Binti

Looking for some lighter reads for my job-library's collection, I thought that I would have a look at the novellas that were either winners or nominees for the Hugo and Nebula Awards.  I've been meaning to do this for a really long time, but now I had a very good excuse for having a look.
Of course, Nnedi Okorafor's name has popped up here and there for a while in other award lists, and I had also been wanting to read something of hers...  so this was a perfect moment to do so.
Tor publishing will give you a good deal on these novellas for Kindle so I bought the first one not knowing what to expect. 
I was amazed!  I was smitten!  I was grateful that the other two novellas in this series were available right now!  Never have I been so happy about buying something online and getting that instant gratification of reading as soon as possible!  Binti was wonderful, and the following novellas were great too.

I enjoyed them so much that I didn't stop there.  I have bought most of Okorafor's other books as well, and I am going to read as many as possible this year.  I am especially looking forward to reading her comic books.
So, if you just want a quick read, an introductory jolt of African futurism, this is where to start.  I have just read an article recently that supports this idea at Bookriot.  I can't wait to read what comes next.

The Broken Earth Trilogy

Okay...I caved.  I decided that I could read the second book in this trilogy this month and then read the third next month ( I thought that it would be a good idea to pace it out...) but it wasn't a good idea!  I want to read the next book NOW (imagine a grown woman throwing a major wobbly fit because she can't gratify her need to know immediately).
As I mentioned in my other post about N. K. Jemisin, I had read (listened to) The Fifth Season and then promptly bought the rest of her work.

This book is just amazing, different, engrossing.  There's that hint of a bygone terrestrial era (and I have always loved a book about an Earth that is no longer recognizable).  Though it is much more than that.  I really want to know how this world evolved to be what it is now and that is what holds my fascination (and always has!).  Added to that a strong female protagonist (who is a survivor), and a hard, painful backstory and you have The Fifth Season.   It gets exciting at the end however and then we get to The Obelisk Gate:

I loved this book!  It really is epic fantasy (and nominated for both The Nebula and Hugo Awards).  Sometimes the middling book of a trilogy is just filler, but not this one.  It's action packed from start to finish, keeping the story going along at a fast clip with some more backstory thrown in.  I hate to give spoilers, so I can't really say more about this book, except that I wish N.K. Jemisin good luck with the Hugos.  Now, to calculate how soon I can get the next book!

Remembrance Of Earth's Past

Another Hugo Award winner, this first book The Three-Body Problem was exciting, so exciting that I had to read the following two books.  I listened to the audio versions of the first two, and read the last one as an e-book earlier this year.  Either medium was excellent, I enjoyed each book thoroughly.  This is a trilogy that is truly epic in its telling throughout all three books (something I did not expect since the middle book is what I have typically considered to be just filler... a place saver until you get to the end of the series when it gets all exciting again.  But The Dark Forest kicked butt all on it's own and was more exciting than the first book in its own unique way.  I actually wondered what more Cixin could say after I finished The Dark Forest, it had all seemed pretty well sewn up by the end.  Oh boy was I surprised, jubilant even, while reading the third book  Death's End.  I was cheering at one point, oohing and ahhing at another point, while still being pretty clueless as to how it would all play out in the end.   Reading these books was like bouncing on a trampoline... I never stayed still.  There was a various array of feelings running through me from one segment to the next (though it was never exhausting as emotional upheavals can be, it was always gentle).

I have raved enough about The Three-Body Problem that my husband went out and bought a copy of the first two books. I plan on reading them when we have the complete set as I figure that there is much that I would have missed listening to the audio book.  I think it says a lot about a book, especially hard/military science fiction genre books like these, that I would want to return to the story again.

This is science fiction with what I consider to be the traditional story telling style of the Chinese saga.  There are so many components to the books it reminded me of Romance of the Three kingdoms and had such a classic way of relating events that had me also thinking of Journey To the West.  These fractions of stories all wove together to make an incredible and inevitable result (which Cixin has very carefully helped you to understand that there could not be any other way to conclude his story).  It's clever and original and not what I have come to expect from a regular "Earth is being invaded by hostile aliens and this is how we fought them" type of story.  Death's End is nominated for the Hugo this year, I wish Cixin Liu the best of luck.

She Kicks Butt

N.K. Jemisin that is... 

I first heard of her last year when I was listening to The Fifth Season (last year's Hugo Award winner) and I loved the book so much I went out and bought everything else she has written.  I had noticed her name on the lists before for the Nebula award (she really gets around!) but hadn't paid any attention to her yet.  I'm kind of glad that I didn't, and that The Fifth Season was my first N.K. Jemisin book. 

 Her books are different, excitingly fresh whilst building a story about her worlds that are believable and rich with history.  It's sometimes hard to go there whenever I start a new book, sometimes you have to wrestle a little bit, really pay attention, and struggle somewhat until you understand the new universe of the book, but I didn't have to do that with any of Jemisin's books.  It was as easy as sitting in my favourite reading chair with a huge cup of coffee and just savoring that first delicious sip of whatever she wants to tell me (and really perking me up!).  

I have read in total five of her books now and I am hoarding what is left like a miser.  There is another two books to be read after The Fifth Season and I am patiently waiting for the third one to come out before I read the whole trilogy.  Nothing to despair about...I had a huge copy of four of her books called The Inheritance Trilogy (The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, The Broken Kingdoms, The Kingdom of Gods plus the novella The Awakened Kingdom).  It kept me busy for a while.    

I like her characters too.  So far most of them have been women, doing significant things in a world that wants to make them insignificant.  I wouldn't call them feminists... rather they are survivors which gives them a strength more powerful than something that could have been achieved in any other way than adversity.  I can connect with them.
I still have  The Dreamblood Duology ( The Killing Moon and The Shadowed Sun) to enjoy until the conclusion of her recent trilogy known as The Broken Earth (The Fifth Season, The Obelisk Gate and The Stone Sky) is released in August.

To Say Nothing of the Dog

Since reading Blackout/All Clear I have been hooked on Connie Willis.  I have collected all of her major works to date and have been jealously hoarding them ever since (only reading one of them a year).  What's really awesome is that she is still alive...so that means she might write some more, which is great, but I still find myself stingily doling out the love an an annual basis.  I mention this because I have dared to begin reading a second one by Connie this same calendar year, and it has me panicking a little!  
But today I am talking about To Say Nothing of the Dog.  I read this in February, and it was the last of her books written about her Time Travel series.  I really hope that she will write more, they are just that good!   It won the Hugo and the Locus award.
This book was mainly situated in the Victorian era.  As usual, a couple of things go wrong for the historians visiting there and the protagonist Ned Henry is sent to fix things up.  Unfortunately for Ned, he has been time travelling a lot recently and he is suffering from 'time lag'.  After being shoved in to the time net,  he has forgotten half of his damage control instructions, thus making the mission go 'pear-shaped' in a comically tragic way.
The main things I love about these stories is that I learn a lot of history (and it's all very interesting), there are a lot of literary references (which I love to follow up on... this time I bought the Kindle bundle of Jerome K. Jerome's complete works), and there are lots of unforgettable characters.  When things go wrong it's all very engrossing, exciting, and best of all gets me chuckling throughout the read, greedily gobbling up pages of the story to the very end.
What is also nice, I suppose, is that even though you have finished the book, there are lots of things to look up and read about, so it helps to keep me busy and not think too much about there not being another book in the series.