So I've read a bunch of pretty good books lately. I finished off the God King Chronicles - I'd read
The Black Coast about a year ago and read the second two,
The Splinter King and
The Godbreaker back to back just recently. This was a really cool trilogy, and I think it could contniue if Brooks wanted to because there are a few storylines that only kind of end. It covers quite a few themes, from sociopolitical philosophy to gender politics to class struggle to the power religious fervor can wield. I thought it got better and better as it went. One thing I particularly liked about it was how you could see Brooks did his homework on creating cultures within the world he built - the different cultures involved in the story are clearly based on real ethnic groups through history (e.g., the Tjakorshi are pretty much the Danes of the Viking age, even their naming conventions follow the Icelandic tradition for last names inferring parentage but in a slightly different way.)
I also read a couple of nonfiction books in my favorite genre (exploration disaster!) I've read a bunch of these stories and some of my all-time favorite books are in this genre -
Skeletons on the Zahara is one I read probably 15 or 20 years ago that stands out as probably the most incredible real life story I've ever read. In general, I think these stories mostly seem to come down to some variation of a few finite themes - like "stunning hubris in the face of nature", "genuine heroism" and "just plain old bad luck" to name a few. The ones I read recently were very different in the specific subjects they covered, but all three of those themes are all over the place in both. The first was "
Empire of Ice and Stone" about the disaster of a polar exploration ship called The Karluk in the early 20th century. It's a pretty amazing survival story with plenty of moments of both incredible fortitude and stunning callousness on the part of different characters. The second was
Buried in the Sky, the story of the 2008 disaster on K2 when 11 people died in the span of just two days. That one is kind of haunting because, unlike in many other climbing disaster stories where you see that a big part of the reason things went south was due to the deadly combination of inexperience and bad luck, this one seems to have been perhaps the most preventable because every single one of the people on the mountain that day were experienced and more than adept at recognizing the dangers in front of them before things got out of hand and yet they all chose to ignore it until things got past the point of no return. It's incredible that as many of them survived as did, and while I sort of recall there being a big blowback about what happened then at the time, I never realized just how justified that blowback was. The survivors should absolutely feel the full burden of blame for what went on up there because every single one of them knew enough to know they should have turned back well before things got out of hand. At any rate, both of these books did a really excellent job handling the material.
I read two books just this week that were really just fantastic. First, I read Alastair Reynolds
Eversion. I actually figured out exactly what was going on before the twist was revealed (I think most people who read enough sci-fi will) but it didn't matter because Reynolds really is a great writer and the story was still riveting. This was the first book I've read by Reynolds, but I'll definitely want to check out some more after this.
Finally, I read MR Carey's
Infinity Gate. This was just recently published and its the first book in what will be his "Pandominion Series" (not sure if it'll be a trilogy or something bigger yet.) I cannot say enough about how much I enjoyed this story. Easily one of the best books I've read in the last few years. I enjoyed every second of it. It's about a multiverse where multiple different earths join together in a loose resource trade coalition called the Pandominion made possible by the discovery of interdimensional travel. Every single part of this just worked for me. Even the elements that require the suspension of disbelief (on my part - not necessarily universally) were absolutely fine for the story. My only disappointment is that because it's so new I now have to wait at least a year to continue it. I cannot recommend this one enough - I was sucked in completely from the first paragraph in chapter 0.