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Underground > Books, Criticism & Writing >

2008: What are you currently reading?

  
  

Page: 12345(6)7

 
 
Closed for Business Time
13:26 / 08.08.08
Current roster:

Latro in the Mist (Gene Wolfe). A book I read slowly. Meaning it will last me the rest of the year. In many ways an easier read than some of Wolfe's other work (New Sun, Peace, Wizard Knight), ime, but still fairly typical Wolfe; a type of writing that syntactically and semantically reads very sparse, elegant and almost simple (in a good way), which neatly counterpoints the complex themes of memory and identity (amongst other things) he frequently explores.

Excession (I. M. Banks). Have read loads of Banks lately - Matter, Algebraist, Consider Phlebas ++. Lovin it! He's got ideas to die for. Good style too.

The Black Swan (N .N. Taleb). Taleb's dissing of Bell Curve/Econ 101 thinking, and his take on what risk and probability ought to mean. Eccentric and highly interesting stuff. Professional interest on my part.

The Fall of Hyperion (Dan Simmons) . I read Hyperion a coupla months ago and got this for a long-haul flight. Has got one the worst pulp-shit covers I've seen in a long while, but the writing is good, even if it does get a bit much with the old mysticism at times. Also, not that impressed with his use of time-space travel as narrative device. Too much already!

Identity & Control (H. C. White). Columbia professor doing mathematical (network) sociology squared with symbolic interactionism, Goffman style, + linguistic pragmatism. Seriously messing with my head at times. Not helped by quite odd way of expressing himself. Well worth the effort though.

Letzee.. waddles...

Oh, yes: Making Money (Pratchett). I just can't help myself.
 
 
Dusto
13:53 / 08.08.08
Just started in on the collection of Fritz Lieber's Fafrhd and the Gray Mouser, it's good. I/m a sucker for Heroic Fantasy, and this is bloody good stuff.

I've been reading the Dark Horse collections as they come out. I've read the first five and have the fifth. It is pretty great stuff.
 
 
Eek! A Freek!
14:00 / 08.08.08
Excession (I. M. Banks). Have read loads of Banks lately

I've read tonnes of Banks as well but only 1 "M" Banks... Is his Sci-Fi as good as his "regular" fiction? I love his style and as enjoyably mundane as he usually begins I am always almost never prepared for when he shifts gears. The first book I read of his still remains my fave: The Crow Road.

Currently reading "The Shock Doctrine" By Naomi Klein. I'm on chapter three. This is certainly a more disturbing look at the corporate world than "No Logo". The gist is how there is a relationship between Government Economic Policy (Mostly based on Chicago School Economics championed by Milton Friedman), and large corporate interests and how they rely on and then prey on the confusion caused by large "Shocks" such as natural disasters, to further their profits and corporate ideals. Klein even manages to form links between lessons learned from Project MKUltra, M. Friedman, and Pinochet's coup of Chile.

The book certainly makes my blood boil, and while I haven't read enough of "the other side", or even many of the references, it rings true in my liberal-socialist mind. The premise that corporatism lends itself to facism and a return to a feudal system seems entirely believable to me. The fact that the States backed Pinochet over Allende when the worst thing Allend had done was give over several large industries to the State in order to benefit the poorer citizens seems to prove this. Spreading the wealth is a foreign and dirty idea to American foreign policy, it seems. Better to slaughter the lefties, terrorize the rest into mute compliance, and hand the wealth over to the already wealthy. I am sure that there are many claims she makes which could be convincingly refuted, but still remains a great eye-opening read.
 
 
Closed for Business Time
14:35 / 08.08.08
I think his "normal" fiction is what's published as Iain Banks sans M. Anyhoo. Never read any of his non-scifi stuff, though I hear it's good. Have been meaning to pick up The Wasp Factory for some time, but stuff intervenes. You read that one?
 
 
Eek! A Freek!
14:43 / 08.08.08
Yeah, Wasp Factory is very good... I haven't read a bad book of his... A Song of Stone was good but left a bit of a dirty feeling afterwards: Kind of like a lighter, fluffier version of Suskind's Perfume I thought. Still well worth reading. They become adictive, his books. I read Player of Games which I liked but that was all for his Sci... What do you reccomend?
 
