straight fantasy, not as a sub-genre.

I think the nearest Hambly has got to what is generally understood as UF is the James Asher vampire series or Bride of the Rat God.

>124 Maddz: Ah, good, that's in its favor then, thanks. I probably misunderstood something I saw somewhere. I started to start it last night, but I was pretty worn out and went to sleep instead. Hopefully today I can make a better start.

>125 YouKneeK: At least you've got time to read - I'm so busy in the garden at the moment all I want to do when I get in is something mindless. It's taken me over 2 weeks to get through Glass and Gardens because I'm so tired in the evenings. The longest time I got to read was last weekend when we went to Corby for a parental visit. I'm still part way through Drinking Midnight Wine and that's been going on for longer. Oddly, it's held my attention better than Weaveworld - it's the same vintage.

I'm digging out cherry tree root suckers, stinging nettles, bamboo, ground elder and ivy from a bed I want to turn into a kitchen garden - I got given a couple of courgette plants last weekend and had nowhere else to put them. So I thought now's the time to use up all the seeds I've got lying around - they may or more likely not be viable but it's worth trying them. The previous owners never did anything in the garden and I didn't have time the last couple of years - the bloke grudgingly mows the lawn when prodded and helps haul heavy stuff around but that's it.

>126 Maddz: That sounds like a lot of work, but I bet the results will be lovely. I don’t have any gardening skills, or really any interest in gaining them, but I do enjoy seeing the results. I live in a townhome complex where the HOA handles the landscaping. (HOA is “Homeowner’s Association”, in case that isn’t an acronym used across the pond.)

>127 YouKneeK: In some way I wish I could sit back and enjoy, but I'm the one with the gardening skills. Which is odd, because I actively avoided helping in the garden back at home - my mother was a keen gardener, and my father thought that grubbing around in the dirt was something the fellaheen did.

I think we'd call it the Resident's Association or the property management company depending on the set-up.

>127 YouKneeK: Here we'd call it the Body Corporate.

>128 Maddz:, >129 hfglen: Thanks, now I’ve learned something new! :)

Review: The Silent Tower by Barbara Hambly



For me, this book started off really slow. I was interested in the world presented, but it took me a long time to warm up to either the characters or the story. After a while, though, my interest picked up quite a bit.

The story is set in an alternate world where magic still exists, although its influence is starting to fade. Many people aren’t sure if magic is even real, and technology is become more prevalent. A programmer from our world is kidnapped and taken to this alternate world where she gets caught up in events there. It’s too difficult to explain what those events are without spoiling the story, so I’m not even going to try.

The book starts off focusing on a character who wasn’t terribly interesting to me. The focus eventually shifted over to a couple other characters who I found more interesting. The story was published in the 80’s and it does have a slightly dated feel, particularly in its occasional discussions of real-world technology, but not unpleasantly so. I did think it failed to be as twisty as the author seemed to want it to be, maybe just because it relied on tropes that have become familiar to me and so it was easier for me to predict certain things. Plus I found it impossible to buy into the idea that Antryg Windrose was the real villain when a four-book series is named after him.

The ending is a complete cliffhanger. Although most of the main questions are answered, nothing is resolved, and our main characters are in jeopardy. I liked this book well enough by the end that I’m going to continue on and read the next book, so I can find out what happens.

Next Book
The Silicon Mage by Barbara Hambly, the second book in The Windrose Chronicles.

This is on my tbr pile. Glad to see you ended up enjoying it.

>131 YouKneeK: The duology I own from the sfbc has the first 2 volumes in one book. That definitely helps with the "cliff hanger" ending. I never read past those 2 books. If you do go past that, I'll have to see what you think of the later books.

>132 Sakerfalcon: Thanks, I hope you also enjoy it when you read it.

>133 BookstoogeLT: I slotted all 4 books in my schedule, but I’m playing it by ear to see how far I actually go with it. For some reason I wasn’t expecting the cliff hanger, at least not until the last few pages when there obviously wasn’t enough time left to resolve things. I didn’t really mind though, since I can just jump straight into the next book.

Review: The Silicon Mage by Barbara Hambly



This book is a sequel to The Silent Tower, starting shortly after the first book left off, and eventually resolving the cliffhanger from that book. I enjoyed it, but I was never engrossed by it, and there were times when I felt restless, particularly around the middle.

An additional character took part in this story who seemed pretty interesting, but she didn’t get a lot of page time. The recurring characters were about as likeable as before, which is to say that I liked them but was only moderately invested in them. There were some plot elements that were a bit of a stretch for me, and I never really bought into the main villain’s motivation, but the general story did hold my interest most of the time and I enjoyed the ending pretty well.

There are two more books in this series, but I’ve decided to stop here.

Next Book
Alif the Unseen by G. Willow Wilson. This is another book that I’m going into completely blind. It’s been on my list for a while and I bought it recently when it went on sale.

