July 2016 reading

Ok...ok... I know it is June 28 but I did not want to start a thread just for a couple of days so I started this one now for July.

I just finished Alliance Space by CJ Cherryh.

It is an omnibus of two novels:

Merchanter's Luck This is a novel of a small space freighter operating on the fringe... not a pirate but not entirely honest either. The pilot/owner is man called Sandor.. he has something terrible happened to him and his family, he lives by his wits and trusts no one... that is until he is forced to.

I give this book 4.5 Stars

The other book Forty Thousand in Gehenna is on the dark side. It starts out describing the preparation for a ship carrying 40,000 to a small planet, Gehenna. That was interesting to me... the bulk of the settlers are clones and it was interesting how 40,000 of them were crammed into rooms with bunk beds stacked 20 high and how these people were mind controlled to live during the voyage. But then the wheels fall off the story which I will describe in my review.

I give this book 3.0 Stars

I really recommend Merchanter's Luck but only marginally the other.

Combined I have given the omnibus an average of 3.5 stars (rounded down)

>1 Lynxear: I know it is June 28 but I did not want to start a thread just for a couple of days

Why start? :) We already have a June thread: https://www.librarything.com/topic/224124

Hmmm could not find it for some reason... Perhaps I accidentally deleted that thread somehow....oh well the July thread has been set up

I had some issues with 40,000 in Gehenna too,the episodic nature as it was spread over several hundred years naturally made identification with the characters difficult. It was disconcerting to get really involved in the usual intense focus of Cherryh's style,getting into the mind of a character who was suddenly jettisoned,without even a sentence about their future! A bit weird that. But I still found it a gripping read.
My TBR for July
C J Cherryh Heavy Time
Michael Bishop No Enemy But Time ✔
James White The Watch Below
Olivia E Butler KIndred ✔
Darynda JonesFourth Grave Beneath my Feet✔
Darynda Jones Fifth Grave Past the Light ✔
Larry Niven The Integral Trees
Roger Zelazny Isle of the Dead ✔

Currently reading The Harlequin and Don't Bite the Sun.

Did we vote to leave June and the common calendar as well?

It will be July in the Far East soon enough anyway. :)

>6 justifiedsinner: Lol!Now now, JS,remember time is a slippery concept,very strange and full of enigmas and paradoxes. Somehow June has disappeared as far as Lynxear's world is concerned! ;0)

I read both novels as they came out, so didn't find myself comparing them directly. Can't imagine them forming an effective package. Very different sorts of stories, even if they are in the same universe.

Still reading Dying of the Light by George R. R. Martin. Looks like I'll end June with it and start July.

>4 dustydigger: "It was disconcerting to get really involved in the usual intense focus of Cherryh's style,getting into the mind of a character who was suddenly jettisoned,without even a sentence about their future! A bit weird that. But I still found it a gripping read."

I totally agree on both counts. The updates to the marriage/child history that periodically occurred and the maps did very little to enhance the story for me and confused me as well. I always got frustrated when something interested me and then it lasted about 2 pages and was dropped and you fast forwards a few decades.

You had the impression the big beasts were important but you don't realize why until the last 1/5 of the book when the embedded "starmen" discovered it but those same starmen required hundreds of years to figure that out. It made no sense to me.

But like you said, I found it hard to put the book aside and eventually finished it.

I wished the book continued the way it started... as a colonization of a new world with 40,000 clone slaves that I found really interesting.

Somehow it seems appropriate for an SF forum to time-travel every now & then...

>12 ahoving: You mean the one that hasn't been published yet and which to are trying to spam?

>12 ahoving: >13 justifiedsinner:

I think that we might cut Ahoving some slack here. There is such a book... it is an e-book and it is on Amazon books as shown in this link

https://www.amazon.com/Mars-Tesla-Charley-Allen-ebook/dp/B01GAGHCL2#navbar

there was also a book by the same name written in 1901 by Weldon J. Cobb as shown in the picture below



Now it may not be a YA classic today... but I can imagine that it must have been so back in 1901 and it would certainly be a classic to those who belong to The Tesla Memorial Society of New York.

My sources (Wikipedia {sigh}) say that this adaptation by Charley Allen is released to celebrate Tesla's 150th Birthday so it seems reasonable to me.

