currents

[ex_pippin880]

Whatcha reading at the moment? Would you recommend it to others?

After taking a break to read 42 volumes of Dragon Ball I've gone back to The Coyote Road: Trickster Tales, an anthology edited by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling. I've read less than half of its contents, but so far I've been more disappointed than pleased. Hopefully the quality will pick up...

Comments

[caro]

I read The Coyote Road last year after buying it at Comic Con. I was pretty disappointed by the stories as well, but there were a few good ones. My favorites were "The Fiddler of Bayou Techem" by Delia Sherman and "The Constable of Abal" by Kelly Link.

I just finished Transformation by Carol Berg and liked it a lot. I also recently read The Last Wish by Andrzej Sapowski, and I'd recommend that as well. Right now I'm reading The Story of the Stone, which is the second Master Li & Number Ten Ox book by Barry Hughart. It's fun, in a silly way.

[foxfinial]

I was pretty disappointed by the stories as well, but there were a few good ones. My favorites were "The Fiddler of Bayou Techem" by Delia Sherman and "The Constable of Abal" by Kelly Link.

Those ones were really good.

I also really liked "Realer Than You" by Christopher Barzak, "God Clown" by Carol Emshwiller, "The Dreaming Wind" by Jeffrey Ford and "The Evolution of Trickster Stories Among the Dogs of North Park after the Change" by Kij Johnson -- but I am fans of all those authors. =D

But, yeah, I was pretty disappointed by some of the other stories. Who knew trickster tales could be so dull?

[caro]

Ooh, I forgot about the Kij Johnson story -- I did like that one a lot.

[ex_pippin880]

"The Dreaming Wind" fell flat for me.

[ex_pippin880]

I was going to get the other two in the anthology series, but I don't know now. :/

Oh geez, a friend lent me The Last Wish ages ago and I forgot about it! I should read it and give it back to him.

[caro]

You should! It's a good, quick read.

[pyrofennec]

Have you read Blood of Elves?

[caro]

Not yet, but I will as soon as I get my hands on it.

[libelula]

Aaahh, Transformation is one of my favorite novels. I read it back in 2003 and absolutely loved it. Her Flesh and Spirit and Breath and Bone duology is also pretty darn good.

[foxfinial]

I'm reading Fire Logic by Laurie J Marks, which is the closest to epic fantasy I've read in quite a while. So far I'm finding the characters quite interesting and likeable. The plot, which simple so far, isn't bad. Would need to read more before I recommended it.

[phoenixsong]

Not quite current, but in the near future, I'll be re-reading at least the last three (if not all six) of Jacqueline Carey's Kushiel's Legacy books in anticipation of Naahmah's Kiss.

I loved the last two Kushiel books, so now I want to go back and see if Kushiel's Scion is really as annoying as I remember it seeming at the time.

[tallan]

I've just started The Oathbound by Mercedes Lackey. Started working my way through her Velgarth/Valdemar books about a week ago, and I enjoy them a lot. The Arrow's trilogy was cute (complete wishfulfillment!), By the Sword was total love (Kerowyn!), and Mage Winds was quite good (Elspeth is badass). Just wish I had found them when I was a kid, I think they would've meant a whole lot (more) to me back then.

[geekmama]

I was the lucky one who had Mercedes Lackey recommended to her just as she was beginning puberty and ended up with the Herald Vanyel trilogy (Magic's Pawn/Promise/Price) being the very first books I read by her. It was the first time I had ever seen a non-straight pairing in anything I had read before and was immediately hooked.

A couple months ago I found the first volume of the Bardic Voices trilogy (The Lark and the Wren) in a local used bookstore and picked it up but hadn't gotten around to reading it until a few weeks ago. (I tend to pick up books in bulk when at used bookstores, eheh. ^^;) I liked that the novel itself was based on a short story, Fiddler Fair, that was featured in a collection of short stories by the same name but I thought that the contention between the Church and the main character was a little forced. It's a story I'd like to see redone to make it read.. smoother.

I'd recommend The Lark and the Wren to people who are looking for an entertaining read but nothing that's really mind stretching.

[tallan]

Sounds lovely. I haven't gotten to the Vanyel books yet, but it's very refreshing and somehow.. relieving? to find queer characters and same-sex pairings highly visible and interactive in all books I've read so far. It's normalising and that makes me happy.

Bardic Voices is an entirely separate universe, right? I'll have to see if I can get my hands on them later on.

[geekmama]

Yep, it's an entirely different universe!

It's not just the same-sex pairings that make me skip with joy when I get a new Mercedes Lackey book, it's all the female characters as well that aren't.. useless. Kerowyn is a prime example of why I love Lackey's writing so much. She's honest about the hardships women face becoming Heralds and mercenaries as well as the hardships they face staying a farmer's wife or influential guild member's wife. Avoiding the pointy end of a sword can be, and is, just as difficult as raising a family and playing Healer to a village when there isn't a green robe nearby.

An added bonus, for me, is that in the Arrow's trilogy, Talia had to help pair together a pair of lesbians when one's partner died and she commented that they could have been a trio that worked out had time and fate given them the chance. Not only is she working with queer characters in an awesome way, but she just acknowledged and tackled polyamory too. Pretty awesome in my opinion.

[wanderer]

I love The Lark and the Wren. I don't think you find anything mindstretching in any of ML's books, but it's fun, and I love the energy in the cast of characters. Unlike some of the Valdemar books, I find that the lesson doesn't overpower the story. They're still a bit Disney-ish in the way the right action always leads to reward, but eh, that's just her style.

