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The Bard in Green

thebardingreen@bookwyrm.social

Joined 1 year, 3 months ago

  • Technology Consultant.
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  • Non-theistic Pagan.
  • Cishet White Male Feminist.
  • Father.
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  • Resident of Colorado.
  • Anti-Capitalist.
  • Hackerspace Regular.
  • Traveler of the American West.

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The Bard in Green's books

reviewed The Olympian Affair by Jim Butcher (The Cinder Spires, #2)

Jim Butcher: The Olympian Affair (Hardcover, 2023, Ace) 3 stars

The fate of the Cinder Spires may be decided by crossed swords in the next …

I've Got A Theory...

4 stars

Content warning Spoilers ahead

The beginning of a fun space adventure.

No rating

These books are pure, engaging space adventure with a side of humor. I picture them as an anime about a D&D party in space. Long hard bishonen space knights with blaster halberds? Check. Cat girl with a grenade launcher? Check. Space pirate captain with a hood and mask and a mysterious tortured past? Check.

They are great fun and well written brain candy.

Alastair Reynolds: Blue remembered Earth (2012) 4 stars

Blue Remembered Earth is a science fiction novel by Welsh author Alastair Reynolds, first published …

Hopeful future, treasure hunt through the solar system, Elephants are cool.

5 stars

The Poseidon’s Children series by Alastair Reynolds (the first is Blue Remembered Earth). It’s not as dark as the Revelation Space books, more of a hopeful future. Africa is ascendant, AI is art. Concepts like pan-spermia and uplift are post religious life philosophies that people dedicate themselves to and a character who is a combination of Elon Musk and the Pizza Grandma from Stephen Universe dies at the beginning of the series - and is a main character. Revelation Space seems to be more popular, but I consider it Reynolds’ Magnum Opus.

Christopher Ruocchio: Empire of Silence (Sun Eater) (Paperback, 2019, DAW) 4 stars

Like a band riffing on all the songs you love, and doing it well.

5 stars

The Suneater books by Christopher Roucchio are probably the series I most look forward to new releases of. It’s a little bit thematically similar to Red Rising (but not as YA) in the sense that both series are

1) Narrated in the first person by a Great Man (in the Theory of History) sense who is really just a confused and wounded boy swept up in the tide of history.

2) Both feature space empires openly inspired by Imperial Rome.

3) Both of said space empires are ruled by a genetically modified ruling caste.

4) Graphic violence and cheapness of human life are central themes.

5) Both authors are prone to poetic prose and waxing philosophically about the human condition.

All that is to say, if you liked one you’ll probably like the other, but something else to keep in mind about Suneater is that the whole series is a …

reviewed Semiosis by Sue Burke (Semiosis Duology, #1)

Sue Burke, Sue Burke: Semiosis (EBook, 2018, Tom Doherty Associates) 4 stars

Human survival hinges on an bizarre alliance in Semiosis, a character driven science fiction novel …

I wasn't expecting to love this book, but I did.

5 stars

I just read Semiosis and Interference by Sue Burke and REALLY liked them much more than I was expecting to. I don’t know that I’ve ever encountered books quite like them. The physical science is a little vague and soft but the biological science is really cool (and totally inspired by all that stuff you’ve read about how the roots and fungus in an acre of forest have more chemical connections than the human brain has synapses). The first book is like a series of short stories, set on a planet where the plants are sentient (and some are sapient) and the human colonists form a symbiotic relationship with them over the course of 100 years or so. Also, lots of pacifist political philosophy (if that doesn’t intrigue you, it will probably seem heavy handed, as an anarcho-pacifist myself, I quite enjoyed this aspect). Funny enough, I probably would have …

G S Jennsen: Starshine: Aurora Rising Book One (Aurora Rhapsody) (2016, Hypernova Publishing) 5 stars

Jennsen is brain candy, but it's some of my favorite brain candy.

5 stars

I have a bit of guilty pleasure in following G.S. Jennsen’s Amaranthe books (the first is Star Shine). These books have lots of flaws, not the least of which being that Jennsen self publishes and would benefit from an editor who can say no to her. But they scratch an itch for military adventure sci-fi that I find it hard to scratch at this stage of my life. Military adventure sci-fi (as a sub genre) is obnoxiously dominated by conservative old white men writing for teenage boys (and they seem to be writing more aggressively conservative stuff lately… I blame the Hugo drama of recent memory). G.S. Jennsen is a female writer who writes books with strong and powerful female characters, sensitive and emotionally vulnerable male characters, gay characters, etc.

If you read my next two paragraphs, you’ll probably think “Why the hell would I read these thebardingreen@lemmy.starlightkel.xyz? You make …

reviewed Delta-V by Daniel Suarez

Daniel Suarez: Delta-V (Paperback, 2019, Rowohlt Taschenbuch) 4 stars

James Tighe, kurz JT, ist ein Glücksritter und der beste Höhlentaucher der Welt. Eines Tages …

Space Race Fun

4 stars

I just read Daniel Suarez’s space entrepreneur books Delta V and Critical Mass. A thinly veiled Elon Musk like character over leverages his personal wealth to launch a secret (the crew don’t know just how secret), probably illegal asteroid mining mission. The second book is about their highly politically charged return to Earth and a second mission to mine the lunar surface, and I liked it much better than the first book. The first book is fun, but is kind of laying the groundwork for the second book which is more about building a near future space economy / society, much the way Daemon was a fun technothrillar laying the ground work for the weirdly libertarian yet progressive gamified political thought experiment that was Freedom. I found Suarez’s other work to be pretty lackluster after Daemon and Freedom so these were a nice surprise.