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A good week for books
Apr. 30th, 2006 12:40 pmMy book stack kept growing this week, but I did read some of the recent arrivals. Two of them stood out: the new Neal Asher, The Voyage of the Sable Keech, and an older Louis McMaster Bujold, The Curse of Chalion.
The Neal Asher book is a sequel to The Skinner, and should not be read stand-alone. If you haven't read Neal Asher, be aware it's good science fiction with a leavening of nasty alien fauna (creepy, horrible or large monsters) which the author clearly enjoys very much (some of my friends think a little too much). One thing I like about these books is that the technology (AIs, faster than light travel, fancy guns, pseudo-immortaly using cyborgs) is not explained through info-dumps. For example, it's taken for granted that AIs are in charge of most planets and interplanetary travel, but they're just characters in the book, as are humans and robots.
If you liked the grisly parts of early Iain Banks, say the game of Damage in Consider Phlebas, you'll love Neal Asher. It's hardly profound, but boy it's a good read.
The Curse of Chalion is the first fantasy work I've read from Louis McMaster Bujold - I got started on her Miles Vorkosigan series by my friend Kathryn, and after a break of a year or so I'm now getting around to her other work. It's the kind of fantasy that's tolerable to me - not an idyllic medieval setting with dancing shepherds, clean temples, friendly gods and some sort of External Evil Threat. This is gritty - man will kill man, the powerful sell their enemies into slavery, outsiders are ready to profit from civil war, and when the gods interfere with the human world it's not likely to make anyone happy. On the other hand, there is a happy ending - a curse is lifted and the hero does get the girl.
The style reminded me of CJ Cherryh in that there's no omniscient narrator and that the viewpoint is that of a limited and oftentimes confused character; there's always the sense that important things are going on when the hero's not looking or elsewhere, and you don't find out until later - and even then a partial or partisan view. Good stuff.
Up next, the new Sterling and the new Varley. And then back to textbooks...
The Neal Asher book is a sequel to The Skinner, and should not be read stand-alone. If you haven't read Neal Asher, be aware it's good science fiction with a leavening of nasty alien fauna (creepy, horrible or large monsters) which the author clearly enjoys very much (some of my friends think a little too much). One thing I like about these books is that the technology (AIs, faster than light travel, fancy guns, pseudo-immortaly using cyborgs) is not explained through info-dumps. For example, it's taken for granted that AIs are in charge of most planets and interplanetary travel, but they're just characters in the book, as are humans and robots.
If you liked the grisly parts of early Iain Banks, say the game of Damage in Consider Phlebas, you'll love Neal Asher. It's hardly profound, but boy it's a good read.
The Curse of Chalion is the first fantasy work I've read from Louis McMaster Bujold - I got started on her Miles Vorkosigan series by my friend Kathryn, and after a break of a year or so I'm now getting around to her other work. It's the kind of fantasy that's tolerable to me - not an idyllic medieval setting with dancing shepherds, clean temples, friendly gods and some sort of External Evil Threat. This is gritty - man will kill man, the powerful sell their enemies into slavery, outsiders are ready to profit from civil war, and when the gods interfere with the human world it's not likely to make anyone happy. On the other hand, there is a happy ending - a curse is lifted and the hero does get the girl.
The style reminded me of CJ Cherryh in that there's no omniscient narrator and that the viewpoint is that of a limited and oftentimes confused character; there's always the sense that important things are going on when the hero's not looking or elsewhere, and you don't find out until later - and even then a partial or partisan view. Good stuff.
Up next, the new Sterling and the new Varley. And then back to textbooks...
