ATTN paper book & movies-on-disc lovers with a Barnes & Noble nearby. Just received an email from them announcing a 40% Off One Item discount 1 Sep thru the close of business 5 Sep. The discount is for the highest price item on a ticket, and excludes stuff like Nook products. Far as know this is the best general purpose discount I've seen them offer. (Buy two get one free offers can beat it assuming you shop carefully and actually want and/or need all three items on the ticket.) Already printed out my coupon, though I don't know that I'll be heading into town between now and then.

I'm currently working my way through the Dragonbone Chair book one of the Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn trilogy, as it was recently recommended to me.

And it is, so far(and I'm over 3/4 of the way through it), a damn good book. I like the characters, I like the story, I like the setting, with one reservation, and the book has done a great job of grabbing me.

But there is still that one reservation, which really kills things for me whenever it rears its ugly head. When it does, immersion breaks, and suddenly I'm reading a book, not enjoying a story.

The problem is the religions. The dominant religion, at least as it's been presented, is a particularly uninspired and unimaginative knock-off of Christianity, which the author hasn't even attempted to hide. And then you get a song that turns out to be about an old god that was displaced by the new religion, Udun: a one-eyed old man, who carries a staff, and wears wide-brimmed hat and a cloak. He even has a day named after him; Udunsday.

It's just jarring to see this fantasy setting undermined everytime religion gets brought into it, both by the lack of imagination and the absence of any attempt from the author to hide that lack.

I'm gonna keep reading, because everything else is great, but there is that fly in the ointment...

Well, I've finished reading Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn.

To be honest, I'm not particularly impressed by it.

I'll admit that I kind of blitzed it, but the author just seemed to drag things out by not sharing any information. The heroes had no real plan, just a vague prophecy, so their plan was literally "gather the three magic swords". They had a goal, but no idea what to do once they'd attained that goal(and we learn early on that one of those three is held by one of the villains...). There are nothing but hints of what the villain's up to, and the heroes don't learn it until more than 80% of the way through the third book. The villain's plans barely even move forward in any visible fashion for almost as long. And the warning given in the first book, and repeated numerous times throughout the trilogy, has a similarly late payoff. In fact the author even goes so far as to tease us with a big reveal of the enemy's plans, only to have that character killed moments before she could begin.

It just made the ending so unsatisfying, and somewhat rushed. The heroes never really knew what was going on until too late, never knew what they could actually do to stop the villain, and seemed to triumph as much because they are the heroes as anything else.

And don't get me started on the lengths the author goes to to pull out the happy ending. That's just obnoxious if you ask me.

Most interesting. I obviously have a much higher opinion of the series, while admitting it is not without its faults. To each his or her on, I reckon. I decided to dig up my copy of volume one and make it a potential reread candidate. Took me forever to find it. (It was not with the remaining volumes, which I spotted within seconds of beginning the search.) The inside cover tells me I've read the book(s) five times beginning 1990, most recently mid 2008.

While searching for Dragonbone Chair I unintentionally unearthed The Fifth Sorceress from the depths obscurity to which it was consigned. By the time I reached its end mid 2003 I had long since dubbed it the worst fantasy I'd ever read, a title it retains to this day. Thing is, I no longer recall why I deem it so. That being the case, it too has become a reread contender, and my the gods have mercy on my soul.

For now I continue my second reading of Samuel R. Delany's Neveryona, or The Tale of Signs and Cities. It's been slow going at times, a little too much philosophizing (though that's not wholly accurate) with little action to keep things moving. It is, despite that, very fine writing, with much to praise. (To be fair, most of the first book and much of this one provide a satisfactory melding of "philosophizing" and character development that keeps me hooked.)

Don't get me wrong, there's plenty that I like in the books: I love the setting(outside of the whole religion thing), I like most of the characters, I love the Sithi, the trolls, and the differences in the various branches of mankind, and I even like the slow start to the first book. I just hate some of what he did with it, with the bulk of that reserved for the whole "false messenger" debacle. He was throwing that at the reader for something like two and a half books before actually doing anything with it, and when he does, it wasn't even about the messenger!

I'll no doubt reread them sooner or later, and it'll probably fare a little better from not being blitzed.

