Lauren

I generally like the Discworld books, and maybe it's been too long since I've read one or maybe I'm just not in the right frame of mind, but this one just didn't do it for me. There were a few fun lines (I did enjoy spotting mention of the Manx tradition of Hunt the Wren) but I found myself just needing to lightly read on the surface and not worry too much about the details or I just got bogged down. I don't really enjoy reading that way these days. I think I'd probably enjoy this one more at a different point in my life than right now.

Some great tips, but mostly worth it for the patterns. My favorite is the gardener girl!

I liked this book and its unusual mechanic - a criminal is captured and before her execution she tells her life story to an officer, a night which spins into almost 700 pages. I enjoyed this book and I enjoyed Sal the Cacophony (though I can't say I liked her, she was an asshole, though deservedly). I liked the magic system and all of the various mages with their talents. I did think that this book was tooooooo loooooong. Many of the plot points spun into foreverland, making me lose focus. With how snappy this writing is, I wanted the plot to go much faster. This is not a Patrick Rothfuss book though it reminded me of his work.
I really enjoyed the big twist at the end where it was revealed that one of the mages on Sal's list, Zanze, had been following her around and shapeshifting into rats and birds and whatnot to avoid detection. I wondered how she had gotten caught and why she was telling this story, and it turned out that it was all just to get close to one of the people on her list who had to die, who was hiding right in the enemy's base. That was nicely done.
I liked that there was a F/F romance, and that Sal seemed to be bisexual or pansexual. I didn't understand the character of Lisette, who was Sal's lover, but who stuck with Sal even though she was treated horribly. I didn't understand her devotion and it wasn't explained in any way that made me believe it. Maybe this got lost in the loooooong plot.
I'm not sure I'll read the next one. I'm mostly worried that I won't remember the details of this one enough to be able to comprehend the next one fully, and I'm certainly not going to read this giant tome again.

This book was okay. I found that it went on far too long. The casual sexism against Jerusha PalaThion throughout the book was incredibly annoying. I had no idea why these people stayed in abusive relationships, especially Moon with her genocidal asshole cousin that she had pledged herself to before she knew any better. I suppose there is something to be said about a world locked in a cycle of endless winter to endless summer and how that manifests in endless stupid decisions about relationships, but mostly I found the characters' behavior incomprehensible.
About the only thing that satisfying was the revelation of the sibyl's source of power, and the promise that this information held. I was still confused about how it would work if the Hegemony zapped all of the electronics and blocked Tiamat from the rest of the universe. Would the sibyls on the other worlds still get the signal? Would they be able to find it eventually like Moon did by just asking the right questions? And how do the offworlders keep living forever on the “water of life” if they can't produce any more because they aren't on Tiamat?

This is a good follow-up to the first book. It focuses on the political intrigue more than the training and setup of characters; we get to meet some new groups of people and dive deeper into the mythos of the gods humans of this world. I'm pretty sure I dislike Rin as much as I did in the first one; she is not a sympathetic protagonist. This book depicts her recovery from trauma of many kinds, including her own actions in the first book. She's recovering from the abuse she's suffered trying to convince powerful men that she is important. By the end of this book, she's realized that she has been abused and used by several powerful men who she's allied herself with, and the only way to move forward is to be on her own.

Another interesting part of this book in particular is the religious conflict between the Hesperians and the Nikara. Both are convinced about different arrangements of divine rule of the universe. We've seen the evidence of Nikara's arrangement through Rin's interaction with Phoenix and Nezha's with the dragon. I'm interested to see how this will play out in the next installment, if we will get more insight into how the divine universe works in this world.

I was not too sure about this book at first. Let's get this out of the way - I love corvids. Crows, ravens, rooks, choughs, jays... in real life, I adore these birds and I find them fascinating in all ways. I could watch them for hours. I delighted in reading a book narrated by one. But the pacing of the text was sometimes difficult for me to really engage in - there were a lot of random asides, little references to things, and there were also chapters inserted in the narrative telling the stories of other animals. While I enjoyed reading about Genghis the Cat, for example, it was difficult to engage in the narrative when I was pulled out and into other stories. However, I ended up enjoying the story thoroughly after I got used to the pacing and the prose, and found our crow narrator delightful.

