Oh, strangely enough, I got that (Rolling Thunder) out of the library last week. It's waiting after I finish Bone Song, which in my trying to get a new job
and jumping on Discworld's "Moving Pictures", got lost in the shuffle. I also started on a double book of Andre Norton's "Crosstime
Quest". The trouble is, I leave my books all over the place, in either bathroom, bedroom or living room and with my household chaos, I can't find them
sometimes. So, I pick up the one I can find and start on it. Very confusing sometimes...
Last Few Reads
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 OGRE3000 |
#161 | |||
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Posts: 2714 05/15/08 12:18 PM Registered User |
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RLHamer |
#162 | |||
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Posts: 715 05/16/08 7:52 AM |
Just finished the lastest Star Fist novel Book 12: Firestorm a good ending to this part of the series. So far after 12 books and with 13th to be
released later this year the series is holding up well. Major characters die, get promoted, married etc just as you would expect to happen in a series that
covers several years in the life of a Marine company.
Started the next Glen Cook Garrett PI novel Cruel Zine Melodies its also the 12 book in the series. About half way through and its holding up very well. ****************
Cymru am Byth |
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OGRE3000 |
#163 | |||
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Posts: 2716 05/19/08 2:57 PM Registered User |
Finished "Bone Song" by John Meany, very weird sort of police detective mystery set on a world like a necropolis, where death rules. Lt. Riordan
discovers a huge conspiracy to kill artists and collect their bones. For you see, the dead also power the world, while wraiths act as servants and you can see
the visions or hear the songs of artists and musics if you have their bones. Brrrrrr. But, a pretty cool novel once you get the idea down...
Also finished the first part of "Crosstime" by the late great Andre Norton. I had read it before but wasn't sure. The 2nd novel is "Quest Crosstime" and I had not read it. I'm having a time getting into the 2nd book, though it has the same main character, Blake Walker, the style is very different, like she didn't do a sequel till years later. Not sure. But I really enjoyed reading Crosstime again. Took me back to those days of wonder when I first found SF. It seemed like the future was going to be fantastic and anything was possible... |
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Kez Maefele |
#164 | |||
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Posts: 15 05/30/08 2:16 PM |
Renaissance, A.E. Van Vogt. Ari said he was reading this a few months ago so I thought I might. WOW! Talk about a backlash on feminism. The story is about an
Earth that was taken over by aliens who pacified all males by making them near-sighted a puberty and forcing them to were glasses (rose-colorred, of course)
that makes them docile. The protagonist has his glasses broken by an underground group and he becomes the Alpha Male! Women just see that he is un-neutered and
they fall into bed, expecting to be forced upon. He overthrows the alien yoke and ends up with a compliant wife and four (4!) mistresses. Very wacky. Reads
like an early '50's male fantasy but it was published in 1979. Read just for historical reasons otherwise 1 star.
The Battle at the Moons of Hell, Graham Sharp Paul. OK, he has three names, and his first novel...I should of known...Freaky religious planets are enemies of the rest of humanity. They dislike using the AIs and other self-thinking machines (Dune?) everybody else uses so they are slowly losing out in the race to terraform planets. A plot is hatched so they will hijack a shipload of equipment and terraform planet on the sly. Passengers are forced to help. Other planets protest, clandestine war ensues. Reads like a first novel, 2 stars. On Armaggedon Reef, David Weber. Well Weber has figured out another way to get advanced science in the hands of less sophisticated people. Advanced humanity encounters aliens that annihilate all other sentient beings they meet. The humans are going to lose but they manage to hide a colony. This colony is forced back to pre-electric levels so the aliens will never find them. Other humans have other ideas so an andriod is awakened a 1000 years in the future and starts giving advice to the most "progressive" kingdom. Of course they have to fight the religious conservatives (anybody see a theme?). Great wooden ship battles. 3.5 stars |
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RLHamer |
#165 | |||
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Posts: 724 06/01/08 9:02 PM |
Finished Glen Cook Garrett PI novel Cruel Zine Melodies the novel was a good addiction to the series I liked that we are seeing some growth in Garrett and his
personally relationship with other characters in the series. The ending was a little weak but still not bad. Certain this is one series that disbite it
leight still has a lot of life in it and still has stories the characters can tell.
