What are we reading in June 2022?

Another month,another pile of books. Share your plans for June.

Dusty's TBR for June
SF/F reads
Jay Kristoff - Empire of the Vampire
Sarah Pinsker - Song for a New Day ✔
Shirley Jackson - We Have Always Lived in the Castle✔
Poul Anderson - The Star Fox
Poul Anderson - The Queen of Air and Darkness
from other genres
David Blake - St Benet's ✔
Louise Penny - A Rule Against Murder✔
Agatha Christie - Hound of Death✔
Beatrix Potter - Selected Tales ✔
Dick Francis - To The Hilt ✔

I'm well into She Who Became the Sun. I also have in hand Light From Uncommon Stars, Seasonal Fears and Harbinger.

>3 Shrike58: She Who Became the Sun looks great. Let us know what you think.

I'm trying to knock off some shorter reads on my TBR pile, so I just picked up Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom. I read his Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town when it came out, and while I felt that most of it went over my head, I made a note to read his first book in hopes that it is more approachable. So far, so good.

I am working on A Master of Djinn right now, my second Hugo finalist.

I will finish the first volume of Galactic Empires, and then I have some series continuations on deck: The Bridge of Lost Desire and 2061: Odyssey Three. Other candidates include Consider Phlebas and Tigerman.

I'm reading Defender by C. J. Cherryh.

I am trying to finish Moby Dick a challenge I gave myself a couple of months ago that is dragging on a little too long. So… plan is to complete it over the next couple of weeks. Then, I get to finally start The Broken Earth trilogy. Been wanting to read that for awhile and those three books on my shelf have been plaintively calling to me the last couple weeks.

>8 Neil_Luvs_Books: When you get to the Broken Earth books - expect that to be one long story and not 3 separate books. The timing and the cadence of the first novel is kinda shifted back because of that -- which can take you a it unaware if you are expecting an actual trilogy. It is heavy on the worldbuilding but it does not really pay off in that novel (or as I said in my review many moons ago: "It feels as if Jemisin forgot to tell a real story while building her world. Yes - there is the back story and there is the traveling and so on but... it feels more like a setup than a real story.")

If you already know that, carry on :) Just making sure you do not get disappointed early on.

Children of Time. It is off to a good start so far.

Having finished up She Who Became the Sun, it might be better described as being a historical romance than an epic fantasy, the author having done precisely what they intended to, and that was to write a gender-bent tale of the rise of the Ming Dynasty. The fantasy elements are very attenuated and are kept at the edges. It's well done but I do remain a little bemused that it picked up a Hugo nomination, and it shows how the boundaries of the genre have changed.

Still reading All the Seas of the World by Guy Gavriel Kay (fantasy) and Poirot Investigates by Agatha Christie (mystery).

>9 AnnieMod: 👍Thanks for the heads up. I hadn’t heard that about the 1st book. I have heard so many good things about The Broken Earth and the premise sounds like something right up my alley.

I'm reading Farah Mendlesohn's The pleasant profession of Robert A. Heinlein and it's doing a great job of showing Heinlein's obsessions, convictions, ideas, and principles. It's almost exclusively about his themes, tropes, characters, and plots, so no real judgments on the literary quality of the books except in passing. She is much more looking for what went on in Heinlein's head than trying to tell which books were good and which were bad. As a literary portrait of Heinlein, it's convincing.

>14 anglemark: I really liked that book.

>14 anglemark:, >15 Stevil2001:

Ah, that came out since the research piece I did on Heinlein. I might have to ILL and read it.

Just started in on Dick again, this time with Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said.

Just started A World Out of Time by Larry Niven. Also lined up for June is Man Plus by Fred Pohl.

After the weak start, I am enjoying Galactic Empires. The next story in the collection is Asimov's original short-form "Foundation," which I haven't read in more than 40 years, and never in its first version.

I am also reading Chaos on CatNet, the sequel to Catfishing on CatNet, one of the YA Lodestar finalists. It's good fun.

As a reward for continuing to trudge dutifully through Mythago Wood I'm now reading a Rosel George Brown novel The Waters of Centaurus with the wonderful protagonist Sybil Sue Blue. She's a glorious contrast to the giggling Manic Pixie Dream Girl conjured up by Holdstock's central character.

I'm on to the last novel in the Library of America Five Novels of the 1960s & 70s by Philip K. Dick, A Scanner Darkly.

Still working on Children of Time, getting really tired of reading about spiders and ants, it really seems to have bogged down.