Shit turd, or S.T., is a pet crow that lived with a human named Big Jim and a bloodhound named Dennis. Then the zombie apocalypse happens, and S.T. and Dennis are forced out into the wilds on their own. They encounter other animals and birds, eventually with a mission to rescue “the domestics” and retake the world for their kind.

S.T. feels that he is part “MoFo” (his word for humans) and is depressed that all of the humans are dead. S.T. also appears to have gained a lot of human speech and knowledge, most of it from watching reality TV or listening to his human talk about other humans. The one part about S.T.'s intelligence that I had a hard time believing was his ability to read. At many points in the story, S.T. reads signs or notes written in human hand, which I was just not sure about. That was one thing that broke me out of S.T.'s character, who is otherwise funny and snarky and endearing.

I was not very fond of the ending, where S.T.'s bird friends find a human baby and he decides to raise it. That left me with many more questions than I wanted to have at the end of this book. I would have preferred a human-free ending.

I think this book would be a great read for anyone who enjoys zombie apocalypse stories, stories about crows, animals, or the general destruction of the human race.

I enjoyed this novella, and it fits in with the kind of material I expect from Becky Chambers. This novella describes a team of explorers and scientists who are visiting a series of exoplanets and doing studies of the local flora and fauna. The team expects to return home to Earth after their mission, even though many decades will have passed.

The planets are varied and different and I appreciated the nerdiness of the team members at each place. One planet was oppressive and difficult and the team could not leave the ship. They dream of going back to another planet that was paradise for them. Mostly they dream of heading back to Earth. Unfortunately, transmissions from Earth stop one day, with no explanation. The team continues their mission. Then...
they hear from another team that returned to Earth that there had been an electromagnetic event that wiped out technology and communication on the planet. The other team said that they were attempting to land on the planet and see what was going on. They were never heard from again. The other team has a tough decision - do they also return home, or do they set up a colony on the paradise planet that they had found? They elect to remain in space in suspended hibernation until they hear from Earth again, and they send a message - it is this book - back to Earth for the people to eventually receive.

I don't know how to review this book, but I'm glad others have had a similar experience. The prose in this book is lovely. It's like reading poetry. There are some particular passages praising books and reading as a kind of magic, and I loved those the most.

The problem is that the narrative is so straightforward and the events so linear that nothing really happens. A lot of stories get told and songs get sung. A young person goes to a foreign country and gets haunted by a dead girl. He joins a cult to find her body so he can put her to rest. He makes a friend. Before he does that, she annoys him endlessly until he writes her story in a book. Then he goes back home.

It's a lot of beautiful prose that is beautiful to read but I really found myself losing interest often.

I really loved the experience of reading this book. The mix of short and long chapters, the shifting time and character viewpoints, the slowly aligning stories. The writing was impeccable, easy to get lost in.

Often when someone important to you dies, it feels like it might be the end of the world. In this case, when Arthur Leander dies, the world ends just a few days later. I'm not sure if this was the story this book was trying to tell, but it was the one that got to me.

It's hard to hold an apocalypse story together. How do we come to care about the characters in enough time to understand the meaning of the end of the world? This book weaves together the stories so they feed off of each other. Objects tie the story together, like the comics and the paperweight, and the Museum of Civilization.

I was also delighted to identify the reference to “The Passage” in the middle of this book. It's great when books I love reference each other.

Another excellent Murderbot tale. This one finally has Murderbot dealing with complex feelings and actions towards Mensah, its “owner” (so to speak). Many thrilling heroics, amusing moments, and a great ending.

This one is supposedly the last of the Diaries, but I wouldn't be mad if there were 1,396 more entries. I could endlessly read about Murderbot's adventures.

I really enjoyed this story. It was amazing to read something created by some of my favorite contemporary writers... together!

Unfortunately, this book showed me that audiobooks are really not my bag. I wanted to listen but I found myself going back to reading again and again. It wasn't that the narration was bad, although some of the sound effects did give me a jolt while I was listening on the bus or out on a walk.

The good news is that this book is just as enjoyable to read as to listen. I appreciated being able to move between the two. I expected with so many writers to experience a change in style between chapters but that was not the case that I noticed.

