Which book are you reading currently? #7

Remove all ads!

So, so true.

 

Started and finished The Wee Free Men yesterday. Good fun, but it felt odd seeing Pratchett going for a light-hearted fare after his very dark Night Watch.

 

Ï find that to be one of his strengths.

 

I said it was odd; I never said I didn't like it

Started Monstrous Regiment, which looks like it's going to be liberally mix both his light and dark sides. I was expecting it to be a City Watch book, but it looks like Vimes only plays a secondary role in it.

 

Ziad: Yeh Vimes is a secondary character. Monstrous Regiment is probably one of my favorite Discworld books.


Anyway, currently reading Men of the Otherworld by Kelly Armstrong.

 

I just finished the Black Company series, by Glen Cook. Luved it! Never read anything like it. Does anyone know of another comparable series/similar writing style to Cook?

 

Steven Erikson's "A tale of Malazan book of the Fallen" inspired by Glen Cook and brought to perfection. I rank it quite a bit higher than Black Company and I really liked that. Cook was one of Erikson's greatest inspirations and well, if you liked Black Company you will love that.

 

I finished it yesterday and immediately raised it to to "one of the favourites" status. I remember from reading the boards some years ago that the books from now on aren't as good, which is a shame. We'll see.

 

Anthony and Cleopatra. Thought I read my way through some classics for a change. Being a parent means that my idea of a good book is 5 pages long and made of cardboard!

 

A hat full ok sky. A bit disappointing - not as good as either the first Tiffany Aching book or other Discworld books in general.

 

I picked up a Witcher novel.

 

I'm about 3/4th through Going Postal. It's... disappointing. Moist is not exactly an endearing character, none of them are really. Even the villain, who Pratchett tries to establish as a Chessmater, only succeeds because the people he convinces are all incredibly stupid. The plot is too formulaic and recycled from his earlier books (there's something going wrong with the music/movies/newspaper/post office and someone is sabotaging it AND there's a supernatural element!) It's not a bad book (none of his books are) but it's a shame to see the series go through its downs. I'm hoping the next couple of books pick up again.

 

It won't. Night Watch was Pratchett's crowning glory the rest are still great books but not up to that level. The other Lipwig book "Making Money" is very similar to "Going Postal".

 

Night Watch was my first Discworld novel as well and I found it, by far, the most moving one. I agree with both of you on the quality of Going Postal. I thought Thud! was quite good though.

I'm already 2/3 through Clavell's Gai-Jin and I must say that it is nothing compared to Shogun which is one of the best books I've ever read. Since I'm planning an excursion into Inner Mongolia at the end of the month, I'm also about to start reading "Wolf Totem" by Jiang Rong.

 

Speaking of Thud, I finished it this morning and loved it. Possibly as good as Night Watch. Vimes is by far the most developed and interesting character in the entire series, possibly the only one that gets real development with every single book he features in (not counting the cameos of course). I thought the book had some of the best elements of earlier City Watch books, reusing some of the same themes from Jingo, The Fifth Elephant and Night Watch but rather than just recycling them the book goes in different directions with them. The "murder mystery" was quite good and I love the way he dealt with the Summoning Dark - at one point I was expecting a predictable heavy-handed explanation, but in the end it's ambiguous enough to make it more interesting.

 

Read Wrath of a Mad God by Raymond E. Feist recently. It is the last book in the Darkwar saga. I was actually positively surprised with this one. Because Feist's recent books have been average at best. But this one was a lot better than I expected it to be. Consequently this got me excited about the new Demonwar saga. The first book is already out...

 

I thought Flight of the Nighthawks was the best of the Darkwar books, or of Feist's books since Rage of a Demon King actually. Wrath of a Mad God was entertaining, but I was annoyed that some revelations blatantly contradict things established in the Serpentwar or even in other Conclave/Darkwar books. The ending was also a bit... odd. For a long time nothing really happens, then everything rushes to a conclusion within the last 3 or 4 pages. It's a bit like some of those old, very long RPGs that had a ten second long finale and ending.

I read Wintersmith and it will be my last Discworld book for some time. It was alright, about the same level as A hat full of sky and not as good as the first Tiffany book. I'm not really looking forward to a Moist book and have decided to take a break and go read other things. All in all I've really enjoyed the Discworld books and the good ones among them were really good.

 

I finally finished Gai-Jin by James Clavell and was utterly disappointed in finding that it totally paled to Shogun in every aspect. There wasn't even a single character who I found I could really sympathize with except maybe Yoshi. I should've brought my copy of Shogun over with me since I haven't read it in around 3years anyway.

Anyway, now I've realy started to read Wolf Totem by Jiang Rong. Still in the first chapter but it seems promising and all the reviews say that it's amazing and being called the best book to come out of China in a really long time.

 

Angel - After The Fall. Read throught the first three collected volumes today, just waiting for the next one to be released. I like it.

 

Back to Dragonlance with Dragons of a Fallen Sun, the first book in the War of Souls trilogy. It's a bit too slow-paced at first but picks up nicely about halfway through. I'm enjoying it so far, though the "mysterious" identity of the One God became obvious on the 3rd page or so, so I'm not expecting any surprises there. I was happy to see Gilthas and Palin (the annoying brats from The Second Generation and Dragons of Summer Flame respectively) upgraded to official badass status (especially Gilthas), but unfortunately Silvanoshei seems to be holding the Annoying Brat title for this book.