Oh, I’m sure it was entirely intentional. I was reading the first half, really liking the thrilling Oceans 11-esque feel of the book, thinking to myself “Wow, Abercrombie is really trying something new in this book, giving us readers a break from the soul-crushing reality of the trilogy…” and then the second half hits and I think “Oh. Nope. There’s the darkness. There it is.”
A very effective way to lull his readers and then shake them up.
Now reading Detour to Otherness, a collection of the collaborative short fiction of Henry Kuttner and Catherine L. Moore. I’ve read a lot of their stuff, but an awful lot of their other stuff hadn’t been collected, or wasn’t easily accessible. I picked it up at the Arisia SF convention, but I was surprised to see a copy in the bookstore yesterday.
Also reading Ken Follett’s Fall of Giants on audio. It was a gift. Very well done book about a collection of interacting people before, during, and after WWI.
Just starting **The Irregulars **by Jennet Conant. It’s very annoying to see how well a foreign nation can control American opinion.
After months I have finally put down The Nameless Day: Book One of ‘The Crucible’ by Patricia Briggs.
This is a well-written historical fantasy set in the time of the French Revolution.
It opens with the death of the Priest whose job it is to close the gates of hell each year. Arch Angel Michael hands passes the mantle off to Brother Thomas Neville.
Although I am not going to finish this, I will recommend it to fans of historical fiction, especially those interested in the time period. It is well-written and complex - with hints that the author is going to examine the nature of good/evil and the social structures and issues that fueled the revolution. Joan of Arc is seen at least twice in the first half of this book and no doubt she plays a role as well.
Although it is a historical fantasy, so far there is very little magic - just some small interaction with Michael and demons (which I believe allows the author to set the stage for a discussion on the nature of good/evil and the church in general.)
End the end though, I just am not interested. I know little about the time period and to be honest, at this time in my life, am not interested in exploring it. When I read for pleasure, I usually am looking for some light escapism.
It sounds right up my alley, though, so thanks for mentioning it. I think you mean Sara Douglass, though.
Good catch. I was on a conference call when I was typing that… probably shouldn’t have been. 
I have enjoyed other works by Sara Douglass and believe that in this case the problem isn’t in the book - it is in the reader and where his interests lie.
I just started Ted Gup’s A Secret Gift, a nonfiction book about an anonymous benefactor who ran an ad in a Canton, Ohio newspaper during the worst days of the Great Depression. He invited confidential requests for help, and then sent out dozens of $5 gifts to those who asked. The book reproduces many of the requests for help, and identifies the benefactor and explores his background. It’s pretty good. You see how different American society was then, when there was much more of a stigma attached to accepting public assistance and charity. And as bad as the economy is now, it was much, much worse then.
I’m done with Johannes Cabal the Detective now. I really enjoyed it–were you lukewarm with the first, or this one? The first, I agree, was a bit uneven, if enjoyable. This one was good, an Agatha Christie murder mystery with necromancy, if only a little bit of necromancy. And, of course, a character even more certain of himself and haughty than M. Poirot! Nicely fleshes out the world of Cabal, too.
Weird. I just noticed that too, the hardcover coming out in March, but there are plenty of paperback copies lying around the place here.
Admittedly Best Served Cold wasn’t a huge burst of creativity, though it was a bit of a different story still from the trilogy; but as I said, I think Heroes is quite the achievement, and, as far as I can tell, a new idea for fantasy, at least.
Anyway, I’ve picked up Madeleine Roux’s Alison Hewitt is Trapped to go into my queue, a zombie-blog come zombie novel, as far as I can tell from the cover. I bought it simply because I buy all zombie books, when I can afford it. Amazon is just shipping me No Country for Old Men by Cormac McCarthy, which I will give a shot, and John O’Hara’s An Appointment in Samarra, which I have had recommended to me. For more fluff, the package should also include the fourth Flashman volume (whose name I’ve forgotten…Flashman at the Charge, perhaps?) and C.S. Forester’s A Ship of the Line. That should get me through the next couple of weeks.
Oh, and I’m this close to dumping Toni Morrison’s A Mercy. Turns out I really, really don’t like Morrison’s writing…
I just devoured that recently. I’d recommend that book to anyone that liked the Pillars set of books. Its written in a similar, sweeping style but about a different time (pre/during/after WWI).
I just read The Devil by Ken Bruen, whom I’d never read before. Cool book. Then I read The Complete Stories Vol. I by Asimov. There were some good stories in there and a couple two-page head-scratchers. I also recently read Lucky Luciano: The Real And The Fake Gangster which was really well done.
