The Bodhisattva

Been a bit busy finalizing Helio3 and drawing up new (and improved) guidelines for Helio4, but I have been getting some reading done.

Read…

- Almost done with a review but in reading Logorrhea which has a lot of nice stories, but I forgot how much I miss reading Elric stories. We watch characters grow over the years, but the eerie thing with Elric is that it almost feels like he watches you grow.

I have had my review of Red Seas Under Red Skies done for awhile now - but I’m prone to get into these moods and right now I just don’t see the point in reviewing a book that is still like two months away from publication. It’s a Scott Lynch book - it’s going to be dope, the first person to tell you that won’t tell you more than the last (or vice versa). It’s better than The Lies of Locke Lamora and I’ll tell you why later…

- Finished Daniel Abraham’s follow up to A Shadow In Summer (I reviewed that last year and really enjoyed it) and while I enjoyed A Betrayal in Winter, I’m sensing a trend I’m not sure I like, I have a full review coming, but to be brief - it’s all a bit too tidy for me.

Catching up….

I have been catching up on a couple of series. One is Erikson’s Malazan work, I finished a complete reread of books last three books and Esselmont’s Night of Knives. I loved the series anyway, but now I have a much more confident grasp on this massive undertaking. I really enjoyed getting back to the some Marine-ass kicking in Reaper’s Gale and I’m continually amazed at how Erickson just slides in new members of the cast who go from unfamiliar, random and perhaps even undesirable to being indispensable - at least until he kills them, which sounds like a winning formula to me.

I know people think I’m crazy but the Legacy of the Force series is hot. Admittedly, Tempest (the third book) by Troy Denning is a bit of a letdown, certainly it furthers the story, seems a bit episodic and has that presence of being that third guy in the relay race - we are just waiting to get the anchor. In this case I (while not being the final installment of the book) it’s Aaron Allston (who also wrote the opening book which I talked about here last year) and I’m currently reading his Exile which put the series back on track to really being the best Star Wars arc I have ever read. Allston handles dialogue with his first two books as well as I have seen in this line and I have to say I’m a fan.

Just broke open…

I just stared reading and am about 120 pages or so into Butcher Bird by Richard Kadrey . At this point the intended hipness and trendy feel isn’t hiding what seems to be just a rather ordinary quest book destined to have have some flip ending. I very much hope to be proven wrong.

It also reminds me an awful lot of something else I have read (that I’m a big fan of) and I will no doubt feel really damn cool about mentioning it come review time.