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Kraken by China Miéville

A reasonably entertaining tale of a worker at an aquarium who gets drawn into the mystery surrounding their impossibly stolen giant squid, and the possibility that it fortells the end of the world. Not as imaginative as his Perdido books, and I'm a bit weary of "magical underground London" books. Still, Miéville running at 80% is better than most of the competition. Recommended.

Steampunk Prime, edited by Mike Ashley

A collection of zeroth generation steampunk, straight from the late-nineteenth, early-twentieth century. Ranges from perfectly entertaining but unremarkable ("The Automaton," about a haunted chess-playing machine) to the boring future prognostication tale ("In The Deep Of Time," in which a man is frozen for 200 years and emerges in a world of walking dirigibles and newfangled uses of cellulose) to assorted paranoid screeds ("The Great Catastrophe", an anti-electricity tale). Mildly recommended to those interested in the genre.

The Skylark books, by E.E. "Doc" Smith

I got the urge to reread these four books recently. Three were written during the 1920s and 30s, one during the 60s. The first are about Richard Seaton, an engineer, and his discovery of a metal that allows the perfect use of E=MC². He builds a spaceship, and proceeds to have interstellar adventures, meeting brave friends and vile enemies (Beware Fenar of the Fenachrone!) along the way. His enemy is Marc DuQuesne, who is exactly like him in every way except for being power-hungry and wanting no competitors. The books are a little repetitive, and not always very well structured. For example, DuQuesne rarely acts against Seaton at all. They don't even meet for the entire second book, and they pretty much never meet in battle as equals. I was also disgruntled when our heroes discover an ameoboid race at war with a humanoid race and, solely on the basis of what they look like, side with the humanoids. (They make no attempt whatsoever to determine who's the aggressor.) The fourth book also suffers from having been written in the 60s; Smith tries to write about sex, but it comes across as adolescent. He was better off sticking to his post-Victorian decorum. So, the first three are recommended, the last is not.

Kaleidoscope by Harry Turtledove

A collection of Turtledove's 1980s work, mostly "high concept" SF and fantasy. What if an alien race discovered interstellar travel during their early Gunpowder Age, and tried to conquer 1980s Earth? What if an SF writer from the 80s went back to the 50s to try and change the world? (Answer: The other SF writers of the 1950s would be really envious of her word processor.) What if the Nazis won WW2, and then had to face Gandhi in India? What if "weather in the 60s" meant the 1960s? A fun collection, recommended.

The Hand of Thrawn duology, by Timothy Zahn.

Sequel to the original Thrawn Trilogy, these books are set about 15 years after Return of the Jedi, in a time when the Empire is nearly beaten, but the New Republic is about to tear itself apart over long-remembered grudges. The rumor that the long-dead Grand Admiral Thrawn (Imperial military genius) may have returned sends all our favorite heroes into a tizzy, as the multitude of factions within both the Republic and Empire scramble for advantage. A major turning point in the Star Wars Expanded Universe, recommended.