William Smith

If you enjoy technology and history, don't let my 3-star rating stop you from reading this book. It had a couple of chapters that I found to be absolute gems.

My biggest critique of David Rooney's About Time is that it could've used more polishing and editing. The narrative waffled between how clocks impacted civilization and Rooney's personal viewpoint (almost to being preachy). I'd rather it had stayed unbiased but I do appreciate Rooney is an expert in his field and of all people he'd have insight to share.

I found the chapter “Empires” (clock #6) absolutely fascinating and wish more of the book had gone into the technical details this one did about time-syncing and navigation. And for the same reasons the chapter “War” (clock #11) had the same effect on me.

Would have enjoyed more technical descriptions of how clocks work along with the history provided.

That I'm writing a review is a positive thing. I liked this book. But while there were things I liked, there we other things that bugged me. I've marked none of this as “spoiler” because I'm not talking plot, but I discuss some things about characters and story points. Stop reading if you don't want to know any details — critical or not.THE COVERThe cover — probably one of the best cover art pieces I've seen in a long time — is gorgeous! And it's representative of the story, which I really appreciate. For the life of me, I can't find any reference to Tommy Arnold in the book, which makes me sad. He did a phenomenal job on this and the Harrow the Ninth cover too.However, the blurb on the front “Lesbian necromancers explore a haunted gothic palace in space!” is somewhat disingenuous. The lesbianism consists entirely of Gideon saying “she's hot” a few times or getting angsty at seeing a little skin. (And she's not even a necromancer.) I wasn't necessarily looking forward to lesbian sex, but it appears Tor decided to add this blurb to the cover simply for shock value alone. I don't think the concept of lesbianism really came from the author.Would I call this “epic” as the cover describes? Not really. Epics are sweeping and broad. Here, “epic” is used to mean “a handful of people from eight planets are summoned to the first planet”. There is history and a background to all of this, but it's not explored very much. THE WRITINGThis is [a:Tamsyn Muir 6876324 Tamsyn Muir https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1543423040p2/6876324.jpg]'s debut novel and for the most part, her writing is engaging and the storyline is well laid. But I did have a few problems with parts of it.The main character Gideon is 18, but she has the brashness and smart aleckyness of someone a few years younger. That's fine. Much of her dialog and attitude reflects that. It's what makes Gideon Gideon.But a lot of the writing itself has that same quality. Assuming the story takes place in the distant future (our distant future?), terms like “pizza face”, “DOA”, “a whole lotta nope” are really out of place. Does Gideon know what pizza is? Doesn't seem so based on the foods she's described, yet she uses the term once. Muir seems to include a lot of immature phrasing like that throughout the book and every time it made me wince because I suddenly felt I was reading an immature teenager's writing. It's there for shock and humor, but really displaced.SUPPLEMENTAL MATERIALI'm trying to understand why the supplemental material at the end of the book wasn't simply incorporated into the book itself.Some of it contains the histories of the characters, which would've been useful while reading not afterward. Most of the peripheral characters remained flat and two-dimensional. And the character pronunciations could've been added to the Dramatis Personae at the beginning instead of telling us after the fact how the author intends names should be pronounced. At least I had most of those right without referencing the guide.If the author had chosen to spend time world-building, then this material might be interesting background information. But there was no world-building. Or sweeping character-building for that matter. There were so many characters and events, there simply wasn't time. But I did appreciate allowing Gideon to make direct connections with many of the characters to at least get to know them better.My rating for Gideon the Ninth was four stars. Had there been more depth to Gideon or attention to the world Muir created, it could've easily been five stars.

Amelia Pang's Made In China isn't an emotionally easy-to-read book, but it's probably the most important book I've read in a long time.

She does a thorough job taking one man's story, a struggle for human rights, from beginning to untimely end and making it accessible to someone like me. My takeaway is that everything has a price and everything has a cost. When the price is at or below cost, there's something very wrong and we need to pay attention to it and understand why.

I'm a consumer of goods, and, likely, most of them are from China. How much do I see around me that was made by someone who was imprisoned simply because my demand for a cheap product drove an industry to imprison people for free labor? I shudder thinking about it.

I appreciate Pang's investigation into the laogai camps and her explanation of what “reeducation through labor” really means. The last couple of paragraphs of her Author's Note detail just how much she personally witnessed to bring us this research and this story. I'm grateful to her for introducing me to Sun Yi.

Much like the computer game Myst, the reader is set down in the middle of an unusual world known as the House. Piranesi, one of two inhabitants, has extensively explored and mapped this world, including its seasons and tides.

The reader immediately thinks, “What or where is this?” But not Piranesi. This is his world as he knows it.

I found myself questioning whether I wanted to finish this book around page 50 (a fifth of the book) because the story was simply mundane. Piranesi doesn't question his world and his journaling was about his bland and banal existence. These were the hardest pages to read because their content was so repetitive. I was slogging through them.

Eventually, we learn there's a secret to discover and mystery to unfold. I'm happy I pressed on because reading was very quick and entertaining from there forward.

I haven't read Clarke's Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, but having read favorable reviews and this her newest work, I'm looking forward to it.

When there's not much content to work with, you really need good story telling. And the story telling was not good.