Offline
I went thru a Mary Gentle phase decades ago - don’t remember much.
Online!
I abandoned everything I had in progress when my copy of Alliance Unbound arrived so I could read that 'without salt' as it were.
By the time Id finished it, my pre-order of Nick Harkaway's Karla's Choice had dropped to the kindle so I'm now reading that. And so far, it's very good.