I don't know if Ahoving read the book or not... I doubt he is spamming this book but he could have phrased his question a bit better and it IS suspicious when you check his library and find only 2 books. There is such a book and it does have a link to another in history... so all those flags should be retracted if possible. IMHO

Reread "Day Million" by Frederick Pohl on a whim and have been reflecting upon what a remarkable story it is. Not only does it deal with those transhumanist themes that all the cool kids are into these days, one of the story's leads (Dora) is actually transgender:

...look closely at the next busty babe you meet and reflect that she may be a Dora, for adults who are genetically male but somatically female are far from unknown even in our own time. An accident of environment in womb overwhelms the blueprints of heredity. The difference is that with us it happens only by accident and we don't know about it except rarely, after close study: whereas the people of Day Million did it often, on purpose, because they wanted to.

Not bad for a story that was first published in 1966. You can read it here:

http://www.sfcenter.ku.edu/Sci-Tech-Society/stored/day_million.pdf

>14 Lynxear:

Cool! What I wanna know is: how are all those guys in the lower left-hand corner of the illustration fitting in that barrel?

>15 artturnerjr: Why do you assume it's multiple people and not one person with more than two arms? Mars has a tradition of four-armed people.

>15 artturnerjr:

Hahaha.... You see that too, eh. There were at least 2 maybe 3 midgets in that barrel. So funny.

>17 Lynxear: Perhaps it's an alien with three hands that just happens to look to us like a barrel...

>16 ChrisRiesbeck:

Of course! Eleven years before the publication of A Princess of Mars, too - very impressive. 8)

>18 RobertDay:

I love those old pulp serials/novels, in many ways they show more imagination that many written today.

As a side story here... My father and uncle accumulated a hundreds of serial pulp mags as teens. They left them at their boyhood home when they married and moved out. My grandfather was tired of this "junk" in the basement and burned the lot in the furnace without mentioning it. {Sigh}

>18 RobertDay:

You know, as long as we're discussing old pulp SF, the Rigellians in the Lensman series were described as barrel shaped and with four arms. That could be a right handed Rigellian who can only shoot with his three right hands and not with his left, so the artist didn't bother showing the fourth hand. :-)

On less of a threadjack note, just finished library copies of Bujold's Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen and the final book in Jacqueline Carey's Michigan fantasy trilogy, Poison Fruit. Liked both of them.

>21 pjfarm:

You know, as long as we're discussing old pulp SF, the Rigellians in the Lensman series were described as barrel shaped and with four arms.

The Elder Things (aka Old Ones) in At the Mountains of Madness are also barrel-shaped. Being an H.P. Lovecraft creation, however, they (of course!) have tentacles rather than arms.

>14 Lynxear: According to Amazon the book was on pre-order. He also stated it was a classic. His link is to the ebook and not the older book. Pretty obvious spamming IMHO and also the other who flagged him.

> 23 Perhaps

>23 justifiedsinner: they also had only one book in the library, which is the one they mentioned in their comment.

Just started The Nightmare Stacks, and I have The Sudden Appearance of Hope on deck for after that.

Started Broken Angels last night - the second Takeshi Kovacs novel by Richard K. Morgan. First 50 pages or so - very different from the first one.

Currently reading fantasy, Indexing and Rose Daughter. I seem to be in a fairy tale frame of mind.

Currently reading The Man Whose Name Wouldn't Fit, a clunky 1968 book that looks like it shouldn't exist yet it does. The initial problem is that the protagonist's name is too long to fit in his company's new computer system, so they fire him.

Just read The Giver by Lois Lowey only because I caught the movie on Netflix the other day. It appears the movie is a bit more Hoolywood than the book. Anyone else catch these?

Starting John Scalzi's The Human Division. It's been on my TBR queue for a long time!

I' ve just started Ready Player One, which I guess fits here as well as anywhere. I'm a little old for the 80s references, but it's still a lot of fun.

>31 jerry-book: I read The Giver last year and didn't much care for it. I gave the follow-up, Gathering Blue, a chance hoping things would improve but found more of the same so I gave up on the series. I don't plan to watch the movie.

>31 jerry-book:

Read the book; haven't seen the movie.

About to start Arcadia, the last book I have to read of ths year's Clarke Award shortlist.

Very busy,but I am starting Michael Bishop's No Enemy but Time and Olivia E Butler's Kindred,both dealing in very different ways, with time travel.
First though I have to concentrate on an old vintage crime story,John Dickson Carr's The Crooked Hinge and Zelazny's Isle of the Dead,both required by other readers. I hate reading to a deadline! :0)

>34 ScoLgo: The Giver didn't measure up for me either.

>37 dustydigger: Reading to a deadline often sucks the fun out of it for me too, Dusty. I hope you enjoy both of those stories enough to take your mind off the time crunch.

