The Sword and Laser discussion

What books are you enjoying this month?

Currently reading Bluebird and listening to The Path of Duty, both outer space action stories.

Kinda feel like rereading Tuf Voyaging after that.

I am trying to catch up on series which for some reason I fell behind. So first up is The Girl and the Moon. Mark Lawrence has a new series coming out and needed to finish his last series. Then some of the SPFBO finalists. About a 25% into BOM Under Fortunate Stars and will probably finish up this weekend as it is nicely paced.

I'm about to finish up this month's pick. My library copy of Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves: The Road to Neverwinter just showed up on Libby, so I've started that. I'm also listening to Chain of Thorns.

Despite really disliking the first 10%-ish of BOM, it's grown on me a bit and will probably finish it soon. Just remembered I preordered The Mimicking of Known Successes, which comes out on the 7th so that's likely next. I've read on Kindle almost exclusively for several years but bought the hardcover of The Passenger a couple months ago and it's been staring at me from the shelf for a while so hoping to start that soon too.

Yeah, there's some pretty obvious Star Wars riffs, to the extent I expected the Cantina Band to show up and start playing that famous riff. Doot doot doot doot do do doot doot doot doot doot DOO do...

I found it fun after a while and did not worry about the Star Wars riff. Lucas stole from Dune, and Barsoom, and others take from him. Why not.

Finished Legends & Lattes. It was… fine. A fun cosy fantasy with no grim. I think I would have liked it better if it had more depth to the world building.

Now starting a Greek mythology inspired book I picked up at my local library, Stone Blind by Natalie Haynes.

John (john) wrote: "Despite really disliking the first 10%-ish of BOM, it's grown on me a bit and will probably finish it soon. Just remembered I preordered The Mimicking of Known Successes, which come..."
The Passenger is really good. More like Suttree than his earlier work.

Stella Maris is a more difficult read, it is his sister's story and by the time you read it you already know the ending to her tale. It consists entirely of conversations between her and (view spoiler)[her psychiatrist during a period referred to in The Passenger. (hide spoiler)]

A Treasury of Fantasy, edited by Cary Wilkins.

Anyone read any Lit RPG novels? Any recommendations? Thanks

I just finished Notes from the Burning Age. It started off a little too slowly, a late-post-apocalyptic story with a lot of pontificating on how people from the burning age (i.e., us) destroyed the world. But then a few chapters in it completely turned around and (view spoiler)[started to reveal itself as a spy novel in a dystopian world. And a good spy novel at that, John le Carre would approve. The relationship with Ven and his target, Ven and his handler, and Ven and the restless spirits of the world. Wondering how much damage he was doing by working for the enemy even though that was his cover. Espionage and counter-espionage leading to a tense rush to discover the spy within his own organization before that spy can discover who he is. (hide spoiler)] Two thumbs up. Would recommend.

Currently reading Critical Mass by Daniel Suarez. This is the second book after Delta V. Both of which have kept me up all night! Near future sci fi, with a hopeful message on climate change.

If you don’t know his work also check out Daemon and its sequel Freedom. This one gives a glimmer of hope for what social media and a connected world could be, if we were only so lucky.

Oaken wrote: "...a late-post-apocalyptic story with a lot of pontificating on how people from the burning age (i.e., us..."

This cracked me up. Us. ;). Adding to TBR.

It's been on the virtual TBR pile for a while but I finally started reading Tuyo - very good writing so far and feels promising.

Library hold for Victory City came in so that's current; 12% or so in and quite enjoying it.

I started the first book in the Uplift series


Sundiver by David Brin

Just finished Tuf Voyaging by George R.R. Martin, a re-read for the first time since 1986. If anything, I actually enjoyed it more this time around. Giant spaceships! Planetary politics! Cats!

My review, a few minor spoilers but nothing major: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

I just got my copy of Tress. The first one of Brandon Sanderson’s 4 surprise novels. It is wonderful. I read it in 4 days. Nothing heavy or dark, just a really good story. Told in the first person and with lots of funny internal monologue. Think “Murderbot is at the tea party with Alice in Wonderland, and they are telling stories about being a very polite Peter Pan.”

Highly recommend.

* Peter Pan”
Sorry, iPad touch keyboard.

Hmmmmm.
For some reason your bot will not let me write the full name of the captain of the Lost Boys.
But it does not tell me this. It is very strange because it does let me say Murderbot and also Alice in Wonderland.. (and yes I know know that is not the full correct title) I will try again;

Think of Tress as;
“Murderbot at the tea party with Alice in Wonderland and they are telling stories about being the captain of the Lost Boys of Neverland”

Peter P@n?

RJ - Slayer of Trolls wrote: "I started the first book in the Uplift series


Sundiver by David Brin"

Sundiver is good, but the series really hits its stride in Startide Rising. The third book, The Uplift War, is also very good.
Incidentally, the first three books in the series are basically stand-alone stories in the same universe. The follow-on trilogy on the other hand is all one long story.

