Amph What book are you reading right now?

Guys, I just finished The House in the Cerulean Sea and, omg, happy tears!!!

AND A SEQUEL IS OUT SOON!!

 

Bernice Summerfield VNA#69: Mean Streets (1997). Doctor Who took December off, not publishing another EDA, so I'm reading two Benny New Adventures back-to-back for the first time. After Terrance Dicks gave us the awful Eight Doctors earlier in the year I was nervous to see him return. Luckily those fears melted away swiftly, as Dicks is on fine form again.

In a surprise sequel to Shakedown (the sections not involving the Sontarans), Benny and old friend Chris Cwej travel to a Judge Dredd style mega-city (called, what do you know, Mega-City) to investigate a cover-up involving suspicious murders. Chris and Roz previously spent Shakedown visiting the same city in pursuit of a killer shapeshifter, and Mean Streets sees the return of Ogron detective Garshak still dealing with a city mired in corruption and crime. Speaking of the Ogrons, it seems Virgin managed to get the rights to the species, as they're the first Doctor Who alien race to directly appear in the Benny spin-off line. The Ice Warriors also get mentioned by name, where previous books had skirted the rights issue by labelling them generically as 'Martians'. There's even mention of the Daleks, and more obscure creatures from Who like Drashigs. Maybe because the author was Terrance Dicks the publishers let all the references slide? Always interesting to see how these books can build off of Who without even being Who themselves.

This noirish tone really plays to Dicks' strengths. The strongest parts of his book Blood Harvest were the 20's Chicago mobster stuff, so he's clearly in his element here. It makes The Eight Doctors look like a shambolic misfire more than a downward trend in his writing prowess. Chris is used to much better effect than in Deadfall, able to use his adjudicator skills and try to honour Roz's legacy. He also makes a strong straight-man to Benny's sarcasm, as she goes all in pretending to be a career criminal to smoke out the real gangsters. Mean Streets isn't all that deep, but as a classic genre-pastiche is heaps of fun.

And at last I've finally finished reading all the VNAs and EDAs from 1997. It's been a long ride, partly due to the doubling of the book lines halfway through the year, with some important milestones. When the year started with Eternity Weeps the Seventh Doctor was still the incumbent. We've had his dramatic lore-filled final outing, Roz's out-of-order delayed death, two debuts for the Eighth Doctor in different book lines, the start of the Benny spinoff, and the dynamic new lore introduced in Alien Bodies (that's not even including all the Missing and Past Doctor Adventures, books featuring older incarnations of the Doctor that I haven't been reading). Despite the show not being picked up for a series after the previous year's TV Movie, 1997 ended up having the most Doctor Who-related content released of any year up to that point.

 

My vast but incomplete Doctor Who library is in storage, except for the prize of my collection: Lance Parkin's A History of the Universe.

 

The Shot, by Philip Kerr. It's 1960 in Buenos Aires, and a longtime Nazi refugee-settler worries about whether he'll be another Israeli kidnappee, a la Eichmann. Splendid start to a thriller featuring Kerr's predilection for German intrigue blended with American timely issues such as the presidential election and Castro. Looks to be another excellent thriller after 2 pages in.

 

A Midsummer Tempest (Holger Danske Book 2) by Poul Anderson
Holger Danske, hero of the classic fantasy adventure Three Hearts and Three Lions, isn't much more than a cameo in this one. But there are many new characters and some familiar ones in new guises who have their own tale to tell. The telling is not what I expected (though all the hints were there had I seen them), and the story truly came alive perhaps a third of the way through the book when the conceit was made clear. At that point, the humor of the tale revealed itself to me. I may have to reread it to see what comedy I missed on the first reading.

 

Have crossed the halfway mark of WoT 14 rereread.

Come on ending I can taste you coming in 3 more weeks!

