Unfinished Post: The Humble eBook Bundle

Blogging is a lot of work, and time-consuming when I'm not just barfing my stream-of-thought directly onto the page. I've got a good dozen or so half-finished drafts sitting in my queue (and even more started-but-couldn't-get-past-the-second-sentence drafts), that are now very out-dated and unlikely to ever see the light of day.

My most recent (ha!) draft is about the first Humble eBook Bundle, which I started back in...... aaand I've just broken the date stamp on it by hitting Edit instead of Preview, so I don't know when I started that post. It was probably two months or so after the first eBook Bundle, therefore [googling...] 10 months ago? ^^;; The post is still only half-finished, but I figured I'd share it anyway, because it's not ever going to get posted otherwise. Book reviews are always relevant, right?

Humble eBook Bundle

I have finally gone through at least the first chapters of all the books that were part of the Humble eBook Bundle's initial lineup.

My two favourites of the bunch are Old Man's War and Pump Six and Other Stories. Surprisingly, both of these are debut novels for their respective authors. Surprising because they don't feel anything like the work of a newbie, but of people who have a very good grasp of storytelling.

Old Man's War is about a future where, at the age of 75, you can choose to leave Earth, permanently, and enlist in the Colonial Defense Forces. The CDF has technology that  somehow allows a senior citizen to become a lethal fighting force. After your term of service, you are given a homestead on a colonial planet, and a chance to start your life over new. Old Man's War follows the protagonist as he cuts his final ties to his life on Earth, and discovers what the universe is really like. Interesting technology, a lot of action, solid plot. I also liked most of the characters, though the fact that the protagonist is an Invincible-Hero-That-Continuously-Defies-All-Odds is a little annoying. Nonetheless, loved the book, and have started reading the sequels :)

Pump Six and Other Stories is a collection of short stories, most of them about dystopian futures, and the everyday life of trying to survive in them. I found the first story to be slow, especially after the more action-y books I had been reading, but once I got into the mood of the stories, they were all very good reads. What makes the stories so powerful are the lines connecting these worlds to ours. That is, the idea that if we aren't careful, these stories could become reality.

<...some unfinished thought about world-building here...>

Those last two sentences need some serious rewriting, but there you go. Old Man's War and Pump Six. Read them.