>23 Karlstar: That was a DNF for me. I can't see why he's so popular. Seemed rather old fashioned themes and writing.

>23 Karlstar: The spiders and the ants are kinda the point of the novel though :)

Finish Light from Uncommon Stars and I really wasn't that impressed. Maybe if it hadn't been up for a Hugo I'd have felt less critical. Then again, if it hadn't been up for a Hugo, I probably wouldn't have bothered with it.

>25 AnnieMod: Very true and it moved on a bit more after I posted that comment. I know they are kind of the point, but dragging us through what felt like the entire equivalent of the Middle Ages through 1700's very slowly in the middle of the novel just felt really excessive. I did enjoy it over all, but it wasn't fantastic.

>27 Karlstar: That slowness is part of what made the novel work for me. But I’ve learned that I need to be in the mood for his kind of storytelling - there are a few authors like that which can drive me up a wall if I am in the wrong mood but work perfectly for me if they hit at the right time.

The Mirror Empire starts another grim and blood-soaked trilogy from Kameron Hurley. Thank goodness for the glossary as there are a lot of viewpoint characters and places to track. It takes a while to grasp what is going on but now that I'm through the first book, I find myself fully engaged and moving on to #2, Empire Ascendant, which picks up right where book #1 left off. Incidentally, although this story has all the trappings of grimdark fantasy, there are hints it may end up being science-fiction.

As is true for most of Hurley's work, there are plenty of trigger warnings. Hurley is not a writer for the squeamish!

Also, dipping in & out of Tiptree's Crown of Stars collection.

Just started Recursion by Blake Crouch.

Just finished Rediscovery Volume 2, a collection of SF&F works by women writers from the 1950's pulps. Mostly Good to Very Good, one or two a bit meh, but all-in-all a very interesting read.

Finished up Seasonal Fears, a pretty good second installment in McGuire's "Alchemical Journeys" series. I'm going to say pretty good because I'm already wondering if McGuire is burning through her ideas too fast. Then again, I engaged in some damning with faint praise of Middlegame, and the further I get from that novel the more I like it.

>30 drmamm: just read the summary for Recursion by Crouch. Looks interesting. From the summary it sounds like it may work through some similar themes to Darwinia by Wilson. But Darwinia is more on a whole world level whereas it sounds like Recursion is dealing more at an individual or personal level. I look forward to your review!

Again, I've been binge-reading series.

Mageworlds by Debra Doyle and James D Macdonald
Science-fantasy space opera which looks like the lovechild of Star Wars and the Liaden Universe
Fun little saga comprising the adventures of three generations of planetary royalty along with a prequel, and a couple of even earlier prequels explaining the emnity between the Mageworlds and the rest of the universe.

Philocles by Juliet E McKenna writing as J M Alvey
Historical crime set in Periclean Athens. McKenna/Alvey originally read Classics at Oxford and the series draws on that background. Rather a good take on the genre; I hope she writes more of them.

I'm currently reading Vigil; I have most of the comics (I'm missing some) and it will be interesting to see how the storyline compares.

Only read one fantasy/horror book this month(horrible real life issues,and the continued trouble with my eye has led to minimal reading by my standards.) but it was a real humdinger, Shirley Jackson's We Have Always Lived In the Castle Jackson does a masterful job of starting out with a seemingly sympathetic much abused child,and slowly scraping aside veneers,and revealing a much different picture. All events and motivations are mutable,and though individual actions seem clear at first sight,we end up as if in a mist striving to clearly see what is actually occuring. Though its not so much a mist as a rather creepy,nasty miasma. Gothic at its best. You thought Severian was an unreliable narator,well,Merricat Blackthorn could keep him company. lol.Two seemingly sympathetic honest young people telling a simple straightforward tale soon becomes moe problematic,but very fascinating

I'm about halfway through Eddie Robson's Hearts of Oak. It's from the Tor.com novella program, though it's long enough I'd guess it to be a short novel. Anyway, pretty interesting stuff about a weird world, though my interest faltered slightly when a big wodge of exposition explained much of what was going on about halfway through.

Finished The Worldbreaker Saga recently. Four stars across the trilogy. Large cast of characters divvied up via chapter breaks, (similar to A Song of Ice and Fire). Highly imaginative with lots of blood & guts mixed in with a weird, mostly unexplained, magic system based on quantum mechanics and people with powers imbued by mysterious satellites in the sky. It's all very confusing but the story is compelling if one simply goes along for the ride without trying to make sense of the underlying architecture.

