Kat: Since you heard from me last, I’ve read The Broken Sword by Poul Anderson, The Long Tomorrow by Leigh Brackett, The Stars My Destination by Alfred Bester, The City and the Stars by Arthur C. Clarke, and (this was my favorite) Gateway by Frederik Pohl.
Marion: I finished Becky Chambers’s A Psalm for the Wild-Built. It’s sweet. I’m halfway through my reread of Leigh Bardugo’s Six of Crows and enjoying it as much as I did the first time. But the feast is coming up: Locklands, book Three in the FOUNDERS TRILOGY by Robert Jackson Bennett.
Sandy: Moi? I am currently reading another classic sci-fi novel from the fine folks at Bison Books, namely Philip Wylie’s Gladiator, which was initially released in 1930. This novel is considered by some to have been one of the inspirations for the Superman character, and whether it was indeed or not, it surely is a wonderfully written and engaging read so far. I look forward to sharing some thoughts on this one with you all very shortly….
Terry: I’m loving All the Seas of the World by Guy Gavriel Kay; his characters are drawn so very well, and his descriptive prose is beautiful. Bill’s review is right on the money about it. I also reread Sandman: Preludes and Nocturnes in anticipation of watching the television series starting in August. It’s amazing to realize that Neil Gaiman was only in his late 20s when he wrote it! I’m moving on to The Doll’s House today.
Kat, you are whipping through the classics! GATEWAY is one of my favorite SF books.
Yeah, these are books I’ve had sitting in my Audible library for years and haven’t read because they were already reviewed here on our blog. I’m so far behind on writing reviews of ARCs right now that I don’t want to read any more until I get caught up on reviews, so that’s why I’m reading books that have already been thoroughly reviewed on the blog. I hope to catch up with those reviews soon.
“In your spare time?” she inquires, one eyebrow raised skeptically.
Book of Night, Holly Black’s latest, was my favorite book from this past week. Builds up the main character’s history and personality very nicely and leaves plenty of room for sequels. Spear (Nicola Griffith) was beautifully written but so short that only the heroine has much character depth. Plus her semi-divine blood makes her basically unbeatable, which bleeds some of the tension away. Even shorter was Escape From Yokai Land, which is mainly Charles Stross poking fun at the more twee aspects of Japanese pop culture in the guise of a Laundry Files novella. And John Ford’s The Scholars of Night is a good spy thriller about an attempt to start World War III (in at least a limited way) in the mid 1980s. As is often the case in books like this, I ended up not sure which side and who in particular had ordered some of the multiple killings that occur.