This is a roundup of science fiction (and possibly some fantasy – how did that sneak in?) I’ve read (or increasingly, listened to someone else read) in 2024 so far. I’ll go from what I least enjoyed to what I most enjoyed.
Too Like the Lightning by Ada Palmer – grand space opera. I really tried and just couldn’t get into the plot or characters after 100 pages or so. When I was younger I never gave up on a book. When a reader gets to middle age though, we begin to accept our mortality and occasionally set aside a book in favor of finding another one that is more worth our dwindling time on earth. This, for me, was one of those.
The Ministry of the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson – Also didn’t finish. I got this through the Libby app, and it was auto-returned before I could finish it, and there would be a very long wait to get back to it. It reminds me of Ralph Nader’s book Only the Super-Rich Can Save Us – it’s really informative non-fiction in fictional form, and that can sometimes be entertaining, but this just wasn’t for me. I doubt I’ll get back to it.
Consider Phlebas by Iain M. Banks. More space opera with some Han Solo-esque swashbuckling space pirates. Entertaining enough, but if it is part of a series I somewhat doubt I will come back to it.
A Master of Djinn by Djeli Clark. Basically the superhero genre, which is not my favorite, only with genies and set in an alternate steampunk version of Victorian Egypt, which made it a bit more novel. Nothing cerebral here, light and fun.
Good Omens and American Gods by Neil Gaiman. These are two different books I am lumping together. These are not bad, something like Harry Potter or Percy Jackson for grownups. Completely readable.
Olympos by Dan Simmons – I might have talked about this before because I started the two-book series in 2023 and finished in 2024. Because Dan Simmons books are very long. But the man has a wild imagination and I do like Dan Simmons.
The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman. A “fairy tale for grownups”, literally involving fairies. Short – a novella, or a novelette? I thoroughly enjoyed this one and it left me wanting more. Not necessarily wanting Neil Gaiman’s other books, which aren’t bad but this was a cut above.
Speaker for the Dead by Orson Scott Card. I resisted reading this for a long time because I love Ender’s Game and didn’t want to ruin it with a mediocre sequel. But this is an equally good book even though it is very different. It reminded me a bit more of Vernor Vinge’s A Fire Upon the Deep series (which I love) than of Ender’s Game (which I also love, but reminds me, at least on the surface, of a Heinlein book, most obviously Starship Troopers). I recently learned from Wikipedia that the “Ender-verse” is much larger than I had imagined. I am tempted to read more, but once again hesitant to cheapen my memory of Ender’s Game and Speaker for the Dead with sequels that might not be as good. Both of those books won many awards, while the rest of the series has not to my knowledge.