Strap in. You are only just getting started on the subplots. Good series though in spite of the many view points & sub plots.
Still reading Middlemarch. Also The Worm Ouroboros. The story lives under the Elizabethan prose like fish seen beneath ice, but it’s there. Meanwhile the physical descriptions of buildings, costumes, and landscapes are perhaps the best I’ve seen in fantasy with the possible exception of Tolkien.
I read Strangers in Their Own Land by Arlie Russell Hochschild last week. It’s a series of interviews by a liberal university professor with conservative voters in Louisiana, and her conclusions about the impetus behind their political views.
I loved it. To quote myself in that review:
The Spaceship Next Door by Gene Doucette (audiobook version)
A fun little book, written with some decent humor and containing a couple interesting twists that (unfortunately) you see coming about three miles away. It reads a lot like a young adult (YA) novel in places which is kind of a shame… the plot and characters all come together far too seamlessly at the end.
The audiobook is narrated by Steve Carlson, who sounds like the love-child of Wilford Brimley and Garrison Keeler. That’s not a bad thing, as his down-home country drawl meshes pretty well with the sensibilities of the characters.
I don’t know that I’d go out of my way to recommend the book, but I don’t regret burning one of my Audible subscription credits on it either.
Just finished Columbus Day by Craig Alanson about a Alien Invasion of Earth. The story revolves around 1 main character and his personal adventures in space. Really enjoyed it and not the normal space fare. I found it quite funny at times and was well read. While not deep sci-fi I have the second lined up to listen to and if it wasn’t for the below would be already on it.
I am now listening to Knots & Crosses Rebus Book 1 and am ashamed to admit that while I loved the TV Series with Ken Stott I have never read any of the books and this was on a daily deal at Audible so grabbed it and it’s great so far. Much better than the TV show which I thought was great. Really looking forward to getting in to the next 20 odd books.
Hah, I started this month’s thread, and perhaps I’ll end it too!
The Collapsing Empire by John Scalzi (audiobook version)
[details=Non-Spoiler Summary]
It’s a thousand or so years in the future and a large space-faring empire of humans is cut off from Earth. They’ve developed a fairly rigid society/government/religion that keeps everything running well enough and largely self-regulates due to a system of checks and balances that keeps all parts of the system at least partially dependent on one another.
However, a change in the way that FTL travel occurs is imminent, and the leaders, businesses and everyday people are in danger of extinction unless they can get their heads out of the sand in time.[/details]
If you like Scalzi’s writing, you’ll probably enjoy this book. It’s the first in a series set in this universe and presumably follows the same characters, though that’s just my assumption. The setting and plot are an obvious allegory to the world’s (really the US’) treatment of Climate Change, but Scalzi only hits you over the head with that once or twice… and it’s only unforgivably blatant once.
My one real criticism of the book is that for a society some 1000 years in the future, the characters sure act and sound like they could be living in Chicago today. Scalzi borrows a lot of concepts from Frank Herbert’s Dune in this book, but the overall “tone” and language were not part of his borrowing. That’s just a quibble though.
The book is relatively short and it’s obviously the first in at least a trilogy. It has a fairly self-contained story that wraps up, but the main conflict is still unresolved at the end of it.
Audiobook notes: It’s narrated by Wil Wheaton, who does many of the readings of Scalzi’s books after being brought in as the narrator of Red Shirts back in 2011. I imagine that was “stunt casting”, but Wheaton has become a pretty decent narrator over the years and I think he’s pretty good in this… though he always sounds just a little smarmy.
I didn’t much like The Collapsing Empire. Only the second book of Scalzi’s I’ve read, after Redshirts, which I thought was worthy but seriously flawed.
In this one, I felt the problems were more pervasive. Implausible setting, unbelievable situations, mostly unlikeable characters, constantly wisecracking dialog, 7th-grade humor, thin plot with holes, bad guys defeated easily. Scalzi’s writing is very slick, clean and clear. It’s just the content doesn’t appeal to me this time.
Plus, it’s no We Are Bob. (Couple chapters in.)
Still reading Middlemarch. I think I’m in the home stretch.
Also bouncing around a bunch of genre stuff. Worm Ouroboros, Lure of the Basilisk, Another Fine Myth, Book of the Three Dragons. Some of these I read as a kid and want to see if they’re still any good, others checking out for the first time. Ouroboros has some of the most gorgeous descriptive prose I’ve seen in fantasy.
When you’re done with Ouroboros you might be interested in the Zimiamvia books by Eddison. I think they’re more mature and sophisticated writing, but the final volume is incomplete, and overall it’s much less fantastic and gorgeous than the Worm.
Rebus series is great!