Monday, November 21, 2005

more books

Finished:
  • Look to Windward, by Iain M. Banks -- Very cool! I'd heard a lot about the Culture from friends, and wasn't dissapointed at all.
  • Excession, by Iain M. Banks -- Again, very good. I loves me the sarcastic Minds (immense, sentient, artificial intelligences); and the kooky ship names are great.
  • A Feast For Crows, by George R. R. Martin. -- OK, but disappointing. It seemed to lack focus. And, it also upped the cruelty to the characters... which is getting tiresome, despite the fact that the grittier, darker world is one of the things I like about the series.
  • Memories of Ice, by Steven Erikson -- I am all a twitter. It's hard to say exactly why I like this series so much. Like Martin's Song of Ice & Fire, it's dark. It's not orphan-farmboy- discovers-he-has-the-power-to-save-the-world. The good guys aren't just good for the sake of being good. The sense of a complete world with a unknowable history, and past civilizations is done very well. One complaint I've heard is that magic in the world seems to be overpowered... which I can agree with. But, it's still a lot of fun.
Just started:
  • Lords of Dus, by Lawrence Watt-Evans -- I really like LWE's Ethshar books, the Obsidian Chronicles, and Split Heirs. So I bought the omnibus collection of the Lords of Dus series... I'm having a very hard time getting into it. You can tell its his first published work... or maybe that's me reading into it. Too flowery prose. Too much explanation of the character's thought-processes. Point of view seems to bounce between characters from one paragraph to the next without much warning. Ugh. Hopefully it'll get better.