Astrid Hawk

I'm giving this 4.5*, because I think it's not quite a 5* - not quite one of my all-time favorites - but certainly stands above what I've recently marked 4*. I loved the relationship between our two main characters, and I definitely enjoyed the ingenuity in the premise of this - how Weir came up with a somewhat scientifically-plausible situation that put Ryland out in space far from Earth, and then kept building on the science he made up to create plausible problems and puzzles on top of that. And of course it's fun watching Ryland figure out how to work out these puzzles and solve all these problems using just the materials and knowledge he has on hand.

The first half of the book read like conversations I used to have with my best friend in high school. One of us would come up with a question - "what would happen if X came in contact with Y?" or "what would you do if you were stuck in XYZ situation?"- and then he'd ask me additional questions to goad me on while I tried to reason out a logical answer just based on principles of physics (and later, principles from our college engineering classes). We typically didn't ever get to the point of actually pulling out a calculator or pencil and paper, but sometimes we did just to get a feel for order of magnitude of things. I loved the early parts where Ryland is trying to figure out where he is and what he's doing, and is reasoning it out based on the little information he has on hand plus his knowledge of math and physics.

For those who complain that there is a bit too much math... there is actually 0 on-page math. I actually found myself wanting more of it. I took astrodynamics in college (I have an aerospace engineering degree with a space focus... astro, as we called it then, is kind of essential :) ), and I wanted to see the orbits, insertion paths, and escape velocities sketched out and calculated. I wanted to actually see the math that resulted in the constant tallying of grams of fuel being used. If Weir has a calculation notebook lying around somewhere that he used, I'd totally read that version of the story.

Weir does take a few significant scientific shortcuts in this book - which of course happens all the time in science fiction, but I'm not used to seeing from Weir. The one that stands out, and which I can discuss without spoilers, is that he relies heavily on a fictional material that his main character has named xenonite, which is apparently a substance made from xenon in solid form that has practically mythical qualities. Xenonite can't be cut or dented by any of our earth-built tools; it can be shaped into just about anything; it can be used to create almost any kind of surface including transparent surfaces; it can withstand a huge range of temperatures and pressures and pretty much the entire periodic table of elements; it can bond to any earth-rendered metal or composite material. And our characters go through xenonite like it's an infinitely renewable resource, without much consideration for how much of it was actually brought on board to begin with. It's a bit of an odd juxtaposition against the rest of the materials mentioned in the book, which are typically assigned quantities or volumes or some kind of limit. Xenonite feels limitless, both in what it can do and its availability.

I think perhaps my favorite element of the book was the first contact element - how Ryland goes about discovering properties of extraterrestrial life and figuring out how it works and how to communicate. Are the various life forms realistic? No idea. Probably not really. Maybe the unicellular ones are plausible. The multicellular ones are likely more imaginative. Either way, it's fun reading about how Ryland encounters them and tries to figure out what he's dealing with.

And of course Rocky. On his own, Rocky is probably not a compelling character, just as Ryland really isn't (in fact, the flashbacks to Ryland's life on earth, and especially his interactions with Stratt and other scientists got a bit dull for me). But Rocky and Ryland together are great to "watch", as they learn to work together and develop a real friendship.

I don't know if I'll ever re-read this, but it was definitely a great ride and deserves the hype.

I'm really glad I listened to this so I could hear Geena tell her own story in her own voice. I've read a handful of trans people's stories now, and they're all very very different - not just because the authors have different backgrounds and were raised in different cultures, but also because issues that we tend to think are common across trans experiences are really not. I enjoyed Geena's story-telling style, and although I've never had any interest in beauty pageants (queer or not) and the modeling world, she does a great job at showing how what is often perceived as a superficial world/career path was so critical in shaping her sense of identity, reclaiming her trans joy, and influencing how she appears in the world.

Like the rest of this series, there were parts where this really dragged, with hours of descriptions of the characters wrestling with their emotions, and parts where there was intense action. This one had aerial dragon action at least, which was fun. The epilogue was a full 2 hours of narration... which is nuts, but I guess makes sense given the length of the total series. My biggest complaint is that one of the reveals really didn't make a lot of sense - it went directly against the very first scene in the series, and some of the events in book 3. Overall I guess it was a satisfying ending the series, with no obvious loose ends left - but I also didn't come away feeling like I was going to miss any of the characters.

A satisfying conclusion to Ewilan's trilogy, and it set us up to learn a lot more about Salim's talents and adventures in the next trilogy. Camille/Ewilan matured a lot in this book - where she was more capricious and reactive in the first two books, she becomes significantly more reflective in this one and is often the voice of reason. It's perhaps a natural progression given all the deep responsibility and dark truths she's had to face, but the change is marked.

Salim, in contrast, doesn't mature as much, but he's thrown (as is the rest of the company) when his hidden abilities suddenly come forward in stressful situations. This book starts to take him away from his role as encouraging, upbeat sidekick and more towards his role as protagonist in the next trilogy. He does become significantly less flippant, however, and tends to be more morose and sensitive, constantly feeling overlooked and rejected, which became a bit irritating at times (especially given how Book 2 ends).

Since this is a middle grade / very young adult story, there are some heartstopping moments, but in the end it's all found/reunited family and happily-ever-after.

Read this for a Kindle challenge, and while it was certainly more enjoyable than reading one of the thousands of formulaic cringey romances on KU, it was... underwhelming. The synopsis makes it sound like the magical element in the baked goods is going to somehow play a critical role, but it is disappointingly not at all mysterious nor particularly pivotal in the book.

The plot was... fine. It's supposed to be a cozy, feel-good read, so it didn't surprise me that the stakes were never terribly high, even when there was conflict (and of course the 3rd act breakup, even though this wasn't a pure romance).

My biggest complaint with this book was the constant peppering of French words and phrases mixed into the English whenever bilingual French characters were speaking. It irritated me, since it was all French vocabulary that one learns in beginner French class, and a bilingual speaker would not bother substituting individual remedial words in their native language and then go on to use much more complicated sentence structures and vocabulary in their second language. For example, a French speaker at one point says "She wore une robe, a very beautiful dress...". Why in the world would she bother substituting "une robe" for "a dress" only to actually use the word "dress" in the very next part of the sentence? I realize this sounds nitpicky, but the novel is littered with examples like this that just grated on me. I have French friends... this isn't how they speak English.