Books: Various
I've been very busy reading recently. I went to the library and rediscovered the joy of a place where I can go and take out reading material for nothing. Libraries are awesome.
Veteran by Gavin Smith:
While I was reading New Model Army, I also read this at the same time. It's special ops sci-fi (so the book's about special operations military types and so it's more like a traditional thriller but turned into sci-fi).
The book was about a war in which humanity is fighting an alien species which is called (for various reasons) Them (note capitals) in a war of mutual annihilation. A discharged special forces operative is on Scotland, Earth, his life wrecked by his stint in the war. He becomes reactivated to track down and kill an alien infiltrator on Earth. When he finds the alien, things start to get very complicated and things don't go as planned.
I enjoyed it a lot. The sci-fi behind the book was really interesting, especially the race Them and the technology they use. The characters are also engaging and quite complex for a novel of this type, and the characters are not necessarily "good", in fact some of what they do is quite violent. The plot is quite fun and twists enough that it kept me guessing and didn't go the way it should if it was following cliche. Some of the action sequences strain credulity but blend sci-fi into them so well that I could overlook it. Definitely worth a read if you love action packed sci-fi and only slightly less recommended if you don't.
Memory by Linda Nagata:
I found this in my second visit to the library. The blurb didn't inspire me with confidence, but I took a chance on the fact that it sounded a bit McCaffrey-esque and I wasn't disappointed.
The book is about a strange world where the silver comes at night. Any animal or person it touches is devoured and disappears, while roads/rocks and other things get dissolved and strange things are put back in their place. Wells with little mechanical creatures called kobalds allow people to make things or even control the silver in a limited way. The story track a girl whose brother is taken by the silver when she's young. However, years later, a meeting with someone else makes her realise he might still be alive. So she sets out on a quest to find him.
This book goes firmly for strange sci-fi setting passed off as a fantastic world, using Clarke's moto of "any technology advanced enough is indistinguishable from magic". It does this very well. Although the book never explicitly states it, I'm fairly sure that the world is a ring orbital (think Iain M Banks Culture) and the silver is rogue nanotechnology. As a result, the world seems fantastical and magical while being also ordinary and plausible, painting a picture of what ordinary life with the constant presence of nanotechnology would be like. How you take the fantasy book and make it sci-fi is up to you and depends on what you know, which is fun and different from normal sci-fi. I liked the characters too, although they weren't the book's strong point.
Surface Detail by Iain M Banks
The latest Culture novel explores the themes of downloadable consciousness, started in the early books, and the effects this can have on religion (hinted at in the previous book). This book is about Hell, literally. Various races have created Hells for their people, in order to enforce moral behaviour. The Culture gets dragged into the war between the anti-Hell side and the pro-Hell side, when it spills from the virtual into the real, through a very surprising person who becomes a fulcrum in the events that follow.
I'm not sure what to think about this one yet. I'm still digesting it.
Second Sight by Amanda Quick
Paranormal romance novel set in Victorian England. It has an interestingly comic situation in which the main female character ends up "married" to the main male character, after thinking he's dead and using him as cover for her widow story, in order to move in Society as a photographer. Meanwhile, someone is stalking them both, looking for a potion.
It's a general bit of romantic fluff. Fun and not too demanding, a good book to unwind to.
Veteran by Gavin Smith:
While I was reading New Model Army, I also read this at the same time. It's special ops sci-fi (so the book's about special operations military types and so it's more like a traditional thriller but turned into sci-fi).
The book was about a war in which humanity is fighting an alien species which is called (for various reasons) Them (note capitals) in a war of mutual annihilation. A discharged special forces operative is on Scotland, Earth, his life wrecked by his stint in the war. He becomes reactivated to track down and kill an alien infiltrator on Earth. When he finds the alien, things start to get very complicated and things don't go as planned.
I enjoyed it a lot. The sci-fi behind the book was really interesting, especially the race Them and the technology they use. The characters are also engaging and quite complex for a novel of this type, and the characters are not necessarily "good", in fact some of what they do is quite violent. The plot is quite fun and twists enough that it kept me guessing and didn't go the way it should if it was following cliche. Some of the action sequences strain credulity but blend sci-fi into them so well that I could overlook it. Definitely worth a read if you love action packed sci-fi and only slightly less recommended if you don't.
Memory by Linda Nagata:
I found this in my second visit to the library. The blurb didn't inspire me with confidence, but I took a chance on the fact that it sounded a bit McCaffrey-esque and I wasn't disappointed.
The book is about a strange world where the silver comes at night. Any animal or person it touches is devoured and disappears, while roads/rocks and other things get dissolved and strange things are put back in their place. Wells with little mechanical creatures called kobalds allow people to make things or even control the silver in a limited way. The story track a girl whose brother is taken by the silver when she's young. However, years later, a meeting with someone else makes her realise he might still be alive. So she sets out on a quest to find him.
This book goes firmly for strange sci-fi setting passed off as a fantastic world, using Clarke's moto of "any technology advanced enough is indistinguishable from magic". It does this very well. Although the book never explicitly states it, I'm fairly sure that the world is a ring orbital (think Iain M Banks Culture) and the silver is rogue nanotechnology. As a result, the world seems fantastical and magical while being also ordinary and plausible, painting a picture of what ordinary life with the constant presence of nanotechnology would be like. How you take the fantasy book and make it sci-fi is up to you and depends on what you know, which is fun and different from normal sci-fi. I liked the characters too, although they weren't the book's strong point.
Surface Detail by Iain M Banks
The latest Culture novel explores the themes of downloadable consciousness, started in the early books, and the effects this can have on religion (hinted at in the previous book). This book is about Hell, literally. Various races have created Hells for their people, in order to enforce moral behaviour. The Culture gets dragged into the war between the anti-Hell side and the pro-Hell side, when it spills from the virtual into the real, through a very surprising person who becomes a fulcrum in the events that follow.
I'm not sure what to think about this one yet. I'm still digesting it.
Second Sight by Amanda Quick
Paranormal romance novel set in Victorian England. It has an interestingly comic situation in which the main female character ends up "married" to the main male character, after thinking he's dead and using him as cover for her widow story, in order to move in Society as a photographer. Meanwhile, someone is stalking them both, looking for a potion.
It's a general bit of romantic fluff. Fun and not too demanding, a good book to unwind to.