Tim the Wiz said:
Jim Butcher, Princeps' Fury. FnordChan is right about this series. Plowed through this book in a day, and couldn't believe I had to wait another year for more. I couldn't continue slogging through the Dresden series after three or four entries, but I get the feeling this is actually heading somewhere. An unsung hero of recent fantasy, right next to Scott Lynch, Matthew Stover and Peter Brett.
As promised above, I did tear through Princeps' Fury in short order. I enjoyed the hell out of it, though this volume did strike me as having a fair amount of shuffling everyone around to get the plot set up for the ending of the series. I'm also curious to see if Butcher has any idea what to do with the Icemen in the next volume, as I didn't get the feeling they were very fleshed out here. Those quibbles aside, it was, as promised, tons of fun and I'm right there with Tim twitching and waiting anxiously for the next volume a year from now.
Tim, you may want to re-visit the Dresden books. You stopped right around the point where Butcher starts to pull everything he's introduced together and really get some long-term plotting going. I was enjoying 'em up until that point, but after that I was devouring the series. Something to consider, at any rate, with the caveat that Butcher has stated he wants to write around twenty books in the series, so he's going somewhere but he won't get there for a while. On the flip side, I feel that the Codex Alera books have one, maybe two more books in 'em until the main storyline is wrapped up.
Also, thanks for reminding me that I really need to read Rumpole of the Bailey sometime; I've had a copy gathering dust around here for a while now. Your Kydd recommendation also reminds me that I need to give the first Aubrey/Maturin book another go.
I also recent finished a couple of crime novels:
Shotgun by Ed McBain (1969) - The book opens with the following disclaimer: "The city in these pages is imaginary. The people, the places are all fictitious. Only the police routine is based on established investigatory technique." That summed up this novel very nicely and apparently applies to the rest of his long-running 87th Precinct series. This was my first encounter with the 87th Precinct and, despite it being the 23rd book in the series, I was able to jump right in. The plot is pretty straight forward - a young couple is found dead in their apartment thanks to point blank shotgun blasts to the face - and the cops figure out who did it. McBain (aka Evan Hunter) writes using a minimal style, but unlike the Parker novels the style isn't necessarily hard boiled, and there's extremely black humor sprinkled liberally throughout. Also, it's not just a straight forward procedural, with plenty of dead ends, detours, and character moments thrown in - not bad for a book that clocks in at under two hundred pages. I was thoroughly entertained and look forward to reading more about the 87th, especially as it's the sort of series that can be read in any order. I'm also inspired to get back to reading William Marshall's Yellowthread Street series.
Severance Package by Duane Swierczynski (2008) - Jumping ahead almost 40 years later, I checked this out of the library based on the strong recommendation of friends of mine and wasn't disappointed. Admittedly, the first I'd heard of Swierczynski was that he was writing the current Cable comics - you know, the one with a mutant baby in a little baby pod on Cable's chest - and wasn't exactly compelled to read the book, even if that detail could probably be dismissed as unfortunate artistic license. That said, his crime fiction was pimped to me pretty strongly so I gave this a shot. The plot involves a bunch of employees who are called in to a Saturday morning meeting at their company where their boss plans to have them all killed. Why this is happening, who was expecting this, and how they react to the plan are all details that, to say any more, would spoil the fun. Some moments stretch things a bit far, but all in all it's a solid look at what would happen if your office suddenly became a slaughterhouse. Recommended for folks looking for a solid contemporary crime novel; I myself plan on reading more of Swierczynski's novels soon.
Old Man's War by John Scalzi (2005) - Finally, I've just started reading this Hugo nominated novel, which was given to me as a gift last Christmas. Whoops. Well, maybe I can finish it before the holiday. I've only just started it, but the basic plot is that in the future there are interstellar colonies that maintain a sort of quarantined contact with Earth, not least because they're fighting a long running war. Their main recruits for soliders are the elderly - at age 75 they're sent off into space to undergo a mysterious rejuvenation process that promises to make them young again - as long as they dedicate a decade of their new lives to the war. It's a fascinating premise and, 40 or so pages in, a solid read. I'll report back, hopefully before Christmas.
FnordChan
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