Book Recommendations?

AnimeJ wrote:
mudbunny wrote:

I just finished the first of the books in the Dresden Files, and am looking forward to getting to the bookstore to pick up the others.

These were some of my first purchases on the Kiindle. I started with a sample, and then started buying them 3-4 at a time. Wish I'd bought 12 before they pulled it back though :(

I had it pre-ordered well in advance. They removed the pre-order and said they'd send mail when it actually comes out for Kindle. I should probably give up and get a paper copy, but I do almost all of my reading in ereaders of one sort or another now, so this is mainly just annoying.

ClockworkHouse wrote:
Gravey wrote:

High five to your P&P&Z criticism, I couldn't be bothered to finish it. I've only read P&P, after Strange, and really enjoyed it. But Strange is even slower and denser than Austen; I see what you mean by "too authentic". Honestly, while I'm not deeply read in fantasy (I also think it's more pulp (or Tolkien retreads) than lit, though I like the really good pulp, with none better than Lieber) I think Strange is the best fantasy since The Lord of the Rings. Maybe even better, as it has the edge of coming after post-modernism so it's not tweedy like LOTR.

Damn it. I just sold my copy, and now you're making me want to try it again.

Check to see if your library is a member of the Overdrive service. It's only a 32 hour audiobook.

Oh, and Gravey, if you click this link and listen to the excerpt, you can hear about how they do footnotes. Although it sounds like they are saying there are separate files, when I think I remember this book really just having them embedded.

Hypatian wrote:
AnimeJ wrote:
mudbunny wrote:

I just finished the first of the books in the Dresden Files, and am looking forward to getting to the bookstore to pick up the others.

These were some of my first purchases on the Kiindle. I started with a sample, and then started buying them 3-4 at a time. Wish I'd bought 12 before they pulled it back though :(

I had it pre-ordered well in advance. They removed the pre-order and said they'd send mail when it actually comes out for Kindle. I should probably give up and get a paper copy, but I do almost all of my reading in ereaders of one sort or another now, so this is mainly just annoying.

I've quickly become a convert to the e-reader, if for no other reason than it's easy for everyone in the house to read at the same time without tromping on toes or buying multiple copies. There are still books I'll pick up in hard back for the kids to read, but by and large, things I buy for me are on the Kindle.

Gravey wrote:
ClockworkHouse wrote:

I took multiple running starts at Jonathan Strange before I finally just sold it. I'm not surprised; I'm not a huge fan of that pre-Victorian style in general, so I'm not surprised.

I'm not surprised either, there are a few copies floating around my family and I'm the only one who finished it. In fact, I have two copies myself (softcover and hardcover) I loved it so much, I didn't want it to end. "Running start" is a good way to look at it: if you can't clear page-long footnotes of totally fictional history, it might not be your thing. Good on you for trying though!

I own two copies myself (hardcover and audibook) and bought it on release but have yet to make it all the way through. I actually really like the book but for some reason around 1/2 way through it I always stop reading/listening and when I try to pick it up again have lost track of where I've got to. I'll get through it one day though, especially now I've started listening to audiobooks and podcasts in the 2x mode on my touch

On the positive side I've got to know the start of the book really, really well over the years.

My two go-to suggestions for recent fantasy are "Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell" by Susanna Clarke, and "The Lies of Locke Lamora" by Scott Lynch. One is a dense and deep Jane Austen-ish story of magic and the eponymous and polar opposite practitioners in an alternate 18th-century England. It is utterly, utterly absorbing, strong, delightful, whimsical, and just plain good. The other is a gritty low fantasy caper adventure, with thieves and conmen, dirty cities, swearing, violence, swordfights, deception, all that stuff. Tonnes of fun that one.

If you liked Lies, make sure you check out any of the Vlad Taltos books by Stephen Brust. There are currently 13 with six more planned and each one is top notch. Start with "The Book of Jhereg", a collection of the first in the series (but not *chronologically* first, it's complicated) although they do all stand alone. His style is like like Raymond Chandler channeled via Alexander Dumas, with a touch of Robert Parker (Vlad often waxes lyrical about food and drink.) Highly recommended.

Robear wrote:
My two go-to suggestions for recent fantasy are "Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell" by Susanna Clarke, and "The Lies of Locke Lamora" by Scott Lynch. One is a dense and deep Jane Austen-ish story of magic and the eponymous and polar opposite practitioners in an alternate 18th-century England. It is utterly, utterly absorbing, strong, delightful, whimsical, and just plain good. The other is a gritty low fantasy caper adventure, with thieves and conmen, dirty cities, swearing, violence, swordfights, deception, all that stuff. Tonnes of fun that one.

If you liked Lies, make sure you check out any of the Vlad Taltos books by Stephen Brust. There are currently 13 with six more planned and each one is top notch. Start with "The Book of Jhereg", a collection of the first in the series (but not *chronologically* first, it's complicated) although they do all stand alone. His style is like like Raymond Chandler channeled via Alexander Dumas, with a touch of Robert Parker (Vlad often waxes lyrical about food and drink.) Highly recommended.

