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This is the first of Karen Traviss Star Wars books dealing with the chaps in white armour. They are all clones of the same person, grown to maturity in 12 years and trained by a Mandalorian drill sergeant, so you might expect them to be very similar to each other, but withing the first page Ms Traviss has four very individual characters on the page, Niner, Fi, Atin and Darman. This particular squad of commandos is comprised of surviving leftovers of other squads following a devastating battle (in the Clone Wars timeline), so rather than being trusted teammates, they are still getting used to each other. They have been tasked with destroying a separatist bioweapon. Darman is separated from the rest and meets a very inexperienced Jedi Padawan, Etain Tur-Mukan. A bond begins to develop (definitely a no-no as far as their bosses are concerned) and they are separated at the end. I don't usually read tie-in fiction, but I've loved Karen Traviss' other books so so reading this was a no-brainer and I was not disappointed. She gets under the skin of the squaddies and presents fully rounded characters as well a breakneck action. Highly recommended.
Audiobook read by Adam SimsSpoilers ahead...
George Orr is a dreamer. Unfortunately (for him) when he dreams his dreams come true. Reality, past and present, changes. Scared of what he can do, he takes to drugs to suppress his dreams and is caught out. Rather than go to jail, he has to undertake therapy sessions with a psychiatrist, Dr Haber, who is, at first sceptical about George's claims that his dreams are 'effective', but experiences those changes for himself when George dreams during a therapy session. Haber begins to use George's dreams to change the world for the better, but though he makes suggestions to Geirge (under hypnosis) he finds that George's dreams achieve the ends he was hoping for, but in a variety of terrible ways. Habers suggestion that George alters the worlds overpopulation problem results in a (past) plague which eliminated billions of humans. Peace on Earth results in all nations uniting to battle against aliens on the moon. Despite this, Haber continues, gradually upgrading his own position until eventually he's the de facto ruler of the world. Meanwhile George goes to lawyer Heather Lelache for help in getting away from Haber and in various realities the two become friends, then lovers until, in one reality-change, Heather never existed. Dreams and reality become very confused. George experiences too many past lives to know what's real and what's not, but eventually succeeds in losing the ability to dream effectively. Unfortunately, Dr Haber does not fare so well. The book ends where Heather - a different Heather but still recognisable - comes back into George's life. Written in 1971, this was Hugo and Nebula nominated and won the Locus Award for Best Novel. I wasn't sure about it at first but I got drawn in gradually as George's dreams progressed. The story questions the nature of reality, and the dangers (use and abuse) of power. It's been republished in the Gollancz Materworks series.
Darrow is a young, daredevil hell-diver, a Red living underground, and working in the mines of Mars. He has friends and he's happily married to the love of his life and unwilling to disturb the status quo. They are working to terraform the planet for the future of humanity. It's a harsh life, but he's content, not really recognising that the Reds exist as slaves. His wife rebels and is executed by their overlords - the Golds, and he discovers it's all been a lie, Mars has been successfully terraformed for generations. There's a whole society living on the surface, and the Golds rule it. Taken in by rebels he's transformed into the very thing he now hates, a Gold, and sent up above to infiltrate Gold society and bring it down from the inside. This first book follows him through the academy where training is more or less kill or be killed. Only the tough survive to earn placements in the great houses. Darrow must rise to lead his squad, and then they must beat the other squads, except that's not what happens. Darrow goes rogue, building his own team from the dregs and deserters from the others. Expect grief, violence, betrayal, unexpected loyalty, and more violence. Tim Gerard Reynolds does a good job on the narration.
Audiobook. This is a standalone which follows on from A Long Way to a Small Angry Planet. Lovelace, the ship-board AI in the first book has, due to circumstances, been lodged in a humanoid artificial body (which she calls the Kit) and is staying, planet-bound, with an engineer called Pepper, trying to fit in (on account of if the authorities discover what she is, she’ll be terminated. Much of this is Lovelace, now called Sidra, trying to make sense of her new world and the people (some human, some alien) in it. There’s a second story, set in the past about a girl called Jane 24 who (at the beginning) is a slave in a scrap reclamation factory with a load of other Janes, perhaps bred for the life. When Jane 24 escapes she finds herself in a hostile world of scrap-heaps, threatened by feral dogs, and only survives because she stumbles across a derelict abandoned shuttle which still has a functional AI, Owl. Owl educates and raises Jane 24 for years, all the time in the hope that Jane can find the right components in the scrap-dump to make the shuttle functional again. Of the two stories I much prefer that of Jane 24 to Sidra
This book is delicious. I couldn’t put it down. Charlie Fitzer, a down-on-his-luck substitute teacher, inherits his estranged uncle’s supervillain business, complete with volcanic island lair, minions, and rivals who want him dead. Oh, yes, and there are also sentient dolphins (currently in the middle of a labour dispute) and computer-savvy cats. He needs to hit the ground running if he’s going to hold his own against an organisation of supervillains who want his billions. Who can he trust, his uncle’s (now his) personal assistant, his uncle’s chief rival, or his cat? This is lighthearted, amusingly quirky, and a fun read despite the body count, the explosions and the assassination attempts. Due for publication in September I had an e-arc from Netgalley. All I can say is place your advance order now. This is not to be missed. 
The colony ship, Ragtime docks in the Lagos system to bring a thousand sleeping colonists to settle a new planet, but something is wrong, some of the passengers have been brutally murdered and their bodies chopped to pieces. What’s more, when all the body parts are reassembled, not everyone is accounted for. Shell is nominally in charge of the ship, though the AI is supposed to do all the heavy lifting. Fin is an investigator sent from the planet with his humanoid robot AI, Salvo. Nothing is quite what it seems, especially with the AI, and this is basically a murder-mystery in space. I enjoyed it while I was reading it, but quickly forgot about it afterwards. I liked Tade’s Rosewater better.
The moon has no law except contract law. Think Game of Thrones meets the Expanse, set on the moon where there are hundreds of ways to die or be killed, and every breath. every sip of water must be paid for. Those with more money live lower down away from the surface radiation. The poorer ones live closer to the surface, selling their piss for the elements it contains. After two years on the Moon there’s no option to return to Earth – loss of bone density and Earth’s gravity would be fatal. It’s a brutal world with five main family consortiums, known as dragons, rivalling each other for mining resources to sell back to under-resourced Earth. The Corta family (think Starks without the sympathy vote) are locked in commercial battle with the McKenzies (Lannisters with a huge commercial empire). There are also Vorontsovs, Asamoahs and Suns who are not front and centre in this book but whose interlaced presence is significant. There aren’t really any sympathetic characters to root for, though some are slightly more sympathetic than others. Marina Calzaghe is new to the Moon - a Joe Moonbeam. The Corta matriarch, Adriana, worked her way up from humble beginnings to found a dynasty. Her children and grandchildren work together, but there are family rivalries as she ages. Expect grim, gritty reality with believable science and engineering, a fair amount of explicit sex, assassinations, enormous extractors separating rare earth metals from lunar regolith, dynastic marriages, deadly rivalry, and the Moon itself, always ready to kill with hard vacuum, radiation or too much dust. The hard-science worldfbuilding is rich and detailed. The pace picks up at the end, so expect a breathless finish and lots of dangling plot to lead on to the next book. There are a lot of characters and you feel as though there will be an exam at the end to make sure you’ve kept track of them all. There are a lot of words I didn’t understand – derived from Portuguese, Korean, Arabic, Ashanti, Chinese, and Yoruba amongst other languages, and then – right at the end – a glossary where it does no good at all when you’re reading on kindle. At least have the grace to put it at the beginning, so the reader KNOWS it’s there and can refer if necessary. That did piss me off a bit when I’d struggled through the book trying to intuit the words in context. Am I going to read on? Not right away. I need something lighter next, but I might come back to it. I understand there’s a TV series in the offing which should be good.
