Fiction

Currently reading A Reaper at the Gates, the third book in Sabaa Tahir's Ember Quartet. Pretty competent YA fantasy with some interesting parts. I especially enjoy books/series where a "bad guy" (from the protagonists' viewpoints) isn't evil, just has goals that are at total cross-purposes. "Plucky kid" narratives pull me in pretty regularly. Too much Hardy Boys as a child, I suspect. With one notable exception, a pretty generic world, though, kinda middle-eastern, but with more of a "Hyborian Age" feel.

Also Elizabeth Bear's Shattered Pillars, second book in the Eternal Sky Trilogy, is a much more richly imagined, complex world. Or perhaps its just enjoying something that clearly basing itself on thoroughly non-European, central Asian cultures. And the idea of different skies for different areas of the world freaks me out in a good way.

Earlier this summer, zipped through Mary Robinette Kowal's The Calculating Stars, which just finished the SF trifecta of Nebula, Hugo, and Locus awards for best novel last weekend at Worldcon. Also read the sequel The Fated Sky. Both occur in an alternate 1950s following a global disaster that forces the development of the space program much earlier. Main character is "Lady Astronaut" Elma York (as she comes to be known) making her way through all the expected baggage of the 1950's. And that makes it sound much more boring that it is. It's a sit-down-read-the-WHOLE-book-stand-up-look-for-the-sequel experience.

Also the "Dagger and the Coin" series from Daniel Abraham (who is half the team writing as James SA Corey for the Expanse). Let's just say it's the first time I've noticed banking, insurance and securities as a primary element of a fantasy world that includes dragons. (Of course there was Making Money in Disc World, but that's just the mint...)