But before you read Brust's Taltos books, give Roger Zelazny's Chronicles of Amber a run through; it was a major stylistic inspiration for Brust, and one of the best fantasy reads of all time.

True, although Amber goes out with more a whimper than a bang. I think Brust maintains quality better than Zelazny did with that series, although both are masters of the form.

I think I've read the first couple of Amber books in the big compendium, but I have never gotten back to the rest of them for some reason. They didn't grab me.

I just finished up King's new tome Under the Dome. Amazing book with not a dull moment to be found, King's characterization is at it's best. Probably one of my favorite King books to date.

Robear wrote:

True, although Amber goes out with more a whimper than a bang. I think Brust maintains quality better than Zelazny did with that series, although both are masters of the form.

Zelazny caught a nasty case of death before finishing the series, unfortunately. I came to the series as the Merlin books were being written - they've got a different feel from the Corwin books, but I still enjoy the hell out of them. I do love Brust, though; I'm a couple of books behind in the Vlad series, and I've got the Three Musketeers pastiche sitting on my bookshelf waiting to be read.

Gravey wrote:

My two go-to suggestions for recent fantasy are "Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell" by Susanna Clarke... a dense and deep Jane Austen-ish story of magic and the eponymous and polar opposite practitioners in an alternate 18th-century England. It is utterly, utterly absorbing, strong, delightful, whimsical, and just plain good.

Agree to disagree. I found it wandering, at times incoherent and mostly boring.

I've recently read a couple of China Mieville's books and they're worth a read.

AnimeJ wrote:
mudbunny wrote:

I just finished the first of the books in the Dresden Files, and am looking forward to getting to the bookstore to pick up the others.

These were some of my first purchases on the Kiindle. I started with a sample, and then started buying them 3-4 at a time. Wish I'd bought 12 before they pulled it back though :(

Pulled it back??

ColdForged wrote:
Gravey wrote:

My two go-to suggestions for recent fantasy are "Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell" by Susanna Clarke... a dense and deep Jane Austen-ish story of magic and the eponymous and polar opposite practitioners in an alternate 18th-century England. It is utterly, utterly absorbing, strong, delightful, whimsical, and just plain good.

I've recently read a couple of China Mieville's books and they're worth a read.

Most definitely - I really enjoyed them.

ColdForged wrote:
Gravey wrote:

My two go-to suggestions for recent fantasy are "Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell" by Susanna Clarke... a dense and deep Jane Austen-ish story of magic and the eponymous and polar opposite practitioners in an alternate 18th-century England. It is utterly, utterly absorbing, strong, delightful, whimsical, and just plain good.

Agree to disagree. I found it wandering, at times incoherent and mostly boring.

I'm on ColdForged side here — I'm a big fantasy fan and also a Austen fan but found JS&Mr.N to be a bore. Others love it, though, so YMMV.

ColdForged wrote:
Gravey wrote:

My two go-to suggestions for recent fantasy are "Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell" by Susanna Clarke... a dense and deep Jane Austen-ish story of magic and the eponymous and polar opposite practitioners in an alternate 18th-century England. It is utterly, utterly absorbing, strong, delightful, whimsical, and just plain good.

Agree to disagree. I found it wandering, at times incoherent and mostly boring.

I've recently read a couple of China Mieville's books and they're worth a read.

I second the Mieville suggestion. A clever mix of steampunk, and fantasy. You can't beat that.

Secret Asian Man wrote:

"The Lies of Locke Lamora" by Scott Lynch sounds pretty cool to me. I'll check out Ambercrombie too.

Its not like I didn't like "The Black Company" I just feel it didn't really excel above the rest.

I think a big part of that is that TBC came first, and Glen Cook really influenced a lot of the modern fantasy writers, it might not have excelled above the rest because they were standing on it.

Secret Asian Man wrote:

"The Lies of Locke Lamora" by Scott Lynch sounds pretty cool to me. I'll check out Ambercrombie too.

Its not like I didn't like "The Black Company" I just feel it didn't really excel above the rest.

Definitely check out Lynch and Abercrombie — two of the best new fantasy writers around, imho.

Did you only read the first book of "Black Company?" After my first read of the first book I was luke-warm, but then I recommended it to a friend and re-read it and really got into it. Now I consider the first three books to be one of the best fantasy series I've ever read. I've read all the BC books now and like them (although there are some seriously mediocre books further in), but that initial trilogy holds a special place in my heart. It also got me to run an evil campaign for my DnD group.

Anybody read Naomi Novik's His Majesty's Dragon and the rest of the books in the series? It's another English twist on Fantasy. Set in a world where Dragons exist as basically an air force during the Napoleanic war, which was an interesting concept that immediately got me interested.

Really enjoyed those. Again, I did them in audio format and they have a great English narrator.

