Recently read notable books

[dsrtao]

• Hella, David Gerrold
• Foundryside, Robert Jackson Bennett

Take one part Heinlein juvenile, one part Heinlein pre-brain-eater adult novel, and update the sensibility; throw in a dash of "I know I've been working on the sixth or seventh book in my other series for twenty years now, would you accept this as part of the same universe?" and shake well: Hella. It's not a great book, but it is a good story and hit enough of my buttons to make me stay up unreasonably late to finish reading it.
Has a line of continuity from the Dingiliiad trilogy, and a theoretical line of continuity from the Chtorr series. Many billions of people are probably dead before the story begins, but several lightyears away.


Stop me if you've heard this one before: an orphan who steals for a living is hired to retrieve something from a heavily guarded warehouse, only to find that the something doesn't want to be returned to either its owner or the thief's client.  Also, magic is performed by learning the programming system underlying reality and inscribing patches to the code in various objects.

I quite enjoyed this, but I would have enjoyed it more if Bennett wasn't quite so anxious to make sure his plot points were clearly understood. On several occasions he spells out exactly what is going to happen in dialogue, between people who turn out to be notable experts in the field, and ends with an As You Know Bob. There are at least two puzzles of interpretation where the very obvious answer (to this reader, at least) turns out to be precisely correct. There's a sequel out now and probably a third coming down the pipe, and I will likely read them.