Derek

I first read this in 1973 or 74. At the time, I thought it “pulpy” as another Goodreads reviewer put it, but not bad. It was believable, but unlikely.

The US decides it needs Canada's Natural Gas reserves, and will go to any lengths to get them. Canada says “you just can't take them, but we'll cut you a really good deal (even after you screw up so badly that anyone else would say you'd blown your last chance), because we're Nice People.”

Now, reading it more critically, I think the writing is perhaps better and unfortunately the story (replace Gas with Water) is getting more believable by the minute.

Canada is not the 51st state, and Wayne Gretzky and Elon Musk have both committed treason.

I can believe it. One 1-star reviewer says it's unbelievable that the US would enter into a second civil war almost indistinguishable from the first. Well, I think they may be too close to the forest. From up here it looks entirely possible.

Anyone who thinks that all Southerners wouldn't join this revolution if fenced in by the North hasn't watched the last year unfolding in Gaza. Desperate people do desperate—and insane—things.

So, I can understand it, and I can believe it. I just can't bring myself to care about any of it in this novel. It's not that none of the characters are likeable—they're not even interesting! They're all pale imitations of humanity. The most interesting thing that ever happens to the protagonist, Sarat, is that an elementary school teacher reads the name “Sara T. Chestnut” as “Sarat”. After that, everything is just simple cause and effect.

Fourth paragraph:
The Edo Conclave represented and administered the Edo sect - a group of beings from many species who were Astral-sensitive and adhered to the Edo tenets. Astral-sensitive beings can draw energy from the mysterious Astral plane, a dimension that exists alongside the physical reality, and use that energy to perform extraordinary actions in the physical world. Using that energy was known as Channeling and Astral-sensitive beings were said to have been favored by the awesome yet mysterious beings that inhabit that sister dimension.

Did I need to know any of that yet? One of the basic rules of creative writing: Show, don't Tell! If you think your readers can't work all of that out in the next few pages you're either a terrible writer or insulting your readers.

I could not finish.

In the first place, the cover blurb is a fabrication. Mariyah is “a renowned winemaker”. No, she's not, she's a winery administrator. There's no “must” in her leaving her home behind, she just chases after her fiance, who arguably has to leave. Half way into the book, there's still no evidence that she can defend herself, let alone be “the Blade”.

When Lem sets off for the border of Vylari, a country that has been magically separated from the rest of the world for centuries, and a border that has only been crossed three times since that separation, he follows a trail!

Terrible writing, and too slow to get to the point.

This is very rare for me but I have to, at least, start a review before I finish the book (as opposed to the 50 books this year that I still haven't got around to reviewing).

Breaking Gravity is, in short, about what happens socially and economically if somebody discovers anti-gravity. The physics is shit! And I don't mean the actual hand-waving that permits and anti-gravity.

I wish I could remember who defined a fantasy as a story in which we had to accept precisely one impossible thing. I think that's a ridiculous standard, but a fine thing to aspire to. So, in this story, the impossible thing is the anti-grav device. Fine. But then we're told that on its high setting, this device launches objects into orbit—and yet, it only managed to embed a half filled coke can in a ceiling rafter, and nobody died. That's just to suggest that perhaps there was too much emphasis on making the science seem right (and failing) instead of concentrating on the real story.

And there's a heck of a story.

I couldn't possibly count the number of times I've lost interest in a thriller because somebody's trying to suppress a secret, and our hero could solve the whole problem by finding a few good journalists to break the story wide open.

It's exactly the same here, but... Dale Adams has discovered “free energy”. Obviously, that threatens everybody who profits from the energy industry, and no doubt a lot of people who you wouldn't expect. And Dale's far too naive to survive. But Dale is smart enough to know that he can just publish his plans, and then it would be pointless to go after him.

Except, he runs to his friends in the slum he grew up in, and they say “you've got a billion dollar idea, and you're going to give it away?

“What about us?”

So, after hundreds of thrillers, almost all of them written by people better known than Mitty Walters, somebody has finally addressed the question of, “if going public could save your life, why wouldn't you do it?”

