Lots of Books

It has been awhile since I did some book reviews, and many of you may be thinking I took a break from reading. Haha, well you would be dead wrong. So here are a bunch of books I have recently finished.

Cory Doctorow
One day I decided to pick up something of his since everywhere I turn I hear great things about his writing. I grabbed Overclocked: Stories of the Future Present, which is a collection of short stories. Every story in the collection is awesome and I would say that even people who are not into sci-fi would probably like most of the stories. They deal more with the immediate future and how our current ways of thinking would affect the technology and cause problems. The main reason I picked up the book was because of Neil Gaiman and Warren Ellis’ quotes on the cover. Speaking of Neil Gaiman….

Neil Gaiman
I have been reading his short story collection called Fragile Things. It is completely Gaiman, he continues to prove to me that he is one of the best writers out there. Best story so far A Study in Emerald. It is kind of what if story, the entire time two characters who seem like Holmes and Watson investigate a murder of the old ones from Lovecraft. It turns out that the two killers are actually Holmes and Watson, and the two investigating are someone else…very cool, very twisty story.

 

Jim Butcher
I finished the third and fourth books of the Codex Alera series. As I have stated before these books are such fun reads, they do not take very long, and they are action packed. There is an interesting bit that I noticed while reading Brisingr, in the differences between the two main characters, Eragon and Tavi.

Let me explain. Eragon is the only person in the land with his abilities (a dragon and magic), he gets this ability quickly and it takes time for him to grow into it. At times we have to deal with his moral dilemas about killing or eating meat.

On the other hand, Tavi comes from a place where everyone has control of furies, except for him. He has to become smarter, faster, and better than everyone around him with just his own mind and body. He has risen the ranks of the legion and become a trusted leader. Now that his own past has been revealed to him and his furies have finally started to come to him, he is on level with others, but he rises above them because he could do amazing things without that kind of power.

Terry Brooks
I finished the second book in the Shannara series, Elfstones of Shannara and started the third, Wishsong of Shannara. The second book was pretty sweet, I can understand why Greg said it was his favorite. Brooks is a fantastic writer, once you get hooked in, it is very hard to let go.


Joe Abercrombie

The final book I want to talk about is Last Argument of Kings. This book kicked ass. It was dark and seedy. There were no happy endings. Just like real life. Turns out that Bayaz was not the really good guy we thought, in the end Logen was just what he was: a savage murderer, and Jezal becomes the puppet king who needs help from Glokta to have sex with his wife…Not the Tolkienesque ending we expected.

Author: Ngewo

5 thoughts on “Lots of Books

  1. Thanks man. Its actually a template I found but loading it made me lose all the widgets on the right. Ugh. Unnecessary work.

  2. Nice to see you writing about books. Some good stuff here.

    I’m a HUGE fan of Cory Doctorow. Given your recommendation, I’m gonna have to pick up a copy of Overclocked. My favorites of his are Down and out in the Magic Kingdom and Little Brother. At the very least, you’ve got to check out Little Brother at some point. Awesome story.

    I’ve read Neil Gaiman’s American Gods, but really didn’t love it. I’ll be skipping Gaiman for a while.

    You probably know what a huge fan of Jim Butcher I am. I’ll likely read the Codex Alera series at some point, but currently I’m totally absorbed in The Dresden Files. Every damn book is so good, and I’m up to #7 in the series.

    I’ve also got to buy a copy of Brisingr. I skipped reading your paragraphs about it to avoid spoilers.

    Glad you liked Elfstones. Terry Brooks has like 1000 books in that series, and none of them are bad.

  3. Greg…I was confused at first, but then immediately realized it was you after the Gaiman comment, since you’ve stated that before.

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