What are we Reading Now: Conan the Librarian

[Nightlord01]

Omega Force 12, The Pandora Paradox, by Joshua Dalzelle.

Been waiting for this one for a while, it's going well so far.

[Elmoth]

The name of the wind. Subpar Mary Sue main character. Uninteresting fantasy.

[Fat Guy]

Thrawn: Ascendancy    :thumbsup:

[CranstonSnord]

The Diamond Age, by Neal Stephenson.

[elf25s]

 ok had been going through some of my old files and found omni magazines about 23gb worth
guess who is going to be reading them over next few weeks?

[Major Headcase]

X

[Nightlord01]

Have you read his Black Fleet trilogy? It's pretty good. Spaceships are my second love after mechs, so any space fleet action novels are my jam.  :thumbsup:

Of course I have. :-)

He writes Navy ok for an Air Force guy, some little pick up points here and there, but altogether pretty good.

[Reldn]

Currently reading Caleb Carr's "The Alienist".

[MoneyLovinOgre4Hire]

Just read the latest October Daye novel, A Killing Frost. Very exciting and with a lot of long-term stuff being set up for future novels.

[LastChanceCav]

Just started Terry Prachett's Discworld series over fromnthe beginning. It is still great work, but it us sobering how different my reactions are 20 years later.

Cheers,
LCC

[worktroll]

Also how his writing matured, as the Discworld found it's voice. Or should I say FOUND ITS VOICE. Simple fantasy pastiche developed a life of its own.

[LastChanceCav]

Pratchett  really did find a clear voice as the series progressed and it carried over into his other works. I read his YA work ahead of my daughters and the tone and tolerance carries through. Its hard to find boks for the kids like that, delivering  a message you agree with, but also challenging  at the same time.

On another note, I just finished Interesting Times again and it is crazy how it changed from a book about my parents to a book about me 20 years down the line  ^-^

Cheers
LCC

[S2pidiT]

Just finished the Gray Death Trilogy. I enjoyed it! Wolves on the Border was good too.

[Euphonium]

I'm reading the Discworld books to my kids. They're teenagers now and don't need me to read to them, but bedtime stories on Skype were important to us during the bad bits of the divorce and none of us really want to stop. I starting them with the Tiffany Aching books, then went back to Equal Rites because they wanted more Granny Weatherwax  :)   We are currently half-way through The Lost Continent.

As a side note, I didn't read Raising Steam until 2018 because for a long while I just wasn't ready to live in a world with no new Discworld stories to come  :(

On a more cheerful note I'm currently indulging my nostalgia by re-reading Raymond Feist's Magician. I'll follow it up with the Daughter/Servant/Mistress trilogy. I think the four of them are his best work.

[Dubble_g]

Just finished "The Quantum Thief" by Hannu Rajaniemi. Fun little book if you like gonzo scifi with out-there tech like a walking city full of immortal people with physical privacy filters who communicate by sharing GIFs and who periodically "die" to spend a couple of years in a kind of community service as mindless drones that do public works, before returning to regular existence. And that's scratching the surface of the weirdness.

Also, if you've ever played Bungie's online shooter Destiny, it's like every time the game's writers got stuck they flipped open this book to a random page and used whatever they found there: The book has Archons and cyrptarchs and warminds and... yeah.

[elf25s]

outnumbering the dead fredrick pohl
immortality is real in the future mortals are like gems very rare

[Banzai]

Grinding though David Golemon's "The Event Group" novels.  Gottem for a quarter each at a garage sale.

They are walking that fine line between "awesome" and "so silly I want to throw them against a wall."  I like them.  ;D

[NightSarge]

Since having the "pleasure" of reading the first few Books from the Dark Age era, i put the whole thing on the line and started with Honor Harrington again, just started with The Shadow of Saganami.

[worktroll]

It's worth skipping forward to "By Temptations and War", NightSarge. The storyteliing picks up. From "Swords of Sedition" onwards they're the equal of the BT novels, but the ones  between those two do some significant scene-setting.

[MoneyLovinOgre4Hire]

My problem with the Honor Harrington series was that the longer the series went on, the more blatant Honor's plot armor became.

Also, Weber's bludgeoning the reader in the face with his political beliefs.