>135 YouKneeK: Good to know I don't have to revisit these and try out the sequels :-D

I have not heard of that book you are reading next, so it should be interesting to find out just what it is exactly.

>136 BookstoogeLT: I was slightly tempted to read the next book and find out how Antryg fared in real-world California, but only slightly!

>135 YouKneeK: It's been decades since I read that Hambly series, but I enjoyed it. I also enjoyed Alif the Unseen. Alas I remember nothing.

>138 quondame: It’s funny, and a little exasperating, how quickly we can forget the details of the books we’ve read. :) I’ve been better about it since I started writing reviews, because the writing process helps things stick in my head better, but I still forget a lot of details.

I’m enjoying Alif so far. The story, at least in the beginning, wasn’t at all what I expected based on the prologue, but I like it.

Review: Alif the Unseen by G. Willow Wilson



I went into this book blind, so I didn’t really have any expectations, but somehow it still wasn’t what I expected. It’s sort of like a cyberpunk story with magic. I liked it quite a bit, although it wasn’t perfect.

The story is set in the Middle East and the main character, who calls himself Alif, is a programmer who helps people of all beliefs run illegal web sites by protecting them from detection by the government. Illegal in this context has more to do with illegal beliefs and ideas, not necessarily what those of us who live in a Western culture would consider illegal. In this book, Jinn are real, although most humans are unaware of them.

I really enjoyed the setting. I have absolutely no personal knowledge with which to judge its authenticity, but it felt authentic to me as opposed to being full of over-the-top stereotypes. I also enjoyed the Jinn aspect of the story, which is a mythology I’ve also had very little exposure to. The story itself was interesting, but most of its uniqueness came from the setting. If it had been set in the U.S. or in Europe, for example, I think it would have felt a little less fresh. I also never developed any real attachment for the characters. I didn’t dislike them, but concern for their fate didn’t drive me to keep reading when I would otherwise have put the book down.

I debated whether to rate this book at 3.5 or 4 stars. 4 stars seems a little too high, but 3 would definitely be too low, so I’m going to rate it at 3.5 stars and round up to 4 on Goodreads.

Next Book
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley. I don’t know much about this book either, aside from the general expectation that it’s going to be dystopian.

>140 YouKneeK: I'll have to look out for Alif - it sounds interesting. Have you read the Budayeen trilogy by George Alec Effinger? It sounds like that's in the same vein.

Brave New World is another book that was turned into a film, although I think I must be remembering the black & white adaptation of 1984 not the later films of Brave New World. I read a few of Huxley's novels when I was younger, notably Chrome Yellow and Antic Hay, but I haven't read any Huxley in years.

>141 Maddz: I’d be really interested to read your thoughts on Alif if you try it.

I read the first book in that Effinger trilogy, When Gravity Fails, a couple years ago. I liked it, but not well enough to continue the series. They do both share a Middle-Eastern setting and cultural references, although Gravity has a futuristic setting and is a lot darker in tone.

Brave New World will be my first Huxley read as far as I’m aware.

>140 YouKneeK: I am eagerly awaiting to see what you think of Brave New World. I haven't read it since highschool, so I have no review of it kicking around anywhere.

>143 BookstoogeLT: I had looked for your name on the LT work page when I added it, to see if I’d have a Bookstooge review to look forward to when I finished, but alas! ;)

>140 YouKneeK: I found Alif the Unseen interesting in it's presentation of a culture and place I know very little about, more than the characters and the dynamic which seems rather familiar and commonly done except in the details. I do remember more of it that of most books after a few months, so that is in its favor.

>142 YouKneeK: I've added Alif the Unseen to my ereaderiq list, so if it gets discounted, I'll get it.

>145 quondame: I’m not really sure if the story or characters will stick with me much over time, although I think impressions from the setting and culture probably will.

>146 Maddz: It had been on sale in the U.S. recently, which was how I ended up with it. I'd had it on my eReaderIQ list for probably a couple years and that was the first time I saw it on sale. Hopefully it goes on sale more frequently in the UK!

I remember really liking Brave New World when I read it back in high school. Wonder if it stands up. I'm looking forward to your review.

>148 Narilka: It seems like this was a common high school read, at least in the U.S., but for some reason we never read it in mine. I had never even heard of it or the author until a few years ago. I think I'll probably finish it today.

Review: Brave New World by Aldous Huxley



This book was, at different times, both interesting and boring and both bizarre and familiar. The story is set in a future where humans have developed the “perfect” society using genetic engineering, brainwashing, and recreational drugs that don't have side effects. The book starts off with a tour in which we learn how babies are made – and it’s nothing like what you learned about as a child.

I think I was most interested in the beginning when the author was establishing the setting and we learned what the society was like and how it was developed and maintained. Once the story kicked in and focused more on some of the characters, my interest fluctuated more. The characters are all a product of the society they live in which made them realistic, but not a lot of fun to read about. Except for maybe one character who didn’t get much page time, the main characters’ actions were all driven by emotion and selfish desires, and they rarely looked past their own perspectives to consider the motivations or needs of others.

