Plans for the New Year:

My plot plan for 2014 is to concentrate on several series rather than just jumping around like a loonie from one series to another. We'll see how well that works.
Series I hope to concentrate on:

Ian C. Esslemont and Steven Erikson Malazan Empire
S.M. Stirling's Alt History Nantucket Event extended series
Jo Walton's Farthing series
Connie Willis 's Time Travel Series
Iain M. Banks Culture series
Susan Hill's Simon Serailler series
Daniel Silva's Gabriel Allon series
Alan Furst's Night Soldier's series
Charles Finch's Charles Lenox series

No doubt I'll read other stuff as well, but I hope to maybe catch up with these. We'll see!

Catchup Post

 

I was very bad toward the end of the year, and ignored my blog. So I’m trying to catch up now and list what I’ve read and a few of my goals for the new year:

 

Books I’ve read but never posted to the blog:

 

103. Rest You Merry - Charlotte MacLeod
102. Quite Ugly One Morning - Christopher Brookmyer
101. Teckla - Steven Brust
100. London Falling - Paul Cornell
99. The Cruellest Month - Louise Penny
98. On the Oceans of Eternity - S.M. Stirling
97. Blackcollar - Timothy Zahn
96. Jar City - Arnuldur Indidason
95. Zoo Station - David Downing
94. A Drink Before the War - Dennis Lehane
93. Phoenix Rising - Pip Ballantine
92. The Fleet Street Murders - Charles Finch
91. The Man With a Load of Mischief - Martha Grimes
90 Hide and Seek - Ian Rankin
89. Sandman Slim - Richard Kadrey
88. Knots and Crosses - Ian Rankin
87. The Yard - Alex Grecian
86. Can You Forgive Her - Anthony Trollope
85. Ratking - Michael Dibdin
84. God Save the Queen - Kate Locke
83. Whitefire Crossing - Courtney Schafer

 

Yes, I’ve read 103 books this year. Just started a new one but I won’t get it done before the new year.

82. Leviathan Wakes – James S A Corey

Fast plot and intriguing characterization.

The future isn’t all that terrific as humanity is stuck in our own star system, not having found an FTL solution as yet. 

A faint SOS beacon brings a response from a passing transport ship, and when its shuttle  reaches the disabled ship, the crew watches in horror as a cloaked warship blows away their transport. Now stranded and hiding from this unknown enemy, they struggle to find a place to go, how to get there, and what to do then. They find some evidence that the culprits in attacking their ship are from the Mars federation. The disclosure of that evidence starts a shooting war between the Belters and Mars. Earth remains surprisingly quiescent.  But how long will that last?

Two POVs which you know will mesh up eventually. Lots of action, interesting trying to piece together what the heck is going on.

Great read!

80. Black Order–James Rollins

 

The third in Rollin’s Sigma series – scientists with guns – starts out with two seemingly harmless assignments. Gray Pierce is in Copenhagen looking into some weirdness regarding sales of expensive scientific treatises and a Darwin Bible.  Meanwhile, Painter Crowe heads off to a Buddhist retreat where Gray had spent some time, when the head of the monastery asked for help regarding some mysterious illness and mysterious lights.

It isn’t long before both of them are under ferocious attacks by folks tattooed with runic characters. 

Another compelling Sigma Force entry with lots of twists, turns and quantum physics.

78. Initiate’s Trial–Janny Wurts

 

I received this book through the Early Reviewer program. I decided not to just pick it up and read it but instead decided to read the entire series in order first. I'm very glad I did. This is not the sort of series you can jump around in. Each book builds upon the previous one, with consequences from earlier actions affecting not only the individuals but the overall course of the plot.

The characters are multi-layered and complex. They grow, they evolve, they make a LOT of mistakes, and then they have to live with those mistakes and, where possible, right wrongs done or at least try to mitigate the unfortunate fallout. But that isn't always possible. Sometimes you just have to accept.

