Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ

March is coming in like a Lion. Maybe? Anyways..what are you reading this month?

The backs of these medicine bottles. Oh dear god I have a brutal cold.

On-brand cold medicine:

Frostveil Brew: A Sovereign Remedy for the Winter's Clutch

Concocted with unparalleled skill by the Master Apothecaries of the Frigid Highlands

In the heart of the coldest winter, when the frost binds the earth and the chill winds howl, the Frostveil Brew offers respite and fortitude. With ingredients harvested beneath the silvery glow of the Frost Moon and blessed by the Ice Sylphs, this remedy is your shield against the biting embrace of cold maladies.

And, to keep this on topic, I've just finished Martha Wells' Witch King, which has prompted me to go a short detour into Murderbot short stories (Compulsory and Home: Habitat, Range, Niche, Territory), before heading into the BOTM.

Trike wrote: "The backs of these medicine bottles. Oh dear god I have a brutal cold."

Hope you're feeling better soon!

I have 2 books going right now, kind of 3. Am actually anxious to get to the book of the month, but I want to try that in audio and I really want to finish my other books first.

I'm reading this silly cozy mystery called Son of a Stitch. It's not bad, though I'm not a fan of the narrator. I listened to the first book in the series on a whim and then bought 2 omnibus editions. I suspect I'll finish the series this year.

In actual print on paper, I picked up a book when I was at LAX last week called Your Table Is Ready: Tales of a New York City Maître D'. It's interesting though I do wonder how many brushes with celebrity are fabricated.

I've also got Magpie Murders on my Kindle. I'm sure I'll like it once I really get into it but I haven't been able to do that yet.

I'm almost done with The Veiled Throne. When I've finished I'll dive into the last book of the series, Speaking Bones. This has been an amazing series so far.

I've also just started The Novels of Alexander Great: Fire from Heaven, The Persian Boy. Funeral Games. I had to get used the writing style (long sentences with commas and semicolons). Enjoying it so far.

Oh, new location for this. Fun.

John (Nevets) wrote: "Oh, new location for this. Fun."

I'll assume it was put here by mistake and move it. It will get lost in the General thread.

Still reading The Hunger of the Gods but I may have to put it aside to read the BotM.

Enjoying HotG, just been a bit busy with life to finish it off.

The Water Outlaws by S.L. Huang - in the mood for some martial arts!

Got a surprise alert from my library that my hold on the audio copy of Making It So: A Memoir was available to check out. I was pretty far down the list when I put it on hold back in December so I was expecting a much longer wait. I just love listening to Patrick Stewart read.

I read Demon Daughter, the 12th book in the novella series Penric & Desdemona by Lois McMaster Bujold. The novellas are priced right at $3,99, the correct price point for a novella in my opinion. Looking forward to March BOM.

Tassie Dave wrote: "John (Nevets) wrote: "Oh, new location for this. Fun."

I'll assume it was put here by mistake and move it. It will get lost in the General thread.."

Yup. totally a mistake. Thanks for fixing it.

Starter Villain Scalzi Scalzi Scalzi

I know that Scalzi is always supposed to be included in every Podcast Scalzi but do we really have to Scalzi in every Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ post too Scalzi?

You've been Scalzi rolled.

Read the first three books in Lin Carter's "Callisto" series. The first two are collected in one volume, with the third as a standalone. It's a Sword and Planet storyline, with the narrator Jonathan Dark (Jandar) transported to Callisto, a moon of Jupiter. There he makes an ally of a member of an insect race, saves and falls in love with a princess, and does battle with both sky pirates having flying ships of highly improbably design, and a Black Legion of mercenaries. It's mostly bronze age civilizations except for the ships.

The central premise of this series is that it isn't fiction. Rather, Jonathan Dark was actually transported to Callisto. There, the gravity is mysteriously just less than Earth normal, and the sky also mysteriously shines from a nonspecific source for twelve hours a day. Well, that and that Callisto is habitable. Jon Dark sent back manuscripts describing his adventures and they eventually made their way to Lin Carter, who is at most the editor.

As a middle teen in the late 70s, I loved the premise. I knew it couldn't be real, and yet desperately wanted it to be so. The collection doubles and triples down on that premise. A foreword by SFF writer/publisher John Gregory Betancourt describes how Carter's literary agent "accidentally" showed a manuscript of exactly the style Jon Dark purportedly sent back from Callisto, for a ninth book in the series. That, and he concludes that Lin Carter's grave could not be found. It's all very mythos preserving and likely could be easily disproved. I have chosen to not even look.

