Enthusiastically Ambiverted Hopepunk
54/2023 – ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ 1991 Hugo Best Novel
Miles’s adventures continue, with all the twists, fun characters, double-crosses, and humor that make this series so enjoyable. The adventure is fun, but it really is the characters and how they relate to each other that impress the most. Four books in, and so far the only disappointment is that I didn’t find this series earlier.
46/2023 – ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ 1992 Hugo Best Novel
Really good continuation of the story from Shards of Honor, even beginning the day after the earlier book ended. Bujold manages to create fascinating, sometimes relatable, and often very flawed characters, and to craft a world that’s an interesting mix of almost medieval feudalism and future technology. For a series I didn’t know anything about and initially approached with a little skepticism, I’m definitely understanding why it got the awards and the good words it has from many of my friends.
33/2023 – ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ 1990 Hugo Best Novel
Still as engrossing as when I first read it, many years ago. Far-future space opera on a huge scale, but presented through a series of vignettes shared by members of a band of pilgrims (if this sounds rather like Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, be glad you got a good education in classic literature) heading toward what seems to be an unpleasant fate for all of them…and possibly billions more. Amusingly, while I knew that this was part of a series (originally two books, then four) because I have all of them on my shelf, I’d forgotten that the next book is not so much a sequel as the second half of a single story. Good thing I can just head upstairs and grab the next book to keep going!
NOTE: Given Simmons’ descent into right-wing politics, including Islamophobia and publicly attacking Greta Thunburg, he has earned a space on my “milkshake duck” virtual bookshelf, collecting those authors whose work I discovered, enjoyed, and might still enjoy, before later realizing that they are what I consider to be rather horrible people.
29/2023 – ⭐⭐⭐ 1989 Hugo Best Novel
This one took me a while to get through, and it wasn’t really until the latter half of the book that I really started to feel like I was really getting invested in it. It’s dense, with a lot of the plot revolving around political maneuvering, cloning, and using psychological conditioning to educate, train, and mold the personalities of clones, as well as to influence and adjust both clones and non-clones throughout their lives. I often found myself reading just a few pages or sections at a time before setting it down, rather than just reading my way through. There’s a lot of in-depth, high-concept ideas in here — great if you’re into that kind of thing, but difficult if you’re not. (Right now, I appear to be somewhere in between those two extremes.)
20/2023 – ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ 1988 Hugo Best Novel
I find it kind of fascinating that Brin wrote his first three Uplift novels (particularly the second and third) as obviously connected and part of the same universe, but not directly continuing the story, even when the story is obviously unfinished. The events of Startide Rising are referred to and influence the events of this story, and the same overall mystery is a major driving element of both, but they’re otherwise unconnected. It’s a neat way to approach a very fully realized universe. I also really enjoy the way Brin creates aliens (both extraterrestrial and terrestrial) and other intelligences; close enough to human to be relatable, but also different enough to be alien. I’ve really enjoyed all of his first three Uplift novels, and one of these days plan to continue on to the second trilogy.
6/2023 – ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ 1987 Hugo Best Novel
Really impressive. Builds on the universe and characters of Ender’s Game, but in very different ways. Lots of very thoughtful (and thought-provoking) discussions of truth, how people see themselves and others, relationships among different types of people and how they see each other, and the vast differences between assumptions and reality, especially when dealing with other cultures (or, in this case, alien intelligences).
A bit of unfortunate ableism at the very end after a character is injured. While it could almost be explained away as very unsurprising self-pity of someone dealing with new physical circumstances, Card does fall into the trap of having created a futuristic society with space travel and all sorts of technological advances, even allowing a blinded character to see through cybernetic enhancements, but motor and speech disabilities are seen as virtually life-ending.
Outside of that, it’s another book that makes me wish Card wasn’t so problematic, so I wouldn’t feel kind of guilty about enjoying his books as much as I do. Which brings me to copying this over from my review of Ender’s Game:
NOTE: It should be noted that OSC had long held and promoted viewpoints that I vehemently disagree with. The books of his in my collection were purchased before I knew of his standpoints, from secondhand stores, or both. I knew going into my Hugo reading project that there would authors and works I would find problematic, and that there might be situations (like this one) where I enjoyed a work by a problematic author. I do what I can to mitigate those situations by purchasing used copies of books so as not to directly contribute to those problematic authors who are still with us, and by noting when I run into those situations – like here (and again down the road, as one of JKR’s HP books also won a Hugo).
5/2023 – ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ 1986 Hugo Best Novel
It had been long enough since I’d last read this that I only remembered the broad strokes: Ender’s training, the zero-G battles, the simulations, the revelation after his final exam, and a few misty bits and pieces about the fantasy game he explores on his computer. But the threads with his brother and sister and, somewhat amusingly (where was my brain when I read this before?), the entire final chapter where Ender explores the colony world, were almost as new to me as if was my first time reading them.
The parts I remembered were as fun (in their way) as I remembered: the zero-G team combat games and their techniques and strategies, all while watching as Ender is manipulated and molded into what they need him to be. The political maneuvering of his brother and sister were interesting, and in some ways reminded me uncomfortably of the modern world, and in ways that wouldn’t have resonated quite so much when the book was published in ‘85. Now, instead of Valentine and Peter posting to discussion forums on their “nets” to influence politics, we have Qanon and Twitter on our Internet. At a few points, it was more than a little disturbingly prescient. (Plus other little details, like Ender’s “desk” where he can read, learn, program, communicate, and play games — basically, an iPad.)
While it’s perhaps a bit too militaristic to be a five-star read for me, it’s still an excellent book, well worthy of the awards it got, and I’m looking forward to reading more in the series (which I’ve never done before).
ADDED NOTE: It should be noted that OSC had long held and promoted viewpoints that I vehemently disagree with. The books of his in my collection were purchased before I knew of his standpoints, from secondhand stores, or both. I knew going into my Hugo reading project that there would authors and works I would find problematic, and that there might be situations (like this one) where I enjoyed a work by a problematic author. I do what I can to mitigate those situations by purchasing used copies of books so as not to directly contribute to those problematic authors who are still with us, and by noting when I run into those situations – like here (and again down the road, as one of JKR’s HP books also won a Hugo).
61/2022 – ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ 1985 Hugo Best Novel
Still feels almost like it could have been written today — a rather impressive recognition of just how influential it was and still is.
59/2022 – ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ 1984 Hugo Best Novel
Dolphins in space! Which sounds jokey, but it’s not at all. Minimal connections to Sundiver, other than being in the same universe, but 200 years later. I really enjoyed this – the uplifted dolphins are a neat choice for a spacefaring crew, and Brin mixes in touches of plenty other alien races as they battle each other and chase the dolphins for the secret they stumbled across. Brin also does a good job of making this part of a much larger universe, dropping in bits and pieces and adding mysteries that don’t get solved, without making it frustrating or feeling like a tease.
43/2022 – ⭐️⭐️⭐️ 1983 Hugo Best Novel
I didn’t find this one to be a strong as the original trilogy, and Asimov’s writing style doesn’t seem to work for me in the context of other Hugo winners published around this time as much as it does with his earlier works. He’s still a very good SF writer, but more obviously one of an earlier era, in both style and in his fumbling around with female characters.
