Our reads September 2020

Another Groundhog month,but at least the books change while everything else seems totally static.. Tell us what you are looking forward to reading this month.

Dusty's TBR for September
SF/F
Richard Morgan - Altered Carbon ✔
Roger Zelazny - This Immortal✔
Lois McMaster Bujold - Captain Vorpatril's Alliance
John Scalzi - Unlocked✔
P K Dick - Piper in the Woods ✔
J G Ballard - The Drought ✔
C J Cherryh - Convergence
Jim Butcher - Cold Days✔

other Genres
Gary Paulsen - Hatchet ✔
Patricia Wentworth - The Chinese Shawl ✔

Already put everything aside to again reread This Immortal OK at times Zelazny was too cute,or he overegged the literary style in his works,but mid sixties when he was on form he was incredible.Hey,and not bad going to share the Hugo with Dune with your debut novel! Cool
In this time of stress I want to fall into a book that is entertaining but thought provoking and needs careful attention. I am pretty well informed about greek mythology etc,and if someone tries reading RZ without such knowledge they might have a lot of esoteric stuff to grapple with,but I find the tussle to dig into the numerous mysteries of This Immortal exhilerating. Hey,each read I understand it all a bit more. Possibly I will ,God willing,manage perhaps 2 more reads before I pop off,and I may actually get it all by then lol..
I love the way RZ leaves the way open for the reader to decide just how old the protagonist is,as I would love him to be from ancient Greece! :0)
Like so many others in the book,I ignore the protagonist's somewhat weary and exasperated appeal to call him Conrad!

.......hmm,on the matter of rereading books trying to understand it all,perhaps its time for another attempt at my favourite Frank Herberts,Whipping Star and The Dosadi Experiment Three reads so far and I STILL dont understand the legal system or what the hell is happening in these books. But its great fun trying :0)

I am reading Liz Williams' Comet weather and it's great fun. As if Tim Powers were to write an Alan Garner novel, with sensitive portraits of the family dynamics of four young sisters. Highly recommended.

Just about done with The Girl with No Face and have The Stone Sky in hand. After that, we'll see; too many library holds have popped up at the same time!

>4 anglemark: this is on my Wishlist. It will now move higher.

I'm reading Chaos vector, the sequel to Velocity weapon. Fast paced space opera. I'm enjoying it.

I'm in the process of putting to bed Pynchon's Against the Day.

At the top of my TBR pile are:
Night's Sorceries by Tanith Lee (the final Tales from the Flat Earth book)
Stranger in a Strange Land (original 1961 edition, a re-read for research purposes)
John Dies at the End

I'm also about to start my long-anticipated re-read of Gene Wolfe's New Sun books.

Between non-fiction and comics, I'm going to try to finally read A Summer Beyond Your Reach - Stories by Xia Jia.

Finished Clarkesworld Magazine Issue 164. Meh.

Finished The Fated Sky, Mary Robinette Kowal's second Lady Astronaut book, and enjoyed it so much I've just bought The Relentless Moon!

Finished Chaos vector which was an excellent sequel. I'm really enjoying this series and hope it's not too long a wait for the next instalment.

>10 SChant: The Relentless Moon is very different from the first two, but I enjoyed it a lot.

Still pushing my way through Tyrant Baru Cormorant. I really liked the first book in this series but feel like the next two went off in a weird direction that isn't paying off. But I have about 300 pages to go, so maybe it will win me over.

I'm reading The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet
by Becky Chambers

Finished The Girl with No Face yesterday and it's a worthy sequel to the first book in what is now described as a chronicle. If you wish that Barry Hughart had managed to get more books published in his "Master Li & Number 10 Ox" series this could be just what you're looking for. Since the book ends on a total cliff-hanger one hopes that'll be relatively soon before the next one comes out.

Just finished Hearts, Hands and Voices and I remain in awe of MacDonald's ability. The Irish allegory remains very front and centre against the backdrop of massive bioengneering in his invented world. Yet the eventual message about the need for reconciliation between opposing opinions, one step at a time, could neither be clearer nor more necessary today, long after it was written.

Next up, I shall be taking up Iain Banks' Transition, which was published as an Iain Banks book in the UK but an Iain M. Banks book in the US.

>3 dustydigger:. I loved This Immortal and Whipping Star. I need to reread both as I read them as a teen.

