Mr. Burke's Reading List

Elder Race Adrian Tchaikovsky (2021) (Not a review, just some notes to help me remember the things I've read. But written this way because it's the Internet, and some people will stumble across this page.) This was a Pandemic Book Club pick for the month of September. A "novella" was chosen because many of us are teachers and September is busy. This is a Tor.com book, but not one I'd heard of before. I might've seen a promo for it when it was first released as I'm on Tor's mailing list. I'm also part of their book club and have gotten many free books from their site. The book tries to blend fantasy and science-fiction by telling parallel narratives. Lyn and Nyr are the two POV characters. Lyn is the Fourth Daughter of the current regent of her city/realm/whatever, and she goes to seek help from the wizard/sorceror on top of the mountain. She'd seen his castle once before as a child so she knows where to go. The wizard had hel...

Harald's Adventure Wares A story of one man's greed, and a goblin by D. G. Redd (2022) (Not a review, just some notes to help me remember the things I've read. But written this way because it's the Internet, and some people will stumble across this page.) This was a book from Free Ebooks on Reddit . It's a short novella, which Goodreads says is part of some other world. The plot is pretty much summed up in the subtitle, which is why I included it even though it doesn't appear to be on the image of the book cover. So Harald runs a shop selling stuff to adventurers, generally the dumber kind who are easier to swindle. Occasionally, a real hero will come to town, and he'll still try to get the best deal he can. It's amazing his lived as long as he has. There's a problme in that there's a goblin outside of town that's making it difficult to gather up the mushrooms needed for making potions and magic items, but a single goblin i...

Steampunk Leap Year by Jessica Lucci (2019) Steampunk New Year by Jessica Lucci (2020) (Not a review, just some notes to help me remember the things I've read. But written this way because it's the Internet, and some people will stumble across this page.) These two steampunk collections were included in a recent eSpec Books Kickstarter campaign. I'm still fairly new to Steampunk, as a reader as well as a writer, so I can appreciate short stories that hit different aspects of the genre. I read the two of them back to back, each one having 12 stories or poems, and all quite short. (My experience with the second book might've suffered for this.) In the first book, the stories should've corresponded in some way (some more obvious than others) to the month of the year. In the second book, I couldn't tell if this was still an overall theme or not. The stories in the first book were: Steampunk Leap Year: on old man kidnaps a young baby. It...

Hobbies for Androids by Aurea Fenn (2023) (Not a review, just some notes to help me remember the things I've read. But written this way because it's the Internet, and some people will stumble across this page.) This book was from Free Ebooks on reddit. The image of the cat with the laser eye was confusing. Android cats didn't appear until halfway through and I don't care any having a laser eye. And if you think about it, it would've been popular with the kittens. Likewise, there aren't a lot of hobbies for these androids. They mostly have duties, even the one that paints. There was one that mused about having his own interests instead of performing anothers, but that turned into an android takeover story and not a particularly good one. This is a collection of short stories, ranging from a few pages to over 30. The lead-off story was about a music promoter in debt so when he discoveres his star dead in bed, he has an associate ready an android to ...