I need to get a camera, so i can join all those book porn fetishists. But then I’m also almost done collecting the stuff I’m interested about, there’s not much left beside new releases and leftovers from long series. No more big orders or significant discoveries to be made, sigh.
Just the plain covers then:
Both books arrived a couple of weeks ago, I’m just late reporting.
Anathem – Neal Stephenson
I already bought Quicksilver, the first book of the Baroque Cycle trilogy, but whenever I decide to actually start with this writer I’ll read this standalone first, then Cryptonomicon. This book came out in early September in the US and a week or so later in UK, the cover up there is from the british edition and it’s the one I got just because I liked it better. Internally even the graphic and typeset should be the same. It is another of those huge doorstops, really impressive to see and heavy to hold. It also has good paper. A beautiful book to own.
900 pages plus forty pages or so of glossary and two appendixes explaining some sort of abstract philosophical problems. On the site I linked there are even some creepy “songs” to listen even if I can’t fathom what they are based on. I’ve read the first few pages to have an idea of the style and I like it. It seems well written even if I get a bit lost when he describes some buildings in detail. I wish I didn’t have already a huge to-read list because I’m so curious about what it is about. It seems a book that you can sink in, deep and challenging. It was first in the New York Times Bestsellers and readers seem to love it. For more insight check these two reviews.
It also seems that the WHOLE Cryptonomicon can be read online for free. I don’t know who could survive, but it seems there.
Return of the Crimson Guard – Ian Cameron Esslemont
This one to complete the Malazan collection. From what I read on the forums it seems that those who didn’t like “Toll the Hounds” (book 8) because it’s too slow and introspective, liked this one much better. The plot seems to move quickly and lots of significant stuff happens, culminating into a huge battle. But for now I can’t read it, this week I’ll finish Erikson’s three novellas, then I start “Memories of Ice” (book 3). This one is supposed to be read after book 7, so a long way to go. In the meantime I skimmed the book here and there because I wanted to see if Esslemont was a decent writer that could hold up the confrontation with Erikson. I can’t really say before I actually read it properly, but the impression wasn’t all that great. He seems to cut the prose into short “denotative” sentences and seems to have some bad habits in the form of repeating the same few sentence structures over and over and over. I really love Erikson because of *how* he writes and the way he experiments a lot with the writing itself and the style. Esslemont seems more “plain” and with less literary intent. For some readers this may be as well a quality since Erikson is seen a bit as pretentious and navel-gazing by some. For me, it’s the main reason (along with many, many others) why he’s my favorite writer in the genre.
It ended up being exactly 700 pages in the hardcover edition, written slightly bigger compared to the same edition of “Toll the Hounds”, so about 800 pages in mass market. The only map included is the one showing Quon Tali and taken from The Bonehunters, so no new stuff. While skimming through it I also got the impression that it’s heavy into references to the Malazan world without explaining much. I doubt it’s readable as standalone by someone who isn’t already familiar with the setting. I really hope it’s a good book because the series only improves by opening all these threads and complexities, like a real world.
In the meantime it’s already October and Erikson should be near the end of the writing process for book 9. When this series is complete it will be a major achievement. I hope it won’t disappoint.