The world is well-drawn and with many hidden, or little-understood or long-forgotten complexities. It's a fantasy world, but one with tightly drawn rules and when something surprises you, you can remember, far back in a previous book, there was a hint of this to come.

If you love fantasy, love your characters tricksy and smart, determined, sometimes nefarious, and you love a world you have to work at to get a grasp on, then this is a series for you.

Me, I'm loving it.

78. Against the Tide of Years–S. M. Stirling

 

  

The second in the Nantucket Event series. 

What happens when an island is somehow transported from present day to the bronze age?  

The Nantucket people have begun exploring their new world and are reaching out to the existing civilizations of the times. And, trying to clean up the mess they’ve already caused.

And, of course, with modern tech (even if it is limited) they’ve already drastically changed ‘history’.

77. The Ice Princess - Camilla Lackberg

  

The first of a series. I doubt I’ll be continuing this series as I wasn’t impressed with the main character, although I did like the male police officer.  Good mystery though and effective and different setting. 

76. The Various Haunts of Men–Susan Hill

 

  

 

The first in her current day mystery series.  Even so, the book is oddly gothic for a modern day story, with lots of atmosphere and terrific settings.

Told from a surprising POV and with creepy effectiveness.

Will definitely continue this series

74. Nine Princes in Amber–Roger Zelazny 75. Stormed Fortress–Janny Wurts

  

First in the Amber series, I’ve read this many times.  Intriguing and different magical system, with brilliant presentation of the information through the eyes of a player whose memory has been erased.

       

8th book in the Wars of Light and Shadow series.  This book represents all the things I love about reading a series as opposed to individual works. Change, based on learning, experience and exposure to events, the world deepening and revealing  before unknown depths, the characters having to survive mistakes and the vagaries of plans gone awry because of things not understood or known, or simply because people aren’t perfect.

Wonderful ending to this arc. Looking forward to finding out where in the universe the rest of the series goes.  I have no idea!  And that’s brilliant.

72. The Inimitable Jeeves- PG Wodehouse 73. The Art Forger–BA Shapiro

  

The Jeeves books are every bit as amusing as the TV series was, but I wish Stephen Fry had read it.   

The Art Forger was different from what I expected. Not the usual viewpoint by insurance agents or art detectives, but instead from the forger’s point of view. Complex enough to keep me guessing and intriguing details on how forgery is done.

71–The Difference Engine–William Gibson and Bruce Sterling

 

Alternate history/cyberpunk tale of what happens when Charles Babbage creates computers during the Victorian Age. England has a distinct advantage and the world, as a result, is very different. Including some interesting changes as to who is Prime Minister and who isn’t.  As well as whose still a colony and who isn’t.

69. Map of Bones–James Rollins

     

I had sooooo much fun reading this book, the second in the Sigma Force series. I got to look up lots of stuff and try to see what was real and what wasn’t.

Some stuff I looked up: m-state metals (monoatomic metals), the Order of Dragons, how many Magi were there?, heap-leach cyanide recovery method to extract precious metals , Meissner Fields and superconducting metals,Catharism, Thomas Chrstians, the Chinon Parchment .

There were more.

Great action, believable storyline not going too far afield, fleshed out characters,  hateable bad guys, and never sure who was on which side.  What more can you want from a thriller!

68. Yendi–Steven Brust 69. House of Silk–Anthony Horowitz

Yendi is the second book in the Vlad Taltos series.  Very funny assassin with a smartass tiny dragon who sits on his shoulder.

House of Silk is a Sherlock Holmes pastiche which I thought was excellently done. Very much evoked the originals, I thought.

66. Reliquary–Preston/Child and 67. What Angels Fear–C.S. Harris

Reliquary is the second book in the Pendergast thriller series. A wild ride as Pendergast and old friends find out that they didn’t really understand what happened in BOOK 1, and that things were going pear-shaped again.  Very effective sequel.

