quinaquisset's 2012 challenge

So I'm mostly into sf and fantasy books. I live in Massachusetts, work in the medical field, and like crosswords, curling and quilting too. Sometimes I get too competitive, sometimes I'm laissez faire. Or lazy.




1. Akata Witch
2. Skirmish
3. The Word for World is Forest
4. The Quantum Thief
5. The Sun Sword
6. Meetings
7. The Night Circus
8. The Telling
9. Wild Ways
10. Mastiff
11. Shades of Milk and Honey
12. Women of Vision
13. Marooned in Realtime
14. Kingdom of Gods
15. Echoes of Betrayal
16. The Lies of Lock Lamora
17. Beauty and the Werewolf
18. An Artificial Night
19. Across the Nightingale Floor
20. Embassytown
21. Somewhere Beyond These Waves
22. Zoo City
23. The Magic Mirror of the Mermaid Queen
24. Redshirts
25. The Killing Moon
26. The Forgotten Beasts of Eld
27. Robopocalypse
28. Endless Blue
29. Leviathan Wakes
30. Blackout
31. Hide Me Among the Graves
32. Whispers Underground
33. Discount Armageddon
34. The Apocalypse Codex
35. The Far West
36. The Quiet War
37. The Secret History of Moscow
38. Permeable Borders; reread Red Heart of Memories; reread Time Travelers Ghosts and Other Visitors
41. The Long Earth
42. Past the Size of Dreaming
43. When We Were Real
44. New Moon's Arms
45. Mouse and Dragon
46. Scout's Progress
47. Bitterblue
48. Captain Vorpatril's Alliance
49. The Highest Frontier
50. Ghost Ship
51. Carousel Tides
52. Dodger

1. Akata Witch
Nigerian fantasy. Good to start off with a multicultural book. Looks like the first in a series. One of the few preapocalyptic books I know of.

I saw Ms Okorafor a couple years ago at Wiscon, she has a lot of presence. That's when I picked up my first book of hers, Shadow Speaker.

Hello, MA-dwelling f/sf reader! I am an NH-dwelling f/sf reader. I look forward to seeing what you read this year.

I've heard good things about Nnedi Okorafor but I haven't read anything by her. Did you like Akata Witch?

Hi blue! Nice to meet you. I liked Akata Witch, but I thought it was somewhat less original than her other works have been. I would recommend any of her books to you (and it looks like we have similar reading tastes).

2. Skirmish
Big fat fantasy epic-series novel (~book 12 in the universe, 4 in the current series). Unlike certain other authors (Martin, Erikson) I was able to finish this in a marathon weekend. I really like her characters and her language. The one thing I would change would be to increase the pacing, which is approaching glacially slow. I can't imagine starting the series with this book, unless you are really into winged cats.

I read about half of House of Suns for book club, but I'll admit I'm unlikely to go back and finish it. The characters weren't really appealing. The setting, with the deep time and the galactic scale and solar engineering, was pretty neat. Points for good gender balance. I didn't really get far enough to get a feeling for the plot. I've tried a couple of Reynold's books now and will admit I just don't like his writing style.

So do I count unfinished books towards my totals? Right now no, but that may change later on in the year.

After Skirmish I wanted to go back and see where things were left off in The Sun Sword. I read to the point where Jewel disappears into the next book, and found myself riveted to finishing the story. Firstly, I don't remember how the plot goes or how the characters evolve (it's like I'm reading it for the first time) and secondly, these are characters I do like and identify with and care about.
There are big overarching nonlinear plots going on in this series but the smaller arcs are also interesting. I like seeing how Diora evolves over time from being hidden, through her trauma and grieving, and using the societal rules to become more powerful. And Kiriel coming to terms with her darkness and capacities for both violence and love. And Valedan ruling but not afraid to show weakness. The contrast between this book and Skirmish in terms of scope is telling also--the later book feels more claustrophobic, fewer characters and places in a shorter time span, rather than this sweeping epic. Contrasted with other recent epic fantasies (ie Malazan and aSoIaF) this has more of the idealism and less of the grittiness.

