Books you should read!

I've been several levels of unproductive the last few days, aside from aquarium stuff, a couple errands, and finally ordering seeds this morning. But I wanted to tell you about the new Martha Wells book, even though it's now about three books ago on my reading list.

The Cloud Roads (from Night Shade Books, which seems to be bringing out a lot of neat things recently...) is epic fantasy as done by someone who takes in a lot of science fiction. Martha Wells is always good about originality and doing things other people-- maybe haven't thought of, maybe can't be bothered with-- that come out really well. (When I grow up, I want people to think of my writing the way I think of hers.) But this takes it rather to a new level: it is epic fantasy, but it is in a world peopled like a complex sci-fi TV show, and being fantasy, it makes a great deal more sense that most of the sentient beings are humanoid. But humanoid only: perhaps one set of people we meet would pass for earth-humans; the others are green with scales, or blue with tusks, or have shells and insect-like wings. Our hero, Moon, shape shifts between a copper-skinned mostly-human and a semi-reptilian winged form. We also hear reports of people of the sea and the sky, though most of what we see is land dwellers.

The terrain and the non-sentient fauna are equally diverse, if mostly in roughly sketched form (we're not reading a travellog here), and it's all put together with a fast-paced adventure plot about a young "man" who has spent nearly all of his life as an outsider being run off from one society after another finally meeting others of his own species. But of course, that's only part of it, since the group he ends up with has their own problems...

I found it a fun and a fast read (but not at all shallow) and the people may look far more interesting than anyone you've met, but they make sense as people in the ways they act and react. The book as a whole doesn't quite win my devotion the way The Wizard Hunters did (which I read twice in a row before letting it go back to the library, and then bought with the sequel when it came out despite being underpaid in the wilds of Colorado at the time) but I think the main difference is that Moon doesn't quite have the comfort level with anyone to banter properly, so I look forward to seeing the next two books... and while this is definitely a case of a stand-alone with sequels, I'm eagerly awaiting them already.

Books you should read!

I've been several levels of unproductive the last few days, aside from aquarium stuff, a couple errands, and finally ordering seeds this morning. But I wanted to tell you about the new Martha Wells book, even though it's now about three books ago on my reading list.

The Cloud Roads (from Night Shade Books, which seems to be bringing out a lot of neat things recently...) is epic fantasy as done by someone who takes in a lot of science fiction. Martha Wells is always good about originality and doing things other people-- maybe haven't thought of, maybe can't be bothered with-- that come out really well. (When I grow up, I want people to think of my writing the way I think of hers.) But this takes it rather to a new level: it is epic fantasy, but it is in a world peopled like a complex sci-fi TV show, and being fantasy, it makes a great deal more sense that most of the sentient beings are humanoid. But humanoid only: perhaps one set of people we meet would pass for earth-humans; the others are green with scales, or blue with tusks, or have shells and insect-like wings. Our hero, Moon, shape shifts between a copper-skinned mostly-human and a semi-reptilian winged form. We also hear reports of people of the sea and the sky, though most of what we see is land dwellers.

The terrain and the non-sentient fauna are equally diverse, if mostly in roughly sketched form (we're not reading a travellog here), and it's all put together with a fast-paced adventure plot about a young "man" who has spent nearly all of his life as an outsider being run off from one society after another finally meeting others of his own species. But of course, that's only part of it, since the group he ends up with has their own problems...

I found it a fun and a fast read (but not at all shallow) and the people may look far more interesting than anyone you've met, but they make sense as people in the ways they act and react. The book as a whole doesn't quite win my devotion the way The Wizard Hunters did (which I read twice in a row before letting it go back to the library, and then bought with the sequel when it came out despite being underpaid in the wilds of Colorado at the time) but I think the main difference is that Moon doesn't quite have the comfort level with anyone to banter properly, so I look forward to seeing the next two books... and while this is definitely a case of a stand-alone with sequels, I'm eagerly awaiting them already.

Experimentally cross-posty from dreamwidth. Comments encouraged in either location.