Jandar has adventures that, as a later adult, I find heavily influenced by Barsoom. And yet I find I want to steelman the premise. If the moon could not possibly be habitable, what of it? Perhaps an alien race built a vast preserve. It could be Callisto, or a different place using Callisto as a way station. The sky a gigantic shell with light interposed on it, videos of Jupiter and its moons making up the night. If they might have been amused to bring humans among other races to the place, perhaps it amused them to provide exotic materials that would allow the pirate ships to fly. None of this is any more implausible than the idea of bodily transport to a habitable moon of Jupiter. It might even be a play spot, like the Niven/Barnes Dreampark.

The stories are full of adventure, staunch and honorable allies, thoroughly despicable and dishonorable villains, and plenty of hand to hand combat. An arena fight in every book (there's the Barsoom influence again.) The love of a princess to be won.

Of course, none of this is real. It couldn't possibly be real.

Could it?

Just finished Quozl by Alan Dean Foster.
Boy, this book is a lesson in "don't judge a book by it's cover". The cover art depicts a dozen or so anthropomorphized rabbit-people inspecting a cabin/dorm room. It all looks very cute and and implies a humorous book. There's even a little flip-motion cartoon in the upper corner of most of the pages.
The story was not funny at all; I don't think it was meant to be. It involves an alien race, the Quozl, who look like human sized rabbits that raided Johnny Depp's closet, coming to Earth during WWII and set up a secret underground colony in remote Idaho. For the first third of the story we follow Looks-at-Charts as he scouts the surface, then the rest of the book switches to other main characters and many years later.
Foster is usually a competent, enjoyable writer and while this book is fine it's not one of his best. It's a little slow at first but then picks up when it changes protagonists until the last 80 pages become a blur with a lot of "tell, don't show" and time jumps of many years between some chapters. (view spoiler)[ It also ends with an unwarranted twist in the very last sentence. (hide spoiler)]
Not a terrible book, just not as good and not as funny as I had hoped.
Edit after sleeping on it: (view spoiler)[ Now that I've thought about it some more, the disconnect between the cover art/flip-motion cartoon/appearance of the Quozl and the seriousness of the prose may be intentional in order to foreshadow the difference between the portrayal of the Quozl as very philosophical/nonviolent throughout the book and the implied violence/aggression in the twist ending. (hide spoiler)]
Next is The Mandel Files, Volume 1: Mindstar Rising & A Quantum Murder by Peter Hamilton.

I'm currently reading Wolfsong by T. J. Klune. It feels like a better written Twilight story so far, but instead of a girl with vampires it's a guy with a gay werewolf. Overall pretty enjoyable so far, I like Klunes writing and House in the Cerulean Sea was one of my top books from last year. This books definitely has a lot of the same found family vibes and whatnot, so give it a look if you get the chance.

That seems to be Klune’s jam. I just read In the Lives of Puppets and it is another found family story but this time with robots! Overall would rate the book good, though not great. But the scenes with Nurse Ratched, a somewhat off-kilter medical robot, are wicked funny.

Read Theft of Fire by Devon Ericksen. It's his first book. Saw it referenced...somewhere on social media, don't think it was here.

Anyhoo. Heavy science space-travel story, definitely engineering SF. Which is great if it's your bag and it is mine. Even at that tho, the space travel went on too long. It really is two people (plus a surprise) in a ship for the entire book. Lots of space travel including to Neptune and the way outer solar system. Some pretty good space chase sequences. It does get a little wearing. There are some flashbacks to other places but not enough to get rid of the sense of claustrophobia.

Starts off great, good action, good intro to the universe (Belters / Mining, riffs off The Expanse which riffed off Niven who riffed off Bester...long history of this kind of stuff in SF.) Gets a bit tedious as they travel on and ON and on.

Plus, there's some interpersonal stuff about halfway through that I felt was going too far and...well, I'm torn. Trigger warning? Yeah, that would have been good. Don't include it at all? Even better.

The guy knows his SF; he's got a habitat called the Clement Ring fer chrissakes and it's been a solid number of decades since Hal Clement wrote Mission of Gravity and its followups. Niven comes in for a few. SpaceX is both loved and hated in its fictional future.

The book got nominated for the Prometheus Award in the time between my tagging the book in LAPL and it coming off hold. There is some actual good Libertarian philosophy included and a description of how technological change always starts out with a luxury good; the problem is when markets aren't allowed to develop to bring the cost down.