 
Closed for Business Time
15:06 / 08.08.08
Weelll.. Thankfully there's not, to my knowledge, any need to read his SF in any particular order, so start anywhere really. The first one I read was the Algebraist, which I really liked. That one's not set in his main literary universe, but it matters little, it's still brilliant entertainment. You could start with Consider Phlebas, his first SF novel, and set in the Culture universe, his main playground.
 
 
sealax
15:18 / 08.08.08
Have been meaning to pick up The Wasp Factory for some time, but stuff intervenes. You read that one?

That's a fantatstic read, an actual page turner I got through it in a day. I prefer his sci-fi stuff personally - he tends to really let the shackles off the ideas-factory.

I have to say though Matter was such an anti-climax. It started so well, I was really disappointed with the end of it.

I think sometimes with Banks his story-telling lets him down, he is virtually unrivalled at the world building side of sci-fi and describing his vivid imagination but when it comes to plot and story I'd say he's pretty average.

I finished Hyperion and Fall of H recently, very impressed with both books. The priest's and scholar's tales in the first book were absolutely top-drawer, and I take my hat off to Dan Simmons on pulling the whole thing together so well.

I'm thinking of reading Caroline Alexander's 'The Bounty' next...anyone read it?
 
 
Closed for Business Time
15:24 / 08.08.08
Really? I loved the ending! So dark, yet so uplifting. What I didn't like so much was some of his not-so-grateful handling of more fantasy-type tropes. It felt a tiny bit forced and grating sitting next to his typical hard SF.
 
 
Baroness von Lenska
03:28 / 09.08.08
I adore the ending to Wasp Factory. Really, I adore both Frank and Eric. The characters and the dry funny morbid ways in which they interact really made the book for me. It does a lovely job evoking the sense of growing up in rural Scotland with a dysfunctionally eccentric family as well, and having first encountered it while in a similar situation plays some part in my adoration. Also enjoy Banks in general, but have never read any of his sci-fi, and always meant to.

I finished Paul Park's Celestis a good few months ago, which I'd only ever even heard of in the first place thanks to a poster here. I wonder about the degree of involvement/influence Park's sister had on the book. Park has said in interviews that his sister is autistic, and that the character of Katherine owes some influence to that. As someone who has been diagnosed by loved ones (who are not psychiatrists, but it wouldn't really be fair of me to give their opinions any less weight for that) as having a few traits of Asperger's, I found Katherine's world view surprisingly...familiar. While some of it is quite strange, most of it elegantly describes my own thought processes in a way that, say, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time left me totally cold on.
 
 
museum in time, tiger in space
11:57 / 09.08.08
As someone who has been diagnosed by loved ones (who are not psychiatrists, but it wouldn't really be fair of me to give their opinions any less weight for that)...

I really don't mean to be rude or disrespectful, but how far do you extend this approach, if you don't mind me asking? I mean, if your car was broken would you see it as unfair to value a mechanic's opinion over that of your loved ones? I'm just curious, really.

I'm reading the heart is Katmandu by Yoel Hoffman. He's kind of interesting - he's probably Israel's leading experimental novelist, but he's also a professor of Japanese poetry and Buddhist studies. He writes in very tiny chapters, usually only a paragraph or two long, with a couple of hundred of them in each book. I've read one other book by him, The Christ of Fish, which I enjoyed a great deal, but this one's a bit harder going. It doesn't really have any plot at all, and there's a returning obsession with legs and feet that I don't quite get. He's a bit tricky to describe, so here's a sample:

I must (he says silently) understand why - in a world where there is only a stack of hay and a foot, only these two things - my wife left me.
Take, for example, (he thinks) the following game: The first one to peep is the peeper. You spread out in twos and each person hits the other on the head until the sun comes up and the rooster crows.
Or this one: Everyone lies beneath an imaginary wardrobe and thinks that the sea is coming toward him, but the sea doesn't come, and therefore everyone loses.
 
 
Bastard Tweed
17:48 / 09.08.08
Yup, that sounds like a fellow who specializes in Japanese poetry and Buddhist studies all right.
 
 
The Idol Rich
20:22 / 10.08.08
The Black Swan (N .N. Taleb). Taleb's dissing of Bell Curve/Econ 101 thinking, and his take on what risk and probability ought to mean. Eccentric and highly interesting stuff. Professional interest on my part.