In the second Bobiverse book there are now many Bobs, cloned from the first, right down to the 8th generation and growing. We follow a braided storyline of Bob intelligences out on their own, sentient spaceships seeking out human-habitable planets - but still in touch with each other. They all have different names and slightly different personalities., though Original Bob is still in the mix alongside Bill, Ryker and Howard. They are multiplying exponentially and choosing their own names (hence Loki and Thor as well). Original Bob has a first contact situation on his hands, an emerging non-human people with roughly stone-age technology. There’s one Bob on earth, trying to coordinated the exodus to the new worlds on Bob-printed ships (with Bob pilots). Another Bob is on one of the new colony worlds, rapidly falling in love with a human woman, which doesn’t seem likely to end well. There are terrorists trying to wipe out their own species, and then an even bigger threat. There’s a race of aliens destroying planets for resources and food and they are heading our way. The Bobs have to organise, invent and develop.It finishes rather abruptly, though not on a cliffhanger, but the third book looks as if it takes up exactly where this one leaves off. The Ray Porter narration is excellent.
Re-read via Audible.
Ivan Vorpatril, often referred to as 'that idiot Ivan' is not an idiot at all. From childhood there was a distict possibility that if anything happened to the young Emperor Gregor, Ivan would be in the running for the job, something that Ivan has never wanted and has actively taken steps to avoid. As a military man, he's gone to great pains not to outshine his peers in case he got promoted to a rank that might make him a recognisable figure in Barrayaran's internecine politics. As an admiral's aide-de-camp, Ivan, quietly efficient, has risen up the ladder as far as he wants to go. So when, on an inspection tour with the admiral, Byerly Vorrutyer, town clown on the surface but also covertly working for Imperial security, talks Ivan into keeping an eye on a refugee from Jackson's Hole, Ivan's quietly fostered invisibility is thrown out of the window, Involved with Tej and her blue gene-altered sister, Rish, one thing leads to another, Bigtime. This is a marry-a-stranger-fall-in-love-later plot so beloved of historical novelists, but in this case it's delightfully accomplished. Most of the characters we usually concentrate on in Vorkosigan novels, notably Miles himself and his illustrious parents, take a back seat, or no seat at all in this book. Instead, we have Ivan himself, his formidable widowed mother, her lover Simon Ilyan, formerly ImpSec chief, now retired and getting bored, and Emperor Gregor. In addition, there's a whole host of new characters including Tej and her unscrupulous Jacksonian family.
My Whole Booklog 2022
Dec. 29th, 2022 01:26 am
1. John Scalzi: Fuzzy Nation
2. Lois McMaster Bujold: Paladin of Souls – Five Gods #2
3. Simon Beaufort: Deadly Inheritance – Sir Geoffrey Mappestone #6
4. Genevieve Cogman The Untold Story – Invisible Library #8
5. Una McCormac: Star Trek Picard: The Last Best Hope
6. Terry Pratchett: Mort – Discworld #4
7. S J Bennett: The Windsor Knot
8. Terry Pratchett: Night Watch – Discworld #29
9. Terry Pratchett: Equal Rites – Discworld #3
10. Jacey Bedford: The Amber Crown
11. Adrian Tchaikovsky: Elder Race
12. Sebastien de Castell: Tales of the Greatcoats – Greatcoats #5
13. John Scalzi: The Dispatcher – The Dispatcher #1
14. John Scalzi: Murder by Other Means – The Dispatcher #2
15. Terry Pratchett: Wyrd Sisters – Discworld #6
16. Meagan Spooner: Sherwood
17. Peng Shepherd: The Cartographers
18. Sean Lusk: The Second Sight of Zachary Cloudsley
19. Anna Harrington: A Relentless Rake
20. John Scalzi: The Kaiju Preservation Society
21. Jodi Taylor: A Catalogue of Catastrophe – St Mary's #13
22. Lianne Dillsworth: Theatre of Marvels
23. Elizabeth Vaughan: Warprize – Chronicles of the Warprize #1
24. Bernard Cornwell: The Winter King – Warlord Chronicles #1
25. Olivie Blake: The Atlas Six – Alexandrian Society #1
26. Davies, Russell T and Cook, Benjamin: The Writer's Tale: The Final Chapter
27. Martha Wells: Artificial Condition – Murderbot Diaries #2
28. Sophie Irwin: A Lady’s Guide to Fortune Hunting
29. Guy Gavriel Kay: Tigana
30. Ed McDonald: Daughter of Redwinter - Redwinter Chronicles #1
31. Amy Rose Bennett: Up all Night with a Good Duke
32. T. Kingfisher: Nettle and Bone
33. Lavie Tidhar: The Escapement
34. Brandon Sanderson: Dawnshard – Stormlight Archive Novella
35. Sophia Holloway: Kingscastle
36. Diana Wynne Jones: Deep Secret – Magids #1
37. Diana Wynne Jones: The Merlin Conspiracy – Magids #2
38. Lois McMaster Bujold: Warrior’s Apprentice – Vorkosigan #3
39. Lois McMaster Bujold: Barrayar: Vorkosigan #2
40. Lois McMaster Bujold: The Vor game – Vorkosigan #5
41. Lois McMaster Bujold: Shards of Honour – Vorkosigan #1
42. Lois McMaster Bujold: Cetaganda – Vorkosigan
43. Lois McMaster Bujold: Komarr - Vorkosigan
44. Lois McMaster Bujold: Brothers in Arjms - Vorkosigan
45. Lois McMaster Bujold: Diplomatic Immunity – Vorkosigan
46. Lois McMaster Bujold: Borders of Infinity – Vorkosigan
47. Andy Weir: Project Hail Mary
48. Dennis E Taylor: We are Legion (We are Bob)
49. Lois McMaster Bujold: A Civil Campaign
50. Lois McMaster Bujold: Winterfair Gifts – Vorkosigan
51. Lois McMaster Bujold: Cryoburn - Vorkosigan
52. Ash Bishop: Intergalactic Exterminators Inc.
53. Jodi Ellen Malpas: One Night with the Duke – Belmore Square #1
54. Naomi Novik: The Last Graduate – Scholomance #2
55. Martha Wells: Rogue Protocol – Murderbot #3
56. Sebastien de Castell: The Fox and the Bowman
57. Liz Williams: Embertide – Fallow Sisters #3
58. Jess Kidd: The Night Ship
59. Terry Pratchett: Guards Guards – Discworld #8
60. Terry Pratchett: Small Gods – Discworld #11
61. Terry Pratchett: Soul Music – Discworld #16
62. Terry Pratchett: The Truth – Discworld #25
63. Karen Traviss: Mother Death – Nomad #2
64. Elizabeth Chadwick: The Conquest
65. Juliet E McKenna: The Green Man's Gift – Green Man #5
66. Jim C Hines: Terminal Uprising – Janitors of the Post-Apocalypse #2
67. T. Kingfisher: Paladin’s Strength – Saint of Steel #2 Audiobook
68. C.S.Forester: Mr. Midshipman Hornblower– Hornblower #1 Audiobook
69. T. Kingfisher: Paladin’s Grace – Saint of Steel #1 Audiobook
70. Lindsey Davis: Falco, the Complete BBC Radio Collection Audiobook
71. Jim Hines: Terminal Peace – Janitors of the Post Apocalypse #3
72. Jodi Taylor: About Time – Time Police #4
73. Jodi Taylor: A Catalogue of Catastrophe – St Mary’s #13
74. Jodi Taylor: The Toast of Time – St Mary’s 12.5 – Audiobook
75. Jodi Taylor: About Time – Time Police #4 – Audiobook
76. Lois McMaster Bujold: Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen – Vorkosiverse #17
77. Kevin Hearne: Carniepunk: The Demon Barker of Wheat Street – Iron Druid #4.4 Audiobook
78. T. KingfisherL Clockwork Boys
79. T. Kingfisher: The Wonder Engine
80. Jennifer Paxton: The Story of Medieval England from King Arthur to the Tudor Congest – Great Courses Series
81. Tanya Huff: Into the Broken Lands
82. Sarah Page: Mrs Wickham
83. T. Kingfisher: Swordheart
84. Jason Fung: The Obesity Code
85. Paul Cornell: The Witches of Lychford
86. Gilly Cooper: Riders
87. Jodi Taylor: The Very First Damn Thing – St Mary’s
88. Jodi Taylor: Santa Grint – Time Police short
89. Marshall Ryan Maresca: The Holver Alley Crew – Streets of Maradaine
90. Meredith Bond: Princess on the Run. – Royals and Rebels #2
This is a re-read via Audible, narrated by Grover Gardner, who does all of the Vorkosigan books. I have to be honest, I'm not that fond of his voice, but I love the books and I'm habituated to his reading. I have to be honest, though, this is not my favourite Vorkosigan book, but it does gently wrap up loose ends. and 'not my favourite' is relative. Ms Bujold is a terrific writer. This is the widowed Cordelia putting her life back together three years after Aral’s death. Miles is now the count, kept busy by his duties, his wife and his lively children. He features in this book only as a supporting character. Cordelia, Vicerine of Sergyar, and Oliver Jole, admiral of the Sergyar fleet, are front and centre. I barely noticed Jole in other books. I think he gets a mention, but we don’t understand his relationship with Aral and Cordelia until it’s examined in some detail here as a prelude to Cordelia and Jole’s relationship. You get the impression it’s the book Ms Bujold had to write. She gave Ivan his happy-ever-after in Captain Vorpatril’s Alliance and now she takes care of Cordelia whose Betan lifespan is very likely to allow her another fifty years, fifty years in which to raise a new family from frozen gametes. So will there ever be another Miles book? I would welcome one, but if there isn’t, the Vorkosiverse is safe. Needless to say, if you haven’t read any Vorkosigan books, this is not the place to start. Go back to the beginning and read Shards of Honour… and then all of the others in order. You won’t regret it.
