The Stars My Destination by Alfred Bester

13 people attended the FACT reading group discussion of Alfred Bester’s The Stars My Destination. Almost everyone has read something by Bester before. Most of the group has read this book when it first came out. Almost all of them re-read it anew before the discussion. Only one person did not finish the book.

This novel is set in the 24th century, when most humans have developed an ability to “jaunt”, or to teleport. The protagonist, a bad-guy antihero named Gully Foyle, seeks to avenge an injustice done to him in the past. His corporate masters

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The Demon and the City by Liz Williams

Ten of us gathered at the North Village library for this meeting. Our topic was The Demon and the City, second in the Detective Inpector Chen supernatural crime. While the first novel, The Snake Agent, focused on the human Chen, this book concentrates more on Chen’s partner, the demon Zhu Irzh. Nine of us had read Liz Williams previously. We all started the book, and eight of us finished.

The Demon and the City was one member’s first Liz Williams book. She started reading it but felt lost until she realized that there was a prior book. So she found The Snake Agent and read it, then returned to the newer book. She enjoyed it much more on the second try.

We liked a lot about this book. The setting and mythology, taken from China and

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