 

A Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin
After watching the first four seasons of Game of Thrones (the show), which I thoroughly enjoyed, I thought I would give the novels a shot. Just finished the first one, and I did go in with a bit of trepidation as the show is very graphic both sexually and in terms of gore. However, this was not my experience with the novel in the slightest, but it was fantastic. The world-building that George has done is magnificent, and his overall writing style is brilliant. He really has a knack for creating unlikeable characters, yet gives them some redeeming qualities which leave you with conflicting emotions. For me, this is particularly the case with Sansa, who comes across as a horrible individual; bratty and spoilt, and yet, he can make the reader feel sorry for her in the last third of the book when residing in Kings Landing, when Joffery is being a massive jack-ass.

Spoiler

literally cannot wait for Joffery to die, he and his mother are my least-liked characters, they are both horrible and insufferable.

A sidenote and not related to the book but rather the series, I must admit HBO did a great job at adapting that first novel for the show, and the casting was on point (if you don't take out the age differences from book to tv, but obviously glad they went with that decision).

Have moved straight onto A Clash of Kings, and I look forward to delving into this tome.

 

Spoiler

Walder Frey is also a nasty piece of work. Tyrion is probably my favorite Lannister.

 

So now you can join the “finish the damn book George” club.

I got to The Last Battle last night.

Ordered my 1st 3 Michelle West books House War 1-3 just now.

 

There's a point at which the books and show deviate greatly. There's a really big plot twist, in fact, that is wholly absent in the show that I won't spoil. You'll know it when you see it.

 

Doctor Who EDA#7: Kursaal (1998). On Kursaal, a planet being terraformed to serve as a giant theme park, the Doctor and Sam encounter the remains of a slaughtered expedition to ancient ruins about to be bulldozed. Opening with an archaeological expedition made me think I was still reading a Bernice Summerfield before the Doctor showed up. The Doctor goes undercover to work with the police, while Sam stumbles upon an activist group trying to protect the planet's biodiversity. It's a good use of both their characters, particularly with Sam's passion for protesting in general.

The book is an interesting examination of these kinds of climate protests, not afraid to tackle some of the murkier aspects. It turns out that the head of the Kursaal construction company has been secretly funding the protestors, to sabotage the development as part of a scheme to get the planet sold off to escape debts. He's also pinning bomb attacks on the protest groups in an effort to discredit them. It's a reminder that even groups with pure motives can often be twisted by personal human affairs and brought down by media campaigns. The book also brings up a common criticism sometimes levied towards peaceful protests, that even those cause disruptions that may endanger lives. It's a particularly timely read, given the recent harsh sentencing of the Just Stop Oil protestors for blocking traffic.

This set-up, of the world and the characters, is all pretty good. Ultimately the problem with the book is the driving source of the plot. Werewolves. That's it. There are alien werewolves running around killing people, and there's no greater depth to the threat, besides the local police sticking their heads in the sand ignoring the issue. There is a slight twist in that the first batch of werewolves are the reanimated corpses of the archaeological team, which lends itself to some gruesome descriptions of blood and broken bodies. But for the most part it's played boringly straight. There was an ancient species of alien werewolves and now they're trying to kill people. It makes what was an otherwise interesting setting, with room for moral debates, into a backdrop for a dull slasher movie plotline. A few books aog Kate Orman managed to give a fresh take on vampires, but here it's a very generic outcome that doesn't add much to the themes of the theme-park protest side of the book.

But, at least it's not drowning in nostalgia for a past era of TV Doctor Who. The influx of new ideas in Alien Bodies seems to have washed all of that out of the system. This story may not be outstanding, but it is at least more than a repeat of past glories. Additionally, in an unexpected twist halfway through the book the majority of the plot wraps up and the Doctor and Sam hop forward 15 years, to after the Kursaal theme park has opened. The prospect of Sam turning into a werewolf and stalking through a giant theme park is a much more potent concept, with festival parade costumes providing huge crowds for the Doctor to hunt for her in. Despite some drawbacks in its plot, there were a lot of moving parts to Kursaal. It had some salient themes it wanted to convey and did so quite well. Can't ask for much more than that.

 

Wow putting quite the dent in The Last Battle section considering the Olympics is taking so much time out of my day.

