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more books
May. 9th, 2014 09:16 amI lack the will to do anything else (or, well, rather, there are specific things I'm procrastinating about), so I've been reading a lot.
The Pirate's Wish by Cassandra Rose Clarke is the sequel/conclusion to The Assassin's Curse. Fun duology, still recommended to YA fantasy readers, although I loved it less than the first half. ( spoilers )
Lockstep, by Karl Schroeder, isn't marketed as YA, but reads a lot like it. 17-year-old Toby McGonigal is an early colonist in the far outer Solar System, until he accidentally gets lost and over-hibernates by fourteen thousand years and wakes up in a world where large numbers of people go into hibernation together, as a way of maintaining synchronicity over interstellar distances despite sub-light travel speeds. I have re-read Vinge's Marooned in Realtime and McCaffery's Death of Sleep many many times each and I find this sort of premise super compelling; I thought Schroeder did a great job with it, working the epic plot and local political plot and secondary characters' plots and Toby's personal family plot in such a way that they all move each other forward. And there's some gorgeous, gorgeous planet-travel-porn, with four vivid worlds I'd never seen anything like before. There are a few unfortunate gaps - the lockstep insists on cultural conformity, but never specifies what that encompasses, so we don't really know how evil/suppressive an empire it is. And Toby is ( spoilers ) Anyways, other than that, I thought this was excellent, and it will probably go on my Hugo list.
The Pirate's Wish by Cassandra Rose Clarke is the sequel/conclusion to The Assassin's Curse. Fun duology, still recommended to YA fantasy readers, although I loved it less than the first half. ( spoilers )
Lockstep, by Karl Schroeder, isn't marketed as YA, but reads a lot like it. 17-year-old Toby McGonigal is an early colonist in the far outer Solar System, until he accidentally gets lost and over-hibernates by fourteen thousand years and wakes up in a world where large numbers of people go into hibernation together, as a way of maintaining synchronicity over interstellar distances despite sub-light travel speeds. I have re-read Vinge's Marooned in Realtime and McCaffery's Death of Sleep many many times each and I find this sort of premise super compelling; I thought Schroeder did a great job with it, working the epic plot and local political plot and secondary characters' plots and Toby's personal family plot in such a way that they all move each other forward. And there's some gorgeous, gorgeous planet-travel-porn, with four vivid worlds I'd never seen anything like before. There are a few unfortunate gaps - the lockstep insists on cultural conformity, but never specifies what that encompasses, so we don't really know how evil/suppressive an empire it is. And Toby is ( spoilers ) Anyways, other than that, I thought this was excellent, and it will probably go on my Hugo list.
