One Magical Book Blew Me Away This Month… | November Sci-Fi Reading Wrap Up

I really enjoyed the setting in 400 billion stars. I thought that Yoshida as a character was great. She's dogged and determined and gradually pieces together what on earth is going on.

I really like the two main plot threads in this book. I thought that the imagery on the Hela thread was excellent. The notion of a train of cathedrals was cool in itself, but also the lengths the faithful on board those cathedrals go in order to ensure that no further instances of the founding miracle are ever missed.

And I think Baxter handles that mix quite well and I enjoyed my time with this book. I give anti ice 7 out of 10.

So [snorts] I was intrigued by the stories in the book that I've read so far and I will go back and read the rest at some point. So I don't consider it to be a DNF even though I've only read half of the stories but based on what I've read so far I give Cautionary Tales 7 out of 10 is a planetary pleasure.

I'm a bit over halfway through Dead Girls by Richard Cooler which again is on the Broad and Philip Pis and I'm enjoying it's kind of cyber punk infected Bladeunner flavors kind of a bit a little bit offkilter and a bit strange honestly but so far I'm enjoying what I'm reading.

It's been years since I've read Enders Game, but I recall enjoying it at the time. and I think it made it into my top 10 science fiction books ever the last time that I compiled that a couple of years ago.

I enjoyed spending time in Bean's head and it was fun to see the degree to which Bean made it possible for Enders Ender to succeed scenes which were all in very much in the background in Ender's game. So [snorts] overall, I enjoyed my time.

I actually tried to read Eternal Light, the sequel to this book last year, thinking that it was sufficiently standalone to allow that, but actually I ended up putting it down fairly quickly as there seemed to be a lot of references to past events which I now think were covered in this book 400 Brilliant Stars.

And this [snorts] story was interesting for me mainly for the note that Yabra leaves at the end of the story which reveals a link to a later novel False Dawn which was amongst my favorite reads in 2024.

I suppose the headline here is that I really love this book and if pushed I think I would say I liked it even more than Barehead and it might even give Dogs of War a run for its money in a fair fight.

I thought that Azimoff did a great job dealing with the time wy issues and the paradoxes, the effect of alterations made and some of that was pleasingly mind-bending. The relationship between Harland and Noise I thought was done well.

I also recently read an early short story collection from the same author, , The King of the Hill, which is, , which has several stories in it, which are set in the same Federation setting, which I enjoyed at the time, and I and I enjoyed being back in this setting, and I'm keen to go back to Eternal Light soon.

If you haven't read it, , read it. You won't regret it. I really loved it.