Where Are You in Fantasyland: May, 2011

A new topic for the merry month of may.

Still working my way through The Wise Man's Fear by Patrick rothfuss as well as reading Guardians of Ga'Hoole: The River of Wind by Kathryn Lasky.

I'm visiting the Soho district of London in Moon Over Soho.

I just spent an hour or two in Saint Batholomew's Church with the 220 church mice led by Mouse Mistress Hildegarde of Lois Lowry's Bless This Mouse.

EDIT to fix Touchstone.

I just boarded the Ketty Jay in Retribution Falls. And we've been shot!

I'm in Tal Varrar with Locke and Jean who are learning to be pirates! Red Seas Under Red Skies

Just been through a trial with whitecloaks, now wandering the Wolf Dream in search of Slayer and the reason behind the purple dome in the Towers of Midnight.

Just started Wise Man's Fear and then realized I'm getting on a plane in two days and it's far too large to be good plane reading. Guess I'll have to finish it before then, right?! ;)

I'm in an underground crypt. Reading The Castle of Dark bY Tanith Lee

>8 sandyg210:: I do like those early Tanith Lee YA books!

I'm still travelling in Eion, in Shadowheart.

Edited to fix touchstone.

I was just in Russia in Deathless by Catherynne Valente.

I am flitting about a 'court of the phay' costume party at the royal palace of Crotheny in Greg Keyes' The Briar King, have a feeling everything is going to go very bad any minute...

Still with the owls in Guardians of Ga'Hoole: Exile by Kathryn Lasky.

In TunFaire, making my way through the Garrett series by Glen Cook, just started Dread Brass Shadows.

I was in Wyzim and assorted other places in quasi-but-not-quite Eastern medieval Europe, with Geralt of Rivia, Witcher, monster hunter in The Last Wish.

i am just about to set of into The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms.

14: Jarandel

Read the next Witcher book slowly, the following two aren't due in English until 2012. I'm still not sure why Orbit(US)/Gollancz aren't taking advantage of the big publicity spend for 'The Witcher 2' Computer Game which is out in 2 weeks.
I would have thought it was common sense.

In Swindon, 1985, with Thursday Next in Lost in A Good Book.

Finished Guardians of Ga'Hoole: Exile and started Guardians of Ga'Hoole: The War of the Ember by Kathryn Lasky.

# 18 Hmmm... interested to see so many people are reading these Guardians of Ga'Hoole books, what are they like? My only experience of them was the film, I was quite excited about going to see it but found it rather dissapointing. Are the books aimed at children or young adults would you say? How do they compare to other anthropomorphic novels such as Redwall etc.

>16 cosmicdolphin:

Though I read the Last Wish in english, actually the french Witcher translations are more advanced, with 2 short story collections and 5 novels now nearly all released in a variety of tradesize & MMP editions, so I could just switch to them :D

But Mount TBR is big enough anyway that even if I quite liked it I won't mind the wait for whatever versions of the next books make it to my hands.

@19 >> I haven't seen the movie, but I've read the first three Ga'Hoole books and enjoyed them but not enough to read through the entire lengthy series. I think the first three are worth reading anyway, and it's my understanding that those are the three that were incorporated into the movie.

I'd say these are definitely aimed more at children than teens. I liked them better than Redwall (I've only read the first Redwall book). Jacques, I thought, took a basic medieval warfare romance and replaced the humans with animals. Lasky's owls, though, are really"owl-y" and not substitute humans.

# 19 KayEluned, the Ga'Hoole books are aimed at children. My guess at the age range would be 6 to 10. The books have nothing to do with the movie except they are both about owls. For the movie, bits and pieces were taken from the first couple of books and mashed up until they didn't resemble the books much anymore. I've not read the Redwall books so I can't comment to that, but the Lasky books happen after something has destroyed humanity (the Others) and only owls and animals are left.

I enjoyed the books. The stories are uncomplicated and each has at least one lesson to teach readers.

Thanks for the info CurrerBell and Seitherin, I might give the first one a read, see how I get on.

I've started Mairelon the Magician which I've heard really good things about! I like what I've read so far.

Now entering the virtual realities in City of Golden Shadows. This is my second stab at this author after being somewhat unimpressed by what I read of Memory, Sorrow and Thorn a few years ago.

