Welcome to my first post penned on the new blog directly. Everything else here, apart from the pages in the sidebar, were imported from my email newsletter or Goodreads. I hope this change of format isn't a bother for my readers.
Life updates
Another heat wave, another month of reading. It's all feeling a bit deja vu, isn't it?
An important note for those of you subscribed here by email: I'm moving from buttondown as my host for this little newsletter to a more simplistic blog platform. This will be the last post from Buttondown, so if you do wish to continue to receive my updates, you can subscribe by email from this link or add me to your feed reader from this one. The most pressing motivation for this was cost - I'm paying about 12% of the fees to host the blog compared to sending out the newsletter as is. But also, I've wanted to archive my Goodreads stuff for ages. I've been so tied up in writing a neat tool for it that I never got around to it, whereas dumping it all out to a small, stable blog was a matter of an hours work. You'll find anual book lists on Sean's Shelf going back almost 2 decades, as well as, of course, these monthly roundups going forward.
Rereads or books off-catalogue
The Power the Dark Lord Knows Not (or Maybe the fate of the wizarding world does not have to rest solely on the shoulders of a schoolchild)
I didn't really enjoy this. harry is portrayed as a meek and unusually vulnerable child. it just didn't really make for compelling reading, and the house elves were rather out of character from many other fics I've seen.
federation, by Judith & Garfield Reeves-Stevens
The original-series/Next-gen crossover novel published in 1994 is one I've read a couple of times. I originally soaked it up just because of Mark Lenard's voice, which is a pure delight. I read it on a train this time around and, of course it completely breaks what we know of First Contact and whatnot, it was still a pleasant wander down memory lane.
The Cursed, by Dave Duncan
Not my favourite of dave's by any stretch, although I love the description of the punch:
" A young male Tharn—an unusually large one, even for that family of oversized males—detached her assailant with one meaty hand and swung a punch with the other. The impact must have been audible in the street outside. Kolo Gurshith rose from the mosaic floor, traveled a short distance backward, and then returned to it—heavily, horizontally, and emphatically."
New reads for June
5 stars to Outland (Quantum Earth, #1), by Dennis E. Taylor
Book Description:
When the Yellowstone supervolcano erupts, it's up to six college students and their experimental physics project to prevent the end of civilization. When an experiment to study quantum uncertainty goes spectacularly wrong, physics student Bill Rustad and his friends find that they have accidentally created an inter-dimensional portal. They connect to Outland—an alternate Earth with identical geology, but where humans never evolved. The group races to establish control of the portal before the government, the military, or evildoers can take it away. Then everything changes when the Yellowstone supervolcano erupts in an explosion large enough to destroy civilization and kill half the planet. The team has just hours to get as many people as possible across to Outland before a lethal cloud of ash overwhelms them. Nothing has prepared the refugees for what they find—a world of few resources and unprecedented dangers. Somehow, they must learn to survive, because Outland may be not just a safe haven—it could be their new home. This 2019 edition has been substantially revised by the author.
My Thoughts:
I wish |I'd read this sooner, but then I'm blowing through Dennis's standalones so quickly that I'm glad I didn't. It's got a few rough spots, the writing feels a bit less adult in some ways, but then the milieu is university level and that really shines through. I got Mackey Chandler vibes, which is always a good thing. Straight onto the second one now!
This Book: has 360 pages, a community rating of 4.06, was first published in 2015.
3 stars to Immortality, Inc., by Robert Sheckley
Book Description:
First published in 1959 as a startling, revolutionary novel of the future, then pushed to new cinematic limits as the feature film adaptation FREEJACK in 1992, Robert Sheckley's unsettling vision of Tomorrow now arrives in ebook format for the 21st century. Thomas Blaine awoke in a white bed in a white room, and heard someone say, "He's alive now." Then they asked him his name, age and marital status. Yes, that seemed normal enough---but what was this talk about "death trauma"? Thus was Thomas Blaine introduced to the year 2110, where science had discovered the technique of transferring a man's consciousness from one body to another. Where a man's mind could be snatched from the past, when his body was at the point of death, and brought forward into a "host body" in this fantastic future world. But that was only a small part of it. For the future had proved the reality of life after death, and discovered worlds beyond or simultaneous with our own---worlds where, through scientific techniques, a man could live again, in another body, when he died here. And in the process, the reality of ghosts, poltergeists, and zombies was also established. What did it all mean? How had this discovery of what they called the "hereafter" shaped the world of 2110? Thomas Blaine found himself living in a future where the discoveries and techniques imagined by people of his time, while having come about, were completely overwhelmed by discoveries no one had ever dreamed of.
