It's the July reading roundup!
Obviously, I've been busy recently.  Which is why this roundup is 1) late and 2) light.  In the month of July, I read nine books, and this is what they were:

1. The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Volume Two A: The Greatest Science Fiction Novellas of All Time Chosen by the Members of The Science Fiction Writers of America
edited by Ben Bova
After really enjoying Volume One of this series, I was all set to enjoy Volume Two, which was divided into two halves because it would have been outrageously big.  As it is, Volume Two A is already pretty big.  I don't know what it was, though, but Volume Two A didn't impress me anywhere near as much as Volume One, which was filled with stories I thought were excellent-- and rightly so, given that they were supposed to be the definitively best short stories published prior to 1964.  But the best novellas of the same time period were pretty average for the most part.  There were some standouts, however: I really liked Universe by Robert A. Heinlein even though I thought it felt like half a story. (Wikipedia has informed me that it is half a story; Heinlein connected it with another novella later on to make a full novel.) Cyril M. Kornbluth's The Marching Morons was also good fun.  My favorite of the book was probably Vintage Season by Henry Kuttner and C.L. Moore, a surprisingly affecting story about tourists from the distant future and their effect on one man.

2. Star Wars: Legacy of the Force: Invincible
by Troy Denning
And here it is, the long-awaited conclusion to most recent Star Wars novel saga, Legacy of the Force.  LotF  has been a bit of a mixed bag all around-- though many of the individual novels have been fairly good or even excellent, the whole they add up to has been less than cohesive.  This book is a case in point.  The Jaina of this book feels nothing like the Jaina of Revelation-- which is a real blunder, given that half of Revelation was setup for Jaina's role in this book!  Darth Caedus was an impotent villain up until the end, hardly worthy of a nine-book series, and this book really shows up one of the series' weaknesses as a whole: once the Jedi finally, actually, honestly decide to pit themselves against Caedus, they defeat him in about a week.  So why did they just sit around for the rest of the series?  The tight POV on Jaina, Jacen, and Ben is also a baffling choice for the final book in the series, as it essentially prevents many of the threads from the rest of the series from being wrapped up. (Not that the threads ever really ran cohesively from book to book in the first place.) And the less said about the stupidity of the epilogue, the better.  The thing with the jokes at the beginning of each chapter was very good, however.  A disappointing end to a disappointing series that has caused me to decide to never buy a Star Wars hardcover ever again.  (Well, I say that now.)

3. Star Wars: Legacy, Volume Three: Claws of the Dragon
by John Ostrander and Jan Duursema
For every bit of badness in Legacy of the Force, there's a bit of goodness in Legacy, which can loosely be considered a followup to it-- over the span of a century, though.  It's another solid installment in the saga, though perhaps my least favorite one to date.  Not that it's bad-- merely good instead of excellent.  The problem is Cade Skywalker.  I'm just not that interested in The Last Of The Skywalkers-- will he choose of the path of good in the end?  Well, duh.  Or so you may think-- though Cade may reject the teachings of the One Sith in this installment, he escapes them by using the Dark Side, so I will give Ostrander some credit and admit things might not be as clear-cut as I expected.  The cool part about Legacy is its new galactic society-- a nice change from the overfamiliar prequel and New Jedi Order eras-- and its expanded cast of characters.  Particularly shining in this volume is Darth Krayt-- even though his true identity feels a little gratuitous-- and Morrigan Corde.  I'm really looking forward to where they're going with her.

