Recommended books 2008 reading list
Discover the best 2008 reading list with recommended books like Halting State by Charles Stross, Victory of Eagles, and Farthing. Explore top fiction picks from Naomi Novik and Ian McDonald in this curated guide.
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Farthing
by Jo Walton
A stunning "what-if" in the manner of Fatherland and The Plot Against America
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Temeraire: Empire of Ivory
by Naomi Novik
An epidemic of unknown origins has decimated the noble dragons' ranks and only Temeraire and a pack of newly recruited dragons stand as the only means of an airborne defense against France's ever bolder armies.
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Victory of Eagles
by Naomi Novik
The acclaimed series, starring the fighting dragon Temeraire and his captain, Will Laurence, reaches a peak of excitement with this latest installment from award-winning author Novik.
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River of Gods
by Ian McDonald
As Mother India approaches her centenary, nine people are going about their business — a gangster, a cop, his wife, a politician, a stand-up comic, a set designer, a journalist, a scientist, and a dropout. And so is Aj — the waif, the mind-reader, the prophet — when she one day finds a man who wants to stay hidden. In the next few weeks, they will all be swept together to decide the fate of the nation. River of Gods teems with the life of a country choked with peoples and cultures — one and a half billion people, twelve semi-independent nations, nine million gods. Ian McDonald has written the great Indian novel of the new millennium, in which a war is fought, a love betrayed, a message from a different world decoded, as the great river Ganges flows on.
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Halting State
by Charles Stross
“Halting State [is] a near-future story that is at once over-the-top and compellingly believable.” – Vernor Vinge, author of Rainbows End In the year 2018, Sergeant Sue Smith of the Edinburgh constabulary is called in on a special case. A daring bank robbery has taken place at Hayek Associates—a dot-com start-up company that’s just floated onto the London stock exchange. But this crime may be a bit beyond Smith’s expertise. The prime suspects are a band of marauding orcs with a dragon in tow for fire support. The bank is located within the virtual reality land of Avalon Four, and the robbery was supposed to be impossible. When word gets out, Hayek Associates and all its virtual “economies” are going to crash hard. For Smith, the investigation seems pointless. But the deeper she digs, the bigger the case gets. There are powerful players—both real and pixelated—who are watching her every move. Because there is far more at stake than just some game-head’s fantasy financial security…