Hey all!

It’s been a while… but I thought it would be fun to try and revive this community a little bit! So I’ll go first and talk about what I’ve been reading. Well, technically what I’ve been listening to since this is all the audiobooks I finished while grinding out the miles. My one rule is that I can’t listen to an audiobook unless I’m running (it’s a little treat for me doing the work.) So if I’m listening to a bad book there’s more of a chance I drop it and physically read it later. I try not to DNF books if at all possible so I can fully judge the entire story.

Waterblack - Alex Pheby

Now this is arguably not speculative fiction… or arguably is once you get more through the book… it’s confusing actually. Anyway, a friend recommended the first book in this series (Mordew) when it came out and I really enjoyed it! I did not like the second book so much, it felt like such a slog to get through. Waterblack… it was ambitious. I think there were things I liked and things I very much didn’t like, but overall if you want something different in “dark fantasy” this might be the series for you. Hard to talk about this book without spoiling the whole series though so I will just leave it at that, it’s different, ambitious and I respect Pheby for trying it out!

***House of Suns - Alistair Reynolds ***

Holy SHIT – fucking loved this book. I am obsessed with this self-contained story. I have read a few Reynolds books, mostly the famous Revelation Space series. I didn’t really like Revelation Space, I am more of a fan of The Culture by Banks and I felt like Reynolds didn’t do as good a job world building and also I am just generally a Banks-stan. I kind of dropped off Reynolds and that was a mistake because damn this book has one of the best self-contained stories I feel like I have read in a long, long time. Truly a special gem in his bibliography in my opinion. This book had me running extra miles just to get through more of it. The world-building was incredible, the pace was perfect and just in general the story was intriguing and the suspense was top-notch. I felt really, really engaged the entire time and just in general hats off to Reynolds!

Roadside Picnic - Arkady Strugatsky

This book was a blind spot for me… I had never read it but knew a lot about the story since I played a decent amount of S.T.A.L.K.E.R when that game came out. I thought I would pick it up and it was worth it. Truly another engaging book that kept me out running extra miles. The story is so creative and the world is just intriguing. I really enjoy books that don’t hold your hand and just throw you in the world and let your mind figure it out. If you haven’t read this one yet, highly recommend. I think the soviet-era writing is a nice break from normal western speculative fiction and really challenging some preconceived notions I had.

The Dragon Never Sleeps - Glen Cook

This one was fun! I read Black Company from a friend’s recommendation and hated it, then read it again and loved it so I thought I would try out Cook’s science fiction book and honestly… really enjoyable! I wouldn’t say good… but it’s fun! It’s kind of cliche in some points and a slog in a few places but Cook just has a fun prose that is enjoyable to me. Highly recommend if you want something different from the “creator” of dark fantasy. It was interesting to see his take on what he thinks sci-fi is!

Thanks for making this far, please post what you’ve been reading recently I would love to get this community back up and going!

  • misericordiae
    2·
    1 day ago

    Agreed, Roadside Picnic is great!

    Here are some highlights from my reads of the past few months:

    • The Thief by Claire North: Book 2 in a trilogy of stories framed by the Gameshouse, a mysterious club where gamblers can bet memories, abilities, years of their lives, health, etc. and participate in games that use places and people for their boards and pieces. Each story focuses on a single player in a single one of these games; this one was hide and seek in Thailand in the 1930s. I didn’t love the writing in this one, but I like the concept, and both this and the first book (The Serpent) have been interesting reads.
    • The Crows by C.M. Rosens: This, if you can believe it, is eldritch horror crossed with 90s chick lit. I found it entertaining, despite some quibbles with the editing. The first sequel (Thirteenth) replaces the chick lit vibe with family drama (and some different PoVs), which I enjoyed less, but enough to put the third book on my TBR. It’s obviously not gonna be everyone’s thing, but if the genre mashup sounds fun to you, I recommend it.
    • The Works of Vermin by Hiron Ennes: Picked this up because I liked Leech. The blurb for it, while accurate, is also super misleading; it’s much less one guy hunting a giant bug, and more a sweeping epic of change in a city with some fantastic/weird/horror elements, from two major points of view. It’s a little slow (for my taste), and a little long, but I enjoyed it.
    • Valuable Humans in Transit and Other Stories by qntm: I’m not really a short story person, but I liked There Is No Antimemetics Division, so I gave this a shot. It was great! Most of the focus was on scifi concepts rather than characters or plot, which helped, I think. Recommended!
    • ArthurOPMAEnglish
      2·
      17 hours ago

      Oh nice! I just picked up Slow Gods by Claire North!

      I love love love qntm’s short stories, Valuable Humans actually has a permanent place on my desk! Thanks for writing up some of your highlights!