Recent good reads

Stuff I liked:

Cory Doctorow: the Martin Hench trilogy, consisting of

Red Team Blues (2023)
The Bezzle (2024)
Picks and Shovels (2025)

which I read in internal chronological order: P&S, the B, RTB. These are
slightly alternate history thrillers told by Martin, who is initially a student
flunking out of MIT because he's just discovered how cool computers are. He
survives and even thrives as an independent consulting forensic auditor.

In the hands of a lesser author, Martin would bust out the action moves,
be impervious to small arms fire and be quite suave with the ladies. He
certainly gets placed into situations where those cinematic skills would be
useful. What actually happens is that Martin gets beaten, physically, just like
most of us would. At times he is remarkably genre-blind.

Contains many excellent examples of high-technology crimes, none of which
involve a Mountain Dew-guzzling teenager shouting "We're in!".

I do recommend the internal chrono reading order.


Suzanne Palmer: the Finder quadrilogy.

Finder (2019)
Driving the Deep (2020)
The Scavenger Door (2021)
Ghostdrift (2024)

These are spectacular space opera, as reasonably self-consistent as we can allow
for a fictional universe with at least three methods of FTL travel. Our
protagonist, who is nearly a hero, is Fergus Fergusson, or perhaps Jon James or
Bill Baugh or any number of other alliterative temporary identities. He is
self-employed as a retriever of lost things - starships, kidnap victims, alien
artifacts - and has a remarkably bad time doing so. But the universe also grants
him a ridiculous amount of luck -- that is his key stat. Palmer plays fair with
her audience: anything that Fergus relies on is explained in advance.
Unfortunately for him, his plans aft gang aglay before finally resolving.

Two authors, seven SFnal books, all very good.

-dsr-


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