Our reads April 2021

Another month,another pile of books. What are you reading in April?

Dusty's TBR for April

SF/Fantasy
Olaf Stapledon - Last and First Men ✔
George R Stewart - Earth Abides
Andre Norton - Key out of Time ✔
Octavia E Butler - Bloodchild ✔
Nathan Lowell - Full Share ✔
Jo Walton -Tooth and Claw ✔
Gareth K Pengelly - Brian Helsing Just Try not to Die✔
Chlo eNeill - Wicked Hour✔

other genres
Jenny Nimmo - The Chestnut Soldier✔
Janet+Allan Ahlberg - Funnybones ✔
Janet+Allan Ahlberg - Each Peach Pear Plum ✔

For April I have lined up The Human, Empire of Gold, The Tindalos Asset and We are Legion.

>3 Shrike58: The Tindalos Asset

I didn't know about that one! Instantly wishlisted.

On the SF side, I have The Trials of Koli, Shadow Captain and Nophek Gloss out from the library. So they should be my first 3 SF books in April... unless something else catches my eye and bump one or more of them back. :)

For book groups, there's the novella Sea change by Nancy Kress, plus finishing The space between worlds by Micaiah Johnson.

Other draft choices to be named later.

>6 karenb: I liked Sea Change last year - it felt a little thin in places (almost like a plan for a story than a story) but it was readable...

Just started Eric Brown's Binary System. Well-crafted solid heartland sf, although it does seem to feature several somewhat over-used tropes.

>2 dustydigger: Ooh, I really liked Tooth and Claw by Jo Walton. Hope you enjoy it.

I'm still reading The Trials of Koli by M. R. Carey.

Just finished Servant of the Underworld last night. Interesting world-building and magic system. Not science-fiction by any stretch but a decent mythic fantasy/historical fiction. (7/10)

Next up: Returning to Bas-Lag with Iron Council.

Also working on The Best of Analog, which contains quite a few excellent short stories I had not read before.

>2 dustydigger: >9 seitherin: Working on Tooth and Claw but it's the first Walton that has NOT been "can't put down" for me.

Just started A Memory Called Empire which has to be back in the library tomorrow. Don't think I'll get through 300 more pages by then but the library will be closed Sunday and Monday so I think I won't officially be overdue until Tuesday. (As well my library system went to a no fines system recently so my only impetus for returning books on time is my guilt at holding up other people wanting to read them.) 100 pages in I'm intrigued but not wholly comfortable with the plot.

I just started Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles. It has been on my bookshelf for decades and for whatever reason I am just now getting to it. I read The Illustrated Man and Something Wicked This Way Comes when I was a university student. As I am certain all of you know, his writing is... different. Not sure how to describe it but it has a different quality from typical SF. Just finished the 1st chapter of TMC and there it is again... the Bradbury quality. Maybe I'll be able to put my finger on it by the time I finish reading TMC.

Sorry, I duplicated my post and then deleted it. Still learning how to use Touchstones...

>13 Neil_Luvs_Books: I always thought of that one as Mars mythology, definitely not scifi, but still fascinating.

I'm working my way through The Man in the High Castle. I have Salvation Lost waiting, but that one will be difficult to read in paperback format.

Next up: The Suns of Scorpio, Volume Two of the Dray Prescot sword and planet series.

Wrapped up The Tindalos Asset this afternoon, and it's a worthy conclusion to the series, if such is the case. Still think that Agents of Dreamland had the most impact though; Kiernan apparently found these books harder and harder to write as time went on, and I think that the process was labored shows.

Currently reading Machinehood. Have Ascendant and A Call to Arms, both book 2 in a series on deck.

The Suns of Scorpio is bad. It's bad in a quite entertaining way but it doesn't even hang together as a story, which is a pretty big flaw. Also Dray Prescot is a jerk.

Now probably in 2021 none of this matters and there are excellent reviews on Goodreads if anyone wants to know why this is so much worse than the first book in the series. Incidentally this was the last book to be dignified by publication in the UK, but that may have been due to the decline of the Sword and Planet genre as much as the awfulness of the current story.

Next up: New Writings in SF 22.

Edit: I was wrong! At least 4 books were published in the UK, I just never saw them.

>13 Neil_Luvs_Books: Ray Bradbury is odd. Sometimes I really like him, other times I don't at all.

