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dustydigger
Posted 2017-09-29 4:31 PM (#16304 - in reply to #14868)
Subject: Re: The Pick & Mix in 2017		Quote Reply



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Location: UK		I had a very varied month this September,as I am working hard to get through my WWEnd challenges,early before all the December mayhem begins!
Phew!!! Battled my way through the final book of Dan Simmons Hyperion Cantos,The Rise of Endymion. Lots of very slow bits,massive infodumps,and a protagonist who is not the sharpest knife in the drawer,plus plenty of religion bashing,par for the course in a lot of SF. Also time travel,teleportation,lots of space battles,cool tech,lots of space travel,and a truly wondrous version of a Dyson sphere,and a very satisfying tying up of all the threads tossed up over 4 books.Romance,horror,melodrama, plus several SF subgenres. Everything but the kitchen sink,tossed like a salad,but somehow it all sorted itself out in the end.Not a patch on Hyperion of course,but what is?
And the Shrike became a sort of good guy,at least in contrast with the truly horrific Nemes Rhadamanth. That lady is one scary creature!!!
I finished Charlaine Harris's Midnight Crossroad,a quietly enjoyable UF tale,no gore or the gratuitous sex that ruined the early promise of her Sookie Stackhouse series,once the TV series arrived.Its much more in her Harper Connelly style.
I plodded through Robert Holdstock's Lavondyss which disappointed and irritated me,because it was overcomplex,very slow and downbeat. I was really disappointed in this book which seemed to be trying too hard to be mysterious,ending up merely tediously obfuscated,and far too long.Annoying that it didnt follow the story and characters of Mythago Wood. Also I didnt care at all about the rather cardboard characters,so bye bye Holdstock.
I really enjoyed N K Jemisin's The Broken Kingdoms. You all know I get VERY bored with standard fantasy,but Jemisin is such a good writer.Her world building is very interesting,her plotting skilful,but where I give her top marks is the characters,definitely non stereotypical.Even small cameo characters are well delineated.I was of course disappointed that,like Lavondyss the major characters of the first book in the series The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms barely appeared,a mere handful of pages.Jemisin makes you think of her characters well after you finish the books and its,you so want to see more of them.An intriguing author,I will try to fit in The Fifth Season this year,ifpossible.
Also enjoyable is the Abraham Merritt Megapack from Wildside. I read Through the Dragon Glass and The People of the Pit,and intend to dip in and out as and when I have the spare time. I do love the ornate prose of weird fiction! At the time these stories were written it was still possible for authors to write about secret peoples in the Arctic,or hidden away on mysterious islands in the South Seas.Today satellite pics would have exposed the Pit to the world,and the people in the South Seas would be doing hula hula dancing for the tourists. Pity!
Cant believe that Wildside Press,via Amazon, are able to publish 5 novels and 10 short stories by Merritt for a mere 79 cents! Now thats what I call value.lol.
Emily St John Mandel's Station Eleven was a poignant,elegantly written musing on the fragility of the modern world, the unpredictability of memory,and the decision as to whether it is more important to rebuild the past,or go forward shaking off the baggage of the past entirely. Made me think I had better savour the benefits of civilization while I can - and start stocking up for the coming apocalypse,whatever form it takes.lol.
Next up is Jane Yolen's Cards of Grief,Larry Niven's The Smoke Ring,and Damon Knight's Mind Switch.
I have now completed 74/80 of my Pick N Mix challenge,and in all we have read 619 books. Awesome! I still have hope that we can reach 800 books read by the end of the year. Keep it up Pick N Mixers!

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