3. The Word For World is Forest
Re-read for book club (which meets next week). Better than I remember it being...I think I was put off before by the character of Davidson, who unfortunately opens the book. He's bigoted and sexist and all around an amoral and cowardly person, narcissistic to boot, the character where you just wait for a good death scene. He didn't bother me so much this time around. My previous memory of the book was something like, humans logging an alien planet and get chased away due to ecological revolution. This time I see it more as how we change what we interact with, and learning to do violence and what that does to us as moral beings. Interesting because I think of Le Guin as a non-violent author. I see ties to the society that she did in Always Coming Home, the aliens are like the California race, with lots of singing and group decisions, but ultimately individual actions. I can't remember much about her other book The Telling, which I remember as being very Taoist, but I wonder if there is a similar echo of Athshean society, and change from interaction, that she had in WfWiF.

In WfWiF the human women are more things than characters; but the alien women make up for it In the native society, the men are intellectual and the women are political. Both men and women can be warriors. They have different but equally important roles in the villages. Unfortunately the description of the native villages is scant.

The other thing I thought about in this reread is the id/ego/superego division of the POVs. Which immediately leads me to considering who is Kirk, Spock, and McCoy. I think Davidson is McCoy/id, Selver is Spock/superego/the alien, and Lyubov is Kirk/ego.

When we picked this book I commented to the group that it is one of the weaker Le Guin books, but on reread it holds up well for what it is, shorter than her better works. Some lists put it an novella length. Other reviewers have commented on its similarities to the ecological message of the Avatar movie, so at least some of its themes continue to have revelance. It's not a book I would recommend to introduce someone to her work, but it is worthwhile. (I would use A Wizard of Earthsea or The Dispossessed, depending on the reader. Or Lavinia)

4. The Quantum Thief
Hard sf, posthumanist. Includes a thief and a detective chasing old secrets on the moving city in Mars. The technology and the setting were interesting; the characters were the type who don't tell you whats going on, which I find annoying and distancing. Lots of asynchronous interstitial passages; several important off-camera personalities. Beginning of a series, but self contained except for the epilogue.

5. Sun Sword
A re-read for me. Book 6 of the series, prequel to Skirmish. I found myself caught up in it, although frequently wishing it were a bit shorter (1K pages) but I do love the tone of writing that she does. Unlike her latest book this one had a more epic feel, spanning weeks or months, half a kingdom, three sides of a war, and a dozen major characters who needed to have their story wrapped up, as well as some threads left dangling loose.

6. Meeting by Nina Kiriki Hoffman

Book 2 in the Magic Next Door series. For a younger audience, but it still pulled me in to the story. In book 1 Maya bonded to a friendly alien intangible blob. They continue learning things in this story, and there are secrets to keep from the mundanes and the evil aliens and some factions of power in the house next door. A fair amount of figuring out ethics, and what you want to do, and who to trust. It comes to a half-ending, with some nice activity but not much closure, that's a bit frustrating. The language is still beautiful and evocative, and Maya is an interesting character with strengths in art and making friends.

7. Night Circus
I listened to this one, which is probably a bad choice for this book. Non-linear storyline, so I kept wanting to go back and check previous things, which is a big weakness for audiobooks. Good narrator though. Wonderful setting, great secondary characters, but I didn't like the central love interest (not more kissing!) It's easier to fall in love with the world than the story.

8. The Telling
Re-read to see why A Word for World is Forest reminded me of it--both are about resisting cultural intrusion. On an alien world, the proletariat rose up against the teacher-leaders in one part of the continent, and then wanted to wipe out all the teacher-leaders, who try to just maintain themselves. A Terran ethnologist is put into the area who wants to learn before the history gets wiped out; she gets flashbacks to a similar situation on (future) Earth when religious fanatics tried to wipe out other cultures. The middle is boring, and the ending is not really satisfying. Try other Le Guin first.

9. Wild Ways
Book 2 of the Gale women. Urban fantasy, strong women, plot with environmentalism and folk music, selkies and dragons. I prefer her in epic fantasy. Themes about growing up.

10. Mastiff
Book 3 of the Beka Cooper series. Eh. More plodding and less action than I expect of Pierce.
In her medieval-generic fantasy world (although good worldbuilding with economics and sewers and so on), a city guard is on a team to find the kidnapped prince. Romance, and recovery from a bad relationship; not much character change.

