Light reading

Currently watching Return of the Jedi again, which has got me thinking about books :-)

The book I'm reading at the moment is Striking the Balance by Harry Turtledove. It's the third in a series of 8 that has at its theme an alien invasion of Earth, commencing a couple of years into World War Two. I want to read these mainly cos I have all 8 :-) but also because I want to know what happens in them. Trouble is, the author's style makes it very hard work.

Curious ...

The books I've read most recently are the Orion series by Ben Bova (see blog post a few down from this one !) and David Weber's Ashes of Empire series. The Ashes of Empire series is a trilogy that I devoured within a couple of weeks, both the first time I read it and the last time. I picked up Larry Niven's Ringworld yesterday and almost read the whole thing. Yet I've been struggling for weeks with Striking The Balance.

All three series are science fiction and some of the personalities at work in Ashes of Empire can only be described as disturbed and disturbing. The violence level is very high, mainly due to the weapons technology at work. Yet that hyperviolence is diluted by the sense of "fun" running through the books, such that it nevers crosses the boundary into "sickening".

It's similar for Larry Niven's Ringworld series, which has a highly interesting character called Louis Wu as its central protagonist. There's a huge sense of adventure running through the 4 books in this series, as Louis Wu jumps out of one frying pan into another fire. After reading snippets out of Ringworld, it's quite possible I'll dive through these 4 books (Ringworld, ... Engineers, ... Throne, ... Children) when I'm done with Striking the Balance.

If you've not read anything by Larry Niven, he's well worth checking out. Recommended books are Footfall, Ringworld and Lucifer's Hammer. An unforgettable passage in Lucifer's Hammer has a group of surfers trying to outrun a Mega-Tsunami by attempting to ride the wave.

Hey ! Where's the Star Wars link ?

The Star Wars films have spawned a huge number of books, that mostly take on after the films. They're a mix between outstanding and very poor. The X-Wing books written by Michael Stackpole and Aaron Allstom are amazing, for their intelligent writing and the no holds barred aspect of the story. However, the books I'll probably be reading next are the ones by Timothy Zahn. They take place about 5 years after Return of the Jedi and take the reader through a campaign masterminded by the brilliant Grand Admiral Thrawn. It's intelligent scifi written by a gifted author.

Which is a lot more than I can say for some of the Star Wars books, I groaned (and growled) when I heard that some of the Dune sequels would be co-authored by Kevin J Anderson. He was responsible for some of the more painful Star Wars books I won't be reading again. I mentioned something about intelligent scifi above, can't say that about anything I've read from Kevin J Anderson. A pity ...

There's also the New Jedi Order series - I devoured most Star Wars books as soon as they came out but this later series killed my enthusiasm for the genre. Our main heroes are up against some real nasty pieces of work in the Yuuzhan Vong, aliens from outside the galaxy. Some books good, some books bad.

But I'll be looking forward to reading the Timothy Zahn books again :-)

Back to the film ! The Ewoks are now kicking Stormtrooper butt and I have a sneaky feeling that my next books to read will be the Timothy Zahn Heirs to the Empire series :-)