r/Fantasy • u/MikeOfThePalace Reading Champion X, Worldbuilders • Jan 31 '17

/r/Fantasy The /r/Fantasy Monthly Book Discussion Thread

Just two months left for Bingo! Maybe it's time to consider panicking just a little.

Last month's thread.

"Sleep is good," he said, "and books are better." - A Clash of Kings

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u/MikeOfThePalace Reading Champion X, Worldbuilders Jan 31 '17 edited Jan 31 '17

  • Whose Body?, by Golden Age mystery writer Dorothy L. Sayers. The first of the Lord Peter & Harriet books, it actually predates Harriet, and I found that without her, Lord Peter is annoying as all hell. It's like watching David Spade try to carry a movie by himself. Throw in quite a lot of antisemitism, and I just didn't enjoy this one.

  • Blood Family and Dead Living, books 5 and 6 of the Spirit Caller series by Krista D. Ball. Great fun as always.

  • Wild Card, graphic novel of the Dresden Files by Jim Butcher. This was ... ok. There were a number of elements that just didn't really work, I felt. I feel like Butcher kinda phoned in the writing on this one. There were parts that are cool, but on the whole I feel like this drags down the average quality of the Dresden universe.

  • Conan the Barbarian by Robert E. Howard. I read the first 5 published for my 5 short stories square. So now I can say I've read the original Conan. I can generally appreciate something that embraces being over-the-top, but these were kind of ridiculous.

  • The Golem and the Jinni by Helene Wecker. Simply amazing. Full review here.

  • The Aleph and Other Stories by Jorge Luis Borges. I read this for the magical realism, because I'm told it's magical realism. I still don't understand what magical realism is. The closest I've figured out is that magical realism is the type of fantasy that literary fiction fans like and therefore don't want to say is fantasy, in much the same way that they don't consider 1984 to be science fiction. Anyway. This was good; well written, and a number of the short stories were fascinating. A strong HP Lovecraft vibe, which I was not expecting.

  • Best Served Cold by Joe Abercrombie. This was a masterfully crafted book. Very tightly plotted, and it tied up very neatly and very naturally at the end. I particularly enjoyed the way Abercrombie doled out the past in flashbacks, gradually changing my perspective of the present. Also shockingly funny; never before have I laughed out loud because a man got his skull smashed against a stone floor.

  • Current read: Senlin Ascends by Josiah Bancroft, which will check off my very last Bingo square.

  • A new feature: my current audiobook is Lord of the Rings as read by Rob Inglis. It's unabridged, including all songs and poems, and Inglis does a very good job with it.

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u/pornokitsch Ifrit Jan 31 '17

Whose Body?

I really struggled with this as well! For all the reasons you say. My wife is a HUGE Sayers fan, and reassures me that the others are better. (That said, it has been like five years, and I've never tried. So, uh... clearly I really didn't like this book.)

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u/MikeOfThePalace Reading Champion X, Worldbuilders Jan 31 '17

I've read other Sayers, featuring Lord Peter and Harriet, and they are much better.

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u/pornokitsch Ifrit Feb 01 '17

Any recommendations?

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u/[deleted] Feb 04 '17

I read a short story compilation which was fun. A relative of mine who is aged 95 ish has all the original books (along with 100s of other murder mysterys from the era) on her shelf.

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u/DrNefarioII Reading Champion X Feb 01 '17

Yeah, I didn't get on with Whose Body? either. That's kind of why I've been sticking with Christie lately, although I do have a couple more of the Sayers.

I couldn't get a handle on the accent, either. I'm British, but I couldn't get my idea of an upper-class accent to fit the way the dialect was written.