4. Mountolive by Lawrence Durrell
The third book of The Alexandria Quartet is different from the first two-- since Durrell wanted to discuss the subject/object distinction, it becomes an "objective" novel, written in a wide third-person point-of-view, rather than the first-person perspective of the first two.  It makes for a very different novel from the first two-- while Balthazar wouldn't make sense if you hadn't read Justine (or at least it wouldn't have much of a point), Mountolive could stand entirely on its own.  Its perspective is very removed from that of the first two-- its protagonist, David Mountolive, only has a couple fleeting mentions in the second book, whereas the narrator of the first two (finally given a name here) is barely in this one, and usually disparaged when he is mentioned, much to my amusement.  The continuous revision of the information we received in the first book is very interesting-- Mountolive presents an entirely new set of reasons for the events of Justine yet again, so that it would seem old Balthazar didn't know what he was talking about after all.  Or did he?  Even though this book is written in the third person, allegedly more reliable, I never felt inclined to trust it.  I think I would prefer it if the version of events given in the first book was true, but I'll wait to talk more about that once I read the last book in the series.  Hopefully soon.

5. Star Wars: Coruscant Nights I: Jedi Twilight
by Michael Reaves
I was excited by this book.  How could I not be?  A noir private eye story set on Coruscant?  Unfortunately, what the front cover and the back cover text promised was not quite what was delivered.  There was no detective story at all, just a hunt for a missing droid.  And even that was carried out half-heartedly-- a lot of the time, the characters seemed to be wandering around aimlessly.  But fortunately the characters are able to carry the book just fine-- there's a welcome return of a number of characters from Reaves's previous books (Darth Maul: Shadow Hunter and Clone Wars: MedStar), especially I-5YQ, and new character Jax Pavan is decent enough, too.  Laranth Tarak, on the other hand, has an excellent introduction as a sparring partner/female counterpart for Jax... but after her first scene, she just stands there and shoots things.  Reaves captures the seedy underbelly of Coruscant very well, though.  It's a decent book, and I look forward to the next two in the trilogy, but Reaves could stand to kick it up a notch or two.

6. Somewhere in Time by Richard Matheson
I had to pick this book up when our Connecticut apartment-hunting trip accidentally became a day longer than had been planned.  Having enjoyed the movie version of this book (originally called Bid Time Return) featuring Christopher Reeve, Jane Seymour, and David Warner, I was interested to see what the original novel was like.  Unfortunately, it was a bit disappointing.  The story is pretty flimsy-- why does Richard fall in love with a photograph? Why does he decide he can travel through time?  And the romance is pretty unconvincing; Elise seems mainly to fall in love with Richard because she has to.  All of this works in the movie with the excellent acting talent, haunting music score, and beautiful locations to back it up; the abrupt prose in this novel is not up to the task, unfortunately.

7. Star Trek: the manga: Uchu
by Wil Wheaton, David Gerrold, Luis Reyes, and Nathaniel Bowden
I swear, I must be the only person in the world buying the Star Trek mangas, because I never see anyone else discussing them, but I enjoy them, so why not?  Wil Wheaton's "Acts of War" is a decent story, well told.  Somewhat predictable, but the parallel structure of having both Captain Kirk and a Klingon commander narrate the tale as they are put on trial by their own governments is pulled off quite well, especially in regards to the final fate and thoughts of each character.  E. J. Su's art doesn't disappoint, either-- he's my favorite of the regular artists in this series.  Stylized yet recognizable.  David Gerrold's "Bandi" is a slight, if fun story-- what is with Gerrold's obsession with fluffly animals?  A number of good funny moments, and Gerrold of course has an excellent command of the classic crew.  Don Hudson's art is not manga-styled at all, aside from the bandi bear itself, but who wouldn't love the shot of the Enterprise with hearts radiating from it?  The standout story for me was Luis Reyes's "The Humanitarian", where Spock takes command of the Enterprise while Captain Kirk stays behind on Vanguard Station.  It's a pitch-perfect Spock story-- bad thing after bad thing keeps on happening, but all the while Spock stays in control because he has to.  I really liked this one.  Spock is the man, and Reyes captures his daily struggle effectively.  The final story, Nathaniel Bowden's "Inalienable Rights" is a discrimination-on-an-alien-planet tale we've seen a hundred times over, and doesn't bring anything new to the genre: the book's weak link.

8. Batman: Year One
by Frank Miller
I've already discussed this one in an issue of Faster than a DC Bullet: poor Batman origin story, good Batman story, great Jim Gordon story.

9. Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: Fearful Symmetry
by Olivia Woods
After God knows how long, we've finally gotten another installment of the Deep Space Nine relaunch.  It's a flip book, which is a pretty neat idea: Side One has Kira on the cover and picks up from the events of Warpath.  This side is slight, but what's there works well.  The strands of the last few books are finally coming together in a clear fashion, and this book introduces some neat ideas of its own, especially in the knock-your-socks-off prologue.  And that cliffhanger!  Subtle, yet effective.  Woods's command of the DS9 characters is perfect, too-- I look forward to seeing where she takes the story in next year's The Soul Key.  Side Two, the majority of the book, has Iliana Ghemor on the cover and follows her life from early adulthood to a point during "What You Leave Behind", filling in a whole heck of a lot of gaps.  It's expository backstory, but it works, since understanding Iliana is fundamental to the current route of the relaunch, and because Woods does it so well.  Iliana's course in life is entirely manipulated by outside forces, feels almost inevitable, and yet I was never disinterested in what was going on.  And some stuff is still unexplained, leaving even more to look forward to in The Soul Key.

Books acquired in the month of July:
1. Star Trek: Deep Space Nine #7: Warchild by Esther Friesner
2. City of Pearl by Karen Traviss
3. Mechwarrior: Dark Age: To Ride the Chimera: A Battletech Novel by Kevin Killiany
4. Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler
5. Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex #05: White Maze by Junichi Fujisaki
6. The Futurological Congress (from the memoirs of Ijon Tichy) by Stanislaw Lem
7. The New Space Opera edited by Gardner Dozois
8. Heroes Die by Matthew Woodring Stover
9. The Tombs of Atuan by Ursula K. Le Guin
10. The Crystal Cave by Mary Stewart
11. Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions by Edwin A. Abbott
12. Tess of D'Urbervilles: A Pure Woman by Thomas Hardy
13. Everything Bad Is Good For You: How Today's Popular Culture Is Actually Making Us Smarter by Steven Johnson
14. British Summertime by Paul Cornell
15. Star Wars: Legacy of the Force: Invincible by Troy Denning
16. Doctor Who: Short Trips 19: Dalek Empire edited by Nicholas Briggs with Simon Guerrier
17. Doctor Who: Short Trips 24: The Quality of Leadership edited by Keith R.A. DeCandido
18. Star Wars: Legacy, Volume Three: Claws of the Dragon by John Ostrander and Jan Duursema
19. Star Wars: Coruscant Nights I: Jedi Twilight by Michael Reaves
20. Star Trek: the manga: Uchu by Wil Wheaton, David Gerrold, Luis Reyes, and Nathaniel Bowden
21. Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: Fearful Symmetry by Olivia Woods
22. Star Trek: Myriad Universes: Infinity's Prism by William Leisner, Christopher L. Bennett, and James Swallow
23. Star Trek: Terok Nor, 2360-2369: Dawn of the Eagles by S. D. Perry & Britta Dennison
24. Ways of Reading: An Anthology for Writers edited by David Bartholomae and Anthony Petrosky
25. A Writer's Reference by Diana Hacker with Nancy Sommers, Tom Jehn, Jane Rosenzweig, and Marcy Carbajal Van Horn
26. Somewhere in Time by Richard Matheson
27. Doctor Who: Galaxy Four: Number 104 in the Doctor Who Library by William Emms

#2-13 were from the Used Bookstore Cincinnati Tour I took with my Secret Writing Partner.  #14-16 were birthday presents.  And #24-25 were supplied to me by the Freshman English program at the University of Connecticut because they'll be used in the class I'm teaching.  Maybe I should take a look at them or something...

Books remaining on "To be read" list: 128

Most of these covers are courtesy of LibraryThing, though many I uploaded to the site myself. Clicking any of them (or any other book-link in this entry) will take you the book's work page on the same site; clicking a series link will take you to my collection of the books in that series.

Steve