Final books of 2017

[bluegargantua]

Hey,

A little late, but here are the last two books I read through for 2017. The second one I mostly finished in 2018 but I started it in 2017 so it still counts.

First up, Ruin of Angels by Max Gladstone. This is the sixth novel in his Craft Sequence of fantasy novels and, as usual, it was a great read.  Generally, each of the stories in the Craft Sequence is stand-alone (much appreciated) but this book pulls in a couple of major characters from previous novels.

The city of Alikand is a city sitting on a magical battle site that makes reality a bit fluid.  Currently, the Iskari have moved in and are enforcing a specific reality to keep people from going mental.  To Alikand comes Kai Pohala (the offshore god creator from Full Fathom Five) searching for her sister who has sent a cryptic message suggesting she's in trouble.  Kai meets with her sister Ley, but she's fishing for a huge infusion of cash for some secret art project of hers.  Kai rebuffs her and then things go sideways.  In the process, Kai meets up with Tara Abernathy who's working for the Iskari but not necessarily with them.  Together they have to unravel a complex mystery while Ley goes off to rob a train traveling in a god-wracked wasteland.

I mean, it's a Craft Sequence book.  I love this series and the writing remains top-notch.  Great characters, quote-worthy dialogue, and a crisp plot, what can I say?  Go read this guy's work.

Next up, Barbary Station by R. E. Stearns.  Iridian is an ex-military mechanical engineer.  Adda is a computer programmer with a specialization in Systems Operations.  Together they have student debt they'll never be able to pay off -- legally.  So they decide to turn to piracy.  The most infamous pirate in the Solar System is Captain Sloane operating out of Barbary Station.  To join his crew, the two hijack a colony ship and deliver it to the station.  But instead of being hailed as competent new crew members, they discover that the pirates are trapped on the station.  The station's AI has classified them as threats and is slowly hunting them down one by one.  If they want to get off the station (never mind join the crew), Iridian and Adda will have to figure out a way to shut down the station's security system.

This was a pretty good book, though it had a bit of difficulty establishing a few of the ground-rules of the setting early on.  It didn't do anything inconsistent with the setting, there were just some statements by characters that weren't entirely clear about how the world works.  These got cleared up later, but they broke up the flow of the narrative a bit.  I realize you don't (and shouldn't) dump all the world-info whenever it gets introduced for the first time, but I feel like it could've been smoother.  

Once you get past that, things start picking up.  In particular, Adda's efforts to try and carefully poke the AI to gain an understanding of its decision processes was pretty neat.  When Iridian is given a chance to be kick-ass, you get some nice action sequences.  The book is quite well self-contained and if there is a follow-on book, I think it'll be interesting to see them tackle an actual piracy job.

And that wraps up 2017.  Next up, the traditional year-end review
Tom