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List: lists:marcs-must-reads

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Cover of Too Like the Lightning.

Too Like the Lightning

by Ada Palmer · published 2016 · last read 2021-12-06
★★★★★
For me, this was a five star books, plain and simple, but I completely understand why it would be a 0-, 1-, 2-star book for others. It's pretentious at times. It wants you to have classical knowledge of ancient Rome and 18th century Fr
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Cover of Embassytown.

Embassytown

by China Miéville · published 2011 · last read 2024-06-06
★★★★★
Embassytown by China Miéville starts out as okay-if-weird scifi, with decent characters, plausibly weird worldbuilding, and appropriately weird aliens, so everything you'd expect from Miéville. It starts by following a good if generic f
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Cover of The Dispossessed.

The Dispossessed

by Ursula K. Le Guin · published 1974 · read 2018-02-12
★★★★★
Anarchist SciFi by Ursula K. Le Guin. It's a bit slow, but the content made me forget all about that.
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Cover of Roadside Picnic.

Roadside Picnic

by Arkady Strugatsky · published 1972 · last read 2023-04-20
★★★★☆
Roadside picnic was a good book to read, and I was surprised that I didn't find it depressing. It takes place in a small town in roughly-Canada, where an alien exclusion zone has spawned that is very much like a radioactive dump: People a
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Cover of Axiomatic.

Axiomatic

by Greg Egan · published 1990 · read 2017-03-10
★★★★☆
Hard to rate collections of stories. There was really cool stuff in there, and I like how he works off similar themes (such as the jewel) repeatedly, but some stories felt too close thematically or in the way they were structured. Really
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Cover of Use of Weapons.

Use of Weapons

by Iain M. Banks · published 1990 · read 2018-03-09
★★★★☆
Very odd one - had me laughing out loud some of the time, and nearly bored at other times. I think the pacing threw me off. Very stunning ending, though, totally worth it.
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Cover of Never Let Me Go.

Never Let Me Go

by Kazuo Ishiguro · published 2005 · read 2020-01-25
★★★★☆
Excellent dystopian storytelling in Never Let Me Go – not loud, not ostentatious, not yelling "THIS IS A DYSTOPIA, GET IT?!" at every opportunity. The narrator's voice was extremely well-done – strong, recognisable, but realistic at the s
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Cover of Parable of the Talents.

Parable of the Talents

by Octavia E. Butler · published 1998 · last read 2024-05-22
★★★★☆
Very very nearly a five-star book for me due to the ending, and I enjoyed it much more than the first volume. The story of Olamina told by herself, but commented on by her daughter, is really something. The pacing is outstanding and not ver
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Cover of Blindsight.

Blindsight

by Peter Watts · published 2006 · last read 2026-02-09
★★★★☆
Re-read notes: I love a couple of things about this book. I love that it is well-written, particularly for sci-fi, particularly for hard sci-fi. It reads well, if you're into sci-fi in the first place. I love that it is clever, and that i
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Cover of The Stars My Destination.

The Stars My Destination

by Alfred Bester · published 1955 · read 2019-05-05
★★★☆☆
The Stars My Destination by Alfred Bester is a scifi classic, and most of those don't work for me. This one was better than average, but I still felt like I was in a weird dream. I have a low tolerance for people behaving horribly and/or
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Cover of Dune.

Dune

by Frank Herbert · published 1965 · read 2018-07-09
★★★☆☆
Dune is a classic scifi novel, which can mean it's anywhere between breathtaking genius and hardly accessible anymore. I found it a bit difficult to get into at first, similar to Ancillary Justice. Once I grew used to the storytelling devic
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Cover of Consider Phlebas.

Consider Phlebas

by Iain M. Banks · published 1987 · read 2017-05-29
★★★☆☆
I liked the world building (this was my first Culture novel), but the story pacing was way off. It dragged on, and most of the personal story elementes were predictable.
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Cover of Excession.

Excession

by Iain M. Banks · published 1996 · read 2018-07-02
★★★☆☆
This is the infamous Culture book that's mostly ships talking. Which is not the part I disliked, the ships and their story were cool! But the humans were terribly one-dimensional and felt lazy, which distracted me from the cool Excession
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Cover of Parable of the Sower.

Parable of the Sower

by Octavia E. Butler · published 1993 · last read 2024-05-15
★★★☆☆
4.5 stars for me, but let's round it up. We see Lauren starting a new religion about God being Change in not-quite-post apocalyptic America. I think that's it. I'm not really sure where I stand on the mysticism, but the characters and