I just finished reading "Ender's Shadow" by Orson Scott Card. It's a parallel story to "Ender's Game", taking place concurrently with that novel, but from the point of view of a different character, Bean, another child prodigy, but one actually younger than Ender/Andrew Wiggin. Over all it was a decent book, but far too often it was filled with Bean's internal dialogs and commenting on events that were explored sufficiently in "Ender's Game". It kept reinforcing just how brilliant is, because he figured things out so quickly etc. Personally, When it did not devolve into yet another a long, drawn out demonstration of Bean's genius, or his internal dialogs explaining this or that (stuff that the reader probably already knows), that's when the book was actually entertaining. At the start of the book, Bean is homeless, living on the streets of Rotterdam (as a 4-year old kid, nonetheless), and joins a gang of fellow urchins. Eventually, he is discovered by a nun who takes him in and teaches him how to read and so on. The early part of the book is actually quite different than anything in "Ender's GAme", which is why it's worthwhile reading. And there's some interesting adventures after he gets recruited for the battle school. But overall, It's definitely a book you can afford to skip. I think that if the early part of the book were turned into a short story or a novella, it might have been a lot better.
I finished the last of the Sherlock Holmes novels this morning, The Valley of Fear. It's definitely worth reading. The story concerns an encoded warning that Holmes receives, followed by a murder, and a story that involves Freemasons, an American Mining town run by murderous thugs, and Moriarty. I understand that the story may be loosely based on the (possibly) true story of the Molly Maguires (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molly_Maguires) Note that I was mislead into believing that this was the next Sherlock Holmes story -- the collection that I've been reading from places all of the novels first, followed by the collections of short stories. Apparently, some of the collections come before this novel I guess it's not critically important, since they each have only minor connections to each other.
Yeah, the novels and short stories are not all in order. Two novels, a whole slew of short stories, and then another novel and so on. But yes, Valley of Fear is a great story.
This morning I finished reading the second book in Robert J. Sawyer's "WWW" trilogy, WWW: Watch, the sequel to WWW: Wake, which I talked about here. The book picks up pretty much where the first one left off. The main character of the book, Caitlin Decter and her parents deciding how to deal with the newly discovered A.I., which they name "WebMind". At the beginning of the novel, an American organization known as "Watch", that is tasked with monitoring the security of the Web, discovers the existence of WebMind (which Caitlin and her parents have decided to keep secret, to study, to guide and to educate, with the help from a few other people). And the U.S. decides that, while WebMind may not be currently a threat, they fear its potential for exponential increase in intelligence and power, and so they plan to figure out a way to eliminate it. The novel contains a lot of interesting ideas concerning privacy, evolution, and game theory. And the story itself is very easy to read and quite enjoyable. I've decided that I'll be reading the last book in the series next, WWW: Wonder, probably followed by The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the first of five collections of shorter works about the detective. I've probably previously read most or all of the short stories in it, but not for many years now.
I just want to write about what I've been reading. I DID finish WWW:Wonder by Robert J. Sawyer a while back -- it was a good book, but not as good as the first two in the trilogy. Still, it did complete the story. I read several stories in The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, most of which I'd read previously. It included some classic stories such as "The Red-Headed League", and "A Scandal in Bohemia". They are fun stories that you can enjoy, and in some cases, try to solve along with Holmes. I recommend it for readers of all ages. While I was reading Doyle, I noticed on Amazon that there was a new, 10th anniversary edition of Neil Gaiman's American Gods and I did not own a copy of it any longer and had a hankering to reread it. So I bought it, not remembering that I actually DID have a copy of the old version on my kindle. Oh well. In any case, I still think that American Gods is one of the best novels I've ever read. The premise of the book is that when people first came to America, where ever they came from, they brought with them their beliefs and Gods and mythical heroes and creatures in their hearts. And those Gods and creatures and heroes were real, but America was not a good place for