April 2015 Reading

Just started reading Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson. Loving it already!

It's a fun action-packed romp.

Almost finished with The Chessmen of Mars; dipping into The Best of Kim Stanley Robinson.

Currently reading Ancillary Sword.

Still reading the Desert Spear by Peter V. Brett...

Finished (and enjoyed) The Ear, The Eye and The Arm, now doing The Engines of God.

>1 EnsignRamsey: Snowcrash was the first novel I read when I started reading SF again on a semi- regular basis. Great book.

Still wading thru The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August. Hit a bit of a reading slump so nothing truly appeals.

Not exactly SF, but I'm halfway through American Gods, by Neil Gaiman. It was an impulse buy, as I've never read anything by him. Not sure how I feel about it at the halfway point. He can definitely put a sentence together, and has built a really interesting "world." There's something about the tone that bugs me though, and it is uneven in places. Some chapters I'm completely absorbed, and some I practically skimmed.

>3 artturnerjr: I just finished reading the Tor version of Kim Stanley Robinson's "The Blind Geometer" with mixed feelings. How are you liking The Best of?

Currently reading Strange Bodies. Was not much impressed by Theroux's Far North but this one got enough recommendations to make it worth a try - and it's pretty good so far.

>11 lansingsexton:

The only one I've read so far is "Sexual Dimorphism", which I actually liked quite a bit. Hopefully I'll be able to get to at least a couple of the others before the library wants it back. :)

Finished The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August by Claire North. Amazing storytelling.

Started All My Sins Remembered by Joe Haldeman.

Rereading Divine Endurance (after years of recommending it). Just as good as I remembered, though I had forgotten how melancholy.

Finished Better Than Life, and just about to start I Robot, to protect.

Just finished: The Chessmen of Mars. Burroughs basically recycles the exact plot of the previous book in the series in this one*; fortunately, his invention is much stronger in other areas.

Just started: Steve Moore's V for Vendetta novelization (of all things).

*as LT member Z-Ryan (aka Ryan Harvey) points out here: http://www.blackgate.com/2012/02/28/edgar-rice-burroughs-mars-part-5-the-chessme...

ETA: Touchstone

More Larry Niven for me. Finished Tales of Known Space and now reading Neutron Star

I've just read Glorious Angels by Justina Robson and Evergence: The Prodigal Sun by Sean Williams and Shane Dix.

I am just starting King's Dragon by Kate Elliott.

Reading Synners.

Finished The Engines of God, beginning Huysman's Pets.

Well, the Hugo nominations came out, so I just ordered The Goblin Emperor - and I'm looking for a copy of Ancillary Sword - to read next: but now that I see that the Hugos have been gamed by assholes, now I'm not sure if I'm going to bother to read them this month.

The Tiptree list looks interesting, though: I've already read My Real Children (... which probably would have been a Hugo nominee, except for assholes...).

I usually use the nominees as a 'recommended reading' list - but a couple of assholes packed this year's nominations, and pushed some deserving books off the list. (The Walton, the new Gibson (The Peripheral), etc.)

So the Hugos have been broken, maybe irretrievably.

Reading Ship of Fools by Richard Paul Russo...

>23 AsYouKnow_Bob: Over the past couple of years I've set myself the enjoyable task of trying to read all the Tiptree winners and shortlist (for a while it was longlist too but there's not enough hours in the day!).
Even when they're not to my taste there's alway something of interest - and I've happend upon some gems that would otherwise have passed me bye. Can't recommend it enough.

>23 AsYouKnow_Bob: Ancillary Sword just won the BSFA and it and The Goblin Emperor are on the Nebula short list. Neither are on any of the Puppies slates.

Started reading The Gemini Effect by Chuck Grossart.

Finished Snow Crash, which promised much but ultimately delivered little. I'm sure it would have worked better as the graphic novel it was intended to be.

Snowcrash also read better 20 years ago.....
I have always wanted to reread it and haven't.

I'm reading The Darwin Elevator and really enjoying it.

Just finished The Martian (B+); while very entertaining I'd have liked some more world-building regarding the society that could have produced a Martian exploration effort of this scale. Then again, isn't that how it goes; today's SF is tomorrow's thriller. It should make a smashing movie.

>31 Shrike58: I know of a book about a mission to Mars that does just that...

It just so happens that I do too. What Weir has going for him is puzzle-solving and a main character with a distinctive voice; the rest, not so much. I'm not going to knock him for achieving what he set out to do though. Weir's problem is going to be whether he can expand his scope, even if he's writing a very main-stream type of SF (the old second novel problem).

