Hello again and welcome to my Tome Infinity and Beyond wrap up. I read 11 of
the 14 books on my TBR, which I'm absolutely thrilled about since I got
through a typical monthly book number for me in just the two weeks of the
readathon. 7 were by new-to-me authors and 3 were new-to-me books
by authors I'd read before. 8 of the books had been on my owned TBR shelves, and
one was a reread. Regarding authors, 5 books were written by a woman, 1 by an
author of color, 1 by a queer author, and 2 by a Jewish author. Regarding
main characters, 5 books had at least one woman, 2 had at least one POC, 2
had at least one queer character, and none had a Jewish main character. All
11 books were, of course, sci-fi. 1 book was a graphic novel, and I DNFed 1
book. My ratings were 1 five star, 3 four stars, 2 three-point-five stars, 1 three star,
2 two-point-five stars, 1 two star, and 1 one star. I started my journey on ship C,
whose challenge was to read a book of short stories. For this I read Murasaki
written by six different sci-fi authors and edited by Robert Silverberg. The
premise of this book was for these six authors to write their own stories set
in the Murasaki star system, which is a real system, to create an imagination
of what alien life might be like in that system and how humans would go and
discover it. There are two appendices in this book at the end, one written by
Poul Anderson and one by Frederik Pohl, that are very dry imaginings of the
types of creatures and the environment that exists on the two planets that
humans visit in this book. I started reading those appendices, but it was just
dry. There was a lot of math for how the planets moved around the sun, and I
personally was more interested in getting to actual story. For the first
five and a half stories in this book, they were interesting but I tend to
prefer more character-driven stories, and while there were individual characters
in here, it was very much an exploration of
the alien creatures, the world, the food, the plants. For my reading purposes it
was a little bit dry. I didn't see any kind of point to any of the stories and
I didn't see a trajectory. However, the last half of the sixth and final story
suddenly brought everything together. It was like reading a mystery when you
didn't even know going in that it was a mystery. Suddenly all the pieces from all
the other five and a half stories melded together. That was a really cool effect,
and that ended up making me think really highly of this book. I gave it 3.5 stars
because there were some definite problematic aspects to some of the
stories. The first story contained fatphobia. Most of the stories had to
make some kind of commentary on the appearance of every single female
character that existed, and I will say there's only one female writer of the
six who participated in this collaborative project, and it shows. I
also couldn't go above 3.5 stars because those first 5.5 stories were for me
something I couldn't connect to, but that big reveal at the ending did make it all
worth it, and I thought it was done very well. I'm glad I didn't DNF it, especially
with the fatphobia and the odd focus on female appearances that happened in the
first story. The first stop on my journey was the planet Venus, whose challenge was
to read a book with a bold female character. For this I read Sassinak by
Anne McCaffrey and Elizabeth Moon. This is one of the three books in the Planet
Pirate series. Some sources say it's the first book, some say it's the second.
Based on the timelines within the series I chose to take it as the first book.
This book is about a young girl who lives in a mining colony on a planet in
some solar system, and her planet is attacked and ravaged by space pirates.
Her entire family is murdered. Most of the people she knows are either murdered
or her friends are taken captive for slavery purposes. The book follows her
journey as a slave escaping slavery and then working her way up through the
military that exists in this universe, and becoming a captain of a ship whose
purpose is to find and eliminate the space pirate industry. I really enjoyed
this book. I loved following Sassinak through her life, through her struggles,
through her triumphs, and seeing her development and her relationships with
characters. The worldbuilding was really interesting, and I loved seeing female
characters who were sexually free to pursue the relationships that they want
without any kind of censorship. The last section unfortunately was a bit of a
mess. I think it's because the timeline of that last section also coincides with
one of the other books in this series, but it was written in a very confusing
way with a lot of jumps. The pacing was totally off, so it wasn't able to stand
on its own in this book. However, I am really excited to read that second book
and then the final book in the series following Sassinak and following the
character that was introduced in that last section and who is the focus of the
second book in the series. I gave this book 3.5 stars. The next leg of the
journey was to visit the Sun, whose challenge was to read a book featuring a
solar based event. For this I read Nightfall by Isaac Asimov and Robert
Silverberg. This book took Asimov's short story Nightfall,
which is about a planet with six suns who always experiences perpetual light
of some sort, and then the planet finds itself facing an eclipse for the first
time in 2,500 years. Basically everyone freaks out about it. What Robert
Silverberg added was to flesh out the story with a beginning and an end into a
full novel, which is the book that I read. This book was so good. I have never read
Asimov before, but the writing was just so tight and on point. Every moment,
every scene and character followed from the beginning of the book, just led up to
that moment of the eclipse. It had kind of a thriller anticipation to it. There
definitely some horror aspects to it, especially after the eclipse happened.
