Absence Makes The blah blah blah, or: What I Read This Summer

Yeah, it's been that kind of summer...

If you've been following along the past year or so here, you know that my family and I moved near the end of last year. That was a move just across town. Then, at the end of April earlier this year, my wife and I picked up and moved again, this time to the Seattle area for her job. We spent the first month living in an extended stay hotel while we looked for a permanent place to live and while I looked for a job. Our kiddos followed us out a month later, after their school year ended.

As my wife already had a job out here, much of that first month I spent looking for a job. Finally, at the end of May someone finally hired me, the kids flew out to join us, and we moved to our new house all in the same week. Then I was in training for a couple of months working pretty much whatever schedule they told me to work. Now I'm off training and on my "normal" schedule (working pretty much whenever they tell me to work).

In the little bit of down time I had, I did manage to get some reading in this summer - all of them ebooks on my phone as my hard-copy TBR pile is still packed away. I didn't have the time to record all the books I read, nor to write reviews. Here's a list, in no particular order, of the books I read this summer along with a brief notation of my thoughts on the book:

On Basilisk Station  by David Weber and
The Honor of the Queen by David Weber. I started reading the Honor Harrington series years ago with the 3rd book or 4th book in the series. I figured I should probably go back and see how it started with these first two books. Good stuff.

Abaddon's Gate by James S.A. Corey. 3rd book in The Expanse series. Fantastic stuff!

The Spires of Denon, by Kristine Kathryn Rusch. A novella set in the Diving the Wreck universe. Interesting story, not featuring Boss and her crew. Love this universe.

Engaging the Enemy (Vatta's War), by Elizabeth Moon. This is a book in the middle of a series I hadn't read any of before, nor have I read anything else by Elizabeth Moon. This was a pretty good book. Light on action, mostly characters moving around setting themselves up for the next book, with a few space battles and some other conflicts too. I'm sorry I started in the middle (I seem to do that with series), because I would have enjoyed reading the entire thing from start to finish. Good book.

Guild Wars: Sea of Sorrows, by Ree Soesbee. Third book in the series set in the world of the Guild Wars 2 MMORPG (that my wife works for). Each book is independent of the other, but all in the same world. This one was the best of the three. Makes me wish there were more books set in this world.

Insidious, by Michael McClosky. Good SF book set in our solar system in the nearish future. First of a series. Read kind of like a video game.

Crucible: Star Wars, by Troy Denning. I'm a Star Wars fan, and have enjoyed reading the books over the years. Lately they've all pretty much sucked (I stress lately, the early books were much better). This one was a little better than most of the recent ones, but still wasn't great.

Razor's Edge: Star Wars, by Martha Wells. I pretty much skimmed through this book just to find out the highlights. What I read was not good.

Kenobi: Star Wars, by John Jackson Miller. I was really looking forward to this one. Only the parts that actually had Obi-wan Kenobi in them were the least bit interesting. I'm not really enjoying the Star Wars Expanded Universe lately. I keep hoping, and keep being disappointed.

Codex Born: (Magic Ex Libris: Book Two), by Jim C. Hines. Sequel to Libriomancer. Love this series. Love Jim C. Hines. Read his stuff now!

Weird Space: Satan's Reach, by Eric Brown. Sequel to The Devil's Nebula, which featured some really gross aliens invading our universe. Apart from one scene with a similar feel to it, this one was not gross. It also sets up the 3rd book in the series. This one was better than the first.

Protocol 7, by Armen Gharabegian. I kept expecting something to happen, most of the book was setup and I kept wanting to stop and go read something else. Then the ending sped by, and was kind of disappointing. 

Gods of Risk, by James S.A. Corey. Short story set in The Expanse universe. Not bad. A quick look at what normal people are doing while the main characters are off doing their things in the main novels.

The Humanity's Fire Trilogy by Michael Cobley (Seeds of Earth, The Orphaned Worlds,The Ascendant Stars). I read the entire trilogy back to back. Interesting world-building. I was sorry to get to the end of the series, because I wanted to stay in that world longer.

I think I read a few others... but I don't see them on my ereaders, and I was negligent in updating GoodReads.com.


That was my summer. How was yours? Did you read anything good? Let me know in the comments if there's something I should read!