Karl's Reading List

Published by Gollancz/Hachette UK: London, 2019 (2018). Book 2 of the 'Skyward' series. Preceded by ' Skyward. ' Followed by 'Cytonic.' Two years ago I read the first book in this series, and quite enjoyed it. Our main protagonist, Spensa, followed her dream of becoming a pilot on a planet that was constantly fighting off alien invaders. She found a hidden ship, M-Bot, with an advanced AI system (that often uses what I now recognise as Sanderson's trademark quipping style), and helped save the day, while unlocking her special 'powers' - very on point for Sanderson, but not at all a negative. This book, like so many of Sanderson's sequels, ups the stakes considerably from what has come before. Suddenly, Spensa is thrust into a far greater universe than she had previously known, having to impersonate an alien species and infiltrate Starsight, an advanced space-station that is home to the aliens who have been attacking Spensa's planet, but who m...

Published by Vintage/Penguin Random House UK: Dublin, 2024 (2023). This most recent Booker prize winner is also one of (if not the ) shortest Booker prize winner in history. It also is one of the cleanest Booker prize winners I've ever read, and also holds the distinction of being the first Booker prize winning book I have read without owning a copy in advance - a sign that my original Bookerworm goal is weakening somewhat, after so many books that have turned my stomach. Anyway, Orbital is a short book about a day in the life of six astronauts/cosmonauts living on the International Space Station. They orbit the world 16 times over the course of a day, reminiscing about life, facing personal highs and lows, observing a massive typhoon heading for the Philippines, thinking about a concurrent mission to the moon and whether that will make their role obsolete... ...and then they go to bed, and sleep, and the final chapters (each chapter covers either half an orbit or the whole orbit) ...

Published by Tui/HarperCollins Publishers (New Zealand) Ltd: Auckland, NZ, 1994. Book 3 in 'The Solar Colonies.' Preceded by ' The Ghosts of Triton. ' Elise and I (along with Ezekiel) have just returned from a two-week holiday/church ministry time in Australia, visiting friends in Tasmania and Melbourne. It was a great trip, with lots to unpack, but one without a lot of time for reading. Also, the main book I've been working my way through - Moby Dick - is in a big omnibus, which would have weighed too much to justify taking on the plane.  So, instead, I took two books with me that were a little bit smaller, one of which - Fear and Trembling - I was already part of the way through, and the other - this one - a book that I knew was an easy read to unwind with in the little bit of downtime I would find. Both were finished while in Australia, but this one (the easier read) was the first I completed. Both of the two Solar Colonies books I have read have had a differen...

Published as an audiobook by Audible Studios, released 04-05-2021. Audiobook narrated by Ray Porter. Originally published 2021. This book surprised me, despite being very much what I expected. I know that author Andy Weir wrote The Martian (aka, the book that the 'Matt Damon growing potatoes on Mars' movie was based on) and expected that, like that book, this one was going to be a science-heavy piece of science-fiction. Tick. The plot of Project Hail Mary unfolds gradually, with protagonist Dr Ryland Grace awakening from a medically induced coma in a mysterious location, being tended to by a mysterious medical robot. To begin with, he is suffering from amnesia (Grace tells us that long-term comas are not good for people, and that it must have scrambled his brain), but as he slowly regains his memories he realises he is on a mission to save all of humanity. A "space bacteria" - given the name 'Astrophage' by Grace - is slowly consuming the light from the sun, a...

Published by Tui/HarperCollins Publishers (New Zealand) Ltd: Auckland, NZ, 1994. Book 2 in 'The Solar Colonies.' Preceded by 'Doomfire on Venus.' Followed by ' Shadow of Phobos. ' A slightly obscure series from the '90s, the 'Solar Colonies' takes place in the "distant future" of (in this case) 2044, in which Earth has colonized Mars and the asteroids with genetically altered humans, tinted to have green, blue or red skin (depending on their home area). This immediately allows the series to explore issues of racism in a different context, at least in books 2 and 3 (which I have owned since I was young) - I haven't read book 1. In this book, cadet Dexter (from Earth) has encountered some strange apparitions while remote mining on Triton (driving Android-like 'Copies' using a mental link from an orbit near Mars) on Triton. These apparitions resemble historical figures from Earth, although to begin with Dex doesn't recognise th...

