I’ve been getting better lately about reading newer books and what could be more current than the newest book by Andy Weir that has just been released and is already at the top of all of the science-fiction sales charts. I liked The Martian enough that I probably would have picked it up eventually but after Amazon offered me a special discount after I had downloaded a sample but stopped short of buying the full book for a week or so. I wonder if this promotion was offered to everyone or the algorithm just picked me, anyway so here I am.
Geoff Ryman isn’t an author who I’d read previously but this novel is so good that I feel like I’ve been missing out this whole time. The thing is his work doesn’t seem to get nominated for the Nebula and Hugo awards and I’ve long contended that there is a frustrating sense of sameyness in the works that do get nominated. This novel feels refreshing different and wears it more fantastical elements lightly enough that it could pass for a mainstream novel. But it is a solid science-fiction novel, not just in its use of novel technologies as a plot element but in its attitude towards change and progress.
Ever since I made a more concerted effort to keep up with the winners of recent awards, I’d had mixed success. It’s probably because I prefer hard science-fiction above all and this preference doesn’t track very closely with the type of work that usually wins in awards ceremonies. This book won a lot of awards and was Ann Leckie’s debut novel to boot. It’s more space opera than science-fiction and I have some issues with how casually it treats the existence of AI. But it is a very strong novel that does make me want to read more about the universe it is set in.
I bought this a little earlier than I wanted after reading Under Heaven due to Amazon’s tricksy 1-Click system but never mind, I would have bought it eventually anyway. This book is set in the same fictionalized version of China as the first one but several hundred years later. The characters from the first book have passed into legend and though the empire of Kitai persists, it is now much weaker as strong generals are looked on with suspicion and so Kitai is forced to treat with the northern barbarian tribes as equals.
Martha Wells is another one of the a relatively recent crop of writers whose work gets nominated for awards over and over again. This year, her latest Murderbot Diary book Network Effect was nominated so I thought I’d check the series out beginning with the first book. Unfortunately it looks like this was only a novella and while this first one is priced cheaply on Amazon, the other three ones which complete arguably the first volume are each sold as full-price books. That explains why the reviews are full of complaints about this exploitative marketing practice.
For once, it looks like I’m on top of new releases as this book has just been nominated for a slew of awards but final results have yet to be announced. Of course this book was always going to be a high profile release given that this is by Susanna Clarke and this is only her second novel after the incredibly successful Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norell. This is however a simpler, far less ambitious work than her first book which famously took over ten years to write and is short enough that some would question if it even qualifies as being a novel.
This is another novel that I wouldn’t ordinarily have read in the course of my usual explorations. It was a recommendation on Broken Forum and though it has some fantasy, it is seen as closer to being a mainstream novel than a genre one. This one is by Guy Gavriel Kay, a Canadian writer who has made a name from writing alternative history with some fantastical elements. This one in particular is a fictionalized version of the An Shi Rebellion during the Tang Dynasty and it really surprised me how much I liked it.