“Peter P@n” looks like something completely different and specialist…

Finished Stone Blind by Natalie Haynes which was an interesting take on the Greek myth of Medusa.

Now my Discworld re-read continues with Guards! Guards!, the first book about Sam Vimes and the Night Watch.

Finished Blood Song. Really enjoyed it. I have started Tower Lord. I have enjoyed it so far.

I just finished Spear, recently nominated for the Nebula best novel. I thought it was great! Although a little short for a novel.

Next (probably): Nettle & Bone

Just finished Ninth House, and will jump into Hell Bent.

Continuing Tuyo but Dead Country released and I'm a huge fan of Gladstone's Craft Sequence so I gobbled it up. This was even better than I'd hoped.

Rob wrote: "Just finished Ninth House, and will jump into Hell Bent."

Ooooh, I loved those!

I'm almost done with Peter Hamilton's 2nd Void book, The Temporal Void. It's a reread and I'm skipping the Edeard parts. Good fun. A lot of things from Pandora's Star come back.

Just read Eversion by Alastair Reynolds. It was a quick and fun read. Something totally new from Reynolds. I really enjoyed it. It wrestles with the question of what it is be human. He is one of my favorite sci-fi authors.

I paused listening to this month's pick because my library hold on Lost in the Moment and Found became free. It should be a quick listen.

There's a TW at the beginning and it was pretty cringy there for a bit. Thankfully, I made it past that part (hopefully, there are no more cringy bits) and I am enjoying it now.

^ I read that book a few weeks ago. If anything I thought the TW part was glossed over. That is, it could have been much more horrific and regularly is in real life. McGuire alludes to both the fictional glossing over and the reality in the foreword, so readers are warned.

Following that though, it is much more in the vein of the rest of the Wayward Children books. Will stop there so as not to spoil.

I'm thinking of reading 6 books in 2023. Low bar, I know.

Let's start with one that helps me kickstart this habit - Atomic Habits, by James Clear.

But as soon as that's done, I'm moving over to X-Wing - Isard's Revenge by Michael A. Stackpole.

Just started The Rage of Dragons by Evan Winter.

Tried to read Rocket Repo but bounced off hard about half an hour into the audiobook (see review). I did waver a little should I rate it at all, but finally decided I bounced off BECAUSE I did not like it so one star it is.
One of Our Spaceships is Missing had been a pleasant palate cleanser – not trying hard for humour and just the right amount of injokes (like the pair of soldiers called Shadout and Mapes :-) ) that are not screaming at me "IT'S FUNNY, SEE?"

Read The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde. It's hilariously over the top in its love of literature. The central plot assumes the reader knows Jane Eyre well enough to spot a problem with its plotline. Martin Chuzzlewit comes in for a mention, and I hadn't even heard of that. It's very "British literary," even a little out of range for the more educated Americans.

Among the sillier bits is the idea that kids would save up ten pence coins to have a gumball-sized Shakespeare dispenser read bits from plays. And I want to say the live play cast every time from people in the audience who of course know it inside and out is also silly, then I think of Rocky Horror and go "maybe..."

Names that are plays on words abound. There's a police chief Braxton Hicks (I hear his force is contracting.) A Paige Turner. The MC is named Thursday Next, and her maybe-love-interest, Landen Parke-Laine. Perhaps he should have been an air traffic controller instead of a writer.

It's all madcap fun with, of course, an eviller than evil villain without a spot of redeeming qualities. Plus some people who by themselves may not have been evil but sure were big on the evil acts. This is Britain in an alternate 1980s and they have perpetually been at war in the Crimea. It's fiction that is more real than reality. Let us hope their solution will work for us.

From there it was either another Fforde book or Baxter's Proxima. I figured the Fforde books made good one shots so would be back later.

So, Proxima. It's Baxter meandering through a plotless book, telling vignettes about the settling of Proxima C, a planet tidal locked to Proxima Centauri and orbiting it every eight and a half days. Baxter being Baxter, it's a dystopian future with forced colonization, like they somehow couldn't get volunteers by the millions? Also some more extreme cli-fi with "Jolts" that baked Earth, despite the current reality of the temperature stubbornly refusing to rise more than a few decimal points if at all.

Among the more plausible aspects is a bellicose China left out of a technological innovation and willing to risk everything to get it. That eventually comes around to be the plot of the book and its main action. And again, Baxter being Baxter, that has to be the worst consequences possible.

Along the way there's a lengthy digression for exploration on Proxima C. It threw me back to "Master and Commander" where there's a stop at the Galapagos thrown into the story. Maybe that's just part of the British psyche. Seems odd to me. Baxter works that in well to two of the subplots, so okay.

By the end, tho, we're visiting some space Romans in a way not specified. I went on to the next book, Ultima, and now we've got a space Roman empire. That seems to be another fascination of the Brits. Or maybe everybody? Welp, none of this is compelling reading for me, but it is good enough insomnia material. I didn't hate it like some previous Baxter. Worth the reading time at least.

