April '11 Book List
Been putting off trying to do last month's list. Mostly because of it being over fifty books. The majority of which is from rereading all thirty-five volumes of the Grantville Gazette anthologies at work. Plus the first two Ring of Fire anthologies after getting the 3rd's advanced reader copy as an e-book...
April also saw several instances where I declared myself done with a book series. All three books; Simon R. Green's the Good, the Bad and the Uncanny for the Nightside series and From Hell With Love for the Drood series and L.E. Modesitt Jr's Angels Fall for his Recluse series, because they were just blending together with every other book in the series...
I also reread Dean Koontz's Strangers after finding a copy left behind at work. And man is it even less subtle than I remember from high school or whenever I last read it...
Filled another hole in my Sharpe's collection with Bernard Cornwell's Sharpe's Havoc, which has Sharpe and his men trapped behind enemy lines in Portugal trying to rescue a young heiress...
Also from long-running, though still ongoing, series read the latest from Patricia Brigg's Mercy Thompson series River Marked and Stephen Brust's newest Vlad Taltos book Tiassa. In the first Mercy and her new husband get entangled with a rampaging Native American river monster on their honeymoon. And the latter has Vlad being saved by his ex-wife from a fairly byzantine scheme by House Jhereg to kill him. Oh and finished Dan Abnett's Thunder & Steel Warhammer fantasy anthology. Which was..decent. I'd say it was mostly lacking in having any real stand-out characters to hook into the way his Gaunt's Ghosts books do...
Got a new Alan Dean Foster book in the new cyberpunk style, Sagramanda. Which is set in the 100 million population Asian city of the same name. Following various characters and two major plot points. A stolen bit of revolutionary bio-engineering and a Kali obsessed serial killer. Oh and a man-eating tiger...
Sever new to me writers as well. Starting with Mark Hodder's the Strange Affair of Spring-Heeled Jack a steampunk novel centered around Richard Burton and time travel. Then David Wong's John Dies at the End which is damn funny book that can be thought of as Call of Cthulu meets Clerks...
After that I checked out Brent Weeks' (if only because I keep getting his name mixed up in my mind with Peter V. Brett) the Way of Shadows. A well-done blood and mud fantasy series. Morally grey protagonists, crap sack setting, the whole nine yards. But really my only qualm is that it has another Total Monster bad guy. Who is partly sets things up for the series' Even More Total Monster baddie...
Finally got around to reading Brom's the Child Thief a fairly dark and cynical retelling of "Peter Pan". Which was..all right. It was well done and everything but just didn't catch a hold of me...
And dipped into the roommate's books again to try out Brandon Sanderson (the writer who is finishing out Jordan's Wheel of Time series) with his debut Elantris. A pretty good book and an interesting setting, but definitely feels like a rookie novel...
Ended the month with Janni Lee Simner's sequel to Bones of Faerie, Faerie Winter. Didn't like this one as much. Mostly because I'm so weary of the Total Monster Sociopath bad guy...
Total books: 53
April also saw several instances where I declared myself done with a book series. All three books; Simon R. Green's the Good, the Bad and the Uncanny for the Nightside series and From Hell With Love for the Drood series and L.E. Modesitt Jr's Angels Fall for his Recluse series, because they were just blending together with every other book in the series...
I also reread Dean Koontz's Strangers after finding a copy left behind at work. And man is it even less subtle than I remember from high school or whenever I last read it...
Filled another hole in my Sharpe's collection with Bernard Cornwell's Sharpe's Havoc, which has Sharpe and his men trapped behind enemy lines in Portugal trying to rescue a young heiress...
Also from long-running, though still ongoing, series read the latest from Patricia Brigg's Mercy Thompson series River Marked and Stephen Brust's newest Vlad Taltos book Tiassa. In the first Mercy and her new husband get entangled with a rampaging Native American river monster on their honeymoon. And the latter has Vlad being saved by his ex-wife from a fairly byzantine scheme by House Jhereg to kill him. Oh and finished Dan Abnett's Thunder & Steel Warhammer fantasy anthology. Which was..decent. I'd say it was mostly lacking in having any real stand-out characters to hook into the way his Gaunt's Ghosts books do...
Got a new Alan Dean Foster book in the new cyberpunk style, Sagramanda. Which is set in the 100 million population Asian city of the same name. Following various characters and two major plot points. A stolen bit of revolutionary bio-engineering and a Kali obsessed serial killer. Oh and a man-eating tiger...
Sever new to me writers as well. Starting with Mark Hodder's the Strange Affair of Spring-Heeled Jack a steampunk novel centered around Richard Burton and time travel. Then David Wong's John Dies at the End which is damn funny book that can be thought of as Call of Cthulu meets Clerks...
After that I checked out Brent Weeks' (if only because I keep getting his name mixed up in my mind with Peter V. Brett) the Way of Shadows. A well-done blood and mud fantasy series. Morally grey protagonists, crap sack setting, the whole nine yards. But really my only qualm is that it has another Total Monster bad guy. Who is partly sets things up for the series' Even More Total Monster baddie...
Finally got around to reading Brom's the Child Thief a fairly dark and cynical retelling of "Peter Pan". Which was..all right. It was well done and everything but just didn't catch a hold of me...
And dipped into the roommate's books again to try out Brandon Sanderson (the writer who is finishing out Jordan's Wheel of Time series) with his debut Elantris. A pretty good book and an interesting setting, but definitely feels like a rookie novel...
Ended the month with Janni Lee Simner's sequel to Bones of Faerie, Faerie Winter. Didn't like this one as much. Mostly because I'm so weary of the Total Monster Sociopath bad guy...
Total books: 53