Right now I just started Keith Richard’s Life, which is a much more introspective book than I thought it would be.
I listed to this recently on audiobook and was very impressed. This is the third novel by Cormac McCarthy I’ve read, but somehow I’m always newly surprised by how solid a writer he is.
Amazon delivered fairly quickly and I’m a couple of dozen pages in. I’m actually positively surprised. I’m not a huge McCarthy fan, disliked Blood Meridian, and was underwhelmed by The Road…I actually enjoyed reading it, but I’m not sure what it’s supposed to tell me, and if I’m reading such a dreary, dreary tale, I think it better had something to tell me. But anyway: I was recommended No Country for Old Men, and figured I’d give it a shot. So far, so good! Not a bad recommendation at all!
I finished “Stalingrad” and am now reading a totally engrossing book called “Unbroken”, by Laura Hildebrand. This is a gut-wrenching story of survival at sea and in the horrendous Japanese POW camps. The story is primarily about Louie Zamperini, an Army Air Corps officer who was shot down in the Pacific, then suffered the predations of the camp guards, and one tormenter in particular. Well written, and with photos. I highly recommend this book.
Re-reading Moby Dick. I recall liking it when I read it on my own in high school, then hating it when made to read it (and, of course, analyze the hell out of it) in a college class. Now, 40 years later I’m on my own with it again. I’m still near the beginning (Ahab is about to put in his first appearance), but I’m liking it quite a bit so far.
Just finished A Nation of Immigrants by John F. Kennedy, a small, posthumously-published book (or a longish position paper) arguing that immigrants had greatly improved the U.S. over the years, and advocating reform of U.S. immigration policy to eliminate racial preferences that disadvantaged non-Northern Europeans. Most of those reforms were indeed enacted in later years. A short but interesting book.
Just started Stephen King’s Firestarter, which I last read not long after it came out in 1980. I’m enjoying it.
Still happily working my way through Susanna Clarke’s Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, and Ted Gup’s A Secret Gift, too.
Listening to The Fellowship of the Rings audiobook for the zillionth time while I decide what to read next.
Finished A Devil in the Details: A Jesse James Dawson Novel a light and easy urban fantasy.
Jesse James Dawson is a Champion a man who fights will wager his soul via a physical fight with a demon in order to win back the soul of another. He is wise-cracking, (self-proclaimed) Samarai who is sought out be those of have sold their soul to the devil.
Not a great book, but not bad. I had some issues with the internal logic. A big deal is made over Jesse being an atheist - something that I find rather inconsistent. He knows that demons exist, that they can “buy” your soul. He acknowledges and accepts that his wife can do magic - and yet, he contends that there is God. Which makes me ask what he believes happens to a soul that is bought and paid for and why he bothers (beyond the money) to try and win back souls. The author dwell too much on his atheism and I found it took me out of the book.
Still, if/when I run out of books, if I see the next one I’ll pick it up.
Currently: A Madness of Angels: Or The Resurrection of Matthew Swift
Is that a sequel?
He’s obviously a very conflicted atheist.
Heh, it’s one of the first books I can think of where the writing style appears deliberately to match the substance - a book about obsession, written obsessively. 
One of my favourites, but clearly not for everyone … another example in the same vein is Gormenghast, a book about the grotesque, written grotesquely.
*Middlemarch *was excellent. For some reason I’m always a little surprised when a classic turns out to be a truly fascinating read.
Over the weekend I read Joe Haldeman’s newest book, Starbound, which is the middle book of a trilogy. His books are always readable, but I didn’t like the plot of this one very much. I don’t like omnipotent, godlike aliens in my science fiction, and Haldeman is overly fond of them.
Because I liked Abraham Verghese’s novel Cutting for Stone, I’ve started reading his memoir, My Own Country, which is about his experience dealing with the AIDS epidemic in a small town in Tennessee. In his novel Verghese wrote about how foreign doctors were recruited by underfunded, overworked big city hospitals in America, who dealt mostly with indigent patients, who suffered mostly from trauma and drug addiction. After he obtains his medical degree, rather than take his new bride to live in “an urban war zone”, Verghese takes a job in a small town in east Tennessee.
I’m a huge Haldeman fan, but he can be… erratic. My favorites are The Forever War (distant-future military sf in which faster-than-light space travel and time distortion are key plot points), All My Sins Remembered (a future spy starts to lose his own identity due to mission-oriented personality overwriting) and Tool of the Trade (a Soviet sleeper agent develops a practical form of mind control just before a big U.S.-Soviet summit). His early short story collections are also excellent.