Now on to a book that has sat unread on my shelf for quite a while... Schismatrix Plus. I'm tackling this one in publication order by starting with the short stories at the end of the book. Swarm, published in 1982, has held up really well.

>37 ScoLgo: Schismatrix

Tangential comment / question: I've not yet read these, though as a William Gibson fan, they've long been on my radar. So perhaps this is answered internally to the stories, but is the term pronounced SKIZZUM-aytricks or SKIZZ-mah-TRICKS? The former seems to make the most sense given the origin of the portmanteau, but my eyes always nudge me toward the latter.

Writing this out makes me realise: for me, the term makes more sense as a written word, than pronounced. Neither pronunciation flows off the tongue.

>38 elenchus: Sterling actually addresses pronunciation in his introduction...

At last I can formally tell a skeptical public that the title of SCHISMATRIX is pronounced "Skiz-matˊ-rix". With a short a. Like "Schismatics," but with an R. Also, SCHISMATRIX is spelled without a "Z". I do hope this helps in the future.

Before reading the intro, I had always assumed the 2nd syllable to be pronounced as 'may'...

>38 elenchus:,>39 ScoLgo: Ditto on the pronunciation. I loved that book. An interesting comparison can be to read also The Helix and the Sword by John C. McLaughlin, which I like even better.

>39 ScoLgo:

Huh. That pronunciation entirely does away with "schism", but it does sound better than the options which preserve both terms in pronouncing the portmanteau. I suppose that makes me part of Sterling's skeptical public.

Finally starting the Penric and Desdemona series after finishing Quantico and Vigil. I also finished off Salvage and Demolition. I've had P&D for a while - I've not felt like reading it so far. It took me 18 months before I could face anything but old favourites.

Vigil and Quantico were OK, but not really my style of reading, although I preferred Vigil to Quantico, not being particularly fond of techno-thrillers. I seem to recall some of the Vigil storyline featured in the comics, but I'd have to dig them out to be sure. I much preferred Salvage and Demolition - a nice time-slip story.

>42 Maddz: I'm not familiar with the Penric and Desdemona series at all, I'll be looking for your comments.

In addition to Schismatrix Plus, I also began Gideon the Ninth recently. That one is a DNF at 10% in. Gideon was a TOR freebie a while back so I may try again someday but it's not drawing me in just now.

>42 Maddz: Salvage and Demolition is a cool little story. Have you read any other Powers?

Just finished Recursion by Blake Crouch. Typical mind-bender by Crouch, and he pulls it off (although you have to suspend disbelief by a *little* bit!) You think you know how things work, and then he pushes you further down the rabbit hole.

>43 Karlstar: I'm up to #4 now, and enjoying them very much. Did you join in The Curse of Chalion reread last year? I think it was last year... These are set in the time between The Hallowed Hunt and The Curse of Chalion.

>44 ScoLgo: Oh yes, between himself and me I have quite a collection catalogued. I started with The Drawing of the Dark. I've read most of them, but I'm not much good as a reviewer - I mostly focus on whether I like a book or not.

>44 ScoLgo: People either love or hate Muir's novel. I thought it was great but it is seriously deranged, and second book is even more so.

Speaking of annoying books, I finished Harbinger yesterday. I used to really like Wen Spencer's writing, but my expectations were low for this work. Turns out that they weren't low enough, as this novel just doesn't work all that well. To be fair, Spencer is trying to tie together story arcs and some of those stories I hadn't read; but those parallel arcs really didn't interest me in the first place.

>48 Shrike58: aww that's sad to hear. I like the Ukiah Oregon books, at least the two I've read. Are there others by this author that you would recommend?

The first three books in the "Tinker" sequence are fun and made a logical arc. After that I kind of lost interest; there was a fairly long hiatus. The fourth novel looked like YA which usually doesn't do much for me, but it turns out to be very relevant to the fifth novel, which is Harbinger.

Maybe I'll backtrack, since I feel semi-obligated to give the forthcoming sixth book a try.

After a break reading a detailed book on the cultural and political impact of Wagner (and it's not as clear-cut as you'd think), I've today started the next stage of my (re-)discovery of Gene Wolfe's magnum opus with Nightside the Long Sun.

