Hello everyone,
I’ve been shaking up my reading habit a little bit this year. I saw a challenge near the start of the year involving looking at reading a book involving every letter of the alphabet. The original challenge was about author names but I didn’t think I could fill all the letters there, so I’ve cheated a little bit (lots) by including book titles as well. I’m up to 19 read so far out of the 26. It’ll be a huge post though writing about all 26 in one go so … here’s a bite size one !
First up though, admin note … I had a “you need to install this plugin to comply with GDPR and the rest” thing appear so I’ve added the cookie notice that you probably see appear. Click what you want there, whether you accept cookies is very definitely up to YOU. I’d like you to accept, because I like to see where my few visitors come from. WordPress is a very money oriented service for the content creator, you get what you pay for and I’m not willing to pay someone for any more than the free stuff. So the only info I see is Country, Pages visited, Referrer clicks and maybe, just maybe … city if I’m quick enough to look at things on Google Analytics.
Hopefully if you accept the cookie, you only need to click the pop up once. Books ?
I actually have to report an abandon. First of the year too. The A to Z has been opening my eyes to new authors as I attempt to fill the various letters up. Some are outstanding, on a level where you find yourself adding the sequels to the wish list for later when you’re part way through the first book. Others are … ok, enjoyed the book but not likely to come back. Some of stinkers.
And I have a cautionary note about reviews too. (Actually as I look at Amazon, I’m seeing different reviews info to what I saw the other day). Low reviews get deleted, high reviews get added out of laziness. Reviews on distribution sites (like Amazon) will be geared towards you buying stuff on their site. I.e. they want you to spend money. I think I’ll be looking at sites like Goodreads as well as Amazon when things catch my eye from the “Hey here’s the list of books we sent you last week, wanna buy them this time?” emails I get.
Oh look, here’s a Goodreads link :-D. That’s for a review of I, Starship by Scott Bartlett which was going to be the I book. However, it became the first abandon of the year because while the central premise of the book looked pretty good and I was vibing with the main character, the selections of secondary characters is bizarre, nonsensical and geared towards conflict that is inexplicable in the set up of that central premise. There’s more info behind the Goodreads link. Oh, it also was getting too close to a few gaslighting incidents I’ve had from previous managers and bosses, which I didn’t want to be reminded about.
I.e. if you’re not enjoying the book you’re reading, definitely move on to the next. I waited to see if one character was ok (at which point the Ship Captain started bullying the MC again), checked to see if it improved via Goodreads and then abandoned … after checking the synopses of the next 4 books in the series. It wasn’t worth sticking with it.
A to Z ?
First up is Alien Clay by Adrian Tchaikovsky, as book A. In this one, humanity have started spreading out to the stars and have 3 off world colonies, all of them really harsh and one step off being Death Worlds. (A habitable world where everything is out to kill the colonists). This one is heavily about the politics and organisations of revolution, a thread that runs throughout the book. You see, the colonies are essentially prison camps where those who speak out against the totalitarian regime are sent. It’s one of those fictional universes you really don’t want to live in. But I did enjoy this one. It didn’t have the madcap humour of the time travelling “One Day All This Will Be Yours” but I enjoyed seeing where the story was going to go. Whether the protagonists would come out on top, how they would achieve that.
A good read. Not his best, not the worst. But one thing you can expect from Adrian Tchaikovsky is something new and different with every one of his books. And I do like my variation in my content. (Goodreads link)
My B and I books could actually swap around (including the abandon!). For B, it’s Indomitable by Jonathan P Brazee (Goodreads link actually for book 1). This is book 5 in a series that starts with Fire Ant, the book that the Goodreads link will take you to. This one finishes off the series. It’s not super cerebral deep thought scifi. It doesn’t ask philosophical questions about the universe. It’s fast, pulpy, well written action science fiction set around a main character who is part of a pathfinding group of space starfighter pilots as they attempt to defend humanity from an implacable, enigmatic enemy who always seems to be one step ahead.
It’s inventive. It sucks you in. I loved the main characters. And I bought the series before I got halfway through the first book because I was so invested in what was happening. Sometimes you want philosophy. Sometimes you want to enjoy something where you can turn the brain off a bit and not need to think too much about deciphering what’s on the page.
Fire Ant series – heavily recommend. One thing that’s always worth knowing when you start a series is whether it improves or fizzles as the series progresses. Some fizzle out (like KSR’s Mars books), some build as they develop their universe and story. Indomitable tops off a very satisfying conclusion to this arc in Jonathan Brazee’s universe.
