It was free, it wasn’t going to take up much of my time, so i thought i’d give it a read.
I wouldn’t call it bad in any way, but at the same time it doesn’t come across as good either. It’s just another one of those beige, average sci-fi short stories that you sometimes read to fill in an hour or so — a bit like a sudoku puzzle. Ergo — 3/5 stars.
I liked the cover, i liked the title, i liked the synopsis, i liked that it was 99p, and …
… i rather liked the story as well. 
The “Tea Master” is actually a mindship, which isn’t really explained fully in the story, but you kind of get the idea that some sentient being has been implanted into the heart of some kind of space ship. There’s a real enigmatic element flowing through this story, and i think a lot of it is because this is a standalone from a much wider story line, that of Xuya, and i’m fairly sure if i go and read lots of stories from the Xuya Universe i’ll soon find out all about mindships and such like.
But for this book, not being fully up to speed on the hard facts of everything really doesn’t detract. In fact, i quite like the brushing over of the science and just getting down to the real bones of the story: that of a damaged mindship turned tea maker because they can’t face deep space any more, and that of a detective, who also comes across as fairly damaged herself. The two have to somehow get over their issues and investigate the death of a child and hopefully prevent more deaths.
Nebula Award winner and Hugo Award finalist for best novella, a sci-fi book doesn’t come with much better credentials.
After reading this i just had to go and read more from The Universe of Xuya, and so i gave this book a second reading when it was due in the series. It’s much better read with the full Xuya background, and you can find that second review to The Tea Master and the Detective by clicking on it.
The description on Amazon states that Recursion is the follow up to Dark Matter, which, for those of you living under a rock, is another absolutely, definitely, must read, Blake Crouch book.
So, i admit, i was a little dubious as to how this book would hold up when compared against its predecessor. Dark Matter is, most certainly, a very, very hard act to follow.
But it did hold up, and without a doubt Recursion is very much a worthy book to be proclaimed as Dark Matter’s follow up.
Blake has one incredible imagination. Genius. How a writer can conjure up novels like Dark Matter and then follow it up with Recursion is outstanding. Awesome mind-bending sci-fi that Blake somehow manages to make complete sense out of for all of us readers to enjoy having our minds bent by.
If you haven’t read these two books yet, then stop reading this and go and read them instead.
What’s there to say: proper, good, classic sci-fi. As with Childhood’s End, it is well deserving of it’s place in the “SF Masterworks” series.
This time, instead of actual aliens coming to Earth and a prophecy of how humanity will eventually evolve, in Rendezvous With Rama we have a large alien vessel entering the solar system on a path that will take it inside the orbit of Mercury, around the Sun, and then, is anyone’s guess. Will it adjust it’s trajectory, pull a breaking manouvre and find a stable orbit in the solar system, or will it use the Sun and sling shot elsewhere? Where did it come from, who sent it, who or what is inside, what is it’s purpose?
Set in a time when humans have colonised several planets and moons in the solar system and space flight is quite normal, we have one space ship — the Endeavour, captained by a big fan of James Cook — that is able to get some fuel and rendezvous with this vessel and investigate it. However, once the vessel has passed inside the orbit of Mercury, the Mercurians decide to take matters into their own hands and ignore what the rest of humanity has to say on the matter.
As i say, this is a proper old school sci-fi first contact story at its best and well deserving of its place as a “SF Masterworks”.
Oooh, sci-fi fairy tales.
All five “Yeowe and Werel” stories in one collection: at long last.
Yeowe and Werel are planets in the Hainish Universe, and although you can read these five stories as standalones i really feel you’re doing yourself a disservice by not reading through all the Hainish stories while you’re here, or there. These five stories are some of the last to be written by Ursula in the Hainish Universe.
