Set aside The City of Brass by S.A. Chakraborty about halfway through. I’m frankly a little baffled by the good reviews; I’m not sure I was even reading the same book. Maybe you’ll like it — obviously plenty of people do — but it’s not for me.
Set aside The City of Brass by S.A. Chakraborty about halfway through. I’m frankly a little baffled by the good reviews; I’m not sure I was even reading the same book. Maybe you’ll like it — obviously plenty of people do — but it’s not for me.
Finished reading Subcutanean by Aaron A. Reed, a horror novel with twinned premises: It involves parallel universes, and each copy of the book is uniquely generated. (Mine was seed 40105.) Very effective as horror, and successful (as far as I could tell) in how it was generated, though of course I’m very curious what another version would be like.
Finished reading A Psalm for the Wild-Built by Becky Chambers, a short novel. Charming and cozy, as one expects from Chambers. About half the book resonated with me in a perfect, clear note, and I recognized the half that didn’t even though it wasn’t speaking to me.
Finished reading “Mick and Amanda and Reesa and Craig”, “Mick and the Spoonbender”, “Mick and the Fit”, and “Like Uber, but for Monsters”, new short stories by Greg Stolze. Like much of his work, it’s well-crafted, unsettling, and sticks with you for a while.
Finished reading The Witness for the Dead by Katherine Addison. Stars a minor character from The Goblin Emperor; this book’s main character is as fundamentally decent as the previous book’s. It was a pleasure to read, and to watch all the pieces come together at the end.
Finished rereading The Mauritius Command by Patrick O’Brian (Aubrey–Maturin, book four). Not quite as enjoyable as H.M.S. Surprise, but still a delight, including some choice bits about coffee, and a harrowing description of a hurricane.
Finished rereading The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison. I’d forgotten how much I’d enjoyed this fish-out-of-water story. The invented-language names were constantly baffling, but once I started aggressively using the glossary and cast of characters as a reminder, the book was smooth sailing.
Finished rereading H.M.S. Surprise by Patrick O’Brian, the third book in the Aubrey–Maturin series. If you’re interested in reading any of these books (perhaps you enjoyed the movie?) but aren’t ready to commit, start here (but read the Wikipedia plot summaries of the first two before you start).
Finished reading Kindred by Octavia Butler. About slavery and its effects on everybody (but especially the enslaved), it’s brutal (but intentionally less than it could have been) and compelling, with a spare style that suits the story. You should read it, but only when you’re prepared.
Finished reading Abaddon’s Gate by James S.A. Corey. I had two major dissatisfactions with the book. First, one of the viewpoint characters made consistently dumb decisions, from before the book started to almost the end; I understand the arc the author wanted to draw, but it made a quarter of the book unpleasant. Second, two characters made a big deal about violence being a dead end and a last resort … but the book sure loves its military-grade ultraviolence, in precise detail. Which is exciting reading! But the author kind of wants to have their cake and eat it too, but really just wants to eat tasty cake.
The summary of the next book in the series promises more of the same, so I think I’ll take a break for a while.
Finished reading Caliban’s War by James S.A. Corey. Focuses on PTSD and how three of the main characters deal (more or less successfully) with theirs. The storyline basically echoes the first book’s; I hope the third tries something different.
Finished reading Leviathan Wakes by James S.A. Corey. Competent prose, though wading through the early character introductions was a chore (“Joe Spaceguy’s square jaw set him apart from the other pilots”, etc.). The structure of the book made it quick and compelling: many short chapters, alternating between viewpoint characters, always ending where I wanted to read more.
Finished reading The Dragon Waiting by John Ford. I loved it; it felt like a mix of Tim Powers and Neal Stephenson … but sometimes with the attention span of Douglas Adams, or quite possibly I mistook oblique allusions for dropped threads. The book changed directions several times, and briefly became a murder mystery, but even when I wasn’t sure where it was going (or even that Ford was sure), I was happy to be along for the ride.
Finished reading The Blacktongue Thief by Christopher Buehlman, my first fantasy novel in a while. If you can get past an excessive amount of swearing — I can put up with a lot, but this was a lot — it has a surprising amount of heart; I eventually decided it felt a little bit like The Lies of Locke Lamora (but without a con game or heist).
Finished reading Last One at the Party by Bethany Clift, a post-COVID “everybody in the world but the protagonist dies from a plague” story. I have mixed feelings about this one: It wasn’t what I expected, the protagonist did not start out at all sympathetic, and there were some gruesome descriptions of the recently-dead. That said, it was compelling, I found myself rooting for the protagonist by the end, and the end itself was satisfying.