Wednesday Reading
I've been reading a lot, but between heat and obligations, have only kept up with about half of it at Goodreads.
Here are two standouts that don't get tons of publicity:
The Robots of Gotham, by Todd McAulty.
His stories in Blackgate (sadly no longer in print) were always standouts for me, so when I had a chance to get an ARC of this his debut novel, I grabbed it. At novel length, McAulty is even better.
We’re at the other end of the 21st Century, and machine intelligences have taken over much of the United States as well as the rest of the world. I’m not usually a fan of robot stories, but I trusted McAulty not to offer up machines-are-evil or alpha guys bashing around in gigantic mecha (a fandom I just don’t get), and I was right.
The aspect that won me over with the robots is that they aren’t machine-evil, or gigantic tin cans for guys to smash buildings, bridges, and countries. McAulty takes the time to develop the robot intelligences, making their culture fascinating as well as believable.
I really liked the female characters, who all have smarts and agency, and the occasional robot blog posts are a hoot-a great way to deliver background data and make it entertaining. The narrative style is skillful, full of humor and image, and gracefully executed in past tense. (I’ve been reading too many first person present tense stories in which complicated backgrounds are especially awkward in present tense.) Because this is written in first person, we assume he survives, and yet that somehow didn’t take away from the white-knuckle climactic scene, which we see twice-and the second time the action is relayed, step by step, blow by blow, increases the tension, even though we know what happened.
The Covert Captain: Or, A Marriage of Equals, an FF historical romantic adventure.
While I found some aspects of the novel problematical (see review here), I was deeply immersed in this novel, enjoying it very much.
This entry was originally posted at https://sartorias.dreamwidth.org/983457.html. Please comment there using OpenID.
Here are two standouts that don't get tons of publicity:
The Robots of Gotham, by Todd McAulty.
His stories in Blackgate (sadly no longer in print) were always standouts for me, so when I had a chance to get an ARC of this his debut novel, I grabbed it. At novel length, McAulty is even better.
We’re at the other end of the 21st Century, and machine intelligences have taken over much of the United States as well as the rest of the world. I’m not usually a fan of robot stories, but I trusted McAulty not to offer up machines-are-evil or alpha guys bashing around in gigantic mecha (a fandom I just don’t get), and I was right.
The aspect that won me over with the robots is that they aren’t machine-evil, or gigantic tin cans for guys to smash buildings, bridges, and countries. McAulty takes the time to develop the robot intelligences, making their culture fascinating as well as believable.
I really liked the female characters, who all have smarts and agency, and the occasional robot blog posts are a hoot-a great way to deliver background data and make it entertaining. The narrative style is skillful, full of humor and image, and gracefully executed in past tense. (I’ve been reading too many first person present tense stories in which complicated backgrounds are especially awkward in present tense.) Because this is written in first person, we assume he survives, and yet that somehow didn’t take away from the white-knuckle climactic scene, which we see twice-and the second time the action is relayed, step by step, blow by blow, increases the tension, even though we know what happened.
The Covert Captain: Or, A Marriage of Equals, an FF historical romantic adventure.
While I found some aspects of the novel problematical (see review here), I was deeply immersed in this novel, enjoying it very much.
This entry was originally posted at https://sartorias.dreamwidth.org/983457.html. Please comment there using OpenID.