Even the savage, John, behaved the same way. His behavior was driven by a different belief system than that of the “civilized” characters, but his actions were just as self-absorbed. For example, he never tried to understand Lenina or how her society had shaped her. Once she crossed the line with him, he labeled her as a whore and became violent with her for daring to not be what he wanted her to be.

In many ways, this book reminded me of Fahrenheit 451 which I read about 3 months ago, although Brave New World was published a couple decades earlier. The stories are different, but the underlying themes are similar. They’re both based on societies in which a kind of mindless happiness is seen as the ultimate goal, and happiness is defined as the absence of difficulties and unpleasantness.

Next Book
City of Stairs by Robert Jackson Bennett, the first book in the Divine Cities trilogy. I know I’ve read reviews about this series, but they’ve all blended together with the many other reviews I’ve read about other books, so I don’t remember any specifics. I just have a general impression that this is probably something I’ll like.

>131 YouKneeK: I haven't read these books in a long time! I guess it is no surprise that we both stopped at the same place, after book 2. I didn't even know there was a book 3, I guess by that point I just didn't care enough to remember that it hadn't ended. I generally like Hambly, but this is not my favorite Hambly series.

>150 YouKneeK: By chance have you seen the new Netflix adaptation of Fahrenheit 451? We watched it on Friday night and it made me immediately go pick up the book for a re-read.

>150 YouKneeK: "happiness is defined as the absence of difficulties and unpleasantness"

I don't know, that sounds pretty tempting! IF I could read all day instead of work anyway ;-)

>151 Karlstar: The first two books felt like a pretty complete story in themselves, so at least it made a good stopping point. I have her James Asher series on my list to try at some point, but it’s pretty low on my list since I think the series is still ongoing.

>152 Karlstar: I haven’t. It was good, then? I don’t often have the patience for TV/movies, but now and then the urge strikes, so I’ll have to keep that in mind for the next urge. :)

>153 BookstoogeLT: LOL, but would you appreciate the happiness of reading as much without the unhappiness of the non-reading to compare it to? ;)

>150 YouKneeK: Even now it's the setting and society that I remember from the story. I couldn't have told you any character names or about the plot for that matter. Maybe I should reread it next year.

City of Stairs is in my wish list. Hope it's good :)

>155 Narilka: I suspect the same may prove true for me regarding my memory of Brave New World after some time has passed.

>154 YouKneeK: Actually, you are correct. When I've had forced time off, a week is really about all I can handle. Then I start looking for things to do, or my attitude goes straight to heck...

>154 YouKneeK: With regards to the Netflix movie Fahrenheit 451 - it was terrible. My wife, who has not read the book, agreed. They upgraded the technology and some of the terminology, which was good and not a problem. The problem was, it was a completely different plot and most of the characters. It had some of the essential message, but only partially and I think many of the changes were to blame. I'd love to hear anyone else's thoughts on it!

>157 BookstoogeLT: I find that these days I can’t sit and read for a full day even when I have both the time and a great book, unlike when I was younger. I get too restless and feel like I need to spend at least some of my time doing other things.

>158 Karlstar: Ah, I completely misunderstood the reaction to re-read the book. I’m now crossing it off of my mental list! ;)

Review: City of Stairs by Robert Jackson Bennett



City of Stairs is the first book in a fantasy trilogy called The Divine Cities, although it stands on its own really well because all the main questions and issues are wrapped up by the end. I liked it a lot. The setting was cool, I liked the main characters, and the story usually held my interest. It was never a compulsive read for me, which is the reason I’m not rating it higher, but it was a solid and interesting read.

The story is set in a world where actual gods and miracles had existed in the past, but those gods had been killed and so their miracles, which take many forms, are fading but not completely gone. This is a really skimpy description of the setting, but learning about the setting and the history of the world was a fun part of the book so I don’t want to give too much detail. Most of the story revolves around Shara, a spy who is investigating a murder. So there is a spy/mystery element to the story, but it was pretty lightly done and didn’t feel too trope-y to me. Sometimes I even forgot about the murder that Shara had originally come to investigate.

Shara was a likeable character, easy to root for, and I also really liked her “secretary”, Sigrud. Some of the other characters were interesting too. The author does tend to lay the groundwork for his revelations pretty clearly in advance, so this wasn’t a very twisty story. Whenever various things were revealed, I had either already figured them out myself or else my reaction was along the lines of “yes, of course” because it followed obviously from what we had already learned. I think I might have been a little more engrossed if the story had been less straight-forward, but it was still an interesting story.

I enjoyed this enough that I plan to continue directly on to the second book.

Next Book
City of Blades, the second book in this series.

I read Tigana, The Fionavar Tapestry and some of the Thomas Covenant books a long, long time ago (when they were fairly new). I was disappointed with the ending of ‘Tigana’ being then of an age when I considered love soppy but despite that, I read TFT though my memories of that are more vague and confused. TC I found a bit bleak, but interesting enough that I finished at least one trilogy.

