Another productive week!
Bill: This week I read a solid but flawed YA fantasy, The Language of Spells, by Garret Weyr, as well as Hannu Rajaniemi’s more enjoyable but not riveting Summerland. Keeping up with my “one old TBR book for every two new ones,” I’ve started Fred Cahppell’s A Shadow of All Light. I also finished a disappointing collection of essays by Clinton Crockett Peters, Pandora’s Garden: Kudzu, Cockroaches, and Other Misfits of Ecology. In media, my son and I watched and enjoyed the first two episodes of Marvel’s Cloak and Dagger, which I thought had a nice bit of layered richness and subtlety to it, and I appreciated the slow movement toward bringing the two young protagonists together. The Expanse is still killing it, while this week’s Westworld had one of the worst examples of an idiot plot I can recall in some time. Arggh. And I’m still working my way through the not-great-but-mostly-fun-with-good-characters Killjoys series.
Jana: This week I only had time to read one book, Sue Burke‘s Semiosis. I highly recommend it for people who are enthusiastic about plants, discourses on intelligence, and planet-colonization stories. Next week I hope to begin reading The Robots of Gotham, by Todd McAulty, a doorstopper of a novel about humans vying for control of Earth with intelligent and self-aware machines, and Machine Learning, a collection of short stories by Hugh Howey. I didn’t plan to read these in the same week, but it will be interesting to see whether there are dovetailing or parallel themes between the two authors.
Marion: I finished up Nnedi Okorafor’s delightful YA fantasy Akata Witch. I enjoyed it so much! I’m waiting for my bookstore to get Akata Warrior so I can plunge into that one. In other news, I turned a project in to my editor on deadline, so I’m happy about that.
Sandy: Moi? I am currently reading a trio of novels by pulp author Norvell Page, collected into one volume entitled Robot Titans of Gotham. Two of these novels feature Page’s most famous character, The Spider, and one features another, lesser-known character, The Octopus. The Spider was featured in well over 100 issues of The Spider magazine in the 1930s and, decades later, influenced Stan Lee in the naming of one of HIS superheroes. (Can you guess which one?) I hope to have a review of this trio of novels ready for you very soon…
Terry: I spent a lot of this week finishing up books I mentioned last week, but I’ve also started Six Four by Hideo Yokoyama, a mystery set in Japan and translated from the Japanese. I can’t say much about it yet, but I do like the way translated fiction feels so different from work originally written in English.
Tim: This week, I polished off Ka: Dar Oakley in the Ruin of Ymr by John Crowley, which was a bizarre and very pretty novel all at once. Working on the review now. I also completed N.K. Jemisin‘s The Fifth Season on audio (very good as well), and so I suddenly find myself without a new book in the pipeline. I’m trying to decide between a couple of options in print, but I think I might go on to Jim Butcher‘s Brief Cases for my new audiobook. It’s nice to have so many books I want to read!
Terry, I’ve wanted to read Six Four for a while, so I hope you’ll let us know if it’s good! I’m a big fan of Keigo Higashino and Natsuo Kirino’s Japanese crime fiction novels, and I’m always looking for more authors to add to that list. :)