Foreigner, C.J. Cherryh

I got interested in the characters and situation, then it skipped forward a hundred years. I got interested in the new characters and situations, then it skipped forward two hundred years. At this point, I decided not to get too invested in the third protagonist, and of course that was the one who lasted the rest of the book. Unfortunately, his story was less interesting than the other two, and so was he. When it petered out, I took a look at reviews of the second one, and decided that I didn’t care enough about a thinly-disguised story of high-tech white colonialism backfiring because they just can’t understand the native black culture.

Od Magic, Harrowing The Dragon, Alphabet of Thorn, *The Book of

Atrix Wolfe*, Patricia A. McKillip

Always reliably entertaining, McKillip’s backlist is getting more reasonably priced on Amazon. None of these really jumped out at me as exceptional, but they’re all good. I have a few more on my ‘overpriced’ Kindle list, and if they ever drop below $10, I’ll buy them.

Shadows & Reflections: A Roger Zelazny Tribute Anthology

A bunch of good authors either writing their own stories in one of Zelazny’s worlds, or earnestly attempting to emulate his prose style in their own worlds. Honestly, it made me wish they’d just written their own worlds in their own styles. Especially Brust.

A Blink of the Screen: Collected Shorter Fiction, Terry Pratchett

An oddball mix of material from across his career. For some of the early stuff, the commentary is better than the story.

Tfimes Three, Robert Silverberg

Three time-travel novels. Not his best, but well worth the cover price.

A Dirty Job, Christopher Moore

The last truly fresh Moore novel I read was Bloodsucking Fiends. Several years ago, I gave up on this one in the first chapter. This time I was more in the mood for it, but not enough that I’d pay $11+ for the sequel. Maybe $7 on a good day.

Northwest Smith, C.L. Moore

Classic SF short stories that I’d only ever seen a few of. Good stuff, but it made me wish she’d written at least one story where Smith didn’t run into some sort of Lovecraftian horror, and just dealt with the SFnal side of his universe.

The Planetary Adventures of Eric John Stark, Leigh Brackett

More classic shorts from another of the legendary women of SF that the current gatekeepers like to pretend never existed. Maybe because she wrote about strong men and feminine women…

Norstrilia, Cordwainer Smith

I’d only ever read The Ballad of Lost C’Mell, not realizing that she’s a major player in this novel. Good stuff, of the sort you just can’t get outside of indie any more.

I’m still waiting on the final Pennyverse novel, currently in small-press limbo. Meanwhile, I’ve got Poul Anderson’s The Corridors of Time and C.L. Moore’s Jirel of Joiry downloaded and ready to go. In the queue to buy are Gordon R. Dickson’s Dorsai! and Theodore Sturgeon’s Selected Stories.

Change of plans!

New Ethshar novel released three weeks ago.

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