The 3rd book in what-is-apparently the first Mistborn trilogy.
The world continues to deteriorate after Vin assassinates the Lord Ruler. Things are looking bleak as forces they don’t understand ravage the countryside. Then, a hero arises.
Reamde by Neal Stephenson
I really liked Anathem and was hoping for something in a similar vein of uniqueness in terms of world building. However, Reamde takes place in a contemporary setting. Mostly an action-adventure story with some bits of spy novel mixed in.
It was fine, but not quite what I was looking for at the moment. And it’s very long. Spent most of the month reading it.
Odds Against Tomorrow by Nathaniel Rich
A hurricane ravages New York City. One guy predicted the cascading failures and follow-on disasters around the event. But then decides to live a life of isolation.
I’m still not really sure what the point of the story was. The writing was fine, but when I finished it was mostly, “okay, I guess were done now.” But maybe that had to do with being phenomenally distracted by other events while trying to finish the last ~15%.
A British Academic’s attempt at understanding what the experience of “battle” is. He attempts to isolate variables by focusing on three battles for which considerable historical data exists, which all occurred in northern France, and which involved in the fighting the French, the English, and–in the Somme–the Germans.
I found Keegan’s prose to be challenging. Asides within asides made it difficult to parse sentences. Maybe this is a common style of British academia. But it made for difficult reading at times.
While his attempts to characterize “battle” are quite interesting the thing standing out to me most is the incredible scale through which battle has evolved over time. From low tens-of-thousands combatants at Agincourt fighting over the course of hours to more than 3 million combatants at the Somme fighting for over 4 months. It’s staggering how much energy humans will muster to annihilate each other.
Ludicrous: The Unvarnished Story of Tesla Motors by Edward Niedermeyer
This was someone’s pick for our book group at work. Extremely frustrating to read as we watch Republicans give Musk free reign to dismantle our government. The book lays out in excruciating detail how Musk has spent decades flat out lying about anything and everything and getting away with it. Promise after promise and hype after hype he has failed to deliver and simply pivots to a new, shinier, grander lie to distract from his previous failures. And now he’s doing the same thing while destroying our country.
Mistborn by Brandon Sanderson
Having played the recent board game of the same title a couple of times I figured I should read it. Jess has had the trilogy since before we got married, so they’ve just been sitting on the shelf waiting for me.
While I couldn’t put my finger on why, I feel like I can tell it’s one of Sanderson’s earlier works–that his writing has matured since then.
I still enjoyed it though.
The Well of Ascension by Brandon Sanderson
So I went on and read the second book the trilogy too.
While some set up was done in the first book it was clear the first book could have been left to stand on its own if not received well. So it was kind of interesting to get a story that has to pick up from “we defeated the big bad guy and we’re in charge now!” and follow through on “yah, now you’re in charge, how does that work out for you?” It’s not rainbows and sunshine. And then it gets worse.
Looking forward to finishing the story with book three.
Words of Radiance (The Stormlight Archive #2) by Brandon Sanderson
A hefty tome which spanned over 3000 pages as rendered by my eReader (an “average” book is typically ~400 pages). Took up most of January and February.
High fantasy set in the land of Roshar.
Kaladin continues his journey discovering how to harness the power of stormlight. And we learn more about the history that shaped this world via Shallan’s studies.
Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson
A book that plays out a possible early colonization of Mars. Unfortunately for me, I was hoping it would be a harder sci-fi focusing on technical challenges. It rather focuses on people and political challenges over decades of colonization and terraforming efforts.
A bit too much political drama in real life to really enjoy artificial political drama.
Also fairly hefty, 1500 pages on my eReader. Took up the rest of February.
An English fantasy book translated to French. A “chosen one” story about a girl who yearns to be a warrior and is destined for something greater.
An act of defiance against occupiers to save a dragon’s life condemns her kingdom to destruction. With nothing further to lose the kingdom fights for their survival.
When their destruction seems assured, the dragon returns and lays waste to their oppressors.
Carbide Tipped Pens a hard sci-fi anthology edited by Ben Bova and Eric Choi
A collection of 17 stories which I enjoyed–some more than others. None seem to have stuck out to me as being exceptional however.
While I had somewhat assumed that Forever Peace was a sequel to The Forever War Haldeman addresses directly in the introduction that it is not.
But it does continue to explore and discuss the issues that affect the participants and victims of continuous warfare. It then goes on to explore the idea of what if you could open everyone’s minds to collectivism and seeing humanity as one. What if we could reach a state of mind where violence against others is seen as violence against oneself and therefore pointless.
The Cat Who Saved Books by Sosuke Natsukawa
This was my Christmas gift from the girls this year. A Japanese fantasy book (translated) about a cat, books, and an old bookstore. They nailed it.
When Rintaro’s grandfather dies he withdraws even further from the world than usual as he takes over caring for the old bookshop.
Then a cat approaches him for help rescuing books. His love of books empowers him to break out of his shell and engage with the world around him.
And those are the only books I completed in December. Most of my reading was on a book in French and I just didn’t quite finish it. So it will show up next year.
Looking back over this year’s blog posts I tally 41 books for the year! With 1 of them in French.