My daughter is reading her very 1st reading for pleasure books. Some gal named Sarah Maas who appears to be all the rage right now. She is on bk 3 of whatever the series is and is expressing interest continuing onto something else afterwards so I’m trying to debate on reco some of my collections. Malazan and Dune would be far above her current level for sure. Thinking about introducing her to her namesake with some Jaina Solo stuff or going simple with some Dragonlance. Maybe some Dresden Files.

 

Oh boy…started a rereread of WoT(minus New Spring) on 9/2/21 just prior to Wheel of Prime S1 starting and that has finally ended on 7/31/24. That took me far faR fAR FAR to damn long to get through. I frequently was reading other books at the same time so it drug out even more. Some hella burn out hit at times.

Idk if I want to tackle any rereads atm. I need to redo Mistborn era 2 before reading the last book and also redo the 6 1st Law before taking on the latest trilogy. Might not have the energy for rereading now.

So I will either start Browns Lightbringer or start going through some of these recent GGK purchases.

 

Three Hearts and Three Lions by Poul Anderson
I may have been a teen the last time I read it. Still holds up as a fun fantasy story from 1961 that had a big influence on D&D. (Anderson was also a founding member of the SCA, so his medieval fantasy nerd banner flies high.) The story is somewhat episodic, but never loses sight of the big picture. There are funny bits that ring very true, never just jokes for the sake of cheap comedy. I still like the characters, and even after all these years I still crush a little on Alianora the swan-may.

 

I have chosen Sailing to Sarantium over Lightbringer which I picked up and went through the DP totally lost on and realized that I was wrong and would definitely need to reread 1-5. Ugh.

Im going to go through these GGK books not in pub order but in real world era order. I’m looking forward to this author after all these years since I read the gem Tigana.

 

Bernice Summerfield VNA#70: Tempest (1998). Previously, in Ship of Fools, Benny was tasked with solving a murder mystery on a space cruise liner. Since that book worked so well, it seems like other authors wanted to repeat the formula. This time the setting is a futuristic monorail on a planet with a toxic atmosphere wracked by constant storms, the crime is the theft of an expensive religious sculpture (including the murder of a guard), and Benny is once again left to sort it all out.

It's not the most original set-up, even in this book line, but that's no problem. Benny works wonders in these kinds of settings, mixing with people from all walks of life and poking her nose into secrets. Christopher Bulis hadn't contributed to the New Adventures since all the way back in Shadowmind, book 16 (which I read nearly a year ago). There's not much connecting the two books, narrative-wise, or stylistically, although I do think Tempest shows a much better grasp of the basics of storytelling. Shadowmind was dragged down by having more characters than it needed and a slightly dull space marines plotline.

Tempest, with its contained cast and efficient Agatha Christie meets Sherlock Holmes mystery is handled well. There are enough roadblocks along the way to keep things rolling along, like having to clear a landslide off the track in the harsh environment outside the train, or an all-out siege from a group trying to seize the artefact. The ultimate twist of the killer and what happened to the artefact is very satisfying, possibly putting this book ever-so slightly ahead of Ship of Fools. Sometimes a formula really works to a book's benefit.

 

I got done reading Two Towers. For the Rohan section and Faramir it's definitely worth a read.

 

For all the sections it’s worth a read.

 

For the minimum of my suggestion yes

 

Emperor of Japan: Meiji and His World, 1852-1912, by Donald Keene. Emperor Meiji was born into an insular, feudal Japan in the process of being reopened to the outside world, and died as the ruler of a modernized empire that had defeated a European great power in war and was well on its way to being a great power itself. An essentially medieval country transformed into a modern one in fifty years; it’s one of the most striking transformations in history, and Meiji is deeply associated with it, and with the transfer of power from the shogunate back to the emperor. With his long reign and reputation for personal virtue and dedication to duty, Meiji has been widely respected, but he was also a reserved, inscrutable personality, and Keene tries to look at the man himself, not just the accomplishments of his era, and bring him to life as much as he can in a biography.