I have No Enemy But Time on my Pick & Mix list for this year so will be interested to hear your thoughts on it. Have already read Kindred, (5 stars and a favorite for me), but also plan to read the Parable duology from Butler as part of that same challenge. Currently 2/3 of the way through Children of God by Mary Russell. As usual, her writing, characterization, and dialog are top-notch so returning to Rakhat is, once again, an immersive experience.

Recently finished The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet, the debut novel from Becky Chambers. This book gets many laudatory reviews but I found it rather lack-luster in many ways. I hear the sequel is coming soon but I plan to skip it.

>39 ScoLgo: Yeeaahh! A sequel? Sorry you didn't like Small angry planet, but I loved it, and I'm very happy there will be a sequel!



Ha, I see it is about Lovey. Perfect! I was worried it would be about the crew of the Wayfarer, and I feel that story has been told.

I'm starting a reread of The Girl in the Road to lead the book club next month.

Starting July with Dorsai! by Gordon R. Dickson. My first attempt at Dickson, who is very Trad SF. I'm getting a flavour of E.E. Smith, with notes of Asimov.

I have started on the third book in the Riters Trilogy, Behemoth. I am reading the ebook version that contains both halves of the book published together as the author prefers.

>40 zjakkelien: Glad I made your day better with my less than gushing review! ;)

Started The Horror in the Museum and Other Revisions (H.P. Lovecraft et al.).

Cherryh's Kesrith was so obviously part 1 from a longer work but it was quite good actually. Morgan's Broken Angels was very different from the first one - but in an interesting way - both novels clarify each other in a way - by clearing up the backstory mainly and how the world got to where it got.

Now reading Asher's Cowl (which so far is disjointed but it seems to be coming together and some short stories (trying to make a dent in a big pile of new and old magazines plus Wondrous Beginnings.

I'm currently reading Le silence de la cité (the City's silence, translated as The Silent City), by Elisabeth Vonarburg.

This the first book I read by this author and I like it quite a bit so far.

I also started a collection of 20 short stories, edited by French publisher Le Bélial to celebrate their 20th anniversary.

Just finished reading Dying of the Light by George R. R. Martin. A rather dark and at times violent story, but also compelling and well-realized. The setting alone is worth the price of admission.

Next up, not sci-fi exactly, but one that people have been urging me to read for a long time: Guards! Guards! by Terry Pratchett.

>48 ThomasWatson: I hear Guards! Guards! is one of the best in the discworld series, but haven't read it myself.

>41 Unreachableshelf: I just read Girl in the road and thought it was really interesting. Your book club discussion should be a good one!

I've just started Mendoza in Hollywood book three of Kage Baker's time-travelling cyborg series. So far it's just as good as the earlier volumes.

Finished Children of God yesterday. Very good sequel to The Sparrow. I thoroughly enjoyed both.

Now starting The Summer Queen. About 100 pages in and am liking it just as much as I did The Snow Queen and World's End.

Finished Dorsai!, which I enjoyed except for the rather disappointing resolution. Next up I'm reading The Face in the Abyss by A. Merritt.

I am about half way through Quantum Night which is Bob Sawyer's latest book. It's brilliant, thrilling and set in my home town of Winnipeg.

Read "The Game of Rat and Dragon" by Cordwainer Smith. Recommended to cat lovers and to anybody who enjoys 50s SF:

http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/29614

Made me want to read more by this author.

>52 EnsignRamsey:

Please let us know how The Face in the Abyss is. Might have to snag a copy if it's any good.

When I told a friend a while back that I hadn't read ANY discworld novels (and after he regained control of his shock) it was recommended that I start with Guards! Guards!, even though it isn't actually the first book. So far, I find it clever and amusing.

>55 ThomasWatson:

That's my usual recommendation for a start as well :) Have fun reading.

>55 ThomasWatson: I might have to try that one. I read The Color of Magic a while back and, more recently, Good Omens, and found them both amusing and clever - but not really my type of thing. Of course, my tastes run more to science-fiction than fantasy so my tone-deafness to the Pratchett humor may be at least partially attributable to that. On the other hand, I do really enjoy puns and bad jokes so I'm not sure why this stuff doesn't appeal more than it does...?

>51 ScoLgo: Finished Children of God yesterday. Very good sequel to The Sparrow. I thoroughly enjoyed both.

Really? I rather liked The sparrow but never continued with the sequel. I thought The sparrow was fine on its own and I worried that Children of god might ruin it. Maybe I should reconsider...

>57 ScoLgo: I enjoyed Truckers by Terry Pratchett far more than the three or four Discworld books I've read. I found it much more fun and clever. It's a short book so you may want to give it a try (it's the first volume in a trilogy).

