Archive for the ‘Reviews of books’ Category
Ashes of Candesce
{4.5/5} “That’s our true enemy… Velleity means ‘having a vague desire to do something, but not enough will to actually do it.’ If we take our message of urgent action around to the nations of Virga, that’s what we’re going to get: a vague interest, some desultory waves of the hand, and no commitment… So, […]
The Sunless Countries
{4.5/5} “Her hands and feet had taken the whole weight of her body so that while she seemed to be sitting in her chair, in reality she hovered a fraction of an inch above it. For long seconds she sat, paralyzed in midflight or midattack by a decade of self-taught lessons in how to play […]
Pirate Sun
{4.5/5} “She saw infinite patience there, the look of a man who has long ago abandoned himself to his role in life. It came to her that he knew what was coming, had plotted out each of her moves as on a chessboard, long before she spoke or acted. He knew what she intended, and […]
Queen of Candesce
{4.5/5} “Eventually she moved over to the window and picked up a particular doll. Its tunic was ripped where the secret policemen had cut it open looking for hidden notes… So that’s what he’d been doing. Albard had rubbed its eyebrows off against the stone. Then, in meticulous tiny lines and curls, he had repainted […]
Sun of Suns
{4.5/5} “The shells of cloud that enveloped the center of Virga sometimes parted, revealing the sun of suns, Candesce. Daylight would suddenly flash out to fill the entire volume of winter. Each time, Hayden had stood on the air, amazed at the brilliance of it — at the sheer size of an ancient, untended fusion […]
Cage of Souls
{4.5/5} “Will you even remember, yourself? No, your minds contract so that nothing but that awful city is in it. You will forget that there are other ways of living. Even Stefan here, who writes brave words about how to save the world, never dreamed of living outside Shadrapar. If the city can be saved, […]
Past Imperative
{4.5/5} “If a man is prophesied to die in battle and you poison him first at his dinner table, then you have invalidated the entire prophecy, you see? … If any one statement is clearly discredited, then the future described is no longer valid and none of the rest of the prophecy applies anymore. If […]
Legends & Lattes
{4.5/5} “She ducked under the lintel and entered, and there was a momentary drop in the conversational volume, but Thune was pretty cosmopolitan, and orcs weren’t unknown, just a little unusual. The noise picked right back up. She took a deep breath and tried to relax her face into a non-threatening expression, something she’d been […]
The Dispossessed
{5/5} “The only security we have is our neighbors’ approval. An archist can break a law and hope to get away unpunished, but you can’t ‘break’ a custom; it’s the framework of your life with other people. We’re only just beginning to feel what it’s like to be revolutionaries… And it isn’t comfortable.” The Dispossessed […]
Starplex
{5/5} “Each person contemplated the small fuzzy blot of light that would give rise to all of them, contemplated the fact that they were farther out in space than anyone had ever been before, contemplated the vastly empty darkness all around them. Six billion light-years.” Starplex by Robert J. Sawyer, published in 1996 Due to […]