Our reads in April 2020

Another month,another pile of books. Probably a bigger one than usual because of Covid - 19 :0(

Dusty's TBR for April
SF/F reads
Lois McMaster Bujold - Winterfair Gifts✔
Lois McMaster Bujold - Flowers of Vashnoi ✔
Donald Wollheim - Secrets of Saturn's Rings
Lin Carter - Journey to the Underground World
Philip Wylie - When Worlds Collide

from other genres
Gary Paulsen - Hatchet
Nora Roberts - Captivated

✔

The definite books for this month are A Study in Honor, Rosewater Insurrection and The Mortal Word.

I'm still reading Floating worlds. It's interesting, and quite enjoyable so far.

Still reading Coyote Rising by Allenn Steele - this second book is a bit better than the first continuing a series of vignettes that string along to tell the overall story with changing perspectives...

>4 Sakerfalcon: I read that many years ago and now have it on my TBR pile to read again. Her Corban Loosestrife series is very good - historical fiction set in the Viking era, but also has a few hints of magic and supernatural events here-and-there to allow it to creep into this thread ;}

I'm currently reading Malka Older's Infomocracy, basically a future techno-thriller about Big Data and the manipulation of elections, which, with a touch of synchronicity follows my reading of Brittany Kaiser's non-fiction work Targeted: My Inside Story of Cambridge Analytica. Spooky!

>4 Sakerfalcon: I also read it many years ago and thought highly of it at the time.

Finished Wheelers and enjoyed it despite the info-dumps; now about to start on Ken Macleod's Engine City.

>8 RobertDay: I trust you have read the first two books.

>9 pgmcc: Oh yes.

>6 SChant: Yes, we live in strange times. In some ways I am not at all looking forward to the rest of this US election cycle.

A friend just finished Sara Pinsker's A song for a new day and thought it eerie how it's set twenty years from right now: after a pandemic, when everything has been virtual, and 6'/2m distancing. I'm tempted to reread the book myself, even after only a few months.

Me, I finished Upright women wanted by Sarah Gailey. It's a nearish future, post-disintegration, post-USA western. Science fictional in the way of alternate history/future than aliens or space opera. Brief; it might be a Hugo-novella size.

Mostly I've been stress reading Mick Herron's spy thrillers, which involve British intelligence people who've been turfed out to a tiny backwater office in the hopes that they'll go away or something. And yet they still manage to fight crime! Who knew?

>12 karenb: Mick Herron is a fun read.

>11 karenb:, I recently finished reading The Sheep Look Up and found that eerie as well, with its president who brushes off a national crisis as the environment collapses and epidemics run rampant, until he's forced to look for scapegoats he can aim an army at: his own citizens.

Finished My Real Children, beginning The Science Fiction of Jack London

I'm stuck in reading purgatory because my Kindle gave up the ghost and it will be about two weeks before the new one arrives. That means Sixteenth Watch and Docile are on hold until then. The good news is I can still read Godsgrave on the app on my phone.

Just finished Sargasso of Space and have started the sequel Plague Ship. Light, fun reads - just what I need at the moment.

>17 daxxh: I too am sticking to light stuff,and have just reread Lois McMaster Bujold's Winterfair Gifts and Flowersof Vashnoi.
Perhaps not quite so lighthearted but good fun is When Worlds Collide.Here we have not just one,but two wandering unattached planets that are going to smash up the moon and then the earth. Nice idea is that some earth people will survive and go to live on one of the maurauding planets.
Also starting a Winston classic,Donald Wollheim's Secrets of Saturn's Rings

I'm reading Providence by Max Barry. He always writes super-interesting SF.

>19 tottman: I enjoyed Barry's Lexicon, and much of my book group still remembers Jennifer Government fondly.

>18 dustydigger:, >17 daxxh: Am now regretting the lack of light, fun reads in my current stash of printed books from the library.

Finished Deathless Divide, which is Justina Ireland's followup to the excellent Dread Nation. A zombie apocalypse interrupts the US Civil War. The second book finds several women of color who were trained to fight zombies out in the West, trying to survive the zombies, the racism, and a guy who wants to develop the first zombie vaccine (but whose ethics are . . bad).

Currently reading Unraveling by Karen Lord. More on that later, if/when I finish.

I enjoyed The Time Traders by Andre Norton despite the quite dated plot element of the Cold War.

And I finally finished The Forever War -- it took me forever to read this! I started in Jan. 2019, gave up about a third of the way through, then tried again in Jun 2019 and made it halfway. This time I had no trouble reading it so I don't know what my problem with it was last year.

