While I have been doing some reading, I’ve mostly been writing. But of the books I have read, some do stand out. One was Alastair Reynolds’ The Dagger in Vichy, a post-apocalyptic novel unlike anything I’ve read (although I’m generally not big on that sub-genre). I also enjoyed Kate Elliot’s The Witch Roads. Victoria Goodard’s “Greenwing and Dart” books are hard to describe because they’re a low-key mixture of fantasy and mystery, set in an “English-type class society” that appears to have trouble holding itself together, except when it doesn’t, with more than a touch of coziness. I also read one of Ian M. Banks’ culture novels — The Algebraist, both intriguing and vaguely disappointing, although I couldn’t say why. Guy Gavriel Kay always writes well, although some of his stories don’t always grab me, but, for whatever reason,Written on the Dark did so, even with the background sense of an empire about to collapse.

Murder by Memory by Olivia Waite is a mystery set in a generation ship, which, unlike so many generation ships, seems to be functioning as designed, although some of its inhabitants are definitely not.

As usual, there were more than a few books that were decent, but not outstanding, and two that I didn’t see any point in finishing.