I went to see him talk in Oxford a few months ago, very interesting guy and quite an engaging speaker I thought - quite casual and humourous. I'm interested partly because I used to trade derivatives for a living and he has a lot to say on the subject - I haven't read the book yet but I keep meaning to get round to it.
 
 
kallisti
08:18 / 13.08.08
I just finished reading The Lover of Ursa Major (the Swedish translation from 1938) by Sergiusz Piasecki, a 1937 book about smugglers on the border between Poland and Soviet. It was quite a refreshing read, being very different from most present-day books I have been reading recently. Interestingly, people and locales are very sparingly described, being mostly "a man with a funny gait" or "a house in the woods". Yet, the way in which it is written makes the story come alive much more than I had expected. Another thing I noticed was that there was a lot of what seemed like foreshadowing going on, but most of it never led to anything. Large parts of the book describe events that have no bearing upon the upcoming chapters, and many characters who could be expected to play a major part just disappear. I thought at first that this was a book about friendship, love and alcohol in about equal doses, but I realized partway through that it is much more about a slow descent into madness. The latter might make more sense if you know a bit more about Piasecki's life and his imprisonment.

The author does not seem exceptionally skilled in the art of the novel, but that is not so strange, given that he was a Polish intelligence officer (who smuggled cocaine and furs across the Polish/Soviet border to fund his operations) writing the book in prison. He had been incarcerated for ten years for a robbery conducted under the influence of cocaine, and apparently passed his time in prison writing books and inciting riots. All in all, he seems like an uncommonly serious badass for a famous novelist, and that is not even taking into account the fact that he was later an executioner for the Polish resistance during WWII.

Anyway, the book was enjoyable, largely for deviating so much from the books of today, but also because the story was engrossing in its simplicity. It felt very real, and given Piasecki's track record, parts of it probably are.
 
 
--
03:51 / 24.08.08
Here's an update of my 2008 reading list (first 24 I listed on page 3 of this thread):

25. "The Crying of Lot 49" (Thomas Pynchon) (April 27)
26. "The End of the World Book" (Alistar McCartney) (May 1)
27. "Foucault's Pendulum" (Umberto Eco) (May 8)
28. "Us Ones in Between" (Blair Mastbaum) (May 10)
29. "The Man Who Fought Alone" (Stephen R. Donaldson)(May 23)*
30. "Valis" (Philip K. Dick) (May 26)*
31. "Angels of Perversity" (Remy de Gourmont) (June 30)
32. "Monsieur de Phocas" (Jean Lorrain) (July 6)
33. "Inferno" (August Strindberg) (July 10)
34. "Soul Kitchen" (Poppy Z. Brite) (July 19)
35. "Monsieur Venus" (Rachilde) (July 20)
36. "A Haven" (J.K. Huysmans) (July 26)
37. "Breakfast at Tiffany's" (Truman Capote) (July 30)
38. "Surfaces" (Thomas Moore) (Aug. 7)
39. "Bat-Wing" (Sax Rohmer) (Aug. 13)
40. "Convolvulus & Other Poems" (Kenneth Grant) (Aug. 14)
41. "Recollections of the Golden Triangle" (Alain Robbe-Grillet) (Aug. 18)
42. "Gamaliel/Dance, Doll, Dance!" (Kenneth Grant) (Aug. 23)

* = book I've read at least once in the past

Books I started reading this year but didn't finish:

"The Secret History" (Donna Tartt)
"Gravity's Rainbow" (Thomas Pynchon)
"Atlas Shrugged" (Ayn Rand)
"En Route" (J.K. Huysmans)
"Hell" (Henri Barbusse)
"Pasquale's Angel" (Paul J. McAuley)
"The Dice Man" (Luke Rhinehart)

Non-fiction books I've read most of the whole way through this year:

"England's Hidden Reverse" (David Keenan)
"Antichrist" (Bernard McGinn)
"The Life of J.K. Huysmans" (Robert Baldick)
"The Image of Huysmans" (Brian Banks)
"The Road From Decadence: Selected Letters of J.K. Huysmans"
"Decadence and Catholicism" (Ellis Hanson)

reading plan:

rest of August:

"The Other Child & Other Stories" (Kenneth Grant)

September:

"The Red and the Black" (Stendhal)
"The Beetle" (Richard Marsh)
"The Street of Crocodiles" (Bruno Schulz)
"The Hearing Trumpet" (Leonora Carrington)

October:

"The Bell Jar" (Sylvia Plath)
"The Shadow at the Bottom of the World" (Thomas Ligotti)
"Diary of a Drug Fiend" (Aleister Crowley)

That should take me to #50. So I'd then have two months to read whatever I want... I'm thinking I might try to tackle the 4 Jean Genet novels that I've had forever now yet keep putting off.

