So what are you reading? Part VI

[label]

Finished : A Clash of Kings (Book 2 in Game of Thrones) - review below
Reading : Pet Sematary (one of the few classic King books I hadn't read yet ,though I did see the movie years and years ago).

A Clash of Kings

For a book that had almost 800 pages I felt like not a lot really happened and what did happen primarily set up the story for it's next chapter. A Game of Thrones did a great job of introducing a whole new world, the characters that inhabit it and set up the stakes and hinted at things to come. While the Kingdom was pretty much left in tact through the first book, it starts to crumble and fall apart in the second book so that much of the kingdom is in disarray and the Starks in particular have a rough time of it. While I did enjoy A Clash of Kings quite a bit and there were twists I didn't see coming, I felt like this book was quite as clear of purpose as the first one and so it felt like it struggled at times to get where it was going.

Tyrion's character got a lot of development and had the most compelling story in this book, but Dany, Bran, Jon and Sansa didn't get a whole lot to do most of the time. The battle for Kings Landing was pretty amazing and there were some great chapters here and there - like Catelyn and Jaime's conversation in his cell - but it felt more like just pushing the pieces into play so that the real story can be told in the subsequent books.

In any case, there's definitely a bit more fantasy elements to this one but at the same time Martin writes characters so well that you don't feel like their stories are being lost to those elements. The action is pretty intense in places, though the happenings at Kings Landing are a large part of the story. <br/><br/>All in all, a competent follow up to Game of Thrones but does more to get you excited and ready of the next part of the story more than it satisfies you itself.

 

[ICW]

How's it, guys? I finished reading Cast No Shadow and thought it was really solid; nothing spectacular but certainly not *horrible* (like some of the reviews that I've read). I also read some of the stories from the New Frontier anthology No Limits (the Morgan and Soleta stories).

I am now reading Shadow of Heaven, the final book in the Dark Matter trilogy.

 

[Zman1]

Re-reading the Stargazer series just finished valiant and now 1/3 the way through gauntlet.

also as chapters become available a halo/transformers crossover fanfic SPARTAN: Deus ex Machine

 

[Joel_Kirk]

I last read 'Goldfinger'...by Ian Fleming...

Some tedious writing, and some questionable passages due to the era in which the novel was written, but it was okay.

 

[JD]

I just remembered that I forgot to mention that I finished "Brave New World" in the second Myriad Universes anthology, Echoes and Refractions. I think this was probably my least favorite of the MryU stories that I've read.... but I still enjoyed it quite a bit. Despite my overall opinion, I did still enjoy it, I've always been been a big fan of Trek AI stories, and I really liked what was done here with Data and the Turing society. I also really liked the crew that was put together, especially the inclusion of Ro and Sito, who was one of my favorite one of characters. Overall I'd give it an 8.5/10.

 

[bok2384]

Just started reading the old TNG novel, Balance of Power, based off of some of the chat on here. It's great to relive some of the good old days aboard the Enterprise-D. Time for some more I say!

 

[Kopernikus]

I'm currently reading Marshaks and Culbreaths TOS-Oldie "The Prometheus-Design", honestly so far a rather strange experience. Lot's of Slash-FanFiction-Hints and very "unique" interpretations of the Characters....
Non-Trek-vise I'm currently reading Ken MacLeods "Learning the World", a very fascinating First-Contact-novel, this time the humans are the visitors.

 

[MagGu]

I finished Paths Of Disharmony! It did start to pick up about 2/3 of the way thru! haha!

Now I'm reading The Secret Circle by LJ Smith, mostly because there's gonna be a tv show on the cw based on these books, and I really liked watching Vampire Diaries after reading the books, and being able to see the differences between the books and the show..(which started off pretty different, now it's completely different!)

 

[Lonemagpie]

Finished The Black Echo, now trying to decide what to take on a trip to the seaside.