[ex_pippin880]

I wish I'd known about her as a kid too. I first found them when I was 18, and I just couldn't get past the bleh. :(

(But then I found out that past the bleh is stuff I've never been interested in, so maybe not even as a kid.)

[ellarien]

I'm halfway through Michelle West's The Hidden City, the first novel of the House War series. It's fine in itself, but I'm a bit disappointed because I really wanted to know what happened to the protagonist after the end of the Sun Sword series, not when she was a child of ten!

[sweet_sparrow]

At the moment, I've just finished up Titus Groan yesterday. I'm still trying to figure out how I feel about it, so I'm not sure who I'd recommend it to yet. I liked it, but I can see why people wouldn't.

I'm curious now, which of the stories in The Coyote Road did work for you? (I could't even finish The Dreaming Wind. It completely failed to grab my interest.) The Evolution of Trickster Stories Among the Dogs of North Park after the Change was definitely the best story in there for me. I'm glad I read The Coyote Road for the stories I liked, but it's not been enough to convince me to rush out and collect the rest.

It's the third time I've read an anthology of theirs, but it just wasn't enough to convince me I must run out and collect the rest. I loved the first anthology I read, the second was utterly ruined by a single story, and this one... As said I'm glad I read it for the stories I liked, but... I don't know. *rambles*

We've very different causes for the reaction, though, I think. I thought a few of the stories were absolutely terrible choices (and the rest at least enjoyable to read), whereas you seem to dislike most of the stories.

[foxfinial]

I have a very mixed reaction to Ellen Datlow anthologies (regardless of whether there's a co-editor): I'll love some stories and struggle to finish others, and find quite a few mediocre. On the one hand, it suggests that Datlow is good at picking a range of stories. On the other, I wish our tastes intersected a little more.

Yet I go back for more. =D She is capable of picking some truly excellent stories.

I've read, hmm, four of hers: Salon Fantastique, Black Thorn White Rose, The Coyote Road and The Del Rey Book of Science Fiction & Fantasy. I also have the last YBFH, although the presence of Kelly Link & Gavin Grant on the editorial team means the success rate should be much higher.

[sweet_sparrow]

She certainly is, that. Though I have to wonder how much of the reaction is just something that's magnified because the stories are shorter and read more closely together. Would the effect be similar if these had been novel-length pieces we picked up and read after one another? Would the effect be similar if they'd been short stories we hadn't read together in anthology? For me the answer would be 'no'.

I wish I knew how to phrase my reasons for the first question. *pokes brain* The second, though. There's a sense of quality about stories that are brought together in an anthology (especially one like the YBFH which even has 'best' in the title), so when the reader finds that quality lacking, for any reason, where does that leave the anthology? When is an anthology truly successful? Should we like every story in an anthology equally? Should we, as readers, allow for the (occasional) ones that we're hard-pressed to finish? How about the ones that leave us wondering why on earth the story was included? (Mind you, I'd love to know why stories were included/picked, period, because that's the kind of thing I find fascinating.)

They're strange things, anthologies. And replying to you now, writing down those questions... I don't think I've ever realised how much of my childhood reading was anthologies. I grew up with read-along anthologies. They're probably the books I went back to most often, for the few stories that truly gripped me. One of them had a translation/condensation of Peter Pan in it that made up half the book's content. I skipped it routinely. That's a lot of story to skip in a book, even an anthology, but I've never, ever regretted reading those books. Nor sticking to reading my favourites. It's strange to think how much my reading's changed.

Also, I'm sorry for straying so. They're questions and thoughts that pop up from time to time in my mind. *pokes DW and hopes it won't double-post now*

[dunc]

I just finished Acacia by David Anthony Durham and hell yes. Great epic fantasy after a long string of 'meh' and all-out duds.

[dracothelizard]

I'm currently reading an anthology of horror stories, The Wordsworth Book of Great Horror Stories, and the cool thing is that they're all from either the late 19th century or the early 20th - there's quite a few by Arthur Conan Doyle, but for some reason none by H.P. Lovecraft. It's not technically fantasy, but there's plenty of unexplained things that go bump in the night and ghosts.

[missdanaidae]

Yesterday I started reading Terrier by Tamora Pierce. I'm very interested to see where the story goes because the plot revolves around the investigation of the murder of a three year old boy. I've never read a YA book with a murder plot so I'm impressed. The only thing that irks me is how long the narrator's journal entries are. I don't mind reading stories told through a journal, but when one entry is 50 pages I cannot suspend my disbelief.

[wanderer]

I haven't read Terrier . . . I've just about finished the Keladry series (Defender of the Small, I think is the official title?). I'm enjoying it, but not nearly as much as I enjoyed the Alanna books in the far-gone time when I read them as a preteen. Is Terrier in the same universe?

[missdanaidae]

Yep, Terrier happens a couple hundred years before Song of the Lioness. The main character is related to someone from the Lioness series, which makes in more interesting to me because I feel like I'm actually reading the history of another world.

[ilthit]

I'm reading a god-awful "paranormal romance" novel that promised werewolves and never delivered. I'm finishing it out of sheer stubbornness.

If you like short stories, first recommendations off the top of my head would be The Ladies of Grace Adieu and Other Stories by Susanna Clarke and Sandman: Book of Dreams, a collection of prose short stories based on Neil Gaiman's Sandman comics (not by Gaiman, and I think they stand on their own without knowing too much about the comics). They are both brain-breakingly awesome. I also like Gaiman's short stories (Fragile Things and Smoke and Mirrors better than his novels; and of his novels my favourite is the delightful Anansi Boys. I also liked Kissing the Witch by Donoghue (short stories again), but for that you need a high tolerance for Message.