Posts Tagged ‘Joe Abercrombie’

Blades, Culture, & Shells

Nov 2nd, 09 / 0 Comments

{Use of Weapons}Img100 Well I finally finished Joe Abercrombie’s Best Served Cold. About three-quarters of the way through and I started getting really pissed with Mr. Abercrombie and the somewhat predictable nature to which he tends to place in his stories. But alas, he has redeemed himself and the ending of Best Served Cold was far far better than the so-called ending of the First Law Trilogy. He still tends to have an issue with leaving characters alive that probably should have died, but honestly this novel is filled with death. So characters not dying was against the grain. I have to say that I will read anything else that Mr. Abercrombie produces.

On a second note, I have started reading after much delay, Use of Weapons by the great Iain M. Banks. This marks the third in the Culture series, which has taken its place as being the best Sci-Fi series that I have read ever. I have only gotten about 50 pages deep into it, but I cannot tell you how nice it was to bridge the gap from epic fantasy to space opera in one day. It was like a long awaited homecoming. More on this novel later.

I have managed to finally come to terms with Windows Vista. I replaced the shell. Yes in the 90′s fashion of Win200 and XP I tried several old favorites (Litestep, BB4Win) and some new ones (Geo-Shell, Object Desktop) but it was SharpE that grabbed my attention. SharpE is a very polished and usable shell that can be used without heavy customization, although some tweaking won’t hurt at all. If anyone is fed up with the default Windows shell environment, the window manager for those in the know, then I highly recommend SharpE!

Books, Tech

Dogs, Fantasy, & Jawas

Oct 15th, 09 / 0 Comments

So it has been awhile since the last post and some interesting developments have occurred. I am now officially back running a dedicated Linux server 24/7 and I absolutely love it! I installed the Ubuntu Minimum release (about 9MB ISO file) and have slowly been adding the packages that I want. Of course it is running headless and my main interface is through a Putty SSH connection from my Vista work machine. My .screenrc file is working good and I am testing out the dvtm window manager used in conjunction with screen to split the screen up into several different dedicated boxes.

I have also been adopted by a sweet, and somewhat giant, stray dog that we have started calling “Marmaduke” or just Duke for short. She has been neglected for a while and was very thin and flea infested when she started showing up, so after a bath a flea pill and some food, she now guards the property outside. The kids also love her and she is content to simply sleep in the garage and do virtually nothing. Definitely my kind of dog. So on Monday Duke and I will be off to the vet for a checkup and a rabies vaccine. Then I imagine she will have a much needed thorough scrubbing and cleaning. Oh, and Maggie, the little beagle, is actually a better dog with her around. Duke will bark and Maggie will come flying out of no where and will actually stay near the house instead of running away for hours on end. All in all a wonderful dog.

I finished Joe Abercrombie’s altogether awesome First Law Trilogy and have started on the stand alone book from the same universe, Best Served Cold. So far I have not been disappointed. I hope to have it finished as well within the next week or so. And why so long you ask? Well, keep reading.

Along with everything else, Steven decided he wants to be a Jawa for Halloween, so Courtney has sewn up the cloak and been working on the gloves while I have to solder up some orange LEDs to mount into a mask for the eyes, and figure out how to make that little gun from the first movie. I think I have it figured out at least.

So that is pretty much it! Oh, and I am writing this with a CLI python based blog editor for Linux called charm. So if it comes out a little bit wonky, that’s why.

News

The Blade Itself by Joe Abercrombie

Sep 16th, 09 / 2 Comments

1_bladeitselffinalwfoil-736071 I am not a fan of fantasy novels, I never really have been. I played the hell out of Dungeons and Dragons when I was younger though so good fantasy still has a rough little spot in my heart. Well, at least that is what I used to think. But as of late with the quality of the fantasy novels I have read, referring to Rothfuss’s amazing The Name of the Wind and now this latest book I finished, The Blade Itself by Joe Abercrombie, fantasy is making a significant comeback into my reading list.

