Book List Meme Nov. '11
Opened the month up with Discord's Apple by Carrie Vaughn, a mix of near future fall of civilization and ancient myth. And while I enjoyed Vaughn's modern paranormal werewolf call-in radio show host series, this one just didn't work for me. I don't know if it was the set up or the asshole Greek gods, but I just didn't care for it...
I was much more pleased with the second Vaughn book I read in the month, After the Golden Age, a supers book about the non-powered daughter of a super-hero couple. Not a perfect book, but enjoyable...
Got the final Beka Cooper book by Tamora Pierce, Mastiff early in the month as well. A bit more morose in tone than the previous ones, but overall a fine ending to the trilogy with Beka and her law dog partners being brought in to track down a kidnapped prince by a very ruthless and arrogant cabal...
After that I ended up buying a whole mess more of David Weber's "Honor Harrington" series. Flag in Exile, Honor Among Enemies, In Enemy Hands, Echoes of Honor, Ashes of Victory and War of Honor. So books five thru nine in series. I do enjoy Weber, but he's got a some noticeable writing tics. As I mentioned last month, he's got a tendency to do huge info-dumps of expository dialogue or just description. Which I'll admit on a few occasions led to some "don't care, don't care skim skim skim" during bits of world building or tech description. Especially the later. Really I'm more space opera than hard scifi so I don't really care most of the time how the widget works. I'm fine with a bit of Trek techno-babble to hand wave things. Still, I don't doubt there are plenty out there who love getting the details. And another quirk of Weber's is related to that. He can give a seemingly unneeded amount of back-story to minor characters. Many of whom end up very, very dead within pages. Still, I'm within a couple books of being caught up on the main series and I'm tracking down both various side-books, collaborations and anthologies AND dipping into some of his other series so its not like its a huge turn off for me...
And while skimming thru Baen's e-book selection (specifically the free section) I came across the Baen 2011 Free Short Story anthology. A nice collection, including two scifi writers I hadn't heard of before, Sharon Lee & Steve Miller's "Liaden Universe" and Michael Z. Williamson's "Freehold", whose stories intrigued me enough that I'll be checking them out in more detail at some point...
Sadly the same isn't true of Dani & Eyton Kollin's the Unincorporated Man. Borrowed that one from the roommate's collection and its story about a future where every person in a publicly trade corporation and what happens to that society when an unincorporated cryogenic revival is dropped into it didn't work for me. Which means I'll be giving the other two books in the series a pass...
Happily though, my next book was a new "Shadows of the Apt" book by Adrian Tchaikovsky. Heirs of the Blade follows several of the characters in the Dragonfly Commonweal lands. Very enjoyable, though a bit of a bridging book setting things up for the renewal of the threat of the Wasp Empire...
Also got a new Grantville Gazette in November, the 38th. Which reminds me, I really need to get around to transferring all the Baen e-books I bought that month to my computer so I can transfer them to my Kindle...
The roommate also pushed Jim Butcher's Spider-Man novel, the Darkest Hours, on me and I was more than pleasantly surprised by it. Its set sometime during the J.M.S. run on the comic but before Spidey joins up with the Avengers. Though his use of both M.J. and the marriage, as well as a partial face turn by the Rhino, makes me even more annoyed with "One More Day" and parts of "The Gauntlet" all over again. But for Spider-Man fans who have avoiding the comics out of disgust, this is an excellent way to get a Spidey fix...
Finally got around to picking up a copy of the Lois McMaster Bujold novel, Falling Free. Which is an early book by her that serves as something of a prequel to the Vorkosigan books. A bit rough in spots, but nice...
Got the second of Larry Correia's "Grimnoir" series, Spellbound. Which are about magically powered super-humans in the 1920s. Very pulpy and fun, though Correia is a bit of a gun fetishest. Not as much here as in his "Monster Hunter" series, but there is still some of it...
Also on the always meant to get around to reading list is Jane Lindskold's Brother to Dragons, Companion to Owls. If only because I love that title. Which made me think this would be a fantasy book. But its actually a dystopian near future one with a bit of psychic powers thrown into the mix...
Then it was Mira Grant's second zombies vs. bloggers "Newsflesh" books, Deadline. Which follows up on the conspiracy exposed in Feed and takes things to a whole new level of Oh Fuck Me. I'm pretty sparing with getting into zombie stuff, because it honestly gives me screwed up dreams, but Grant is a definite keeper...
And then I finished up the month with an early fantasy book by Patricia Briggs, Masque and the sequel to it she wrote much later, Wolfesbane. Even with some re-editing for a new release the first book is very much a first novel. Not a bad book about mercenary/spy/mage girl versus the Giant Evil Wizard, but definitely full of some well-used fantasy tropes and rough first-book-out-of-college edges...
