moar books
May. 1st, 2013 09:25 pmWhat are you reading?
Mm. I'm sort of in the midst of a Tom Stoppard collection. Reread 'The Real Inspector Hound' and 'After Magritte' last week. Undecided whether I'm going to continue on: Stoppard is wonderfully clever but not exactly what I'm looking for. Not that I'm sure what that is at the moment, so.
What did you recently finish reading?
Martha Wells's Books of the Raksura, which have a wildly different feel to them from anything I've read in ages. It's ... most of the fantasies I've read recently contain magic, because that's sort of a major trope. Wizards and spells and magical engineers and all that, all harnessing magic to their own ends. Ultimately the magic feels almost like an intrusion, like, I don't know, nuclear power or something. An add-on. In these, the magic infuses literally everything. The titular Raksura are flying shapeshifters, and there's a group of deeply sociopathic all-devouring shapeshifters called the Fell; there are flying islands for no reason other than that there are flying islands; strange creatures are the norm rather than the exception.
And they're books about finding a home, and learning to trust, and they have some mild yet cutting gender commentary in the background. Good stuff.
What do you think you'll read next?
I have no idea. Possibilities include Martha Wells's City of Bones, John M. Ford's Princes of the Air, Ken MacLeod's space opera, and who knows what else. If the first Daniel Abraham book gets here soon, then it'll likely be those.
Mm. I'm sort of in the midst of a Tom Stoppard collection. Reread 'The Real Inspector Hound' and 'After Magritte' last week. Undecided whether I'm going to continue on: Stoppard is wonderfully clever but not exactly what I'm looking for. Not that I'm sure what that is at the moment, so.
What did you recently finish reading?
Martha Wells's Books of the Raksura, which have a wildly different feel to them from anything I've read in ages. It's ... most of the fantasies I've read recently contain magic, because that's sort of a major trope. Wizards and spells and magical engineers and all that, all harnessing magic to their own ends. Ultimately the magic feels almost like an intrusion, like, I don't know, nuclear power or something. An add-on. In these, the magic infuses literally everything. The titular Raksura are flying shapeshifters, and there's a group of deeply sociopathic all-devouring shapeshifters called the Fell; there are flying islands for no reason other than that there are flying islands; strange creatures are the norm rather than the exception.
And they're books about finding a home, and learning to trust, and they have some mild yet cutting gender commentary in the background. Good stuff.
What do you think you'll read next?
I have no idea. Possibilities include Martha Wells's City of Bones, John M. Ford's Princes of the Air, Ken MacLeod's space opera, and who knows what else. If the first Daniel Abraham book gets here soon, then it'll likely be those.