Book comes to a decent interim conclusion of the major plot points, then introduces a whopper of a cliffhanger. I'll show up for the sequel, but the author says he's likely to produce one book a year. Sigh. I'll likely have forgotten major points by then. But at least it's better than Martin and Tomlinson!

Also, fwiw given the many discussions of Sarah J. Maas I decided to tag A Court of Thorns and Roses in LAPL some weeks ago. I am now "down" to #1,754 on 257 copies. There are 20 "ghost" copies that are usually for one-week quick reads, that you only see if you click the listing when one is available. I've been able to get many quick reads that way. This book, I have not seen available yet and it's been at least a month. Seems her fans are rather rabid! Well, I'll find out...in three months or so.

I went on to more of the Callisto series, this one the Mad Empress of Callisto. After two days I'm halfway through. I do love this series, but don't want to go through it all at once. With luck my next LAPL Hold (Machine Vendetta / Alastair Reynolds) will come in soon.

Read a little known short horror/fantasy/mystery Osgood As Gone. The main character has an unusual lifestyle (look out, Anita Blake), but it's not a big part of the book. It almost turns into Doctor Strange towards the end. Youtube CriminOlly recommended it recently. There's two other books in the series.

John, the library might have the Graphicaudio version of ACOTAR.

Thanks for the attempt...I've never been able to relate to audiobooks. For me reading is something done in silence. Anyhoo, that reminded me to check Hoopla which has plenty of Maas...all in audio! I'll somehow have to find a way to survive until a library copy becomes available in ebook... :)

Graphicaudio is fully dramatized too, with full cast, music, and sound effects.

I’ve just signed up for a free trial of an audiobook app called Book Beat, which works on hours listened-to rather than book credits like Audible. The selection of available books is fairly small compared with Audible but they do have Yellowface by R.F. Kuang which I’ve been meaning to read for a while so I’ve started listening to it in audiobook- it’s compelling in a full-body cringe kind of way. The way the protagonist keeps justifying herself…�

I finished The Book of Ile-Rien: The Element of Fire & The Death of the Necromancer and started The Earth is Flat: Tales from the Flat Earth and Elsewhere, a recent collection of Tanith Lee's heretofore uncollected Flat Earth stories.

Three more of the Callisto series, books 4-6. Some pretty solid portal fiction, still selling the premise that it's real. Lin Carter even claims to go in the 6th book, transporting out of the well in the jungles of Cambodia.

This is a ragged trilogy covering the struggle against the Mind Wizards. They live on the opposite side of Callisto and are infiltrating cities with the intention of taking over the local governments and eventually the entire moon. It's a framing device for adventures all over Callisto.

There's a lot of stuff borrowed from Burroughs. The Mind Wizards are much like the telepaths of Barsoom, with the ability to project entire scenes. The first book of the trilogy, Mad Empress of Callisto, brings Jandar (Jonathan Dark) and his recently-married wife Darloona plus a few others to another city as captives. Of course they escape, have various adventures, and wind up in a coalition against the Mind Wizards. Darloona has an moment of agency unusual in this series, as she speaks ruler to ruler with the queen of the city to convince her that the Mind Wizards were controlling her.

Then Mind Wizards of Callisto. The coalition heads off to confront the Mind Wizards. Mishaps occur, well, it's portal fiction. Jandar once again falls overboard from a floating ship. It's more Pellucidar than Barsoom or Amtor (Venus) here, with flying humanoids who are, of course, intent on eating them. They escape, just like Tarzan on Pellucidar did, but there's a curious lack of agency here. Jandar doesn't lead the action, he more experiences it. Their escape is more or less pointless as rescue was on the way and they actually made matters worse. But they have no idea in advance, so it's more like real life that way. Jandar et al wind up on the run leaving a manuscript in a cairn, so the end of this book is left wide open.

And finishing up the rough trilogy, Lankar of Callisto. Yep, Lin Carter claims to go to Callisto himself. He does a good job setting it up. As he described the transport well, my first thought was "that sounds mostly like the way Jon Dark described it, but somewhat different" as if they were two different people which, well, I love the way he sells it, but nah. "Lankar" befriends a huge six legged doglike creature which actually has the most agency in the book. He is crucial in fighting the Mind Wizards as he's not fully taken in with their mental illusions as he relies on other senses. The humans/Callistans do a lot of fighting, but without Nature in the form of the "dog" they wouldn't have had a chance. It's an interesting take on the Sword and Planet concept.

