Five more books...
Oct. 5th, 2014 04:36 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
graculusHere's what I've read since last time (mid-September):
1. Gemsigns by Stephanie Saulter - the one bad thing about WorldCon is that I came home with not only a pile of books to read, but a recs list at least twice as long, mostly of folks I'd not heard of, Stephanie Saulter being one of them. Gemsigns is fantastic, near-future dystopia, where humanity got smacked down in a massive manner by a technology-related plague that decimated the population (and not in a Roman-style 'kill every tenth one of them' literal way).
In response to this, genetic engineering went into overdrive, creating a workforce specifically tailored to particular jobs - want someone to mine for minerals on a mountain so they need to be able to cope with high altitude, the companies can make and hire them to you - your workforce is then living in indentured servitude to the companies who created them. And then it all falls apart, a stray piece of legislation throwing the established order into turmoil and suddenly humanity needs to decide just how human their former workforce are (or not) and what rights they should have.
In short, it's really great, highly recommended!
2. Summer of the Big Bachi by Naomi Hirahara - I'd had this sitting on my bookshelf for a while, as it's the first of a series that sounded interesting. Our protagonist is a survivor of the Hiroshima bomb, now living in the US and working as a landscape gardener, whose past comes back to haunt him. I wanted to enjoy it more than I did, but it's first person (which I am so done with, after many many urban fantasies) and I struggled to empathise with the main character. So, another promising series I don't need to buy! ;)
3. Daughter of Smoke and Bone by Laini Taylor - another one where I'm working through my TBR bookcase (yes, it's not a pile, it's an entire bookcase). Enjoyed this very much, didn't see the twist coming until it hit, though the requisite romantic sub-plot made me toy with the idea of skipping some pages but the author managed to pull it back into manageable levels.
4. Ancillary Sword by Ann Leckie - I have been waiting for this book since I read Ancillary Justice over the summer and it did not disappoint me. Not quite as good as the first one, but there was definitely plenty going on there that I didn't see coming in advance. My only minor qualm was that I missed the relationship between Breq and Seivarden that was such an important part (for me) of my enjoyment of the first book, as they're now in a much more structured and hierarchical environment. Though at least Seivarden gets the chance to save Breq this time around, so I guess they're even! Really looking forward to seeing where the third book goes, but I have no idea when that might be... :(
5. And I'm currently reading Who Fears Death by Nnedi Okorafor, which is excellent so far but definitely comes into the category of 'books I am glad I've read but will never want to re-read'.
1. Gemsigns by Stephanie Saulter - the one bad thing about WorldCon is that I came home with not only a pile of books to read, but a recs list at least twice as long, mostly of folks I'd not heard of, Stephanie Saulter being one of them. Gemsigns is fantastic, near-future dystopia, where humanity got smacked down in a massive manner by a technology-related plague that decimated the population (and not in a Roman-style 'kill every tenth one of them' literal way).
In response to this, genetic engineering went into overdrive, creating a workforce specifically tailored to particular jobs - want someone to mine for minerals on a mountain so they need to be able to cope with high altitude, the companies can make and hire them to you - your workforce is then living in indentured servitude to the companies who created them. And then it all falls apart, a stray piece of legislation throwing the established order into turmoil and suddenly humanity needs to decide just how human their former workforce are (or not) and what rights they should have.
In short, it's really great, highly recommended!
2. Summer of the Big Bachi by Naomi Hirahara - I'd had this sitting on my bookshelf for a while, as it's the first of a series that sounded interesting. Our protagonist is a survivor of the Hiroshima bomb, now living in the US and working as a landscape gardener, whose past comes back to haunt him. I wanted to enjoy it more than I did, but it's first person (which I am so done with, after many many urban fantasies) and I struggled to empathise with the main character. So, another promising series I don't need to buy! ;)
3. Daughter of Smoke and Bone by Laini Taylor - another one where I'm working through my TBR bookcase (yes, it's not a pile, it's an entire bookcase). Enjoyed this very much, didn't see the twist coming until it hit, though the requisite romantic sub-plot made me toy with the idea of skipping some pages but the author managed to pull it back into manageable levels.
4. Ancillary Sword by Ann Leckie - I have been waiting for this book since I read Ancillary Justice over the summer and it did not disappoint me. Not quite as good as the first one, but there was definitely plenty going on there that I didn't see coming in advance. My only minor qualm was that I missed the relationship between Breq and Seivarden that was such an important part (for me) of my enjoyment of the first book, as they're now in a much more structured and hierarchical environment. Though at least Seivarden gets the chance to save Breq this time around, so I guess they're even! Really looking forward to seeing where the third book goes, but I have no idea when that might be... :(
5. And I'm currently reading Who Fears Death by Nnedi Okorafor, which is excellent so far but definitely comes into the category of 'books I am glad I've read but will never want to re-read'.
