Month 21: New Crobuzon and New Orleans

Month 21 of 260 (8.08 percent)

Size of list: 84,625 pages (8.8 percent greater than starting size)

Pages read: 10,855 (12.83 percent)

H-list: 2,865/23,122 (12.39 percent)

N-list: 3,857/36,694 (10.78 percent)

O-list: 4,033/24,809 (16.26 percent)

Finished: Perdido Street Station

Reading: A Case of Conscience

Added: The Obelisk Gate, The Scar, All the Birds in the Sky

I moved Perdido Street Station up on the list because in a book I read last year, A Trip to the Stars, Mala takes an apartment on Perdido Street in New Orleans. Well, if this book takes place in New Orleans, I'm the only one who believes it. It's a far-future post-apocalyptic multi-racial/species magical fantasy, that at times felt like a fantasy version of Infinite Jest. I quite enjoyed it, although I enjoyed the worldbuilding more than the plot, and unlike Infinite Jest it dragged a bit in the final third, as the plot was taken care of. The final chapter ties up one loose end and throws a haymaker, and I loved it. It was definitely good enough to add the sequel to my list.

The book was on the list because it was recommended in the D&D Inspirational Reading list, and it got me thinking about a game set in a single sprawling city. The icons of 13th Age would be great for something like that, with the Emperor, the Archmage, the Crusader, the Priestess, the Prince of Shadows, the Lich King and the Diabolist all representing factions within a city. I'd toss out the race-specific leaders and replace the High Druid with a lord of the sewers, maybe a Rat King or something. 

I added The Obeslisk Gate because it won the Hugo, and I added All the Birds in the Sky because it was a close second -- actually getting more first-choice ballots -- and I love Charlie Jane Anders anyway.

Time to read more!

Month 20: A Decided Lack of Progress

Month 20 of 260 (7.69 percent)

Size of list: 83,279 pages (7.1 percent greater than starting size)

Pages read: 10,364 (12.44 percent)

H-list: 2,793/22,674 (12.32 percent)

N-list: 3,538/36,116 (9.80 percent)

O-list: 4,033/24,489 (16.47 percent)

Finished: none

Reading: Perdido Street Station

I read 54 pages this month. Plus some Hugo reading, but still. This is not progress.

Month 19: No more exceptions

Month 19 of 260 (7.31 percent)

Size of list: 83,279 pages (7.1 percent greater than starting size)

Pages read: 10,310 (12.38 percent)

H-list: 2,793/22,674 (12.32 percent)

N-list: 3,484/36,116 (9.65 percent)

O-list: 4,033/24,489 (16.47 percent)

Finished: The Dragon Reborn

Reading: Perdido Street Station

This month, I finished The Dragon Reborn, the last book on my plan that I'd already read, because it counts as part of the ultimate whale of fantasy, The Wheel of Time. From here on out, it's all new stuff.

The Dragon Reborn is better than its ending lets it be. The titular character, Rand, is barely in the book. It's as if Jordan realized at the beginning that Rand was whiny and boring, so he went off on three other stories: Egwene and the other women at Tar Valon, Perrin dealing with his wolfishness, and Mat dealing with his luck. A few more characters come in, but it's really about those three, and it's fine, until the end features a big climactic battle between Sir Barely Appearing in This Book and Ba'alzagain, the Evil Lord of Being an Evil Lord, which is just boring because who cares about either one? 

I've started into Perdido Street Station, which is kind of weird because I went in assuming it takes place in New Orleans, but it doesn't, it's in New Crobuzon, so I keep watching for a sign that it's really in New Orleans. I'm only about a quarter of the way through, so more reports later.

Month 18: Franchise fiction

Month 18 of 260 (6.92 percent)

Size of list: 83,279 pages (7.1 percent greater than starting size)

Pages read: 9,804 (11.77 percent)

H-list: 2,793/22,674 (12.32 percent)

N-list: 3,038/36,116 (8.41 percent)

O-list: 4,033/24,489 (16.47 percent)

Finished: Labyrinth of Evil, Avatar (books one and two)

Reading: The Dragon Reborn

Added: Avatar Book Two

This month was about fast reading from the big sci-fi franchises. It was nice to just turn pages. This seems kind of silly to say; it's not like I've been reading War and Peace or Capital in the 21st Century here, but after The Uplift War, Star Wars and Star Trek books were fast reads.

Labyrinth of Evil is a direct prequel to Revenge of the Sith, and it includes an interesting backstory for General Grievous that is revealed over a couple chapters from different characters' points of view. When we learn things about Grievous that even he doesn't know, it's a fun revelation. The end, which had to be in line with the beginning of the movie, suffers a little; it's especially hard to believe Count Dooku is so naïve about the situation he's walking into. Still, by tie-in standards, it's a good read; not as good as Death Star or the X-Wing series, but pretty good. 

Avatar is a novel spread across two volumes that follows the end of the TV series Deep Space Nine, my favorite Star Trek. This felt like a two-part episode, a pilot for a delayed Season Eight. About half the characters were returning — Dax, Bashir, Kira, Quark — and then there were new characters brought in, mostly new but including Ensign Ro, the Bajoran from TNG. The plot was okay but felt a little thin across this many words. More interesting were the characters and how they dealt with each other — Ezri and Julian dealing with symbiont relationships, Kira and Ro dealing with opposite views of Bajoran religion, Nog and Quark adjusting to life without Rom. 

They're books I enjoyed because I already love the underlying characters and worlds; I wouldn't recommend them to anyone who doesn't already.