Gods, and as people stopped worshiping them and sacrificing to them and forgot about them, these Gods became weaker and more like average people you might meet on the street or in bars and so on. The novel has a main story but interspersed between the chapters of the main story are chapters that tell stories about people coming to America and bringing their gods from Asia and Europe and Africa. The main story itself is about an inmate in prison who calls himself "Shadow". He's released from prison, and learns that his wife has just died, so he flies home for the funeral, and to take a job that a friend of his has promised him. But on the plane, he meets an odd character named Wednesday, who offers him a different job. Wednesday seems to know more about Shadow and his situation than Shadow does himself. Soon, Shadow and Wednesday are caught up in a conflict between old gods like Odin and Anansi, and the new gods of Media and the Internet and so on. It's a terrific and fun book that is both surprising and moving and incredible. And Gaiman's writing is superb. I actually never was a fan of fantasy until I read Gaiman, and imho this is the best he's ever done. I used to say that I don't like fantasy, but I love Neil Gaiman. I knew that Gaiman could write from reading his 'Sandman' comic book. And I'd read some of his other novels which were all good and entertaining but never (imho) great. This book was great. BTW, the 10th anniversary edition supposedly is a lot longer than the original. One of the blessings and curses of growing older and having a failing memory is that I couldn't remember anything other than my general feelings and the broad strokes of the original. So I can't tell you (for the most part, what was added, though on the good side, a lot of the novel surprised me yet again. All I can say is that both editions moved me greatly. There is one scene that was cut out of the original AND from the rewritten version, where Shadow meets Jesus. It's added at the end with an explanation, and it is not considered part of the novel. Though Gaiman does hint that he would like to write about more conversations between Shadow and characters that die not fit into the novel. Whether that means that he may write a sequel or a related book, I don't know.
BTW, according to Wikipedia, Gaiman IS in fact working on a sequel. Don't read the wikipedia page if you don't want spoilers, though. Read it after you've read the novel, as it does tell you who some of the characters in the book represent (in case you couldn't guess them all. Many of them are obvious enough if you are at all familiar with mythology. But, for example, Slavic mythology and Algonquin mythology are a mysteries to me.
If you liked American Gods... I'll recommend: Norse Code. A story about one of the norse gods trying to stop Ragnarok, and several of them trying to bring it on... in modern time. Dresden Files. The whole series, it's great. Sort of fantasy noir, wizard/private detective in modern day chigaco, with vampires, werewolves, fairies and other nasties. Monster Hunter International: Modern day fantasy action book, written by a gun nut and b-movie afficinado, and very well written, and there's plenty of hilarious humour mixed in with the darkness and very gritty action, he turns many tropes about fantasy creatures on their heads. The elves and the orcs are particularly hilarious.
I've read all of the Dresden Files books to date and enjoyed the short-lived TV series. It's definitely a fun series that I recommend as well. The little I've seen of the Dresden graphic novels has not impressed me all that much, so I don't particularly recommend them. In any case, I'll definitely check out the other books you've mentioned. They sound promising.
Monster Hunter International is a good series. The first book seemed a little goofy at the end but not too bad. It was a good journey anyway.
Well, I read The Norse Code and I did enjoy it. It was a fun, fast-reading adventure book about heroes and Gods fighting to stop Ragnarok against the inevitability of prophecy as well as rival Gods and monsters and so on all intent on seeing that the prophecy prevails. I also started reading Monster Hunter International, which hooked me from the first page. So far, so good. Thanks for the recommendations.
I finished Monster Hunter International this morning. I have to say that I had some problems with it, such as a couple of plot holes, and annoyances. But it was a fun book at times. I can't particularly recommend it, but it's not bad either. BTW, a Dreidel or Dreidl is not a religious icon or symbol. It's a children's gambling game, a Jewish variant of a European toy. It's commonly played during Chanukah, yes, but it's as religious a symbol as a chocolate bunny or a valentine. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dreidel My favorite part of this, and something I've never heard of before "No-limit Texas Dreidel". If you read the book, you'll understand.
