Originally Posted by brainee (Post 11728703)

About 200 pages in:
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/...SH20_OU01_.jpg

I'm still not sure how I feel about this Malazan series. The first book was tough sledding at times (took lots of double-checking the appendices and glossary to keep track of things), but I liked it. Erikson has created an original fantasy world, some interesting characters, and there are some big epic stories to tell in it. I liked how the second book completely shifted the focus ... mostly new characters, a new continent, and a different story. While the two books were set in the same world, they both told self-contained epic stories.

You'd think by the third book the reading would get easier. But it just feels like a lot of effort to keep track of everyone and everything. Erikson's writing is packed with fantasy jargon that makes it tough for me to really get into the story or characters. It just feels like work to read this, especially compared to how fun and fast my reading of the First Law trilogy was. I don't know ... hopefully things will get better as we move into the meat of the story (about the alliance of former enemies from the first book against a mysterious new cultish empire).

Originally Posted by benedict (Post 11720667)

Just started Charles Stross' "The Apocalypse Codex" but may have to stop as it looks like I've omitted book three, "The Fuller Memorandum".

Also just found a couple of free online shorts set in the same mileu:

• Overtime
• Down on the Farm

Originally Posted by brainee (Post 11760189)

How was this? I really liked the first Joe Ledger book (Patient Zero). I was mixed on the second (Dragon Factory). It seemed like it was throwing too much stuff into the mix and the action scenes were reading almost like a parody of the genre (with an impossibly perfect action hero who can take down whole squads of bad guys without even trying). Otherwise Maberry seems like a solid writer (I also read his epic vampire/werewolf trilogy) and I like the idea of the how the Joe Ledger series reminds at times me of what "24" would be like if it went sci-fi/horror.