I'm nearly done with The Valiant. I love the story, even though when I picked it up I didn't know much of the background. (I never got into TOS.) I have a pile of the Stargazer series to read next, and very much looking forward to it.
I picked up the three Myriad Universes anthologies and am nearly through the first one ('Infinity's Prism'). I don't know at this point which of the three novellas collected in IP is my favorite because um still reading "Seeds of Dissent" and can't decide which of the first two ("A Less Perfect Union" and "Places of Exile") I liked better since both were excellent.
Finished up Star Wars: The Cestus Deception. While I wasn't thrilled with who was perpetrating the deception in the story, I thought the parts focusing on the ARC Trooper were very strong. All in all, a good read. I decided to go with The Hunger Games for my current book, and I'm enjoying it a lot more than I expected to. I was planning on reading The Romulan War: To Brave the Storm next, but I might end up reading the other two books in the Hunger Games trilogy first.
Done with the Valiant. A fun and gripping story, though some of the resolution seemed a bit weak. The enemy aliens never had any dialog, they just attacked and were beaten back. Maybe the enemy will pick back up in a future novel. A few other threads not tied up or left hanging either, just dropped. But still, I enjoyed the read. Anxiously starting the first series Stargazer book, hoping it will continue to be fun and also resolve some of these.
The Death and Life of Great American Cities, by Jane Jacobs. However, a book I've been waiting weeks for is FINALLY back in the library -- Bernard Cornwell's Death of Kings, the next book in the Saxon Stories series. I'm beyond excited.
Just finished Voyager: Homecoming. All around decent, but I think the book suffers from trying to force a plot on the the homecoming. It was almost as if we couldn't really think of what to do for the characters so instead we just have them sitting around treading water. Admittedly, there is a Trek III vibe to end of the novel. But man, oh man, could this book have used another pass from the editor. "The Doctor answered a message to see a the handsome brown visage of an attractive man." "Janeway stare at the handsome but forbidding Admiral." "The Doctor recalled Iden, who had been an appealing but ultimately ugly person." I think Christie Golden may have invented the Female Gaze! (Kidding, kidding.) I didn't think it was out of place to call the characters attractive, but everyone is attractive in this book, and they are uniformly called so. I decided to tackle The Farther Shore right away, but I'm only 3 or so chapters in. Next on the docket is the Chakotay story from "Captain's Table" and then TNG: A Hard Rain.
I don't know what to read next. It's between: Adventures of an Artificial Woman-Tom Berger The Lost Man (Saint novel)-Leslie Charteris Firefly-Piers Anthony Double Star-Robert Heinlein Menace from Earth-Robert Heinlein 6 x H- Robert Heinlein Or something else on my shelf that I've read, and need another Joel-opinion on....
Hurrah and huzzah! Finally finished Summon the Thunder after two weeks! It hasn't taken me that long to finish a book in months, but it did drag in places and my attention was diverted on to other things. Ah well. Time to play catch up and read That Which Divides before Storming Heaven is released on Tuesday.
^ I've been distracted lately too (by Mass Effect 3) and am only on the final pages of Summon the Thunder now, so it'll be a little while longer before I get to post the review thread, sorry . If you want to do it earlier you're of course welcome to, though.
If you don't mind, Sho, then I'll have a stab at creating the thread. Thank you, and good luck with finishing.
Started Variable Star today, the novel that Robert Heinlein left unfinished and was completed by Spider Robinson. I've heard mixed reviews, but I haven't read enough Heinlein and nothing by Robinson to let comparisons with other works get in the way. Hopefully that will let me enjoy the book on its own merits. So far it isn't bad. But more significantly I stumbled across a book called Count To A Trillion by John C. Wright. I started the first page and before I knew it I was done the prologue. The writing was sweeping me along, but I didn't buy the book because I wanted to do some research on the author and see if anything else he's written might catch my attention more. Has anyone heard of him? I'm eyeing the Orphans of Chaos trilogy at the moment.
I started ST: Mere Anarchy: The Darkness Drops Again, the fourth book in the miniseries. This will be my second Christopher L. Bennett book in a row, and I'm pretty confident it won't dissapoint.
Finished The Farther Shore last night. It ended strongly, but seemed directionless during the first half. I wonder if it was supposed to be a trilogy and got condensed because the Holographic plot line just sort of ends abruptly relatively unresolved. I also quickly read Chakotary's story from Tales from the Captain's Table. Decent overall. A really nice lead in to the character taking command, I thought. And now I'm onto A Hard Rain, which is fairly entertaining for a Holodeck story.
Currently reading Star Trek: TNG A Call to Darkness by Michael Jan Friedman and Star Wars: NJO Dark Tide Onslaught by Michael A. Stackpole. Really enjoying both.
I finished Artemis Fowl: The Eternity Code and started to move on to Artemis Fowl: The Opal Deception. However, I'm reconsidering this, as I had to really push myself through these, and I'm thinking it's time for something new. Plus I'm really starting to hurt for shelf space again. I'm going to go on a mini-rant here and say these books have annoyed me throughout with the frequency of run-on sentences, fragments, and homophone errors. Maybe this makes me overly obsessive about grammar, but in books aimed at kids who are supposed to be learning how to properly compose sentences and use words, the number of these mistakes in these books is simply unacceptable. So I'm thinking these are headed for either trade or sale online. I have Mr. Sebastian and the Negro Magician by Daniel Wallace that I picked up at a thrift store a while back that is smiling at me over there. I had never heard of it, but the cover caught my eye, the blurb on the flap seemed interesting, and it barely cost me anything - either $.50 or $1.00. I think I'll try it next. ETA: I'm also reading Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman on my iPhone when I find myself without a book handy. Amazon offered the Kindle version on the cheap a while back, and it's been a pleasant diversion when I've needed one. I haven't felt compelled to read it when I have something else more handy, but it's amusing enough.