What are You Reading Right now?

I took a break for a little bit but I'm back to this series and on the 8th book...



They're really good but there's so many I have to take a break in-between from time to time. Besides being entertaining and funny they're really interesting. Even though the two main characters are fictional a lot of the characters and ships in the series were real and they've found themselves in the middle of some historical battles.

 

A surprisingly difficult read, not in terms of being bad but hard to follow because of extremely convoluted political situation at the times and the huge number of people involved in the story, MANY of which are named Vlad and many more I don't even attempt to pronounce in my head. So many emperors and kings changing places every 10 seconds. I've spent as much time in Wikipedia articles and maps trying to keep everything straight as I have in the book. Oh, and LOTS of impaling. It's very interesting though.

 

My daughter told me she's reading one of the Jedi Academy books in their free-reading time at school. She ran down the plot for me this morning. I'm a proud papa!

 

three books im busy with this month

Star Wars High Republic Fallen Star which I just got in the mail today and started reaidng it
Dune Battle of Corrin
Paperbacks From Hell

 

Pretty good so far though I'm not really sure what is going on yet. I saw the movie back when I was really young but I don't remember anything about it and possibly didn't really understand at the time. It's by the author of The Exorcist and it's sequel Legion and is considered part of a trilogy with those books though it's only loosely tied to them. One of the characters is the astronaut from The Exorcist (also in the movie if you haven't read it) who Reagan tells is going to die in space. Well he didn't because he went insane and aborted his mission on the launchpad and has been sent to this private insane asylum run by the military filled with all these other members of the armed forces who all have come down with some kind of sudden and identical madness. The main character is a shrink who has been brought in to study them but he might possibly be insane himself or at least knows more than he lets on. I'm not really sure what's going on yet, besides the mystery of what drove all these people crazy there's a lot of mystery surrounding the doctor and then there's another doctor apparently spying on the shrink for the Pentagon for some reason. I'm interested to see how it pans out.

 

Well, The Ninth Configuration ended up being pretty awful. They set up a lot of stuff that just never panned out, like the strange identical madness the characters had which necessitated a top secret asylum... apparently all just coincidence. The psychiatrist ended up being a Rambo type guy from Vietnam who went insane and the military by some mistake sent him orders to be the psychiatrist at the hospital, so he just leaves Vietnam and goes there as the doctor even though he has no training besides killing. He then goes into some kind of amnesia where he actually believes he's a psychiatrist. The military figured out their mistake but were just like, oh well let him go, we don't want him to freak out and maybe he'll cure them. And he does by committing suicide which magically cures everybody. The cover with the astronaut on the moon standing in front of a crucified Jesus is basically not even part of the story, just an image from a dream that's mentioned once. Very disappointing so I don't recommend it even though at the beginning I was talking it up.

 

I checked out the film stats, and it turns out that this has pretty decent reviews, at least. But it does sound super-odd in places.

 

Yeah I've heard good things about it and I can see it working as a movie and do plan to watch it again. Especially with the cast, not really any A-List actors but a great collection of supporting and character actors who will probably make the dialogue interesting. Including Tom Atkins, one of my 80's favorites. And maybe Blatty (who on top of writing the novel also wrote and directed the movie) cleaned up the plot a little or maybe it just works better on screen. It was just weird how it set itself up like it was going to be some kind of supernatural or sci-fi thriller then it kind of pulls a twist where it isn't, but the actual explanation is harder to swallow than if it had been. It's also possible I just didn't pick up on what Blatty was trying to say, it was kind of a convoluted book.

 

Back to old-timey British people in boats

 

Guess I'm rooting for Dracula this time.

 

reading a couple of books this month

Final Fantasy VII Remake tie in Tales of Two Pasts
Clive Barker's Weaveworld
The Silmarillion

 

The Iliad by Homer, this is the first book I've read that is actually hard to read!

 

Great book for comicbook enthusiasts.

 

I've been looking forward to this one but had to get 10 books into the series to get to it. While the movie Master And Commander: The Far Side Of The World takes different parts of several books from the series into the script the main plot comes from this one. Only in the movie they changed the enemy ship they pursue/fight throughout the story from an American ship to French so it would play better over here in America I suppose. And I guess it sort of made sense because the majority of the series is about the Napoleonic Wars and doesn't get into the War Of 1812 near as much so I can see why they switched it to a French ship since they were kind of trying to distill the series into one movie.

 

Normally I've been taking a short break between these books to keep the long series from turning into a grind but the last one ended on kind of a cliffhanger and I wanted to see how things turned out.

Also I'm reading this....



I read some of these in middle school, I don't really remember anything about them other than that I was disappointed they weren't as cool as the movies. But when I saw this in a used book story I bought it out of nostalgia and decided to read it for old-times sake. It's NOT very good but I still find it entertaining to read some good old 90's trash sci-fi and honestly it's better than recent Aliens books I've read which are just as bad but also take themselves way too serious.

