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#24. Flash by L.E. Modesitt, Jr. 4. Most of Modesitt's work consists of elaborate world-building to justify a regretful hyper-competent guy getting to assassinate a bunch of people while still being morally justified. Since his targets of choice are usually abusive corporations or warmongering would-be conquerors, I'm mostly ok with it. As expected, this protagonist, who's ostensibly a marketing consultant, spends most of the book earnestly wishing he didn't have to kill as many people as he ends up killing (with great creativity). Bonus points for dumping him with plot moppets that actually do impact his worldview. He does a lot of juggling babysitters to make sure someone's watching the kids while he's setting ambushes.
#25. Space Opera by Catherynne M. Valente. 5. If Douglas Adams decided to make a washed out Freddy Mercury clone his protagonist. Apparently written based on a drunken tweet about Eurovision in space, this is deliriously hilarious, with emphasis on delirious. She never met a phrase she didn't like, and piles them the way Chicago natives treat hot dog toppings. Read the first chapter on Tor.com. You will love it or hate it. If you love the first three paragraphs, you will love the whole thing.
#26. The Arabian Nights ed. by Andrew Lang. 3? The edition I ended up with has been unapologetically bowdlerized, I'm afraid. At some point, I'll need to hunt down an edition that did not have things removed to be considered appropriate for children and Westerners. That said, what was left was mostly delightful...for a while. The extreme nestedness of some of the stories is entertaining and then a little irritating. More of a problem is the fact that towards the end, they start getting rather repetitive. Most unforgivably, this edition doesn't actually contain the end to Scheherazade's story.
#27. Shadows of Self by Brandon Sanderson. 4. More Western-y magical swashbuckling, now with more details on everyone's backstories. Sanderson continues to introduce new level bosses for his characters to defeat, with hints at a new Big Bad. This one ends with a twist that's impressively set-up and suitably devastating. (Also, Steris is starting to really grow on me.)
#28. Head On by John Scalzi. 4. If you liked Lock In, you'll like this one. (World-building-wise, it would help to read the first one. Plotwise, though, this stands alone.) Scalzi continues to explore the implications of a world where a certain percentage of the population are conscious but completely unable to move their bodies while building fast-paced mysteries taking advantage of the quirks of said world.
#29. From a Certain Point of View by multiple authors. 3.5. 40 Star Wars short stories, each exploring the viewpoint of a minor character from Episode IV. (In movie chronological order.) There's a number of fun stories here, although some of them get a little repetitive. (There are a lot more characters in the cantina or the final battle than, say, Luke meeting Ben, so we see some events over and over and over.) I'll admit, previous (much older) collections like Tales from the Cantina are somewhat more fun because of the lack of limitation - each character has to intersect the main plot somehow, so there's a limit to how much mischief they can get up to. But many are quite a lot of fun.
#30. Hatchet by Gary Paulsen. 4. I loved this book when I read it back in elementary school, and I wondered how it held up. I still love the survival aspects of this story of a 13 year old boy stranded in the wilderness for two months. Not so crazy about the obsessive focus on his mother's infidelity, which never gels thematically. But a nice reminder of my kid-surviving-in-wilderness obsession phase.
#25. Space Opera by Catherynne M. Valente. 5. If Douglas Adams decided to make a washed out Freddy Mercury clone his protagonist. Apparently written based on a drunken tweet about Eurovision in space, this is deliriously hilarious, with emphasis on delirious. She never met a phrase she didn't like, and piles them the way Chicago natives treat hot dog toppings. Read the first chapter on Tor.com. You will love it or hate it. If you love the first three paragraphs, you will love the whole thing.
#26. The Arabian Nights ed. by Andrew Lang. 3? The edition I ended up with has been unapologetically bowdlerized, I'm afraid. At some point, I'll need to hunt down an edition that did not have things removed to be considered appropriate for children and Westerners. That said, what was left was mostly delightful...for a while. The extreme nestedness of some of the stories is entertaining and then a little irritating. More of a problem is the fact that towards the end, they start getting rather repetitive. Most unforgivably, this edition doesn't actually contain the end to Scheherazade's story.
#27. Shadows of Self by Brandon Sanderson. 4. More Western-y magical swashbuckling, now with more details on everyone's backstories. Sanderson continues to introduce new level bosses for his characters to defeat, with hints at a new Big Bad. This one ends with a twist that's impressively set-up and suitably devastating. (Also, Steris is starting to really grow on me.)
#28. Head On by John Scalzi. 4. If you liked Lock In, you'll like this one. (World-building-wise, it would help to read the first one. Plotwise, though, this stands alone.) Scalzi continues to explore the implications of a world where a certain percentage of the population are conscious but completely unable to move their bodies while building fast-paced mysteries taking advantage of the quirks of said world.
#29. From a Certain Point of View by multiple authors. 3.5. 40 Star Wars short stories, each exploring the viewpoint of a minor character from Episode IV. (In movie chronological order.) There's a number of fun stories here, although some of them get a little repetitive. (There are a lot more characters in the cantina or the final battle than, say, Luke meeting Ben, so we see some events over and over and over.) I'll admit, previous (much older) collections like Tales from the Cantina are somewhat more fun because of the lack of limitation - each character has to intersect the main plot somehow, so there's a limit to how much mischief they can get up to. But many are quite a lot of fun.
#30. Hatchet by Gary Paulsen. 4. I loved this book when I read it back in elementary school, and I wondered how it held up. I still love the survival aspects of this story of a 13 year old boy stranded in the wilderness for two months. Not so crazy about the obsessive focus on his mother's infidelity, which never gels thematically. But a nice reminder of my kid-surviving-in-wilderness obsession phase.