Some news about "Wool": http://www.contactmusic.com/story/ridley-scott-casting-wool-in-2014_3971384 If you are familiar with the series, you'll know that the first book has very little action, and is mostly a character-driven drama and serves more as an introduction to the world of the Silo, and as a springboard for the rest of the series. So I'm not exactly sure how this will work out. But I do have a lot of respect for Ridley Scott, particularly because of "Bladerunner", "Alien" and "Aliens". BTW, I started rereading Piers Anthony's Macroscope recently -- it was a book that I recall borrowing from a friend back when I was a young teen or pre-teen and enjoying, but for the life of me, i could not remember much about it. Unfortunately, the Kindle edition of the book is horrible. It's formatted terribly and badly edited. Multi-syllable words are split in half seemingly at random, at times everything is formatted into single endless paragraphs. Dialog is impossible to follow sometimes because of how its formatted, and so on. This is not a criticism of the original work. It's just that whoever did the e-book translation did it in a thoroughly lazy and half-assed manner. I've decided to set the book aside and instead am reading the newly released book in Peter Clines' Ex-Heroes series, Ex-Purgatory. It's a fun though flawed series of books combining the Zombie Apocalypse with the superhero genre.
Recently finished reading Peter F. Hamilton's Pandora's Star and Judas Unchained back-to-back. Mixed opinions on them, the latter in particular, but overall an enjoyable read. Both were a vast improvement on Fallen Dragon at any rate, which was... not very good, in my opinion. I'm taking a break before starting on the Void trilogy, preferably something a bit shorter without a terrible lead character.
Because I was having trouble sleeping last night, and because this happened to be a real page-turner of a book, I just finished reading Peter Cline's Ex-Purgatory. I have to say that this was my favorite book of the series, even though I did kind of figure out the mystery about half-way through it, but only because I'm pretty well-read as far as science fiction is concerned. I do recommend the book, as well as the 3 novels in the series that came before it. I don't recommend reading this book unless you've read the prior ones in the series, since there are elements of the story that may not make sense otherwise. This is a very different kind of story than any of the others in the series, but it involves many of the same characters of the previous book. I had a bit of a problem with book 3 because it felt a little bit contrived. I did not have that same problem with this book -- every piece fit together nicely like an elegant puzzle, and when the solution is finally revealed, it feels right. In some notes after the novel, Clines suggests that there may be a 5th book in the series -- I hope so because I'd really look forward to it.
Recently read through Trudi Canavan's The Black Magician trilogy. Very good series. Gritty, some of the most believable characters I've ever encountered in a novel. It reminds me in some respects of Robbin Hobb's Soldier Son trilogy, except the setting is more traditional low fantasy/magic realism, there's also similarities with J V Jones's Book of Words trilogy, but it's better than that. I'll note that the second book in the series is the first book in a long time that I read through in a single day because I just couldn't put it down(almost 600 pages, I think 580ish).
Currently about half-way through Hugh Howey's Sand which has not yet been released as a full book (it's currently available in 5 separate e-books, but should be released as a whole, and as a physical book as well, shortly). It has absolutely no relation to any of the Silo Series -- this is a brand new novel. It's a science fiction (technically, what used to be called 'science fantasy', though that term is rarely used nowadays). It seems to be a novel set in the far future, where man is in an eternal survival battle against the sand, which is blown everywhere and covers everything. There are trained divers who where special suits that allow them to swim through the sand and recover ancient artifacts, including copper wire, coins other metal objects, old coffee makers, samsonite suitcases, etc. which can fetch a lot of money. And a gold-rush of sorts seems to be on the verge of happening when rumors start that one diver has found the lost city of 'Danvar'. For those who are interested, Book 3 of George R. R. Martin's shared universe series "Wild Cards" is finally being rereleased (it's been out of print for a while, and copies have been selling for outrageous prices -- no joke). It should be out February 11th. I look forward to re-reading it. Books 1 and 2 were already re-released in both paperback and e-book formats, including some newly written material. I HIGHLY recommend it, even if you are not normally into superhero fiction. The first three books forms a trilogy (although all the books in the series are related) dealing with the origin of the Wild Cards Virus. I do know that a movie set in the contemporary Wild Cards universe is in the screenplay stage (it's not actually a movie version of any of the books, but a separate story involving a few characters from the series). I say 'contemporary' because the series partly serves as an alternate history of NYC, the U.S. and the World, and real historical events and people do have fictional counterparts in the series. And it's my understanding that when Book 4 is rereleased that it also will contain newly written material (the first book in each trilogy is structured as a series of related short stories).
Shame the last four hundred pages of that trilogy are utterly awful and ridiculous. I loved it until about page 200 of the third.