I just finished The Last Emperox. Glad I wasn't reading that in public as I laughed quite loudly in a couple spots. I am just starting Captain Vorpatril's Alliance , if little black dog will let me up to grab the book.

Now reading Vagabonds by Hao Jingfang (translated by Ken Liu). So far, so good.

About a third of the way through Scalzi's novel and am enjoying myself...considering that I thought that the first book in the trilogy was one of his weaker efforts it's quite a rebound.

Finished The Last Emperox yesterday evening and though it isn't Scalzi's best work I wound up enjoying it quite well; I wasn't that impressed with The Collapsing Empire and nothing has happened to make me think better of it. Then again, the original concept for this trilogy was a Frank Herbert pastiche, not a commentary on the current world political scene! Scalzi blames 2019 in his afterward.

>15 RobertDay: Glad to see the good review of the McDonald. It's moving up my TBR pile.

I'm reading Debris by Jo Anderton and Dead astronauts by Jeff Vandermeer.

Finished The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction July/August 2019. OK readl.

I finished Sisters of the Vast Black yesterday. Now I'm rereading Cast in Ruin by Michelle Sagara.

Ah,loved my 2nd?,3rd? reread of This Immortal. Have to restrain myself from running of to visit Sam in Lord of Light,or ride a bike down Damnation Alley.Maybe in a couple of months.
Instead I am reading Cold Days to remind myself of all the nuances of Harry Dresden as Winter Knight,ready to read Peace Talks and Battle Ground as one book in October. Very suitable for Halloween! lol.Butcher's fairies are nicely cold vicious and frightening. Perfect!
Not amused by splitting what is one tale into two shorter parts,and charging £9.99 each on kindle.Ouch.
Also reading a vintage crime novel,and The Devil in the White City. Interesting,but at only 60 pages in I am yet to see how Erik Larson will link the building of the Chicago Fair with the notorious serial killer H H Holmes.
But for fun I will escort our Harry ,and perhaps start Lock In.

I've finished The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue by Mackenzi Lee. Three teenagers navigate around nobles, guards, robbers, and romantic drama on an accidental quest.

I couldn't figure out until about halfway why the book shows up on speculative fiction lists. Alchemy confuses me; I'm not sure when it counts as science fiction, fantasy, or anything else. While the story climax was fantastical, most of the focus was on actual medical practices used at the time in a way that reminded me of science fiction despite none of it being futuristic.

Anyway, the book describes an interesting adventure through a world that's passed away.

>24 aspirit: I read that a couple of years ago. Someone recommended it. I don't know why I bothered. I don't read YA and the book seemed a complete failure as historical fiction. There is apparently a sequel or two.

>25 iansales: "a complete failure of historical fiction" is an interesting take. I've been poking at historical references and thinking about elements of fiction written centuries ago, specifically about what people today seem to want to forget. While I'm nothing close to an expert on 18th century Europe, I think Lee provided a variety of details that built up a believable setting without ever sounding as if she's trying to teach history.

Just a difference of opinion, obviously.

I'm not an avid reader of YA but like to see what's done in speculative fiction. Adult fiction by major publishing imprints has more limited selections, from the presses and from distributors, especially from my local library system, which started considering adding new releases of adult speculation fiction into its collections only last winter.

Unfortunately, my closest libraries don't have any more of the author's books. I was lucky The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue is on loan as an ebook. It wasn't available as a physical copy.

I think the next library book I'll read is The Sound of Stars by Alechia Dow. More YA.

I just finished The Tyrant Baru Cormorant; so far the first book in this series was by far the best, but I will probably read the fourth when it finally comes out.

I am about to start Fritz Leiber's Changewar, having enjoyed The Big Time enough to seek out other stories in the same milieu.

>27 Stevil2001: I enjoyed The Big Time and the excellent Lady of Darkness by Leiber,but wasnt so keen on the Hugo winningThe Wanderer Great ideas,interesting start,then in petered out. How can a novel about a wandering planet causing havoc to the tides and earth peter out? lol
Someday I must go journeying with Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser

Knocked off Finna (B+) yesterday evening, a novella which exists to prove that you CAN mix winsomeness with cosmic horror.

>28 dustydigger: The Wanderer was probably the first plushie novel.

