melreads: text: "I think the sub-text here is rapidly becoming text." (buffy)
(always possibility of spoilers here!! - especially for later Expanse books, in this case)

Monday, July 24
I was thinking about two-author books. The only thing I know about how "Corey" works is that they started out with one of them writing Holden and the other writing Miller. That reminded me of the books that Patricia Wrede wrote with Caroline Stevener (which were literally an exchange of letters, in real life, as I understand it) - starting with Sorcery and Cecilia. Those are basically Regency with magic - the first one is an out-and-out romance, too (only with magic). I think I may need to re-read that.

(It occurs to me to wonder if the idea for Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell came from that. Same combination of Regency and magic.)

Tuesday
I'm finishing up Cibola Burn, and the last time I read the epilogue I must've been totally skimming, because it lays down a foundation for the rest of the books in a way I didn't really take in before. (I can see missing it before I read the others, but that was a while ago now.) The gist: once Mars' population starts leaving for the gates in significant numbers, the Martian terraforming project will fail, so Mars as a civilization fails too. Nobody needs their natural resources when they can get them beyond the gates - and that means the immediately valuable thing left is their military might - leading to Marco and Laconia and all that.)

Friday
It's early and I can't sleep so I thought maybe writing would clear my brain a bit and help me sleep. I can't say I really have anything brilliant to say about books at the moment, though. I did read straight through Sorcery and Cecilia the other night. There are two more books in that series, but I don't think I have the second one any more, only the third. Which is a shame, because even if the third one is better than the second (which it is), I'd still like to re-read the whole series, not just 2/3 of it.

melreads: Text: "The earth is doomed" (it's a Buffy quote) (Buffy: earth is doomed)
Beware -  definite spoilers here!

Saturday, July 18, 2020
Finished Abaddon's Gate. I guess moving on to... what's the name of the next one, I can't think. The one on the planet beyond the gate, anyway. (Cibola Burn, I just looked.) I need to look up Cibola, I don't what it means beyond what Trashcan Man says in The Stand. A mythical city? My grasp of mythology beyond the very basics of Greek and Roman gods is tenuous.

Let's see, before we move on, do I have more thoughts about Abaddon? Don't really understand that reference either, beyond Abaddon being a Big Bad. These guys, meaning the authors (I can't think of them as one person) write such good characters. Sam dying feels like a punch in the gut. (I also think of the revelation way later that she and Pa were lovers. Doesn't surprise me that Sam would like girls, but there's hardly even any inference that she knows Pa to speak of. Sam's been on Tycho and I mostly never got the impression that Pa was, although maybe I'm wrong. Anyway, never occurred to me at all.)

Sunday a.m.
I forget every time how depressing Cibola Burn is - actually all these books are pretty depressing, come to that. Dropping rocks on Earth, for god's sake - and we haven't even gotten to that part yet! By that standard, Cibola Burn's terrorists and alien robots and killer snails are minor-league.

Monday
Well into Cibola Burn now - well 10%, according to Kindle. (Still getting rolling, but not the very beginning.) I was thinking that nowadays my brain registers this duality: I think of the characters and I also think of the way the authors are setting things up, to play out later in the book. I think as time goes on I see it from the authors' POV more and more. Maybe that's why I have trouble getting quite as immersed in books in general the way I used to. Or, I don't know, maybe I've been that way for years and I'm just now noticing. (Some of that definitely came from being an English major, though. I think before that, I was oblivious.)

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melreads: Text: "The earth is doomed" (it's a Buffy quote) (Default)
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