Miscellany – September 2008

September has been a terrible month. Too many things to do, too little space in which to do them, and what seems like a thousand people to appease. Nevertheless, I've managed to appease the library shelves.

1. Steve Augarde's Celandine is a worthy sequel to The Various, reviewed two posts ago. The mythical and eponymous Celandine, who brought a higher form of civilisation to some of the Various and seriously perturbed the rest, is revealed as another human girl, plunged during wartime into the odd world of the little people. The book isn't quite a sequel; it's perhaps more of a prequel, and yet a centrepiece. This is a trilogy, and for once it doesn't seem as if the second book is just filler.

2. John Scalzi's The Last Colony has a lot in common with Heinlein and Niven, with Joe Haldeman thrown in. It's the third member of a series begin in Old Man's War, and reads a little bit like Haldeman's The Forever War crossed with All My Dreams Remembered, interpreted by Niven and humanised by Heinlein. John Perry and his family are tapped to start up a new colony for all kinds of dastardly political reasons, are on the brink of destruction, pull their fat out of the fire just in time by conning the alien commander into a very bad situation, and are home in time for dinner.

3. All that was pretty engaging, but the material covers roughly as much as Larry Niven's Fleet of Worlds, co-written with Edward Lerner. This one is a worthy addition to Niven's Known Space universe; as a tale told on its own it is also pretty good. The story is one about humans working in tandem with a wiser, more powerful space-faring race of kindly mentors, only to find out that they are servitors to a bunch of ruthless pathological cowards... what's even more fun is when you're a long-time fan of Niven and can spot the references to earlier tales of Known Space.

4. Sometimes, a man's gotta do what a man's gotta do. Especially if the dead man you just met is your long lost brother. And that's more or less what Lee Child's Killing Floor is all about. That and a town that reminds me of a certain Stepford. Between him and G M Ford, I now know what to do when I am bored and need a quick change of pace. Oh yes, I ought to put Clive Cussler here too. Although they are all very different, and Ford's probably the best.

September was a terrible month. Sigh.