Books read November

Work and other duties keep eating into my reading time, so once again a month with only a few books read. It didn’t help that one of them was a Steven Erikson 1,000+ pager fantasy brick.

The Bonehunters — Steven Erikson
The sixth installment in the Malazan series, this is Epic Fantasy for advanced students, hideously complicated. In lesser hands this would’ve been an awful mess, but Erikson manages to keep all the plotlines tidy.

Buy Jupiter — Isaac Asimov
One of the first ever science fiction books I’ve read. Still a great collection, especially with all the autobiographical notes Asimove put in between the stories.

Will Eisner: A Spirited Life — Bob Andelman
Authorised by Eisner and his estate, this is a reasonable overview of his life, but light on analysis. Andelman tends to skip ahead and back within chapters with little rhyme or reason and rarely delves deep below the surface of Eisner’s life. Useful as a first look at Eisner, but a much better biography still needs to be written. Had Eisner been a straight novelist of the same qualities and importance, half a dozen would’ve already been published.

Earth Is Room Enough — Isaac Asimov
Another Asimov collection, unfortunately without autobiographical notes. As the title indicates, all stories are set on Earth.

The Hubble Wars — Eric J. Chaisson
Soon after the Hubble Space Telescope was launched in orbit in 1990, after a seven year delay, it became clear that all was not well with it. This book is a firsthand account of what happened in the months and years, what went wrong and why, written by one of the people involved. Interesting if only for the insight it gives in how a great science project can come off the rails.

Grunts — Mary Gentle
“And pass me another elf, Sergeant. This one’s split.” A black humoured, dark fantasy in which orcs, those footsoldiers of Evil, take control of their own destiny to become marines…

Spy Story — Len Deighton
A proper Cold War thriller, in which the main character is as befuddled as the reader for most of the book as to what’s going on and what his role is.