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

[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.