Recent Reading
Jun. 1st, 2023 01:16 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
a_cubedJust a recent reading post this time.
I read the wonderfully strange and meta "The Manual of Detection" by Jedediah Berry. Despite the name it's not just a detective story, but a very weird world, sort of retro-period/retro-future mashup with a Twin Peaks kind of feel in some ways. Definitely recommended.
I struggled through Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir. I did not get on with this and finished it out of stubbornness since I don't like DNFing books, but I decided not to continue with theresst of the series. It just didn't speak to me. I didn't like the main characters much and found the ancillary characters hard to follow (too many different ways to describe the same characters with personal names, family names, house descriptions and other descriptions used alternately).
autopope was kind enough to send copies of his Laundryverse "Tales of the New Management" series with a visiting friend. I'd read the first (Dead Lies Dreaming) in draft when it was called The Lost Boys but I don't think I'd read the second (Quantum of Nightmares) in any sort of draft (though I do recall reading some discussion on his DW about it). The third (Season of Skulls) again I had seen some discussion but definitely not read any of the crit drafts. These are sutbly different to the main Laundry books but set in the same world. Fun reads if you liked the Laundry. I can't judge whether they're readable without knowledge of the Laundry Files since I've read those so many times as well as discussed their development with autopope that I know them too well to achieve any veil of ignorance.
I'm in the middle of the third book of Derek Kunsken's Quantum Evolution series. The first one, The Quantum Magician, was a brilliant heist novel with space-faring humanity including multiple genetically-developed subspecies of humans. It got a bit icky at one point and I was worried it was going to continue that vein which I didn't enjoy, but he cut that bit of out and out horror short. Other than that one uncomfortable section I enjoyed this immensely. The followup, the Quantum Garden, was still very good, with a not-quite-a-heist plotline which really played a lot with non-causality-violating time travel. The third one isn't keeping my interest to the same level, although that might be the jetlag I'm suffering from on return from a conference in Brussels. It's called The Quantum War and so far is a space-war novel rather than a heist or heist adjacent piece. It may be that this lack-of-heist is losing me. It's an intruiging setting but I'm not sure he's pulling off the war novel properly so far. There's a related novel set following the past time travel period from the second book, and the start of a new series set in the historical background of the setting. I may read those next or may take a break from this writer and go on to something else. I've been eyeing Megan Whalen Turner's The Thief for a while and a fantasy heist book (I think) might be a nice follow-on to the SF heist of The Quantum Magician.
I read the wonderfully strange and meta "The Manual of Detection" by Jedediah Berry. Despite the name it's not just a detective story, but a very weird world, sort of retro-period/retro-future mashup with a Twin Peaks kind of feel in some ways. Definitely recommended.
I struggled through Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir. I did not get on with this and finished it out of stubbornness since I don't like DNFing books, but I decided not to continue with theresst of the series. It just didn't speak to me. I didn't like the main characters much and found the ancillary characters hard to follow (too many different ways to describe the same characters with personal names, family names, house descriptions and other descriptions used alternately).
autopope was kind enough to send copies of his Laundryverse "Tales of the New Management" series with a visiting friend. I'd read the first (Dead Lies Dreaming) in draft when it was called The Lost Boys but I don't think I'd read the second (Quantum of Nightmares) in any sort of draft (though I do recall reading some discussion on his DW about it). The third (Season of Skulls) again I had seen some discussion but definitely not read any of the crit drafts. These are sutbly different to the main Laundry books but set in the same world. Fun reads if you liked the Laundry. I can't judge whether they're readable without knowledge of the Laundry Files since I've read those so many times as well as discussed their development with autopope that I know them too well to achieve any veil of ignorance.I'm in the middle of the third book of Derek Kunsken's Quantum Evolution series. The first one, The Quantum Magician, was a brilliant heist novel with space-faring humanity including multiple genetically-developed subspecies of humans. It got a bit icky at one point and I was worried it was going to continue that vein which I didn't enjoy, but he cut that bit of out and out horror short. Other than that one uncomfortable section I enjoyed this immensely. The followup, the Quantum Garden, was still very good, with a not-quite-a-heist plotline which really played a lot with non-causality-violating time travel. The third one isn't keeping my interest to the same level, although that might be the jetlag I'm suffering from on return from a conference in Brussels. It's called The Quantum War and so far is a space-war novel rather than a heist or heist adjacent piece. It may be that this lack-of-heist is losing me. It's an intruiging setting but I'm not sure he's pulling off the war novel properly so far. There's a related novel set following the past time travel period from the second book, and the start of a new series set in the historical background of the setting. I may read those next or may take a break from this writer and go on to something else. I've been eyeing Megan Whalen Turner's The Thief for a while and a fantasy heist book (I think) might be a nice follow-on to the SF heist of The Quantum Magician.
