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Unbound

(A short story collection by Shawn Speakman.)

Unbound was mixed – exactly as intended – with some fascinating to me introductions to new authors, and interesting new short stories from old favorites. Before I downloaded it, I was looking forward to Harry Connolly’s story. I had no idea what it’d be, but I like basically all of the worlds that he writes.

(It turns out that it was a short story from The Great Way series – a sad tale about a doomed subject kingdom on the eve of its freedom from its oppressor.)

There were lots of other interesting stories – and a number of stories that were okay, but clearly set in worlds I hadn’t read before, but would probably have been amazing with context. (Much like The Way Into Oblivion likely was for others.)

I particularly liked Madwalls (by Rachel Caine) for the engaging lead character and parental relationship.

Dichotomy of Paradigms (by Mary Robinette) was almost campy in a good way – when you’re contracted to make a pirate look good, art goes interesting places.

Uncharming (by Deliah Dawson) was a very creepy look at a weird underworld,

Mark Lawrence’s A Good Name was an interesting take on a culture of honor, and went in an interesting direction to capture good lessons about maturity.

The Hall of the Diamond Queen (by Anthony Ryan) was very effective – I kept thinking about the Voice and implied history that set up the opening circumstances well after finishing.

The Ethical Heresy (by Sam Sykes) was also interesting; leaning very hard on the costs of compliance with injustice, with a fascinating (and relatable) viewpoint character.

The Siege of Tilpur (by Brian McClellan) was an interesting universe (with Powder Mages in a colonial setting); with a strong main character well positioned to demonstrate lots of angles to the setting.

Jury Duty by Jim Bucher was a fun Dresden interlude; it’s easy to slip back into that world.

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Fall Reading 2024

Unraveller by Frances Hardinge. A cunningly told story about a strange land, with wild and weird magic, and organic responses to the dangerous and threatening magic. Kellen can unravel curses, while those who curse are feared and often wind up imprisoned for their own good. Friendship and balance wind up being critical – but not as straightforwardly as a “book for young adults” would lead you to expect.

The Way of Kings by Brandon Sanderson. This was a reread, but it’d been long enough that many elements were familiar – but I only really anticipated the broad strokes of each of the three main POV stories. Kaladin’s story forms the backbone, but Shallan and Brightlord Dalinar Kholin have great stories in very different social strata. The minor characters around each (Dalinar’s sons, Shallan and Jasnah, and the members of each of Kaladin’s bands) are all brightly sketched and wonderfully revealed.

Breach of Containment by Elizabeth Bonesteel. The third book in the series; the stakes continue to spiral ever higher. Some new characters advance into focus, and the status quo continues to erode. Elena crosses back from PSI and gets sucked into a deep plot. Greg’s ship and crew change as they’re asked to do more and more, while the universe drifts out of control.

Alone with You in the Ether by Olive Blake. A compelling story of developing friendship, that drifts and grows into romance. A thorough look into two very charming and beyond quirky leads, delving into how people tick, solving abstract problems, math, and art. Fascinating and different.

A City on Mars by Kelly & Zach Weinersmith. This is non-fiction, but with humor and a light touch. It investigates the idea of space settlements, with wide detours into related elements – like antarctic bases, the laws of the deep sea, and the treaties covering outer space. They have a firm viewpoint (mostly that current enthusiasts skip over a lot of missing knowledge and legal constraints), but present all sides without stacking the deck obnoxiously.

Wild Oats & Fireweed by Ursula LeGuin – Poetry, mostly from the 80s. There’s a lot of more pointed commentary on news events, and more emphasis on change rather than acceptance. Still beautiful seeing and describing lands and sometimes the strange customs, or interesting wildlife to match.

Serpent Bride by Sara Douglas – A very interesting book with a few good leads. It’s a rough start, marred by a huge overhead of “what happened last time”. To a degree, it feels like a world in motion – but it also feels like a “related to” sequel. As the book continues, the investment in this set of characters (and reference back to old characters and events) lessens, allowing more space for the well told tale.

