Bookish Thoughts

I started reading the Expanse books when I couldn't figure out how to watch the TV show that began airing last year. They're fun, exciting books that deal with a time period science fiction tends to skip over. Humanity has colonized the moon and Mars and established mining operations on various asteroids and moons of the outer planets. But we're still traveling at sub-light speeds, which keeps us confined to the solar system. And all the same old prejudices and politics are with us. In the second novel, the alien threat begins to take shape. New characters are added and bring exciting points of view. Once again, the action is centered on the search for a young girl, though this one is much younger. Humanity remains on the brink of war as everyone vies to get ahead before the alien threat on Venus makes its next move. What I appreciated about this book was the additional characters. There are four viewpoint characters instead of two, and their stories come together much ...

Terry Pratchett wrote this book when he was 17. Then, when he was 40, he did a massive edit and re-released it. That second version is the one I read (and probably the only one you can find these days). It was interesting to see his younger and older selves coming together in one book. Having read the entire Discworld and seeing him grow as an author made it easier to pick out the bits that he added later. The story itself is fairly straightforward fantasy, with a fun twist. The entire civilization exists inside a carpet, and it was fun to pick out the things from our world. The people collect ash and wood from fallen matches, varnish from a chair leg, and mine bronze from a penny. They're impossibly small and live on a contracted scale. The occasional (and unpredictable) vacuuming throws everything into chaos, and becomes the main crisis that the current characters have to get through. Unfortunately there are almost no women until the very end, where Pratchett tacks on a bunc...