Audiobook.
See the full review here: https://jacey.dreamwidth.org/703943.html
As usual with Jodi Taylor's St Marys and Time Police books this is beautifully read by Zara Ramm. She injects just the right amount of character voice for them all to be instantly recognisable It's only a few days since I read this on kindle, but I always enjoy revisiting Ms Taylor's books in the audio version. There's a lot going on in this book and so consuming it again as an audiobook, brought out some of the bits I'd missed first time around. Highly recommended in either audio or written version.
For a full review of the story see: https://jacey.dreamwidth.org/684676.htmlThiis is the audiobook, beautifully read by Zara Ramm. The naked gardening sequence is particularly funny and with hindsight the whole thing leads into A Catalogue of Catastrophe.
Audiobook re-read 25/10/22. Zara Ramm is an excellent reader, and the perfect voice for both Max and Markham as they begin their alternative time-tripping career. There are some loose threads at the end of this book, regarding Max's next move against the agency that has already tried to kill her three times, and the potential fate of Treadwell, not to mention Hyssop, who might just be not as bad as we think she is. I'm already looking forward to Book #14My full review of the book is here: https://jacey.dreamwidth.org/690592.html
I’m a big Jodi Taylor fan, so I pre-ordered this and started reading it as soon as it appeared in my Kindle. The Time Police books are a spin off from the St Marys sequence and there’s often crossover. The main characters are Luke Parrish, Jane Lockland and Matthew Farrell, Team 236, or Team Weird as they are often known. Matthew is the son of Max and Leon, from St Marys, which is where the crossover usually happens. In this book, we’re still in the fallout range from adventures at Site X (in ‘Hard Time,’ the second Time Police book). As I suspected from the two previous books, Henry Plimpton, Mr P., is proving to be a perpetual, ruthless antagonist. There’s the mystery of what happened to Jane’s parents, because the real story is not what her awful grandmother told her. A couple of murders at Time Police headquarters prove that there’s a traitor in their midst – which is a massive problem for Commander Hay, longsuffering head of the organisation. Added to all that there’s a will-they won’t-they thing going on between Jane and Lt Grint. Expect weirdness from Amelia Meiklejohn, now working for the Time Police rather than running away from them. This is delightful, though not the place to start if you’re new to the Time Police books. I suggest you read them in order – better still, start with the first St Mary’s book and pick them all up in order. Highly recommended.
Most of Earth’s humans have been turned feral by a Krakau plague, though the Krakau have generously managed to cure some of them to be used as cannon-fodder in the Alliance Prodryan war in space. Cured human, Marion Adamopolous, Mops for short, and her multi-species crew of janitors have become so much more than cleaners and plumbers. They are now officially in charge of the spaceship Pufferfish and are the leader of Earth’s space force of one. In this book they make a dangerous trip to see why the Jynx, inhabitants of the planet Tuxatl, have been able to drive off the dangerous alien Prodryans. Might there be something that Earth and the Alliance can use against the vicious conquerors? Mops herself is running out of time as she seems to be reverting to her previous feral state, leaving crew members to step up. Good job she’s trained them well.
Marion “Mops” Adamopoulos and her alien/human crew of ship-board janitors and sanitation specialists are more used to cleaning up plumbing disasters, but when a freak occurrence killed all the crew but the janitorial team, it put them in charge of a space-ship, the EMCS Pufferfish (i.e. they stole it). Humans are very much second-class citizens after all humans on Earth turned feral following a terrible plague, but some (like Mops) have been ‘cured’ and allowed to take up menial positions in the Krakau space fleets, or have become cannon-fodder in the ongoing hostilities between the Ktakau and the Prodryans. Mops and her crew have to go to Earth to see if they can discover the source of the plague, and discover a team of librarians made up of plague resistant humans. Perhaps humanity isn’t quite dead yet. This is the middle book of a trilogy (I have the last one lined up already) and Mr Hines doesn’t ease you into it gently by backtracking on the story in the first book. You need to be up-to-speed with the characters. I wouldn’t recommend reading this one before the first (Terminal Alliance), but it’s well paced and has some startling revelation.
This is the second Nomad book, following on from 'The Best of Us'. Most of earth has been hit by die back - a virus that is killing major food crops. A few countries have isolated to avoid it, but many (America and Europe in particular) have been turned into a dead wasteland. Asia is one of the survivors (so far), as is Britain.
Ainatio, the tech/research company located in the American wilderness next to the tiny self-sufficient town of Kill Line, has managed to launch a ship full of settlers in cryo-suspension towards a far off planet, Opis, where Solomon the ethical autonomous AI and his bots have set up a basic colony fit for humans. Solomon has hitherto been able to flit (virtually) between Earth and Opis, but the FTL link has now been lost and Sol is on Earth. The initial ship has already arrived. The ship launched in the first book has 45 years to go and the third ship is being prepped to take a third batch of settlers, including the Kill Line residents, but they are a few months short of being able to launch.
The same human characters we met in the first book are upfront again. Chiefly these are three military types: Chris the rough-around-the-edges leader of a ragtag bunch of survivors who are camped close to Kill Line. Marc, tough soldier with connections to British Intelligence, and Trinder, in charge of Ainatio Security. On Opis the colony set-up crew, led by Captain Bridget Ingram, are shocked by the arrival of some crow-like aliens whose tech is amazingly advanced, as is their ability to learn English. The Ainatio folks back on Earth are hamstrung by the arrival of a Korean investigative team from the Alliance of Asian-Pacific States, led by Tim Pham, supposedly hunting the origins of another die-back strain, but in reality sniffing around for FTL tech. The Koreans would also destroy Solomon if they knew that he was sentient.
The narrative swings between Earth and Opis, where news of not-so-friendly-aliens puts the small colony on alert. There are ethical questions throughout as things develop and the fragile peace between Tim Pham and Ainatio is stretched to breaking point. There's a massive technological advance (from the aliens) which is a major game changer. Are our guys the good guys or the bad? It all depends on your point of view. I love Karen's writing, the way she manages to include a lot of logistics while making it tense and exciting. I'm so looking forward to the third book, 'Here we Stand.'
