Book(ish) Matters

Here's a quick update on what I've been reading:

A few weeks ago I finished the very excellent book Kushiel's Scion which is the first book of the SECOND trilogy in Jacqueline Carey's magnum opus about the many different flavors of Love. Don't let that scare you off, all of these books are examples of the fantasy genre at its finest. So, if you haven't read any of this series, grab Kushiel's Dart and get started! (Her Banewreaker series is good too!)

After Kushiel's Scion, I picked up Ken MacLeod's Learning the World. This is a quick read with lots of fun ideas. It features humans spending 400 years travelling near light speed to move from one star system to another on an extremely big ship and when they arrive they discover that their destination is already inhabited. MacLeod's gift is using science fiction as a means for exploring different political and economic systems. Some of the best parts of the novel involve him detailing the financial and ecomonic models that would be required to make a trip between solar systems feasible. He also does an extremely good job of using the alien race as a means for poking fun at some of the ideas that underly our "modern" society, or at least to make you reflect on those beliefs in the harsh light of another context. Highly recommended.

Next up: Today I started reading Tad Williams new novel Shadowplay which is book two of his Shadowmarch series. Williams is great at coming up with alterations of the "traditional" way of doing fantasy. The way he conceptualizes and describes magic in his novels is especially delightful and Shadowmarch is no exception in this regard. If you haven't read Tad Williams before, then check out some of his earlier work. Start with The War of the Flowers which is a nice stand-alone book and then tackle his Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn triology that starts with The Dragonbone Chair, moves to The Stone of Farewell and concludes nicely in To Green Angel Tower. And, by the time you finish with that, Tad will be done with his Shadowmarch series and you'll have three MORE good books to read!

Too many books, not enough time!

Ken