What book are you reading right now?

[evil ash]

Originally Posted by SgtAngua_CW

This week I read three fantastic books in a row - Apocalypse Cow by Michael Logan, Emma Newman's Between Two Thorns and Poison by Sarah Pinborough.

Just started Ben Aaronovitch's Rivers of London and I can already tell I've struck gold again

All of those are fantastic books! The Rivers Of London ones are fantastic! Have you read Sarah Pinborough' Dog Faced Gods trilogy? They are brilliant as well

[MrShears]

Star Wars: Book of Sith
Shapely Ankle Preferr'd by Francesca Beauman
Seasons in the Sun by Dominic Sandbrook

[Boo]

Just finished Wool by Hugh Howey and really enjoyed it. It's a post apocalyptic novel focusing on a city of people living in a silo as some kind of disaster has left the earth uninhabitable. Speaking of the outside is an offence punishable by cleaning, which is when the offender will be sent outside in a suit to clean the monitors and will be left there to die when the atmosphere destroys the suit. There's a really clever mystery around what is actually outside and why people sent for cleaning always clean despite knowing they're about to die. Can't wait for the next two in the series.

[The Creeping Spleen]

Yesterday, on my journey back home from being in Perth all weekend, I fairly rattled through "Snake Bite" by Andy Lane, book 5 of the Young Sherlock Holmes series. Started it as the bus was leaving Perth for Glasgow, finished it just as my train from Glasgow reached Greenock.

Now onto "World Binder" by David Farland. Book 6 of the Runelords series.

[hammard]

When I should have been completing Cloud Atlas for the Book Club I instead read:

Just War by Lance Parkin: I honestly can't decide how to rate this story. It is objectively very well written but as Doctor Who it is terrible. Very bleak and treats the female characters appallingly (one is used for torture porn and the other is a racist with a shoehorned love plot).

[runalong]

Ah that's because you're reading a New Adventure and the particular cycle of books was quite bleak and they explored that character's racism in an arc iirc

I liked it at the time pretty much one of my favourite eras

[Rhian]

Yes, it's been a long time but I really liked that one. Well, I liked everything by Lance Parkin I think.

[hammard]

Originally Posted by runalong

Ah that's because you're reading a New Adventure and the particular cycle of books was quite bleak and they explored that character's racism in an arc iirc

I liked it at the time pretty much one of my favourite eras

I've read most of the rest of the arc but I hadn't read ths one (due to how damn expensive it is). They do kind of explore Roz's alienism but they never have her go so far as to declare how happy she is that she is pure blooded.

For me this is about the point when the novels went off the rails and everyone seemed to fall over themselves to say how bad the TV show was. Just compare how fun and stand-alone The Also People and Shakedown are before to how grim and arc obsessed Warchild and SLEEPY are straight afterwards.

Originally Posted by Rhian

Yes, it's been a long time but I really liked that one. Well, I liked everything by Lance Parkin I think.

I am an absolute Lance Parkin fanatic which is why I'm so surprised by this book. His other writings were the only great Doctor Who novels when everyone else was either being pretentious and bleak or fannishly terrible. It is extremely well researched and written but doesn't feel like real Doctor Who. Whilst his other virgin novels, Cold Fusion and The Dying Days, are undeniably Whovian with a great sense of fun.

[runalong]

Never got that feeling about them insulting the TV series but I'd agree that arc was getting darker but thought that was as the end of the series for Virgin was coming

[hammard]

Originally Posted by runalong

Never got that feeling about them insulting the TV series but I'd agree that arc was getting darker but thought that was as the end of the series for Virgin was coming

It wasn't in text but off-screen. You read the interviews from around that time, even people like Steven Moffat and Paul Cornell talk about how bad the old TV series was and I think that is reflected in the writing of the time.

I didn't think they knew about the return of the lisence to the BBC until after the TV movie which was still a few months away. I thought it was more just the direction they wanted to head but I could be wrong.

Anyway, won't pollute the thread any further...