Can you recommend a good... no a great read?!

[Stanleythecat]

Hi Folks

I've recently been reading a load of nordic noir - Henning Mankel, Jo Nesbo, some Icelandic chap who I won't even try to spell! And of course Steig Larsson and his unbeatable creation that is Lisbeth Salander. I feel myself getting stuck in a bit of a genre rut; I like the thriller/crime side of these books but the messed up detectives are tiring a little because they all have to be pscologically floored in some way and it's never too disimilar to the last. Lisbeth has something else as she's not on the side of the law... well she's not a police officer for starters!

What I am trying to ask is can you guys recommend a fantasic read? Non stop from beggining to end, well written, keeps you guessing and actually has a good end (rather than running out of steam!!) What was the best fiction book you read recently? I want to be excited to read again!

What do you recon? is there a page turner that you think 'i bloody loved that'?



Many thanks

Leo

 

[ex-member BareThrills]

Simon Scarrow Cato series has kept me busy since xmas. Now on book 11 and i cant get enough.

 

[crosslandkelly]

Gates of fire, by Steven Pressfield.


Go tell the Spartans, stranger passing by, that here obedient to their laws we lie.

Thus reads an ancient stone at Thermopylae in northern Greece, the site of one of the world's greatest battles for freedom. Here, in 480 B.C., on a narrow mountain pass above the crystalline Aegean, 300 Spartan knights and their allies faced the massive forces of Xerxes, King of Persia. From the start, there was no question but that the Spartans would perish. In Gates of Fire, however, Steven Pressfield makes their courageous defence--and eventual extinction--unbearably suspenseful.

In the tradition of Mary Renault, this historical novel unfolds in flashback. Xeo, the sole Spartan survivor of Thermopylae, has been captured by the Persians, and Xerxes himself presses his young captive to reveal how his tiny cohort kept more than 100,000 Persians at bay for a week. Xeo, however, begins at the beginning, when his childhood home in northern Greece was overrun and he escaped to Sparta. There he is drafted into the elite Spartan guard and rigorously schooled in the art of war--an education brutal enough to destroy half the students, but (oddly enough) not without humour: "The more miserable the conditions, the more convulsing the jokes became, or at least that's how it seems," Xeo recalls. His companions in arms are Alexandros, a gentle boy who turns out to be the most courageous of all, and Rooster, an angry, half-Messenian youth.

Pressfield's descriptions of war are breathtaking in their immediacy. They are also meticulously assembled out of physical detail and crisp, uncluttered metaphor:

The forerank of the enemy collapsed immediately as the first shock hit it; the body-length shields seemed to implode rearward, their anchoring spikes rooted slinging from the earth like tent pins in a gale. The forerank archers were literally bowled off their feet, their wall-like shields caving in upon them like fortress redoubts under the assault of the ram.... The valour of the individual Medes was beyond question, but their light hacking blades were harmless as toys; against the massed wall of Spartan armour, they might as well have been defending themselves with reeds or fennel stalks.

Alas, even this human barrier was bound to collapse, as we knew all along it would. "War is work, not mystery," Xeo laments. But Pressfield's epic seems to make the opposite argument: courage on this scale is not merely inspiring but ultimately mysterious. --Marianne Painter, Amazon.com --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Review
"Breathtakingly brilliant... there have been many books about Sparta and its warrior code, but none have captured so magnificently the hearts, minds and spirits of the warriors who fought at Thermopylae. This is a work of rare genius. Savour it!" (DAVID GEMMELL)

"Incredibly gripping, moving and literate... rarely does an author manage to recreate a moment in history with such mastery, authority and psychological insight" (NELSON DeMILLE)

"Brings the battle of Thermopylae to brilliant life... he does for that war what Charles Frazier did for the Civil War in Cold Mountain. When you finish Pressfield's work, you will feel you have fought side by side with the Spartans. This novel is Homeric" (PAT CONROY)

"A tale worthy of Homer, a timeless epic of man and war, exquisitely researched and boldy written. Pressfield has created a new classic" (STEPHEN COONTS)

 

[Tank]

I am not much of a reader and in fact I listen to books more than I read, but I recommend Scott Sigler's books to everyone, they are an escape from the real word. I believe his books would be in the horror/thriller crossed with realistic sci-fi genre.

INFECTED trilogy - INFECTED, CONTAGIOUS and PANDEMIC
Galactic Football League series - THE ROOKIE, THE STARTER, THE ALL-PRO, THE MVP and THE CHAMPION (out sept this year)

Also check out
ANCESTOR , NOCTURNAL and EARTHCORE (this was a Podcast only book but i think this is now get this as a book)

Not everyone's cup of tea but I thoroughly loved them.

 

[Stanleythecat]

Thanks guys. I've not heard of any of those! I expected there to be knives... well swords within some of the suggestions I got back!

 

[British Red]

Try "Death of Grass" by John Christopher. Its about a plague that kills grasses. Doesn't sound scary until you work out that means wheat, rice and the food for most grazing animals. Its a story of a family fleeing the city trying to get to their brothers farm. A real page turner.

 

[Huon]

Try "Death of Grass" by John Christopher. Its about a plague that kills grasses. Doesn't sound scary until you work out that means wheat, rice and the food for most grazing animals. Its a story of a family fleeing the city trying to get to their brothers farm. A real page turner.

A Wrinkle in the Skin, also by John Christopher, is good too. In fact, almost anything by him is well worth reading.

 

[sandbender]

"...is there a page turner that you think 'i bloody loved that'?..."

I couldn't really get into the Larsson novels, however I liked the first Swedish film and the US remake, the Swedish one was by far the best though. The second and third Swedish films not so much.

With that said, a page turner that I enjoyed reading for the second time last Christmas was Neal Stephenson's 'Reamde'.

Amazon blurb:

In 1972, Richard Forthrast, the black sheep of an Iowa farming clan, fled to the mountains of British Columbia to avoid the draft. A skilled hunting guide, he eventually amassed a fortune by smuggling marijuana across the border between Canada and Idaho. Parlaying his wealth into an empire, Richard developed a remote resort in which he lives; he also created T'Rain, a multibillion-dollar, massively multiplayer online role-playing game with millions of fans around the world. But T'Rain's success has also made it a target. Hackers have struck gold, unleashing REAMDE, a virus that encrypts all of a player's electronic files and holds them for ransom. They have also unwittingly triggered a deadly war beyond the boundaries of the game's virtual universe - and Richard is at ground zero. Racing around the globe from the Pacific Northwest to China to the wilds of northern Idaho, Reamde traverses worlds virtual and real. Filled with unexpected twists and turns in which unforgettable villains and unlikely heroes face off in a battle for survival, it is a brilliant refraction of the twenty-first century, from the global war on terror to social media, computer hackers to mobsters, entrepreneurs to religious fundamentalists.


The book contains some bushcrafty elements with folks prepared or otherwise trying to run around the North American wilderness, lots of shooting, lots of techy stuff, a good read.

 

[British Red]

A Wrinkle in the Skin, also by John Christopher, is good too. In fact, almost anything by him is well worth reading.

Very true - a great book - earned a place on my "not to be loaned out" bookshelf

 

[Stingray]

[FONT=arial, sans-serif]Depths by Henning Mankell.Interesting read.[/FONT]