What are you reading?

Finished up David Gemmell's Troy trilogy, very good alternate history fantasy series, I'll be reading his Legend book soon also. I'm now in the process of finishing Guards of Haven by Simon Green, a omnibus about Hawk and Fisher a married Guard couple who solve crimes in the dark and corrupt city of Haven. A mixture of Fafhrd/Grey Mouser type sword and spell fantasy mixed with a who done it murder mysteries, its a interesting take on the fantasy genre and a fun divergence from your typical high fantasy fair of Tolkein.
 
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Finished up David Gemmell's Troy trilogy, very good alternate history fantasy series, I'll be reading his Legend book soon also. I'm now in the process of finishing Guards of Haven by Simon Green, a omnibus about Hawk and Fisher a married Guard couple who solve crimes in the dark and corrupt city of Haven. A mixture of Fafhrd/Grey Mouser type sword and spell fantasy mixed with a who done it murder mysteries, its a interesting take on the fantasy genre and a fun divergence from your typical high fantasy fair of Tolkein.
Gemmell and Green are a couple of my favorite authors. Glad you're enjoying them. I actually found Gemmell's Troy series to be my least favorite of his by a good margin.
 
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I'm 4 books into Green's Deathstalker series, and like 5 books into his Nightside series. He's a fun author, nothing amazing but good entertainment that can be a nice departure from sometimes thick genre reading. I enjoyed Gemmell's Troy series enough that I got Legend, hopefully I'll like that as there is alot of books in that series.
 
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As a short interlude to the Malazan story I picked up Diane Duane's To Visit the Queen, which surprisingly I haven't read before. The prequel, the Book of Night with Moon was where I got the name Arhu from 17 years ago, as well as the cat wizard persona. Given that Arhu has been my online avatar ever after, reading about him is very strange. Had the same feeling when I met "myself" in D:OS.

It also makes me wonder why I didn't read the book earlier. Some of the other names I'm still using regularly, for my PC and network names and stuff like that, so in a way it's like they never left me. Experiencing the story and meeting the characters again feels so fantastically and weirdly familiar. I did wonder why Arhu is a black and white tom in the book, but I suppose I took white as my color back then to contrast Rhiow, who's midnight black.
 
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I couldn't help myself, and started reading the fan-translation of the The Swallow's Tower, the next to last Witcher novel, which hasn't yet received an official translation. And man, it's great. It could be my most favorite one.

And the whole series is just wonderful. What a great story and great characters. There's so much to everyone in this world. I love it. And I love the way the writer chose to fill in certain gaps that are certain story threads. He's writing multiple story threads, each a slightly different time periods or tempos, and they all fill in each other. And they're from multiple sides, both friendly, and not so friendly (Nilfgaardian's side for ex)

I'll definitely want to re-read them once I'm done, and once all books will be officially translated. Maybe even after finishing the books. Right now I'm very curious how they tied the ending of the books to the beginning of the game series.
 
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Ha! I'm exactly in the same place. Went ahead and downloaded Swallow's Tower and Lady of the Lake fan translations.

So far I like the first book, "The Last Wish" (short story collection), almost the most, since it's a close toss up with Baptism of Fire.

The stories were better in the the first book, but the character development is much deeper and better in the latter book(s), in particular, "Baptism of Fire". Look forward to reading the last 2.
 
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@Thrasher: Cool stuff. Good to know somebody else is also enjoying these. :D

And I started the Lady of the Lake. I'm not sure I like this one as much. I'm 3 chapters in, and it's written a bit differently. I hope I'll get over it. But it feels a bit like he doesn't want the story to end, so the author mixes in some new characters. But I just want to find out what happens to the main ones.
 
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I'm up to the Burning Land in Cornwell's Saxon series. Finally FINALLY Uhtred has had his fill of Alfred and, in an act sure to please all, departs from the court in a way that.....well, totally suits him =p. I'm sure that it will lead to his downfall at some point but man, I'm totally thrilled to finally see him thumb his nose at Alfred and make his own way in the world.

