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The Godel Operation, James L Cambias.

A standalone novel set about 8.000 years in the future of the solar system. No FTL. Energy is currency, but with earnings of around 20,000 gigajoules for a week of casual pick-up work, it's really only interesting when you want to move mass around the system (or buy something that has been moved across the system.) There are plenty of biological creatures including clades of enhanced humans, uplifted chimpanzees and orcas. AIs range from nonsentient maintenance systems through human equivalents up through multiple levels of singularity, culminating in a Dyson swarm around the Sun that hosts quadrillions or quintillions of sapients, uploads and native digital life, right up to gods.

(The author notes influences from Atomic Rockets and Orion's Arm; Eclipse Phase is not noted but quite similar.)

The story is narrated by Daslakh, a baseline-plus sentience wearing a small mechanical crab-spider body, who becomes friendly with Zee, a human ice-miner. Zee gets into some trouble, Daslakh arranges to solve it, and the plot begins - partially a travelogue, partially a hunt-the-McGuffin, partially a drama about making mistakes and sometimes being able to fix them.

Much better than I expected, though I should not be surprised: his previous novel A Darkling Sea was a nicely original first-contact story.

- *The Last Good Man*, Linda Nagata
- *In Evil Times*, Melinda Snodgrass
- *The Scorpion Rules*; *The Swan Riders*, Erin Bow
- *Kris Longknife: Emissary*, Mike Shepherd
- *Kangaroo Too*, Curtis Chen
- *Final Girls*, Mira Grant
- *Down Among the Sticks and Bones*, Seanan McGuire
- *Nothing Left to Lose*, Dan Wells
- *To Fire Called*, Nathan Lowell
- *White Hot*, Ilona Andrews

If you wish to be completely unspoiled: I liked every one of these books,
enough to recommend them (or their series) to people whom I think might
like things like that.

After this, my low-spoiler notes on what kind of things they are.


*The Last Good Man* is a near-future military thriller posing
philosophical questions about the ethics of automated weaponry and
the place of private military companies  amidst battles on four
continents. It's also about justice and revenge.

*In Evil Times* is the second book in at least a trilogy and perhaps a
longer series, set in the FTL Imperio de Humanidad, a moderately nasty
aristocracy built on a theme of human superiority and alien servitude.
In the first book, La Infanta Mercedes became the first female cadet at
the space force academy; this book chronicles the middle decades of her
life, before she presumably ascends to the throne. Youthful idealism
gives way to realpolitik and easier paths.

*The Scorpion Rules* and *The Swan Riders* are the first and second
books set in a 400-year old all-Earth empire ruled by a handful of AIs
that got the keys to an orbital laser grid. Sadly, the AIs are faster
and more observant but not wiser than humans. Their pax is based on
limited self-rule of nations guaranteed by hostages from the rulers and
the threat of laser-glazing cities. (The energy requirements do not seem
to have been calculated well.) Intriguing characters, though.

*Kris Longknife: Emissary* is the fifteenth book about the
Admiral Princess; this time she's sent to become ambassador to the
Iteeche. Remember how little is known about the Iteeche? Now we get to
find out. Shepherd is now self-publishing this series, which means about
the same level of publishing and copy editing but a schedule closer to
his natural pace -- which seems to be 2-3 books a year instead of one.
Don't start with this one; it's a milSF-space-opera popcorn series and
you should get the whole set.

*Kangaroo Too* is the sequel to Chen's hilariously funny *Waypoint
Kangaroo*, and it manages to be nearly as good. Not a trilogy, I think,
but a long-running series. It's multi-planetary espionage of the Bond
variety which takes itself seriously enough to be worth investing
your time.

*Final Girls* by Mira Grant and *Down Among the Sticks and Bones* by Seanan
McGuire are of course by the same author. Both are horror novellas;
the first in a SFnal horror-movie sense, and the second in the fantastic
multi-dimensional universe of *Every Heart A Doorway*. More blood and
gore on the SF side of the house, which would make an excellent movie.

*Nothing Left to Lose* wraps up the six volume series of Dan Wells' John Cleaver,
a teenage serial killer who restricts himself to killing demons. Luckily,
there are a bunch of demons in that world to kill.

*To Fire Called* is the second book of the second series about Ishmael Wong,
who is now trying to set up an interstellar transport company of his own.
Unfortunately... spoilers. Lots of spoilers. Lowell continues to try to
solve his characters' problems non-violently, but doesn't quite succeed
here.

*White Hot* is the second book of a romance-marketed urban fantasy /
PI-with- psychic powers series. I assume it's romance-marketed because
that sells better; there's no particular reason to categorize it
that way otherwise. Good plot twists.

Stephenson's editor didn't. The result is the worst book with Stephenson's name on it.

The first 2/3 of this weighty tome (I assume -- mine came encoded as a very large number) is a series of technical infodumps on space technology of the early to mid 21st century, with a framing plot that destroys the Earth and more than 99.9999% of all living things in the Solar System over the course of three years. There are a couple of characters in there who recur often enough to keep their names straight. Most characters die or disappear quickly enough that job titles would do just as well. I didn't find any of the characters particularly sympathetic. Perhaps you have seen a slushpile book in which a first-time author has worked out the entire history of their fictional universe, and tries to tell that to you with the names of fifty legendary characters that you should definitely remember? This is like that. If the parts of Anathem and Dune that you really enjoyed were the glossaries and appendices, you might get more out of the first section than I did.

