Beyond Reality discussion

Starting the thread a day early because I'm going to be busy all day tomorrow taking my 14 year old to a big bike race. What are you reading right now? Any and all genres welcome in this topic!

Finished Wilderness of Mirrors a week or so back
I have started the latest self published Michelle West Essalieyan Series.
The story is her publisher dropped the books because economics. They were large tomes and cost a lot to print. She started a patreon to finish the series. She just finished the second book of the final series and I love the whole series. Eighteen books and counting.
Been reading them for the last twenty odd years. The best thing is she has been slow and steady, Always had a new book out every two or three years. Keeps you hooked
Started The Wild Road

I was curious what the fuss has been all about, so I finally picked up A Court of Thorns and Roses. It was...fine? I suspect that a lot of the buzz comes from readers who aren't usually fantasy fans, because I thought it was completely full of tired tropes that I've seen used a million times, but if you're new to high fantasy I can see how it would feel original. It wasn't terrible, but it wasn't great either. Not sure I'll bother continuing with the series.

I then ripped through Bald-Faced Liar, which was a pretty standard popular thriller that I got for free on Kindle First. Now I'm on a memoir There Is No Ethan: How Three Women Caught America's Biggest Catfish.

Finished Fallout
That was quite the ending.

Starting Match Game

I got confused on what month we were reading the new Scalzi book, so continuing on with my marathon. :)

Finished Match Game

Starting Failure Mode at some point today.

Failure Mode was initially the end of the series.. And while he picked it back up, the new stuff is not yet done, so this is a good stopping point for me for now until the new stuff is completed.

Hoping to finish this weekend:

Count Zero by William Gibson. Been doing a buddy read of the Sprawl trilogy and have let this one slide. Need to finish it up because I really want to get to the third book.

Yesterday's Kin by Nancy Kress. I'm so not a Kress fan. I'm just reading this for another group's challenge. At least it's short.

Even the Worm Will Turn by Hailey Piper. Another series buddy read for another group. A reread for me. Gave it 4 stars last time (this one is more exposition heavy than the other two), but still enjoying it. Another short read.

Also reading:

Catch-22 by Joseph Heller. A long-due reread of an old favorite. Not a fast read due to the large number of characters and how they connect to each other that can be hard to keep track of.

Navigational Entaglements by Aliette de Bodard. Just read the short story by de Bodard in the latest Uncanny magazine and now onto this recent publication. After this I'll be reading her A Fire Born of Exile as a buddy read.

Finished Failure Mode
Wow, so that was the initial ending for the series? I'm not surprised he picked it up again. There are still a couple more books pending so now is a good time to take a break.

Started Foe this morning. CJ mentioned it in one of our QotW and it sounded interesting so I grabbed it.

Backyard Foraging: 65 Familiar Plants You Didn't Know You Could Eat by Ellen Zachos

Finished Foe (short book)

I am honestly not sure what I think about it. I think it achieved what it set out to do, but I am unsure on my reactions. Unusual for me.

I have a few library books out that I really should start, but I'm in that end of school year fog and went for a comfort re-read instead - Sailing to Sarantium by Guy Gavriel Kay. I've been meaning to re-read it for a while, since the history of Sarantium is mentioned so often in his more recent books.

I did manage to read a couple books while traveling over the past few weeks:
The Mask by Dean Koontz, 6/10, and The Boys from Brazil by Ira Levin, 6.5/10. I’m currently finishing up the third book I took on the trip, King of Morning, Queen of Day by Ian McDonald.

Busy week

Read The Ballad of Black Tom, which I've been meaning to read forever. Sadly, I think it could have been a fuller experience if I could remember the Lovecraft story The Horror at Red Hook. If that was a story I had read in the past, it would have been around 30 years ago and my memory is nada.

Read Truths, Half Truths and Little White Lies, a memoir by Nick Frost

And I went a head and started When the Moon Hits Your Eye
I had intended to start this next week, but everything else I want to read right now is series related and I don't want to interrupt a series for this.

Finally finished up Point of Hopes by Melissa Scott. It's not a fast read. The story overall was decent, but it was the intricate worldbuilding that I enjoyed the most. Also recently read Bate Eater and Other Names for Cora Zeng by Kylie Lee Baker and can say, it lives up to the hype. It does get pretty gory, though, so not typical of the kind of horror books I usually prefer.