>28 dustydigger: I loved the Fafhrd and Grey Mouser books. I should read them again to see if I still do.

I am just starting Silver by Linda Nagata. It's too smokey to do anything today but stay inside and read.

>30 justifiedsinner: not familiar with that term, and Google didn't help. What's a plushie novel (other than a book with a very soft cover)?

Now reading The Promise of the Child, which is very Banksian. It's one of those books that surprises you it was published since it doesn't seem to fit in with all the YA and debut fantasies Gollancz were publishing five years ago...

>32 ChrisRiesbeck: Also sometimes called furries I believe. A fetish involving soft toys or people dressed up like furry animals.

>34 justifiedsinner: Interesting. In all my years in fandom I've never heard furries referred to as plushies before. Admittedly not my fandom, though.

>34 justifiedsinner: >35 anglemark: Plushies are more toy-oriented than furries, I believe.

>35 anglemark: >36 iansales: Interesting distinction. Does an alien cat woman constitute a soft toy or a person in a fur suit. I guess only the cognoscenti would know.

Just finished The Relentless Moon, another excellent addition to the Lady Astronaut series. The main characters and their inter-personal relationships are very well drawn, the secondary cast less so but still very human rather than the cardboard cutouts one sometimes sees in a novel with such broad scope. The racist and sexist attitudes of the era are still highlighted though perhaps not so strongly as in the first 2 books.
I love the way she casually drops in names of some of the real astronauts - especially a throw-away comment about Alan Bean's artwork - a delightful hommage.
I didn't quite buy into the sabotage storyline - it just didn't seem plausible that such a wide variety of incidents, their sometimes technical nature, and access requirements to many areas of a complex system like the space programme was feasible. Let alone the fact of the culprits seemed incredible well-organised for a terrorist organisation. That aside, the story of these acts and the race to track down and ameliorate the dangers was gripping.

Finished Ballistic by Marko Kloos. Enjoyed just as much as I did the first book in the series, Aftershocks.

Finished The Cassini Division last night. Great conclusion to the initial Fall Revolution trilogy by Ken MacLeod.

Still working on Vacuum Diagrams, which is my first foray into Stephen Baxter's oeuvre. Some very good stories in this interconnected collection.

Also reading a couple of non-genre titles, (Catch Me If You Can and Bridge to Terabithia), before I pick up The Sky Road later this week.

For the first time I'm reading The Falling Astronauts by Barry N Malzberg which foresees a (near-future?) where spaceflight has become relatively commonplace. Everything I've read by Malzberg to date has used SF tropes to explore the dark recesses of the human psyche.

>40 ScoLgo: I thought The Cassini Division was by Sven Hassel. Clearly I was mistaken!

I've just started Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen. I'm a bit dubious about the retconning in this one, but the Vorkosiverse is always a fun place to be.

My sister has been after me to read Brandon Sanderson for years, so I've just started the first Mistborn book, The Final Empire.

>42 SFF1928-1973: Never heard of Sven Hassel. Reading his wikipedia page, he seems to have been a very controversial fellow. Not the type of thing I would usually read - but I was deeply moved by All Quiet on the Western Front, a book that Hassel was accused of having plagiarized.

Looking at his catalog, you may have been thinking of Monte Cassino?

Finished Winds of Marque by Bennett R. Coles. Technically SF because it takes place in outer space, but far more reminiscent of 18th century sailing/pirate fare. It was OK.

I (quickly) finished reading John Dies at the End and posted my review. I've moved on to Almuric, which is--as far as I know--Robert E. Howard's sole contribution to the sword & planet subgenre.

Did a reread of Scalzi's Unlocked: an Oral history of Haden's Syndrome. Was rather amused at how much knowledge of viruses etc I have obtained in 2020,it all seemed very familiar......

Just finished Iain Banks' Transition. I enjoy world-building and alternate histories, and I can cope with Banks' non-linear plotting (think of Use of Weapons). This feels a lot like his earlier fantastic novels Walking on Glass or The Bridge, which pre-date his entry into the sf field, though it also explores a large shadowy organisation, as in The Business or even the Culture's Special Circumstances.

Of course, there are helpings of Banks' trademark political discourse, though I rather felt there was one Leftist political joke late on that owed its presence to his friend Ken Macleod; it relied on the reader knowing their socialist politics, as regularly exercised in Macleod's 'Fall Revolution' and 'Engines of Light' novels but I found it laugh-out-loud obvious.

