Lies. It’s fourth in a series of five. But you guys would probably like it. Just finished it. Took a day. Now to wait for May for the final book in the series. 
I’m rereading it for the umpteenth time.
His writing gets much better after the first. It was written in the pages of a forum and self published.
Grimnoir Chronicles are pretty darn good too if you like Noir type of stuff. Alternate history 1920’s. He also has a series based on Warmahordes Malcolm’s Malcontents that’s a Dirty Dozen send up.
His fantasy series is still on book one but it’s a mythology based on Indian folklore and pretty amazing.
I’m a fan and I’ve met him a couple times now. It’s not usually high prose, but it’s good fun.
Who did read ‘The Gormenghast Trilogy’ by Mervyn Peake?
A bit different, but the third book/volume (Titus Alone) was just - whacked out.
I loved the references to Gormenghast in ‘Lords and Ladies’ by Pterry.
Wow. There’s a blast from the past. I read those back in my late teens/early twenties? I don’t remember much in the way of details, but it was different.
Man, that’s a rough read at points. I read it in High School I think. I tried to pick it up again a long time ago and just couldn’t do it again.
Some books are best read once and never again.
I like Terry Goodkind’s Sword of Truth series, always good for a re-read.
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I guess it’s time to start re-reading a classic series that I’ve loved since it first came out: Joel Rosenberg’s Guardians of the Flame series. It’s 10 novels and starts off with a group of college kids who get transported to a magical world during a D&D game. Sounds corny, but the reality of it is really explored well.
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I’ve always heard Ghormenghast is something I should read, but just haven’t gotten around to doing so.
I’m currently enjoying a short story collection from Ramsey Campbell who does a lot of Lovecraftian horror stuff but made his ‘thing’ being UK based (mostly in a small remote region of his own devising). I was honestly a nit surprised that he’s still around: Some of his creations have kind of become part of the ‘core’ of the Lovecraft Mythos, like the Insects from Shagai.
The book is interesting, but ti’s also part of an effort to go no-cellphones (or tablets) at bedtime. So I am forcing myself to read a bit slower but with less distractions: I really got into the mode of being able to look up stuff while reading. Removing this option is tough but I hope it leads to better sleep.
That’s what it always felt like to me: a history text describing a fantastic setting that would make some great novels, graphic novels, or animated series. Blind Guardian (a German progressive metal band) did a fantastic concept album around it (Nightfall in Middle Earth) that had more character and drama than the actual book.
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Sword of Truth : Confessor
I haven’t read it yet since I just bought it today, but I picked up “The Beekeeper’s Apprentice”. It caught my eye because that’s the hobby Sherlock Holmes takes up when he retires. If I remember right, anyone attempting to contact Mr. Holmes are informed of this by various Holmes historical/appreciation societies.
The book is about Holmes and is based on that idea. Holmes meets Mary Russell, a good match for his skills and becomes his apprentice.
Author Laurie R. King wrote fourteen more Mary Russell books, averaging almost one book every year. The preface to this book, first in this series, says that King didn’t write the stories. They arrived in a trunk delivered by UPS with other nicknacks, written by someone known only as “Mary Russell”. King just edited the stories so they could be published.
Wow! I haven’t read those in years!
“My God…it can think.”
Great read!
Yeah, the Blind Guardian album has a couple really great songs on it.
I’m not reading it, my daughter is, but I just have to mention it because of the title.
“Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters.”
Apparently it’s based on the original, but with added sea monsters.
There are others like “Pride and Prejudice and Zombies” and “Android Karenina” that I have also never read either the original or the remake (and probably never will).
I read “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and the Undead” many moons ago. I wanted to try the genre and I picked that one because I liked the source material. Meh. I don’t resent the time I spent reading it, but I didn’t like it enough to read anything else in a similar vein.
Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter was surprisingly good.
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@Johtoguy was asking about cyberpunk movies over here, but I started drifting into books. In a vain effort to contain the topic drift, some favorite books with cyberpunk elements:
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Alastair Reynolds has a sprawling series starting with Revelation Space. It gets a bit non-linear from here, but it’s a mix of ‘Space Opera’ that is surprisingly hard (one book has a fight between two ships traveling between worlds… At ‘merely’ close to light speed. So it takes decades. And it’s tense! Cyberpunk elements include the major worlds being all kinds of horrible: A major aspect is the “Melding Plague” which went after anyone with high-tech implants, and destroyed them, melted them into buildings (which were also affected if they were high-tech), or similar. The ‘modern’ day of the setting is a rougher civilization hat rovers. There’s some “clean” cybernetics in the Conjoiners, whoa re kind of like the Borg, but less pasty and more about hive-mind-as-perfect-communication.
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The Altered Carbon books are great. I dropped the show about midway through the first season: I felt like it was (as do many shows) adding in sex and violence that wasn’t advancing the plot. The trilogy is quite good, and each book is very much it’s own thing, occurring years apart and ‘starring’ different bodies for the main character (Kovachs as in the show). More trans humanist than the typical Shadowrun ‘purple mohawk’ styling.
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Charles Stross’ Glass House is kind of post-post-post cyberpunk. It’s loosely a sequel to his early Accelerando which goes from the modern day to sometime a ways in the future where humanity is very, very different. Glass House is a lot back, as a modern citizen of this future world gets roped into an attempt to simulate late 20th/early21st century life which goes horribly, horribly wrong. Or perhaps right. (Stross is great: His main series is the Laundry Files which is basically Lovecraftian horror being dealt with by IT staff. He is adamantly against steampunk for the most part, however.)
For Steampunk, I liked the Leviathan series, which is basically WWI if it came down to the two main factions being the “Clankers” (Steampunk mecha) and “Darwinists” (genetics gone similarly weird). The story itself has some somewhat predictable aspects (It’s a Young Adult book series I think) but is enjoyable: Kind of reminds me of the Mark Twain or Robert Heinlein works about young adults doing adventures.
Also Cherie Priest’s Boneshaker was good. I haven’t read the sequels, though. More 'standard’s steampunk. Close to the civil war, giant machines, and zombies.
There’s also a great Steampunk Trilogy collection I picked up years ago. It predated what I think of as 'modern’s steampunk, in that it was a lot less about the tech bits as ‘backdrop’ and more about exploring simple weird changes to society.
A bit of a dry read from what I remember but there is also Gibson and Sterling’s collaboration effort The Difference Engine.
I remember reading at the time it was published and the conflict of reviews regarding if it were steampunk or just alternate history. I may have to dust it off and re-read it through the lens of time.
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I think I read that one but didn’t love it.
Larry Correia’s Hard Magic series is gritty Steampunk Magic Noir. 1920’s with Imperial Japanese Airships and Death Rays and an interesting magic system.
He’s also got a couple Warmahordes books out. Kind of a Dirty Dozen vibe in Warmachine.