Tony’s Comments (group member since Dec 19, 2018)

Tony’s comments from the Sci-fi and Heroic Fantasy group.

I have started the first book in the light-hearted steampunk Girl Genius series - Agatha H and the Airship City

Welcome, hopefully you will find this a good place to relax in.

I know it's now June (just) but the June topic hasn't started yet, so I'll list this here. I have finished Planet of the Apes. Reasonably well-written and I'm glad I have read it, but the film (the 1968 version) is too iconic for this to have any chance of replacing it as the "real" story - although there aren't that many differences.

G33z3r wrote: "
Apple TV added a bonus episode of
Mythic Quest
. (I almost missed it because there's so little going on on Apple TV I never bother to open the app to check.) It's a COVID-19 special as the empl..."

I had Apple-TV for a month to watch the alternate history where the Soviets won the space race - it started well but faded - but I really couldn't find anything else that interested me so I cancelled my subscription.

I have started Planet of the Apes. Until this edition was released in 2011, I had never realised that the film was based on a book. And yes, that's how long it has been sitting in my TBR pile :)

I finished Xenophobia. This is an excellent novel that handles first contact in a very believable way. The aliens are quite alien and humanity behaves the way that decades of Hollywood have taught us to act. 4.5/5

Peter Cawdron has been making a lot of his books free for limited periods during the lockdown period, which is kind of him. I decided to read one of those that I had grabbed off Amazon for free. I've started Xenophobia, which is a first contact story set in the modern day world.

I finished Raffles. This edition has a 50+ page introduction, which was quite interesting, and is extensively annotated - the notes for the 9 stories add about 40 pages at the end of the book and cover historical notes, references to real people and places and provide explanations for readers who may not be familiar with British idioms of the period.

Time to read a bit of Victorian era mystery - Raffles. This Penguin book is a reprint of Hornung's first volume of short stories about Raffles - The Amateur Cracksman. It was followed by another 18 short stories (in 2 volumes) and a novel - Mr Justice Raffles.

Oops, my bad. While Hornung did write a lot in the Victorian era, his Raffles stories were written in the Edwardian era.

Finally, after several breaks to read other things, I have finished The Runes of the Earth. While Donaldson has made the book an easier read in the sense that the main characters aren't quite so unpleasant, he is now suffering badly from overwriting. The book is about 750 pages long and the story could have been told in half that.

Andrea wrote: "It's a bit like one shouldn't hang around Jessica Fletcher in Murder She Wrote, that little town in Maine she lived in had an unusually high murder rate."

Or the village of Midsomer in Britain. I think in the 22 (?) years Midsomer Murders has been on TV, they must have killed about 3 times the population of the village :)

Gary wrote: "Andrea wrote: "Yay! Finished the last of the Oz books, whew.

You read all of the Baum Oz books, but don't forget all of the Ruth Plumly Thompson's Oz books..."

It's always a difficult decision for those trying to complete a series. Take Conan as an example - is it enough to just read the REH books? What about those written by de Camp? Or the comic series from Marvel and Dark Horse - some of which have been excellent stories. It's even worse for Cthulhu since Lovecraft openly shared his world, and a fair chunk of what is consider Cthulhu canon wasn't written by HPL.

I finished Witchnapped in Westerham. It was a light and easy read, as most cozy mysteries are. Nice to see an Aussie author and an Aussie protagonist. As is the case for all of the cozy mysteries I have read, the story is resolved in one book, but there is an overarching plot that is ongoing.

I have started reading Witchnapped in Westerham

I finished reading Zero Limit. It's a good read especially for those who prefer to keep their SF reasonably grounded in reality. A novel about the dangers of asteroid mining with some degree of political and social commentary.

Barbara wrote: "I liked Devs until the end; I wasn't happy with the last episode."

The ending was certainly unexpected, and I'm not sure I think Stewart's action was in keeping with his character. But I don't intend to post spoilers here :)

I watched a series called Devs. It's a bit of a genre bender - starts out like a murder mystery but quickly develops some SF elements. A single season of 8 episodes - the story is wrapped up, so I don't think they're planning a second season. I found it quite good.

If you enjoy that series, you may also enjoy the Garrett, P.I. series from Glen Cook. The first book is Sweet Silver Blues. There are 13 books in the series - I've only read the first 5 or 6, but I enjoyed them. Kind of like a humorous Sam Spade in a fantasy city.

G33z3r wrote: "I was collecting the set in dead-tree editions, but after #5 the publisher decided to change the design and re-issue the first 5, making it impossible to extend the set I already had."

I find that so irritating - and it happens so often with lengthy series.

I have started on Zero Limit