not been good with book reviews

[rone]

palecur turned me onto James Alan Gardner.  Expendable is his first book, and it's OK; interesting ideas, characters that could be interesting but aren't too well developed, a bit too much angst for my taste.  Vigilant is much better; an old character reappears and is solidified, and the story is much more compelling and interesting.  Good SF.  Paul also lent me Richard Morgan's Altered Carbon, which was grim and gritty but definitely entertaining.

Moving Pictures is possibly the worst Discworld book.  It was wretchedly boring; it seems to me that parodying the movie industry is very difficult without good insider knowledge (for example, Mamet's State and Main).  Reaper Man was much better, but not among the top in the series.

I'm currently reading C. S. Friedman's In Conquest Born.  I've decided that "space opera" is code for "fantasy, but with spaceships instead of horses and aliens instead of elves".  The book alternates between good bits and nearly melodramatic bits.

Comments

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

We've got Moving Pictures somewhere here, but I never read it because Sam told me it was pretty bad.

Reaper Man was one of the first I ever read, and I liked it a lot; I think it was the first one I read in which Pratchett tried to inject genuine pathos into the story, and that came out of left field and surprised me. But the "mall entity" subplot was sort of a one-joke thing.

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

Yep, i felt the same way about the mall thing.

[taerowyn.livejournal.com]

Gah, Moving Pictures is just...well, as you said, worst wouldn't be a stretch. Thankfully balanced by some fine, fine writing.

Signed,
The girl who is going to meet Pterry next Friday (insert fangirl squee here)

[taerowyn.livejournal.com]

The "fine, fine writing" being the other books in the series...thought I should clarify that before anyone asked.

[nyar.livejournal.com]

I read a C.S. Friedman book once... Never again!

I liked Altered Carbon quite a bit. I thought it had an interesting concept and was fairly well executed. And yes, grim and gritty!

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

I remember In Conquest Born having a really spiffy Michael Whelan cover painting.

I don't know anything else about it, except that it was hyped as a huge important novel by the same marketeers who hype everything as a huge important novel.

[peglegpete.livejournal.com]

Well, these novels are huge and important to the marketeers' pocketbooks.

[peglegpete.livejournal.com]

I concur on Moving Pictures. I tend to enjoy the Watch books the most, and I'm always a sucker for good Rincewind suffering.

My take on Friedman...
In Conquest Born: okay
Madness Season: wonderful
This Alien Shore: even more wonderful
That fucking trilogy: my eyes! Aie, my eyes!

Actually, that trilogy had some really cool ideas, and I think it could have made for one really cool book.

[eagle]

I remember liking In Conquest Born and can no longer remember a thing about it, which usually means that it's actually just okay. On the basis of that book, I started another C.S. Friedman series (Black Sun or some such thing), and it was dreadful.

I wasn't a big fan of Expendable; the glass people got rather annoying. Trapped is much, much better, and I can recommend it.

I'm currently reading Lady of Mazes by Karl Schroeder, which is completely blowing me away. But more on that in my journal when I finish it.

[ambyr.livejournal.com]

I quite like In Conquest Born, but it is a first novel, and so it does show some strange uneveness. I enjoyed her later books a lot more.

Unfortunately, the sequel, The Wilding, her eighth book, can pretty much only be described as dreadful. I await whatever book she puts out next with some trepidation.

[alfvaen]

I'm a big fan of Gardner, myself, ever since reading his short story "Muffin Explains Teleology To The World At Large", which is a hoot. I liked Expendable a lot, actually, but the other books in the series are good, too. Commitment Hour was a bit of a misstep--it could almost be a Tepper novel. I haven't read his latest, Radiant, yet.

Definitely agree on Moving Pictures, but I really liked Reaper Man. I think my current favourite Discworld book is Thief of Time, though.