Thoughtful Science Fiction! This is my favorite of Lois McMaster Bujold’s many great Vorkosigan novels, largely because of the depth of its insight into human character and the way that she can bring me along on a wonderful maturing relationship between two completely believable characters. Komarr provides a page-turning science fiction adventure and political intrigue with the backdrop of a thoughtful examination of an abusive relationship contrasted with a real romance. A thinking a person’s action-adventure story indeed, worth multiple reads!
1
author picked
Komarr
as one of their favorite books, and they share
why you should read it.
This book is for kids age
16, and
17.
What is this book about?
Accident or
Treachery? Komarr could be a garden-with a thousand
more years work. or an uninhabitable wasteland, if the terraforming fails. Now
the solar mirror vital to the terraforming of the conquered
Thoughtful Science Fiction! Ok, this book might get shelved as fantasy, but the fantastical elements are so well constrained by logical systems, and the underlying causes and behaviors of seemingly-magical events explored with such an investigative and scientific vigor, that I must call it science fiction! Woven throughout this adventure story of Tress’s search for her kidnapped love are funny and philosophical insights into the foibles of human nature and society. Tress in Wonderland perhaps? Tress’s Travels?
My list of books this year highlights thoughtful science fiction, but I might call Unfettered Journey science-fictiony thoughtfulness. This book offers a science fiction political adventure with elements of mystery, justice and injustice, and a strikingly intriguing future world that extrapolates quite well from our present society, proposing interesting directions that we might take, and the problems and solutions those directions might lead to. However, the heart of this book is the search for meaning and purpose in life, contemplations about the existence of God, and a quite wonderful turn of events that brings one to consider that past life and cultures, however anachronistic they may seem to now to us, have their roots in the basic elements of survival and what it means to be human. Given that many whole chapters are devoted to philosophical musings, this book might not appeal as much to those looking for an action-packed page-turner, but if you love your adventures of the body mixed with adventures of the mind, and value free will and relationship as centerpieces of meaning, this little slow-burn gem might be for you.
A literary cross-genre adventure and love story, for the intelligent reader. Winner of 7 book awards. (Winner in new, adult, debut, visionary, spiritual, and science fiction categories.)
"Unfettered Journey is an existential adventure for the mind and a lot more besides." - Carly Newfeld, The Last Word, KSFR Santa Fe Public Radio
Unfettered Journey follows Joe, an AI scientist, as he pursues the secret of AI – and his own – consciousness. He travels to a small college to escape life's frenetic pace and to find answers. But a mysterious woman on a personal mission interrupts his search. Fighting unjust…
A geology grad student with a spiritual bent and a mystic from the Pleistocene find a modern skeleton in ancient rock and must risk their friendship to save the world from an unexpected danger lurking within the laws of physics.
Jen Hewitt, a quiet geology graduate student, doesn't actually believe in time travel. Were it possible, rocks from the age of dinosaurs should already be cluttered with artifacts from future time-tourists. Nevertheless, she proves with fellow geologist Jonathan Renner that a human skeleton encased in Pleistocene rock came from their own time. Their work, coupled with fundamental research by physicist Susan Arasmith, reveals an unexpected character to the universe that carries them from the safe world of science into a struggle with powers and possibilities they hadn't imagined. The three friends, along with Kar-Tur, a frightening mystic from the ancient past, learn that discovery is sometimes as much about faith as knowledge, and that friendship and love are often found where least expected.
