Time to choose which book the Kevin's Watch Book Club will read in November. Below are our current nominations.
Voting will end in one week. Discussion of the selected book will begin in late November, after we've all had time to read it.
Beyond the Event Horizon - Scott Curtis/Scott McElhaney
The Magic Engineer (Book 3 of the Recluce Saga) - L E Modesitt JrSkylar Rains has made a significant breakthrough regarding the future of time travel. Testing this theory however leaves him stranded 1100 years in the future with no hope of return. What he discovers is a frightening world devoid of all life. Now he must sift through the clues to learn what became of the world he once knew. Much to his surprise, he finds that these clues may lead him to another planet nearly 12 light years away.
The Quantum Thief - Hannu RajaniemiDorrin, a young scion of the Order magicians, is interested in forbidden knowledge, in the working of machines. Promising, intelligent, but determined to follow his passion for scientific knowledge, Dorrin can invent machines. He is the Leonardo da Vinci of his age, but his insights violate the rules of the Order magic of Recluce. Now he must go into exile in the lands of Chaos to pursue his dangerous inventions.
Yet Darrin remains loyal to the idea of Order, and is tortured by the knowledge that to preserve it he must constantly create new devices for war. For the forces of the Chaos wizards are moving across the land, devouring whole countries and creating an empire—and their ultimate goal is the destruction of Recluce.
Off Armageddon Reef - David WeberJean le Flambeur is a post-human criminal, mind burglar, confidence artist and trickster. His origins are shrouded in mystery, but his exploits are known throughout the Heterarchy - from breaking into the vast Zeusbrains of the Inner System to steal their thoughts, to stealing rare Earth antiques from the aristocrats of the Moving Cities of Mars.
Except that Jean made one mistake. Now he is condemned to play endless variations of a game-theoretic riddle in the vast virtual jail of the Axelrod Archons - the Dilemma Prison - against countless copies of himself.
Jean's routine of death, defection and cooperation is upset by the arrival of Mieli and her spidership, Perhonen. She offers him a chance to win back his freedom and the powers of his old self - in exchange for finishing the one heist he never quite managed . . .
Blackbirds - Chuck WendigHere is the saga of humanity reduced, by an implacable alien enemy, to inhabiting a single colony on the distant world of Safehold. To avoid drawing the attention of the enemy through the busy signals of an industrial civilization, the human rulers of Safehold have taken an extraordinary measure. With mind control and hidden high technology, they have built a religion in which every Safeholdian believes, one designed to keep Safehold society medieval and unnoticed forever. After disagreement about the wisdom and justice of this course, the dissenters were ruthlessly eliminated. Centuries have passed and now, in a hidden chamber on Safehold, an android initiates a rebirth set in motion centuries before. A rebirth that will provide the only remaining humans with their last chance to learn the truth and to rejoin the universe. It is destined to be a tremendous undertaking, unfolding a story of deception and ignorance, freedom and tyranny, and the liberating power of the truth.
Miriam Black knows when you will die. Still in her early twenties, she's foreseen hundreds of car crashes, heart attacks, strokes, suicides, and slow deaths by cancer. But when Miriam hitches a ride with truck driver Louis Darling and shakes his hand, she sees that in thirty days Louis will be gruesomely murdered while he calls her name. Miriam has given up trying to save people; that only makes their deaths happen. But Louis will die because he met her, and she will be the next victim. No matter what she does she can't save Louis. But if she wants to stay alive, she'll have to try.