As for the reality of the idea, Carter sells it as being real all the way through. He drops hints and lets the reader decide. Callisto may or may not be the actual moon of Jupiter; the portal could as easily been a gateway elsewhere. Carter is awake during the transport, as Jon Dark was, and they see the ammonia-based moon before the jungles of Callisto appear. It's like an entrance to a theme park ride. Is Callisto a gigantic zoo or theme park set up by an alien race? They fight a creature closely resembling a Plesiosaur, supporting the "zoo" concept. There's references to a "hydrogen like substance," well, there's only one of those - hydrogen. If it's "like" then we're in a different universe with different physical laws. There's floating ships that wouldn't work as described, so what else is involved? Some gems are referred to as being unlike anything on Earth - physical laws are the same everywhere in the universe so that's another hint they are elsewhere. There's also multiple races on Callisto that match to Terran races from places other than Cambodia, so that's an implication there's more than one portal. It's nicely set up and allows the reader to decide how far to take the explanation.

Much as I love the portal fiction, the location of the transport well makes it hard to take as just fun. The 6th book came out in 1975 and by then Cambodia was well on its way a war and death on a scale difficult to fathom. Lin Carter starts the sixth book with a visit to Phnom Penh that is so stereotypical and condescending of the local culture as to take me completely out of the book. I put it down to outdated attitudes of the day and swallow it as an undigestible lump in otherwise great writing.

I remembered this as a six book series, but I also recall some arena fighting where the smallest member of the band throws an ax and almost takes out the biggest bad of the fight. There's two more books left. I'll see if it's in there.

Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami. Magical realism. There were moments in the book that were memorable and the plot was interesting but overall it was kind of a mess. Would not recommend.

I finished Speaking Bones by Ken Liu. It's the final volume of his Dandelion Dynasty series. Wow!!

I can't describe how awesome I think this series is. It has amazing world building, characters, and plot. If someone is looking for a series similar in scope to A Song of Ice and Fire give this one a try. It doesn't have the sexy times of Martin's series but it has everything else: political intrigue, epic battles, and a thoroughly though out world.

Next up, I'm heading back to Moorcock's Elric saga with The White Wolf.

I've also started listening to The Red Scrolls of Magic.

Started reading Red Queen by Juan Gómez-Jurado after watching the tv adaption on Prime Video

Finished Yellowface by R.F. Kuang, author of previous S&L pick The Poppy War. It isn’t a fantasy book, it’s a very inside-baseball book about publishing. The protagonist is incredibly dislikeable and makes a series of terrible decisions. I found it compelling in a full-body cringe kind of way, right up until the final chapter. The ending was really unsatisfying imho.

Anyway, I’m now starting A Power Unbound by Freya Marske, the final part of the “Last Binding� trilogy. I guess you’d call it romantasy, set in a magical version of Edwardian England.

I'm listening to Amongst Our Weapons on Audible.

Finished 36 Streets, slightly different cyberpunk, set in China-controlled Vietnam.

Reading Redliners, which came out in �96 but reads like it was written last month. FPS video games took a lot of his ideas.

Just got The Shadow of the Gods, Iron Widow and Generation Ship from the library this morning. All my holds came in at once. Never rains but it pours.

Just finished Dungeon Crawler Carl which was disappointing. Definitely a one trick book that is stretched out too far.

1. More SF than F.
2. Quite possibly the first of 10 big books. Sigh

The premise of the book (the Earth is turned into a giant dungeon with monsters) gets repetitive. The writing is basic and this is a book that could definitely do with more than one point of view. Glad it did not win.

Continuing on with some Tanith Lee, now starting her novel The Storm Lord.

Red London by Alma Katsu

Pure magic. That's the only way I can describe the final two books in the Callisto series. It's Sword and Planet with every trope engaged, all in the pursuit of SFFnal adventure. Loads of fun.

We're beyond portal fiction now as "Jandar" (Jonathan Dark) relates these adventures, but he is only peripherally involved. These are the NPCs becoming PCs, the background character joining the team like the 70s animated shows.

In Ylana of Callisto a character we met in book 5 takes center stage. Ylana's a headstrong jungle girl, daughter of a chief, agile, fit, good hunting skills, your basic stock character. She is hot for (but can't admit it to herself) Tomar, the late-teen sidekick honorable-warrior for Jandar. Anyhoo, they go chasing the last of the evil evil Mind Wizards after Jandar et al defeat the rest. And how do we know the Mind Wizards are bad? They use their telepathy and technological prowess to oppress and dominate others, invading their minds. Also, they eschew the physical and use technology as a substitute. And they smell. It's both straight up tropes and hilariously obvious. Darth Vader before Darth Vader (Book came out the year Star Wars did so this one and its precedents were written earlier.)

