I’ve been trying to be more up to date on current science-fiction books and this is one of the most talked about ones recently. It is the debut novel of its author, Rivers Solomon, who self-identifies using the pronoun they and them, and indeed many of the characters in it have atypical genders. I was also attracted to its premise of reimagining the scenario of black slaves in the America South on board a generation ship. In the end however I didn’t like it as much as I thought I would as it leans so heavily on its inspirational sources that it’s barely much of a story on its own.

So I’m a huge fan and advocate of the Worm web serial and this is the much anticipated sequel. To be honest, I first started reading some months after Wildbow started writing it but bounced off after only a few chapters. I’ll go into why more later but it was so infuriating how everyone uses therapy-speak constantly and is so careful, like walking on eggshells, around each other. When I learned that he had finished it earlier this year, I decided to give it another shot and eventually powered through though it was at times quite a chore.

I had no idea this collection of short stories by Greg Egan existed until it popped up as a Kindle recommendation for me. Needless to say I immediately snapped it up though I had already read two of the eleven stories it includes elsewhere. I was also quite pleased that three of the stories, including Bit Players that I’ve read before and liked a lot, are all part of a larger story and could actually be taken together as a short novel.

I’ve had this on my reading list ever since I saw it being featured in Jo Walton’s What Makes This Book So Great but I’ve actually first known about it since I read Eliezer Yudkowsky’s fanfiction The Methods of Rationality as his version of Harry Potter consciously patterns himself after the main character in this book Miles Vorkosigan.

As promised, here is the second book of Jo Walton’s Thessaly trilogy, though it has been more than half a year since I read The Just City. I loved both the premise and the characters in that book but after a while I do have to admit that it’s a bit of an intellectual lightweight when set against its ambition and promise. Similarly this book is a fun and highly satisfying read but ultimately ducks out of any real philosophical clash.

Finally we come to the third and last book of George Alec Effinger’s Budayeen series featuring protagonist Marîd Audran. Everyone who has reviewed this talks about how the title is lifted from Shakespeare but I was delighted to discover that its opening quote is a Malay proverb even if I’ve never heard of it before. I think it’s a good sign of how widely this American writer roamed in search of inspiration.

So I finally finished the third book of Liu Cixin’s Remembrance of Earth’s Past trilogy and it really took some effort as it is far longer than the previous two books. This is a true epic in every sense of the word, with a prelude that takes place before the previous two novels, covers events in parallel with them, and then picks up after them until what amounts to the heat death of the universe. It’s by far my favorite of the three books and lays out some genuinely terrific ideas.