>57 ScoLgo:, >59 chlorine: The trick is to give the first 5–10 books a miss. Neither The colour of magic nor Good omens is a particularly good book. The first really good Discworld novel is Small gods.

>60 anglemark: Good to know. I read The Colour of Magic and decided not to continue with the series. Maybe I'll try Small Gods.

Continued with the "Rivers of London" series and Broken Homes (A), in which Aaronovitch throws a major plot twist at the readers. This has never been a series you could dip in at any place and it really isn't now!

>58 zjakkelien: I waited a couple of years between reading the books. There are reviewers that say they don't like CoG as much as they did The Sparrow, and, having now read both, I can understand why - and to some extent, I agree. However, I thought book 1 was so, so good that I fully expected the sequel to fall a bit short. Perhaps my lowered expectations played a role but I was pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed book 2. Is it as good as The Sparrow? Probably not. Is it a worthy sequel? In my opinion, definitely yes.

(BTW - your touchstone for CoG is mis-linked ;).

>59 chlorine: Thank you, I will keep an eye out for Truckers.

>60 anglemark: Thank you. That is good to know. I almost feel that, should I return to Discworld, I need to read book #2 - if only because of the literal cliff-hanger of an ending in book #1! ;) Will watch for Small Gods and Guards! Guards! too since those both seem to be highly recommended.

>58 zjakkelien:
>63 ScoLgo:
I've read and enjoyed both The Sparrow and Children of God. As far as sequels go, CoG is one of the better ones I've read. I gave if 4.5 stars instead of the 5 I gave the first book.

>60 anglemark: Thanks for the recommendation. I have given up on the Discworld series but if I ever decide to give it one more try I'll be sure to skip the first ten books. :)

>63 ScoLgo: >65 seitherin: Thanks for the opinions! I think I will put Children of God on my wishlist after all...

Touchstone fixed. Why on earth would the system think I meant A brave new world when I typed Children of god?

Finished Ultima by Stephen Baxter, now on The Corporation Wars: Dissidence by Ken MacLeod

Just starting Time's Eye It looks to be a co-authorship between AC Clarke and Stephen Baxter

Reading Cibola Burn by James SA Corey....

>61 Foghorn-Leghorn: The early Pratchett Discworld books were written in his spare time (from being a press officer at a nuclear power plant, what could possibly go wrong?) and are certainly still from a writer developing his craft. 'The Colour of Magic' feels very much like three short stories bolted together. The first Discworld book that many people consider to be capable of standing on its own two feet is Mort but 'Small Gods' is a very good contender for the first serious Comedy (in the classical sense of the term) instead of just being humourous writing. But I could understand people wanting to make a start with 'Guards! Guards!' as well, as by then Pratchett's command of his world-building as well as his writing was fairly well established.

'Truckers' (and its sequels, Diggers and Wings) are specifically YA - or even children's - literature but are very well crafted and adequately science-fictional.

About 200 pages into Red Mars, published 1993 and detailing the colonization of the red planet. Heavy on jargon but comprehensible even by me, and pretty strong on the character side too. Still seems relevant in 2016 - not that I'd know - except that no smartphone technology is rather obvious.

I agree about the first two Discworld books but I really liked the fifth one - Sourcery. The Luggage and Rincewind have a brilliant friendship :) Other favorites: Reaper Man, Small Gods, Lords and Ladies, and Soul Music (who doesn't enjoy a story about sex and drugs and music-with-rocks-in?)

Maybe you have to have a Monty Python type of funny bone to like Pratchett's books...

I started Company town last weekend. Love it so far! Anyone else read it?

>74 zjakkelien:

Grabbed it from the library last weekend so it is somewhere in my near future. Good to see they finally published it...

>75 AnnieMod: Were there publication issues?

>76 zjakkelien:

Something like that :) Angry Robot had it on its lineup in 2014 (including cover and all: here for example, Then it got pushed to March 2015. Then apparently an editor changed companies and the book was not with Angry Robot anymore and Ashby posted that now Tor is publishing it: here - although it was expected 2015 release. And then finally this year, Tor published it. I am probably missing steps in the saga - but it had been one of those weird publishing stories...

>74 zjakkelien: This looked interesting to me. Now that you've enjoyed it I will definitely look out for a copy!

>54 artturnerjr: I think I'm far enough through The Face in the Abyss to recommend it. Especially if you enjoy authors like H.P. Lovecraft and William Hope Hodgson.

>79 EnsignRamsey:

Ha! I'm reading books by Lovecraft and Hodgson right now, as a matter of fact. Okay, I'm gettin' it. Thanks! :)

I'm very much enjoying my re-read of The Passage; and while I can't wait to get to the other two books in Cronin's trilogy, The Passage is soooo good!

