- "The Eden Paradox", 2011, 392 pages.
- "Eden's Trial", 2012, 318 pages.
- "Eden's Revenge", 2013, 285 pages.
- "Eden's Endgame", 2014, 368 pages.
This was a fun read. My son said it reminded him of Herbert, i.e. evolution, I didn't get that much. It is a tale that escalates nicely, from involving just Earth to a full galactic civilization. I was not particularly pleased that the civilization was strongly heirarchical - 19 levels, with humans on level 3. Going up the levels is mostly about increased processing speed. The cast of characters is varied and strong.
Next up, "Fire & Blood", by George R. R. Martin, 2020, 971 pages, 264k words. Set 300 years before Game of Thrones, this book covers the Targaryen conquest of Westeros with dragons and the 1st 100-200 years of their rule. Guess what? Succession problems. Civil war. Dragons fighting dragons. Having read and watched all of Game of Thrones, I guess I had to read this. But, I found it annoying everytime he refered to "the smallfolk" - commoners, as opposed to feudal lords. I want to read novels that don't glorify feudalism. Feudalism is too much of a strange attractor for how to organize human civilization as is.
This wasn't particularly "Game of Thrones"-y - no really unexpected (mass) murders, etc. More of a history book feel. My son referred to it as "The Silmarillion for GOT". It's not nearly that bad.
It looks like there's going to be 1 more of these.
Finally, "Dead Lies Dreaming", Charles Stross, 2020, 409 pages, 111k words. Set in the current universe and chronology of the earlier Laundry Files novels, this 1 features a completely different cast of characters. Charlie is definitely keeping himself current - all the characters were some flavor of LGBTQA... some of them I was never sure which. Maybe that's the point. The story centers around a quest through time to retrieve a mystical book of great power. The plotting was good I guess. I'm back to thinking that Charlie is burned out on this series - this is book #10. I'll keep reading them, but I wish he'd go back to writing about bright shiny futures with things like cornucopia machines.
Still 80 unread books on my iPad - oops. #SongOfTheDay is eating into my reading time, like everything else. Well, maybe we'll have a vaccine soon & I can get out and play music in public & quit obsessively working up new songs.
