Reading Update: Fiction

-- Rereading Anne McCaffrey's 1st award-winning Pern stories that made up the first of the novels. Still potent.

--Kim Stanley Robinson's Shaman (actually was reading it when my Kindle died)-- survival among the early hominids.

--Dan Krokos' Planet Thieves -- finished awhile ago and was in the writing throes of a review when a triptych of tech woes steered me off course.  The book's a fun YA romp with "alien" baddies.

--Scott Nicholson's Transparent Lovers, a PS Publishing noir-flavored novella about a detective coming back to life to find his murderer and stopping another in process.

--Cate Gardner -- short stories mostly.  Often takes a situation--sometimes common trope, sometimes not--and milks out the emotion of such a scenario.  This and her sometimes startling imagery are her strengths.

--J Kathleen Cheney's The Golden City -- approaching 1/2 way mark.  A cross between Tim Powers, Jane Austen, and a mystery--an original confection set in early 20th century Portugal--both familiar and sufficiently strange.  The love story's kicking in.


--Robert Heinlein (finished Menace from Earth collection -- I just need a stretch of time to write.

--Mark Twain's Tom Sawyer.  Loved as a boy.  Still delightful.  It begins as a picaresque tale, but slowly events shape others.  Wonderful studying how Twain twists his turns.  I still remember thinking, "Man, if Tom's this ornery, imagine Huck's Adventures!"  And then Huck wasn't near so bad.  His was still a good story, but for different reasons.