>21 leslie.98: I read "The Forever War" and enjoyed it some time ago. I know it was at least 15 years ago because I had read it before going to WorldCon in Glasgow in 2005 and the first session I got to was Joe Haldeman being interviewed and talking about a new book he had coming out.

>21 leslie.98:, that's good news about the Time Traders, I'll be reading that soon myself.

>20 karenb: Wrong touchstone for Unraveling, Karen! Let me know what you think of it.

>24 anglemark: Thanks; fixed.

So far, so good. I'm not sure how to describe it, though. Have you read it?

re: Forever War -- Excellent book that I should reread soon.

>25 karenb: No, I haven't. I loved The Best of All Possible Worlds and Redemption in Indigo (but was less satisfied with The Galaxy Game), and she was a wonderful GoH at a local con. I'm very curious about it!

>22 pgmcc: It must have been my mood last year - I had a pretty long reading slump and The Forever War just wasn't the book to pull me out of it. I liked it fine on this attempt!

How cool that you got to see Haldeman, especially just after finishing this book!

Finished The Shadow Rising, which is almost madcap compared to the other books in the series, there's so much going on. Well, there's lots of battles. The writing is still terrible, the characters are all as far through as a kipper, but there are occasional nice touches to the world-building. Only nine more to go...

Now reading Noumenon, which seems to have been praised by all and sundry, but is really not impressive. It's not just that two characters enter a traditional pub in Oxford, UK, in the first chapter and a waitress brings a beer to their table (doesn't happen in British pub - research fail), but then the book is just a series of lectures about the generation starship mission to a variable star, all told in a light breezy tone better suited to YA fiction. If this is what passes for the best of 21st century US science fiction, then things are much worse than I thought.

>28 iansales: There is something about those Wheel of Time books - even though I moaned about the writing & was irritated by many of the characters, I kept on reading the books until I had finished the series!

>29 leslie.98: I read the first 6 or 7 books in quick succession back in the 1990s, but as the books became more bloated, and less happened in them, so my reading slowed. And eventually stalled. I never got past volume 10. Which is why I'm rereading them now. The Shadow Rising was less of a chore of the previous three books, but I know the series peaks soon and then it's all downhill...

Well, I made the mistake of starting a novel in stead of going to sleep so I find myself typing this in the early morning, having knocked off A Study in Honor. This is a near-future re-imagining of the Holmes & Watson relationship, with the backdrop of a new American civil war, and I enjoyed it very much.

Reading All Systems Red by Martha Wells. I picked this up because it had wonderful reviews almost everywhere, but a third of the way through I'm still waiting for a decent plot or some characterization to occur. It's readable but no-where near as good as reviews led me to anticipate.

>32 SChant: You are likely to be disappointed

>32 SChant: >33 iansales: I dunno... I rather enjoyed the Murderbot stories - mostly because it's simply a fun romp and not due to any profundity or new territory being explored in the narrative.

>30 iansales: The last few books which were 'co-authored' by Brandon Sanderson picked up so I felt the series ended on a high note.

>34 ScoLgo: And yet they were nominated for the Hugo several times, and won one too. Apparently Hugo voters think shallow science fiction is "the best of the year".

>33 iansales: Yep - you are right. Readable, but nowhere near worthy of the praise that has been lavished on it. Still, it's saved me from shelling out for the exhorbitanty priced next volumes :)

Now started Lifelode by Jo Walton - much better writing and shaping up to be an interesting plot. My TBR pile is going down nicely.

Starting The City We Became by N.K. Jemisin tonight...

Noumenon was terrible. The author had apparently not bothered doing any research, and the entire generation ship story was just simply an excuse to play out a few banal observations, like slavery is bad. Avoid.

Now reading The Real-Town Murders and it's way, way better.

>36 iansales: I can't argue with you there... Like I said, I enjoyed them well enough for what they were but... award-worthy? I didn't really think so either. Still, awards ceremonies are often popularity contests wrapped up in politics and I don't personally pay much attention to that type of thing.

>37 SChant: I ended up reading all four but borrowed the e-books via Overdrive. Afterward, I stumbled upon the print versions while browsing a book shop and was stunned by the price. Hard to believe people are paying that much for novellas. In my opinion, the first book was the best of the bunch. If All Systems Red didn't catch your fancy, you won't be missing out skipping the sequels.

>40 ScoLgo: The Hugos and Nebulas are completely tribal now. Well, the Nebulas is still prone to logrolling, as well.

I've finished Engine City and enjoyed it immensely, perhaps the most of the whole sequence. There were bits which made me laugh out loud.

