Book 16: A Storm of Swords by George R. R. Martin

I'm not actually going to say much about this yet, because... ahem... I'm not quite done with the previous yet.  Between my sick kid at home and Halloween activities I'm a little behind.  I should be done today or tonight though, so I'll be starting this one sometime today.

These things keep getting bigger!  This one is 1128 pages which is way too many pages per day.  Yeesh!

REVIEW:  A Storm of Swords is by far the darkest volume in this series so far.  There was a point in the first book that had me so outraged that I wanted to put the book down and quit.  This book has several such moments.  With The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien was able to balance tragedy with heroism, but the realistic tone of Martin’s books don’t allow that kind of escapism.  As a result, the story falls deep into tragedy leaving you wondering who will even remain alive at the end of the series to put the pieces of the world back together again.

The survivors of this book continue to live, however, and fight desperately to do so... and similarly, I continue my struggle to continue through to the next book.  The writing and the plot are still ponderously slow with almost a hundred pages at the beginning simply bringing the reader up to speed with the characters from the last book.  There are very good scenes to be had, though, and the battles are particularly brilliant with the fighting at the Wall in the north as shining examples.  In fact, all the parts dealing with the characters in the far north, at and beyond the Wall are, by far, my favorites.

The fall from grace and/or death of many of my favorite characters gave birth to some very strong nihilism.  There was a very large part of me that wanted the armies from across the sea to come and burn the whole thing to the ground.  This world needs a clean slate at this point and it’s hard to predict what Martin will do next.  There are still 2 books in the series I have yet to read, however, and 2 more that are still unwritten, so I’m sure that the author has very large and very complex plans for them. He is nothing if not painstakingly detailed.

The big swing into tragedy in this volume, coupled with the same slow, extremely detailed plot progression made this one harder to read than the previous:  6 out of 10.

Book 15: A Clash of Kings by George R.R. Martin

Well, here we go, the second part of the epic series by George R.R. Martin.  The end of the last book was action-packed and spurred my interest after a very long introduction.  This book promises to be full of action and intrigue.  I have a few friends that, when I mentioned that I was debating reading all of the books in a month (there were only 4 at the time), said that it wasn't possible.  Seeing that as a challenge, I'm off and running into book 2... and it's a huge one: 969 pages in my edition.  That's a whopping 140 pages per day just to stay on schedule.  I'm gonna need a whole lot of luck to finish these on time.

REVIEW:  Finally finished this book.  The story is moving along a bit better now but Martin still bogs himself down with too much detail.  I appreciate it to a degree because a lot of the realism is from the attention paid to the details, but sometimes he just digresses took much from the story.  For instance, the characters have frequent feasts and Martin likes to describe it in minute detail:

"They began with pears poached in wine, and went on to tiny savory fish rolled in salt and cooked crisp, and capons stuffed with onions and mushrooms.  There were great loaves of brown bread, mounds of turnips and sweetcorn and pease, immense hams and roast geese and trenchers dripping full of venison stewed with beer and barley.  For the sweet, Lord Caswell's servants brought down trays of pastries from his castle kitchens, cream swans and spun-sugar unicorns, lemon cakes in the shape of roses, spiced honey biscuits and blackberry tarts, apple crisps and wheels of buttery cheese."

Sounds tasty, but come on, get on with the story.  He tends to do this sort of thing with food, banners, any kind of group of people, et cetera.  While the story is interesting and the action is moving along, it moves very slowly.  It reminds me of the Wheel of Time series by Robert Jordan in that way... both authors take about 1,000 pages to move an army from one city to the next.  Is it realistic?  Sure.  Is it interesting?  Well, yes.  But it takes quite a bit of determination to get through it.

I can still think of several fantasy genre series that I like better than this one.  The story is very interesting, the characters are rich and the setting is detailed but, it just moves so slowly that I find myself wanting to skip ahead a few pages now and then.  Overall, I found it a bit better than the previous due to the plot picking up speed a bit:  8 out of 10.

Book 14: A Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin

This series has become very popular lately, no doubt due to the new HBO series based on the books.  I know a couple of people who absolutely love these books and can't stop talking about them.  I also know a couple people who say they're crap.  I guess we'll find out which side I agree with in about a week.

807 pages!?  Ouch... that's about 116 pages a day.  Hope it's good, 'cause that could be painful otherwise.

REVIEW:  This book was a little hard to get through.  As the first book of a long series, it took a long time to get up to speed.  About 500 of it's 800 pages were, essentially, an introduction to the characters and locations involved in the story.  Once it does get going, however, it became much more interesting.