Russ Wesley accidentally gets mixed up with a bunch on intergalactic exterminators who are so impressed by his marksmanship that they insist he joins them. His friend Nina tags along and suddenly she and Russ are rivals for the one available place on the team. The book is quirky and entertaining, and there's some imaginative worldbuilding and a cool robot, but I admit I almost gave up at around 65%, though I persevered and it finished well.
Copy provided by Netgalley.
Audiobook, read by Grover Gardner.
Miles is a happily married man, still the Emperor's 'auditor' (troubleshooter). He is sent to a conference on cryonics by Emperor Gregor because a cryo company wants to set up in Barrayaran territory and there's something 'off' which neither the Emperor nor Miles can identify. Due to a botched kidnapping attempt Miles is half-drugged and lost amongst thousands of cryo pods. He meets a young street kid (Gene or Jean - I was listening and not reading and I can't remember the spelling from the last time I read the book) who helps him to safety in a commune of street people banded together in a remarkably well organised abandoned building. Miles begins to discover corruption at the heart of the cryo business. This book is particularly notable for something momentous and life-changing right at the very end, and the short pieces in the Epilogue. Some of those make me cry.
Audiobook, read by Grover Gardner.
In A Civil Campaign Miles won Ekaterin's heart and this is the novella of the wedding, set at mid winter in the snow. It's told from the point of view of Armsman Roic Miles new man - a cross between a bodyguard, valet and carer. Roic has never been offworld, so a string of offworld wedding guests comes as quite a shock, especially the eight feet tall Sergeant Taura, genetically engineered super-soldier, with claws long enough to tear a man's throat out. When Ekaterin falls ill, it's Taura and Roic who discover the plot to poison her. Though this is a slight, novella-length story it contains a good mystery and brings together all Miles friends and comrades from Barrayar and from the Dendarii Mercenaries. It more-or-less rounds off Taura's story arc very nicely and introduces Roic who will be with Miles for future adventures.
In the book Komarr, Miles met Ekaterin Vorsoisson, a widow by the end of the book, and fell deeply in love. Even though she was about to leave her husband, it's not seemly for Miles to court her so soon after her husband's death. Back on Barrayar he tries courting by stealth, keeping up contact but never admitting his feelings to her (though it seems as though he tells everyone else). Others are not so reticent and several bachelors come sniffing around the comely widow. As usual Miles manages to tie himself up in knots and this turns into a comedy of manner which is more like Georgette Heyer in space than one of Miles' usual full-on outings. His brother Mark turns up with one of the Koudelka girls, a scientist and a case full of butter-bugs, and installs a lab in the basement of Vorkosigan House. The scene is set for comedic disaster when the butter-bugs escape in the middle of the dinner party Miles has arranged to impress Ekaterin. Could anything else go wrong? Well, yes, quite a bit really, but like any good Georgette Heyer it all turns out right in the end. This is one of my favourite Bujolds. I read it years ago in dead tree format so this is a re-listen. Excellent.
(And yes I know that if that's supposed to be Miles and Ekaterin on the cover, Miles must be wearing stilts.)
Audiobook narrated by Ray Porter.
Bob sells his tech company, so comes into some money. He signs up to have his head cryo-frozen when he dies, figuring it will be a long time yet. Unfortunately he gets hit by a car and wakes up (or is woken) in a century ruled by the religious right. Instead of being restored into a new body, a copy of him is uploaded into a spacecraft capable of replicating itself from material mined from asteroids. His mission is to find a new home for what's left of Earth's population (post climate change) and in order to do that he has to spawn multiple Bobs in multiple new ships. But Bob is no mere machine, and he sets about improving his technology. Before he can find a new home for humanity he has to escape the ships from Brazil, intent on destroying him.
I found this because I'd enjoyed Ray Porter's narration of Project Hail Mary and went looking to see what else he'd narrated. This is quirky and fun and Mr Porter narrates it beautifully.
When Astrophage – a tiny alien lifeform – begins to swarm, effectively reducing the power of the sun, all the spacefaring countries on earth band together to build the Hail Mary to make a desperate one-way trip to Tau Ceti, the only star in the near galaxy that seems unaffected. It’s a suicide mission to try to prevent an extinction-level threat to humanity. Three astronauts are placed in a medically induced coma to sleep off the four years of the journey. It’s not without its perils. Ryland Grace, a biologist formerly in academia, but now a high school science teacher, awakes unable to move, speak, or remember and gradually works out where he is and what is mission is. Unfortunately, his two crew-mates have died at some time during the journey, so Grace is on his own. Gradually he begins to recall memories of events which led up to him being an astronaut. Fortunately, Grace is smart. Just like Andy Weir’s The Martian, he has to science-the-shit out of the situation. That’s where the comparison with The Martian ends, because it turns out that Grace is not alone. Enter Rocky, an honest to goodness alien, vaguely spider-like in shape (but bigger) with five arms and a rocky carapace. The alien communicates by musical chords. He (it) perceives the world around him with a kind of sonar and has no eyes, but gradually, even though they can’t survive in each other’s habitat/atmosphere, the two achieve a level of understanding and friendship. Rocky - the last survivor of his own mission to save his species from the Astrophage, turns out to be a brilliant engineer. There’s a lot of fascinating science in this book. I’m no scientist, but I’m assuming it’s more or less accurate. The relationship between Grace and Rocky is fascinating, and the solution to the Astrophage problem will save both their worlds. I consumed this via Audible. The narrator, Ray Porter, is excellent.
This is a re-read via Audible, read by Grover Gardner.
Borders of Infinity is a single book with framing device encompassing three Vorkosigan short stories/novellas: The Mountains of Mourning, Borders of Infinity, and Labyrinth. In the Mountains of Mourning, Miles, then only twenty, must solve the murder of a baby in the superstitious back-country of Vorkisigan Surleau where despite all efforts to stamp out the killing of 'mutie' babies at birth, the old practice still happens. Miles is the man for the job since at four feet six with a twisted spine, he looks like a mutie himself. In Borders of Infinity Miles gets himself incarcertaed in a Cetagandan prison camp in order to rescue one specific person, and ends up rescuing a few thousand. In Labyrinth, Miles and the Dendarii are on a mission to Jackson's Whole to liberate a genetic engineer and his tissue samples which have been stored in the calf muscle of super-soldier, Taura, eight feet tall with fangs.
This is a re-read via Audible, read by Grover Gardner.
Miles is on his honeymoon with Ekaterin while their two children are 'cooking' in a uterine replicator back home. They are diverted to Graf Station in Quaddie Space by Emperor Gregor, to sort out a diplomatic standoff between a rich merchant ship of Barrayarans and the quaddies, a gen-engineered race designed for nul-gravity. They have four arms instead of two arms and two legs. Miles reunites with Bel Thorne, Betan hermaphrodaite and former Dendarii mercenary, who is now in charge of running the station. After an attempt on his life, Miles discovers that one of the passengers on the Barrayaran ship has a thousand uterine replicators which are somehow tied into the Cetagandan gene bank. And there's the possibility of a Cetagandan super-plague.
This is a re-read via Audible, read by Grover Gardner.
While in his Admiral Naismith guise with the Dendarii Mercenaries, Miles spends some time on Earth swapping between his two identities, trying to work with the head of Imperial Security on Earth, Dub Galeni. he's surprised to find his cousin Ivan, who is assigned to the Diplomatic Corps. Trying to find out what's happened to an expected payment for the Dendarii, Miles suspects someone is embezzling funds. What he doesn't expect is that there's a Komarran plot to kidnap him and replace him with a clone--a clone that Miles believes is his brother and therefore must be saved.
