first_contact – Made by Mikal

Abaddon’s Gate

This is the third book in the Leviathan Wakes series by James SA Corey. Just as good as the first two, this is a story about how much a daughter loves her father, perhaps beyond reason, moral choices, and politics — just as much as it is the continuation of the story arc around the alien visitor.

Another excellent book, with a bit more emphasis on space battles than previously and an overall enjoyable plot line. Worth a read, to be honest I think the series is getting better.

Title: Abaddon's Gate
Author: James S. A. Corey
Genre: Fiction
Publisher: Hachette UK
Release Date: June 4, 2013
Pages: 560

The third book in the New York Times bestselling Expanse series. NOW A MAJOR TV SERIES FROM NETFLIX For generations, the solar system - Mars, the Moon, the Asteroid Belt - was humanity's great frontier. Until now. The alien artefact working through its program under the clouds of Venus has emerged to build a massive structure outside the orbit of Uranus: a gate that leads into a starless dark. Jim Holden and the crew of the Rocinante are part of a vast flotilla of scientific and military ships going out to examine the artefact. But behind the scenes, a complex plot is unfolding, with the destruction of Holden at its core. As the emissaries of the human race try to find whether the gate is an opportunity or a threat, the greatest danger is the one they brought with them.

Caliban’s War

This is the second book in the Leviathan Wakes series by James SA Corey. Just as good as the first, this is a story about how much a father loves his daughter, moral choices, and politics — just as much as it is the continuation of the story arc around the alien visitor. I haven’t seen this far in the Netflix series, but I sure hope they get this right, because its a very good story so far.

Title: Caliban's War
Author: James S. A. Corey
Genre: Fiction
Publisher: Orbit Books
Release Date: April 30, 2013
Pages: 624

For someone who didn't intend to wreck the solar system's fragile balance of power, Jim Holden did a pretty good job of it. While Earth and Mars have stopped shooting each other, the core alliance is shattered. The outer planets and the Belt are uncertain in their new - possibly temporary - autonomy. Then, on one of Jupiter's moons, a single super-soldier attacks, slaughtering soldiers of Earth and Mars indiscriminately and reigniting the war. The race is on to discover whether this is the vanguard of an alien army, or if the danger lies closer to home.

Leviathan Wakes

I read this book based on the recommendation of Richard Jones, and its really really good. A little sci-fi, a little film noir, and very engaging. I also like that bad things happen to good people in the story — its gritty and unclean enough to be believable.

I don’t want to ruin the book for anyone, but I really enjoyed this and have already ordered the sequels. Oh, and there’s a Netflix series based off these books that I’ll now have to watch too.

Title: Leviathan Wakes
Author: James S.A. Corey
Genre: Fiction
Publisher: Orbit
Release Date: June 15, 2011
Pages: 592

The book is the basis for the first season of The Expanse, a new original series premiering on Syfy in December 2015. Leviathan Wakes is James S. A. Corey's first novel in the epic series the Expanse, a modern masterwork of science fiction where humanity has colonized the solar system. Two hundred years after migrating into space, mankind is in turmoil. When a reluctant ship's captain and washed-up detective find themselves involved in the case of a missing girl, what they discover brings our solar system to the brink of civil war, and exposes the greatest conspiracy in human history.

Earthbound

This is the third book in the Marsbound series. The Others have just turned off all electronics on Earth, and now we need to survive. One problem with this book is that it jumps straight into the action — I had to go back and re-read Marsbound and Starbound in order to understand what was happening in this book. That was ok because those two books are excellent, and I enjoyed re-reading them. In fact, those two are probably a little better than this one.

Overall Earthbound is pretty dark, and there isn’t a lot of hope presented — its just a series of scenes where the main characters attempt to deal with an all powerful adversary. Perhaps if the Others weren’t so powerful this would be a better book, because you just know that everyone is doomed. I also respect authors who are willing to kill off lead characters, but that happens a lot in this book, which sort of bothered me. Perhaps that’s what combat is really like though — people you have an attachment to just stop being there. There’s no warning or explanation.

The end of this book isn’t very satisfying. There better be a sequel or I’m going to be annoyed.

Title: Earthbound
Author: Joe Haldeman
Genre: Fiction
Publisher: Hachette UK
Release Date: December 19, 2013
Pages: 320

The mysterious alien Others have prohibited humans from space travel-destroying Earth's fleet of starships in a display of unimaginable power. Now Carmen Dula, the first human to encounter Martians and then the mysterious Others, and her colleagues struggle to find a way, using nineteenth-century technology, to reclaim the future that has been stolen from them.

Rendezvous With Rama

This is a classic book, so I expected a lot from it. I was a little disappointed to be honest. The book is slow, although interesting. There chapters are all very short as well (around four or five pages), which is a little odd. There is a lot of potential with this concept, and I feel this book could have gone a lot further.

[isbn: 0330240242]
[awards: winner hugo 1974; winner nebula 1973]

The Apocalypse Troll

This is an interesting combination of a first contact story, a combat science fiction story, and a love story. It is very different from the other science fiction I’ve read recently, and I enjoyed it a lot. The book has a good beginning and ending, but is slow in the middle. I’m glad I kept at it though.

[isbn: 0671578456]

Starbound

This is the newly released sequel for Marsbound which I really liked, so I was excited when this arrived the other day. This book is much like the previous one stylistically, being written as a set of mostly first person diary entries. However, the people writing these entries are older now, and this feels less like a teen fiction novel. There is also more than one narrator in this book, unlike the first, with generally each chapter being narrated by one of three people. This can be a bit jarring at first, because it takes a while to realize that a new person is narrating and that’s why the point of view changed. You get used to it though. This book is also quite Heinlein like in this level of sex, which is similar to Marsbound, but not true of all of the Haldeman books I’ve read — I think it might be a relatively recent change to his style.

Overall a good book, I enjoyed it, and I can’t wait for the next one in the series (which Joe finished at the end of 2010).

[isbn: 044101979X;9780441019793]

Agent to the Stars

There is something a little bit annoying about Scalzi. Take this book for example — it is his practise book that he wrote to see if he even could write a coherent book. He didn’t even intend to ever publish it. Yet it is really really good. Oh, its not his best book, but it better than many other books I’ve read. Its funny, interesting, entertaining, and yet thoughtful as well. I loved it.

[isbn: 0765357003;9780765357007]

A Hymn Before Battle

This is an interesting book in that it lays down a reasonably believable scenario and then doesn’t really resolve it. Its obviously setting up for a series, and while the local micro plot is resolved, there is clearly a larger story arc that wants telling here. The book isn’t happy or uplifting, it is downright depressing in places. Regardless, I still finding myself hanging out for the next one in the series.

[isbn: 0671318411]

The Coming

This book wasn’t as good as I hoped it would be — some of Joe’s other work has been excellent (The Forever War, Forever Peace and Marsbound being examples). However, some of his other books are very weak, such as Forever Free and There Is No Darkness. This book is an interesting experiment in story telling style, where many different very short chapters are told by different characters. Each chapter follows on directly from the previous one. However, this style makes the story confusing to read until you can remember the names of all the characters. Worse than that though, the idea behind the story isn’t terribly strong, and the resolution is weak as well.

Overall and ok read, but not Joe’s best work and not a book I would recommend.

[isbn: 0441008763]