I've just finished Elder Race by Adrian Tchaikovsky, and thoroughly enjoyed it.
It's about a princess trying to prove her worth by recruiting a wizard to help defeat a demon.
Except the world they're on is a human terraforming colony, now post- (or pre-?) technological, thousands of years in the future. The "wizard" is an anthropologist from a later, more advanced period of Earth history than the original colonists, who spends most of his millennia in stasis while waiting for communications from Earth.
The chapters alternate between third-person fantasy from the princess' perspective, all flowery formal language, and a much more conversational first-person sci-fi for the "sorcerer". Language differences mean that the sorcerer can't explain that he's just a scientist and that his "familiar" is a robot, so he's mostly pretty grumpy about being dragged on a quest by an old friend's great-great granddaughter.
I bought Elder Race on aniki's recommendation (and because it was cheap on Kindle), and it is very good, but also surprisingly short.
Spoiler - click to showFinding the arch felt more like the end of act 1, and should have led to a withdrawal - and a much more severe reassessment of priorities from Nyr, DCS or no. The thief guy gets nothing to do except walk for a bit, and didn't really need to be there at all, beyond giving them directions at the speaking circle thing.
I like the concept and the plot, and it's well-written, but it could have done with being at least twice as long.
Just finished the first good fantasy book I've read in years, and it's by the same author as the posts above!
City of Last Chances by Adrian Tchaikovsky. It's set in the occupied city of Ilmar, a place that has more than a whiff of Ankh Morpork. And the reason I loved it, aside from his great writing, is that it's not the neat story most people would have written. The occupiers are a bunch of shits, so you sort of expect the narrative to be 'downtrodden populace fights back'.
Which it is, sort of, but there's so much history in the city that it's not that straightforward. So many warring factions, so many agendas, and a real appreciation that the original Ilmari rulers were almost as shitty as the new imperial occupiers.
Throw in a dash of really inventive fantasy, spooky forest portals, and university professors that fight back by chucking chairs out of top-floor windows (there's Ankh Morpork again), and I hoovered this up in a couple of days.
There are 4 books (groan), but they're all standalone. They just exist in the same universe.
After finishing the excellent (if not as good as the first) second Tyrant Philosophers book, House of Open Wounds, I took a crack at a much shorter novella that had been offhandedly recommended on an RPG podcast and boy, do I wish I hadn't.
A Short Stay in Hell sounds like a cracking idea: a guy dies, ends up in Hell, which is a functionally-infinite library containing every possible book, that he can leave if he finds the book that exactly describes his life with no factual, grammatical or spelling errors.
Unfortunately, it is let down by some truly pedestrian writing, is wildly unevenly paced, and will not shut up about the main character's Mormonism. It doesn't interrogate any of its ideas. It doesn't seem to have a point, or even an opinion. It'll skip over centuries of time to fixate on a single conversation that doesn't expand on anything, just restate previously-established concepts from a different (but agreeing) character's point of view.
At least it's short; I finished it in an evening. But I wouldn't recommend it. Read City of Last Chances instead, of you haven't already (and read House of Open Wounds if you have).
Another disappointing read was The Shortest History of Japan, a breezy run through several millennia of Japanese history that somehow makes it all totally forgettable.
The biggest fault is its habit of jumping around within the broader eras; a chapter will be about, say, the Tokugawa shogunate, but one paragraph will cover events from 1685 before the next jumps back to 1672. It leaves the actual cause-and-effect really muddled (complicated further by the clan names, frequent leadership changes and shifting alliances).
And it's not even the shortest history of Japan. Bill Wurtz's effort might not have any more context than Lesley Downer's, but at least it's chronological (and entertaining).
Just finished The Raven Scholar by Antonia Hodgson. Books of this size, in this genre, and promising (or threatening) sequels can be off-putting, and I've read more than a couple that were real slogs (looking at you, Priory of the Orange Tree).
This, though, was magnificent.
The structure and pacing are unusually episodic, which normally I'd find annoying in a story of this length, but here it builds on itself in such a satisfying way—and still managed to surprise me and let me feel clever when I worked out pieces of the puzzle.
I'm very much looking forward to the second book now, though it's not due until next summer (presumably the paperback will take even longer). Highly recommend checking this one out, if you're into low-magic fantasy and political intrigue.
