November Book Foo 1/2

Bit in a rush, so no other comments, still alive, that's about all that matters.

On to Book Foo... had to divide it into two posts, sorry, blame LJ:

Finished: Waypoint Kangaroo by Curtis C. Chen

Disclaimer: I received this book free through a giveaway (although, not through Goodreads itself). I don't think it affects my review.

A secret agent, code-named Kangaroo, has the apparently unique ability to open a portal to an empty universe and store stuff there. This makes him extremely valuable and makes up for the other areas where he may lack some of the qualities ideal in a secret agent. But when he's on vacation, none of that should matter. Except on his vacation cruise between Earth and Mars he stumbles upon a plot that could lead to interplanetary war.

I find I don't really have a lot to say about this book. It's fun, but it doesn't blow me away. ( Read more... )

Finished: The Future is Japanese (short stories)

What I thought this book was: A book of science fiction stories mostly by Japanese authors, many of which translated into English for the first time.
What this book actually was: A book of mostly science fiction stories, about half written by Japanese authors (and may well have been translated for the first time), the other half written by Western authors (many of whom have a particular connection to Japan) in English but set in Japan or using Japanese characters.

The difference between what I thought this book was and what it actually was, was a big disappointment.( Read more... )

Finished: The Forbidden Library by Django Wexler

After the ship her father is traveling on is lost at sea, twelve-year-old Alice goes to lie with an uncle she never knew she had, who has a mysterious and impossible Library. There she soon comes to discover that she is a Reader, with abilities that include traveling through magic books and controlling creatures imprisoned within. And there may be much more to her father's disappearance that she needs to uncover.

Disclaimer: I won the first three books in this series through a giveaway. I don't think it affected my review.

Obviously, this is a book intended for an audience much younger than me... the back of the book reads ages ten and up.( Read more... )

Rating-wise, I'll put it at three stars, while acknowledging I'd probably have given it four were I the proper age. Since I won all three currently-published books of the series, and I did enjoy it, I'll be continuing on with the others before probably passing the books on to someone who could appreciate them more.

Finished: The Mad Apprentice by Django Wexler

(description cut due to possible spoilers)
( Read more... )

I'll give it a star beyond what I gave the first.

Finished: The Sudden Appearance of Hope by Claire North

For some mysterious reason, nobody can remember Hope Arden. After you stop interacting with her for more than about a minute, you completely and permanently forget she'd ever existed. Naturally, this makes a few things difficult. She lives as a thief, at first for survival and then for the thrill, but when somebody she's interacted with commits suicide, and it seems to be connected with a phone app that is becoming ubiquitous, she gets involve for personal reasons, and is caught up in events that might change the world... even if no one will remember her part in it.

First, a little personal info. Long ago, on an online text-based roleplaying game themed around the X-Men, I played a character with a power/curse very much like this ( Read more... )

So far Claire North's books under this pseudonym have been extremely enjoyable and I look forward to what comes next.

Finished: The Palace of Glass by Django Wexler
(plot synopsis behind cut because of potential spoilers for previous books)( Read more... )

I don't think I'm going to be one of those people that buy the snap up the next book when it comes out... my reading list is already much too big. But, I might like to see what happens, and so if one day I happen to see the next book in a discount bin or something, I might grab it. Or a few years down the line if I'm gripped by nostalgia and a burning curiosity, maybe I'll try to find the series. Or, maybe I'll just look up summaries on Wikipedia. Too soon to say. But I was more into the series than I expected to be, which says something, at least.

Finished: The Just City by Jo Walton

The goddess Athena gathers people from all over time for a bold experiment... to recreate the "ideal society" proposed in Plato's Republic. In addition to admirers of Plato from across time, she also helps them recruit slave children to be the free citizens of the Republic, and robots to do the work. While the society is very different from ours, it seems im many ways to be working... at least until Socrates shows up and starts asking questions.( Read more... )

Personally, I think it's my favorite of her works (which, admittedly, I've only read two of).

Finished: Metrophage by Richard Kadrey

A young punk tries to stay alive in a near future torn between gangs and corporate-controlled governments with sinister agendas. There's also a plague.

Okay, so it's cyberpunk, that classic 80s subgenre of SF filled with street level characters, cyber-enhancement and drugs, morally grey protagonists and cynical plotlines.( Read more... )

I'll probably forget it almost entirely within a few years, as there's very little sticking in my memory right now. Maybe someone less familiar with the tropes of the subgenre would get more out of it, and maybe in historical context it was published right at the perfect time to stick in the minds of the readers, but for me, it was only okay.

