Fantasy Book Critic: A Quick Snapshot of Recent and Current Reads (with comments by Liviu Suciu)

Here is the list of the current top 18 books I am looking at courtesy of Goodreads - I cannot emphasize enough how useful Goodreads is to keep track of books you read, you want to read etc, even leaving aside its social network component.

While Imager's Battalion is a truly addictive read that is hard to put down and I am a huge fan of both Rhenn and Quaeryt's tales, the book is coming out only in January, so there is time enough for it if I can resist of course...

On the other hand both Dark Matter (UK) /In Free Fall (US) by Juli Zeh and the trilogy Your Face Tomorrow by Javier Marias are books I have wanted to read for some time now and they seem to fit the spot of "challenging reads of interest" for now.

On the sf front, Alarm of War is a very intriguing Weberian series debut which moves briskly in the 50 pages or so I read so far, while The Fractal Prince is still cluttered, though seems a bit more flowing that The Quantum Thief. As I was not bowled over by that one, The Fractal Prince is a make-or-break series and author book for me and I plan to give it my full attention.

Of the rest, I went fast through the famous and controversial The Reader (63K+ ratings on Goodreads which is a lot) a while ago but I am planning to give it a more thorough read, while the rest are books I want to read given time - some like The Rise of Ransom City, Boxer Beetle, The Black Mausoleum, Breaking Bamboo, Hikikomori and the Rental Sister (this one which is an earc from Net Galley and a January 2013 release has an irresistible title and actually starts very well), The Painter of Silence, The Black Isle and The Uninvited, I am sure I will read at some point for various reasons, the others will see...

Of course the list is not static and as October has some huge asaps (see my comment there) and there is an implied promise by Tony Weisskopf at Baen that an earc of David Weber's Shadow of Freedom will be available to buy by mid-month and even earlier if possible, who knows how this list will look in a week or so...

The mixture of the books above is: 4 SF (including The Last City and The Uninvited) 3 fantasy (including The Black Isle), 11 mainstream, with 7 review copies and 11 books obtained by me. Also 12 are 2012/13 releases, 3 2010/11 ones.

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(list here; click on picture for higher resolution)

Here, just a quick snapshot of my last 30 books read, covering essentially August and September, and noting that I reviewed either fully or at least in a few thoughts some 14 of the above here on FBC (and Mihir reviewed one more), I plan to review 7 in the near future and maybe talk a little about HHhH too here at some point, while you can find my raw thoughts on Goodreads through the link above.

The mixture of the books above is: 7 SF (including the Steampunk debut The Clockwork Giant) 4 fantasy, 17 mainstream including two installments of a serial, and 2 non-fiction, with 7 review copies and 23 books obtained by me. Also 26/30 have at least one 2012 edition (some are translations, some are US editions of late 2011 UK books).