Keene doesn’t succeed in making Meiji all that human. There’s not a ton of documentation to work with, but he does his best to get at every scrap of personality, only to have to admit at the end that maybe the public Meiji really was all of him — a man fiercely committed to playing the role of an impassive, perfect, diligent Confucian monarch. What is there is illuminating, but Meiji remains an enigmatic figure, difficult to penetrate. Keene has better luck illustrating the many developments of his reign and situating Meiji among them. The Meiji Restoration overthrew the shogunate, and Meiji’s administration went on to open up the country to Western influences and accept the necessity of modernization, even going so far as to institute a (wildly dysfunctional) parliament. This made Japan the only country of East Asia to successfully modernize and maintain its position, rather than declining or being colonized. But it also made Japan one of the imperialist predators of the area, launching several wars and annexing Korea and Taiwan. Keene presents Meiji as largely a figurehead who wasn’t a driving force behind any of this — his constantly churning, dysfunctional ministers and the perceived force of events were — but who was a key enabling element. Contrasted to his fiercely xenophobic father, whose rage and distress at the shogunate’s concessions to foreign intercourse drove the shogunate’s downfall, Meiji was realistic and open to the need for modernization and accommodation of some degree of westernization in order to prevent the decline and collapse of the country.

The book makes for a pretty good look at the period, one that’s generally informative while also trying to illuminate Meiji as best it can. Its biggest limitation is that Keene is a dry writer who doesn’t bring his subject to life, and sometimes gets bogged down in details or names without refreshing the reader or providing enough context. In a very long book, it makes for a bit of a slog that’s not going to appeal to casual readers. But it’s worth the read if you want to learn a lot about a fascinating period.

 

The Rocketeer: The Complete Adventures. This is a collection of Dave Stevens’s Rocketeer comics, which only actually amounts to two stories. In the first, he gets his hands on the rocket engine and is caught between the government agents, Nazis, and Hughes men chasing it. It’s basically the same story as was used for the film, though the movie actually had to build the story out with a few more angles to make it work at feature length and give it a central villain. The second story follows immediately on, as Cliff Secord chases his less-than-faithful girlfriend Betty to New York and ends up working with the Shadow to protect himself from an old nemesis.

Neither Cliff nor Betty are very heroic characters — Cliff is a relatable ordinary guy, but entirely self-interested, while Betty mostly just shows up for cheesecake shots and her whole place in the plot is based around the fact that she’s cheating on Cliff with a sleazeball. And the stories, as stories, aren’t going to light anybody’s world on fire. But the pulp-throwback appeal of the comics is undeniable. Stevens’s art captures the retro pulp sensibility, and the stories are built around a lot of fun tropes, and career from action sequence to action sequence. I was surprised that the sensation they made is rather outsized to the fairly slight stories themselves, but they are a lot of fun and I can see how they’d grab the imagination.

 

I saw something about Michael Moorcock's Elric of Melnibone books, which I've heard about for decades but never got around to reading. Amazon had a free sample that I decided to check out, and I didn't much like it. None of the characters appealed, and their society didn't ring true at all. It felt like a lame wanna-be-goth trying to prove how edgy and different they are. I just don't get why people would want to read about Elric.

 

I’ve got 3 Elric SFBC editions that I got like 20+ years ago. Still never even cracked the cover open.

Im totally fn digging Sailing to Sarantium. GGK is a fantastic writer. About 110pgs in so far.

 

Michael Moorcock's Elric is one of the "founding texts" of Dungeons and Dragons; my first exposure was as a kid in the 1st edition Deities and Demigods, which in addition to the conventional mythos had three literary ones - Lieber's Newhon, the Cthulhu Mythos, and the Elric saga.
I hadn't gotten around to reading them until last year. He's often described as the 'anti-Tolkien' - which is a little unfair, but he clearly was never fond of him. Elric is something a walking disaster, who often means well but causes the destruction of his own land and the people he cares about, and in the end himself.

But the biggest influence on D&D was every munchkin player wanted that fricking sword of his.