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.

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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!

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***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!

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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.

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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!