The Sword and Laser discussion

I finally got Veronica to pick Wesley Chu, only she threw me a curve ball and had a quick poll and went with his sci-fi series The Lives of Tao

Let us know what you think of the pick

Could have gone with my favorite Five Broken Blades by Mai Corland, but maybe for July Tom can throw the curve ball.

The description from the book blurb is "chef's kiss" - I picked up the audiobook right away

Just finished the book. I enjoyed it quite a bit! But I've always loved stories that (view spoiler)[involve two minds sharing a body and the way the ages long secret war between the two factions was handled while maintaining the reality of human loss within that interwoven history was well handled. (hide spoiler)]

I will likely read the rest of the trilogy at some point. I have other things I'm anxious to read and I don't feel strongly enough about it to immediately bump the other two books to the top of my list like I did with the Nsibidi Scripts after Akata Witch. But I expect I'll return to Tao at some point.

Is there something odd about the availability of this book? I'm a member of 5 different library systems and only 1 of the small independent ones had it.

AndrewP wrote: "Is there something odd about the availability of this book? I'm a member of 5 different library systems and only 1 of the small independent ones had it."

Might just be that even that last book in the trilogy is 10 years old. That's plenty of time a library to notice it hasn't circulated in a while.

AndrewP wrote: "Is there something odd about the availability of this book? I'm a member of 5 different library systems and only 1 of the small independent ones had it."

Neither of mine have it in any form although they do have the other books.

LA Public Library still has an e-copy.

I've been meaning to reread this series for a bit, loved the first book but needed a refresher to get to the rest. glad for the excuse

I've never read a Wesley Chu book. Picked this one up as my re-entry to Sword & Laser book. I'm SO glad I did! I'm 40% in and it's SO GOOD. I'm having a blast with it.

Yay! One I've already read and loved. I can't wait to hear the discussions.

This has been on my TBR for ages untold. Just started reading this morning and I’m now on page 80 and I think it’s great. Kind of surprised it hasn’t been turned into a TV series already.

I was cruising along, tentatively enjoying this, when I hit (view spoiler)["Our ship was passing near your system when it was caught in a meteor shower." (hide spoiler)].

I'm no astrophysicist, but come on. If you don't have 30 seconds to look up what something is, don't make it how your story's premise came about.

I'll try to get past it and enjoy the book, but... dang.

Scott wrote: "I was cruising along, tentatively enjoying this, when I hit [spoilers removed].

I'm no astrophysicist, but come on. If you don't have 30 seconds to look up what something is, don't make it how you..."

I thought the same thing. I’m hoping that instead of lazy writing, it’s Tao not being straight with the story of how all this happened,

Just finished. There were a couple of other details that made me go nope, and took me out of the story for a second. But overall I liked the story and the book. I might even consider continuing the series at some point. It had just enough variation from a formulaic spy novel to keep me interested, even though you could fairly easily see where things were going.

As much as I liked it, I wonder if the discussion is a little on the lite side both here and on discord because it is early, or because it really isn't that controversial. While it talks about humanity and such, it really doesn't say much we haven't heard many times before. I guess this makes this a good beach read, but maybe doesn't lead to deep discussions. Don't get me wrong, I'm more then fine with that, just something I'm thinking about.