Sci-fi and Heroic Fantasy discussion

A new month to pick out some new books to read.

This month I'm shaking things up a bit, after reading mostly SF since the start of the year, I'll be reading some fantasy this month.

I decided to leave out a Robot novel this month, and only read one Dune book instead of the usual two. For the fantasy I'm starting with, I picked Blood by Emily Thompson. I downloaded the first couple books in this indie series from Goodreads and enjoyed them so much I've been buying the dead tree versions of the rest of the series. There's just something about the characters I really like. Been reading one a year so I don't run out too quick :)

Also, I was looking for something on OpenLibrary to read that wasn't Star Trek, after finishing a 12 book YA Deep Space Nine series. I wasn't in the mood to start an all out full length adult novel, it's hard on the eyes reading on the screen, but last night I watched The Iron Giant for the first time and discovered it was based on a book (it's a duology actually) and they're only about 100 pages long, perfect! OpenLibrary had both, so I'm reading The Iron Man by Ted Hughes which I understand will be quite different from the movie, seeing as, of course, the story had to be Americanized otherwise North American audiences wouldn't be able to handle it (eyeroll). Mind...I still thought it was a good movie and earned it's reputation :) I'll have to see what I think about the books now.

*edit*

Other than the presence of an iron giant, there was virtually nothing in common between the book and the movie :) The book was actually downright trippy with a giant space dragon the size of Australia.

Harbinger by Wen Spencer

I am getting near the end of Kindred, which has been great.

Finished The Iron Woman by Ted Hughes...that was one of the strangest things I've ever read, and I've read a lot of Lovecraft and other strange stuff, this thing was really bizarre. And let's just say a tad heavy handed with the moral of the story.

Just finished The Storm. Pal is SUCH a hero!! And he has a wonderful dog.

Completed:
text:


Audible:

==========================================
Authors:
Holly BlackIsabel Cañas, Darcie Little Badger, Kirsten Miller, Sylvain Neuvel, Nnedi Okorafor, M.R. Carey
Narrators:
Theo Solomon

Finished Clockwork Twist: Blood, as usual a feel good read, though it took about half the book before the adventure actually started so it was a bit rushed at the end.

My other yearly tradition is another installment of The Chronicles of Elantra, this year will be Cast in Wisdom by Michelle Sagara

I also got through the library a copy of Dune: House Atreides, Volume One since I just finished reading the actual novel thought it would be fun to see it again but with picture :)

Cloak of Shards by Jonathan Moeller

Redemption (YA that's actually good)

Noble Roots by Drew Hayes

Finished both Vol1 and Vol2 of the House Atreides graphic novels...must admit it really bugged me that the Fremen weren't drawn with blue-within-blue eyes, which is kind of a key feature, whereas there would be other scenes, due to the lighting and effects that would make people look like the whites of their eyes were actually blue where it wasn't appropriate. Otherwise it was ok, but the books were better (as was my imagination for how clothing, thopters and other things should look), didn't really need the graphical treatment. But hey, that's what libraries are for, saving you from investing 60$ in something that in the end you don't love :)

Aria: The Masterpiece by Kozue Amano

Great to learn about some new books here! I'm currently reading Bridge of Dreams ... I just love the world she created in this series! They're these isolated pocket worlds/landscapes connected by magic bridges etc.

And just finished Kings of the North! I was so glad Elizabeth Moon came back to the Paks world with this series! The story's becoming epic. :)

Aria: The Masterpiece, Volume 6 by Kozue Amano

Finished Cast in Wisdom, liked that one since it was about a magical school.

Also started and finished Star Trek: Countdown which gives the backstory of the character Nemo who shows up in the 2009 movie. I'm so confused about these timelines since Data was supposed to be dead, but then he's in B4's body now, but in the Picard series he seems dead again...I guess just need to roll with it and not try to keep the details straight!

Though I didn't enjoy the first book in the series, I borrowed The Skill of Our Hands by Steven Brust from the library, I hate leaving series incomplete and well, there was just this one other book, and turns out I'm enjoying it more than I did the first one.

Just finished When Women Were Dragons. What a wonderfully powerful story I just loved it!

Starting William Shakespeare's The Empire Striketh Back.

Audrey wrote: "Starting William Shakespeare's The Empire Striketh Back."

That's so much fun.

I was looking around for another Patricia A. McKillip book to read, and I just found out that she passed away!

https://www.tor.com/2022/05/11/patric...

Michelle wrote: "I was looking around for another Patricia A. McKillip book to read, and I just found out that she passed away!

https://www.tor.com/2022/05/11/patric..."