I just finished So Long and Thanks for All the Fish. I had read it 30-some years ago, but didn't remember anything about it. Despite it being one of peoples' least favorite Hitchhiker books, I enjoyed it!

Now reading The Vanished Birds. Liked the opening but then it started into the usual corporatist space opera bollocks, and none of the economics make any sense whatsoever. Tricked by a US genre debut again...

Finished Iron Council yesterday. Rating it 2.5 stars. For me, this was the weakest of the six Miéville novels I've read to date.

Currently reading:

- Mexican Gothic. Early going but the first two chapters have already setup a decent Haunting of Hill House / Dracula vibe.

- Falling in Love With Hominids. Some fiercely original short stories. Getting along with Hopkinson's short fiction much better than I did Brown Girl in the Ring, which wasn't bad per se, but also didn't completely wow me.

- A Maze of Death. Short book. Interesting setup through the first five chapters. Dick was interested in some pretty weird religious stuff and his literary experiments in that direction make for sometimes uneven science-fiction. This one is pretty good so far.

All Systems Red: The Murderbot Diaries

Murderbot is doing the bare minimum at it's job. It just wants to be left alone and watch it's vids. I know how that feels. But of course things go very wrong and now they are all in danger.

Finished with The Empire of Gold yesterday evening. I think this trilogy is a great achievement but Chakraborty might have helped herself by splitting her epic four ways, rather than three, as pacing does become a problem. The folks who like long, immersive, brick-like books will be insisting that this is a feature, not a bug.

Besides that the library-hold fairy has come up with A Desolation Called Peace for me and that's going to the top of the TBR pile.

Finished The Vanished Birds. Did not like. The usual fascist space opera crap, visuals stolen from media sf (especially Star Wars), and a universe that makes zero sense other than as a showcase for some high-level sociopathy.

>27 iansales:

Woah, Ian. Don't hold back!

>27 iansales: Sounds like I'll be avoiding that one.

Finished Redemption Ark by Alastair Reynolds the other day. I think I may be beginning to warm to this universe.

Finished Newton's Wake and started a re-read after many decades of The Tin Men.

I've just returned to the Company series and read Life of the world to come. Another excellent entry.

I'm enjoying The Light Brigade.

I wrapped up my read of Arthur C. Clarke's The Sentinel (and posted my review). Now I'm reading The Hidden World.

I've started the Library of America edition of Ursula K. Le Guin's Annals of the Western Shore. Almost done with the first book, Gifts. As always, excellent stuff.

Reading The Past Through Tomorrow, a collection of Heinlein's "future history" stories, and it has not aged well. Not just the technology, most of which is laughably wrong, but also the sexism, the fact Heinlein's history is 99.999% white, and the snobbery. And this despite some of the stories having been quietly changed at a later date - 'Blowups Happen' is copyrighted 1940, but mentions the Hiroshima bomb. Still, for all that, at least the stories don't display the mega-violence, callousness or sociopathy of most present-day science fiction.

Just started reading Ancestral night by Elizabeth Bear.

>37 iansales: Well, whatever else science fiction is it's a commentary on the times of the author. With some dread, I'm expecting more mega-violence, callousness, and sociopathy in the near future.

>39 Shrike58: You would hope it was a commentary, but I suspect a lot of it really isn't :-)

>39 Shrike58:, >40 iansales:

"reflection of" at least.

Finished The Trials of Koli by M. R. Carey and added the last book in the trilogy, The Fall of Koli, to my reading rotation. I enjoyed the second book as much as I enjoyed the first book (The Book of Koli).

I've just finished After the Crown which is the second in the Indranan Wars trilogy.

It was described to me as 'light sf' and I see why but it is fun. I read Behind the Throne, the first book in the series, a few weeks ago and intend to read the last book soon. The first book is about a gunrunner who is called home from the outer reaches of the galaxy to take her place as princess of the Indranan planetary empire of which she is now the sole remaining heir. This second book is about her trying to prevent her empire from being invaded by the Saxon empire.

>27 iansales: Sounds like a trend!

I finished New Writings in SF-22 and since I noticed there's no review on the site I've written the shortest one possible. Next up I'm re-reading Frankenstein Unbound by Brian W Aldiss. The only thing i remember from the first reading 45 years ago is that it references the Frankenstein legend as per the novel by Mary Shelley.

Started Inscape by Louise Carey for my SF&F book group. So far it's a pretty good cyberpunk-type thriller of high-tech Corporations. Enjoyable.