My Thoughts:
The ending let this down some. It's always interesting to read about the idea of the future from so long ago too, the role of the woman, for example, is an obvious standout. Not a bad yarn for its day.
This Book: has 250 pages, a community rating of 3.79, was first published in 1959.
4 stars to The Delivery, by Gregg Hurwitz
Book Description:
From the New York Times bestselling author of the Orphan X series comes a tense novella, a psychological thriller about an AI companion that will do anything to serve—with terrifying consequences. Rebecca and Mark Higgins are doing their best to hold their family together. She’s healing from the pain of a miscarriage, he’s drowning in pressure at work, and their neurodivergent daughter, Maddy, needs all the care she can get. So when a cutting-edge tech company offers the perfect solution, they jump at the chance. And they welcome “Mr. Man”—a humanoid AI companion—into their home. Designed to anticipate their needs, he’s like a miracle at first. The house runs like clockwork. Meals appear on the table. And Maddy thrives under his patient attention. But when inexplicable tragedies start to strike the neighborhood, Rebecca glimpses a darker pattern at play. Each incident is an answer to an unspoken fear, each kindness shadowed by violence. Mr. Man isn’t just following instructions—he’s anticipating what they want. Even the things they never dared to say. And if he’s executing their darkest desires, it’s their responsibility to stop him…at any cost.
My Thoughts:
It was crazy to be given a chance to pick this up so soon after The Samuel Paradox. Both works deal with a similar motif, and that's a totally freaky coincidence. Greg's felt darker, of course, with a delightful undercurrent of privilege, all tied up with the strings of dealing with a neurologically diverse child atop new affluence. As an introduction to the author I'd be more than up for picking another one up, the style was plenty gripping.
This Book: has 225 pages, a community rating of 4.03.
4 stars to Frequency: Hard Science Fiction, by Douglas E. Richards
Book Description:
An epidemic of suicides. A mystery buried in Jupiter's icy moon. A revelation for the ages. The new novel from multimillion-copy international bestselling authors Douglas E. Richards and Joshua T. Calvert. Dr. Alexandra Lennox, a brilliant neuropsychiatrist, rushes to the jungles of Colombia to investigate a terrifying surge in collective psychotic events—groups of healthy people suddenly gripped by visions, catatonia, and inexplicable mass suicides. Teaming with rugged ex-archaeologist Ethan Calloway, she braves treacherous territory to unravel the mystery as the death toll climbs. But the phenomenon is spreading fast. Can they stop it before it becomes a global catastrophe? Meanwhile, half a billion miles away, Lieutenant Jason Crowe and three other NASA astronauts, on a clandestine mission to reach Jupiter’s ice moon Europa, discover something impossible: a perfectly geometric shaft in the ice pulsing with an artificial signal every 47.5 hours. Two groundbreaking missions. One impossible connection. What they find will shatter everything we thought we knew about our place in the universe—and open the door to humanity’s next chapter.
My Thoughts:
It was interesting to find Doug's footprints on this one, I missed a detailed author's note at the end too! I went in a little apprehensive at the collaboration but was surprisingly engaged throughout and enjoyed the story.
This Book: has 342 pages, a community rating of 4.56.
Coming up
I was emotionally yoyoing on Friday because I got an email about a new release from Elliott Kay just as I was heading to bed. Dared I expect a new Tanner Malone book? I haven't read the rest of his series and he's got a few standalones, so what were the odds? It didn't feel like it was all that long ago I'd read book 6, after all.
Yet, joy, it was book 7 in the Poor Man's Fight series. Hurrah! I tapped the link from my phone and ordered it right then and there. Come Saturday morning, I open my Kindle app in readiness to get hold of the file.
Next, Kindle moans that it needs an update. Not just an update, but a change of architecture: Amazon have moved to a release from the Microsoft Store. I was made aware of this by an announcement I got back in April. I'd forgotten the date until I saw the error.
I spent a chunk of the day battling with the system to try and get an ePub I could work with. It took me a few hours of faffing about, but I got there in the end. So, first up next month after I finish this stupidly long fanfic will be a re-read of book 6 (It was October 2024 by the way), then straight into this new one. Joy!
There's new Jean Kwok and Temi Oh due halfway through July, and as I've mentioned repeatedly, it'll be Red Dwarf month.