|
Post by wildfire2099 on Dec 4, 2020 11:18:28 GMT -5
Before the Are Hanged (First Law #2) Joe Abercrombie
With so much set up on the 1st book... this book just HAD to have more plot movement that the typical 2nd book of a trilogy. And it did... just.
There are now just three threads to the story... Bayaz's quest, the war in the north, and the war in the south... that's good. 3 threads is plenty... the 5 or 6 of the first book were simply too scattered.
There was a battle, but not a decisive one.. not surprising for a 2nd book. There's some added intrigue that paid off some hints form the first book that were not surprising, but are intriguing.. you don't get mysterious bankers as antagonists too often.
Overall though, the plot still has far too go to make sense of everything... most importantly... who are the good guys? Yes, we've been hearing the story from the Union, but are they really? Especially after the events in this book, it seems maybe we'll have to look elsewhere for the heroes. I think that might be the thing that keeps me from really giving the series glowing remarks so far. I get it, that's the trend in storytelling.. everyone is shades of grey and good and evil are what you make of it. Great, thought provoing stuff in it's place. But when that's all there is? Sometimes gray can become a confusing muddle that just becomes uninteresting.
So often, series like this talk about the plight of the common man, and how it doesn't matter who wins. If that's the case, why am I reading the book? There can be TOO much of a good thing, and there's something to be said for having a clear villain to fight.
The characters continue to be the strength.. I still REALLY like Glotka, who would think a torturer could be such a humanizing character? I'm looking greatly forward to the group that went on Bayaz's quest to go back to interacting with the other main players.. that has been too long in coming... it seems the main point of that part of the story was an excuse for historical exposition. I appreciate good world building, but it can be done in a better way than this.
Logen Ninefingers continues to be an well done Conan analog who I REALLY want to get back to the North and sort things out... he's been totally wasted on the quest... almost as if they just needed him to be out of the way to develop the others and be ready for his return.
I've heard from some that the 3rd book is where it all brilliantly comes together, and others who say it ended with a dull whimper... I can see a few different paths. That's a good thing, but if it's the one I expect, I'll admit to being a bit disappointed. We'll see in book three!
|
|
|
Post by Slam_Bradley on Dec 4, 2020 12:14:32 GMT -5
The Pale Criminal - Philip Kerr
It's 1938. Nazi troops are threatening the Sudetenland. And Bernie Gunther has been hired to stop the blackmail of a rich young publisher with the love letters he sent to his male therapist. That case, however, takes a back seat when Gunther is drafted back in to Reinhard Heydrich's state security force to solve the murder of a number of young girls who are the very essence of the "Aryan ideal." The hunt for the killer includes a trip to Nuremburg to look in to Julius Streicher, publisher of Der Sturmer, into the crazy occult underbelly of leading Nazis and to the planning of the Kristalnacht. Gunther remains Gunther. A quality detective and a very flawed human being. But not a Nazi. And Kerr does a fine job of treading a fine line in writing about a terrifying time period in a country gone mad. The arbitrariness, brutality and hypocrisy of the ruling regime is displayed here. This book showed Kerr's growth as an author over the the first volume. It's a good read.
|
|
|
Post by Slam_Bradley on Dec 11, 2020 12:32:06 GMT -5
The Lady in the Morgue by Jonathan Latimer
Bill Crane is back for a third case. An unidentified suicide is in Chicago's morgue. Crane is dispatched to watch the body until it can be identified by a client. But the body disappears and a morgue-worker is killed. Now the Chicago police think that Crane may be the murderer and a body snatcher, two sets of mobsters want the body back from Crane, and the client wants to know if the dead woman is his sister. So Crane and his fellow operatives have to try to find the body...in between a whole lot of drinking. The plot on this one is byzantine. And frankly, I question the way that Crane comes to his conclusion. But it's still a fun read, not quite as good as book one, but much better than book two. This one does a good job of treading the line between hard-boiled and tipsy humor. It falls back on the cozy ending of gathering all the suspects together so Crane can have a big reveal. But it's a lot of fun along the way. Fair warning. Crane and his other operative drink a LOT. And this was written in 1936 with a full dose of misogyny and racism.
