poetsquib.com

I read a few sci fi books over summer

Jack McDevitt’s Omega is about mysterious clouds that move through the universe destroying civilisations. It’s about a human quest to save one such civilisation, that is in the path of an oncoming cloud. It’s pretty classic sci fi and I enjoyed it. To McDevitt’s credit, I hadn’t read the previous books and didn’t even realise it was a follow-up so it stands on its own very well

The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell was also very good. Russell is skilled at the gradual release of a story, holding bits back and winding you in until you have to know what the big mystery is. The only bit I didn’t like about the book was that God was mentioned on almost every page. However as the book was about a group of Jesuits, I guess I’m just being a wee bit picky

End of the World Blues by Jon Courtenay Grimwood is very different. If you can imagine Hayao Miyazaki’s Spirited Away fused with an anti-hero detective mobster story that is set in Japan, London, Amsterdam, and a futuristic place in the sky called High Strange, then you get the general idea. It was both very absorbing and original. My only gripe would be that sometimes I found it gratuitously sleazy in a geeky make sci-fi sort of way.Do we really need the book’s heroine dancing topless in a G-string?