Man, reading all these books has been quite a marathon. I think next year I might only read a few big books, such as "Gravity's Rainbow" (which I just couldn't get through this year), "The Magus", William Gaddis' "The Recognitions", "The Decameron", and so forth.
 
 
Our Lady Has Left the Building
17:26 / 28.08.08
In the last few weeks I finished Look to Windward which is the first Iain M. Banks sci-fi novel I've enjoyed in a while, neither The Algebraist or Inversions really did much for me. But when Banks really goes for it on a massive canvas where one-side has almost infinite power and the other side doesn't, but he still manages to make it suspenseful, while never losing site of the human (or alien) story at the centre of it all... This man is terribly underappreciated by the British public.

Then I read Alan Moore's Voice of the Fire. Hmmm, after the horrific slog of the first chapter, 50 pages written with a deliberately reduced language base from the point of view of a caveboy who hallucinates (I think this is the theory that pre-Homeric humans might have mistaken their own internal monologues as communications from Gods?) Alan gives up on that and all his other characters talk in near perfect English, even when they are characters, such as a Roman inspector, who have no reason to (his Crusading Knight would have spoken French wouldn't he?) and just when it seems to be building towards something Alan throws in the towel with a final chapter which, while great, deliberately does nothing to cap the story off. He treats the idea better in the performance pieces he does with Tim Perkins a few years after this book comes out.

We have a thread on it here.

I'm currently reading Mapping London which looks like a history of attempts to map London and the effect this has had on the development of the city.

I also picked up Men in Skirts by Andrew Bolton, second-hand in Spittalfields Market. It goes with the V&A exhibition of a few years ago which I unfortunately missed. I am, as you might guess, very excited to read this, though as Bolton insists that while it's looking at men wearing skirts it's not about drag or cross-dressing I'm a little concerned that he may have stopped himself from saying anything useful right from the start.
 
 
Mistoffelees
07:43 / 29.08.08
(I think this is the theory that pre-Homeric humans might have mistaken their own internal monologues as communications from Gods?)

Yes, that´s called Bicameralism.

"In psychology, bicameralism is a controversial hypothesis which argues that the human brain once assumed a state known as a bicameral mind in which cognitive functions are divided between one part of the brain which appears to be "speaking," and a second part which listens and obeys."


Inversions also did nothing for me. I started reading IMB´s science fiction in january and have read almost all his sf novels and inversions and matter felt lacking. I thought that might be because I overdosed on his books, but then I read The state of the art, and that was solid culture fun again.

At the moment, I read Viriconium by M. John Harrison. It is a collection of short stories and novellas that take place in the far future. Large areas of earth are a huge junkyard and people live in some kind of medieval times, using leftovers of thousand years old technology (similar to Book of the New Sun). They fight beetles from space or brain eating robots and it´s all described very vividly. The blend of fantasy and scifi works very well, everything (landscapes, characters, history) is really fleshed out, and the battle scenes for example are a joy to read.

I also have to look up many words, even after reading english almost every day for the last twenty years. I´ve never before read words like serac, pinafore, mahout, litharge, gamboge.
 
 
The Idol Rich
09:25 / 29.08.08
Then I read Alan Moore's Voice of the Fire. Hmmm, after the horrific slog of the first chapter, 50 pages written with a deliberately reduced language base from the point of view of a caveboy who hallucinates (I think this is the theory that pre-Homeric humans might have mistaken their own internal monologues as communications from Gods?) Alan gives up on that and all his other characters talk in near perfect English, even when they are characters, such as a Roman inspector, who have no reason to (his Crusading Knight would have spoken French wouldn't he?) and just when it seems to be building towards something Alan throws in the towel with a final chapter which, while great, deliberately does nothing to cap the story off.

It's a funny one that book. I read it years ago and hated it but a couple of years back I read it again and I raised my opinion of it somewhat. Still, it's definitely no masterpiece; for every interesting idea there is something that doesn't quite come off or that is just plain irritating.
 
 
illmatic
14:05 / 02.09.08
I really liked it. I particularly liked the first few chapters, including the weird first one. After a while I got into trying to decode his strage language, and I loved the way how

SPOILER

Grok, or whatever his name is, couldn't comprehend it when he first encountered someone who was lying.

