Billie Thompson

A nice change from a deluge of low-quality LitRPG books.

The main characters well-formed, and have histories independent of one another, there's some character development, and the characters have their own motivations and desires.

Reminds me a little of some of the earlier Russian LitRPGs. Cast contains women characters that aren't just MacGuffins, or sex objects (I can't believe that's a thing that's worth saying, but it's rare enough that it is).

My only criticism is that the “God Mode” that the player has enabled, isn't really taken advantage of by the characters. I think Derek should have gone with “The player can never use this because it's going to alert the mods”, the other option the characters be totally immune would have been a mistake, but I don't think the sort of halfway Derek went for was a great choice either as it left a few plot holes.

Enjoyable. I will read the next in the series.

Interesting world building, unique card based magic system, very predictable plot and characters (maybe they lost something in translation or maybe they were always like that)

This is a really weird book.

Like on the face of it it's a somewhat predictable story, but there's like, little bits that get you curious, like the magic system, or some detail about physics or ships (as compared to boats).

Idk. 3 or 4 stars? 1 star? 5 stars? Definitely not 2 stars. Idk. Towards the end I got quite into it. Lets go for 4.

Not a bad little set of stories. Not terrifying but creeped me out a bit at points. A nice easy read for a rainy spring afternoon.

Bit ill when I read this. So my view might not be 100%

Some parts I really liked, like she's really not a nice person, and that's kinda refreshing for an urban fantasy. I disliked that there wasn't more gum-shoe-ing, and that plot changes were very deus ex machina

Nearly lost me in the middle, but had me again at the end for the exercises to try

Some good advice on soliciting advice. Clearly written from a position of a person who is pretty privilaged and is in a place of power. Constant name drops of famous CEOs.

I was super torn between 4 and 5 for this.

Clearly someone's DND campaign, but very entertaining.

Travis is doing a good job with this series. I enjoyed the story, although it is similar to the others. I will read the next .5 book soon.

It's easy reading, but towards the end were some good emotional moments.

The world seems to be developing along with the characters, and we're moving away from something good vs bad to something a little more neuanced I think.

Aaah! The merchant princess university is back except this time the protagonist isn't suck in some crappy medieval world's creepy breeding program (and Stross is a better writer).

Very enjoyable and will totally read the next one. Does feel very much like a direct sequel to the merchant princess series so I am not really sure why it's it's own series.

The first third of the book you read it for the universe, the second third for the characters, and the final third the story.

This was very enjoyable. I totally recommend it. Not really a tech book but it's interesting in seeing how, when people pick up new ideas and practices, they maybe aren't doing so in a logical way.

Another layer of conspiracy and misdirection on the same story.

confirmed

Somewhere between 3 and 4. Very similar to the first, and treads dangerously on “old man shouts at cloud” territory with the ranting. The story is sort of fun though.

You're not going to be going omg, that was a life altering experience after this, but you might go, that was a enjoyable experience.

EDIT:Originally I wasn't going to mention this in this review, because it's a big spoiler, and like audiobook only, but that's what spoiler tags are for right? There is one fanatastic scene in the audiobook of this which might be worth reading (listening to?) the book on its own for, where M.K. Gibson makes Jeffrey Kafer break the 4th wall. And not just like a "oh dear listener" type shit, no a total break, and it's pretty hillarious (and childish) and great.

I do not think someone who hasn't read the other books in the Solar Clipper series would enjoy this as much as I did. It was beautiful, but perhaps because it revealed something about the other stories I had overlooked.

Couldn't finish it, just felt meh about the whole thing.

An ok futurisitic detective novel. The story is predictable, but acceptably written. But the world is interesting, the characters are ok.

Just generally an OK story.

A semi wandering look at if the singularity comes, how people might relate to it. Told through the eyes of a teenager, so games come into it a reasonable amount. It's not all roses, and it's slightly more philosophical than say [b: Avogadro Corp 13184491 Avogadro Corp (Singularity #1) William Hertling https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1410758407s/13184491.jpg 18281456] or [b: Nexus 13642710 Nexus (Nexus, #1) Ramez Naam https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1347149654s/13642710.jpg 19257521]I think this is going to be pretty popular as a book, but to me the story didn't feel amazing.

dnf

Read this mostly because I was looking for something with LGBT characters in, that was scifi. Not sure it counts as gay representation if everyone is a woman.

I wasn't that interested in the story, the characters felt flat and the story a bit dull, I know some people like it so don't like this review put you off.

Underwhelming. Had to slog to get through by the end. Reminded me of the [b: We Are Legion (We Are Bob) 32109569 We Are Legion (We Are Bob) (Bobiverse, #1) Dennis E. Taylor https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1474344826s/32109569.jpg 52752877] in some ways, tone was very similar.

Wow this was amazing. One of the best books I have read this year.

So this story follows Jack, a pharma pirate who is being chased down by the company she pirated drugs from after dumping a load of an exact copy of a new drug called Zacuity on the market causing a lot of people to die from a flaw in the drug which causes extreme addition to work.She runs around the world trying to create a fix for the addition, and tries not to get killed by the agents that are trying to stop her. She's Bi (yay!) and pretty cool. Half the story focuses on Jack and her cadre of friends who help her achieve this, and the other half on the agents, Eliasz and Paladin who're chasing her.Some context. In this universe AIs are real in the form of (mostly) humaniod robots. Robots are indentured because people where like, erm, I built this, so I should own it. Some smart ass pointed out that well children are made too, so shouldn't we be able to own people? From this we get a world with real AIs and indentured everybody.Jack is human, and she has a sidekick who was an indentured slave until Jack killed their owner. Of the agents one of them is human (Eliasz), the other is an AI (Paladin).This brings us to the major themes of this book. Slavery, and Identity. On the Jack side of things we have the exploration that jack saving her her sidekick doesn't mean anything unless they are able to financially support themselves, and get normal jobs etcOn the agent side of things we have an exploration of what it means to be in a broken relationship, that is the only thing you have known, and the difference between what gender means to yourself vs what it means to other people. The AI agent Paladin is genderless technically, and uses He/Him pronouns by default at the start, and after thinking about it by prompting by their team member switches to She/Her.The relationship between the two agents is very broken. Eliasz has a massive internalised homophobia problem, being terrified at being attracted to Paladin at first, until he discovers her brain was originally belonged to a woman. This is in itself not unheard story to how many straight people react when being attracted to trans people, what is different is that Paladin's mind is for about half this book being forced to be attracted to Eliasz by a series of programs.Later on this is removed and we get an analysis of if she is actually attracted to Eliasz, ultimately she decides that she is, as every time he's away on missions, she misses him. I do wonder though if she had known anything other than this relationship how she would have felt.Maybe there will be a sequel that explores this.Interestingly we DO know she is totally fine with she/her pronouns. However it is explored a bit that she really doesn't care either way and that's a human thing.The book ends (of course) with Jack getting away and releasing a cure, the two agents going to mars to love each other in peace (with the AI getting their autonomy). Which is kinda odd because you'd think that Paladin wouldn''t be terribly cool with going with someone who has fucked with their mind.

Stopped reading after the 3rd or 4th time that characters were homophobic, racist or sexist.

Geez I love this series. The characters are so well written. The ends are always a little predictable but I feel so many emotions along the way

it started getting a bit strange towards the end, which is interesting.

The next book should be interesting.