 

I've been mostly into Progression Fantasy these past few months, starting with Cradle in March. The final book comes out next week, and I am EXCITED. Will Wight will probably win my "Author of the Year" award, if only for the fact that by the end of the year, I'll have read 14-15 of his books in one year. (It depends on whether or not he gets another book out for his new series.)

However, not every series I've tried has lived up to that high. Right now several of them have been what I call Junk Food books. They're good enough to read to destress instead of watching a show and when you don't have enough time to play a game, but not really good enough to recommend fully.

Mage Errant series by John Bierce. This series is okay I guess, but I can't recommend it. It's a LOT of telling vs showing (something I'm realizing is a giant problem in this genre), and sometimes things that shouldn't be said out loud are.* The characters also act like the main character's backstory is the saddest thing ever. It's sad and rough to be sure, but it's not the worst of bunch from other series. (Lindon from Cradle and Raysha from Manifestation were viewed as a disabled, while Rick from Street Cultivation's parents abandoned him and his sister and their debt actively harmed his life.) Overall, it's just...mediocre. I may finish the series someday, but four books was enough for me.

Manifestation by Samuel Hilton. This book series is a LOT better by comparison. Raysha is a pretty decent main character, and her progression is interesting. She's more like Lindon than the rest, and that's okay. If you're a fan of Korra, then you may be a fan of Raysha. The writing is a step up from Bierce's stuff, but it's still not the best. If you're looking for another Progression Fantasy to try outside of Cradle, this is my recommendation. It's not great, but it's good enough. Book 3 comes out this November.

Street Cultivation by Sarah Lin. This is the most unique of the three, as it's a mix of Progression Fantasy and Urban Fantasy. (With some Mix-Maxing seemingly from the LitRPG genre included.*) Instead of taking place in an Eastern-inspired country/world, or taking place in a pre-industrial world, it takes place in the modern time, on an alternate Earth. Instead of seeking to be the strongest ever, our protagonist Rick really just wants a better life for himself and his sister Melissa, who has a crippling condition. Rick finds himself drawn into various conflicts and corners of the underworld in order to build a better life for himself and Melissa, and it's intriguing to watch. The fights are well done, the magic system is pretty detailed but also pretty easy to follow. It reminds me a lot of the gameplay of Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia in a lot of ways.** The naming conventions in this series are pretty weak and modern, but that's not always a bad thing. Overall, if you're looking for a unique experience in a pretty simple genre, this is a solid recommendation. If you like the Rocky/Creed movies, this is an even higher rec.


Lastly has been Star Wars: Brotherhood. This is the first canon Star Wars book I think I've read since Master & Apprentice, and the first Star Wars book I've read since the Thrawn trilogy last year. This was a good read, and I'd recommend it to people looking for Ventress's new canon introduction as well as insight on how Obi-Wan and Anakin's relationship started to change between AOTC and TCW/ROTS.


Next up for books will be Waybound, the final Cradle book, coming next week. After that, if I have time, I may read the Thrawn duology. Then Secret Project 3 by Brandon Sanderson, and we'll see what's after that.


*There's a point where the main character confronts a bully and when the bully asks why the hero didn't retaliate when given the opportunity, our hero openly says he's a better person than the bully. Yes, we know that, but saying it out loud actually make him sound far too arrogant and not that much better of a person than he thinks.

*I've only read one LitRPG book, and that was years ago, but I distinctly remember how the characters would power up spells/skills and parts of their body and it being like a points system in games. It's actually really cool. I'd probably like the genre more than I do, but I'm also not a giant fan of the Isekai overlap that the genre has.

**In SoV, characters gain three types of EXP...if I remember correctly. They gain personal EXP which goes to levelling up; they gain weapon rank EXP, which lets them use stronger and stronger weapons; and they gain EXP with the weapon currently equipped, allowing them to learn and use techniques with that weapon or type of weapons.

 

Really good so far but everything I've read of his has been great. I can see why lots of later sci-fi and horror writers consider him one of the best.



Also reading this, it's not great so far but I'm not very far into it and haven't gotten into the actual production. So far it's been more behind the scenes of publishing and studios bidding on books than on the actual filming itself. Once it gets there I'm sure I'll find it more interesting.

 

Had I actually seen the full title on Amazon when I bought it I might have been prepared for the fact it's more of a love story than a book for space exploration nerds like me. Still it's a decent Borman biography and focusing on his marriage does shed a little more light on the guy than one that was more career focused probably would and I already know quite a bit of the latter. He didn't make many friends in the space program (more than one astronaut autobiography called him names I can't repeat here) and was pretty no-nonsense and intense on the job but at home he was a softy. His desire to return home alive seems to be what made him the way he was at work.