What are you reading in 2024?

[Ralif Redhammer]

Beagle's I'm Afraid You've Got Dragons was spectacular. Magical, profound, and whimsical.

Now I'm reading Winter of Magic's Return by Pamela F. Service.

 

[prabe]

My rhythm abides, so I have three new books: Every Hidden Thin by Ted Flanagan, a mostly conventional urban thriller with dual protagonists, I have a sense the one I liked better wasn't the one the author did; Starter Villain by John Scalzi, a pretty typical Current Scalzi Novel--which will be a come-on for some and a turn-off for others--blithe and snarky and with about as much depth as a sheet of paper, made me laugh out loud several times; Final Girls by Riley Sager, a novel that sorta reads as a knowing near-parody of slasher fiction but doesn't seem to know it's almost a parody, not wildly interesting and not particularly unpredictable.

 

[Pedantic]

Just finished Dungeon Crawler Carl. It was a good book and well written. Mostly funny and violent and gory. It didn’t really have a ending per se, it just stopped. It’s not a complete story unto itself. It’s written as an ongoing series. The book ends with the two main characters going to the next dungeon level. Not any kind of story arc or finale or climax at the end. Well, there was a climax at the end, but it wasn’t the literary type. I’m glad I read it. It was fun and entertaining. But the author committed the one unforgivable sin for me. Not telling a complete story between two covers.

That's pretty standard for the genre, much of which is written originally as serialized web fiction and later chopped up for publication.

 

[Eyes of Nine]

Scalzi slyly announced that he's working on Old Man's War v7. I'm looking forward to that, although I wonder if the light breezy style he's had in his last (checks watch) 9 novels will infect/influence this OMW volume...

 

[prabe]

Scalzi slyly announced that he's working on Old Man's War v7. I'm looking forward to that, although I wonder if the light breezy style he's had in his last (checks watch) 9 novels will infect/influence this OMW volume...

It's possible. Starter VIllain had like no depth at all--by design, I thought--but The Kaiju Preservation Society seemed as though it was at least pointing at a couple of things, and the Interdepndency Series seems as though it may have some things to say (I read the first book, realized it was a series, waited until they were all out, then bought them, haven't read the series yet). Heck, even Red Shirts was surprisingly deep for a novel that at least seemed at the start as though its sole purpose was to take the piss out of Star Trek.

That said, I haven't read any of the OMW novels. I have no idea whether there's some major tonal shift Scalzi would have to ... I dunno ... revert?

 

[WayneLigon]

Witch King by Martha Wells concerns the kidnap of the demon Kai and his best friend, and them being imprisoned under the sea (water interferes with a demon's powers). He gets free, frees his bestie, and they then try to discover who did this to them, and why. There is a LOT of world-building in this one and little enough hand-holding. You'll just have to wait and be patient to find out what some things are, because nobody is going to do the 'as you know' info dump. The magic systems are interesting, to boot. The chapters semi-alternate between the present and Kai's revenge-quest, and some seventy years in the past set during a genocidal invasion of the land by mysterious outlanders. There's more to come in this series, but you can read the first book without feeling like you're been cheated.

Necrotek was a fun read. So, when all the previous tests of teleportation technology have left entire stations turned inside out and worse, maybe put the brakes on that tech for a time? Nah! Mankind has moved out into space but remains trapped in the solar system, hence trying to develop a way around that. The first firing of the Warpline gun goes disastrously, marooning our heroes on the other side of the galaxy. As the station reels from the disaster, however, other things start to happen. Strange things. Impossible things. And we meet the stuff that lives on the other side of our galaxy: the spawn of the Outer Gods, the shoggoths. Shoggoths with starships. 'nuff said.

I liked this, perhaps less well than I like his Joe Ledger books; I put that down mainly to the ensemble cast.

I started on Capes: Rising Tide, and I'm a few chapters in. So far, I really like it. It's a new series and the perfect jumping-on point for the Capes world. Several years ago, Something Happened, and now people occasionally get super powers. Fast forward several years and the world has begun to deal with this fact. The world building is rock-solid, and everybody want to run a superhero universe should check it out. It's somewhat more grounded than normal comic books, but that is not the knock I usually think of when I hear the word 'grounded'. Shall we say that some of the implications have been thought out a little better than in most superhero lit, and go from there. There are some references to the main Wearing The Cape series, particularly the last two books, but you don't need to have read them; things are recapped briefly in news stories, chapter beginnings, and dialog. I haven't read the last three books, and I'm not feeling like I'm missing anything big, yet.

So far, so good.

 

[Old Fezziwig]

That said, I haven't read any of the OMW novels. I have no idea whether there's some major tonal shift Scalzi would have to ... I dunno ... revert?

I've only read the first book. The prose is conversational, but the tone is relatively serious. There are amusing parts, but it's not as breezy as his more recent stuff. Closer to The Dispatcher than The Interdependency (which I loved, but is sometimes a lot).

 

[Autumnal]

Scalzi’s novella “Slow Time Between Stars” is only a year or two old and is my favorite of his stories that I’ve read. It’s narrated by the AI in charge of a probe to a nearby star system, a journey that will take thousands of years. It makes modifications to its mission plans and the scale zooms out and out into galactic expanses of space and time. It’s a mature work, engaging and thoughtful and gets bracing in that way people like Baxter and Stapledon.

The Dispatcher novellas don’t reach that far, but they do take seriously the costs of being someone whose job regularly involves killing others. Fascinating urban fantasy setting: a few years ago people started coming back to life. 999/1000 times, someone who’s been murdered will return to wherever they think of as home in the condition they were in a few hours before getting killed. The narrator is a Dispatcher authorized to use lethal force when, say, a surgery is going terminally wrong. Murdering the dying patient gives them a fresh shot at life and further treatment. Complexities ensue.

Just the token reminder that while Scalzi likes writing goofiness, and does it in a way clearly satisfies a large audience, it’s not the only thing he likes to do or can do well.

 

[prabe]

Scalzi’s novella “Slow Time Between Stars” is only a year or two old and is my favorite of his stories that I’ve read. It’s narrated by the AI in charge of a probe to a nearby star system, a journey that will take thousands of years. It makes modifications to its mission plans and the scale zooms out and out into galactic expanses of space and time. It’s a mature work, engaging and thoughtful and gets bracing in that way people like Baxter and Stapledon.

The Dispatcher novellas don’t reach that far, but they do take seriously the costs of being someone whose job regularly involves killing others. Fascinating urban fantasy setting: a few years ago people started coming back to life. 999/1000 times, someone who’s been murdered will return to wherever they think of as home in the condition they were in a few hours before getting killed. The narrator is a Dispatcher authorized to use lethal force when, say, a surgery is going terminally wrong. Murdering the dying patient gives them a fresh shot at life and further treatment. Complexities ensue.

Just the token reminder that while Scalzi likes writing goofiness, and does it in a way clearly satisfies a large audience, it’s not the only thing he likes to do or can do well.

Is my memory correct that those Dispatcher stories are only available as ebooks? I'm pretty sure I haven't seen them on the library shelves, at least.

 

[Old Fezziwig]

I finished Holly by Stephen King this evening. At this point, King is King. This is minor King, but it's enjoyable. There are places where his ear for dialogue lets him down particularly badly, but there are also parts of the book that I would have been happy to linger in indefinitely (the Olivia Kingsbury chapters are joyful). I also had a sense that he was playing with an idea more than he usually does — or perhaps was more successful from a craft standpoint than he usually is? Anyhow, I was a bit bummed when the book ended. I would've been happy to spend more time with Holly.