Rik thomson

Ok, not mind blowing. Probably not a good fit for my taste and some character quirks tended to annoy more than entice. Gus the male protagonist was described as having rough calloused hands constantly. His workman hands, crooked smile and dark black eyes were as constant as was his rumpled clothes and unruly hair. In my experience writers hands tend to be pretty smooth but hey he was a gravedigger a decade earlier that would be it. January didn't fair much better as a character, so i guess they were well matched.

What a joy! This was a great, easy to read adventure. The characters were interesting, charismatic and entertaining. New Mexico was an new geography for me, very varied with a diverse population of eccentric characters. Style wise it reminded me of Tama Janowitz “Slaves of New York” and Janet Evanovich's Stephanie Plum Series. Will definitely be reading more of her work.

A modern Sci-fi thriller spanning several genres. None of which can be explained easily without spoilers. This book explores modern physics, string theory, quantum physics while still being primarily a story about one mans fight to get his family back.

If you enjoyed the documentary “What the #$*! Do We (K)now!? (2004)” or “Sliding Doors” or even Multiverse related ideas then you should also enjoy this. It's very modern and thoughtful while being very familiar and emotional.

This is Becky Chamber's third book in her exploration of the Universe she has created.

Of the three books I found this the hardest to get into. It was very character driven like her previous books, but it just seemed to be very scattered in its approach.

‘The long way to a small angry planet' (her first book) was focused on the crew of a spaceship. It was a team exploring the Universe together, interacting together and sharing their experiences.
‘A closed and common orbit' (her second book) was two storylines of two characters that live together so there was a mixing of experiences and communication between those characters.
This book has a range of the characters that it explores. Some are linked to each other, others have absolutely no relation to others at all. Well apart from living within this spaceship fleet orbiting a sun.

Having finished the book now I can understand what it was communicating, why it was created, and what it was saying about it's characters, but it just was nowhere near as compelling as the first two books. She still has written a fascinating exploration of society and people within it, but it lacked the hook that gripped me in the first 2 books.

Surprising

I initially was expecting some sort of Murderbot-esque cyberpunk tale of a dystopian future. In some ways it was , but with so many pop culture references. This book covers so many modern scifi styles, it's really pretty clever. As Bob himself would tell you. A strangely cosy sci fi political dystopian tale about an engineer and his brush with eternal life.