What is on my nightstand this week: quick reads edition
Picked up two short novels from TOR, Stone Mad by Elizabeth Bear and Killing Gravity by Corey J. White.
Stone Mad is the sequel to Karen Memory, set in the same steampunk Wild West filled with colorful characters and everyone’s favorite sewing machine. Starting off a year or so after the events of the first book, Stone Mad starts off with an interrupted dinner and delves into the world of magicians and spiritualist with a bit of magic, maybe, and fantastic creatures. If you have not met Karen and the world of Rapid City then I would say pick-up Karen Memory, but if you know Karen and the rest of the cast then this book is a great romp through that world and like visiting dear friends.
Killing Gravity is a space opera that reminds me of some other space operas I have read of late, but not in a bad way and it brings to the table enough good ideas and some interesting characters to overcome that and stand on its own. Structured as a serial Killing Gravity wastes no time throwing the reader right in and starting off with a bang. We follow Mariam and her pet Seven, a genetically modified cat-thing, as they bounce from almost dying derelict in space to being hunted to a pretty fantastic raid on a space station and around a swamp planet and on. There are a bunch of ideas about culture in space, how humans would adapt, and space travel in general all tied up into a pretty tight narrative. Even the AIs are more interesting than the typical voice operated computer in most space opera. I will be reading the follow-up and so should you. Oh, and there are epic scale psychic powers, as well.
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