January 2021 Reading Thread.

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So... I'm giving The Weapon Shops of Isher by A. E.van Vogt. I read the earlier novella The Weapon Shops in the mammoth book of golden age sf but didn't enjoy it at all! This is reassuringly different, so far
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Came across a new author, not quite sure how, maybe an Amazon recommendation because I read Jodi Taylor.

So the new author is Eva St. John and her first book is "The Quantum Curators and the Faberge Egg".

Glorious opening - two woman team is on a retrieval (though a Quantum portal). They are after Excalibur. The priestesses come to the lake to toss in the sword and they can't throw for toffee - it goes splat in the shallows. So they get a boat. And head out into the lake with the sword. The nearer person of the team has to go into the lake after them to catch the sword. She doesn't have scuba gear, just a re-breather and finishes up going into the water naked. Navigating in a scummy lake she turns on a light so she can see all the debris. The priestesses get terribly excited at the glowing patch and row over to it. She puts up her hand for the sword......

Only in the third chapter, but so far, so very amusing.
 
Finished The Fifth Season by NK Jemisin and am glad I stuck with it through a slow beginning. I'm still a bit non-plussed at the convergence of fantasy and superhero movies in terms of superhumans unleashing genocidal power left and right, but the rest of the story is well handled and the pacing is much better than similar stories I recently read (Poppy War, Mistborn).

Also read the graphic novel March, Book 1 by John Lewis, which was solid but unspectacular, and am following it up with Maus I, which so far is living up to its reputation.

On the kindle, I bailed on A Red Death (guess there's a reason it took 20 years for me to bother with this sequel) by Walter Moseley and am trying another thriller instead by Olga Tokarczuk called Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead. It's bizarrely intriguing in the early going.
 
Skin by Liam Brown.
Yet another pandemic novel, however this came out in May 2019, long before we'd heard of Wuhan.

It's eerily prescient, we have most of the population quarantined at home, communication with school and work is online etc.

The tale so far, female protagonist spots a man from her window, most unusually he is not wearing a facemask (that's as far as I've read, the first chapter)
 
So the beginning of The Weapon Shops of Isher started well, but then I realized what I thought was the first chapter was the prologue! Chapter one began and it is exactly the same as the dull story in the anthology, albeit with actual chapter breaks. Later on it returns to the character that appeared in the prologue so I might just jump ahead.
 
Re-reading The Book of Three. It doesn't hold up too well in my opinion.

I also have a couple of ARCs on the go in Hollow Empire by Sam Hawke and Mask of Mirrors by M.A. Carrick. I am slowly getting into the former but the latter is currently a big disappointment.

I think it might be time to reward myself with a re-read of something I know I like.
 
The Big Peat said:
Re-reading The Book of Three. It doesn't hold up too well in my opinion.
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More details? My 3-star Goodreads review a couple of years ago was: "Amusing, charming and well-written, with nicely drawn characters, but nowhere near as compelling for me as an adult reader as it was as a teenager, and with a disappointing ending." I preferred books 2 and 3 (4 stars each).
 
HareBrain said:
More details? My 3-star Goodreads review a couple of years ago was: "Amusing, charming and well-written, with nicely drawn characters, but nowhere near as compelling for me as an adult reader as it was as a teenager, and with a disappointing ending." I preferred books 2 and 3 (4 stars each).
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Only 20% in so not many so far other than there's no great hook that makes me go "ah yes, this is why this book of all the many was so feted".
 
Finished For I Am A Jealous People. Interesting premise. Everybody that goes to war seems to assume that God is on their side. But what if He’s not?
Being an atheist, I don’t suffer from this moral conundrum....thank the lord :D

Now starting Gordon R. Dickson’s The Mortal And The Monster.
 
I have read a few of Stephen Baxter's books, but not many. I found him to be a bit hit and miss. I adored The Time Ships, Voyage and Titan but I thought Moonseed was nonsense.

I never got around to reading his Xeelee series, which i have read very favourable reviews.
 
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