A Sorceress Comes To Call, Kingfisher

• Cordelia is a fourteen-year-old girl, raised by her mother who is an abusive evil sorceress. They go to the home of a wealthy man, who the mother intends to trick into marrying her. The man and the family treat Cordelia with utter kindness, and she fears her mother will kill them. This is apparently a reimagining of “The Goose Girl," which is one of Grimm's fairytales (one I'm not familiar with). I enjoyed this book quite a bit. The characters are engaging and it manages to go to dark places in a mostly light-hearted way.

The Last Colony, Scalzi

• Third (and tacitly final) of the Old Man's War series. This one shifts the focus back to John Perry, the main character of the first one. John, his wife, and adopted daughter (none of whom are in the military any longer), are talked into leading the formation of a seed colony on a new planet. The colony ends up becoming a pawn in multiple games, and the family struggles to keep everyone alive, and to keep the human race from being exterminated. I enjoyed this book. It's slightly less military than the prior two (which suits me fine), though there is still that aspect to it. In some ways, it's maybe less gripping, but not excessively so. Lots of Scalzi-type witty banter. Wraps up the trilogy nicely.

The Ministry of Time, Bradley

• The near future British government has attained time travel, but don't know how safe it is. To test it, they pull five people from history just before their deaths (to avoid changing the past) to monitor and study. Each is assigned a “bridge" - someone to monitor their charge, but also ease their transition to our time. Told from the point of view of the woman assigned as the bridge for Graham Gore, a real-life figure who died on the ill-fated Franklin expedition to find the northwest passage in the mid 1800s. This one really sucked me in. The story moves along well, but it's also thoughtful. It's a bit of a romance story, but not in a cliche way. It has a lot to say about good intentions vs actual goodness.

The Swarm, Schätzing

• Sea life has turned against mankind across the globe, and multiple scientists are trying to figure out what's going on before we're wiped out. This is a big book (translated from its original German) with a big scope. There's a lot to love here: Schätzing has drawn some interesting characters, clearly did a lot of research into the various sciences involved, created some pretty imaginative ideas, and manages to keep the big book moving along for the most part. There are a few things that didn't work as well for me. There are some computer simulations that seem too advanced for the time, there are a couple characters that seem more like caricatures, and there are some long sections where characters debate philosophy and religion in a way that's clearly the author trying to spoon feed us. Still, it's a book with a lot to say and I think it's pretty successful.

The Long War, Pratchett and Baxter

• Sequel to The Long Earth. A couple decades after the prior book, where the ability for anyone to move to parallel earths was made available, the effects of that are being felt. The original earth (called Datum now) is suffering from a labor shortage, and the government is trying to tax communities on the same footprint on other earths. Meanwhile, all the trolls are disappearing. I was worried, based on the title, that the story would mostly be about a battle, but it's not like that. Lots of people trying to do the right thing, with a few who aren't. Enjoyable.

Matter, Banks

• Another in the Culture series. Set mostly on a “shellworld,” which is an artificially created planet constructed of nested spheres, with people (or aliens) living on the surface of between the layers of each sphere. This shellworld is largely inhabited by people at about Victorian-era technology, with a power struggle and other developments that may warrant the involvement of the powerful alien races that populate the galaxy. Banks still has a penchant for characters that are well drawn, but who almost all seem emotionally isolated in some way. I liked the book, but somehow never felt too invested in the drama.

Rose/House, Martine

• A novella. Set 100 to 200 years in the future, an eccentric architect built an AI-controlled mansion out in the California desert. After his death, he willed that all his works should be stored there, that the only person who can enter is an estranged former student, and that she can only be inside for seven days a year. The local police get a call from the house AI saying that there is a dead body inside, while the former student is abroad, making a challenging case for the local police. I'm a bit lukewarm on this one. The writing is good, the characters are engaging, and the premise is interesting, but it feels like it just never gets in gear. Some books are a bit too long for the story they have to tell, but this one feels like it could have used more flesh on its bones.

