I'm glad someone else finally picked up Declare after me shouting about it from the rooftops.

Twilight.

Ha! No, I'm kidding.
Rereading the Dune series of novels. On God Emperor of Dune right now.

You would be better off reading Twilight.

Liked Dune, but only read the first novel. How was Dune Messiah?

By the way, have you seen the miniseries Children of Dune based on the books Dune Messiah and Children of Dune? I liked this miniseries, so it made me wonder if the books are worth a look see. I thought the book for Dune was far better than the film adaptations (a lot more nuance for example, especially for the dinner table scene early in the story, and the scene where Paul slays a Fremen and sheds tears after being chided by his mother). Ironically, I suspect that the film Children of Dune is better than the books it is based on.

I've missed much of this thread so it wasn't your suggestion (rather, me reading the Laundry series and finding out about Declare). It's certainly written better than Stross' work (no insult to him, but Powers is sharper pretty much everywhere).



As for the Laundry and darkness, Case Nightmare Green is coming mid-series (planned arc of 9, plus side-stories) and will probably make things rather unpleasant, to say the least.

I'm now reading Michael Lewis's Moneyball. The book was written in 2003, so it's interesting to think about what has happened since then. Unfortunately for the Oakland A's, the advantages of Sabermetrics disappeared once everybody started doing it - they haven't had a winning season in the past 4 years.

This is a story that the CIA will not want you to read. It will likely shake your faith in the highest levels of America’s national security establishment. And it will leave you feeling as if you are living not in the United States but in a seedy banana republic where there is no line between the good guys and the bad guys.

In “How to Get Away with Murder in America,” the celebrated journalist Evan Wright reveals the extraordinary story of Enrique “Ricky” Prado, an alleged killer for a major Miami drug trafficker who was recruited into the CIA. Despite a grand jury subpoena and a mountain of evidence unearthed by a federal task force, Prado was promoted into the agency’s highest echelons and charged with implementing some of the country’s most sensitive post-9/11 counterterrorist operations, including the agency’s secret “targeted assassination unit.” All while staying in close touch with his cocaine-trafficking boss and, evidence suggests, taking part in additional killings for him.

After Prado retired in 2004 at the rank of SIS-2—the CIA equivalent of a two-star general—he moved to a senior position at Blackwater, the private military contractor, where he continued to run the same, now-outsourced “death squad.” Contrary to government assurances that it was never actually activated, Wright reveals explosive testimony from one of the Blackwater assassins that Prado’s unit was indeed carrying out assigned killings. As a former military intelligence officer told Wright in 2011, “Private contractors are whacking people like crazy over in Afghanistan for the CIA.”

In “How to Get Away with Murder in America,” Wright discloses never-before-seen federal investigation files and lays out a mind-boggling and ultimately damning indictment of Ricky Prado and the intelligence community that embraced and empowered him. It is the deeply disturbing story of a criminal case abandoned because of CIA intervention, political maneuvering, and possibly corruption. Its cast includes Mafia capos, former U.S. Senator Bob Graham, former U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno, Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, former CNN host Rick Sanchez, and Prado’s longtime boss at the CIA and then Blackwater, J. Cofer Black, who is now a “special adviser” to presidential candidate Mitt Romney. Wright also delivers a stunning portrait of Prado’s childhood friend Albert San Pedro, a.k.a. “the Maniac,” the drug lord whom he served for years as loyal bodyguard and enforcer, as well as their longtime nemesis Mike Fisten, the detective who began pursuing them more than two decades ago and still hopes to put them both in prison for murder.

There are many conspiracies in Wright’s story, all of them unsettling. Did the CIA knowingly hire a suspected murderer with strong ties to drug traffickers? Or was the agency a stooge, infiltrated by an underworld hood described by one investigator as “technically, a serial killer”?

“How to Get Away with Murder in America” is likely to have serious repercussions for the U.S. national security establishment. And it will shake to the core your conceptions of government and justice in America.

As for the Laundry and darkness, Case Nightmare Green is coming mid-series (planned arc of 9, plus side-stories) and will probably make things rather unpleasant, to say the least.

I don't know if I should continue on with Burroughs' Barsoom series. I have mixed feelings about it.

The later books get progressively worse in quality, if you're struggling now then don't bother with the rest.
Same goes for a fair few of the 'classics', for example the last two books of the Lensman series are complete pants.