Stable Strategies

After seeing Eileen Gunn at Readercon last July, I finally checked out her collection of short fiction, Stable Strategies and Others.  It’s a slender volume filled out with three encomiums plus an author’s foreword plus endnotes for each story, all commenting about how slowly she writes. What she does write is good stuff.

The Exchange

After putting Graham Joyce on my list of authors I’d like to read more of, I finally got around to reading another one, The Exchange. And I liked it. This could be a pattern.

The Years of Rice and Salt

You probably already know that The Years of Rice and Salt, by Kim Stanley Robinson tells an alternate history where the Black Plague wiped out Christian Europe, which leaves a world dominated by Buddhists and Muslims. This gives you a good excuse to explore parts of world history we don’t hear so much about.  As [...]

Lizard Music

When I think of Daniel Pinkwater, the first book that comes to mind is always Lizard Music. It’s funny, intense, goofy, and light, sometimes in turns, sometimes all at once, in a way that leaves you off balance and finding something new every time you read it.

Little Brother

In Little Brother, by Cory Doctorow, Marcus Yallow is a smartass who delights in playing Harajuku Fun Madness and in evading the security at his high school. He and his friends are caught in the post-bombing sweep after a terrorist attack on San Francisco. After a harrowing interrogation, Marcus is set loose. Though he knows [...]

Sailing to Sarantium

Sailing to Sarantium, by  Guy Gavriel Kay breaks the pattern of the previous books. It focuses on one character, Crispin, a skilled but flawed mosaic artist. He travels to Byzantium, I mean Sarantium, apparently in the same world as Al-Rassan, but centuries earlier, there’s no war at the end, and not a word about Fionavar.

Pyramids

If you’re reluctant to commit to reading even a sub-series of Terry Pratchett’s Discworld books, Pyramids is a pretty good standalone sampler of his humor.
Teppic, heir to the kingdom of Djelibeybi, is a good-hearted character, even if he is training to be an assassin. The first third of the book is dominated by his training [...]

A Storm of Swords

When I picked a throughly read copy of A Storm of Swords by George R. R. Martin at the library, the book’s binding was coming apart. There’s a reason why this is also known as A Storm of Words. Despite the warning signs of bloat, I had a terrific time reading this book.

The Limits of Enchantment

It’s time to admit that there are several books I like that I’m not going to be able to do justice to, and waiting to post about them won’t make it any better. For example, The Limits of Enchantment, by Graham Joyce is exactly the sort of book that I never would have bothered with [...]

Anathem

If you read cosmology books for fun, you’ll have plenty of fun reading Anathem, by Neil Stephenson. It also helps if you like wordplay, language, and philosophy. I liked this book so much I was actually a bit relieved that I didn’t fall in love with it, because a 900 page book could mean some [...]