Good [1] Books I Have Read Recently

[1] For some values of "good;" see second half of post.

In no particular order:

Karl Schroeder's Sun of Suns, which I read earlier this year on a trip to NM for training. Short review: Swashbuckling fun in a Big Dumb Object/habitat, with guest appearances by posthumans. Recommended, esp. now that it's out in pb.

A whole lot of Charles Stross, including The Jennifer Morgue, Accelerando, and the first two Clan Corporate books. (The third is in the queue.) Short reviews: TJM is the latest Bob Howard book; Lovecraftian James Bond, with lots of amusing hacking stuff thrown in. I can't help but notice that Stross has read some of Brian Lumley's Cthulhu Mythos stories, but he's transformed them from juvenile humanity uber alles (odd for allegedly Lovecraftian writing, but there it is) into something rich and strange. Accelerando should be read while wearing a seat belt. I enjoyed it, but didn't find it to be an easy read. I also enjoyed Clan Corporate quite a lot, but I've been a sucker for that sort of story since I read Nine Princes in Amber, back *mumbledy* years ago.

Another new (to me) author whom I'm finding to be very good is Alistair Reynolds. He was recommended to me in a conversation at WisCon with, IIRC, rdkeir and jlassen. We were talking about Night Shade Books' Glen Cook reprints, and jlassen mentioned that The Dragon Never Sleeps predated but reminded him of Reynolds' modern space operas. TDNS is an old favorite of mine, so I checked out Reynolds. I'm impressed.

Part 2 will be forthcoming after a staff meeting.

Good Books, Part Deux

I've read two books by Alistair Reynolds so far: Chasm City and Pushing Ice. In both of them, Reynolds managed to keep me guessing about a few interesting plot points. PI was a Big Dumb Object story, another genre I'm partial to; it reminded me a bit of Benford & Brin's Heart of the Comet, only better. CC jumps around a bit in time, but after reading Glen Cook I'm used to that.

The last thing I've read is Jo Walton's Farthing.

Holy sh*t, that's brilliant. Deeply, deeply disquieting, but brilliant. There are a couple of Michael Swanwick short stories that approach it for general disquiet (Radiant Doors is one, and I can't think of the other...something involving large-scale reanimation of corpses to do menial work.), but those two have enough stfnal elements to make detachment easier. Even though it's an alternate history, I didn't get that distancing from Farthing. Recommended, but I'm not sure I'd read it again. Unless I read it back-to-back with V for Vendetta.