>77 AnnieMod: Wow, ok, that seems like a lot of hassle. Glad that it did work out in the end!

>78 Sakerfalcon: I didn't finish it yet, but I am definitely enjoying it. I like the main character, and it isn't every day that you find one that is half-Korean and that has a disease like Hwa has (Sturge- Weber. I didn't know it, but it is associated with port-wine stains, which she had, possible seizures and glaucoma).

Just finished Citizen of the Galaxy, which until I got to the end I was thinking was rather better than I thought it would be, but I found the ending most unsatisfactory. Far too much was left up in the air, and I get the idea that Heinlein had taken it as far as it would go and didn't really know what to do with it next.

Reading Digital Dreams: A Decade of Science Fiction by Women - the first 3 stories are underwhelming but hoping it picks up a bit.

>68 AlanPoulter: I really enjoyed The Corporation Wars: Dissidence.

Now reading The Three-body Problem.

>77 AnnieMod: I hadn't heard the editor bit with Angry Robot. The part I heard was that there was a holdup as the original founder and owner of the company bought it back (from whomever he sold it too, I guess). I just assumed Ashby got her rights back and re-sold it to Tor.

>86 beniowa:

She was explaining the editor situation on her site back then - still there in my second link up in the post. It was probably a combination of a lot of things at the end of the day - delays caused by whatever was going on in the publisher, editor leaving, lucky chance getting the book in front of an editor elsewhere. Who knows what started the chain :) I happened to wait for it -- which is why I even knew something was amiss enough to look for information.

I finished John Scalzi's The Human Division. I think this may be the one where Scalzi experimented with publishing his book in installments? He chose a structure that would accommodate that approach - tales of a band of diplomats meeting with aliens, with the Old Man's War conflicts providing the crises that needed addressing. It worked - it felt like a severely episodic novel - but I think I prefer modern novel structure. I get more absorbed in the story than I do when the storyline is frequently interrupted.

<85 so far seems to be a generic cyberpunk reboot, without any local roots..

Finished Century Rain, several stories into Outer Space, Inner Lands.

ScoLgo, I'm pretty much the same. Omnivorous as my reading habits are, fantasy makes a small contribution to fiction when compared with science fiction. That this is my second fantasy read this year (The Lies of Locke Lamora being the first) is unusual.

So far, I'm enjoying Guards! Guards! quite a bit. It reminds me a lot of Monty Python, except it's actually funny, and has a plot.

I rather liked Good Omens. That's the book that prompted me to ask where to start with the Discworld books.

Moved onto The Twelve after finishing The Passage, which was very good. I know it isn't some people's cup-o-tea, but I like big sprawling doorstopper books with multiple storylines. Think of Peter F. Hamilton writing a Vampire Apocalypse series...oh wait, he did that! Ok, a Vampire Apocalypse series set in the very near future with tighter editing!

As for Terry Pratchett, I have only read Mort so far. It was silly, but I loved the sly humour, the personalities (Death, a skeleton who speaks in capital letters and who could "kill for a good curry"), and Pratchett's gift for description.

>93 drmamm: Hamilton wrote a Vampire apocalypse series? Which books are they?

>93 drmamm: I rather liked the Passage. the Twelve was a bit unfocused, but Cronin makes up for it in the City of Mirrors

>96 johnnyapollo: That is good to hear because I plan on rereading the first two books before I try the last one!

>95 Foghorn-Leghorn: Foghorn-Leghorn: It was sort-of tongue-in-cheek. I was referring to his Night's Dawn Trilogy. Vampire apocalypse, but for the known universe in the far future.

>98 drmamm: NIght's Dawn Trilogy was my first encounter with Peter Hamilton. An excellent encounter.

Finished The Face in the Abyss. Not only is it a cracking story but it's hard not to believe Merritt influenced better-known authors such as Tolkien and Moorcock. Back to mainstream SF next for The Interpreter by Brian Aldiss.

I finished Ninefox Gambit by Yoon Ha Lee. This was a really interesting read. Dense SF. Hard to decipher government and mathematics and calendar based systems. Good characters though. I liked it.

>93 drmamm: I'm right behind you! Finished my re-read of The Passage yesterday and I'm about 100 pages into The Twelve. Definitely enjoying it. I really like that the book continues from the end of The Passage, but also continues with the direct aftermath of the release of the virals.

I haven't read any Peter Hamilton yet - I have The Dreaming Void on my shelf - and I didn't know he did a vampire apocalypse trilogy; I'll have to check it out.

