More items recently defenestrated from my Kindle Paperwhite.
June 22, 2020
House of Assassins, Larry Correia. Baen bundle. This is fantasy, epic scale, won a best-novel award in 2019. Glacial plot development has leached away my attention span. I’ve read other things by Larry and liked them, so this was a surprise. 12% finished.
Someone paid for this cover art.
In The Empire of Underpants: A Scifi Story, Robert Jeschonek. Story Bundle purchase. This left me wondering if I have an irony deficiency. The self-aware underpants struck me as a bit too cute, and Messiah 2.0 was just too heavy a lift. Dropped this into the hamper 9% of the way through.
Raising Hell, Norman Spinrad. Story Bundle “outspoken author” bundle. Workers of the world, unite -- and read something more entertaining. Union organizers wind up in hell, unionize the demons. Leaden (asbestos-clad?) writing and, ironically, a preachy undertone. 24% finished.
Children of Arkadia, M. Darusha Wehm. I think I mistook this for Niven’s Ringworld. It’s closer to a mix of Bridge Constructor Portal (but voiced by an AI) and my grad school experiential group dynamics course. I’m stopping it before Wehm makes me write a long paper dissecting my thoughts, experiences and hidden motives. 12% done (but this is a giant civil engineering project in space, so probably closer to 4% done, three years late, and 5400% over the initial winning bid…)
Beowulf’s Children, Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle, Steve Barnes. More Baen goodness. Set in Camelot and Avalon, descendants of the heroic winners of the Grendel wars have forgotten the horror of their salmon-spawned foes. (No, seriously. “‘The salmon developed legs, and teeth, and a taste for human blood. They become…grendels.”) I’m finding myself sympathizing with the (putative) monsters because the humans are so insipid. 10%, maybe.
Carpe Diem, Sharon Lee and Steve Miller. Baen monthly bundle. Volume 10 in a series. The first two chapters were cryptic but promising. Then caromed directly into a concrete wall (the unintuitively-titled “LIAD: Trealla Fantrol”) which was suddenly Jane Austen mixed with a very early draft of Dune. Couldn’t do it. The FTL drive quit 567,643,800,000 kilometers into a light year’s worth of reading.i
Voices of the Fall (Black Tide Rising #5.5), John Ringo, ed. Zombie anthology. Nothing wrong with this as such, just haven’t been in the mood since I put this on the triage list on June 1st. Off it goes.
On probation:
Til Valhalla, Richard Fox. I liked the Terran Armor Corps military space opera series well enough that I will try to tough this out. The PLA steam rolling over Australian local defense militia in the presumably near future, pre-xeno invasion Earth is a bit on the nose. That said, the novel--like the war it depicts--is early days. 4% through.
Angry Robot books updates Gibbon, apparently right down to the sword.
Empire of the Blood, Gav Thorpe. I know and love Gav from his Warhammer work, but am having some trouble engaging with this omnibus set. Writing’s fine, but Roman legions + Roman imperial politics + minimal character development isn’t...escapist? realistic? something...enough. The lead character has (literally) an unbelievable combination of terrible political instincts and naivete for someone who’s supposed to be a military genius. We’ll see. 17%.
Bonus Post-Script:
One oddity with Carpe Diem is the cover art. Baen apparently stays afloat by using, ahem, either startlingly inexpensive artists or people who are blood relatives of one of the bosses. (See the first one here, for example.) Anyway, this is endearing—the one linked to above is at least funny.
But the current (2015) Baen edition is a shocking contrast with the 2003 Ace (paperback?) cover art. I would think that if I were going for the Fabio/bodice-ripper effect (wow, there’s something I never thought I’d actually put in writing) I’d possibly invest in a less vapid pair of models. Or not accidentally use the practice painting. Or something. Is the woman in the second cover perhaps looking for an escape route or is that my imagination?
Unimaginative. A solid ultra low-budget budget cover. If you’re going to not do frilly visual marketing, then really don’t do it.
The reviewer was mesmerized. Our heroes are…lightly stunned? Sedated? An early draft?
(All cover art from Goodreads; imagery doubtless copyrighted in a spirit of reckless corporate or authorial optimism someone might steal them..)
i Roughly 6%