What I’m Reading – January 2024 Edition
2 RPG sessions and a TBRCon panel down, but I’m still not done; I’m off to sing for the BBC today, so this morning I blog at speed. And so instead of talking about what I’m writing, I thought I’d share the current list of what I’m reading. It’s been Christmas, after all, and so a small stack of tomes awaits my attention. (Though when doesn’t it?)
Ken MacLeod – The Lightspeed Trilogy
I’ve liked Ken MacLeod since I was a teenager, when my old English teacher donated a chunk of his own bookshelf to the school library, including the Engines of Light trilogy. While a lot of the socialist themes went rather over my head as a kid, subsequent re-reads have absolutely held up, and so when I spotted the first book of a brand-new trilogy just after my birthday last year I snapped it up straight away.
A new future, where new national conglomerates are already scrapping over the Earth before someone comes up with (a very cool spin on) FTL travel and expands their reach to new stars, is magnificently explored. You’ve got humanoid robots who don’t know they’re robots, an omnipresent AI that might not have all your best interests at heart – and, as is MacLeod’s custom, a vision of a future, socialist Scotland that confronts this new future head-on. I’ve got book 2, Beyond the Reach of the Earth, sitting waiting on the pile.
Christopher Paolini – Murtagh
Oh, I do love the Eragon books. This is another fixture of my childhood; I devoured each book as soon as it came out, absolutely loving the classic hero’s journey of Eragon and the dragon Saphira, and the vast world that span out of that core tale over the course of four hefty books. I was picking up sample chapters of Inheritance months before the final book came out (which gave me an early glimpse of just how much can be rewritten during the editing process, as none of those chapters or their implied plot threads ended up in the finished product). It was a staple epic of my youth. The short stories of The Fork, The Witch and The Worm were a pleasant surprise a few years ago – but not half as much as seeing the truly massive tome that is Murtagh, the novella accidentally turned standalone sequel to the original 4 books.
And, come on. Murtagh was always cool. Yes, he was a bit of an edgelord, but you can’t not love a hard-bitten mercenary with an unexpectedly dark past, coming to terms with the new world he reluctantly helped create with his Darth Vader-esque turn to the light at the end of the original series.
(Also, I love how the image of Murtagh’s dragon Thorn on the cover is the very same one as on Eldest, his first appearance).
The only reason I’m not halfway through this book already is because it’s way too big to carry to work every day…
Taran Hunt – The Immortality Thief
Having discussed worldbuilding at length with a panel of excellent authors, I’m trying to catch up with the books they were discussing, and next on the list after Marina J. Lostetter’s Noumenon is The Immortality Thief by Taran Hunt. I’m only a little way in, but it appears to be, at its core, a space heist – which is definitely good material even without the themes of far-future archaeology, sinister aliens and a crew of thieves whose hearts may not be as golden as they try to pretend.
Analog Magazine
And then there’s the latest issue of Analog, which is proving to be a bloody good read so far. Some very informative factual bits and bobs, and a particular highlight is the royal court of a magnificent species of birdlike aliens and their contact with human explorers in Ron Collins’ ‘Kagari’. I’ll do a proper review of this later, I think, especially when I get to the last story; the author’s name is familiar somehow…
