Reading in January 2010

[Hobbit]

Welcome to 2010!

(You know, I'm sure there's an SF title in there somewhere. )

Hopefully you have lots of new reading material you're reading or about to read this month.

Just in case you didn't know, this is where you tell us what you've been reading in SF this month. Good or bad, we want to know what and why.

For your information: the SFFWorld Review of Fantasy 2009 is up HERE; and the SF Review HERE.

Feel free to join in, agree or disagree.

Mark

 

[Loerwyn]

I shall continue to read Pandora's Star! Not picked it up for a few nights (been incredibly tired lately), so hoping to have a good go of it soon.

It's always nice to have a break from Fantasy, isn't it?

 

[spiralguru3d]

I will be reading A Deepness In The Sky by Vernor Vinge. I've made a start and things look very promising so far.

I just finished Stranger In A Strange Land, and felt it to be hard work. I can appreciate what a stir it must have caused when published in the 1960s, but fifty years on it's liberalism is less impressive, and indeed actually falls short by today's standards. I'd be interested to hear others' experiences of Reading this book.

 

[Ropie]

Reading A Billion Days of Earth by Doris Piserchia and A Fire Upon the Deep by Vernor Vinge, concurrently. Both are very good indeed and compliment each other quite well, being about far future societies involving evolved versions of animals coming into contact with humankind.

Although ABDOE is very strange it is certainly quite an intellectual read and seems to be addressing psychological issues about the nature of self. It is a bit forced and theatrical but is set so far in the future that one can't really argue with the way beings will behave. I'm not sure but I think Gene Wolfe may have taken some stylistic elements from it as a basis for his Book of the New Sun series.

 

[pat5150]

A bit on a dare with Mark Charan Newton, I decided to give tie-in fiction a shot by reading the first chapter of The Horus Heresy sequence set in the Warhammer 40,000 universe. And I have to say that I'm very impressed by Dan Abnett's intelligent and entertaining Horus Rising.

Will definitely read the rest of the series!

Patrick

 

[crewman no7]

I shall continue to read Pandora's Star! Not picked it up for a few nights (been incredibly tired lately), so hoping to have a good go of it soon.

It's always nice to have a break from Fantasy, isn't it?

I got Pandora's Star myself last month i hope it's good as it is next on my list.

Once i finish kim's Mars trilogy that is.
I have come to the last chapter of the first book and have to say it's a gripping read.

 

[chitman13]

Read Ender in Exile by Orson Scott Card and I'm seriously disappointed with it I know that I was never going to get another Ender's Game, but it was such a departure from the original that I just couldn't find it in myself to enjoy it as much as I wanted to.

Now going to spend most of 2010 reading sci-fi with only some fantasy. Sci-fi needs more pimping.

 

[Rob B]

Mark, have you read Speaker for the Dead? Any of the Ender books after the first four, especially the parallel Bean stories take a sever down step in quality the more recently they are published.

 

[suciul]

I finished The Kingdom of Ohio by Matthew Flaming; it's one of those books that you wish would have a properly thought out story, since then it would have been an extraordinary novel; still recommended I put a mini-review on Goodreads:


"This is a very hard novel to evaluate; in style it's an A+ being written absolutely superbly, a page turner with a great atmosphere in both threads of the novel, as well as in the snippets of the further past.

The execution is also well done though the main twist is obvious immediately, and the ending is great - some called it a cliffhanger, but I disagree - the story could end here and I would be happy, though of course a sequel would be great.

The main problem is the storyline itself, which is absolutely bare-bones, more novella like with snippets/notes than a coherent novel; coincidences galore only the magic of the author' style made me suspend my disbelief, but like with all magic it wears thin fast, so this is a novel you cannot reflect upon and do not see its essentially absurdity or maybe solipsism as the story goes; still as i appreciate a magic act despite knowing it's hand tricks, mirrors and misdirection, rather than substance, the same I appreciated this one a lot and the author became one to watch from now on.."

 

[chitman13]

I've not read any of them Rob. Before reading Exile I was going to try and pick them up, although now I just don't know whether I should bother. More than anything I found that Exile just wasn't that interesting. Nothing major actually happened and the brief description of these events from Ender's Game was more than enough.

 

[Rob B]

Well then I suggest you read at least Speaker for the Dead - it is at least as good as Ender's Game. YMMV for Xenocide and Children of the Mind - I enjoyed both but they've both provoked strong negative reactions as well.


suciul - I've got a copy of The Kingdom of Ohio and wasn't sure about picking it up. Although your brief review paints it positively, I may just skip it since it seems more style over substance.

 

[suciul]

suciul - I've got a copy of The Kingdom of Ohio and wasn't sure about picking it up. Although your brief review paints it positively, I may just skip it since it seems more style over substance.

This is a book that is worth opening and reading the first few pages and see how much (if at all) hooks you - I planned to give it a quick browse and possibly a quick read, but I liked so much those pages that I read it carefully.

I read recently short books that were completely satisfying as plot/world building/character evolution go, so my main issue with The Kingdom of Ohio is not that it lacks at least a hundred pages to flesh out things, but more that it tried to cram many apparently disconnected facts in the narrative and the main story remained just like an outline

Spoiler

the connection of the subway to time travel; the pure happenstance of the girl knowing Tesla in one alt-Earth; the dropping of names, JP Morgan, Edison and Tesla, all just thrown in as props; the relatively big chunks of space devoted to three parts - Peter Force work on the subway, his earlier adventures with his father, the foundation and evolution of the Kingdom of Ohio, none that turn out to have much to do substantively with the main story at least so far; I mean in a 400 page novel, sure there would have been place for all that, but here those basically crowd out the main plot...

