2007 Book Challenge Final Tally

1. Agent to the Stars - John Scalzi (sci fi)
2. Out of Thin Air - Peter Ward (science nonfic)
3. Memory of Running - Ron McLarty (mainstream fic)
4. The Paths of the Dead - Steve Brust (fantasy trilogy 1)
5. The Lord of Castle Black - Steve Brust (fantasy trilogy 2)
6. Sethra Lavode - Steve Brust (fantasy trilogy 3)
7. Core Performance - Mark Verstegen (nonfic exercise book)
8. Hellspark - Janet Kagan (sci fi)
9. Brokedown Palace - Steven Brust (fantasy)

I was aiming for 12 and ended up with 9. Next year I think I'll aim for 10. :)

I was also aiming to write up book reviews as I went along, but that went by the wayside after the third one, unfortunately. Right around the time I was finishing up Brust's trilogy was when I first got sucked into Wikipedia. So all my writing efforts went there instead. By the time I started wandering back in the direction of reviewing books, I'd moved on to read other things and never managed to make it back. Then I didn't want to review the things I was currently reading without first reviewing the stuff I'd already read, and therein went a gridlock that led to not writing any of them.



Apparently I did write a few mini-reviews in the forum thread, though. For Hellspark I wrote:

"I finally forced myself past the opening paragraphs of Hellspark. It turns out that this book is not very well written at all, and now that I've had some practice at the basic technicalities of writing, I'm a lot more conscious of what specifically is wrong and sometimes even how to fix it. I keep stopping to look at passages and thinking of ways I would've written it instead. However, I liked Kagan's other two books and I'm pretty sure there's a good story buried in the crappy writing, so I'm planning to read the whole thing."

I did read the whole thing. The plot was entertaining in a good but not spectacular way. I liked all of the characters but none of them really fired up my imagination. Probably the biggest flaw was when the story shifted suddenly near the end with the arrival of the main character's mother. Suddenly all the relationship dynamics went funny there. It still all wrapped up well enough, but it was definitely bumpy getting past that shift.

The setting was Kagan's strongest point by far, and the book would be right up the alley of people who like exploring really cool faraway places. As I recall her other book, Mirabile, the setting of that was the strongest point as well though the six connected stories were a lot stronger than Hellspark's one big story. Kagan is definitely better at writing short stories than longer works.

Then the last book I managed to read was Steve Brust's Brokedown Palace. I bought it because it's in the same Dragaera setting as the Jhereg series and Khaavren series, but it's a standalone story about four brother princes and the palace they live in, which is crumbling with old age. It reads like an allegory, and like all of his other work I've read, very easy to slip into and get started - which is an important point with me these days when getting myself started on a new book is a lot harder than it was in my youth. I enjoyed it quite a lot.

I might manage to read one more book before the end of the month. I've started on Queen of Blades by Aaron Rosenberg, which is a Starcraft novel. Should be a fairly easy read. Guess we'll see.

Earlier tonight I put in an order for five more books: Old Man's War by John Scalzi, Dzur by Steve Brust, Color of Magic by Terry Pratchett, American Gods by Neil Gaiman, and 1491 by Charles C. Mann. Since they're shipping to my work address, where they're much less likely to get stolen than if they came to my apartment, I won't actually receive any of them until work reopens in January. That should give me a good start for next year's book challenge. :)