The writing was so well done that even though there were a handful of
characters to follow I was invested in them
and their studies from the beginning. What I really liked about this book was
that it didn't approach the eclipse from just an astronomical angle. It included
archaeology. It included psychology. It included media (one of the characters was
a newspaper writer). They were separate at the beginning, but then slowly as the
book developed and they each individually found evidence for the
eclipse about to happen, they come together, slowly merging into that point
that is the actual event of the eclipse. I thought it was really realistic how
the author portrayed a society who had never known darkness (they did not know
that this eclipse was going to happen) and how it affected people, how it
destroyed civilization, and not just the darkness but they thought that the
entire universe was within the area of those six suns, and then when the eclipse
happens they're able to see the stars for the first time. Oh, and in addition to
all the other elements, the psychology, the archaeology, astronomy, and media,
there's a religious aspect to it and how they have to handle the religious
calling of this apocalypse that they didn't believe in before, and then they
start getting the scientific evidence for it and how they have to handle the
way that the religious people peddle their dogma versus actually trying to
warn people based on the scientific evidence. Everything merged perfectly. The
tension was fantastic. The ideas were clear and followable and believable and
really interesting. I liked being able to see that beforehand and the effects of
the eclipse afterward in this post-apocalyptic world that occurs after
the eclipse. I highly recommend this book. The next stop on my journey was Mercury,
whose challenge was to read a book under 250 pages. For this I chose Brothers of
Earth by C.J. Cherryh. I have heard about C.J. Cherryh a lot as a classic author of
sci-fi, and especially since she's a woman who was writing in that time.
However I really disliked this book. I couldn't even finish it. It's a book that
I DNFed. The writing style was really dry and
distanced. I couldn't connect to any of the
characters or what was going on, but I pushed through hoping that things would
start making sense, the world would start to converge into something that I cared
about. But then I got to the point where there was insta-love between the main
human character and a very humanoid alien woman, and he showed his "love" (I'm
putting that word into air quotes here) by breaking all of her boundaries. The
alien creatures do not like physical touch, and he insists on touching her and
not letting her leave the room. There was one sentence that says he literally did
something he knew she didn't want. I skipped ahead at that point to see if
there was anything salvageable about this book, and I happened to come upon a
scene that I won't describe because of spoilers, but you can look at my review
on Goodreads and read it if you want to, but it's just one of the worst tropes,
misogynistic, horrible treatment of this woman, and I just noped out of
this book. I gave it one star. After Mercury my journey took me to the
asteroid belt, whose challenge was to read a space opera adventure. For this
I picked up a book I had been wanting to reread for a long time. It's another Anne
McCaffrey book called The Rowan. It's the first in a series of 5 books. The series
is called The Tower and the Hive. I read the series when I was a teenager,
and I remember absolutely loving the whole thing. I definitely enjoyed it upon
reread, but there were more problematic aspects to it that now that I've matured
as a reader over many years, that hindered me from enjoying it as much as I did
when I was a teenager. A lot of the male characters were very domineering, and
they get away with it in this book, but there is a counterbalance with a lot of
feminine empowerment, especially in the way that the final conflict of the book
is handled. This book takes place within Earth's solar system and some planetary
systems in the nearby area. Many humans who have expanded into the universe have
varying levels of psychic, telekinetic, other types of paranormal abilities. The
way that shipments of cargo and humans get from place to
place in space are from the most powerful humans with abilities called
primes. They, with their telekinetic abilities, basically port shipments
between each other. This book follows one particular prime, called the Rowan, from
her childhood to her adulthood. The first part of this book following her from the
age of three to about eighteen is great. It's her discovering her powers, where
she fits in, the typical coming-of-age, just set in space with telekinetic
powers. After that the book kind of devolved a bit. She's this great powerful
character, and there is an overarching conflict that she has to deal with, but
at that point after that first section it really focuses on this sudden romance
aspect. That relationship with the guy she ends up falling in love with is
definitely a little bit problematic. I've certainly read worse. In this book the
insta-love romance, which is the fastest case of insta-love I've ever read, could
really be explained because they are telepathic and they can discover each
other's emotions and backgrounds in an instant, but I still side-eyed it a
little bit. The Rowan character did seem to lose herself a little bit in that
relationship, but the book had set her up as a really lonely character. It's the
nature of primes to be very lonely, so her discovering someone that she
connected with was something that she appreciated quite a bit. So there were
pros and cons. Ultimately it weighed out into a four star read, which was probably
a half star rating more than I might have given it had I been reading this
for the first time, but I will consider that half star a nostalgic half star. I
do look forward to continuing the rest of the series to see how they hold up.
