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a. reid johnson Posts

Crooked Kingdom — Leigh Bardugo

This 2nd book completes the “Six of Crows” series where we follow the adventures of Kaz, Inej, Nina, Matthais, Jesper and Wylan as they attempt to undo the wrong they received at the hands of a crooked “merch” at the end of the last book. I’ve been struggling to find time to read, but I finally had some time and read the last quarter of it last night. It got to the point I love…

Six of Crows — Leigh Bardugo

My novel has multiple POV characters. More than a year ago, one of the people in my writing group suggested I read this book because it tells its story through multiple POV characters as well, and she thought it would be good for me to see an example. Now, most of the SF I have read recently is also told through multiple POV characters, so this isn’t new for me, but I figured I would…

The Last Emperox—John Scalzi

In the afterword to this book, Scalzi says that this is the first intentional trilogy he has written. That was an interesting fact to learn. This book follows the thread, picking up right where book two ended. There were a few surprises, not the least of which (SPOILER ALERT) was the death of the (seriously spoiler alert. I will pause and put it in the next paragraph… it will be safe to read after the…

On a Pale Horse–Piers Anthony

I received this book as a gift from a friend. He said it was one of his favorite series. I had heard of Piers Anthony; one of my good friends in High School read him but somehow I just never managed to. I found myself laughing out loud and reading pithy sections to my wife as I read. I haven’t read much Terry Pratchett but this book was nailing the odd British humor that he…

The Consuming Fire—John Scalzi

As promised, I read this next. The book continues to follow the adventures of the Emperox, a scientist, and the head of the business side of a Royal House as they work separately, together, to try to deal with the end of the world. The throughways that allow for travel between the stars are closing, and since humanity mostly lives in habitats that aren’t self sufficient, this could be the end of the line. I…

I’m Published!

My first publication (2nd sale) has gone live at Radon Journal. “The Grocery Store” is a climate flash fiction piece I wrote several years ago, and it does have several Easter eggs that are probably only interesting to me. I am very glad that this piece found a home, and am looking forward to sharing much more with you my many many readers in the years to come. 🙂

Brief news update

My first publication should go live in the next ten days. I have seen the proofs and approved them. Very exciting! I applied to both Clarions and also the Odyssey workshop, but found out over the last few weeks that I didn’t get in to any of them. That was disappointing but I turned around and submitted the story I had sent to Odyssey and have already been rejected by Clarkesworld (my dream market). It…

Stars and Bones — Gareth Powell

Humanity has been evicted from the Earth by a benevolent super alien, and now we all live on arks, forbidden to ever land on a planet and destroy it again. That is a hell of a premise. And it gets worse. The main character, Eryn, is the pilot of a navigational ship and she wants to find out what happened to a lost survey crew that included her sister. This was a great space opera…