Moe Lane

David Weber and John Ringo’s* Empire of Man military science fiction series was great fun: if you’ve never read it, Empire of Man (Books 1 & 2) and Throne of Stars (Books 3 & 4) have been collected for your amusement.  Worth your time to peruse, if you haven’t.  Although I imagine that Weber / Ringo fans are not exactly under-represented among my own readers…

*I originally wrote that as ‘David Ringo.’  Which is not a slam, I swear.

The Trail of Glory is Eric Flint’s alternate history series about the Cherokee, and I’d love to know why it hasn’t been finished yet.  I’m pretty sure that there’s something going on, there, only I don’t know exactly what.  Which is a shame, because it was turning out to be a ripping adventure yarn.

The Masked City is Genevieve Cogman’s second book in her Invsible Library fantasy series (involving functionally immortal agents of a powerful Library who have access to the source language of the universe*).  I should have put this one a while back, but I got distracted and am only now taking up the series again.  It’s quite fun!  And I like Genevieve.  People should buy her books when they come out, and say nice things to her at conventions. (more…)

…were either ARCs or Kickstarter rewards.  I’ve been trying to think of a more exploitable suitable book for the last few days, and I’ve absolutely drawn a blank.  I dunno.  Recommendations?

Got in on the Kickstarter. Vintage Worlds: Tales of the Old Solar System are stories about the Solar System as we used to think that it was. To wit: more habitable planets and adventure.  Heh. I had a concept once for GURPS Space where a Precursor species had managed to squeeze at least seventy habitable worlds in a single solar system.  I should see if that could still work…

Although I will say this: like everybody else (including its author Roger Zelazny), I’d recommend Damnation Alley the novella over the novel.  It’s a good post-apocalyptic road trip story* that’s influenced a lot of other stuff out there, but the novella is simply tighter than the longer version.  ‘Course, the novel probably paid better.

Moe Lane

*Just ignore how ridiculous the weather conditions are.  I mean, they’re really ridiculous.  In ways that are sometimes hard to fathom.

SM Stirling is calling The Sky-Blue Wolves the last book of his The Change series (post apocalyptic, steadily more openly-magical fantasy), and I’m not sure if I believe it.  He put in enough hooks at the end to justify a new series, presumably set in post-Change Mongolia and so forth.  I did like it, although I think that it should have either been a bigger final book, or else two more books with the same word-count as this one.  But I may just be desensitized to humungo-books at this point. ‘Tis a common problem in modern fantasy.

The Labyrinth Index is book 9 in Charles Stross’s Laundry Mythos-spy series.  It’s quite fun to read, although I’m not enjoying it in the same, ah, visceral way that I believe Charlie intends.  I imagine that people who began freaking out about current events after, oh, I dunno, June 23rd 2016 (and who graduated to raw terror and panic after November 8th of that same year) will find this book deeply scary; for my part, it’s just another The Horror At Red Hook.  I’m just not scared by what scares the author, that’s all.  But I can still enjoy the aesthetic, and this is a pretty good installment in the Laundry series.

This is one of the speculative ones: I know Karl Gallagher from Facebook, Patreon, and here. He’s an alright fellow. He’s also the author of the Torchship Trilogy, which sounds extremely promising. So I’m trying Torchship (the first book).  I’ll let you know how it goes.

I’m actually waiting to read Christopher Skaife’s The Ravenmaster: My Life with the Ravens at the Tower of London*.  My wife is still reading our copy.  But she laughs whenever she’s reading it — and when I asked if it was a Book worthy of the Week, she enthusiastically said yes.  Seeing as I implicitly trust her judgement, that’s good enough for me.

*Just what it says in the title.