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adg211288 
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Black Metal, Prog/AG Teams Joined: 05 Nov 2010 Location: United Kingdom Status: Offline Points: 22239 |
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 Posted: 30 Sep 2023 at 2:51pm |
 This might be the fastest I ever read a book. Apart from about 30 pages read the night before, I read this entire book in one day. Granted that was only possible because it doesn't have a lot of words on each page (huge line spacing), but it was still around 370 pages in a day. I wanted to finish it fast so I could start a book I've rented from the library, but it turned into quite the genuine page turner.
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adg211288
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Posted: 11 Oct 2023 at 2:02am |
 13 books along and I'd say this is one of the best Harry Hole thrillers so far!   I read the first one about ten books back and just picked up the rest of the trilogy. Very good all round! It doesn't really end as such, leaving plenty of room for more stories (there are already two stand alone novels set in the same universe) to come. Recommended.
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adg211288
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Black Metal, Prog/AG Teams Joined: 05 Nov 2010 Location: United Kingdom Status: Offline Points: 22239 |
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Posted: 20 Oct 2023 at 2:17pm |
 Solid Mieville book, though I find it hard to believe this is aimed at a younger audience. Okay so there's nothing too objectional in it in terms of actual content (it's basically a homage to Moby Dick) whereas there certainly is in some of his other books but the language level doesn't seem all that lower than his usual work. Mieville is an exceptionally gifted writer but this is sometimes his downfall: his books sometimes require the use of a dictionary to find out what the hell the random obscure word he's used actually means. I find his prose compelling and well crafted and would not say I've ever found any of his work hard-going, but I'm not sold on the idea that he can write for younger readers.  The Millennium series is resurrected for a second time since the death of Stieg Larsson, now in the hands of Karin Smirnoff. Apparently she wrote a few other books before this but it looks like only one of those has made it to English. According to Goodreads tagging her prior books weren't in the crime/thriller/mystery genre so on paper she doesn't seem like an obvious choice to helm the series. I remember before I read the book that a bit of a deal was being made over Lisbeth Salander being written by a woman. And what an absolutely fucking travesty of a book this turned out to be! It's like reading bad fan fiction. The entire plot is facilitated by the extraordinary coincidence that several key characters have all appeared in the same small Swedish town at the same time, completely independently of each other. Salander to look after a niece who has been invented for her, Blomkvist because his daughter now lives there and is getting married, Hans Faste one of the cops from the original trilogy is in charge up there now and even the motorcycle gang they had a run in with in the original trilogy is now operating there too. To top it all off, the characters are written like shadows of their former selves, especially the two series leads. And the book is also written to be far too meta for my taste, with Stieg Larsson being namedropped as an actual person in the universe he created, Lisbeth thinking of herself as 'the girl who played with fire' and it being commented on that she looks like Noomi Rapace (who played her in the Swedish film series). Worse book I've read all year. Smirnoff is lined up to write two more of these. I do not think I will be bothering. Many people may have spoke out against the David Lagercrantz trilogy existing but those were at least solid and lived up to Larsson's trilogy (although he film of the first one was shite and badly miscast all round). This just takes a shit on Larsson's legacy.  It's been quite a while since I read the rest of this series. I actually read all five of them one after the other, they were that good. It would have been about February/March last year. I found them relatively recently considering book 5 was published in 2013. This one only came out this year, although it was first released in Swedish in 2021. It's the sixth and final volume of the series and also the longest. I've forgotten a number of things from the previous books by now, but it wasn't difficult to resume. I'd day the series goes out mostly on a high although I could have done with less flashback sequences. I found those dragged a bit. The resolution isn't completely satisfactory in terms of its own individual plot but it rounds out the stories of the main characters well.
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adg211288
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Black Metal, Prog/AG Teams Joined: 05 Nov 2010 Location: United Kingdom Status: Offline Points: 22239 |
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Posted: 23 Oct 2023 at 5:14am |
 Pretty good psych thriller although it doesn't top the previous Lisa Jewell book I read: The Night She Disappeared.
