The islanders

Not an easy read. Priest puts together a group of stories about many islands that are part of an archipelago. The book appears to be set up as a sort of travel guide/history but it strays from that to tell connecting short stories with various recurring characters.

The reader has to put together a narrative from the bits that happened at each island and it's not chronological. There's action, science fiction, romance, and mystery involved in the stories.

If you're bored of the standard narrative structure, this one is interesting and worth a try.

http://etcetcetcetc.tumblr.com/post/22036750714/christopher-priest-the-islanders

I liked being in the world with winds and seas, maps that are inaccurate and incomplete, temporal vortices, strange artists. This is really what kept me reading until the end. The whole thing felt disjointed, although it did strike a decent balance between short tour book-type chapters and the lengthier character chapters. It just didn't fit together as a whole for me. I don't mind having to do a little work to get the gist of things from multiple points of view, but I missed the larger narrative — if it was there. Still, it was fun being in the world.