>89 quondame: I would think that stabbing would be painful. ;0)

>161 humouress: I'm sure it was. The actual wounds described seem to be primarily in the pelvic region, I assume less protected than the thorax.

>160 YouKneeK: That series has been on my wishlist for a while now. Your rating does nothing to require its exclusion and maybe I'll even get around to picking it up someday.

>161 humouress: I remember enjoying Tigana quite a bit, but I seem to only remember half of the story now, so it hasn’t stuck with me very well.

>163 AHS-Wolfy: I’ll look forward to reading your thoughts if/when you try it!

>150 YouKneeK: I just found my paperback copy of Brave New World yesterday evening while winnowing my shelves. It's actually in decent shape compared to many of my others. The pages didn't turn orange, at least! Anyway I realized I had zero memory of it, unlike so many of my books from that genre and era. I was thinking of rereading it in digital format, but now I think you've made me change my mind. :o)

>165 clamairy: How long ago did you last read it? I had wondered if it might have been more memorable for me if I’d read it earlier in life, but it sounds like that wasn’t the case for you.

I read Brave New World years ago - in my mid-20s, I think it was. I also read a few more Huxley at the same time - my print editions are all from that time. I also read Animal Farm and 1984 at the same time. Beyond the sense of the story, nothing much has stuck with me - probably because the world has changed in a wildly different way. I remember the Orwells better than I do the Huxleys, and of the Huxleys I read at the time, Chrome Yellow remains more in memory than Brave New World (probably because we knew some of the peripheral Bloomsbury set and hence some of the basis of the novel).

I dipped into some Huxley over on the Faded Page, and it didn't seem to have worn well - it was an interesting period piece written very much in the pre-war literary style and it didn't hold my interest as well as it did 30-odd years ago (even then it was a bit of a slog to read).

>166 YouKneeK: It had to have been in the 70s. Might have even been for a college class, which would explain why I don't remember it! :o)

>167 Maddz: I have to agree, even if it is widely considered a classic, i re-read Brave New World back... 20? years ago and I still don't remember much about it.

>167 Maddz:, >168 clamairy:, >169 Karlstar: Well at least, once my memory of the story fades to almost nothing, I’ll know I’m in good company! That should be in, what, 7 days or so? ;)

>167 Maddz: I’m pretty sure we read Animal Farm when I was in 7th or 8th grade, but I have only the vaguest impressions of it. I don’t think I’ve read 1984 at all. I’d like to get to both of those eventually.

>150 YouKneeK: You actually graded Brave New World higher, by 0.5 stars, than myself. I liked the world building and social construction, but frankly the characters didn't so any development and there didn't seem to be a plot.

Great review.

>171 mattries37315: Thanks! I enjoyed your review also; I found it when I was looking for friend reviews after posting my own. :)

Speaking of which, I have a random question for whoever might know the answer. One of the things I’ve always enjoyed doing after I finish posting a review is reading the reviews written by people I know. On LibraryThing, I haven’t been able to find a quick way to do that. The best strategy I’ve found is to click “show all” on the reviews. In the “Members” section, it lists which of “Your friends” and “Your interesting libraries” also have the book shelved, so I then hit Ctrl+F and search for each of those people. It works, and it isn’t too torturous, but it’s a bit on the tedious side. Especially since not everybody listed has actually written a review, and it doesn’t allow me to see their ratings if they’ve just rated it without reviewing it. Is there a better way that I’ve missed?

>172 YouKneeK: If there is I haven't found it! If it is a very popular book I have occasionally gone into various individual's libraries, searched for the book and read their reviews from there. That method is probably only quicker if there are hundreds of reviews for a work.

Go to a book's page, let's say Brave New World and look at the "Members" section. Like you said, if any friends it'll list them. Click on a friends name like say mine, it'll take you to my Profile page. On the right side of the page you'll Connections, Book You Share, and Search mattries37315's books.

Go to Search mattries37315's books and type in Brave New World then click search. It'll bring up a Collection style page and have the book (or books because for some reason Before They Are Hanged showed up when I search yours don't ask me why) and right there is the review I wrote.

You can then click the book's title to return to it's page and repeat the process for however many friends you have.

Hopefully I explained this well.

>173 clamairy:, >174 mattries37315: Thank you both! For me, hitting Ctrl+F all from the same page seems fastest since I can search for everybody’s reviews in the same spot and it takes me to them almost instantly. If there are a ton of reviews, the first step of clicking “Show All” can be a little slow, but the Ctrl+F part is fast. That method probably wouldn’t work as well for somebody on a mobile device or with a slower connection, though. I'm always on my desktop.

