Book rec time!

I read The God Eaters effing years ago, forgot about it, remembered, and read it again. I think it got better.
It is an absolutely brilliant story by Jesse Hajicek, aka Chartreuse (the mad genius behind the webcomic, Metanoia) that inspires and captivates with its sparse prose and intricate details that suck you in and make you beg for mercy.

The book is available via Amazon, but Mr. Hajicek has offered the world an online copy, which is the whole fabulous story, word for word. For free.

The God Eaters


Like I said, the story is amazing.

The author has also drafted two other (amazing!) books, both of which go under the heading "The Kastor Stories," and a series called "Summerlands" of which I know nothing about! ::cries a little:: So that one's next on my list.

Anyway, to read these stories as well, click on the links found here. I would provide the actual link, were it not for the open letter requesting that I not do exactly that. But as the links are provided on a perfectly public LJ profile page (where I came across them in the first place), I figure escorting you that far is okay.

(And something else I found: If you delete the "kas_index.html" from the html I'm not supposed to give you, you go to an index with two more Kastor tales. I don't even remember how or why I found these, but I'm extremely glad I did.)

Please, please read these stories, and if you have the cash, buy the book. They are what brought back my faith in the writing community, after discovering that my dearest literary loves had whored me out for cash. Mercedes Lackey, Robin Hobb, I am looking at you.

Also, read the webcomic. It is the shizz.
Fucking hell, read everything this man writes. Or I will find you.

I'd fallen out of the habit of actually sitting down and reading. A lack of books will do that to you. I've been trying to ease myself back into the flow of things with Good Omens, but it seems that subtext just doesn't do it for me.

So I picked up Sarah Monette and Elizabeth Bear's A Companion to Wolves.

I've read Monette's Melusine by complete accident, and later snapped up The Virtu in my insatiable lust for Mildmay. But I'd never read Elizabeth Bear before, and frankly didn't know what to expect. I was thinking maybe Juliet Marillier-esc angst and... vikings.

And boy, did it deliver. But it was good.

I don't want to give too much away, but if you liked Robin Hobb's Farseer trilogy (note that word. TRILOGY. YES we are still ignoring the fact that the Tawny Man books ever happened, thanks very much) and maybe even if you've read Ellen Kushner, give this a look.

There is gay.

I seem to have a finely tuned gaydar when it comes to books. Don't judge me.

I'm reading a great book by Bill Fitzhugh, a writer from Jackson, MS, called Radio Activity.

The book is about a radio disk jockey cum private eye figuring out all sorts of twists and turns about blackmail, extortion, murder, and beastiality in a small Southern town. You can see the space for incoming hijinxs.

But what is kinda cool for me is that he goes into great detail about the overhaul the main character sends the local rock station through, turning it into a B-side classic rock station.
My favorite part was Rick, the main character, defacing a single of Stairway to Heaven.

And I totally get where he comes from. Rick totally disses the stagnant rock radio playlists that every corporate branch of radio plays over and over into the ground. They insist on playing Pink Floyd's Money at least once a day, when there is SO MUCH MORE TO BE HAD.

But it also makes me kinda sad that so much of what they advocate isn't really my era. I was born in the late 80's, and was raised on late 70's to mid 80's music. The major focus of this book's musical tastes is based in 1975, and leans a half decade in either direction. The later stuff? I'm all over it. Theres Segar and Foghat and Hendrix and Allman Brothers, and a few more obscure ones that I plan to look into. But the earlier stuff, like Donovan or Beatles... The era that was rooted deep in folk rock. That stuff blew over my head. I tried to listen to tracks from Piper at the Gates of Dawn and cringed inside until I could stop myself from cranking up Motorhead.

I was there when rock went to country in self defense from disco. I was not there when rock grew a pair from Tequila Sunrise.

I have found out who I want to be when I grow up.

And that person is Locke Lamora, Gentleman Bastard.

I would so have the sex change.

So, anyway, my fangirling aside, lets talk about Scott Lynch and The Gentleman Bastard Sequence.

