Hutch & Academy, book 7. I've wondered about these books for a while. Very tourists in space.

Alan Stewart used to work for British Intelligence, and has been asked to take part in one more mission. It goes south.

Donovan is a colony on a distant planet. They haven't had a resupply in years. A ship finally arrives, hoping to take over, but Donovan is a very hostile planet.

Destroyermen is a series about a WWII destroyer that goes through a time vortex into an alternate dinosaur infested world. This new series is about a small army of 1840s infantry, cavalry, and artillery being sucked into an earlier era of that world.

Book 2 of "A Memory called Empire". The Empire considers everyone outside their borders to be alien, for instance the inhabitants of the tiny Lesl Station. When real planet destroying aliens show up just beyond Station, the Empire is driven to war to protect their own borders. Three Seagrass and Mahit Dzmare are called into service.

Book 3 of Drake's arthurian sci-fi series. The world of "Here" consists of tiny islands of livable land separated by "Not-Here", an alien and unnavigatable space. Only certain individuals assisted by their trained dogs can navigate the "Road" between the livable nodes. Arthurian.

Millinae ago, the world was destroyed. The ancients created a race of desert dwellers to help repopulate. Khat searches for fragments of the ancients technology.

AI Gods rule the galaxy. They nurture and protect humanity. The GOds impose a few rules about heresies like computer programming. Yasira is experimenting with energy production that doesn't require the Gods' intervention. The Outside starts breaking in.

Don Miguel of the Spanish Imperial Society of Time believes that someone is illicitly breaking time and attempting to cause the Spanish empire to fall or worse, to never exist.

Lt. Amanda Bostick is sent to a strange planet inhabited by telepaths after 16 scientists were murdered and their deaths covered up. She suspects things are worse than that.

Ensign Kris Longknife is the daughter of the prime minister and the grand daughter of George Washington Lincoln Patton. She joined the navy to get away from her domineering poliitical parents. In the pattern of Drake's Lightnings, Weber's Harrington, or Campbell's Geary, Kris is strong, noble, moral and intelligent. Shit happens. She overcomes it. Why is the book titled "Mutineer" when she's so noble and moral? Guess.

Dr. Avrana Kern and her team have deployed a new evolution directing programmable virus to a recently terraformed planet. The goal is to uplift monkeys into monkey-butlers for the incoming colonists. Terrorist actions prevent the project from commencing as planned and the virus is rampent on a planet with minimal mammals. The virus therefore begins to uplift spiders.

So good.

Anna wakes up after her trip to Mars and discovers a note in her handwriting saying "Trust Noone". Why does the science populizer hate her? Why does she have such an attraction to the base doctor? Why is her wedding ring missing?

Book 7+ in this list, not counting the 4+ in other series. Penric has to help track down a new plague. Great.

Book 5. Geary and his rag-tag fleet are just a few hops away from home, but they're being hunted both by a secret Syndic fleet and the aliens who want to keep their secrets.

Nettie is a black Indian living in a version of southern texas populated with monsters. She's thrown into a quest to rescue children from the Cannibal Owl.

Peter is a content influencer who is an early adopter of a total sensory and feeling recording system. He posts sense-videos of his life and interviews and sports. Aliens come. He's picked as the on-site reporter by one of the aliens.

Portugal, 1700s or 1800s. The country is split in half with two princes ruling. The american colonies are separating, it think. The island of the me`rrmaids repelled an invasion. Mermaids come in selkie skin-removing varieties and serrarrarria gilled, scaled, and finned varieties. Some necromancer is building a strange art exibit in the bay.

VIWarshawski is asked to investigate some forged bonds found in a church's safe.

John Geary continues to lead his tired fleet through enemy space, desperately carrying more secrets that will change the course of the war.

Mana is a mid-level administrator in City Planning. Leon is a police officer on the hunt for an overlooked serial killer. The Noah is a generation ship near the start of its 1000 year voyage.

