The Sword and Laser discussion

Welcome February. What books will you be enjoying this month?

Currently reading Heaven Official's Blessing: Tian Guan Ci Fu (Novel) Vol. 1 by Mò Xiāng Tóng Xiù - preparation before watching the live action.

Plan to read Imago by Octavia Butler and Tiger Honor by Yoon Ha Leenext.

I'm currently reading:

Where the Drowned Girls Go by Seanan McGuire
Fire & Blood by George R. R. Martin
Pandora's Star by Peter F. Hamilton

Shorefall second book in the new series by Robert Jackson Bennett then on the the BOM for Feb and March. That should fill the month up for me

So finished up my slow read of The Player of Games. I had read Consider Phlebas about a year before the group did, and didn't love it, but I saw some potential in it. Since people then recommended Player, I decided to give it a go. I think it's safe to say Banks is just not my type of author. The plot is good, and he is a good author, but his style just doesn't grab me. While less then in Phlebas I just think he spends a bit too much time in the storytelling coking Chekhov's Gun, without ever pulling the trigger. I'm sure he is doing this in the service of worldbuilding, but it often seems overly done to me. The funny thing is I know Neal Stephenson is also accused of this in many of his books, and for me it works most of the time in those. Not 100% sure why, except I'm typically more interested in his tangents.

I also thought there was a bit of inconstancy in the level of naivety of the main character. At the beginning he seemed more shroud, almost like a pool shark, but at some point this seemed to be lessened, as if he was more academically smart and not very street smart. This threw me a bit, but honestly is fairly minor, and I may not have noticed if I had been more into the story.

Unfortunately I'm feeling somewhat similar in my read of next months pick. Although I'm near the end of that, and many more of the threads are coming together.

I'm currently reading The Sudden Appearance of Hope by Claire North
This is a book about a young woman who is forgotten by everybody very quickly after they lose sight of her.
I am following it with The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by V.E. Schwab
This is a book about a young woman who is forgotten by everybody very quickly after they lose sight of her. She is also immortal

Claire North also wrote The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August which is about a man who lives the same (mid 20th C) life over and over again.
While Kate Atkinson wrote Life After Life which is about a woman who lives the same (mid 20th C) life over and over again.

It isn't a question of plaigarism; Harry August and Life After Life are very different, they just share the same High Concept

John (Nevets) wrote: "So finished up my slow read of The Player of Games. I had read Consider Phlebas about a year before the group did, and didn't love it, but I saw some potential in it. Si..."

Same.

Yeah, if you didn't like Player, Banks is not for you. I'd disagree that Player is mostly about world building, too.

It's very much a book about power, class and the journey of Gurgeh from a sheltered, almost effete games player from his Culture life of ease and almost detachment to a realization that a game can (and in this case does) embody everything about a culture... and that he's a piece in yet another game.

Rick wrote: "Yeah, if you didn't like Player, Banks is not for you. I'd disagree that Player is mostly about world building, too.

It's very much a book about power, class and the journey of Gurgeh from a shel..."
And I agree with you that I think those are the themes Banks is going after, and successfully weaves in. I probably mislead when I just mentioned worldbuilding. I guess I just thought he was a little heavy handed in getting his points across, and in my mind didn't serve the rest of the story well. I will say I do think this was a better book then Phlebas, and I am glad to have given Banks another try. I just probably won't read a 3rd.

Yeah, I've long said that Phlebas is a poor introduction the Culture novels as whole since it's very different than most of them, but that if someone reads both it and Player and bounces off of both, the Culture novels are probably not in their wheelhouse.

I'm listening to The Night Watch I'm really digging it. Kinda noir, Russsian, vampires, werewolves, witches, etc.

After reading another set of Tarzan books (the new editions from the Edgar Rice Burroughs Authorized Library, which have lots of nice bonus materials) -- Jungle Tales of Tarzan, Tarzan the Untamed and Tarzan the Terrible -- I decided it was finally time to try some Matthew Hughes (an author who works very much in the tradition of Jack Vance) with his novel Majestrum.

