Our reads in May 2025

Another month,another pile of books. Share your plans for May.

Dusty;s TBR for May
Brian Aldiss - Non Stop
C S Lewis - The Lion,the Witch and the Wardrobe✔
Lester Del Rey -The Year After Tomorrow

Not really sf, but if Narnia counts: I’ve gotten started on Nifft the Lean.

Working on Memory's Legion: The Complete Expanse Story Collection in between Hugo reads now.

I have in hand Long Live Evil, Who Killed Sherlock Holmes?, Woken Furies, Saevus Corax Captures the Castle, and The Sunforge.

Currently Reading
Seveneves by Neal Stephenson

On Deck
The Reefs of Earth by R. A. Lafferty
Cronos by Robert Silverberg

Ordered/Requested
Heretics of Dune by Frank Herbert

I am packing books to move house, and this summer I will gain access to a different and larger public library system.

May Reading Plan:

To Green Angel Tower (Part 2) - Tad Williams
Second Foundation - Isaac Asimov
Mercy Falls - William Kent Krueger
Eisenhower in War and Peace - Jean Edward Smith
Blood and Blade - Matthew Harffy
The Mugger - Ed McBain
The Intuitionist - Colson Whitehead
A Shadow in Summer - Daniel Abraham
Sackett’s Land - Louis L’Amour
Trunk Music - Michael Connelly
The Protector’s War - S.M. Stirling
Savage Sword of Conan: The Original Marvel Years Omnibus No. 1

I can't seem to create a version of the Savage Sword book that will produce a touchstone, even though I found it in the database using the ISBN code. If you're a Goodreads user, you can find it at: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/63389610-the-savage-sword-of-conan

As I prepare to pick up Sleeper Beach, I am finishing a re-read of Titanium Noir. Loved it the first time through & finding it even better this time around.

Also e-reading Circe, which is a well-written and interesting re-imagining of Homer's epic from a different viewpoint.

Next up will be Floating Hotel - a book bullet from the fine folks over in The Green Dragon pub that the hold fairy just delivered.

Get to start The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet finally tonight! I had to hold it out as a carrot to get myself through a couple other books, so I'm looking forward to a good evening reading.

Earlier this year, someone shared a link to the 2024 Locus reading list; https://locusmag.com/2025/02/2024-recommended-reading-list/

Initially I wasn’t too impressed, seeing as I had already given up on a nummer of their recommendations, like Someone you can build a nest in and The book of love, and there were a nummer of authors on the list that I don’t really like.
But I did start on what science fiction recommendations the library had, and just finished Beautyland, which is an interesting and somewhat subversive addition to a science fiction list, and a really good book. It deconstruct society through the frame of a an alien, reporting back to her superiors on her lived experience incarnated as a working class American girl growing up in the last quarter of the 20’th century.
I’ll continue with Rakesfall and Private rites this month, and I can already tell that they share a certain eerie detachment with Beautyland, and although they are on a science fiction list, they seem more speculative fiction somehow.

>2 dustydigger: Glad to see that you're still here and reading.

Currently reading The mercy of gods by James S.A. Corey for book groups. Also working on Tristan Strong punches a hole in the sky, which is more fantasy but excellent. After that, not sure.

Reading my next Hugo novella, the charming What Feasts at Night.

>10 amberwitch: I've put Beautyland on my wishlist. Thanks.

>13 vwinsloe: Sounds intriguing....making note for future reading.

I finished Beginning Operations by James White, an omnibus of the first three Sector General books. The first book is a collection of previously published short stories. The third is the first, I believe, written as a whole novel.
Covering, as they do, stories of a galactic hospital and the practice of galactic medicine, there is a lot of room for imaginative aliens and what ails them. Freshest in my mind, of course, the third book covers what to do with an entity the size of a planet and how to treat it.
I got lost in some of the longer passages in the last book, but mostly from reading when I was sleepy. I look forward to continuing the series.

Finished Engineering Infinity, about to start Lamarchos.

Finished To Green Angel Tower: Part 2 by Tad Williams. The grand finale of a very long epic fantasy trilogy. How long? For a trilogy, very. The third installment is so long, the publisher split it into two volumes, because, by word count, it was about 10% longer than the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy. Am I emphasizing it's length enough? That being said, I enjoyed it & can recommend it to those who like epic fantasy - and epic fantasy fans like their fantasy long. I gave it four stars, but it probably would have earned 4.5 had the author had a bit more restraint, or the editor enforced it. Great worldbuilding, memorable characters, very much in the "traditional fantasy" vein, owing much to Tolkien.

