madbaker | Books I've been reading (Reply)

Because someone else had a "Current book" instead of "current music", and I will probably steal that going forward. In the meantime, though, some short comments about what I've been reading. Or in Gaiman's case, devouring.

Neil Gaiman, Endless Nights

Wow.
I've been a Gaiman fan since the "Dream of a thousand cats" issue of Sandman. I'm happy he came back to the universe.
The portraits of Despair were heartbreaking.
The story of Desire (as drawn by Milo Manara) was wonderful.
Dream's saga was fun, and shed some light on the Endless' family history.

It makes me want to go back and read through the whole saga, yet again. I already went back and read the Emperor Norton story, which is my favorite along with the issue cited above.

Tad Williams, The War of the Flowers

I've gone somewhat off Tad's work. I think he needs an editor who isn't afraid of him - who will whap him upside the head and say "I don't care! Cut 400 pages from this book!" Then his stories might be tighter.
That said, I enjoyed this book. I'm glad I checked it out from the library rather than buying it unread; although I liked it enough that I will probably pick up one. (My general litmus test on buying books: will I read it again? If so, am I willing to fork out the money to buy it in hardback? If the answer to either of these is "no", then I need to reconsider. That's also why I sold two bags of books to the used bookstore recently, because I decided that these were not books I would probably read again. So they don't need to take up valuable shelf space.)

I've digressed enough here that I may as well stop.

KD Wentworth, The Imperium Game

Ya know, this book was far better than it probably deserved to be. It's one of her first books (and she hasn't written many, although she has a new one out with Eric Flint that I'm waiting for a library to pick up...) and it's LARPing in an ancient Rome setup. Complete with computer program gods. ("Minerva has more bugs than Cerberus has heads...") Fluffy but fun.

Simon Green, Something from the Nightside

Also fluffy but fun. Green generally writes fluff, although he makes an effort to switch genres - the Deathstalker series was space opera; Hawk & Fisher is sword-and-sorcery murder mystery; Drinking Midnight Wine was contemporary fantasy. This series (with two books so far and this is the first) is urban noir fantasy. Think Gaiman's Neverwhere crossed with Glen Cook's Garrett books. One reason I enjoy Green's books is that they all have a large vein of humor running through...