What Are You Currently Reading?

[JamesN]

Originally Posted by trebor8273

finished these two. anyone read rising and city of the dead by brain keene, these will be the first books i read by this author

I don't think I've read that particular novel, but Graham Masterton is one of my favorites. FEAST (which I think was titled RITUAL in the U.K.) is the only book I've ever had to put down for a few minutes because it was making my physically ill. I loved it.

Looking forward to hearing what you think about the Brian Keene books. Brian is a good friend of mine.

[Demoncrat]

Looking forward to reading Brian Welch's autobiography, which I couldn't help picking up. It tells the story of how he was "saved" from his life in Korn by the beardy bloke in the Xmas ads.

Should be a hoot.

[Demdike@Cult Labs]

Originally Posted by Demoncrat

Looking forward to reading Brian Welch's autobiography, which I couldn't help picking up. It tells the story of how he was "saved" from his life in Korn by the beardy bloke in the Xmas ads.

Should be a hoot.

Santa?

[JamesN]

Originally Posted by Demdike@Cult Labs

Santa?

Krampus.

[Deadite]

Just to show my age, these have been sitting unread on my shelf since 1996! I decided it is about time i read them. Set in 1597, this series is an historical fantasy set in India and is about herbalism, alchemy, the inquisition, and a very special powder.

[Susan Foreman]

Originally Posted by Deadite

Just to show my age, these have been sitting unread on my shelf since 1996! I decided it is about time i read them. Set in 1597, this series is an historical fantasy set in India and is about herbalism, alchemy, the inquisition, and a very special powder.

So is your age connected to 1996, when they were put on the shelf, or 1597, when they are set?

[J Harker]

I've always been interested in things like Loch Ness, Atlantis, Stonehenge that sort of thing, mythical or generally unexplained places. Currently reading a chapter on cryptozoology.

[Demoncrat]

Originally Posted by Demoncrat

Looking forward to reading Brian Welch's autobiography, which I couldn't help picking up. It tells the story of how he was "saved" from his life in Korn by the beardy bloke in the Xmas ads.

Should be a hoot.

It literally was a hoot. After taking crystal meth for two years solid (with a little cocaine as it "was better for him" )
he sees G*d.

Left it on the bus.


Now reading This Book Is Full Of Spiders ("David Wong"). A lot more full on than John Dies.... still got a bit to go though....Recommended!!

[MacBlayne]

Hi all, I’m back. I won’t go into the details into my absence, suffice to say that it was a combination of college work and personal issues. The result of which has seen me give up social media (I had a twitter account – I followed Stephen!) and becoming practically teetotal. However, I’m happier for it as twitter was a headache and alcohol was rotting what was left of my mind. I’m exercising more and I don’t watch much television now unless it looks really interesting. Instead, I’m reading a lot more and really enjoying it. Which leads me to...

The Girl in the Spider’s Web
by
David Lagercrantz

It’s been five years since Mikeal Blomkvist has spoken to Lisbeth Salander, but it doesn’t bother him much now. He has other worries. Bloggers and rival journalists frequently decry his old-school techniques. His magazine, Millennium, is suffering a major decline in sales due to the rise of the internet and faces a hostile takeover from a tabloid newsgroup.

Things begin to look up, though, when Blomkvist is tipped off to the possible theft of a new artificial intelligence by an American company. However, he soon finds himself involved in a conspiracy involving international gangsters, the NSA, rival corporations, and the Swedish Special Police (Sapo). And it all seems to circle around a certain female hacker.

Whether he intended it or not, Stieg Larsson’s Millennium series owes a debt to the Cyberpunk genre. Although his plots were set in present day, and were more Harlan Coben than William Gibson, Lisbeth Salander looked and felt like the perfect cyberpunk anti-hero. She was an outsider. She followed her own strict moral code (which didn’t always align itself with the ethics of modern society). And although weak in physical stature, she would get around this shortcoming by using her greatest weapon: her mad hax0r skills.

So it makes sense for Lagercrantz (taking over since Larsson sadly passed away before the publication of the original trilogy) to make cyber-crime the main focus of TGitSW. The old murder mysteries and Cold War paranoia of the previous books have been replaced with more modern plot devices such as corporate espionage and online surveillance. The theme this time is our increased reliance on the internet at the cost of our privacy. Or, at least, that’s probably what Lagercrantz was hoping for.

I adore the Millennium trilogy but I must admit – they were not perfect. Larsson was guilty of overlong prose (you could almost make a drinking game of the amount of times Larsson would detail what exactly was in a character’s sandwich). He would often include meandering subplots that went nowhere. And the main plot of the series did go off the rails. But, there was a real vigour behind his writing. The plot was only a framework for his major theme – misogyny. Larsson was more interested in highlighting the mistreatment of women in society and it was this anger that kept you reading page after page.

TGitSW does not have this fire. Lagercrantz’s plot is no sillier than what has come before in the series. But without that passion that carried Larsson’s writing through, it just feels completely unrealistic. The more the overwrought story unfolds, the more lurid and downright nutty it becomes.

There are a few pluses to TGitSW. Lagercrantz’s writing style is better than Larsson’s long-winded journalistic approach. His paragraphs are short, sharp and to the point and he knows how to successfully segue from one chapter to the other. In many ways, Lagercrantz’s prose makes for a quick read, even if his ear for dialogue is one made from recycled soup cans.

It is his approach to the characters that trips him up badly. He starts well by dialling down Blomkvist’s dynamic magnetism to women (women are no longer falling at his feet), but continues dialling him down in other regards too. In the other books, Blomkvist could be a prat. He got results but his single-minded determination often made him alien to the plight of his colleagues. Here, he just seems a bit tired than anything else. Berger, his long-suffering editor, is reduced to the side-lines – only to emerge whenever Blomkvist needs somebody else to drive somewhere. Malm, Palmgram and Armansky also make appearances but they feel more like fan-service than actually being part of the main characters’ lives.

But, it the Mary Sue-ification of Salander that stings the most. As well-written as she was in Larsson’s novels, she was never flawless. She was both cold and insufferably rude, belligerent to those that helped her, and frail. She may hate to admit it, but she often had to rely on the help of others to get through her predicament.

In TGitSW, she’s practically perfect in every way. She fights burly men twice her size without breaking a sweat. She shoots like a John Woo hero and takes bullets like one would take a bee sting. Not only that, there isn’t a problem that she isn’t able to solve. Lagercrantz has robbed her of her foibles. In the Millennium series (I know I keep bringing these up but the comparison is important), we were able to understand where Salander’s frustrations were coming from. But, this isn’t Salander. This isn’t even a human being.

Had TGitSW been its own book, I may have enjoyed it a lot more. There is an enjoyable trashiness to it and it moves along at a quick pace. But, next to the Millennium trilogy, its deficiencies are all the more apparent. It doesn’t help that Lagercrantz actively invites this comparison by awkwardly crowbarring the misogyny theme into his story (we are told that some characters are misogynists instead of being shown, and one side character’s abuse doesn’t have much backstory). If, like me, you love the original trilogy (and the films), you may wish to skip this. There’s fun to be had but it does not in any way continue the story of Blomkvist and Salander.

[bizarre_eye@Cult Labs]

Great to see you back, Mac - your presence here has certainly been missed.