I picked up Polostan by Stephenson, I'm hoping to get to that this month, after I finish Killing Floor.

Wrapped up Woken Furies. I should have read this a long time ago but whether I would have had appropriate appreciation for it is another question.

Read the third book in the Dungeon Crawler Carl series, The Dungeon Anarchist Cookbook. The set-up was a little less engaging than the previous ones, but still a really good read.
I reread book two as preparation, and I do think that this is a series that works best without too much time between books, as it is one continuous plot.

Just finished Richard Powers' Playground, which is certainly not science fiction, but contains a lot of elements that are no stranger to sf (tech and AI and speculation of where this goes in the near future, games, the impact of man on his environment). It's brilliant.

Now back to non-fiction, to The Science Fiction Century, and to Cory Doctorow.

>21 igorken: I had a hunch about Playground, and it's on my TBR. Thanks for confirming my hunch.

Finished Long Live Evil, which I'm going to admit was not as much fun as I thought it was going to be. I'm left with the thought that maybe it wasn't supposed to be fun at all. Your mileage may differ.

I've started in on my next Hugo Award finalist, Adrian Tchaikovsky's Alien Clay.

>24 Stevil2001: I just finished this and found it very interesting. I'll look forward to your comments.

Now started on a re-read of Chris Priest's The Islanders as research for my article. I wouldn't normally re-read so quickly - I only read this for the first time since Chris' death last year - but my appreciation of the complexity of his work has changed so much that this is necessary to get a proper handle on what is going on in his books.

Finished Lamarchos. Next up, Clone by Richard Cowper. I'm amazed that touchstone was right the first time given a title like that.

Wrapped up Who Killed Sherlock Holmes? and I had the sense that Cornell was losing control of his material.

>17 ChrisG1: the Williams series was high school reading for me, back when it first came out. I'm looking forward to getting into the sequel series this summer.

I recently finished When we were Real by Daryl Gregory. The world has come to the realization that they are living in a simulation, and many react badly. In this novel, a tour group travels across the US visiting impossible wonders. Each has their own reasons for being there, and of course things don't go according to plan. I enjoyed a lot of this book, but there was one whole storyline that I found tedious and unenjoyable. On balance, I'm glad I read it.

I'm currently reading Direct Descendant by Tanya Huff. It's another small-town fantasy featuring a magical family in which the magic is dangerous and the price is high, with a 20-something female main character who resents the older practitioners. She's done this sort of story before, but this one so far is less creepy and incestuous than the Gale family novels. It took me a while to get into it, but I'm now almost halfway through and enjoying it.

I just wrapped up Seveneves in time to switch to a far more portable book for some weekend travel. I'm excited to pick up The Reefs of Earth, as I am a real Lafferty fan.

Working on the most recent Lady Astronaut book, The Martian Contingency, in between Hugo finalists.

Also, I posted a review of Ann Leckie's collection Lake of Souls to LT today, which people may enjoy.

Just borrowed Permafrost by Alastair Reynolds and Three Miles Down by Harry Turtledove from recommendations I've seen here (couldn't get the Revelation Space by Reynolds so am giving him a try through another, later work). So thanks for sharing your reads!

Edited to correct touchstone (thx ChrisRiesbeck! I hadn't noticed!).

>33 PocheFamily: This is the touchstone you wanted for Permafrost.

Sci-fi related rather than sci-fi itself, but I'm going to count it; I just finished a reread of Words are My Matter by Ursula K LeGuin. Her essay collections are absolutely worth reading.

>30 gailo: I really like Tanya Huff, especially her later novels - Into The Broken Lands is like a fully matured and powerful version of The last wizard.
But I am really not good with horror, so I wasn’t sure I could read Direct Descendant.
Please report back on it when you are done, I’d love to know if my concern is warranted.

Finished Clone, on to a classic mystery Five Red Herrings.

>31 paradoxosalpha: You were aware that 'pykrete' was a Real Thing?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pykrete

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Habakkuk

HMS Habakkuk was a short story by Eugene Byrne in Interzone 1055 (May 2000).

>38 RobertDay: I was ambivalent. That makes his urge to explain it twice even odder, don't you think?