And, I might add, he's highly entertaining while he does it.

“Mitty Walters”? That name sounds familiar for some reason. Oh, the secret lives that authors lead...

Now that I've finished, I have only one thing to add. The book ends very abruptly. That's unusual, but I can't say it's wrong. The story was done; I honestly can't say anything would have been gained by continuing.

I saw this staged at the Theatre Royal in Plymouth, this week.

It was a beautiful set, well acted, and funny. But it's so ... meh.

Not what I expect from Stoppard.

I remember hearing Margaret Atwood talk about her plans for this story, probably about the time the Hogarth Shakespeare series was initially announced, as I'm sure it was before I moved to the UK.Then I proceeded to forget all about it, until Lyn gave it a rave review a week or two ago. Even though I read Jo Nesbø's [b:Macbeth 33952851 Macbeth (Hogarth Shakespeare) Jo Nesbø https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1507978598s/33952851.jpg 54925798] (also part of the Hogarth series) last fall, Atwood's book didn't come back to mind.So, I promised to read it “next”, though technical difficulties like breaking my e-reader slowed me down.I'm really, really, sorry I forgot you Peggy! You have never let me down.This is everything that Nesbø's book wasn't (though I mostly blame the source material—in my opinion, [b:The Tempest 12985 The Tempest William Shakespeare https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1546081115s/12985.jpg 1359590] is a vastly better play than [b:Macbeth 8852 Macbeth William Shakespeare https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1459795224s/8852.jpg 1896522]).Felix Phillips takes a part-time job teaching literature & theatre to prisoners. When the two people who destroyed his theatrical career, now senior politicians, announce they'll be viewing the final production of this year's show, he decides to put on [b:The Tempest 12985 The Tempest William Shakespeare https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1546081115s/12985.jpg 1359590] and have his revenge.[b:Hag-Seed 28588073 Hag-Seed Margaret Atwood https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1463887982s/28588073.jpg 49490147] is at times funny, bitter, vengeful and redemptive. Felix Phillips is not entirely sane (not entirely insane, either, as he sees and talks to his deceased daughter, but he always seems to know she's not really present). His players are criminals, and none of them nice people, but they're not entirely bad, either. It would have been too easy to make this just a retelling of the play, as Nesbø did, but Atwood makes the characters real in their own rights. Even though Phillips wants revenge, he's careful to protect the one man in the visiting party who just deserved a very little revenge, and the one who was completely innocent. His criminals have no problem helping him out, but they draw the line at doing anything that would lose their chance of parole.Just as Phillips always ends his course by asking his players what would happen to their characters next, the one thing I'm dying to know, is what happens to Estelle? Estelle is the one character who has no counterpart in Shakespeare's play. Felix thinks she wants him romantically, or perhaps merely sexually. But he's far from a reliable narrator, and in any case he's a man, and an actor, and both are far too likely to believe that than they should be. Only Felix and Estelle can tell what comes next, and apparently they're both incommunicado.

I'd put this on the back burner, essentially for the reasons Myke Cole put in his afterword: he's only previously written hardcore military fiction, and I had my doubts about his ability to do fantasy. Fantasy from a teenage girl's point of view, at that!
And half-way in, even though I knew what the Armored Saint of the title had to be, we still hadn't got an armored saint, and no hint it would happen soon. I was beginning to feel this would be one of those books that was really just the first part of a story, and one would have to buy the rest of the series to get any closure.
In fact, the armored saint didn't arrive until at least the three-quarter mark, and most of the action was in the last quarter of the book. Yet the first three-quarters were a steady build to the climax, and didn't seem slow at all, and the last quarter didn't feel rushed but a satisfactory conclusion was reached (while leaving lots of room for sequels—which is fine by me).
Cole also did a fine job of writing from the perspective of a teenage girl (at least to my male mind...)
I'll be reading the rest of this series!

