There are too many paywalls appearing in our modern entertainment and it makes a mockery of choice and accessibility. Personally, I have a Netflix sub plus a higher value cable TV package with movies and sports. I have no intention of subscribing to any more entertainment subscription services, I'd rather do without sampling their content. And there isn't enough time in the day to get the full value out of all of those subscription services.
Especially if it's people like Amazon who got into their dominant position by not paying taxes.
How about the books today ?
The first is Revenger by Alastair Reynolds. This book should really have been in the 52 books challenge but I left it out because I finished it pretty much just before the year started. Anyway, the story is a lovely tale about 2 sisters who run away from home and are taken on by a band of treasure hunters who are down on their luck.
Alastair Reynolds is fantastic at world building and that talent is on show here as well. The setting is rather different to any other tale of interplanetary adventure, with the ships depending on solar sails instead of anything more forceful like sublight or warp engines.
It's a compelling, standalone tale and I'd heartily recommend it.
From a standalone novel to part of an epic ...
The Lost Fleet books by Jack Campbell brought to life a fleet, hopelessly outnumbered and trapped behind enemy lines by a cruel and sadistic enemy. All hope is lost, until Admiral Jack Geary emerges from a few centuries of coldsleep to lead the fleet to home and safety.
The Beyond the Frontier series picks up the tale after they get home, with Dreadnaught having the remaining ships of the fleet getting sent on a mission beyond known space, to chase the unknown Enigma race that was menacing the fleet in the later days of the previous series.
Jack Campbell (aka John G Hemry) is pretty good at allowing you to visualise what's going on with the epic space fleet that he has bouncing around numerous systems. He uses the narrative trick of having the central character Jack Geary being brought up to speed by his fleet XO, Captain Tanya of the Battlecruiser Dauntless. The weapon systems in play and the tactics available are explained by the reader in a very believable and understandable fashion.
A wise man once said "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." but book readers should demand more than that. The magic is brought to life in the world built by the author but an author also needs to explain the fundamentals for the book to be successful in my eyes.
And Jack Campbell does that brilliantly in these series of books. I got as far as the book Steadfast and should really pick it up again. These are great books.
Last one is a throwback to my childhood and a really old book ...
It's Caverns of the Snow Witch, a Fighting Fantasy book from Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone. These books are choose your own adventure books, where the narrative is split up into (usually) 400 segments, with horrible things and creatures awaiting your character as you journey through. Each segment would have choices, which would send you to another segment often at the other end of the book.
This one is somewhat more linear than most, with what amounts to a few phases as you go through the book. It also has a "if you don't get this item, you die", which was a bit too common in these books.
It's one of the better ones though and I enjoyed it when I was a lad.
Last century indeed.
I am old.
What will be tomorrow's books ! And Lego ! We shall see.
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