I was hopeful there might be some way to filter the list of reviews and just read through them all at once without having to search for them. Every now and then I neurotically start looking at all the clickable stuff all over again to see if I’ve missed something, but if neither of you know of anything like that then it surely doesn’t exist and I should probably stop looking! :)

Review: City of Blades by Robert Jackson Bennett



City of Blades is the second book in the Divine Cities trilogy. As with the first book, this one tells a complete story, although there is one character whose future is a little bit up in the air at the end. I’m hopeful that story will get some closure in the next book. If I had to choose, I would probably say I liked the first book a tiny bit more, but my enjoyment was pretty close to the same.

This book's main character played a role in the first book, but was not really a main character. I’ll put their name in spoilers for anybody who wants to know who they are: Turyin Mulaghesh. This person made for an interesting main character, although I’m still a bit partial to some of the other characters from the first book. Some of them (Sigrud most substantially, with Shara participating in some long-distance conversations) do make an appearance eventually though, which I enjoyed.

Structure-wise there are several similarities between the books, although there are a lot of differences story-wise. We start off with a bit of a mystery to solve, this time in the form of a missing person. Our main character arrives on the scene to solve the mystery, but naturally discovers that things are a lot more complicated and dangerous than they first appeared. Similar to my comments on the first book, the author lays the groundwork pretty clearly so that there aren’t really a lot of surprises by the time things are revealed, but there were a couple of small surprises and the story was well-told and meaningful.

I look forward to reading the last book.

Next Book
City of Miracles, the final book in this series.

>176 YouKneeK: I'm glad you're enjoying the Divine Cities trilogy. I thought it was excellent, quite unlike any other fantasy series I could think of.

>177 Sakerfalcon: Thanks! I can’t think of any very similar types of stories that I’ve read either.

For anybody who didn’t already see it in today's Tor newsletter, or elsewhere, it looks like Amazon has confirmed their plans to make a Wheel of Time TV series. Here’s the link. There’s very, very little info, but at least it’s slightly more tangible than previous rumors. If it does materialize, that’s something I would probably watch.

The Dark Tower is mentioned also, which is a series that’s on my reading list but not very high on it.

>179 YouKneeK: Thanks for that link. Definitely glad to see something slightly more tangible than JUST a rumor :-)

>180 BookstoogeLT: Me too! :)

>179 YouKneeK: Woohoo!!! Let's hope it happens as that could be awesome! Right up there with Game of Thrones.

>182 Karlstar: I haven’t watched Game of Thrones yet, even though I’m pretty sure I would enjoy it, out of a naïve hope that someday the book series will get finished and I can read that first. I may give that idea up and just watch the show once it’s done, though.

>179 YouKneeK: And with 14 books, that series could run for many years. Here's hoping they do it right :)

>182 Karlstar: You hear all sorts of things about the next SoIaF book, but supposedly Martin is no longer predicting when it will be done, except to say that it won't be this year, again. My guess is he'll wait until after the TV show is over to maximize the differences between the two. Who knows?

>185 Karlstar: Who knows? Might as well just enjoy the show. With 5 of 7 published and taking like 10 years between books, it's going to be a while for those last two.

>183 YouKneeK: Don't worry about getting spoiled for the end of the book series from Game of Thrones, they're two different beasts. While they might share some general strokes of the brush, they'll be painted very differently once everything is said and done.

>184 Narilka: Good point, that could be a very long series if it's successful!

>187 mattries37315: I think mostly I just prefer to read things in print first, and get my own images of the characters and the setting in my head before I get too influenced by the interpretations of other media formats. As an example, late last year I read Hamlet and then later watched two different movie adaptations. I enjoyed both adaptations, but neither of them completely matched my own interpretation from my reading, so I felt like I had my own special version in my head that was all my own. If I'd watched one or both adaptations first, my reading would have been more in line with what I'd already seen.

But in the case of GOT, there’s no telling when (or if) the rest of the series will ever be published, so it probably isn't worth trying to wait. If I’m going to experience it first as a TV show, though, I’d rather treat it similarly to how I treat book series and wait until it’s complete then binge the whole thing. Because I’m neurotic like that. :) With WOT, on the other hand, since I already know the story, I think I wouldn't mind as much just watching it as it airs.

>188 YouKneeK: The first book and first season of the show are very close. They start to diverge in book 2/season 2 slightly and diverge even more starting in book 3/season 3 if I remember right. I stopped reading the books at #3 when I realized the author wasn't finishing any time soon and that was back in the early 2000s. I liked the first book enough that I've reread it I think 3 times now, though none of the others. Anyway... you can start the show next year sometime. The final season is due out next summer :)

>189 Narilka: Ah, that’s not too far off then!

Review: City of Miracles by Robert Jackson Bennett



This was the last book in the Divine Cities trilogy. I’ve enjoyed the entire series, although this last book held my attention the best out of the three. I was especially happy with who the main character was. It was somebody who featured in the previous books and was one of my favorites. The ending was satisfying, although a bit more bittersweet than what I was hoping for when I started out.

