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I finished The Price Of Spring at half past midnight last night. It made me cry a little in a good way, because it was a good ending. The end confrontation was also sufficient, so that makes for a book that I loved every frigging moment of.

In theory I should have had a lot more problems with the fifteen year time gap between the stories. Lots of writers haven’t been able to pull this off; characterization would become unstable, or there would be too many flashbacks to the periods in between. And while I honestly wasn’t such a big fan of Otah and Maati being so old in this book (that’s what you get after three timejumps of fifteen years), it was still done so tastefully. And there were new characters to love, too. The characterization was very strong.

It could be that I would have to think on this somewhat longer, but except for the somewhat slow start I really can’t think of anything I was unhappy with in this book. And even the slow start was needed to establish everything sufficiently before all hell would break loose. So yeah.

Daniel Abraham – The Price Of Spring = made of awesome!

I’m not writing tonight. I’m reading Daniel Abraham’s The Price Of Spring. I wanted to read for just an hour, but I couldn’t. It took a while to get going, but now it’s just one ‘holy fuck’ moment after another.

Talk about a situation having spiraled way out of control, damn, it’s insane. It’s brilliantly written; the characterization is spot on; the twists and turns the plot is taking are spectacular. I love, love, LOVE it.

I’m about 3/4 into the book at the moment, and this story blows my mind. It’s been a very long time since I’ve read anything this awesome.

Mr Abraham, I tip my hat to you. When I grow up, I want to be just as awesome as you <3

So what have I been doing the past few days? Looking back, it wasn’t all that much special stuff. I sat in the garden and read Jacqueline Carey’s Naamah’s Kiss which was a lot of fun (although I would have been just as fine if Moirin had stayed in the City of Elua, I didn’t really care for the whole China storyline) on Tuesday.

On Wednesday I pretty much chilled out some extra. We barbecued up some of the leftovers from the bbq party… lazed around in the heat, because the weather’s been borderline unbearable hot this week. I did heaps of laundry (that still has to be folded and ironed, sadly enough), and Thursday Olli had the day off and he wanted To Do Something And Get Out Of The House. Since he isn’t all that much for the beach, we basically just went for a walk. We hiked to Voorburg in the sweltering heat, and then took a bus to Rijswijk where we scored some network cables at the Boogaard. We just basically took it easy and had drinks, and then walked through Rijswijk back to tram 15 at the Herenstraat. By then I was pretty drenched with sweat (and read ‘totally’ where I said ‘pretty’) so when we got home Olli turned on the garden hose and sprayed me completely wet. I dried up pretty quickly, too. We made caipirinha cocktails from the bottle of rum that I got for my birthday from Nathalie last year, and all in all we had a great time.
And Friday we’ve been helping Kat and Tijs in their new apartment. There are better times in the year to be painting houses, but oh well, it has to be done, sweltering heat or no. That’s what friends are for, right? Also, there was beer afterwards

And for this weekend… I dunno… cleaning, laundry, some more Rock Band 2, and I think I’m going to need to sit down with my bass of awesomeness and figure out how to play it. The boys are pretty insistent that I gotta play with them at the next jamsession, so let’s get down and dirty.

On the subject of genuine enjoyment, I finished Daniel Abraham’s ‘An Autumn War’  this morning while waiting at a rainy & windy tramstop. It’s the third book in the Long Price series that I started a couple of months ago and HOLY FUCK did this pay off!

The first book was enchanting and sweet, and it completely drew me in even though it wasn’t exactly mindblowing. I just found myself loving the setting, the atmosphere of the books. I really enjoyed the tale.
Then came the second book which was nice, but definitely suffered from ‘middle book syndrome’… it was clearly drafted to be a bridge of some sort, and even though all that happened was pretty cool, I could see where we were going to end up with all this.

And now the third book. I said ‘holy fuck’ already, right? Because this totally did blow my mind. It was enticing, it had the feeling that everything was going to hell in a handbasket, the stakes were higher than ever and the writings and setups were cleverly done. I could also enjoy them from a writer’s point of view. It was obvious that Abraham had shitloads of fun with this book and it wouldn’t surprise me if he loved writing this one the most. The resolution of it all completely blindsided me, I hadn’t expected things to work out the way they did.
It left me kind of breathless – and there’s still one more book to go. “The Price of Spring” has not been released yet, however. Looks like I’m going to have to wait again.

Robert Jordan is dead. He died September 16, 2007 from complications from primary amyloidosis with cardiomyopathy (cardiac amyloidosis).
No kidding here… I found out just a bit ago, because George Martin dedicated an entry on him on his blog. Checked up on wikipedia (see link), and it’s true.

Never thought this would happen… he was fighting so hard against his illness, doing so much better already. Guess we’ll never know how the Wheel of Time series ends now.
We’ll never get to Tarmon Gai’don.
What a crying shame… I am pretty bummed about it.

So I finished Red Seas Under Red Skies last night, and I thought I might spend some time this morning convincing the people who are not convinced yet that Scott Lynch is THE AWESOME. I thought that his first book was a bit better, and I’ll go into why I think this in a bit, but what makes Scott Lynch my hero is that the guy is my age, he’s a geek like we all are, he writes great, and it makes reading FUN. It’s been quite a while since reading has been semi-lighthearted uncomplicated fun for me. It made me giggle aloud no less than three times during the reading. And yet despite that, it’s always intelligent, there IS a plot, and the “oh SHIT” moments really work. I nearly chorused it along with the characters.

The Lies of Locke Lamora was just a bit better. For me it’s mostly a pacing issue, and part a characterbuilding issue. I felt like this book spent more time building up and the final deliverance was rather short. Especially the whole Sinspire job – I need to reread there, but I feel that Lynch used the same deception on us as Locke on his mark. I do love the way it turned out though. The way the Stragos issue was handled felt also rather satisfying (although the kind of justice is used is a bit harsh for my taste).
In the first book, the buildup to the large revelations was a bit shorter, compared to the big evening when everything came together.

The whole concept of the pirates was fun, though. Unlike many people, I have no particular love for pirate stories (sorry ), and when I heard the concept of Jean and Locke having to become pirates, I rolled my eyes a bit, I have to admit. However, since Robin Hobb’s liveship traders was also awesome, I decided to give it a whirl. And I was pleasantly surprised. I liked the storyline, I liked Ezri and Zamira. So all was peachy.

I’m curious where Lynch will be going with the characters from now on.
Chalk me up as a fangirl, here’s somebody who loves the sheer fun of this series!