Then Stephenson skips 5000 years. The "Seven Eves" of the title are the seven surviving fertile human females at the end of part 1; their descendants, about 3 billion strong, are the subject of the second and far more interesting part of the book.  It's still not great: it is mostly a semi-utopian travelogue novel, where a viewpoint character visits many named places on the map and talks to people who come from the other named places. (Yes, there's a map with named places on it.)

Had I been the editor, and strong enough to say no to a heavyweight best-seller, I would have cut the entire first section and started off with the second section. SF readers are used to picking up clues about a fictional world, and doing so is actually fun for most people. This... not so much.

Iain Banks, _The Hydrogen Sonata_. An extended meditation on long life, death, memory, song, and the inadvisability of screwing around with the Culture.

_Kiss the Dead_, Laurell Hamilton

This is the 21st or so book in the Anita Blake series, so if you don't know what you're in for, this is not the book for you. For everyone else, the question is "is it getting any better?" and the answer is a qualified "not yet".

Minor spoilers follow.

In this episode, Anita faces her least convincing threat ever: a group of vampire and vamp-wannabe terrorists, bent on breaking the vampire master-fledgling dominance structure. Past their introduction, there is no serious worry that she will break a nail. More property is damaged by supernatural sex than bombs.

The real focus of this book is on Anita's polyamory, with special attention to primaries, secondaries, slaves, and scheduling problems that even Google Calendar is helpless to solve. The word polyamory is defined several times, and of course there are many examples presented. Anita finally admits to being "heteroflexible", which is apparently different from "bi", because, you know, she only does females who she really really wants to do. I'm not sure if this is supposed to fool anyone except Ms. Hamilton.

We also see some repetition of scenes. For example, this happens more than once:

AB: Oh, I must have sex to feed the ardeur, lest I grow weak! Of which there is no sign.
Willing But Possibly Dominated Partner: Oh yes!
[ They do, for a chapter or so. ]
AB: That was so good, I forgot to feed the ardeur. We must do it again.
WBPDP: Yes, just let me move first, I'm beginning to chafe.
[ They do, for a chapter or so. ]

Spoiler: no place or entity named "Kiss the Dead" shows up.

_The Rook_, Daniel O'Malley

Is there a more traditional opening than having the protagonist wake up with major amnesia, knowing nothing of their identity, training or abilities? Yes, there is: the protagonist is orphaned, but one day is whisked away to an odd academy. Oh, and being the One of prophesy is good, too.

Aspects of all of these happen in _The Rook_, and it's a first novel, so it should be crap. Instead, it's a tightly-written thriller along the lines of _The Bourne Identity_, only with magic instead of guns and the British Occult Defense Force (of whatever title) rather than the CIA. Oh, and it works in some of the best casual humor I've seen in a fantasy in quite a long time. I'm looking forward to O'Malley's next book, whatever it happens to be. I doubt a sequel is forthcoming: the loose ends are all tied up and snipped off here.

_The Mirage_, Matt Ruff

In a world where the United States of Arabia is the civilizing superpower, and the continent of North America is a fractured mess of fundamentalist Christian crusaders and barely competent dictators, everybody except our few focus characters has a name you should recognize from the news in the last three decades. It's an alternate universe that superficially looks good but becomes less convincing as you examine the details, and that's the hook for the real story.

This should appeal to Neal Stephenson fans; it has much of his style about it, the casually breezy explanations, the characters that come with interesting backstories, the major puzzle with the satisfying explanation... and the almost complete lack of an ending. There's something called an epilogue, but it doesn't help. Grade A right up until then, though.

_The Throne of the Crescent Moon_, Saladin Ahmed

Here's the story of the last of the great Ghul Hunters, men who wielded the magic entrusted to them by The Most High, whose robes stayed white no matter the mud or dust surrounding them. And he's not getting any younger, so when ghuls more powerful than any man living has seen start showing up, he needs the help of a sword-wielding dervish and a Bedouin were-lion, not to mention wise and powerful alchemists and perhaps the apothecary in the marketplace... it's a modern tale from the Thousand Nights and a Night. Fun.

Let us suppose that you are an author with a consistently hard-cover original line of action/fantasy-horror novels, a nice long backlist, and you made two mistakes. The first mistake is that you decided to join a previous series with the current series (hah, new printings!) and as a result incorporated a definite timeline for the end of the world. The second mistake is that you already wrote the end-of-the-world book in the previous series...

Did I mention that the timeline of the new series is about to crash into the end-of-the-world from the first series?

The answer, then, is to write prequels, fill-ins, and rewrite the end-of-the-world book.

_The Dark at the End_, F. Paul Wilson.

Which is the last possible book to write before _Nightworld_, the end-of-the-world book.

Fort Freak, edited by George Martin, written by many
The Edge of Ruin, Melinda Snodgrass
Snuff, Terry Pratchett
Monster Hunter International, Larry Correia
The Children of the Sky, Vernor Vinge
The Detachment, Barry Eisler

I thoroughly enjoyed each and every one of these, mostly for different reasons. One starts a series. The others are all the latest volumes of ongoing (we hope) works.

Damn it, Vinge, it's going to take you how many years to write the next story?

_reaMdE_, Neal Stephenson
_The Affair_, Lee Child


REAmDe has an actual satisfying ending. It has many characters, a prodigious plot, and large chunks of it appear to be an exercise in making the most addictive reading possible. Insofar as it is SF, the sciences being fictionalized are semiotics and psychology. No laws of physics seem to be bent, although there are some coincidences on the scale that one expects in entertaining fiction. If you read slower than I do, be prepared to enjoy many hours of not wanting to put it down.

_The Affair_ is the sixteenth book about Jack Reacher, and it chronicles the events that happen just prior to the first book. If you are a fan of Reacher, you will like this one. Otherwise, don't start here.