Read and enjoyed Roger Zelazny's Isle of the Dead,though it wasnt in the first rank of his works,and was a little bit rambling,obscure and slightly confused. However it did have the trademark preoccupations with immortality and mythology,and those fabulous descriptions of nature and landscape that are a favourite feature of his books for me.
Also had real fun with Darynda Jones Fourth Grave beneath my Feetwhere feisty Charley,the Grim Reaper, finally gets together with Reyes the son of Satan in this amusing UF series. Funny,feisty,and frothy,a perfect antidote to all the grief and grimness which is all we see if we dare to brave turning on the world news. I am going straight on to the next book,Fifth Grave Past the Light ffor another dose of the humour and mayhem that surround the scatty Charley.

>101 tottman: If it's anything like his short fiction, I won't be bothering with it.

Finished Cowl over the weekend. If some of the early Polity novels (The Skinner mainly but some elements of others as well) were toeing the line between SF and Horror, this one is simply moving it (or crossing it - your choice of interpretation). It takes a while to get into it (and the time travel is not even part of the difficulty) and there is a part in the middle that goes on and on but overall a pretty good novel. I am almost sorry it is a standalone. And it did remind me of Hamilton - a lot shorter, a lot faster, different in topic but similar in feeling. Although I would not recommend starting with this novel if you had never read Asher before - it is a bit too disjointed and a bit too different if you do not recognize the style. Review to follow some time this week.

Now reading Well of Shiuan - continuing with my Cherryh's read-in-order project.
And catching up with the shorter fiction on my other two read-in-order projects - Asher and McDevitt (figured out if I am going to read the novels, I can as well try to pick up the shorter works as well - as much as possible anyway - some of the early Asher ones are impossible to track).

>102 LisaMorr: Peter Hamilton is one of my favorite SF authors, although he's not a man of half-measures. Looooong books, where he will take an entire page to describe what someone is wearing. But he can really pick up the pace when he needs to. I would keep anything with "Void" on the shelf until you read Pandora's Star and Judas Unchained. They set the stage for the Void series (and I think they are better). Night's Dawn is a separate universe from all of that - he wrote it before PS/JU/Void.

If you want a standalone book that is "only" 500 pages or so, read Fallen Dragon. Very good.

And I finished The Twelve and have moved on to City of Mirrors, which appears to have received the best reviews of the three. Very early, but good start. I liked The Twelve ALMOST as much as The Passage, although it bogged down in the middle at times. Still a great read.

>106 drmamm: Depends on the edition - the Orbit paperback of Fallen Dragon is 800+ pages :) Still recommended though. As is Great North Road for another standalone (a bit longer than that).

Starting to like Time's Eye now. I have not read much for the last week (Calgary Stampede gets in the way at this time of year) and the book had a funny beginning but now it is making some sense.

It has a Island in the Sea of Time feel to it but better written IMHO.

I'm reading Behind the Throne by K B Wagers and I'm really liking it so far. Strong characters, really interesting world building, lots of action, some humor, and I'm just getting to the political intrigue. I hope it keeps up!!

Finished The Interpreter, and left a micro-review of same because most reviewers don't seem to "get" it. Next up I'm re-reading Deathworld One by Harry Harrison.

Just finished Mostly Harmless. Next up The Robots of Dawn.

>106 drmamm: Thanks for the Peter Hamilton advice!

>110 EnsignRamsey: Read Deathworld last year for the second time. I didn't remember it being so short.

Dipping my toe into Peter F. Hamilton with If at First....

>105 AnnieMod: Which book would you recommand for starting with Neil Asher? I want to get to him someday, and I have Gridlinked wishlisted, but I think the only reason I chose this one is that it's the one with the most readers here.

>115 chlorine: I'd say Gridlinked is a good choice. It's the first of the Agent Cormac series (within the Polity Universe). If you're into something more Mieville-weird The Skinner would be another.

>115 chlorine:

Gridlinked is the best way to start IMO - The Skinner does start a new story but it does not explain some of the realities of the universe already covered in the first one - and some of them do play a role. The different subseries are mostly independent but they are in the same universe.

Finished If at First... and started Great North Road.

>116 justifiedsinner:
>117 AnnieMod:
Thanks for your advice! I'm very much into Mieville-weird but will still stick to Gridlinked, and keep The Skinner in mind for later. :)

>113 Foghorn-Leghorn: It's shocking how short some of the old-timey books are if you're a fan of, say, George R.R. Martin!

Finished The Nightmare Stacks a few days ago, have Arcadia from the library and hope to begin reading it tonight. I was really enjoying The Expanse series this spring and summer but am at a hard stop until Babylon's Ashes comes out this fall. I'd moved away from most SF in middle age but recs on io9 have pulled me back in.

