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.
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.
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.
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…
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.
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]
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).
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]
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]
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.