I've been bouncing from the Dwarves series to this one and back and forth, and Cornwell's series is, by far, the clear winner for me. The Dwarves series is entertaining, the Saxon series is enthralling.
 
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And I just finished The Lady of the Lake, the last of the witcher novels. I liked it, but somehow Tower of the Swallow was better. But it does tie up loose ends, especially one about the relationship between Emhyr and Ciri. And considering how it ended, I think CDPR did a wonderful job of continuing the game series. Very much how I would imagine the original author would, if he decided to continue the series.
 
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Finishing up Steven Erikson's Reaper's Gale, 7th Malazan Book of the Fallen. Excellent reading, far reaching epic fantasy with literally hundreds of characters, but Erikson still keeps it coherent. I enjoyed this the most and The Bonehunters out of all the Malazan books so far.
Finshed, too. Great book, as usual. My favorite was still the third one, though. Next up in the series is Toll the Hounds, but I'm going to throw in something else in the meantime.

As I'm almost through with Shadowrun Returns, I picked up Neuromancer. The lingo takes some getting used to.
 
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I finished China Mievile's Perdido street station and I loved it.Weird, dark and very well written.Mievile is slowly but surely becoming one of my favorite writers.Now I am off to next book in the series.
 
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I'm reading Sword of Destiny now, the second of the Witcher short story collections. It's darn good stuff, really. I completely dig the setting, and the stories suck me in.
 
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Singularity Sky by Stross. Not loving it. Some bits are good, others really tedious.

-kaos
 
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As I'm almost through with Shadowrun Returns, I picked up Neuromancer. The lingo takes some getting used to.
I'm 25% in and already I can see the direct and indirect influence this work had on so many other media that I love. The Matrix, Cyberspace, even Armitage has become a common name used in Cyberpunk settings (Armitage III was a fantastic mini Anime series). Also, the book feels like a perfect companion to Shadowrun, just featuring different runners (and no different races, as far as I'm aware).

The only caveat is the 80s vibe, which doesn't work that well anymore, nowadays. There's also the huge difference in language: In Erickson's Malazan books, which I read just before, even side characters can philosophize about life and the universe like the best of them, while in Neuromancer most people can't even form complete sentences. Sure, I guess it's an extrapolation of some kind, what with all the "low life", but... dunno.
 
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Just finished reading Wheel Of Time... yes I am slow!! Don't have that much reading time.

I am not sure what to think, the ending was interesting in a way I guess, still it is a pity that Jordan did not finish, I can't help but to think that it would somehow have been grander if he did. There is nothing wrong with Brandon's writing but it is just kind of plain, it just doesn't lift above the normal fantasy level.
 
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I'm reading Sword of Destiny now, the second of the Witcher short story collections. It's darn good stuff, really. I completely dig the setting, and the stories suck me in.

Aaaand done. I've read both the "Last Wish" and "Sword of Destiny" now, and, though I'm usually not a big fan of short story collections, these are superb. I was hooked from start to finish. Good stuff. :)

I really have to refrain not getting the rest of the Witcher books and blazing through those now. I promised myself I'd read REH's Conan stories first, which have been sitting on my shelf for a while -- I got the 3-part Del Rey collection, as those were touted as the definitive version.
So about to start the "Phoenix on the Sword" now...
 
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Just finished Ian Banks "the wasp factory" Interesting read, but seriously disturbing on so many levels. Just started Patrick Ness's "the crane wife". I like his writing style thus far.
 
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Lots on the go at once. Warning, strong opinions incoming!

Seveneyes - Neal Stephenson channeling Kim Stanley Robinson (pages of irrelevant geek details) and yet another post apocalyptic novel at least no zombies (yet)

The Liars' Key - Mark Lawrence very good but too dark for solid long session reading

Koko the Mighty - Kieran Shaw light military small scale space opera (escapism with guns and explosions)
 
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