The whole series was consistently strong. The world-building was interesting and unique (in my experience), it was well-written, and the characters were likeable. There was also a little bit of humor sprinkled throughout, particularly in the dialogue and in the characters’ reactions to things. As I mentioned in previous reviews, these aren’t particularly twisty stories because the author lays the groundwork for everything in advance, but I still enjoyed the plots. There was a good mix of action, introspection, and dialogue. There were also some deeper themes, especially in the last two books.

Next Book
Since I haven’t read any long books this year (this is a small example of sarcasm), I’ve decided to remedy my oversight by reading 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami. It’s 1332 pages. So it will probably take me longer than usual to post my next review…

>187 mattries37315: I have to disagree here. If you want to really enjoy the Game of Thrones TV show, read book one first. You'll get a much better sense of the world, the characters, the history, everything and you'll be able to tell all the dark haired, dark cloaked guys apart! If you don't like spoiled endings, only read the first half, but that only applies to season one anyway.

>192 Karlstar: I read the first two book of the series by the time the first season started, I've all five books twice since the show has been on air. I was talking about the end of the TV series and how it and the books are now two completely different entities meaning the show won't spoil the book ending because they've diverged so much.

>193 mattries37315: Sorry about that, I misunderstood! I agree, you can watch the show and not have it spoil the books, though I'd rather read the books first! Still waiting for that next book George! I hear his next book is going to be about the Targaryens, if it is as much of a boring history lesson as his most recent novella, it won't add much to the series.

>194 Karlstar: I prefer to read ahead of time, but I was very thankful for the series because I had actual faces to recall for many of the peripheral characters. It made them a lot easier to keep straight when reading. I'm pretty sure I'd only read the first book before season one, but I read 2-5 before each of their (supposedly) corresponding seasons hit the screen. And then we were in uncharted territory. I have to say that, as much as I enjoy the show, the dialogue took a turn for the worse once there was no source material to draw from. But I'm a special effects whore, so I was easily mollified by glorious HD eye candy.

>195 clamairy: While the show has been lots of fun and I enjoy it, they just don't do as good a job of character development and world development as George does. The 'teleporting' bugs me too. The effects are awesome though!

There was teleporting? I must admit, I read the first two books and then gave up because my favourite characters kept getting killed off and it was getting a bit grim and gory. That didn’t seem to change when the TV series came along, but my husband loved it so he had it on so I kind of watched it anyway.

I wonder if George watched, too, and if it changed anything that he had planned to write? It must be weird, seeing your own creation when you haven’t got to that point yet.

>197 humouress: Well, not actual teleporting. Just characters moving huge distances in completely unrealistic amounts of time. LOL

>197 humouress: It just takes choosing the right favorite characters. Ned Stark was plainly too stupid to live and clearly passed that on to his first born. The collateral damage is quite high though. The more interesting of the 'good guys' for a very loose definition of good, seem to have made it to the final season.

>199 quondame: Ack... SPOILER ALERT.

>Super spoiler alert! Some folks here haven't even seen the show yet!

>200 clamairy:,>201 Karlstar: I didn't think anyone on this list could have missed those departures. They are pretty much Memes at this point.

>199 quondame: Obviously I picked the wrong ones :0)

>199 quondame: Thanks for hiding the spoiler! I’ve somehow managed to avoid Games of Thrones spoilers so far. I may live partially under a rock. :)

>204 YouKneeK: But only partially! 😁 I meant no offense by that comment, BTW. I find it admirable that you've managed to stay 'Unsullied' thus far!

>206 humouress: Been playing Myst?

No. Maybe I should?

>206 humouress: Now that's a rock!

>208 humouress: Check this out: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1252280491/myst-25th-anniversary-collection...

This and various Spiderweb Software games (check out this KS: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/619141553/queens-wish-the-conqueror?ref=use... are the only computer games I've ever played the lot (apart from the PC only stuff like the online game). Sumptuous graphics, excellent puzzles, atmospheric music - I can thoroughly recommend this series.

I don't really get on with FPS or platform-type games.

That rock looks rather like the start scene for one of the later games in the series.

>205 clamairy: I may have missed something, but I didn’t see anything to take offense to. :) It probably helps that I don’t know many people in real life who like the same things I do. Actually, Game of Thrones is one of the few things in my wheelhouse for which I do know people who watch it, mostly people I work with, but I put in headphones whenever they start to talk about it.

>206 humouress: LOL, this looks like an upgrade from the current rock I’m living under! :)

>210 Maddz: I played Myst, although not the sequels. I also played some of the Spiderweb games – mostly the Exile games. I did play a few FPS and platform games, but I usually gravitated more toward RPG’s and adventure games. I loved the King’s Quest games, then later the Baldur’s Gate games, and that kind of thing.