Komarr was conquered by Barrayar before Miles was born. It's of strategic importance since it guards the only wormhole which leads to Barrayar. The planet itself is inhospitable to humankind and the population lives beneath a series of domes. When part of the solar array that provides power for the planet's terraforming project is destroyed, Miles, newly appointed Imperial Auditor, and Auditor Vorthys, engineering specialist, are sent to assess the situation. They stay at the home of Vorthys' neice, Ekaterin Vorsoisson, her nine year old son, Nikki, and her husband, Tien, a mid-level beaurocrat who works for the terraforming project. Ekaterin's marriage is crumbling and it turns out that her husband, up to his ears in debt, has been taking bribes from a bunch of Komarran patriots who've been engineering a wormhole collapser, intending to isolate Barrayar forever. Tien tries to inform against the terrorists, but his plan goes awry and he dies when he is tied up outside with his breath mask running out of oxygen. The conspirators kidnap Ekaterin and Vothys' wife while trying to use their weapon (which would be likely to blow them up).. Ekaterin manages to destroy it. Miles has been gently falling in love with Ekaterin thoughout the book, but decides to bide his time (which leads directly to the next book, A Civil Campaign). I've been re-listening to the Vorkosigan books via Audible (not necessarily in the correct order) and thoroughly enjoying them.
This is a re-read via Audible, read by Grover Gardner.
Miles and his cousin Ivan are sent to Cetaganda to represent Barrayar at the funeral of the haut-Empress, who has died of natural causes. On arrival, Miles and Ivan's shuttle is misdirected to a deserted service bay and a stranger accosts them, leaving behind a strange rod after being driven off. Later when the dead empress' servant, Ba Lura, is found murdered at the foot of the funeral bier, Miles recognises the Ba as their aggressor. Thus begins a complicated plot. Miles meets the neautiful haut Rian Degtiar, one of the haut ladies who control the Cetagandian gene bank. The strange rod, which Miles returns to her, is the key to the bank, but it turns out that it's a fake. Miles takes on the job of finding the original rather than handing the problem over to the authorities. He suspects one of the governors of Cetaganda's outlying colonies, though it turns out to be not the one he thought it was. After a few twists and turns, three 'pranks' - which could have proved fatal - a kidnapping and a capture, Miles solves the problem. The emperor awards Miles the Order of Merit, but politely suggests he should leave Cetaganda immediately before he causes any more mayhem. Haut Rian Degtiar becomes the next empress.
This is a re-read via Audible, read by Grover Gardner
I reviewed the plot before, in great detail, way back in 2009. Though set 200 years after the book about the quaddies (Falling Free) this is the first Vorkosigan book, in which Aral Vorkosigan meets and falls for Cordelia Naismith while they are on opposite side in a war. Complications ensue and are surmounted. Both Cordelia and Aral find things to dislike about their own side and, indeed, Cordelia is almost killed with kindness, but it all resolves beautifully. This is the first Vorkosigan book Ms Bujold wrote and it sets the scene well for future books.
Grover Gardner doesn't have the kind of voice that I like. It's a bit hard, but he reads well and I've become habituated to his readings of all the Vorkosigan books.
Audio book read by Grover Gardner.
Miles Vorkosigan, thanks to a soltoxin attack on his mother when he was still in utero, is less than five feet tall with brittle bones. He's managed to complete his training at the Barrayaran military academy and graduate as an newly fledged ensign, despite his physical limitations. He's determined to keep his nose clean and get through a six month assignment to an arctic training camp as a weather-man, after which he's been promised a transfer to Barrayar's newest battleship. Unfortunately, he barely lasts half that time before he crosses the somewhat unhinged base commander and ends up almost dying of frostbite and accused of mutiny. They can't simply chuck him out of the service. He is, after all, the emperor Gregor's cousin and son of Aral Vorkosigan, legendary military commander, one time regent for the emperor and now prime minister. So, Simon Illyan, head of security sends him off on a reconnaisance mission as a junior officer. Of course, being Miles Vorkosigan, small of stature but large of intellect and imagination, Miles ends up out on his own, finding the emperor, who has gone AWOL from Barrayar, and then losing him again. He reconnects with Elena Bothari and the Dendarii Mercenaries, an outfit he accidentally created in his Admiral Naismith guise. There are the usual Miles mistakes combined with his twisty plan to rescue the emperor and, at the same time, stop a war. This is another high-energy space romp with Miles being his usual hyper self. Immensely enjoyable. Highly recommended.
Audiobook read by Grover Gardner
This is a re-read or rather a re-listen to the audible version. I read this book many years ago, and loved it. On reviewing it for the second time I still love it. In the previous book, Shards of Honour, Captain Cordelia Naismith met and fell in love with enemy officer Admiral Aral Vorkosigan. Against all odds they married, but their happy ever after gets a bit complicated in Barrayar. It's a follow-up book, but written out of chronological order and now it forms the second half of the omnibus volume Cordelia's Honour which combines the first two books. Cordelia has to get to grips with Barrayaran customs and politics which are lodged firmly in 18th century Earth. Barrayar has an emperor and a council of counts who each rule their own slice of the planet. They have only recently come out of the Time of Isolation, when access to the rest of the human-settled planets was lost via their unstable wormhole. Aral's father Piotr, the current count, remembers the time he went into battle on horseback, not in a wormhole-capable space ship.
The current emperor is dying. His son, Prince Serg, a thoroughly reprihensible character, was killed in Shards of Honour, so the heir to the Empire is Serg's son, the five year old Gregor Vorbarra. Arral, rather than the retirement-into-obscurity he had planned with Cordelia, is called on to become regent, thus annoying other counts, particularly Vordarian who feels his own bloodline makes him at least Aral's equal. There are a couple of attempts on Aral's life, the second one involving soltoxin gas, which misses Aral but catches Cordelia and, unfortunately, her unborn child. The soltoxin and its antidote damage the foetus, but Cordelia is determined the baby will have every chance at life. Unfortunately the damage is likely to affect the child's skeletal development, but Cordelia insists on decanting the child into a hi-tech uterine replicator for experimental therapy. The rub here is that all of Barrayar, and especially Aral's father, Piotr, have a morbid fear of producing mutants. In Barrayar the ideal is to have six foot militaristic sons and this baby has no chance of growing up as Barrayar's ideal son. In fact, having been unable to persuade Cordelia to have a termination, Piotr actually tries to have the baby killed while still in his unerine replicator. And then there's a military coup, later known as Vordarian's Pretendership. Aral and Cordelia and those who are loyal to them must protect the young Gregor and oust Vordarian.
In many ways this is a set-up book for all the later Vorkosigan novels. We meet Gregor, the fledgling emperor, Miles and his cousin Ivan (often referred to as 'that idiot Ivan' in later books) are born. We meet a cast of secondary characters, some from the first book, Bothari and Kou, and some new such as Drou and Alice Vorpatril, Ivan's mother. Even though Miles isn't born (recovered form his replicator) until almost the end of the book, stunted and brittle-boned, we can alrady see future clues as to his character. I would usually say start reading from the beginning of the series, but Bujold is such a skilled writer that this book fits neatly into the Vorkosigan sequence, but can easily be read as a standalone. Highly recommended.
Audio book re-listen. Narratyed by Grover Gardner
I shouldn't have... I really shouldn't have. For a start I didn't have time and there's the fact that I've already read it and there are so many other books waiting for my attention... But I went along to Audible and...well it was there. Even so I could have just downloaded it and kept it for later... but I listened to the first sentence and I was hooked.
Yes, I've read this before but it remains one of my favourite Miles Vorkosigan books and a perfect introduction to the maddening, hyperactive, totally brilliant little runt. Miles is 17, trying to get into the Barrayaran military academy on his own merits, which means competing against, or training with, the perfect physical specimens who are ideal for the Barrayaran war machine. Miles, barely four feet six inches tall, crook-backed and brittle boned due to a Soltoxin gas attack on his mother while she was pregnant with him, doesn't stand a chance of passing the physical, but he's petitioned for his test results to be aggregated, so if he can score close to 100% on the written, he's in. All he's got to do is get round the obstacle course without breaking anything.
He falls at the first hurdle, literally, and washes out with two broken legs.
