Scott - Book Invasion
2.5 stars.
I have not listened to the Alice isn't Dead podcast. Though I have listened to and read ‘Welcome to Nightvale'.
I really enjoyed Part 1 of the story and liked the bit of mystery that it left you with. Then the later parts kicked in and it turned into some ‘Underworld' war of ‘beings' and the different conspiracies surrounding the origins of those beings and the plot became a little too ‘stretched' for me.
The main character suffers from a severe case of anxiety and at the afterward of the book the author talks about how she experiences it the same way he does. She doesn't come out at the end of the book all healed - she just learns to live with it. So it may be a good read for those interested in an MC with anxiety, but the story surrounding it might get a little muddy.
(Audiobook) A very enjoyable space adventure in the same lane of Hitchhikers Guide. The main character is a tech support nerd thrust into a dangerous mission with the smoth-talking, good-looking Fletcher Griffin - who is more than what he seems.
It was all very enjoyable and there are plenty of easy laughs here and there. I felt a little zoned out in the middle after we learned about Fletchers real mission and they head off to Galustay and the other characters they run into towards the end.
Although this was my first read from this author and there are other books in this series, this was great hard-sci-fi. It doesn't lend well to following along on audiobook and there were many times I had to pause and rewind. I believe for this book a print/e copy would have been better to truly absorb everything.
I enjoyed the suspense and the mutiny of the whole CHIMP situation. It really kept my attention through this short read. It had a bit of Annihilation meets Leviathan Wakes with the ‘spaceship AI' character who may be a puppet, or may be pulling the strings itself.
Well, this most certainly wasn't a typical read for me, but quite entertaining nonetheless. While the initial part story seems to only want to flaunt opulence and promiscuity, that deceit and manipulation are the fastest ways to success, the latter part of the book dives into the moral dilemma of the ‘why' behind those choices. This was a case study in the complexity of being a good person while simultaneously being a bad person - it's about perspective. Plus how bad can you feel for an extremely successful Hollywood persona?
Going in it seemed like I was just reading an episode of Entertainment Tonight mixed with Sex and the City but at the end it provides a satisfying character examination and the societal pressures through love and loss.
For Fans Of: Dark Matter, The Fold, All Our Wrong Todays
Alright, look. I went into this really going by the tags on goodreads as:
‘Science Fiction'
FIction
Time Travel
SF Fantasy
I'm not saying that those tags are WRONG but shit man. This is ‘literature' about relationships and cultural perspectives.
So I'm really torn on how i feel about it. It's difficult when you go into a book thinking about what it SHOULD be and then reading the book and it not being that thing at all. Does that make the book bad? Not at all. If it deviates from the storyline now and again to provide in-depth backstory and history of the relationships of the pre-sent-day characters, does that make it boring? this book just ‘lingers'.
It all starts out with the main character ‘Rebecca' feeling that something's not right. people are right, things start to glitch. There's reports of people suffering from this psychosis disorder of suffering from too much technology that causing these feelings. Now this is the part that really sparked my curiosity and I wish that was explored more.
Then away we go through a number of digressions:
Rebecca's backstory of dating and ‘dancing' (a reference to a Dane Cook bit)
Philip's backstory
Their son ‘Sean'
The Causality Violation Device
Rebecca's Job
Rebecca's father the minister
The security guards in the lab
The lab assistant Alicia
the other lab assistant Carson
Rebecca's friend Katherine and Carson
Then we learn about ‘the tragedy'
I did enjoy the futuristic setting and the touches of society covered in the writing. There are autonomous vehicles. An overbearing ‘VR' president that could interrupt your dinner or even your phone calls, and a dating service that's engineered to have a lower success rate than what's possible to keep people coming back. and that can also monitor the modulations in the voice of the call center agents grading their ‘performance' while helping customers.
It's all very insightful sprinkled with those ‘Black Mirror' esque glimpses of how future technology can be used to deceive us.
It reads like a slow drama, there's a tiny bit of foreshadowing for interesting things on the horizon, but it's not until the final one-third of the book that things start picking up a little.
It was good, just definitely not what I had expected.
(Audiobook listener)
I really wanted to love this book. I haven't read any other work from these authors but I have met them at a fest and follow them on Twitter. I love their dynamic at the Con panels and really think they're great writers. I've heard them talk about the writing process for this book and how it came about and how they put it all together and though it sounded really fun.
After about 50-60% through I zoned out through the rest. But I did finish!
This is definitely a ‘mood' book and you have to be ready for constant jokes and references to poop and sex. (now, i'm all for that here and there, but it was a little over-the-top. Which I do realize that's exactly what this book was going for.)
I did like it for the most part and thought the originality and wittiness of these writers really shone through.
William Dufris on the narration really kept this book afloat for me. It adds such a great layer to everything and the amount of accents and vocal imitations this guy does is astounding.
This was a great funny, space-romp about the ‘unlikely goofball hero' with ashady past who get thrust into some unfortunate situations and circumstances happen and he walk away just fine. It plays on all of those typical tropes and then some. I really enjoyed the light-hearted read and will keep this gem close to my heart. See Also:[b:Mechanical Failure 26850100 Mechanical Failure Joe Zieja https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1443755037s/26850100.jpg 46886868], [b:Space Team 32058824 Space Team (Space Team, #1) Barry J. Hutchison https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1474031773s/32058824.jpg 52701261] and who can't compare a funny sci-fi to [b:The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy 11 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, #1) Douglas Adams https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1531891848s/11.jpg 3078186]
This played on the familiar survival-reality-show tropes very well and although you knew where the plot might lead you, the way in which it all played out was very engrossing and very well done!
I don???t typically watch those type of reality shows but when they???re sad amidst a outbreak apocalypse situation it then turns into a post-apocalyptic tale of starting over.
As a fan of post-apocalyptic sci-fi I had my eyes on this story for quite a while. Though it is a non-fiction tale, i felt like this would fit right in that alley - and it did.
How long would you last in the wilderness alone, while about 5 minutes away from your camp, society presses on. 27 Years? How do you reintegrate with society after something like that?
I really enjoyed this book. After the EMP hits and wipes everything out, we'll all be on the same level as Christopher Knight.
