Reading notes
What I've been reading.
Books I've finished, with a short synopsis and what I actually took away from each one.
Sci-fi/fantasy books
Clear
Radiant Star
The story is set on a star-less planet that is somehow important spiritually for different space cultures.
People have visions there, and sects are of course attracted and live...
Paladin of souls
We follow the queen-mother Ista. After the event of The Curse of Chalion.
She was Cursed for 25 years and now she is free. The thing though is that everybody thinks she is craz...
Ra
Magic exists as a science/engineering domain of humanity since its discovery in the 70s.
It obeys certain rules and there are still researches around it.
We follow, mainly, tw...
The curse of Chalion
We follow a noble soldier who's coming back to his land after having had a hard time on a galley in a foreign land.
He finds a job at a noble woman's house as the tutor of her ...
Children of Strife
The fourth instalment of the children of time series -- which is mostly about uplifting and different type of minds.
We follow people who have found a planet to terraform. The...
The man who saw seconds
A man who can see all the possible futures in the 5 seconds, intuitively, is living a nice life.
Until he isn't and is pursued by the police and then the whole US government, d...
Annie Bot
We follow a bot - a female bot that is owned by a man who's recovering from his break up.
The man decides to override the default settings so the bot can learn from the specif...
In ascension
A woman grew up in the netherlands. She had a father that used to be fisherman and then worked as a civil servant in water management that beat her. A mother mathematician that ...
The Deep Sky
The earth is ravaged by environmental damage, and everybody get together to send the best of their youth to other planets to save humanity.
We're on the ship with this youth th...
Embassytown
We are at the edge of the "visitable" space and there, on a planet, there is a bubble called "embassytown" - a bubble from the outside where another type of lifeform exists. The...
There Is No Antimemetics Division
There is a secret world organisation that takes care of the secret things in the dark. There is a department in this division called the Antimemetics Division and they take care...
The House in the Cerulean Sea
It is set in a world where some people are born magical and where until recently, these people have been condemned by society.
Now a government has an agency to look after the ...
House of Suns
Clones with variance that can live eternally are roaming the galaxy - touring around in trips counted in hundred of thousands of years.
They collect info and technology.
When ...
The Goblin Emperor
A young man rejected by his father the emperor finds himself on the throne of an Elf kingdom after his father and half-brothers die in a air-balloon crash.
No one at the court ...
The Mountain in the sea
Ha is a scientist who specialises in octopus communication/consciousness/civilisation.
She's invited to study on an island, with the only synthetic human on earth, the possibi...
Null State
Following the events of Infomocracy, side characters now are the main protagonists. The story happens in Darfour, where there's suspicion about Information as well as old habits...
Infomocracy
We're a century in the future and there's a new form of politics: centennals. They are agglomeration of 100.000 people who get to vote on their government. The elections are org...
Far from the light of heaven
A spaceship, the Ragtime, goes from earth to the planet Bloodroot passing by the Spacestation Lagos. Arriving at Bloodroot, the captain Shell Campion wakes up and the ship AI is...
The Night Circus
It's the story of a woman and a man set against each other by their fathers. Their contest is hidden, even from them, and their playing field is a circus where they perform magi...
The Burning God
Rin decides to rally all the poor people of the south to take over the Dragon Lord
The Doubt Factory
A teenager girl from a well-off family is living a life without worries, until some day, incidences happen at her school - a stranger disrupts her life and ask her to question h...
To Sleep in a Sea of Stars
A crew goes to inspect a new planet for colonization, a small crew. Our protagonist is a woman, and she discovers an old alien ship ( humanity hasn't encountered aliens yet ) a...
Rule 34
A strange murder that includes a sex toy happens in Edinburgh and we follow 3 people linked to that murder.
One is a petty criminal who's trying to reform and the other person ...
The Water Knife
In Phoenix Arizona, a man get killed and somehow it moves around a lot of people.
This in the USA where water has become a scarce resource. Not so scarce as everybody struggles...
The Delirium Brief
An old enemy of The Laundry, a preacher from the USA, is coming to British soil.
The Laundry is already not going well because of the invasion of elves (alfars) that made it p...
Dead Lies Dreaming
Eve Starcky and Imp are brothers and sisters, children of mages from mages family. They followed both different path, Eve being high in the corporate world and Imp being a vaga...
The Labyrinth Index
Mhari used to work for the Laundry Service. The UK, in a previous book, has now a God ( the black pharao) as a PM and he is directing the Laundry Service, which he kinda dissol...
The Relentless Moon
This time we follow a side character of the Calculating Stars. She is a pilot that is also the wife of a senator. She's on the moon as the colonization keeps on working. There ...
The Fated Sky
We keep on following our Pilot-Computer. The equivalent of the NASA has accepted women being pilots, especially at the end of the last book. Here though, it's about the Mars Mi...