I think the second story was the strongest - the evil murderess and the tattooed village shaman. I really love the idea of that intense focus on place.
 
 
The Idol Rich
14:57 / 02.09.08
SPOILER (such as it is) CONTINUES

Grok, or whatever his name is, couldn't comprehend it when he first encountered someone who was lying.

Yes, I liked that too - except it seemed inconsistent with a joke that he made earlier in the same chapter which relied on similarly pretending that someone was something that they weren't.
I agree that the second chapter may have been the best, it's certainly one that sticks in my head better than most although that might just be due to a general sense of annoyance that accumulated chapter by chapter throughout the book and prevented me reading the later chapters with such interest.
 
 
Kevis
00:17 / 11.09.08
I'm about to embark in Anarcho-Syndicalism Theory and Practice by Rudolf Rocker... I'm using it to punctuate my reading of 3x George, an orgy of Carlin... which is basically an anthology of three Carlin books...
 
 
Hallo, Paper Spaceboy
14:22 / 22.09.08
I'm prepared to make a pithy post in its thread once I'm further along, but I'm in the midst of the first section of Zadie Smith's White Teeth, apparently seven years after everyone else. I'm enjoying it so far, although I find her prose occasionally drops into cliche which makes it stumble. It's funny, which I can appreciate. Not sure how I feel about some of the comedy accents (speech patterns = good, cheesy accents transcribed = bad).
 
 
mashedcat
13:09 / 30.09.08
kallisti pointed out one of my favourite authors and books,, Umberto Eco,,, Foucaults Pendulum,,,genius writing ,,,,he makes history a must,,,other books like Name Of The Rose,,,,The Island Of The Day Before and Baudolino, were extraordinarily clever books .. Eco draws the reader in to a subject not anticipated yet so deeply engaging. i havn`t read the rest but i hope to soon ,
 
 
zoetrope101
03:05 / 03.11.08
House of Leaves - Danielewski. I know I should have read this by now but time is a valuable commodity. Lighter stuff with the last two of Elmore Leonard, and of course - A Wanted Man, John LeCarre. Notes From the Underground is lying here somewhere too..
 
 
nyarlathotep's shoe horn
11:46 / 09.11.08
I just finished

"Three Day Road" by Joseph Boyden ~ two Canadian Cree boys go off to World War 1 together. It's a surprisingly captivating story, which is ultimately about the true healing of one's spirit.

Just picked up his second novel

"Through Black Spruce" which has been short~listed for a Giller Prize. I've only read the first handful of pages. The tone is quite different from "Three Day Road."
 
 
This Sunday
11:58 / 09.11.08
Rereading Simone de Beauvoir's Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter, and even though it's been years since I last read it, I slipped right back in. She's always very involving, regardless of translator, possibly due to certain structurist blurs that come and go (the early color delineations, for example), but there's an enveloping quality to Memoirs... in particular, that I have never been able to nail down and replicate.
 
 
Anna de Logardiere
13:40 / 10.11.08
My favourite has always been The Prime of Life!
 
 
Dusto
16:44 / 12.11.08
About to start Roberto Bolano's 2666, despite all the hype. That is, I usually find myself averse to the author du jour for whatever knee-jerk reason, but this book actually looks promising.
 
 
Eek! A Freek!
18:54 / 12.11.08
I'm reading my first Cormac McCarthy Novel, Blood Meridian.

So far I'm loving it: I'm almost half through. I heard that The Road, All the Pretty Horses, and No Country for Old Men are equally impressive. I'm gonna avoid the Cormac McCarthy thread until I form my own ideas...
 
 
GogMickGog
11:57 / 13.11.08
Delillo. Mao II. Absolute sex on toast. My first of his, and deffo not the last. I thought post modernism was supposed to be cold and indifferent but he's so invested in the language of the piece. Sure, the characters are mostly cyphers, but they're channeling a sensitive intelligence.

Also, Dan Farson's Soho in the 50s. Lots of familiar types (Bacon, Deakin, beloved Maclaren-Ross) and littered with the author's excellent photographs.

For sleazy variety, I've been leafing through Mark Manning's Crucify Me Again for the umpteenth time. A very naughty book indeed, but peppered with some mean insight.

