What I’m reading right now, and yes, really enjoying! (thought I’d get that out there right away 😉 ) is Julie Czerneda’s Search Image, the first in her new science fiction series, the Web Shifter’s Library.

It’s not the first Web series, though, but the second, bringing back the central characters from the Web Shifters series, chiefly Esen-alit-Quar and Paul Ragem/Cameron.

Canadian author, Julie Czerneda, has written nearly twenty novels now, most of them science fiction, so I’m not going to hide my head when I admit that I haven’t yet read the original Web Shifters series.  I’m almost certainly going to, though, since (as above) I am enjoying Search Image. I’m about half way through and so far, it’s a fun, adventurous story with plenty of Julie’s trademark worldbuilding and biologist’s take on fascinating species.

It’s also a book I can enjoy in its own right, without having read the preceding series: in part because it’s a new story but also because the backstory for the established characters is woven in as necessary for understanding (and without infodumping.)

Julie & me, NatCon 2009

If you like your science fiction with plenty of alien species and also space travel, humorous storytelling and engaging characters, then I suspect you’ll enjoy Search Image as much as I’m doing right now.

In terms of other aspects of the book that may be of interest, Julie used the names of friends and fellow travellers from the NZ speculative fiction community—met while here in 2009—as the source of character and place names. My friend Joff is there, masquerading as “Joffre sorbet”, while there’s also a continent called Lowesland… #JustSayin’ 😉

I am reading the hard copy version of Search Image, published by DAW in 2018. The book was made available to me by a friend, the Joffre of the Joffre sorbet. 😉