New author for me time, with Daniel Abraham being today best known as one half of the duo who write under the pen name James S. A. Corey and are responsible for The Expanse series. I’ve never read that either but I love the televisions series. This novel was his debut and was recommended by many, being the first book of a quartet. Unfortunately while the world he creates here is indeed intriguing, I ended up not really liking this novel and I doubt I’ll read the rest of the series.
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.
Chalk this up as another one of those novels that I would never have read on my own and was glad I did. This is effectively a coming of age novel by Thai writer S.P. Somtow. Though Somtow’s first career was as a celebrated composer and musician, he has also made a name for himself as a writer who dabbles in horror, fantasy and science-fiction. This title itself however should count as a non-genre book being based on the author’s own memories of growing up in Bangkok in the 1960s. It does have more than a fair bit of magical realism, which now that I think of, seems to be pretty common in novels of this type.
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.