I highly recommend this story to anyone who would enjoy a good character driven sci-fi. I can't wait to read the next installment.

It's been a while since I was so into a book that I carved out great chunks of time to read it AND stole a minute or two to read a paragraph here and there. This book did it.

So easy to read, but so involved, so much world building. I loved the setting, familiar and yet not so. I loved the “last of her race” story. I loved how our protagonist took a clear path to being, probably, the actual antagonist of this story.

I can't wait to read more.

I loved all of these short stories. Usually I am not a fan of the genre, but each one of these gripped me from the start. They all celebrate our planet and the many possible futures it has, some of them alarmingly difficult to conceive.
My favorite were the last two in the book, Through Her Eyes and Cannonball. They seemed unrelated, but they tie in with each other in an unexpected way.

I enjoyed reading this book, especially as changes have been happening lately to Saudi Arabia's guardianship laws that allow more freedom for women to travel and obtain government documents. While the changes happening lately make the situation described in this book better, this book gives a lot of context for understanding the culture. You can also glimpse in this book a little image of the plight of activists like Loujain al-Hathloul.

The writing is easy to read while the story is not. Culture shock is portrayed candidly, along with the human need to connect. The action picks up swiftly towards the end of the book. I enjoyed reading about the relationships between the women in the book of all cultures.

A few threads are left hanging, like what happens to the other women who leave before the main character does, who promise to stay in touch. Do they? Did their advice and experience help? And the son, Sam - much is made of a trend towards violence, with his fascination with knives and random bouts of violence towards other boys. In the end, nothing really happens with it. Maybe just a passing fad as with many boys that age, or maybe a characterization of his father more than him, but with so much build up it seemed like something was going to happen with that.

I was unsure of how this book would go, especially after how unsure I was at the start of the Imperial Radch series but how by the end I loved it so much. This book doesn't have the “throw you in the deep end” start like Ancillary Justice does, and I was glad for the gentle introduction. This book tells two stories on a collision course - a young man Eolo who seems to be what we might call trans serving his lord Mawat who is on a quest to reclaim his throne (or bench), and an ancient powerful god who inhabits a rock on a hillside.

This book is reminiscent of N.K. Jemisin in its tone and style. I enjoyed the weaving of the stories and the deep thoughts on language and its performative possibilities.

I really wanted more of an ending after the one we got, but it may be setting up another volume after this one. Too many things happened quickly; I wanted to savor the end more and understand it, but considering that the narrative picked up speed consistently throughout, it was perhaps a fitting ending.

I tell you what, I'm pretty sure “The Calculating Stars” ruined this book for me. After reading a book that was so well written and with so many details, Vessel was a disappointment. The plot was so “summer beach read” with the cheating husband and the reveal of the affair in space, but then there were aliens. And the title of the book gives away the form that the aliens take!

I also got tired if the writing very early. The thing that really got to be were the tiny details like handing over water bottles and drinking coffee and other activities that did not relate to the action and even interrupted dialogue.

I loved it. I really can't get enough of the tight prose and witty humor in Scalzi's books. This one had a ton of exposition in it, but holy cats I am fascinated by this universe so I'm very happy to read it all. Can't wait to get my hands on the next one.

I enjoyed this book as I did the first one in this series. Dr. Elma York is a familiar voice guiding us through the story and she goes through significant development in this installment. I enjoyed watching her overcome the awkwardness that was her placement on the Mars mission and the rapport that she eventually developed with the crews. I liked the little tidbits about cooking in space, and even the gross details from when everybody on the one ship got sick.

I also appreciated the hints of political commentary surrounding the “Earth First” movement. It sounds an awful lot like some short-sighted movements we have going on now, although sort of in reverse - the people who believe that climate change is a hoax. This thread got kind of lost in the middle - as I guess folks would lose it being in space for three years - and then came back out of nowhere to cause mid-journey drama.

I am also a little bit sad that we never find out what happened to the racist De Beer character. He just disappears. I really did hope that something bad would happen to him, but it never did. Instead he faded to obscurity. Maybe that's ok.