Renata is not a believer, but she follows her friend Suh, who hears a message from God, inviting them to a new planet. Something bad happens and Ren is pressured into keeping it a secret for twenty years.

Inspired by a true story, the ww2 aircraft carrier is bombed by a kamikaze pilot and nearly destroyed. This is the story of the surviving crew trying to restore their shop.

The ambassador from the small independent mining community of Lsel to the vast space empire of Teixcalaanli has died in mysterious circumstances. Manit Dzmare is dispatched to replace him along with a ridiculously out of date copy of his memories. Who can she trust, what can she offer, why has she been sabotaged repeatedly, and how can she save both her home and the vast perfection of empire?

Tom lives in rural Virginia with his drug-dealing older brother. Tom encounters a crashed space ship with two dead and one wounded alien. As a result of his failed attempt to rescue the survivor, Tom is accepted as a cadet at the Academy of the Federation. Hundreds of alien species work together as a diplomatic and contact corps, struggling with their innate biases and learning from each other.

Possibly the third in a series. Time shenanigans have patchworked modern cities into the late cretaceous and vice-versa. Our heroic and attractive protagonists slip into the past and must escape before or else.

Years after the bombs destroyed the old world, the survivors live in New Carthage on the shore of one of the Great Lakes. The old cannot give up their grief and the young lack a future. Hadrian finds himself investigating the murder of his engineer friend Jonah. Less science fiction than mystery procedural.

It's what the box says. Not a deep book, but quick summer read.

On a world shaped like a dodecahedron, 4 children of the ruler of a city are kidnapped as hostages by the hordeleaders of the next face over. Very interesting gods and battles.

Kidnapped by elves. Didn't finish it.

A pair of gansters in a distant solar system face off. Facebook controls all. Two strange fundamentalist religions. Mind-bending isolation aboard off-shore drilling rigs. The plot hadn't started by the 2/3 point. Didn't finish it.

Not-Corona virus is rampaging and not-donald-trump is lying as everyone dies. Very on the nose. Claims to be written before 2020. Pretty good once it gets to the sister-clones doing what they can to make the world a better place.

Julius Caeser is dead and Agustus and Mark Anthony fight for domanance of the empire. Each faction is searching for the holy relics that will give them ultimate power. Apparently I read this already and forgot until half-way through.

John "Black Jack" Leary continues to push his rag-tag fleet toward home..

Fergus Ferguson's friends, the ship-builders of Pluto have been attacked and kidnapped. He must sneak under the frozen ocean of Enceladeus to find them.

A vampire, a lobotomectomy, and a multiple-personality are sent to communicate with a planet sized alien probe.

A futuristic victorian novel about the great detective and magician.

Short stories on the boundary between east and west, old and modern, fantastic and real.

Girl is the offspring of a demon, thus poised to be the representative of Queen Hel (of Asgard) on Earth, liasing with a minnesota police department.

Changlings, multiple worlds, hostile overlords seeking children with special powers.

These are fantasy westerns. Red country is about settlers and wagon trains and gold rushes, but in a late middle ages fantasy world.

This was strange. The story is a first-contact / space battles kind of book, but the narrator wants to work on a Hitchhiker's type book. The fusion didn't quite work, much like the first season of "The Orville".

Raymin Dahl is a propaganda journalist for the military. He is assigned to Special forces captain Ansell Stirling in documenting a peace treaty between the colonial union and the cyborgs of the Grand Alliance.

The Grays keep the ship running. The Reds keep them in line. The Blues manage things. The Greens rule. Ruby is ready to start a revolution.

The guild specializes in translating between alien races.

Department 5656 is a secret agency tasked by the president with something. Probably protecting the U.S.ofA. from the weird. Aliens, time travel, time-travelling nazi aliens. Didn't enjoy this so much. Strange typos in the text. Stilted dialog. Everyone's the world's best at whatever. Time-travelling nazi alien velociraptors.

Chinese story about bandits and nuns trying to fence religious artifacts.