The Crippled God by Steven Erikson, I've been reading the Malazan books for the past 6 months and i'm finally nearing the end.

In Merlotte's with Sookie, Claude, and Claudine in From Dead to Worse and with Khaavren in his office in Tiassa.

I'm at the Departmen of Giant Robot Warriors in New York City in the graphic novel Giant Robot Warriors and in New Canada in Satan Burger. It's not fantasy, but I'm also on the road with Che and Alberto in The Motorcycle Diaries.

I have departed from Retribution Falls and am now entering An Artificial Night with October Daye in San Fransisco. Spike rules!

Venice in The Fallen Blade

I'm in the city of Avendoom in the kingdom of Valiostr planning a trip to Hrad Spein to retrieve the Rainbow Horn in Shadow Prowler.

I'm sailing on The Bird of the River - reading Kage Baker's book of the same name

30, Phanatique - how are you liking The Fallen Blade? I have it and am trying to figure out what to read next from my TBR pile.

Just started The Summoner - managed to score a set of Necromancer books at Goodwill...

I'm in The Inheritance & Other Stories. At the moment I'm in Seattle in "A Touch of Lavendar," which is more SF, but there will be more fantasy when I'm through the Megan Lindholm stories and get to the Robin Hobb.

I've just entered Embassytown and I must say, it is very very weird...

(by china mieville. touchstones not loading.)

Can't talk long. I'm in the middle of a mob war. After burning down one of Laris's brothels, Vlad's just been taken to task by his boss's boss. "Burning down an enemy's business is not a normal thing for a Jhereg war. It's expensive and it gets notice, neither of which is good." Guys, I don't think Vlad's going to make it. I mean, this isn't some two-bit player. This guy is one of the five bosses in charge of the organization in Adrilankha. "This guy . . . could snap his fingers and have me killed. But I wasn't about to kiss his ass; my life isn't worth that much."

Steve Brust's Yendi, from The Book of Jhereg compendium. Think Godfather, but set in Lord of the Rings (except we humans live in a Jim Crow elven empire).

Can't stand the tension so instead I'm gonna take a break and vacation in Nazi-occupied France (Alan Furst's The World at Night).

Reading fast this month! Now in Bon Temps with Sookie in Dead Reckoning which I'm almost finished with and then I go into Mind Fuck (er...sorry).

I'm back in Bon Temps, LA (seems like I was just there last week!) with Sookie Stackhouse in Dead and Gone, and things are getting hairy.

Concurrently (appropriately) I'm adventuring with Sir Seaton Begg, The Metatemporal Detective, in locales from London to Texas. Beware the albino with the hungry sword!

I'm in Chicago. Reading Hard Bitten by Chloe Neill

I'm in the Sea of Brass in Red Seas Under Red Skies

I'm in Emona in The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova.

@peasantstories
Get out get out get OUT! Now!

@destinyhascheatedme
Just to clarify, are you telling me to get out of Emona or to get out of this group?

Just started The Curse of Chalion by Lois McMaster Bujold.

@peasantstories
:)

Emona. The Historian is a horrid book.

#42 Just finished Red Seas Under Red Skies myself. I thought it was terrific.

In New York reading Moonshine good start.

I've left Whistling Tor a few days ago after finding Heart's Blood. I'm probably going to have to visit Neverland to meet Peter Pan soon.

Waiting for the dragons to hatch in Dragon Keeper by Robin Hobb.

I'm in Zoo City as Zinzi gets drawn into using her finder of lost things skills to track down a missing person.

Finished The Curse of Chalion and have moved on to Roman Britain with The Ravens of Avalon. Yet another author who's addicted to the word "upon". Oh, goody.

I'm in Tempe, AZ with Hounded: the iron druid chronicles by Kevin Hearne. Which is weird because I'm in Tempe in real life too...

touchstone not working :(

Touchstone fairy: Hounded. :-)

I was just in Westeros with A Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin. I'm doing a re-read of the series in preparation for ADWD.

@ 33: bibliolee8

The Fallen Blade is a quick and perfectly entertaining read but I didn't feel Like Grimwood makes Venice his own in the way that others have - such as Scott Lynch's re-imagining of it It's kind of a snack book ... enjoyable but forgettable.