Anyhoo, the Jungle Girl and Tomar of course escape their Mind Wizard captor and seek refuge in the, natch, jungle. Apparently her tribe has been taken over by a group of dishonorable abusers. You can always tell the bad guys, they don't have courage or noble codes. They may be physically strong but are mentally weak. Nuance? Fuggeddaboutit.

Sooo lengthy jungle adventures, gain allies / fight dishonorable faction etc. The Mind Wizard overestimates his ability to control of the "groaks", apparently Plesiosaurs, and, well, you can guess. Once again Nature takes a role. Makes me wonder on the place being a huge alien zoo with control mechanisms in place, but that's head canon only.

Jandar comes in after the book's MCs have solved the issue and reports his role as transcriber. Well anyway, wall o' text above, let me cut here and...

...on to the next book, Renegade of Callisto. The "Renegade" here is the Arthropod Koja. He's a Yathoon, an insect race grown huge. He was one of Jandar's first companions on Callisto but took short shrift in later books.

A hilariously obvious series of misadventures puts Koja and yet another young sidekick floating away at high speed in one'a the small floating vessels. Plus a six legged "dog" that is the son of the beast Lankar befriended in book 6.

Sooo trapped far from home they must struggle to survive and - I know! Both good straight up but also hilariously straight to the stereotypes. It's Barsoom in the jungle. Koja was a chieftan of the Yathoon, but then self-exiled. They're taken captive, slated for the Arena in the South Pole of Callisto where the Yathoon regularly gather for contests that bring breeding rights. Along the way they get rescued by Koja's old tribe, he fights for and wins the chieftanship. As one does.

Big evil nasty emperor of the Yathoon dislikes Koja and manipulates him into a duel. Which is live-action chess with fights to the death when players get onto the same square. Yep, older-me recognizes this as a straight rip of the Barsoom book Chessmen of Mars, but I love it not a whit less for being derivative.

The young'un does have the moment I recall, almost taking out the Big Bad with a thrown ax before the emperor recovers. Of course evil must evil so the baddies cheat. That's right before daddy dog shows up, having somehow tracked his child through a thousand miles of wilderness with no scent. Silly, ridiculous, yet narratively satisfying as a parent takes heroic measures to protect a child. And once again nature takes a major role in the Callisto series.

There's strings left open in this final book. The Yathoon are dying out and presumably Koja will find a way to reverse that. The Mind Wizards came from another satellite of Jupiter and there could be more of them. And so on. But this is the last book Lin Carter wrote, oh excuse me, received from Jandar. And a joy they have been. Derivative of Barsoom yet with their own brand of adventurous fun. It has been a blast.

I finished reading Memory by Lois McMaster Bujold. This is a Miles Vorkosigan story, and it is a game changer. One of the best so far. I’m reading the Vorkosigan Saga for the first time. I am reading The Talisman (The Talisman #1) by Stephen King and Peter Straub. It’s a fantasy with an alternate dimension Earth called the Territories that can be entered under certain circumstances. I plan to read Half the World (Shattered Seas #2) by Joe Abercrombie next. This novel is set in the same world as the first book but features a totally different cast of characters.

I read Michael Crichton's Congo, with the gorilla that can sign. It's mostly a world building and plot doorway, bordering on science fiction. There quite the climax in the African jungle. It's a bit nonfiction-bookish, even with some footnotes. I hear the movie is terrible. There's great ideas for a new movie though. The characters have a lot of potential.

This villian guy isn't in the book. What a clown (intentional reference).

Gary wrote: "I finished reading Memory by Lois McMaster Bujold. This is a Miles Vorkosigan story, and it is a game changer. One of the best so far. I’m reading the Vorkosigan Saga fo..."

I also loved this entry. Full 5 stars for me.

Tamahome wrote: "I read Michael Crichton's Congo, with the gorilla that can sign. It's mostly a world building and plot doorway, bordering on science fiction. There quite the climax in the African jungle. It's a bi..."

The movie is a little over the top, but it's entertaining even on a rewatch. You can't go wrong with (view spoiler)[killer gorillas and killer lasers (hide spoiler)]

Gary wrote: "I plan to read Half the World (Shattered Seas #2) by Joe Abercrombie next."

I read that series to my daughter when she was nominally old enough. It was great! You wouldn't think Joe Abercrombie and YA would be a match, but there you go.

I'm working my way through the Nebula nominated novels (that I haven't already read).