Just finished the most recent collection from Cliff Burns, Electric Castles. Now started on The Centre cannot hold to close out Stableford's Asgard trilogy.

Finished The Tin Men and A Very Private Life, starting The Islands of Chaldea.

This weekend I read Winter's Orbit by Everina Maxwell and The Bronze Skies by Catherine Asaro. I really enjoyed the latter, while the former was not quite as satisfying for me.

Finished The Past Through Tomorrow. Did not have high expectations, but was expecting it to be a little better than it was. The technology was laughable, even for the 1940s, the sexism was notably conspicuous, and some of the stories just didn't make much sense. In 'Logic of Empire', I thought Heinlein was going to argue against slavery, only for him to turn round and claim it was justified. In Methuselah's Children, actually a full-length novel, the Families invent a magic drive, visit two alien worlds whose inhabitants have EVEN MOAR magic technology, and the return to Earth. Entirely pointless. One or two stories weren't bad. 'The Menace from Earth' still holds up reasonably well. and 'The Long Watch' wasn't too bad.

Now reading Reading Backwards, a collection of essays by John Crowley, published by Subterranean Press. Somehow or other I managed to order two copies of the signed and numbered edition. Oh well

Finished up A Desolation Called Peace yesterday evening and I think that it's a worthy follow-up to Martine's first novel. I look forward to seeing what she does next.

Frankenstein Unbound just wasn't that good. A novel where a man from the 22nd Century falls back to the 19th Century and meets such historical figures as Frankenstein and Mary Shelley ought to be a lot of fun, but this isn't. It's overly talky, outright preachy at times. My overall impression is that this started out as a review of Ms. Shelley's Frankenstein but somehow got out of hand and became a novel. Indeed from what little I know of the late Brian W. Aldiss that's probably exactly what happened!

Next up I'm reading...well actually I don't know. I'm still waiting for something to come in the post.

Finished The Islands of Chaldea. Let https://random.org pick the next item: Once there was a giant.

Well, re-opening after the most recent lockdown my library has delivered a pile of books I've had on hold since the FIRST lockdown - where to start?
How Long 'Til Black Future Month
A Skinful of Shadows
The Future of Another Timeline
Sherlock Holmes and the Sussex Sea-Devils

Good news! Nebula Award Stories 8 just arrived in the post. It's another re-read but fortunately I don't remember any of the stories.

>24 nx74defiant: love that Murderbot series..

>45 SFF1928-1973: “Frankenstein Unbound”, A play on Percy B Shelly’s Prometheus Unbound also I guess ( I was told that was sf in the 6th grade by the librarian). :-)

Just started The Light Fantastic, which I think is a reread, but I read the first few Discworld novels back in the 1980s and I'm not really sure which ones I read. Also reading Lonesome Dove - it was on offer on Kindle.

Just finished Brian Stableford's The Centre cannot hold, which was a disappointment - much more telling than showing, and a long interlude in a virtual world which is perhaps two-thirds heroic fantasy. Now moved on to Ken MacLeod's The Restoration Game.

>59 RobertDay: Have you read the Acknowledgements in The Restoration Game?

>60 pgmcc: Hopefully you were more deserving of it than I was of the namecheck I got in The Execution Channel, which I did indeed read but had disappointedly little to say about. Interesting acknowledgements, though. Except for Sharon, I have at least met all people being thanked, and some of them are personal friends. Fandom is small.

>61 anglemark: I enjoyed The Execution Channel very much.

Nicholas Whyte and Charles Stross are the only people I have met on The Restoration Game list. Charlie and yourself are the only two I have met in The execution Channel list.

Fandom is small but I have not travelled around it all...yet. :-)

Finished The Warship - good and The Midnight Library - OK. Starting Piranesi
>58 iansales: Lonesome Dove is one of my favorites. Let me know what you think of it.

>59 RobertDay: The penny drops! Count me as impressed.

Otherwise, I've only spoken to Charles Stross, though I am on Farah Mendlesohn's FB list and correspond with her moderately often.

>64 RobertDay: I know Nicholas, Donna and Farah, and I've known Stross since the early 1990s. Shana I've corresponded with on social media. And I know Ken, of course. I remember a few years ago we were both at a con in Leicester, and caught the same train home. We chatted until the train reached Derby. The train terminated in Sheffield, my destination, so Ken disembarked to catch a train to Edinburgh. In due course, my train arrived in Sheffield. I left the train... and bumped into Ken on the platform. Apparently his train had beaten mine to Sheffield, where it had stopped for fifteen minutes for some reason, so he had gone in search of coffee.

