Thought it’d be fun to share what everyone has been reading. I’ll try to include titles and authors to make finding more information on them easier as well as a brief synopsis and my thoughts.
I had a lot of travel this week and speed through “Children of Time” by Adrian Tchaikovsky. Great read with very interesting ideas and payoff that had me hooked. Covers human uplifting of other species, their development, and interactions afterwards.
I’ve also been working on “Strontium Dog” from 2000 A.D. comics (hey, it’s sci-fi and it’s printed) and made it through most of Vol. 3. In short, the main character Johnny Alpha is a mutant who’s only available employment is as a bounty hunter. Very fun read in general, although part of the main beats in this volume are sad.
Started a new novel and continued working on my audiobook but I’ll save my thoughts on that for next week / when I finish them.
I started and finished the first two Murderbot books from Martha Wells (All Systems Red, Artificial Condition). Reading the ebooks I didn’t realize how short they were until I got to near the end. I guess they count as novellas? But it’s nice to have something fun and easily digestible now and then so I’ll start the third tonight.
Children of Time was very good. There is a sequel, no? But I never read it.
Joe Abercrombie’s First Law series. It’s decidedly not science fiction, but you gotta take a break sometimes. I’m enjoying it enough, but I do find the characters that were initially interesting are falling into some pretty tired tropes close to the end of the second book. Still, Abercrombie’s prose is super neat and readable.
That series is fire!
Yeah, I’m almost done the third book now and I’m having trouble putting it down. The tired tropes shook themselves out and got interesting again.
Well, not scifi but I read this book called Wages of Rebellion this week, by Chris Hedges. Good reminder of the atrocities and tyranny the US has committed globally and domestically, often in the name of capitalism.
In terms of scifi, I’d recommend A Canticle for Leibowitz, by Walter M. Miller Jr. It’s a collection of post apocalyptic stories set on a monastery in the desert that serves as the only source of preservation of material from the “old world.” Good themes in this one.
