Sci-Fi Book # 21 The Restaurant at the End of the Universe by Douglas Adams

Reading The Restaurant at the End of the Universe without having read The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy recently is a bit weird. There is no beginning or end here. It is all "middle". I hadn't read this in at least twenty years and didn't remember any of it- so it was like a whole new book. Hooray. B+

Quest for the Hidden City (Star Wars: The High Republic) by George Mann

 

For a book aimed at kids, Quest for the Hidden City wasn't bad. It tells a decent self contained story about a young Padawan and Jedi on a mission to help out a planet in crisis and rescue some fellow Jedi. Hopefully some of the characters will reappear in the more adult High Republic books. B

Sci-Fi Book # 33 - Childhood's End by Arthur C. Clarke

 My goal in 2023 is to knock at least 10 books off of my Sci-Fi reading list. The first is Childhood's End. I had no idea what it was about so I started with no expectations other than that I've always enjoyed reading Clarke. And yeah, I liked it. It starts off with a large fleet of alien ships appearing over Earth and from there everything that happens is fairly unexpected. And the ending isn't entirely dissimilar to that of 2001. A-

Star Wars: Convergence (Star Wars: The High Republic) by Zoraida Córdova

 

I guess Star Wars: Convergence was okay. I'll say B-. It was kind of a small scale story for the first main book in a new Star Wars arc. Not really much to say, we'll have to see how the next book builds on this.

Path of Deceit (Star Wars: The High Republic) by Tessa Gratton and Justina Ireland

 

Maybe I should have been reading the YA High Republic books after all. I gave this one a chance since it is the start of a new arc and I was pleasently surprised. The story is more focused than then adult novels (even if playing to YA tropes about forbidden romances) and had an ending that I didn't see coming. It also tied in fairly nicely to the previous High Republic books. So, um. B+

This Census-Taker by China Miéville

 

I could have sworn until two minutes ago that the name of the book I read was The Census-Taker. But it seemingly isn't. It is This Census-Taker. How did I miss that? Weird. Anyway, like anything by Mieville, This Census-Taker is weird. The setting is a bit uncertain. It seems like some kind of fantasy-type society but also not. Again - Mieville is weird. But I still felt like I had a good idea of it in my head. So kudos. Overall I enjoyed it, maybe because it was short and incredibly vague at points. A-

Horror Book # 30 - The Lottery and Other Stories by Shirley Jackson

 

Well, the collection The Lottery and Other Stories wasn't quite what I was expecting. It seems weird that this would be classified as horror. Except for the main story I don't think any of them could really be horror. I did enjoy most of the stories though. They envoke a sense of uneasieness and anxiety by presenting some fairly mundane everyday events. A