I finished Andy Weir’s Project Hail Mary a few days ago.  It’s the kind of novel that almost demands a sequel (or at least a second novel that dovetails with missing but intriguing plot points).  Sequels are always a little tricky.  When I read The Passage back in the day, I was so pleased with the overall reading experience that the need of a sequel didn’t even cross my mind (and even though a sequel made perfect sense).  I’m glad Cronin continued Amy’s story in The Twelve and City of Mirrors.  But reading that first book was reading bliss for me.

I’m not sure we’ll get a follow-up to Project Hail Mary, but I am aware of two other sequels that I’m excited about.  One will bring to a close one of the most fascinating science fiction reads ever for me.  Ender’s Game was a game-changer for me.  I read the first book over twenty years ago (and even then didn’t see that ending coming).  Speaker for the Dead was a sequel so much better than it had to be.  It was a novel that moved Ender’s story in a direction that made total sense, even though the story was completely different in nature.  And then Card went back and told a totally different story by following Bean’s perspective  . . . and it was a fascinating read!  Orson Scott Card brings the series to a close this fall with The Last Shadow.  It brings the threads of Ender’s story and Bean’s story together one last time.  (Which is a real bummer to me because the events of the previous novel made the one thing I really wanted to see impossible).  The book drops in October.

The other sequel is from Dave Eggers and picks up threads from The Circle (a somewhat misunderstood thriller that became a better-than-you-remember movie).  The Every brings e-commerce to the world of social networking in way, I hope, that really gets us to think.  I also hope it’s a good page-turner.  The Every drops in November.

It’s been a good summer of books for me so far.  After a series of shorter books, I’m now ankle-deep in Charles Taylor’s A Secular Age.  Brilliant thinking.  I’ve been reading around the book for years now (thanks to James K. A. Smith and Andrew Root).  It’s good to finally read the book for myself (and for the online class I’m currently “taking” each week).