11. Shades of Milk and Honey
This was a very quick read. A light romantic story ala Jane Austen. Possibly a novella? The moral lesson here is: the man you don't like at first sight is your future husband. Isn't that always the way.

12. Women of Vision
A set of essays from the late 1980s from women sf authors and editors. Interesting perspective on how the women's movement meant different things, or nothing, to different women. I read about 75% before I had to return it to the library. They had some amazing talent in there. Recommended if you like feminism and history of sf.

13. Marooned in Realtime
I'm counting most of this as read; I had to return it to the library, so I skipped some of the middle chapters. Not as exciting as when I read it back in the 90s, when all the Singularity stuff was new (get off my lawn!). Also probably better to read right after The Peace War, which I only vaguely recall (nukes in the farm?)

14. Kingdom of Gods
Book 3 of a series, somehow I dragged on reading it. What do you call a series when the characters and setting are the same, but the themes are different? Although I guess the unifying theme of the series is how to change yourself and society around you after stagnation.

15. Echoes of Betrayal
This, on the other hand, was fast reading, popcorn reading. Book three (of five?)--huge cast, some story movement but still lots of unanswered questions and foreshadowing. More of Arvid the thief, and Kieri organizing his kingdom and his wedding, and elvish secrets lurking in the shadows.

16. The Lies of Locke Lamora
A reread, on audio, for the Sword and Laser bookclub. Twenty one hours of reading, which took me about six weeks. Still an exciting story. The pacing was odd, the emotional core of the book comes in the middle, although I remembered bits of the ending too (magical high-rises, a boat on fire, the severed tongue). I look forward to book 3--in print, not on audio.

17. Beauty and the Werewolf
Minor Lackey, a female empowered cross between Beauty and the beast and Little red riding hood. Meh.

18. An Artificial Night
Urban fantasy, not much new, heroine acts heroically stupid against a children's menace.

19. Across the Nightingale Floor
Japanese historical romance, done as audiobook. Again, just okay. Where are all the good books this year? (Actually, I'm quite liking Embassytown right now.)

20. Embassytown
Wonderful space colony story with politics and alien languages, difficulties of communications, sweeping societal change. First person narrator, who gets to change unexpectedly during the story. One left to read before the Hugos (Leviathan Wakes)--but this is my current second favorite.

21. Somewhere beneath those waves
Short stories, some just scenes, some encapsulated stories. Both of her collections are great, well worth keeping an eye out for. She excels in the odd yet familiar. Recommended.

22. Zoo City
Set in a magical contemporary South Africa. I loved the world building and the magic (she inverts just about everything about the Animal Companion trope). The main characters tend to criminals and generally bad people, which brings it down a notch for me.

23. The Magic Mirror of the Mermaid Queen
A nice YA book to wash out the grit from my mind. It's set in a fairy version of New York, with all the places but few of the humans. Instead you get fashion brownies and Yiddish dockworkers. There's a magic school too, with cliques and rules. Neef, the heroine, gets to be brash and headstrong and not always right.

24. Redshirts
Another quick read. Very meta on the whole sf media angle, told from the pov of those guys who always get killed off, and they aren't really happy about it. I like the wrap-up epilogs at the end too.

I'm not familiar with most of these reads, but we seem to have similar reactions to LeGuin, so I'm going to have to look some of these up--especially Zoo City and The Magic Mirror of the Mermain Queen sound fascinating, and I need to read more YA books since I'm moving toward teaching middle schoolers for the first time! Good reading...

Thinking of what I was reading in middle school (6-8th grades in the late 70s)--I have strong remembrances of Harriet the Spy, the Xanth novels, Johnny Tremain, the Riddlemaster of Hed series by Patricia McKillip, the Earthsea series by Le Guin, the dragons of Pern, reading the Dune trilogy for 8th grade summer reading (in the rain), Lord of the Rings. Of those, I would still recommend McKillip, although I should go back and see how dated they seem now. Extrapolating from those books, stuff from now that I would have liked then--Tamora Pierce, Patricia Wrede, Nina Kiriki Hoffman, Terry Pratchett, Robin McKinley. Interesting idea.

25. The Killing Moon
Book one (of a duology?) I really liked her 100,000 Kingdoms book. This one less so. Still it gets points for good worldbuilding, alternate magic and political systems. The characters, while well written and complex (even the villains), just didn't hit my buttons. I would borrow number two.

