Reading in November 2012

[krisbslick]

I agree (I almost never read books that were specifically intended to be humourous). In this case the book was written very "tongue in cheek" and it was distracting at first. But either I got used to it or it got less overt through the book. So it was enjoyable enough on other levels.

I listened to the audiobook with Wil Wheaton as narrator ... he did a pretty good job with the humor

[chitman13]

I finished Neal Asher's Zero Point today, and enjoyed it more than the first Owner Novel, The Departure. I felt that The Departure spent a lot of its time setting up the world and characters, while Zero Point takes that foundation and runs with it. There was a section in the middle of the novel where things started to slow, but by the end all the action was there and it blasted along to its conclusion. Speaking of which, not a massive cliffhangar, or anything specific to know exactly where the story is going, but enough is said and done to make the third Owner novel, Jupiter War, a must read next year.

[suciul]

A few days ago I finished The Best of All Possible Worlds by Karen Lord and it was excellent; anthropological adventure sf partly quite original, partly in the tradition of Jack Vance more than the advertised U Le Guin; I opened a thread here as this book deserves a large audience

[suciul]

As The Sentients of Orion series by M. De Pierres will be released finally in the US soon, I decided to read Transformation Space (the last volume - bought on UK publication but somehow slipped through the cracks at the time and then later I knew I had to read volumes 2-3 again too to get in the spirit of the series); so first a second reread of Chaos Space (volume 2)

Very entertaining and making one turn pages even in the 3rd read; this series is excellent at least from volume 2 on - I actually liked volume 1 too, but it is more planet bound with fewer characters and I see why people may like it less - and hopefully the US release will give it a higher profile

Next sf for me is Mirror Space (vol 3 reread) and then Transformation Space (vol 4); I also have the M C Planck January debut The Kassa Gambit (seems a fairly standard planetary sf adventure in a space opera context and will give it a serious try sometime) and Exodus by Doug Dandridge, a Weberian space opera with aliens almost destroying humanity, humanity rebuilding far away and actually getting an inter-species empire to boot and now after 1000 years of human expansion (plus the long escape flight, so some 2000 years later total) the bad aliens presumably will be back for round 2...