Expeditionary Force: SpecOps (Book 2) by Craig Alanson.
https://www.amazon.com/SpecOps-Expeditionary-Force-Book-2/dp/B06WD6K2XH
I enjoyed the first book despite the fairly clumsy prose and exposition. The second book is significantly better-written, though it suffers from being one of the “middle books”. Alanson does mil-sci-fi pretty well and writes action decently.
The audiobook is nicely narrated by RCBray, who does a wonderful job with accents.
I haven’t had the time to read much the past month, but over the course of an incredibly packed vacation trip I read the last two thirds of A Fire Upon The Deep by Vernor Vinge.
Holy shit what an amazing novel. It must be the Dune of this branch of science fiction. It is an incredibly layered, interesting and inspiring read. I don’t have any more words.
Next up is either Childhood’s End by Arthur C. Clarke, or the first Witcher short story anthology.
Continuing my Shakespeare jag. Finished As You Like It and now into Richard III.
Europe in Autumn by Dave Hutchinson. First in a series. This is a near-future spy thriller which is best where it stays away from the main plot and where it avoids science-fictional elements. Feel is, uh, Jason Bourne meets Thomas Pynchon. So the first 150 pages are great. Plenty of cooking (main character is a chef) and nice verisimilitude in a Europe which has fragmented and broken up into lots of teensy little states a few decades from now.
On the downside you don’t learn what the book is really about until page 350, and the big reveal is around page 400. The author doesn’t seem to know much about computers or cryptosystems, and these things are important to the story. And yet it’s still quite entertaining. So I’ll definitely read the sequels, which are already out, since this book was published in 2014.
Been reading Ben Aaronvich’s PC Peter Grant / Rivers of London series, and squeezed in Charles Stross’s The Delirium Brief shortly after it came out.
I have this on my to listen to list. the narration of the first is excellent and I enjoyed the storyline somewhat. Might have to bring that up the list.
Listening to A Dark so Deadly by Stuart MacBride, it’s long and slow going but I am enjoying it a lot, not sure why maybe the change of pace and the main character who is decent, a bit of a turd and a loser but he knows it to.
Just finished FoxGlove Summer myself.
Good fun series…
Heard a lot about Stross, so I just ordered the 1st in this series.
I just finished Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson. While I actually enjoyed this book I will plead guilty to having fast forwarded thru much of the technical discussions his characters get into. Some of it is plot driven and that I tried to hang with, but there is some stuff that I think Stephenson includes just to make you feel stupid.
The book covers two time periods and has four lead characters, whose stories merge as the book progresses.
I don’t know if it is just me, and it has been a long time since I have read any Vonnegut, but large parts of this book made me think of Vonnegut.
I recommend the next book in the series, The Hanging Tree. Foxglove left me with series fatigue due to a feeling of the plot having stagnated without much interesting advancement, but THT got it nicely back on track.
I’m on Whispers Underground in the Peter Grant series. A bit too much exposition on magic and how things work in the beginning, at least for people who just read the 1st two books, but I’ve gotten past that part. Hopefully the rest of the series doesn’t keep explaining vestigium and the Folly’s role in the Police in every book. It’s getting repetitive and tiresome.
As to the Charles Stross’ books. The Laundry Files are a lot of fun, but getting a bit overbearing as Case Nightmare Green approaches. I still enjoy them, but the roots are a bit more fun than the over-powered endgame. Make sure you read the short stories as well, as they are really fun - for the first couple of books, they are addendums to the kindle versions at the end.
For a shorter trip, I really, really recommend Halting State and the sequel Rule 34.
Stross is one of my favorite 21st Century SF writers out there
Read Childhood’s End by Arthur C. Clarke. Interesting take that’s a bit different from the usual ones. There’s something about 1950s science fiction that is both quaint and full of ideas at the same time.
Yeah it’s sort of like the Cambrian explosion before everything solidified into certain genres and tropes.
I liked Childhood’s End well enough, although IMO Clarke, great idea man, is pretty lousy at characterization.
I actually enjoyed the out of London digression a lot.
But thanks for mentioning The Hanging Tree,for some reason I thought it was earlier in the series, and that I had read it, but I have not…
Sure, it was a fun read that added some to the world. But the abrupt ending and how the book didn’t really address the “main plot” was something I found anoying. But that is all forgotten and forgiven after The Hanging Tree.
The various online short stories are also good, and there’s a novelett set between book 4 and 5 coming in September.
I’ve read a bit into The Last Wish by Andrzej Sapkowski. It’s the first novel/short story collection that inspired The Witcher. It is a bit clunky and I don’t really care for descriptions of combat, but overall it has some allure.
I’ll look for it. I got a book called Blood of Elves that was also described as the first Witcher book. The one you mention sounds more like the real character debut.
The character probably did debut in short stories, and the titular story The Last Wish is directly relevant to the first game’s plot, but the actual ongoing story starts with The Blood of Elves. And let me recommend picking up the next book also, at a minimum, because Blood of Elves is basically all prologue.
When you finish it, post.
Finished Broken Heart, another excellent David Raker mystery.
Started The Atrocity Archive, the first Laundry novel, a series mentioned up thread. Interesting, but hard reading. Each paragraph seems to contain two sentences with info-dump of complete mumbo-jumbo…
The new David Raker I am missing came out last Thursday release price was £3.99 which is half normal price. I have it and will read next week while on holiday…