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adg211288
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Black Metal, Prog/AG Teams Joined: 05 Nov 2010 Location: United Kingdom Status: Offline Points: 22239 |
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Posted: 26 Nov 2023 at 2:44pm |
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I haven't kept up with posting here again. Read all of these since my last post:
 Great debut sci-fi novel. Looking forward to reading the sequel.    Sequel to The Powder Mage Trilogy. I think I preferred the first trilogy but not by much. As far as I can tell the series he is writing now is nothing to do with these but I hope he is not done with this world.  As far as I'm concerned they can't get this series translated to English fast enough. I will be pissed if they abandon it like they seem to be doing with so many other European series.   It wasn't as good as the first one but a worthy follow-up that's quite humorous in its way.  I've had this series on standby for ages after reading the Lewis trilogy over a year ago and finally picked up the first book. Based on this I prefer the Lewis Trilogy, but this was solid and now I've started I'll be picking up the next one every so often between other books.  This is only an about 200 page novella by him but it's pretty damn good. Apart from starting it last night I read most of it today in one sitting. It is dedicated to the memory of Gene Wolfe, but I think it also owes something to Ursula K. Le Guin's Hannish Cycle. It's sci-fi, but dressed up as fantasy. Tchaikovsky has a way of taking what is essentially a very basic, even cliché storyline and making it interesting with his shorter reads. Spiderlight, which is a bit longer, enough to be counted as a full novel, was much the same though more out and out parody of old tropes. This marks 83 books read this year for me. With only a little over a month to go it seems ambitious to try to make the hundred, but this is a record for me already. I challenged myself on Goodreads to do 50 in order to read more and clear some of the backlog. I'm kinda cheating now and only picking shorter books, but hey, it counts. Let's see if I can do it.
Edited by adg211288 - 26 Nov 2023 at 2:47pm |
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adg211288
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Black Metal, Prog/AG Teams Joined: 05 Nov 2010 Location: United Kingdom Status: Offline Points: 22239 |
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Posted: 10 Dec 2023 at 2:31pm |
 Two novellas from the Revelation Space universe. Seem pretty self-contained with the second having a throwback to the first compared to what I've read from the main books so far.  The second Dresden File. I think I prefer the first one slightly. There are a lot of these and I'm not as enamoured with them as some series I've started, but I'll keep going as long as I can find them, whenever that may be by the right I actually find a copy of book 3. They're not a series I feel like I'm going to shop ebay for.  A prequel to some books I read a couple of years back. The trilogy was good but it's been a while and it took a bit of time to re-familiarise myself with the characters.  Just started this trilogy. This is very different for fantasy because it's set in a more or less modern world, maybe on a technology level with around the 1970s-1980s I guess. The actual story is about two warring gangs. The author is of Asian heritage and was influenced by Hong Kong gangster movies and the Wuxia genre. First book was bloody brilliant and I already started the second one this morning.
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adg211288
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Posted: 18 Dec 2023 at 2:47pm |
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Stormed through these two since my last post with the first one:
  Real page turners, highly recommend fantasy using a modernised setting.
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Vim Fuego
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Death, T/S/G, Grind, VA Teams Joined: 05 Jul 2015 Location: Canterbury, NZ Status: Offline Points: 6599 |
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Posted: 26 Dec 2023 at 4:08pm |
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I've got two books on the go and I'm not going to get them finished before the end of the year, so here's a List Challenge of all the books I've read this year.
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adg211288
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Black Metal, Prog/AG Teams Joined: 05 Nov 2010 Location: United Kingdom Status: Offline Points: 22239 |
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Posted: 27 Dec 2023 at 12:03am |
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I've only got one in common with you there, coincidentally also read this year: Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell.