Published by Gollancz/Hachette UK: London, UK, 2018. Book 1 of the 'Skyward' series. Followed by ' Starsight. ' This is the first Sci-Fi (as opposed to Fantasy) book by Brandon Sanderson that I have read, and it is a good read. It is also much more in the YA vein of literature, with a quick-fire pace and easy chapters to get through (not that Sanderson is usually tricky to get through - I just am used to his 'denser' fantasy series'). Spensa 'Spin' Nightshade is the daughter of a disgraced former pilot who was shot down and killed for cowardice during the Battle of Alta. Spensa, who doesn't believe that her father was a coward, seeks to become a pilot in order to regain her family honour - as well as to satisfy her warrior-urges and desire to seek revenge against the Krell (alien invaders). She is pressured not to join by Admiral Ironsides (the primary antagonist of this book), who believes that Spensa will follow in her father's footsteps, b...

Published in an omnibus audiobook edition 'First Command Box Set: Spacers, Books 1-6' by Audible, 03-08-2022. Contains: ' First Command '; 'Free Space'; 'Wartorn Cluster'; 'Empire Space'; 'The Fall'; 'Thatcher's Gambit'. Narrated by Mark Boyett. First published 2019. I had an Audible credit sitting there and had no idea what to get. In the end, I decided to go for quantity, purchasing this 'box set' of six audiobooks for the price of one. I had fairly low expectations for the series, and as long as you do that I can tell you that this first book at least meets those expectations. Our protagonist, Tad Thatcher, has just been given command of his first spaceship, the New Jersey, and is sent to the far side of the galaxy through a wormhole to fight pirates for a private security firm. After some time there, the wormhole collapses, and now Thatcher is stranded far from home and his pregnant wife. Thatcher is the sort of pr...

Published by Orbit Books: London, England, 2017. A strange science-fiction book, in that it is a simple storyline, but with a strange amount of complex world-building for a 'stand alone' novel. Apparently this is because Provenance is set in the same universe as author Ann Leckie's previous trilogy, but as a reader fresh to Leckie's world, I found it a little confusing. Not only are there numerous political factions and treaties being signed between groups that the reader never actually encounters in the book, but Leckie also includes a third gender into her world without explaining fully how the whole thing works. This is particularly disorienting when the third gender is referred to as 'e' (as opposed to 'he' or 'she') or 'eir' (as opposed to 'their') with no warning - I honestly thought the book was just poorly edited for quite some time.  As for the storyline itself, we follow Ingray Aughskold, the adopted daughter of Netano A...

Published by Voyager: Hammersmith, London, 1998. First published 1986. Arthur C Clarke is one of the most well-known science fiction writers. Even if you don't know his name, you will likely know of the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey. Arthur C Clarke wrote the story that the movie was based on, as well as co-writing the screen-play for the movie itself. This is the first book I have read that Clarke has written, and I can understand from reading it why he is admired among science fiction circles. The Songs of Distant Earth  is not a long book and yet Clarke helps the reader understand the various cultures he portrays quite easily, providing logical reasons for the ways they have developed and changed from our current culture. The story is fairly laid-back in pace, describing the interactions between two human civilizations: the Lassans from Thalassa, whose civilization has arisen from intentional genetic seeding from Earth, and the crew of the spaceship Magellan  who are the last...

Published by Orbit: London, 2000. First published 1985. As a fairly well-known science-fiction book with a film adaptation that I enjoy (not love, but enjoy), I was looking forward to reading Ender's Game, particularly because I know that fans of the book have not always been big supporters of the movie version. Having read the book, I can understand where they are coming from. Its not that the film is now 'disappointing' to me - it is still a fun science-fiction blockbuster - but the book has a number of subplots that are not even touched upon in the film, and the story is so streamlined (as is inevitably the way of movies to some degree) that at times the film seems to be paying only lip-service to the source material, despite hitting the same major beats. One of the biggest examples of this is in the different portrayals of Ender's older brother, Peter. In the book, Peter is a calculating genius, cold and uncaring, threatening to kill Ender and their sister Va...

Published by Penguin Books: England, 1964. (1956). This a series of short stories written by science-fiction novelist John Wyndham. The genres range from comedy to horror and a lot in between. 'Pawley's Peepholes' and 'Meteor' are both very amusing, with the former telling of tourists from the future coming back to then-present-day England and irritating the locals, while the latter follows a group of aliens arriving on Earth, only to find themselves at a disadvantage due to their scale. The story 'Survival', on the other hand, is very heavy, and left me with an unpleasant feeling by the end. This one outlier aside though (and even this has its fans) the collection is a good selection of classic science-fiction, and would be a good taster for someone just getting into the genre. Completed 23 July 2019. Previous Book ~ Next Book