Books 2020 Edition

Some low hanging fruit posts. I figure now that we are all stumbling back out from our pandemic hibernation you would be interested in what books I read. So here’s what I read in 2020.

1. The Phoenix Project – Gene Kim, Kevin Behr, George Shepherd
2. The Desert and the Blade – S.M. Stirling
3. Archangel Rising – Evan Currie
4. Prince of Outcasts – S.M. Stirling
5. The Sea Peoples – S.M. Stirling
6. The Sky-Blue Wolves – S.M. Stirling
7. Boarder Wars – Evan Currie
8. The Great War: American Front – Harry Turtledove
9. Defiant – D.J. Molles
10. The Great War: Walk in Hell – Harry Turtledove
11. The Great War: Breakthrough – Harry Turtledove
12. Extinction Shadow – Nicholas Sansbury
13. Extinction Inferno – Nicholas Sansbury
14. Extinction Ashes – Nicholas Sansbury
15. Extinction Darkness – Nicholas Sansbury
16. In the Balance – Harry Turtledove
17. Superhuman – Evan Currie

The Phoenix Project was interesting as you don’t see many fiction books about IT. I can see the narrative style would be appealing to most people and think the lessons can be applied to more than just IT teams. After that I jumped back into the Emberverse and finished it. I have to say I have never read a series with this many books before. It was quite daunting and did my best to read them all straight through so I could remember the story but did have to take a couple of breaks throughout. It is a fantastic series and I do highly recommend it. As the series spans generations my only wish is that it would have spent more time and books with the original characters before transitioning to their progeny.

I read a few books from Evan Currie who has written some fantastic space operas. Archangel Rising is part of the Odessy universe and has been my favorite sci fi books that I have read in the past decade. Boarder wars is the 8th book in a different universe about one hell of a bad ass woman in space.

I then read the Great War series. I read a few of Turtledove’s books back in high school but nothing since then. This series is well written and I probably can’t give Turtledove a compliment he has not already received by someone more eloquent than I.

I also read Defiant, book 4 in the second series in D.J. Molles The Remaining Universe. The remaining has definitely been my favorite book and series I have read in the past decade.

The Extinction Cycle: Dark Ages series is actually the second series from the author. I did not read the first series and actually started with this one. You are not at a disadvantage if you start here. The story was quite interesting and held me captive till then end.

Then I tried the first book in Turtledove’s Worldwar series. I thought it would be like the Great War series except set during World War II and foolishly did not read the description very well. Boy did I miss the boat. While it does take place at World War II I did not catch the fact that there were aliens. It threw me off and caused me to struggle with the book, that was just not what I was looking to read at that time. I should have put it down and came back later but stubbornly I did not. I will say the book did get me to think about things I had not necessarily thought about with an alien invasion before so that is pretty darn cool.

I tried Superhuman from Evan Currie near the end of the year. I will say I struggled with this one. It starts by introducing a ton of characters in different situations and I had a hard time keep track of who was where and felt like I did not have any facts about the characters to tie them together in my head. I ended up actually reading the first quarter of the book twice in an attempt to get to wrap my head around what was going on. I finished it and felt meh about it. I’m not sure if it was because I struggled at the beginning but it was not my favorite.