What are you Reading? Debonnaire December 2019 edition

About halfway through Starsight, the new Brandon Sanderson novel that came out last month. The best world builder out there. Also in the middle of Ben Shapiro's The Right Side of History.

cbwjm said:

Yeah, he wrote some of the NJO books. I read quite a few of the earlier books in the series.

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Dont kill me for butchering this, but yeah those Yuhzon Vhong books were really good. IIRC Didnt Troy Denning write Star By Star, or was that Vector Prime? Both?

dragoner said:

I haven't re-read it in a while, I read up to God Emperor back in the day, then a few years back, re-read the series and continued up to Chapter House, I think. At one point I did read the book on the Butlertarian Jihad, but that was a while back, I have a friend who loved those.

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Ive started reading the original Dune novel at least 10 times over the last 40 years and even though coming within 20 pages of the end Ive never once finished it. Call me superstitious or nostalgic but I honestly believe that if I did it would be the death of me. No naughty word, this is truly a credo I live my life by these days.

R_J_K75 said:

Dont kill me for butchering this, but yeah those Yuhzon Vhong books were really good. IIRC Didnt Troy Denning write Star By Star, or was that Vector Prime? Both?

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It's been far too long since I've read them to recall. I must have a bunch of them in a bookshelf somewhere.

cbwjm said:

I'm so close to finishing Kevin J Anderson's the dark between the stars, book 1 of the saga of shadows. I probably would have finished it last night of not for me needing sleep so I can work the next day.

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And now begins book 2.

cbwjm said:

It's been far too long since I've read them to recall. I must have a bunch of them in a bookshelf somewhere.

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Wow I was right, Star By Star. Good line of novels except the last one was disappointing.

cbwjm said:

It's been far too long since I've read them to recall. I must have a bunch of them in a bookshelf somewhere.

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Good novels except for the last one was garbage.

KahlessNestor said:

I read the first two books of that, but Kindle didn't have the last book of the trilogy for some reason, so I never read it. Queen of the Mark, I think it was called?

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yah noted that! Im also reading on kindle. I think i will get the audiobook for the third one it is available in that format.

Gamechanger by L.X. Beckett - Rubi Whiting is, among other things, a legal defense person specializing in people who have run afoul of the consensus ranking system that runs the world. Since in 2070 privacy is a privilege, not a right, almost everything you do - and everything you ever did - is on view to the world 24/7/365. Socially acceptable behavior earns you credit, and visa-versa. There is a certain basic line of food, shelter, etc available to every human on the planet but to rise above that requires micro-transactions. The better your social credit, the cheaper those things are.

Rubi's client, Luce, is in the social pits. A mere 14% rating. Even looking at his calendar means he has to sit through 5-6 ads he can't get rid of before seeing each entry. Rubi would normally help someone like him, but Luce has an extraordinary, incredible claim: someone else is responsible for his descent into the social pits. Someone who wants to silence him... for good.... by effectively drowning Luce in Dislikes.

In a world where even slapping someone is almost impossible to get away with, someone has found a way to effectively commit murder.

Really, really amazing world-building. I just started running a Shadow of the Beanstalk campaign and already the book has changed my in-game vocabulary, inspired amazing amounts of cool cyberpunk themes that you just don't see elsewhere. Like, the gamification of jobs. One of the characters wants to be a cop but permajobs are rare, so he takes low-level policing gigs for credit, like successfully watching a warehouse all night, to each points towards higher-paying and higher-status gigs. Eventually he might earn enough points to get on the hiring rolls of a real police unit.

The Grid by Philip Kerr
During the grand opening of an ultra-modern, computer-controlled building in downtown Los Angeles, the architects discover to their horror that the computer has programmed itself to kill

It was written in '96,so I expect it to be out dated lol.

I finished Binti: Home - it's a novella with some powerful emotions in it. I also read T. Kingfisher's Minor Mage, another novella. And it was so good. It reminded me a bit of Sir Terry Pratchett, in that there's humor, but also truth and insight. And plenty of magic.

Next up, I think I'll return to the Masters of Stone and Steel Omnibus that I've been working my way through.