Whats everyone reading?

[Grugz]

Finished Star Wars Aftermath - the worst Star Wars novel I have ever read.

  I read the sample on my kindle and soooo glad I didn't buy it,i heard many poor reviews but the thing that grated me was the weird way it was written like a poor film script?

wedge is a pilot he is sitting in his ship, he pops open his pringles and starts to eat them.

just couldn't get used to the style... ihear "lost stars" is miles better even though its in the young adult section (of which I am neither)

   I have been enjoying "new dawn" again which shows how kanan and hera from 'rebels' first meet.
Also ploughing through the star wars ...along time ago trades dark horse put out of the old marvel comics ,
the third and fourth of which are my favourites , and a spilt brew ruined 1 and 2 so i'll have to procure them again, the fifth one is dire.

[sheldipez]

Finished Star Wars Aftermath - the worst Star Wars novel I have ever read.

  I read the sample on my kindle and soooo glad I didn't buy it,i heard many poor reviews but the thing that grated me was the weird way it was written like a poor film script?

wedge is a pilot he is sitting in his ship, he pops open his pringles and starts to eat them.

just couldn't get used to the style... ihear "lost stars" is miles better even though its in the young adult section (of which I am neither)

   I have been enjoying "new dawn" again which shows how kanan and hera from 'rebels' first meet.
Also ploughing through the star wars ...along time ago trades dark horse put out of the old marvel comics ,
the third and fourth of which are my favourites , and a spilt brew ruined 1 and 2 so i'll have to procure them again, the fifth one is dire.

On every level the book is poor, the characters are wooden and un-interesting (much like the dialogue), the story takes hundreds of pages to go nowhere, the writing as you mention is workman like to the extreme - someone enters a non-descript room, completes an action, queue next scene.

It's like LucasBooks thought up the idea of a post-ROTJ novel but didn't want anyone to progress the Star Wars story forward in any meaningful way so got a cheap sub-standard writer to chuck something together.

The thing cost me £6.99 too, biggest let down. Have cancelled all the other Star Wars books I had on pre-order to wait on reviews. I have been un-impressed with the new canon books but Aftermath really was the straw that broke the donkey's back.

I have New Dawn but not read it yet! Think I will have a break from Star Wars universe for a while now

[TordelBack]

They've hung themselves up badly with their 'EVERYTHING we shit out from now on is CANON and it REALLY HAPPENED' nonsense.  Every single comic and book, strangled into anemia so that it doesn't 'contradict' anything else that might or might not be in the pipeline... recipe for beigey blandness straight out of the gate

[Bolt-01]

Just started Alastair Reynolds' 'On The Steel Breeze'.

Really enjoyable fun, nice mysteries and some clever use of character.

[I, Cosh]

Seem to have read nothing but sci-fi for the past six months. Just finished The Peripheral, William Gibson's typically readable latest. This one adds a second, post-extinction timeline to his usual gritty near-future. As ever, he extrapolates effortlessly from last year's Wired headlines into the everyday and low level criminal application of technology. Here the things catching his attention include drone warfare and gamification*, 3D  printing of hardware and chemicals (the exploding Backwoods meth labs of Justified brought to a brave new world) and the inevitable environmental cataclysm.

Gibson has always been interesting in the way his main literary influences are clearly from the hard-boiled detective school. Over the years, he's become quite a prose stylist. He has a spare, clipped tone - never a conjunction or a preposition where a comma will do - which suits his laconic characters and is perhaps at its best here.


*Anyone who really thinks that the deliberate dissociation of murder from murderer involved in remote piloting a Predator is something new, rather than a simple increase the physical distance involved, might benefit from reading something like Joanna Bourke's An Intimate History of Killing.

[von Boom]

I read The Peripheral as soon as it was released and agree with you completely Bulbous.

Gibson has always thrown his readers into the thick of things and never once does he hold your hand. You either get it or give up.

I would love to see more authors return to his sharp style of prose. All these mega books and series are getting tiresome.

[Tjm86]

I would love to see more authors return to his sharp style of prose. All these mega books and series are getting tiresome.

Amen.  Why the hell does everyone have to try and out-Tolstoy War and Peace?  The beauty of the likes of Clarke, Asimov, Heinlein, Harrison, Bradbury etc was the pace (okay, Heinlein could write a good couple of breeze blocks as well).  They may have been trite, cliched at times, poorly characterised .. but dammit, they were fun!  I've started a Clarke binge recently and been reminded of how enjoyable his work can be.  I gave up on Game of Thrones because they were so bloody boring! 

