Val's Random Comments

Grass - Sheri S. Tepper

noreply@blogger.com (Val) — Sat, 18 May 2013 22:00:08 PDT

I was hoping to find the time to take part in the WWend Women of Genre Fiction reading challenge this year. Until now that has been a dismal failure. I haven’t had time to research and acquire the book I need for it and have mostly been reading stuff that was already on the to read stack this year. I would be surprised if I could still manage to read the twelve required but I can at least read

A Feast for Crows - George R.R. Martin

noreply@blogger.com (Val) — Wed, 15 May 2013 00:20:27 PDT

After publishing the third novel in the A Song of Ice and Fire series, Martin ran into some serious trouble. His tale grew in the telling and he struggled with the fourth volume for five years before publishing the part of it that is A Feast for Crows. Working though the rest of the problem and releasing A Dance with Dragons cost him an additional six years. Had it been one book as Martin once

On a Red Station, Drifting - Aliette de Bodard

noreply@blogger.com (Val) — Fri, 10 May 2013 03:51:58 PDT

On a Red Station, Drifting is a novella and the longest piece de Bodard has published in her Xuya alternative history (or future history, not quite sure what to call it). It has been published in a nice hardcover edition by Immersion Press, which may be a little hard to get at the moment since the story has been nominated for the Hugo, Nebula BSFA and Locus awards. The author tells me a digital

Eye - Frank Herbert

noreply@blogger.com (Val) — Sat, 04 May 2013 02:09:48 PDT

I haven't finished any of the books I am currently reading so I find myself out of material for the blog again. I have dragged up an old review that I originally wrote in June 2008. It has undergone some mild editing to weed out the worst of my errors. I hope to be back sometime next week with a review of Aliette de Bodard's On a Red Station, Drifting. No promises for the week after that though,

Shattered Pillars - Elizabeth Bear

noreply@blogger.com (Val) — Wed, 08 May 2013 09:22:11 PDT

Range of Ghosts was one of the best books I've read last year. Bear's attempt to show what epic fantasy can be if you strip away the sexism, overused tropes, excessive word count and pseudo medieval European setting. It was a bit of a departure from Bear's previous work but certainly a successful one. One element typical of epic fantasy Bear didn't discard is the trilogy format, although the

The Boy Who Cast No Shadow - Thomas Olde Heuvelt

noreply@blogger.com (Val) — Sun, 28 Apr 2013 02:52:31 PDT

Something remarkable happened a couple of weeks ago when the Hugo nominations were announced; a Dutchman was nominated in the Novelette category. Although, especially in the short fiction categories, a slow movement towards a more diverse and international genre can be detected in recent years, I can't remember a translated work having made the ballot before. Thomas Olde Heuvelt is well known

Blood of Dragons - Robin Hobb

noreply@blogger.com (Val) — Sat, 13 Apr 2013 06:41:38 PDT

I guess this week is Robin Hobb week on Random Comments. After reading Hobb's novella The Willful Princess and the Piebald Prince, I'm having a go at Hobb's latest novel Blood of Dragons now. I tend to avoid reading works by the same author back to back but just this once I did anyway. Blood of Dragons is the fourth and concluding installment of The Rainwild Chronicles, a series that started

The Willful Princess and the Piebald Prince - Robin Hobb

noreply@blogger.com (Val) — Sun, 14 Apr 2013 06:04:33 PDT

It's a good year for Robin Hobb fans. This month Blood of Dragons. the final installment in her current series the Rainwild Chronicles, appeared and on top of that The Willful Princess and the Piebald Prince, a new novella also set in the Realm of the Elderlings, was released by Subterranean Press. I'm currently reading Blood of Dragons but when This beautiful little book arrived I couldn't

Blood and Bone - Ian C. Esslemont

noreply@blogger.com (Val) — Sun, 31 Mar 2013 02:50:54 PDT

Blood and Bone is Ian C. Esslemont's fifth novel set in the Malazan universe he created with Steven Erikson. The first of these Night of Knives serves as a prequel to the series, where subsequent books explore events and continents not covered in Erikson's ten book series. Esslemont's previous book, Orb Sceptre Throne, was mostly set in and around the city of Darujhistan, familiar territory for

What Kings Ate and Wizards Drank - Krista D. Ball

noreply@blogger.com (Val) — Tue, 26 Mar 2013 22:00:06 PDT

I owe the people at Tyche Books a huge apology. I was provided with a review copy of this book and was aiming for a review in December. I did get around to reading it but then I got caught up in all the moving stuff so it is very, very, very late. But better late than never so here we go. I was first introduced to Krista D. Ball's work though the anthology Ride the Moon, which contains a piece

A Memory of Light - Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson

noreply@blogger.com (Val) — Sat, 23 Mar 2013 11:07:29 PDT

At long last, the fourteenth and final instalment of The Wheel of Time series has arrived. I sympathize with people who had the bad luck to pick this series up in 1990, when it was thought to become a trilogy. Personally I didn't pick this series up until the summer of 1999, just before the mass market paperback release of The Path of Daggers, book eight in the series. That was less fourteen

The Lazarus Effect - Frank Herbert and Bill Ransom

noreply@blogger.com (Val) — Tue, 19 Mar 2013 22:00:02 PDT

This is one of a handful of Frank Herbert's novels I haven't read before. It wasn't particularly easy to come by. I ended up buying a second hand copy. It is a very nice fist print hardcover by Putman but it did cost me. The Lazarus Effect (1983) is the second book in the WorShip trilogy written with Bill Ranson. The series has its origin in Herbert's 1966 novel Destination: Void, of which he