|
|
|
Post by Deleted on Dec 14, 2020 6:11:45 GMT -5
Reading thousand page installments of a monster fantasy epic takes some time. It took nearly five weeks to finish, but I finally finished Book Four of Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time-The Shadow Rising this evening/morning. I think this has become my favorite of the series so far. The first book had been my favorite since I first read it back in the 90s, and Shadow Rising was the only one to challenge it back in the day, but this time it surpassed the initial offering, in large part because of Perrin's story in the Two Rivers, as Perrin has become my favorite character in the series, and because of the time spent with the Aiel-I just find their culture fascinating and so well developed with lots of subtleties and nuances despite surface appearances. The book took a long time to set up the three separate narratives it would follow, with the initial third of the book having to serve as both set up for those and dénouement for the climax of the previous volume. In each of the previous volumes, there was a pattern of gathering the cast, setting up the various paths, splitting the party so to speak and then bringing them all back together at the resolution. The next volume would then pick up with the aftermath of the resolution with the cast together and then split them up again until the resolution of that book. Book four breaks that formula a bit. It still sets out three distinct but interwoven stories all leading towards resolutions, but instead of wrapping it all up together and bringing the cast back together at the end, it leaves them separated with each path coming to a climax, but not wrapping it all up in a neat bow this time. The three paths-Rand with the Aiel, Perrin in the Two Rivers and Elayne and Nynaeve in Tanchico hunting the Black Ajah-all are interesting stories and show the breadth and scope of the world and the epic nature of the conflict being played out, and each comes to a climax and some kind of resolution, but none is a true ending-The Perrin story comes closest to having a final resolution, but only for the immediate conflict in it, there's still plenty more to explore there. Of the three, the Tanchico plot thread was my least favorite, despite involving Thom Merlin (who was my favorite character in the series in my initial reading of the books I got through). I find Nynaeve to be a bit annoying at times and of all the cast, she has shown the least character growth so far. I've come to appreciate her more this read through, but it takes more effort from me to get through the chapters following her story than it does the others, and I tended to slow down and take more breaks when I was in a cluster of chapters devoted to that storyline than I did the other two, which I tended to burn through quickly to get to what happened next. I think I'm going to take a bit of a break and read a shorter book or two before diving into book 5, which is another near 1000 page epic, which I anticipate starting sometime Christmas Eve or Christmas Day, as I have those two days off. -M
|
|
|
Post by Roquefort Raider on Dec 14, 2020 10:43:06 GMT -5
That's one sweet title design.
|
|
Confessor
CCF Mod Squad
Not Bucky O'Hare!
Posts: 9,627
|
Post by Confessor on Dec 14, 2020 13:10:11 GMT -5
That's one sweet title design. I've had this on my "to read" pile since last Christmas. I'm away for a few days in the run up to the festive season and I'm planning to start Dune then. BTW, this is the cover of the paperback version I have...
|
|
|
Post by Roquefort Raider on Dec 14, 2020 13:35:07 GMT -5
That's one sweet title design. I've had this on my "to read" pile since last Christmas. I'm away for a few days in the run up to the festive season and I'm planning to start Dune then. BTW, this is the cover of the paperback version I have... Lovely... The colour palette is gorgeous. I remember when I first read Dune, back in... lemme think... (I had just bought Time Warp #2, so that would be...) late 1979. The novel had a formidable reputation, so I had delayed picking it up at the pubic library despite being a huge SF fan (I was always a little shy when it comes to "great" books). But came a day I had to wait for a ride back home, and the library was right there, so I thought I'd maybe just read the first few pages. I got instantly hooked!!! I don't want to jinx your experience by overselling it, but that novel absolutely deserves the praise it's got over the decades. The only aspect that saddens me is that new Dune readers will already have been exposed to many of its ideas through later works, ones that helped themselves to its treasure trove of concepts.
|
|
|
Post by Slam_Bradley on Dec 14, 2020 13:44:44 GMT -5
I've tried maybe a dozen times to read Dune. I've never made it more than 100 pages in to it. I find it completely unreadable.
|
|
Confessor
CCF Mod Squad
Not Bucky O'Hare!
Posts: 9,627
|
Post by Confessor on Dec 14, 2020 14:13:05 GMT -5
I've tried maybe a dozen times to read Dune. I've never made it more than 100 pages in to it. I find it completely unreadable. I know people who say that about The Lord of the Rings too, and I think that is just an incredibly good book. But I've often read about Dune being described as "the sci-fi LOTRs", so maybe it has a similarly "Marmite" aspect to it?
|
|
|
Post by Slam_Bradley on Dec 14, 2020 14:16:46 GMT -5
I've tried maybe a dozen times to read Dune. I've never made it more than 100 pages in to it. I find it completely unreadable. I know people who say that about The Lord of the Rings too, and I think that is just an incredibly good book. But I've often read about Dune being described as "the sci-fi LOTRs", so maybe it has a similarly "Marmite" aspect to it? I used to read LoTR every 18 months or so. The last time I tried I stalled out on it at Tom Bombadil and never tried again. My reading habits have changed a lot over the years. But my inability to read Dune remains constant.