A tongue in cheek story about the British Space Empire. Classic British sexism, racism, classism as applied to aliens and androids.

A very vietnam inspired book - the two powers have been fighting performative battles every 10 years for the last two centuries to maintain their economies.

The Ansari is patrolling the outer systems of Human Space. Throk and the Xen(?) are patrolling the outer limits of Xen space, poking at the Human defenses. CEO of a planet, Not-Tony-Stark is wondering who's messing with his stock prices. Really good.

Resuccitated "Fearless Black Jack Geary" rescues a prison camp, deals with a mutiny of half his ships, and attacks a central space shipyard while on his epic quest to return the fleet to Alliance space. More questions of why the war started and why it continues are raised.

Nita and Kit discover a book instructing them in wizardy.

space retelling of The Little Mermaid.

The company has been sent to the edge of the earth to preven the ancient power The Dominator from returning to life and the world.

Mona is a baker and a wizard, but just a wizard of baking. She can force bread to rise or bake correctly. She can bring her sourdough starter to some life. But when the city is attacked, she's the only wizard available to defend her city.

Croaker is the doctor and annalist of The Black Company, an old and prestigious group of mercenaries. This is a ground-eye's view of a battle between high powers for ownership of the continent.

Book 1 - the planet gets wrapped in a slowfield so billions of years pass for the universe but only 100 pass for the Earth. Because time is in our favor, humanity colonizes Mars. At the end the slow field shuts down and earth is connected via portals to the rest of the universe. Whee.

Book 2 - a kid is genetically engineered to hear voices in his head of the Hypothetical Entities that created the slowfields. Some people follow him around.

Book one has some Baxter problems with agency. Cool stuff is happening but not because of the protagonist.

Alt-History story about the deovtees of two vodou goddesses in free independent 1899 Lousiana.

Ghost story on a space station.

Mella is a semi-pro trick snowboarder. She and several other competitors are spending the winter at a resort, training for upcoming competitions. Ten years later, the group is summoned back to the resort for a reunion. At then end of that fateful winter, one of them is dead, one of them is crippled, and the group breaks up. Who has summoned them and what are their plans?

Bob, a revived simluated version of Robert Johansson, who died 200 years ago, continues running his Von Neuman swarm. Bob-1 has first contact to manage. Riker(Bob-2) and Howard (Bob-2-3-1) and are trying to rescue the population of Earth. Bill(Bob-5) is running R&D on a lot of cool toys. The antagonistic brazilian simulants need to be finished off and there are so many more stars to explore.

Charlette is not the chosen one. The prophecy clearly says that her younger sister will save the world. But when vampires show up to kidnap and kill the chosen one, Charlette lies to defend her family and is drawn deeper into her lie of being the Chosen One herself.

Two Short Novels In One! Two brothers, once close, now estranged are trapped in a high valley during winter. A Texas Marshall goes to rescue his unproclaimed love from kidnapping.

A Roman legion and one Gaul gets teleported into an alternate world with byzintine politics.

Robert Johansson wakes up after being hit by a car to find he's been frozen, revived, and uploaded into a computer. His new owners have installed him as the controlling intelligence in a Von Neumon probe. So good.

Finished "The Three Body Problem". I'm pretty sure I've read it before. The prose was strange. I think Chinese must be a terse or declaritive language, because this book is much less flowery than any native english book I've read. The poetry in Chinese must be much more implicit or allusionary.

Plot 1 was the Communist revolution which I don't know a lot about, so the suspense was lost on me. Plot 2 was the cop and the scientist investigating some conspiracy but the investigation plot peters out in favor of other plots. Plot 3 was the video game which reminded me of the worst aspects of Neal Stephenson and Stephen Baxter. The author has imagined some really cool worldbuilding gimmick and is determined to explain it to me. Then at around the 3/4 mark, plots 1,2, and 3 fully resolve and plot 4, the alien invasion, starts up almost out of nowhere.