Finished Ancestral night which I really enjoyed. I had my doubts during the first few chapters, which had a lot of descriptions of things that I couldn't visualise, but then the characters came to the fore and the story picked up. Will definitely be looking for the companion novel set in the same universe, Machine.

>65 iansales: I've gone drinking with Stross a couple times when he was in the Washington (DC) area. The first time he came to a meeting of our local club, and my thought was that guy looked a lot like Charlie Stross, oh wait, that is Charlie Stross! The second time was when he was talking at another conference and put out a call for bar gathering. This was like 10-15 years ago; certainly before the last Chicago worldcon.

On more thought the bar session had to be in 2008, as Stross' wife was also present, and we mostly talked about Sir Max Mosley's sex scandal, and whether that was fair play.

Speaking of science fiction I did knock off We are Legion, and it turns out to be a pretty good routine SF story, which seems to be harder and harder to do as a lot of the last few stories in that vein I read didn't do anything for me. Imagine something from Ben Bova's editorial run at "Analog" tuned up for the current day.

>68 Shrike58: Talking of Ben Bova,as editor I am really enjoying his selection The Best of the Nebulas at the moment.Had a lovely nostalgic time today reading Dragonrider the Nebula winning novella that formed the basis of Dragonflight and the rest is history,there has been for good or ill a plethora of dragons everywhere ever since.
I have been working my way through a Top Ten of short storiesand was delighted to find no less than 5 from that list in this anthology.Especially Jefty is Five,couldnt find that anywhere. That and Joanna Russ When Things Changed will complete my list.Of course I have several other lists ready :0)
Your monicker Shrike is turning up a lot online at the moment.Hyperion is flavour of the month with a new generation,lots of people doing readalongs or the like Cant believe its over 30 yers old!
And Gary Riddell.s iconic depiction of Shrike (Nebula nominated) is still wowing people too:0).

Currently reading Salvation Lost. I'm finding I really enjoy parts of it and parts of it I really don't. Did anyone have a similar experience? Thoughts?

Finished Once there was a giant of which everything had dated badly, as could be expected, except the title story. Started an old Ace double with The Green Millennium / Night Monsters.

Had a few of the Valdemar omnibuses kicking around; finally took the plunge with The Mage Wars.

All I can say is um. They weren't a bad read, Lackey is too good an author for that, but they do come across as YA. It's the same problem I have with the Elemental Masters series. Individually they work, but as a binge read, it's like gorging yourself with something nice that's not particularly healthy in the long run.

At some point I will read the others, but I'm not in any hurry to do so. I much prefer the Diana Tregarde Investigations and the related SERRAted Edge series.

Finished up Last and First Men. How come no one ever mentions just how much dry wit,heavy irony and even savage satire is concealed by the seemingly dry as dust academic tone of the narrator.? Stapledon gets away with the most absurd or shocking things under that pedantic tone. I ended up liking the book much more than I expected.

>57 DugsBooks: Yes it's just the kind of literary wordplay Aldiss used to enjoy. And you'll no doubt remember that M. Shelley's Frankenstein was subtitled "The Modern Prometheus".

I finished my re-read of Nebula Award Stories 8. It was nice to refresh my memory of stories i enjoyed as a 16-year-old such as the adventurous A Meeting with Medusa by Arthur C. Clarke and the hilariously satirical "The Day We Went to See the End of the World" by Robert Silverberg.

But I'm sure I failed to fully appreciate the more "adult" stories like the wonderful The Fifth Head of Cerberus by Gene Wolfe and the increasingly relevant "Goat Song", a scary AI story by Poul Anderson.

Next up I'm reading The Godwhale by T J Bass, a weighty tome compared to what I've mostly been reading, but nothing remarkable by modern standards.

I have a request/ suggestion. Over on the Fantasy group (one of them), the monthly reads thread is titled 'Where are you in Fantasyland in (whichever month)?'. Could this thread be titled something along similar lines, like 'Where are you in the Science Fiction universe?'?

Just because 'Our Reads' could apply to any genre when it shows up on my 'Your Posts' list. (And because it's fun.)