John (Taloni) wrote: "Read The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde. It's hilariously over the top in its love of literature. The central plot assumes the reader knows Jane Eyre well enough to spot a problem with its plotline. ..."

Or it makes you scratch your head at the end wondering "did she broke the book or »fixed« it?" like me… :-D

BTW, later volume (does not rememmber which one) totally ruined "Wuthering Heights" for me. I have never had been a fan, but before reading Fforde I did not chuckle thinking about it.

Clyde wrote: "Sundiver is good, but the series really hits its stride in Startide Rising. The third book, The Uplift War, is also very good.
Incidentally, the first three books in the series are basically stand-alone stories in the same universe. The follow-on trilogy on the other hand is all one long story."

So far I'm struggling to get into it. Slow start and I'm finding it hard to care about anything. The "upflit" idea itself is interesting, as is the idea of "sundiving." I've wanted to read the original trilogy forever so I'll keep pushing through this one - I've heard from many that it's the weakest of the three. It's Brin's first novel too, which I'm sure has something to do with it.

The cover art perplexes me though. It looks like one of the aliens from Close Encounters is selecting a giant green floating donut while Rick Springfield, the lead singer from a-ha, and one of the members of Devo (or someone cos-playing the kid from Battle of the Planets) are looking on.

RJ - Slayer of Trolls wrote: "The cover art perplexes me though. It looks like one of the aliens from Close Encounters is selecting a giant green floating donut while Rick Springfield, the lead singer from a-ha, and one of the members of Devo (or someone cos-playing the kid from Battle of the Planets) are looking on."

That’s goofy. (But I like your description .) Mine has a silver pinball in a fire. (Forcefield as they dive into the sun.)

I’m cautiously re-reading Shadow and Bone by Leigh Bardugo as Season 2 of the TV show has just dropped on Netflix. I say “cautiously” because I didn’t think it was that great first time round (Six of Crows is much better) so there’s a chance I’ll Lem it rather than proceeding on to Siege and Storm. We shall see!

Read The Mountain in the Sea since it's been on a bunch of lists - and I can see why it's garnering honors. I really liked it. Perhaps a generation in the future a corporation buys an island nature reserve where there are rumors of a sea-monster. Of course, the corporation's goals aren't what they seem. The main storyline features an octopus researcher and an android on the island, with stories featuring a hacker and a slave aboard a fishing ship spiraling in towards the main plotline. It manages to be smart without feeling like attending a lecture.

Trike wrote: "That’s goofy. (But I like your description .) Mine has a silver pinball in a fire. (Forcefield as they dive into the sun.)"

I forgot to mention the alien's sleeveless fur-lined bathrobe which is truly regrettable, straight outta the 1980 Hugh Hefner Spring Line for Men. The early 1980s were weird, man.

I’m reading Naked Lunch, it’s so hard to get through not because it’s bad but because it’s so disturbing

I’m currently reading The World We Make, which is the second in N K Jemisins ‘cities’ series. I read the first via ebook, but was able to get this in audio from the library. For the most part, the narration is incredible. I’m also loving the effects included on the audio, which is surprising for me, as I usually find those kind of details, like sound effects in a radio drama, to be offputting, but it really works for me here. I say it’s great for the most part though, because there are British characters and yeeeeeesh! Those are a struggle to listen to.

Finished The Change by Kirsten Miller - borderline fantasy, about three 50ish years old women who task themselves with getting their town rid of corruption – and worse. The message could be more subtle, but there is something compelling in a story about women taking matters in their own very capable hands. Blurb calls it a "feminist revenge fantasy" and it does not overpromise.

Ruth (tilltab) Ashworth wrote: "I’m currently reading The World We Make, which is the second in N K Jemisins ‘cities’ series. I read the first via ebook, but was able to get this in audio from the library. For the most part, the ..."

oh. my. god. I listened to the audiobook of the first book in the duology and nearly stopped listening early on because Manny's British room-mate had such a ghastly Dick Van Dyke level cockney accent (even though I think he was supposed to be from Yorkshire??? I can't remember). I actually had to Google whether he was going to be a major character or not because if he was I didn't think I could cope. If the sequel has a bunch of British characters then I am definitely not listening to that audiobook!

It’s awful, right? I had to laugh too, because when I looked up the narrator, she apparently specialises in accents! lol. To be fair to her, the rest of her work is perfection, but oh, the PAIN! I’m a little over half way, and the accent is thankfully not featured too much, but there was one chapter in which the roommate meets another Brit, and it was horrible for my poor ears, who had been having such a lovely time up until that point.

It’s sad too, because when I read the first book, the roommate was my fav and I wanted more of him!

Well, now I want to listen just to hear how bad it is, lol.

I imagine how bad it is will depend on where you are from. I'm sure it sounds just fine to the average American, for example. Could be others wince at different accents they know well, that sound fine to my less familiar ears. That's definitely the downside of having people from all over in your real world story - it's tricky to get a narrator that won't mess up at least one of the accents as far as natives are concerned.