What Book Are You Reading XV - The Pile Keeps Growing!

[Birdjaguar]

All Systems Red by Martha Wells. A wonderful SciFi novella. One of her Muderbot Diaries. An afternoon and evening well spent. Intrigue and action as a planetary survey team runs into trouble on a newly discovered planet.

 

[PhroX]

All Systems Red by Martha Wells. A wonderful SciFi novella. One of her Muderbot Diaries. An afternoon and evening well spent. Intrigue and action as a planetary survey team runs into trouble on a newly discovered planet.

I read the the first couple of Murderbot books and they were a lot of fun, but they're really expensive for what you get in terms of length. Wish they'd release a compilation at normal book prices instead of novellas.

 

[tjs282]

Finally finished Earth Abides, which ended pretty much as I expected it would.

Now on a (re?)read of Stand On Zanzibar (anything to stretch out the 'new' books I've acquired over the past year but not yet read, a little bit longer...!).

 

[Birdjaguar]

I read the the first couple of Murderbot books and they were a lot of fun, but they're really expensive for what you get in terms of length. Wish they'd release a compilation at normal book prices instead of novellas.

I checked it out of the library.

 

[Narz]

Tribe by sebastian junger.

Very good but short, got it from library, didn't really learn anything new but good to hear ideas I've already internalized put into different words

 

[EgonSpengler]

I finished Leviathan Falls (2021), the 9th and final book of The Expanse, last night. Mixed feelings about the ending, complicated by being bummed out that it's over.

Spoiler :

I mean, okay, I wasn't expecting "...and they all lived happily ever after", but I do think I would have ended things a little differently. For instance, I might have had Amos be the one to both kill Duarte and take his place inside the Ring Station. I didn't like that Tanaka, of all people, and after everything that our main cast had gone through, was the one to take out Duarte. Also, the people who'd been resurrected by the repair drones in the pools of black goo - Amos and the two kids - had a slightly different relationship with the alien technology than the people who'd been infected with the Protomolecule, so I might have used that to make Amos somehow better able to interact with the station. I dunno, I'm just riffing. But I can understand not wanting Jim to be the one to kill Duarte. As Amos once said, "He's not that guy." He was talking about Prax, but it's true for Jim, too. (In fact, it might have been a fun callback to have Amos use the exact same line. ) You could also maybe use Teresa/Tiny as a way to get Amos into a fight with Duarte.

Having Tanaka kill Duarte reminded me of the final confrontation between Cornelia (Emily Blunt) and Melmont (Rafe Spall) in The English, which also left a bad taste in my mouth, albeit for a slightly different reason.

I didn't love that Avasarala died 'offscreen' or that Drummer just vanished. My attachment to both of those characters is of course strongly influenced by how they were portrayed in the tv series, but not entirely. Drummer was a central character in Persepolis Rising and then was dropped like a hot potato. I didn't care for that. By the end of Tiamat's Wrath, we don't even know if she's still alive. (She was at Avasarala's funeral on Laconia, then... What? She could have gone to Medina Station to be with Saba, even if it was only surreptitiously, in which case, she was probably disintegrated with everybody else.) Both the books and the series had a habit of dropping characters completely once their service to the larger story was over*, and I was mostly adapted to that, but for some reason it stung me to have Avasarala and Drummer so casually cast aside. And I never really gave a [hoot] about Alex's son and his family. Perhaps their role in the final book, small as it was, could have been filled by Drummer and Saba?

So, yeah, I think I wanted Jim and Naomi to end up together, even if the ending couldn't be a completely happy one. And I'm not sure that it couldn't have been a happier ending. Continuing with my idea of having Amos kill Duarte and merge with the Ring Station, you could, for example, have Amos start appearing as a projection to Jim, Naomi and Alex. You could do that with Jim, too, I suppose.


* The list of interesting characters who drifted away from the main story and were never seen again is a long one. There could be almost any number of spinoffs of The Expanse that follow people we already met after they parted company with the Rocinante crew.

Overall, though, I think this series was a complete success and is probably my favorite 'epic' series (admittedly, I haven't read many of them, so I don't have a lot to compare it to).

Also, I think my idea from last Fall that the show Firefly could take place in the same universe as The Expanse, a couple-hundred years into the future, looks stronger than ever. Leviathan Falls actually provides an explanation about something that was never addressed in Firefly, or in the movie Serenity.

Also-also, why is it some characters in The Expanse are referred to by their first names and some are referred to by their surnames? It seems random/arbitrary. At least, I can't discern a pattern.