[Batman's Superior Cousin]

Finished Star Wars Aftermath - the worst Star Wars novel I have ever read.

Lies, It's one of my favourites (so far)!!!

Most way through "Hitler's Last Witness: The Memoirs of Hitler's Bodyguard" by Rochus Misch - title says it all really. Was 70p for the Kindle version. Good read if history is your cuppa.

How war it??

[von Boom]

I would love to see more authors return to his sharp style of prose. All these mega books and series are getting tiresome.

Amen.  Why the hell does everyone have to try and out-Tolstoy War and Peace?  The beauty of the likes of Clarke, Asimov, Heinlein, Harrison, Bradbury etc was the pace (okay, Heinlein could write a good couple of breeze blocks as well).  They may have been trite, cliched at times, poorly characterised .. but dammit, they were fun!  I've started a Clarke binge recently and been reminded of how enjoyable his work can be.  I gave up on Game of Thrones because they were so bloody boring!

I feel the same way about Game of Thrones. Dull and pointless rambling with no purpose other than to bilk you out of your time and money.

[CrazyFoxMachine]

Alice in Sunderland

Bryan Talbot's 2006 tome is quite a dizzying prospect. A history of Sunderland and the surrounding area, Alice in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll, Alice Liddell herself, the author, sequential art and everything in between. It is extremely dense and definitely benefits from reading over several sittings - the structure is dreamlike (which is explained in the narrative) and is largely stream of conciousness. Talbot's artwork is similarly kaleidoscopic, drifting between styles from the heavy use of collage and filtered-photography (to save time painstakingly drawing all the buildings of Sunderland I'd imagine) in front of which the always-drawn narrator moves to some inspired segments of pure old-skool heavily detailed Talbot gold (particularly his retelling of the Lambton Worm story and his interpretation of the Jabberwocky).

When I first got Alice in Sunderland (I think in 2006!) I read it in one go and found it suffocatingly detailed. This was long before I'd been to uni and written any longform essays which essentially Alice in Sunderland is and the depth of it was unfathomable to me. On reading it again nearly a decade later it's easy to appreciate as an astonishing feat of research and art, an indulgent Talbot meditation on everything that makes up his reality - seen through but barely adhering to the central point that Lewis Carroll was creatively inspired by Sunderland. Whether or not that's the case - Talbot clearly is.

[Link Prime]

Alice in Sunderland
Bryan Talbot's 2006 tome is quite a dizzying prospect. 

Dizzying is a very good descriptor.
I had a similar feeling when reading From Hell, enjoyable as the feeling was in both cases.
I think I'll have to pencil in a re-read too, it's been a long time since I opened it.

[CrazyFoxMachine]

Dizzying is a very good descriptor.
I had a similar feeling when reading From Hell,

Well - both have extensive reference sections - I read From Hell in one sitting when I had a serious delerious bout of the flu and that was quite an experience I can tell you!

[sheridan]

Despite liking what I've read of A Song of Ice and Fire so far, I actually prefer shorter books as well.  I grew up on Michael Moorcock's fantasy (before his books started getting longer) and Pratchett (before his books start* hmm, said that already)...

[Zarjazzer]

Still reading Star Wars Aftermath -an odd book indeed. Meandering sequences that don't appear to add to the story and  jumping around the galaxy a lot, for not much reason.  Okay characters and professionally written but just lacks something. I'm almost finding it a chore. Not a good sign. Not the worst SW book, but by no means the best just okay.

On the plus side  read Shattered Empire 10 and Star wars 10 comic books today. Both pretty good.

[Colin YNWA]

Just finished The Bojeffries Saga, oh my what fun that was. I approached it with some intrepidation. I've not read it since about 1990 when a friend lent me his complete Warrior collection. I loved it then, but then I loved DR and Quinch then and I don't think that holds up too well (I know, I know I'll get me coat). So I worried that the 18 year old me was once again leading the 43 year old me down the garden path and giggling at him (me) behind his back.

Well I need not have worried its simply fantasic fun, with a nice dose of social observation thrown in. Its wry and sharp, daft and slap stick. Its just good comics.

I also noticed how much early Steve Parkhouse seemed to be a glorious combination of all the great 80s and 90s Mad artists. I mean I love his work now, but his early(ish) stuff is quite fantastic too. Great fun (and sad) comics.