I don’t know if you ever went in the read Dragons of Summer Flame, but it’s really very bad indeed, did lasting damage to the world to make it ready for the ‘Age of Mortals’; to me it was another Phantom Menace except that it also ruined the world I’d previously loved (so maybe more of an Alien3, although that film at least trying to say something interesting).
W&H clearly regretted Summer Flame too as they spent a further (surprisingly good) trilogy trying to reverse it, although I forget the name of it now (it started with Dragons of a Vanished Moon, I think) and I was losing interest in the whole saga by then.
There aren’t very many novels that I’ve read more than once, yet I’ve tended to always keep the books I’ve really loved reading on the assumption that I definitely will re-read them at some point, and I read a lot of books when I was young… so my bookshelves are basically crammed with the potential for devastating disappointment.
I reread a lot of the Dragonlance books not all that long ago and I still enjoyed them. Are they a bit basic? Sexist and possibly racist occasionally maybe? Formulaic? Yes to all the above but I still enjoyed them a lot.
The Moonshae books from Douglas Niles, and the Icewind Dale trilogy were my first dip in the Forgotten Realms as well. With Chronicles of the Dragonlance, and Dragonrealm from Richard A Knaak, plus the Lone Wolf series, they were the core of my reading in my teenage years after I discovered the genre through Tolkien and the Neverending Story.
I know in Uni I re-read the Icewind Dale books, and still enjoyed them, but I don’t know how much of that was nostalgia. I think they would be good enough to re-visit, but there is so much else to catch up on, and I am not reading half as much as I did then…
Just finished A Record of a Spaceborn Few, and it was… thoughtful. Interesting.
The last one and this one both speak very heavily towards “Okay, but why are we here?”, and I don’t know if that’s just part of the zeitgeist these days, but man does that speak to me. I’m lucky… I know exactly what I want to do with my life… the only problem is the difficulty and hurdles between me and that goal (which, not gonna lie, are considerable). But my partner and many of my closest friends are all grappling with that question. What does it mean to be human? What does it mean in a world where you can theoretically do anything but none of it matters?
Anyway. Good book. Really enjoyed it, even if the pacing was slow by my tastes.
… does this mean I like slow, thoughtful sci-fi? Oh man, I’m going to have to re-evaluate so many books…
Still plugging away at The Necropolis Empire (Twilight Imperium Book 2) at work, and that’s a fun little romp, although also less exciting and action-packed than the last one. I’ll pick up and start the last of the Wayfarer series tonight at home.
Finished The Necropolis Empire. It was good… although the ending was very, very deus ex machina, a trope I loathe.
But still, Pratt did a very fine job, and a lot of the characters are super fun. Plus one of the villains from book 1 have a sorta-redemption arc here that they botch, which leads to a really interesting “will they be a villain in book 3” moment… anyway, it was good! Still far better than I expected for a Twilight Imperium tie-in novel!
Tomorrow I will start on The Galaxy and the Ground Within It, which I expect I will finish by Boxing Day. Gosh, it’s nice to not have to work 10-12 hour days in retail for a little while… contented sigh
I just finished All of the Marvels which the cat got me for Christmas.
It was a guilty pleasure in that I wish I could hit flow state reading about technical and mechanical things the way I can reading about comic books I’ve known for years.
Since I stopped reading Marvel regularly around 1994 it provided some good info to catch me up and to put perspective on how I felt about the parts I was reading live.
I finished The Children of Dune the other day. I must say that I started just reading the story at some point and not trying to understand all the philosophical musings about humanity, war and religion. Sometimes Dune just gets away from me. The same way Neal Stephenson and Kim Stanley Robinson get away from me. It‘s all fascinating stuff and I wish I had the „reading power“ to grok all those thoughts and put them together into a composite. But after so much pandemic and still lacking my new glasses all I felt able to do was finish the story. And I cannot remember having read this before but Goodreads says I did. I remember Books 1 and 2 clearly… but 3??? Not at all.
I also read „Two Truths and a Lie“ by Sarah Pinsker—Hugo novelette of the year (I totally failed to nominate and vote this year). I must say I liked some of Pinsker‘s previous short fiction. This one was good enough to read but somehow I expected more from the author.
Got started on Infomocracy II (I read the first book ages ago and barely remember the story but the world with the micro democracy and the centenals was very impressive and I remember that at least)
I have never read beyond 3 because someone told me 4 was terrible. Hmm…
Also aren‘t the books beyond 3 written by Herbert‘s son?
I like it as well and somehow it works, in 3 these things really got away from me. I wonder why? Maybe I was just too tired and wanted to finish the book before year end to make my Goodreads reading challenge. Maybe I should have done that differently.