>49 RobertDay:
it relied on the reader knowing their socialist politics, ...but I found it laugh-out-loud obvious.

:-)

Does this tell us more about you, Robert, than it does about the book. :-)

I love Ken's work and some of his humour. The end-of-the-USSR opera in Newton's Wake was hilarious.

I just finished reading The Peripheral by William Gibson which I somehow missed when it came out in 2014. I only heard about it when Gibson's second book in the series Agency was published earlier this year. I thought it was very well done and I've put a hold on Agency at my library so I can read it while the details are fresh in my mind. That's one advantage to not knowing about first books in a series. I can read them almost back to back. Mind you, since it took Gibson 6 years to finish the second book I might be waiting a long time for #3.

>7 paradoxosalpha: My favorite. I’m rereading Long Sun now. Enjoy!

>45 ScoLgo: Yes, it was Monte Cassino! I must confess I haven't read All Quiet on the Western Front (undoubtedly I should!) but I suspect that Sven Hassel "borrowed" the structure of that novel, adding some of his own wartime anecdotes to make up the novel Legion of the Damned.

Read Randomize by Andy Weir. Found it disappointing.

Added Ark by Veronica Roth to my rotation.

Finished The Promise of the Child, which read like a weird mash-up of Iain M Banks and Warhammer 40,000. The first half was better than the second half. I might continue with the trilogy, but only if I come across cheap copies of the books.

Now reading Skein Island. I'm conflicted about Whiteley's works - she's a very good writer, but I'm not entirely convinced by her fantasy premises.

One of my "stay at home" projects has been to finally watch my DVDs of original Star Trek episodes. I got the bright idea to reread the James Blish novelizations at the same time, also in broadcast order. I've held onto the books since the early 1970s, they were among the first that I bought myself with my own money as a young teenager, but I hadn't read them in decades. I knew the stories weren't in any sort of order in the books, but I didn't realize how spread out they were until I got into finding them in order, some early first season episodes don't show up until book 12. And then the Mudd episodes are a separate book unto themselves. At least book 12 does contain a list of the contents of all the books, plus an alphabetical index of the episode names, so finding what to read next is easier than I was expecting.

Pairing the two forms of each episode this way points out how very different some of the novelizations, often written from early drafts of scripts rather than final cuts of episodes, turned out to be. When I originally read them, I had probably seen episodes only one or two times, if at all. Then by the mid 70s they were rerun constantly, and I didn't often go back to the books, having dozens of tie-in novels to read instead.

>57 SF_fan_mae: I've done the same with the first three books. Being a cheapskate though, I watched the episodes on YouTube. The Star Trek books are my favourite works of James Blish, and what started me reading SF!

Finished The Falling Astronauts. I enjoyed it, but it was the kind of guilty enjoyment that comes from seeing a car crash and laughing at the broken bodies of the victims. I found it extremely well written, and it sums up the fin de siecle of the Apollo missions, with pokes at NASA view of the astronauts as an expendable commodity. There's an excellent review on the main page btw.

Next up, and in complete contrast, I'm reading Raiders of Gor by John Norman. Despite it's bad reputation the first five volumes have been readable, if a little stodgy. Of course the author cranks up the misogyny a little with each successive volume, presumably in the hopes that no one will notice.

>59 SFF1928-1973:

To quote my review of a later number in the series: "Whether John Norman's 'counter-earth' Gor was ever intended to be an innocent sword-and-planet epic or was always meant as a sprawling masculinist pro-slavery narrative manifesto, it had long ago settled into its character by the writing of this twenty-first volume."

Finished Ark by Veronica Roth. Liked it OK. Also read You Have Arrived at Your Destination by Amor Towles. Not bad, but just rubbed me the wrong way.

Added Summer Frost by Blake Crouch to my rotation.

Finished Summer Frost. Rather creepy AI story. Added The Last Conversation by Paul Tremblay into my rotation.

>62 seitherin: I'll be interested to hear what you think of The Last Conversation as I have also been reading The Forward Collection over the past couple of weeks. Finished up last night with Rand0m1ze which I thought was, by far, the weakest of the bunch.

>63 ScoLgo: I agree with you about Randomize. I found it very disappointing.