Also, in the middle there's a bait and switch. Plot 2 & 3 start up with the question: "If you found out that your world wasn't real or that there was no more to discover, would your life have any meaning?" That was interesting. Then the story meanders and comes back to answer a different question : "Do you think humanity is redeemable or we should all just end it now?" which I find much less compelling.

Asteroid miners.

Not Jeff Bezos wants to leap into space and recruits a bunch of interesting people for his space plans.

A series of vignettes about a family dealing with the collapse of the environment and governments in the wake of global warming.

supernatural stoner comedy.

Earth is wrapped in slow time.

A convoluted magical heist.

People are being kidnapped at sea.

Couldn't finish

Couldn't finish

Couldn't finish

Couldn't finish

Couldn't finish

Ern is a re-cloned library resource, a clone of a famous author lent out to library patrons.

Lucinda is a low class lieutenant on a RAN space battle ship, tasked with patrolling the border between the earth/core worlds and the racist space nazi Sturm. Battle ensues when the Sturm launch a computer virus into the always-on bio-computers that everyone has in their heads, turning anyone who checks their email into murder-zombies. Reminded me of the Culture books by Iain M. Banks and the Eschaton books by Charles Stross.

Oliver only knows 3 spells and one of them is to suppress his allergy to his familar armadillo. He's not the best pick to travel to the distant mountains and bring back the rain, but he's all the town has.

I immediately picked up book 2. Every night demons crawl up out of the ground and kill anyone and anything they can reach. It is only the incomplete art of warding that holds the demons at bay. Much ancient knowledge has been lost. Arlen, Leesha, and Rojer are three young people who want more - more adventure, more safety, and more control of their lives than their world provides. So good.

An angel, an assassin, and a demon in the city suspended by chains over the mouth of the Deep. Thousands of years ago, a minor god and its angels staged a coup against heaven and lost. They were cast down to earth and founded a church in their service.

A young woman discovers a hidden hallway in her uncle's museum/junk shop which leads to another world. So creepy. So much fun.

The sun never sets on the great empire of Eire. As the 19th century closes and the 20th century dawns, Eire must navigate rebellious colonies and a restless Europe. This novel (?) is a collection of linked novellas about the burgeoning science of temporal mathematics and its implications for the crown.

The Incrementalists are an ancient society of potentially immortal minds. They can offload their thoughts into a collective consciousness and when one body dies their colleagues can upload their memories into a new body. The personality of the host or of the ancient may either become dominant, thus the near immortality will cost at least one life.

Phil has a continuous personality stretching back 2000 years. His on-again off-again lover Celeste has died under mysterious circumstances and he's taken charge of implanting her memories into the chosen vessel Ren. The book bounces back and forth between Phil and Ren's POV, which was more trouble narratively than it was worth.

I have perhaps read one Terry Books book, so I grabbed the thinnest book I could find on the shelf. It's a novella.

As near as I can tell, a few years ago Jair and Bran saved the world, but they didn't do a very good job so the world didn't stay saved. Now Jair is a teenager and powerful and probably dead forces want him to fix his shoddy world-saving. The book is written like I know and love these characters, but I don't.

This one I really enjoyed. So, there are Dragons. Ancient, possibly wise, impossible to argue with, because they're dragons. For unknown reasons, there are were-dragons; humans who can turn into dragons. It's rare and always unexpected. Linden is 600 years old and is the youngest dragonlord, the last discovered were-dragon. Either because they're wise or because you can't argue with a dragon, the dragonlords have been called in to mediate a succession dispute. The prince is super young and both his uncles claim they're the obvious choice to serve as regent for the next 10 years. The prince's queen mother, father, and possibly an older sibling have all recently died in totally not suspicious circumstances.

Linden is somewhat bummed because he's never found his dragon soul-mate which all the other dragons have. No one knows why there have been no new dragons in so long.

Book 3 of "Revenger" trilogy. The pirate sisters are pursued by the Revenue. Space battles. An abrupt right turn at page 500 into what should have been book 4.

