lots and lotsa reading

[meganbmoore]

Yeah, so, been caught up in doramas and haven't said much about reading lately.

Hopefully, the cut works, as it's 2 1/2 pages in MS Word.  As you can see from the Wallflower post, lj cuts and I have not been getting along lately(I put them in, and they don't cut...

Novels: 


"The High Druid of Shannara: Jarka Ruus by Terry Brooks(fantasy)I knew sticking through a few "ok" books(well, "ok" for Terry Brooks, which, for me, translates a "good" for high fantasy in general, which I’m picky about, though I’m having very good luck lately) would pay off. This trilogy finally seems to be back to the "Heritage of Shannara" standards, which I count as one of my favorite fantasy series. I’d say that people who gave up on Brooks should skip ahead of the "Jerle Shannara" books and straight to this one, except then they’d be hopelessly lost. I’d say this book is worth reading through those for, no matter how much you disliked them(I liked them well enough myself, but know I’m in the minority) Grianne, I think, is my favorite Brooks character after Wren(not topping Wren though...can’t see that ever happening) and I’m quite looking forward to her...dealing...with the people who betrayed her(yes, that’s right...send the most powerful person in the world to your equivalent of hell and just hope she doesn’t find her way back...you deserve what you get, dolts.)

"Ghost King" "Last Sword of Power" "Wolf in Shadow" and "The Last Guardian" by David Gemmel(historical and futuristic fantasy):   This is an...interesting little set. The first 4 books of Gemmell’s "Stones of Power" series(I understand there’s at least one or two more) The first 2 books are a rather interesting(though occasionally confusing) retelling of the King Arthur myth, and the other 2("Wolf in Shadow, I believe, is the book that was written at a time when Gemmell thought he was dying, which explains quite a bit about it) are futuristic/biblical westerns. I...really don’t know how else to describe them. All were good, but left me more than a little confused.

"Star Prince" by Susan Grant(futuristic romance): Once upon a time, futuristic romances were and oft and justifiably marked genre, moreso than any other romance genre, as 95% of them featured a Conan with laser guns and a spaceship who would still rather use his sword, but in a Conan way, not a cool Jedi way, and the few good ones were essentially lost in the quagmire. Until a lovely lady named Susan Grant came along, and someone at Dorchester grew a brain and promoted the you-know-what out of the book. Instead of Conan-in-space, the genre was stripped down to the elements and only what worked was kept, and the book was hugely successful because it was simply "in the near future, aliens come, and instead of randomly wiping out and enslaving entire races, they realize the benefit of trade and a healthy working relationship" and went from there, with a heroine with a full wardrobe and brains and a hero who appreciated said brain, and the technology and civilizations at his disposal. That book was "The Star King." This one is a sequel, about said heroine’s son. It goes a little closer to the "fantasy storyline" elements than "Star King"(in fact, while I like "Star King" quite well, I prefer this one and "The Legend of Banzai Maguire" to it), but not in a bad way, and keeps the brains and likable, intelligent characters.

 "The Hidden Stars" by Madeline Howard(fantasy): The setup for this fantasy isn’t overly original (in fact, I thought I was going to be reading a "Willow" knock-off at first) but it ended up being quite enjoyable and refreshing. It starts out your standard "evil all powerful ruler, destined baby with powers who disappears at birth" story, but branches off from there. Normally, we’d be treated to the story of a peasant boy or girl who was either mistreated or loses his or her parents at the beginning of the book, and after various trials, learns they’re the oh-so-important kid. This time around, the story is about her father and sister and their allies, who, after learning she may be alive(it was understandably questionable) pretty much go "uh...yeah...we should go find her before the evil queen learns about this, even if it’s not really her" and focuses on them, with the girl not even appearing until near the end. It still has the potential to become generic, (anything with a relatively normal core concept does) but it’s very well written and right now the take is original enough and the characters enjoyable enough to make it worthwhile.

"The Shadow Runners" by Liz Maverick(futuristic romance): Liz Maverick is one of the writers that emerged in Susan Grant’s wake, and, as I understand it one of the better ones. This is the only book of hers that I’ve read, so I’m not really a good judge of that, but if it’s anything to go by, she deserves the acclaim. This book is part of the "2176" series, started by the excellent "Legend of Banzai Maguire"(these two, incidentally, are the only books of the series that I’ve acquired...I need the rest very badly now) and, like Banzai, you can almost forget that it’s marketed as a romance most of the time. The basics are about the daughter of a rebel leader and the rising-rebel-leader half-brother of the emperor gathering forces in Australia, which has regressed to its penal colony days. It’s quite excellent and works on the same levels as Susan Grant’s books, but going any further into it(though I want to) pretty much involves a complete recap of Banzai, and not only is food ready, but I still have a lot to go.

Manga:

 With the exception of the Labyrinth book(which is new), these are all pretty much on a par with other books in the series and most of what I would say would be repetition, so no individual entries, but a few comments

ES Eternal Sabbath Vol 2
Fullmetal Alchemist Vol 9(Were it not for the fact I know Riza is around in later eps, I’d still be screaming in rage and fear)
Negima Vol 10-11(I now love gun girl and am even more antsy about seeing Negi’s father...bring on Nagi already!)
Ouran High School Host Club Vol 7 
Skip Beat Vol 2
W Juliet Vol 12(Yay! My secondary OTP is now canon, as opposed to just being obvious. It only took twelve volumes)

Return To Labyrinth Vol 1: So, this is the sequel to the excellentexcellent Labyrinth. While the interior art doesn’t not hold up to the promise of the prettypretty cover, it was quite good. The story, for Labyrinth fans who are allergic to anything resembling manga, centers on Jareth getting bored ruling things and that it’s time for Toby, who apparently is still technically his heir despite his "rescue," to take over, especially since he grew up to be a touch ungrateful, and it goes from there. I wouldn’t mind seeing an actual sequel movie grow from this, but I doubt Jim Henson loves me that much(I’ll just be content with the original and Mirrormask...and Jack in the Beanstalk) 

Trades:

Nextwave Agents Of Hate Vol 1 This Is What They Want:  It is wrong. So very very very very wrong...that it’s right. Basically a 50-mile-a-minute-don’t-ask-questions-because-I-don’t-have-time-to-answer-them mockery of all things conventional superhero-y. It should not work on any level, but it does. Disturbingly well, despite being a little light on characterization. I may never look at Cap and Cable the same way again...:


Promethea Vol 5: My head...my head went boom...Promethea pretty much always throws my head into a tailspin(in a good way) but this one moreso than usual. An excellent ending to an excellent series, but one that has to be reread to fully understand. 

edit:  LJ hates me.  Or MS word does.  It looked perfectly all right when i hit post...came out screwy.  Should be fixed now.

Comments

[southerndave.livejournal.com]

I don't know if it's my computer, but your formatting seems to have gone as haywire as a very haywire thing.

As for the Gemmell books... I first read "Wolf in Shadow" years ago and the library's copy dated back to when it was a stand-alone novel. I quite enjoyed it. Then a while later I read the two Arthur books (which I found rather tedious, but at the time I read them - say 1990-ish - it must have been "trendy" to chuck Arthurian stuff in random books and I'd got quite burnt out on all the Guineveres and Lancelots and crap. Then I read "The Last Guardian" which I thought was horrible, horrible, horrible, just for the first chapters where it totally wrecked the ending of "Wolf in Shadow". The editions the library had at the time numbered them as a series in publication order ("Wolf in Shadow" first, then the two Arthurian ones, then the last one.)