The Inexplicables - Cherie Priest

noreply@blogger.com (Val) — Wed, 03 Apr 2013 08:48:56 PDT

The Inexplicables is the fourth, or, depending on whether you want to count the short novel Clementine, the fifth book in Cherie Priest's Clockwork Century. An alternative history where the American civil war has raged for two decades and all manner of strange Steampunk contraptions are in use. I've read al the previous volumes and enjoyed each of them. They are not terrifically complex books

A Signal Boost for Lady Business

noreply@blogger.com (Val) — Tue, 12 Mar 2013 08:57:19 PDT

As you know I've been trying to read more work by female authors recently. My reading habits were very skewed to the male authors at one point. I did reasonably well in 2012 even if I didn't reach parity. Gender and genre fiction has been a hotly debated issue all over the internet. World Without End for instance, is currently running a reading challenge designed to introduce readers to female

Immersion - Aliette de Bodard

noreply@blogger.com (Val) — Sun, 03 Feb 2013 03:25:30 PST

Anticipating the 2013 awards season Aliette de Bodard has made the short story Immersion available in a number of e-book formats at her website. It was originally published in de June 2012 edition of Clarke's world, where it can still be read or listened to. I've been a fan of de Bodard's writing ever since I read The Lost Xuyan Bride a few years back so obviously I picked it up. It turns out

House of Suns - Alastair Reynolds

noreply@blogger.com (Val) — Tue, 29 Jan 2013 08:36:57 PST

A new year so time for an Alastair Reynolds review, albeit a bit later than usual. House of Suns is another one of Alastair Reynolds' standalone novels. There is short fiction loosely related to this universe but the novel reads just fine without having read that. As with just about everything Reynolds wrote he doesn't rule out doing another work in this universe but for now it seems his new

Wrapping up 2012

noreply@blogger.com (Val) — Wed, 27 Mar 2013 12:03:20 PDT

My blogging over the last six weeks are obviously not everything I would have hoped for. I found a apartment last month, which is something of a miracle all things considered. Unfortunately I couldn't get any time off work in December or January so I've been forced to pour all my free time into this project. It is almost inhabitable, I expect to move in in January, joined a few weeks later by my

Busy Writing Jury Reports This Weekend

noreply@blogger.com (Val) — Sat, 24 Nov 2012 02:50:51 PST

Got twenty-six to write and I'd like to do at least ten of them this weekend. Otherwise I'll never make the deadline. I have read all of them by now and it's an interesting mix ranging from absolute beginner to publishable with some minor tweaking. I was expecting more classic fantasy, since that is all that can be found in the F&SF sections of most book stores here. Most of them are

De Eerste God - Adrian Stone

noreply@blogger.com (Val) — Tue, 20 Nov 2012 12:11:33 PST

My attention for Dutch language has been sorely lacking this year. The last time I reviewed one is a year ago, almost to the day. I am reading lots of short storied for the Fantastels contest at the moment but a full novel was a while ago. De Eerste God, final book in the Rune duology by Adrian Stone came out in September fortunately. I hate to leave series unfinished so this one was on my to

The Listeners - James Gunn

noreply@blogger.com (Val) — Tue, 13 Nov 2012 11:11:30 PST

I haven't been very adventurous in my reading for the Damon Knight Grand Master reading challenge. Seven of the ten books I've read so far have been by authors I have read other works of, while two others were acknowledged science fiction classics. For the eleventh read I decided to pick a book by someone I knew very little of. James Gunn doesn't have as long a bibliography as some of his

You May Have Noticed...

noreply@blogger.com (Val) — Mon, 05 Nov 2012 11:00:35 PST

...that I didn't post a new review this weekend. I had hoped to write two, but unfortunately I seem to have developed bronchitis, which left me in a zombie-like state for most of the weekend. I have a lot of others stuff to do this week, looking for a new apartment for instance, and there is always work of course, so I very much doubt I'll be able to catch up before the weekend. To make matters

The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms - N.K. Jemisin

noreply@blogger.com (Val) — Wed, 31 Oct 2012 11:44:23 PDT

The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, book one in the Inheritance trilogy, is one of the most discussed releases of 2009. It has launched Jemisin's writing career and since it's release four more books have appeared. I missed this novel at the time and only really noticed it once the nominations for the Hugo and Nebula awards came in for that year. The reviews I've read about this novel have been

The Hobbit - J.R.R. Tolkien

noreply@blogger.com (Val) — Sun, 28 Oct 2012 00:16:42 PDT

There is absolutely no point in reviewing The Hobbit (1937) of course. Like Tolkien's Magnun Opus The Lord of the Rings, it has been analysed to death and then some. I very much doubt I'll have something to add. The first movie in a trilogy based on The Hobbit is expected in December so I wanted to reread the book anyway. Jackson will no doubt do a fine job, even if I don't see why he'd want to

Be My Enemy - Ian McDonald

noreply@blogger.com (Val) — Tue, 23 Oct 2012 21:00:12 PDT

Be My Enemy is Ian McDonald's second book in the Young Adult Everness series. I read the first novel, Planesrunner, last year and it turned out to be a fun and very geeky read, full of science fiction elements, cool gadgets and airships. McDonald is clearly aiming at boys in their early teens, a demographic that is currently not very well served. He may be on to something. As far as I know,

Fahrenheit 451 - Ray Bradbury

noreply@blogger.com (Val) — Sun, 21 Oct 2012 00:29:29 PDT

Last month I ran a poll to help me decide which book should be reviewed work number 300 on Random Comments and tied it to the Grand Master Reading Challenge for which I still have to read a couple of novels. Ray Bradbury won. I had expected one of the big names I hadn't covered it to get it, perhaps Jack Vance or Robert Heinlein but, as one commenter pointed out, with Bradbury's passing at the