So his parents send him off-world to visit his Betan grandmother with the faithful (if psychopathic) Sgt Bothari and Bothari's daughter, Elena, in attendance.
You've just got to love Miles. Things HAPPEN to him... or happen because of him. Or both. Firstly he picks up a couple of strays, Baz, a Barrayaran deserter on the skids, and Arde Mayhew a jump ship pilot who is desperately trying to preserve the last working jump ship that his implant will fly. Miles picks up the same said jump ship... on an impulse to help Mayhew keep flying. Once he's got a ship, a pilot and an engineer (Baz) he needs a cargo, because of course he's now also got a debt, which he's secured against some land that he owns back on Barrayar. Unfortunately, the land is radioactive and likely to be so for the next few hundred years at least, so Miles' creditors are not going to be very pleased when they find out.
With me so far? The only cargo available is a load of agricultural implements (OK, they're weapons really) destined for the losing side in an interstellar turf-war. In order to deliver then he needs to get to the other side of a blockade run by a bunch of mercenaries. It's all going do well... and then Elena is threatened and the whole plan starts to swirl down the toilet. But Miles is in overdrive. One thing leads to another and a small untruth turns into a bigger lie and then the whole thing escalates into a huge bloody fantasy. Miles, using his mother's surname, Naismith, finds himdelf an admiral in charge of a mercenary fleet, flying the whole operation by the seat of his pants, manipulating people cleverly to cover the gaps in his knowledge and searching for a way out that will allow him to retain some semblence of personal honour while not letting down his crew. This book is a wild ride, at times laugh out loud funny and at other times heartbreaking. I highly recommend it to anyone who hasn't read any Vorkosigan books. It's a superb introduction to one of Bujold's best characters.
Novella
The artificial being which calls itself Murderbot decides to research its own dark past - the massacre that prompted it to name itself Murderbot. It heads for the space station where the massacre happened, posing as an augmented human, and teaming up with ART an autonomous research transport vessel. This is the second Murderbot novella (the first was All Systems Red) and the being is learning and growing all the time, which is fascinating. Posing as an augmented human means it has to interact with humans which makes it deeply uncomfortable. It would rather sit quietly and tune into endless media shows, but instead it has to be proactive. A friend recommended the Murderbot diaries, and I'm thoroughly enjoying them. Highly recommended.
Compared to some Scalzis, this is lightweight, but fun. In his afterword Mr S likens it to a pop song rather than a classical symphony, and that's about right, but it's still well worth reading. Jamie Gray loses his executive job and in the middle of a pandemic ends up working as a food delivery driver. A chance meeting with an old acquaintance leads him to taking a job with an animal rights organisation doing grunt work for a field team. What he doesn't know is that the job is on another world (an alternate earth, deadly on many levels) and the animals in question are enormous (more than enormous) Kaiju, equipped with biologically developed nuclear reactors, and covered in deadly parasites, any one of which can take down a full-sized human. Jamie and his group of friends - also new to the KPS - have barely settled into the world when disaster strikes, and they're the ones on the spot. A real page-turner. Highly recommended.
Novella. Nyr is an anthropologist, sitting (or long-term sleeping) in his tower, after the rest of his team have shipped back to base. He's somewhat depressive (alone and abandoned) and has given up on the idea that someone will come back for him, so he's still studying the human colonists he's forbidden to help or interfere with. But he's broken the rules before, and when fate comes knocking on his door in the shape of Lyn he might have to break the rules again. Lyn reminds him so much of her now long-dead great grandmother, with whom he fell in love three hundred years earlier. That time has passed in an eyeblink for Nyr because he's been asleep the whole time. He has memories of what Lyn thinks of as ancient history.
Lynesse, lowly Fourth Daughter of the Queen, knows that the tower is inhabited by a powerful sorcerer, Nyrgoth, who once helped her ancestor. Desperate for a way to defeat a global threat, she trudges to the tower without the permission of her mother. Together Nyr and Lyn set out to defeat the entity that Lyn knows is a demon and Nyr knows it can't possibly be. Nyr is not a sorcerer, of course, but he does have some tech that might look like magic. This is told from the dynamically opposing perspectives of Nyr and Lyn, with the somewhat quirky difference between what Nyr thinks he's said in Lyn's language, and how she hears it.
This is an entertaining culture clash novella. Highly recommended
Audiobook. This takes place before the events in Season One of the new Picard TV series. Picard is prised away from the Enterprise and made into an Admiral in order to take charge of helping the Romulans to evacuate people from worlds within the blast range of the Romulan sun, which is soon going super-nova. This chronicles the trials and tribulations of Picard, on the star ship Verity, as he gathers around him new crewmembers including Raffi Musiker, his new Number One. (This is as much her story as Picard's) Star Fleet is throwing everything at the Romulan evacuation effort, though the Romulans themselves are still very wary of the hand of friendship being held out by their old (untrusted) enemy. The task in hand is made doubly difficult by Federation politicians and the Tal Shiar, the Romulan secret service. It looks as though there are four books in this sequence that lead into the TV series, but the second features Riker, and the third (not published until June 2022) features Rios (whom we meet in the TV series). The fourth book isn't listed yet. I'm not sure about the rest of the series, but Una McCormac's The Last Best Hope captures Picard beautifully and the narration by Robert Petkoff works well. He captures Picard's inflections well. Recommended.Booklog 1/2022: John Scalzi: Fuzzy Nation
Jan. 1st, 2022 10:16 pm
Audiobook
Jack Holloway is an independent surveyor/contractor prospecting for ZaraCorp on a distant planet 178 light years from Earth. He works alone (just him and his dog) and that's the way he likes it. He's unconventional and a bit spiky and he hasba past. He didn't always work as a prospector. In the wake of an accidental cliff collapse, Jack reveals a magnificently rich seam of Sunstones and negotiates a deal that will make him richer than rich.
But ZaraCorp's right to exploit the planet depends on there being no indigenous sentient life. Enter the Fuzzies, cute cat-like creatures who exhibit intelligence. They invade Jack's isolated cabin and he gives them names and makes pets of them... until he gradually begins to realise that they are't pets, they are people. Once that becomes known ZaraCorp will stop at nothing to eliminate these small inconvenient sentient beings, but Jack's not about to let that happen. If only they could talk.
Based on an original novel by H. Beam Piper from 1962, this retelling is Scalzi's own take on it (with the permission of the Piper estate). I listened to the audible version, read very ably by Wil Wheaton (Wesley Crusher from Star Trek TNG) and thoroughly enjoyed it.
My Whole Booklog 2021
Dec. 28th, 2021 09:02 pm
With the year drawing to a close, here's my list of books read in 2021. There are 73 in total, including re-reading a couple of my own. I'd like to give a quick shout-out to T Kingfisher/Ursula Vernon, particularly for the two Saint of Steel books I read this year; also to John Scalzi for his Old Man's War series. Special mention to Benedict Jacka for wrapping up his twelve book Alex Verus series in fine style. New to me this year was K.J. Charles's trio of excellent Will Darling adventures which I read one after the other. Julia Quinn, author of Bridgerton which hit TV screens this year, provided some lovely fluffy Regency romances - my guilty pleasure. There were single books from some of my favourite authors: Liz Williams, Juliet E. McKenna, N.M. Browne, Sebastien de Castell, Kari Sperring, and Lois McMaster Bujold. I had a great reading year, topped off by Leigh Bardugo's Rule of Wolves which at the very end promised another Kaz Brekker book. He's my favourite character from the Six of Crows Duology. Here's my full list. You can get my thoughts on these by scrolling back through this blog. Happy reading in 2022. (Don't forget my seventh book, The Amber Crown, is out from DAW on 11th January.)
