Whale Skeleton in the Sahara January 29, 2020
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Wedding Photo January 28, 2020
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I’m the tall one in the back.
Empress of Forever, by Max Gladstone January 21, 2020
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Empress of Forever, by Max Gladstone, read by Natalie Naudus is a delightful romp mostly because of the voice acting. Oh, the story is pretty good, too: tech billionaire becomes fugitive hunted by Empress of the Galaxy. Good enough for my twelve-year-old mind, certainly. But Natalie Naudus’ voice acting puts smarm and sarcasm into the character Zange (audiobook, so I don’t know the spelling), naivete into the voice of a hungry god, humility in the voice of a monk (Buddhist-derived, not Catholic) and chilling viciousness into the voice of the Empress. There’s reasonably-paced action and breathless hyperbole in descriptions[0] and an overarching gestalt of a galaxy composed partly of a computational cloud which gifts everyone with special abilities[1]…except our heroine, who is only[2] human.
Available on Amazon (no, really?) and at sfpl.org.
[0] Fun all by itself, if you are into that sort of thing.
[1] Dangerous abilities.
[2] By which I mean, merely.
The Wayfarers Series, by Becky Chambers January 13, 2020
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A series of three novels, the Wayfarers starts with Hugo-winning The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet and extends to two equally charming sequels, A Close and Common Orbit and Record of a Space-born Few. The first is the one I want to tell you about, because it is a rare gem that shows all the attributes of a space adventure novel (difficult journey, pirates, armies in tense standoff, difficult crewmates, culture clash, sapient AI, star-crossed lovers, etc.) but tells enough of each character’s thoughts and feelings to establish the why of every (often terrible) action.
This already remarkable accomplishment is even more interesting when the tone of the whole novel is so warm and friendly (and the shipmates so careful with each other’s feelings) that I felt caught up in their drama myself. when they wander into danger (here and there), I felt concern for the outcome. Suspension of disbelief apparently applies to novels as well as performances.
The other two novels share these attributes, and I recommend them also. Available at Amazon (of course), and as audiobooks from sfpl.org.
Stuffilike.net 