Finished The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes with a good lol at the fact that “The Final Problem” appears less than half way through the Complete Holmes audiobook.

Now onto The Hound of the Baskervilles.

^ Yeah, Doyle had gotten sick of writing Holmes and really wanted that one to be the last story. His fans had other ideas and prevailed on him to write more. TBH they don't really trail off in quality until the last maybe one or two stories.

^ I knew that ACD tried to kill Holmes off and then had to bring him back again, but I hadn’t realised that the bulk of the Holmes canon, including HotB, which is probably the most famous single narrative, was actually written *after* The Final Problem. (Although HotB was written after TFP, it’s set earlier on in the series’ chronology)

Ruth wrote: "^ I knew that ACD tried to kill Holmes off and then had to bring him back again, but I hadn’t realised that the bulk of the Holmes canon, including HotB, which is probably the most famous single na..."

Yeah, Doyle was like, “Screw it, they’re baying like hounds and next they’ll be wanting dogs, so I’ll give ‘em a dog.” Little did he know. 😂

I’m reading The Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson. This first chapter is more terrifying than any horror novel I’ve read, because it’s the future that’s coming for us all. Even scarier is that all the scientific speculation put into this book doesn’t factor in the ongoing pandemic, because the book was published when the pandemic was only 6 months old and everyone thought it would be done once vaccines came along.

Brad wrote: "I’m reading The Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson. This first chapter is more terrifying than any horror novel I’ve read, because it’s the future that’s coming for us all. Even scarie..."

^ I’m reading this too! Yeah, that first chapter is brutal.

^Despite this technically being a work of fiction I feel like I’m learning a lot and gaining a whole lot of perspective. It’s not an easy read though. It’s a tough pill to swallow to know that a lot of what he writes about is pretty much a foregone conclusion.

^ me too! It feels very educational, but not very encouraging...

In audiobook I’ve just finished The Hound of the Baskervilles which was a fun and atmospheric crime adventure, my favourite Holmes story so far. I’m now pausing my Holmes-a-thon to listen to Ghost Talkers, which is apparently Mary Robinette Kowal’s favourite of her own books.

I have just finished The Empress of Salt and Fortune and am about to start When the Tiger Came Down the Mountain.

As that won't take long at all you have inspired me to read The Ministry for the Future after that as I received it as a present for Christmas. Fun times ahead :-)

^ Glad we could inspire you. I’m about halfway through and it continues to be very good. Robinson’s writing really reminds me of Peter F Hamilton’s in a lot of ways, though much less fantastical. Anyways I think this is one of those books that should be required reading for everyone to really get a perspective on how urgent the problem is and get an idea of the kind of wide, sweeping changes the whole world needs to adopt if we want a chance at saving civilization and the lives of many people and wildlife.

Just finished The Rage of Dragons which I thought was really good and really well-read by the narrator. Closing in on the end of You Sexy Thing which is good enough, but I still haven't found a book that can quite scratch that Firefly itch.

I've finished reading The Sudden Appearance of Hope and The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue which might have been unwise.
They are both about young women who are forgotten when not in the presence of other people. There are differences in how the "invisibility" works and Addie LaRue is possibly immortal.

The Sudden Appearance of Hope is a techno thriller with writng that fizzes.
The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue is essentially a YA Fantasy and I am beginning to really hate YA Fantasy

I read like half of The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue, and while I did not like it much I also don’t think it was really YA fantasy, it was barely even fantasy. It was mostly just a romance novel filled with misery. Half the time the book is all about how miserable her life is without really adding to the story at all. It’s like we get it already, this curse is really miserable, get on with it.

I was doing well, making good progress with Pandora's Star. Then Leviathan Falls came off the library hold list. I couldn't resist switching immediately.

I promise I will get back to Pandora. Later.

Pandora’s Star >>> Leviathan Falls IMO.