A terrorist group has given a list of evil but heavily protected men and one-by-one those men are falling over dead. An Indian religious movement runs a preschool that really seems to be helping autistic Hannibal. A group of mercenaries is getting together for one last score.

This was really good. I should read more Barnes.

This is a novella in the wolrd of The Sharing Knife. All through the world Malices, or Blight-boggles, form at random. These immortal creatures grow by ripping the Ground or magic or life-energy out of all living things around them. If they can capture bigger animals they invest that energy into making muddy versions of their prey to serve as slaves. As they consume each animal, they grow better at creating new minions. The only ones who can kill a Malice or keep them from devouring the entire world are the Lakewalkers. This tribe of nomads have magical talents themselves, being able to sense the Malices at a distance, to guard their own Ground/life-energy from attack, and to wield the bone blades infused with their own deaths as weapons.

In the original series Senior Patroller Dag had to set a couple of idiot kids straight. Now in this tale, Barr, one of the idiot kids, has discovered that he is a now father and must learn to act like it.

I keep getting author John D. MacDonald and author John D. Fitzgerald mixed up. One is a children's author I enjoyed and one is a best-selling adventure novelist. I keep seeing mentions of MacDonald and being slighly confused because I wasn't sure that Fitzgerald had written non-children literature.

The book opens: "We were about to give up and call it a night when somebody dropped the girl off the bridge." Excellent start. The next five pages detour explain why Travis McGee is fishing under that bridge - the answer being a week long binge of sex and therapy to help a woman decide whether to divorce her husband. The story catches back up with itself and Vangie is a high-rent prostitute who works in a con identifying rich lonely men, dumping them overboard into the ocean and running away with their money. Vangie tried to get out and got dropped off a bridge.

This was a really well written story, but with baggage. An engaging tale by racist grandpa.

Page 51: Vangie tries to get naked into McGee's bed and is thouroughly described. McGee turns her down because once a woman's slept with too many men, she turns into an acidic whore with a heart of stone stinking of death. His wise friend confirms this opinion and reasures him that though McGee later boasts to have a different woman every 3 months or so, he is not a womanizer or an objectifier. (p60)

Page 92: I only half understand this quote: "the educated Negro woman" .. "carry the dead weight of all their deprived people, and though they know intellectually that the field hand mentality is a product of environment" (the Stuggle) "They say Now, knowing that only fifteen percent of Negro America is responible enough to handle the realities of Now, and that in the hard core of the South, perhaps only seventy percent of the whites are willing to accept the obligations of Now. But they are on the move with nowhere to go but up, with the minority percentage of the ignorant South running into the majority percentage of ignorant Negro America, in blood, heartbreak, shame, and confusion". McGee tells himself that he's intolerant of everyone and is vouched for by a black lawyer friend - he totally has a black friend.

McGee has a distinct Madonna vs. Whore thing going on. The whores try to buy him with sex and the negro maid is a pure noble widow.

Page 157. While he eventually turns the prostitute down, she says "Anyways, I got proof you're not lavender, dearie."

Several thousand years ago several divinities appeard in the Continent. They warped reality to their will such that in various places on the Continent, the world was created by different dieties in different fashions, and all of these conflicting accounts were true.

Five hundred years ago, the divinities unified into a single pantheon and became expansionistic, brutally dominating the island of Saypuri.

One hundred years ago, the island of Saypuri revolted, executed every Divinity and priest they could find, and turned the Continent into their protectorate. It is now illegal for a Continental to preach, to teach about their beliefs, or to imply that the Divinities were ever real.

A Saypuri historian has gone missing in the central city and a spy/ambassador/investigator is trying to discover what happened to him.

This is another supernatural romance, and Kelley Armstrong was the title blurb, so I wasn't really looking forward to it.

It wasn't bad, but I wasn't in the mood. Witchy sex is stranger than werewolf sex. I think this was intended to be book 1 of a series, so at page 200, the story was still introducing characters. The only conflict came at page 250, and then it was over.

