Remains

I read "The Buried Giant", by Kazuo Ishiguro (2015). My son had read it at the beach and lent me his trade paperback copy. It is 335 pages. It won all kind of "book of the year" awards last year.

The story is set in a straight up (Arthurian) fantasy world. You can tell it is written by a literary type, the language is beautiful. The story moves along surprisingly well, given that its 2 main characters are an old married couple. The main theme is remembering vs forgetting the past. Good and bad with both.

Ishiguro also wrote "The Remains of the Day", which was 1 of those Merchant-Ivory films you had to see. I also bought the movie "Never Let Me Go", based on 1 of his novels. It is near-future science fiction. I also bought "The White Countess", for which Ishguro wrote the screenplay.

Next I read "Remanance", by Jennifer Foehner Wells. The book is subtitled (Confluence Book 2). When I started reading the 1st of the series, my "bad writing" alarm got triggered. I've looked into that more, I hate being critical without knowing exactly why. But regardless, Ms. Wells' writing continues to improve rapidly.

Amazon says the print book is 496 pages? Wow, I would not have guessed that. Kudos to the author for creating such a page turner.

She has a nice sci-fi framework set up with lots of directions to take it. Her aliens are nicely alien? And who could not love a cephalopod protagonist? I was disappointed in the 1st book that the main adversary, who we have not encountered yet, was bugs - Hicks, "It's a bug hunt". But, there are interesting things you can do with interstellar insects: social insect behavior in general, and intelligence without consciousness.

So a quick read and a better ending, looking forward to the next one in the series.