Surface Detail, Banks

• Another in the Culture universe, though in this one the Culture and Special Circumstances have bit parts. Since people can be scanned and put into new bodies or virtual environments, some cultures have created virtual hells where people can be endlessly tortured in an afterlife as a way of keeping them good in real life. There is a war being held in virtual space between the factions that want these hells and those that are against them. The book has various story lines, some of which seem unrelated, including an indentured servant who is murdered by the rich and powerful man who owns her, two people who go into hell so they can report back on the atrocities, a soldier in the virtual war who is repeatedly reincarnated, and various others. I think I liked this one most of those I've read. It tackles some interesting philosophical questions, and many of the characters don't fit cleanly into good/bad buckets. I was bugged by the fact that he never addressed who decides which people go to hell or why, and some of the characters seemed so inconsequential that I wonder why they're there, but it's a good story.

Vurt, Noon

• Set in a future Manchester, England. Sucking on color-coded vurt feathers puts people into shared virtual realities, and some people are hooked on them, including the small group of friends (gang?) who are the focus of the story. Told from the viewpoint of Scribble, desperately trying to find the feather that will allow him to find his sister, who went into a vurt with him and never came out. Very unusual story, with a very punk feel. Recommended if you like weird and gritty.

The Sparrow, Russell

• Set starting in the very near future and spanning 40+ years, a Jesuit priest is sent as a linguist as part of an expedition to a planet from which radio signals have been discovered. The expedition goes very badly, and the story is told in two timelines: from the beginning, and from the inquiry into what happened after the priest, now a broken man, is the only one to return. I stayed up late finishing this book, it really pulled me in. It's about a lot of things - love, family, morality - but a large focus is on the existence and nature of god, if one exists. As an atheist, I found myself hyper sensitive to whether the author was making a case for theism or atheism, and while I think eventually she may have (I won't spoil where it leads), she certainly voices the reasons for debate. For sure worth reading regardless of your beliefs.

The Stage Case of Jane O., Thompson Walker

• A woman sees a psychiatrist after being found passed out in a park with a full day missing from her memory. It becomes apparent that she's suffering from strange hallucinations. This is an odd little book. The chapters alternate between being the notes of the psychiatrist, who writes like a scientist from the early 1900s, and of letters written from the woman to her son as a kind of journal. The story unfolds very slowly, and though the strangeness is apparent early on, the SF-ness of it isn't apparent until very late. Because of the way the story is told - by notes and letters as opposed to a first person point of view - there's a strange detachment to the story, but it still manages to be pretty engaging. I liked it, but if you want a book that hurries up to get at the action, this isn't it.

Daemon, Suarez

• After the death of a brilliant and wealthy game developer, distributed programs he wrote (collectively called a “daemon") become active, with the first actions being the murder of key people in his company. The story follows the government and non-government people trying to stop it as it becomes more powerful, and people who are manipulated into helping it as its grander purpose unfolds. This is an action-packed techno thriller with characters that seem a little thin. The ending was a little unsatisfying, but apparently that's because there's a sequel that concludes the story. The technology seems generally feasible, though it's worth noting that it was written in 2006 and seems to take place around the then present day, so some of it is dated. I'll likely read the sequel.

Red Rising, Brown

• On a future Mars, Darrow is a miner for helium, used in the terraforming process that will eventually allow humans to live on the surface. Like all miners, he is a “red," the lowest of the color-coded castes that make up the planet’s residents. But Darrow finds out that everything he knew about the planet and its society is a lie, and he sets out to change things. An interesting book some have described as “The Hunger Games mixed with Game of Thrones," and that's not far off. The pacing is excellent and the story is twisty, but I find myself not liking the main character, who seems unreasonably good at everything and understandably arrogant. The ending wasn't satisfying, but likely because there are sequels.

(Continued)