What are we reading?

[Martok]

GB, you should definitely take some time and finish off the series with the trilogy finale.

Seconded. 

[Mr. Bigglesworth]

To be fair, what usually kills people with bitter, bitter resentment, isn't the first 3 books, but somewhere from Book 6 onward.

Still, you go UGeek! Keep us updated. :)

That was me, I was good with the first 5 or 6. I kept expecting the next to have the last battle...then I started to feel I had been had.

[Greybriar]

GB, you should definitely take some time and finish off the series with the trilogy finale.

I may do that some day, but to me that series was finished when Robert Jordan died.

[Nefaro]

Gonna start Six Gun Tarot  soon.

It's some Supernatural Western setting containing some Lovecraft influences, along with a little Steampunk and Dark Tower perhaps. 

First in the series, just released this year.  Most of the reviews say it's good and someone highly recommended it on the Shadows Of Brimstone BGG forums.


I grabbed the paperback version of the first one, since it was the same price as the Kindle one (and I'm a Book Sniffer!!).  But if it's decent I'll probably pick up a copy of book #2, The Shotgun Arcana, also.  It just came out IIRC.

[Staggerwing]

Have any of you guys read Eric Brown's autobiography "Wings on my Sleeve"? I'm wondering if it is chock full of gritty 'aeroplane' goodness or if it's 'softer' on the tech details.

[JasonPratt]

Nef, that looks like a straight-up Graboid homage in the background of the first cover! (Great cover designs, too.)

[JasonPratt]

GB, you should definitely take some time and finish off the series with the trilogy finale.

I may do that some day, but to me that series was finished when Robert Jordan died.

Well, Sanderson did work from his notes, though reportedly that's most obvious in the last book -- TOR and RJ's widow (who's an editor at TOR) hired him with the understanding that he would do his best to put RJ's plot notes into the final books; and I have a hard time imagining anyone loved his writing style so much (especially after Crossroads) that they just couldn't continue for that reason. But for what it's worth, a lot of us (myself included) felt like Sanderson was doing a good job channeling (pun intended) RJ's-writing-style-but-better.

It really does feel (to those of us who liked it) like a return to the quality of Books 4 and 5 or better even. I'm not going to say like a return to Books 1 and 2, since the characters' situations are so different, but the somewhat Stephen Kingish aspects of those books come back as well.

At the very least, I recommend reading Leigh Butler's WOT recap series, available completely for free, over at TOR.com, so you'll at least learn how various plot elements wrapped up. She does a good job summarizing chapters (and chapter blocs) and then commenting on them from a critical-fan perspective.

[Greybriar]

I won't dispute what you're saying, Jason. But to me when a person dies that's it. It isn't like a job you just hire someone else to do, it is the deceased author's creation and it is unique to them.

[Mr. Bigglesworth]

I like your style GB.

[Mr. Bigglesworth]

Got the Philip Marlow complete collection as well as a couple more Le Carre books. Now I need a fireplace, shortbread cookies, and a good whiskey.

[Gusington]

I have to agree with GB too.

[JasonPratt]

I can respect that. :)

But RJ did want it finished out along the lines he had indicated, and TOR and Harriet (his widow) respected that, too, in commissioning Sanderson and overseeing what he did with it.

It is exactly because I loved RJ's work (warts and all, sometimes mountainous warts ;) ), that I was glad to see RJ's work completed in fidelity to his intentions in a high quality way. I didn't think of it being Sanderson's work at all, though realistically I know he had to have actively contributed a lot of the final shape, too. I know at least one good friend (and fellow author) WOT fan who can't stand Sanderson's work who still thought he brought RJ's work home as RJ's work.

I can't deny there were financial considerations from TOR to finishing the series instead of leaving it forever incomplete (after increasingly poorly received installments, too), but it doesn't feel like a cash-in. It felt like someone giving a dying RJ help finishing out his life's work (even though RJ was already dead).

That doesn't mean fans have to read it, of course. And strictly speaking RJ could have changed his mind about how he planned to go forward on any points; and we may not ever be able to tell for sure how much Sanderson added or altered, even though the goal was to include as much as possible. So from an artistic standpoint, I understand there's a real argument for this not being RJ's ending because RJ didn't actually write it.

Then again, he actually wrote Crossroads of Twilight, so, you know...  I can't exactly say with confidence, even though KoD was a major improvement back to form, he would have finished out alone as well as Sanderson (in effect) helped him finish out.

[GDS_Starfury]

when you finally give in to the wall of words that no longer have any meaning because Jordan has used them repeatedly, ad infinitum, or written so many of them that even the spelling of the word, a, no longer looks correct.

this has been my relationship with the internet for the last 10 years.

[Martok]

I can respect that. :)

But RJ did want it finished out along the lines he had indicated, and TOR and Harriet (his widow) respected that, too, in commissioning Sanderson and overseeing what he did with it.

It is exactly because I loved RJ's work (warts and all, sometimes mountainous warts ;) ), that I was glad to see RJ's work completed in fidelity to his intentions in a high quality way. I didn't think of it being Sanderson's work at all, though realistically I know he had to have actively contributed a lot of the final shape, too. I know at least one good friend (and fellow author) WOT fan who can't stand Sanderson's work who still thought he brought RJ's work home as RJ's work.

I can't deny there were financial considerations from TOR to finishing the series instead of leaving it forever incomplete (after increasingly poorly received installments, too), but it doesn't feel like a cash-in. It felt like someone giving a dying RJ help finishing out his life's work (even though RJ was already dead).

That doesn't mean fans have to read it, of course. And strictly speaking RJ could have changed his mind about how he planned to go forward on any points; and we may not ever be able to tell for sure how much Sanderson added or altered, even though the goal was to include as much as possible. So from an artistic standpoint, I understand there's a real argument for this not being RJ's ending because RJ didn't actually write it.

Then again, he actually wrote Crossroads of Twilight, so, you know...  I can't exactly say with confidence, even though KoD was a major improvement back to form, he would have finished out alone as well as Sanderson (in effect) helped him finish out.

You've said everything I could've and more, Jason (and much more eloquently too).  I can only second what you've posted here. 

[airboy]

I have been rereading Bimbos of the Death Sun for the first time in a decade.  It is a wonderful, light murder-mystery at a Science Fiction Con.  If you have ever been to a Con, you will see lots of archetypes in the book.

I'm also almost finished with a rereading (audio) of the Guns of August.  What has struck me this time through is that Lord Kitchener seems to be the only major figure at the start of the war that thought it would last for years and involve armies of millions.  The stupidity of the Kaiser is always there in any book on WW1 political/military situation.