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Vim Fuego
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Posted: 03 Jan 2024 at 10:53pm |
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Got my challenge kicked off for the year. I finished one of the books I had on the go. I've decided I need to go to the library more this year, so I went and grabbed a handful of books today to get started on. I'm not back to work until Tuesday, so I've got a bit of time for some nice quiet reading.
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adg211288
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Posted: 04 Jan 2024 at 1:08am |
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I'll finish my first of the year today.
I set myself a target of 50 for 2023 and made 92, though some books were quite short or had large print. I've set myself 60 for this year which may or may not be ambitious. It really depends on if this is the year I finally tackle The Wheel of Time, although I don't imagine reading those one book after the other.
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adg211288
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Posted: 04 Jan 2024 at 3:38am |
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Just put my book list up for 2023:
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Vim Fuego
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Posted: 04 Jan 2024 at 1:53pm |
4/92
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adg211288
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Posted: 07 Jan 2024 at 9:42am |
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And here's my list of all books read as of the end of 2023:
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Vim Fuego
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Posted: 07 Jan 2024 at 1:21pm |
57/465 It looks like once you get onto an author you like you just keep going with everything they've written.
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adg211288
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Posted: 07 Jan 2024 at 2:45pm |
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That's probably only actually true of maybe half a dozen authors but yeah, when I like an author I do tend to stick with them although there's a few on there I've thrown the towel in over. Although I am hoping to get a few new authors in this year.
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Kilimmaic
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Joined: 29 Mar 2023 Status: Offline Points: 21 |
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Posted: 16 Jul 2024 at 11:26am |
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I've been focusing on improving my writing lately, and one of the books I found incredibly useful is "A Writer's Coach: The Complete Guide to Writing Strategies That Work" by Jack R. Hart. It's filled with practical advice and techniques that have already started to improve my writing skills. For those who also want to improve their writing, I highly recommend this book. Additionally, I also recommend using this tool aithor.com/ai-essay-generator. It's great for generating ideas and refining your essays, making the writing process much smoother and more efficient.
Edited by Kilimmaic - 17 Jul 2024 at 6:56am |
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Vim Fuego
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Death, T/S/G, Grind, VA Teams Joined: 05 Jul 2015 Location: Canterbury, NZ Status: Offline Points: 6599 |
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Posted: 16 Jul 2024 at 5:20pm |
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Ever wondered what a magpie thinks?
It's a pretty simple story told from a bird's eye view.
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adg211288
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Posted: 05 Aug 2024 at 3:56pm |
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Hit 50 books read in 2024 today. My Goodreads target for this year was set at 60. Last year I read 92 which is an unprecedented record for me. With most of four months to go I'm maybe not coming close to that again this year and I'm got some bigger books I want to try to get in before the year is out, but I'll comfortably hit the 60 books goal.
Here's everything I read this year so far in order:
Phew... Not the most diverse lot and as with the case of 2023 I have one author who's been dominating a bit (LJ Ross) but I'm on a break from them now. Will keep reading thrillers between them but going to try to clear a few trilogies off my reading pile for the rest of the year, as well as maybe start some of the bigger fantasy series because if I don't make a start I'll never read them at all.
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adg211288
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Posted: 01 Sep 2024 at 3:44pm |
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Have just read this trilogy one after the other:
   I think Adrian is one of the best current writers in the fantasy and sci-fi realm. These were no exception, though I did feel parts of the middle book dragged a bit. Also maybe he wrote his influences on this sleeve a bit with this series: it seems highly unlikely that he wasn't in some way influenced by Neal Asher's Polity universe here. I mean not only does he actually use the word polity to describe human culture in the book, the concept of unspace is very like Asher's underspace and there's also a character that feels similar in purpose and abilities, if not origin, to one from Asher's Agent Cormac series. I'm not saying they're a rip-off - the stories are completely different - or that similar plot devices haven't been used before Asher, but having read the Agent Cormac series (most of them still relatively recently) it felt a bit on the nose.
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adg211288 wrote: