Our reads in March 2025

Another month,another pile of books. What reading plans have you got for March?

My planned SF&F books for March are:

Stone of Farewell by Tad Williams
Foundation and Empire Isaac Asimov
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick
The Chrysalids by John Wyndham
That Way Lies Camelot by Janny Wurtz
The First Chronicles of Druss the Legend by David Gemmell

Dusty's TBR for March
Lester Del Rey - The Year After Tomorrow
Robert A Heinlein - Waldo✔
Dennis E Taylor - Not Till We Are Lost
Nalini Singh - Angels' Blood✔
Lindsey Davis - Saturnalia

Currently Reading
God Emperor of Dune by Frank Herbert

On Deck
The Zap Gun by Philip K. Dick
Piranesi by Susanna Clarke
Seveneves by Neal Stephenson

Ordered/Requested
A Conventional Boy by Charles Stross

I'm reading The End of All Things, one of Scalzi's Old Man's War series. It's less than fabulous, but I'm finishing it because a new one is rumored for this summer.

Currently reading Cahokia Jazz and finding it all kinds of fun.

>1 dustydigger: I hope life has settled down and that you are able to get some good reading in.

I am currently reading:
Vast
The Vor Game
Twice Cursed

Next e-book is on hold with Overdrive; finished and really enjoyed Black Sun the other day so am looking forward to continuing Roanhorse's trilogy with Fevered Star soon.
Next print book: Hunting Party

I have in hand The Runes of Engagement, The Immortality Thief, War of the Maps, A Conventional Boy, and Dogs of War.

I should finish up The Two Towers this weekend and start The Return of the King. It’s been fun reading Tolkien’s saga from The Silmarillion through The Hobbit and on to LotR. I’ve never read the Middle Earth saga all the way through like that.

I finished The Affirmation and am now on a work, not directly sf, but related: Star Trek Phase II, about the plans that Paramount had to launch its own channel in 1977, with a new Trek series as its flagship. By the time they realised that they couldn't make money from the channel, they'd sunk so much money on development of the Trek series that they decided to go the whole hog and make a film. The rest is history. Some scripts of the twelve they commissioned made it to The Next Generation, and a lot of the unrealised production design has surfaced in recent incarnations such as Discovery and Strange New Worlds.

Probable March reads:
interlibrary Loan - Gene Wolfe
Tourists - Lisa Goldstein
Crossfire - Nancy Kress
Dune Messiah - Frank Herbert
plus fantasy:
The Golden Enclaves - Naomi Novik
After Dark - Manly Wade Wellman

(boy - the touchstones are dicey right now. Almost all of these went in wrong without even asking me. Luckily I scanned the right-hand list.)

>11 rshart3: I doubt there's something wrong with the touchstone system; it's just that "Tourists," "Crossfire," and "After Dark" are all pretty generic titles.

>12 Stevil2001: I guess -- but to pick the wrong one almost every time? It's not like any of them are unknown authors. I suppose I'll have to do the slight extra effort of doing touchstones for the authors too. I was trying to save a few keystrokes.

Currently reading Martians abroad by Carrie Vaughn.
Abandoned A borrowed man - the narration was just too annoying and self-conscious for me, and the worldbuilding too thin. Reminded me a bit of Too like the lightning, which I also gave up on despite several of you thought it was worth the effort.
Got I’m starting to worry about this Black box of doom lined up for later this month. I don’t do horror, so I had to stop reading John dies at the end, but I thought it was pretty good until it hit my personal squicks, so I have hopes for this one.

>14 amberwitch: “personal squicks”—I had much the same problem with This Book Is Full of Spiders and abandoned that at about 60%.

Knocked off The Runes of Engagement, which delivered the portal adventure that was promised. It'll be interesting to see if the concept has legs.

>14 amberwitch: , >15 haydninvienna:
There's no horror in Black Box of Doom. Just angst, irony, and black humor!

