I saw Stewart Hotston's Project Hanuman on the new books shelf at my local library, and it seemed like very much my thing (space opera with elements of Indian mythology, and an author influenced by Iain M. Banks!). I immediately moved it toward the top of my to-read pile.
The science fictional and philosophical ideas are quite Banksian. Sometimes I just need some spacey SF in my life, and this hit the spot. It's not a perfect fit (more on that later), but overall I really enjoyed this!
At last I am continuing with Part Two of my Review of Reviews for February 2026 (see Part One here). I figured I should post this before February is over. Here are my reviews of Rendezvous with Rama by Arthur C. Clarke, Wyrd Sisters by Terry Pratchett, The Great Hunt by Robert Jordan, How the World Made the West by Josephine Quinn, Pebble in the Sky by Isaac Asimov, A Few Rules for Predicting the Future by Octavia Butler, and Driftglass by Samuel R. Delany.
Iʻm also reading Michael Harriotʻs Black AF History for Black History Month. Iʻm loving it, but alas, Iʻm not quire done, so maybe Iʻll get that in the next batch.
You can find these and other reviews on my Goodreads.
I have gotten behind on my reviews again. D'oh! Part of the blame is a trip I took last month, a trip on which I read these two books! So, maybe this is a good excuse for a double review post for The Long Earth by Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter and The Orphaned Worlds by Michael Cobley.
Meanwhile, my annual reading of the Hugo finalists has begun, so look for those reviews soon! (I also will be at Worldcon again this year!)
I read (and loved!) Liu Cixin's The Three-Body Problem back in 2016. I vowed to read the sequels soon... and then I ... didn't. I'm honestly not sure why (maybe: aliens?), but I watched and mostly liked the Netflix adaptation of The Three-Body Problem, which reminded me that I really should pick up the sequel (there are actually a few things from the second book in the series as well, so that was fun).
I'm glad I finally read The Dark Forest! This feels like a different kind of book to me (maybe due to being a second book in a series, or leisurely in a more focused way, or maybe I'm a different reader now?). Still, I enjoyed it almost as much as the first one.
It's the week between Christmas and New Year's, that blank time filled with cheese, sugar, and not knowing what day of the week it is. I've been having fun reading, but I have been somewhat remiss when it comes to writing reviews. Lest I disappoint the small handful of humans and bots who will read this, here are my reviews of some of what I've been reading lately: Transcendent by Stephen Baxter, The Chrysalids by John Wyndham, The Sum of Us by Heather McGhee, and Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer. I also recently finished A Prayer for the Crown-Shy by Becky Chambers, but I need more time to process how much I loved everything about it. I'm also returning to an old favorite, The Player of Games by Iain M. Banks, which I'm loving just as much if not more than I did when I first read it ten years ago. Anyway, on to this Review of Reviews: December 2023!
As with all of Le Guin's work, The Telling is profound, thought-provoking, complex, and raises more questions than answers.
The trouble with reviewing a Le Guin book is that anything I could say about it feels inadequate compared to what Le Guin herself has written. But let me give it a shot, anyway.
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| Reading the Patternist series with a beer on a nice afternoon |
March is Women's History Month, so echoing my "Black Future Month" post, this seemed like a good chance to finish two series by two of my favorite authors: Octavia E. Butler's Patternist series and Ursula K. Le Guin's Earthsea series. Okay, so the Earthsea books aren't about the future, at least not our future.
But Le Guin's fantasy may be about my future: I hope to do some serious academic work on both Butler and Le Guin in the future (building on the article on Le Guin I've already published), so maybe this will be a seed of some future project. Echoing a phrase from Le Guin, I might even call it something like Realists of a Larger Reality.
I read the first two books of The Expanse book series around 2013 and 2014. I meant to read the third book soon... and then I didn't. Instead, I watched the entire TV show The Expanse, which just ended recently. Occasionally while watching the TV series over the years, I would think, "I should read the rest of the books someday." And then I didn't. Until now!
The Ministry of the Future is up there with Kim Stanley Robinson's best work. Given how much I love his work, this counts as high praise from me.
If you're familiar with Kim Stanley Robinson (KSR), you'll have some idea of what to expect. A lot of wonky, nerdy details delivered in what his critics would call "info dumps," a lot of cool Big Ideas, a delightful thrashing of the "show don't tell" rule that's sure to give nightmares many creative writing teachers, and oh yeah, some characters and plot and stuff, too. (Indeed, I sometimes wonder if a writer like KSR would get published today given how he cuts against the grain.)
I just finished watching The Matrix Resurrections, one my most anticipated movies of the year (after Dune, of course). The best spoiler-free review is the shortest: Whoa.
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| Me, watching The Matrix Resurrections |
I enjoyed Mary Robinette Kowal's third entry in the Lady Astronaut series (The Relentless Moon) more than the second volume (The Fated Sky), but not as much as the first one (The Calculating Stars). The biggest problem is that it's probably a lot longer than it needs to be, although maybe for what Kowal is going for, it's just as long as it needs to be.