It’s hard to find time for games anymore, but lately a small portion of my spare time has been going toward Skyrim in Virtual Reality. That's quite an experience! There has been some screaming and flailing. I haven’t tried much else in VR yet because Skyrim has taken up what little time I have for it, but I understand there’s a Myst-like game made for VR by the same company and I’d like to try that eventually.

>211 YouKneeK: :0)

I’m not a gamer (so I don’t even understand FPS). My kids have a PS4; can I get Myst on that, do you think? That is, if the Singapore PS store does it. Its selection for kids is pretty sparse.

I do have a Myst book with gorgeous illustrations but unfortunately it’s the second in a series. I started reading it and then realised I was completely lost and about then, discovered it was based on a game.

>211 YouKneeK: I started Spiderweb with the Exile trilogy. They got remade into Avernum 1-3, Avernum 4-6 came along, and now Avernum 1-3 & 6 have been released in HD versions also available on the iPad... I also have Blades of Exile, Nethergate and the Geneforge series. Spiderweb also released the Avadon trilogy - which is kind of a mash-up between Avernum and Geneforge. I don't like Geneforge or Avadon as much as I do Avernum - both games seem to want you to play as an utter b*st*d which I don't much like.

>212 humouress: The original game was released on Playstation 1; apparently a PSone Classic port was released for PS3. I don't know whether it's playable on the PS4 - not having kids, I have limited contact with Playstations. I don't know if the subsequent games were released on that platform. Compared to the sequels, the Myst (and RealMyst) graphics look crude (at the time they were awesome). I will say it's a game that you and your kids can play together - the focus is on exploration and puzzle-solving.

>212 humouress: Sorry, FPS stands for “First-Person Shooter”. I don’t know any of the modern, well-known FPS games that you might have heard of through your kids to offer as an example but, if you’ve ever heard of Doom, that would be an early example. I never played Doom, but I played Wolfenstein which I think was one of the very first FPS’s.

I never even knew Myst was available for anything other than computers, so >213 Maddz: knows way more about that than I do! I grew up with computers and we never had any consoles at home when I was a kid, so most of my game playing has been on PC’s.

>213 Maddz: I did play the first Avernum remake I think, both the original one and the HD version, and I tried a few of the others. By the time that stuff started coming out, though, I had less time for games. Exile is the only one I played all the way through. After that, I never made it past the first game in whichever series before I would decide to reclaim my game time for something else.

>214 YouKneeK: FPS makes me sick to my stomach. Doom used to trigger my motion-sickness, and I've never been able to enjoy any FPS. I do like Zelda and Star Wars games, but my all-time favorite is Diablo II.

Diablo 2 is the only way to go! :)

Well, I can't find Myst in the Singapore PS store, but the same company do seem to have one called Obduction. Maybe I'll try that.

>217 humouress: Forgot about Obduction - it's not Myst, but it's in the same vein. I was a backer but I've not yet played it (I don't think they made a Mac port).

>218 Maddz: I see it (ETA Myst) in the App store (for Macs) but it's SGD8 more than in the PS store.

>215 Darth-Heather:, >216 Karlstar: I’ve never played any of the Diablo games. My game-playing has always been sporadic, so I have large gaps in my gaming credentials. :)

>215 Darth-Heather: I had heard that a lot of people experienced motion sickness from those early FPS games. Up until recently, I had really never experienced motion sickness with anything – whether something physical like a roller coaster or a spinning ride, or something visual like a game or a 3D movie. On the other hand, I experienced motion sickness the first time I played Skryim in Virtual Reality. Skyrim was pretty much the first thing I did in VR, so it might have been better if I'd eased myself into it with something milder. The character movement was more intense than I was prepared for. My body knew it was standing in one spot, but my eyes said I was moving rapidly. I played for 20-30 minutes and was so caught up in admiring the visual aspect that I didn’t notice how my body was feeling until it was past the point of mild discomfort. Since motion sickness had never been a problem for me, it caught me by surprise and I ended up on the floor trying not to puke or pass out. After that I would feel queasy if I tried to play more than 10 minutes at a time. I Googled to see if other people had trouble and read about an app called "Natural Locomotion" that affects how movement works in some games. You move one or both of your arms like you would when walking normally, and it syncs up your character’s movement speed to your arm movement so that your body and your eyes feel more in sync. It works with Skyrim, and it made all the difference in the world for me. I haven’t had any issues since.

>217 humouress:, >218 Maddz: That’s the game I was thinking of earlier when I mentioned there was a Myst-like game available for VR. I’d be interested to hear how you like it if either of you play it, whether in VR or the normal way.

>220 YouKneeK: Like you, I don't game much these days - although I polished off Avernum 3 HD within a fortnight of it being released earlier this year (despite the flu). (That was always my favourite of the originals.) I went through a patch of online gaming which took up a lot of time - I played some Travian and a Tribal Wars servers. When I realised how much a time sink they were, that was it; I also prefer PvE to PvP games. I did try Diablo II but didn't get very far - I preferred the gameplay of Diablo I especially in relation to save points.