The Calculating Stars
A meteorite crashes close to Washington DC in the early 1950's and the USA's east coast is devastated. The only long term solution for humanity ( because of the coming Climate ...
Redshirts
Ensigns on a spaceship are aware that something is wrong, as no one wants to go down on missions. Why ? Because ensigns going on missions die often. So often that the new ensig...
Heaven's River
Fourth Volume of the "We are Bobs"
Bobs find a superstructure were a species seem to be lightly controlled. In parallel, some Bobs are hacking 3D printers and routers, as Bobs...
All These Worlds
Bobs have to fight the Aliens, and help humans adapt to another planet. Bobs get attach to their ancestors, and at the same time discover that price of eternity.
For We Are Many
Bobs go back to earth and discovers they really need help, as a nuclear winter threatens to wipe out humanity. A bob also discovers a planet where there is a life that looks li...
We Are Legion (We Are Bob)
Young CEO dies young, but got to have his brain frozen. He is revived centuries later and learns that Earth is not going so well. He is to be the AI behind a spaceship to find ...
Termination Shock
A rich Texan who has invested in real estate in Houston, decides to build giant sulfure shooting guns in the texas, to cool down the earth.
He invites the queen of the netherl...
Prelude to Foundation
Hari Seldon proves that psycho-history can exist. He just doesn't know how it works. He is sent on a quest to find how to make it work.
He thinks he needs to look at the origin...
Diaspora
Three types of humans exist: digitalized, cyborgs and dna-enhanced. The protagonists are digitalized and one is actually constructed as a digital being. They become a bit frien...
Fugitive Telemetry
Murderbot is on a "free" planet, working for his favorite group. This time though it is a murder mystery.
Network Effect
Murderbot is now working for the humans. He is sent on a survey mission, but as they come back, they discover that ART needs help. His crew got kidnapped by Aliens and Murderbo...
Exit Strategy
So murderbot goes back to help the group of humans that "rescued" him from servitude. He deduces that his preferred human has been kidnapped and works on freeing her.
Rogue Protocol
Murderbot volume 3. He finally lands on the asteroid where he committed attrocities. There he comes to understand that the company actually made him kill everybody as to hide th...
Artificial Condition
Murderbot is free and want to explore his past. To do so, he takes on a job as security consultant. In his adventure, he meets a spaceship that is sentient, that he calls ART,...
The Eye of the Heron
6000 colonists on a planet. 2/3 are exiled criminals, the other third are exile pacifists. The pacifists, 80 years after having arrived, want to be independent..
All Systems Red
A survey of a planet turns into a a skirmish between half-human battle bots.
The protagonist is a battlebot that managed to be free of its governing module.
the beginning place
A man, I forgot his name, with an unhappy mother who he feels responsible for, discover another place, calm, where time is slower. He encounters a girl there, and she is also i...
Of ants and Dinosaurs
Ants and Dinosaurs are in alliances: ants are the scientists/mathematicians and the dinosaurs have the imaginations.
Dinosaurs are not caring about the environment and ants a...
The Ministry of the Future
In 2024, the Paris Agreement creates an office, un-officially called the ministry of the future. At little after that, and unrelated to the creation of the ministry, a heat wav...
Hold Up The Sky
It's a collection of short-stories by Liu Cixin .
• The Village Teacher: The story of a provincial village with a devoted teacher. Aliens discover the notion of teacher as a wa...
The Dragon Republic
Following on the adventure of Rin. In this book she defends the Dragon Warlord, who allies himself with the westerners, against the Empress. She hesitates wither she's defendin...
The Poppy War
The book is set in a fantasy china at the beginning of the 20th century. We follow a girl as she gets into the military academy and discovers that she can calls on the power of...
A desolation called peace
So following up the events of a memory called empire, our ambassador and her connection at the empire are sent on the front of a war against an alien species. The species is di...
Hothouse
In a world where the sun stopped moving, we follow some humans. One human in particular is still curious enough to travel around. He founds a morsel that talks to him and is so...
Space Opera
Eurovision in Space in the style of Douglas Adams
Exhalation
8 short stories fantasy and sci-fi.
• The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate : about time travel
• Exhalation: about entropy and life from a robotic world
• What's Expected of...
a memory called empire
An newly ambassador from a space-stations confederations is sent to an empire. These stations have the particularity of adding an "image" of a person unto them. She received th...
Cage of Soul
In the future, very very far in the future, humanity has overused all its resources.
The only thing left is one city, of ten thousands inhabitants, and its prison in the jungle...
Infinite Detail
It's the story of the before and after of a virus that takes down every networks. The before is a dystopia of constant control by a few big tech companies with the accumulation ...
Devolution
An Eco Village in America get stuck and technology less after a volcano. Then a Sasquatch tribe hunts them
Stories of you life and others
Collection of short stories :
- Tower of Babylon: great story about language and recursion
- Understand: I don't remember
- Division by zero: a mathematician disproof mathema...