So, I finished Fan Fiction. Not bad for a celebrity-written novel, but got the impression that I was supposed to be finding it funnier than I actually did. A bit hard to tell what was meant to be surreal invention and what might be considered “normal for Hollywood”!

Moving on, I’m filling my audiobook time with another St Mary’s novel - A Second Chance. Gotta love a good time travel story.

I have decided it’s time for a full discworld read/re-read, starting right at the beginning with The Colour of Magic

^Oooh! Sounds great. And long. I read them all in a long burst a while back, when about one of every two books I read was Discworld. IIRC took me over a year. But they're soooo great, never to be equaled.

John (Taloni) wrote: "^Oooh! Sounds great. And long. I read them all in a long burst a while back, when about one of every two books I read was Discworld. IIRC took me over a year. But they're soooo great, never to be e..."

I’m expecting it’ll take me at least two years, as there’s lots of other stuff I want to read too!

Finished Ghost Talkers by Mary Robinette Kowal which was an excellent book although some of the character voices on the audiobook weren’t amazing- I think MRK didn’t do herself any favours with the range of accents she had chosen.

I’ll be returning to my Holmes-a-thon with- appropriately enough- The Return of Sherlock Holmes.

Finished Tess of the Road and really liked it. I think I'll read the other ones this author has set in the same world. But first I'll revisit this month's pick and maybe start in on the next one.

I finished The Ministry for the Future and loved it. It’s a difficult read and at times very depressing but ultimately it’s a hopeful book.

Next I’m on to Piranesi.

Should be finishing Velvet Was the Night soon, and starting Imago.

Yet, Moon Witch, Spider King is calling me...it's just been released today.

I'm reading The Eye of the World for the first time. I watched the first season of the Wheel of Time series and now I want to see how they compare.

Ruth wrote: "Finished Ghost Talkers by Mary Robinette Kowal which was an excellent book although some of the character voices on the audiobook weren’t amazing- I think MRK didn’..."

I just discovered The Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmes: War of the Worlds & I want to read them all. Sadly, no audio.

Finished Startide Rising and, oooo-kay...I hated it. In many cases a nostalgia reread adds depth and my own life experience causes me to perceive it differently. This one, I was just puzzled all the way through.

I vaguely recalled it as a space opera with a lot of aliens. Well, it is that. But for a guy who says his books portray "interesting aliens," these weren't. Every one of them was either beaten down like colonial subjects, or an example of abnormal psyche. The aliens were completely, depressingly, human.

Then, the plot betrayals. Hark! A space war! Lots o' ships with different races! Nope, we have to have sections specifically titled "Galactics" with the war in space because the majority of the action takes place with humans, dolphins and one ship crash landed on a planet. Ooooh, good space war!

And then the BIGGEST example of an unfired Chekov's Gun I have ever seen. So big it should be Chekov's Cannon. I didn't know of the disappointment to come when I first read it a few decades ago. That probably allowed me to enjoy it more. This time I knew it was coming. I suppose I'll spoiler protect...(view spoiler)[ How...HOW do you start with the discovery of a two billion year old alien corpse that relates to the "progenitors" theme from the first book, AND THEN DO NOTHING WITH THAT PLOTLINE? Not even a hint. It's just a macguffin. The lack of any closure for that plot point takes away significantly from the book. (hide spoiler)]

And then there's stuff that really doesn't age well. Okay, I get that it was 1983, but sexual harassment is okay? There's an uplifted dolphin that routinely engages in sexual innuendo and unwanted touching with a human female. But that's A-OK apparently. According to another (female) character, she's inadvertently leading him on. See everybody? It's fine, she was asking for it! *heaves*

There's other stuff but none as bad as that. The Library has an entry that implies that evolution is purposeful, and some races had a few remnants that had not yet "finished 'stepping off' into a later stage of evolution. I'll forgive Straczynski for having that plot point in an early Bab5, but not an astrophysicist.