|
|
|
Post by beccabear67 on Dec 14, 2020 14:56:07 GMT -5
Dune starts off with a lot of dry (heh) background exposition for the first quarter or third of the book, hard to plow through as you are bombarded with odd named people and places before you really care about any of them. Robert Heinlein was the early master at starting the action on page one, one of the great page turner authors alongside Kipling, ERB and H. Rider Haggard! If you've read a lot of the Victorian era things by Lord Dunsany or William Morris maybe you are more prepared for the drier Dune, or all the detail put into Lord Of The Rings.
|
|
|
Post by Slam_Bradley on Dec 14, 2020 15:10:46 GMT -5
Blood and Thunder by Max Allan Collins Collins has Nate Heller take on the Huey Long assassination. Heller is hired to deliver a birthday present to Long. It's a bulletproof vest offered because of credible death threats against Long. But the Kingfish is having none of it. He does, however, hire Heller to investigate the threats and to add to his squad of bodyguards because Long took a shining to Heller when he was in Chicago a few years prior and Heller gave him police protection. Of course Heller looks in to the threats which gives us a look into Long, his Louisiana and his enemies. And of course, Long is assassinated while Heller is a few floors below in the Louisiana capitol building. That would seem to end the matter, but Heller is contacted months later by Long's widow, Senator Rose Long. Huey had an insurance policy with a double-indemnity clause and Rose and the insurance company agree on Heller as a neutral arbitrator/investigator to determine if the Kingfish was assassinated or if the death was accidental. This leads Heller back in to the underworld of Long's Louisiana to poke in to a case that most people don't think needs poking. This one was a bit different than the average Heller for me. Still a fun read. But, usually I find the first half a slow burn and Collins really turns it up in the second half. This time I was enthralled by the first half and the second drug a bit. Also, in this one, Collins invents his own outcome/conspiracy for the Long assassination. Not that there haven't been alternative explanations to Carl Weiss assassinating Long, mostly hinging on him dying from friendly fire from his many bodyguards. And there's a bit of that, but Collins puts a much deeper conspiracy than that. Another good entry in an always fun series.
|
|
|
Post by Roquefort Raider on Dec 14, 2020 15:46:11 GMT -5
Dune starts off with a lot of dry (heh) background exposition for the first quarter or third of the book, hard to plow through as you are bombarded with odd named people and places before you really care about any of them. Robert Heinlein was the early master at starting the action on page one, one of the great page turner authors alongside Kipling, ERB and H. Rider Haggard! If you've read a lot of the Victorian era things by Lord Dunsany or William Morris maybe you are more prepared for the drier Dune, or all the detail put into Lord Of The Rings. I see what you did there!!!
|
|
|
Post by berkley on Dec 14, 2020 17:04:38 GMT -5
I've tried maybe a dozen times to read Dune. I've never made it more than 100 pages in to it. I find it completely unreadable. I know people who say that about The Lord of the Rings too, and I think that is just an incredibly good book. But I've often read about Dune being described as "the sci-fi LOTRs", so maybe it has a similarly "Marmite" aspect to it? I read it at I think just about the perfect age for me, around 14 or 15, 1976 or '77, and the back cover of my paperback edition had a blurb from Arthur C. Clarke that said, "I know nothing comparable to it except The Lord of the Rings".
I think what Clarke had in mind, even more than the epic scope of the story-telling, was the world-building, the sheer depth and breadth of the background Herbert created for the setting of his novel, the sense of a deep, richly detailed history that gave a feeling of weight and texture to the characters and events of the story told in the novel itself.
And though it may be less obvious now that every two-bit fantasy trilogy tries or purports to do the same thing, I think Clarke was right. That doesn't mean that Herbert went to quite the same lengths Tolkien did (e.g. creating an entire language), but I think he came closer to achieving a similar kind of effect than anyone else in SF had done up to that time and probably since, though of course these things are always open to argument.
|
|
|
Post by wildfire2099 on Dec 15, 2020 23:52:07 GMT -5
Last Argument of Kings Joe Abercrombie (First Law #3)
It's funny, before I started this 3rd book, I was reading comments and such on the 2nd one, I and made one myself that I didn't think the series was all THAT dark. It's almost like the author heard me, and thought... oh, really?
Things definitely came together in the end, more or less. Though there were still a few bits that went unexplained...like why the heck the whole plot in the North even existed, other than to have an excuse for the author to have his barbarian in the main cast.
There were certainly alot of twists... most were pretty predictable, but not everything, so that was good. There were alot of skipped fight scenes, which is probably just as well, but I would have likely to see different ones then were shown for sure.
Overall, I'm glad a read the series at last, and I may at some point check out the stand alones... the world is a pretty interesting one that could have some interesting corners to peak in.
|
|