Not there yet but my next-to-read book is Magician by Raymond Feist. I am not much of a fantasy reader but this looks a cut above many others

>33 Shrike58: My problem with The Martian was that the book was completely hollow. It was just a series of increasingly implausible things that go to wrong for a bloke trapped on Mars - because of a storm which could never have caused the damage it did, incidentally. It's like a dog that does tricks - clever, but it's still a dog and it's never going to do more than its wonder trained it to do.

Finished Synners, which was a weird mix of quaint and quite modern. Review to appear on SF Mistressworks soon. Now reading Spider Moon, since I seem to have a lot of John Shirley books I've never got around to reading...

I'm currently reading The Girl With All The Gifts by Mike Carey

>37 andyl:

I've got that on my wish list. Curious to hear your thoughts on it.

Started Beyond the Doors of Death -- Robert Silverberg's "Born with the Dead" and Damien Broderick's sequel to it.

Not unfair; one suspects that Weir is more concerned with being the next Martin Caidin or Michael Crichton then the next Kim Stanley Robinson.

Since February, I enjoyed Gardens of the Moon (Steven Erikson), The Inheritance Trilogy (N.K. Jemisin), and Look to Windward.

Tried but dropped Phoenix Cafe (Gwyneth Jones) and Emissaries from the Dead (Adam-Troy Castro).

Now scooting through My Real Children by Jo Walton.

>41 psybre: Have you read White Queen? Phoenix Cafe won't make much sense if you haven't.

>42 iansales: thank you, Ian. I'll shelve it back under tbr until I find a copy of White Queen.

>35 iansales: I thoroughly enjoyed The Martian largely for the reasons you didn't. There was no wasted space, I didn't have to skip any tortuous politics or side stories thrown in for dramatic effect. I understood it, it was all stuff I was interested in, and it was a lot of fun for me. The most interesting thing about it is that my sisters - who hate science fiction but love gardening and biology - liked it too. I hope he, or somebody else, writes more books like The Martian :)

>43 psybre: Take my words with a pinch of a salt - I'm a huge Jones fan :-)

>44 nhlsecord: By "hollow", I didn't mean politics or side stories. When you read about someone who travels from A to B, you expect there to have been a point to the journey. There was none in The Martian. Man struggles to survive on Mars. Which is not unlike: Man struggles to survive in wilderness. Although there are no bears on Mars. But that's only part of it. To impress me, a novel has to be more than just a good story (and I don't mean plot), it also needs to be well-written. And Weir is not a good writer. He's serviceable, at best.

For me The Martian started out well (if you can ignore the ridiculous storm) but quickly became formulaic. It also seemed to have been written with an eye to the script that will follow (has in fact followed, Matt Damon is to play the lead).
I think it's aim was to be a Robinson Crusoe. Unfortunately it compares poorly with Defoe who, for all his colonialist ideas, gave it a spiritual dimension that The Martian lacks. Mark Watney seems to have little, if any, inner life.

>46 iansales:
>47 justifiedsinner:

The way Ian described it, it sounds like a Jack London story set on Mars, but not as good.

>48 artturnerjr: I thought his adapting tools and building himself a garden more Defoe than London.

>49 justifiedsinner:

The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction describes it as a robinsonade, too:

http://www.sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/robinsonade

49: He reminded me very much of my mother who was a remarkable survivor, and he also reminded me of the engineers I used to work with who liked to put things together just because they could.

I've just started The moon king; not sure yet if is going to be SF or fantasy.

It's fantasy, but of the kind that Miéville wrote with his Bas Lag books with a strong whiff of Jeff Vandermeer.

Myself, I am reading the Coming of Conan the Cimmerian. I loved Conan when I was around 20, so this is a visit back to my youth to see if it holds up. So far the answer is yes and no. It's really pulpy and purple, but definitely readable.

>53 anglemark:

I was in my late teens when I read the Conan stories, most of the originals and some of the deCamp and Carter additions. I was hugely impressed at the time, but I don't know how I would feel re-reading them as a cynical adult.

Finished Parable of the Talents which, despite the catalogue of atrocities, I thought rather pedestrian. Starting Under the Skin.

I just finished The Night Circus. Well it was descriptive..... and kinda boring. *sigh*
I am now going to walk to the library, return this and see what else I can find.

I'm not going to mark down Weir for what he is not but it'll be interesting to see how his career goes after this; I should mention that I have lower critical standards for "thrillers" as opposed to best practice in SF proper.

>53 anglemark:
>54 EnsignRamsey:

I still really enjoy Robert E. Howard's work. A lot of it has not aged particularly well, but his natural gift for storytelling still shines through in the best stuff. "The Tower of the Elephant" (http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Tower_of_the_Elephant) (which is collected in the book that anglemark mentioned above) is a fine example of this.

Finished Huysman's Pets, started Steps of the Sun.

