Thanks for the recommendations. I wasn’t aware of the short story, but my friend who loaned me Saturn’s Children spoke well of Neptune’s Brood as well.
Finished Saturn’s Children yesterday. I think it was pretty good. It had some interesting takes on many ideas, some of which are a bit disturbing. The final part of the book felt a bit like stuff just happened, but considering the scale and such that is probably the right way of telling it from the perspective of the narrator.
By coincidence I read it just after a book in the Imperial Radch trilogy, which makes for some interesting comparisons. Now, on to Ancillary Mercy.
I continued reading through the whole Lois McMaster Bujold’s Vorkosigan series and am now almost through, with only the short story Dreamweaver’s Dilemma remaining. The last two novels, Cryoburn and Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen were a bit of a let down, but perhaps only in comparison to the excellent rest of the series.
Those two books are IMO objectively inferior to the others.
Cryoburn is just plain bad.
Gentleman Jobe is not badly written, but it has no tension and release, either as a romance (which by convention has to thwart the lovers for a while and requires them to do something positive to overcome their problems) or according to any other genre form. It’s just and-then-this-happened with everything working out well because all the characters are grownups who like or love one another. That’s nice, but it’s not very interesting. As a fuck-you note to the retrogressive Baen editors I kind of like it, but as a novel it’s not much.
I don’t agree. Gentleman Jole, especially, is a lovely thing. Oh, sure, there’s not that much plot or tension, really. But it’s the 16th book in the series, and I for one was more than invested enough in the characters by that point to enjoy a sedate, mature, funny and heartwarming romance orbiting around them, especially with the opportunity to see Miles from a more…parental…perspective for once. And you get some interesting details about Sergyar as a bonus.
Finished up the Imperial Radch trilogy with Ancillary Mercy (review blog post here). Books two and three feel almost like two halves of a full novel, in my opinion. A whole lot of groundwork from Ancillary Sword is resolved in Ancillary Mercy. It pretty much wraps up Breq’s story, though there’s a whole lot of conflict-across-the-galaxy left if Leckie wants to keep going in the same world. I enjoyed the whole trilogy, though the first book is definitely the best one.
Generally agree. I didn’t like the opening ice-planet episode in the first Ancillary book, because it felt both cliched and less than fully polished to me. But I liked the rest of the first book a great deal. The next two books were relatively thin on plot (though they move the story along), and don’t wrap up the main story at all, but are still a lot of fun.
Completed Joe Abercrombie’s Shattered Sea trilogy, which I very much enjoyed. I don’t think it has quite the same depth of character as The First Law series, but it’s just as entertaining. Here’s my thoughts on the third book (and that has links to thoughts on the other two). It’s billed as a young adult series, but I’m pretty sure my parents wouldn’t have wanted me reading this when I was a teenager - fairly graphic violence, lots of slavery, moderate sex (though not explicit). Changing world, I suppose, and fine for kids that are mature enough to handle it.
Good to know the Shattered Sea series is good. I only have two more books set in the First Law world.
I did just finish Abercrombie’s Red Country. I had it in my Kindle collection for some reason, probably grabbed it on sale a while back. I really enjoyed it, though it’s a western set in the First Law world. It does have the return of Logen Ninefingers, so it’s great for that alone.
I hope Abercrombie continues to write in this world. I’d like see some resolution with the first magi, Bayez.
I also just finished Imperium by Robert Harris, first in a trilogy of novels about the life of Cicero. Robert Harris has been a bit hit-and-miss for me, I loved Fatherland and The Ghost, but didn’t care for Enigma or Archangel, with Pompeii falling somewhere in between. But Imperium was great, both as a political thriller and as historical fiction and I’m really looking forward to Lustrum now.
Finished Some Kind of Fairy Tale by Graham Joyce. The basic premise is that a teenage girl named Tara disappeared roughly 20 years ago, and it broke her family and boyfriend in various ways. Everyone has long since assumed she’s dead and there was suspicion that the boyfriend did it, but he was never actually charged. And then, on Christmas Day, she turns up again suddenly. She doesn’t look much older than when she disappeared, and although at first she claims to have wandered the world, she eventually tells them the true story - namely, that a horseman stole her away to another place and she was trapped there for six months…which turned out to be 20 years for everyone else. Naturally, no one believes her. And the rest of the book is about how her family (particularly her brother) and her boyfriend cope with her reappearance and outlandish story, visiting her nephew (who has accidentally shot a neighborhood woman’s cat) and the psychiatrist they send her to along the way. Of course, it’s a novel and labels itself a fairy tale right off, so we the readers are inclined to suspect that her story is 100% accurate, and there are things that come up that hint in that direction…but it never actually says flat out and there -could- be mundane explanations. It makes for an interesting character study.
Also finished Afterparty by Daryl Gregory. It follows the efforts of a woman named Lyda, who while attempting to find a cure for schizophrenia with her wife and a couple of partners, accidentally created a drug that when ingested makes you feel like God is there, watching you. And then they all collectively were overdosed with it and now she sees an angel with her, all the time, forever. Her partners do too. And oh yeah, her wife was murdered sometime in there. But the novel kicks off ten years later, when she discovers that someone is distributing that drug, which was never brought to market and which she absolutely does not want in circulation. So she gets out of the mental instituion she’s currently in (along with her paranoid former spy lover, whose brain was permanently damaged by another drug that promotes pattern association when she was working as an analyst) and goes on a search for her former partners, who are clearly the only ones that can be responsible. Lots of revelations along the way (you don’t know a fair bit of the above going in normally, although there’s still plenty left to find out), and an interesting near future vision.
Based on recommendations in the movie forum, I picked up The Girl With All The Gifts and I can’t put it down. Really great stuff
Finished The Black Lung Captain, the 2nd in Tales of the Ketty Jay.
Aircars and adventure. An amoral Captain who usually does the right thing. And a very interesting crew. Good stuff.
Started Cockroaches, the 2nd Harry Hole police procedural.