It is definitely a fantasy novel, but written very realistically.  There is little magic and a lot of the action is political in nature.  The Game of Thrones are basically the political machinations of the half-dozen or so lords and their King.  The story is as epic as The Lord of the Rings, or perhaps even more so, but far grittier, rough and bloody.  It is a no-holds-barred look at war in a medieval setting with all the death, destruction, rape, pillaging and burning that implies.

I have really only a few complaints about the book.  First, the story is very dark and gets darker throughout the book.  It could do with a bit of humor or some other respite to help lighten the mood.  Secondly, it is an extremely well detailed story... Martin doesn't omit any little detail in his descriptions of people, places or plots.  While it nice to see someone write his story so thoroughly, it bogs down the story quite a bit and makes it harder to read than necessary.  Finally, I'd like to see him tone down the sex a bit.  I'm no prude, but there is a LOT of sex in the book, consensual sex, incestuous sex, rape, you name it.  There is usually a reason for it, so it's not exactly gratuitous sex, but it's very close to pornographic in sections.

Rich and complex, realistic and gritty this book still suffered a bit from a slow start.  I'd give it about an 7 out of 10.

Book 13: Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad

I know a few people who just detest Joseph Conrad but, in my limited readings (I've only read Heart of Darkness) I find that I actually enjoy his writing.  I find it impressive that he writes such good prose for a non-native English speaker and I think that his depictions of the human psyche are quite interesting and believable.  I had a couple of Conrad novels to choose from and Lord Jim kept popping to the top of the list so, with very little knowledge of what it's about, I'm going to give it a go.

It's 417 pages in my copy so that makes about 60 pages per day.  I have a couple of other events coming up this week, however, so I'll probably have to do a bit better than that.

REVIEW:  I had a hard time getting through this one.  It didn't capture my attention quite as well as some of the other books I've been reading lately.  I also had a lot of things going on this past week and wasn't able to read as often as I'd have liked to and maybe that had something to do with it.

The book is roughly split into three main sections.  The first part reads very mysteriously as you are told about the title character, Jim, and that there is something about his past that haunts him.  Little by little we are let in to the secret and all comes out eventually.  The second part deals with the complete story of the event that has shaped Jim's life.  It reminded me of The Rime of the Ancient Mariner the way that the narrator is held enthralled while the main character tells his unfortunate story.  Finally, we are shown the effects of this event and Jim's gradual redemption through the assistance of the narrator.

It was this final part that seemed to drag on a bit.  I kept wondering how much could possibly be left while I still had 150 pages to go.  Conrad managed to keep the story going, however, and I eventually made it to the end.

The plot was interesting and some passages were very well written but, ultimately, it felt more like a chore to finish the book.  I certainly didn't hate the book, but it wasn't one of my favorites.  It's definitely a good book, but not for me.  5/10.

Book 12: Hellstrom's Hive by Frank Herbert

Time for a bit of weird science fiction.  I know it's going to be weird because it's Frank Herbert and, while his Dune series is very well constructed, his other works of fiction tend to be decidedly odd.  From the back cover:

"A team of government operatives is sent to invade the site of Dr. Hellstrom's secret Project 40.  What they find are specially bred scientists with huge heads and stunted legs who develop weapons that hum with deadly insect venom... chemically neutered workers capable of poisoning the world ... hidden tunnels immune to atomic fission ... hormones for ecstatic sensual pleasures ... and the vats -- where everyone finally ends to nourish future generations of Hellstrom's horrifying hive."

Sounds like good stuff!  312 pages in this one which makes about 45 pages per day.

REVIEW: Lots of nudity, crazy cultists, selective breeding, experimental human societies and secret government agencies, in short, almost everything you could want from a good old classic sci-fi book. There are a number of themes that this book has in common with Herbert's masterpiece, Dune, particularly, the secret human colonies and selective breeding programs. After getting used to his writing style again, I found myself getting more and more into this book. Most of it reads like a government spy thriller. A secret government agency has discovered some evidence of strange goings-on at a remote farm in Oregon, they send agents to investigate who never return so they become more and more invested in trying to uncover their secrets until a major conflict is imminent. It was very tense and very interesting. Herbert has a way of making even his most unusual ideas seem, not only pausible, but realistic. I'm a big fan of this author and this was another great one from him. The ending was a little abrupt however and you wish it would go on for another 50 pages or so... even so, I'd give this one a 9/10.