26. The Forgotten Beasts of Eld
Re-read, because I had forgotten the plot and the themes. Still a good book. It's much more circumscribed than contemporary fantasy, everyone lives a day's travel from each other. There is love and revenge and slavery and family issues, and it's short and easy to read and packed with ideas.

27. Robopocalypse
Book club read, the story of the machine rebellion. Like World War Z, told from multiple viewpoints; unlike WWZ, from the same dozen main characters who all affect each other. High testosterone narration. Provoked interesting discussion.

28. Endless Blue
Space opera, with interesting things about raising creche babies and nature/nurture, and a cool inside out world, aliens ranging from cool to annoying, and a storyline that went from interesting to thud. I liked the beginning, but went meh by the end.

Catchup time--
29. Leviathan Wakes

Space opera, popcorn variety. Two authors, two POV characters with different ideologies, trying to save the solar system from alien spores and mad scientists. I liked the introduction of the characters and situation, but got tired by the end.

30. Blackout

Book 3 of the zombies vs bloggers saga. There's a nod to science among the cloning and viral vectors, but the underlying plot has deep holes. The zombies aren't the enemy, just a weapon for the people in power. It was a fast exciting read that doesn't hold up to much thought.

31. Hide Me Among the Graves

Sequel to Stress of Her Regard, now with more Romantic poets. Set in London. Odd (for Powers) jumps in time. Vampires as quantum phenomena. Not the best Powers, but it inspires me to learn more about the Rosettis and Swinburne.

32. Whispers Underground

Book 3 of the Peter Grant series (not a trilogy). Set in London. The apprentice wizard/rookie cop gets a partner and a murder case. Good combination of contemporary technology and magic. More hidden races and magic users. Concretely based in the city; I ended up looking up several landmarks that they talked about. I'd like to read it again with a map of the Underground stations available.

33. Discount Armageddon

Start of a new series. Set in NY, usual urban fantasy with first person POV of a girl who takes names and kicks ass, who falls for a dangerous guy, and she solves a mystery. Different in that she combines competitive ballroom dancing with a strip club waitress, and McGuire can write better than average. She still leaves it rather light and snarky though.

34. The Apocalypse Codex

Book 4 of the Laundry series. Starts off in England (I think in London), concluding my literary stay in the British Isles. But then it moves to Colorado. The hacker/demonologist teams up with a technowitch, to look into a church with a coercive eschatology. Pretty unfavorable to modern religions, as Cthulhu is the one true religion in this universe. A page turner.

So of these, I most enjoyed the Stross, followed by the Aaronovitch.

35. The Far West

I really enjoy this character--a young adult who is humble and polite, but has learned how to manage her family and friends, and who gets to go off on adventures hunting for new species. A nice mix of magic and frontier skills. A well crafted alternate universe.

36. The Quiet War

Read for book club. Suffers from characters who react, but are mostly pawns to larger players as the titular war ramps up. Some cool settings and science. Slow pace at the beginning, and the middle, picks up a bit at the end. Half the major characters are women, and a good slew of the minor characters, including politicians, warriors, and scientists. About half the people in our groups liked it, but this author has struck out twice with me.

37. The Secret History of Moscow

Yea for urban fantasy where the heroine has no paranormal powers or werewolf boyfriends, and is set in a city not in North America!

Seriously, you run around learning about Russian history and folklore, meeting gypsies, traversing liminal spaces, going on magical quests and trying to avoid thugs with guns. The fun way to learn about another culture.

38. Permeable Borders

39. Red Heart of Memories

40. Time Travelers, Ghosts, and Other Visitors


PB is the newest collection, including stories about Edward, Matt, and others from Red Heart of Memories, triggering that reread; and I was trying to remember other short stories about those characters, which were not in TTGaOV. PB is a wonderful set of stories about home and family, and the family we make.

41. Long Earth

:( It started off pretty good, with an interesting idea, lots of characters, some of whom were fun to interact with, but then some pretty terrible endings, both to the A and the B stories. Which had the benefit of being unconventional, and there was some lead up to them, but ugh. I had been thinking of recommending this to my book club, but just no. Note that I have left Barnes unfinished before; I love Pratchett, including non-Discworld stuff, but someone pointed out that there is none of his joy in this book (although I see his hand in some characterizations, ie Sister Agnes).

