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Red Mandarin Dress (Qui Xiaolong)
A detective with a literary bent leads a squad which gets called in for "sensitive" cases. If the setting is London, his name is Adam Dalgliesh. If Shanghai, rather Chen Cao. In either case, the reader can expect writing which is a satisfying novel whether or not any crime is solved.
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Transition (Iain M. Banks)
Banks keeps getting better. I've heard that a lot of readers who read him principally for his space operatic sweep were upset with the ending of Matter. Whose side can I take here?
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Zoe's War (John Scalzi)
I want to like John Scalzi's writing more than I do. He seems like a nice enough guy. Some of his themes appeal to me. His book about the purple sheep was one of my favorite comic reads of the last several years, and I've been willing to believe that the shallowness of Agent to the Stars was an intentional representational strategy. But I ( Read more... ) -
An open letter
to the young gentleman ( Read more... ) -
Various...
The last few weeks I've been reading a bunch of fairly light stuff that didn't inspire anything I really needed to write. Since I seem to be in the mood to pick up some more substantial stuff, I'm going to briefly discuss several books in one post to clear out the cellar.
( The backlog... ) -
The Accidental Guerilla (David Kilcullen)
If you want to understand the thinking that turned the Iraq war from an unmitigated disaster into managed disorder, read this book. If you want to understand _precisely_ how classic cold war derived strategic attitudes don't just misguide us in dealing with terrorists, our following them is part of extremist strategy, read this book. If you want ( Read more... ) -
The Game of Kings (Dorothy Dunnett)
I found this when clearing off shelves in the office. rebecca_m had picked it up years ago and never finished it. Not exactly a compelling recommendation to move something to the front of the reading list, but I was inspired by the glowing reviews of it as a classic on the order of O'Brien.
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The Magicians (Lev Grossman)
I saw a preview ad for this book at ReaderCon, and knew I'd have to buy a book that had enthusiastic dust jacket quotes from both Kelly Link and George R. R. Martin. What book would a publisher even send to both of them ( Read more... ) -
From Dead to Worse (Charlaine Harris)
I adored the first Sookie Stackhouse novel, and rushed out to pick up the second. As the series progressed, the novels have tended to have one large plot arc, ending in some cataclysmic conflict. "Plot" here should be taken literally: the action is usually driven by some person or group's political machinations. I've found this less and less ( Read more... ) -
A Shadow in Summer (Daniel Abraham)
I picked this up after reading a review in Strange Horizons. For me, reading reviews is about finding things to read that I otherwise wouldn't have picked up, and this was a fine example. I usually have no patience for contemporary epic fantasy, with it's laboriously Byzantine politics and frequent thinly-veiled fetishism of regressive social ( Read more... )