Twisted Citadel by Sara Douglas. A very good sequel, with only the least hangover from the previous series. There’s an abrupt change sprung right at the beginning that mostly fell flat (the One for Kanubai)- but once you are past it, the substitution winds up being fine. It just wastes the relationships and enmity that was developed for the whole first book. The end, however, has a very dramatic shakeup — much more than you expect from the average middle of a trilogy.

(I returned The Other Valley by Scott Alexander Howard because it expired after a renewal; I’ll check it out again sometime next year.)

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Summer 2024 Reads

So Far So Good: Final Poems: 2014-2018 by Ursula K LeGuin. A fascinating mix; aging and acceptance are powerful themes, but not the only ones.

By a Silver Thread: DFZ Changeling Book 1 by Rachael Aaron. A very enjoyable fantasy world overlaid on a mid-future. This one has a thick layer of grime – there’s addictive blood magic, mind games, and a lot of jockeying for position. The fae are alien here, in a pleasing way.

Nice Dragons Finish Last (Heartstrikers, #1) by Rachel Aaron. The same world as By a Silver Thread (I suspect that it’s decades earlier), with a very different feel due to the main character’s attitude and relationships. Julius doesn’t have an easy path, but it makes victories the right way sweeter when they do come.

Sourdough by Robin Sloan. Delightfully weird; it’s a bay area of almost today, with a slight skew and subtle almost magic that threads through a few parallel storylines.

California Bones by Greg Van Eekhout. This is a weird urban fantasy – California seceded from the US on the strength of bone magic. It’s mostly about a heist crew, their relations, navigating a strange and usual world. Disney and Mullholland wind up running rival powerbases in the weird LA. It’s a weird elite, with “power corrupts” running strongly through – along with some crisis of ecology that slides in and becomes a surprisingly strong background theme.

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Spring Reads 2024

The Blue Machine – How the Ocean Works by Helen Czerski

Legends & Lattes by Travis Baldree

The Doors of Eden by Adrian Tchaikovsky

Translation State by Ann Leckie

Busted Synapses by Erika L. Satifka

Arguing with Zombies by Paul Krugman

(then into the heat of summer…)

Arboreality by Rebecca Campbell

Excellent Women by Barbara Pym

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Recent Reads

Recent reads for early February.

The Way Into series is a powerful, off kilter from expectation world. The gifts and Blessed have fascinating rules and histories, with a structure that makes increasing sense as the series continues. It’s oddly like a fantasy world crashed into a zombie apocalypse. Tejohn is a great “voice of experience” character, and grounding him with extensive experience around magic (but he’s not a practitioner, an important contrasting POV). Cazia provides a great wizard- and also a youthful, iconoclastic viewpoint.

The first four Steerswoman books are fascinating; the idea of the Steerswomen as a society with subtle impact on the world, but no overt conflict. That changes a bit as the series progresses, and we learn more about the wizards and their machinations. By the third and fourth books, we start to understand the wizard structure and powers, but also their callous ruthlessness.

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Recent Reads

December and January

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Books

Alien Echoes and Neuromancer

Alien Echoes by Mira Grant was an interesting take on the alien universe. The first half of the book was an excellent and gritty story about the struggles of colonies, with fascinating extrapolated biological issues.

When the aliens come crashing down, it’s clear that they’re trouble of a wildly different scope — too perfect to be accidental. Olivia offers fascinating viewpoints — she explains what’s expected and what’s really unusual (from an amateur Xenobiologist’s POV), which proves to be a fascinating breakdown of plausibility for the various alien traits.

Neuromancer by William Gibson is a classic; I think I’ve read other Gibson novels, but this was unfamiliar enough that I think it’s a first encounter. Case is our sole POV, but his interactions with Armitage and Molly, and the interestingly textured characters that they run into at each stop, really lend the gritty feel of a complex world that’s ground on with interlocked histories, at national and personal levels.

It gets very ambitious, with a lot of travel to different interesting places, including orbit by the end.

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Recent Books 11/19

Some Desperate Glory by Emily Tesh was excellent, and very subtle in a few ways. Our POV character, Kyr, is a young woman from a defeated humanity, raised to gain glory for her fallen people. The society that’s she’s raised in has added some blinders – as has Kyr’s self image. As the book continues, and the way the universe expands, Kyr finds herself reevaluating what she has always known… it’s a rough road.

