Valerie
Do you want to annoy your DM by sidequesting your D&D party into creating a coffee shop using vaguely medieval methods? This is the book for you. Otherwise, I'd skip it. There's no real tension, the characters are basic cut-outs, and the writing is just fine. It made me miss Terry Pratchett because it's a very Discworld concept (the super modern thing in a high fantasy world), but if Sir Terry wrote it, it would also be a witty but scathing indictment of colonialism. This is just a side quest that for some reason lasts over 200 pages.
I often find I'm not as into spin-off short stories and novellas, but this is a rare exception. I wouldn't recommend reading it if you haven't read “Borne,” but it also only has to do with Borne on the periphery. It's Vandermeer at his weird, bio-tech best, weird and wonderful with rich language and challenging perspectives, and it adds to the Borne universe in unexpected ways.
If you like hearing Neil DeGrasse Tyson's voice wax poetic about space and our species' place in it, this is a great read even if it is now somewhat dated information. It's a collection of speeches, essays, articles, and interviews mostly from the Obama era of the US space program. It suffers a little from the repetition I often find in essay collections which were meant to be taken individually as opposed to read through all at once, but that repetition also kind of drives home Tyson's thesis that we as Americans and as humans have an obligation to keep exploring space, and it provides some great evidence if you are having a conversation with someone who says, “Why are we wasting billions of dollars on space when we have enough problems here on Earth?”
I think Carrie Vaughn is one of the most under-rated genre writers around. Post-Apocalyptic murder mystery is not a genre just anyone could handle, but she does so with great skill. Bannerless has the fun of other fantastical neo-noir detectives but without the sexism and toxic masculinity that is pretty ingrained in the latter genre. I love the concept, and the mystery met my criteria of I got it figured out just a little ahead of the characters. I remember liking Bannerless but read it a long time ago and was worried it would be confusing to jump into the world, but honestly you could jump in here and be caught up with the world in the first chapter.
I'm also maybe a little won over by the idea of “households” who all gather together to raise children because magic dystopian birth control aside, that's a really great idea.
Recommended especially to fans of a good detective story looking for a fresh and more inclusive take on it.
My end feeling was this is that the author really wanted to see this movie. Honestly, I would probably like to see this movie. With a talented cast that could breathe life into the characters and some special effects, this could be really fun. Bisexual Han Solo? Let's do this! And maybe the sloppy time travel would not bother me as much as it does if the acting was good enough.
As a novel though, it's a little uninspiring. The writing never really dragged me in. The time travel did bother me a ton, and I never really bonded with any characters. I like a light space opera, but this was maybe a little too light for me.
I... I feel good at the end of a Saga volume... I feel good at the end of a Saga volume that explicitly addresses complex moral arguments and assumptions around abortion as well as the all too often overlooked and powerful effects of miscarriage. And yet there is so much hope here. There is so much love. There are so many rainbow zebras.
Merged review:
I... I feel good at the end of a Saga volume... I feel good at the end of a Saga volume that explicitly addresses complex moral arguments and assumptions around abortion as well as the all too often overlooked and powerful effects of miscarriage. And yet there is so much hope here. There is so much love. There are so many rainbow zebras.
Neil Gaiman writing about Douglas Adams is sort of a perfect fit for my tastes, and I had a good time reading about how H2G2 in all its many and varied forms came to be. It's strange to look at what Adams and the world thought of his many creations in 1988, even before Mostly Harmless came out and long before we lost him so tragically. This is a window into the entertainment, technology, and process of the time with a very young Gaiman impersonating Adams' voice as he is still finding his own. A good read for any H2G2 fans though probably not much new information.
I was unsure of this one going in for two reasons. 1) The overused A&B title format which just signals blandness to me and 2) I had my big fairy tales but for adults phase all the way back at Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister, so I'm hard to please in this area. My hopes were raised when I found out that T. Kingfisher is actually Ursula Vernon whose graphic novels I've enjoyed for many years, and her style and flair really saved the book from the mire of grown up fairy tale tropes. It's a good story, that suffers maybe a little too much from deux ex machina plot devices, but the characters and writing make it feel part of the world and not a cheat. Overall enjoyed it and would recommend to people who love a dark fairy tale and people who used to love them but have lost faith in a tired subgenre.
