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.
Finished reading The Elusive Shift by Jon Peterson, about how a wargame hack (D&D) came to be understood as a “role-playing game”, and what that meant to early players and theorists. I can’t recommend this book to you; only you know if you would find this interesting. I thoroughly enjoyed it, of course.
Finished rereading Post Captain by Patrick O’Brian. Master & Commander was good, but this book is where O’Brian really started to figure out what he was doing.
Finished rereading Master & Commander by Patrick O’Brian. It’s a little longer than most of the other 19 (!) books in the series, a little less tightly-focused, but still very enjoyable.
My unpopular opinion: I read The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu, trans. Ken Liu, and while the premise was intriguing, I super did not love the story, and have no interest in reading the rest.
Finished reading The Galaxy, and the Ground Within by Becky Chambers. I loved this series; I don’t know if “cozy sci-fi” is a genre, but this would anchor it. Lots of explorations of family and community.
Finished rereading Seven Surrenders by Ada Palmer, the second book of the series.
Interesting: When I started rereading the first book, I had forgotten most of it, but it came back to me as I was reading it. This book, though, I felt like there were whole chapters I was reading for the first time. Really enjoyed it, though! She undercut her “I am writing about only the best people” shtick at the end — a little later than I’d’ve liked, but I’ll take it. Looking forward to book three.