The Sword and Laser discussion

A new year is upon us. What will you be reading to ring in the new year?

Welp, I'll start with this month's pick Light from Uncommon Stars, then Warped: An Engaging Guide to the Never-Aired 8th Season by Mike McMahan who is now the showrunner for the animated Star Trek: Lower Decks, and in a couple of weeks, Quantum of Nightmares by Charles Stross will be released.

I just started She Who Became the Sun on audio and I'm completely hooked! I've been wanting to read it for months, I wish I hadn't waited. But better late than never!

My copy of Termination Shock had to go back to the lie-berry, so I switched over to No Gods, No Monsters. Early chapters, but it shows promise.

Also started The Body Scout, which is the purest cyberpunk I’ve read since the 80s.

Totally forgot to load up on comics from Hoopla yesterday, so I left 5 slots unfilled. 😭

Just started, Behold a White Horse: The Coming World Leader by Chuck Missler. Exploring the first of the seven seals listed in Revelations.

Still working on:
by Jen Blood
by Dave Canterbury
By Enos Mills
By Anonymous
By Joseph Young.

Even though there are no Sword or Laser titles, I believe this is plenty to keep me busy this month. Probably enough to get me started next month as well. So much reading to do, so little time. Wish we could live longer to enjoy more books.

I’m reading several books atm, in addition to the January pick.

Just started Upright Women Wanted by Trike’s favourite author Sarah Gailey

Still going with Jade Legacy by Fonda Lee which is just as gripping as the previous Green Bone Saga books.

Also reading Iron Widow by Xiran Jay Zhao which is a Chinese history-influenced YA fantasy. With giant robots. It’s kind of Mulan meets Pacific Rim.

New Penric and Desdemona novella Knot of Shadows which snuck up on me. Love that series and the price of $3.99 gets even more love.
Empire of Shadows (The Coraidic Sagas Book 3) by Alicia Wanstall-Burke is coming Jan 24. The S&L BOM. There are a few series I been meaning to start so maybe one of those.

For an easy win to start my Goodreads reading challenge (and because I'm waiting on a pre-order coming in mid-month) I'm doing one of the Expanse novellas, Strange Dogs.

(And also just started on the January pick as an audiobook. Interesting setup so far.)

In addition to the this month's pick, I'm reading:

Terciel and Elinor by Garth Nix, still plugging away at House of Chains by Steven Erikson, and Threads of Life: A History of the World Through the Eye of a Needle by Clare Hunter.

Genesee wrote: "I just started She Who Became the Sun on audio and I'm completely hooked! I've been wanting to read it for months, I wish I hadn't waited. But better late than never!"

That's the first book I finished in this year, also after putting it off for a while - really liked it.

I'm finishing off River God by Wilbur Smith. Doing it as a Christmas buddy read with my 93 year old mother :)

Just finished Team Yankee by Harold Coyle.
It's the tale of a Tank company during the Third World War.
It was written and set in the mid 1980s and is based on the WWIII scenario detailed in The Third World War: August 1985 by John W. Hackett

It's an example of a book whose action takes place during another book

It feels like a series of battle reports rather than a deep character-full story.
I enjoyed it

AndrewP wrote: "I'm finishing off River God by Wilbur Smith. Doing it as a Christmas buddy read with my 93 year old mother :)"

I enjoy Wilbur Smith' s Egypt series although it varies in quality and strangeness
My first finished Nanowrimo novel (unpublishable of course) was inspired by River God and The Seventh Scroll

Seth wrote: "Genesee wrote: "I just started She Who Became the Sun on audio and I'm completely hooked! I've been wanting to read it for months, I wish I hadn't waited. But better late than never..."

I'm a little surprised I'm not done yet, I think I have an hour or so left of the audiobook. Should be done within a day. I think S&L readers would love it!

I just finished The Scavenger Door this morning after a bit of insomnia. Next up The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue, which I'm particularly excited for, namely because I remember loving the premise but that was when I first added it to my tbr forever ago, and have since forgot :p. Then I'm considering finally jumping into an epic fantasy series (trilogies and stand alone have been my go-to for a while now), and maybe starting Assassin's Apprentice. I typically only read one book at a time.

This must be She Who Became the Sun month because coincidentally I just read it today. I enjoyed the way it explored gender queerness.

Icia wrote: "I just finished The Scavenger Door this morning after a bit of insomnia. Next up The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue, which I'm particularly excited for, namely becaus..."

Assassin’s Apprentice is an excellent choice! Love the Realm of the Elderlings series.

