Sci-fi and Heroic Fantasy discussion

So, what august works have you read this month?

By tomorrow I'll have completed Clubbed to Death, which is a cozy only on a technicality.

Currently reading Guy Gavriel Kay's The Last Light of the Sun and John Myers Myers Silverlock

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Completed:

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Authors:
Agustina Bazterrica, Robert Jackson Bennett, M.R. Carey, S.A. Chakraborty, Cherie Dimaline, Linda Holmes, Angie Kim, Laura Lam, Linden A. Lewis, Sarah Moses, Cherie Priest, Veronica Roth, Adrian Tchaikovsky, Brent Weeks

Finished Vagabonds (though I skipped chunks between p400-600) and.... it was very slow with some big ideas. Not so sure the payoff was worth the length though.
I maybe need to take a long break from any long books!

SA wrote: "======
In Progress:

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Nice batch of books. 🙂

Finished A Scholar of Magics, definitely a fantasy of manners, don't think that poor protagonist could be made to drink more tea...

Now as part of my "Finish series I started" I'm reading Dark Tracks by Philippa Gregory. It's not really fantasy, since most of the magic gets debunked along the way, but I wouldn't entirely call them historical. It also probably isn't the end of the series but it's been a few years since Gregory wrote this one and no idea when the next will come out, if ever. So it will be finished as much as I am capable of finishing it :)

I've also made it through another ten Bleach mangas, so I'm starting the month off at volume 60. Whether or not I finish this series will depend if I'm brave enough to borrow a book from the library that might have been in someone's covid infected house. The ones I did nab just now were on the shelves the past four months so were as clean as is possible to be, but around 68 or something like that they were in circulation. It's supposed to be safe, but hey, why risk it...

The Princess Who Forgot She Was Beautiful by William David Ellis

I have finished The Robots of Dawn. Only one book in the Robot series to go and then on to Asimov's Galatic Empire novels.

Starting the final book in the Robot series, Robots and Empire. The covers of the mass market editions published by Panther (for all 4 of the Robot novels) are nice but really have no relevance to the stories. All of them feature giant robots, none of which appear in any of the novels.

Finished Dark Tracks, was an odd but quick read.

Starting on People of the Book: A Decade of Jewish Science Fiction & Fantasy edited by Rachel Swirsky for my Anthology BINGO slot. Got a few names I recognized like Yolen, Beagle and Gaiman.

It's a bit odd but been reading a fair amount of Jewish content...there's an major Jewish character in The Mortal Instruments by Cassandra Claire, and Dark Tracks looked at how Christians in medieval times treated Jews. None of this was intentional, just one of those coincidences that come up when you think you are reading completely unrelated books :)

Cat Pictures Please and Other Stories is a collection of Naomi Kritzer's short stories, including her multi-award winning "Cat Pictures, Please" which gives the collection its title; and "So Much Cooking," which I have thought of many times during the COVID-19 lockdown. Plus some previously unpublished stories. Regretably, none of her Seastead stories.

The Last Emperox ends Scalzi's Interdependency trilogy. I found it very good comedy but less so a space opera.

The Vikings: From Odin to Christ by Martyn Whittock

I just finished "I call him HIM" by Scott W. Kimak. It's AMAZING!

Islam, Arabs, and the Intelligent World of the Jinn by Amira El-Zein

I read Spirits Abroad, a collection of Malaysian fantasy short stories. It was brilliant. One of those few collections where all the stories are equally well written. It's not a cultural mythology I'm familiar with, so it was all very new and interesting.

Though I have not finished the anthology yet, I find I can't just read them right through, they start to meld together, so I'll read a few stories here and there, and in parallel started on The Wind Through the Keyhole by Stephen King. Decided I'll risk reading it and hope it doesn't drop any hints or make any assumptions about the last book (it takes place chronologically beforebut published after so sometimes authors can write something a certain way based on something that happened in the previously published book but not yet chronological...in fact there is a reference to the Wolves of Calla so glad I read that first)

I'm usually that way with anthologies as well - it's very rare that I read one cover to cover.

My review of Crossings by Alex Landragin

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

Ah...well now I know why Roland is the way he is, if those are the kinds of stories his mother used to read to him as a child! I pity the kid Roland later told the tale to (and now Jake), think that would give me nightmares for life!

