The Remains of the Day

Kazuo Ishiguro, 1989

(October 2017)

Reread this for a thing. I wasn’t going to write too much about it here, as this isn’t the thing (yet), but I find that I have thoughts that are not so directly connected to the thing and so here we are.

The Vagrant

Peter Newman, 2015

(August 2017)

I remember this book generating a fair bit of buzz a couple of years back, but it doesn’t really live up to it (or, to be fairer and more accurate, to my memory of it). There are a lot of interesting parts here, but somehow it never quite adds up to more than the sum of them.

Everfair

Nishi Shawl, 2016

(December 2016)

Steampunk alternate history in the Belgian Congo. With a premise like that you know things are going to be interesting, at the very least.

The Just City

Jo Walton, 2015

(March 2016)

  

A raging worldbuilding nerdgasm in all its eruptive glory.

  

The Cage of Zeus

Sayuri Ueda, 2004 [Takami Nieda, 2011]

(January 2015)

  

Before we begin, I’m going to refer you back to a previous post, specifically the opening paragraph, which I think must now stand as my standard disclaimer for Japanese SF. All clear? Good. So you’ll understand why I wasn’t expecting great things from this in terms of craft, but even so the first few pages of The Cage of Zeus must count as one of the most inelegant, leaden, and bluntly cack-handed opening scenes I’ve ever read in a professionally published novel.

Look to Windward

Iain M. Banks, 2000

(July 2014)

I’m going to cop out of this one slightly. Firstly, I figure that after going so thoroughly to town on Inversions we could probably all do with a bit of a break from overthinking Banks.