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Temeraire, Parts 3 and 4

Tuesday, April 8th, 2008 Will No comments

I’ve read the latest 2 parts of the Temeraire series: Black Powder War and Empire of Ivory. I’m really glad I started reading this series. I don’t have 30,000 characters to keep up with in any given scene. I don’t have to read two-page descriptions about somebody’s dress. I don’t have to wait hundreds of pages for something good to happen. And I don’t have to wait 5 years for the next book in the series. The next book in the series, Victory of Eagles, comes out this summer and it’ll actually be out in hardback.

Childhood’s End, Arthur C. Clarke
~~Timeline, Michael Crichton~~
Finding Serenity, Jane Espenson
Serenity Found, Jane Espenson
On Bullshit, Harry G. Frankfurt
On Truth, Harry G. Frankfurt
~~Playing for Pizza, John Grisham~~
The Appeal, John Grisham
Night Watch, Sergey Lukyanenko
Day Watch, Sergey Lukyanenko
Twilight Watch, Sergey Lukyanenko
Final Watch, Sergey Lukyanenko
The Taking, Dean Koontz
~~His Majesty’s Dragon, Naomi Novik~~
~~Throne of Jade, Naomi Novik~~
~~Black Powder War, Naomi Novik~~
~~Empire of Ivory, Naomi Novik~~
Victory of Eagles, Naomi Novik
~~Lyra’s Oxford, Philip Pullman~~
Elantris, Brandon Sanderson
Titus Andronicus, William Shakespeare

Tags: black powder war, books, childhood's end, empire of ivory, temeraire

Temeraire

Sunday, March 9th, 2008 Will No comments

I have a rule against starting a fantasy series that hasn’t already been completed and now I’ve broken it. With Harry Potter and The Sword of Truth being over and The Wheel of Time being close to complete, I guess I need another ongoing series to take their places. There’s something nice about reading an ongoing series and getting new material to read every so often. Besides, the author of this new series is 35ish (young), so I think there’s a good chance that she’ll get to finish it. And she’s spitting books out like crazy, so hopefully we won’t have long gaps between books and maybe that also means she’ll finish the story sooner.

The new series that I started is the Temeraire series by Naomi Novik. Temeraire is an alternate history in which the Napoleonic Wars are fought with dragons. Neat, huh? Peter Jackson has already scooped up the movie rights. Novik’s website says that she did graduate work in Computer Science before she left to work on Neverwinter Nights: Shadows of Unrentide. Awesome! Then she went into writing and I guess the rest is history.

I’ve read the first two books: His Majesty’s Dragon and Throne of Jade. Both books are under 400 pages. Yes, it is possible to tell a good story in under 400 pages. Yes, you can have self-contained stories in each novel of a series. It seemed hard to find time to read, but whenever I picked them up, they were hard to put down. I’m eager to read more, but I don’t want to get burnt out, so I’ll probably snack on some Philip Pullman before coming back to Temeraire.

The list keeps growing.