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Finished Revenger by Rory Clements, the 2nd in a historical fiction series, set in England at the beginning of the XVII, not long before Elizabeth's death.

There's a noticeable improvement since the first book, both in the plot and the flow. Not that the first was bad. I've spotted a couple of obvious typos though, which doesn't happen often in those series. It would have been interesting to benefit from Amazon's X-ray annotations too, but it's not really necessary, the complexity is nothing close to A Song of Ice and Fire ;) Just a missed opportunity with a historical novel.

Only reproach I have: the author seems to favour more gripping suspense by using easy props like allusions to torture the main character is facing, or threats to his close relatives. A bit overdone but effective. I prefer C.J. Sansom's subtler approach, but that's just a style and it doesn't happen too often.

There is an annex with historical notes that give a good summary of the context back then, and to indicate what is fictional in the book, always interesting.
 
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About an hour ago I wrapped up Cold Dish, book one in the Longmire series. I found it even better than the telly show, and that's saying a lot because it's a damn fine series. I'll be reading more in this series for sure, the writer is someone who understands the craft and doesn't dumb it down in the slightest, his plot work and character developments are both exceptional.

Up next will be a re-read for me, Red Rising. I read this series when it first released some years ago, and looking forward to visiting it all over again.
 
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And with some Manson music in the backround, perfect for this book by the way, Red Rising came to a finish. This is a tale about a future society that has spread out to the nearby planets, adopting a Roman political system for the entire solar system, for both good and ill. A peon will attempt to rise and shake the foundations of the empire, go with the tide or be swept away with it! This is a splendid read, the first book is exceptional, and I'm looking forward to re-reading the second, as soon as my library gets it back in stock!

I'm twenty pages now into book six of the Dresden chronicles, Blood Rites. It starts off with Harry and Thomas together, so I've high expectaions for the shenanigans that I'm sure are to follow these blokes!
 
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About an hour ago I wrapped up Cold Dish, book one in the Longmire series. I found it even better than the telly show, and that's saying a lot because it's a damn fine series. I'll be reading more in this series for sure, the writer is someone who understands the craft and doesn't dumb it down in the slightest, his plot work and character developments are both exceptional.

Up next will be a re-read for me, Red Rising. I read this series when it first released some years ago, and looking forward to visiting it all over again.
I read Red Rising (the first trilogy only) for the first time last summer. I really enjoyed it.
 
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I finished the book series Malazan: Book of the Fallen by Steven Erikson yesterday. I enjoyed it a lot.

Very different from all other fantasy authors I read. No specific protagonist, and not one chosen hero. Instead a large number of characters (confusing sometimes), all with a role to play and all with understandable motivations. All books had very slow starts due to this.

And he's the first English speaking fantasy author I've read in a while who doesn't apply American gender values to the story. A breath of fresh air to not have regular gender comments about differences baked into the story (I'm looking at you Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson).
 
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Yeah I've read the Red Rising trilogy before, this time I plan on reading the other books that have come out since then. I'm rather curious as to where they might take the story after the initial three novels!
 
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Yeah I've read the Red Rising trilogy before, this time I plan on reading the other books that have come out since then. I'm rather curious as to where they might take the story after the initial three novels!
Yes, I'm curious as well. Maybe I'll read them next as well.

But for now I'm going to read "The things we cannot say", which I've no idea if I'll like or not. It's supposed to be a good love story in Poland around WW2.
 
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The Dresden books and Flavia keep hooking me back in and keeping my attention diverted, though in good ways. I'm grateful for all the marvelous stories that we get the chance to enjoy these days!
 
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The Dresden books and Flavia keep hooking me back in and keeping my attention diverted, though in good ways. I'm grateful for all the marvelous stories that we get the chance to enjoy these days!
I'm really curious about the dresden files books. It seems like you can heartily recommend them?
 
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Aye, if you enjoy stories with a serious supernatural bent and the genre involved, you'd likely respond well to these. Right now, the sixth book is chock full of vampires of two different styles: the white, which are like empathy/emotional vibe-suckers, and the black, these are your traditional Stoker-types. Witches, fairies, lots of other creatures abound, and humour as well. It's not written at the highest collegiate level, I'd cite that as a possible draw-back at times, yet nothing can be perfect.
 
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And this morning I completed Blood Rites, book six of the Dresden series. Harry is up to his neck in vampires both of the white and black varieties, and on top of that finds out he actually has some family still alive. This book is more action-oriented than many of the previous, lots of various combats take place, with both old villains/friends and new. I don't think I'd read this far into the series before, and I can tell you I'll be continuing on, gotta know what happens next!