Has anyone here read and enjoyed any of the Mistborn books, and if so can you please tell me exactly how much of a head injury I'll need to give myself so that I can stop the cold dread creeping in every time I see its cover on my Kindle.
I cannot fathom how a person can build this world and this magic system and these characters, and then proceed to tell a story with such a lack of panache, wit or poetry. It's the most clinical, uninspiring prose I can recall reading in my life.
Any curiosity I have about what's going to happen next is suffocated under a thousand tons of Sanderson's own apparent disinterest in the moment to moment happenings. Someone needs to buy this man a thesaurus and beat him around the head with it until he learns what a metaphor is; even if he deployed them poorly it would be a towering improvement over this bland gruel of a novel.
I think I made it about 10 pages into the only Sanderson novel I ever attempted. Couldn't figure out what people saw in it. I can't remember what it was; might have been Mistborn, I know some folks who are big fans. Maybe he gets better..?
Yeah, I bounced off Sanderson’s books too.
The writing doesn't get any better. I enjoyed Mistborn, but accepted it for what it was, breezy YA fantasy that's entirely carried by its magic system.
His epic saga (the 10-book one that starts with Way of the Kings) doesn't work for me, because he's not good enough to write an epic saga. He's the Netflix Originals of fantasy, and he's harmless enough. But his books aren't classics.
Speaking of classics, I'm currently buying up those beautiful penguin hardback classics, filling gaps in my classic literature knowledge. I'm sticking with 19th century onwards for now; any earlier and they do become a bit of a chore to read for someone of my middling intellect. But I've been surprised how enjoyable, and even page-turny, some of them are. Great Expectations has more in common with modern genre fiction than modern literary fiction. It's heavy on plot and vibe, light on naval gazing.
Cranford next.
… I've been surprised how enjoyable, and even page-turny, some of them are. Great Expectations has more in common with modern genre fiction than modern literary fiction. It's heavy on plot and vibe, light on naval gazing.
Cranford next.
If you haven't already read it, I recommend Wuthering Heights. Very page-turny, much better than Jane Eyre (which I suffered through at school as it was on the curriculum for English Literature and have bever been able to return to). I also recommend almost anything by Jane Austen.
Most classics are classics because they are very readable. I believe that we do a terrible job of introducing them to people, though. Either foisting them on kids who have no interest / aren't ready to receive them, or treating them like some sort of sacred text that can only be read a certain way / gatekeeping generally. Discovering them independently can be a bit of a revelation.
Wuthering Heights has been on my bookshelf for about 20 years. I never read it because I'm so familiar with the plot, but I'll add it to the list.
One thing that I was told about 19th century literature is that it was often serialised before being published in book form. This is especially true for Dickens, as I understand it. Basically, it was written with a view to be presented to the reader as smaller chapters, each with a cliffhanger to keep customers returning. It definitely would explain why a lot of classics from that period fairly zip along when they are being read.
The Count of Monte Cristo is the same, though there's a theory that the second half drags a little more at certain points because Dumas decided to make sure he would get paid for it for a bit longer, which I've always been amused by.
I've been slowly reading Emily Wilson's translation of The Odyssey - since before all the fuss - but haven't managed to finish it yet.
It got quite well-reviewed when it released, as I recall, but despite her use of iambic pentameter and thoroughly-explained word choices, I'm finding it a strangely technical exercise, without much in the way of evocative language or, y'know… poetry.
It is an interesting exercise, but perhaps total adherence to the "original" (read: single surviving written version of a tale that was told as oral tradition for hundreds of years), the determination to do it in iambic pentameter, and sticking to the same number of lines as the original was a few too many self-imposed restrictions?
Most jarringly, at line 339-340, she uses:
"Poor man! Why does enraged Poseidon
create an odyssey of pain for you?"
She couldn't think of another word for "odyssey"? In the Odyssey?
I do intend to finish it, but I'm tempted to seek out another translation for comparison - maybe one less determined to Stick To The Original - and see if that works a little better for me.
Apparently I'm a glutton for punishment; having finished The Odyssey (or perhaps more accurately, after The Odyssey ended), I've almost immediately started on Seamus Heaney's translation of Beowulf.
Wish me luck.