For those who've read The Nightmare Stacks (slight spoiler for those who have not), did anyone else have a belly laugh upon learning of the PHANG counting compulsion?

Well I finished Time's Eye. The book had a very unsatisfactory ending to what was initially an interesting start.

I normally avoid books about the holocaust,or slavery,or about child abuse etc,these days I tend to want lighter books on lighter topics. So I have been putting off Olivia E Butler's Kindred where a young modern black woman has an irresistible link with her slave owning white ancestor ,born back around 1810,so that whenever he is in physical danger she is transported back in time to save his life,switching back and forth in time till she is sure that her great great grandmother has been born to one of his slave women . I was surprised at how accessible the style was,since was expecting a typical literary fiction style,dry and erudite. The book did move smoothly and easily,and was tense and gripping. But I just found the whole heartbreaking slavery situation very distressing to read about,I only read one flashback section at a time because it was so grim and disturbing,as this modern american woman had to struggle to become servile to survive ill treatment and the heartbreak of numerous abuses of the slaves. So its taken quite a while to finish the book,but it was a good book I'm glad I read it. I think I will wait a few months before tackling another of Butler's works!
Co-incidentally I was also reading a very different time travel novel,Michael Bishop's No Enemy But Time about a time experiment where a young man is sent back to the Pleistocene,and when the technology for his return to the present fails,he joins a group of hominids and even falls in love with one! The book is vividly written,often hilarious,or harrowing,sexually frank,and addresses themes of racism and identity in a vibant way. Good fun.One more Nebula off the list!That's 31/52 completed :0)
How interesting that time travel can be used for such different authors themes! Butler uses it only as a device to get a modern character back to the 1820s where she can be a foil for the state of blacks back then,as well as showing that even the most sensitive or well-intentioned of people are affected by the whole social milieu,so that the whole society can fall into gross injustices and cruelty.I found it sad to be reading this at a time when any sort of progress of justice seems to be faltering badly,just one more reason for finding the book a hard read in some ways
Bishop uses a form of spirit travel combined with military equipment to thrust his protagonist much further back in time,while being careful to avoid pitfalls of pulp SF novels time travel gaffes That was my second Bishop book,and it was very different from Transfigurations,though both are rather anthropologically themed,and both interesting and thought provoking. Good stuff.
Going to read some much easier and lighter books from other genres for the rest of the month,while sorting out some good SF stuff for next month!

>120 EnsignRamsey:

There's something to be said for that, I think. Those older SF novels have their flaws, obviously, but those writers knew how to say what they had to say and finish - a virtue that seems to be missing in a lot of recent stuff in the genre.

>124 artturnerjr: I agree with you whole heartedly!

>121 rlsalvati: Yeah, I like the way the Laundry Files novels play with expectations, and the counting compulsion made for a couple of very funny moments.

>118 seitherin: My introduction to Peter F. Hamilton was the Nights Dawn trilogy. Talk about jumping in with both feet! Great North Road is a monster of a book, in terms of page count, but a fantastic read!

I finished Behind the Throne by K B Wagers and it's one of the most impressive SF debuts I've read. It's not that it has the depth of social commentary like an Ann Leckie, but it's a fun, fast-paced well-written adventure. It does have a very interesting societal structure, but it is sort of a background piece and not the focus. I'm definitely interested to see where this series goes!

>127 ThomasWatson: Large page counts have never put me off reading anything and the concept of the book sounded interesting so I decided to dive in with both feet. Not quite a third done and I am enjoying it. I hope it holds up till the end.

>129 seitherin:

Oh yes, he does. He is very good at wrapping his long narratives up. :)

>121 rlsalvati:

I just finished The Nightmare Stacks today myself (review posted). Since book four or so, when I caught up to the ones already written, I've been waiting for each new installment. This one did not disappoint.

>124 artturnerjr: I couldn't agree more! Maybe that's why I keep reading old SF.

Just finished Seveneves by Neal Stephenson, not a light summer read, but very good though. It's got 2 parts, first disintegration of the moon causes the destruction of the Earth, while a small number of people find shelter on Earth' orbit. The second part jumps 5000 years into the future, revealing how the survivors of the human race evolved.
The technical details are remarkable, and also it's got to be the most spectacular apocalypse in sci-fi.

Really enjoying Abaddon's Gate, the third in The Expanse series.

Finished The Twelve on Saturday and well into the last book of Justin Cronin's viral vampire trilogy, The City of Mirrors.

i really enjoyed your comments on both books. I'd like to see more extended remarks, not just the skeletal informative minimum we so often get.