(view spoiler)[ Like the mud men that have boils that explode when a spider comes out and they have to scoop out the eggs from the hole in their body using their fingers...and those were the good guys! (hide spoiler)]

And now that I'm almost done reading it, I think this book, though placed before Wolves of Calla, it should be read after since there is a small hint regarding Wolves that is dropped in this book (it was weird too, like why didn't any of the characters remember the warning, when they are usually very good at remembering stuff like prophecies, poems and random statements all throughout the rest of the books)

I think the last time I posted was after I finished The Last Man by Mary Shelley last month. Since then I've also read Connie Willis' To Say Nothing of the Dog which was much fun! Rated it a solid 4/5 stars.

Today I finished Rage of Ares, the last book in Christian Cameron's Long War series. An extremely epic conclusion and I was a bit sad to say goodbye to Arimnestos. Rated it 5/5, one of the top three books in the series.

I'm now currently reading Surrender None by Elizabeth Moon as part of the Legend of Gird omnibus. So far so good. This book is where we get to see the beginnings of Gird in his life time before he becomes the deity of the original Paksenarrion trilogy.

Finished The Wind Through the Keyhole, and getting back to the Heroes of Olympus series that I've put on hold for a while now with - The House of Hades by Rick Riordan

Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

just finished reading one kindle book from the library, went to return it, and returned The Blinding Knife (40% completed and starting to get good) by mistake - ~12 weeks until my turn to borrow it comes up again. Crap

Finished People of the Book anthology. It had some good ones, but it wasn't quite what I had expected. I guess the key point is that it was Jewish authors, not necessary Jewish themed (I was hoping to learn more about their mythos like golems and dybbuks, and there was some, but there were also some that were about Narnia)...and frankly, some of them had no fantasy/sf element at all.

I found a good number of them on various online 'zines and I own other anthologies that have a couple other stories, of course I didn't necessarily find all my favorites but I think I won't keep the book itself, and make some room on my shelves (I'm already way into negative space anyway so every bit helps!)

The Fireman by Joe Hill

A strange malady called Dragonscale causes people to spontaneously combust, leading to a pandemic and all sorts of trouble.

Very good story. 4 stars

My review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

Just finished Recursion by Blake Crouch.

My review of A Declaration of the Rights of Magicians by H.G. Parry

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

Finished reading A Little Hatred (Age of Madness Book 1) by Joe Abercrombie and Barrayar by Lois McMaster Bujold. I am reading The Fires of Heaven by Robert Jordan. I plan to read Ancillary Mercy by Ann Leckie next.

I have finished Robots and Empire which brings to an end Asimov's Robot series. While it does help bridge the Robot series with the Galactic Empire series, this is not the best of the Robot books, and is well below Asimov at his best. There are flashes of the master, but too few, and too widely separated in what is an overly long book.

Before I begin the Galactic Empire books, I am changing tack a bit and have started A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court

I finished Memory. I liked the book, just perhaps a tad less than the previous ones, possibly because the pace of events in it is rather sedate,

Due to an administrative issue with the credit card account that I use to purchase my e-books, I have to wait until next month to order the next opus in the saga. As a result, I am restarting The Warrior's Apprentice, in part to see whether I missed some important aspects of Miles' early career.

Tony wrote: "I have finished Robots and Empire which brings to an end Asimov's Robot series. While it does help bridge the Robot series with the Galactic Empire series, this is not the best of th..."

How did you rate Robots and Empire?

Currently reading Leonardo da Vinci by Walter Isaacson and Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier.

Finished Hunted which I started a while back on my eReader. With no commute to work, I find I don't pick up my ereader as much. Too many physical books taking up space in my room to ignore them, the ereader just sitting quietly off to the side...

I was going to take a break but since it was a 3 book omnibus I'll just keep going with the next book in that series - Retribution by Megg Jensen. For a freebie, it's not bad. I haven't decided yet if I'll pay to read the rest of the series, there's only two more after all but at this point I'm tempted, we'll see where book 3 leaves me.

Luffy wrote: "How did you rate Robots and Empire?"

I gave it 3 stars (out of 5). It could have been at least a third shorter I thought.

Tony wrote: "Luffy wrote: "How did you rate Robots and Empire?"

I gave it 3 stars (out of 5). It could have been at least a third shorter I thought."

Somewhere in his later life Asimov felt an urge to tie all his universes (Robot, Empire, Foundation) into one unified timeline. The result is a lot of written duct tape.

G33z3r wrote: "The result is a lot of written duct tape."

Well put.

Duct tape....the series finale of Agents of SHIELD....

Andrea wrote: "Duct tape....the series finale of Agents of SHIELD...."

That's a shame, but not unexpected. I quit watching it a few seasons back. I was thinking of catching up, but I think I'll skip it.

Ah no, you had to have seen it to know what I meant, it was actually a fun season. They knew it was the last one and had fun with it. The duct tape was an insider joke, not a comment on it being badly put together XD

Oh.

