Mark Lawrence > Recent Status Updates

I have some significant reservations about the 3rd part.

With hard SFF where pages are spent exhaustively explaining systems, I feel that it's fair to speculate about the science, just as with historical fiction there are people who focus on historical accuracy.

The idea that this populaton of 3 billion, after 5,000 years still can't match our microchips (which they have examples of along with info) is ... wrong.

It's a big fat book, broken into 3 parts that could each be a smallish book.

I'm in section 3 which takes place much later. Huge amount of "world building" (excuse the pun) about world building, reams of detail about how this or that system works.

I did enjoy the urgency and drama of the closing sections of the previous part.

It has a lot of the detail porn that made me DNF Kim Stanley Robinson's Red Mars.

I just waded through pages and pages detailing the controls and maneuvers for two pods to spin around on a tether. I don't mind a little, but this is a lot.

However, I'm still engaged because:

a) it's still not as dry as Red Mars
b) the doomsday scenario makes it all more tense and emotional and interesting.

I'm enjoying the story, though I have major technical objections.

I can't see that it is possible to break the Moon into 7 big pieces - fragmentation would start immediately.

If it were possible it would take hours at most, not 7 days, for scientists to note the inevitable catastrophe.

It's orders of magnitude easier to survive underground in bunkers than in space.

The Moon blows up on line 1 :o

continues to be very strong - thrills, spills, complexity, shock!

Very good - opens with a 100 page battle in a monster-overrun town, which has lots of variety and character stuff to leven it.

More of the book 2 allied character conflict - which feels totally real, groups argue, a lot. And in this book there's more resolution with a bunch of insightful/touching moments.

Could be my favourite of the trilogy, and the first two were fine books.

As with all of these “something huge and mysterious has arrived” stories, there is a struggle to prevent the MC asking a sequence of structured questions that will in a big info dump bring us all up to speed. It’s logical but not good storytelling. I’m enjoying the mystery.

I've finally got around to this one and realised that I shouldn't have slept on it - the writing is very good and the mystery is interesting.

Just reached a bit that feels a lot like several films I've watched where they "assemble the scientists" to deal with a new phenomenum ... but fair enough ... let's see what happens next.

There's a very clunky romance in this. The particpants are 23 and 22, but behave as if 13 and 12.

I have a rating for this one - and I though that I had read it ... but reading it over last 2 days, I have zero memory of any of it. So maybe I just remember the title from my father's collection.

It's ... interesting ... not always for the right reasons.

Wildly poor tech advancement for thousands of years of technical advancement - computers are devices for doing sums. Spaceships can be stolen like a car.

This is so ... 80s!

It feels like very soft core porn with manly wish fulfilment. I'm feel (& hope) that the Conan books I liked didn't lean quite so hard into the women as breast-carrying devices mode as this one does, although it is fairly contemporary with the ones I own.

Prologue page 1: POV character:
Her tall form was barely covered by a black silk (snip) that left the outer curves of her breasts and hips bare.

The other two female characters introduced so far are either spanked by Conan or threated with spanking.

It seems Jordan goes for the $10 word where possible: dripping & pooling blood are described as "sanguinary flow" and "sanguinary pool". A bloody sword is "encarmined".

This book was written at the time I was reading Conan books, and hits many of the same notes though harder that I recall them. The surprise is probably because you don't tend to see this sort of thing anymore.

The Point Of View (POV) often strays outside the characters to undress^B^B^B describe them from an omniscient - somewhat prurient POV. These days most writers keep the POV firmly in the character.

I read a bunch of Conan books in the 70s/80s and still have them on my shelves somewhere.

I was given the opportunity to write a Conan book last year (and again this year) so I thought I should revisit the series, even though I don't think I have the time or anything to add.

I have also never read a Robert Jordan book, so this felt like a two birds, one stone chance.

I'm enjoying this a lot.

People say it's his best book and it's certainly better than the Amber books, which I also was very keen on.

I've seen this book praised many times. It's said to be Zelazny's best!

I enjoyed the Amber books a lot - so time to tackle this classic.

I bought this in the 70s.

As a teen I was a huge fan of Moorcock books, but re-reads 40+ years later have been a bit of a disappointment.

This one, however, is holding up pretty well, all things considered.

As always, Moorcock is a torrent of imagination.

The jousting knights start 80 feet apart and begin riding towards each other...

...a short while later with 40 YARDS still between them...

I feel there has been a typo :D

I see that by chance, just as I start reading it, they announce they've made and are releasing in January, an HBO series based on the book.

I'm making time to read this - which is testament to its quality.

Really enjoying this - continually reminded of what made me love GRRM's writing the day I picked up A Game of Thrones.

I'm immediately reminded of how much I love GRRM's writing. This is great - no idea why I slept on it for so long.

Really, really good - all the quality of book 1, expanding horizons. Questions being answered.

Very engaging. Despite all the battles, these books always feel relatively gentle, with a focus on people and relationships. All very well done.

Enjoying it a lot - just as good as the first 3.

Having DNFed two books in quick succession - one massively popular, one a little known self-published book - it's great to be reading something that I'm actively enjoying.

I can see the merits in this book, but the YA vibe is dialled up too high for this old man, so I'm going to put it aside.

Enjoying this a lot - is fun, bouncy, good pace.

This seems really familiar, so I must have picked it up at some time in the past, read a little, and got distracted away from it.

It starts well, so there's no reason I would have abandoned it on quality grounds.