The Three Body Problem

I'd heard good things about The Three Body Problem, and wanted to broaden my science fiction intake to some fresh perspectives, and so was very pleased by Liu Cixin's novel, translated from the original Chinese. It is a weird mixture of style between that odd 1950's impersonal feel that so many classic sci-fi novels have, weird magical fantasy, and a solid modern hard sci-fi. It takes more than half the novel to work out which it is. It spans 50 years of Chinese history, from the Cultural Revolution to the modern day, and tells the story of humanity's first contact with an alien species, and how people cope with the changes and threats that brings. For a western reader, it also gives a fascinating internal view of life for academics under the Chinese communist government. Well worth a read.

The Magician King

The first book in this series, The Magicians, was so self-contained and complete that I was surprised to find there was a sequel. Lev Grossman's The Magician King takes the conclusion of the Magicians, where (spoiler alert) Quentin and his friends have found their way into the magical land of Fillory, and builds on that in an epic tale where the entire world was endangered and a Quest was required to save it. Again, the book is rich in reference and homage to other fantasy novels, but makes the genre its own. The story wraps into a expected-yet-unexpected bittersweet conclusion, providing a clean ending to the stories of the characters. And as I finished it, I was surprised to find there was a third book in the series to read.

Rogues

This is a collection of short stories about various rogues written by a range of writers, with the notable selling point of containing a World of Ice and Fire historical novel. But it's far from filler - there are some great stories in here. Joe Abercrombie's Tough Times All Over is a whirlwind adventure following a package that is stolen by one rogue after another, and would make a great movie. Carrie Vaughn's "The Roaring Twenties" is a great episode, and made me want to read more of these characters' exploits. George R. R. Martin's The Rogue Prince is written as a history text, and so is rather dry, but adds more interesting depth to the world of A Game of Thrones. I don't think there were any stories in the rather weighty tome that I'd suggest skipping - it's a very solid anthology.

The Magicians

Lev Grossman's The Magicians is essentially "what if the Harry Potter world was populated with actual teenagers who are messed up and obsessed with sex like real teenagers are. Also Narnia". It works surprisingly well, with Grossman throwing in references to many other stories and ideas without going over the top or seeming inauthentic or corny. It's very much set in our modern world, except when the characters sometimes step out into more magical worlds that are related to our world in various ways. It's an excellent read.

The Expanse Novellas

In addition to the long series of long novels, there are a collection of novellas and short stories set in the expanse universe:

• Gods of Risk
• The Churn
• The Vital Abyss
• Drive
• The Butcher of Anderson Station

Each adds interesting background to the characters and setting. A couple of these (The Churn and Drive, in my opinion) are excellent, and collectively they have made me more keen to continue reading the series (my enthusiasm was starting to wane a little as the series dragged on).

Lovecraft Country

Matt Ruff's Lovecraft Country is an excellently done take on a Lovecraftian story of scheming sorcerers told from an outsider perspective. It also neatly parallels the otherworldly horror of the Cthulhu mythos with the terribly real-world horrors of Jim Crow era racism in the US. It even manages to convey a bit of the disconnected flow of 30's pulp fiction, with each section of the novel being told from the perspective of a different member of an African-American extended family. It's the 1950s, and Atticus Turner, a veteran of World War II, finds a cryptic message from his uncle, and with his uncle and a friend travels up into the backwoods of New England to find him. This gets him and the extended family tangled up in the affairs of sorcerers, and the rest of the story details how they try to extract themselves from this mess. But the real horror is the routine danger of being black in a country of grinding and omnipresent racism. It's a very well done novel, and delivers its message deftly and effectively.

All the Birds in the Sky

Science vs. Magic! Two nerds befriend each other in school, one a latent witch, and the other a developing technological genius. But life separates them and they grow up apart, each fully developing their power and training it as much as possible. Then, naturally, science and magic go to war and they find themselves on opposing sides, which could end everything.

All the Birds in the Sky is the first of Charlie Jane Anders' stories I've read (I used to be a devoted reader of io9.com, so I've like her writing for a long time). It's cleverly done, and is a really well realized world of magic and science (though the science feels rather magical throughout). Well worth a read.

Nemesis Games

This latest installment in the Expanse series takes a different turn, with the previously inseparable crew of the Rocinante each going their separate ways to deal with issues from their past. It's a good change, adding much needed depth to the characters. A lot of backstory for each character is added, and all of them (except the obnoxiously good and noble and fair Holden) have a lot of their seedy background revealed to the reader as they each try to resolve some unresolved aspect of their past.

But, being the Expanse series, this puts each of them into exactly the most critical part of the solar system so they can be key players in the next big round of ramping-up-the-epicness (which seems to kind of happen every second novel in the series). I can't say pretty much anything without spoilering the book, but this was a refreshing improvement to the series, and much more enjoyable than the previous book, and it sets the stage for even vaster epicness coming up while staying true to the series' basic premise that the four main characters have to be present when anything important happens in the universe.

Cibola Burn

The Expanse series has an odd oscillation between huge, sweeping cosmic visions which affect all of humanity, and tight, focused, small events that affect a small group of people. This fourth book in the series swings back to that tight focus, when James Holden and his crew are sent to deal with a conflict on the first planet outside the solar system that is settled by humanity. There are two groups - some free settlers who have asserted squatters rights and set up a mining colony on the planet, and a large Earth corporation that wants to survey the planet and study it scientifically. Things immediately get nasty between these two groups, and they stay nasty, nearly leading to the deaths of everyone involved. Again, the mystery of the civilization that made all this is touched on and more information is gradually revealed, but at the end, we are still left with just tantalizing clues and more questions. This episode of the series isn't one of the strongest, since it seems to focus on characters, and that has never been the strong point of the series.