Michi Kaku says in his introduction “In 1893, as part of the World's Columbian Ex­po­si­tion in Chicago, sev­enty-four well-known in­di­vid­u­als were asked to pre­dict what life would be like in the next 100 years. The one prob­lem was that they con­sis­tently un­der­es­ti­mated the rate of progress of sci­ence.” But that's not going to be a problem in this book he says because their science wasn't good enough, and anyway he's an insider...
So, the arrogance turned me off at the beginning, but I persevered.
I should have known better than to read a book that aimed to predict scientific advances of the next century, when it was already 8 years (or more) old. The one thing that became immediately obvious is that he's underestimating the rate of advance in science. Plus ça change.

Painful.

Wonderful.

Ace Atkins continues to do a fine job of handling Parker's legacy. There's no point in describing the plot—if you haven't read the Spenser novels, this isn't the place to start, and if you have, this is more of the same.

It's rather odd that this is published by Random House Children's Books. It's barely YA, and definitely not suitable for for children (not that I wasn't reading much bloodier books than this as a child...).
The first book in this series qualifies as Young Adult only because the protagonist is a teenager. By this book, she's quite clearly an adult. 
These books are easy-reading low-fantasy. There's magic, but not much of it; there's a fuedal medieval state. But there's also a fairly complex economic plot.
Recommended. 

Probably the oddest book I read in 2018.
A man comes to consciousness in the woods; a woman is being murdered; he knows her name, but practically nothing else. The reader, of course, is as confused as the protagonist. It turns out that he's here to solve a murder mystery—but not the murder of that woman in the woods. The victim is going to die tonight. And if he doesn't solve the murder before midnight, he'll come back in the body of another person and relive the day! He's got eight days to figure it out if he ever wants to get out of this. The blurbs keep saying it's “[b:Gosford Park|11504695|Gosford Park|Robert Altman|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1347504376s/11504695.jpg|16440394] meets [b:Inception|26793013|Inception (The Marked, #1)|Bianca Scardoni|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1442863855s/26793013.jpg|46754768], by way of Agatha Christie's [b:Murder on the Orient Express|853510|Murder on the Orient Express (Hercule Poirot, #10)|Agatha Christie|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1486131451s/853510.jpg|2285570]”, which is silly. It's clearly The Prisoner meets [b:The Murder of Roger Ackroyd|1910840|The Murder Of Roger Ackroyd|Bruno Lachard|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1347377036s/1910840.jpg|15945461] via [b:Groundhog Day:785126].
I have a real problem with non-linear narratives, but this one kept my attention all the way through, even though I never really felt I knew what was going on. Brilliantly written.

I went to see a dramatic presentation of this last night.

It had me in tears by the five minute mark, and never let up.

I can't help thinking Mr. Stross has dug himself into a deep hole with this episode of the Laundry Files. 
Of course, Bob Howard (not his real name) and his colleagues save the day, Eldritch Horrors (capitals absolutely required) are banished, and the world is (at least temporarily) rescued. But is the price more than we can afford? 
In previous volumes, the world is saved through the brilliance of Bob and his wife Mo. In this one, it's very close to a Deus ex machina, which rather detracts from the enjoyment.

What Charlie Stross has done for the spy genre in the Laundry Files, Ben Aaronovitch is doing for the police procedural. There's a similarity between the two series, but their styles are quite different. 
I wish I hadn't started Aaronovitch's series with this book—I'm missing a lot of back-story, but you don't really need it, it would just have been nice to have. This was the first one that my library had, though.
I'll definitely be looking for more.

ETA: 6 years later I have STILL not found any of his other novels!

I read this in parallel with Project Gutenberg's First Folio edition of Macbeth, and honestly, I'm not sure which I liked less!
My memory of Shakespeare's Macbeth, admittedly about 45 years old, is considerably better than what I just read, and perhaps later editions were fixed up, but Willie has Malcolm telling MacDuff that he's too venal to be King, and then immediately turning around and saying he repents and will be king. At least Nesbø's version makes that understandable, but he's so wordy!  The Gutenberg version is 58 Kobo pages, and probably 12 of those are Project Gutenberg boilerplate. 
Shakespeare's Macbeth has Ross (MacDuff's cousin) meet him and tell him that his wife and children are fine, yep, just great... oh, well, the tyrant murdered them the moment your back was turned. But at least the way the murders are committed seemed at least as believable as the rest of the play. Nesbø's version is so over the top, I couldn't imagine it happening.