The book features quite alien societies – definitely more than humans in funny suits – and weird universe changing technologies that are hard to understand for everyone. There’s interesting simulations and temporal variations… Kyr doesn’t get a smooth path, but it’s a fascinating read, and the Kyr who emerges is so different but still grounded in the girl we first encountered.

Spear by Nicola Griffith is a powerfully Welsh retelling around the edges of the round table. Celtic myth and gods patrol the edges, but it’s a very human scale. Some of it was familiar, or familiar at a slant from Hawk of May, but Peretur comes from a very different, not nobly raised background that renders the political largely invisible to her.

The world isn’t particularly rough or cruel, though it’s a lot closer to the bone, and the nobility’s share is a sizable bite. The story as a whole feels very concise – it doesn’t mess about with multiple viewpoints, or try to handle multiple big events. It’s not the end of Caer Leon – it still feels like summer, and Medraut isn’t in the picture yet. This tale comes to a firm ending about Pereteur’s storyline – if not that of the companions that Peretur is joining.

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Recent Reads

(As of 9/21/2023)

Light from Uncommon Stars by Ryka Aoki. Set in the world of today, it’s mostly an excellent story; the primary POV was Katrina Nguyen, a young violin prodigy on the run. She’s very much a modern youth, who interacts oddly with Shizuka Satomi, a violin teacher with a dark past. In parallel, Lan Tran, a starship captain in disguise runs a donut shop. I had to push past the “you’re putting peanut butter in my chocolate” for the melding of modern, fantasy, and space opera; fortunately, the strong characters keep you riveted and moving through.

The River Road by Karen Osborn. Another book set in the world of today, without any fantasy to relieve it. It’s mostly about how two families deal (and fail to deal) with tragedy. There’s a lot of confused memory, glorious flashbacks and unbridled youth. It’s a very nicely textured deep look at a rural near town friendship, and the slices we each see of each other.

Crip Up the Kitchen is a book filled with excellent advice about how to work around disabilities and conserve spoons, with careful and detailed explanations for the various tools and their uses. The recipes are similarly carefully detailed and thoroughly explained — even new cooks, and cooks exploring new tools are setup for success. The stories of adaptation and perseverance are excellent and inspiring; the gatekeeping lectures preceding each recipe that the author has a personal cultural connection to were wearying and repetitious.

Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2018, N. K. Jemsin Editor. A very broad mix of short stories, most relatively short and well crafted. I’d come across a few stories in other collections, and they run the gamut from quite familiar to entirely unique. Not every story was a great match for my taste – but the majority were, and craft was evident in them all.

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Recent Reads

(August 25, 2023)

It’s been a while since it visited the library, so I’ve been rereading several novels. (I have added many more books to my library queue and requested several, so I’ll soon be back to new books.)

World War Z by Max Brooks was a fast reread; the various little tales are all quick, and when you start to encounter characters again in the second half of the book, there’s a warm burst of familiarity. A minor flaw is that the lack of continuous storyline meant that it didn’t embed in my mind, preventing it from being as useful when trying to sleep.

Halfway Human by Carolyn Ives Gilman was a fascinating flash back to the world of 25 years ago, where a story centered on an asexual aromantic lead character was played up as genuinely alien to standard galactic society. Tedla, blands, and the whole society of Gammadis are a fascinating look at where desires for service and gender interact – and don’t.

The Dispatcher by John Scalzi is a fun thought experiment, looking at a world where most murder victims pop back to life immediately after dying. It’s fleshed out to tackle some quick exploits – like integrating Dispatchers, basically licensed assassins, into high risk surgeries, or the adaptation of society to mercy killings basically as a “do over” for nasty accidents, etc. It feels like a long short story – one big concept well explored, rather than the complex storylines of most novels.

Vatta’s War is a five book series by Elizabeth Moon. We follow a few POV characters, but the anchor is Ky Vatta. The series kicks off with Trading in Danger, where Ky begins the story by getting kicked out of the academy for “helping” in a way that backfires with terrible publicity. She’s a great character, who is put through a lot of misery but comes through it surprisingly well. There are a number of parallels to Moon’s Deed of Paksenarrion books, but Ky manages to stand apart – in part because the universe is facing a different threat than Pak’s tale.