I need to remind myself of whats happened so I can read that!
I had a big gap between The Bands of Mourning and The Lost Metal so I was fuzzy on a lot of things. It wasn’t until I got to the end of the book that I found there was an appendix with a summary and definition of terms! Maybe I should have started there.
2 Likes
if you can stomach him (not everyone can) the current Doctorow humble bundle could provide you with a whole bunch of quick palate cleansers. i like the books of his i read and they are usually funny light near future SF.
edit: funny in so far as dystopian fiction can be.
2 Likes
I’ve only read Walkaway which I enjoyed but there are a lot of books in that bundle 
1 Like
I’ve read little brother a long while ago and the sequel. I also read walkaway. i like them. there is always some interesting tech stuff going on…
I read Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town, Makers, Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, and Little Brother like 10+ years ago and loved them all.
Then I haven’t read anything of his since, other than In Real Life, a graphic novel he did with Jen Wang, which I borrowed off a friend a couple of years ago.
I’ve still got For The Win and Homeland sat on my shelf, waiting to be read.
2 Likes
I’m interested in the bundle, but this gave me pause–what about his work is difficult to stomach?
2 Likes
I think Doctorow’s heart is in the right place but I find his actual prose distractingly bad.
4 Likes
What @RogerBW said, the prose isn‘t all that refined and I know several people who didn‘t like his books. I do.
I would put him and Scalzi in a similar bucket prose-wise btw. (Both have audiobooks read by Wil Wheaton (which is why I am making that particular connection).
The other thing I was referring to is that he is an activist (digital stuff mostly) and his politics shine through in his books. You might not like what he has to say. Check out his blog if you haven‘t heard of him.
3 Likes
Just finished Glasslands by Karen Travis a novel set in the Halo universe, which I picked up because we’ve just finished watching season one of Halo.
The show has had some negative feedback about the portrayal of Master Chief*, but quite frankly I’m not that into the lore to care, and thought the story pretty good. YMMV.
*He takes his helmet off a lot, and I kind of get it as I’m Judge Dredd fan and the Carl Urban movie is so much better than the Stallone one, down in part to Urban keeping his helmet on. But, in all fairness the story is better too.
I get the fan desire to be true to the character, and clearly I’m not that invested in Halo to care.
Moving on…
I’m now about to start System Collapse by Martha Wells the most recent book in the Murderbot Diaries.
3 Likes
Spent a couple months trying to branch out from my normal sci-fi hole, with varying results!
Nightcrawling–teenager in Oakland does what they can to not get evicted. Solid read, but also quite depressing and could be triggering for some, so fair warning.
Lessons in Chemistry–definitely not “for me”, but I liked this one a lot! It took me more time than I care to admit to shed the pretentious sheen of “this isn’t how the world works, it’s not that simple!”, but once I did I liked the story quite a bit. That dog is completely nonsense, though, and almost ruined the story for me with how deus-ex-machina it is.
Whalefall–Basically The Martain, but with a sperm whale’s stomach instead of Mars, and an angsty teen instead of a botanist. Not nearly as good as that description makes it sound, but decent enough.
Kindred–Pretty harrowing story about slavery in America. There are dozens of stories about how slavery is pretty bad, actually, but I thought the perspective here was kind of unique. It’s hard to explain without rambling for a few paragraphs, but the story takes pains to show how easy it is to normalize a situation you’re stuck in and to empathize with people who you spend time with, even when they regularly commit horrible acts. It makes you consider just howhard it is to break these systematic evils, which is not something that gets talked about a lot. This and Dawn are quickly cementing Octavia Butler as one of my favorite sci-fi authors.
Finally, Black Leopard, Red Wolf, which was good, but wayyyy too long. I barely got through the first 1/3rd of it, and even once it picks up steam it still frequently feels like wheel-spinning and word-inflating. Still, the way it’s written like a sort of oral mythology is quite interesting, and it’s one of the few stories I’ve read to treat magic and the supernatural like a dangerous, barely-understood thing, instead of a well-catalogued system.
These were all good and I’m glad I read them, but I’m excited to jump back into some straight sci-fi for a while.
2 Likes
Okay, starting to re-read the Dark is Rising books has clearly set me off on a children’s fantasy thing, as I’ve now started on Earthsea, which I haven’t read in ever such a long time.
And oh my lord, the writing is gorgeous.
4 Likes
Yeah Wizard of Earthsea was one of my favourite books growing up. Might have to have a revisit myself
3 Likes
Earthsea was one of my favorites when I was a teenager. I confess I missed the whole white skinned savage bit, though.
The more recent extension of the series feels not as well put together. Or maybe it doesn’t mesh with what I thought should have happened. Something, it was disappointing, especially the last one.
1 Like
“Livid” by Patricia Cornwell. The central murder weapon is pushing feasibility, but the story is keeping me interested.
1 Like
That could describe most Patricia Cornwell books to be fair!
It’s the latter, I think.
Well, when I read all the Narnia books (I was about seven or eight) I had no idea they had anything to do with christianity.
I loved them so much then though that I still can’t help liking them despite the religion stuff.
2 Likes
You don’t HAVE to read stuff acknowledging any allegories and stuff. You can just read it and enjoy it on face value. Nothing wrong with that.
4 Likes
A thing I have heard repeatedly from.people who don’t like Narnia now is that they enjoyed the stories and only later noticed the theological propaganda.
3 Likes