I've recently finished two Star Trek books: Crisis of Consciousness and Troublesome Minds both by Dave Galanter. Both novels do a really great job at capturing the personalities and interactions between all the characters, and both are totally accurate to The Original Series. They both investigate interesting forms of telepathy in the universe, and put the Enterprise in the center of conflicts, acting as a sort of intermediary. I highly recommend them!

My son was a reluctant reader and then he picked up a "Horrible Histories" book and he's taken off. He's 8 but has a higher reading age.

This is a surprisingly tricky age range to buy books for. There's loads of stuff for 6-8 year olds, and there's a load of stuff for 13+ (which contains things which aren't really suitable for him right at the moment). There aren't many books aimed at tweens.

So I'm reading a bunch of children's books to find out what's in them so that we're prepared for any questions he might have.

I've finished The Tetris Effect: The Game that Hypnotized the World by Dan Ackerman. After some initial sections which were biographical and psychological, most of the book was just about the wheeling and dealing involved in selling and obtaining the rights to distribute Tetris. But it was never boring. Mr Ackerman had obviously done his research, including talking to the major players. I felt like I was right there, with each of the people as the events occurred, It was a fascinating insight into how big business works, and how it can sometimes come down to personalities rather than economics.

I've still got the Mordant's Need duology on the go. After I finished 'The Tetris Effect', I moved 'Mordant's Need' into my main reading slot.

Until yesterday. Yesterday I went book shopping. And, I gave in to temptation and bought Astounding: John W. Campbell, Isaac Asimov, Robert A. Heinlein, L. Ron Hubbard, and the Golden Age of Science Fiction at full price (I've been waiting for it to move to the bargain bookstores I normally frequent). And I've already read about a quarter of it.

It's like a four-way biography, with a primary focus on Campbell, but with lots of space also devoted to Asimov, Heinlein, and Hubbard. (Maybe a 40:20:20:20 split between the four?)

Those of you who were arguing with me in the thread about the John W Campbell Award being renamed will be pleased to know that this book pulls no punches. Everyone is being presented in full detail, warts and all. Noone comes out of this smelling like roses.

The four men had one thing in common: they were all precociously intelligent children, and they each became, in their own different ways, over-confident arrogant men. Apart from that, they varied greatly. But Campbell appears to have been the worst of the four.

It's still interesting to see how they all grew up, how their paths crossed, and (I expect in later parts of the book) how they influenced the development of science fiction.

Right now I'm rereading the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous again, as well as Pet Sematary by Stephen King. I'm only about a third of the way through the latter, but I'm liking it so far!

Just finished up DC Comics' 52 where the premise is that a massive universe ending event has been adverted, but Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman are indisposed for about a year afterwards and the world adjusts to their absence. I liked it, and it kinda felt like a big TV show or a novel in scope, in that it follows a bunch of characters around and all of there plots intersect and bounce off one another, but it is pretty unfocused due to the nature of it being written week by week across an entire year.

I've been reading The Signal and The Noise by Nate Silver, it's actually a really interesting analysis of predictions and how they may succeed/fail. I'd recommend it just for the explanation of how statistics invaded baseball alone.

Decided that for the next 2 weeks I think I'm going to read something different from my normal fantasy and scifi stuff. Read some stuff that is a bit more grounded in reality, hope that a change makes things a bit more interesting.

Vicious by V.E. Schwab

Series: Villains Book 1

I enjoyed reading this book, the characters and story just felt really good and interesting to read. Though I'm disappointed at the build up and completion of the actual main plot.

The characters all have various interesting quirks and unique features. They all feel special, and play very important roles in the story. I never felt that one character wasn't necessary, or that somebody was just a waste. They all just came together in a way I felt was very satisfying.

And the story itself I found to be a rather good page turner. I kept wanting to come back and keep reading, see the next twist and where things were going from here. How things would change, and how the characters abilities would come into play. But I did have a rather major issue with the story and development.

This book I feel was too short, and was far too compact. The story takes place largely over just a couple days, and it makes all the planning and manipulation feel weak. It didn't feel like this was a battle between two very smart people, the build up was weak and disappointing. What I feel it needed was more development and plans, seeing the two characters battle each other in minor battles for weeks trying to maneuver your opponent into place before the final confrontation. But it doesn't have any of that, it starts and ends so fast I don't feel like the characters really showed off their skills and abilities to make the victory feel deserved.

So overall while I really enjoyed it, and kept reading and coming back. The main reason for me to read the book, a good solid battle showing their strengths and strategies, just never occurred and left me feeling disappointed.

Score: 3/5

Mark of Fire by Richard Philips

Series: The Endarian Prophecy Book 1

I found this book to be rather generic and uninteresting after a sort while. Nothing in this book felt like a really original idea, and it wasn't all that well put together with his method of writing. It felt like he had a list of places, ideas, and people he wanted in the book. Than tried to fill in the space between them to put things together.

The ideas never felt like they escaped the realm of generic fantasy tropes I've read many times before. We have a prophecy that involves a dark lord with a massive army and this has happened before in the past. We have the romance trope of not being good enough for the other. The cast runs into a haunted evil castle that has some back story, never does get explained, in order to escape a threat. The dark lords city stays hidden via magical macguffin for thousands of years without issue, until the heros stumble upon it.

At times the characters will escape an event through complete deus ex machina. It feels like he created this location and wanted to use it. But once he wrote the characters into it, he didn't know how to extract the characters. So he just kinda made something work, regardless of it being something that really works logically.

The characters didn't impress me really, Carol grows in her abilities way too fast with very little restrictions. And Blade felt like he was so much more powerful than any of the other characters he was around, an assassin shouldn't be all powerful rushing through a large crowd of enemies and in fact should be struggling. And the side characters felt underdeveloped and just doing the same things over and over.

I would have to say that while the book had good editing and didn't discover any issues with that. It doesn't really do much to make it original or interesting to a fantasy fan. It uses all the same tropes and ideas that fantasy has been using for years, but doesn't give you any interesting curve balls or characters to make it feel new and interesting.

Score: 2/5

I have been reading through Leviathan Wakes the first novel in the expanse series.

I am about half way through it and am very smitten. Its some of the best science fiction I have ever read, and I have read quite a lot.

Just started Children of Ruin. Children of Time might be my favorite read of the year so I'm hoping this one is just as good. It's about uplifted animals à la David Brin. A well constructed plot and good writing kept me turning pages.

Also just read Steering the Craft by Ursula Le Guin. She was an amazing writer so I enjoyed reading her insights. Gave me a lot of to think about regarding the writing process. It's exercise oriented so if you wanted to practice some different techniques it would be a good read for ya.

I'm currently reading The Great Railroad Revolution by Christian Wolmar. I find it a little bit of a slog because the paragraphs are incredibly long but it's quite interesting. It's about the growth of the railroad in the United States. I'm about halfway through which corresponds to the last quarter of the nineteenth century.

I finished The Soul of a New Machine by Tracy Kidder the other day. The book lagged a bit in the middle but overall it was a really riveting read and a great look at what drives people to do what they do. All of the people involved in the development process that the book follows were very interesting people, and the character of Tom West is reason enough to read the book. Such a unique guy.

Next up I think is Foundation by Isaac Asimov. I'm gonna try to knock that out so I can read some spooky books come October.