>14 seitherin: First fifteen lives of Harry August I admire the research and knowledge the author has of the 20th century. I have no idea who Harry August is as a character, neither does the character really. I finished Replay last night, similar concept, but a shorter timeframe. Both unsatisfying endings!

>41 psybre: I have My real children on loan from the library and may start it next, it seems like a riff on the same theme.

I'm also listening to Alistair Reynolds Revelation space series, on Redemption ark at the moment. I read his standalone books first, and am liking this series less then Century rain, which he sadly said he wouldn't do a sequel to.

>60 wifilibrarian: I thoroughly liked Replay (maybe because I hadn't read in the sub-genre for a long time). Love the Revelation Space series and hope to start his Poseidon's Children series this summer.

I'm finding My Real Children is only somewhat of the same riff as Replay, and a joy to read.

Just finished my re-read of Greg Bear's Eon. I first read this not long after it came out, but it was spoiled for me by the fact that the publishers, Tor, put a stonking great big mammoth SPOILER in the blurb and it heavily influenced the way I read the novel. Now pressing on (in my coffee-time reading) to the second novel in the sequence, Eternity.

In other news, I'm also reading Mrs. Bradshaw's Handbook to travelling upon the Ankh-Morpork and Sto Plains Hygienic Railway, which I suppose is sort of steampunk sf set in a fantasy world. I don't know how much Pratchett is actually in this, but I'm finding it funnier and better constructed than the novel it was an adjunct to, Raising Steam.

Finished Touch. I liked the way she handled the central conceit, but the plot was a bit on the thin side and it felt like a lot of words for a short distance. Tried reading City of Ruin, gave up halfway through the first chapter. That one'll be a raffle prize at the York pub meet, then.

I have finally started Magician by Raymond Feist. This is the expanded revised addition which is 600+ pages so I will be here for a while. Only about 20 pages in and so far I really like the writing style. I think I may have found a new author. :)

Over the weekend I read Tracker by Cherryh. Not one of my favorites, but even a weaker book in this series is better than most of the other books I'll read this year.

Now reading The Atrocity Exhibition.

Finished Larry Niven's Crashlander and the Robert Silverberg and Damien Broderick collaboration Beyond the Doors of Death and now reading Tom Purdom's Romance on Four Worlds: A Casanova Quartet.

Just started reading Matter, by Iain M. Banks. Almost all the way through the Culture novels.

Currently reading Persona by Genevieve Valentine.

Reading Starstrike by W. Michael Gear...

Just finished up Thieftaker (B); file under novels that I wanted to like better than I do. What it boils down to is that the main character Ethan Kaillie just didn't capture my imagination in a dynamic fashion, though you have every reason to feel sympathy for his position. I'm still willing to give the next book in the series a try; particularly since the climax raises a lot of questions about the author's world-building skills.

Read:

The Three body problem by Cixin Liu - 1st book of a trilogy that starts with the Chinese Cultural Revolution that traumatizes a young Chinese scientist. In some ways it reminded me of Enders Game because of a virtual reality aspect. Decent book, but is more a commentary on the CCR than what I think of as a science fiction. However, it could turn out that the second book will be more like a science fiction - it will be coming out soon, after translation. Best character - the rough, but cagey, policeman.

Fire with Fire by Charles Gannon was a heck of ride. Lots of interesting features, intrigue and action. Started reading TRial by Fire - not so thrilled with this book - lots of military action and weaponry description. Not my cup of tea.

Just started Parable of the sower which is bleak but gripping so far.

Just finished The Dark Defiles by Richard Morganand have now started A Quantum Mythology by Gavin G. Smith

I'm enjoying Shaman.

Currently reading Harrison Squared by Daryl Gregory.

Currently reading A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller Jr. I am struggling with it though.

Read Tabula Rasa by Lippert-Martin - a good suspense thriller with lots of twists. A young woman is undergoing treatment to have her memory wiped. Of course, she comes to realize that she doesn't really want to do that and starts taking steps to avert completion. But that is only the beginning. Its an action book and it keeps you on your toes.

The last few days I found several wonderful science fiction stories in Nisi Shawl's Filter House collection. The other stories were very good also.

Currently reading Avalon by Arnett. Humans have long traveled space using the "metaspace." A young man works as a space thief for a crime lord, but wants desperately to leave that life and take his sister with him, but the crime lord owns the man's space craft due to a gambling debt. The crime lord gives him an opportunity to retrieve a ship that has an incredible weapon, but it means going into a part of space from which ships do not return. Has intrigue, action, some futuristic world building. It will be interesting to see how this turns out, since, of course, there is a sequel Polaris.

Just started reading Nexus.

I've finished The Darwin Elevator and will finish The Ghost Sister this evening.