I'm reading The White-Luck Warrior now which is pretty good. I kind of wish that Bakker had other notes in his repetoire than DOOM, DOOM! but he is so good at creating psychologically nuanced characters that I find his writing very compelling even though there are virtually no lighter moments ever to balance the unending darkness.

I'm not quite sure where I am except that there's an airport, but it's in Warm Bodies.

Now reading The Blood King...

Supernatural intrigue in New Orleans with Jane Yellowrock in Mercy Blade. Third in a series. Directly in the supernatural-creatures line of Laurel K. Hamilton, Jim Butcher, etc: not very original, but she puts her own spin on it & does it well and engagingly.

>50 sparrowbunny:, 51, 52: Heart's Blood, Dragon keeper and Zoo City are all on my tbr pile, but I must finish Shadowheart first. Sigh . . . I am enjoying it but there are definitely sections that have dragged in order to get characters into the right place for the grand finale.

I'm re-reading Kushiel's Dart and just started The Demon's Surrender. I'm struggling to find new and exciting fantasy series to read at the moment though so doing some research before my next adventure.

I am in London looking after Sixty-One Nails.

Still in Shadowmarch, reaching the end of the journey in Shadowheart. But have just joined Sir Able The knight in Mythgarthr, to keep me entertained while commuting. So far so good, although it hasn't grabbed me the way New Sun and Long Sun did.

Just left the Vampire's Kiss bar with Sookie, Eric, and Pam in Dead Reckoning, and with Felix Castor standing outside his temporary home in Dead Men's Boots.

In the Shadowlands, trying to get back to Amber with Corwin in The Guns of Avalon. Having finished the first Amber book last night and started the second one today, I fear the quality is dropping off. I wonder if the second one was rushed.

I've left The Administration in Mind Fuck (until the sequel arrives in the mail) and am now hanging out with werewolves in Silver Kiss. I love not dwelling in reality!

re #66
The Guns of Avalon is the weakest one of the first series. But then, you have to accept the whole thing for what it is: light fun. The series picks up after the second one, and I love it (read it twice), but great literature it's not.

@67>> Silver Kiss looks interesting. I just downloaded it to my Kindle. (For some reason, when I saw that title as a "werewolf novel" I thought of Patricia Briggs and her "Mercy Thompson" series.)

I'll have to get to Silver Kiss in the next few days, in between reading Lucy Maud Montgomery and Sarah Orne Jewett, which are both recent kicks of mine.

I was in Johannesburg, South Africa in Zoo City by Lauren Beukes. It's a bit of blending of several genres including science fiction, noir, and urban fantasy, but the author handles it very well. I thought it was a great book.

Yay, I've finally left the Marchlands of Shadowheart! Things really felt slow even as the action picked up because there were so many plot threads to jump between. Overall it was a satisfying journey, but I'm not sure I'll reread it the way I do Tad's other books. I was frustrated by the way somany of the minor characters just disappeared for 100s of pages until they were needed, when suddenly they reappeared for a key scene and then vanished again. I loved Merolanna and Utta for example, but but they ended up being completely blown off. Oh well.

Started my re-read of A Game of Thrones by George R. R. Martin.

>70 beniowa: I'm from Pretoria, SA, so I'm really looking forward to reading Zoo City!

I've justed finished slinking around the dark, decrepit hallways of Gormenghast, but I only read Titus Groan, because I found out that new versions of all Peake's books are coming out in June for the centennial of his birth.

The perennial question is, of course, whether the Titus books are even fantasy. They seem, to sound a bit pretentious, pretty sui generis to me, resembling Dickens more than, say, Tolkien.

I'm currently getting slightly lost in the Shadow Realms and elsewhere with Sophie and Josh, about a quarter of the way through Michael Scott's The Warlock right now. I just noticed it when I went into B&N a few days ago for something else and picked it up.

My only problem with the "Nicholas Flamel" series is that Scott fills it up with so many characters, and they're of such eclectic "mythological" origins, that it really can get confusing after a while. Rick Riordan's approach seems a bit more manageable (though I'm deliberately staying away from his newer Egyptian series, at least for now, to keep my various TBR mountains under some kind of control).

