Yes, I'm jumping the gun since this book hasn't been released yet, but it will soon and when it does IMWANkers will want to read about it and talk about it. I'm curious, and I may want to sink my teeth into this one, and the length (nearly 900 pages) isn't scaring me. So what is Seveneves about? Nothing more and less than the end and rebirth of the world.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/0062190377/?tag=imwan-20



The first sentence of the book reads, "The moon blew up without warning and for no apparent reason." Why the moon has been destroyed is not important. What IS important is that astronomers realize that the debris of the moon is eventually going to fall to Earth in a "hard rain" that will exterminate all life on Earth. There is a race to reconfigure the International Space Station into an ark (dare I say "The Ark In Space"?) that will save a few thousand members of humanity, and the rest are toast. BTW, one of those lucky survivors is an egomaniacal President of the United States who gets herself on the ark despite public protestations that she will be staying behind. For most of the book---about five hundred some pages---we see the people on The Ark In Space struggle to survive and make sure that their posterity has a chance to survive, too.

Then comes a plot twist that should not count as a spoiler. It's revealed in the summary of the book at Amazon.com, and most reviews of the book will mention it freely. I could pull the attitude that I had with From Dusk Till Dawn where I could not believe But I think some people WILL believe that this plotline is a spoiler so I will mention it in spoiler brackets below.




So...is anybody planning on reading this?

Mebbe.

I felt burned by Anathem.

If this book turns out to be a disappointment, there are people who will say that...

I really enjoyed Anathem, but haven't been able to get into Cryptonomicon.

I love Cryptonomicon. Anathem didn't interest me that much.

I was a little disappointed with the ending to Cryptonomicon.




But it's nice to know that there is a workable code that comes with Cryptonomicon that you can use with any playing card deck. If you don't want to buy the book, you can get this code from Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solitaire_%28cipher%29

Just got my copy of Seveneves today in the mail from Target.com. Why Target, you ask? Won a gift card at work and decided to use it.

Almost finished with one book on Kindle, but I'll also start this book, too. ( http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00APA1GJE/?tag=imwan-20 ) Anyway, I'll let you know what I think of this book as I go through it.

The book is The Monster Hunters (Monster Hunters International combo volumes Book 1).

I should have just said the title. (Sorry!) It's actually a combination of three books by Larry Correia:

Monster Hunter International
Monster Hunter Vendetta
Monster Hunter Alpha

To sum up, these books are set up in a world where supernatural monsters exists, but the government goes to great lengths to keep it a secret. ("Great lengths" include killing survivors of monster attacks who publicly state what they've been through.) The protagonist of these books, Owen Zastava "Z" Pitt finds out about this world when he kills his boss after the latter turns into a werewolf and tries to eat him. The bad news is that he winds up losing his job. The good news is that he gets recruited by a monster bounty hunter firm called "Monster Hunters International." Both books I read so far are action-packed and funny. If you're curious, the first book in the series is now free on Kindle, but if you actually want to spend money this omnibus edition is a good bargain. Not many good books 1200 pages long are available only for $9.99.

I just finished Seveneves, and Anathem just came in the mail. Looks like Anathem will be a LOT harder to read, but I've only just a few pages in, so I'm still going to give it a chance. Anybody who decided not to read Seveneves simply because Anathem was hard to read should give it another chance.