User Profile

Paul

Paul@books.theunseen.city

Joined 5 months ago

I will read pretty much anything, although my preferences tend to veer towards Science Fiction (especially Space Opera) and Fantasy (especially Epic Fantasy).

You can also find me on Mastodon

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Paul's books

Currently Reading

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2023 Reading Goal

30% complete! Paul has read 9 of 30 books.

The Scout Mindset (Paperback, Portfolio) 4 stars

Thinking about thinking

4 stars

Thinking about thinking is a subject that I often find interesting. With The Scout Mindset, Julia Galef does a good job of both summarising what we know and providing a framework for looking at how we think, and how we can improve our thinking.

This is a very solid book and one that is well worth reading.

Dark Between the Trees (2022, Rebellion, Solaris) 3 stars

1643: A small group of Parliamentarian soldiers are ambushed in an isolated part of Northern …

Promising, but disappointing

3 stars

A promising, if ultimately disappointing, slice of folk horror. There is a lot to like in this book but it lets itself down somewhat with a very homogeneous collection of characters that remain very difficult to care about.

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Doors of Eden (2020, Orbit) 4 stars

This really parallels my universes

3 stars

It's one of those Adrian Tchaikovsky novels that has alternatively-evolved sapient animals in it, but it also has an unexpected amount of queer characters. Tchaikovsky tends to be good at the former, and this book is not an exception; he also handles the latter well enough, though if you are not okay with bigotry exhibited by some of the more contemptible characters being part of the plot, you may want to skip this one.

The novel starts out kind of slow and takes a while to ramp up while you want to scream at the characters to figure it out already. In the middle, it may seem to be a bit predictable, although it does take some interesting twists in the last third, which subverts that impression a bit.

Overall, a fun parallel universe story, if you're into that sort of thing, even if not an exceptional one.

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The Long Earth (Paperback, 2013, Corgi Books) 4 stars

Terry Pratchett, other than lending his name to this book, wasn't a part of it. …

I loved it! Such a good book and I can't wait for the next in the series. Not sure how the authors can sustain this for 5 books, but then again it is Terry! He has form for creating new and believable worlds, and other trouser legs of time...