Spider is a time machine repair man. His life is turned upside down when he finds a dead body hidden inside a time machine hidden inside a time machine.

I liked the first half a lot, then got confused by the reality disrupting effects of multiple time machines wrecking havok on multiple timelines.

Authors with last names beginning B, I'm discovered via my "read a book from every shelf" project. Struggled with the first chapter of "Witches" and am really enjoying "Time Machines".

Picked up "Darker Than Amber" because I'm always confused by two authors named Macdonald and I've never read this one. Picked up "Programmed Inequality" because it looked interesting. I don't like the writing as much as "Code Girls" which is on a similar subject.

Working through Clive Cussler when I don't have anything else.

Reynolds is a great horror author. Ascender looked interesting.

Now I need to get through at least 7 of these before moving on...

This is book 4 of 6, I think. The First Lord is busy putting down a rebellion in the southern swamps. Tavi should be defending the west from the Canim invaders, but he's been accused of treason and imprisoned. Tavi can see the massive death toll coming, but can he find a way to avoid it.

This is the third book in the Interdependency series. The Interdependency Empire spans dozens of solar systems, connected by a hyperspace called "The Flow". A shoal, a particular place in each solar system may be connected to another place in another solar system. Travel within the Flow takes days or months to cross interstellar space. Some systems, like the capital Hub, have many shoals connecting them to many other worlds. Others, like End, may have only one. Three more things to understand. One, the civilization of the Interdependency was formed in the rubble of a terrible series of wars, and thus was engineered to spread the resources and the dependencies across the many worlds. One world may be the only one to produce rice. Another may be the only one to produce cars. In order to survive, humanity MUST cooperate, by design. Two, the Interdepency exists solely in space habitats and underground cities on inhospitable worlds. The planet of End is the only one they've found that can support life, and that world is far from the rest of the civilization. Finally, the Flow that connects the many worlds and allows humanity to survive is breaking apart and collapsing.

In this book, several planets have been permanently isolated. The emporox Grayland II is dodging assassination attempts. The full collapse of the empire is imminent.

I haven't read a lot by Elizabeth Bear, but this novella seems like a shorter piece set in a well worn world. I assume her other writings reuses some of this world's features.

Bijou is a wizard of sorts whose power is taking bits of bone and jewel and wire and reforming automotan creatures to live with her. She and her once apprentice are growing suspicious of the local necromancer. Her once apprentice now friend brings her a child whose arm is rotting on its bones, to save and to raise.

Thorvald Spear wakes up from being dead. After 100 years, his savestate had been found and his body rebuilt for him. He immediately sets out to kill the nigh-omnimpotent AI which had gone rogue and killed his fellow soldiers in one of the last battles of the recent war. Reminded me a lot of Peter Hamilton and Iain M Banks.

I had read this one before. Singh is a prince from the planet of space-kashmir. He's enlisted in the space-navy of his imperialist colonizers to help bring his space-planet into the technological space-future. His space-ship gets deployed to space-arabia where the space-french patron state is worried about the expansionist policies of the space-germans. It's a pretty good space-navy book and not as silly as I'm making it sound.

Abe and Joanna are an older couple living on one of the islands in Puget Sound off Seattle. One night they befriend a young woman who makes the world around her light up. Who is she and what is she running from?

The writing was really good and the plot was engaging enough. I started it worried that it would devolve into werewolf sex and it devolved into wereworlf sex. Elena is trying to remain faithful to her steady reliable boyfriend while having passionate wolf sex with her sexy denmate. She worried about her moral character while murdering everyone who discovers that she is a werewolf. The blurb describes her as a strong sexy female character, but the writing is not strong on consent as she tells various characters "no" while getting forcibly kissed and groped.

I have read the previous "The Bear and the Nightingale". In this book Vasalia continues to try to assert her independence, save the nearby villagers who are attacked by bandits, and keep from being burned as a witch.

