Books 2011: General Taylor gained the day: carry him to his burying ground

[hawkwing_lb]

Books 2011: 155-166


155-156: Jack McDevitt, Echo and Firebird.

The fifth and sixth entries, respectively, in McDevitt's Alex Benedict series. Archaeology in space: good fun if occasionally slow, and McDevitt sometimes puts my feminist hackles up.


157-158: Barbara Hambly, Those Who Hunt The Night and Travelling With The Dead.

Ebooks. First two in the James Asher series. Pre-war ambience, great characterisation, really creepy serious vampires. Strongly recommended.


159-160. Linnea Sinclair, Hope's Folly and Rebels and Lovers.

Romantic space operas. I would have preferred less romance and more space adventure, but one cannot have everthing that one desires. It is bad for one's character, or so I am told.


161-165. Susan R. Matthews, Prisoner of Conscience, Hour of Judgement, The Devil and Deep Space, and Warring States.

Four books set in Matthews' Jurisdiction universe, following on from An Exchange of Hostages and starring Andrej Kosciusko, Chief Medical Officer and Jurisdiction Inquisitor. They are sharp, brilliant, emotionally wrenching and frequently brutal space opera, of a kind I hardly dared dream of finding.

They are all, also, sadly out of print: 2005's Warring States is the last one, and I rather fear that the series has been orphaned of a publisher.

I recommend them exceedingly.


nonfiction

166. Cicero, Political Speeches. Oxford World's Classics, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2009. Translated by D.H. Berry.

A selection of Cicero's speeches, including Pro Marcello, In Verrum I and IV, and one of the Phillipics, as well as some of the speeches against Cataline. Interesting oratory, fascinating politcal invective, has no relevance for my thesis but it was entertaining.

Comments

[puddleshark.livejournal.com]

Linnea Sinclair's earlier books - Finders Keepers & An accidental goddess are really enjoyable 'guilty pleasure' reads. Shame that some of her more recent works go off the dire-ometer scale...

[hawkwing-lb.livejournal.com]

"Too much boyfriend, not enough roller derby," as someone somewhere around here said a while back in reference to something else entirely. :P

I quite like An Accidental Goddess - at least, up until the Rousing Finale.

[rysmiel.livejournal.com]

would have preferred less romance and more space adventure, but one cannot have everthing that one desires. It is bad for one's character, or so I am told.

People keep telling me that too, but nobody thus far has demonstrated any real commitment to allowing the proposition to be rigorously tested.

I have the strong impression I would not like Linnea Sinclair, given that pretty much the only romance i like is Shards of Honor. Feeling a degree of guilt for having confused her with Linnea Quigley (whose career is kind of epitomised by playing Trash in Return of the Living Dead; as an actress, she is good at taking her clothes off) is probably not reason enough to actually read something of hers.

[hawkwing-lb.livejournal.com]

but nobody thus far has demonstrated any real commitment to allowing the proposition to be rigorously tested.

Indeed. I feel it shows a shocking disregard for the principles of scientific progress, and hereby volunteer myself as an experimental subject.

Purely for the sake of Science, of course.

Yeah, I suspect that you and Linnea Sinclair would not be a very good fit - given that her recent books are barely a good fit for me, and I'm inclined to be very generous to anything that features girls with guns who drive spaceships.

(Permit my curiosity: have you read Susan R. Matthews?)

[rysmiel.livejournal.com]

Let me know how that works out for you.

I'm not familiar with Susan R. Matthews. Also, I should mail you.

[hawkwing-lb.livejournal.com]

I think you'd find her first book, An Exchange of Hostages, at least interesting.

I'm terribly bad at recommending books I like without carrying on for paragraphs and paragraphs - it's space opera with more emphasis on character and psychology than on technology, and I'm not sure I entirely approve of it, but it's well-written and I'm still thinking about it a month after finishing. Might be worth picking up, if you find a copy/have time.

[hawkwing-lb.livejournal.com]

Also, I should mail you.

My inbox is ever open...

(Clicked "post" too soon.)