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arbieroo

Arbie's Unoriginally Titled Book Blog

It's a blog! Mainly of book reviews.

Currently reading

Station Zero
Philip Reeve
Progress: 220/282 pages
The Books of Earthsea: The Complete Illustrated Edition
Ursula K. Le Guin, Charles Vess
Progress: 749/997 pages
The Penguin Book of Russian Poetry
Robert Chandler
The Uncertain Land and Other Poems
Patrick O'Brian
Progress: 8/160 pages
The Heptameron (Penguin Classics)
Marguerite de Navarre
Progress: 152/544 pages
The Poems and Plays of John Masefield
John Masefield
Progress: 78/534 pages
Poems Selected
Emily Dickinson, Ted Hughes
Progress: 4/50 pages
Selected Poems
U A Fanthorpe
Progress: 18/160 pages
The Penguin Book of Scottish Verse
Mick Imlah, Robert Crawford
Hainish Novels & Stories, Vol. 2
Ursula K. Le Guin
Progress: 133/789 pages

Blue Remembered Earth, Alastair Reynolds

Blue Remembered Earth - Alastair Reynolds

First of a projected trilogy, with the second available in hardback at the time of writing.

 

Intra-family strife, secrets, the death of a Matriarch and a trans-solar-system treasure hunt for - who knows what? Imagine what The Da Vinci Code could have been if written by a competent SF novelist as opposed to an incompetent thriller writer and you will have some idea about this book. Also imagine African elephants, which feature quite a bit and left me with some of the more abiding images from this book.

 

People looking for trademark Reynolds Gothicism/grotesquery will find it in short supply and quite heavily disguised but it would have been out of place in this story so the lack of it does no harm.

 

I am intrigued to know where the 2nd volume takes us, which can't be a bad thing.