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New Review: Robin Hobb's Ship of Destiny
October 31, 2002 (4:05 PM) ( link ) ADDED a review of Robin Hobb's Ship of Destiny. An excellent ending to a phenomenal series: I think I ended up liking it less than I liked The Farseer Trilogy (mostly because the conclusion of the older trilogy is so mindblowingly good), but nobody who likes fantasy should pass up on The Liveship Traders Trilogy. Now, all I have to do is wait for Hobb to finish her third trilogy, and I'll be picking that up too. My brother Frank has started to purchase all of Hobb's books in paperback; I expect to eventually round off the collection in hardcover, especially if all three trilogies end up being subtly connected to form an epic nine-part cycle.
In other news, I was browsing the web when I came across this article in Wired about near-death experiences, entitled Dead But Awake. This, of course, is the subject of Connie Willis's decently interesting Passage; and, indeed, I could easily see Joanna Lander as one of the two scientists in this study (except that they're British, and she's not). Reading this article made me realize just how impressively educational Willis's book is--I felt like an expert as I suddenly recalled all of Joanna's pessimistic theories about near-death experiences, and the methodological perils surrounding their study. Say what you want about Willis, but nobody can deny that she pours PhD levels of research into her work.
Right now I'm putting most of my energy into finishing Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman's Dragon Wing; I expect to finish that pretty soon (by this weekend at the very latest), but a review may be somewhat slower since in order to post one I'll have to integrate co-authors into my publishing script. (This is a good thing, though, since I'm also planning to read The Talisman by Stephen King and Peter Straub.)
Also on my currently reading list: Christopher Priest's The Inverted World, which has one of the weirdest settings I have ever read. I still haven't figured it out entirely yet, and I've been scrupulously careful about avoiding spoilers on the Internet or elsewhere (such as the back cover). The reason I got into The Inverted World was that I very much enjoyed The Prestige, one of his later books. The other reason I started on this book is that it's short--I've only read it for maybe an hour or an hour-and-a-half, and I'm already about a fifth of the way through. (A welcome change from The Liveship Traders Trilogy, where I could read for an entire day and still not finish a volume.)
Finally, I've revised the layout of my Books I Plan to Read page, eliminating the useless and self-serving "explanations" and retaining only the titles and authors in a categorized format. It may seem curious at first that my "Fiction, General" section is the longest, given my reading preferences--until you realize that the only reason it's that long is that I almost never reduce it.
No more! I am getting tired of fantasy already, and soon I will get tired of science fiction. There's no doubt in my mind that I'll be broadening my reading as much as I can soon.
New Review: Robin Hobb's Mad Ship
October 21, 2002 (1:40 PM) ( link ) ADDED a review of Robin Hobb's Mad Ship, the second book in her phenomenal Liveship Traders Trilogy.
At first I was going to take a break from fantasy and read a science-fiction novel such as Christopher Priest's The Inverted World or the ever-reliable Iain M Banks's Against a Dark Background. But the ending of Mad Ship was so good that I really can't help but finish the series with Ship of Destiny, an equally long but hopefully equally compelling read. I hope to be able to finish that book soon, though, since I'm on fall break and don't really have a lot to do (Yale Law School being the way it is). Afterward I should be able to proceed to Priest or Banks, or even both.
Dragon Wing has suffered a great deal from being read in conjunction with Hobb's series. Weis and Hickman's book is still a fun, frothy read--but reading Dragon Wing after Hobb is a little like attending a middle school art exhibit after visiting the Met. I nevertheless expect to finish reading Dragon Wing soon, probably even before I finish Ship of Destiny, just to get the Death Gate Cycle series rolling.
All of this naturally leaves CS Friedman's Coldfire Trilogy in the lurch, which is pretty much where I want it to be for now. I'm usually a completist when it comes to series--no matter how bad a series is I'll try to finish it once I've finished one book. (Hence my manful struggle through The Fionavar Tapestry.) But I really feel no need to return to Friedman's series until I've finished books that I know I enjoy. Fortunately, the final book in a series is usually the best: authors tend to develop a great deal as writers in the meantime, and (in my opinion at least), most series writers start with great intros and conclusions, and it's only the middles that seem truly weak. So I am looking forward to Friedman's third book (whatever its title is) in my own way.
For now, however, I will return to Ship of Destiny, praying fervently that it isn't as depressing as the third book of The Farseer Trilogy.
Google hits
October 17, 2002 (6:09 PM) ( link ) Looking back through the logs on this web site, I've noticed that this site is popping up more on certain Google searches. Among the most noteworthy ones (numbers refer to the order that this site appears): Unfortunately there doesn't seem to be a way for me to track the number of hits on each individual page, so no statistics for that so far--though it would be nice to be able to compile something using the logs. Oh well; it's interesting enough to see where people are coming from. (As a side note, it's definitely this book reviews page that's getting the most hits from google--which makes sense, since none of the rest is supposed to be that public.)
UPDATE: Sadly enough, this site also comes up 8th if you search for fear factor playmate scan. Who would have thought?
Still here...
October 16, 2002 (6:23 PM) ( link ) I'm not dead, but I haven't had the chance to do as much reading as I would like. That's not completely accurate: I have been doing a lot of reading, but you won't be reading about con law, contracts, etc. on this page.
I am continuing with the same two books I've been reading all month: Dragon Wing (fairly interesting, but clearly juvenile), and Mad Ship (phenomenal, but it drags a little in the middle). Both should be done soon, I hope.
I've also updated my Books I Plan to Read page with a few additional titles, including one of the most famous Chinese novels of all time.
13-month anniversary
October 1, 2002 (3:39 PM) ( link ) This is the 13-month anniversary for this book reviews site. In the past month I read 3 books and (correspondingly) wrote 3 reviews, for a total of 105 reviews thus far. In addition, there were 155 hits to this page, making 1235 unfortunate souls who have read what is here.
I have started reading Dragon Wing, the first book in The Death Gate Cycle. It's all right so far--very D&Dish, and fairly juvenile, but mildly entertaining. At least the cosmology of Weis and Hickman's world seems interesting, despite the paper-thin characters and unrealistic politics.
But I'm only a few chapters into it, so I'll withhold judgment for now. I don't expect it to take particularly long to read it, since the pages go by quickly, but I'm also pretty busy so it might be a while before even this brief novel gets consumed.
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