Finished: The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August by Claire North (reread)

Finished: City of Pearl by Karen Traviss

A long mission has been sent to a colony on a distant planet that had been thought gone. Leading it is an environmental protection officer who isn't even entirely aware of her mission, just that it's locked away in some corner of her mind. On the planet, she finds that the colony is safe and under the protection of another alien race, seemingly far more advanced than humanity, and must strike a balance between keeping good relations and discovering all she can... a task which gets complicated with many different competing interests.

I can't really find a lot to say about this book. I liked it, but it didn't blow me away. ( Read more... )

I enjoyed it well enough, though, and found one of the central sci-fi-y concepts interesting enough, that I might move on to the rest of the series in time.

Finished: Blindsight by Peter Watts (reread, as I always tend to do when going to cons)

Finished: A Hidden Place by Robert Charles Wilson

During the Depression, a young man goes to live with his aunt and uncle. A mysterious girl lives upstairs that isn't quite normal. And meanwhile, a lonely drifter wanders the roads, drawn by some impulse towards another part of the country.

Robert Charles Wilson is one of my favorite authors. But it took him a while to get there. Some of his earlier work I've read, I liked, but not as much as his more recent offerings. This book is his first novel.... so I approached it with both curiosity and a little trepidation. First novels are often a little rough. ( Read more... )

So two stars, only okay. But if this is your first experience with the author, check out some of his later work.

November Book Foo 2/2

Finished: Slum Online by Hiroshi Sakurazaka
A college student has a secret double life, playing in a multiplayer fighting game online. He wants to become the very best, and sometimes that quest means that school, his new girlfriend, and other concerns must fall by the wayside. Also catching his interest is the growing legend of a mysterious character challenging, and winning against, the best players in the game, in the unranked matches outside of the arena.

I'm not sure I'd consider this a science fiction novel. Yes, it deals with technology and how it impacts the world and people in it, but none of the technology is noticeably beyond anything we have now... or, for that matter, anything we've had for the past fifteen years, before the book was published. ( Read more... )

The story's didn't blow me away or anything, and I'm not sure I'll even remember much about it in a year's time, but it was fun enough reading and better than I was expecting.

Finished: Necrotech by K.C. Alexander

A cybernetics-enhanced mercenary wakes up with no memory of the past few months, in an unknown facility, and as a dangerous situation is about to erupt that costs the
life of her girlfriend. While trying to piece things together, she finds that her own reputation is in the toilet and has to do her best to uncover what happened.

Disclaimer: I received this book for free through a giveaway on Goodreads. I don't think it affected my review.

Okay, this is a book in the subgenre of cyberpunk. And I should probably state up front that I have a bit of a love-hate relationship with Cyberpunk. I love the technological milieu, the general idea of it, but a few of the tropes I really don't care for at all. Some merely need to be done well, others I outright dislike.

It's also a genre that's well past its prime. But that actually gives me hope, because, my reasoning goes, a new book might avoid some of the pitfalls and overdone aspects of the genre. So, when I first heard about this book, I was excited to try it.

Unfortunately, it still hit a few too many of my cyberpunk "hates." ( Read more... )

I'd almost give it a one star, but I think everything else is just good enough that I'd push it up to two. I won't hold it against the author for future books, but I probably won't read any more in this series either (which is a bit of a shame because it did leave in a place that I kinda wanted to see where it would go from there).

Finished: Dawn (Legends of the Galactic Heroes #1) by Yoshiki Tanaka

Mankind has spread out through space, but there's still war, conflicts involving thousands of ships and millions of lives. On one side is the Galactic Empire, an oppressive
regime that is milding in its old age. On the other, is the Free Planets Alliance, which has good intentions but often hampered by bureaucracy and the political machinations of those elected to power. Each side has one genius general, but they must work with what they're given.

This is apparently a rather famous Japanese SF military SF series, in no small part due to the fact that there's an anime adaptation. However, I should point out that I've never seen that adaptation, and it plays no role in my own perceptions.( Read more... )

All in all, I didn't hate it, I didn't particularly like it, it was just okay. It doesn't end with much of a conclusion, because it's only volume 1 in a long series, but I doubt I'll continue with any more of it unless I happened to get it in a bundle of ebooks, like I got this one.

Finished: The Promise of the Child by Tom Toner

It's the 147th century and mankind has divided, or prismed, into many different subspecies, with radically different looks and cultures and, in many cases, in conflict with one another. At the top of the heap are the Aramanthine, near-immortals with almost unimaginable levels of technology that they use to rule over many of the others, although when a new challenger to their throne appears, they're thrown into conflict. Meanwhile an average citizen living his life gets into a situation where he may need to leave it behind and live as a fugitive. There's also a mysterious device that may change everything. Other stuff also happens.