TRP wrote: "AndrewP wrote: "I'm finishing off River God by Wilbur Smith. Doing it as a Christmas buddy read with my 93 year old mother :)"

I enjoy Wilbur Smith' s Egypt series although it varies in quality an..."

I haven't read him in a while, but when he died last year it made me want to pick one up again. Maybe I will, though probably one with pirates and swordfights.

I finished The Midnight Library, reading because the rest of my family read it. I enjoyed it.

Next up is Termination Shock, which I've just started. Really enjoying it so far but not quite sure what it's about.

Started The Dragonbone Chair on audio.

I tried to read it in my mid-teens but didn't get very far. I don't know why I stopped. Hope it goes better this time.

HeyT wrote: "This must be She Who Became the Sun month because coincidentally I just read it today. I enjoyed the way it explored gender queerness."

I'm done too! It reminded me of both The Poppy War and The Traitor Baru Cormorant. I agree with you on the gender note; it makes sense this book one the Otherwise Award.

TRP wrote: "Just finished Team Yankee by Harold Coyle.
It's the tale of a Tank company during the Third World War.
It was written and set in the mid 1980s and is based on the WWIII ..."

Team Yankee is my favorite tank warfare book. I classify it as alternate history -- i.e. "what might have happened if …"

Finished the months pick LFUS and started in on the March pick Pandora's Star in audio... Text is still a bit much.

Ruth wrote: "Icia wrote: "I just finished The Scavenger Door this morning after a bit of insomnia. Next up The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue, which I'm particularly excited for, ..."

I've heard so much praise for it, plus Robin Hobb is such a staple name in the fantasy community!

Continuing on with Legends II, the second big fantasy anthology edited by Robert Silverberg; as it happens, the first story is a Robin Hobb Elderlings piece.

Joseph wrote: "Continuing on with Legends II, the second big fantasy anthology edited by Robert Silverberg; as it happens, the first story is a Robin Hobb Elderlings piece."

I love the Legends anthologies!
You may also enjoy:
Rogues
Dangerous Women

Ian (RebelGeek) wrote: "I love the Legends anthologies!
You may also enjoy:
Rogues
Dangerous Women ..."

Yep! And Warriors, although I think this time around I'll just go with the two Legends books. Were there any others?

I finished off Matilda with my daughter and Watchmen which has been 80% done for the last year but my first proper read of the year has been The Glass Hotel by Emily St. John Mandel. I'll finish it this weekend and along with Station Eleven I think it's a 5 star read. Sea of Tranquility has definitely become my most anticipated book of this year now.

Joseph wrote: "Ian (RebelGeek) wrote: "I love the Legends anthologies!
You may also enjoy:
Rogues
Dangerous Women ..."

Yep! And Warriors, although I think this time around I'll just go with the tw..."

Oh yeah, I forgot about Warriors. I think there were just 2 Legends anthologies. I really enjoyed Patrick Rothfuss' Kingkiller Chronicles short story in Rogues.

More recently there were The Book of Swords, The Book of Magic and The Book of Dragons, but those had more authors writing at shorter length, and not necessarily writing specifically in their famous worlds.

Joseph wrote: "Yep! And Warriors, although I think this time around I'll just go with the two Legends books. Were there any others?"

It depends which editions you have. There are two volumes of Legends in hardback, but each of those are spilt into multiple books in paperback. It's a bit confusing because Legends 2 paperback might be the second part of the first book, or one of the second ones. I believe there are 5 total in paperback. (3 for Legends and 2 for Legends II).

I just wrapped up Displacement and Flowers for the Sea. Both were fast reads and they had very different vibes! Flowers for the Sea had a bit of a "what did I just read?!" quality, but a chunked it out so I could sit with the writing a bit longer. Rocklyn definitely seems like an author to watch! Displacement did a good job visually representing intergenerational trauma; it would make a good intro for readers who are not familiar with the history and lingering impact of the Japanese internment camps.

Just finished Jade Legacy, the final part of the Green Bone Saga by Fonda Lee. A great read - Lee really sticks the landing. I’m going to start offering a clean blade to anyone who winds me up.

Next up is Sistersong by Lucy Holland

Joseph wrote: "More recently there were The Book of Swords, The Book of Magic and The Book of Dragons, but those had more authors writing at shorter length, and not..."

Oh yeah. I read Swords & Magic, but still need to read Dragons.

Finished several books recently. In no particular order...