Cale is raised by the brutal monks of the Sanctuary of the Redeemers. When Cale and his friends discover a dark plot, they grab the chance to escape.

Reminded me of Firefly. The crew of a smuggling job are hired to sneak a package past customs and are betrayed. Everyone has a dark past they don't like talking about. Colorful characters.

When London is bombed, an unlikely group of subway workers discover a door that takes them to the magical land of Down. They struggle to understand this new world and to survive.

So far so good. A woman and her alien friend travel around the SW United States.

The Codex Alera is a fantasy series that I like to describe as "Roman Legions with Magic". There are elemental furies everywhere in the land and all the humans of the empire can draw on their powers to one level or another. All of them except for Tavi.

Each elemental weilder can call forth an avatar form of their element as well as benefiting from various side powers. Earthcrafters can cause structures to flow from the earth and have great strength so long as they touch the ground. Aircrafters can create winds to enable them to fly and also compress the air into far-seeing lenses. Watercrafters can heal others, sense the emotions of others, and use any water they're familiar with as a H2Olographic communciation display. Firecrafters can do the expected and inflame the negative emotions of others. Metal and Wood are the non-standard pentahexamembers of the usual tetrad. Metalcrafters have unusual endurance and speed. Woodcrafters can move easily through even dense foliage and get several elf/ranger bonuses to archery.

The empire's technology is based on the complete ubiquity of furycrafting powers. Household lamps can only be ignited or extinguished by ordering the encased fury. The imperial roads are filled with an earthcrafting that lets the road fling the user forward at incredible speeds.

And so Tavi, with no powers whatsoever, is seen as lamentably disabled.

In this third novel, a southern slaver lord is rebelling at the same time as hordes of Canim wolf-warriors begin assaulting the western coast.

I like the Culture series of books, but I cannot tell them apart from title or cover. I think I have read 7 or 8 of the 10 books, but I don't know which ones. I keep picking up another one in the hopes that it's one of the elusive ones I've missed. It's not.

This book opens with a conversation between a family of space ships. No that's not a typo. I think the planet sized constructor ship is called "Grey Area" and its various offspring are "Morally Dubious" and "Open to Interpretation".

This is the Out Of Context Problem book. A powerful thing that was previously unknown that by its existence upends the balance of power. The Culture and their offshoots and neighbors are on the brink of war after an artifact of unimaginable power appears on their border.

I've been accused of having read every book in the library or in the Science Fiction section. When I deny this, I grant that I may have read a book on every shelf of the Science Fiction section. Let's check.

I have read something by Lynn Abbey but not this. I've checked Magicians Impossible out to be fair.

I have read Douglas Adams. I own all these books.

I have read Asimov, but not these franchised books by Allen. I have read Mark Alpert's book The Orion Plan. I've read The Meg by Steve Alten. I read City Of something by Charlie Jane Anders. Ooh. Gillian Anderson co-wrote a few books. Maybe I'll try one.

I have read Kevin J Anderson and Poul Anderson.

I have read Poul Anderson and the first 5 Destroyermen books by Taylor Anderson.

Wow. Piers Anthony has written a lot of books. I've read a few Xanth books, all the space sequence, and all of the immortals books.

I'm not sure if Piers Anthony should count for my having read this second shelf too. Maybe I'll read something by Arden. I read the bear book.

A young man from the mundane world discovers that he has a magical family history. He goes to the school of witchcraft and wizardry and shows an aptitude for all things wizzical. An evil wizard has already killed his parents and is pursuing him.

The writing was pretty good but the premise and story were lacking something.

I have read this one before, so I only got a hundred pages in before dropping it.

A rich family pissed off a religious order by stealing an artifact. The order kills the parents and eventually gets a legal assassination contract against the daughter. The daughter something somethign gets the old gang back together and goes searching for the last Lazy Gun - an artifact of great power.

