Recent reading

[luzula]

Forgot to write up books for a while...

Hyperion by Dan Simmons (1989)
For my fannish book club. I first read this 15-20 years ago, and I guess I notice things now that I didn't then, such as wishing it passed the Bechdel test more than it does. The first story is effective body horror, and reminds me a bit of The Sparrow, as being in the genre "use an alien species to torture a Jesuit priest as much as possible". It reminded someone else of Octavia Butler, which I can see—there are alien mpreg aspects of it, kind of.

Articifial Condition by Martha Wells (#2 in the Murderbot series, 2018)
Like the first novella, this one is also very readable and enjoyable!

Into the Fire by Elizabeth Moon (audiobook, #2 in the Vatta's Peace series, 2018)
I am not usually into military SF, and I guess these are sort of balancing on the edge of whether the things that I enjoy will balance out the things that annoy me. But I guess I enjoy the audiobooks enough so far to keep listening.

Comments

[auroracloud]

I recently read Artificial Condition, too! Loved it! I ♥ Murderbot.

[luzula]

Definitely very engaging!

[skygiants]

One does have to wonder a little why 'use an alien species to torture a sad Jesuit' is such a popular genre!

[luzula]

Can you think of more examples than these two?

[jesse_the_k]

I admit I can’t. But it does seem _right_, probably because Jesuits are reliably well-educated, so they can reference many many sad works of art through history as they suffer.

(I had a former-Jesuit as a roommate, and let me just say it helped me understand why the adjective "Jesuitical" has such negative valence.)

(Which didn’t prevent me from suffering along reading The Sparrow, but I was just done by the sequel.j