Flight into Fantasy

I’ve just finished A Storm of Swords ! Good freaking lord, that was an awesome book.

• I was so proud of my fat, cowardly Samwell. Although I kind of would have liked to know more about Coldhands and his journey with Bran and the Reeds through the wall, and what Bran’s up to.

• Poor, poor Sansa. She’s going to become manipulative and slightly psychotic by the end of the series what with Lord Petyr’s pedophilic interest in her. Although I can’t say I was all that sorry to see Lyssa pushed out the moon door.
• Arya didn’t kill the Hound. Sure, she left him to die, but ultimately she didn’t do it. I hope she does retain some of her humanity.
• OK, about now is where Dany needs to have a serious setback. She’s done extremely well for herself. This makes me worry for her.
• I’m sorry. I know this makes me either a cold, callous unthinking bitch or extremely in the minority, but I actually really liked the members of house Fray that we’ve met so far. Well, y’know, except for the part where they staged the Red Wedding. Walder Fray is one of my favorite minor characters because he’s querulous and snarky, and I can’t help loving him.
• OMG Tyrion, my giant of Lannister! He kicked so much arse during the second book, that it was horrible to watch him suffer in this one. And then he killed his father. That made me happy. So did the death of his cruel, abusive nephew Joffrey.
• The Queen of Thorns can stay around for a while.
• Cersei, though, needs to get poisoned, like, right now. Some of the spoilers I’ve read suggest that her time is coming, and I confess I’m looking forward to that.

OMG the red wedding!

Class so did not happen today. Tomorrow I have to go, if only to assuage my guilty conscience, and they say Friday the high is supposed to be somewhere above freezing, which is a very good thing. Because then I may freeze to death, but it’ll take longer.

In the meantime, I dipped back into A Storm of Swords because I just couldn’t leave those books alone.
This book is going to be sort of hard to get through because I’ve been spoiled a little, and even if I weren’t, well… You don’t have to be a genius to realize that Martin is fixing to push Tyrion, one of my favorite characters in the series, to an extremely large fall from grace. And one of my favorite things about A Clash of Kings was watching Tyrion put the smackdown on his horrible bitchy sister.

And in completely irrelevant ASOIAF news, I want someone to write me some Jon Snow/Samwell Tarly fanfic. That is all.

i’m on the last short story in the Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror collection I’ve had from the library since August. I’ll be sad to not have to hear the voice of that old, grandfatherly British dude anymore… Not so much.

There was one particular author they featured though, who had a fascinating story. The short story was called “Jenny Come to Play” and the author was Terry Dowling. Unfortunately, the Library of Congress has not seen fit to record anything else by him. But the story was a horror tale set in a mental hospital… Which I found quite awesome.

On other book-related notes, apparently the Library of Congress has begun the process of reading A Feast for Crows. This means I may be able to read it sometime next year, if I’m lucky. Therefore, I hope I can get a commercial audio copy of it before then.

So today I allotted myself the stories by Tad Williams (“The Burning Man”) and George R. R. Martin (“The Hedge Knight”) in the Legends anthology.

I have, therefore, been in fangirl heaven. (Except for the part where I was alone in the house and was reading one of the passages of Martin out loud because I liked the way it sounded and there was a knock, which turned out to be the mail carrier.)

I shouldn’t say it, but after reading the Williams and Martin stories, everyone else represented in this particular collection just come off as complete and total hacks.

Oh, and there was a brief moment after I finished “The Hedge Knight” when I found myself realizing that there was so much slash potential in that story. But even without that, Ser Duncan the Tall is my type of character. *pets*

The only Song of Ice and Fire fanfic I’ve ever found I discovered over at Adultfanfiction.net. And that appears to be a Sansa/Sandor Klegain story.

I’m a bit frightened to go look at that story, because that’s totally one of my secret ships.

I haven’t been listing my book reading of late so I have a lot to post.
Book 32: Needful Things by Stephen King. Well-written, though not one of his better books.

Book 33: Dance upon the Air by Nora Roberts. Light and fluffy romance, kind of weak for the first book in a trilogy.

Book 34: Heaven and Earth by Nora Roberts. By far the best book in the trilogy with a wonderfully compelling hero and heroine.

Book 35: Face the Fire by Nora Roberts. Not nearly as good as the other two, because the heroine really shouldn’t have gotten her own book, given that she’d been set up as the wise mentor type.

Book 36: The Nonesuch by Georgette Heyer. Classic Regency romance. Extremely engaging.

Book 37: Ritual of Proof by Dara Joy. The sex scenes were hot, and some of the social issues she brings up in this futuristic romance were interesting, but overall somewhat disappointing.

Book 38: A Clash of Kings by George R. R. Martin. Still wonderful. A Song of Ice and Fire is the best fantasy series out right now, in my opinion.

Book 39: Magic’s pawn by Mercedes Lackey. A reread. Very delightful, and my favorite book in that trilogy. One of the few books out there not published by small independent publishing companies with a gay lead character.