There are two books for the moment. The first one is The Lies of Locke Lamora. The second is Red Seas Under Red Skies.

Lemme make this as clear as possible.

( READ THEM, MOTHERFUCKER! )

Or lets talk about, more specifically, his book The New York Trilogy. Originally, the book was three seperate stories, City of Glass, Ghosts, and The Locked Room. Shortly after print, they were all merged into one hyperbook.

No, really.

So you read one after the other, and up until about the second to last paragraph of the book itself, you're fairly sure that these stories have nothing to do with one another, other than being set in New York.

The stories are confusing at times, but the prevailing sense I got from the trilogy was that of loneliness. There is very little description of persons, as these are supposively detective novels, but there is a great deal of mental musing and reflection in the main characters. You get a sense of their thought process, and how it changes throughout, but very little of anyone else. You are very much isolated from the rest of the world, as I assume you only can be in a large city.

I think it was City of Glass that disturbed me the most. The story is revealed to be the notes of the actual man, written by another. Althogether you have four other characters in the story, but none stay for longer than a chapter or two, and you are very much left with this man's thoughts. And they are very strange ones. Over the course of his story, he slowly goes mad, obsessed with a case he was hired to solve. I think I was physically cold when I read it, and for some reason was fighting down something like nausea.

Not to say that the story was bad. It wasn't. It was just discordant, and never really settled with you, a less jagged reaction similar to that which I experianced after I finished the Tawny Man trilogy. It wasn't frustrating, since you never got passionate about the book. It truely was a very bloodless form of storytelling. But I was hooked nonetheless.

What I found perhaps strangest of all is that you never really understood anyone's motivations. They did insane, inexplicable things to themselves and others, and you cannot fathom why, any more than they can.

I would have to say that the stories are intelligent and engrossing, with a great deal of research put into elements of history, language, and psychology, and are extremely post-modern in style. But I'm not sure I would recommend them. They don't sit easy on the mind, and there really is no resolving them.

Perhaps its easier to read the graphic novel, City of Glass: The Graphic Novel. I haven't, but maybe seeing it would settle things that would otherwise make your head itch on the inside.

I can't really gather any emotion towards the book, since it seems to discourage it.

If you want a book that both encourages and flattens thought, give this one a shot. But you have been warned.

Okay, this is therapy for me, as well as spoilers for all my masochists.

Didja get that? SPOILERS with big pointy teeth.

Well, okay, so the big spoilers go under the cut, but lets get past the squeeing first.


Okay.


SQUEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE.

J.K. Rowling, I LOVE YOU. YOU DID NOT DROP THE BALL AT THE VERY END, YOU MADE MY LIFE WORTH LIVING AND DID NOT DRIVE ME TO SUICIDE WITH WIBBLING AND EMO-TEARS!

YOU ARE MY GOD, MY PERSONAL SAVIOR, AND I DO NOT BLAME YOU FOR GOING INTO HIDING.

::inhale::
::exhale::

Anyway. Since I knew that this book was gonna be a slaughterfest of characters I love, I decided to make a list of the Deaths.

In the book Deathly Hallows.

Found ( here )


In short, read the goddamn book. We are the last generation to have ever lived in suspense of the ending to Harry Potter. Like Luke and Darth Vader, Thelma and Louise (well, maybe not them) children from now on will grow up with the knowledge that Harry Potter ::deleted for spoiler content::. Revel in the fact that you found out on your own.

And totally love the codenames. It took me a moment, but I was so proud of myself for getting it, it wasn't even funny.

what a fucking day not to have a HP icon. dammit.

I just finished the book Soon I Will Be Invincable. A story of your classic villans and heros, complete with altered timelines, aliens, evil geniuses, fairies, cyborgs, and magic.

( Musings and Spoilers )

A good book, even with the dim, real-life cast that you don't usually get from supers. Because they are smug media hogs, and villans are just abused, misunderstood unfortunates with too much time on their hands.