Sci-Fi

Thrawn (2017)

rockraiderminer

This is a recommendation with a huge caveat. How deep do you want the rabbit hole?

We all know Star Wars has a myriad of characters, settings, and timelines. This is a great book if you love the empire era. This book also paints the empire in a very different light then in any other media namely the “boring sides” of logistics, protocols, and bureaucracy; mixing in xenophobia, life under empire rule, and of course space battles. With that said, I still recommend any fan interested to know who Thrawn is, read this book. It is well worth your time. This book is smart and clever with gripping story (yes even with the bureaucracy). Also if you are an audiobook lover like I am, I highly recommend/warn the sound effects and pure production in the book.

Because of this book, I give the mentioned caveat.

I think to the surprise of no-one I am a Star Wars nerd. Because of this, I read 9 other books featuring Thrawn. ( Thrawn: Alliances, Thrawn: Treason, Heir to the Empire, Dark Force Rising, The Last Command, Thrawn Ascendancy: Chaos Rising, Thrawn Ascendancy: Greater Good, and Thrawn Ascendancy: Lesser Evil) I could recommend them. But I find myself when I talk about these books with peers I really can’t.

It is a struggle to convince someone to read one book let alone 9. I do absolutely enjoy what I have read, and think if people take the time to sit down and read them all it will be worth their time. But it is a commitment too far to say “read 9 books and tell me what you think”.

Basically this is THE book I recommend, and IF you want more there is plenty more, but if you only read one, this is it.

Reading List of 2021

rockraiderminer

This is the big list of books I completed in 2021.

I would like to say there is a pattern, however I think that would be a lie.

The list is in (mostly) sequential order

note: just because it is on this list does not mean I recommend it or will not recommend it later, this is more the list of stuff I thought would be worth reading.

  1. The Reluctant Adventures of Fletcher Connolly on the Interstellar Railroad
  2. Eating the Dinosaur
  3. Song Machine
  4. Humble Pi
  5. Liquid Rules
  6. Better Than Before
  7. Libertarian Walks into a Bear
  8. All Creatures Great and Small
  9. Watership down
  10. Thrawn ascendancy: Greater Good
  11. White fang
  12. A Clockwork Orange
  13. Creativity INC
  14. Heavens river (Bobiverse)
  15. Mathematics of love
  16. The Ice Diary’s
  17. Shadows of the Empire (abridged)
  18. The Android’s Dream
  19. Sword of Destiny (Witcher)
  20. Invisible hook
  21. The Godfather
  22. Four Fish
  23. Orconomics
  24. Eaters of the Dead
  25. Cosmos
  26. Super Freakonomics
  27. Lies my Teacher Told Me
  28. Prisoners of Geography
  29. Nordic Theory of Everything
  30. Everybody has a Podcast Except You
  31. Thinking, Fast and Slow
  32. Curious
  33. Thrawn Ascendancy: Lesser Evil
  34. Existentially Challenged
  35. Consider the Fork

The Reluctant Adventures of Fletcher Connolly on the Interstellar Railroad

rockraiderminer

Another recommendation where I am technically recommending the entire series.

This is a goofy book with a good plot. Very much a space opera, lots of planets and types of aliens. The characters, for lack of a better term, are down to earth. They all feel very rational and unique. Namely the main character, Fletcher, is very Irish. This book does lean on the reader liking British/Irish humor to get some of the nuanced jokes. The audio book also hammers this fact down. But I still recommend this. There is a lot of fun and adventure to be had.

The sci-fi world is great at poking fun at trends, creating aliens, and revising earth. The author knows when to lean into the campy humor and when to use a well-crafted plots and twists.

This book/series is a fun romp, funny, adventurous, and thought provoking in only a way sci-fi/ space operas can pull off. Also, the individual books are really short, and the collection feels like one book when put together, so I technically count this as 1 book in my head.

Star Wars: The Clone Wars: No Prisoners

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To the surprise of absolutely no-one, I am a Star Wars Fan. There is a LOT and I mean a LOT of Star Wars Media to consume, much of it good to a degree. At some point I will add more SW books, I promise.

With Disney now owning SW, books were ripped out of canon, and into legends. This is one of those books. And yes, it is based on the animated series “The Clone Wars”. But please give it a chance. First, its not an episode from TCW, and you do not need much context from TCW to enjoy this book. Second, this really gives a good look into Anikin in the prequels, that I wish was present. Same with the jedi philosophy, and clone’s outlook on the war.

I recommend this book to anyone familiar to the SW prequels, but namely I think this book is the best slice of TCW without diving head first into the whole series or other books.

We Are Legion (We Are Bob)

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Technically I am recommending the entire bobiverse (We are Legion, For We are Many, All These World, Heavens Rive and hopefully 2 more soonish).

This is a killer Sci-fic concept, perfect for people who like to think about Sci-fi meeting reality.

“What would it be like to be a Von Neumann Probe?” (A Von Neumann probe is a self-replicating spaceship).

I don’t like giving too many spoilers (I recommend you read these books for yourself after all); but to give a bit more context, this follows Bob. Bob is a regular man who dies and his conscious digitized into a self-replicating drone. He escapes earth and makes clones, both as a spaceship and as his conscious, all following his adventures in the galaxy.

Plenty of wit and good ideas, it is hard to recommend only the first book, all of them are great