2.5 Stars
Earthdivers Vol.2: Ice Age by Stephen Graham Jones
Page Count: 104I personally didn't love the sequel. The art style is nice, but it doesn't make clear what is going on in terms of which character is in what timeline or its a flashback or dream or something that's really happening. Because of that the story itself was a little all over the place. I understand that it is upping the ante from the first book but there had to be a better way to do it. I was also dissapointed that there was no major followup on the story line from the first book, which made a pretty big change to history, so I was hoping to see how that changed the future but we just don't see it. Or we might have but it was so confusing I just totally missed it. Will not be continuing the series, but I might try another graphic novel, as I obviously don't have a lot of practice reading them.
3 Stars
Ancient, my Enemy by Gordon R. Dickson
Page Count: 206This was a short story collection, so it fell into the trap where some stories are good and some aren't. The stories are very of their time (1974), which means they are quite hopeful and have an overall positive outlook on humans/humanity, although sometimes it feels a little too optimistic as to be completely unbelieveable. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't, I think in works in Tiger Green, but not in Monkey Wrench. Unless you are a die hard sci fi fan this book is probably a skip.
3 Stars
This Alien Shore by C.S. Friedman
Page Count: 564GIRLY POP DUNE (complimentary). I love this book! This is an example of world building done right, every chapter you learn something new about the world and it deepens your understanding of eveything that happened proir. There is very little info dumping, which is impressive considering that Friedman's world is as complex and intricate as in Dune. For worlds that complex it is very difficult to immerse the reader slowly but surely. This novel also tackles a lot of common sci fi themes in a differnt light, for example exploring what is alien vs human while not falling into the trap of making all the aliens caricatures. It also, similarily to Dune has a main character whose mind is not all their own, and I would say that Friedman is better than Herbert in fleshing this out and showing how it affects the character on story on the page. I also appreciate that the protagonist is a woman, something you don't see as much in older sci fi. This is as much Jamisia's coming of age story as it is a well written epic science fiction. I will likely do a more detailed review on a second read.