 

[Cap'n Crunch]

I finished Supernatural: One Year Gone yesterday. There were a lot of editorial mistakes (misspelled words, wrong words in some places, etc) and the ending seemed kind of rushed. Also, for a novel called One Year Gone, I was expecting the story to take place over the year between seasons 5 & 6, but it only took place over about a week. Otherwise it was pretty good and I especially liked the flashbacks to the Salem witch trials.

I'm now reading The Ruins of Noble Men by Marco Palmieri in Vanguard: Declassified.

 

[Starbreaker]

Leviathan Wakes by James S.A. Corey

Humanity has colonized the solar system - Mars, the Moon, the Asteroid Belt and beyond - but the stars are still out of our reach.

Jim Holden is XO of an ice miner making runs from the rings of Saturn to the mining stations of the Belt. When he and his crew stumble upon a derelict ship, The Scopuli, they find themselves in possession of a secret they never wanted. A secret that someone is willing to kill for - and kill on a scale unfathomable to Jim and his crew. War is brewing in the system unless he can find out who left the ship and why.

Detective Miller is looking for a girl. One girl in a system of billions, but her parents have money and money talks. When the trail leads him to The Scopuli and rebel sympathizer Holden, he realizes that this girl may be the key to everything.

Holden and Miller must thread the needle between the Earth government, the Outer Planet revolutionaries, and secretive corporations - and the odds are against them. But out in the Belt, the rules are different, and one small ship can change the fate of the universe.

 

[Sakrysta]

I finished Titan: Taking Wing last night and really enjoyed it. Next is Articles of the Federation.

 

[CommanderRaytas]

Apart from all the German post-war poetry I have to read for my exam (Paul Celan, Günter Eich, Ingeborg Bachmann, Gottfried Benn etc), I'm re-reading The Dark Tower VII for the third time.

Never a dull day in Mid-World!

 

[S. Gomez]

Finished The Scroll of The Dead. It was okay, but nowhere near as good as I thought it was going to be. The author did a decent if not great job of capturing Watson's voice. The plot was alright, but I found it a little humdrum for some reason. Maybe I was just expecting something more exotic, like a trip to Egypt or something (the story has an Ancient Egyptian theme).

I meant to continue my Vanguard re-read, but I've been lured by the siren song of history. And since I haven't read any non-fiction in a while, I chose a book called Berlin At War. The author uses memoirs, diaries, and interviews to capture what it was like to be an ordinary German living through World War II. I haven't gotten too far in it, but I'm loving it already.

 

[BrotherBenny]

I'm continuing my re-read of my favorite ST novels with Christopher's The Buried Age. A trip to the library this evening will give me the first three or four Kathy Reichs novels and in a week's time I'll be reading A Choice of Catastrophes.

 

[label]

Finished The Black Echo, now trying to decide what to take on a trip to the seaside.

How was it? This is on my short list of things to read. I've never read Connelly before and they had this book on sale for .99 one day on Amazon so I picked it up.

 

[label]

I finished Titan: Taking Wing last night and really enjoyed it. Next is Articles of the Federation.

I think you're supposed to read the "Red King" first......(or at least I did)......as the Red King part two of Taking Wing. In any case, I enjoyed those two pretty well myself.

 

[Christopher]

^Well, calling it "part two" is a stretch. Taking Wing and The Red King tell two separate stories, but one leads into the other and there are some subplots that span both of them.

 

[Corran Horn]

^Well, calling it "part two" is a stretch. Taking Wing and The Red King tell two separate stories, but one leads into the other and there are some subplots that span both of them.

They might tell two separate stories but if you read "Taking Wing" it ends off at a point where no standalone novel would end without a sequel, really.

 

[Christopher]

^Yeah, but that's along the lines of starting a new story at the end of the previous story, like the way Lost in Space or the third season of the Adam West Batman did things. Or like how "The Naked Time"'s time-warp ending was supposed to be the setup for "Tomorrow is Yesterday," an otherwise unrelated story. Or like how Greater Than the Sum wrapped up its story but then had an epilogue that was essentially the prologue to Destiny. Regardless of where the cutoff point is, they're still two distinct stories, not halves of a single story.