I read this Project Gutenberg's First Folio edition of Macbeth in parallel with Jo Nesbø's Macbeth, and honestly, I'm not sure which I liked less!
My memory of Shakespeare's Macbeth, admittedly about 45 years old, is considerably better than what I just read, and perhaps later editions were fixed up, but Willie has Malcolm telling MacDuff that he's too venal to be King, and then immediately turning around and saying he repents and will be king. At least Nesbø's version makes that understandable, but he's so wordy!  The Gutenberg version is 58 Kobo pages, and probably 12 of those are Project Gutenberg boilerplate. 
Shakespeare's Macbeth has Ross (MacDuff's cousin) meet him and tell him that his wife and children are fine, yep, just great... oh, well, the tyrant murdered them the moment your back was turned. But at least the way the murders are committed seemed at least as believable as the rest of the play. Nesbø's version is so over the top, I couldn't imagine it happening.

On the whole, very good, but I felt that the ending was deliberately mishandled to provide drama. Instead of calling in a squad of demolition experts, they could have had an air strike, and the problem would have been resolved fifty pages sooner... Wouldn't have been as exciting but would definitely have been more believable.

Jim Holden believes that secrets are a plague, and that if everybody knows everything, we're all safer.
I tend to agree with him. Unfortunately, Jim Holden starts two wars by revealing peoples secrets, because the secrets turn out to be only part of the story—intentional misdirection.
This is not space opera. This is SPACE OPERA!!! Everything is on a grand scale, totally fitting of the name “opera”. 
There are stories within stories here. Holden is trying to find out who detroyed his ship and killed almost all of his shipmates. Miller is just trying to find a missing girl. Somebody is trying to create a weapon from an alien virus. When it all comes together, Miller and Holden have to save the solar system and all of humanity!
Meanwhile Corey is (are?) exploring issues like the morality of secrets and violence, and of course what it really means to be human.
I'm reading these as fast as I can get hold of them!

An excellent new detective in the same milieu as Connolly's Bosch and Haller series.

Good story, but it just felt too “same old, same old”.

Anti-vaxxers, gun nuts, anti-government crusaders, and an entirely predictable resolution.

This is one of those stories where there's a character you hate, but is so well written that you can't help admiring her (and the author, too). Autumn is simply horrible. She complains that “Lizzie had started sending her passive-aggressive emails, demanding Autumn answer.” Well, no. Lizzie had sent her a couple of emails because Autumn had suddenly disappeared and she was worried. But Autumn seems determined to see the worst possible side of everything. As the story progresses, you come to learn what has damaged her so badly that she acts that way (and why she disappeared), but it's hard to feel terribly sympathetic for her.
Nevertheless, Autumn heals, and the reader heals along with her.
I'm looking forward to more from Cornell.

Lots of good stuff, some of which I'd read elsewhere, some of which was new to me, to flesh out Reacher's life.
Reacher is always fun!

A great follow-up to [b:The Girl with all the Gifts|17235026|The Girl With All the Gifts (The Girl With All the Gifts, #1)|M.R. Carey|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1403033579s/17235026.jpg|23753235]. 
We read the [b:The Girl with all the Gifts|17235026|The Girl With All the Gifts (The Girl With All the Gifts, #1)|M.R. Carey|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1403033579s/17235026.jpg|23753235] in the Apocalypse Whenever group, and some people felt that it was pretty depressing as it meant the end of humanity, while others thought it was quite optimistic as it ends with a new, improved (?), humanity. I think this story, which runs in parallel to the first, rather than being a strict sequel, will make believers of that first group. I always love stories that delve into the details of what actually makes us human, and this does that, showing that in the end some people are monsters, and some monsters are people.