Month 52 of 260 (20 percent)
Size of list: 91,780 pages (18 percent above start)Pages read: 26,471 (28.84 percent)
H-list: 7,524/23,922 (31.45 percent)
N-list: 10,031/37,308 (26.89 percent)
O-list: 8,916/30,550 (29.18 percent)
Reading: A Fire Upon the Deep
Added: Blood of Elves, Prose Edda, The Triumph of Injustice
Finished: This Is How You Lose the Time War, Old Man's War
Despite some lost time this year, I'm still ahead of the curve. I hope to do better in Year 5.
This Is How You Lose the Time War is a series of epistles between two rival agents in the titular time war. It was interesting in its concepts, such as the nature of the two rival groups, the Agency and the Garden, and in the creative ways the agents would hide their letters but set them up for discovery. But it had third act problems, in that the shifting into action wasn't set up well, and then wasn't compelling.
Old Man's War felt like largely a recapitulation of Starship Troopers, and if you follow the author on Twitter as I do you'll know that he wouldn't deny that. There were a few interesting new concepts he explored — not the way that old people were given new bodies, which felt like a series of advertisements for SmartBlood and BrainPal and whatnot, but the way some bodies belonged to people whose brains hadn't come forward, and what that means. It was a fast read, and interesting enough that I won't mind returning to that universe.
I added Blood of Elves because it's the first Witcher book, and my teenager would love it if I read that; the Prose Edda because it's the Norse mythology that underlies dark elves and other elements; and The Triumph of Injustice because it's the virtual sequel to Capital in the 21st Century, which I read back in Year Zero.