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Cymru am Byth |
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OGRE3000 |
#166 | |||
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Posts: 2732 06/08/08 11:32 PM Registered User |
Finished The Veil Trilogy with the last book, "The Lost Ones" over the weekend. Pretty good, Golden didn't let me down, big battles, lots of
heroics and a good ending. Then picked up Dean Koontz's latest, "Darkest Day of the Year". A lot like his other books, a troubled boy/girl story,
twisted villain(s), a special Golden Retriever and some sympathetic (and in danger) child(ren). Still, it sucked me in and after a lot of dammit, I've read
this before moments, I really enjoyed it and stayed up till almost 6am this morning finishing it. Not my favorite Koontz, but still enjoyable...
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OGRE3000 |
#167 | |||
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Posts: 2735 06/13/08 11:40 AM Registered User |
Finished "Grouch Marx, King of the Jungle" by Ron Goulart a day or so back. This time, Groucho and his Watson, Frank Denby are hired to investigate
the murder of Randy Spellman, who plays Ty-Gor, a Tarzan character. Of course it's really good as the whole "Groucho Marx, Detective" series.
Goulart never fails to capture classic Hollywood and Groucho...
After that picked up RAH's "Space Cadet". It's one of the ones I had never read. So far, pretty good, dated of course, but I love the POV of how the Space Patrol was going to be in the future, viewed from the 1950s. It's so full of that the characters are going into something noble and deadly serious and makes our current space program that barely anyone seems tp pay attention to seem very sad... |
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RLHamer |
#168 | |||
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Posts: 748 06/15/08 11:09 AM |
"Space Cadet" is one of my favorite. Notice how ahead of his time Hienlien was with cell phones. Like Texs I also fool people by packing my cell
phone away instead of carrying it around all the time.
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Cymru am Byth |
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OGRE3000 |
#169 | |||
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Posts: 2739 06/16/08 11:49 AM Registered User |
Finished it last night, really great book. I also appreciated a lack of snappy patter that really got old in some of his books. Being a "hep-cat" in
'50s SF is not timeless...
Welp, after that, picked up "Midshipman Hortio Hornblower" since I've been watching the show. A lot of differences from original story to the small screen but still, the character made it pretty much intact. I know it's older, but it was easer to read then some of the Jack Aubrey stories of Patrick O'Brien... |
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OGRE3000 |
#170 | |||
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Posts: 2744 06/24/08 11:10 AM Registered User |
"Midnight Rambler" by James Swain, finished it over the weekend. Damned good suspense book. At first I balked 'cause Swain is famous for the
"Tony Valentine" mysteries, an ex-con that solves crimes at casinos across America. Buttttttttttt, I picked up and started reading and couldn't
stop. The story's about Jack Carpenter, another ex-cop who's life was ruined by his last case, the "Midnight Rambler", a serial killer that
Jack caught and supposedly tortured for information. New evidence surfaces, apparently clearing Skel, the 'Rambler' and he is set to be freed. Can Jack
re-solve the case? Can he repair his ruined life and rep? It's a helluva ride finding out...
Last Edited By: OGRE3000 07/01/08 1:43 AM.
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RLHamer |
#171 | |||
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Posts: 762 06/30/08 6:58 AM |
Just finished Jack Campbell's latest Lost Fleet novel Valiant. A well paced military sceicne fiction series. This one as a good addition to the series
and we get to see some growth in all the major characters. The action is fast pace and beleiveable. The series doesn't break to many of the laws of
physics as we know them. There are problems with targetting at speed were relativity came into play. Its a good series for anyone that likes military science
fiction.
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Cymru am Byth |
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OGRE3000 |
#172 | |||
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Posts: 2753 07/04/08 12:22 AM Registered User |
Read the 2nd Hornblower (in chronological order) "Lieutenaunt Hornblower". Really good of course, but different, the POV is from Lt. Bush, an officer
new to the Renown, the current ship Hornblower serves. The trouble this time, besides the Spanish and French is Capt. Sawyer, a heroic figure that
unfortunately has grown old, unstable and paranoid. He also takes his madness out on the ship's crew save for his toadies. Before the story is over, the
crew must deal with mutiny, a Spanish fort in the West Indies and a deadly fight aboard the Renown. Can't wait to get the 3rd book!
