I loved this book. It’s a memoir from Ellie Kemper, who most of us probably know as Kimmy from Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, and the tone is very much what I expected from the actress capable of portraying a “mole woman”. It’s not very long, it’s very amusing, and I recommend it to anyone who enjoyed any of Ellie’s work even a little bit.
The Stone Sky, the third book of the Broken Earth trilogy by NK Jemison.
Good stuff. This was a trilogy that paced out the revelations of its mysteries pretty well… so you always felt you knew as much or more than the main characters, but were aware that there was more going on beneath the surface.
The story ended in a vaguely-dissatisfying way, but that pretty much fit with the gritty grimness of the overall story tone. I’m looking forward to more from this author.
I felt the ending was extremely satisfying, and fitting, given the overall series. YMMV.
I consider this a highly recommended trilogy for both sci-fi and fantasy lovers.
Gentlemen of the Road is a pastiche on Fritz Leiber’s Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser series. I generally like Chabon, but I thought this book was a bit dull.
Yeah, which is why I found it to be an okay read. It was pretty short so it wasn’t a big problem for me. I’ve got some of his other stuff on my to-read list, but there’s a lot of stuff above it in the pile.
I am trying (once again) to listen to The Slow Regard of Silent Things, but I simply don’t like Rothfuss I guess. Every sentence of his is crammed full of adjectives and adverbs. Everything is a superlative. The “most” this or the “best” that. Kvothe (not in this book to be fair, but elsewhere in the series) is also a huge fucking Mary Sue! Bleh.
I read the new Richard Morgan novel, Thin Air. More atmospheric* SF noir, this one set on Mars after a few hundred years of failed terraforming. You can breathe in the canyons, but not on the surface, and the society is a corrupt, faked up frontier under colonial control from Earth.
Not bad, though a slow start due to all the terminology and setting stuff. Once again the hero is an improbably superheroic badass and the female characters are more or less disposable and othered, but the story is well told and the writing is good.
*ha ha see what I did there.
I read the first book in the murder bot diaries by Martha Walls - they had the first book, all systems rejd, on sale.
While I enjoyed it, it was very short. I read it on a 2.5 hr plane ride. Looking at the rest of them, it’s 3 more books, or more importantly, another $30 - and other than the last book, they all clock in on a short 160 pages.
I feel like this is similar to the Jack Campbell’s lost fleet series - I feel like I’m getting fleeced.
Can anyone say if I getting to the end is worth another $30?
So, I remember the first one was very well received by the members of this thread. Kindle just decided to notify me about the sequel:
I have no idea about that particular series, but I can say that whenever I ask myself a question like that, the answer is nearly always “get the books from the library.”
I’ve been wondering the same thing. I liked the first book, but they are priced higher than books twice the page count. That said, I prefer it when authors get to the point and don’t bloat out books, but $12.50 for a 160 page book seems off. I’ve added book 2-4 to my amazon kindle list, so I’ll watch out for a sale.
Edit: Replying to @Tman, which for some reason didn’t happen. Stop posting so many replies while I am typing you guys!
It’s a novella series. Hopefully priced lower than novels from Tor?
I have read all four, and I enjoyed them immensely but also strongly disagree with the pricing that has been chosen for them. I don’t know if it was her call or her publisher’s, but it seems pretty out of whack.
No author has any say whatsoever in setting price with a traditional publisher.
She has gotten rights to some of her stuff back - I wasn’t sure if these represented her self-publishing like she did to bring those older books back or not, but apparently not.
And no, Tor novels are priced around the same, and there are a bunch of shorter form works that are of similar size that they’ve priced at $3-4 each. (But also some stuff from Seanan McGuire that are of similar length and price. Which suggests a pricing strategy that assumes people will pay more for novellas from a “name” author. Maybe they’re right, but not with me.)
I bought two ebook novellas, The Willful Princess and the Piebald Prince by Robin Hobb and The Flowers of Vashnoi by Lois McMaster Bujold, both of which I was satisfied with the price (about $5 each). I’m sorry that other people had poorer experiences.
Oh well. People do love her stuff, especially Murderbot, so I guess it’s what the market will bear. They’re holding one of my novellas for a second look right now, as it happens, but odds are still like 100:1 against a sale.
One of those Murderbot books was a monthly giveaway from the Tor book club recently too. I haven’t gotten around to reading it yet though.
Yeah, that one’s on my short to-read list. I loved Traitor, still think it’s one of the best fantasies of the decade.
They are excellent, wouldn’t try to read them out of order though. Really all the novellas are a four-act novel.