Humouress weighs in for 2019 (finally)

I'm Nina, I'm an expat living in Singapore with my husband, two football-mad sons and our/ their dog, a golden retriever named Jasper whom we've had for two and a half years. My favourite genre is fantasy but I'll occasionally venture into other fields. I try - but don't always succeed - to review what I read, but I do keep my reviews spoiler-free.

75 Book Challenge 2019 - thread 2
2018 thread

Green Dragon Master Thread wiki

Dec books

Nov

Oct

Sep

Aug

Jul

review posted/ rated/ written/ read

✔ / / (#) / Title

June
✔           14) Any Way the Wind Blows by Seanan McGuire
      13) The Shadow Throne by Jennifer A. Nielsen
✔   12) The Eye of the World by Robert Jordan
  11) The Raven Tower by Ann Leckie
10) by Anne and Barbara Fienberg

May
still nothing

April
nothing

review posted/ rated/ written/ read

✔ / / (#) / Title

March

✔       9) Dr. Eleventh originated by Roger Hargreaves
✔       8) Dr. Tenth originated by Roger Hargreaves
7) The Cloud Roads by Martha Wells
✔       6) Dr. Ninth originated by Roger Hargreaves

review posted/ rated/ written/ read

✔ / / (#) / Title

February

nothing to report :0(

January
✔       5) The Ghostly Term at Trebizon by Anne Digby
✔       4) Small Gods by Terry Pratchett
✔   3) The Runaway King by Jennifer A. Nielsen
2) Tashi and the Haunted House by Anna and Barbara Fienberg
✔   1) All Systems Red by Martha Wells

June
14. 12.

May

April

March
9. 8. 6.

February

January
5.     4. 3. 1.  

The constellation:

  You have got to read this one!                          
  Really good; worth reading                                
      Good, but without that special 'something' for me  
       Very nice, but a few issues                                   
           An enjoyable book                                                                        
           Um, okay. Has some redeeming qualities                  
                Writing is hard. I appreciate the work the author did    
               (haven't met one - yet)                                               
                     Dire                                                                            
                     Rated only as a warning. Run away. Don't stop.               

Purple stars, from Robin's thread:

5.0
4.5
4.0
3.5
3.0
2.5
2.0
1.5
1.0
0.5

Unfortunately, the coloured stars I usually use come from an insecure website and no longer show on LibraryThing, so I'll have to hunt down another source.

Reading inspirations

Ongoing series:

The Dark is Rising - Susan Cooper
Chronicles of the Cheysuli - Jennifer Roberson
Chronicles of the Kencyrath - P. C. Hodgell (group read, started January 2018)
Tashi - Anna Fienberg
The Vorkosigan Saga - Lois McMaster Bujold (2014-2017 group read - savouring it before I run out of these glorious books)
**Farseer (group read starting March 2018)
***The Wheel of Time - Robert Jordan (relaxed group read starting January 2019)
{Tor read https://www.tor.com/2018/02/20/reading-the-wheel-of-time-eye-of-the-world-part-1...

Planning to read with the kids:
A Series of Unfortunate Events - Lemony Snickett
Ranger's Apprentice - John Flanagan (group read starting January 2019)

Ooh, what about...

Miss Fisher mysteries
Cinder
Vatta/Honor Harrington
*Ready Player One
Earthsea book 1

Reading at home : The Eye of the World, Ship of Magic

‘Waiting for the boys to finish classes’ book : The Ruins of Gorlan

Bedtime reading :Tashi series, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

Kindle : Trebizon series

Downtime : Skulduggery Pleasant

Overdrive :

Book club The Raven Tower

online story

1) All Systems Red by Martha Wells

{First of 4: The Murderbot Diaries. Sci-fi. Kindle single}
LT recommended

 

I was looking for some quick reads to try and make my '75 books read in 2018' quota in the last couple of weeks in December. I found this as a Kindle single deal and since this has been getting a lot of (favourable) noise on LT recently I downloaded it to read. However, light, fluffy and quick it is not; I had to put brain into gear - and so it became my first book of 2019.