For now though, onto the Mistborn Trilogy

At 1025 today, during lunch, I completed a reread The Guns of '62, of volume two of Image of War: 1861-1865, a large format series focusing on photographs from the American Civil War. I'm reading the series at the kitchen table during meals, the books being too heavy and bulky for my decrepit self to read laying on my back in bed.

Alternating between my new book, third in its series, Johannes Cabel and the Fear Institute. Surmised as 'A necromancer of some little infamy joins a band of fools into the realm of dreams to hunt fear itself.' Dark comedy set in a steampunk-ish Victorian period. The other book I'm trying to get back into off n on is the first volume of A Song of Ice and Fire, A Game of Thrones.

WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOT !!!!!!!!!!

At 2254 yesterday evening, 16 Sep 2016 I concluded my second reading of Samuel R. Delany's Neveryona, or The Tale of Signs and Cities. I must admit it was a struggle at times. Page after page after page of what I'll term intellectual discourse. Boy oh boy can his characters wax philosophic, in ways that, to me at any rate, can seem at odds with the books' dawn-of-civilization setting. (The series' faux (?) backstory is that it based on a fragmentary (Earth) manuscript whose original source may harken back as early as 6000BC.) That said, much of the book keeps this, again my opinion, over civilized babble in balance with character and plot development. At those times the book is quite enjoyable.

I have somewhat reluctantly decided to continue on with the next volume, Flight from Neveryon. This will be its first complete reading, assuming I make it to the end. An old bookmark shows that during my first attempt, likely very early 1998, I made it to page 334/5 before, for whatever reason, throwing in the towel.

I do not own the fourth and concluding volume.

I abandoned Flight from Neveryon for now and am 83 pages into Patricia A. McKillip's The Riddle Master of Hed, a book I've read three times, first during June 1986, most recently March 1999.

Well, I just finished the First Law trilogy.

To be honest, I think it's the only trilogy I bought recently that I won't be rereading.

It reminds me of Michael Bay films; lots of big dramatic moments, so many that you go numb to them after a while. And Abercombie doesn't reserve those moments for the main plot, he throws them at everything, regardless of how insignificant to the plot it actually is. So for instance; a man doesn't just learn the woman he's interested in doesn't have that same interest in him, he finds her screwing another guy. And to maximise the moment, there's nothing beforehand to suggest that this would happen. Because these moments come in two flavours: you either see them coming miles away, or they come out of nowhere without anything to set them up.

And the outcome of these moments is always bad, to some extent or other, just to make sure that everything is tainted. So the trilogy plays out as you watch his characters dragged down an ever-descending spiral, with each big moment tailored to do nothing more than delay their progress, for a moment, never to reverse it. And after a while it just gets tiresome. I stopped caring about what happened to the characters, because the downward trend was so blatant that there were only ever two options: death, or to move on to another crappy situation. There was no-one to root for, to get behind, because you knew it would go badly for all of them. Save one.

If you want to see a collection of characters thrown through a grimdark meatgrinder in good setup, then this is the book for you. If, on the other hand, you think such things are better used sparingly, to season a story, then I'd suggest giving it a miss.

"Tales From The Pen Of A Drama Queen," by Joe Abercrombie ...

Heh, more or less

I've now started reading The Sword of Shannara, by Terry Brooks. Nine chapters in, and it's pretty good so far. I can't help noticing how much they changed with the TV show though.

At 1552 this afternoon I concluded my fourth reading of Patricia A. McKillip's The Riddle Master of Hed. I didn't recall enough of it to spoil things. Quite enjoyable. I'll begin the second book, Heir to Sea and Fire, by day's end.



I seriously considered buying First Law when it was newly published. Can't recall why I didn't. Gotta admit that several well reputed fantasy novels I bought during that period ended up not tickling my fancy. As to Shannara, I read the original series and a number of follow-ups. I found the books uneven in quality, some being engrossing, some blase. It's been a LONG time, but if memory serves I was very favorably impressed with the original series second volume.

At 1204 this afternoon I concluded my fourth reading of Patricia A. McKillip's Heir of Sea and Fire. Gonna start in on the third and final volume, Harpist in the Wind, by day's end.