Abaddon's Gate

This is the third book of the Expanse series, and things are getting serious. At the end of book 2 the weird things brewing within Venus launched out into space, and the consequences are felt in book 3. I can't say anything more without spoilering the first two and a half books, so here goes: Spoiler Alert for the first half of the Expanse series ahead!
The series makes the transition from interplanetary sci-fi to interstellar sci-fi here as the weird alien artifacts create a gate that connects to a strange bridging space that contains hundreds of gates to other star systems. Naturally humanity gets all fighty over control of this, and a mystery is revealed: who are the aliens that created all this, and where are they? The book touches on these mysteries while dealing with the unfolding conflict between various factions trying to control how humanity deals with the huge change that follows from having access to a thousand new planets. The same core characters are again central to the unfolding adventure, and it's starting to get a bit silly that they always happen to be in the right place at the right time, and never get killed when everyone around them is getting killed.

Caliban's War

The second in James S. A. Corey's The Expanse series follows the further adventures of Jim Holden and the crew of the spaceship Rocinante, in the wake of the events of the first novel. Humanity has settled down to a new post-war normal, but further events shake the fragile interplanetary peace.

I'm still not sure about this series. It's pretty good, and there is a nice realistic feel to the frustrations and dangers of living in space and the differences that will naturally emerge as humanity leaves its home planet. But it'd be nice to have some more personality to the main characters (they are very archetypal, and don't have the honest texture of more fully developed characters).

Leviathan Wakes

I picked this book up based on the growing amount of noise I was hearing about it - it was similar to the noise around A Game of Thrones that prompted me to start reading it. When everyone starts talking about it, it must be interesting. Also, the TV show was on its way.

It turns out it's pretty good, but no Game of Thrones. It borrows a little, stylistically, but it very much it's own story, with much less murky morality and complex characterisation. It's set in a technologically stagnant future, where humanity has colonised parts of the solar system, but isn't doing much to expand its domain, but rather is starting to look inward. It tells the tale of a few ordinary people put into extraordinary circumstances, and the huge consequences of their actions.

In this first book of the series, there are really only two viewpoint characters - Holden, the naive and idealistic first officer of as ice transport ship; and Miller, the jaded and very film noir detective working for a private corporation on the asteroid Ceres. It's a fast paced book - I kept being surprised as I read it that there was so much still left to read, since a solid novel's worth of plot had been unpacked before the book was half-way done. The worldbuilding was excellent - it is a complex world but everything holds together and makes sense. Through it you can clearly see the things we did wrong in our time that led to this rather disappointing future.

It's not A Game of Thrones, but it's worth a read. It sets up a very interesting situation for the following novels in the series, so I'll be interested to see where it goes.

Ancillary Mercy

The third and final novel in the Imperial Radch series, Ancillary Mercy increases the action a bit while retaining the rich culture and impeccable manners and politeness of the previous novel. The alien Presger are uncompromisingly alien, the artificial intelligences are a fascinating mixture of human and non-human, and the comprises between freedom and obedience are crucial to the future of the society. The tensions and problems raised in the first novel are largely resolved in this book, though the wider civil war may or may not still be raging. While a part of me was still missing the scope and drama of the first novel, the detail and intricacies of the culture make it well worth the effort. I've seen one review that describe books 2 and 3 as "Downton Abbey in Space", so strong are the manners and proscriptions on behaviour, and the restraints on the actions of characters. It's impressive to see it done so well, and if a second series of Imperial Radch books ever gets written, I'll be picking it up straight away.

Ancillary Sword

After the huge revelations of the first book, this is a very quiet, tame book by comparison. The plot moves directly on from the first book, with Breq being given her own starship and sent to a star system in an obscure corner of the Radch empire. However, the lack of epic empire-wide action gives the characters room to breath, and lets the author delve more deeply into the rich culture established in the first novel, the iniquities of an imperialist society, and the nature of personhood and individuality. So while not anywhere near as exciting as Ancillary Justice, Ancillary Sword is well worth a read.

Ancillary Justice

Ann Leckie's Ancillary Justice is a fascinating science fiction novel. It's better than most with regard to an exciting plot and well-constructed technologies, but where it shines is in its characterisation and its portrayal of a far-future culture similar and yet very different from our own. It is told from the viewpoint of Breq, a person on a quest to revenge herself against a vastly more powerful enemy. The compelling thing about the novel is the way the culture she is embedded in keeps surfacing, and has real effects on her actions and the actions of people around her. The culture is some sort of cross between ancient Roman militarism and sense of overarching justice; communism; and some eastern religions, complete with its own taboos, beliefs, rituals, and so forth, and like any real culture, is the framework within which all the actions of the characters take place. It is real and tangible throughout the novel. One of the first things most people comment about is lack of gender in the language, meaning that throughout the novel, except when the characters are talking in a different language, all the pronouns are rendered in english as female - so Breq is a "she" throughout, and it is never actually made clear what her actual gender is, because in the Radchaai culture, it isn't important. It's very well done, consistently handled, and leaves a native english speaker constantly wondering what the actual gender of each person is. The other main theme of the novel is the question of personhood and the self, and what constitutes each. The are persons in the novel who have multiple bodies, and this is critical to the plot as it unfolds, and clearly the author has put a lot of thought into what it is like to be a person with multiple bodies.

This is an excellent start to the Imperial Radch series, and well worth a read.