Not bad, Mr. Mieville, not bad. I didn’t know if I’d like a non-Bas-Lag book by China Mieville, but Embassytown was a very interesting world.

Set in a world far, far in the future long after the human diaspora (after faster-than-light travel is discovered), Embassytown tells the story of a group of humans who have taken residence on a planet inhabited by a race they call only the “Hosts.” The name is given in deference to the permission the humans have obtained to live on the Hosts’ planet — a permission obtained with some difficulty, since the Hosts’ do not recognise other creatures than themselves as being sentient.

There’s also a brief B-plot about the “Immer,” which sounds a lot like the “Immaterium” present in the Warhammer 40K universe… :p Basically it’s a sort of sub-space that a craft can enter to travel long distances — very, very long distances, such as from galaxy to galaxy, halfway across the universe. The main character is one of the rare people who can pilot ships through the Immer, as most peoples’ minds go “slack” and they vomit uncontrollably the entire time they’re inside of it.

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God, I can’t get enough of CJ Cherryh’s world. This book follows the life of a group of miners who live their lives in the “Belt” here in our own solar system. The theme of “heavy time” — necessary time they must spend in 1g gravity aboard space stations in between mining runs (there’s no artificial gravity in this world) — is ongoing throughout the novel.

It’s a story set in the time before the Company/Union wars, when life was tough for those ruled by the Earth Company, and personal ships in the belt were largely at the mercy of directed “beams” of energy (caught by large sails) sent from mining station HQ’s. The people are hesitant about the future — they know the strength of the Union that lives in the “Beyond,” as they call it, and they live in constant fear of some great big rock being dropped into their system at relativistic speeds, aimed straight towards Earth.

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Was a very good book — very good continuation of the last one that focused mainly on Rand (this one was all Mat and Perrin). Like I’m sure some others may feel, I felt that the final, glorious showdown between Mat and those that lived in the world of the Aelfin and Eelfin was a little… rushed. Still good, just rushed. I mean, we had been waiting for this showdown and the possible rescuing of Moraine for a long, long, long time (when did she disappear — the bloody 5th book?)

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Great book — I’ve got to read more of this series. It’s part of the "Ringworld" universe, but doesn’t deal with that story line directly. It’s a bit of a side-story dealing with, well, the dealings of the Puppeteer race and their dealings with humankind before the Ringworld was found. Great writing, great characters.

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Honestly, this book is like "The Jungle" for our times, just it takes place in PC farms in Malaysia, India, and China. Interspaced a few times throughout the story of the characters are a few chapters about the economic principles of an increasingly multi-national world, written in a easy to understand fashion. The chapters that take place in China seem authentic with the current economic conditions there (low-educated workers streaming in from the countryside to be taken advantage of in the city-based factories).

The chapters in China with "Jie" (the pirate-broadcasting girl) — her introduction at all, really — seem a bit contrived, but hey: it’s a story. I’ll forgive it, and it helps move the book along.

I particularly liked the chapters dealing with the MMORPG "headquarters" — I can almost imagine a room like controlling World of Warcraft, subtly changing game mechanics and coefficients to keep players hooked.

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Seriously — and I hate to say this — it was almost better than the last few books written by Jordan himself. :X

The amount of characters are kept to a minimum — the action is easy to follow, and you don’t feel yourself being overwhelmed by characters being introduced that you may have not read about in years. My only criticism — and it’s small — may be that perhaps some of the character interactions aren’t fleshed out enough… but no, I’m not going to go there. I’m happy with the way it’s written.

Rand, in particular, develops into an incredibly interesting character in this book — I personally thought his development had stagnated just a bit, and The Gathering Storm has certainly made up for that!

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I have to admit, the series got much better as it went along! I didn’t completely like the direction it took in this book (what happened to the Second Foundation? Would’ve liked to have seen a bit more of them), and the ending, though still good, was maybe a bit too "oh no! tune in next week!" for my tastes. But other than, a great ending to a great series!

Now to the final, last, prequel book.

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Hey, not bad for supposedly "YA" fiction — wonderful SF-fantasy themes in an apparently rich world. What more can you want?

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Not bad, not bad — better than the first three (learned that this book was written almost 25 years after the others!).

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Wonderful, wonderful book. Seems to almost be more about the human element involved in maintaining a society that’s on the verge of collapse than it is about zombies — the zombies are almost just the backdrop for the story, only referred to as Z’s or "Zack."

This book will make you want to go outside and meet your neighbors for the first time — to make you wonder just how much "stuff" you really need to be happy.

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