As a new item on the blog, I decided to introduce the "Currently reading" feature, where I'll talk about what I am reading at the moment and how I like it.

Right now, I am in the middle of:

Throne of Jade, the second volume in Naomi Novik's Temeraire series. The Temeraire novels are very well-done, in my humble opinion. The concept is simple but very nicely executed: think Napoleonic wars but with an air force. Not any old air force, though, but an air force consisting of dragons, dragons as big men-of-war of the skies with crews and captains and a separate corps. Lovely!

The Odyssey, the second volume in Homer's - well, you know the Odyssey, don't you? But did you actually read it? Like, properly read it from front to back cover? I hadn't, but I'm remediating that fault in my literary education at the moment.

More on both books in later posts...

This "Fiction Rule of Thumb" by xkcd is spot on. In fact, I recently bought a Steven Erikson novel, Reaper's Gale (the seventh book of his Malazan series) and boy, does the fiction rule of thumb apply here :-)

Well, actually, not completely. My main gripe with the novel is that there are just so many small plots with so many different characters - each of which I would have liked to get to know better - that it becomes tiring to keep up with the story. Of course, this being the seventh novel in a series makes it a little unfair for me to judge the novel on that count alone (I picked it up at the airport desperate for something to read on a transatlantic flight). It did have a great atmosphere to it, and the idea of these ancient elder Gods walking around among the mortals, and being at the same time so aloof from the goings-on but also so very earthy in their actions, well that's an idea that really stirred my interest. 

I have yet to finish the novel by the way. I got so exhausted by the plethora of characters and storylines that my jetlagged mind couldn't deal with it. I'll pick it up again soon, now that I'm fit and ready to wrap my mind around it...