The Books/Reading Thread

[Vegard Pompey]

that's the version i have, in fact i have the first six in that format and they're all at least reasonably nice looking (although that's the best one), then they did those hideous looking new prints and i couldn't get anything else for the last four.

i hope you do get further! <3 i actually think erikson is better on rereads because the first time around you're getting absolutely hammered with information, and there's also tons of foreshadowing and worldbuilding that triggers more associations second time around (assuming you recall any of it from the previous read lol).

I'm pretty sure they have older style prints all the way up to and including Toll the Hounds, but yeah for the last two books there's only the one print which sucks because my burgeoning collection is all the other one. I had to order a used copy of Memories of Ice because apparently both trade paperback variants are out of stock for some dumb reason. It's only the case with that one book in the series!

I recall very little from my previous reads of Dodheimsgates and Memories of Ice. Mostly just the plots in broad strokes, the major deaths and every new character introduced in DHG being amazing. One reveal I do remember, can't remember from which book, is

Spoiler

Shadowthrone and Rope being Kellanved and Dancer

and there's definitely a lot of hints at that in GotM. In general it's easier to pick out throughlines in the convoluted narrative. Small things like Rigga's "prod and pull" line being echoed by an unrelated character later on in reference to the meddling of gods.

 

[TageRyche]

I finished the Sheila Connolly mystery Rotten To The Core.

 

[no country for old wainds]

been going back through the series myself, this time with the intention of reading all the ICE stuff, the prequels etc. love this one, a number of my favourite characters get introduced here (technically some appeared in minor roles earlier but y'know)--obviously i remembered the karsa shit vividly, but i'd forgotten about the trull/onrack stuff and those are my dudes as well.

this is absolutely fucking mental btw. i would kind of like to do this one day. definitely wouldn't recommend it for a first read though, erikson has always recommended to read them in order of release and i agree with him.

 

[Vegard Pompey]

Nice. I'm chipping away at DHG myself, though I have exams first week of June so I don't have much time to read fiction right now.

 

[no country for old wainds]

where did you get up to last time? did you actually finish MoI?

 

[Vegard Pompey]

Yeah, finished MoI, never started HoC.

 

[dwellerINTHEdark]

House of Chains will be the next one in the series for me, glad it's regarded highly.

 

[TageRyche]

I finished the Sheila Connolly mystery novel Red Delicious Death.

 

[TageRyche]

I read and sent in reviews for a couple of books to the magazine I write for.

The books were Leonard Goldberg's The Art of Deception and Robyn Gigl's By Way of Sorrow.

My review of Leonard Goldberg's The Art of Deception was printed in the new issue of Mystery Scene magazine. It is now available to read online as well via this link.

My review of Robyn Gigl's By Way of Sorrow made the print edition of the new issue of Mystery Scene magazine as well. You can also read it online HERE!

 

[TageRyche]

I finished reading the debut mystery from Mary Keliikoa called Derailed. It was pretty good. I was surprised to find that when I bought it, it came having been signed by the author.

Speaking of signed copies. I found out that I won signed books from two other mystery authors this week because of posts I made on a blog each was featured recently.

 

[CiG]

Finally ordered another pile of Horus Heresy books. Finally arrived in the mail the other day just as I was considering canceling the order and getting a fucking refund because late af.

About a chapter in and boy, I don't know how I used to love the Space Wolves because now I find it a slog to get through their fluff and the style of writing usually used to depict them. Still, anticipating this one because it's about the confrontation between two primarchs; Leman Russ and Magnus the Red. Surely gonna be epic.

 

[Oblivious Maximus]

Just can't stay away. Still have La Maison de Rendez-vous and Djinn on deck, but I'm especially interested in this one because he included in this the text that he wrote for a series of etchings by Paul Delvaux called "Building a Ruined Temple to the Goddess Vanadé". This also supposedly makes a good pairing with Recollections of the Golden Triangle .