>73 dustydigger: There you go. I just joined this group to say that you inspired me to check whether I have a copy of Last and First Men. And I do! Now all I have to do is find it.

ETA I found it.

I'm reading Engines of Oblivion, the sequel to Architects of memory. I'm really enjoying it.

>77 haydninvienna: Hey,welcome to the group. Hope you pop in to tell me what you think of the book. I have come across only one person,iansales of this group in fact,who did a group read of the book back in 2009 or thereabouts. He pointed out that a character was called Gordelpus,obviously a version of the cockney Gawd Help Us. I had already had suspicions about satire in this book and that was a clincher. At one point when the First Men were interreacting with sub humans,cruel and sadistic I noticed the tone was rather odd. It dawned that this was very similar in tone to Jonathan Swift He,in A Modest Proposalwas sedately reasonably,advocating the English eating Irish children,detailing all its practical and sesible points.It was then I came to see there was even more to the book than just a sweeping history of the human race.
When I read that the Third Men were huge and heavy round the legs and feet,but ended up with slender tiny ''Liliputian'' fingers I was sure of a Swiftian edge to the book.
Reading it as history,as well an allegory and satire of different social types of human kept me interested enough to plod through any longueurs or pedantic bits,and I surprised myself at how much it ended up impressing me :0)

>70 Karlstar: Yes, I had mixed feelings on the whole series. Peter Hamilton is one of my favorite SF authors, but he "over Hamiltoned" a lot of stuff. Overly graphic sex (I'm far from a prude, but it didn't really contribute to the plot or characterization), exceedingly verbose exposition, uneven pacing, etc.

That being said, I do think he pulls everything together in the 3rd book, and some of the ideas are very imaginative, so I'm glad I stuck it out.

Currently reading parallel in two different genres. Western - Lonesome Dove, which is proving to be very funny. And science fiction - Crimson Darkness, self-published by William Barton, which I tried last year but got bogged down a quarter of the way in, which is hardly a surprise as it's a piece of tour de force world-building, the chronology is fractured, and the story makes no concessions to the reader whatsoever. Good stuff, but a difficult read.

Wow,I was blown away by Octavia E Butler's Nebula,Hugo and Focus winning novelette,Bloodchild.
I always felt that Butler's novels had to hammer out the desperate angry message because of the times,the racism etc,so there was little time for subtlety.But this little exquisite gem of a story,a mere 30 pages long explores many themes obliquely. It verges on horror at times,but has a strong SF base.A really worthy winner which will stay in my mind for a long time.
At the moment the novella is free on kindle in the UK,dont know about the USA,well worth picking up.

>82 dustydigger: I have been planning to read something by Octavia E Butler. Your post has told me where to start. It has also given me a free copy of the Kindle edition.

Thank you for both.

>76 humouress: Interesting question. I don't have any strong opinion on this and I sympathize with your problem. On the other hand this thread has grown up organically so it might come under the subsection "If It Ain't Broke Don't Fix It."

>81 iansales:. I wish I had a dollar for every time someone recommended Lonesome Dove to me. It is in my TBR pile, and I intended to get to it during the pandemic, and failed. I had no idea that it was humorous. Moving it up. Thanks.

I've just started The Wanderers about astronauts preparing to go to Mars. No opinion yet.

>85 vwinsloe: I picked it up for 99p on Kindle, plus two of its sequels also for 99p each, and I'm enjoying it lot.

"Station Eleven meets The Martian"? WTF? Has the person who wrote that actually read either of those two books?

>86 iansales: We shall see on both accounts. Lol.

>80 drmamm: Agreed, you hit on what was bothering me. I just finished Salvation Lost, it was quite good. I was told by a writer that younger people actually want to read that kind of stuff, it is somewhat 'required'.

>76 humouress: >84 SFF1928-1973: I'm not opposed to a thread name change, but do you actually mean starting a new thread with the new name?

>82 dustydigger: Bloodchild is fantastic. I've multiple anthologies that feature it, and I re-read it every time. I can't understand why it's only rated 3.84 here. I suppose it's not for everyone.

>76 humouress:,>84 SFF1928-1973:,>88 Karlstar:
"Where are you in Fantasyland" has always seemed just a bit cutesy to me. Sure, it's fun to say things like "I'm in Rathillien with Jame", but somehow I'm more comfortable with "April Reads" (which of course refers to reads in whichever genre the group covers). {edit: although it hardly matters since people regularly post fantasy reads in SF, & SF reads in the fantasy group, which doesn't matter for the many like myself who read both, but must be disconcerting for those who like one genre & not the other.}

Spent an enjoyable couple of hours with Murderbot in Fugitive Telemetry!

