[ACT] What are you reading?

[Oedipussy Rex]

Sounds like a real page-turner.

[Kersus]

I am a slow reader it seems. Part of the trouble is I pick books I 'should' read over books that excite me. Although sometimes I really want to know all the info in a book I find hard to read.

Fumbling through The Broken Sword by Poul Anderson as D&D history research.

[Kersus]

Viriconium by M John Harrison (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/304217.Viriconium)

[Oedipussy Rex]

So. Read the first chapter of second Hugo and Nebula award winning book, The Dispossessed. (Fun fact: LeGuin is the first author to have a novel win both awards twice, the first Hugo/Nebula winner for her being The Left Hand of Darkness.) After the first chapter I realized I really didn't want to read anything that heavy, so I'm reading Roger Zelazny's second Hugo award-winning Lord of Light, again. (First Hugo being This Immortal, the novelization of the serialized ...And Call Me Conrad., tying with Dune.)

May have to see if I still have the Earthsea novels in a box, somewhere, if I want to read any LeGuin anytime soon. As I recall, they should be light enough for me to handle nowadays. Lord knows I'm likely to never reread The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant.

[Kersus]

Reading a terrible book by some guy who works with a friend at Walmart. It's so bad I laugh hysterically as I read it. The spelling mistakes and incorrect word usage is always funny. The plot is very much 'suppressed' (not oppressed) capitalist Elves vs the evil communists in a Fantasy world.

It's also using the font of an old typewriter which is a drag to read. As I read I totally side with the Federation (communists) against those magic wielding Elves (capitalists). Nothing good came form an Elf. Always rebelling. The protagonists to the author are the antagonists to me the reader.

I thought at first it was written by a child but... nope, this is an adult.

I thought I'd hate it but it's so inadvertently funny that I hear all the narration as if read by Mel Brooks. All the serious stuff comes across in my head as sarcasm.

[Oedipussy Rex]

The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu

Greatest Chinese sci-fi I've ever read. Only Chinese sci-fi I've ever read. But it's the first book of a trilogy so YAY!

[Oedipussy Rex]

Leviathan Falls by S. A. Corey

The third book of the third and final trilogy of The Expanse. Except for the tenth book, which will be coming out next year. But this is the end of the story of the crew of the Rocinante. Doubtless, the series will be up for another Hugo and/or Nebula. And justifiably so.

[Oedipussy Rex]

New Spring (2004) by Robert Jordan

I haven't read The Wheel of Time since finishing A Memory of Light and after the shitshow that was the Prime Video series I decided to reread books. I uploaded a secondhand ebook to my secondhand ebook reader that has all the books in a single file, starting with the prequel, New Spring. Because the prequel takes place before the quel. That's why it's first in the file. Chronologically in the story's world, it takes place first. So New Spring has been set up to be read first. Why am I belaboring the point? Because prequels that are written ten books into a twelve book series aren't supposed to be read before the main story. Prequels depend upon and use the history/legend of the main story and builds upon it, so, for example, when New Spring mentions Artur Hawkwing, the reader thinks, "Oh yeah, him," not, "Who the fuck is Artur Hawkwing?" So putting the prequel at the beginning of the file is an immensely stupid idea.

That said, the novelization of the serial published in Legends: Short Novels by the Masters of Modern Fantasy by Tor, half to a third the size of all the books in the series, starts at the very end of the Aiel War, and tells the story Lan Mandragoran being miserable and stoic, and of Moiraine (and Siuan) becoming a Sister beginning her search for the Dragon Reborn, and ends with her bonding Lan as her Warder. Doesn't add anything important to the universe and paints neither Moiraine nor Siuan in a good light, really.

[Oedipussy Rex]

And continuing on, I just finished book 11, Knife of Dreams, the last of the Jordan-penned books, and I have to say that other than possibly Min, I don't particularly like any of the characters. In fact, I can't really muster much empathy for them. Still, it's better than the prime video series.

And now on to the Sanderson-penned three volume, final book of the series.

[Oedipussy Rex]

So. Volume one and 1/3 to 1/2 of the second volume of the twelfth book of the The Wheel of Time series down and either 1) Sanderson is a better writer than Jordan -- something I hate to admit; or 2) Jordan's widow/book editor started doing her job. Kind of.

Possibility 2 first: One of the things that annoyed me throughout the series was Jordan's incessant, let's call them writing tricks of dramatic irony. I don't care about [X] in the least. Well, barely at all, if at that. Now, that other person cares about it overly much to the point of obsession, but not me. Two, three times in a book is humorous. Every major character doing it two three times in a book is annoying. Every major character doing it two, three times in every book through eleven books of a of a twelve book series? That's an editor not doing her job.

1) I'm not all that big a fan of Sanderson as a world-builder. We all know the adage, “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” My corollary is, "Any fantasy that is overly codified may as well be sci-fi." And that's Brandon Sanderson's oeuvre. But the man can tell a story. Kind of.

Kind of: So there are four major story threads and several minor ones by this point. Two of the major threads are Rand and Perrin. And one of the minor threads is Queen Morgase, who is a subthread of Perrin. So by the end of volume 1 of book 12 (I refused to call the Sanderson-written works books 12-14. They are volumes 1-3 of book 12) we learn of the resolution to the Morgase sub-thread in the Rand thread, but in volume 2, the Perrin thread hasn't reached that point yet. So we have the other major three threads continuing on, interspersed with jumps back in time to the Perrin thread where the Morgase sub-thread has yet to come the resolution we already know, thus stripping the sub-thread as well as the Perrin thread of any real tension. Bad choice in story-telling and a bad choice in editing.

Also: Olver has got to be my most despised character in the entire series.