@ansate After that ending it is difficult not to just go right on to the next one. Enjoy!
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A numbers geek reading SFF to maintain some hope in this world.
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Will started reading Flight from the Ages and Other Stories by Derek Künsken
Flight from the Ages and Other Stories by Derek Künsken
A stunning collection of novellas and short fiction from the award-winning, critically acclaimed and best-selling author of the Quantum Evolution …
Will reviewed The House of Saints by Derek Künsken (Venus Ascendant, #2)
The Stunning conclusion to the Venus Ascendant series, from the world of The Quantum Magician. …
A Fantastic Conclusion
5 stars
This book is filled with sorrow and loss, but also hope. The two books of this series are beautiful. The detailed worldbuilding meshes well with the sibling series, but is separate enough to be fresh and new. Künsken lovingly handles issues of gender identity, poverty, and the crimes people commit for survival, sometimes with a gentle caress and sometimes with a fist to the face. He explores how governments react to those self-preserving crimes, and also how the governed may deal with their intuitions. There is a lot of hard SF here too. Near-future science on a vivid and believable Venus drive the story.
@ansate Have you read these before? If not, I envy you. This is my most favorite series of all time and I wish I could read them for the first time again. Instead I am content to reread them at least annually. Enjoy!
Will wants to read Hench: A Novel by Natalie Zina Walschots
Hench: A Novel by Natalie Zina Walschots
Anna does boring things for terrible people because even criminals need office help and she needs a job. Working for …
Will started reading The House of Saints by Derek Künsken (Venus Ascendant, #2)
The House of Saints by Derek Künsken (Venus Ascendant, #2)
The Stunning conclusion to the Venus Ascendant series, from the world of The Quantum Magician.
George-Étienne and his children have …
Will reviewed The House of Styx by Derek Künsken (Venus Ascendant, #1)
The first in a ground breaking new science fiction series from the best-selling author of …
Unexpected and Wonderful
5 stars
I tend not to like prequels, so even though I enjoyed Künsken's Quantum Evolution series, I put off reading this for too long. As I mentioned in a previous comment, I went into this confident that I knew the book I would be getting, but ended up being completely wrong. The book explored several concepts I wasn't expecting from this writer, most notably a gender identity story, and did it so deftly that it appeared effortless. The pacing of the book was deliberate and slow, but Künsken painted such a wonderful picture of the society and the people in it that it was nice to linger for a while. There are many pages devoted to the the physics of Venus, both in the clouds and on the surface, and I imagine that some readers may get impatient, but I found them creative and interesting. This is one of my two …
I tend not to like prequels, so even though I enjoyed Künsken's Quantum Evolution series, I put off reading this for too long. As I mentioned in a previous comment, I went into this confident that I knew the book I would be getting, but ended up being completely wrong. The book explored several concepts I wasn't expecting from this writer, most notably a gender identity story, and did it so deftly that it appeared effortless. The pacing of the book was deliberate and slow, but Künsken painted such a wonderful picture of the society and the people in it that it was nice to linger for a while. There are many pages devoted to the the physics of Venus, both in the clouds and on the surface, and I imagine that some readers may get impatient, but I found them creative and interesting. This is one of my two most favorite reads from 2023 and I'm eager to get into the next volume.
Will rated Well, That's Just Ducky: 5 stars
Well, That's Just Ducky by Anthony Giffen, Ducky
Every Sunday, fans of a dog named Ducky and his Daddy head over to read their newest conversation at the …
Will wants to read Those Beyond the Wall by Micaiah Johnson (The Space Between Worlds, #2)
Faced with a coming apocalypse, a woman must reckon with her past to solve a …
This is in the same universe as The Space Between Worlds, but the main characters from that book purportedly only make limited appearances, which is disappointing to me. I was drawn to the characters in that book far more than the world. #SFFBookClub
Will wants to read Cahokia Jazz by Francis Spufford
Cahokia Jazz by Francis Spufford, Francis Spufford
In a city that never was, in an America that never was, on a snowy night at the end of …
Will wants to read The Imposition of Unnecessary Obstacles by Malka Older (The Investigations of Mossa and Pleiti, #2)
The Imposition of Unnecessary Obstacles by Malka Older (The Investigations of Mossa and Pleiti, #2)
Investigator Mossa and Scholar Pleiti reunite to solve a brand-new mystery in the follow-up to the fan-favorite cozy space opera …
Will wants to read He Who Drowned the World by Shelley Parker-Chan
He Who Drowned the World by Shelley Parker-Chan
What would you give to win the world?
Zhu Yuanzhang, the Radiant King, is riding high after her victory – …
Will started reading The House of Styx by Derek Künsken (Venus Ascendant, #1)
The first in a ground breaking new science fiction series from the best-selling author of …
I'm a little under halfway and have encountered a couple things I wasn't expecting. First, it is radically different from its sibling series, The Quantum Evolution. Second, there is a gender identity story here and it is being told extremely well up to this point. Any time I think I understand Derek Künsken he shows me how wrong I am.
Will reviewed System Collapse by Martha Wells (The Murderbot Diaries, #7)
Am I making it worse? I think I'm making it worse.
Following the events in …
I may be reaching my limit with this series
3 stars
This will probably be the unpopular minority opinion, but here goes...
This book was still enjoyable, but the first half was extremely slow. It picked up once we got into the action, but it was somewhat more subtle this time around. There is nothing wrong with the book, but it feels like Wells thinks she needs to do more to evolve this character, but doesn't really know what, so we just get tiny bits.