I finished reading the Elric novels a few days ago. They were a pretty good read, but not great. Moorcock makes a lot of technical mistakes that I just cannot avoid noticing. Head-hopping and telling vs. showing are the two worst - and continual - offenders. He clearly does not know have any idea what to do with a female character, aside from proving that his hero is heterosexual of course, and to serve as damsels in distress.

But all in all they still made for fun reading. There is still a freshness to the character of Elric, who is definitely not cut from the cloth of most fantasy heroes, or even anti-heroes. The way his sword Stormbringer serves as an allegory for addiction was also very sharply in focus for me this time around.

Now I stared Gate of Ivrel, the first book of C. J. Cherryh's Morgaine cycle. So far I am liking it. It is interesting because it is not told from the point of view of the protagonist - Morgaine - but rather from that of her henchman Vanye. That helps to keep Morgaine feeling mysterious, so that we keep guessing about who and what she really is, which is rather nice. So far so good.

I've read a good many of Moorcock's various "Eternal Champion" series. To me their strength lies not in the quality of individual titles, which is not always of the highest order, or even individual series, but the overall arching concepts that tie them together. The champion, the Lords of Chaos and Law, the Balance, the multiverse, the Conjunction of the Million Spheres, and so on. For whatever reason I've not been able to drum up enough enthusiasm to re-read the Elric books in years.

I was rather taken with Cherryh's Morgaine cycle when first read ages ago. Not so much during its most recent re-read, though I still enjoyed it.

I like that Moorcock's characters question things such as their role in the universe, whether or not they truly have free will, or are they predestined to walk a path that they cannot change? It helps brings them down to earth, in spite of how exotic and world-shattering the events in their stories are.

Well, I blitzed The Sword of Shannara. It was a pretty solid book, liked how it ended and everything. I only really had two problems with it: The lack of female characters(I think the only one was more a plot point than a character), and the way that the fights got rather tiresome. Apparently Allanon lucked into getting the greatest fighters in the world.

I'm currently most of the way through The Elfstones of Shannara, and have long since given up trying to track it along the tv series. The book is better, for the most part. There are only two things that are really disappointing me at present: Amberle, who's a little bland, and in my opinion totally upstaged by Eretria, which kind of bugs me as an abuse of the whole "chosen one" deal. But what I find really annoying is the way the author refers to certain characters. When not referred to by name, Wil Ohmsford is "The Valeman", Amberle is "The Elven Girl", and Eretria is "The Rover Girl". I don't recall ages being mentioned, so it kind of feels like he's devaluing Amberle and Eretria somewhat by calling them girls. And potentially making it kind of awkward with the way they both seem to really like Wil.

But apart from that, it's a good book, and I'm enjoying it so far.

At 0055 this morning I concluded my fourth reading of Patricia A. McKillip's Harpist in the Wind, third and final volume of The Quest of the Riddlemaster. As of now the series is tied with two fantasy novels by Guy Gavriel Kay for my non-prestigious "Best Re-read of the Year" award. Both authors might be out of the running by year's end, but I suspect it'll be hard to displace 'em.

No idea what I'll read next.

I've finished The Elfstones of Shannara, which ended better than the TV series did. A solid enough book.

So, onto The Wishsong of Shannara, which is in some ways better than The Elfstones, but in some ways is worse. I'm liking the side of the book that deals with Jair: He's got a fairly clear notion of what he needs to do, has found some competent help, including a character with more than a little mystery to him, and I've just reached what I'm guessing(or hoping) is a major twist.

The side dealing with Brin, on the other hand, is rather disappointing. For one thing, the convention regarding female characters continues, so she's a Valegirl. Even though her younger brother is a Valeman. Apparently Valewomen don't exist. I'm finding this far more annoying than I probably should, but it still bugs me. But then, to be honest, I find her whole character annoying. Somehow, despite being told by Allanon that her magic will succeed where his failed, she seems to think that her two protectors(and the author really hammers this part home with the second of them) are so powerful that she won't be needed. While also being somehow paranoid about some shadowy threat that she's getting 'premonitions' about. Surely, if she thinks they're that powerful she's got no reason to be worried?

I'm pretty certain I'm not going to bother trying to find any of the other Shannara books after this(barring some dramatic and unlikely change in the story), though I might reread the first two at some point.

