Who knows? I read and enjoyed the first three but haven’t read any other of the Dread Empire books. If there were others like me who dropped out along the way the market for sequels would shrink.
geewhiz
1946
I guess I am one of the few that prefer his Garrett PI series.
If you skip the epilogue of book 3,it wraps up nicely. However, books 2 & 3 don’t live up to book 1. 3 gets closer to it than 2.
rshetts
1948
That’s a fair assessment. I felt book two swung to hard to be something as far way from book one that they could get. Book 3 goes back to the things that help make #1 so good. I still enjoyed book 2 but it felt out of place in the series.
Maybe not your usual genre, but this is one of the best novels in years.
It’s so good that, at $2, I almost want to buy it again lol. And it’s about a fellow living his life confined to his quarters, which strikes me as more apropos than ever.
rshetts
1950
For those who are familiar with Preston and Child’s Pendergast series, the Cabinet of Curiosities, the novel that I feel is the best book in the series, is on sale today for $2.99
It can be read as a standalone as its only the 3rd novel in the series so the characters were still developing. Anyway, if you like mystery novels with a tinge of the supernatural, you will like this book.
https://www.amazon.com/Cabinet-Curiosities-Novel-Pendergast-Book-ebook/dp/B000FA5SUM/ref=sr_1_2?crid=HLA0JVB3G5U5&dchild=1&keywords=cabinet+of+curiosities+book&qid=1612722774&sprefix=cABINET+OF+curiosityes%2Caps%2C767&sr=8-2
Thanks for the recommend. I’m enjoying it. Pendergast is a modern day Sherlock Holmes.
I will have to see if I can find others in the series in ebook form to check out from libraries. They are all $9 or $10. I don’t pay that much for ebooks.
Hi all,
StoryBundle has a new SF set. I am not familiar with the titles or authors so maybe someone else can chime in some opinions.
The site also has a crime thriller bundle going.
Jeffrey Carver is usually a good read. Never heard of any of the rest of those.
Django Wexler’s Ashes of the Sun is on sale for $2.99 on Amazon and other merchants.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07ZZ25BCX/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_HHCJZA4G9EPXBSVGJFDB
Thank you! I have this in hardcover, but grabbed it for my Kindle at that price.
Stand on Zanzibar is $2.99 through Bookbub today. Truly one of the all-time great sci-if novels.
https://www.amazon.com/Stand-Zanzibar-Hugo-Award-Winning-Novel-ebook/dp/B004VMV3U4
Agreed. A very 70s novel, but immensely influential and important.
Bought!
I tried to track down all the Hugo winners back in the 90s so that I could read them all. I used to go to Waldenbooks and then in later years Barnes & Noble and try to find them so that I could buy them and read them. It was really hard to find a print copy of the old novels.
Of course, back then I didn’t have a huge book backlog. It was the opposite problem: a desperate search to find the next great science fiction novel that I hadn’t read yet.
If you find that you like Brunner’s work (and some don’t, it is very much in the sociological SF vein that became influential in the 70s) I would also recommend The Sheep Look Up.
JoshL
1961
The Sheep Look Up is probably the most depressing book I ever read.
And here I thought the sheep were looking up.
JoshL
1963
The problem is that almost everything in The Sheep Look Up happened or is happening.
I hope you enjoy it!
No spoilers here, but a useful tip about the narrative structure of the book. It is borrowed from the work of John Dos Passos. There are four types of chapters in the book, as follows (from Wikipedia):
As in Dos Passos’s work, the chapters are headed by one of several rubrics:
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"Continuity" : Most of the linear narrative is contained in these chapters.
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"Tracking with Closeups" : These are similar to Dos Passos’s “Camera” sections, and focus closely on ancillary characters before they become part of the main narrative, or simply serve to paint a picture of the state of the world.
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"The Happening World" : These chapters consist of collage-like collections of short, sometimes single-sentence, descriptive passages. The intent is to capture the vibrant, noisy, and often ephemeral situations arising in the novel’s world. At least one chapter of the narrative, a party where most of the characters meet and where the plot makes a significant shift in direction, is presented in this way.
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"Context" : These chapters, as the name suggests, provide a setting for the novel. They consist of imaginary headlines, classified ads, and quotations from the works of the character Chad C. Mulligan, a pop sociologist who comments wryly on his surroundings[3] and in one chapter, actual headlines from the 1960s.
Do you just have to flow with it until things begin to come together.