This novella is told in the first ... er ... person from the Murderbot's point of view. It (although, for some reason, I think of it as feminine) is a cyborg (part organic, part robot), rented out by The Company (which is never named) as a security unit to a scientific team which has an option to investigate an area of a new planet. There is another, larger team (on a different area of the planet) which rates more SecUnits rented out by the company but, as a robot, Murderbot feels no affinity to them. In fact, it has infiltrated it's governor module which is normally used by the company to give it instructions.

The novella opens thus:

'I could have become a mass murderer after I hacked my governor module, but then I realised I could access the combined feed of entertainment channels carried on the company satellites. It had been well over 35,000 hours or so since then, with still not much murdering, but probably, I don't know, a little under 35,000 hours of movies, serials, books, plays and music consumed. As a heartless killing machine, I was a terrible failure.

I was also still doing my job, on a new contract, and hoping Dr. Volescu and Dr. Bharadwaj finished their survey soon so we could get back to the habitat and I could watch episode 397 of Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon.'

The Murderbot has to be careful that no-one finds out that it has gone rogue but it does also seem to have developed a conscience as well as an addiction to space soap operas.

The mission goes disastrously wrong (possibly sabotage - but who?) and it has to make decisions that will save the humans it has been assigned to - but only by going against the programming from the governor module.

I don't tend to read much sci-fi and when it is, it's space opera like the Vorkosigan saga and I haven't read AI pretty much at all since I read most of Assimov's I, Robot series about thirty years ago, so this genre was quite fresh to me. I liked the protagonist and the team it worked for. The team was a good mix of (Earth) ethnicities and genders and I liked the way they approached situations relatively calmly. What surprised me was the way the Murderbot thought, rationalised and (despite constantly convincing itself otherwise - or trying to) cared. The ending was bitter sweet, but it opens the way for further Murderbot Diaries.

Nicely done. A sentimental view of a 'non-sentimental' being.

4.5 stars

2) Tashi

3) The Runaway King by Jennifer A. Nielsen



{Second of 3: The Ascendance Trilogy children's, fantasy}
(Re-read)

This book follows on within a few months of the end of the first book, which concerned Conner's plot to find the 'lost' prince Jaron of Carthya. The main protagonist is Sage (who is about fourteen or fifteen years old) and the story is narrated in the first person from his point of view.

Sage realises that the king of Avenia is in league with the pirates who were hired to kill prince Jaron four years ago and the kingdom of Carthya is in danger from invasion on more than one front. To save the kingdom, he decides to join the pirates and infiltrate them from the inside. Imogen, who helped him at Farthenwood, doesn't want to see him put himself in danger. But there's the small matter of the princess Amarinda.

I like Sage's brashness - which gets him out of a lot of scrapes but also tends to get him into scrapes - and his dedication to his kingdom and friends. Obviously, other characters in the book feel the same way as I do because it wins him their loyalty. I like Sage's heroism, that he would try to save as many people as possible, whether he knows them or likes them. And he likes giving people second chances.

This is a nicely plotted novel for children/ young adults with lots of action and derring-do. Nielsen builds the tension skilfully; at some points I really wanted to read on to find out what happened while at the same time I almost couldn't bear to, in case all Sage's planning collapsed like a house of cards. And the number of times that things almost worked out, only for Sage to have safety snatched from him at the last moment by a bad turn of luck! The number of times things work out may be improbable in real life but work very nicely in this YA fantasy.

4.5

Mini-review from Dec 2015

Knights, thieves, pirates; swashbuckling adventure, a little bit of politicking, a hint of romance. Well written, focused if a little improbable in real life; but, hey, that's why I read fantasy. This series is addictive. It seems popular, too. I recognised it in Dutch the other day. Looking forward to the next book.

*Binding on this edition (Scholastic ISBN 978-0-545-28416-5) is bad.*

4) Small Gods by Terry Pratchett

 

{Thirteenth of 41: Discworld series. Fantasy, humour, satire}
{Bookclub}

Another book in the Discworld pantheon with Sir Terry at his hilarious best. This book frequently made me smile, laugh, giggle silently or guffaw out loud though I suspect a lot of it went over my head, as usual. I did start off writing down funny quotes but it was interrupting my reading having to pause so often.