I first heard about Abercrombie only a few scant weeks ago during the release of his latest novel Best Served Cold. And what I heard intrigued me,

"If you’re fond of bloodless, turgid fantasy with characters as thin as newspaper and as boring as plaster saints, Joe Abercrombie is really going to ruin your day. A long career for this guy would be a gift to our genre."
Scott Lynch, author of The Lies of Locke Lamora

“The books are good, really good. They pulled me in. Well-developed world. Unique, compelling characters. I like them so much that when I got to the end of the second book and found out the third book wasn’t going to be out in the US for another three months, I experienced a fit of rage, then a fit of depression, then I ate some lunch and had a bit of a lay down.”
—Patrick Rothfuss, author of The Name of the Wind

So essentially I was told by word of mouth that it is akin to George R. R. Martin but with great characters, and since I don’t really like Martin this seemed grand.

The story follows a number of major characters, “The Bloody-Nine” (aka Logen) being primary among them. Logen is a great battle hardened Northerner that evidently has a little psychotic break when he gets angry and kills people in a most violent manner. Aside from that he is a thoughtful, considerate, and even compassionate at times.

Captain Jezal Luthar is a pompous young member of the nobility hell bent on making it big. His commanding officer Major West is a commoner and reviled by the officers because of it, and plauged by his drunken sister, Ardee. And there are countless others.

But for some reason the one character that really sticks with me more than any other is Inquisitor Sand dan Glokta. Glokta was in the Ghurkish War years prior and was Major West’s commanding officer then. He led a fool hardy attack that eventually won the war and cost him two years of torture in the prisons of Ghurka. When we find Glokta he his a crippled shell of a man that is hobbled with pain and has had alternating sets of his top and bottom teeth removed by hammer and chisel giving him a sickening smile. Oh and as an Inquisitor, Glokta gets to torture people. Something he is rather good at givenBeforeTheyAreHanged  his own experiences.

If you haven’t guessed already, this novel is amazing. Full of intelligent characters that are so damn believable it is hard to grasp that one guy could write them all. I was sucked in within pages and was hard pressed to put it down.

I give it 5 out of 5 and recommend it for everyone out there. Next on the reading list is Before They Are Hanged Book 2 of the First Law Trilogy by Joe Abercrombie.

Books

Yes I Am Alive…

Sep 10th, 09 / 0 Comments

So I’m sure no one is wondering why the sudden drop off in posts in the last few months, but I will go ahead and lay it out for you anyway. My wife is currently pregnant. That alone meant the initial drop off of posts is justified, but then to complicate matters, she decided that we had to buy a house. Immediately.

So, for future reference, purchasing a house with a pregnant wife, using a loan broker that is not local, and an internet lender equals months of stressed induced insomnia, weight gain, and depression. And thus leading to a lack of motivation large enough to deny any hope of doing virtually anything, much less blog.

Thankfully, we finished the purchase of our first house on September 2nd and moved over the Labor Day weekend. This past Tuesday we went to the doctor and saw the first ultrasound of the new little one on the way. And a week ago today I started taking happy pills. So all in all, things are looking up much more than it had even a week ago.

For those of you that know me well let me give you an example: for the seven weeks it took us to purchase our new home I was only able to finish two books! That alone was almost more tragic to me than virtually anything else.

n49294 The book that I picked at through the majority of the process was Larry Niven’s Ringworld. For some reason I had never read this series, and I’m not certain as to why. Ringworld was a great read, a little slow at times possibly but still an awesome science fiction story.

The other book that I finished was the amazing start of the Marla Mason series  belgBlood Engines by T.A. Pratt. This was a real surprise read for me and provided a necessary escape when I needed it most. For that reason I killed it in just over a day. And it is worthy of the read too. Fans of Jim Butcher’s Dresden Files series will love it. It’s violent and gritty and just damn good storytelling. A must read for any fan of the urban fantasy genre. I feel I should go ahead break bad news here though as I learned that Mr. Pratt’s publisher has opted to not pick up the fifth novel, ending the series unexpectedly on a cliffhanger.

n4724 I also finished reading my first Terry Brooks novel, I know don’t laugh. Magic Kingdom for Sale-Sold was a surprising little twist of fantasy that I read more because it was free on the Sony EBook store than for any other reason. It was a delightful little story, and although I am not certain that I will BladeItself-752023ever read the others in the series, this book was a good read. Brook’s tends to be long winded in the narratives but other than that this would make a nice introduction into the fantasy genre for young newcomers.

So next on the reading list will likely be Joe Abercrombie’s The Blade Itself, book one of the  First Law Trilogy. I have heard a lot about this series and his new book from the same world, Best Served Cold, and thought I should give it a shot.

Books, Personal