Currently I'm rereading Childhood's End by Clarke with my classics reading group.

Also reading Sea of Rust by C. Robert Cargill and I think I know why Cargill isn't considered a major 21th century SF writer. So far, it's mid, with problems, at best. Or maybe Murderbot has spoiled me to the point where if I read something that tries to tackle the morality of robots as slaves, I expect more than a US middle school level grasp of chattel slavery and the Civil Rights Era.

Starting the 5th Raksura book, The Harbors of the Sun by Martha Wells and the 2nd Tyrant Philosophers book, House of Open Wounds by Adrian Tchaikovsky this morning.

Outlaw of the Outer Stars by John C. Wright

Finished King of Morning, Queen of Day by Ian McDonald, 5/10. There are basically 3 stories in this book, with 3 female protagonists, written in 3 very different styles. Emily, Jessica, and Enye are interesting but not always very likable. The ideas of “nesting” realities that can intersect with each other at times, and that the “demons” we battle are born within ourselves, are not new but are given an unusual treatment in this book.
It was the unanswered questions that bothered me the most—and maybe I just didn’t read carefully enough. (view spoiler)[Who raped Emily? What was Bell’s Comet/the Altairan space vessel really, and what caused the massive power outage? Were any of the otherworldly creatures “real”—the ones Emily took photos of, or Tiresias & Gonzaga? Was the drug that Enye took actually a drug? (hide spoiler)]
It did seem that the “faeiries” became more malevolent as time progressed through the book.
So I am left with very mixed feelings about the book. It certainly was not what I was expecting. Parts of it were excellent and other parts baffling, at least to me.

And tonight I finished Boy's Life by Robert McCammon, 10/10. My comments will be in the Quarterly Challenge folder since I chose this for the Q2 challenge.

Finished When the Moon Hits Your Eye

That was not what I had expected. Not bad, just unexpected. More to come when our discussion starts next week.

I had intended to start a Southern Reach reread for the 4th book in that series (Absolution) but most of me now wants to pickup on a few podcasts that I have been meaning to listen to for years now. Some of them have finished while they were waiting in my queue and I think they might be just the thing I need for a mental break.

We'll see how it goes.

School's out! Finally! I still haven't finished putting my classroom away for the summer, because yesterday was three digit temperatures and my school is not air conditioned, but it's supposed to drop to 70 tomorrow so I'll go in and finish tomorrow morning. So I've got time and mental energy to read again :)

I just started Spells for Forgetting and I've got When the Moon Hits Your Eye ready to go when I finish, so I'll be prepared for July's discussions!

Shel wrote: "I have a few library books out that I really should start, but I'm in that end of school year fog and went for a comfort re-read instead - Sailing to Sarantium by [author:Guy Gavriel ..."
I love Kay, been meaning to reread all his books. I went to a book launch of his latest book. That man can write a book

Kay is one of my few must-buy authors. I can't wait to read the new one.

I finished listening to Silverborn: The Mystery of Morrigan Crow, which was great, and now I'm listening to The Book That Held Her Heart, which is off to a great start.

Spells for Forgetting was lovely. Looking forward to discussing it with you all soon.

I just spontaneously picked up A Most Puzzling Murder by Bianca Marais at the bookstore, so I'm starting that now.

The Words of the Night by C. Chancy

I finished the penultimate book in the Charlotte & Thomas Pitt historical mystery series, Treachery at Lancaster Gate by Anne Perry, 8.5/10. A much tighter story that some of the Pitt books, with possible police corruption, questions of loyalty & trust among members of the police force, opium addiction, and (as always) murder, politics, & family matters among the recurring main characters.

And I started the RCN/Lt. Leary space/military science fiction series. First book is With the Lightnings by David Drake, 7.75/10. I thought the main characters were engaging and, once all the “set up” was done, the action moved right along. I hope Adele Mundy continues as a MC in the series since I liked her even more than Lt. Leary. Nothing earthshaking in terms of the science or the fiction (although “sponge space” is a new-to-me way of looking at interstellar travel), but certainly an entertaining read.

Finished Michelle Sagara's latest Essalieyan book, The Wild Road. Very good.
Decided on a Flemming James Bond book. The last novel he wrote.
The Man with the Golden Gun

Squeezed in one more book before the end of the month: When We Believed in Mermaids by Barbara O'Neal, 8/10.