I just finished Martin’s A Clash of Kings , and will be starting on A Storm of Swords tomorrow.

I love this epic series, and the fourth book comes out in November. I don’t know how I can weasel a copy of the audio version from a library, but I’m going to try.

It’s so nice to read any bit of genre fiction where characters act like bloody people and not just cardboard cutouts with a passing nod toward flaws. The book’s not an easy read, and there are lots of jarring plot twists.

And I also really shouldn’t have been skimming GRRM message boards. because I got spoiled for some of the stuff that happened near the end, which enabled me to laugh maniacally at certain key passages.

And on another gushing note, I love some of this man’s names. Some of the characters he mentions with the coolest names are only briefly mentioned in passing, and I find myself wanting to know why they’ve got those names. Why is there a soldier called Raff the Sweetling, for instance? And where did Lark the Sisterman get that name? Probably none of those will be answered for me, but I think it’s the mark of a good author that even throw-away characters get some intrigue.

I haven’t reported my book reading for a while, so will do so here.

Books 27-29 were the remaining three books in Louise Rennison’s series about Georgia Nicolson. They’re called Knocked out by my Nunga-Nungas, Dancing in my Nuddy-Pants and Away Laughing on a fast Camel. There’s another book out, but it’s not anywhere where I can access it. The last three books in the series were quick reads. Rennison clearly is putting out product now, and is more likely to make jokes about knickers than tell a good story. And I hated Georgia with each passing moment.

Book 30: The Amber Spyglass by Philip Pullman. I struggled through this book, too, because at the time I had nothing else to read. I found lots of the themes disturbing, and not in a pleasant way.
The climax of the book concerned the two main characters, Lyra and Will, falling in love and, well, having sex. Those characters were maybe twelve and thirteen. I thought the very idea of that was creepy. And the anti-religion stuff annoyed me, even though I’m not religious myself.

Book 31: A Game of Thrones by George R. R. Martin. I love this book. It took me ages and ages to get into it, and I’m moving through A Clash of Kings at about the same pace, although that’s because someone else has A Storm of Swords checked out from the library already. Anyway, once I got all the people straight in my head, AGOT was a wonderful book. It’s not light reading, and nothing happens as you’d expect it to. Martin draws his characters well. There is no real good or evil, just a lot of moral ambiguity, which I like because, yes, that’s how things are in the real world.

I suppose I should come up with something coherent to say. However, as that never happens (as those of you who read me should well know) let me offer up a few things.

• 1. A Song of Ice and Fire might possibly be the best fantasy series ever written. I’m glad I stuck it out even though it took me a hell of a long time to get into it. On that note, Brienne the Beauty (who appears in the second book) might be the best secondary character ever. When I stole a look at the appendix and discovered her name, I thought she’d be one of the “fierce fighterMary Sue” types. But she’s not. She’s a fierce fighter, but she’s ugly as sin, physically, and knows it, and that makes her self-conscious. (And that’s another thing I like about Martin. Not all of his characters are good-looking, and the best characters are often the most repulsive physically… Take that, all you silly amateurs!)

• Jolt Cola tastes incredibly flat. I can’t imagine voluntarily drinking the stuff more than once, caffeine or no.
• I cannot believe I entertained a crush on my little brother’s best friend. He might have a few redeeming qualities, but he needs to ripen a little more on the vine before I’ll have much use for him.
• I wish my sister wouldn’t be nearly so open about her sex life with me.
• I should do a random stupid poll.

So I had a lot of time to read, and so I did. Here’s what I managed to finish.

I’m not going to post reviews because I read a lot and don’t really feel like doing more than summarizing.

Book 13: Sea of Silver Light: Otherland, Volume 4 by Tad Williams. A great way to close out the series though it did go on a bit too long.

Book 14: Assassination Vacation by Sarah Vowell. Quite funny and full of interesting facts delivered in a droll, witty style which I liked very much.

Book 15: Deerskin by Robin McKinley. An interesting story. The climactic moments of the book seemed very weird to me, and they didn’t make much sense, and the main character was something of a Mary Sue, but she gets raped by her own father, so I guess that’s a compensation.

Book 16: Dolores Claiborne by Stephen King. Definitely not King’s usual style, but a gripping read nonetheless.

Book 17: Trader by Charles de Lint. The things I hated about Onion Girl> and Spirits in the Wires weren’t there. It was a very well-told story, although I think I may be one of the few De Lint readers who could really despise his character Joe Crazy Dog, known in this book as Bones.
Book 18: Wicked: the Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West by Gregory Maguire. I really enjoyed this book. Not enough to pick up any of Maguire’s other titles, but it was an interesting story anyway, and makes me think of Oz in a completely different light. I didn’t really identify much with Elpheba, the main character and the aforementioned witch, but I didn’t despise her the way I did several of the other characters.