What are you reading in 2024?

[Eyes of Nine]

I should probably read more of Ann Leckie's books - I liked the first one.

I'm a big fan of her books.
Becky Chambers? I like her characters too. Closed and Common Orbit (the one about the AI in an android body) is a nice counterpoint to the Ancillary series.
Also... Martha Wells' Murderbot? Talk about a great protagonist.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I'm a big fan of her books.
Becky Chambers? I like her characters too. Closed and Common Orbit (the one about the AI in an android body) is a nice counterpoint to the Ancillary series.
Also... Martha Wells' Murderbot? Talk about a great protagonist.

Becky Chambers has pretty good characters, but I cannot handle her mangling of some of the SF elements, particularly the harder science elements. It's too much for me (the failing is mine, to be clear). She's the perfect example of a writer who'd be better if they wrote less, not more. I've brought this up before, but she totally unnecessarily devoted pages to describing how the power source of a robot character was definitely not a perpetual motion machine, and in doing so, made it completely clear that it was absolutely undeniably 100% a perpetual motion machine, and she didn't understand basic physics well enough to get that (she was using physics-by-analogy - i.e. "X is like Y" instead of like, understanding thermodynamics*). Whereas if she'd just said the robot had like an unobtainium core and thus infinite power, or just never explained the power source, it would have been fine! And if that was the only time she'd done that I'd shrug it off, but there were multiple other instances in that book alone, of like basic science fail (in most cases which could have been avoided by less description not more). She's like the inverse of Mary Robinette Kowal, who writes excessively dry characters (imho) - not unrealistic ones or cut-outs, just ones it's hard to care much about (the 1950s setting and somewhat uptight nature of most of the characters really does not help), but my god, the hard science of it! The only times I even questioned something, I looked it up, and was like "Oh it is I who was wrong!", with her books - there was particular one thing I hoped she was wrong about but nope, that's real depressing!

Murderbot is great but I kind of want to get it all as a big collection when it's done (which it may be, I forget). I have her epic fantasy novel so I need to read that at some point.

* = As my wife often teases me about, screwing up thermodynamics is my greatest bugbear in any SF novel or really just any situation!

EDIT - You are definitely right to laugh lol, I don't consider myself like a "mansplain-y" kind of awful nerd and actively avoid that behaviour if I sense myself doing it, but anything about thermodynamics and it's like I'm a Manchurian Candidate sleeper agent and I just heard my activation phrase

 

[Eyes of Nine]

Murderbot is great but I kind of want to get it all as a big collection when it's done (which it may be, I forget). I have her epic fantasy novel so I need to read that at some point.

I love the novella size (about to read a Seanan McGuire novella next); but yeah having a big X volume set with 2 novellas per would be cool. I think though that she's far from done with the series...

What Lois McMaster Bujold has done with her Penric and Desdamona series of novellas is great, although also infuriating, as they are not collected chronologically...

 

[overgeeked]

I just finished Aliens: Earth Hive. It was a good book with a middling story, the characters were engaging and familiar, and the description and action was on point.

I found out why the description and action are constantly driving the story forward in a visually appealing way...because it's an adaptation of a comic book limited series.

I found out why the characters were so engaging and familiar...because it was originally published before Alien 3 came out, so the two main characters were Hicks and Newt. After Alien 3 came out the subsequent comic reprints and this novel had the characters' names changed to Wilks and Billie, respectively. Those names were chosen because they could be easily spliced into the lettering as they take up almost the exact same space in comic fonts.

This is the first in a trilogy based on the trilogy of graphic novels. I might read the rest at some point. It's a quick read. Only about 60,000 words. A quick scan of the graphic novel suggests the adaptation is very close to the source. There's a few changes here and there making the novel a bit darker and more adult than the comic book source material.

 

[Alzrius]

I just finished Aliens: Earth Hive. It was a good book with a middling story, the characters were engaging and familiar, and the description and action was on point.

I found out why the description and action are constantly driving the story forward in a visually appealing way...because it's an adaptation of a comic book limited series.

I found out why the characters were so engaging and familiar...because it was originally published before Alien 3 came out, so the two main characters were Hicks and Newt. After Alien 3 came out the subsequent comic reprints and this novel had the characters' names changed to Wilks and Billie, respectively. Those names were chosen because they could be easily spliced into the lettering as they take up almost the exact same space in comic fonts.

This is the first in a trilogy based on the trilogy of graphic novels. I might read the rest at some point. It's a quick read. Only about 60,000 words. A quick scan of the graphic novel suggests the adaptation is very close to the source. There's a few changes here and there making the novel a bit darker and more adult than the comic book source material.

Wow that takes me back! I read those years and years ago; they're still on my shelves gathering dust; I should flip through them again sometime.

 

[Richards]

I finished the first book in the "spider apocalypse" trilogy by Ezekiel Boone, The Hatching, and am now on the second one, Skitter. It's a pretty seamless transition in the story, but I'm really glad I hunted up the first book before I started with the second - it has really been worth it tracking it down and getting to read it as it was intended. (That's something not always possible when you buy from library book sales.)

Johnathan

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

Back from Origins and I finished ERB's Pirates of Venus. Enjoyable, but it falls short of the pure thrill of Barsoom.

Now I'm off to more traditional pirates with REH's Black Vulmea's Vengeance. My copy is this weird oversized format from Baronet Publishing Company.

 

[overgeeked]

Just finished the first Murderbot book, All Systems Red. It was a good, quick read. Took less than 2 hours to read it...but it took me 3 days to put in that time. I liked the action and the character. I'll probably read more. I liked that they dealt with the slavery, second-class citizen, property angle. Diving into that kind of character's head was interesting. I can see why so many people tag Murderbot as neurodivergent. I can definitely see it. I would absolutely love to have a full face mask I could turn opaque at will. Every time she talked about not wanting to deal with humans I was just like "yep." I say she because calling a character "it" doesn't sound right. The author is a woman so Murderbot is a woman. Head canon...not to be confused with a head cannon, which I'm sure Murderbot will eventually have.

 

[JEB]

Read 40 Years of Gen Con, an oral history (plus pictures) of the convention from 1967 to 2007. Kind of doubles as an oral history of the RPG industry. Interesting read if you like firsthand accounts. There's even a section on the ENnies!

 

[Nellisir]

Just finished the first Murderbot book, All Systems Red. It was a good, quick read. Took less than 2 hours to read it...but it took me 3 days to put in that time. I liked the action and the character. I'll probably read more. I liked that they dealt with the slavery, second-class citizen, property angle. Diving into that kind of character's head was interesting. I can see why so many people tag Murderbot as neurodivergent. I can definitely see it. I would absolutely love to have a full face mask I could turn opaque at will. Every time she talked about not wanting to deal with humans I was just like "yep." I say she because calling a character "it" doesn't sound right. The author is a woman so Murderbot is a woman. Head canon...not to be confused with a head cannon, which I'm sure Murderbot will eventually have.

Murderbot is an it/they. They have no genitalia, no reproductive organs, and no overt (/useless) sexual characteristics. Murderbot also thinks sex is gross, touching is gross, and double triple eww the leaking.

Also, they've cast a guy as Murderbot so that's gonna mess with your headcanon. No headcannon yet.