Mudbunny, the latest Dresden book was caught up in the Amazon fight with publishers. Pre-orders were canceled and the Kindle edition has not yet surfaced. Butcher is flaming mad but can't do anything about it.

Robear wrote:

Mudbunny, the latest Dresden book was caught up in the Amazon fight with publishers. Pre-orders were canceled and the Kindle edition has not yet surfaced. Butcher is flaming mad but can't do anything about it.

Yep. I didn't preorder it, but had it on a wish list but can't buy it now

On the Abercrombie front... Maybe it was unfair to try to read his first book after coming off The Fionavar Tapestry, but holy hell, I couldn't get through the first chapter. "Hamfisted" is a good descriptor. Don't buy before you try.

Tanglebones wrote:
Robear wrote:

If you liked Lies, make sure you check out any of the Vlad Taltos books by Stephen Brust. There are currently 13 with six more planned and each one is top notch. Start with "The Book of Jhereg", a collection of the first in the series (but not *chronologically* first, it's complicated) although they do all stand alone. His style is like like Raymond Chandler channeled via Alexander Dumas, with a touch of Robert Parker (Vlad often waxes lyrical about food and drink.) Highly recommended.

But before you read Brust's Taltos books, give Roger Zelazny's Chronicles of Amber a run through; it was a major stylistic inspiration for Brust, and one of the best fantasy reads of all time.

Thanks for the suggestions, Robear and Tanglebones, they're going on the list. The Black Company keeps coming up, so I'll put that on my list too. Any good low fantasy that means I don't just re-re-read Lieber's Lankhmar books (not that that's any bad thing).

NSMike wrote:

On the Abercrombie front... Maybe it was unfair to try to read his first book after coming off The Fionavar Tapestry, but holy hell, I couldn't get through the first chapter. "Hamfisted" is a good descriptor. Don't buy before you try.

Yeah, "Best Served Cold" was a total impulse buy for me: I was there, it was there, the cover looked damned awesome (at least it still does, sitting on my bookshelf), and a brief look at the reviews on Amazon seemed promising. If I'm not the only one feeling how I did about Abercrombie, then I'll definitely put his other stuff on the bottom of the to-check-out list.

Jonman wrote:

I'm about halfway through Charles Stross' Accelerando, and it's turning out to be one of the best technological-singularity/posthuman/cyberpunk bits of fiction I've read in a long time. Chock full of hard sci-fi and technobabble-jargon, as well as a bunch of sci-fi ideas that are explored in novel ways (self-aware corporations ftw!)

I just finished Singularity Sky by Stross, based on a recommendation I read last October somewhere around here. It started a little slow for me, but then we got on board the battlecrusier and the techobabble really started to fly! I'm thinking about picking up the sequel, Iron Sunrise but If anyone has any other "space opera" that I should check out I'm in the market

My question to Jonman (or anyone in know) is: Is Accelerando related to the "singularity series" or is it related to his other work?

clever id wrote:

My question to Jonman (or anyone in know) is: Is Accelerando related to the "singularity series" or is it related to his other work?

Accelerando is a stand alone story.

MikeSands wrote:
clever id wrote:

My question to Jonman (or anyone in know) is: Is Accelerando related to the "singularity series" or is it related to his other work?

Accelerando is a stand alone story.

I like to think that Glasshouse is set in the same universe/timeline though:)

Accelerando is a bit of a mess, but I enjoyed it. He never really found a good way to end it.

Sorry if I skimmed over this but I heard some stuff about George R.R. Martin's series "A Song of Ice and Fire"

Anybody reading this series and have an opinion?

For what it's worth, I'm a big Abercrombie fan and found "Best Served Cold" to be an unsatisfying book — it felt forced and lacked the spark of his original series

Secret Asian Man wrote:

Sorry if I skimmed over this but I heard some stuff about George R.R. Martin's series "A Song of Ice and Fire"

Anybody reading this series and have an opinion?

I'm not sure if you're kidding or not, but I'll assume you're not.

It's a great series (one of the great fantasy series, really), but it's not finished, and you should prepare for long, long waits between volumes. It's the sort of grim, violent fantasy that everyone is trying to write these days, but it has a core of fantastic characters that keep the story from becoming overwhelmingly bleak.

ClockworkHouse wrote:
Secret Asian Man wrote:

Sorry if I skimmed over this but I heard some stuff about George R.R. Martin's series "A Song of Ice and Fire"

Anybody reading this series and have an opinion?

I'm not sure if you're kidding or not, but I'll assume you're not.

It's a great series (one of the great fantasy series, really), but it's not finished, and you should prepare for long, long waits between volumes. It's the sort of grim, violent fantasy that everyone is trying to write these days, but it has a core of fantastic characters that keep the story from becoming overwhelmingly bleak.

What Clockwork said - also, unlike some other authors (Robin Hobb, early China Mieville), Martin genuinely seems to like his characters - the bad situations they get into make sense, rather than feeling like arbitrary maliciousness. If you don't like the first book, though, you probably won't like the rest of it.