I had a good think about why I am enjoying this series so much. Part of it is the space opera/political intrigue which is entirely my cuppa. The other part I think has to do with the fact that while the characters at first seem a little simple without too much development of the course of fairly plot-heavy books, they can be divided into essentially two camps: characters motivated by doing good for others and characters motivated by doing good for themselves. The interesting thing is that this places people from both camps on the protagonist/antagonist teams. And that's a big edge towards keeping this series from being overly simple.
If you liked The Collapsing Empire, it's definitely work continuing, and I'll most likely finish the series up after a break for my book club.
I haven't read Scalzi in sometime, and it was good to come back to his style. He's one of my favorite witty dialogue writers, and this was no exception. The concept was exciting, the characters were interesting (even if I hope that far future societies don't go back to a religiously-based, hereditary monarchy... please tell me that's not our timeline), and the pacing is as quick and easy to read through.
I very nearly took away a star for using “squicked” in a non-ironic sense, though. Only previous enjoyment of Scalzi and his works stopped me. No way that word survives a thousand years. Right? We have too many dark timelines.
This is a book I wouldn't have picked up from the subject matter alone, and but a couple of trusted sources recommended it, and man, were they right. On the surface, this is a story about a marriage, but it's also about how much or how little you can know the people around you in life. It's about perspective, and trauma, and the things that make us who we are, and it's done within the context of a modern Greek tragedy. The writing style, as I'm coming to expect from Lauren Groff, is superb enough to just make me angry at how good it is. Groff is good. Read her books.
Look, I heard a lot of great things about James Tiptree Jr. She sounds like an extremely interesting person, and I'm told I should give her short stories a chance as that's really more her medium, but this book just ... wasn't good, and also was deeply problematic. I try to read books with respect to the time period they were written, and I know this was written in 1985, but even so.
I read a bunch of other reviews to try and figure out why anyone liked this book, and the most interesting one said that the author was probably writing about truly horrific things to reflect and highlight the truly horrific things in our real world. especially from her experience as an FBI agent. That might be the case, but none of the horrors really felt like they were being criticized to me.
The child porn stars are just that, and people are uncomfortable around them but no one really criticizes them and there are ample scenes where the girls in particular are naked and objectified. And the reward for one of the stars is to become a concubine to an eleven year old prince who just happens to be good at everything? And he picks her after studying her mom to make sure she'll age well? Then there's the weird father/daughter but want to bang non-relationship of Bram and Linnix, the flippant murder of a comatose teenager which I guess we're supposed to take as setting her free from the will of her sister who is also just sort of left in a coma, the fact that even the female character in command is described purely in terms of youth and beauty and the horror that she feels at her rapid aging is mostly because she's no longer hot enough for her hot husband? I could go on, but... man it doesn't get better. This isn't even getting into the aliens deciding what they really want is to be just like their colonizers including selling their bodily fluids to them.
Also everyone in this book is terrible at their job. Also everyone is either instantly way too intimate upon just meeting or completely lacks intimacy despite being married for years. Also, the “futuristic” dialogue hurts to read. Also, why give away your plot twist with a character who as “good hunches?”
Again, there's a world where I could respect this subject matter in the time period. I like the idea of porn stars saving a group of hapless researches. I like a lot of the progressive (for the time) ideas nearly buried under the problematic points. But none of it is done well or in a sensible way or gave me much of a foothold to enjoy the book. I haven't read any other Tiptree Jr., and if you haven't either I do not suggest starting here.
McSweeney's is always a good collection, but this one had a couple of stand outs. The first one is “Dog Lab” by T.C. Boyle. Incredibly moving and philosophical piece on ethics and humanity. The second is “The Little Men” by Carl Napolitano which is the kind of weird magical realism backed with massive literary skill that I love so much.
I read this as part of the eBook collection “Elric of Melniboné” which includes the first four chronological novellas, so this review is encompassing that collection.
The Elric novels have been a hole in my fantasy history. I've owned a few for a while but only got around to reading it when my book club picked it. I struggle to rate them with stars because by modern standards, they aren't really my cup of tea, but as part of the foundation of fantasy, they are interesting to explore.
