Bee

Damn that was fun. I'd forgotten how funny Taylor could be. This was by now means a deep story or superbly written, but it was a lot of fun, with some great geeky details and a satisfying plot. I had some inkling of how it would turn out but was still pleasantly surprised at the end.

M.R. Carey can write a pretty wide range of fiction, that's for sure., I really enjoyed Outlaw Planet. I cool mix of Western and far out Sci-Fi. But light enough to just be fun. Nice setting with animal analogues for humans, a cool adventurous Western tale, and some big concept twists. Not very deep, but a lot of fun.

I LOVED Wakeful Slim!

3.5 stars

I feel like this should or could have been excellent. But some how it never quite landed the setup . The language was often beautiful, complex metaphors abound. It was an emotional book, full of old trauma, skirting around the inability to love or be loved. The analogies with robots was never rubbed in your face, it was subtle and often quite lovely. But also cold and distant, like seeing the story unfold through lead glass, even when you were in someone's POV.

The disjointed new unified Korean was a really rich background to the whole story.

I read they might be making a series out of this, and i suspect (and hope) that might be able to pull the deeper story to light in a better way. Fingers crossed, because it was such a rich milieu for a complex story

2 stars for originality, 3 starts for effort

Pffft. Wow that was forgettable. Nothing wrong with it per say, it wasn't bad, it was just bland and forgettable. Not a single new idea or a particularly interesting character. It's all been said before so many times. I just don't get what the fuss is about Powell. I've yet to read a book of his that was memorable. I can't for the life of my understand why Peter F Hamilton got him to write his last books.

It was kinda fun sometimes, and pulled me in a few times, but in general i kept waiting for the other shoe to drop, for it to get tense or me to actually start caring about Ursula. But it just never got there.

4 Stars for world and plot
3 stars for SMUGNESS

I keep doing it to myself, i forget how much Scalzi annoys me, and ESP how much Wil Wheaton's narration annoys me, and I fall for the GR hype. This is 100% my opinion of course, but I get so annoyed at the smug characters that populate his books. Smug charmers who smugly solve every problem with a quip and disarming leer. Reminds me of what a friend once told me, “Charm is a verb”, it's a tool used by manipulators. It annoys me no end. Every now and then the smugness suites the story enough that it doesn't grate. But not consistently enough alas.

That being said the plot and story were engaging enough though, not sure if that says something about Scalzi or the original author the story was a remix of?