What books are you reading?

hotseatgames wrote: The Altered Carbon show, and the anime, were both good.

The second season of AC tanked so badly though, from the miscast Anthony Mackie to the decision to scrape all the dull bits of the other 2 books for a plot and then shy away from all the salaciousness that made the first season at least fun to watch.

dysjunct wrote: The Devils by Joe Abercrombie. I'm in for pretty much everything Abercrombie writes and this sure is some of it. If you've read Abercrombie, you know what to expect. It's not "dark fantasy" in the sense of Warhammer, but it is definitely not heroic in any sense. Mostly morally ambiguous characters, generally trying to do the right thing, or at least survive, but who are thrown into situations where they have to make pretty rotten choices. What sets Abercrombie apart for me is the wry humor that runs through the writing -- the books are very funny, which is a nice counterpoint to otherwise bleak or nailbiting plots.

This is not in the same setting as his main writing (The Blade Itself etc.) but in an alt-history Europe where the Church is gender-swapped: the pope, bishops, and most of the saints are women; the savior was a woman, and male priests have the same status as nuns in the real world -- respected but not really granted a lot of power in the hierarchy.

And there's a handful of sorcerers, werewolves, and vampires. Elves are vaguely analogous to Jews -- they occupy the holy land and are second-class citizens in pretty much every way. Jews don't seem to exist in the setting.

Anyway, I'm about halfway through. Great read, will happily revisit any other books in the setting.

I just finished this and OMG it's such a fun read. The dialogue is so witty. Really has it's Douglas Adams moments of outright silly but pitch perfect exchanges. Much lighter(?) than The Blade Itself. Love the whole split in the church over The Wheel verus The Circle, such a great satire of religious splitting hairs.

A colleague refers to Abercrombie as "scoundrel fiction" and says he likes it a lot.