I Didn't Need More Of That

1st up, "The Flood Circle: A Twenty Palaces Novel", by Harry Connolly, 2022, ? pages, ? k words. The 2nd of the 2 books kickstartered for this series - the 1st was blogged here. Shit starts to go south, and we reminded that you cannot forget strategy no matter how good your tactics are.

Connolly says there will be 1 final book in this series.

Next, BookBub offered me "Sleepside", by Greg Bear, subtitled "The Collected Fantasies", 2014, 293 pages, 79k words, 9 stories. I think I had only read 1 of these before, so this was definitely FTW! 1 or 2 of the earliest stories were kind of odd, but still interesting reads. The last story was longish and set in the world of Eon/Eternity by Bear - definitely not fantasy, but I was very happy to read it, I loved that series.

Then, in an odd piece of synchronicity, the day after I finished this collection, the news of Greg Bear's death circulated on the net. He was 71, 2.5 months younger than me. So, I beat him - sadly, this is apparently how one thinks when you get to an advanced age like mine. He was probably my fav hard SF author for many years.

Next up, "Wayward", by Chuck Wendig, 2022, 1048 pages, 285k words. The sequel to "Wanderers", blogged here, this one is apparently even a longer tome. Phase 2 of the post-pandemic-apocalypse of "Wanderers". More on the AI who was heavily involved in the 1st book, more on our friendly christian fascist militias.

Finally, "The World We Make", by N. K. Jemisin, 2022, 364 pages, 99k words. Book 2 of The Great Cities. The sequel to "The City We Became", blogged here. This is as enjoyable as the 1st book. It seemed a little short maybe, and in the Acknowledgments the author discusses how COVID and Agent Orange made this book hard to write, and truncated what was originally billed as a trilogy to 2 books. Not far into the book at all, here's our human bad guys: more christian fascist white supremacists. I really didn't need more of that. This is supposed to be escapist stuff, right? 2 in a row featuring very real and very scary actual threats to the US was a bit of a bummer. Still, this was a great read, and wrapped up well. I particularly liked the author's characterizations of some of the older cities that New York meets.

On to the magazine stack, and I think I will do a Music In post as well. Progress! Or rather, Process! LOL, I have been on the fence for years about using the phrase "In Progress" vs. "In Process". And here they both are. Hmmm ...