Catching up on various stories on the forum, and also reading Alliette De Boddard's Obisidian and Blood trilogy; absolutely fantastic series of Aztec-styled fantasy novels, and I'm currently partway through the final book. I'll probably get a review of it upon my blog once I've finished reading it as part of my Female Writers Month effort, if anyone's interested.

I've finished Obsidian and Blood, and a review can be found on my blog. Go give it a read; blog traffic is the only means through which I measure my self-worth

Ben Counter - Battle For The Abyss...

Saga Issue 13 has finally been released, and it was a goodly reminder of why the Saga series is the best thing to ever come out of comics, ever. Period. No dispute. No, better than Watchmen. And V for Vendetta. Bloody amazing series.

Just finished a brief novelette by Mary Robinette Kowal, The Lady Astronaut of Mars. It's brilliant, essentially the first ten minutes of Up if it was set on Mars, can be read here on her website for free. You owe it to yourself to read this, it's brilliant.

Not much reading going on. When I'm waiting in places for an appointment, I'm reading Vinge's 'A Fire Upon the Deep' Lovely book and definitely worth reading. To be honest I don't care about the Blight (background problem that's trying to zombify/enslave the galaxy) or the attempts to stop it, but I do love the other plotline which I won't spoil. Why? Because it has aliens who are actually alien. Also, intelligent bonsai-trees. I'd say more but if you like wild sci-fi you have to read this without being spoiled.



When at home I read lighter and more digital fare. Currently I'm reading 'Edison's Conquest of Mars'. Set down as an unofficial sequel to Wells' war of the worlds, it is basically exactly what the title suggests. And with that said, it reads well but is also hilariously bad. The book (approved by Edison himself) seems to push two themes. Those being 'USA OORAAH PATRIOTISM' and 'Edison is the most awesome who ever awesomed'. The former goes away when the 'pre-emptive counterattack,conquest loot and genocide field trip' get's underway, but the latter is forced onto the page as many times as possible.

Oh, and did I call this a field trip? Cause that's exactly how everyone seems to behave. As for Edison's so-called genius, it is more that everyone else is absolutely braindead and with almost zero initiative. They need Edison to tell them for crying out loud that 'hey fellas, standing in front of a Martian gun is kinda bad, ok. Also, you might think of firing back.' All of Edison's plans and ideas are just about the most straightforward thing one could come up with for the situation. And when he can't think of anything, he'll just do nothing and wait for a convenient deus ex machina or two. (which are also distressingly often used to force the field trip back onto the rails and get back to the genociding.)

The only thing Edison actually did in the book that might be considered genius is inventing antigravity spaceships and rayguns, all of which conveniently happen off-screen with the help of an army of assistants.


Long story short, read it if you want to see how one can use a novel to blatantly stroke a man's ego and generally suck up to him, as well as an insight in late 19th century american values.

Mechanicum - Graham McNeill...

Just out of interest, did you discover that book from a Cracked article written on it?

And on a related not, I finished the John Carter of Mars novels lately. One of those rare cases where the movie is better than the book, I'd say.

Haha, I wish. I think I came across the title somewhere on the project atomic rockets site. And well, with a title like Edison's Conquest of Mars, not to mention its age, I just had to give it a read. It's pulp before the invention of the word pulp!

Right now it looks like the conquerors, brave warriors, manly exterminators have figured out a way to defeat an entire planet. You see, it turns out that the martians rigged their entire world so that at the press of a single button they can flood it and drown everyone. Ya know, in case they get a sudden bout of global suicidelust. How did Edison's gang figure that out? By randomly having all their food stores dissappear, randomly having every single cook on the hundred ship's strong fleet decide that this isn't worth mentioning. Then they randomly land on a random spot of the planet, followed by randomly walking into the first building they found which randomly turned out to be a storehouse for canned food and incidentally, there was a random human slave who incidentally, was a pure beautiful single virginal woman who speaks perfect proto-aryan from which all the world's languages are derived.

Yeah, turns out that the martians raided the garden of Eden, made a detour to Egypt for their minecraft fix, then went back to Mars with their slaves when they got the flu for the first time. Naturally, said slave is now the only woman among 900+ men who are all acting like horny teenagers in a satirical romantic comedy. Oh, and there is no need to worry about killing one's fellow man now because the martians killed off all their human slaves off-screen to save Edison the moral conundrum.

So now four brave men are going to infiltrate the global self-destruct shack. Four. And Apart from the author insert, Edison and the woman (who isn't a man and therefore not included in the count, or given a gun for that matter, or allowed to walk without someone holding her hand), none of them even existed before the foodstore raid. This party used to consist of twenty, then it became twelve and finally four, so I could almost see the author backpedalling out of fear for having to come up with so many characters. (to be fair, twenty is a bit much.)


And I've been planning to watch the John Carter movie but never got around to it. I should fix that. I also got the first three books on my shelf but never read them. More things to fix.

This post has been edited by jack cloudy: Sep 14 2013, 03:52 PM

The Mystery of Mercy Close, by Marian Keyes!

Seventh Retribution by Ben Counter...

Jeez, you'd think they'd learn by number six.

...Space Marines...They're nothing if not thorough... ...

Having now started my English Literature course proper, my answer to 'What are you reading?' is currently 'lots of everything, all at once'.

So many books. So little time.

FoTR - LoTR.

Smh at its awesomeness. Wanted to brb at the action going on in Chorrol, but damn.... THIS BOOK STOLE MY TIME.

I really need to re-read the Lord of the Rings books someday.

In other news, I just finished China Miéville's Iron Council for the second time; absolutely amazing book, and it still leaves me wanting his babies. I'm about a quarter of the way through Metro 2033 so far, as well, and it's pretty good; I like how a lot of the worldbuilding is done through the traditional Russian literary method of characters exchanging anecdotes, and it's got some really atmospheric bits, though I find the dialogue feels rather clunky and over-expositional at points, though this may be due to it being translated more than anything.

The Boy's reading FOTR at the mo...*Sniffs and wipes away tear*...I'm very proud...*Applauds son*...

Still on me Retribution book...I got distracted for a while...

Haven't picked up a periodical in ten years. Maybe the occasional magazine in the waiting room. But, to have picked up ink and paper in a tome is not something I've done in some time.

I was hunting through Barnes and Noble's clearance table and they were selling a Hermann Hesse book, called "Siddhartha" for five bucks, so I've been working on that.

It's not that long...maybe 120 pages. After three days, I'm barely on page 18, as I'm reading it in my downtimes. I got it, because I read his prior book....Abraxas? or something like that. The book blew my freaking mind, so now I have to read that, and I have to say he didn't lose anything...

So has anyone read any of that dinosaur erotica that's been causing a stir on the internet lately?

WHAT??? Haha, what is this? I've never heard of it haha