There's some thoroughly predictable chase scenes. A theme of uplifted species wanting to go primitive again. I can't tell if these are more riffs on The Island of Doctor Moreau or Tarzan. Welp, this book has neither the macabre creeping horror of the first nor the unvarnished adventure tale of the second.

I found Startide Rising long, dull and ponderous. I don't know if I can bring myself to read the third. Usually with a well written series outside my wheelhouse, like say Robin Hobb's Assassin books, I find myself wanting to read more. This one, I could barely finish and it's well within my wheelhouse.

If there are any fans of the series here, maybe tell me if the Progenitors storyline EVER gets resolved? That'll help me decide if I will pick up another Uplift book when the current TBR gets lower. Right now the magic eight ball says "all signs point to 'no.'"

Seth wrote: "Finished Tess of the Road and really liked it. I think I'll read the other ones this author has set in the same world. But first I'll revisit this month's pick and maybe start in on..."

The sequel to Tess is coming out later in the year... All good books.

John (Taloni) wrote: "Finished Startide Rising and, oooo-kay...I hated it. In many cases a nostalgia reread adds depth and my own life experience causes me to perceive it differently. This one, I was just puzzled all th..."

I liked it when I was a teen.... I don't recall the progenitors popping up but the memories are quite dim...

Spurred by the coming of the TV series, I started re-reading The Wheel of Time in october, and now I'm onto book 11; one book past where I gave up the first time.
Surprised by how much I'm enjoying it. Some parts more than the first time, others less, and some parts that bothered me before bother me still.

I'm finally getting around to Redshirts. The mystery of away team disasters has my interest piqued. I look forward to seeing how it all ties together. It's a short book, which right now, I'm not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing. I want to know the ending, but do I have to get to it so quickly?

Phillip wrote: " It's a short book,..."

:) It's 306 pages. Fantasy has ruined book length for us when 300 pages is short.

Rick wrote: "Phillip wrote: " It's a short book,..."

:) It's 306 pages. Fantasy has ruined book length for us when 300 pages is short."

True. But those pages have a lot of one word dialogue paragraphs. Anything I can read in under four or five hours counts as a short book. That being said, I don't care for things too long either. I think my sweet spot is something around 100,000 words or six to seven hours of reading.

After finishing Matthew Hughes' Henghis Hapthorn trilogy, I decided to return to Lankhmar with Fritz Leiber's The Swords of Lankhmar.

I realized that there are two new (to me) stories about Cormac and Amelia, secondary characters from Kitty Norville series, so now I'm reading Charmed Waters about transporting a mermaid from middle of the US to the ocean.

Trike! There's a gift for you in Arthur Clarke's "Songs of Distant Earth." From the Foreword:

"Please do not misunderstand me: I have enormously enjoyed the best of Star Trek and the Lucas/Spielberg epics, to mention only the most famous examples of the genre. But these are works of fantasy, and not science fiction in the strict meaning of the term. It now seems almost certain that in the real universe we may never exceed the velocity of light. Even the very closest star systems will always be decades or centuries apart; no Warp Six will every get you from one episode to another in time for next week's installment. The great Producer in the Sky did not arrange his program planning that way."

John (Taloni) wrote: "Trike! There's a gift for you in Arthur Clarke's "Songs of Distant Earth." From the Foreword:

"Please do not misunderstand me: I have enormously enjoyed the best of Star Trek and the Lucas/Spielbe..."

😎

I’ve been slacking off my reading this past couple of weeks because I’ve been glued to the Winter Olympics. I have just finished the first part of my full discworld read, The Colour of Magic which took me ten days- a long time considering it’s less than 300 pages long!

Now I’m starting This Woven Kingdom by Tahereh Mafi which is the Illumicrate book for January. (Illumicrate is a subscription box for book lovers which sends you a fancy hardback edition of a selected book each month, together with some book related swag)

The Apollo Murders by astronaut Chris Hadfield. Solid thriller so far.