>15 haydninvienna: I can imagine🙀

>17 paradoxosalpha: thanks for confirming, that was also my hope based on the descriptions

I have tasked the hold fairy with Heretics of Dune, which I have never yet read, now that I have finished my re-read of the preceding books.

My review of The Affirmation...

>17 paradoxosalpha: To be specific, what led me to DNF was a somewhat graphic description of a girl infected with the spiders being burned alive. That's a bit too black for me.

>22 haydninvienna:
Er, yeah. This new book has some violence, but nothing like that.

Finished A Comedy of Terrors and started A Billion Days of Earth.

Finished Autonomous by Annalee Newitz and enjoyed it. Not a lot of science in terms of details, as karenb mentioned last thread, more science on the concept level, and with societal structure. There is a whole lot of ethical questions raised in the story. It generated a pretty good discussion in our local library's Sci Fi bookgroup, too.

>3 dustydigger: Oh, Waldo! I remember that story (and I don't necessarily have a good memory for titles). Let us know how it rereads, now, if you get the chance.

>6 elenchus: I've heard only good things about Cahokia Jazz, but I haven't gotten to it yet.

>25 PocheFamily: Yes, I find that Newitz's books are usually good for book discussions: there's always lots to talk about, beyond whether any of us liked it or not.

Me, for upcoming book groups: Cascade failure by LM Sagas, then Kinning by Nisi Shawl. Plus whatever the library hold fairy brings.

I read The Wild Robot, award-winning
children’s novel.
The movie won 3 Oscar nominations.

>27 nrmay: My kids (aged 4 and 6) are big Wild Robot fans, my wife read the whole series aloud to them.

Finished The Return of the King. Second time I read LotR; first read in the early 1980s. This was an interesting reading experience having read in order The Silmarillion, The Hobbit, and now The Lord of the Rings. Made the references to events and characters in the first and second ages of Middle Earth make more sense. It was every bit as good, maybe better, as I remembered it.

Now back to reading SF with Orbital, the 2024 Booker Prize winner.

>25 PocheFamily: Coincidentally, I am just reading The Future of Another Timeline now.

Read some old Dick.

Finished up The Immortality Thief, in which I felt the author did a very good job of transcending the tropes they were working with, on the basis of in-depth characterization.

Finished A Billion Days of Earth which was much better than I expected, and started The Sword of Rhiannon.

Currently reading Alien Clay. I like it, but I am having trouble focusing so it is very slow going. I may read something short and fun just to get back into reading mode.

I've been diverted from sf at the moment, and I've hit my stride in Going for a Beer, where I had just been crawling with short stories at long intervals. I've got the measure of Coover's technique now, and it's a lot of fun to read stories where the author invites the reader's collaboration to such a high degree.

I finished Orbital yesterday. Not sure it should classified as SF. It takes place on the ISS but it is simply detailing the activities and thoughts of the crew members over the 16 orbits that constitute one day. I guess it is SF in the sense that it is n the near future; it is the day of the next moon landing (funded by a billionaire of course). Still, it feels very current of our times rather than the future. Not a long read. Certainly a pleasant and interesting read.

Currently reading Lake of Souls, Ann Leckie's collection of short fiction. Have finished all the non-series stories and the Imperial Radch stories and am now onto the ones from the world of Raven Tower.

Cascade failure was pretty good! Sort of space opera, in that there was space travel and a small space ship and crew, but the physical action takes place off the ship. The handful of characters (mostly human) are all developed, and they work well together as if they were in a heist movie -- but no heists, just a rescue and some . . other stuff. (Maybe the next book has a heist? Stay tuned.)

Recently joined this group and posted an introduction in the pinned chat.

Just finished Riddley Walker: Expanded Edition by Russell Hoban. This is a really cool novel and I would be dying to chat about it if anyone's read it. Incredible feat of imagination and creativity.

The expanded edition has a glossary of terms, as well as notes, which are interesting and useful. Has anyone else read this?

