melreads | Entries tagged with author: corey

(always possibility of spoilers here!! - especially for later Expanse books, in this case)

Monday, July 24
I was thinking about two-author books. The only thing I know about how "Corey" works is that they started out with one of them writing Holden and the other writing Miller. That reminded me of the books that Patricia Wrede wrote with Caroline Stevener (which were literally an exchange of letters, in real life, as I understand it) - starting with Sorcery and Cecilia. Those are basically Regency with magic - the first one is an out-and-out romance, too (only with magic). I think I may need to re-read that.

(It occurs to me to wonder if the idea for Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell came from that. Same combination of Regency and magic.)

Tuesday
I'm finishing up Cibola Burn, and the last time I read the epilogue I must've been totally skimming, because it lays down a foundation for the rest of the books in a way I didn't really take in before. (I can see missing it before I read the others, but that was a while ago now.) The gist: once Mars' population starts leaving for the gates in significant numbers, the Martian terraforming project will fail, so Mars as a civilization fails too. Nobody needs their natural resources when they can get them beyond the gates - and that means the immediately valuable thing left is their military might - leading to Marco and Laconia and all that.)

Friday
It's early and I can't sleep so I thought maybe writing would clear my brain a bit and help me sleep. I can't say I really have anything brilliant to say about books at the moment, though. I did read straight through Sorcery and Cecilia the other night. There are two more books in that series, but I don't think I have the second one any more, only the third. Which is a shame, because even if the third one is better than the second (which it is), I'd still like to re-read the whole series, not just 2/3 of it.

(discussion of fictional violence, & spoilers)

Friday, July 24, 2020
Hmm, I haven't actually read much in the last day or two. I was kind of looking at some things I might want to read in the future, some recommendations and such... For one thing, I have one of the Murderbot books, I think, and that seems like something I'd like. (I say "book" but I think maybe they're novellas?) I also saw some recommendations from the Expanse guys about "spaceship" SF, which might be interesting!

Sunday
I don't know that I have much to say. I finished the romance novel. (The one guy did commit suicide, the other guy did egg him on, but this is something that happened several years in the past, in the book, and the protagonists agree that there's not going to be a way to punish the egger-on, and they move on. A lot of Mary Balogh books seem to be about getting past the traumas that happened in your past.)

Meanwhile, I'm back to slogging through Cibola Burn. I'm to the part where there's a huge apocalyptic event on the other side of the planet Holden and Amos are on, and it seems for a while like everybody's absolutely going to die, but actually most of them don't, in the end. This book has now been done by the TV series, too. We watched one episode (of the 4th season, that is) and Rob seemed interested but we haven't come back to it. I guess I'll go finish it on my own, at some point. Rob and I tend to have difficulty coordinating on TV shows sometimes. Anyway, I will get through this book eventually. Possibly with another romance novel going in parallel!

Spoilers always possible here!

Tuesday, July 21, 2020
These books (meaning the Expanse series) are really "boy" books, in a way. Lots of violence, I prefer my action without a whole lot of actual killing, but I'm not likely to get that wish unless I go back to reading romance novels. Even "girl" books usually have some violence. Heck, even romance novels often have some level of violence. Often there's a little murder mystery, or a violent suitor or something like that.

(Later) I was trying to remember one romance where an evil guy deliberately eggs somebody on to kill themself. - It took me a while to figure it out, but i think it's The Proposal - or at least one of the books in that series, a Mary Balogh series where all the protagonists were in the Napoleonic wars and all of them are traumatized. The maybe-suicide that I was thinking about was the heroine's late husband.

(Even later, continuing the thought) To say "maybe-suicide" is not fair to the evil guy. It was a suicide - the guy jumped off a balcony. It's just that the guy who could have been trying to dissuade him, didn't. (And he stood to inherit, so there's definitely motive there.) I've actually started re-reading this now, did I say that? I need an antidote between doses of Expanse, anyway.

Beware - definite spoilers here!

Saturday, July 18, 2020
Finished Abaddon's Gate. I guess moving on to... what's the name of the next one, I can't think. The one on the planet beyond the gate, anyway. (Cibola Burn, I just looked.) I need to look up Cibola, I don't what it means beyond what Trashcan Man says in The Stand. A mythical city? My grasp of mythology beyond the very basics of Greek and Roman gods is tenuous.

Let's see, before we move on, do I have more thoughts about Abaddon? Don't really understand that reference either, beyond Abaddon being a Big Bad. These guys, meaning the authors (I can't think of them as one person) write such good characters. Sam dying feels like a punch in the gut. (I also think of the revelation way later that she and Pa were lovers. Doesn't surprise me that Sam would like girls, but there's hardly even any inference that she knows Pa to speak of. Sam's been on Tycho and I mostly never got the impression that Pa was, although maybe I'm wrong. Anyway, never occurred to me at all.)