Stephenson obviously does his homework and avoids handwavium, so that was never really an issue.

I've started my next Hugo read, The Ministry of Time. Based on some of the buzz, I expected to not like this one, but I am really enjoying it so far and blitzed right through the first third yesterday. Bradley is a sharp writer.

Just finished a re-read of Chris Priest's The Islanders as research for an article.

I was afraid that this was going to be something of a chore, given that I only read this last year, but I was pleasantly surprised. Perhaps it was helped by the fact that I've read/re-read all the other Dream Archipelago stories recently, so a lot of background from other stories was still fresh in my mind. I see no need to add anything to my review from last year...

Next up, something that I'm rather behind the curve on: Old Man's War.

>31 paradoxosalpha: I was disappointed in Seveneves. Having grown up with Apollo and followed space missions in detail as a boy and also ever since then (of course men are just big boys) I found the technology mundane and the SFy element of the nanobots just too unrealistic.

In relation to the finale I was upset by his use of the links over 5,000 years back the the three original groups. That struck me as just too contrived and twee.

This book was the one that convinced me to stop buying Stephenson's books as soon as they came out.

>36 amberwitch:
I read and enjoyed a few of Tanya Huff's books some years ago. By chance I met her at the 2005 Worldcon in Glasgow. She was very pleasant and signed a copy of Albedo 1 magazine in which I had a review of one of her books published. That was almost twenty years ago, and of course I cannot remember the book title. It was one with a vampire from a royal family, very like Angel, and in my review I had mentioned it was very Buffyesque but that it was written well before Buffy made an appearance. She liked that bit. :-)

I just looked at Lafferty's page on isfdb.org, and it seems unlikely that I will ever read him completely. He's sort of scarce on the ground, and I tackle his books opportunistically.

>43 pgmcc: You're thinking of her Blood series, featuring Henry Fitzroy (royal byblow and 450 year old vampire) and Vicki Nelson (former Toronto police officer turned PI).

Tanya is great - she was GOH at one of our local cons and I really enjoyed meeting her. My particular favourites are her Confederation/Peacekeeper books, which are military SF (later books shading into more of a policing role), but I will read anything she writes.

>45 tardis:
You are correct. That is the series.

>44 paradoxosalpha: I agree--The Reefs of Earth is representative of several of Lafferty's interests and strengths, so I often find myself recommending it (along with Okla Hannali for those readers who prefer historical fiction to speculative fiction).

And it's actually in print (print-on-demand, at least) from the Locus Foundation. As you say, Lafferty is scarce. I haven't read everything yet, but I'm probably excessively proud of my mostly complete collection: https://www.librarycat.org/lib/JacobHolt/search/author/2565?sort=date. More Than Melchisedech was the biggest acquisition challenge (and a delight to read); hard to find for sale anywhere, but a fellow Lafferty fan offered me his duplicate copies at a fair price.

>47 JacobHolt:
I was at a local bookshop recently and was excited to see a secondhand Lafferty with an unfamiliar cover, but it was one I already owned and had read in a different edition. The proprietor nodded sagely as I made the disappointed evaluation.

Hi people,still alive but doing little reading. I did a reread of Andy Weir's Project Hail Mary,and actually enjoyed it a little more than the first time. I have a bit of a soft spot for McGyver in Space tales. I like books about scientists,engineers etc,also books with alien interactions and linguistics,so it ticked a lot of boxes as a pleasant comfort read.
Also reread for the nth time The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe.,and a couple of trashy urban fantasty books,guilty pleasures really but fun. :0)
Numerous hospital and doc visits but Mr Dusty and I keep on plodding.
At the moment I am not reading spec fic but reading Virginia Woolf's A Room of One's Own
,an impassioned essay on woman and literature and the almost insurmountable difficulties women faced down the centuries to write.First time I've read any of her essays. Very different from the dignified measured tone of her fiction and very interesting.Slow going though,I am only reading a handful of pages at a time still likely to take a few more days,then I hope to read the final book Winston juvenile series,to finish that WWEnd list at last! :0)

>49 dustydigger:

Sounds like suitable reading for your circumstances, all the best for you & Mr Dusty as you navigate these waters. Comfort (reading) to you both.

