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.
Finished rereading Too Like the Lightning by Ada Palmer. Still has off-putting elements, but I’m charging ahead to the next book.
Musing about what it would take to turn the long walk journal into a print-on-demand book.
Finished God Cancer by Greg Stolze. I didn’t know I was looking for a short horror novel mashup of Lovecraft (At the Mountains of Madness–style) and cancer, but I sure was.
Finished A Desolation Called Peace by Arkady Martine. A satisfying sequel to her first, not flawless but still very well executed.
Finished Piranesi by Susanna Clarke. Short and unsettling and very, very good.