I just finished The Saint of Bright Doors. I enjoyed it quite a bit; it's a very magical realism story, kind of like Salman Rushdie or something like that. Definitely not your typical SFF novel, or Nebula nominee.

One of the Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ reviews says that it is loosely based on Sri Lankan Buddhist mythology/history. Possibly enough to be controversial. I don't know anything about that, and simply enjoyed it for what it was. YMMV.

Next up, another fantasy from a non-Western perspective: Shigidi and the Brass Head of Obalufon

I also added two books to my to-read list from the Hugo novel list. I can't say I'm super excited about either: Some Desperate Glory sounds like "space opera, but lesbian!" I guess I thought that about A Memory Called Empire as well, and that was terrific (and especially, for me, the sequel).

Also Starter Villain: I feel like I've gotten plenty of the Scalzi schtick, thanks. With his (excellent) blog and SFF connections, I feel like he gets over-nominated. Hopefully my low expectations can be exceeded.

Geoff wrote: "Some Desperate Glory sounds like "space opera, but lesbian!""
The lesbian side was there but the focus is on the space opera.

I am reading Empire of the Damned book 2 in the Empire of Vampires series by Jay Kristoff , Finished Shauna Lawless's novella Dreams of Fire . It intoduces you to the main characters of The Children of Gods and Fighting Men. Hope to sneak in two short stories recently published together in Mark Lawrence's Library Trilogy series.

I have this problem with "galactic empire" anything in that it doesn't hit me near as much as Foundation did when I read it. That was ~1977.

I enjoyed it a lot on reread ~1988. Have reread it twice within the last 15 years and have enjoyed it less each time. There's also been lousy sequels and even more lousy prequels. So nothing hits like Foundation any more. Not even Foundation. I liked A Memory Called Empire just fine, but I do miss the days of my more impressionable young(er) years.

Decades of SFnal reading can bring odd associations. I just read Machine Vendetta and the mind-wipe of Dreyfus' wife reminded me of a similar situation in Orbitsville Departure, which came out some 40 years ago. Reynolds is well read, it might even be intentional.

Oaken wrote: "Geoff wrote: "Some Desperate Glory sounds like "space opera, but lesbian!""
The lesbian side was there but the focus is on the space opera."

To be clear: nothing wrong with lesbians in space opera. I guess my trepidation is that space opera is such a well-worn sub-genre that if the only thing to recommend "Some Desperate Glory" is that it has added lesbians to space opera, that doesn't sound too exciting to me.

Anyways, I'll get back in a few weeks when I've actually read it and discuss on the book's merits, not its cover blurb.

I’m about 75%of the way through Some Desperate Glory and actually bringing up that something lesbian might be in it is kind of a spoiler. And definitely not the point of the book! As I have noted for a different book (can’t remember where) marketing these days seems to be very misleading. On the other hand marketing’s job is to sell books, not necessarily to accurately describe the plot of a book.

Soooo on the subject of recent book reads:

Man Plus by Fred Pohl. He's probably best known for the Gateway books featuring the Heechee. Those were okay but Man Plus, wow. Features a physical transformation of a not-really-willing astronaut to live on Mars. By the 40% mark it was at the fringes of body horror and then went fully into that. I think the castration sequence was the worst. It went on to some moderately interesting Mars scenes and a "twist" that wasn't all that twisty. It won the Nebula and I can't say it aged well. "Arty" without being good.

Then...actually, before that, Machine Vendetta. It was okay insomnia read material, familiar premise going on for multiple hundreds of pages. Only rose to the level of adequate for me tho. That's more on me than Reynolds. He trusts the reader to remember previous books and, well, I don't recall the details. It's a trilogy of sorts, but we all know the Glitter Band is doomed from Chasm City so all the action is moot. If I remember anything from previous books it's the errors: In the first book a Prefect watches a spherical item roll and miscalculates the path on account of coriolis effect - except that prefect was raised in space, not on a planet, and would expect it.

Adequate ending to this ersatz trilogy (that I don't think was planned as a trilogy.) I think I prefer the main-sequence Revelation Space better tho, especially when they do relativistic travel.

Geoff wrote: "Oaken wrote: "Geoff wrote: "Some Desperate Glory sounds like "space opera, but lesbian!""
The lesbian side was there but the focus is on the space opera."

To be clear: nothing wrong with lesbians ..."

My takeaway was that it was unevenly-written but otherwise fine, and then there’s a bit of a twist in the middle that changes everything and makes it more interesting. 3 stars ultimately for me.