>45 tardis: I remember those books, back when finding urban fantasy was a bit of a challenge.
Her early works remind me a bit of Mercedes Lackey, they have that 90's feel to them. She was also one of the first writers I remember mixing urban fantasy and humour in the Keeper's Chronicles series from the same era.

I agree her Confederation series is really good. And it may just be that the world has evolved, and the genre has matured, but I really feel like she has grown as an author, and not just repeating herself.

I've posted my review of Memory's Legion, the Expanse short story collection.

In the meantime, I'm working on some of the short fiction Hugo finalists.

I've moved on to a re-read of Downbelow Station, as my last reading of it was ages ago. So far, I'm enjoying the spare style and pace.

I'm diving in to A Memory Called Empire. It's a pivot from Ex Force and Michael Mammay. It really is a pivot and it feels like switching gears or exercising a different muscle group. I'm enjoying and appreciating it, but not easing into it, as if my brain both appreciates and rejects the extra effort involved.

Next, one of my very favorite writer's new book - Sunnyside by Rob Dircks.

After that, Will Leitch's latest book, but it's not scifi, so I probably shouldn't mention it.

I was on the verge of tossing this novel at the wall, but I eventually came around to respecting "The Sunforge;" though it took a bit of cheating by skipping to the end to convince myself that the sloggy portions of this story were worth engaging with. Stronach claims a bad case of the "Second Novel Blues," and it shows.

Just finished Absolution. I almost didn't finish it. Parts one and two were good. Part three was so bad, but I was determined to finish this book as I really liked the previous books. (Annihilation is one of my favorite books.) At times, the imagery of Annihilation is there. But the use of f*#k with the frequency used where it isn't an adjective, verb or interjection is ridiculous. It makes the stream of consciousness very hard to follow as one forgets what the character is saying or thinking by the end of the sentence. This usage lessens as the ramble continues, but it didn't improve the tale. I can't recommend this one.

Off to something lighter - Three Bags Full.

>56 daxxh: The third part of "Absolution" didn't offend me for its bad language, but just for seeming so below VanderMeer's usual standards; and yeah, even if you're dealing with the sort of character who would liberally sprinkle their language with obscenities, it was a bit much.

>56 daxxh:, >57 Shrike58:
I couldn't help thinking that I was missing some interesting twists and revelations in that last part with its distasteful protagonist.

I am reading my next Hugo novel, The Tainted Cup. Interesting so far.

Here's my review of one I've already read.

>59 Stevil2001: great review! I am glad to hear that Someone you Can build a nest in was a disappointment to you too - I gave it up for a bad job early on, and your review confirm it was the right decision (for me)

>60 amberwitch: Heh, I'm glad to validate your decision!

>53 Karlstar: Downbelow Station is one of my favourite books. At some point I’ll read it again along with the rest of the Merchanter-Alliance-Union books. I still need to read Cherryh’s more recent Hinder Stars books.

My reading was disrupted by a short and unexpected stay in hospital, but either side of that excursion, I rattled through Old Man's War fairly quickly, and found it a pleasant experience, though not without some minor issues:

>63 RobertDay:
You're back and posting so I'll take that as a good sign. Take care!

I finished Letters from Atlantis, and next is Project Pendulum.

Catching up on my reviews; I posted one of another Hugo finalist today. And am almost done reading yet another one, The Tainted Cup.

Wrapped up Saevus Corax Captures the Castle; though arguably formulaic, I'm still enjoying Parker's formula and am looking forward to seeing on how Parker wraps this up. However, what I'm really looking forward to reading is A Drop of Corruption, which I already have in my grubby little hands.

>67 Shrike58: I love KJ Parker. How does this compare to 16 Ways to Defend a Walled City and The Siege series in general?

If you liked those books you should like this trilogy too. Probably a bit more violent though.

Finished Mathieu Bablet's graphic novel Carbon & Silicium, which was less gimmicky and more contemplative and slower paced than I'd expected. A bit bleak perhaps.
Progessed a couple of stories further along The Science Fiction Century. Nothing that stood out.
And that concludes my sf reading for this month.

>62 Neil_Luvs_Books: I finished Downbelow Station a few days ago, so it was still May. I think that novel is sneaky good. Without a lot of embellishment, she illustrates the problems with interstellar war, rogue warriors and refugees, all with a very spare, matter of fact style that gets the point across.

>71 Karlstar: I completely agree with your assessment of Downbelow Station: it is sneaky good.