Where are you in Fantasyland? October 2018

About to dive into The Traitor Baru Cormorant by Robert Galbraith.

>1 seitherin:, ..... something tells me Robert Galbraith (aka JK Rowling) didn't write that one.

>2 Cecrow: OMG. My only excuse is that I was still working on my first cup of coffee. Cormoran . . . Cormorant. Fuzzy brain. It was Seth Dickinson who wrote The Traitor Baru Cormorant.

Still reading about Legends: Tales from the Eternal Archives.

Just checking in. Still sailing on the Ship of Magic.

I'm a bit over half way through The Skull Throne.

Cross-media stuff: I just came across & bought the 1975 Michael Moorcock album "New Worlds Fair". I'd forgotten he did music. It's surprisingly good musically, and the concept & lyrics are interesting in places, though overwrought in others. Certainly fits the dark fantasy genre.

It also interested me to perceive a whole mini-genre: that of the dark carnival or circus. Books that come to mind are The Circus of Dr. Lao and Something Wicked This Way Comes. Musically, Buckethead, consciously or not, is following after Moorcock in his "Bucketheadland" albums. And darkest of all might be the movie Freaks.
Funny - I've liked fantasy, and certainly dark fantasy, for years; but never noticed the repetition of the carnival theme.

As Mommy Fortuna says in The Last Unicorn "Creatures of night, brought to light!" (Not a dark fantasy, but certainly a dark carnival episode.)

Just getting started on The Lost Steersman.

Added Evil is a Matter of Perspective edited by Adrian Collins and Mike Myers to my reading rotation.

Moved on to The Core. Time to see how the Demon Cycle ends.

Just finished Half a War by Abercrombie. I liked it much better than the First Law books (in fact I never bothered to read the third volume of that.)

I was in possibly fictional small-town USA with an American Ghoul, a nice coming of age with a twist.

I've decided to set aside The Traitor Baru Cormorant by Seth Dickinson. It is just not what I'm in the mood for at this time.

Now reading Mars by Ben Bova as the second book in the "Reader Recommended Order" of the Grand Tour....

>14 johnnyapollo:, what is the "Grand Tour"?

Finished "The Lost Steersman" (Gawd, Rosemary Kirstein is like magic in how she gets across Rowan's worldview of learning, learning, learning being the overriding priority at an instinctual level.

Popping back over to the World of the Five Gods to finish out the final (?) two Penric novellas, starting with Mira's Last Dance.

Heading back to the Grishaverse for Siege and Storm.

Added The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction March/April 2018 edited by C. C. Finlay to my reading rotation.

Added The Warlock in Spite of Himself by Christopher Stasheff to my reading rotation.

Doing some detective-y investigating with fantasy flair in Wizard's Heir by Daniel Hood.

It's time for some Musketeers Greatcoats in Traitor's Blade.

Finished The Warlock in Spite of Himself by Christopher Stasheff. Meh.

>22 seitherin: I loved The Warlock In Spite Of Himself many (coughforty-oddcough) years ago, but last time I tried I found the Suck Fairy had got to it, and all its many sequels.

>23 tardis: This is the first time I've tried to read it. Got the book as a freebie. Wasn't impressed.

>23 tardis:, after similar experiences I tend not to revisit anything else that I remember loving that much at that age, to preserve the memory. And I've eased away from strongly recommending them, just in case.

>24 seitherin:, a few years back I tried the start of another of his series, Her Majesty's Wizard. Same impression. Maybe if I'd read that in the 80s when I thought everything was great, and not since, I'd sing a different tune.

Finished The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction March/April 2018 edited by C. C. Finlay. Mostly a meh issue for me.

>25 Cecrow: This is the only Stasheff I've ever read. I've no interest in ever reading anything else.

Just started Towers of Midnight. The previous book The Gathering Storm really picked up the pace, and the second half pretty much acted like a slingshot for the story. Brandon Sanderson did a great job stepping in for the late Mr. Jordan.

Jumping to outer space for a quick catch-up on the two latest Murderbot novellas - Rogue Protocol and Exit Strategy.

Finished Evil is a Matter of Perspective edited by Adrian Collins and Mike Myers. Good read. Nice introduction to a bunch of authors I've been wondering about.