 

[no country for old wainds]

do i still consider this his best work? its climax feels half-formed with too much left unresolved for reaper's gale and beyond, which blunts its emotional impact in comparison to the devastating funereal endings of DHG or MoI, but i think it's his most intelligent and tightly constructed. the whole story is built around a couple of key themes and images with some serious real-world resonance, the tone shifting effortlessly between his darkest and lightest work, the latter always feeling like a necessary relief when it comes. it introduces probably my favourite elder god, the most ghastly villain, the wittiest comic characters and a few of the most tragic as well, and a key bit of elder lore that reverberates across the series. it gives us the first real taste of the crimson guard and leaves me salivating for more (i haven't read most of ICE's stuff yet). there's a particularly shakespearean quality to the two sets of brothers, the bonds and differences between them, that i really love. all in all, yeah, it's pretty amazing, definitely in the top 3 so far if not even higher.

yeesh that cover sucks. i only read the first two of these, and i have to say that while i quite enjoyed the first, an origin story of how reese comes to the employ of the two necromancers, the second was a bit of a slog, with erikson doing his usual chaotic convergence without doing the necessary groundwork to make you care. i'm trying to be completist with my reread, and they're definitely for completists only, tangential to the main story and barely adding anything to the lore.

now this one i loved on re-read. a more small-scale, conventional story than anything by erikson, it's written almost exclusively from the perspective of just two characters and set over one particularly eventful night, one crucial to the lore of the malazan empire. it shades in a lot of context surrounding kellanved, dancer, laseen, dassem ultor, tayschrenn and co, and also introduces another of my favourite elder gods, but mostly it just oozes atmosphere and breathless momentum from start to finish. pretty easy to gobble it up in a week or less.

this next! i devoured this in a couple of days when it first came out back in '06, i remember it being an absolute page turner. my memory starts to get hazy from this point on which is kind of exciting tbh.

 

[TageRyche]

I finished the debut thriller A Desperate Place by Jennifer Greer today.

 

[Einherjar86]

Finished this beast. It was good, different than the show (although not quite that good)--but one of my pet peeves is when people misspell ordnance as ordinance, and this book did it fucking twice.

 

[CiG]

About a chapter in and boy, I don't know how I used to love the Space Wolves because now I find it a slog to get through their fluff and the style of writing usually used to depict them. Still, anticipating this one because it's about *the confrontation between two primarchs; Leman Russ and Magnus the Red. Surely gonna be epic.

Finished this tonight, and it was nothing like I was expecting (also wrong about it featuring *the confrontation). Pleasantly surprised given my reaction to the first chapter or so. Very fast and also very satisfying book focusing solely on one of my lesser favourite legions of 40k.

Moving onward to the next book in the series:



This one is an anthology, usually enjoy those.

 

[no country for old wainds]

this next! i devoured this in a couple of days when it first came out back in '06, i remember it being an absolute page turner. my memory starts to get hazy from this point on which is kind of exciting tbh.

finished it. it might be my favourite of the lot now. because all the disparate strands are starting to converge into a central storyline for the first time, it's a little less self-contained than the previous books and he has to juggle a lot, but it's still honed with some incredible extended set pieces even before it builds to the most epic and emotional climax since memories of ice. helps that it follows a high percentage of favourite characters, from the various bridgeburners to mappo/icarium to karsa to trull/onrack to tavore/ganoes paran. i also think reading night of knives beforehand this time enrichened it more than i anticipated due to a greater familiarity with the two main locations, some central lore and certain peripheral characters.

anyway, good to be reminded that these books are still my favourite thing in the world. reaper's gale next.

 

[Slayed Necros]

Reminds me that I need to pick Toll the Hounds back up. The Bonehunters was my immediate favourite after finishing it and probably the best fantasy novel I've read. The massive Y'Ghatan chapter is particularly intense and memorable.

 

[no country for old wainds]

yeah, even compared to the chain of dogs that shit is fucking brutal. i love his handling of soldiers and armies, other writers would just focus on a couple of extraordinary characters but he actually manages to create a sense of an entire army with his huge cast, and that chapter you're talking about is the definitive example of that. i also love all the gallows humour, the unspoken moral codes, the games they play to keep themselves sane, the mythologising of soldiers who do great things (and the plotting against the cunty/incompetent ones), etc. and then you're reminded what a mean, resilient, crazy bunch of fucks they are when an engagement comes.

 

[Somethingface]

I still haven't read any Erikson (even though you told me to like 15 years ago haha). Would you suggest starting with the Malazan series?

Reading Tristram Shandy at the moment though, so not sure how long that will take...