I just finished Witches Abroad by Terry Pratchett. I really enjoyed it, and felt like it’s a big improvement over the last few books in the chronological order of the series. Deals with problematic benevolence and imposing one’s will on others, and really cemented the personalities of the Discworld’s three primary witch characters Granny Weatherwax, Nanny Ogg, and Magrat Garlick. Laughed a little too hard at Magrat reading martial arts books about the Way of the Scorpion by Grand Master Lapsong Dibbler of Ankh-Morpork.

I also recently read The Last Unicorn, by Peter S Beagle, which I have mixed feelings about. Not unlike Witches Abroad, it deals with the concept of how people interact with the stories we well, and the written language is poetic and really lovely, but there is a discordant note about how people just kind of… become whatever a story demands of them. People gain maturity or magic powers when they fill the role that requires it in a story, and bad stuff happens with people resist stories. It means the only entity in this book with any real self-determination, or whose actions may actual matter, is the unicorn, who kinda doesn’t usually do much anyway and is not affected by stories and roles like mortals are. I don’t know, I appreciated the book and really enjoyed reading it, but something about the orderliness-of-existence that rubbed me personally the wrong way, though I felt touched by the characters’ pathos.

I also read The Kite Runner, by Khaled Housseini, which gave us an incredible, painterly portrait of the intimate relationship between two children, and went on to give us a window into the Afghan expat community in America, but I felt like the strength of the story was in the childhood relationship, and the book tried to stretch that story into a three-act story involving world politics that I don’t think worked. I like the overall feel of the book, but at times it felt like plot points were glued together in a way that didn’t feel genuine.

Finally I also read Love, Death, and Robots, the anthology of short stories used for the Netflix animation feature. I felt like it was a good introductory collection of science fiction short stories for people who might not be used to reading them; a good gateway from adaptation to source material. I didn’t care for all of them, and I liked most of them. I really loved:

• Three Robots, by John Scalzi,
• Beyond the Aquila Rift, by Alastair Reynolds
• Good Hunting, by Ken Liu
• Zima Blue, by Alastair Reynolds
• The Secret War, by David W Amendola