And there really isn't any character in the "Nicholas Flamel" series of whom I'm extraordinarily fond. I adore Clarisse LaRue and I refuse to watch that "Percy Jackson" movie since they took Clarisse out, and I've even started on the new "Percy Jackson" series just for Clarisse's cameo. There just isn't anyone in Scott's "Nicholas Flamel" that I can get that excited about (though I really do like Scatty, but she's too relatively minor a character).

Oh well, I'll still be following the "Nicholas Flamel" series through the final volume in 2012, to see how it all turns out, and I should be finished The Warlock over this long weekend.

Just finished Brandon Sanderson's Mistborn and am starting on the sequel, Well of Ascension. Really liked the first one a lot!

Doing a re-read of The Name of the Wind at the moment!

I'm about 2/3 of the way through The Name of the Wind right now; hopefully I can finish during this holiday weekend!

I've also started A Game of Thrones so I am very ready to get into that next!

Been reading Daggerspell by Kathernine Kerr for the last few days (touchstones not working for me for some reason)...

#73 I know what you mean about Gormenghast, very hard to categorise. I don't usually like the term 'speculative fiction' because it is such a wide catch all term and doesn't give you much of an idea of what a book is really like, but in this case it is the only thing I think can cover it! Gormenghast has elements of fantasy, gothic in the traditional literary sense, historical, mystery and even, when you get to the final book Titus Alone, possibly dystopian sci fi or steampunk or something, it defies categories and is a wonderful book :) (how I empathised when poor Lord Gormenghast's library went up in flames!)

Also agree that Gormenghast is hard to categorize. Quite unique and wonderful, a fantasy work of genius. Oddly, though I loved it & often reread favorites, I've never been able to reread it, maybe because it's so dense & ponderous. I didn't like the last book, which was joltingly different in many ways (style, setting, plot); I think I've read that he had Parkinsons Disease & wrote the last book when significantly deteriorated both physically & mentally.
Often movies aren't as good as the original books (or sometimes vice versa!), but in this case the BBC did a rather good adaptation about 10 years ago, really capturing the feeling & the characters. They were smart enough to leave off the third volume.

#80 I agree the third book is completely different from the the previous and it can seen jolting, I don't think it was published during his life, in fact I don't think he ever finished it. I might not be remembering this right but I think someone either in his family or from his publisher brought all his notes together and wrote it for him which might explain some of the strangeness. And yes I also saw the BBC version, it was very good,beautifuly done, with a very young John Rhys Meyer as Steerpike : )

Peake actually finished Titus Alone in draft format, but he was too ill to revise it fully. There have been at least two, somewhat differing versions of the book. I kind of like Alone; it shows Peake's versatility and confirms his shunning of genre.

For those of you who are interested in Peake, Overlook and Vintage are bringing out most of his work in new editions in June. Interestingly, they are also publishing a book called Titus Awakes, which is based on a manuscript found in 2010. I don't think it will be that great, though: Peake only wrote some of it; his widow, Maeve Gilmore, finished it. I don't know if I'll even buy it: reminds me a bit of that And Another Thing by Eoin Colfer, which 'completed' Douglas Adams's Hitchhiker books. Didn't read that either.

I still want to see the BBC production. You all make it sound very intriguing.

Me? I am On the Edge.

I am finally making my way through the Harry Potter series. I read the first three books this weekend, and am working on the fourth now. I don't think they'll end up favorites, but I'm definitely enjoying them, and can't believe I waited so long to read them! I've posted my thoughts on each of the books I've read:

Sorcerer's Stone: http://www.librarything.com/work/5403381/reviews/73530851
Chamber of Secrets: http://www.librarything.com/work/683408/reviews/73530887
Prisoner of Azkaban: http://www.librarything.com/work/2742161/reviews/73530913

Now reading Darkspell by Katherine Kerr (touchstones still not working for me)...

left Nantucket on a mission to defeat the bad guy in long ago Britain. Island in the Sea of Time

Just left Kelewan in Daughter of the Empire and am now visiting the various worlds of Robin Hobb and Megan Lindholm in The inheritance.

June topic located here - http://www.librarything.com/topic/117284.