This is an incredibly ambitious book, particularly for an author's first novel. And I really, really wanted to like it.( Read more... )

it doesn't really measure up to any more than two stars. I doubt I'll be reading the sequel. But what the author did well impressed me enough that I am willing to try him again if he writes something unrelated. There's a lot of talent here, I think it just needs to be channeled a little better.

Finished: The Scar by China Mieville

Fleeing from political dangers in her home of New Crobuzon, Bellis Coldwine embarks on an ocean voyage... and her ship is soon taken by pirates, the passengers forced to join a floating pirate city with a daring agenda. For some of those aboard, it means freedom, for others it means exploring the frontiers of magic and science, but Bellis wants to go home, eventually, and that's the one thing denied to her.

This isn't quite a sequel to Perdido Street Station, although it takes place a few months after and the events in the book are mentioned briefly. The main character, Bellis, doesn't even rightly appear in the first book (although she is mentioned once as some backstory of one of the main characters is explored, and that connection is part of the reason for her journey). It's merely another book in the world.

And what a world. ( Read more... )

I think that's a big part of why I'll give it four stars, even though there are some significant things I enjoyed more in the first book. I think Bas-Lag may actually be my favorite fantasy world (at least, leaving out things like superhero universes and sci-fi-where-the-science-is-pretty-unbelieveable-but-it's-fun-anyway).

Finished: Feedback by Mira Grant

Decades after zombies began rising from the dead and changing everything, there's a Presidential election, and one of the candidates hires a blog team to follow them, only they uncover a conspiracy involving zombies. No, not the Masons, that's Feed. This is another team, following another candidate, at the same time.

Sometimes when an author realizes they've got a world people enjoy, they'll do this thing, where they don't quite have it in them to do a sequel (which might involve answering questions about the fates of characters they don't want to commit to), but instead decide that some minor character or group in the first book (or occasionally just similar to the first book) has had their own amazing adventure, parallel to the original one.

It rarely works out, in my opinion. ( Read more... )

So, yeah, enjoyed, just not super impressed. But my issues with the book are not nearly big enough to make me less interested in more stories set in this world (unless of course, the next book is called "Deadline Crunch!" and followed by "Blackout Drunk" each cynically following unnecessary side-stories that took place during the other novels in the original Newsflesh trilogy that we never heard about).


Finished: On Basilisk Station by David Weber

Honor Harrington is a competent new commanding officer... but sometimes that can work against you. When her performance in a training exercise embarrasses the brass, she's sent to Basilisk Station, the dumping ground for the officers the Navy wants to punish or needs out of sight. Worse, her commanding officer there leaves the entire system in her care. Understaffed for a job nobody else seems to care about, and with a crew that resents her for getting into this situation, not to mention plots by a neighboring civilization she's not even aware of, the odds are stacked against her, but Honor still must do her duty to the best of her ability.

This is fairly standard military SF, with a world tuned to make space battles more like naval battles were in the old days.( Read more... )

Wasn't blown away, but I had some fun with it. The fact that I read it from the Baen Free Library (where Baen offers free ebook versions of many of the first installments of its titles, to try to attract new readers) made that even easier. I'm not rushing out to grab the next book in the series, but I might it check out at some point (especially since it, like this one, is also free on Baen's website).

Finished: Warchild by Karin Lowachee

After his parents are killed and he's taken by pirates, a young boy eventually manages to escape... right into the hands of sympathizers to the aliens at war with his people, who take him to the alien homeworld, where he grows up learning their culture. But once he's a teenager, he's sent on a spy mission to infiltrate a military ship from Earth, and finds that neither side might have the monopoly on truth and decency.

I've heard this novel described as being a bit in the mold of Ender's Game, and that's certainly accurate to a point, although the child in question is less super-genius and more average but put in situations he shouldn't be in. It's arguably YA, but it goes surprisingly dark at times ( Read more... )

The book was a first novel, and for that it is quite impressive. I'd put this in the high 3-stars category already, but I do tend to be a bit more generous to first novels so I'll bump it up to a four. I'd read more of Lowachee's work.

Currently reading (or finished and haven't quite done a review yet): Red Rising by Pierce Brown, The Noise Within by Ian Whates, and Phantasm Japan (short stories). And, it's in transit but when it shows up, A Closed and Common Orbit by Becky Chambers.