February 2021 Reading Thread.

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Finished Rosewater by Tade Thompson and really enjoyed it. There was a lot going on and I'm not entirely sure he pulled it all together perfectly, but it sure made for a unique experience, which can be hard to come by.

Now tackling The Obelisk Gate by NK Jemisin. I had a mixed reaction to the first book early on (it has a reputation for starting a little slow), but felt it ended strong enough for me to want to see where it's headed next. I'm a little weary of genocidal/mass casualty superpower plot points though, so hopefully this can overcome some of those overtones.

I’ve also decided to use my kindle for a long, leisurely read through a classic. Just haven’t decided if it will be Les Miserables, Don Quixote, or War and Peace...
 
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AE35Unit said:
Was Star Soldiers originally published under a different title? It doesn't show up on Fantastic Fiction.
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@Vertigo is precisely correct. The twin book is Star Soldiers and the parts are Star Rangers and Star Guard. I should have recognized that. It would have made my first post clearer and more correct.
 
soulsinging said:
I’ve also decided to use my kindle for a long, leisurely read through a classic. Just haven’t decided if it will be Les Miserables, Don Quixote, or War and Peace...
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might i suggest the count of monte cristo? or the lusiadas if you like verse? actually i don't know if there's an english version... do you know of gil vicente?
 
Bick said:
Have you read Pratt's "The Wrong Stars" books at all? If so, what were you thoughts?
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I think Doors of Sleep is better than The Wrong Stars. I enjoyed The Wrong Stars but I think it tries a little too hard to have "quirky" characters.
 
Randy M. said:
Started Binti: The Complete Trilogy by Nnedi Okorafor. Only ~40 pages in, but the premise is intriguing and I like the compression of Okorafor's writing. Within a few pages we have a sense of the character, the culture she comes from, and the personal stakes for her.
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Just finished. Interesting book, entertaining and well-written with a distinct and compelling voice.

I'm not sure that Okorafor meant to be in conversation with Ender's Game but it's hard to read about a child's involvement in a war between species without making that connection. And Binit's story can stand as a different perspective on a similar premise. Binti's story is also about coming of age and
just to top it off has the elements of the birth of a messiah when Binti dies and is resurrected.
About that spoiler, I thought near the end I felt the author's thumb resting on the scales. I've come across more egregious instances though, that pretty much ruined their story but I didn't find this as damaging; if anything it just deducted points for not sticking the landing. Still, I was pretty satisfied with where Binti ended up at the conclusion.
 
I’ve started Slan, by A. E. van Vogt. I’ve been meaning to read this for some time and I expect I’ll zip through it. Well, I’ve never heard of readers saying they trudged, or waded, through a van Vogt, and it’s not too long.
 
Bick said:
I’ve started Slan, by A. E. van Vogt. I’ve been meaning to read this for some time and I expect I’ll zip through it. Well, I’ve never heard of readers saying they trudged, or waded, through a van Vogt, and it’s not too long.
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I didn't like that one. And I found the Weapon Shops a trudge. It was a DNF
 
Slan is pretty straightforward for van Vogt. No trudging required.
 
Finished both Star Rangers and Star Guard. Both were good reads and have aged very well for S.F. They are clearly Juveniles in that the end is in sight from the beginning, or nearly so, especially in Star Rangers. I would make Star Guard the superior book, but both are fine, and well worth the read. If you could get you 12 year old to read them, I'd bet they would love them.
 
I read Ursula Le Guin's The Other Wind. I thought it was a good conclusion to the series that brought in a lot of characters and plot threads from the previous books. In one of her comments in the omnibus edition I'm reading Le Guin said a lot of previous collections had omitted it or put it in the wrong place in the series and I think that does seem like a mistake since apart from the first couple of books (which were fairly standalone) I think the others would have left something unresolved without this. Although it does seem an appropriate conclusion I think the very end of the story way maybe a bit abrupt.

It is interesting reading all six books together to see how Le Guin's writing and her ideas about how her world worked evolved over the decades that it took to write them. I think the Le Guin of the 90s and early 2000s would not have done plenty of things differently if writing the early books of the series again, but despite that they are still recognisably part of the same series as the later ones. Overall I found the plots more interesting in the early books although I think the characterisation perhaps had more depth in the later books, particularly for characters other than Ged or Tenar.
 
Finished Doors of Sleep by Tim Pratt. I loved most of it, but the ending was a little rushed. It obviously sets up for a sequel. That's just something you have to accept with 50% of books these days.

Currently listening to The Midnight Library by Matt Haig and reading How to Stop Time by Matt Haig. Enjoying them both.
 
Parson said:
Finished both Star Rangers and Star Guard. Both were good reads and have aged very well for S.F. They are clearly Juveniles in that the end is in sight from the beginning, or nearly so, especially in Star Rangers. I would make Star Guard the superior book, but both are fine, and well worth the read. If you could get you 12 year old to read them, I'd bet they would love them.
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I may get the omnibus for my 14 year old then. Cheers for review.
 
AE35Unit said:
And so on to Domain book 3 of James Herbert's Rats trilogy, where a nuclear holocaust and giant rats combine...
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In case you're not aware, there is a fourth instalment to the trilogy, set some time after the holocaust, a graphic novel called The City with art by Ian Miller. I read it as a library loan decades ago. The story wasn't anything special but the art was amazing (and disturbing).
 
I didn't know there was a fourth story to The Rats, HareBrain. I will have to get that as i loved the Rats novels.
 
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