Hey guys, I put this together for some of the other sci-fi / fantasy readers at my office, but I figured that I would share it here as well.
~Ian
Extras, by Scott Westerfeld
The first book that I read over break was to finish up the Uglies series. Steve recommended these to me, so you probably all know about them already. This final book was an ok finale to the end of the main trilogy. While I enjoyed the book I couldn’t shake the idea that this was a cash-in addendum to a popular series that had not been planned from the start. In addition, the characterization of some of the returning characters was a little lame to me.
Anyways, if you happen to not be familiar this is a young adult series that is dang fun to read at any age. It has cute themes (most of the books have an obvious Just So Stories moral about something like trust or friendship) with a pervasive original sci-fi bent. Extras was just alright but the series is still a favorite of mine.
Snake Agent, by Liz Williams
Now here is a good elevator pitch for a pulp novel, “World-weary Chinese detective (married to a demoness on the DL) travels to hell solve a series of bizarre murders with his demon partner.” And yes, while this is not high literature by any stretch of the imagination, I had fun with this novel and I’m looking forward to starting the next book in this series. To be honest, it really is just a pulp detective novel in structure, just with a very bizarre setting (think A Chinese Ghost Story) which I think appealed to me, since the usual film noir setting of most detective novels turns me right off.
The Terror, by Dan Simmons
As long as you have the time this would be my biggest recommendation out of the books I read. It is essentially the arctic survival tale of Ordeal By Ice by Farley Mowat crossed with an unnamed horror from a Stephen King novel. It’s a neat combo with all the goodies of both genres: ships sticking in ice, shadow shapes in the fog, dog sled expeditions, natives, bloody murders on the ice, incompetent leaders and cannibalism. It was something like 800 pages but I finished it in about two days, although the massive video game binge that I was coming off might have contributed to my speedy reading. Very good stuff.
Territory, by Emma Bull
Here is another odd concept for a book, a retelling of the story of the O.K. Corral shootout with hints of dark magic involved. I picked this up from an Amazon.com best-of list and felt that it was pretty solid. It’s much lighter than many of the other books that I read and even though there is plenty of death and dark magic its tone is always pretty joking / upbeat (think Firefly). I actually think that this has some pretty heavy romance elements to it and I think that I’m going to recommend it to Liz next. The only downside is a rather disjointed ending. I’m actually going to go back and reread the ending myself to see if I can make better sense of it this time. The disjointedness is especially odd to me as the rest of the book is quite straightforward.
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4 comments:
The list looks fun! I did read Pretties, Uglies, and Specials last year after your recommendation, and I really liked them. Jon turned his nose up at them, though, even though I told him they were good. So I'll have to check out that last book, and the rest of your recommendations.
I also heard there's a new Mary Doria Russell coming out that I think I'll have on my next library list. Right now we're both reading CJ Cherryh's Chanur series. There's 5 books, and the first three are in an omnibus format. Although the writing is worse in the first book, like all Cherryh books she creates a really intriguing alien universe and some interesting races.
I'll have to put CJ on my backlog. Although it will be a while as I still have a bunch more to read before I've cleaned out my current stash. Especially now that I actually have to work 5 days a week! How unfair is that?
I can't believe Jon turned his nose up at the Pretties series. :-P What a snob! ;) They are very fun books even if they do look incredibly teeny bopper.
I know! He'll happily read a comic book or graphic novel, but not a YA book. Oh well, he's missing out!
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