Month 17: Where Dungeons Come From

Month 17 of 260 (6.54 percent)

Size of list: 83,045 pages (6.8 percent greater than starting size)

Pages read: 9,722 (11.11 percent)

H-list: 2,793/22,674 (12.32 percent)

N-list: 2,978/36,116 (8.25 percent)

O-list: 3,455/24,255 (13.44 percent)

Finished: Sign of the Labrys

Reading: The Dragon Reborn

Added: Revenge of the Sith, Dark Lord

This is the amazing back cover to Sign of the Labrys, a 1963 novel by Margaret St. Clair, who was called out by Gary Gygax in his original Appendix N; this novel was one of three listed on the 5th Edition update. Another Appendix N writer pointed to this novel as specifically inspiring what we now think of as the Gygaxian mega-dungeon, and that's certainly there, with a multi-level complex connected by tunnels and guarded by traps and populated by groups that might as well be weird cults; each level is different, but a common theme runs through them. But this novel is explicitly post-apocalyptic, most of the population having been wiped out by a plague, and not much government left. It's very late-'60s, and the ending is so not compelling that, a week later, I don't really remember what happened. (It's almost like a song that fades out because the writer couldn't think of a good ending... which is sort of how I feel about the ending of Infinite Jest, but for a completely different reason.)

I also started reading Labyrinth of Evil, a prequel-era Star Wars book; I've read enough accounts saying the novelization of Revenge of the Sith is better than the movie, and even better as the middle portion of a trilogy, that I added the second and third volumes to my list. (And in the wake of The Uplift War and Sign of the Labrys, I wanted something fast, familiar and modern as a palette cleanser.) And I've been slowly, slowly, working my way through The Dragon Reborn, the third volume of The Wheel of Time (and last of my rereads); the story of Egwene, Nynaeve and Elayne in the White Tower is some of the most interesting the series has been so far.

Month 16: A banana and a beer

Month 16 of 260 (6.15 percent)

Size of list: 82,256 pages (5.8 percent greater than starting size, unchanged for three months)

Pages read: 8,796 (10.69 percent)

H-list: 2,793/22,674 (12.32 percent)

N-list: 2,850/36,116 (7.89 percent)

O-list: 3,153/23,466 (13.44 percent)

Finished: The Uplift War

Reading: The Dragon Reborn

The only book I finished this month was The Uplift War, the 1988 Hugo winner and a direct sequel to Startide Rising, which I read last year. But I mean it's a direct sequel in that it's more of a sequel than Startide Rising was to Sundiver, nominally the first book in the Uplift Trilogy. The Uplift War shares none of the same characters or even the same planets, but what happens in this book is caused by what happens in the previous.

The Uplift War features chimpanzees as an uplifted species, and pits them against the Gubru, an avian race that has invaded Garth, the planet that is the setting of this story. (An aside: I used to have an old Mac game, the kind where you send spaceships from one planet to another and they fight when they arrive, and it pit the player as humans against two races: the Kzin and the Gubru. I had never known where the Gubru came from before reading this.) A few other characters are human and Tymbrini, another alien species. 

The best part of this book is the Gubru. David Brin succeeds in making a race feel alien while still comprehensible to the human reader. The other alien species are interesting too, and life as an uplifted chimpanzee was wonderful to read about.

When I got to about 100 pages to go, as the climax was coming, and chimpanzees were walking up a hill taking tests, I couldn't put it down. It was an excellent climax.

Brin wrote another whole Uplift Trilogy, which isn't on my list at all, but I may throw the next book on if I'm in the mood.

Month 15: The first book I hate

Month 15 of 260 (5.77 percent)

Size of list: 82,256 pages (5.8 percent greater than starting size, unchanged for two months)

Pages read: 8,369 (10.17 percent)

H-list: 2,456/22,674 (10.83 percent)

N-list: 2,760/36,116 (7.64 percent)

O-list: 3,153/23,466 (13.44 percent)

Finished: Fool's Errand, The Big Time

Reading: The Dragon Reborn, The Uplift War

The Big Time is the 1958 Hugo winner, and when I finished it I was glad, because it meant I didn't have to read it any more. The book is set in a bubble in time and space; half the characters are soldiers in an endless war across time and space, and the others are charged with providing R&R to those soldiers. There are many reasons for hating this book. Some of it is just an outdated version of gender roles, although the main character, a woman, always being casually in fear of being hit by her boyfriend goes beyond that. Some of it is the main character herself; I hate her voice, from her accent to what she says. Part was the supporting characters; although some were soldiers recruited from across time, and some were doctors or entertainers, it was hard to really keep track of their roles and motivations. I loved the big-picture concept of the war between two factions of unknown entities, fighting across Earth's history for unknown goals, and I could enjoy books set in this universe. Just not this book.

Fool's Errand is the first book in Robin Hobb's third trilogy in her world. It returns to the first-person character of the first trilogy, and really repeats a lot of flaws with Assassin's Quest, the third volume of said first trilogy. Specifically, this is largely another Tolkien-esque fantasy road trip, where we get interesting but ultimately inconsequential pages and pages about every inn, every ferry, and stops on the way. The second trilogy, the Liveship Traders, was third-person with shifting POV characters, and these characters had much more interesting goals. I'll keep reading, because the first two books in the first trilogy were more interesting, but really, I'm already tired of the fantasy road trip.

I'm halfway through The Uplift War, the 1987 Hugo winner and sequel to Startide Rising, which I read last year; and have just barely cracked into The Dragon Reborn, the third volume of The Wheel of Time. I'm still behind on the year, but I'll catch up.