Yes, I too have just learned that. sniff

So many wonderful, enchanting books. . . .

Aria: The Masterpiece, Volume 7 by Kozue Amano

I finished reading The Path of Daggers (Wheel of Time Book #8) by Robert Jordan. It had several interesting events, but I didn’t think it had enough that happened in it to make it as good as the previous novels in the series. Cetaganda (Book #9 of the Vorkosigan Saga) by Lois McMaster Bujold. Miles Vorkosigan must solve a mystery in Cetaganda. I am reading The Sins of Our Fathers (The Expanse Book #9.5) by James S.A. Corey. It is a novella set after the final novel of the series. I’m wondering what will happen in it. I plan to read It by Stephen King next.

As part of my "classics" theme I've read:
- ; I thought I knew the general story but I didn't know how political it was, or that (view spoiler)[the Eloi are cattle (hide spoiler)] which is chilling.
- .
- : it's a short story or novella and very descriptive so the plot is simple ((view spoiler)[guy has a nagging wife, he sleeps for 20 years, when he wakes up wife has died so he can do what he always wanted to do -nothing- and is happy (hide spoiler)]) but made me chuckle.
- , by the same author. Also short and descriptive, not much happens until the ending, which I really liked. It's kinda funny how we're supposed (I think?) to root for Ichabod and Katrina but whenever he looks at her (or thinks about her) we can see the dollar signs in his eyes :)
Both are good reads and especially interesting for being set in a young America.

I realized I hadn't finished the Earthsea series, so I read . And then I realized I haven't read Tales from Earthsea and should have done it before The other wind...

I'm now reading , which for some reason has been put in the Forever war series but is unrelated.

Finished The Skill in our Hands, the moral was a little heavy handed, but I did enjoy it more than the first book, maybe because the other characters played more of a role. This one also had multiple POV's but since these characters had more distinct personalities you could tell who was talking without even the aid of a chapter heading which the other book actually had and I *still* couldn't keep the narrator straight :)

And back to Dune, to wrap up the Prelude to Dune trilogy with House Corrino

I'm also digging deeper into the library's graphic novel collection. It's not fun to browser, trying to read those tiny titles on those skinny bindings on jam packed shelves but was able to discover a few searching their catalog so I picked up the manga version of H.P. Lovecraft's At the Mountains of Madness, Volume 1 and the graphic novel version of H.G. Wells: The War of the Worlds and of course Dune: The Graphic Novel, Book 1. Kind of nice to complement the books I've read with a visual adaptation of them.

Bryan wrote: "As part of my "classics" theme I've read:
- ; I thought I knew the general story but I didn't know how political it was, or that [spoilers removed] which is chillin..."

I would have assumed that Forever Peace was a sequel to Forever War myself! I'm glad you told us that it isn't.

Haldeman has said that Forever Peace isn't a sequel to Forever War, but rather a companion novel - it examines some of the issues of the original from an angle that didn't exist when he wrote Forever War in the early 70s.

Just finished a re-read of The Sword of Bedwyr, and now I'm in the mood for Vlad Taltos so I'm re-reading Jhereg.

I'm going to give Daughter of the Moon Goddess a try.

I have finished The Third World War, August 1985: A Future History. Written as a near-future prediction / warning of what might happen, it now probably classes as alternate history. It is also written in the form of a history of the war, not as a novel of the war, so it has a much higher information density, and that makes it a slower read - also filled with the many, many acronyms that the military and bureaucracy love :)

I have started The Song of Roland, which will fill one of my Bingo slots, although I'm not sure which one yet. It could be pre-20th century, or translated, or alternate form (poetry).

Finished The Minority Report and Other Stories. I particularly liked the one story when in the future people believed that the modern day (well 50's and 60's) SF writers were literally predicting the future (maybe they are, the future guys should know) so one guy goes back in time to a conference and runs into Bradbury and Asimov and actually takes Poul Anderson to the future. Thought it was cute PKD was using his contemporaries, and I have to wonder if they, in particular Anderson, returned the favour and made him a character in any of their stories.

My review of Amongst Our Weapons by Ben Aaronovitch

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

Finished The Adventures of Tom Stranger, Interdimensional Insurance Agent; pretty zany.

Starting The Mother Code.

I've been reading To Honor You Call Us, and it's an excellent military science fiction book!

I finished Shards of Earth by Adrian Tchaikovsky. I found it a very rewarding read. I am now jumping into the next book in that trilogy, Eyes of the Void.