Yet now I'm twenty percent into book seven of the Expanse. I'd gotten a few of these books back in the fall and now it's time to catch up, Persepolis Rising is off to a fantastic start and hooked me immediately! Man, it's always a good time to return to this marvelous universe.
 
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Book seven of the Expanse is put to bed, Persepolis Rising was really really good. It starts off like most of the other novels, then quickly goes into a set-up combat stances, with a nasty sense of inevitability about how it will all resolve, and the status quo for the Rocinante crew will not be the same going forward.

I've no idea how they or anyone would do justice to this particular book film-wise, as there's no way it could be done in a two or three hour film, heck I don't think even twelve episodes could do it. There's just so much going on, and if you took subject matter away, you'd have a very watered down result.

It's really good. One of the best books to date. I'm headed right into book eight starting later today or tonight.
 
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Tiamat's Wrath, book eight of the Expanse novels is pretty good so far, and yet rather different from the earlier books. Here you find the crew still separated and jarred from the events of the prior book, with their numbers whittled down via death or capture. I'm about a third of the way through the book and finding it difficult to even put it down. Similar to the previous volume you also have a few new members to get used to, and a couple from a previous book back that are a delight to see again.
 
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"Midnight Riot" (U.S. title) by Ben Aaronovitch. I like this sort of supernatural urban mystery so I'm getting on well with it. I don't know yet whether I'll continue reading the series, which is up to something like 8-10 books at this point, but it might happen.
 
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This morning I finished Tiamat's Wrath, book eight of the Expanse tales. The broken crew try to make their collective ways in this new Empire, with mixed results. Holden is still captive, Amos/Tim is pretty much MIA, Alex and Naomi are trying to hold things together and advance the rebellion, with a lot of help from Draper.
At the end of the tale we're down another crew member, yet advances have been made against the enemy. For what it's worth, I totally take Elvi's point in all this, that the stupid humans should wrap up whatever angst seems to be in their collective underwear and focus on the REAL danger.

One thing to note now in this series, in the last two books I've come across a rather distasteful practice that never fails to annoy me when I encounter it: an author telling you which side/faction the reader should be championing. No. Never. YOU NEVER DO THAT!! I am not five years of age, you can present the information to me and I'll make my own choices from there. When you attempt to steer me in a certain direction, the first thing I'll usually do is break the bloody steering wheel. This won't stop me from completing the books as the ninth is up next, though it might inform me should I ever think of re-reading these latter volumes.
 
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I finally got around to finishing the Expanse novels, all in all a very good series. It's hard to believe that it was over a decade ago, slightly before book five of the Ice and Fire books was released that Leviathan Wakes first came out, if I remember right. I remember reading it for the first time and wondering, at the end, where the heck was this story going?!?! Some of the latter books get a bit into pandering, yet I try to ignore that for how the story wraps and is so complete. Leviathan Falls is a solid conclusion, yet sort of leaves many doors open to be explored, should anyone take up the gauntlet. My favorite character lives and becomes a guide to the human race, along with his two partners in crime.

Alex gets a fitting conclusion as well, certainly much better than what happened to him in the telly version, for whatever reason. We don't actually get to see it play out, yet I'm certain that he and Kit met up and continued where they'd left off. The ship went with him, of course, as was right and proper.

Nagata's ending is a bit more bleak, of course. She's been shattered before though, and I've no doubt she got through this latest debacle as well. You could easily have another trilogy simply explaining how things moved on after the gates all got destroyed and people had to subsist where they were. I totally see Naomi leading that, and I think Chrissy would approve!

Up next for me is a King novel that I've not read before, Lisey's Stoy.
 
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I finished Dune Messiah and Winds of Dune, which is placed between Messiah and Children of Dune. I remembered that I didn't like Messiah much when I read it first, but could not remember why. Now I do, I simply dislike Muad'Dib. I like Paul well enough, but not what he became. Then again, even Paul didn't like what he became :)
Winds of Dune is an unneeded book and adds little to the overarching story. It tries to give some insights into what motivated Paul, but that becomes already clear enough in Messiah and Children of Dune. It does create it's own story that isn't finished, so I guess another book is intended to follow it, somewhere in the future. When it is ever written I probably will read it as well, just for completeness.
I'm a fifth into Children of Dune and it is as good as I remember it to be.
 
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I liked Dune, but I stopped reading half way through Dune Messiah. One problem with the author (IMNSHO) is that he tends to add a lot of stuff in (some of) his novels, stuff that aren't always explained very well. which makes reading a bit ... overwhelming. A bit like The Wheel of Time from book 4.

pibbuR who did like "The Santaroga Barrier" and the idea behind the "Dosadi Experiment" (which nonetheless became a bit confusing).
 
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