Silver Princess, Golden Knight — Sharon Green
I took a punt on this, from an author I hadn’t heard anything before and was disappointed. A princess gets into trouble with the law and her father’s solution is to marry her off through a contest. She enters herself but of course falls in love with her main rival. At the end it turns out all her struggles were for nothing. The author really seemed to hate her heroine.
The Magicians’ Guild — Trudi Canavan
I was disappointed with this novel, as it looked like it was possibly going to challenge the class assumptions built into most epic fantasy novels, but it didn’t.
Rome and the Sword — Simon James
A military history of Rome, as told through the swords it used. An interesting conceit and a decent history.
Last Letters from Hav / Hav of the Myrmidons — Jan Morris
The original was written in 1985, a series of dispatches from a fictional city state located somewhere in the nebulous reaches of far Eastern Europe; the second was written in 2005, updating Hav’s story. The 1985 Hav was chaotic, a mixture of the histories and powers that had shaped it. The 2005 version was streamlined, totalitarian in a way you recognise from actually existing countries.
Dancing in the Glory of Monsters — Jason E. Stearns
A nuanced and interesting history of the wars in Zaire/the Congo.
Silence in Solitude — Melissa Scott
The second in the Silence trilogy, about a woman space pilot in a far future where physics is very different from our own and her struggles to find the lost road to Earth.
I was given the gift of life, and now I have to give it back. This is hard. But I was a lucky woman, who led a lucky existence, and for this I am grateful. I first got sick in January 2010. When the cancer recurred last year and was terminal, I decided to be joyful about having had a full life, rather than sad about having to die. Amazingly, this outlook worked for me
Which is one thing I wish we could’ve done when Sandra was dying. We did do something similar to what Jay Lake did recently, when he held his own wake, by doing a proper Sunday roast with the entire family before Sandra stopped her treatment, as a way to say goodbye to everyone so Sandra could withdraw from life and prepare for death.
These rituals, these ways to say goodbye and sum up your life, to mark the transition between living and preparing to die, are important. Sandra in the end died as good a death as she may have wished for, even if it came way too early for us, was such a bitter disappoint following on our dreams of giving her a more normal life again through the kidney transplant. Those last couple of weeks as she was slowly slipping towards death were both stressfull and yet incredibly peaceful. The worst had happened, we were as prepared as we could be and didn’t need to do anything anymore.
Almost two years on, some three weeks before the anniversary of our wedding, she’s still never far from my thoughts, still present in most everything I do. I don’t think that will ever change.
Aaand we’re back. So sorry, my provider went for a hissy fit just as I went on holiday with not enough internet to do anything about it. It’s fixed now, but if anybody has a good, cheap host they can recommend?
This was the first time I’ve been on holiday with my family since (thinks) 1994, back when we we’re last all living together. This time, we instead got my foster brother and his family, my sister and her family, as well as my parents and youngest brother; luckily we weren’t all staying in the same holiday house, but it was still a concentrated blast of family I hadn’t experienced in a long time. Fun was had by all, but two weeks were just long enough for me. It’s interesting to spent so much time together now we’re all in our thirties and see how easily we still somehow slip in our old roles sometimes…
Anyway, going to France meant of course buying some comics; and unlike the last time we went on holiday there, this didn’t mean buying French copies of Marvel titles (I was fourteen). Instead I went to a very nice comics shop in Montpellier, Azimuts, where the woman vbehind the counter was very enthusiastic about Baru, also one of my favourite cartoonists. So here’s what I got:
Two Baru books recommended to me: Fais péter les basses, Bruno! and Quéquette blues
Finally, Le Bleu est une Couleur Chaude by Julie Maroh, which has already been made into a movie.
That last one is the one I’m most excited about, though it’s hard reading what with my fairly limited high school French. Oh well, at the very least I can look at the artwork, which is brilliant.
What I also noticed in France was how manga were everywhere; even the local hypermarket had several shelves full of them, more than of French comics, with all the popular series (One Piece, Naruto, etc) you’d expect.
Again only six books read, all science fiction novels of one kind or another:
Hunting Party — Elizabeth Moon
Heris Serrano has just left the Regular Space Service for reasons and is now reduced to being the captain of the luxury space yacht of Lady Cecelia, who has been saddled with ferrying some of her own wayward family members to one of the Family’s private planets, for fox hunting season. Stuff happpens and foxes turn out not to be the only things being hunted…
Five-Twelfths of Heaven — Melissa Scott
In a far future where space ships are run on alchemical principles, havbing to seek out Purgatory inbetween Heaven and Hell to travel from system to system, one woman pilot fights for her freedom.
Sporting Chance — Elizabeth Moon
The sequel to Hunting Party, dealing with the fallout of the revelations of the previous story, which Lady Cecelia and Heris Serrano have to resolve. Another fun read, slightly better than it needed to be.
Inversions — Iain M. Banks
Read in remembrance of the passing of Iain M. Banks. This was his one true fantasy novel, though there are some “subtle” hints that this may in fact be set somewhere within the Culture series.
Adrift on the Sea of Rains — Ian Sales
In an alternate world where the Apollo project lasted much longer and was militarised, a handful of US astronauts are stranded on the Moon when World War III broke out in the early eighties. Now they need to get home.
God’s War — Kameron Hurley
I’m not quite sure yet what I think about Hurley’s debut novel. It’s been criticised for its pseudo-Islamic setting and I’m not quite comfortable with it myself, but there are hints of greatness in it nevertheless. An interesting debut.
Still not reading enough, just not in the mood most of the time. And when I did read, the only thing I wanted to read was science fiction.
Hammered, Scardown, Worldwired — Elizabeth Bear
This is Elizabeth Bear’s debut trilogy of novels, which starts out as streetlevel cyberpunk but quickly evolves from that. Each novel in the series ups the stakes and opens up the stage in which the story takes place through the sort of conceptual breakthrough science fiction does best. Apart from this, Bear is also very good at creating believable, realistic characters including the main protagonist Jenny Casey, a disabled middle age war veteran with a cyborg left arm and eye.
Dragondrums — Anne McCaffrey
Third in the Harpers Hall trilogy. An entertaining read but nothing more than that.
Remnant Population — Elizabeth Moon
Moon usually writes well done mil-sf or fantasy, but this is more ambitious. A failing human colony is recalled, but Ofelia, who has grown old there, does not want to leave. When the ships have left she’s the only remaining human on the planet, but then it turns out there is indigenous sentient life…