I've spent the past several months on a HUGE fantasy bender, reading Wheel of Time and Malazan back to back. I'm zigging back to Science Fiction and just downloaded book 2 of Peter F Hamilton's latest series (Salvation). I read book 1 prior to my fantasy bender, then remembered that I broke my rule - "don't read a series until the final book is published!"* It's not Hamilton's best work, but he's one of my favorite authors and mediocre by his standards is still pretty good.

Interestingly enough, I never warmed to Alastair Reynolds, another British hard SF writer (and friend of PFH). I think Al Reynolds sacrifices some of the "fun" to get the "science" right, when in fact the science is still wildly speculative. PFH is more like "I want to run trains through wormholes!"

*I also broke that rule with a certain series written by George R R Martin, but I was young(er) and naiive! And A Storm of Swords made it worth breaking the rule.

>65 drmamm: I've always much preferred Reynolds to Hamilton. And yes, they're friends, but only in as much as most UK sf writers are because of meeting up at cons and such.

Finished The Last Conversation. Liked it.

Am rereading C J Cherryh's Convergence then will reread Emergence to refresh my failing brain ready for Resurgence which arrived today
Also have managed to get hold of Night in the Lonesome Octoberfor my Halloween read. Last year the waiting list was so long I didnt get it in time,so I made sure I was alert this year :0)

>68 dustydigger: I have been collecting the Foreigner series in anticipation of reading all 21 books for the first time. I have gathered that it is a series much-beloved by many readers. Other than that, I have avoided any and all spoilers as I wish to come at it with no preconceptions. Having read quite a few of Cherry's Alliance-Union titles, she is one of my top-5 authors so I'm really looking forward to starting the Foreigner books soon.

I hope you enjoy the Zelazny. I bought the hardcover of A Night in the Lonesome October five years ago. This October will mark my 5th (annual) re-read. I love all the literary and pop-culture allusions. Another planned Halloween read for this year is The House on the Borderland, which I know very little about.

>69 ScoLgo: I have an October special read too - The October Country by Ray Bradbury.

Anyone else have their own holiday book tradition?

My Halloween favorite is "The Shadow at the Bottom of the World" by Thomas Ligotti.

>71 paradoxosalpha: That could be my favourite Ligotti story. It is tied with Teatro Grotesco.

>70 Darth-Heather: I often also re-visit We Have Always Lived in the Castle in October. Thanks for reminding me that I have a copy of The October Country but haven't read it yet. Might have to remedy that this year.

>71 paradoxosalpha: >72 pgmcc: The TBR grows again. (*sigh* ;)

Finished The Stone Sky this morning and while Jemisin wrapped up the trilogy in an impressive fashion I still find myself most impressed with The Fifth Season.

At some point I'll have to do a methodical reread of the trilogy (I seldom revisit any novel) to decide whether Jemisin too obviously stacked the deck to tell the story she wanted to tell.

Looking forward to reading her next trilogy as this looks more like my preferred taste in fantasy.

Altered Carbon was a strong mix of cyperpunk tech and crime noir. Hardboiled,stark,occasionally gruesome,it needed a lot of effort to get through it. One for the boys i'm afraid.
Now on to LMBs Captain Vorpatril's Alliance

For seasonal reading I've often gone for Bradbury's The Hallowe'en tree or Something wicked this way comes (the book and/or the movie).

Plate o' shrimp: I just finished up the new Tim Powers, Forced perspectives, which takes place in LA (of course) at the end of October, 2018. Hallowe'en is merely a deadline rather than an atmosphere. Still, it's Tim Powers, so there are plenty of ghosts and evil people. Pretty good, too.

Started The Man Who Fell to Earth. Have seen the film several times, but never read the book. Not especially convincing, it has to be said - it's set in the 1980s but feels like the 1950s, and the ease with which Newton introduces products and processes in competition against big corporations is somewhat implausible.

Started Lightspeed Magazine:People of Colour Destroy Science Fiction. Six stories in and so far not impressive.

Reading Deadhouse Gates by Steven Erikson...

>69 ScoLgo: I hope you enjoy The House on the Borderland. I read it as recently as 38 years ago and my recollection is that it ticks all the right boxes for gothic horror!

>80 SFF1928-1973: Thanks! Good to hear. I'm just about to delve into it tonight.