Coming up next we C Beyond the Fringe by Miles Cameron. This is an accompanying book to Artifact Space and Deep Black. These are the two main books in the series, following Marca Nbaro’s adventures from escaping a horrible situation by running off to space. Beyond The Fringe expands the universe by including a series of short stories based around the events of the two main books. Miles Cameron very quickly became a highly rated author for me, as I read through Artifact Space and was drawn into that universe and the characters. Beyond The Fringe was a very interesting second look at that universe from a completely different angle to shipboard life aboard the Greatship.
You’d need to have read Artifact Space and Deep Black really before opening this one but it’s definitely worth a look. And there’s a sense of fun throughout too, which definitely helps me enjoy a book.
One of the objectives of this series / challenge is to find new voices to listen to. D could have been a really lazy pick of Roald Dahl but then Stranded by A K (Amy) Duboff popped up on one of those Amazon emails and it caught the eye enough to check it out more. This one is centred around a pairing of characters who immediately find themselves falling out of space in evacuation pods that have just been ejected from a colony ship that just went boom. They’re landing on what looks like a paradise planet but … it’s also got big scary monsters. And rogue humans too. Will they survive ? What’s on the planet that’s worth blowing up the colony ship for ?
This one kept me guessing to the end and I’m looking forward to steadily reading through this series as books get added to it. Stranded is book 1 and came out in February, book 2 is available and there’s more to come.
That’s one of the strengths of reading and the author community. I follow a bunch of authors on Bluesky and they’re lovely people who are always supporting each other. Us readers will devour a book far faster than an author will write said book. So we need a community of authors writing so we can have enough books to keep our reading habit going. And that author community are always cheering each other on. They understand that they’re not really in competition with each other, they love chilling out with each other and egging each other on with ridiculous memes.
Next up is F for The Folded Sky by Elizabeth Bear. This one starts off fairly gently, with our protagonist and main character, Dr Sunyata Song, being transported to the edge of the galaxy where there is an impossibly ancient and immense computer construct called the Baomind in a system with a star that’s approaching the end of its existence as a star. Our people need to figure out how to communicate with the Baomind, so they can best establish how to rescue as much of it as possible and relocate it to a star that’ll last a while longer.
It’s the third in the Synarche White Space universe, which is set a fair bit off in the future with sentient AIs, faster than light space ships, lots of mindfulness, a huge variety in alien beings and a lot of mystery along the way. Oh and a sassy lesbian wife, space pirates, teenagers, a space dragon dinosaur … cats and lots of drama going on. You’d need to have read either or both Machine or Ancestral Night, also by Elizabeth Bear, to fully understand what’s going on in here but it’s a worthy addition to the universe.
A safe choice again because I’d enjoyed the other two books in the series. The Folded Sky just came out, if you act fast then you might still be able to get hold of it on a discounted to 99p price …
For G, we have Girl on Fire by Gemma Amor. This one is a new one to me for reading, although I’ve been following along her posts on the various social medias. She’s nice, has struggles but also has the good vibes to pass on. Girl on Fire though is a very angry book. The main character has so much anger inside, she literally becomes a phoenix like person and spontaneously combusts. Not the kind of vibe I’d usually go for due to how I mirror emotions but I was invested in this contemporary fiction book. I wanted to see how the story was going to go and how it would finish.
Worth checking out a new author. I’m not sure that I’ll be back for more due to that anger vibe but this one pulled me in.
Observant people will have noticed I missed a letter … It’s E-zy to do sometimes. The E book amongst all of the other e-books is Off Midway Station by Marc Alan Edelheit. This one is the first in a new series. It’s set in future space and opens with a main character who’s faced with an impossible situation of surviving a surprise attack which has devastated his ship, only for his mortally wounded commanding officer to order an attack which would slaughter thousands of civilian bystanders. And we move on from there to have the first half of this one setting up the universe and the scifi rules of the setting before launching into a battle for survival.
Oh and surprises too for everyone. I’ll be looking forward to checking out Off Javelin Station when it comes out in October.
That’s the thing you really want in a book. To be sucked in and engaged in a developing story with interesting characters and to not really know what’s coming next.
Like I haven’t completely fixed what books L to N are going to be ! Could be Quarter Share by Nathan Lowell, another new author. Could be Last Emperox by John Scalzi. I’d like to go back to Elizabeth Moon, not read one of hers in ages. And then there’s A Voyage for Madmen by Peter Nicholls. Or it could be a Larry Niven.
And that’s the thing. There’s a huge amount of stories out there. There are all of the genres, all of the styles, there’s the deep novels and the shallow novels. And they’re all waiting for us to lose ourselves in them for a while.
Time for me to dive into the replacement I book, it’s In The Shadow Of The Ship, a novella set in Aliette de Bodard’s Xuya Universe.
Good night everyone.
