sci fi

My Top 10 (Completed) Science Fiction/Fantasy Series

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Before diving into the list itself, I’d like to establish a few things. These are my favorite series, and do not necessarily reflect the best writing in series I’ve read. This ranking takes into consideration things like prose, dialogue, characters, worldbuilding, and plot. In some cases, weight will be given more to phenomenal prose; in others, the focus will be on setting or characters or whatever.

It also ignores incomplete series, so you won’t see any love for The Kingkiller Chronicle or The Stormlight Archive, among others. Similarly, it ignores standalone books, so no The Windup Girl or The Left Hand of Darkness or Roadside Picnic or the like.

That said, let’s dive on in. Continue reading

Book of the Week – December 22nd, 2015

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I’m back with an early post, since I know everyone will be busy with family and friends and important things like eating loads of ham this weekend. After last week’s post on The Claw of the Conciliator, we continue with the next in the series, The Sword of the Lictor. And wow, is this one a doozy.

Sword of the Lictor

Where Claw of the Conciliator left off in a seemingly out-of-nowhere event, and bafflingly without any kind of real conclusion, Sword of the Lictor opens after skipping what would normally be the climax of the quest: Severian has already gotten to Thrax and settled in as the new Lictor there, serving the archon by running the prison and performing excruciations and executions. Dorcas is with him, still, and Dr. Talos and Baldanders have long since returned to Lake Diuturna. Continue reading

Book of the Week: October 16th, 2015

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The Book of the Week is back, and this time it’s not a Mistborn novel! I promise.

We’re going back quite a few years to a science fiction classic that, in my opinion, doesn’t get a whole lot of the love it deserves: Out of the Silent Planet by C.S. Lewis.

Out of the Silent Planet

Out of the Silent Planet is the first of Lewis’ Space Trilogy, and I’ll admit that my recent reading of it was a very different experience from the first time (which was probably sometime around 4th or 5th grade…it’s been a while). There were very few things that I remembered about the plot and almost nothing about the characters. The result was a pretty fresh take, and I was impressed. Continue reading