>39 MacReady:

Welcome @MacReady. I've not read Riddley Walker but it goes onto the recon list, sounds intriguing.

>40 elenchus: It's a really interesting read about a young boy in a post-nuclear apocalypse England, told in an imagined New Iron Age English dialect. I've never read anything like it, and it seems like there is a whole community of devoted Russell Hoban admirers out there. Sadly, I haven't encountered any in the real world as of yet, but here's hoping!

Thanks for the kind welcome!

It sounds reminiscent of another book I've not read but found intriguing in premise: The Wake, evidently also employing a strong dialect in prose.

>39 MacReady: I read it decades ago when it was fairly new. I don't remember that much except that I found the dialect sometimes difficult and usually annoying. I should reread it; I suspect I'd like it more now.
A Clockwork Orange by Burgess does a similar thing with language.

>42 elenchus: I've actually got a copy of that book and I've been meaning to get around to it. It looks fantastic. I first heard about it when a colleague lent me his copy of No Snakes in Iceland, which is a really great book loosely based off some Old Icelandic Sagas, which was actually phenomenal, and in the author's note, he describes where he got his inspiration, and he mentions The Wake.

I'd definitely recommend No Snakes in Iceland, although I think it might be a little tricky to track down a physical copy, it seems.

>43 rshart3: I've never read A Clockwork Orange or seen the movie for that matter, but I was telling my father about Riddley Walker and he said to me "Oh that sounds a bit like A Clockwork Orange!"

I guess it'll have to go on the TBR!

Definitely agree about the language - I think if I had tried to read this 5 years ago, I would have bounced off it hard. Now the frustration and difficulty with the language is actually a selling point because that helps convince you that this is actually set in a regressed technologically descended Britain.

re: Riddley Walker

Has anyone else read Feersum Endjinn by Iain (M) Banks? IIRC it's all in dialect too, but I haven't read it (yet) myself.

>46 karenb:
Feersum Endjinn is one of my favourite novels. Knowledge of the Glasgow accent would help. Iain managed to spell the phonetics perfectly.

>46 karenb:. I enjoyed Feersum Endjinn. I had to read the phonetic part aloud until I got the hang of it.

>47 pgmcc:. I hadn't thought about it being accented. Perhaps I wouldn't have had any trouble had I thought about Banks being a Scot.

Finished The Sword of Rhiannon, starting A Monster Calls.

>49 ChrisRiesbeck:

I quite enjoyed A Monster Calls, curious what you think of it.

Now finished Gustavo Bondoni's Amalgam.

>46 karenb: The only thing I have read by that author is The Wasp Factory, which isn't written in any unusual dialect.

>2 ChrisG1: This looks like a really cool list. I've read The Chrysalids, very good as I recall. Haven't read any Tad Williams. Heard really good things about him and looking forward to checking his stuff out.

>4 paradoxosalpha: Piranesi is a favourite of mine! Enjoy!

>46 karenb: Yes, as I recall it was a fun addition to Iain Banks the Culture series. Others have said that it was a struggle to read, but I found it to be easy enough once you got into it. It was not my favorite Culture series book, but it was worth reading.

>52 MacReady:. You have read Iain Banks which is Banks's nonscience fiction persona. He wrote his science fiction under the name Iain M. Banks, and IMHO, it's top shelf.

>55 vwinsloe: Feersum Endjinn isn't generally regarded as a Culture novel, as far as I'm aware.

>4 paradoxosalpha: >54 MacReady: My brief review of Piranesi begins "This is one of those books that the less said about it, the better."

Don't assume you know where it's going, just trust you'll be glad when you get there.

Just finished Dune Messiah. I’ve read Dune several times over the years, and still love it. I found the second two books a let-down. After the last reading of Dune about a year ago, I meant to reread the next three books, but delayed again. This reread of the second book mostly confirmed my earlier opinion. It still handles well the struggle between the various groups and individuals. But this one has an overwrought tone, especially around the theme of Paul as Messiah. I find the idea of a galaxy-wide racial need for vast struggle & upheaval, to mix the genetics, implausible. And the tendency for Herbert’s thought to be infused with eugenics and social Darwinism is still off-putting.

