-- Farthing, Jo Walton -- The Name of the Wind (The Kingkiller Chronicle: Day One), Patrick Rothfuss -- Getting to Know You, David Marusek -- Brasyl, Ian McDonald -- The Execution Channel, Ken MacLeod
Anyone read any of 'em? I've heard of the Rothfuss book (Randy Holland gave a shout out to it at the Something Positive website), but none of the others.
Posts: 2911 | Registered: Aug 2001
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i ordered the name of the wind, but amazon cancelled it. it's supposed to be really good though.
Posts: 5700 | Registered: Feb 2002
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I've got Ian McDonald's prior work out from the library, River of Gods. Name of the Wind has been getting raves. Curious why the Road isn't nominated here, I guess it was too 'good' to be segregated into the scifi/fantasy/horror subsection and the lack of Lies of Locke Lamora in this category is flat out shameful.
That Special Topics in Calamity Physics is up for best general fiction is nauseating.
though this book sounded interesting, another one not in the scifi/fantasy section:
Jamestown Written by Matthew Sharpe Published by Soft Skull Press # Description: Jamestown chronicles a group of "settlers" (more like survivors) from the ravaged island of Manhattan, departing just as the Chrysler Building has mysteriously plummeted to the earth. This ragged band is heading down what's left of I-95 in a half-school bus, half-Millennium Falcon. Their goal is to establish an outpost in southern Virginia, find oil, and exploit the Indians controlling the area. Based on actual accounts of the Jamestown settlement from 1607 to 1617, Jamestown features historical characters including John Smith, Pocahontas, and others enacting an imaginative re-version of life in the pioneer colony. In this retelling, Pocahontas's father Powhatan is half-Falstaff, half-Henry V, while his consigliere is a psychiatrist named Sidney Feingold. John Martin gradually loses body parts in a series of violent encounters, and John Smith is a ruthless and pragmatic redhead continually undermining the aristocratic leadership. Communication is by text-messaging, IMing, and, ultimately, telepathy. Punctuated by jokes, rhymes, rim shot dialogue, and bloody black-comic tableaux, Jamestown is a trenchant commentary on America's past and present that confirms Matthew Sharpe's status as a major talent in contemporary fiction.
Posts: 128 | Registered: Aug 2006
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I was going to start a new thread, but this one seems to fit. I started The Name of the Wind yesterday because of OSC's killer review of it a couple weeks ago.
I'm only about 60 pages in (and it's over 600 long).
Holy crap. What's sad is that it's so hard for me to describe how original and amazing this book is (so far) without resorting to very unoriginal and tired-sounding cliches. But crap! I'm in, I'm convinced, I'm excited, and I'm so glad it's the first of a trilogy. I wouldn't mind another 1200-1500 pages after I'm through with these 660. And this is his debut!!!
anyway, sorry to crash your thread. I haven't read anything else on that list, but I had to find an outlet for my current state of "Holy Crap." Posts: 6415 | Registered: Jul 2000
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