Next it's some Conrad for course reading and Waugh's Scoop which is about the only one of his left I haven't read.
 
 
Dusto
12:05 / 13.11.08
If you like Mao II, you'll love Delillo. I think. That is to say, it's my least favorite book of his that I've tried, so everything else should be even better. Though I tend to favor his earlier stuff, in general. I know it's standard, but White Noise is definitely my favorite.
 
 
Janean Patience
15:24 / 13.11.08
Echoing Dusto's sentiments on MaoII; it's definitely one of DeLillo's weakest. If you liked it, there's lots more fun ahead. My personal favourites are Ratner's Star for crazy Pynchonesque invention and for the jokes, Great Jones Street as a relatively short but very complete book, and The Names because it's always overlooked.

That last used to be my favourite, but it's probably been overtaken by Underworld or specifically the good bits of Underworld. It's strange, but I find whole sections of DeLillo completely discardable. I love End Zone but probably haven't ever read the football game midsection through even once, most of the non-New York bits of Underworld I skip while enjoying the rest again and again, and I love the first quarter of Americana while finding the rest boring and overwrought.
 
 
The Idol Rich
12:33 / 17.11.08
kallisti pointed out one of my favourite authors and books,, Umberto Eco,,, Foucaults Pendulum,,,genius writing ,,,,he makes history a must,,,other books like Name Of The Rose,,,,The Island Of The Day Before and Baudolino, were extraordinarily clever books ..

I liked the other ones but for some reason The Island of The Day Before did nothing but annoy the hell out of me. It’s years since I read it but I always remember it as one of my most frustrating reading experiences – especially so because I was expecting to enjoy it.

I love the first quarter of Americana while finding the rest boring and overwrought.

That’s pretty much my take on that book. The early bits are really funny but it definitely goes off the boil. Or at least, more charitably, it changes in what it sets out to do and I liked the first aim better. My favourite DeLillo is White Noise.

Anyway, I’m just reading Voyage To Arcturus by David Lindsay – for those who don’t know it’s kind of sci-fi without any science stuff or maybe Pilgrim’s Progress set on a far away planet. Very readable and fun and also allegorical no doubt.
 
 
The Idol Rich
16:06 / 25.11.08
I liked the other ones but for some reason The Island of The Day Before did nothing but annoy the hell out of me. It’s years since I read it but I always remember it as one of my most frustrating reading experiences – especially so because I was expecting to enjoy it.

(apologies for quoting myself but I have done so there) I met someone the other day who it turns out is good mates with Umberto Eco, I got quite drunk and told him to make sure to ask him why that book is so shit next time he sees him. I won't hold my breath for a reply though.
Anyway, just read Aurelia and Others by Gerard de Nerval and I'm about to embark on Death's Jest Book by TL Beddoes. The former was kind of weird and interesting and allegedly an influence on some of the surrealists and Proust but I found the prose a little fiddly at times.
 
 
nyarlathotep's shoe horn
15:36 / 13.12.08
thanks to this thread I just plowed through

"No Country for Old Men" & "the Road" by Cormac McCarthy

also
"Ceremony" by Leslie Marmon Silko

This is one of the densest stories I've read in quite some time. I've also read her "Almanac of the Dead" and she evokes some powerful moments in both.

"Medicine River" by Thomas King

An earlier novel of his. i can see the roots of "Green Grass Running Water" in it.

The above two authors are both first nations, Silko is part Laguna I think (SW USA) and King is part Cherokee. I find their characters and traditional story telling methods worked into fiction clever and crafty.

"Ceremony" in particular is a very powerful tale. There's much more to it than what appears on the surface, as if Silko's found the way to bipass our intellect and speak directly to the brainpan.
 
 
STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK
20:21 / 16.12.08
I've just started The Religion by Tim Willocks. Pretty swashbuckling stuff about the Knights of Malta. Much rogering, puking and roister-doistering, which makes a good read while waiting for the computer to take its turn in Medieval 2. It has a properly cool anti-hero figure (Mattias Tannhauser)- an arms dealer and bar owner who was once a janissary but is about to brave the Turkish blockade of Malta to help a Countess find her lost son- real Han Solo stuff. It's rather beautifully written as well, and the guy seems to have done his research, and I have a feeling both sides in the conflict are going to be treated with equal cynicism.
 
  

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