I'm waiting to begin my next reading project. I ordered books one and two of Stephen King's Dark Tower series off the interwebz, and naturally book two came in first.

I finished Gate of Ivrel today. I enjoyed it quite a bit. I started in on The Well of Shiuan, and so far I am liking it as well. I like the new character it starts out with. I wonder if she will be the pov character throughout this book, as Vanye was for Ivrel? I guess I will find out seen enough.

Where in Ivrel we were told of the dangers the gates possessed, in this one we see it firsthand. One moon turned into seven (I am guessing blasted into those bits by some gate-power gone wrong), and a world hurtling toward ecological disaster in the form of ever increasing floodwaters. This really hammers home the importance of Morgain's mission.

Speaking of Cherryh's "Morgaine" novels.

After finishing The Quest of the Riddlemaster the other day I couldn't for the life of my settle on anything to read. Last night, looking through my Guy Gavriel Kay collection for something that might tickle my fancy, I chanced to notice Cherryh's Fires of Azeroth with a bookmark placed partway through it. Further investigation shows that I apparently abandoned the series on page 68/69 during its most recent re-read, early 2012. For now I'm thinking to pick up where I left off, or maybe start the book afresh. Or not. We shall see.

I'm a terrible reader, not that I'm Illiterate or anything (or else would be able to interact online ) it's just I have this REALLY bad habit of reading a book than putting it down and never picking it back up again. The only book I finish was The Hobbit and that like to have bore me to death. The last book I tried to read was Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH (or you might know it as The Secret of NIMH), The book was alright and covers why Timothy was so deathly ill and weak in the movie.

Lovecraft while sitting beside the ocean! Probably not the best idea, lol

Moved on to something more adventurous; Conan the Cimmerian: The Complete Tales! Currently reading "The Queen of the Black Coast".

I remain in something of a reading slump, not helped by feeling rather crappy for the past week. Since last report I have given up on the Cherryh. At a total loss as to what might appeal, I thought of Callidus Thorn's recent reading of Tad Williams' Memory, Sorrow and Thorn on my recommendation. I decided to give it another go, and am now on page 347 of Dragonbone Chair, not quite yet its half way point. Whether or not I stick with it remains to be seen, but having gotten so far has to be a good omen, doesn't it?

Khajiit would say so!

At 1020 this morning I finished The Image of War: 1861-1865 volume three, The Embattled Confederacy. As previously mentioned, I am reading the series at the kitchen table during meals, the books being too bulky and heavy to read in bed. I read the series in its entirety at least once before, at a time preceding my habit of annotating completion times and dates on inside covers. This particular volume commences with a chapter on the Battle of Antietam and concludes with Gettysburg. Each chapter contains a great many captioned photos prefaced by pages of text.

I'll begin volume four during tonight's supper.

Dragonbone Chair remains my in-bed book of choice.

I finished The Morgaine Cycle. It was good, but not great. I thought the whole angle of a fantasy swords and sorcery series that is actually science fiction was neat, as was the point of view character not being the protagonist. But toward the end it seemed to be the same thing over and over. I especially got exasperated with Vanye getting captured every single book!!! The action scenes were often written rather vaguely, which made it difficult for me to understand what was happening.

A few days ago I stared Ahsoka, and am now half way through. I am liking it tremendously! It is set a year after Order 66, with Ahsoka in hiding from the new Empire. She is all on her own now, and is learning to walk the deadly tightrope of remaining hidden vs. using her abilities to help others. All of her actions have consequences, often unforseen.

We get an excellent view into her head. I reallly loved how she is always thinking of her old comrades in arms, be they Rex, Obi-Wan, Yoda, or Anakin. She often finds herself thinking what they would do in similar situations that she is in, often with very amusing results. But more than that, it really hammers home the loss she feels. Because she has been severed from all of these people, and it is painfully clear every time she meditates and reaches out with the Force, she only finds emptiness out there.

So far the only issue I have had is that the writer seems to expect the reader to have a great deal of foreknowledge of not only Star Wars in general, but Ahsoka and the Clone Wars tv show in particular. For example in one scene she is helping a group of new rebels sabotage some Imperial walkers. But the writer never describes the walkers, or even gives a model number of what they are (AT-AT, AT-ST, AT-TE, and so on). So if you have never seen Star Wars, you would have no clue what they were sabotaging. And even if you have, you are still left puzzling it out.

