It's taken a while to get this written, but here's last month's book list.
Of Books, and Earth, and Courtship (Dominion of the Fallen 0.6) (Aliette de Bodard)
A short story which explores love, magic and power in the Dominion of the Fallen setting. Just leaves me more determined to read the trilogy it links to.
I bought this for the Alienate de Bodard story and was pleasantly surprised to find an Ian Hocking tale set in the Deja Vu universe as well. An enjoyable mix of very different SF shorts. Some humorous, some verging on horror, some even B-Movie as well as the more serious stories. Entertaining.
Sword Destiny (Andrzej Sapkowski)
The second collection of shorts in the Witcher series. I've never played or touched the video game, but some clips of cut scenes on YouTube put me onto this. The setting very Mittel-European and reminds me a little of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplaying. We follow the Witcher, Geralt of Riva, as he passes through the world, nominally plying his trade of slaying monsters. However, that isn't the most interesting part of the stories; what I really enjoy is the interaction with the people he meets, and a cast of reoccurring characters such as Dandelion the Poet/Bard and Yennefer the sorceress (with whom he has a complicated on/off relationship). Sometimes the tales are quite cleverly structured, as they switch perspective and have flashbacks that aren't always signposted initially. The hints of the truth behind the monsters and other races that he meets whet the appetite for more, and often I found the feeling that humanity was far worse than the simple behaviour of monsters and the different societies of creatures such as Dryads. I look forward to the rest of the series, which I have owned since it was on the Amazon big deal a few months ago.
Red Sparrow (Jason Matthews)
I decided to read this before I watched the film as I'd picked up the three books in the series in an offer. The story has two main protagonists: Dominika Egorov, a young Russian SVR agent, and Nate Nash, likewise a young CIA operative. They are linked by hunts for moles in both Russia and the USA and their missions put them on a collision course. I nearly wrote 'on both sides of the Iron Curtain' there instead of 'in both Russia and the USA'. It may not be true anymore, but the feel is very much like a Cold War thriller. Tradecraft is reasonably believable and the plot gathers pace well. The protagonists find their faith in the systems they have been brought up in challenged and there is sexual tension between the two agents aimed at each other. Very enjoyable; I will be reading the others this summer.
The King of Dungeons RPG (Baz Stevens)
See the separate blog post here.
No comments:
Post a Comment