Sunday a.m.
I forget every time how depressing Cibola Burn is - actually all these books are pretty depressing, come to that. Dropping rocks on Earth, for god's sake - and we haven't even gotten to that part yet! By that standard, Cibola Burn's terrorists and alien robots and killer snails are minor-league.

Monday
Well into Cibola Burn now - well 10%, according to Kindle. (Still getting rolling, but not the very beginning.) I was thinking that nowadays my brain registers this duality: I think of the characters and I also think of the way the authors are setting things up, to play out later in the book. I think as time goes on I see it from the authors' POV more and more. Maybe that's why I have trouble getting quite as immersed in books in general the way I used to. Or, I don't know, maybe I've been that way for years and I'm just now noticing. (Some of that definitely came from being an English major, though. I think before that, I was oblivious.)

I think I should just make this line standard in every entry:
Note: definite possibility of spoilers!
(and then if I get way spoilery like I did way down below with The Expanse, I'll put it in the title, too!)

Monday, June 29
(Writing in my brand-new journal, a Happy Planner Classic Horizontal)
Currently reading: Leviathan Wakes

I can't resist writing here even though it's early. (NOTE that this refers to the paper journal - I was writing in the July start journal even though it was still June.) The plan is that this will be my book journal - we'll see how I stick with that. There's not a lot of room here so I'll have to write short bits here - unless I get behind, which I often do in my regular journal. And if I have anything lengthy to say it'll just have to go elsewhere! So I'm reading Expanse #1 (the one above), but I've stopped for the moment and I'm reading romance novels instead. My favorite romance novelist is Mary Balogh, who writes characters much more realistic than most, it seems to me. (No matter that her sex scenes are in fact mostly the same one over and over, with some variations. Sex scenes don't interest me as much as they used to, anyway.)

Wed., July 1 - I wanted to read "Someone to Remember" which is a novella so it will go fast, but first I re-read Someone to Honour, which is the book before it chronologically, and which has a plot that intertwines with the novella. (All the books in this series are "Someone to _____" which makes it hard to remember which is which.) I just finished the first one so I can read the novella tomorrow.

Thurs. - So, Someone To Remember is the very unusual romance with a middle-aged heroine. The funny thing is that I noticed the minute the author started thinking of her as a person. For the first few books of the series she was a bit of a caricature, the maiden aunt who stayed at home. Then she started to change, gradually. I became convinced a couple of books ago that she would get her own romance, and she did.

Friday - Okay, I veered off to romance-land long enough to read three books, no less, but I'm ready to go back into The Expanse this weekend, skipping some 4 or 5 hundred years in one fell swoop. (The books are vague about what year it is, but the TV series says 23rd century - not the near future but not unimaginably far, either.)

Saturday - I am 2/3 of the way through Leviathan Wakes, lest you think I read nothing but romance novels all week. I'm just reading in fits and starts. It's funny how I visualize this in my mind now that I've seen the TV show. Left on my own, the way I visualize book characters is pretty vague. I don't really form much of an idea what they look like, exactly (past whatever description is in the book, I mean), although once in a while I'll realize that I've "cast" some character in my head and I'm thinking of a certain actor, usually without even realizing it for a while. Here, I seem to see them now as somewhere between what I originally saw in my head and the TV actors - except Miller, who I'm pretty definitively seeing as Thomas Jane, most of the time.

Monday, July 6th
OK, done with Expanse #1, on to #2, which is Caliban's War, the one about Ganymede, the one where Bobbie shows up. (After that is the one out at the gate, then the one at the planet on the other side of the gate. Then Marco drops his stealth rocks on Earth - that's the next two. Then the ones about, um, the ex-Martians - Laconians, is that it? That makes eight, right? And #9 isn't out yet. So seven more books to re-read, that'll keep me busy for a while.) Will I go straight into Caliban's War? Yeah, maybe I will - well, maybe not right this minute. But I'm pretty sure I'll at least start it before I veer off into anything else. That book is one of my favorites.

Tues. - I'm now a good way in on Caliban's War - 12%, says the Kindle. Prax is a good character, it's a shame he didn't fit into the other books - but what would be their excuse for carrying around their own botanist? (I do think he and Mei make some brief appearances later.) Avasarala and Bobbie both stay around for ages, so you can't have everything. (Now I'm thinking about character deaths and such. They killed Miller off in book one and he was back for two more books. Amos is also effectively dead but it looks like he'll make it into #9.)

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Entries tagged with author: corey

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Flashback: 2020, late July - still slogging through Cibola Burn

Flashback to 2020, late July - sci-fi and romance (spoilers!)

Flashback to July 2020: gender issues

Flashback: 2020, mid-July (spoilers for Expanse books 3-4)

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