Elric is maybe the original fantasy anti-hero, and I know he's inspired a lot of my favorites. In Elric I see the ancestor of Morpheus, of Geralt, of Harry Dresden, of so many of the tall, pale, brooding figures just trying to punch a few evil doers while wondering how far from true north their own moral compass has wandered.
The plots themselves are pulpy and commercial, the non-Elric characters are pretty flimsy, and the women are basically just there for Elric to rescue and/or have sex with, so they aren't really what I look for in a novel, but I'm giving it the four stars because I know my books wouldn't have evolved to where they are to day with this series.
So this was... bad. Not like offensive or anything but just very fanfiction turned in for a creative writing assignment bad. I think I got it for free or cheap and didn't realize that while Hugh Howey gave his blessing for it to be written, he didn't really have anything else to do with the spinoff series. I think there is much better fanfiction for Wool available on A03.
I feel bad giving it such a low rating because I'm sure Christy is a huge fan who was really wants to expand the Wool universe, but I couldn't find anything I can honestly say I liked about this. Flat characters, zero tension, and just bad writing. She uses the phrase “it sounded like her voice had been dipped in sarcasm” at one point. What?
Well, I think this is probably my least favorite Jemisin book, which is sort of like saying it's my least favorite ice cream. Jemisin is definitely in my top three living authors, and this was still a fun read even though it didn't quite live up to the first book in the duology. After reading her afterword, I think I understand why a bit, and how she might be a little burned out writing what is supposed to be a fantastical dystopia but is in fact our reality.
The City people are all fantastic. The Lovecraft smackdown is still great. The action sequences are a little sillier and clunkier to me than the first book, and some of the “New York is great!” occasionally feels like the post 9/11 add on scene in Sam Raimi's Spiderman movie. But most of what I know about New York comes from this series and Broadway musicals, so maybe it's more realistic than it seems from my suburban eyes. I think it probably could have used 3 books, but I'm glad she at least decided to finish the series even as Lovecraftian horrors spring up around us in realtime.
This issue of McSweeney's is focused on colonialism and what it's like being an indigenous person in a colonial world. Like all McSweeney's, it's excellent. I think “El Señor de La Palma” was my favorite but mostly because MLM's fascinate me. I'm a little behind on my McSweeney's, but it felt good to get back into these beautifully crafted short pieces.
I love Terry Pratchett so much that I haven't read all of his books. Since his death, I've been rationing out the books I have not read because I know one day, I will read the last Terry Pratchett book, and I will be very sad.
This is a collection of Sir Terry's nonfiction divided into three sections: his works and being a writer, his early works on being Terry, and his anger, much of which is about living with Alzheimer's and his frustration surrounding the laws on assisted death. This last section in particular is hard to read, but I think it's worth everyone's time to do so. The book might suffer a little since it's a collection of speeches and articles that were never meant to go together and thus there is some overlap, but overall it's thought-proving and smart, just like Sir Terry.
This was a reread for me of a book I listened to a few years back which then got picked for my book club, and it was great to go back to it. I think genre murder mysteries are some of my favorites, and the complications of cloning and generation ships elevate this far above the average whodunnit. The writing is sharp and snappy, the characters are great, especially Joanna who is as a bonus great representation for people thriving with disabilities. Highly recommended.
It's possible I might have liked this book a little more had I read it like not within the last six months as it became clear we are living in the darkest timeline the time travelers in this book are trying to fix. It's also possible I wouldn't have. In general, time travel is not my jam, and this one just triggered all of my paradox, suspension of disbelief, plot convenience triggered. I like Annalee Neuwitz a lot as a nonfiction writer, and I was pretty into Autonomous, but the writing for this one was just not strong enough for me to get into it. I should like a super diverse, punk rock, sci-fi story that draws from actual little known pieces of history, but at the end of the day, it felt like a hodge podge of cool bits of history thrown together with some pretty one dimensional characters with time travel that was explained just enough to make me question everything about it.
Also, those time travelers did NOT do a good job of fixing the timeline if this is where we are today.
It's been a long time since I've read any Murakami, but I always enjoy him, and the various translators for this collection of short stories are excellent. I think “Samsa in Love” is my favorite, probably because it's the weirdest and I love Murakami most when he gets weird, but even the stories with no magical realism elements were solid reads, and I'd recommend them.