The latest Invisible Library book, The Untold Story. It's the finale of the current storyline. A little bit of a rush to conclusion, but overall enjoyable. Not the best book in the series but a solid conclusion. It's not the end of the Invisible Library, but Genevieve Cogman will be taking a break from it for a while and work on some other series'. Crossing fingers for her to make a well deserved stack of cash on them.

The book starts with the usual caper, altho this one for once doesn't involve theft of a book. It's darker, a harbinger of events to come.

I found the introduction of new elements a bit rushed, something that should have happened over the course of a few books. There seems to be more story to tell, even though this is the end of the current storyline. I'm curious how Cogman will handle it. There's plenty of twists and adventure along the way, just that some major parts went by fast and I would have been glad for more.

As for the overall series storyline...TBH I've always been a little bothered by the Irene's relationship with Kai. That's partly because he was once her apprentice. If I give it a bit of thought, I didn't like it when Dr. Strange dated his apprentice Clea in comics going back to the 1970s. Power disparity relationships always bug me. Teacher and lover are roles that should not mix.

I also wondered why Cogman had the "Great Detective" of that world (an obvious Sherlock Holmes riff) rebuff Irene's rather strong advances several books back. A commentary on Holmes perhaps? He didn't date, but wasn't averse to it - witness his obsession with the Lady in Red. Irene is an equal. I was puzzled how this romance got nipped in the bud. Ah well. TBH I thought perhaps there was a deeper reason, like perhaps (view spoiler)[he was actually her father Alberich, and said no because even he doesn't go that far, (hide spoiler)] but nope.

Anyway, a worthy conclusion to the storyline. When there are more I will be glad to read them.

Next up, two books from a collection. Somewhere in here in S&L I saw a list of "13 powerful standalone books." Had a look and picked two among ones I hadn't already read and that looked interesting. Those were "More Than Human" by Theodore Sturgeon and "Mammoth" by John Varley.

Turns out I already read More Than Human. I recognized the two teleporters and their inability to move clothes with themselves. Other parts of the story were less memorable. I probably read it at least three decades ago, perhaps more than four.

The book encapsulates an idea once big in SFF and, well, I want to say "gone now" but it was recently seen in the final Expanse book. It's the idea of a gestalt entity, made up of several people in this case. In Childhood's End it was the whole human race. In older SFF the idea was presented as the future of humanity and a definite good thing as we learned to love one another Age of Aquarius style. The book apparently had an outsize influence on entertainers of the day.

For me, though, it's a book whose stylistic choices don't hold up. Yeah, I get the idea of the gestalt mind. Sturgeon feels the need to have heavy racist elements in the story, with unsympathetic characters saying the n-word regularly. There's also a rip on religion. Then a section where farmers are both poor and stupid, ready to sell out years-long relationship at the drop of a hat. It takes me back to my Anthropology class in college, where I learned about ethnocentrism - the belief that your group is better, and reverse ethnocentrism, the idea that your group is wrong. This book feels partly like an intellectual's rip on the society he came from, showing off how enlightened he is. It wasn't enough to wreck the book but I found the presentation dated and unsubtle.

The book is a mashup of related pieces. The first novelette holds up well, the next two have some excellent parts tho uneven. The final one puzzlingly sells out the main premise of the book into a deus ex machina.

Well, I suppose it was nice to revisit the past of SFF for a bit. I'm afraid Sturgeon just leaves me cold now.

John Varley's Mammoth...what to say? Varley has won multiple awards and really should appeal. I found this book middling. It's about time travel, but not really. It's really more like a sociological work. And worse, for me, it's set in the present, with slices of life that are pretty much just today with a slight riff. I generally need a more out-there SFnal element to get into the book.

The motivating billionaire of the book (not the MC) wants to clone woolly mammonths and digs one out of ice. 'Kay. Next up is, well, an obvious surprise that's given up in the intro, but I'll leave it out on the outside someone considers it a spoiler.

There follows an attempt to build/repair a time machine that pretty much makes no sense. The book doesn't build towards making sense, it's more like a philosophical treatise. Mostly it's a musing on the nature of time. Well, interspersed with needlessly bloody elements.

I didn't exactly hate the book, but I wondered how Varley had become such an SFnal icon. I hadn't read anything by him before and am not rushing out to do it again. It was an adequate insomnia read, little else for me.

Read Varley's short fiction (several collections). Read his Eight Worlds stuff (https://www.goodreads.com/series/1302...). If you don't like those, I don't know what to say. I think you'd dislike Titan based on your reviews, so I'd pass on those as your next step.