What Angels Fear is a period mystery, set in London, just as the Regency is about to begin. A woman is found murdered and raped in a church and the clues point to Lord Devlin, the only remaining son of one of the Prince’s main advisors. I realized after I began this that I’d read it many years ago.  I did remember whodunnit, but reread it entirely anyway. Quite a good period mystery with lots of grimy scenes of the poor sectors of London.

64. Gateway–Frederik Pohl, 65. White Rhino Hotel–Bartle Bull

                                                                                        

Gateway, a science fiction novel, is  about the discovery of a mysterious, uhm, gateway created by aliens long gone.

The White Rhino Hotel is a novel about a young man leaving England to try to make a life in Africa.

The two books are eerily similar in structure. 

I didn’t plan to read the second one right after Gateway, but just picked it up, so this similarity was entirely unexpected.

Both go into detail about the strange worlds the people step into, and spend a lot of time dealing with the reactions, surprises and learning curves for each new world.

Both were wonderful reads, and eye-opening in multiple ways. Both are highly recommended.

63. Hexed–Kevin Hearne

Atticus, no longer able to keep a low profile, is forced to face down a bunch of bad witches. And discovers he has some new friends.

62. The Small House at Allington–Anthony Trollope

Not my favorite Trollope but very much the usual tale with lots of fun pokes at society and its peccadillos.

61. The Hunt for Atlantis–Andy McDermott

(Audiobook)

I love books about archaeological quests, so I’d hoped for a bit more from this book. There was lots of chases and gunfire but not enough archaeology for my tastes. Also, I found the ending a bit hard to believe, at least the plot denouement at any rate.

Still, I own book two and because I like one main character, and want to kick the other, I’ll probably listen to it as well.

.

60. The Unexpected Mrs Pollifax–Dorothy Gilman

A fun and easy story about a New Jersey widow, bored with her life, who goes to the CIA and asks to be a spy. What happens after that is just a crazy patchwork of happenstance.

Cool characters, interesting story, and lots of fun.

59. The Grim Company–Luke Scull

Not only is the Company Grim, so is the world created in this work of sword and sorcery.

A world run by mages who care little for the people in their cities, deceit and misery abounds.

The main characters are nothing to write home about either. It was hard to root for any of them, or to care about their welfare and triumph.

The ending left me feeling much the way I felt at the start of the book. I really want nothing more to do with the world in the book, for there was nothing there I thought worth saving at all.

Abandoned: The Long Ships–Frans Gunnar Bengtsson

The fist part of this book was terrific. Vikings going a-viking and getting caught up in wars in Spain, running into the Moors and Jews and finally Chrisitians.

 

But when Orm comes home and starts to think of ways to trick, cajole or otherwise force (you have a choice, covert or I take your head) I began to hate it.

Abandoned after 300 pages. Too bad. It’s possibly just my own problem but I read for fun not for anything else.

RVing Update.

This old barn is located just down the road from the MIL’s in North Carolina.

 

While we were staying in the NC mountains near Asheville, our friends joined us and this is the view from the cabin they rented.

 

A shot from the top of the mountains as we went from Maggie Valley to Cherokee.

 

We saw these guys on that same trip, right at the entrance to the Blue Ridge Parkway.

 

The river as we were traveling through Cherokee.

 

A shot from the river park in Cherokee.

 

We’re glad to have gotten away from the family. Ugh. Families. There are feuds going on there and we hated that. Refuse to take sides and hate that that stuff goes on. So glad we live far away from all that.

Had a great visit with friends (better than family as you CHOOSE them) we’ve known for 30 years who drove up to spend a long weekend with  us in Maggie Valley.

We had yet more RV issues today, with a jack refusing to lift up. Jim MacGyvered a fix for it, so we are on the road, currently over-nighting at Camp Pedro at South of the Border on the SC/NC border.  Heading into SC tomorrow and will overnight just north of Florida.

Apologies for the pictures. I didn’t remember to load my photo software on the new laptop so they’re just as the camera caught them, some using just the phone.