Books read this fortnight: Sten 3: The Court of a Thousand Suns 6/10 (Chris Bunch and Allan Cole), The Boys: Volume 7: The Innocents 7/10 (Garth Ennis et al.), The Boys: Volume 8: Highland Laddie 7/10 (Garth Ennis et al.), The Cellar 5/10 (Richard Laymon), The Graveyard Book 8/10 (Neil Gaiman), The Steel Remains 8/10 (Richard Morgan), Cryoburn 7/10 (Lois McMaster Bujold), A Dance With Dragons 8/10 (George R R Martin), Judge Dee at Work 6/10 (Robert van Gulik), Rule 34 7/10 (Charles Stross), The Lost Fleet: Dauntless (Jack Campbell) and The Dresden Files; (deep breath) Fool Moon, Grave Peril, Death Masks, Blood Rites, Dead Beat, Proven Guilty, White Night, Small Favour, Turn Coat, Changes, Ghost Story and Side Jobs, all 7/10, all (Jim Butcher).
As you can see, I've had the chance to do quite a lot of reading over the past couple of weeks. I've not time to go into detail about all of these books, so I'm going to try and write something brief about each book.
The Court of a Thousand Suns is the third book in the Sten series, a pulp sci-fi series from the mid-80s. It's quite entertaining and moves fairly quickly, and provides a fascinating insight into what we thought the future would be like before the internet.
The Boys is Garth Ennis' gleefully anarchic series about superheroes and the black clad eccentrics employed by the CIA to keep tabs on the 'supes'. The series began brilliantly, but has begun to tail off slightly; that said, it's still very funny (and exceedingly violent), and I do retain a lot of sympathy for Ennis' basic thesis; if superheroes were real, they would be like rock stars. Can you imagine Michael Jackson with the power to destroy buildings?
The Cellar is a straight-up horror story, a genre I read only very rarely. Tis a pity it's not very good.
The Graveyard Book is Neil Gaiman's homage to the Jungle Book, but with vampires. It's by turns creepy, humorous and moving. Classic Gaiman, in other words.
The Steel Remains is Richard Morgan's first foray into the fantasy genre, and it is excellent. I think Morgan is one of the best science-fiction writers working at the moment, and as far as I'm concerned his debut, Altered Carbon, is the best novel of the past decade. However, writers can stumble when moving into a different genre and I was pleased to see that this didn't happen here. On the other hand, Morgan moved from gritty, cynical and ultra-violent cyberpunk noir to gritty, cynical and ultra-violent dungeonpunk noir, so possibly is wasn't that big a step.
Cryoburn is the latest entry in the Vorkosigan saga. The series remains what it always has been; light, breezy, entertaining and fairly cheerful. With (in this case) and added pinch of ripped-from-the-headlines trading in dodgy futures (in this case deep-frozen citizens not mortgages).
A Dance with Dragons is the newest novel in the Song of Ice and Fire series; a dramatic improvement on the fourth novel (much more Tyrion!), I'm beginning to get a feel for how Martin wants to end the series. That said, I'm not sure how he can do it in two books. The book is primarily devoted to tearing down the two decent characters who were actually doing well so far, and also to Martin demonstrating that he will not permit things to improve in his world (this is particularly blatant in the epilogue where a character is killed by a deus ex crossbow purely for trying to make things better). This makes the bad guys seem quite a lot less threatening; if they succeed solely because the good guys are afflicted with a bizarre streak of bad luck, they aren't particularly scary; as soon as Martin makes that streak end, the bad guys are going to go down hard. Not that that won't be entertaining, but a little more challenge would be more dramatic I think.
Judge Dee at Work is a collection of short stories about a Chinese detective under the Tang dynasty (about the year 700). The protagonist is based on a real historical figure; the main point of interest really is the level of sophistication in administration and society that is on display in the stories compared with the (total lack) of sophistication on display in Europe at the same time.
Rule 34 is Charles Stross' latest, a sort of pseudo-sequel to Halting State. It's not a bad book, but nothing like as good as Halting State, and I felt that the plot didn't really seem to go anywhere (and neither was it properly explained). Still fun to read.
Dauntless is the first book in the Lost Fleet series. I found it quite dull.
The remaining twelve books are all part of Jim Butcher's Dresden Files series. I (as you can see) found them quite gripping; extremely entertaining, with a well-evolved mythology that develops through the series. There's also a strong undercurrent of humour, despite the increasingly dark tone of the books as the series progresses. I have tried to get into the series before, without much success, but something did just click this time, and I chainsawed through them in short order. Unfortunately I'm going to be in for a bit of a wait until the next one.
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