G33z3r wrote: "Somewhere in his later life Asimov felt an urge to tie all his universes (Robot, Empire, Foundation) into one unified timeline. The result is a lot of written duct tape."

Well, that's definitely how the framing story around and between the short stories in I, Robot felt. I would have preferred the (often wildly different) stories as simple standalone pieces than, for instance, having the ending of the first story immediately contradicted by the interstitial between that and the next one, with a line saying, "Of course, that didn't last, because things changed rapidly." Forcing them all to fit into a single timeline didn't seem to add anything good to the stories.

Since I recently finished a rewatch of the entire Deep Space Nine series with my Mom, and we have a BINGO slot for Media Tie-In I decided to revisit my DSN book collection. Years ago I used to hunt used bookstores with my cousin to collect Star Trek books so I've got a pile of them to pick from. I decided to start at the beginning with Emissary by J.M. Dillard but since that is just a novelization of the first episode, I'll use the second book for the BINGO some time next month.

BTW if anyone is still seeking something to fill in the spot and Star Trek catches their interest, OpenLibrary has a HUGE number of the books, not all of course, but way more than I ever would have expected. I've also been finding some for only 0.99$ on Kindle/Kobo, since it brought back the nostalgia of the used book store hunts I used to go on (and they don't take up any space) I grabbed a bunch of those for my eReader, been a looong time since I've read one of these :)

The Joy of Erudition wrote: "G33z3r wrote: "Somewhere in his later life Asimov felt an urge to tie all his universes (Robot, Empire, Foundation) into one unified timeline. The result is a lot of written duct tape."

Well, that's definitely how the framing story around and between the short stories in I, Robot felt. I would have preferred the (often wildly different) stories as simple standalone pieces than, for instance..."

I'd forgotten about those. At least they were only a couple of paragraphs. All the stories were originally published stand-alone (all in John W Campbell's Astounding Magazine (now called Analog), except for "Robbie" which was a re-write of "Strange Playfellow" that appeared in Fredrick Pohl's Super Science Stories.

My preferred collection of Asimov's Robot stories these days is Robot Dreams and Robot Visions, which together are the most complete (because they were the last repackaging.) They also skip the connecting duct tape (I suppose one could argue that makes them incomplete :)

G33z3r wrote: "My preferred collection of Asimov's Robot stories these days is Robot Dreams and Robot Visions, which together are the most complete (because they were the last repackaging.) They also skip the connecting duct tape (I suppose one could argue that makes them incomplete :)"

I'd say that cutting bad content, which wasn't in the originals anyway, doesn't make it incomplete. 🙂 Now I wish I'd read the Robot Visions version instead, but I didn't know about it before.

The thing about both Robot Dreams and Robot Visions is that while they are both collections of Asimov's short stories, neither focuses solely on robot stories, the way that I, Robot and The Rest of the Robots do. Both contain a significant proportion of non-robot stories - which is fine if you are looking to just read Asimov, but a little irritating for anyone looking to read the Robot series.

Tony wrote: "The thing about both Robot Dreams and Robot Visions is that while they are both collections of Asimov's short stories, neither focuses solely on robot stories, the way that..."

Well, perhaps. They contain a couple of Asimov's "Multivac" stories, and probably more significantly a number of non-fiction essays about robots & his robot stories. I enjoyed the essays, covering a half-century of his writing; the sort of material an author would put in a blog these days. They have the advantage of having the robot stories written after The Rest of the Robots, such as The Bicentennial Man, and together have more robot stories than The Complete Robot (only because they were published a decade after the Complete Robot, not because Complete Robot was intentionally holding out, but it should have been called "The Complete Robot (so far)" :)

OTOH, there's definitely something to be said for reading in publication order rather than the re-jiggered collections, in that it's easier to see the evolution of Asimov's thoughts.

Asimov was adept at re-releasing old material in new packages with a bit of new material to constantly incite his fans to buy another book (its part of how he published over 200 books in his career. :) I think I have 4 copies of "Robbie" in paperback and another 3 in eBook.

READ


The Eye of the World

The Great Hunt

The Dragon Reborn

Janus and the Prince

The Burning Land



IN PROGRESS
The Name of the Wind

The Shadow Rising



TBR:
Mistborn: Final Empire

Destroyer of the Gods: Early Christian Distinctiveness in the Roman World by Larry W. Hurtado

Musa wrote: "READ

The Eye of the World

The Great Hunt

The Dragon Reborn

Janus and the Prince
[boo..."

Musa, how did you like [book:The Burning Land|6489529]? I adore the author's Sharpe series, but haven't tried any others of his.