Currently reading The Quantum Thief

I bought a bunch of translated science-fiction graphic novels (mostly French) from Humble Bundle (an excellent deal - over 50 graphic novels for 25 USD).

I started by reading Aldebaran (english version) - volume 1 - The Catastrophe, which is the first of 12 graphic novels that tell the whole story.

The pace is slowish, as it concentrates more on world-building than action, and the dialogue is a bit clunky in places (perhaps not a great translation?)

Overall, it's a nice story and it shows the difference between Eurocomics and American comics.

I just finished reading Miss Percy's Guide to the Care and Feeding of British Dragons and it was excellent. I highly recommend it.

Miss Percy's Pocket Guide to the Care and Feeding of British Dragons

*goes to write review*

Finished House Corrino, in the end, I enjoyed this prequel trilogy to Dune. The next trilogy goes to the far past (though still our far future) and goes over things like the Butlerian Jihad which so affected the culture and beliefs of the people in the original Dune series, the whole "no thinking machines" thing that lead to the Mentats.

But as I'm only reading one Dune book this month, I'll mix things up with a little middle grade reading next with Sal and Gabi Break the Universe by Carlos Hernandez. This is one of the series under the Rick Riordan Presents umbrella. He couldn't learn and write about all possible mythologies so he opened it up to other authors. Not sure yet whose mythology this will be.

Finished the Dune graphic novel. It was done really well, with a lot of attention to detail. You'd think that remembering Fremen had blue-in-blue eyes would be easy, but the graphic novel version of House Atreides got that all wrong. But here they even remembered the red-stained lips of the Mentats. I was quite impressed and even liked the fact that the pages were not glossy. The thopters didn't look right to me but a minor issue.

I also finished The War of the Worlds graphic novel. Something about what the women wore didn't seem to match the timeline, the tripods looked more like cobras, the legs more like ribbons, and the aliens seemed to speak to people which didn't jive with the original tale, so was not particularly impressed with this one.

I am curious about the "sequel", The Massacre of Mankind so I'll put that on reserve at the library to read next month

I finished To Honor You Call Us yesterday, (terrific military sci-fi!), and then went back to re-read Teckla since I am re-reading the series before the new one comes out next spring.

How far along is Brust's Vlad series now? I think Orca is the last book I read & I don't remember being wowed by it. I really liked the first few, though. They're among my favorites.

Jim wrote: "How far along is Brust's Vlad series now? I think Orca is the last book I read & I don't remember being wowed by it. I really liked the first few, though. They're among my favorites."

Tsalmoth will be #16; it comes out in April.

Andrea wrote: "I am curious about the "sequel", The Massacre of Mankind so I'll put that on reserve at the library to read next month"

I read the novel (not the graphic novel) earlier this year and rated it 4 stars. Full review (pretty much spoiler free) here:

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

Action packed May with bloody thirsty multi verse spanning Alien slavers to fantasy Orcs and Roman armies.....

Ruins of the Galaxy (Ruins of the Galaxy #1)
Ruins of the Earth (Ruins of the Earth #1)
Gods and Men (Ruins of the Earth #2)
The Tiger’s Imperium (Chronicles of An Imperial Legionary Officer #6)
The Tiger’s Wrath (Chronicles of An Imperial Legionary Officer #5)
The Tiger's Fate (Chronicles of An Imperial Legionary Officer, #3)
The Tiger's Time (Chronicles of an Imperial Legionary Officer #4)
The Tiger (Chronicles of an Imperial Legionary Officer, #2)
Stiger (Tales of the Seventh #1)
Stiger's Tigers (Chronicles of an Imperial Legionary Officer, #1)
Fortress of Radiance (The Karus Saga #2)
Lost Legio IX (The Karus Saga #1)

and may is not over yet

Half-Real: Video Games between Real Rules and Fictional Worlds by Jesper Juul
One Hundred Poems of Kabir by Kabir, Rabindranath Tagore
The Silmarillion by J.R.R. Tolkien, Christopher Tolkien
The Fellowship of the Ring by J. R. R. Tolkien
Victory Conditions: Vatta's War: Book Five by Elizabeth Moon
Command Decision: Vatta's War: Book Four by Elizabeth Moon
Behind the Throne (I) Indranan War by K. B. Wager
A Master of Djinn by Clark, P. Djèlí

I think this covers May... though I may get another two in...
another one for my Gaming course and O so many more purchased that I really ought to read before buying MORE!

Oh, Peat...I love that Driver series!! He's writing another right now.

Stiger, not Driver! The autocorrect got me again.

A book recommendation for you Michelle. :-)
Damn You, Autocorrect!