Finished Outer Space, Inner Lands and The Three-Body Problem. The latter was Tor's free e-book offering for July -- thank you, Tor! Starting The Winds of Time tonight.

Currently reading Nemesis Games by James SA Corey...

>137 ChrisRiesbeck: How good was The Three-Body Problem?

Finished The Summer Queen last night. Long but good. I think I may have liked it even better than the opening volume in the series, (The Snow Queen). Definitely glad I read World's End between the two. Things in Summer Queen made more sense with the events of World's End in mind.

About halfway through Medusa's Web by Tim Powers. Another creepy paranormal piece of goodness from the master of secret history stories.

Also began Borderline (The Arcadia Project) last night. Only a couple of chapters into it so I'm not sure about the subject matter yet - but the writing is good and I think I like the voice of the protagonist.

Finished Great North Road. Really, really enjoyed the book.

I thought it was enjoyable if you like very old-fashioned science fiction and aren't bothered by the sins of classics from decades past. It didn't seem like game changer to me though.

I finished Great North Road too and my reading of it was not enhanced by cross country travel and multiple interruptions. I liked it; didn't love it, but was surprised that Angela Tramelo inhabited my dreams for several weeks after I finished the book.

>139 Foghorn-Leghorn: & >142 ChrisRiesbeck:

I would agree with Chris; it was enjoyable but not the Earth shattering wonder story I was led to believe it could be based on the hype and some friends' enthusiasm. I found the Cultural Revolution and subsequent Chinese history interesting.

I will not be seeking out the other books in the trilogy.

Larry Niven's The Integral Trees,a Locus award winner, was a hugely enjoyable romp,but as is usual with Niven it has a jaw dropping setting
.500 years ago the ship Discipline was exploring with an eye to colonization,under the watchful eye of a computer tasked with monitoring the crew's loyalty for the all powerful State. They came across the Smoke Ring,a massive gas torus surrounding a neutron star with no planets,but with a variety of plant and animal life-forms evolved to thrive in conditions of continual free-fall. A mutiny occurred,and the crew abandoned ship, setting up home on some of the vegetation,setting up a variety of social and political systems.Scratching for a living on the tree like vegetation,and now with no memory of their past,and a pitiful amount of old tech slowly dying out,life is hard.
A small group of survivors from a dying Tree have a hair raising series of adventures,including slavery, before they steal an aged shuttle craft and make brief contact with the ship Discipline's computer,which is still patiently obeying orders to monitor the crew,before setting up a new colony on a new Tree.
Sketchy characterization of course,but lots of derring do,narrow escapes and wild adventures. A fun,quick read,and of course that weird and wonderful setting of the Smoke Ring. Excellent.
That makes 28/46 Locus award winners completed.I am trying to read 2 or 3 Hugo,Nebula or Locus winners per month,it should take about two more years to complete them all! lol.
But now the nice short,easy SF/F reads are going to give way to all the massive wristbreaking tomes,so progress may be a bit slower. Having a great time though,and have had some wonderful reads since getting back into the genre after decades away.
Next up for August on the awards roster are Pat Murphy's The Falling Woman,and Elizabeth Ann Scarborough's The Healer's War,both new author's to me.(Scarborough did some rather dull collaborations with Anne MacCaffrey many moons ago,but I havent read any of her personal stuff.)

I'm reading The Nomad of Time, an ominbus of Moorcock's Oswald Bastable novels.

>73 Darth-Heather: If you enjoy good science fiction & rock music (I can't tell & haven't read Soul Music), I recommend that you check out Radio Freefall by Matthew Jarpe. My short review with no spoilers was "Reading through the night, unable to put this book down, I realized Radio Freefall's claim of being a rock and roll cyberpunk romp that exceeds pomp and circumstance worships various masters of at least three different science fiction sub-genres, drawing subtly new ideas, and having a really kick-ass time doing it. I rather liked the Ken Kesey character morphed into a tech guru."

I finished The City of Mirrors yesterday, the last book in Justin Cronin's viral vampire trilogy. The trilogy covers ~1000 years in ~1300 pages, I suppose that's not too bad. Having re-read the first book and then the next two in quick succession this month, I did notice a couple of things that didn't add up from the first book through the third book. Still, I very much enjoyed this trilogy.

My last genre book of last month was Windswept (C+); while it had it's points in terms of trying to invoke a gritty industrial setting, a lot of the world-building is rather perfunctory and your enjoyment will depend on how much you identify with the put-upon main character. Most of my reading group just couldn't relate.

The August thread has started.

>147 psybre: whoa... that sounds awesome! Added to my wishlist - thanks!