Total books: 20
I was much more pleased with the second Vaughn book I read in the month, After the Golden Age, a supers book about the non-powered daughter of a super-hero couple. Not a perfect book, but enjoyable...
Got the final Beka Cooper book by Tamora Pierce, Mastiff early in the month as well. A bit more morose in tone than the previous ones, but overall a fine ending to the trilogy with Beka and her law dog partners being brought in to track down a kidnapped prince by a very ruthless and arrogant cabal...
After that I ended up buying a whole mess more of David Weber's "Honor Harrington" series. Flag in Exile, Honor Among Enemies, In Enemy Hands, Echoes of Honor, Ashes of Victory and War of Honor. So books five thru nine in series. I do enjoy Weber, but he's got a some noticeable writing tics. As I mentioned last month, he's got a tendency to do huge info-dumps of expository dialogue or just description. Which I'll admit on a few occasions led to some "don't care, don't care skim skim skim" during bits of world building or tech description. Especially the later. Really I'm more space opera than hard scifi so I don't really care most of the time how the widget works. I'm fine with a bit of Trek techno-babble to hand wave things. Still, I don't doubt there are plenty out there who love getting the details. And another quirk of Weber's is related to that. He can give a seemingly unneeded amount of back-story to minor characters. Many of whom end up very, very dead within pages. Still, I'm within a couple books of being caught up on the main series and I'm tracking down both various side-books, collaborations and anthologies AND dipping into some of his other series so its not like its a huge turn off for me...
And while skimming thru Baen's e-book selection (specifically the free section) I came across the Baen 2011 Free Short Story anthology. A nice collection, including two scifi writers I hadn't heard of before, Sharon Lee & Steve Miller's "Liaden Universe" and Michael Z. Williamson's "Freehold", whose stories intrigued me enough that I'll be checking them out in more detail at some point...
Sadly the same isn't true of Dani & Eyton Kollin's the Unincorporated Man. Borrowed that one from the roommate's collection and its story about a future where every person in a publicly trade corporation and what happens to that society when an unincorporated cryogenic revival is dropped into it didn't work for me. Which means I'll be giving the other two books in the series a pass...
Happily though, my next book was a new "Shadows of the Apt" book by Adrian Tchaikovsky. Heirs of the Blade follows several of the characters in the Dragonfly Commonweal lands. Very enjoyable, though a bit of a bridging book setting things up for the renewal of the threat of the Wasp Empire...
Also got a new Grantville Gazette in November, the 38th. Which reminds me, I really need to get around to transferring all the Baen e-books I bought that month to my computer so I can transfer them to my Kindle...
The roommate also pushed Jim Butcher's Spider-Man novel, the Darkest Hours, on me and I was more than pleasantly surprised by it. Its set sometime during the J.M.S. run on the comic but before Spidey joins up with the Avengers. Though his use of both M.J. and the marriage, as well as a partial face turn by the Rhino, makes me even more annoyed with "One More Day" and parts of "The Gauntlet" all over again. But for Spider-Man fans who have avoiding the comics out of disgust, this is an excellent way to get a Spidey fix...
Finally got around to picking up a copy of the Lois McMaster Bujold novel, Falling Free. Which is an early book by her that serves as something of a prequel to the Vorkosigan books. A bit rough in spots, but nice...
Got the second of Larry Correia's "Grimnoir" series, Spellbound. Which are about magically powered super-humans in the 1920s. Very pulpy and fun, though Correia is a bit of a gun fetishest. Not as much here as in his "Monster Hunter" series, but there is still some of it...
Also on the always meant to get around to reading list is Jane Lindskold's Brother to Dragons, Companion to Owls. If only because I love that title. Which made me think this would be a fantasy book. But its actually a dystopian near future one with a bit of psychic powers thrown into the mix...
Then it was Mira Grant's second zombies vs. bloggers "Newsflesh" books, Deadline. Which follows up on the conspiracy exposed in Feed and takes things to a whole new level of Oh Fuck Me. I'm pretty sparing with getting into zombie stuff, because it honestly gives me screwed up dreams, but Grant is a definite keeper...
And then I finished up the month with an early fantasy book by Patricia Briggs, Masque and the sequel to it she wrote much later, Wolfesbane. Even with some re-editing for a new release the first book is very much a first novel. Not a bad book about mercenary/spy/mage girl versus the Giant Evil Wizard, but definitely full of some well-used fantasy tropes and rough first-book-out-of-college edges...
Total books: 20