I decided (pre-crash) to read as many Hugo Award winners as I could. This seemed to be a good way to explore my favorite genre, while avoiding the unexpected dreck I usually find on my own. I found that I’d already read quite a few of the more recent winners, and there are some I already know I’ll avoid, but that leaves plenty of books to check out.
Here are three I read recently:
- A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine, a space opera. I really liked this; I’m finding I especially like galaxy-sized world building.
- A Desolation Called Peace also by Arkady Martine, a continuation of the story from her other book. I think I’d read a third (and a fourth, and a fifth…) if she wrote one.
- Nettle & Bone by T. Kingfisher, a young-adult-ish fantasy adventure. Nice enough, but fantasy is less and less my thing as time passes.
- I started on The Calculating Stars by Mary Robinette Kowall, an alternate history where 1950’s America takes an extinction-level meteorite hit. It’s the start of a series, but I didn’t finish this one so I probably won’t track down the rest.
That’s about when I lost interest in my reading project. I reread some Arthur C. Clarke (Expedition to Earth, The Fountains of Paradise) and called it a day.
There was a new Slow Horses novel that just came out (Clown Town, by Mick Herron), so I got that on Kindle and read it, but then I kind of hit a wall with my reading, until I picked up a new-ish treatment of Alexander the Great, focusing on the last seven years of his life.
This was Alexander at the End of the World by Rachel Kousser, and it dealt mainly with Alexander’s difficulties in the eastern part of his empire, his attempts to create a lasting state from his conquests. It was based on the usual classical sources, plus a lot of fairly modern archaeological research, and it was really good for fleshing out the story of Alexander in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Currently I’m rereading Anne Leckie’s Translation State.
