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What I have been reading
I’m behind, again, on my reading posts. You can tell i have felt stressed out this autumn because I have mostly read lightweight and/or speedily read books.
Steven Brust’s Jhereg and Yendi. Fantasy where humans share the world with reptilian, and very long-lived, humanoids called Dragaerans. The protagonist is a human assassin; Vlad Taltos. I’ve heard a lot of good about these books, but I was rather meh about them. I’m not over fond of first person narratives, and I don’t much care for the prevalent idea of making gangsters into some kind of flawed heroes. A major plot point is that the Dragaerans are sorted into “houses”, each with their own characteristics when it comes to occupation, character traits, looks and even colour they wear. And I don’t much care for this kind of “set” society. With that said I can also say that Vlad is a pretty likeable person, and the books were fast reads- about 200-250 pages each. I’ve started on the third book which seems to add some complexities and layers to the society and to Vlad’s worldview, which makes it more interesting to me.
A Long Day in Lychford, the third of Paul Cornell’s Lychford-novella’s about three witches with very different worldviews and temper. It was a nice read, but IMO the weakest of them, so far. It was still enjoyable- Cornell has written both episodes and novels for Doctor Who, and there is a quirkiness in these novellas which reminds me of the show.
A whole bunch of Shani Struthers. 44 Gilmore Street and Old Cross Cottage which are book 3 and 4 of her Psychic Surveys series. I enjoyed book 1, but felt book 2 was a letdown. These two were better again. In the first a family has trouble with a very malevolent ghost, in the other one the series main protagonist goes to a working holiday to a haunted cottage. I also read two of her novellas. Blakemort in which one of the characters in the Psychic Surveys series relates her experiences as a child, and very much felt like a prelude to something yet to come. And The Eleventh Floor where a young woman find herself trapped in a very strange hotel. On the whole I think Struthers have good ideas, but, as is so often the case with ghost stories, they don’t hold the whole way through. There is also an irritating habit of letting her characters be very stupid about certain plot points, just to keep the story going. The novellas hold together much better on that account.
Faunen by Anna-Karin Palm which will have a post on it’s own.
Steven Brust’s Jhereg and Yendi. Fantasy where humans share the world with reptilian, and very long-lived, humanoids called Dragaerans. The protagonist is a human assassin; Vlad Taltos. I’ve heard a lot of good about these books, but I was rather meh about them. I’m not over fond of first person narratives, and I don’t much care for the prevalent idea of making gangsters into some kind of flawed heroes. A major plot point is that the Dragaerans are sorted into “houses”, each with their own characteristics when it comes to occupation, character traits, looks and even colour they wear. And I don’t much care for this kind of “set” society. With that said I can also say that Vlad is a pretty likeable person, and the books were fast reads- about 200-250 pages each. I’ve started on the third book which seems to add some complexities and layers to the society and to Vlad’s worldview, which makes it more interesting to me.
A Long Day in Lychford, the third of Paul Cornell’s Lychford-novella’s about three witches with very different worldviews and temper. It was a nice read, but IMO the weakest of them, so far. It was still enjoyable- Cornell has written both episodes and novels for Doctor Who, and there is a quirkiness in these novellas which reminds me of the show.
A whole bunch of Shani Struthers. 44 Gilmore Street and Old Cross Cottage which are book 3 and 4 of her Psychic Surveys series. I enjoyed book 1, but felt book 2 was a letdown. These two were better again. In the first a family has trouble with a very malevolent ghost, in the other one the series main protagonist goes to a working holiday to a haunted cottage. I also read two of her novellas. Blakemort in which one of the characters in the Psychic Surveys series relates her experiences as a child, and very much felt like a prelude to something yet to come. And The Eleventh Floor where a young woman find herself trapped in a very strange hotel. On the whole I think Struthers have good ideas, but, as is so often the case with ghost stories, they don’t hold the whole way through. There is also an irritating habit of letting her characters be very stupid about certain plot points, just to keep the story going. The novellas hold together much better on that account.
Faunen by Anna-Karin Palm which will have a post on it’s own.
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I think you might like the related series that starts with The Phoenix Guards better. That's a sort of Dumas pastiche that doesn't entirely work for me but does work for a lot of people who actually like Dumas.
It may also help to know that the house divisions, apart from Jhereg, are actually due to the members of each house being genetically related to the creature the house is named for. That is, Dragons aren't called that because of how they act; they're called that because someone spliced in dragon DNA to make their ancestors.
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