I finished Ahsoka. It was outstanding! It tells the story of how Ahsoka created her white lightsabers, joined the Rebellion, and became Fulcrum. I would love to read more by the same author. Especially if they are more Ahsoka novels in the future.

The only drawback is as I have previously stated, it does require one to have watched The Clone Wars, as it relies heavily on the events and characters from it.

Ahsoka was this one's favorite part of The Clone Wars. Khajiit found her dynamic with Anakin very interesting. It was heartbreaking when .

Ahsoka was definitely my favorite character in The Clone Wars. Because she was a Padawan, she was the one character with the most character development still before her. So we got to see her learn and grow as the show went on. The other characters were all basically established into who they were, so changed little, if at all. One of the strongest things about her eponymous novel is that in it she is still growing and changing as a person, and still finding her place in the galaxy.



I was so excited to see her in Rebels. I even guessed at who she was in that beforehand. She is probably my favorite Star Wars character all together, followed by the Clone Wars version of Obi Wan. He was always so much fun. At one point in the novel, Ahsoka was on a dull and boring planet where nothing ever happened, and thought: Master Obi-Wan would have said Raada was a good place to relax and then somehow stumbled on a nest of pirates or a ring of smugglers or a conspiracy of Sith. Obi-Wan was always stumbling into something, whether he liked it or not! And I loved his bizarre friendship with Hondo.

Khajiit also enjoyed Obi Wan's strange relationship with Hondo. Very amusing!

I've finally given into the temptation to reread The Magicians, though I'm not going to blitz it this time

At 1323 this afternoon I concluded my sixth reading of Tad Williams' The Dragonbone Chair. I'll begin book two, Stone of Farewell, later today.

I started reading Bloodline, by Claudia Gray. So far so good.

Compared to some of the sci-fi and fantasy others have been reading, I've been into some pretty dry stuff.

Right now I'm working my way through The Guns at Last Light by Rick Atkinson. It's the third in his Liberation Trilogy, which takes us from the invasion of North Africa through Sicily and Italy and on into D-Day and Europe. Yup, I'm a long-time WWII history buff, and I'm starting to get into the Korean Conflict and WWI.

Slowly though, as the only time I read is at mealtimes.

I've finished The Magicians, which is a bloody good book. Though from what I've read online about it you either love the characters or you hate them. The whole setup starts with a magic school, but in these books magic is hard. You've got to be highly adept at ancient languages and advanced maths, every spell requires specific hand positions, and needs to be tailored to fit the Circumstances.

So in order to be a Magician, you've got to be a genius, possess magical aptitude, and be depressed and obsessive enough to actually learn magic.

Part of the book takes place at the school, and part take place elsewhere. Anything more would constitute a spoiler, methinks.


I'm now reading the second book; The Magician King. And while I do like it, I do have a few issues with it, but I'll just give you the highlights. It bounces back and forth a lot to tell the story of a character who was pretty minor in the first book, making the whole thing a little disjointed. But the biggest problem for me is how it deals with the ending of the first book. Because either the author forgot a lot of what happened after the big fight, or he decided to ignore anything from it that would get in the way with the second book. The competency of the main character from the first book goes out the window, and no reason for this is ever presented. The inconsistencies bug me.

I finished Bloodline a few days ago. It was good, but the ending was a downer, which kept it from being great. I don't entirely blame the author though. The book tells the story of the decay of the New Republic's Senate, which led to the creation of the First Order. The good part of it is it also depicts the creation of the Resistance. But a few things happen at the ending that left a bad taste in my mouth.

I started Lost Stars, also by Claudia Gray. So far so good. I like her writing.

Oh so the First Order isn't just the Imperial Remnant?

It is in part. For example the young General Hux we see in The Force Awakens is the son of Brendol Hux, an Imperial Commandant and former officer in Grand Army of the Republic. After being defeated at Endor and Jakku he and his son fled with the remnant of the Imperial Fleet beyond the Outer Rim. That remnant would form the core of the First Order military, along with new troops like Fin who were conscripted as children and raised to be warriors.