‘Time is a drug. Too much of it kills you.’

So: the major gods of Discworld live at Cori Celesti - but away from the Hub, on the outskirts of deserts or deep in marshes, people believe in small gods, linked to local waterholes and so on. And as the numbers of their followers grow, so does their status of these gods and their powers increase. Upon the belief in one such god, the Great God Om, is the city of Omnia sustained. And the novice priest Brutha (who has been a novice for many years and is likely to remain a novice for many more years) is one of his most fervent believers, having been brought up in a small village by his grandmother who instilled that belief deep in him.

His eighth prophet being scheduled to appear, the Great God Om descends to earth and takes the form of ... a one-eyed tortoise.

Now consider the tortoise ... It has about as good a turn of speed as you need to hunt down a lettuce.’

Who, having survived the fate once already, has a dread of being seized by an eagle and dropped from a great height.

‘Gravity is a habit that is hard to shake off.’

Actually, Brutha is probably Om's only true believer; fortunately, the eagle drops the Great God Om (as a tortoise) into Brutha's garden. And so events are set in motion.

Om, being arrogant in his power, has a tendency to lose his temper easily...

'Om lost his temper and turned Lu-Tze into a lowly worm in the deepest cesspit of hell, and then got even more angry when the old man went on peacefully shovelling.

'The devils of infinity fill your living bones with sulphur!' he screamed.

This did not make a great deal of difference.'

... but unfortunately (or not) his stock is rather low at the moment. The problem is that religion in the great city of Omnia is all show and no substance.

We also meet Vorbis who is in charge of the Quisition and is effectively in charge of Omnia's priesthood (and thereby, Omnia) and who has a Trump-like tendency to believe the lies he tells others to believe. He hears about the heresy that proposes that the Discworld is supported on the back of four elephant which stand on the shell of a giant turtle which is slowly swimming through space when all good Omnians know that the world is round and revolves around its pole.

And so with this cast of characters we travel to Ephebe where philosophers congregate and where the second greatest library on Discworld is situated - before it was burned down.

I confess, I didn’t digest Small Gods in one sitting. But the plot zigs and zags in unexpected ways, none of which I foresaw. Of course, everything works out happily, thanks in no small part to Lu-Tze the history monk (based on Lao Tse the philosopher, according to the Discworld wiki), who is there to observe events, otherwise they would just be random happenings.

And Cut-Me-Own-Throat Dibbler’s distant relative, Cut-Me-Own-Hand-Off-Diblah, makes an appearance or several. Necessarily, so does Death.

This book was absolutely hilarious in spots, funny in others, satirical in some and just narrative in parts.

4 stars

Litsy notes:

(But why did Om end up as a tortoise? Is there a higher being - that maybe he could pray to?)

5) The Ghostly Term at Trebizon by Anne Digby

{Eleventh of 14: Trebizonseries. Children's, school story. Kindle}

   

Since I've just read and reviewed my ten book omnibus of the Trebizon series, I thought I might as well go ahead and read the last books and finally find out what happened to Rebecca & co. (I didn't get this far when I first read them as a school girl).

Rebecca Mason has just spent the summer holidays between her fourth and fifth years with her parents and playing in the junior tennis tournament at Eastbourne although her parents don't realise how well she has been doing and have been mysteriously quiet about her end of term report. On the way back to school, she injures her wrist and is forced to stop playing tennis for the term. This does mean that she can focus on her GCSE coursework, which has been suffering from the time dedicated to practising, while her friends at Garth College are also focussing on their Oxbridge entrance exams.

Meanwhile, she meets an old friend from her London days - and someone seems determined to make the story invented by last years fifth years, about a Court House ghost, become reality.

I like the way Digby made Rebecca's parents into real people rather than the (necessarily) distant presence they have been up until now. GCSE course work isn't the most exciting topic to read about but, as I'm getting more acquainted with it since my own fifteen year old will be doing his GCSEs this year, I can relate.

