{"id":1090,"date":"2015-02-26T05:25:51","date_gmt":"2015-02-26T05:25:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.offkorn.com\/blog\/?p=1090"},"modified":"2018-03-05T10:15:55","modified_gmt":"2018-03-05T10:15:55","slug":"books-before-and-after","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.offkorn.com\/blog\/books-before-and-after\/","title":{"rendered":"Books; Before and After"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>First the before, which was three books read back in August:<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Hannu_Rajaniemi#The_Jean_le_Flambeur_series\" target=\"_blank\"><strong>Jean le Flambeur<\/strong><\/a> &#8211; This trilogy by Hannu Rajaniemi reminded me of two other authors&#8217; styles. The first book (<em>The Quantum Thief<\/em>) was reminiscent of <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Jack_Vance#The_Demon_Princes_Series\" target=\"_blank\">Jack Vance<\/a>, the second (<em>The Fractal Prince<\/em>) of <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/R._Scott_Bakker#The_Prince_of_Nothing\" target=\"_blank\">R. Scott Bakker<\/a>, and the third (<em>The Causal Angel<\/em>) a combination of the two. These books do not explain what&#8217;s going on. Rather, they show you what&#8217;s going on and trust that you&#8217;ll be able to understand\/decipher the terminology and happenings on your own. It&#8217;s&#8230; certainly interesting.<\/p>\n<p>And now the after, three books I just read yesterday. The first since the trilogy above:<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Seanan_McGuire#October_Daye\" target=\"_blank\"><strong>The Winter Long<\/strong><\/a> &#8211; Seanan McGuire&#8217;s eighth <em>October Daye<\/em> novel apparently kicks off the &#8216;main&#8217; plotline that&#8217;s been simmering in the background since <em>Rosemary and Rue<\/em>. Which is not to say that things have changed all that much, as it&#8217;s still fundamentally the same series it has always been&#8230; just with higher overall power levels.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Eileen_Wilks#Lupi_titles_.28in_reading_order.29\" target=\"_blank\"><strong>Unbinding<\/strong><\/a> &#8211; This eleventh <em>Lupi<\/em> novel is focused on wrapping up the loose ends from the tenth and is told from the perspective of the mindhealer Kai. There&#8217;s not really much to say about it honestly, since if you&#8217;ve been reading this far into the series you already know what to expect and this doesn&#8217;t do anything in particular to shake things up. One aspect stands out though, and that&#8217;s the possible newfound focus on marrying off its characters. I don&#8217;t really like the message this appears to be trying to send; that somehow &#8216;officially&#8217; being bound to your SO should be important for the relationship in any way, shape, or form. Of course I highly doubt anyone impressionable enough to have their views on the subject changed will be reading a series like this in the first place, so I suppose it doesn&#8217;t matter much.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Ann_Aguirre#Dread_Queen_Series\" target=\"_blank\"><strong>Havoc<\/strong><\/a> &#8211; The second part of Ann Aquirre&#8217;s <em>Dred Chronicles<\/em> series is sort of so-so. I wasn&#8217;t really sure where things could go from the first book, and this one just feels like an excessive escalation. I also don&#8217;t remember the central government being so ridiculously corrupt in the <em>Sirantha Jax<\/em> novels (this takes place in the same universe), which caused some cognitive dissonance. It&#8217;s okay I guess, it just lacks solidity and doesn&#8217;t come across as particularly believable.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>First the before, which was three books read back in August: Jean le Flambeur &#8211; This trilogy by Hannu Rajaniemi reminded me of two other authors&#8217; styles. The first book (The Quantum Thief) was reminiscent of Jack Vance, the second (The Fractal Prince) of R. Scott Bakker, and the third (The Causal Angel) a combination of the two. These books do not explain what&#8217;s going on. Rather, they show you what&#8217;s going on and trust that you&#8217;ll be able to understand\/decipher the terminology and happenings on your own. It&#8217;s&#8230; certainly interesting. And now the after, three books I just read yesterday. The first since the trilogy above: The Winter Long &#8211; Seanan McGuire&#8217;s eighth October Daye novel apparently kicks off the &#8216;main&#8217; plotline that&#8217;s been simmering in the background since Rosemary and Rue. Which is not to say that things have changed all that much, as it&#8217;s still fundamentally the same series it has always been&#8230; just with higher overall power levels. Unbinding &#8211; This eleventh Lupi novel is focused on wrapping up the loose ends from the tenth and is told from the perspective of the mindhealer Kai. There&#8217;s not really much to say about it honestly, since if [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[73,100,104,138,139,107,29,62,106,30,105],"class_list":["post-1090","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-related","tag-ann-aguirre","tag-dred-chronicles","tag-eileen-wilks","tag-hannu-rajaniemi","tag-jean-le-flambeur","tag-october-daye","tag-paranormal-romance","tag-science-fiction","tag-seanan-mcguire","tag-urban-fantasy","tag-world-of-the-lupi"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.offkorn.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1090","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.offkorn.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.offkorn.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.offkorn.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.offkorn.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1090"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.offkorn.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1090\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.offkorn.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1090"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.offkorn.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1090"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.offkorn.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1090"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}