I'm somewhere in space with Miles Vorkosigan who fortunately carries Diplomatic Immunity.

With another loner-ish character (i.e. similar to Murderbot in my previous read) - figuring out how to survive as someone with weird "dark magic" in a dystopia with ghosts and magic in Defiant, second book in the Towers Trilogy.

Added Norse Mythology by Neil Gaiman into my reading rotation.

(First time poster in one of these monthly threads here -- I'm overcoming my lurker tendencies to branch out where I get suggestions for what to read next. Hi, all!)

I'm in the middle of Crooked Kingdom right now, after happily devouring Six of Crows in two days while I was on vacation last week. I'm really enjoying it -- it reminds me of Locke Lamora, except that instead of all of the details lavishly describing the city, the details of the world that you learn are parts that inform the main crew of characters, so that each of them feel really fleshed out. On the other hand, it's a bit more YA than I expected, so the teenage-romance-where-no-one-admits-their-feelings (with what appears to be three couples -- three!!) is getting a little overdone for me, and I'm slowing down.

Hmm, I'm curious about how Gaiman-y it is, or if the stories are more straight retellings. I always feel like the fiction Gaiman books that use mythological elements (e.g. American Gods or Neverwhere or Anansi Boys) are more about using them as window dressing to talk about very modern characters and relationships than ones which really engage too seriously with the original stories. (Not a criticism of them of course, just an observation.)

Edited to add: this was a reply to 32... not sure how to to link to the post.

>34 Kanarthi: You create a link by typing a chevron > immediately followed (no space) by the number of the message you're answering.

>35 Jarandel: Thanks!

>33 Kanarthi: Welcome! I agree about Crooked Kingdom -- I love a lot of it but got a little frustrated with some of the more teen feelings parts.

I'm finally, finally getting deep into Spinning Silver (and loving every second of it), and I'm finishing up my audiobook reread of Tamora Pierce's Tortall series with Mastiff. It's taking me forever to get through these Beka Cooper books!

>34 Kanarthi: So far I am underwhelmed by Norse Mythology. What I've read so far is a rather dry and uninspired telling of Norse mythology. "Thor has a hammer. It has a short handle. He trows it one-handed. It never misses what he aims at." Not a quote but very nearly that simplistic.

>34 Kanarthi: Yeah, I found them rather basic retellings. Sometimes a phrase was funny, but it's certainly nowhere near his typical prose quality.

>38 seitherin:
>39 Unreachableshelf:
Well, thanks for the info. Sounds like it's not worth checking out! Basic retellings of myths can be interesting to read if they are carefully written -- Menelaos Stephanides comes to mind -- but it sounds like this book doesn't even measure up to that standard.

I just hastily departed from Derbyshire, UK as The Lair of the White Worm by Bram Stoker fell from my hands.

>41 Jarandel:, whew, I don't think I'd pick that one off the floor even if I saw you drop it.

I'm heading back to Roshar in Oathbringer.

>40 Kanarthi:
I have a particular fondness for retellings of myths; also any retelling of a classic story from a different viewpoint. I recently read Circe by Madeline Miller -- really well done novel telling the life story of Circe from her viewpoint, not Homer's or Odysseus'. Another example is Grendel by John Gardner: the Beowulf story from Grendel's viewpoint. I enjoyed Gaiman's version of the gods in American Gods, even if the plot was a bit stretched.

>41 Jarandel: hmmm. I watched a movie by that name, but I didn't really enjoy it. There were some.... ugh... scenes... not sure if the two are related but it certainly put me off.

>45 Darth-Heather: It's an adaptation of this novel. I've never watched it but if it's somewhat faithful to it, well, they both abundantly deserve to remain obscure and forgotten.

>33 Kanarthi: Belated welcome, Kanarthi. :) Those Leigh Bardugo books have been on my radar for a while, but I keep pushing them off because I already read the first Grisha-trilogy book and feel like I should finish that before jumping to a different series of hers. :P

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My current read: Just starting with some what seems like it will be an airship/steampunky setting in An Alchemy of Masques and Mirrors.

NOVEMBER THREAD: http://www.librarything.com/topic/298273