March 2008 Reading

1. A Cruel Wind - Glen Cook
2. Dreamsongs: Volume II - George R. R. Martin
3. Black Powder War - Naomi Novik
4. The Sandman: Dream Country - Neil Gaiman
5. Eclipse One - Jonathan Strahan (editor)
6. Water Sleeps - Glen Cook

(above links are to the reviews)

For some reason, and I cannot say exactly why, March was a very, very slow reading month. I’m not sure when the last time I only read six books in a single month. Not many reviews, either.


Best Book: Dreamsongs: Volume II. Is there really any question why? Reading the two volumes of Dreamsongs I was delighted to experience the full range of George Martin’s fiction. He is good at nearly everything he writes and while he is best known and these days first known for his Ice and Fire novels, Dreamsongs just goes to show that the man had two decades of quality fiction behind him before he ever wrote A Game of Thrones. I cannot recommend Dreamsongs strongly enough. There are some outstanding stories in this career retrospective. When Martin is done with Ice and Fire I hope he returns to short fiction (while thrilling us with new novels we never expected)

Most Disappointing Book: A Cruel Wind. I wrote about this in my review, but I had high expectations for this first Dream Empire omnibus and my expectations were not met. Given that this is an omnibus of three novels of The Dread Empire I have started to wonder if I am simply a Black Company fan instead of a Glen Cook fan.

Pleasant Surprise: Water Sleeps. Being a Black Company novel I expected to enjoy Water Sleeps, but the past couple of Black Company novels were fairly disappointing. Having switched from Croaker and Lady as narrator to Murgen just did not work. He have another narrator switch here, this time to a character named Sleepy, one of the survivors of the rest of the Company trapped under the Glittering Plain. The Black Company novels seem to work best on the strength of who narrates and Cook does a very good job in having the narrators feel like distinct characters. Sleepy works. Also, Water Sleeps is a novel of discovery, of action, of progress, and while it feels like an ending, there is still one more Black Company novel to go.


Previous 2008 Reads
January
February