Yeah that is pretty depressing. Sounds like an interesting read otherwise though. I like Star Wars lore a lot. Especially the ancient Jedi and Sith stuff.

Just a progress update from me. I'm now on page 505 of Tad Williams' Stone of Farewell, with some 225 pages to go. The tale is holding up rather well, as it always does. Barring the unexpected I should have the series completed (for the sixth time) before publication of volume one of Williams' return to the land of Osten Ard early next year. No way am I not gonna buy that book, though as a general rule I find that authors who revisit the scene of their early triumphs following decades of neglect tend to disappoint to one degree or another, and occasionally fail miserably. (I'm looking at YOU, Last Chronicles of Thomas Covenant.)

Agreed. Has me worried for what will happen to "A Song of Ice and Fire" since GRRM started writing it in 1991; and was last going strong with it in 1996-1998. By 2000 he had begun writing other things and traveling around making public appearances. The next two books were 5 years and 6 years apart each while he did other things. It has been 5 years, and of the two books he had projected he has already changed the title of one from a very themed title to one that doesn't even feel connected to the story and won't inspire someone to throw gold down for it. I think he is rightfully enjoying his success, but worry that the future books of the series have to suffer from the lack of concentrated focus on them that the original works had in abundance.

At 1845 this evening I concluded my sixth reading of Tad Williams' Stone of Farewell and will move on to To Green Angel Tower. Part 1 by day's end. It's gonna be tuff picking my "favorite re-read of the year" this year. So many fine contenders! On the other hand, "favorite new read of the year" has been all but 100% certain since New Years Day. Gonna be hard to top that book/series.


I hear ya. I hope Martin holds firm to his once stated vow (?) that the now further along TV series will not influence future SoIaF book releases.

I finished Lost Stars by Claudia Gray a few days ago. It was really good. It follows two best friends and pilots from their childhood on the same backwater world, to their days together in an Imperial Academy, and finally through there careers in the Imperial Fleet and Rebel Alliance. It shadows the events of the original Star Wars trilogy, with both being either present or at least near the destruction of the Death Star, Hoth, and Endor. It even goes beyond the films to show us the Battle of Jakku, and ends shortly afterward.

Today I started Rise of the Empire. It is a compilation of Tarkin, A New Dawn, and three short stories. I read the first short story - Mercy Mission, and liked it. The main character is Hera Syndulla, long before The Ghost and the Rebels crew. She is a pilot on someone else's ship, and the story is about them smuggling a shipment of medicine into Ryloth past the Imperial garrison. It was good, though it introduced so many characters in such a short space that it was difficult to keep them all straight.

I just barely started Tarkin, and cannot say much about it. Except that it begins 5 years after Order 66, and he is overseeing the construction of the Death Star.

At 0005 this morning, just after midnight, I concluded my fifth reading of Tad Williams' To Green Angel Tower, Part 1 and am already 80 pages into Part 2. Personally I'd have preferred less reading and more (any) sleep during the night, but what can ya do? (Admittedly, I did nap fairly early yesterday evening. Not sure how long. Certainly no more than three hours. Likely appreciably less. I'm guessing maybe two hours, two and a half tops.)

At 1536 this afternoon I concluded my fifth reading of Tad Williams' To Green Angel Tower, Part 2, drawing the curtain on Memory, Sorrow and Thorn. I amazed myself in reading its almost 800 pages from start to finish within four days, quite a feat for a slow reader sunk uncomfortably into his dotage with a tendency to lose concentration at the drop of a hat. The book kept me spellbound most of the way through, especially as the final confrontation approached. I admit to having tears streak down onto my pillow as I lay in bed reading its final pages.

Each year for the past some years I dole out meaningless awards for what I consider my favorite (and sometimes least favorite) reads of that particular year. So meaningless are they that I post them on online forums without bothering to save copies on my computer, so that with a year or two it's all forgotten. This year's best "new" read was, barring the unexpected, pretty much set in stone with my very first read of the year. Best "re-read" is gonna be tough! I've re-read so many worthy books this year!!!! Memory, Sorrow and Thorn is most definitely amongst the contenders.

My problem now is how to follow it up.