March Books 5) Take Back Plenty

5) Take Back Plenty, by Colin Greenland

I realised to my embarrassment last week that I was moderating not one but two P-Con panels with Colin Greenland as a participant, and I had read perhaps one short story of his from the Moonshots anthology. Well, I had the opportunity to get the three “Plenty” novels during the con and he was kind enough to sign them.

This first book is pretty good (as you would hope for a book that won both the Arthur C Clarke and BSFA awards). Well above-average space opera, feisty female protagonist, solar system where humanity is vying for space and influence with various alien species (like Stephen Baxter’s Xeelee sequence but less depressing). Mild rewriting of history to allow us Mars as desert planet with breathable atmosphere and Venus as tropical hell. Generally good fun. Will probably read the other two.

One thought on “March Books 5) Take Back Plenty

  1. I’m… actually a bit disappointed by the repetition of author names

    Here are the votes from the poll summed by author, for all authors who got 100 or more votes. (There’s still a bit of repetition, because Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson appear together as well as apart.)

    Brandon Sanderson 452

    John Scalzi 369

    Terry Pratchett 360

    Neil Gaiman 359

    Jacqueline Carey 329

    Robert Jordan 288

    Jim Butcher 283

    George R.R. Martin 278

    Lois McMaster Bujold 272

    J.K. Rowling 266

    China Mieville 249

    Steven Erikson 246

    Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson 235

    Patrick Rothfuss 231

    Peter Watts 229

    Neal Stephenson 218

    Charles Stross 171

    Susanna Clarke 167

    Daniel Abraham 138

    Naomi Novik 131

    Richard K. Morgan 130

    Alastair Reynolds 124

    Scott Lynch 123

    Robin Hobb 116

    Joe Abercrombie 110

    (So it’s Brandon Sanderson who’s the most popular author of the decade! Not bad for an author whose first novel was published in 2005. Doesn’t tempt me to read any of his books, though: I learned my lesson after I tried playing Final Fantasy X—it turns out that 10 million Japanese can be wrong.)

Comments are closed.