Ship of Magic by Robin Hobb. I’d read two of the Elderlings trilogies like a decade ago. I recommended the series to a friend and he’s blasting through it. It’s about time I continued although I doubt I’ll keep up.
this post was submitted on 17 Jun 2025
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Halfway through "The Hundred Years' War on Palestine" by Rashid Khalidi, a Palestinian living in the West Bank with familial connections to the pre-Nakba landed elite. It's a bit of a dense read so far but highly informative, would recommend.
Stainless Steel Rat's Revenge - Harry Harrison (book 2 of the SSR series). Other than the typical hangups of sci-fi from the era, not a particularly aggregous example though, it's been an ok 'brain-off' read. I enjoyed the series going through it my first couple times as a teen, less so now. Mostly recommend as a nostalgia trip, or a study of sci-fi as a whole. Otherwise, go read hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy or something.
Honestly, the most interesting thing has been the tech predictions, poor Harrison didn't stand a chance. Mass surveillance would be too labour intensive to be feasible?!
Working my way through Master and Commander again. I'm up to Truelove.
The Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells. The first book ends kinda flat but it’s the first series in a while to catch my eye and keep me reading. I’m just at the start of the second book as of now.
My 1st time through, All Systems Sed really felt like half a book. It needed the 2nd book and boy did it ever deliver (for me).
Oh, you're gonna have a good time.
It's not flawless, (what is, after all) but it's quite good.
Murderbot is very good. The TV show does a good job of capturing the tone of the books imo.
Just finished the last Dungeon Crawler Carl book. Now I just wait :(
I started reading The Curse of Saints by Kate Dramis, but I found out after starting the book that it is Romantasy. Everyone was described as wearing skin tight clothes that accentuated their muscles and curves. Women were constantly brushing their hair behind their ear. Men always had smoldering looks in their eyes. The main character mentioned every 3 paragraphs how much she hates the dude she works with, so even though I only read maybe 15% of the book I already know she's going to fall in love with him. I can't describe how much I hated the short bit I read and only read that much because I didn't have wifi to download a new book while on vacation.
I ended up starting Night Angel Nemesis by Brent Weeks. I last read the Night Angel series about 7 years ago, so I have forgotten almost everything that happened. The original series was good, and this one is starting off OK. Not great, but better than the alternative.
Heh, "Romantasy".
Yeah, I cringed the first time I heard that term, but then fairy sex books like Court of Thorns and Roses and dragon sex books like Fourth Wing became a popular thing outside of fantasy readers.
Re-reading the terror - https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3974.The_Terror
This is a comfort read.
And also reading gridlinked - https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/98046.Gridlinked
I've heard good stuff about the polity series. Looking forward to seeing the jain nodes in action.
Just finished "Shroud" by Adrian Tchaikovsky. I'm a fan of his works but I'm not entirely sure how I feel about this one. It was an interesting mix of No Man's Sky meets Project Hail Mary with a dystopian corporate bent; but I'm not entirely sure that it worked? Act 1 could (or possibly should) have been a lot longer, and beyond that I shouldn't continue because Spoilers ;)
No Man's Sky meets Project Hail Mary is one hell of a synopsis, sad that it didn't work out.
Is this standalone or part of a series?
Standalone. I wanted very much to like it but it seemed underdeveloped tbh. An extra hundred pages might have smoothed out some of the narrative issues; Tchaikovsky seems to do some "tell don't show" tricks with his writing that keep the plot moving at the price of a richer experience
Interesting. I haven't read any of Tchaikovsky work yet, but he is mentioned so much here that I should try to rectify this soon.
I’m between Hardwire and Mycelium Running, just finished Orson Welles, Camera and his Shadow (but I’m not sur of the translation) and Justice Warrior #1
The Oxford Handbook of Theology, Sexuality, and Gender.
Currently reading Empire of Wild by Cherie Dimaline.
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Finished:
Old Man's War by John Scalzi (military sci-fi)
Old people enlist in the galactic military in exchange for new, younger bodies. Follows one particular old man through basic training and a series of battles during his first two years of service.
So I ended up going back through some reviews of this, because it's well-liked/often recommended, and I wasn't a big fan: apparently the context I'm missing is that it's meant to be a subversion/snark of classic pulp like Heinlein. Lacking that connection, I stand by my opinion from last week, which is that while it's certainly not bad, I personally wanted a lot more from either the plot, characters, or commentary.
Bingo squares: war (HM), late to the party (HM)
The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson (supernatural gothic horror)
An academic invites a small group of people to spend the summer at a reputedly haunted mansion, in order to gather research on the supernatural. Surely, nothing will go wrong.
Aside from a few bits and pieces, this is an entirely different story from the Flanagan show (haven't seen the movie). There's a lot of things left out in the interactions between characters, which I found kind of frustrating in the first half, but as the narrative gets more and more dreamlike, it becomes apparent that that's intentional. I ended up quite liking this, and I can see why it's a classic.
Bingo squares: adaptation, orange, x of y, alliterative (HM)