The next step of my journey was to switch to ship D, whose challenge was to
read a new-to-me author. For this I chose Aristoi by Walter Jon Williams. I had no
idea what to expect from this book, but I ended up seriously enjoying it. I ended
up reading all 450 pages of this book in one day. It was a
great, long sci-fi with a healthy dose of adventure thrown in. This book is about a
far-distant human civilization spread out across the
universe. Each section of the universe is ruled by one Aristos or Ariste,
the Aristoi at large. Earth has been destroyed by nanotechnology gone wrong,
but there has been a second Earth established. The main character that this
book follows is the Aristos of a totally different area of the universe.
The way that the Aristoi communicate with each other is by plugging into
something called the Oneirochronon. They mentally plug into it, almost like a
mental Internet, and they can manipulate the programming within that virtual
reality in their heads to create ballrooms or mountain areas or whatever
environment they want to be in, and that's how to communicate with each
other. The conflict in this book is when that main character discovers that
there's a problem within that virtual reality system, that everything could be
compromised, and that some kind of secret experiment is going on on a planet
system very far away that would be illegal and unaccepted by all the other
Aristoi. The book is about figuring out exactly what's going on and how to
handle it. The inciting action for that conflict doesn't happen until about page
100, but all the introductions to the characters and the world and the
relationships in that first 100 pages is essential to the reader's, or at least
to my, understanding. It took me a good 30 or 40 pages to really understand what
was going on and how this world works, from understanding the Oneirochronon,
that virtual reality, to the role of these personalities called Daimones,
which are basically alternate personalities that every person has and
can talk to in their heads. It was a really interesting dynamic. I really
enjoyed it, it just took a while to get into, but once I did understand I was
invested in this story. Like I said, there was action and adventure,
there was philosophical exploration of humanity and integrity,
lots of character and relationship development, scientific and technological
advances. The culture on these worlds was one of the more realistic futuristic
human cultures I've encountered because it took lots of
pieces from all over the world of Earth as we know it today and melded it into
something that seems believable. Lots of secrecy and betrayal, and at one
point the main characters are even undercover on a pre-technological world,
so we have space and all this technology, but then you have a section where they
have to deal with a pre-technological world, so it has everything you can think
of. It was packed in, the pacing was great. I really appreciated that the main character
was a bisexual polyamorous male character in a book written 26 years ago
and there was no issue with that from the other characters whatsoever. It was
really good, and I enjoyed every minute of that ride. The next step on my journey
was ship B, whose challenge was to read a book set on Mars. For this I read the
Sword of Rhiannon by Leigh Brackett. I was really excited for this book because
Leigh Brackett is the female sci-fi author who wrote the first draft of The
Empire Strikes Back Star Wars movie. She's a really big name, but I don't hear
about her often. This book is about an archaeologist on Mars who gets pulled
back in time and has to deal with a lot of the civil strife happening in the
world that existed in the past. Unfortunately I did not like this book
very much. I liked the writing quite a bit. It was
very tight, easy to follow, and often a lot of the phrasing and descriptions of
the world were really beautiful, but I really disliked the main character. I had
a lot of trouble believing that the world over a million years in the past
on Mars was so similar biologically. Other than small variations like skin
color, they seem to be exactly the same biologically as humans in the present.