>43 Karlstar: OK, finished Penric and Desdemona novellas, including the uncatalogued one I got yesterday. They are set in the same world as The Curse of Chalion, and are basically episodes in the life of the sorcerer Penric kin Jurald, a Learned Divine of the Bastard from the time he gets his demon, Desdemona onwards.

Penric is a younger son of a poor noble family from the Cantons and ends up in the Duchy of Orban. The world of the Five Gods is not 'our' world, although there are elements of our world in it - Chalion seems to be equivalent to Reconquista Spain, Lodi seems to be equivalent to Venice and so on. The Cantons seem to be equivalent to Switzerland.

I do like them - they are written in rather a tongue-in-cheek style, and come across as rather picaresque. In many ways, being written as novellas means they come across as not enough story, but on the other hand the complete collection is longer than a novel and I dare say there will be more to come.

I can heartily recommend these, and fingers crossed, I will get to play in a World of Five Gods freeform at a convention later this summer.

>51 RobertDay: cool! Wolfe’s Book of the Long Sun is in my reading queue. I am trying to read one work per year by Wolfe after being introduced to his work just last year with Book of the New Sun. I just finished Urth of the New Sun last month. Not as good as BotNS but still hugely enjoyable.

I have wrapped up Galactic Empires and posted a review. 2061 is next.

>53 Neil_Luvs_Books:
I too liked Urth a little less than the original four, but I think Long Sun is just as good and Short Sun is maybe better. And although it's not always obvious, the cycle is a whole integrated work.

>54 paradoxosalpha: excellent to hear. I am looking forward to reading them.

I am reading Adrian Tchaikovsky's novella, Elder Race.

Polished off Nightside the Long Sun today (helped by having to head into town on a regular basis and sit around waiting to be selected for a jury). Not so baroque as Book of the New Sun, but just when I thought I knew where the first volume was going, Wolfe delivered a curve ball, which intrigues me. Given that the book's blurbs give away the key plot element (if I hadn't read it all over the place already), I'm interested to see how that knowledge will be bestowed on the principal character, Patera Silk, in the later books. Also looking out for links back to the earlier series.

Now on a re-read of The Algebraist.

>52 Maddz: They sound good, thank you.

Finished off Repo Virtual last night. Four stars and a nice surprise of a book. Comparisons to William Gibson are unavoidable when talking about AI/VR fiction - and there is some validity to that comparison here - but this reads more as though Ernest Cline and Paolo Bacigalupi got together to write a mashup of Ready Player One and The Windup Girl. White writes better characters and dialogue than Cline, (and avoids the overload of pop culture references), and manages to not go as dark as Bacigalupi. This is a fast-paced heist story that follows a fairly standard plot, but the journey from beginning to end makes for a fun ride. The poignant epilogue was unexpected and added a nice closing touch.

>59 ScoLgo: Putting that one on my wish list. Thanks for the recommendation.

I've just started The Every which postulates a future in which a large social media company (See The Circle) and the world's largest retailer have merged.

>60 vwinsloe: I hope you like it! I found the world-building a bit confusing in the early going but things start to click after a while if one sticks with it.

I keep meaning to read The Circle but haven't gotten around to it yet...

Katherine Addison - The Goblin Emperor and The Witness for the Dead
I see book 3 in this series is due... Enjoyable but very dense reads. I found the honourifics rather confusing, especially the sex and class ones. I think they will bear re-reading when I come to read book 3.

Bill Pronzini - 2 short story collections featuring The Nameless Detective; Case File and Scenarios. Rather fun reads; I must dig out the novels I have in paperback at some point.

To Raise a Clenched Fist to the Sky - overly right-on for my taste. I'm not saying it's a story that shouldn't be written, but I found it rather bitty, jumping around the viewpoint characters. The blend of secret history and the Blank Panthers I didn't find particularly compelling either. I'll read the others if I come across them, but I am unlikely to go looking for them specifically. It was part of a bundle where I wanted other books so unless the others come the same way, I won't bother with them.

A Secret Rage - a re-read. An OK stand-alone.

Loot - not quite a stand-alone, but close to it. An art expert is called in to identify Nazi cultural loot. OK.

Lines in the Lawn - a charming children's short story.

3 Gothic romances by Barbara Michaels: Patriot's Dream, Into the Darkness and Here I Stay - the first was new to me, the second is an old favourite, and the third I don't remember reading at all even though I have the paperback so I must have read it at some point.

>62 Maddz: Glad you enjoyed the Addison books and I'm glad it wasn't just me that was confused by the titles and such!