 

[Seak]

I recently finished The Forever War, which I liked quite a bit, I just didn't think it lived up to the hype. I know, that's a lame way to go, but I didn't think it was the blow me away, best military sci-fi ever.

Full Review Here

 

[chitman13]

Recent reads:

Monster Republic by Ben Horton - a YA book about a boy who is in an accident only to awaken and discover he's been part of an experiment to 'improve' him. Enjoyable and the market it is aimed at should enjoy it thoroughly.

Cosmopath by Eric Brown - the last book in the Bengal Station trilogy and such a great read. It doesn't cover any new ground, but Brown is such a great storyteller it all just works so well. He's left it open so there is scope to revisit, but the ending was a very good wrap up and left it on a high.

WE by John Dickinson - another YA book, but definitely aimed at the older teenagers and is easily enjoyable by adults too - I loved it and thought the it was really good with some very deep and serious themes. With the population of Earth all connected by the World Ear and used to instant communication and querying, but when Paul Munro is picked to by removed from the society and sent halfway across the solar system to be part of a four person observation project around one of the outer gas giants he has to adjust to a basic human existence once again. I'm writing up my full review at the moment, but this is by far one of the better books that looks at the effect of a separation from the familiar and what it is to be human.

Flashforward by Robert Sawyer - I got this through the end of last year when the new tv series was debuting. I've never watched the show and never will now, I just wouldn't want it to ruin what was a really interesting book. I thought that it would be a stretch to get a novel out of the idea, but with the thread of Theo's murder it really carried the plot forward with a sense of something to be resolved.

Now reading Forbidden Knowledge by Stephen Donaldson (which is proving to be a bit better than I thought it would be after reading The Real Story) and the newest Gaunt's Ghosts novel, Blood Pact by Dan Abnett (a Warhammer 40K novel in th very popular series, although I've only read the first book). Thoughts when I'm done...

 

[livens]

Just finished Chindi by Jack McDevitt. Fun read but after the first 1/3 of the book it became predictable and flat. The ending was a little dull too, and didnt clear any of the mysteries up in itself. One of those books that gets cleaned up at the end by alot of narration explaining everything. Pretty much what happens in his other books that Ive read. And Ive got a few more McDevitt's on the shelf but I need a break from him, I need something more exiting!

Next up is The Gods Themselves by Isaac Asimov and/or Halting State by Charles Stross. I picked up Halting state yesterday just because of the author, and the flap blurb sounded interesting (and possibly the $5.98 price tag on a hardback lured me in too). Ive read both Singularity Sky and Iron Sunrise and loved both of them, so hopefully he'll come through again for me

 

[T77]

I just finished Revelation Space by Alastair Reynolds. I really enjoyed this. It's the first book that I've read in a while that was a real page turner. I also loved all of the technology that he used.

I moved right on to Chasm City and I found the first third to be a little slow, but it seems to be picking up now that they've finally arrived in Chasm City. I heard that this is one of his best books, so I have high expectations.

 

[DragonReader]

Now reading "The Currents of Space" by Isaac asimove having recently finished the first two books in his Galactic Empire trilogy.

 

[Luke_B]

I am currently reading Retromancer by Robert Rankin. But, I am not sure whether I should be posting about it in the fantasy forum or the science fiction forum. It would certainly fall on the fantasy side of the dichotomy according to Heinlien’s definition. Judging from the blurb and what I have read so far, it does not contain any serious scientific extrapolation. But my own classification system is pretty nebulous and this feels more like science fiction to me. Alternate history seems to be the most pervasive flavour at the moment anyway (along with comedy) and one of the title pages is illustrated with a man holding a sort of retro lasergun thingy.

This is my first Rankin and I realise that this book links two existing series, but I have not found it too difficult to get into. There is a prologue which provides a reasonable amount of exposition regarding what are presumably the events of previous books.

At the moment, the most striking element of Retromancer is the very mannered and highly stylised first person narration. It is very quaint and very English. I am not sure whether I am finding it laboured and artificial or charming and droll, but I assume this is Rankin’s usual shtick. The style does seem to complement the Pythonesque sense of humour and sixties London setting quite well, but I could see it being a serious irritant to some people.

I also wish I had not read the blurb. I am a couple of chapters in and at the moment I think Rankin is trying to do something similar to that scene in Shaun of the Dead, where Shaun is wandering around with a hangover, oblivious to the fact a zombie plague has swept across London. I think I would be enjoying the mystery and confusion in these early chapters a bit more if a major plot point was not spoilt for me by the blurb.

 

[Rob B]

I had to set Dhalgren by Samuel Delany aside after 50 pages. I'm just not in the right frame of mind for the book right now though I do want to read it at some point.

On the positive side, I'm over 100 pages into Orphan's Triumph by Robert Buettner and enjoying it. Review to come later.

 

[chitman13]

I finished reading Blood Pact by Dan Abnett, the latest in his series his Gaunt's Ghosts books. I really enjoyed this one and despite only readng the first book in this series I didn't find it too hard to get into at all. When I read Warhammer I expect it to be from the perspective of the front line grunts, but Blood Pact was set on a planet far from the front line with the Ghosts effectively on down time while waiting for a new posting. This works extremely well in getting to see the characters from another viewpoint and seeing a planet in the W40K universe leading a relatively normal life was pleasing. Of course, when it hits the fan, it hits the fan and Dan Abnett does a sterling job once again with the action. I came away from Blood Pact with one thought in my mind - why haven't I read more of the Gaunt's Ghosts novels? Some I must remedy!

Rob - looking forward to see your review on Orphan's Triumph (the last one?). I've read the first two and have the other three sitting on my shelf to read, something I plan on doing this year