The main character was able to integrate into their environment pretty easily,
including being able to fluently speak the language. I just thought that was
unrealistic. The romance aspect was ridiculous. They hate each other at the
beginning. The woman has him enslaved and whipped, and somehow he finds that hot,
apparently. She has absolutely no reason to like this guy other than the fact
that he's the hero of the story. I am glad that
I read the version of this book with the introduction by Nicola Griffith, because
she was able to put this book into context of the time it was written. At
that time a lot of Westerns were being written. This book definitely feels like
a Western, with the arrogant hero who gets the woman in the end, who is able to
triumph under ridiculous odds, just this happened to be set in space with time
travel. I do not like that dynamic. I gave this 2.5 stars. Next on my journey was
Mars, whose challenge was to read a book featuring aliens. For this I read The
Gods Themselves by Isaac Asimov. It's my second Asimov ever and for Tome Infinity
and Beyond. This book is about Earth discovering a seemingly infinite source
of energy by exchanging protons with a parallel universe. Of course there's a
problem with that, but only a couple of people actually know or suspect that
there will be catastrophic effects from this exchange of protons in the very
near future. This book was good and interesting. I definitely had to suspend
my disbelief for most of the hard science aspects of it because the
physics went right over my head, but I did enjoy overall the way that it was
laid out. However, this book seemed to be way too long. It could easily have been
100 pages shorter. The book was divided into three sections, and the entire
middle section took place in that parallel universe. That was by far my
favorite section of the entire book. I loved the aliens. I loved their world. I
loved the characters that were focused on, but I don't think it actually added
anything to the overall plot of The Gods Themselves. I think it would have stood
by itself as a short story or novella much better than it did in this entire
novel. I will say that the dialogue between characters throughout the entire
book was spot-on. Asimov is a master of showing versus telling and pulling the
reader into the way his worlds work without any exposition whatsoever. I
ended up giving this book three stars. My journey next took me to Jupiter, whose
challenge was to read a book featuring giants. For this I read Attack on Titan
volume 1. This takes place in a post-apocalyptic Earth
in which giant, mostly androgynous creatures have driven humanity behind
walls in the last city on Earth because if humans venture past those walls, the
giants will eat them. I have seen season 1 of the anime and I really enjoyed it,
so I was excited to get to actually reading this book. The manga did not
disappoint. The artwork is wonderful. I love when, in manga or graphic novels, the
artist knows exactly which frames of action to pick to really draw the reader
in and get emotions and plot across perfectly. Even knowing what would happen
from watching the anime, I was still caught up in the story and the
characters and that overhanging threat to humanity in the tone of the entire
book. I got emotional. I thought it was done really well. I can't wait to
continue reading the manga. Next on my journey was the comic relief planet
Uranus or Uranus. For this I read The Universe Next Door by Robert Anton
Wilson. This is the first in the Schrödinger's Cat trilogy in which
various parallel universes are explored with the same characters and mostly the
same plot, just some details change, and the author explores those changes in the
different sections of each book. What I really appreciated was how this book,
written in 1979, and this satirization of politics in the United States, is
still relevant today. It's frightening, disappointing, and also unsurprising. I
was able to appreciate the humor that came in there of the satirization of
the government. It got to the point where some of the details that the author put
in this book were so on point to the issues we're dealing with today. In this
book the government some of the characters work against is ruled by a
small amount of rich people who control 99% of the country's wealth. The solution
that the group wants is for just one of those rich people to give up all their
wealth above 1 million--they would still have an entire million dollars--but by
giving up all the rest of their billions and distributing it equally to every
other citizen in the United States it would solve the majority of the problems.
We see that same argument and issue today, so it was weird to read a book
from so many decades ago that could have been written today. I enjoyed part one of
this book where the characters were new, the plot was new, the ideas were new. Part
two follows a parallel universe where mostly everything is the same. It didn't
add anything to the point of the book, and it got really really weird. The whole
book is bizarre, but at least in part one there were those thought-provoking
elements to balance it out. Part two, to me, lacked cohesion, was difficult to
follow, and didn't add anything, so I didn't care. I will not be continuing
this series. I gave it two stars. The final leg of my journey and the ultimate
place where I will be settling anew after the destruction of Earth is Saturn,
whose challenge was to read a book with circles on the cover. For this I read
Sphere by Michael Crichton. This book follows a psychologist who is called to
the scene of a Navy dive in the middle of the ocean, where they think they have
discovered a spaceship. It's a little bit mystery, a lot thriller, a little bit
sci-fi. The beginning was great, where you have that mystery aspect. They're trying
to figure things out, there's a lot of science too, especially being a thousand
feet below the surface of the water. I enjoyed all that, but by about halfway or
two-thirds of the way through the focus shifted so greatly to the thriller
aspect and far outweighed the sci-fi focus.
I appreciate thriller, but I really wanted to continue that good sci-fi that we had
at the beginning of the book. The thriller aspect so superseded the
sci-fi that we didn't even get an explanation for the sci-fi at the end of
the book. I really also didn't like the way that the author handled issues of
race and gender among the cast of characters throughout the book. I gave it
2.5 stars. And that was my journey to find a new settlement for Tome Infinity
and Beyond! Let me know down in the comments if you've read any of these
books and what your thoughts on them are.
Thanks for joining me!
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