The Family Trade
First of his economic science fiction disguised as fantasy series. It’s a very readable piece of writing
Category: B+
you suck?
Your Hate Mail Will Be Graded
This is an entertaining collection of posts from the past ten years of Scalzi’s blog the Whatever.
whispers?
Dawn of the Dumb
This is the second volume of Brooker’s TV criticism, with the addition of some non-tv columns.
It’s still a pretty great read, but reading it straight on after Screen Burn like I did is not recommended as his starts to become a bit over familiar.
lye?
Fight Club
This short novel was the source for the brilliant, if controversial, 1999 film.
dr ruth?
Heartfelt
Hibee follows Hearts for a season
soulchip?
Saturn’s Children
heinlein homage. post human robotic solar system. intrigue danger and sex.
Messy ending, etc.
roughnecks?
Starship Troopers
This is perhaps the most celebrated of Heinlein’s ‘juvenile’ novels.
spicy wings?
Someone Comes To Town Someone Leaves Town
I found a copy of the ebook of this on an old thumb drive.
A very strange and oddly moving book this.
The story opens with a man refurbishing an old house in Toronto. Somehow it leads to a falling out with one of his neighbours, a plan to create an open access wifi mesh network and the stirring up of old secrets.
The book felt, real, somehow. For it’s weirdness and the strangeness of it’s characters.
I would recommend this book in it’s free ebook state without hesitation as it’s definitely worth the read.
leuchars?
The Execution Channel
MacLeod tries something new with this near-future thriller. Set in a world with rampant terrorism (including nuclear attacks) and American offensives throughout Central Asia.
Principally told through the eyes of James Travis, a middle aged IT professional with incriminating links to a foreign power, and his daughter Roisin who’s a peace protester camped outside RAF Leuchars (now a USAF base in all but name).
Things kick off when Roisin photographs something unusual on the base just before an explosion wipes the base out. At the same time James’ cover is blown.
Everything gets murky and mucky from there on in as politics and power come to bear.
It’s a world where disinformation on the net is co-ordinated by governments, manipulating soldier’s blogs and feeding stories to bloggers with strong enough a reputation in order to manipulate public perception.
It is, to tell the truth, full of interesting ideas but ultimately falls of being an exceptional piece of work as the story never feels like it pulls together to give a really powerful payoff. Also the only character I thought was anywhere near nuanced enough to be interesting was the daughter and even she seemed a touch on the underwritten side at times.
I suppose I sound a bit disappointed with this, but please don’t get me wrong it’s a pretty strong read – it just could have been extraordinary.
beloved?
The Ghost Brigades
The follow up to Old Man’s War is a curious beast. It’s set in the same context, even features a couple of characters from that first novel, but it’s protagonist is entirely different.
Jared Dirac is a Special Forces soldier in the CDF, what the regular forces call The Ghost Brigades. Unlike every other Special Forces soldier Dirac was created to host the conciousness of another man. Charles Boutin was the brilliant scientist behind the BrainPal and the transfer of conciousness that allows the CDF special forces to exist, but now he’s gone renegade and betrayed humanity to competing alien forces. However the transfer seems to fail and Dirac becomes a regular SF grunt.
The book follows Dirac through basic training and into full-blown combat and on to a confrontation with Boutin himself after he gains access to the man’s memories.
It’s a fun book but flawed in that it lacks a real sense of coherence and succeeds better in providing a satisfying ending to the story in the first book than anything else.
It’s still worth a read if you want a quick blast of Heinlein like old school science fiction, like.