Recently finished:
Land of Laughs by Jonathan Carroll
This is my first Jonathan Carrol book. It's very,
very surreal, almost like a cross between Murakami and Neil Gaiman. I hated the main character. He's a full on weasel shitbag from the very first page, and he almost made it impossible for me to enjoy the book, but somehow it all came together anyway. The story wasn't exactly unique--I sort of saw everything coming. But the execution was excellent, and some of the details are wonderfully strange, especially towards the end. Bottom line: it's a good book, and if you like really weird fantasy you should try to read it.
Eternal Sky Book 1 - Range of Ghosts by Elizabeth Bear
I discussed this book in an
earlier post, and I was really enjoying it at that point. For the most part, it held up. My one complaint:
the pacing is almost too fast. I feel like she could have taken a little more time fleshing things out. The world and characters are interesting enough to support a massive WOT/ASOIAF-sized tome easily, and it probably would have benefited from that kind of expanded scope, but that's about the only thing I can say against it. I liked it well enough that I've already started on the second book.
Gabriel Alon book 3 - The Confessor by Daniel Silva
The opening to this was very slow and almost ruined it. Things pick up in the second half, and the ending was decent, but this is by far the weakest Gabriel Alon book I've read so far. I like the character and enjoy Silva's writing style so I'll probably continue reading these, but for other people interested in this series, this book is probably skippable.
The Strain Book 1 - The Strain by Guillermo Del Toro and Chuck Hogan
I thought the first episode of the TV show was pretty cool and decided to try out the book. It was a very light and quick read, ridiculous at times, occasionally scary, very pulpy, always fun. There is almost
too much action. The show so far is actually better than this book in a lot of ways--it sort of reminds me of what this book might've been if they did another draft, fixing some of the problems. I probably won't grab the next book in the series anytime soon, but I may read it eventually when the story in the TV show moves further along.
Straw Men Book 2 - The Upright Man by Michael Marshall Smith (writing as Michael Marshall)
This was a huge step down from the first book in the series and takes some hilariously bizarre turns. The writer has an amazing prose style and there were some great scenes, but the story totally falls apart. I'm not sure if I'll finish the Straw Man series or not--right now I'm leaning towards giving up on it--but I like the guy's writing voice well enough that I'm very interested in his other work, particularly a science fiction book called
Only Forward, which is supposed to be great.
Malazan Book 2 - Deadhouse Gates by Steven Erikson
I gave up on this a few hundred pages in and I am now officially
DONE with this series... probably.... There are things I like here and there, but the story is so dry, and the characters are so flat... Erikson mentions that Frank Herbert's
Dune books were an influence for the Malazan series, and I definitely see the resemblance. Unfortunately, I couldn't finish
Dune either, for many the same reasons. This series has some good points, and I can't say that it's actually crap (although the first book is borderline), but there is something clinical about the writing style, a lack of emotional juice, that just kills it for me.