42. Past the Size of Dreaming

Continuing my Hoffman reread. I think I'll let the Stir of Bones sit for another time. Nice closure to the series (although I would love to journey on with these characters), but not as emotionally satisfying the first book. Lots of magic. And a positive transgendered character.

43. When We Were Real
Read for book club, or I would have ditched it after the first chapter, with its horrific matriarchal male-subsuming culture that nevertheless produces one of the skeeviest POVs I remember. Every woman has prominent sexual characteristics, and is either pretty or causes an erection, and there is no comment about how to actually solve gender inequality here. There's a war, and a love interest (who is furry), and everyone is immortal unless they are killed in the war and don't have a contract for revival, and there are talking machines and animal human hybrids, and soulless corporations, and I skipped to the end where everyone is happy because they get their rights. (And the matriarchy is conveniently dead in the war.) Blech.

44. New Moon's Arms

Audiobook, I had neglected Nalo Hopkinson too long. Few fantastical events, more a woman coming to terms with her past and her menopause. Read in a beautiful Caribbean accent by the female narrator, who did a good job with individual voices. Parts of it were hard to listen to, as the main character is a rather homophobic shrew. Nice images of island life. I still don't think she ever figured out that she was dealing with selkies.

45. Mouse and Dragon

A Liaden novel, a middle book between the Pilot's omnibus and Fledgling. Mostly a popcorn romance, the kind where you just know you're going to end up with some kernels stuck in between your teeth. True love, abuse recovery. General disregard for passage of time, overuse of apostrophes. It does make me want to go make and the prequel.

46. Scout's Progress

After Mouse and Dragon I had to go back and reread the prequel, which I hadn't really remembered. This is the getting away from the abusive situation. It stops just before M&D starts, with the heroine happily in the hospital. Hidden prince, hypercompetent commoner fall in love.
I also skimmed through some of the Val and Miri stories, looking for Miri's presentation to the Liaden House (which occurs in Plan B).

47. Bitterblue

Third in the Gracelings series by Cashore. Another post-abuse story! This time, it's how an entire kingdom is recovering from a psychopathic king. Very different from the more action oriented earlier books, for which I applaud her.

48. Captain Vorpatril's Alliance

Yea for new Bujold! Not one of her big game changers, more an offshoot novel that continues Ivan's voice from A Civil Campaign as he, despite his intentions, finds himself in the middle of a Situation. I like how straightforward he is as a character.

49. The Highest Frontier

I've been meaning to read Slonczewski's Door Into Ocean for a while, but that's still off in the future. After our last book club I needed a female author, and a female protagonist. I liked the Kennedy scion with social phobia disorder. It's college in space, with usual shenanigans, also a presidential election and dealing with a poisonous alien organism. Lots of biological lectures, expected from a bio prof, but also discussion of political systems. And interesting world building, including a new system of taxation and a successor to the world wide web.

Woo hoo, fifty books done!

50. Ghost Ship

Picking up the Theo story, after, I don't remember anymore, Plan B? as the Korval clan is moving on to a new world and new challenges, and Theo has a date with destiny. Make that a blind date with a ship. Who's not too impressed by her. Lots of loose ends left to tie up, certainly not a trilogy.

Congratulations! Well done :-)

Thanks! But the reading is never really done!

51. Carousel Tides


A non-Liaden contemporary fantasy story. The magical elements come out slowly, as does the backstory. The romance elements are more traditional. The magical beings mix more with the mundanes than usual, but the most fantastical things happen in other worlds that have more magic than ours. The converse is that our world allows more permanent change than the elfin worlds allow. There's a missing relative, and a quest for a thingy, and a fairly quick climax. And a lovely carousel running throughout.

52. Dodger

Historical fantasy set in London in Victorian times, where a proper lad from the sewers can become a hero on Fleet Street and save a young woman from a dastardly prince (or at least his assassins). The humor that was missing in Long Earth is apparent here, although it's not as ridiculous as some of the Discworld books. I like the imagery of the Lady of the Sewers. The girl, Simplicity, is a good character although offstage most of the time, she does know her own mind. Audio book narrated by Stephen Briggs, who I didn't much like.