The book does end sort of abruptly, going right into the epilogue that seems oddly like “they lived happily ever after ... on Mars”.

I love Murderbot, I love this series, I love the uneasy friendship she makes in this one with Miki. I get the feeling from this entry that the universe isn't as bad as it seems from Murderbot's experience. There are some trusting, nice people in this one. Of course, there are also hired killers and evil corporations, so maybe there are just still humans who want to get themselves killed.

I enjoyed the world, the language, the mythology, the idea of clan powers. The world of the “big water” and the walls were fascinating. I want more of just the world and these constructions.

I didn't particularly enjoy the somewhat formulaic storyline, the monster hunt, the relationships, or the characters really. I do think this is a worthy book, I'm glad it was written, and I think people who like urban fantasy will appreciate this more than I did.

The thing that really disappointed me was the reveal at the end, the “I used my powers of persuasion to get you to trust me but the feelings are REAL” turn. I saw it coming, hoped it wouldn't happen, and there it was.

Overall, I liked it well enough, and I hope more will be written like it in a variety of genres with many storylines to explore.

I love these books so much. My favorite thing about this book was the spontaneous naming of ART, and the way that name signaled a friendship... and how that friendship was built on, basically, mutual love for a TV series.

I love the way Murderbot feels about themself. I love the self conscious use of other cameras to look at interactions. I love recognizing introvert time as recharging. I also love that the humans are all depicted as making stupid decisions that will let themselves killed, and Murderbot just going along with it.

I hope ART comes back again.

If you can suspend disbelief and go to the place where we didn't know what Mars looked like from the eye of a little robot, this bleak but very human tour of Mars, its history, and how Earthlings destroyed it is a masterful piece of literature.

Some things don't hold up. The sexist treatment of women, the dismissal of their concerns throughout, for one. These short stories depict the colonialist nature of the US taken to the extreme, to another planet entirely.

But pieces like the “there will come soft rains” bring it back, a reminder that humanity is its own doom.

This book was okay. I was very confused about the two different storylines, but slowly understood that they would eventually merge into one point. I enjoyed the construction of the world and the role of time travel in it. The details given about the “habs” and the “hells” hinted at an intriguing world, and the difference between “plague babies” and “fat babies” - while never fully explained - was enough that I started to understand eventually.

What I didn't like was the ending. What a cliffhanger! Like that, somewhat unexplained, I found some other parts of the book went by too quickly or with too little transition mechanism. Some parts felt very disjointed. I'm also not sure how their “peach” got destroyed in the end based on the discussion of the relevant technology levels.

Overall, I enjoyed the atmosphere of the story, if not some of the execution.

I really enjoyed this book! I liked how honest Elma, the main character, is with herself about her own shortcomings. I also liked the frank discussions of anxiety in this book, including both the self-imposed stigma and the gentleness that can really help someone going through anxiety. I enjoyed the relationship between Elma and Nathaniel quite a bit, even though it was incredibly corny sometimes. But they are big nerds... so I guess it's understandable!

The sexism (and the racism) in this book really annoyed me, but not in a way that made me dislike the book. It reminded me so much of stories my mom would tell of her time working in the 60s. I am glad that the author didn't strip this out of the narrative since it was such a part of the lived experience of the time.

I recommend this book for a quick, smart read. I hope lots of young women read it.

I thought this book was okay. Like many other reviewers, the hand-waveyness of the magic system was a bit frustrating at times. I have always shied away from the “speak magic words and magic things happen” kinds of magic, and this was full of that - magical foreign sounding words are magical!

With a bit of suspension of disbelief, this was a nice story about a girl thrown into an impossible situation suddenly having to deal not only with her own coming of age but also a tumultuous political situation in the world around her.

I found that the book went on far too long. I could have done without a few of the sub-plot lines and a bit of a tidier ending. I really liked the relationship between Agnieszka and Kasia. I enjoyed the trips to the small villages and the concept of different peoples being tied to different parts of the world and the land there.

To sum up, I thought the books was ok, a mostly enjoyable and quick read, but nothing earth-shattering. I would have enjoyed reading this on a beach or on a cruise more, I think, than the quick reading I did on the bus going to and from work and during a couple of evenings at home.