Which book are you reading currently? #7

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I just finished "Changes" by Jim Butcher, his latest in the Dresden files. If anyone else read it more carefully (I SLAMMED through it in one night, it was awesome) I have one teensy little question about a possible plot hole. I'll spoiler it:

Spoiler

When Harry puts the knife to Susan, thus eliminating the entire freaking Red Court, why didn't their daughter (Susan's blood relation) die as a result of the Blood Curse? Did it say somewhere that the curse only went back to ancestors and not to descendants? If so, where did it say that?

 

That might be it, Ziad. But WHY do they always radically change everything in the novels? It's really annoying. Like what I heard with the Forgotten Realms and the 4th edition. I understand they want to promote their new system, but do it gradually or in a soft way...

 

Just started the second Mistborn book, Well of Ascension.

 

"Bauchelain and Korbal Broach" short story collection set in the Malazan world by Steven Erikson. So far so very very good.

 

Took a break from Well of Ascension to read Anansi Boys. Really enjoyed it and decided to start rereading American Gods.

 

Went back to Discworld and finished Making Money over the weekend. Like the previous Moist book it felt very meh. The last decade of Discworld books has been very uneven.

 

Mayhap but I must say that after going back and rereading the first Discworld books I find them to be much worse than the latter ones. The middle ones are the best.

 

I could never more than halfway thru the 1st book. Some story lines jsut don't "do it" for me. Modesetti is another writer I just can't keep reading, the 2 stories I read were a bore.

 

Seeing as Pratchett is a god you are doing yourself no favours by skipping him. Do not mention him in the same sentence as Modesit. Start with the first Nightwatch books, Guards! Guards! I think it is called and skip the Rincewind and even the Death books as he is still searching for his voice there. Pratchett has written the best philosophical comments on religion, war and politics I have ever read and he has been funny while doing it.

 

First Discworld novel I ever read was 'Night Watch'. Sucked me right into the series. Of course, Night Watch turned out to be one of the best of them all and my personal favorite.

Just started Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami

 

Since we're on Pratchett, I finished Unseen Academicals (rather quickly too) and liked it a lot. It's a departure in many ways, in that it breaks away from his usual formula: no "something going wrong with [insert institution here]" (though I thought this is where the whole football thing was going, it turns out to refreshingly go somewhere else instead), no Eldritch Abomination trying to come back, no petty villain trying to overthrow Vetinari (this particular plot device was getting very, very tired) and it's one of the few books where he has multiple seemingly-unrelated threads running in parallel (they sort of come together at the end). Very statisfying, even if I don't rank it among the best.

I agree that Guards! Guards! is a good one to start with if you don't like the early ones, but I'd say absolutely do not skip the Death books. Reaper Man is a brilliant satire of consumerism (and possibly an homage to Dawn of the Dead?) and the first book where he started introducing his social, political and/or philosophical commentaries (though much more subtle at first). It also started the streak of amazing books that (with a couple of exceptions) lasted all the way until Monstrous Regiment.

Definitely. Between The Last Continent and The Truth I was starting to think Pratchett was running out of breath. Then came Thief of Time, The Last Hero and especially Night Watch and I realised he only runs out of breath temporarily

 

I enjoy both Rincewind and Death, I particularly like Hogfather but a person having trouble getting into Pratchett might do well to skip them as other people have pointed out his best stuff is his "middle" stuff so to speak. Everything he writes is great, it is just that some of the stuff is absolutely amazingly brilliant so why not start with that?

 

I have never read a Pratchett book that I didn't like -- he is amazing. Each of his primary character-drivien plotlines (Rincewind, Granny Weatherwax, Death, the Watch, and now Lipwig) have their own strengths and weaknesses, but even his singletons (Pyramids, Small Gods) are just freaking awesome. Small Gods wasn't nearly as funny as the rest, but it's clear to me that it wasn't supposed to be as funny -- there's a big difference between trying to be funny and failing and deciding to take a story in a different direction than you have done before. But he is just too skilled an author to pass over.

 

Finished Kafka on the Shore. I really like Murkakami's writing style, but the end of the novel left me with a WTF? feeling not unlike Mulholland Drive, heh.

 

My favorite author's (Robin Hobb) new book - Dragon Keeper. It is... not good. What she writes is well, but it is organized horribly - lots of jumps in time (the first hundred pages take place 5 years before the next hundred and could have been explained in a single chapter), and there is lots of cheap expositional dialogue ("What did you do then?" "I did this." "Oh, and how did you feel?" "I felt this way." etc). Hopefully it will pick up in the last half of the book

 

Did you read that soldier trilogy she did after the fool trilogy? Was that any good?

Reading A wild Sheep Chase now by Murakami

 

I'm reading "Star Wars: Survivor's Quest" by Timothy Zahn again. I recently finished "Star Wars: Outbound Flight" by Timothy Zahn. The books are connected but the events take place 50 years separate. Also, they were written (and read) out of order. So I'm rereading "Survivor's Quest" in hopes that the story makes more sense and because I've forgotten alot of it.

 

The Soldier Son trilogy was pretty good, Enag. The first book took me a while to get into because the world is completely different than the world of her other novels (and from most others I have read), but they are tightly written and really make you care about the characters despite their flaws (and the main character has some major flaws). Give them a try.

 

Really like Murakami, even if it feels too modern-ish to me for some reason.

Just finished The Judging Eye by Scott Bakker... yet again. Probably 3rd or 4th time now. Absolutely a blast. It's really amazing how different it is from the first triology. Typical day-in-the-pit dungeon crawls usually bore me, but Bakker's vivid language makes it something special. Tho, he could probably make a cooking recipe a read.