Beyond Reality discussion

Happy February! Let us know what you are reading this month!

Let's see -- This month I have queued up in the Fantasy genre:

A Head Full of Ghosts by Paul Tremblay
The Great Victorian Collection by Brian Moore
Deep Betrayal by Anne Greenwood Brown
Maynard's House by Herman Raucher
Sorcerer to the Crown by Zen Cho

I am so totally outside of science fiction this month, it's scary.

Engrossed in green green universe by Jay lake. An amazingly well written fantasy tale. The first of three. Reminds me of the best by Sean Russell.

I halfway through The Goblin Emperor; while I find the story interesting, I'm having a great deal of trouble with the names. I wish the author had thought to put a list of characters and their affiliations at the front of this book. She does have a list of names at the end, but often the name I'm looking for is not there. Most characters have 2,3 or even 4 names (partly because of honorifics) and those names are complex. I will downgrade my rating of this book because of this

Christine wrote: "I halfway through The Goblin Emperor; while I find the story interesting, I'm having a great deal of trouble with the names. I wish the author had thought to put a list of character..."

pssst...the list and a glossary of how the naming works is at the back! I wish I'd known that upon my first read too!

I just finished The Riddle-Master of Hed last night and am continuing with the trilogy next; hoping to finish it before it's time to pick up Fool's Errand for the group series read.

Shel wrote: "Christine wrote: "I halfway through The Goblin Emperor; while I find the story interesting, I'm having a great deal of trouble with the names. I wish the author had thought to put a..."
Shel, I've seen the list and glossary, but neither is helpful; with all the variations on names, I can rarely find the name I'm looking for. I'm now 3/4 of the way through and am finally getting to know who is who

Christine wrote: "Shel wrote: "Christine wrote: "I halfway through The Goblin Emperor; while I find the story interesting, I'm having a great deal of trouble with the names. I wish the author had tho..."

Fair enough! Well, when you finish, dig through our archives and post your thoughts - the group read and discussed the book back in 2014.

I'm still working on La Belle Sauvage, which is quite good (almost done) and making me want to re-(re-)read His Dark Materials. I may have accidentally started The Fifth Season... it fell open and sort of sucked me in.

Not sure what I'll dive into after that. I'm technically in the middle of Debt of Honor and a re-read of Royal Assassin but haven't picked up either in weeks.

In semi-written-for-adults-books, I've been following along with my oldest tiny human as he reads the Amulet series, which is beautifully drawn and a really good story so far. We just finished collection #7, so only 1 more published. We're also reading the hilarious and quirky and maybe-more-than-it-seems Alcatraz series out loud, and are currently on The Shattered Lens.

I am about 1/3 through Guardians of the Keep by Carol Berg, book 2 in her Bridge of D'Arnath series, and so far, I'm liking it as much as the first book. This is for a different Goodreads group.

Queued up after that are: Fool's Errand for our series read, A Sorcerer's Treason by Sarah Zettel, book 1 in her Isavalta series, and The Huntress by Kate Quinn, a post-WWII historical novel.

I finished The Goblin Emperor which I quite enjoyed but downgraded due to the difficulty of keeping characters with multiple complex names strait. Now on to A Bad Deal for the Whole Galaxy

I'm dedicating 2019 to completing all of the novels and short stories in the Southern Vampire/Sookie Stackhouse series. I just started book #4 Dead to the World.

I know that it's a work that the group already read, but I'm finally getting to Sue Burke's _Semiosis_, which is as gripping as it is interesting. I'm excited about the sequel. I'm also teaching a science fiction course, so I just reread _The Time Machine_, which proved just as unique and frightening as I remembered. I'm going to try to share more of my thoughts with the list this year.

Ciaphas Cain: Choose Your Enemies by Sandy Mitchell

House of Assassins by Larry Correia

I finished The Huntress by Kate Quinn. Parts of it were definitely a 10, especially when writing about the Soviet woman who was a pilot/navigator—her story was enthralling and well-researched. But the parts with Jordan, the budding American photographer, were pretty clichéd. Yet the whole story came together quite well and I ended up giving it 4 stars, 8/10. I received an ARC of the book in a publisher’s giveaway.

Then I started Sarah Zettel’s Isavalta series, beginning with A Sorcerer's Treason. Given that it is the first book in a series, I expected unanswered questions and loose threads, but there were a few too many unexplained things for me to really feel satisfied. 7/10. It appears the next book, The Usurper's Crown, actually is a prequel to the first book, so maybe that will help. Two things I really did like were the method of weaving magic by actually weaving/braiding the spells and the setting in our world—Sand Island and Bayfiled, near the Apostle Islands here in my home state of Wisconsin.

