I finished A Feast For Crows (fourth in the Song of Ice & Fire saga and the only contemporary fantasy worth reading imo) by George R. R. Martin a few weeks ago, and just finished The Fifth Child by Doris Lessing.
I found the former to be a bit of a let down to be honest. As it's essentially half a book, it was missing half the characters, and I didn't enjoy the new POVs. Still fantastic, but it's the first in the series which seems to contain padding (not in the Wheel of Time sense though, at least this padding was still enjoyable
). I say seems, because we only really got half a book, and until we get the other half, and the next book after that, it's impossible to really discount any of the apparent padding as, well, padding. Anyway, slightly less than genius is still very good.
As for The Fifth Child, well, I was pretty disappointed. I wouldn't say it's a bad book, but I think one really needs to be a parent to relate. The basic premise is this - David and Harriet are determined to achieve domestic bliss through a traditional blueprint of family life. So, they purchase a large house and have a multitude of children. By the fourth child everything's still going swell, and they appear to be living their dream. Enter the fifth child, a cold, violent, large and ugly child who only seems vaguely human. Sounds like an interesting premise, yeah? Unfortunately I found the writing style to be very dull. I thought the ideas presented were somewhat interesting, but ultimately drawn rather poorly. At the same time, I think I'd have found it more interesting if I was female, a parent, or married and wanted to have kids. Still, it's a short read so I can't complain.