1) Simon R Green: The Best Thing You Can Steal
2) Liz Williams: Blackthorn Winter
3) Georgette Heyer: Venetia
4) Hannah Matthewson: Witherward – Witherward #1
5) Julia Quinn: Mr Cavendish I Presume – Two Dukes of Wyndham #2
6) Charlotte Anne: The Unworthy Duke
7) T. Kingfisher: The Hollow Places
8) Julia Quinn: Dancing at Midnight – Splendid #2
9) Julia Quinn: Minx – Splendid #3
10) Patricia Briggs: Wild Sign – Alpha and Omega #6
11) T Kingfisher: Paladin's Strength – Saint of Steel #2
12) Julia Quinn: Everything and the Moon – Lyndon Sisters #1
13) Julia Quinn: Brighter than the Sun – Lyndon Sisters #2
14) James S.A. Corey: Leviathan Wakes – The Expanse #1
15) Ben Aaronovitch: Takes from the Folly – Rivers of London
16) Elizabeth Chadwick: The Wild Hunt – Wild Hunt #1
17) Elizabeth Chadwick: The Leopard Unleashed – Wild Hunt #3
18) A.J. Lancaster: The Lord of Stariel – Stariel #1
19) N.M. Browne: Bad Water
20) Ian Mortimer: The Time Traveller's Guide to Regency Britain
21) Jodi Taylor: Another Time, Another Place – Chronicles of St Mary's #12
22) Julia Quinn, Eloisa James, Connie Brockway: The Lady Most Likely – Lady Most #1
23) M. Verant: Miss Bennet's Dragon (Jane Austen Fantasy #1)
24) K.M.Peyton: The Right Hand Man
25) John Scalzi: The Ghost Brigades – Old Man's War 2
26) John Scalzi: The End of All Things – Old Man's War 6
27) John Scalzi: The Last Colony – Old Man's War 3
28) John Scalzi: Zoe's Tale – Old Man's War 4
29) Agatha Christie: The Murder of Roger Ackroyd
30) Lois McMaster Bujold: The Assassins of Thasalon
31) John Scalzi: The Human Division – Old Man's War 6
32) Michelle Magorian: Goodnight Mister Tom
33) Fran Bushe: My Broken Vagina: One Woman's Quest to Fix Her Sex Life, and Yours
34) Darcy Burke: A Rogue to Ruin – The Pretenders #3
35) K.J. Charles: Slippery Creatures – Will Darling #1
36) K.J. Charles: The Sugared Game – Will Darling #2
37) K.J Charles: Subtle Blood – Will Darling #3
38) Jacey Bedford: Crossways – Psi-Tech #2
39) Jacey Bedford: Nimbus – Psi-Tech #3
40) Becky Chambers: The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet – Wayfarers #1
41) T. Kingfisher: Nine Goblins
42) Stephen Aryan: The Coward.
43) Catherynne M Valente: The Past is Red
44) Ursula Vernon: Black Dogs Part One: The House of Diamond
45) Ursula Vernon: Black Dogs Part Two: The Mountain of Iron
46) Stephanie Garber: Once Upon a Broken Heart
47) Jodi Taylor: Long Shadows – Elizabeth Cage #3
48) Sebastien de Castell: Way of the Argosi – Spellslinger #0.5
49) Burgis, Stephanie: The Raven Heir – Raven Crown #1
50) R.W.W. Greene: Twenty Five to Life
51) Juliet E McKenna: The Green Man's Challenge – Green Man #4
52) Sabaa Tahir: An Ember in the Ashes – An Ember in the Ashes #1
53) Katherine Buel: Heart of Snow
54) Genevieve Cogman: The Secret Chapter – The Invisible Library #6
55) Sherwood Smith: The Phoenix Feather – Fledglings #1
56) Kari Sperring: The Rose Knot
57) Andre Norton & Sherwood Smith: Derelict for Trade – Solar Queen #6
58) Stephanie Burgess: Scales and Sensibility – Regency Dragons #1
59) Martha Wells: All Systems Red – Murderbot Diaries #1
60) Jodi Taylor: Saving Time – The Time Police #3
61) T Kingfisher: Paladin's Hope – Saint of Steel #3
62) Lois McMaster Bujold: Knot of Shadows – Penric and Desdemona #11
63) Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman: Good Omens
64) Gaie Sebold: Bad Gods – Babylon Steel #1
65) Mary Jo Putney: Once a Laird – Rogues Redeemed
66) R J Palacio: Pony
67) Benedict Jacka: Risen – Alex Verus #12
68) T. Kingfisher: The Raven and the Reindeer.
69) Georgette Heyer: Sylvester
70) Naomi Novik: A Deadly Education
71) Leigh Bardugo: Rule of Wolves – King of Scars #2
72) Benedict Jacka: Favours – Alex Verus novella
73) Jodi Taylor: The Toast of Time
This is the third outing for Team Weird (Team 236), Matthew, Luke and Jane, almost ready to graduate from their training in the Time Police. It follows on from the second book and there are still elements of the aftermath from their adventures at Site X. Luke has lost two fingers to frostbite and is convinced that his father, head of Parrish industries, is the Mr Big (or rather Mr P) behind Site X, but he can't unearth any proof. After graduation, Jane is flattered to be chosen to help another team and discovers that there are as many dangers from her fellow officers as there are from criminals. After graduation, Team 236 go to check on a known miscreant, believed to be harmless, only to discover a gaping crater where his street used to be. Thus begins another adventure in this series which is a spin-off from, and crossover with, the Chronicles of St Mary's. This seems to be setting up a big bad for Team Weird, just as Clive Ronan was the big bad in the St Mary's books. Expect major peril, a touch of awkward romance, and guest appearances from the St Mary's cast of characters - mainly Max (Matthew's mum) and Mikey (Matthew's special girl). Jodi Taylor is a buy-on-sight author for me. Highly recommended. When I'd finished reading I immediately listened to the audible version, which is read beautifully by Zara Ramm.
Murderbot, its own name for itself which it believes it deserves, is a self-aware security android supplied by The Company to a small exploration team on a distant planet. Neither the Company nor the team of scientists know that Murderbot has hacked its own governor so it can't be forced to be an uncontrolled killing machine again. It doesn't have a very high opinion of humans and would like to be left alone to enjoy endless entertainment feeds, movies serials, books and plays, from which it possibly acquires its moral compass. Murderbot says "As a heartless killing machine, I was a terrible failure.” When the other exploration team on the planet suddenly goes dark, Dr Mensah leads her team of scientists to find out what has happened. Murderbot goes along, though really it doesn't much care about the fate of the other humans, only to find the other team's androids have been turned into killers and wiped out the crew. From then on Murderbot is more or less forced into involvement. It's a good story, novella length, but introduces Murderbot and Mensah who treats it like a full human – which causes some awkward social interaction. A friend recommended this series and she was right. I love it.
It must be more than forty years since I last read one of Andre Norton's Solar Queen books, but I'm a bit of a fan so I was pleased to discover a more recent book in the series. Solar Queen is a cargo ship eking out a living tramping around known space, led by Captain Jellico and featuring a crew who have become found-family. Dane Thorson is apprentice to the cargomaster – though by the sixth book in the series, he's probably more than capable of doing the job himself. When the Solar Queen salvages a derelict ship their good fortune turns into a nightmare as Dane and his fellow crewmembers try to find out what happened to the crew of their derelict. Instead of concentrating on Dane Thorson, Ms Smith writes from multiple viewpoints and brings in the rest of the crew, even finding a hint of romance for Jellico. The first four in the Solar Queen series were written by Norton herself, but from Book 5 onwards they are a collaboration. I picked this one because it's by Sherwood Smith, whose writing I enjoy. There's much more Smith than Norton in here, but that's no bad thing.