Next up is Fool's Errand for our series read.

Christine wrote: "I finished The Goblin Emperor which I quite enjoyed but downgraded due to the difficulty of keeping characters with multiple complex names strait. [...]"

I remember thinking that the characters were fun and the worldbuilding was good but that the plot was too simple and characters generally followed a good/bad split along the lines of who did and didn't like the protagonist. Tor announced plans for a sequel last year.

I finished La Belle Sauvage, which was a fun return to one of my favorite fantasy series. I'm looking forward to the other two books, whenever Pullman gets them written.

I also tore through The Fifth Season, which was amazing. The growing realization of how all the characters were connected was delicious. The worldbuilding was fantastic as well and I'm looking forward to seeing where it goes in books 2 and 3.

Now I should really start Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI for one of my IRL book clubs but I'm avoiding it with Royal Assassin. As much as I love dark fantasy, true crime is not really my thing.

I finished the Riddle-Master trilogy the other day - I always feel like finishing a Patricia A. McKillip book is like waking from a lovely dream :) Such a satisfying ending!!

Next up is Fool's Errand for the series read.

I just finished George RR Martin’s Dreamsongs 2. The Glass Flower is a devastatingly powerful story.
I’m also reading Clark Ashton Smith’s The Door to Saturn and Andy Duncan’s fabulist An Agent of Utopia. Next on the list Josiah Bancroft’s steampunky The Hod King and Sam Miller’s Blackfish City.

So far this month I have read:


The Golem and the Jinni - (Started in January)
Giant Days, Vol. 1
Dead to the World
Giant Days, Vol. 2
Saga, Vol. 1

And I am currently reading Dead as a Doornail. I am not yet sure if I will read Giant Days, Vol. 3 or Saga, Vol. 2 next.

Nyssa wrote: "So far this month I have read:


The Golem and the Jinni - (Started in January)"

I LOVED that book!

Shel wrote: "Nyssa wrote: "So far this month I have read:


The Golem and the Jinni - (Started in January)"

I LOVED that book!"

It is terrific!!

A Green and Ancient Light by Frederic S. Durbin

Zipped through Fool's Errand (so good!) and now reading a collection of short stories (usually not my favorite thing but several authors I like and a theme I love) called Return to Avalon.

I finished A Bad Deal for the Whole Galaxy, which I recommend and now on vacation am reading Of Blood and Bone

I loved Of Blood and Bone and look forward to the conclusion on the Fall. I'm now reading The Book of M

After I finished Fool's Errand, I wanted to read something completely different so I started Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End. But then I had a really bad day and needed some brain candy, so I spent some time with Toby Daye in Ashes of Honor, zipped through it in two days, and now I'll go back and finish the nonfiction before moving on.

Now I'm on to Children of Time, which all of you raved about and wow, I can see why!

Get ready for the sequel CHILDREN OF RUIN in a few months!!

I got sidetracked by Creating Moments of Joy Along the Alzheimer's Journey: A Guide for Families and Caregivers, Fifth Edition, Revised and Expanded which was given to me by a therapist after several meetings related to my sister who has Down syndrome and Alzheimer’s disease. (My dad also had Alzheimer’s.) Poignant, funny, sad...

Hoping to finish The Usurper's Crown in a couple days so I can start my March reads for this and another group.

I started off February with a couple of disappointments. I had high hopes for both Envy of Angels and After the Fall, Before the Fall, During the Fall but ended up not liking them.

However, things looked up from there. I read three 5-star books this month: Ancillary Justice (sci-fi opera), Thin Air (historical fiction/horror), and one of our books this month, Sorcerer to the Crown (regency fantasy).

I also really adored the second in The Broken Earth trilogy, The Obelisk Gate, because Jemisin is just an amazingly talented storyteller.

Craven Manor was a great haunted house read and I'll definitely be looking for more from Darcy Coates.

In the motley-crew-of-hippos genre, I had a ton of fun with the flawed but lovable novella River of Teeth and was intrigued by the psychological character drama that took center-stage in the zombie apocalypse in This is Not a Test.

And in non-fiction, my 7-year-old dino-loving self was quite pleased with The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs: A New History of a Lost World, though she could have done without some of the self-congratulatory authorial inserts.

The Terracotta Warriors: Exploring the Most Intriguing Puzzle in Chinese History by Edward Burman

I just finished The Book of M which I enjoyed; now out of genre with Past Tense, a Jack Reacher story

I’m reading the latest Louise Penny, KINGDOM OF THE BLIND.