[NightSarge]

I'm focussing myself on the main line right now, because i haven't read the last two by now. Got them while Reading BT, and after ending them i didn't want to take a hard turn a dive into the deep end right away. So i gave myself the whole series again.

The plot armor thing is a thing i noticed for myself quite early on. There are quite a few moments where she alone is the decider of fate for many peoples and nations. Knowing hat i focus myself more on the military and technical part and its ok for me.

[Banzai]

I chewed through as much of the Honorverse as I could stomach.  I got about a quarter of the way through At All Costs,  the eleventh, before realizing it wouldn't get better again and that I no longer cared.

[MoneyLovinOgre4Hire]

The latest Dresden Files book, Battle Grounds, releases today.

[Wrangler]

Finished Icons of War, great book from Jason.  He slips a surprise for all us when new plot book / novel comes out.  it will be entertaining. The book certainly opens up part of the Clans you've never seen before really in fiction.

[Lorcan Nagle]

I chewed through as much of the Honorverse as I could stomach.  I got about a quarter of the way through At All Costs,  the eleventh, before realizing it wouldn't get better again and that I no longer cared.

That's about as far as I got too.  Or at least I finished that book.  The depiction of space naval life was the big appeal to me, but that faded away in favour of the epic melodrama, but Weber didn't have the writing skills to make the grander political drama believable - the internal antagonists in both Manticore and Haven were 2-dimensional while the protagonists in both arcs are far more fleshed out, but also ultracompetent.  At the same time the combat sequences went from these interested detailed fights where you can feel the ships falling apart as they take damage to a maths exercise as thousands of missiles fly past one another and one side or ther other gets wiped out.

I don't begrudge anyone who still enjoys it,but definitely no longer for me, to the point I sold off my books.

[Elmoth]

I read them in 2005. I ditched it after the mantocore navy became an aircraft carrier fleet. Dunno what point that is but it had been repetitive for a while. Since I was studying an MA in politics at the time the politics of Manticore were rather funny in how I see superhero movies: good for a laugh from time to time but really shallow and bad. No real interest there.

[Wrangler]

That's about as far as I got too.  Or at least I finished that book.  The depiction of space naval life was the big appeal to me, but that faded away in favour of the epic melodrama, but Weber didn't have the writing skills to make the grander political drama believable - the internal antagonists in both Manticore and Haven were 2-dimensional while the protagonists in both arcs are far more fleshed out, but also ultracompetent.  At the same time the combat sequences went from these interested detailed fights where you can feel the ships falling apart as they take damage to a maths exercise as thousands of missiles fly past one another and one side or ther other gets wiped out.

I don't begrudge anyone who still enjoys it,but definitely no longer for me, to the point I sold off my books.

Being a completest, I've read through most of the series, including the final spiral novel.  I personally thought it was not his best work.  Essentially the War on the Solarian League, essentially finishing off the universe.  He try ramp things down technology wise by engineering the Pearl Harbor event which sabotaged their overpowered missiles.   However, didn't seem make different.  I personally, thought he should ignored everyone, just all Harrington die in At All Costs novel, let her children pick up the pieces decades later. Giving room for story, perhaps tech slide to make the conflict Solarian League some teeth and not make it walk througth it was.  I guess he rush finish up.  Now it's mess.  Sad.

[Euphonium]

I enjoyed Weber's Honorverse books but felt that the later ones were weaker and the last one felt "not with a bang, but a whimper." I also found some of the side novels suffered for me because I don't know any eastern european langauges so I couldn't work out how to pronounce most of the character and place names which left me feeling totally disconnected from what was going on.


On the topic of what I'm reading now, I've just finished British Submarine Warfare 1939-1945 by Alastair Mars, which I quite enjoyed, and am getting into Sea Harrier over the Falklands by "Sharkey" Ward.

[Jaim Magnus]

Finished Icons of War, great book from Jason.  He slips a surprise for all us when new plot book / novel comes out.  it will be entertaining. The book certainly opens up part of the Clans you've never seen before really in fiction.

Yeah, not from Jason.

[Wrangler]

Yeah, not from Jason.

ACK, i did it again.  Sorry, Craig!