Some Books I Loved

**A postapocalyptic Katmandu, ruled over by a benevolent AI named 'Karma'.  Is it a utopia?  A dystopia?  Well, an all-powerful djinn just woke up after millennia of slumber, and the big problem is he thinks it's boring **   The setup is a classic one:  Following climate disaster, humanity's survivors are forced to huddle up in purpose-built cities, nanotechnology protecting them from a Planet Earth that can no longer support them.  One such city, one of the greatest, is Katmandu, jewel of the Himalayas shining brighter than ever before Nanotechnology has created a post-scarcity society, in which everything you could possibly want is available at the push of a button.  With food and shelter and comfort and safety taken care of, currency has been abolished.  For luxuries, the only thing that matters is Points doled out by the city's aptly-named benevolent AI ruler, Karma: Karma took everything; money, land, companies, stocks, bonds, vehicles, ...

**An epic fantasy trilogy in the oldschool sense, driven by its robust and deep mythology to create a believable world for the characters and the reader to inhabit.  Also Sigrud is awesome** Robert Jackson Bennet has been under the radar for a while, quietly putting out quality book after quality book for a decade and a half.  Fortunately, it seems like "The Tainted Cup" is getting some well-deserved awards buzz, hopefully that will give his whole catalog some hype (personally, if you want to start with one of his standalones, "The Company Man" is a great little urban mystery scifi, "American Elsewhere" is a small town eldritch shenanigans story very reminiscent of Stranger Things, and "Mr. Shivers" reads like if Stephen King decided to write a John Steinbeck novel, or vice versa) But I want to talk about the Divine Cities trilogy, which I honestly think stands up as a masterpiece Are any of the three individual books masterpieces on their own? H...

 **A cross between a post-apocalyptic scifi novel, political and social commentary, and a oldschool Kung Fu movie.  Yes.  This book is amazing** Nick Harkaway is a fantastically underrated author.  That is of course his pen name, his real name is Nick Cornwell, son of David Cornwell, who in turn was better known by his pen name, John le Carré.  So, yeah.  If nothing else, Nick has the pedigree Yet while his father was gritty and real (and amazing, truly a legend.  If you haven't read "The Spy Who Came in from the Cold", honestly, maybe you should stop reading this post and go do that), Harkaway instead find joy in the fantastic.  He's one of my favorite world-builders in the business, and couple that with prose that is so damn quotable , yeah.  You should be reading more Nick Harkaway And yes, he has a lot to say about the world: Modern war is distinguished by the fact that all the participants are ostensibly unwilling. We are swept towards o...

 **Classic spy novel, but it it still cracks me up that a lot of readers don't get that this book is satirical** Satire is, in all seriousness, probably my absolute favorite form of art.  It is noble, it is fun, and it is a lot harder than most people credit it.  Or at least, good satire is.  Sure, you can parody the tropes and broad brush strokes of some other art form and call it "satire", but to me in order to truly excel it requires intelligence and thought and knowledge of the subject material.  In many ways, a truly great satire is a lot harder to create than a straightforward piece of art (as Wilde possibly apocryphally said, "you can fake being serious, but you can't fake being witty") And at a level even above that is those works of satire that manage to simultaneously be a really good iteration of what they are satirizing.  These works truly have my absolute highest respect:  "Shrek" is actually a wonderful fairy tale, as is "Dealing...