The Trebizon books are short and easy to read as well as being plausible and grounded in real life. Unfortunately, my e-book edition (published by Straw Hat) did have some typos, swapping letters like 'b's for 'h's for example.

3.5 stars

6) Dr. Ninth originated by Roger Hargreaves

{Ninth of 13 : Dr. Who/ Mr. Men series. Children's. Retro}

 

The Doctor meets Rose while shopping for a hat (where he sees a familiar looking hat and long scarf)- but then they’re accosted by Autons and they have to rescue Jack Harkness from them, too. Rose gets to see the inside of the TARDIS and is amazed.

3.5 stars

7) Cloud Roads

 

8) Dr. Tenth originated by Roger Hargreaves

{Tenth of 13 : Dr. Who/ Mr. Men series. Children's. Retro}

 

Dr. Who is trying to take a well-deserved holiday on an alien planet when a spaceship lands on it because the Sontarans have decided to invade. So he tries to convince General Staal that he is not an enemy and all he wants is for the Sontarans to leave so that he can have some peace and quiet - but the General doesn't believe him.

4 stars

9) Dr. Eleventh originated by Roger Hargreaves

{Eleventh of 13 : Dr. Who/ Mr. Men series. Children's. Retro}

 

The Doctor and River Song have just spent a very busy day avoiding danger from all quarters. Unfortunately, the Doctor has left something vitally important behind - but he can’t remember when or where he left it or what, in fact, it is. They do have a time machine though, so they go back and retrace their steps through all the dangers.

4 stars

10) Tashi

11) Raven Tower

12) The Eye of the World by Robert Jordan

(First of 14: The Wheel of Time series. Fantasy, epic fantasy)
(Re-read.)



This must be at least my fourth time of reading this book and I have set up a 2019 group read (https://www.librarything.com/topic/302886) in the hopes that I will actually manage to complete the series. I first discovered The Wheel of Time quite early in the series, loved it and started collecting the books for my own shelves. Of course, I soon caught up with Jordan and would wait impatiently for him to release the next book, though it didn't help to find that he knew exactly what the last scene of the whole series would be... and I wanted to know, too! But it was one of those series that I didn't want to end, so I was quite happy when a planned trilogy turned into a long running serial and I didn't mind the extended descriptions of people's clothes.

The trilogy had turned into ten books when we heard the news that Jordan was mortally ill. Thankfully, Brandon Sanderson took up the reins and finished the series - by which time I had forgotten all the storylines. So - with a warning to first time readers to not leave it too long between books - here we go again from the beginning.

The prologue shows us a time long, long past when the world was broken and then the story begins by introducing us to Rand and Tam al'Thor, who are making a delivery to town, walking from their farm through woods that are clinging to winter while they keep a nervous eye out for wolves, which have been more numerous and bold this year.

Jordan evokes a sense of isolation for the town of Emondsfield which lies on the border of civilisation, and the farms which lie beyond it. For all their hardiness, the Emondsfielders are caught off guard by creatures out of legend that attack the town, and we flee with Rand and his companions with our hearts in our mouths, not knowing what unknown dangers we might face, and with only Moiraine Sedai and her taciturn warder, Lan, to guide and guard us. But the legends their mothers told to scare them may lie closer to the truth than they realised, with trollocs - unnatural fusions of man and beast - and Fades - faceless Halfmen who can walk through walls or disappear by turning sideways - hunting them for unknown reasons. And they have dreams which seem more real than when they are awake and which imply that they are very important to the fate of the world.

Although they find friends and allies along the way there is always a sense of threat, of not knowing why they are being hunted and whether they can absolutely trust the people around them. And if they return home, they will carry the danger back to the people they love.

The book ends with a fairly satisfying conclusion, rather than a cliff-hanger - until we read the epilogue, and remember that this book was originally written as the first part of a trilogy.

As others in the group read realised, there are a lot of parallels with many classics of fantasy - innumerable Arthurian references, similarities to Lord of the Rings and so on - which Jordan made intentionally so readers would be familiar with the narrative. (But don't waste time trying to fit the characters to the stories which belong to those with similar names from the Camelot tales because they generally don't bear more than a passing resemblance, in my experience.)