>84 SFF1928-1973: >90 rshart3: Fair enough.

>88 Karlstar: I thought it could be done (if it were to be changed) when it ticks over for May.

>90 rshart3: Agreed, too cutesy. I much prefer the current naming scheme.

>92 humouress: Remember that anyone can set up a thread here at any time. Its unnecessary to change the monthly reads thread which anyway covers a much wider scope than just visits to ''Sci-Fi land''.and what on earth is Sci-Fi land anyway? Science fiction is notoriously slippery to define,and has boundless scope and subgenres. Most of my reads each month would not even fit in with your thread! lol.
You can always open an experimental thread for May,and see if the results are good and popular
.But our monthly reads thread is practical,informative,and leads at times to interesting discussions.I read masses of old SF and award winners,sothere are always people who familiar with my books.Claiming to be with Jamie in Rathilien doesnt lead very far.
This thread is actually adaptable. I post my monthly TBR at the top of the thread each month,very convenient for me,and never a month goes by but I get some nice little posts about books on my lists,which I discussing.Just listing books without comments or info doesnt cut it for me. Knowing that Jame was in Rathilien is not enough! :0)
But do open a thread for May and check the response.You can give it any interesting twist you loke :0)

>94 dustydigger: humouress's suggestion was just to rename this standing thread, though, not to change the contents of it. She just wants a cozier, more imaginative name than "Our reads", that's all.

Finished The Fall of Koli by M. R. Carey. Very good end to a very good trilogy.

Next up is Fugitive Telemetry by Martha Wells.

>95 anglemark: Thank you, yes; that's all I was suggesting.

I'm already posting my fantasy books in the fantasy group but I was posting a sci-fi book and realised I should be posting that over here.

Finished Engines of oblivion. It's dark, but I enjoyed the read.

>95 anglemark: >94 dustydigger: I go for function over clever in repeating thread names. Clever works well for one-off threads, but wears thin as a repeating thread pattern awfully fast for me. I'm definitely happier with anything clear and simple like "what are we reading in April" or "April reads" or similar.

I can't see any LT views where the Thread title appears in the total absence of the Group name, so it doesn't seem like it's too much of an opening to confusion.

Binti was a pleasant enough read,though a bit overhyped. And I hadnt realized that it was less than 100 pages long. Oh well,it was only 99p! lol.
I wish I could say the same about some of Ben Aaronovitch and John Scalzi novellas. Horrific prices for little content.:0(

>99 ChrisRiesbeck: Basically my opinion too...

Finished Lonesome Dove. Turned dark in part 2, and sad in part 3. Good, though.

I'm really getting bogged down with The Godwhale. T J Bass undoubtedly has a vision of his future dystopia but he makes no concessions to the reader.

Finished Fugitive Telemetry by Martha Wells. Enjoyed it.

Finished Asperfell. Not bad at all - what you'd get if somebody like Arya Stark with magic got trapped in Gormenghast Castle... Very enjoyable.

Finished The Restoration Game. Other than the presence of Krassnia, a sort of Stalinist Ruritania, this hardly came over as a novel of the fantastic until about two-thirds of the way through. But still a Ken MacLeod novel, so there's all sorts of thought-provoking stuff in there. Now made a start on The Subtle Knife.

With libraries (and their ILL departments) reopening, I am back to my temporary delayed Cherryh reading - Festival Moon was as much fun as I expected it to be (and the different styles manage to blend very well).

>103 iansales:. Okay, okay. Lonesome Dove is next.

>106 Maddz: Arya Stark with magic trapped in Gormenghast Castle? Where do I sign up?

>103 iansales: Glad you liked Lonesome Dove. It is one of my favorites.

Finished Remote Control as my last April book. It was ok.

>110 SFF1928-1973: It was a Daily Deal on Amazon.co.uk last month. The second part of the trilogy is out later this month.

>74 SFF1928-1973: Right, but after I did a wiki check on Percy Shelly’s Prometheus Unbound & found it was based on the “ 5th-century BC Greek tragedian Aeschylus” works Prometheus bound and Prometheus Unbound, I drop any pretention of intellectual knowledge on the subject! :-)