This time I spotted one of his main gimmicks: the characters engage in verbal sparring of a cryptic, zen-like nature. I used to be impressed by that, but now I find myself too often thinking “but WHY does that statement mean “x”? I realized that one feels on the inside track hearing these exchanges, but that I’m not sure how profound or meaningful they really are. It could be that I’m just slow on the uptake, but I’m reasonably intelligent, and OK with language. I can even follow Henry James (most of the time). :-)

>56 RobertDay: I suppose you're right about Feersum Endjinn not being a Culture series novel, but I always thought of it as such because of the commonalities like the ship names.

>58 rshart3: I find the idea of a galaxy-wide racial need for vast struggle & upheaval, to mix the genetics, implausible. And the tendency for Herbert’s thought to be infused with eugenics and social Darwinism is still off-putting.

I'm also in the midst of a Dune re-read, thus far making it through the first two novels.

Your first sentence here gave me pause, and while I find it an accurate description of the plot of both books, it surprised me in framing events in a way which simply never occurred to me. So much hinges on one's interpretation of "need", I suppose.

I fully agree with your second sentence. Whether Herbert intended that reaction or not, the ideas on offer certainly are provocative.

Vis-a-vis Frank Herbert, and how a lot of his ideas no longer seem to stand up to close scrutiny:The Suck Fairy comes for just about every book eventually. Or, to put it another way, Campbellian SF had a lot of dubiousness built into it from the get-go.

I'm rereading Too Like The Lightning, more slowly this time and focusing on a particular character.

>62 Watry: Sounds fun. Who is your focus?

>63 paradoxosalpha: Carlyle! I think they get a lot more character development (as opposed to character revelation) than most, and a great deal of it happens off-screen, IIRC.

I started to write a mini-essay here but I'll leave it at: I just think Carlyle's interesting.

>64 Watry:

All sounds interesting and could raise that novel up in my queue, looking forward to your review.

>61 Shrike58: Very true. Heinlein is another prominent example.

>65 elenchus: Same. I now own Too Like The Lightning and Seven Surrenders so that should get me started.

Finished up War of the Maps. It's been awhile since I've read anything by Paul McAuley, but this turned out to be a worthwhile far-future novel. Characterization was a little dry, but this has probably always been a feature with McAuley.

>50 elenchus: I liked it quite a bit, but I liked it more when the focus was on anyone but the main character. They were allowed to develop, while he had to stay the same (IMO) until the big climax.

Finished A Monster Calls, started Diadem from the Stars.

>69 ChrisRiesbeck:

That's a fascinating observation, I think I'm going to bring it off my shelf this weekend and re-read with that frame in mind. Whether or not it's intentional on the part of the author(s), and setting aside whether it's an engaging character for the reader, that is quite a propos the story, and metaphorically apt for the character's emotional situation.

>71 elenchus: The nature of the story kind of demanded it, I think.

Finished Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick. Continuing my PKD project, this is arguably his most famous story, due to it's adaptation to Blade Runner. As is typical of PKD, it's a bit of a mind-bender, a post-apocalyptic story where androids are indistinguishable from humans without special testing. Recommended.

The Martian Contingency is an excellent addition to Mary Robinette Kowal's Lady Astronaut series. (I don't usually manage to read books so soon after they've been released, but I like this series a lot, so I put it at the top of the virtual pile.)

Just finished The Chrysalids by John Wyndham. A post nuclear apocalypse story. Young David Strorm lives in a frontier community which attempting to "purify" it's human, animal and plant stock. There is a great deal of mutation from the nuclear fallout (never explicitly stated, but my conclusion), so all mutants are destroyed when identified. It's dressed up in religious terms. David realizes he has telepathic connection to other young people in his community & of course they keep it to themselves. Of course, they are ultimately found out & they seek to escape. I'll leave it at that - lots of interesting ideas at work in this. Recommended.

