What Book Are You Currently Reading?

Krampus: The Yule Lord by Brom

Ok I'm going to hold off on Krampus - it hasn't drawn me in after 3 chapters, but I have hope it gets better - slow start is all.

So, I'm going back to Neil Gainman with Neverwhere

That's great!

I, too, have just started reading the Dark Forest!

I can already tell the translator isn't as good...or Liu lost something between books 1 and 2.

Armada by Ernest Cline

I'm glad you agree, I'm about 140 pages in and this is better than the first book, so far. The Wallfacer Project is very fun and original to read about.

I've dreamt about writing a sci-fi story that takes a realistic approach in showing the effects of alien contact on the Earth. This is kind of nailing it.

As a writer myself, I look at passages such as this one and think how could I ever compete with that...even it's translation is on another plateau...

'Then he felt like he was standing on a towering cliff top, and the girl's eyes were the vast abyss beneath, covered in a pure white sea of clouds. But the sun shone down from all directions and turned the clouds into a brilliance of colour that surged endlessly. He felt himself sliding downward, a very slow slide, but one he could not arrest under his own power. In a panic, he shook his limbs to try to find a place to hold on. But beneath his body was nothing but slick ice. His slide accelerated, until, finally, with a burst of vertigo, he began to fall into the abyss. In an instant, the joy of falling reached the upper limit of pain.

The Mona Lisa was deforming. The walls were deforming, melting like ice as the Louvre collapsed, its stones turning to red-hot magma as they fell. When the magma passed over their bodies, it felt cool as a clear spring. They fell with the Louvre, passing through a melted Europe toward the center of the Earth, and when they reached it, the world around them exploded in a shower of gorgeous cosmic fireworks. Then the sparks extinguished, and in the twinkling of an eye, space became crystal clear. The stars wove crystal beams into a giant silver blanket, and the planets vibrated, emitting beautiful music. The starfield grew dense like a surging tide. The universe contracted and collapsed, until at last everything was annihilated in the creative light of love.'

I finished it up last night. Fully satisfied.

The only downside is we have to wait until April for the translation of the final book... Same week as GoT, too. Should be quite a Spring.

That it was.

As soon as the people of earth began exclaiming that it was sent as a gift/peace/surrender you knew the spaceshit was going to hit the fan.