A psychiatrist is attempting to treat patients with a sudden and strikingly similar condition. Otherwise healthy young people suddenly suffer from apparent PTSD, screaming in a foreign language and describing visions of fire.

This was competently written but not amazing. The second book is set up for ancient viking antartica ghost wizards. A fun beach read.

vN means Von Neuman machine. A robot that can reproduce on its own. A end-times church decides that since in the apocalypse, all the Christians will be raptured and all the evil people will be eaten by demon horse locusts, humanity will need robots to help them, thus creating a race of synthetic intelligent self-replicating androids.

Continuing to read a book from every shelf in (the sci-fi section of) the library.

??? Not sure if I've read anything by Kelley Armstrong.

Not sure about Asaro - I think so? Not sure about Sarah Ash. I just finished vN by Madeline Ashby. It was in the missing spot.

I have read Asimov, but not these franchised books by Allen. I have read Mark Alpert's book The Orion Plan. I've read The Meg by Steve Alten. I read City Of something by Charlie Jane Anders. Ooh. Gillian Anderson co-wrote a few books. Maybe I'll try one.

I have read Asimov and Asprin.

I have read Fortune's Queen by Bach.

??? I have to have read somethign by Baker, Baker, Baker, or Bakker... I'll have to check.

I have read Banks, but as I said, I have no idea which books. I have read Bannister.

Continuing to read a book from every shelf in (the sci-fi section of) the library.

I have read "The Bone Ships."

I have read "Firedance" and I just picked up "Twelve Days". I like Stephen Baxter, but he always has an omniscient sidekick character to explain how clever the world building is.

Picked up a book by Beagle.

I really like th eLegacy/Eternity/Eon series by Bear.

I picked up Time Machines repaired while you wait.

I have read benford.

Continuing to read a book from every shelf in (the sci-fi section of) the library.

I have read Bester but nothing else. I should pick up one of these books.

I picked up Birmingham. Bishop looks like another supernatural romance and I'm not in the mood.

I think I read "Red Right Hand". I've read Bledsoe.

I've read "Breach of Containment."

I read Jupiter something by Bova.

"Fata Morgana" is really good.

I've read Ray Bradburry.

Continuing to read a book from every shelf in (the sci-fi section of) the library.

I have read The Vorrh, and Beth Cato.

I have read the Parasol Conspiracy by Gail Carrigan.

I have read some Jack Chalker, Becky Chambers, and one Owl book.

I have read "Nouner" and cat books by C.J. Cherryh.

I read one book by Zen Cho. The thin, unreadable one.

I have read Arthur C. Clarke.

I have read Cassandra Rose and Susanna Clarke.

I have read Genivive Cogman and Myke Cole.

I have read Glen Cook, Stephen Coonts, and maybe Brenda Cooper - yes, I'm reading Ruby's Song.

I have read "The Expanse". I have read 1633 by Eric Flint and other books by John Ringo.

I have read most of Michael Crichton and one of Justin Cronin.

I have read Julie E. Czerneda.

I read "The Ill Made Mute" and something by James E. David.

???

I have read L. Sprague De Camp.

I have read Delaney and de Lint.

I have read de Lint and Medusa and something by Dick.

I have read Dickson. I'm not sure about Dietz.

????

I have read one of Thomas Covenant. I have read The Spaceship Next Door.

I have read Sara Douglass.

I have read David Drake and Diane Duane.

I have read Dave Duncan.

I think I've read Dunne and Durst.

I have read Eddings.

I must have read something by Egan, right?

Axiom's End. Harlan Ellison.

????

????

????

I have read Philip Jose Farmer.

????

I have read Thursday Next and Jack Spratt. I have listened to and read Nightvale. Oooh. "Guild of Xenolinguists! Ordered."

I have wread Flint.

I have read Flynn. I hav read Agatha Heterodyne.

I have read Foster, of course. I need to read Forcheter. I think I have read Margarat Fortune.

I read a rift book. I have read Freer.

I read Space Captain Smith.