AAARGH I NEED A BOOK

[athelind]

I'm not in the mood to watch TV, not in the mood to mess around on the computer, and it's too danged early to go to bed.

The box of "Feed Your Head" books hold no appeal, nor do the Lankhmar books that I put in the same box. Of course, the rest of my fiction is all tucked away in quelonzia's garage, awaiting the purchase of satisfactory bookshelves.

I finished the last of China Miéville's "Bas Lag" trilogy last week, and dropped it off at the Santa Clara library. I think I need to cruise back by there and pick up a Stack of Random, just to have something to occupy my brain in these late hours.

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Comments

[tombfyre.livejournal.com]

Its always good to have a book at hand. I tend to always be reading something at any given point, provided its book time of course. :3 Looking for suggestions?

[athelind.livejournal.com]

Nah, mostly just bitchin'.

[tombfyre.livejournal.com]

Ah-ha. Well everyone does from time to time. :3

[paka.livejournal.com]

So what'd you think of Mieville?

Hm. If it were me, I'd propose re-reading LeGuin stuff, or maybe tackling George R.R. Martin's quasi-medievalism, or maybe trying to tackle the Black Company books. But I don't know whether those really fit your tastes.

[athelind.livejournal.com]

Miéville rocks on toast. He's writing the kind of baroque fantasy that I've always wanted to see -- my earliest notes for my Magnum Opus mention "clanking, clockwork contraptions" and a strong leftist distrust for the conventional power structures of the "good happy kingdoms" of high fantasy.

Maybe it's what the genre would have looked like if it hadn't taken that long, long diversion into mimicking Tolkien: Lankhmar meets Lovecraft meets Cyberpunk.

[ebony14.livejournal.com]

Have you read King Rat? It was his first work, and it out-Gaimans Gaiman when it comes to urban fantasy, in my opinion.

If you're looking for something else, I've been working my way through Butcher's Codex Alera, and find it to be quite good.

[athelind.livejournal.com]

I ... started King Rat, but it was the n+1th book I'd read in a very short span of time where the plot hinged on someone's life being torn apart by losing someone close to them. It was not a good time for that.

I'll pick it up again some other time, when things aren't so ... acute.

[athelind.livejournal.com]

I also like that Miéville is so unabashedly D&D-influenced -- handlingers, for Pete's sake, handlingers -- without ever, EVER seeming like Yet Another Boring Generic Fantasy Quest.

He's got all the RIGHT parts of D&D. The crazy, off-the-wall, inexplicable parts.

(And yeah, this dovetails right into my continued constant refrain that most of the WRONG parts are the stuff cribbed from Tolkien.)