>75 ChrisG1: Compare with Children of the Atom by Wilmar H. Shiras. In that, not telepathy, but genius, is the hidden bond between a group of young people resulting from radiation-induced mutations. I haven't read The Chrysalids; I'll look for it.

>76 rshart3: Agreed; I've come across parts of Children of the Atom (in their short magazine incarnations) and was struck by the benign nature of the mutations.

In other news: after a break from genre, I've today started Christopher Priest's The Dream Archipelago in my re-read for an article I've undertaken to write. This is an anthology collecting all the DA stories up to that time (1999, though most of the stories are from the late 1970s / early 1980s), adding a bracketing story, and re-writing the end of another to make it fit the overall structure.

>77 RobertDay:

Once written, I encourage you to share that article here. I've read only one Priest novel so far but have been quite taken with your various Dream Archipelago reviews. I'm much more likely to pick up another of his works, but also curious about your take in the article itself.

>78 elenchus: The article is intended for Bruce Gillespie's long-running fanzine, SF Commentary. That is published via Bill Burns' excellent website https://efanzines.com/, and is freely available. I shall happily provide the link here once Bruce has "pubbed his ish".

Knocked off A Conventional Boy; now all that remains is how Stross chooses to clear the board.

>80 Shrike58: The hold fairy just called me to pick that one up from my local branch!

>65 elenchus: Finished it yesterday. I want to go back and look into some chapters more, but ultimately as much as I liked it the first time it's much more comprehensible on the reread.

If you do read TLTL and like it, I suggest not waiting to start Seven Surrenders. There are four books but it's essentially a duology, and TLTL is really just putting the chess pieces down.

>82 Watry:

That's a great suggestion. Typically with titles like this, I let chance determine when I read it: come across it in a used bookstore, get a bookshop gift card at some point, or whatnot. I'm leaving myself a note to either pick up both titles, or line them up from my Local before starting.

Finished Diadem from the Stars, off in mystery land with S is for Silence.

>82 Watry: I started Too Like the Lightning last night. I also own Seven Surrenders and will read it immediately thereafter. I hope that your saying that they are essentially a duology means that I won't need to get the other two immediately after I finish these two?

The complexity of the whole Terra Ignota series means that they benefit from continuous reading, but I agree that the first book does not stand alone well, while the later ones offer more satisfying endings.

From my review of Perhaps the Stars:

I would advise prospective readers of Terra Ignota to view the four books as a single work and avoid setting it aside between volumes--perhaps especially between the third and fourth books where there was in fact a delay in publication. Do not skip past the fanciful-seeming publication conditions and dramatis personae front matter in each book. These supply important (p)reviews of the social structures, factions, stakes, and characters. If you've never read Homer, or if it's just been decades, consider reading an encyclopedia article for an overview of the Illiad and the Odyssey. Ditto for Thomas Hobbes and his Leviathan, and perhaps Voltaire and Diderot to boot.

>86 paradoxosalpha: thanks for the advice! I’ll remember that when I eventually get to Terra Ignota.

If you are going to take an extended break (I had to), definitely do it between Seven Surrenders and Will to Battle.

>86 paradoxosalpha: I generally read a book or series and if I am sufficiently intrigued I search out further information. So thanks for the road map. It appears that my library system has both of the final books in the series, and if I want to continue immediately after the first two, I could do that.

Finished my re-read of The Dream Archipelago. Now moving on to Paul McAulay's In the Mouth of the Whale, which is a continuation of The Quiet War and Gardens of the Sun.

Just finished Dogs of War; now kicking myself that I didn't read it a lot sooner.

On the last day of the month, I finally finished The Best Science Fiction of the Year, Volume 8, which I think I started back in September or October, reading a couple stories at a time.