{"id":35,"date":"2010-08-02T10:21:14","date_gmt":"2010-08-02T10:21:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.fact.org\/reading\/?p=35"},"modified":"2012-02-27T14:20:31","modified_gmt":"2012-02-27T14:20:31","slug":"bitter-angels","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.fact.org\/reading\/?p=35","title":{"rendered":"Bitter Angels"},"content":{"rendered":"

Bitter Angels <\/em> by C. L. Anderson<\/h3>\n

On August 2nd, the North Reading Group met at the North Village Branch of the Austin Public Library, located at 2505 Steck Ave, to discuss Bitter Angels<\/em>.\u00a0 \u00a0The author is Sarah Zettel, writing under the name C. L. Anderson.\u00a0 It won the 2010 Phillip K. Dick award, given for a distinguished SF work issued originally in paperback form in the U.S.\u00a0 Twelve members attended.\u00a0 Nine had read Zettel before (this is her first book written as C. L. Anderson).\u00a0 Eight started the book and six finished it.\u00a0 Apparently the nom-de-plume<\/em> was selected because the story was a departure from Zettel’s themes over the past several years and her recent books hadn’t sold well enough.<\/p>\n

The central theme is how in a multi-planet colonial empire peace might be maintained by a dedicated central force (the Guardians) whose members are not permitted to kill, even in self defense.\u00a0 The protagonist is a long-retired Field Commander of the Guardians, Terese Drajeske, who reluctantly accepts a return to duty to investigate the disappearance of a former close associate.\u00a0 The book is a hybrid military SF-space opera-detective-spy story with a strong female protagonist, set in a planet best described as a “hell hole,” controlled by a despotic central government located nearby whose power is maintained by rationing water.<\/p>\n

Several members like the book, for a variety of reasons.\u00a0 One commented on the detailed world-building.\u00a0 Another liked the pacing and the fact that all of the characters had detailed backgrounds.\u00a0 Two commented that “the book wrapped up well.”\u00a0 Others simply liked the story and said that it maintained their interest throughout.<\/p>\n

A couple of readers found the pacing to be too slow early on; one dropped out after 60 pages.\u00a0 One commented that the book had “too many viewpoint characters.”\u00a0 Another complained that there was “too much motion,” creating confusion, although adding that the characterization was good and most of the action scenes were well done.<\/p>\n

The consensus was that this is a good summer read.<\/p>\n

After the meeting the group enjoyed dinner at The Black-Eyed Pea.<\/p>\n

—Tom Sciance<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bitter Angels by C. L. Anderson On August 2nd, the North Reading Group met at the North Village Branch of the Austin Public Library, located at 2505 Steck Ave, to discuss Bitter Angels.\u00a0 \u00a0The author is Sarah Zettel, writing under the name C. L. Anderson.\u00a0 It won the 2010 Phillip K. Dick award, given for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-35","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fact.org\/reading\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fact.org\/reading\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fact.org\/reading\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fact.org\/reading\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fact.org\/reading\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=35"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.fact.org\/reading\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":516,"href":"https:\/\/www.fact.org\/reading\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35\/revisions\/516"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fact.org\/reading\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=35"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fact.org\/reading\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=35"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fact.org\/reading\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=35"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}