Yes, I’m very late to be finishing up last year’s book blog – so sue me.
Previously we had:
Night Without Stars, by Peter F Hamilton
October, by China Mieville
Gnomon, by Nick Harkaway
Seven Surrenders, by Ada Palmer
The Furthest Station, by Ben Aaronovitch
Binti, by Nnedi Okorafor
The Labyrinth Index, by Charles Stross
Emergence: Corporation Wars 3, by Ken McLeod
Other Minds, by Peter Godfrey-Smith
Guardians of Paradise, by Jaine Fenn
The Rise and Fall of DODO, by Neil Stephenson and Nicole Galland
The Obelisk Gate, by NK Jemisin
Dark State, by Charles Stross
Rosewater, by Tady Thompson
Places in the Darkness, by Chris Brookmyre
Elysium Fire, by Al Reynolds
Austral, by Paul McAuley
You Don’t Know Me, by Brooke Magnanti
And now for the continuation:
Lovecraft Country, by Matt Ruff
The horrors of racism outdo the mythos related horrors in 1950s America. Interesting format which is more linked novelettes than anything else, but seems to work well for the story he wants to tell. The mythos side is more sorcerers and magic as technology than anything cthulhoid, but that plays to the themes well.
Sweet Dreams, by Tricia Sullivan
Nice take on the possibilities of dream hacking and dream therapy, which I’m sure is also partly a comment on social media.
The Rig, by Roger Levy
Long novel including a crime lord’s saga and what it did to the galactic civilisation he lived in and helped to change. The disparate timelines aren’t clearly disparate at first which was a bit confusing, but it all came together in the end.
Dogs and War, by Adrian Tchaikovsky
Excellent novel of a world where augmented cyber-animals are used as weapons, told from their perspective. Really enjoyed this. Bees is one of the best non-human artificial intelligences I’ve come across.
Iron Gods, by Andrew Bannister
More happenings in the artificial stellar cluster known as the Spin. An interesting mix of space opera and cyberpunk. Looking forward to the third volume.
The Freeze-Frame Revolution, by Peter Watts
A typically bleak far future from the man who does realistically bleak futures so well. When you’re on an endless mission to seed new FTL gates around the galaxy, spending most of your time in cryosleep, what do you do when you want to ferment a mutiny?