I like the way all the references are tightly local; anyone suspicious is like a Taren Ferry man - Taren Ferry being a day’s journey or so away. Or, since the Coplins are a family of ne’er do wells, any foolish talk is ‘like Coplin talk’. Rand and his friends have explored further than most people they know, but now they go as far as Taren Ferry and much, much further into the unknown world. There is a lot thrown at them - and thereby at us - much of it out of legend, so we discover the outside world along with them.

I like the world building and the small details that are included which flesh it out; though we probably don’t see it but the once, the inn’s cat has a name (Scratch) which gives it weight and presence. And I like the interactions between people.

“Her name is Moiraine,” Ewin said ... “The Wisdom may not like her, but I do.”
“What makes you think Nynaeve dislikes her?” Rand said.
“She asked the Wisdom for directions this morning,” Ewin said, “and called her ‘child.’”

(Funnier once you’ve met Nynaeve.)

I thought the ending was a bit rushed but, as I said before, it was planned as the first book of a trilogy. This book was first published in 1990 at a time when most fantasy books were limited to around 250 pages and series were usually trilogies; this one runs to almost 800 pages but it is dense and rich and very well worth reading. It builds and holds the tension and even though I have read it so many times before, I found myself sitting up anxiously.

5 stars

13) The Shadow Throne

14) Any Way the Wind Blows by Seannan McGuire

 

{Short story, stand alone. Fantasy}

A short story commemorating the move of Tor.com away from the Flatiron Building in New York:
https://www.tor.com/2019/06/05/any-way-the-wind-blows-seanan-mcguire/?utm_source...

The unnamed Captain of an airship (nicknamed Stubby and which looks, in the accompanying illustration, remarkably like the Tor logo) sailing between parallel Earths and mapping them visits our Earth and meets the folks at Tor.com - who are, of course, delighted to meet people who could be straight out of the stories they publish.

The story is narrated in the first person by the Captain and for some reason, I identified them as female. Although, given that there are green skinned and even multi-headed crew members picked up from different parallels, they/ it could be any gender or race.

I like the tasty metaphor that McGuire uses for the parallel worlds:

First, it’s basically a sheet of baklava that hasn’t been cut. Layer upon layer of reality, all resting lightly atop one another, all sweet and delicious and ready to be devoured. And trust me when I say there are things out there that are totally into the concept of devouring existence as we know it, one crunchy, nut-filled bite at a time. Worlds that aren’t watched have a tendency to blink into nothingness and be forgotten, filling the belly of some cosmic terror, creating yet another hole in the pastry. When a world gets eaten and a hole opens up, it’s easier for the baklava-eaters to shove their nasty little hands in and pry more pieces loose.

And I have to agree that when we read about or watch human vs alien interaction, it tends to be

If one world opens a window on another, they view themselves as peaceful explorers. If a world has a window opened on it, they view the people on the other side as hostile invaders.

So it's nice to read a story from the 'alien' point of view.

The Tor.com characters, while not named either, are obviously based on real people but I felt at a disadvantage not knowing who they are. I'm sure they must be well chuffed to see themselves on the other side of the book cover.

A delicious vignette featuring a glimpse at another version of our world.

3 stars

I’m happy to see you add a thread over here again! :) I put some effort into following the 75ers group for a month or so, but it was way too much for me.

Thank you!

Both my reading and my LT activity have been down this year (as you can see). When I’m on LT I just try to catch up with a few of the folks I know and then try and stay caught up with those threads while I try and catch up with a few more the next time but a lot of threads move too fast for me to do that. I can keep up with people who only have a handful of new posts but I have currently only caught up with a couple of the others. I tend to lurk, otherwise LT turns into an even bigger time sink.

It's great to see you here! Looking forward to reading more of your reviews this year.

Thank you Claire!

Welcome back! :o)

>33 clamairy: Thank you Clare!

Well, we head State-wards this week, to Seattle. I’m planning to be in Third Place Books at Lake Forest if anyone can make a meetup.