I went to America last month, and as usual, I read a storm on the plane. I’ve been meaning to post this for ages, but I’ve been ridiculously busy so I haven’t gotten around to it. I’m finally going to just take some time this morning and post stuff.

Space Opera

I read the first four books of the “Lost Fleet” series by Jack Campbell. I really enjoyed these four books from a standard space opera point of view. They are very interesting from a military / tactics point of view. A fairly easy read, and the pages go quickly. I’ll definitely pick up the final two books in the series when they come out. I found these books because when I was shopping for some John Scalzi stuff they kept coming up as recommendations from Amazon.com so I thought I would give them a try. Good job, Amazon! I really enjoyed them!

Fantasy

I already wrote about China Miéville’s Perdido Street Station a while back (it was plane fodder on a trip to Singapore) but it has taken me a long time to read his later two novels, The Scar and Iron Council.

I really liked Perdido Street Station – the world of Bas-Lag is a very interesting turn-of-the-century with magic sort of place, and doesn’t feel like the standard sorts of high fantasy or science fiction that you come across, but is a blend of both. The Scar was a great follow-up. There were things about it that I didn’t like: I didn’t like the protagonist much, and had trouble caring about what happened to her, but there were other great characters, and the story itself is really great. I feel like you will enjoy The Scar more if you have an understanding of quantum mechanics at some level, but it was really impressive the way that the novel takes a very modern and scientific concept and works it into the fabric of the story in a natural way. There were also some elements of science that surrounded Perdido Street Station as well.

If The Scar was about Quantum Mechanics, then Iron Council was about politics, revolution, and governments. I didn’t enjoy Iron Council as much as the other two, but it is still a great read. China Miéville has a real way with building interesting worlds and giving you a personal view of large-scale events from the people involved in them and on the fringes. I highly recommend all three Bas-Lag novels, you should give them a try!