Now started Northern Lights, a long-overdue read.

Finished The Science Fiction of Jack London. Perhaps not the best time to read "The Scarlet Plague" with its 5-day incubation period that wipes out civilization (no spoiler -- that's the frame of the story). Started Deep Space by Eric Frank Russell.

>42 RobertDay:
I remember thinking each of the novels was 3 star good, but that when I finished Engine City the three books together attained 4 star status. (May have been 4 star/5 star. It was over fifteen years ago that I read them.)

>44 pgmcc: I don't know why i enjoyed Engine City more than the first two. More laugh-out-loud moments? It can't be that I got more of the obscure references, because I usually get most of Ken's. (Even some of the obscure Marxist ones.) The cute aliens? The fact that I kept on visualising the saurs, especially Salasso, as Kif from Matt Groening's Futurama?

Or is it just that under present circumstances, any trip outside my current surroundings both into my own head-space and at the same time across the Galaxy is to be welcomed?

I liked the new character of Travis Fox introduced in Galactic Derelict, the second book in the Ross Murdoch/Time Traders series.

Now I am listening to the audiobook of Snow Crash...

Finished Floating worlds and really enjoyed it. Paula is an unusual female protagonist - amoral, no interest in protocol, and unconcerned about how others see or think about her. Her journey was a fascinating one.

Now I've started Gideon the Ninth, which is intriguing and well written so far.

>47 Sakerfalcon:
I loved Floating Worlds and used to recommend it at the library. Doesn't create much of a recommendation for anarchism, though...

>48 rshart3: Ha ha, no!

Currently reading A Very British History, and it's weird how the attitudes of some of the earlier stories - from late 1980s and 1990s - have not really aged well, even if the ideas mostly seems to still hold together.

I have finished Final Diagnosis by James White. I don't remember who brought up the Sector General series last fall but thanks! I have been working my way through the series and enjoying it very much.

Finished Deep Space, started Out where the big ships go. I have had quite a few Cowper books but I don't I've read any until now.

Now reading Shardik and it's refreshing to read some decent prose.

Finished Gideon the Ninth which was fun but definitely more science fantasy than science fiction. Swords are still the go-to weapon, although there are spaceships and dead ancient technology around.

Now I'm reading The continuous Katherine Mortenhoe, inspired by Lola in her Would you give this book to a child? thread.

Finished Lifelode and found it more an exercise in bucolic world-building than a proper story.
About to start Best of British Science Fiction 2018 which I got as part of a storybundle.

Next up I'm reading Bring the Jubilee by Ward Moore. I have the New English Library "Master SF Series" edition with an introduction by Kingsley Amis.

Finished The Mortal Word (A+) and considering how I suspected that I was merely being pandered to at the start of this series I was really impressed with how the author has essentially brought this series to a climax. The succeeding books from this one really have to be the start of a new cycle.

Finished Northern Lights today. Taking a short break from fiction and then diving into Titus Groan.

Finished The continuous Katherine Mortenhoe this weekend. It was interesting but I didn't love it. As with most older SF its predictions for the future were both spot on and way off. The voyeuristic nature of TV and a population who seek vicarious thrills through its medium felt apt, especially when we read in the papers of people whose lives have been destroyed by intrusive media. But otherwise the book felt very much of its time (the 1970s), with public telephones, a random orgy, and the prominence of hippies (fringies as they are called in the book). I did enjoy watching the relationship between Katherine and Roddie, the subject and the observer, as it developed and both of them changed during their short time together. An interesting read but not one that I am likely to go back to.

Because people here have also mentioned the exorbitant cost of the full set of Murderbot novella's, I'd like to mention that the full set is free this week at Tor.com's eBook club. One each on each coming day (starting today).

>60 divinenanny: US and Canada only. Would have given it a go otherwise.

>20 karenb: I recently finished Providence by Max Barry and it is one of the best books I've read this year in any genre! I also remember Lexicon and Jennifer Government fondly, but I have a new favorite now.

Skimmed through The Late Great Wizard yesterday evening and found it thoroughly "meh." Let's just say that the wizard of the title just isn't that interesting and, after not very long, I found the young woman who is the main point of view not especially interesting either. Glad that I got it for free.

Finished Sixteenth Watch by Myke Cole. Enjoyed it.

Finished Out where the big ships go, started Ascendancies.

Just starting into The Steerswoman's Road by Rosemary Kirstein.

At the same time I picked up that book, The Stone Sky became available via Overdrive. The Jemisin trilogy has been a good read for me thus far so I'm very interested to see how she wraps things up in this third volume.