I don't think I'd get on well with VR - I have a tendency to motion sickness in certain circumstances. I can't read on buses or cars for instance for longer than about 10 minutes before getting queasy, I'm usually OK on boats (although I had problems on a Sea Cat during a storm). Planes and trains I'm OK with. I can trigger symptoms at the cinema or watching TV - one of the Attenborough series (Life on Earth?) the opening credits would be a trigger (the swoop from space to ground level). (The latter may be why I don't like roller coasters.)

>221 Maddz: I’ve done very little online gaming because, like you said, it’s such a time sink. I also prefer things that have a definite end you can work toward. The last time I did any online gaming was back when they were mostly text-based games.

From what little I read, it seems like the VR issues don’t necessarily correlate to other types of motion sickness. In addition to people like me who had some trouble despite no history of motion sickness, I also saw people on the opposite spectrum who did have a history of motion sickness and no issues whatsoever with VR. Then of course there were the people who had trouble with all of it. :)

It’s been a week since my last review, so I thought I’d at least post a brief reading update. I’m still reading 1Q84, currently on page 845 out of 1332. It was originally published as a trilogy, and I just finished the second book. It’s a really, really strange book, but it’s holding my interest easily. I don’t think I’ll be able to form any definite opinions about it until I get to the end.

I imagine I'll be done with it by this time next week, probably sooner, but it’s my turn to be on call for after-hours support issues starting tomorrow, and it's quarter end, so that will eat into my spare time.

Review: 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami



1Q84 is a 1300+ page omnibus of a fantasy series that was originally published as a trilogy in Japan. I really enjoyed the first two books, but I started to get frustrated with some things by the third book.

It’s difficult to explain what it's about without spoiling anything, so I’m going to be vague. The official book synopsis has a much more coherent explanation, but would spoil some of the fun of discovery. Details are revealed very slowly, and piecing it all together was part of the fun. The story is set in Japan in the 80’s and the chapters alternate between two 30-year-old characters: Aomame, a woman, and Tengo, a man. Early in the book Aomame murders a man, a job she was apparently hired to do, for reasons that are hinted at but not fully explained until later. Meanwhile, Tengo gets involved in a scam to rewrite a novella written by an unusual young girl. As these two characters go about their separate lives, little bits of strangeness start to creep in that don’t fit with the reality they thought they knew. This would probably be classified as magical realism.

For a good portion of the first book I wasn’t too sure what was going on, but I was very interested in the story in spite of that. I’m not sure I liked the characters exactly, but I was interested in them. In the second book, the pieces started forming a more coherent picture and I remained equally interested. In the third book I realized that, while the pieces were starting to form a picture, there were gaps between those pieces that were never going to be filled in to make a seamless picture. There were events and explanations that were clearly intended to connect to other events and “explain” how things happened, but they usually didn’t stand up well to any sort of logical scrutiny. It was like somebody tried to fit together puzzle pieces where the shapes didn’t quite match up even though the colors matched.

The writing style felt unique and different at first, and I really enjoyed it for the first couple of books. By the third book though, some aspects started to grate on my nerves. This book is full of repetition, in different forms. Entire paragraphs are repeated when a character is remembering something they were told or had read. Characters also tended to go over the same details repeatedly in their head. In dialogue, characters would frequently repeat to each other what they had just been told. It all got to be a bit much after a while, especially toward the end when I was just ready to be done with it. In the third book, a third POV character was introduced and that entire POV was pretty much a repetition of things we already knew. It did have a purpose, but the content was boring to read about because so much of it was familiar.

My review sounds more negative than it probably should. Throughout the first two books, I would have rated this at 4 stars. It was only in the last book that I started to get frustrated, and that colors my opinion of the whole trilogy. I particularly enjoyed the Japanese setting, which I haven’t encountered much in my reading. The writing style was also different from what I’m used to, and I enjoyed that newness for the first two thirds. The story was interesting and I really enjoyed the way things were revealed slowly and from different angles. My biggest problem was that I wasn’t satisfied with how it was all (not really) tied together by the end. After reading 1300+ pages, I wanted to be more satisfied by the ending.

Next Book
Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer, the first book in the Southern Reach trilogy.

>224 YouKneeK: So I guess I'll be taking a pass on that one! Sorry that the last third of the tale didn't work as well for you as the beginning did.

(I had enough problems with the only Murakami I've read, and that was as much for the scenes of violence & torture as for the pace of the story telling. I'm glad I read it, but I'm not in a hurry for more.)

>225 clamairy: I’m happy to have saved you 1300 pages of reading time. ;) I actually didn’t think 1Q84 had that much graphic violence, although there was definitely some. And a lot of sex. This is the first Murakami book I’ve read, though, so I’m not sure how it compares with his other work. I might be willing to try something else he’s written sometime in the future, but probably something shorter!

It looks like the # of posts in this thread conveniently justifies starting a new thread for the new quarter, so I'll have a new thread up shortly.