When a humanity-saving expedition to Proxima Centauri leaves Earth taking one of Julie's close friends with it, Julie is left behind, one of the billions on the dying Earth. Oh, it's not about to explode tomorrow, but the air is full of dangerous particulates and most people have been housed in cubes, kept doped up to the eyeballs by constant attachment to virtual reality feeds. When Julie's mother decides to move out of the family home in a failing suburb, Julie, still a minor at 23, is faced with life in a city cube… or… she can go on the road and hope to fall in with the Volksgeist, groups of tramps, hoboes and free citizens in their collection of ramshackle campers, and converted vans. So she goes on the road. Since she's not a legal adult until she's 25, Julie is a runner. Luckily she meets up with Ranger, an experienced road warrior whose lungs are none too healthy. There's a lot to learn, from driving (which she'd never been allowed to do) and how to pack the van to making soap and bio diesel from used cooking oil.
It's a coming of age story, but it's also a travelogue around this dysfunctional, dystopian (North American) world. To be honest it doesn't really have a plot other than, 'Julie goes travelling and meets a lot of people, some good, some not,' but it's an interesting read with, on balance, more good folks than bad. Julie is an engaging protagonist and Ranger is an interesting character who becomes Julie's mentor.
Tetley Abednego lives on a floating garbage patch somewhere in the Pacific. This is post-apocalyptic. The world has been drowned by climate change, brought about by Fuckwits (that's us). Garbagetown is all that's left. This is a slice-of-life novella without any real plot. Incidents come and go, but not always in chronological order (or is it me just getting confused). Tetley is an upbeat character despite becoming a pariah for taking action to save Garbagetown from itself. I'm glad this was only a novella as I found this a difficult read because of the quirky style. I read one or two reviews that suggested it was funny, but I must have had my sense of humour switched off. This book manages to be depressing, disturbing, and hopeful at the same time.
This is an ensemble novel, featuring the multi-species crew of a ship that punches wormholes in space and shores them up to create transport links. Rosemary, fresh from Mars and travelling under an assumed name, takes a job on the Wayfarer as a clerk.
Ashby Santoso is the captain, an Exodan human and a pacifist who is having a long-distance affair with an Aeluon woman, Pei. Corbin, a Solan human, is the algaeist, good at his job but a complete asshole. Kizzy and Jenks are engineers. Both are human, but Jenks is very small in stature. Sissix is the pilot, a lizard-like Aandrisk with green scales from her head to the tip of her tail. Doctor Chef, whose alien name is unpronounceable is both of those things, doctor and chef. He's a Grum with six limbs that work as either hands or feet. The navigator, Ohan, is a reclusive Sianat Pair, two personalities on one (blue furry) body, courtesy of a virus. The final crewmember is Lovelace, or Lovey, their AI who has formed a more-than-special relationship with Jenks.
The first quarter of the book is Rosemary settling in, the reader being introduced to the players, and the Wayfarer crew making a successful tunnelling jump. This sets everything to 'normal' in this universe. Then they are offered a very lucrative contract to punch a tunnel through from Toremi space back to the core. It's a job that has to be done in that particular direction, so firstly they Wayfarer has to get to Toremi space, a journey that will take a year, hence the book's title. And, of course the job is not straightforward.
Ms Chambers worldbuilding is superb. Her diverse aliens and humans are well realised, as are all the places they visit along the way, and the people they meet (many of them old friends). The plot is fairly slight, but entertaining enough when the book is taken as a whole. I enjoyed this.
I'm continuing the possibly inadvisable attempt to review a book I've written. I had a genuine excuse this time; I'm a core author for an upcoming anthology Brave New Worlds for Zombies Need Brains Press, and I've suggested that I write something set in my Psi-Tech universe. I have an idea to continue the story of two secondary characters who walked out of Nimbus towards the end, and I needed to refresh my memory of them and the exact circumstances of their leaving. It's five years since I wrote this, so I'd forgotten some of the details. (Hey, I've written more books since then.)
Nimbus follows on from the massive space battle at the end of Crossways. The station, now in orbit above Olyanda, is being rebuilt piecemeal, Garrick is still determined to forge alliances with other independent worlds to keep the megacorporations at bay. Someone is killing Free Company telepaths (mind to mind, from a distance) so Cara is on a galaxy-wide quest to find the woman who is the key to unlocking source code in the psi-tech implants in order to keep them safe. Ben is still having nightmares about the dark entity in foldspace, the Nimbus, so menacing it even frightens the void dragons. When people lost many years ago in the Folds start coming back it seems like a reason to celebrate, but is it? They haven't aged a day, even the ones lost fifty years ago. Who are they really and why do they return with murderous intent? Ben and Cara reach a conclusion, but no one is going to like it, especially the megacorps. Ben is still at the top of their most-wanted list and if he has to give himself up in order to make a point, he will do, aided and abetted by Cara, the Free Company, and his formidable grandparents.
If the plot seems episodic at first, don't worry, it all comes together in the end. The Nimbus will change how mankind navigates the stars.
Perhaps I shouldn't review my own book. After all, I could just say best-book-ever, please buy it, and leave it at that, but I wrote Crossways in 2014 and it came out in 2015 and I haven't read it since... so taking time and distance into account, I'd forgotten some of the detail, and I ended up reading it as a reader, not as a writer... and... I enjoyed it. It's the middle book of the Psi-Tech trilogy, sandwiched between Empire of Dust and Nimbus. The pace is relentless and the multi-stranded plot plays out with main characters, Cara and Ben, whose viewpoints did the heavy lifting in Empire of Dust. At the end of Empire of Dust, Ben, Cara, the psi-techs and the settlers sold the planet Olyanda and its platinum reserves to criminal-with-ambitions, Garrick, and took refuge on Crossways, rogue space station, or maybe space station of rogues. They'd outmanoeuvred two megacorporations and lived to tell the tale, but an ark ship with 30,000 more settlers frozen in cryo, is missing presumed lost in space. Ben has promised to investigate and Ben always keeps his promises. Cara is searching to find a new home for the displaced settlers before they drive Garrick bonkers with their unreasonable demands. The psi-techs have decided that since the megacorps want them dead, they'll stick together and form The Free Company (psi-techs for hire). Ben and Cara are on everyone's most-wanted list. They bested the megacorps once, but it doesn't mean that they have escaped free and clear. Expect ambush, treachery, space battles, family in peril, very strange aliens, and an impossible flight.
Cara is a top-grade telepath. Ben is a psi-tech Navigator, able to fly that liminal space beween jump gates. He's been trained to believe the 'visions' in Foldspace aren't real, but there's something sentient in the Folds that is certainly NOT an illusion - a big scary void dragon. In order to find the missing settlers they are going to have to brave foldspace again and again and Ben's not sure he can do it any more.
I recommend starting with Empire of Dust, but if you start with this one I don't think you'll find catching up a problem. I'm always happy to answer questions if you have any. Thanks for reading.
PS, The cover is by the hugely talented Stephan Martiniere and I love it. www.martiniere.com
This is presented as a single book, but it's actually a collection of thirteen semi-connected short stories which gives me more context for reading The End of All Things (which I read out of order). Many of the stories feature Harry Wilson (Colonial Defence Force), Ambassador Abumwe (Colonial Union) and Hart, Harry's friend and Ambassador Abumwe's aid. The stories (especially Harry's) move the situation forward as the CU/CDF try to figure out who is stealing their starships, while trying to repair the CU/CDF's damaged relationship with Earth and open a backchannel to negotiate with the Conclave who might or might not be their enemy.
This retells the story told in The Last Colony (Old Man's War) from Zoe's first person viewpoint. It revisits the story from the point at which John Perry and Jane Sagan are asked to take on the leadership of Roanoke colony. Zoe, their adopted daughter, a teenager is considered a special person by the Obin who were given the gift of (artificial) consciousness by her birth father Charles Boutin. As a result she has two Obin minders who (as part of a peace treaty) relay her every activity back to their planet for all to see. This charts Zoe's relationships with her minders, a girl who quickly becomes her best friend, and her first boyfriend. There are things that Zoe experiences that her adoptive parents don't know about, and one section where Zoe's actions affect the outcome when Roanoke is threatened.
Mr Scalzi gets the teen voice right and it's fun following Zoe filling in the gaps like Rozencrantz and Guildenstern filled in the gaps in Hamlet.
