Ken Newquist's Blog at Lafayette College
A run down of all the cool stuff I’m reading right now.
Mistborn is the first book in Brandon Sanderson’s Final Empire series. The setup is simple enough: imagine if the hero destined to save the world from a terrible evil did so … and then decided to use his new-found power to establish a tyrannical empire. The ascended “Lord Ruler” is considered a living god, and … Read more
A Memory of Light is the final book in Robert Jordan’s epic Wheel of Time series, a series so huge that Jordan died before he could finish it. Fortunately, he took voluminous notes and passed those on to his chosen successor, Brandon Sanderson. Sanderson’s done a fantastic job finishing up the series, and I’m looking forward to this … Read more
I’ve enjoyed Brandon Sanderson’s work completing Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time series; he’s nailed the town and narrative stye of Jordan while simultaneously taming many of the author’s meandering story lines. I was eager to see how his own books read, and decided to pick up the The Way of Kings audiobook. It’s a big … Read more
Neal Stephenson is one of my favorite authors — Snow Crash is one of the best cyberpunk novels ever written (Stephenson was responsible for the concept of virtual avatars operating in digital environments), Diamond Age anticipates the coming age of nanotech and distributed manufacturing and Cryptonomicon was a very cool, very fun book about private currencies, cryptography … Read more
I was itching for some good science fiction, and decided to check out a few of the older novels by one of my favorite authors, Vernor Vinge. The Peace War takes place in a future in which Earth’s nation states and their associated military-industrial complexes have been smashed by an organization known as the Peace … Read more
The 13th novel in Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey/Mautrin series finds the pair on a diplomatic mission to the far side of the world, where they hope to outmaneuver a French envoy hoping to secure alliances with one of the island nations. It doesn’t have any of O’Brian’s signature gun fights, but it does see a reversal … Read more
Leviathan Wakes is an interplanetary space opera reminiscent of Joss Whedon’s Firefly. Although its set entirely within the confines of our solar system — there’s no zipping between star systems — the book still manages to get in some great starship combat. Combined with fun, fast dialogue, the book reminded me strongly of Joss Wheadon’s … Read more
The New Space Opera 2 is written by the current generation of SF writers, including Cory Doctorow, John Scalzi, John Barnes, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, and Mike Resnick. There are 19 stories in all. The first volume read more like The New Transhumanism than the New Space Opera, focusing on how humanity morphs itself in the future, rather than tales … Read more
Jack McDevitt’s The Engines of God is a novel of interstellar archeology. Earth has been devastated by global warming, and our exploration of the galaxy has only turned up a handful of “garden worlds” — planets comparable to Earth — that we can settle. We’ve also found ancient alien relics scattered around the galaxy, as … Read more