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ecgordon |
#173 | |||
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Posts: 4826 07/10/08 5:24 AM Star's Hero |
Cormac McCarthy's The Road. Can't say I recommend it for anyone else, and it took me quite a while to finish. Granted there were many nights I
didn't read at all, but when I did I couldn't get very far each evening. Not much happening as far as narrative, and his sparce, non-complete sentences
got old real quick. In case you don't know anything about it, it is a post-apocalyptic journey story, with a father and son laboriously traveling down a
road trying to get to the sea, and hoping they find some other good people along the way. They do encounter several not-good people, including some cannibals,
but even those sequences were not compelling enough to make me want to read it for any length at any one time. And the apocalypse itself was never explained,
but I have to assume nuclear holocaust.
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OGRE3000 |
#174 | |||
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Posts: 2764 07/16/08 12:40 PM Registered User |
Read what I thought would be a gonzo or bizarre vampire/detective novel, "The Nymphos of Rocky Flats" by Mario Acevedo. Nope, pretty serious and not
a lot of the wacky fun I hoped suggested by the title and the blurbs on the cover and back. It was good vampire/detective story that did a hard turn (no pun
intended) into SF. The story is about Felix Gomez, a P.I. that is an Iraq War vet that got turned into a vampire after a horrible incident and seeks
redemption. Gomez is hired by a friend to investigate an outbreak of "nymphomania" at the Rocky Flats Nuclear Facility and begins his trip in to lots
of danger involving vampire hunters, hitmen, forest nymphs and eventually UFO conspiracies. Good book, but not what I thought I was getting. I would read, but
not buy the sequel, "X-Rated Blood Suckers"...
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OGRE3000 |
#175 | |||
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Posts: 2770 07/24/08 1:01 AM Registered User |
Just finished "Time Spike", a novel by Eric Flint and Marilyn Kosmatka. It takes place in the same universe as the "Ring of Fire/1632"
series, where a part of W. Virginia gets sent back to, of course, 1632 Europe. Welp, it's pretty good, it's about a federal prison in Illinois being
shifted back about 150 million years or so into the past. So, along with trying to handle the cons, the prison guards and nurses have to contend with
dinosaurs, saber-tooth tigers, tribes of primitive peoples, some of the Cherokees from the Trail of Tears and Hernando De Soto and some of his brutal army, all
dragged back to this point. It's like the Ring of Fire, people stranded back in time, trying to survive against all odds...
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ecgordon |
#176 | |||
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Posts: 4853 08/04/08 4:53 AM Star's Hero |
Fool Moon, the second Dresden novel by Jim Butcher. Quite a bit more graphic in violence and sexual tone than the tv show could have ever
managed, but I still enjoy both versions.
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OGRE3000 |
#177 | |||
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Posts: 2775 08/04/08 9:12 PM Registered User |
Ha, that's funny, I am reading "Small Favor", the 9th or 10th book of The Dresden Files. So far, really good, not a dull moment...
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Mohr Stoutbeard |
#178 | |||
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Posts: 1199 08/05/08 8:35 PM Administrator |
I've almost finished "Moby-Dick". Go me.
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OGRE3000 |
#179 | |||
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Posts: 2777 08/07/08 1:10 AM Registered User |
Holy shit, you deserve some prize of some kind. As much as I love books and Classics, I couldn't make it. I suppose I should get the "annotated"
version and make another go at it...
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OGRE3000 |
#180 | |||
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Posts: 2779 08/08/08 2:35 AM Registered User |
Finished "Small Favor" last night. Really good, I don't see any sign of 'The Dresden Files' running out of steam anytime soon unless the
author gets tired of them. I need to read his other fantasy series, I think I even have the first book, not a clue where it is though...
On a side note, my boss told me that he had to stop one of our cleaners who was cleaning the office from throwing my book (a library copy) away when she did the room. I want to know, what kind of damned stupid-ass world we are living in, when someone thinks it's okay under any circumstances to throw away a book?!!! And a hardback that cost $23.95 and clearly had a library marker at the bottom of it's cover! I told my boss thanks, but you guys would have had to cough up that money, 'cause I sure as hell wasn't going to do so! Throw away a book, what the hell's next?! I bet if it had been a CD or a DVD that sucker would have went into their bag or purse, 'cause those are worth something right? Phillistines... |
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