Reading in June 2006

David Weber, Linda Evans Hell's Gate
Weber started a new series, military techno-fantasy, about the war of magical and technological civilizations. I had hope that with new series Weber would return to his early stile, which I liked a lot. The beginning made me hopeful, but after some times the book degenerated into Weber at his worst. After the initial conflict, and with exeption of one short battle in the middle, nothing happen in this book, but endless historical digressions and talking about nothing. And on top of it the books end with cliffhanger.
 
The Inverted World - Christopher Priest


It was an interesting concept. Priest's prose is not too shabby and the setting was intriguing.


The mathematics involved got a chuckle from me although the conclusion was more fantastical then anything else. I did like the basic premise a lot and enjoyed Priest's style of disclosing information bit by bit. (no info dumps and boring exposition here) Oh, and the love story [with the exception of the ending] was lame - I don't understand why authors put one in when clearly theRE is absolutely no focus on character development.

Anyway, I'll hopefully be picking up The Glamour soon.

Rating: 7/10


I had to abandon Alistair Reynold's Revelation Space; it was boring and not very well written.

Currently starting on The Player of Games and expecting to enjoy it a lot.
 
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Erfael said:
Two interesting ones of late:

First was Richard K. Morgan's second Takeshi Kovacs novel, Broken Angels. This was a pretty light read. Morgan has a pretty good flair for description. You really get a gritty feel for his worlds. There wasn't too much by way of make you sit up and think here, but it was a rip-roaring fun ride.
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Am I only one who that this book mocking/paying homage/polemicize with David Drake Hammer's Slammers ? Mercenaries started as sympathetics Darke mercenaries, and shown complete monsters at the end. BTW last books Woken Furies is best of all in my opinion. It's about Quellism!
 
Beleg said:
The Inverted World - Christopher Priest


It was an interesting concept. Priest's prose is not too shabby and the setting was intriguing.

Anyway, I'll hopefully be picking up The Glamour soon.

Rating: 7/10


I had to abandon Alistair Reynold's Revelation Space; it was boring and not very well written.

Currently starting on The Player of Games and expecting to enjoy it a lot.
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Beleg, your recent readings are mirroring my own: I just read Inverted World, though I really loved it and went straight on to The Prestige (even better!). I have just finished Player of Games - a good solid piece of writing with interesting concepts, though not my favourite by Banks. And earlier this year I started then abandoned Alastair Reynolds' Chasm City for pretty much the same reasons as you.

This week I'm starting The Martian Chronicles which I've had on the shelf for some time now. Initial impressions are that it is right up my street ;)
 
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s271 said:
Am I only one who that this book mocking/paying homage/polemicize with David Drake Hammer's Slammers ? Mercenaries started as sympathetics Darke mercenaries, and shown complete monsters at the end. BTW last books Woken Furies is best of all in my opinion. It's about Quellism!
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I MIGHT agree with the mocking/homage/polemic thing, but I've never read Hammer's Slammers, so really can't comment on it...maybe one day I'll get to that one and be able to do a comparison.
 
Just finished Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes, which was an excellent book.

Now reading the Handmaidens Tale by Atwood
 
Finished reading two Elizabeth Moon books that make for an interesting contrast: Remnant Population was Hugo nominee, a character study of one elderly woman and how she manages first contact with an alien race on her own. It's only slightly idealized, and is mostly a quiet read with a lot of nuance.

Then, Trading in Danger the first book in her new series about a new female heroine, Kylara Vatta. I enjoyed this book for exactly the same reasons that I enjoyed all of the Herris Serrano books: competent, capable, ex-military female hero takes the poor hand fate has dealt her (through no fault of her own), gets into crisis situations (which she was thrown into through other people's ill-judgement) and gets through it using only the limited resources she has on hand. I love the way she writes these adventures. They're not terribly deep or taxing, but they're a lot of fun and usually right up my alley.
 
I've also read a Elizaberth Moon's book: "The speed of dark". I did like it, but found it a bit slow sometimes.

Now I'm reading "Raft" by Stephen Baxter.
 
Well, there's another Hugo category down for the year: I've now read all the nominated short stories. Thank goodness they're all available online, at the LACon website.

My rankings:
"Tktk'tk" by David Levine
"The Clockwork Atomic Bomb" by Dominic Green
"Down Memory Lane" by Mike Resnick
"Singing My Sister Down" by Margo Lanagan
No Award

With no ranking given to "Seventy-Five Years" by Michael Burstein because it was not good. I felt the same way about his nominated work last year, "Decisions." How does this guy keep getting nominated? Simplistic, cliched, and awkward. Bleah. The top four are all excellent, however, and it was a real struggle to rank them.
 
Thanks for mentioning the availability, Archren. This is my first year voting, and I just assumed the onus was on us to buy every individual publication in which the stories and novellas appear. Yikes, I doubt I can read all those in time. Is it gauche to just vote for best novel?
 
Heck, I bet there are some folks out there who send in ballots with nothing but votes for best movie! :D

I try to only vote in categories I'm at least a little informed in. I always feel guilty about not voting for best Editor or best Artist, but I just don't pay enough attention to that to be fair.

I'm just so happy that with the internet you can get almost all the short works, and even three of the long works for free! (Although I bought all the long ones, just because they're darn good works in their own right, no question).
 
Right now I'm reading Star Dragon by Mike Brotherton. I like the ideas behind it ("It's a critter living in the accretion disk of a double-star! It's great!"), but I don't really like the way it's written. I just can't stop reading a book when I'm only halfway through!
 
I just read The Martian Chronicles. I've added some comments to the book club thread on it.

Now I'm starting Spin for the book club - it's a bit of a heavyweight; hope I manage to finish it in time, though so far it would seem to fit in to the 'SF pageturners' thread... ;)
 
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Finished The Player of Games. 8.5/10 [more comments in the Banks thread]



Also read a few stories from Martian Chronicles (thanks for giving me the idea, Ropie! it's fun book-stalking you :p) and a couple of Theodore Sturgeon shorts. (A Saucer of Lonliness etc. which were absolutely brilliant)

Thinking of starting either Morrow by Robert Reed or the second Heechee novel.
 
Beleg said:
Thinking of starting either Morrow by Robert Reed or the second Heechee novel.
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I'd recommend "Marrow", which I found excellent. On the other hand, the second book in the Heechee saga was completely dissapointing :(
 
Are you aware that Marrow has a new sequel, The Well of Stars? I sought out Marrow for that very reason, but it's out of print here and needs to be bought used.
 
Charles Stross Family Trade

First book of the series. While good entertainment by itself, book not quite fulfill it's promise. From the premises I'd expected socio-economic SF thriller about transforming society, kind of Amber Zelazny meet Accelerando. However nothing essential happen in the book. May be the theme will be developed in sequel.
 
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