Here I am with a dozen or so books to review, and no time to write a proper book review for each one of them, so lets agree on a book review blitz where you can see, in a glimpse, my reading habits and better target Internet advertisements at me. Or determine what book you should be reading next. Whatever.

Permutation City, by Greg Evans

Here’s a book that was suggested to me by Elisabeth Vonarburg during her 2008 writing workshop. She suggested it to me because it talks about the same topics than the short story I was submitting that year for the workshop; uploaded counciousness and time ratio difference between emulated-people time and meat-people time. I read the book over a long period of time, and never really got involved that much with the characters or story. The ending was a bit dissapointing.

The Ghost Brigades, by John Scalzi

I had liked John Scalzi’s Old Man’s War so much that I really couldn’t not read the sequel: The Ghost Brigades The book takes place after the first book, in the same univers, and with some of the same characters. As a human scientist betrays the Human race to help an alien species, a super-soldier tries to remember his former life.
The book is well-written, with a good balance of action, suspense, humour and dialogues. The book is really accessible, without being cliché, dumb or boring, even for the experienced science-fiction reader.

The Last Colony, by John Scalzi

When I learned that Scalzi’s 4th book in the Old Man’s War series had been nominated for the Hugos, I though I could not really read Zoe’s Tale before reading the 3rd book, The Last Colony. As with the 2nd book, this one share many of the same characters with Old Man’s War. It takes place a few years after The Ghost Brigades and picks up the story line nicely. The good thing about this series is that it’s not simply a tale of the characters fighting aliens. The whole universe evolves and the military and politic context in The Last Colony is a direct consequence of what happened in The Ghost Brigades. We follow Jane and John, the main characters of Old Man’s War as the lead a colonist group to setup an illegal colony on an isolated planet. The plot of the book is complex and really well done, although some of the events happening on the colony seem to have, in the end, really little impacts on the over-all story. Nonetheless, a good book that you must read if you’ve already commited to the first two books.

Anathem, by Neal Stephenson

I read Neal Stephenson’s Anathem as an audio book and, really, it’s a good thing because I would not have been able to read this book in the dead tree version. Anathem is a massive book, filled with long descriptions and dialogues (this won’t surprise you if you’ve read some of Neal Stephenson’s books before.) Being scholars, the dialogues between the characters tend toward phylosophy, sciences, and mind-blowing theories. This is the sorts of things that would turn me off when reading a book, but since I was listening to this book in my car, stuck in traffic, with nothing else to do but to pour audio content into my hears, I appreciated every single minute of this audio book. This is a good science-fiction book discussing parallel universes, quantum mechanic, time, consiousness, etc.

The Virga Trilogy, by Karl Schroeder

I’m in a hurry, so lets tackle this trilogy with one stone. The trilogy is made of (you’ve guessed right) three books: Sun of Suns, Queen of Candesce and Pirate Sun. Although it might seem to start as a weird fantasy tale, it becomes obvious early on that Virga is a science-fiction story, in the same universe as Ventus and Lady of Mazes. Virga is a huge (but, really, really huge) air bubble in deep space with a mechanical sun in its center. There is no gravity in Virga, so its inhabitants have to build constructs to generate gravity: town-wheels. The first book of the series, Sun of Suns, talks about a young rebel biker who gets enrolled in the enemy’s army as they set a plan in motion to destroy a huge dreadnought that is being build by a neighbour nation. As the first book ends, the main characters are divided, setting things up for the second book, Queen of Candesce.

This second book was not my favorite of the three. Although the events taking place in it are important in the story to come, it departs from the action-packed, military style of the first book. This second book is more about social and political interactions and the strange norms of the people living on a huge town-wheel. We move away from two of the three main characters of the first book to focus on, sadly, my least favorite of the three.

As the third book starts, we’re almost back to square one; that is, at the end of the first book. We’re back to following the young admiral we had met earlier in book one, as he escapes from prison and travels in enemy territory. This book is back to the level of action the first one offered, but introduces more science-fiction elements. A good ending to a good trilogy. The world pictured in Virga is rich, original and fertile for adventures; So much that a role-playing game company should license this universe.

Saturn’s Children, by Charles Stross

When Saturn’s children was nominated for the Hugos, I downloaded it as an ebook from the voter package and read through it in a few days in order to get ready to vote. Although it’s a good science-fiction book, I must admint it was not up to the level of the other books nominated this year. Saturn’s Children is a book taking place in a world where humans are extinct. A love robot gets enrolled as a spy to transport pink goo (i.e. a living egg) from Mercury to Saturn, and then gets stuck in the webs of factions fighting to rule over the solar system. In a nutshell: female James Bond meets Astroboy. Many things work, but some don’t. The main character is too much human, down to the way she was raised, etc. I see this book as a proof-of-concept challenge Charles Stross assigned himself. It’s a fun read, with a good balance between humour, mystery, action and… well… sex (even if there are no humans left to have sex with one another.)

Speaker for the Dead, by Orson Scott Card

The follow-up to Ender’s Game, Speaker for the Dead was actually the story that Orson Scott Card wanted to tell before he wrote Ender’s Game. It tells the story of Ender, the military genius who destroyed the only other intelligent race the human race ever met… until now. On this planet-wide ecological reserve, Ender gets called to speak the dead of two men who died some 20 years appart. But the natives of the planet learn that Ender is coming and want to talk to him, even if the human law prevents it. Speaker for the Dead is a science-fiction classic, written by a master of the genre. The audio book is well done, involving many actors to read the scenes from the many point-of-view characters.

The Graveyard Book, by Neil Gaiman

In my effort to get ready to vote for the Hugos, I read The Graveyard Book. This is the story of Nobody Owens, a young boy who gets raised by ghosts and undead creatures in a graveyard. The book is based on Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book and features many of the same archetypes and scenes. I have only been exposed to The Jungle Book through Disney’s adaptation, but I was able to relate to it as I was reading The Graveyard Book. It’s a good book, more for young adults than kids, but still an excellent book for adults. Oh, and, by the way, it actually did win the Hugo for Best Novel.

Daemon, by Daniel Suarez

I was looking for an audio book to buy with my Audible credit when my friend Simon suggested Daemon by Daniel Suarez. This is a geek’s book! The story is about a cop who ends up investigating the dead of a computer programmer who turn out to have been killed by a distributed software designed by a genius who had died recently. Although the concept of having a sentient software program is clearly in the science-fiction realm (well, as of today, at least) everything else in the book is merely applying technologies available today. It’s a captivating book, although I must admit I had trouble following all the viewpoint characters as they evolve through the story. It turns out this is part one of a series (which I wasn’t aware of) and I really can’t wait to read the rest of it.

American Gods, by Neil Gaiman

When Neil Gaiman was announced as Guest of Honor of the world science-fiction convention in Montréal, I realized I had not yet read a book by him. So I ordered American Gods from Amazon (and, in the end, read it as an eBook from an undisclosed source.) The day he walks out of prison, Shadow gets hired by a strange man. As he tags along, Shadow’s life become more and more strange. He meets a few gods, get bullied by men in black, and has a few chats with his dead wife. Old gods from the Europe, Africa and Asia are having a hard time in America as the Americans have forgotten them, living lives without faith in any god. The new gods (Media, Money, Internet, Car) want to give the final blow that will get rid of the old gods, but Odin and his friends will not go away without a fight. This is a really good book, although the build-up for the climax was a bit slow.

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Lectures by Alexandre Lemieux