Come, I will conceal nothing from you: part of the amusement value in reading Charlie Stross is in seeing him struggle manfully to get out of the hole that his typically overconfident (and typically off-kilter) predictions of the future has gotten him into. Stross is an excellent writer, so he can typically can give it the old college try, and I can’t wait for the next Laundry novel, given that it was written in response to a particularly horrifying (for him) double-whammy by objective reality. As I think that I’ve noted in the past, reading Stross these days is like reading Lovecraft’s The Horror at Red Hook; I understand that he’s legitimately terrified, but it’s at things that simply don’t scare me in the same way, or sometimes at all. Continue reading In the Mail: Dark State.
Category: Books
Book of the Week: “With The Lightnings.”
Truth be told, With The Lightnings — David Drake’s first entry in the Leary-Mundy space opera series — is available for free. But it’s still a fun series, not least because Drake has no intention of producing a happy-shiny spacefaring culture that has learned to get beyond those things that divide us and all the other anodyne proclamations. Nope! Leary and Mundy work for a star nation that can be rather obnoxious at times, amazingly culturally chauvinistic, and often cheerfully indifferent to corruption and the two don’t try to do anything about that. And why should they care about the way this might come across to their distant ancestors (i.e., us)? We’re practically barbarians ourselves! I don’t know if I’d want to read nothing else besides this series, but it usually serves as a decent bracer.
And so, adieu to Silverlock.
In The E-Mail: David Drake’s ‘Though Hell Should Bar The Way.’
Though Hell Should Bar The Way is David Drake’s latest entry in the Leary/Mundy series; it’s also an EARC, because as usual Baen is wise to assume that I’m willing to pay hardcover prices to read certain books a few months early. For those unfamiliar with the setting: space navy combat in a far-future where the heroes are much nicer than the star nation that they work for, which is likewise much nicer than the other star nations out there, and David Drake is unsentimental generally when it comes to politics and statecraft. It’s all very pre-Reform Act England mixed with the Roman Republic, and quite entertaining. Hence my buying it in EARC form.
Book of the Week: Silverlock.
I’m surprised that John Myers Myers’ Silverlock hasn’t been done before. Maybe I assumed that all of you already have it. If you don’t, well… be warned. You will be seduced into reacquainting yourself with Western literature. And it’ll be very sneaky about it, too.
And so, adieu to Lammas Night.
Annnnnd the Internet’s back.
Alarmingly, quite a bit of my entertainment choices rely on my being able to be online. To say nothing of you know, actually putting stuff on this website. Then again, I’m sick, right?
…And I’ve just started reading yet another Jack Campbell series: Stark’s War. I swear to God, they should declare his books to be controlled substances, or something. No, wait, then I’d have difficulty reading them. Never mind.
Read of the Day: ‘A HISTORY OF THE SILMARILS IN THE FIFTH AGE.’
I was originally going to render that title down from all-caps, but if you’re a Tolkien geek then you’re absolutely going to agree with me that this concept deserves it. I need a word for “one step up from brilliant,” because this qualifies. This absolutely qualifies.
The Silmarillion describes the fate of the three Silmarils. Earendil kept one, and traveled with it through the sky, where it became the planet Venus. Maedhros stole another, but regretted his deed and jumped into a fiery chasm. And Maglor took the last one, but threw it into the sea in despair.
Well, Venus is still around. But what happened to the latter two? Surely over all the intervening millennia, with so many people wanting a Silmaril, they haven’t just hung around in the earth and ocean?
There’s a lot of spoilers in that link, so be careful.
Via @TimHarford.
Book of the Week: Lammas Night.
Katharine Kurtz’s Lammas Night is what you get when a talented writer decides to combine World War II, modern occultism, and an uncritical willingness to take The Golden Bough more seriously than it deserves. Well worth reading if you like that kind of literary blending. Which I, of course, do.
I’m going to have to update the sidebar later. This Chromebook gets less responsive every year.
In the mail: Girl Genius: Second Journal, Volume 3.
The full title is Girl Genius: The Second Journey of Agatha Heterodyne Volume 3: The Incorruptible Library, which is a bit of a mouthful. I always pick up my volumes via Kickstarter, but it’s also available on Amazon if you happen to be one of those poor unfortunates who didn’t manage to get on that already. It’s the usual pretty book with entertaining steampunk mad science adventures; so if you did do the Kickstarter, look to your mailboxes.
Book of the Week: The Anubis Gates.
Tim Powers’ The Anubis Gates is one of the best time travel novels ever written. I don’t say that sort of thing lightly. What makes it stand above most of the rest of this particular genre is in Powers’ uncanny ability to find hollowed-out places in the historical records where one is able to pour in a story or three. You are left with the sense that while things might not have turned out the way that he portrayed them (usually a safe bet, since he writes fantasy novels), but they should have turned out that way and there’s no way to disprove it now anyway. This was the first one of his that I read, and I’ve been buying Tim Powers on sight ever since.
And so, adieu to Carter and Lovecraft.
Book of the Week: …None of the Above is Suitable.
Sorry! It’s just been not a great week for books. I’ve read a bunch, but I wasn’t wowed by any of them. They weren’t bad, most of them; they were just kind of OK-I-guess. And I don’t want to name names, because apparently the easiest way to destroy a writer’s inner tranquility and will to live is to say that you were kind of indifferent to his or her latest tome. I freely admit to having a history of being a bit of a sadist, but I don’t throw punches like that unless they’ve been thrown at me first. I’m not a monster.
So, I dunno: go read Guns of the South, or something. That was a solid Turtledove AH.