Still going with Sistersong in dead tree edition, in the meantime I’ve read Iron Widow on my kindle. It’s a bonkers YA book that mashes up kaiju vs mecha battles with Chinese history. Some heavy topics - alcoholism, abuse, the pain of bound feet - but a blistering pace kept me reading.

My new kindle read is Ha'penny by Jo Walton - sequel to Farthing, it’s set in an “alternative” timeline where the UK has been taken over by fascism.

And I’m also reading Last Night at the Telegraph Club by Malinda Lo, a beautifully written coming of age story set in the Chinatown and the lesbian community of 1950s San Francisco.

Ruth wrote: "My new kindle read is Ha'penny by Jo Walton - sequel to Farthing, it’s set in an “alternative” timeline where the UK has been taken over by fascism."

You mean the 1980’s?

;-)

John (Nevets) wrote: "Ruth wrote: "My new kindle read is Ha'penny by Jo Walton - sequel to Farthing, it’s set in an “alternative” timeline where the UK has been taken over by fascism."

You mean the 1980’s?

;-)"

It’s actually set in a version of the 1940s where the US refused to join WW2 and the UK made peace with Hitler, but I’m expecting to see a lot of parallels with the contemporary situation...

Rick wrote: "I think you'd dislike Titan based on your reviews, so I'd pass on those as your next step."

Haaa, this is hilarious! Turns out I have read Varley. I read Titan within the past few years. Gave it two stars and didn't bother with the rest of the series. TBH I can hardly recall what it was about, superstructure something something threat to habitat.

Perhaps I should run all my book choices past you first... :)

IIRC, Titan was "What if Rendezvous with Rama, but sexy?"

Ruth wrote: "John (Nevets) wrote: "Ruth wrote: "My new kindle read is Ha'penny by Jo Walton - sequel to Farthing, it’s set in an “alternative” timeline where the UK has been taken over by fascism."

You mean t..."

I recently watched Darkest Hour & if it's accurate, the British government nearly did surrender to Hitler.

I'm listening to Jade War. It's been awhile since I did the first book so it's taking me awhile to get back into it. I'm sure I'm forgetting a ton of detail from the first one but I seem to have my bearings again.

No Gods, No Monsters crumbled and lost focus. 2 stars.

The Body Scout was excellent, living up to its early promise. 5 stars.

Elder Race, a novella by Adrian Tchaikovsky, was also very good. 4 stars.

Other than that I’ve read 7 graphic novels. I will highly recommend Time Before Time, Vol. 1, a terrific time travel tale, with the caveat that it’s only part one of the story.

I kicked off the year with one sword and one laser. The most recent novella in the Wayward Children series, Where the Drowned Girls Go, has probably turned my opinion more favorably on the series. For a while I was frustrated that she wasn't writing what I was wanting, which is probably a magical school type series. No, she has this school for children who have gone through a door, but then she can do whatever she wants, and she does. In this one a student decides to go to a school where they focus on helping you forget, and it isn't pretty.

I've had this Cat Rambo novel in my eARC backlog for a while but finally read it - You Sexy Thing. The description says Becky Chambers meets Great British Bake Off and hmm, maybe? I'd say space opera with some quirky species and found families, but an underlying sense of danger. But lots of funny moments too. It does scratch the Chambers itch but not really the GBBO itch.

Jenny (Reading Envy) wrote: "I kicked off the year with one sword and one laser. The most recent novella in the Wayward Children series, Where the Drowned Girls Go, has probably turned my opinion more favorably..."

I keep seeing You Sexy Thing when I browse the SFF section and wondering if I should pick it up. You've convinced me, I definitely should read it! It is nice to have more books with Chambers vibes, I hope we continue to see more of it (very helpful for RA and for my personal reading taste).

Genesee wrote: "I keep seeing You Sexy Thing when I browse the SFF section and wondering if I should pick it up. You've convinced me, I definitely should read it! It is nice to have more books with Chambers vibes, I hope we continue to see more of it (very helpful for RA and for my personal reading taste). "
I always see Valerie Valdes used as a comp for Chambers but I'd say this is closer. I was annoyed by the Valdes. :)

Jenny (Reading Envy) wrote: "Genesee wrote: "I keep seeing You Sexy Thing when I browse the SFF section and wondering if I should pick it up. You've convinced me, I definitely should read it! It is nice to have more books with..."

Yep, I have absolutely used that as a comp. Haven't read it either, yet. 2022 was NOT my year for reading.