After The Stone Sky will be In the Country of the Blind by Michael Flynn. I really liked Eifelheim so I have high hopes for this one too.

Reading The Killing Moon by NK Jemisin....

>59 Sakerfalcon: The late Kingsley Amis once said "...orthodox science fiction and alternate probability are, as I said earlier, only at first sight concerned with the future and the past respectively: each is really looking at the present, our culture, our life, through its own special type of lens, which distorts and yet helps us to see freshly and clearly."

>68 SFF1928-1973:

There is a phrase I like to quote but do not know where it came from. It obviously reflects Kingsley Amis's view of the World and may be a paraphrasing of his words.

"If you want to tell the truth, write Fiction. If you want to tell the truth about today, write Science Fiction."

Having just finished a "comfort" reread of Tolkien, I'm now starting an SF comfort reread of the Chanur series.

>68 SFF1928-1973:, >69 pgmcc:
Yes! One of the worst stereotypes about SF is that it's mainly about predicting the future. For me, its main strong points are (1) good storytelling and worldbuilding, and (2) exploring different says of seeing, thinking & acting. The best SF does both.
And in fact, the Chanur books for me, while primarily page-turners, also have strong, interesting themes of a society (Hani) learning to transcend some of its limiting traditions -- and of the characters learning to understand better the other alien races, acknowledging and accepting the different premises on which they build their thinking and actions. I'm looking forward to, once again, watching those processes as they develop through the series.

>70 rshart3: I love the Chanur books but I don't think I'd ever classify them as more than above average sf adventures. The sophistication of the alien races only increased as the series demanded. They're extremely good science fiction, but there are no humans truths to be found there. I'd be surprised if Cherryh felt there were.

I'm new here
Finished "Zone One", postapocalyptic (seemed currently appropriate), but zombie apocalypse.
Currently on "The Best of C. M. Kornbluth" short stories, many of whom also seem currently appropriate.

>71 iansales:
I wouldn't call them literary SF either, that's why I classified them as primarily page-turners. But the issues of the Hani learning to grow beyond their gender stereotypes & insular culture seem to me to be a thinly veiled commentary on human issues -- as does the theme of learning to accept & work with very different emotional & mental patterns (as with Kif). It's hard to imagine that Cherryh wasn't aware of how those subjects applied to human cultures. In fact, a weak point of the series, and of much SF, is that most of the alien races are too human and not alien enough; though she does make the methane breathers more suitably alien.

>73 rshart3: Yes, Cherryh's inspirations for her various alien cultures were never difficult to see. I thought the kif were the most interesting of the races, perhaps because their biology was so different. They may have started out as rats, and the hani lions, the mahendo'sat monkeys, and so on, but then Cherryh expanded on that with the kif.

I'm reading This Gulf of Time and Stars by Julie E. Czerneda who is a new author for me. I believe I saw a post by her on John Scalzi's blog about her newest book and it intrigued me because she is Canadian (as I am) and I had never heard of her. This book is actually #7 in a series about a group she calls The Clan so I'm a little sorry I didn't start at the beginning but I am quite intrigued by what I have read so far. Anyone else read anything by her?

Made a start on the first part of Mervyn Peake's 'Gormenghast', Titus Groan.

Finished Fleet of Knives (B+) yesterday evening; while still mostly a page-turner that I'm not sure rises that much above its influences, it's definitely a step up from the first book in the trilogy.

>72 gzuckier: Welcome to the group!

About to start Some of the best from Tor.com: 2019 edition, a freeby collection of shorts from the eponymous publisher. Got some of my favourite authors, plus some new-to-me writers that I'll be interested to read.

About halfway through Shardik. Read The Green Man's Foe, which was fun. Then started Billie's Kiss. I really need to stop picking up a new book before I've finished the last one...

>80 iansales: I have The Green Man's Foe waiting in a pile for me. I enjoyed The Green Man's Heir.

Reading Like a boss, the sequel to Windswept. These are fun SF adventures based around issues of labour economics.

I just finished Sleeping Giants by Sylvain Neuvel. I love alien tech novels, but this one was more about the interpersonal relationships of the main characters than any technology. I did really enjoy the way the book was written in interview form. I will at some point read the rest in the series.

>83 davisfamily:, I enjoyed the second book even more, and found the last one to be a little flat.

Speaking of a little flat, I just finished Iron Gold and aside from two new really good characters, I don't think it lived up to the first three books in the series.

Currently reading We are legion (we are Bob) by Dennis Taylor.