 

[Birdjaguar]

@EgonSpengler The books are a magnificent series of both world building and character development.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

Finally finished Earth Abides, which ended pretty much as I expected it would.

Now on a (re?)read of Stand On Zanzibar (anything to stretch out the 'new' books I've acquired over the past year but not yet read, a little bit longer...!).

John Brunner? I have those in my library (have had them for decades) but never got around to reading them.

I'm still slogging my way through Duchess of Milan, though am fairly close to finishing. That's my bedtime reading. My reading the rest of the time is a Harry Potter story I've been following each week (new chapter every Tuesday) in which Hermione marries Arthur Weasley. This is an AU post-Battle of Hogwarts story in which Molly and Bill die, Fred lives, Ron marries Astoria Greengrass, and the Ministry puts in a marriage law compelling everyone between the ages of 17 and 55 to marry and have at least 2 children (to repopulate the Wizarding World after the war, since so many have died). The ministry sets up possible matches, and the best of Hermione's choices turns out to be Arthur Weasley. They're 30 years apart in age, but so far everything is working out (chapter 48 was posted this week).

I'm also reading a lot of Merlin fanfic. Some of it's a bit weird (but cute), like the one in which an apple tree falls in love with Gwaine.

 

[lymond]

Just finished Book 5 or 6 of The Witcher Series (not sure exact book since the first coupla are short stories but 2 more to go). Really enjoyed the series which I've been reading off and on for several years now. But just started the second to last book and there is quite a twist, or more like a revelation, right at the beginning...wow.

 

[tjs282]

John Brunner? I have those in my library (have had them for decades) but never got around to reading them.

SoZ is Brunner, yes. The writing style is very much of its era of late-60s SF (you know, where despite the book being set multiple decades later, somehow the slang and 'tudes haven't, like, changed all that much, maaan...).

EA is by George R Stewart. It doesn't depict its catastrophe quite as cosily as, say, Wyndham, but the writing is rather better: bit like Bradbury, if you like his style of small-town Americana.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

SoZ is Brunner, yes. The writing style is very much of its era of late-60s SF (you know, where despite the book being set multiple decades later, somehow the slang and 'tudes haven't, like, changed all that much, maaan...).

EA is by George R Stewart. It doesn't depict its catastrophe quite as cosily as, say, Wyndham, but the writing is rather better: bit like Bradbury, if you like his style of small-town Americana.

Ah, okay. One of my favorite Robert Silverberg novels has a race/misogyny aspect that doesn't fly today as it did in the '60s. I used to run a Time Travel Novels group on Yahoo and one woman refused to finish this book (Up the Line) and thought Silverberg was an awful person.

He really isn't. He's one of the most interesting authors I've ever met, and that novel had an influence on how I developed my SCA persona's backstory. Just because an author writes some characters with certain attitudes, it doesn't mean that's what the author him/herself really thinks.

I told her she should try to finish it. The twist at the end is completely worth it.

 

[Josu]

Ended Q, by Luther Blisset
Erratic book, there were parts which I enjoyed a lot and other ones that were hard to read.
It may be because Luther Blisset is a multiple use name and the book was written by several authors, so the pace and the writting style changes during the book.

Starting The Martian by Andy Weir

 

[AmazonQueen]

Ended Q, by Luther Blisset
Erratic book, there were parts which I enjoyed a lot and other ones that were hard to read.
It may be because Luther Blisset is a multiple use name and the book was written by several authors, so the pace and the writting style changes during the book.

Starting The Martian by Andy Weir

Very much liked Q, have reread it several times.

 

[Spidernova]

I'm still on the audiobook train.
I started The Knight by Gene Wolfe. This is a lot of fun.
And I very much recommend the recent audible version of the Latro books.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

I have finally finished Duchess of Milan. It didn't turn out as I expected.

 

[AmazonQueen]

Just started 1 of my Xmas gifts, The Winner by Nick Thomas-Symonds, a biography of Harold Wilson.

 

[Takhisis]

Starting The Martian by Andy Weir

May I also recommend his earlier work, Casey and Andy?

 

[Kyriakos]

Asimov-The feeling of power

 

[Valka D'Ur]

I started reading Antony & Cleopatra, by Colleen McCullough. At least this time I know who dies in the end.

 

[EnglishEdward]

Yesterday, I finished reading:

Divergence

by

Tony Ballantyne

copyright 2007.

which I had resisted paying full price for, and picked up in a charity shop for a pound.

It is a sci-fi space opera sort of book, with some interesting ideas, good characters
and reasonable plot; but the all too happy ending left me intellectually unsatisfied.

Perhaps the loose ends will be dealt with in the follow up.