Rob

I'm never a big fan of short stories, just when things start going they end. So I tend to like/rate them less than full novels.

I thought this one did a good job of feeling like a complete story and not just the start of something though.

Executive Summary: A fun present day sci-fi story that will cause you to never look at history the same way again.

Full Review
I had never heard of this series or Wesley Chu until Sword & Laser did an interview with him back in April. Not long after, the first two books of this series were on sale so I added them to the ever increasing pile. Recently, I was looking for something to read. A few people recommended this as a good light read and I'm happy to agree.

Aliens are among us. The conspiracy theorists are right. They've been inhabiting humans since the days of the neanderthal. Tao has inhabited some of the best leaders in history including Genghis Khan and Zhu Yuanzhang. His current host Edward is an elite field agent.

Then everything goes sideways and Tao ends up in an overweight 30-something computer programmer named Roen (hey that's me! well, not that overweight, but still!) whose life is going nowhere.

This is really more of a spy thriller with a sci-fi backdrop than it is your typical technology near-future sci-fi story. Roen doesn't obtain magic powers, highly advanced weapons or a jet pack.

What he does get is thousands of years of experience and expertise of the alien symbiote named Tao. Can Tao use his knowledge to turn Roen from overweight slob into something that can pass for a field agent? He had better because there is a civil war between the two factions of aliens that has been raging for hundreds of years, and Tao's side is losing.

The book is well written, with enjoyable characters. The is a decent amount of humor throughout keeping things pretty light. I really enjoyed the way Mr. Chu incorporates the Quasing into our history.

This book was a lot of fun and I'm looking forward to picking up the sequel just as soon as I have some more time. Highly recommended!

Executive Summary: A fun present day sci-fi story that will cause you to never look at history the same way again.

Full Review
I had never heard of this series or Wesley Chu until Sword & Laser did an interview with him back in April. Not long after, the first two books of this series were on sale so I added them to the ever increasing pile. Recently, I was looking for something to read. A few people recommended this as a good light read and I'm happy to agree.

Aliens are among us. The conspiracy theorists are right. They've been inhabiting humans since the days of the neanderthal. Tao has inhabited some of the best leaders in history including Genghis Khan and Zhu Yuanzhang. His current host Edward is an elite field agent.

Then everything goes sideways and Tao ends up in an overweight 30-something computer programmer named Roen (hey that's me! well, not that overweight, but still!) whose life is going nowhere.

This is really more of a spy thriller with a sci-fi backdrop than it is your typical technology near-future sci-fi story. Roen doesn't obtain magic powers, highly advanced weapons or a jet pack.

What he does get is thousands of years of experience and expertise of the alien symbiote named Tao. Can Tao use his knowledge to turn Roen from overweight slob into something that can pass for a field agent? He had better because there is a civil war between the two factions of aliens that has been raging for hundreds of years, and Tao's side is losing.

The book is well written, with enjoyable characters. The is a decent amount of humor throughout keeping things pretty light. I really enjoyed the way Mr. Chu incorporates the Quasing into our history.

This book was a lot of fun and I'm looking forward to picking up the sequel just as soon as I have some more time. Highly recommended!

I struggled a bit with this at times. My attention would drift. I'd go several days without picking it back up, often opting for a podcast instead. It got better as it went along and I already bought the final book in the series, so I will probably wrap it up later this year, but there are some other books I plan to listen to first.

Stephen Brand once again does an excellent job with the narration. This really helped me get through the slower parts when I was less interested.

Executive Summary: A fun present day sci-fi story that will cause you to never look at history the same way again.

Full Review
I had never heard of this series or Wesley Chu until Sword & Laser did an interview with him back in April. Not long after, the first two books of this series were on sale so I added them to the ever increasing pile. Recently, I was looking for something to read. A few people recommended this as a good light read and I'm happy to agree.

Aliens are among us. The conspiracy theorists are right. They've been inhabiting humans since the days of the neanderthal. Tao has inhabited some of the best leaders in history including Genghis Khan and Zhu Yuanzhang. His current host Edward is an elite field agent.

Then everything goes sideways and Tao ends up in an overweight 30-something computer programmer named Roen (hey that's me! well, not that overweight, but still!) whose life is going nowhere.

This is really more of a spy thriller with a sci-fi backdrop than it is your typical technology near-future sci-fi story. Roen doesn't obtain magic powers, highly advanced weapons or a jet pack.

What he does get is thousands of years of experience and expertise of the alien symbiote named Tao. Can Tao use his knowledge to turn Roen from overweight slob into something that can pass for a field agent? He had better because there is a civil war between the two factions of aliens that has been raging for hundreds of years, and Tao's side is losing.

The book is well written, with enjoyable characters. The is a decent amount of humor throughout keeping things pretty light. I really enjoyed the way Mr. Chu incorporates the Quasing into our history.

This book was a lot of fun and I'm looking forward to picking up the sequel just as soon as I have some more time. Highly recommended!

I have mixed feelings on this one. I struggled with the characters, including Mickey. His view on people doesn't vibe with my own. His choices that lead to him becoming an expendable are not ones I'd make, but I guess I understand. Most of the supporting characters are worse, except maybe Nasha.

For me the thing that kept me picking the book back up was the story itself. There is a bit of a mystery and I wanted to know what happened. Mickey did grow on me as the book went along. He had some interesting character growth. The book explores a lot of ideas about what is self.

I guess there is a sequel, but I'm not likely to pick it up. I am fine with this as a stand-alone.

I will continue the series, but every time I pick up a new book in this series I'm reminded how much I can struggle with the writing. I love the characters, the world building and the overall plot has me interested. That said there are just huge lulls of infodumps or overexplaining things and I just sort of tune out. I want to see where the story goes. This book finished much stronger than it started.

The narration is fantastic as always. I think it's a huge help to get through the slow parts of the series. I was annoyed when the book got delayed, but I'd rather it be delayed than have a different narrator.

For a while John Scalzi was one of my favorite sci-fi authors. Anytime a new book a pre-order was automatic. However I was mostly underwhelmed by his last two novels The Kaiju Preservation Society and Starter Villain. Both had fun sounding premises and both didn't end up being as fun as their premise.

So here comes this book about the moon turning to cheese. In the afterword Scalzi mentions how its the final book in what he sort of considers a loose trilogy of unrelated books. I was staring to think that maybe I'd be more selective of which novels by Mr. Scalzi I'd pre-order in the future.

Thankfully this was a book that ended up being as fun as the premise. If you're looking for a hard sci-fi novel, well you must not have read a John Scalzi novel before. The science is hand wavy at best. But that' not the point.

I'm not generally a fan of short stories. This book is almost that, but not quite. Some characters we meet once and never again. The book explores a lot of ideas, characters and parts of the US with the question of "how would they react if the moon turned to cheese?". It's a silly premise and question, but somehow it leads to some really interesting vignettes that worked well together into a novel length story.

Despite my somewhat low expectations and a style of story telling I generally don't enjoy, Mr. Scalzi somehow pulled it off.

Wil Wheaton does his usual good job with narrations. This book has far less snark than other books by Mr. Scalzi but I still think Wil is always a great fit for his novels.

Executive Summary: This was a fun novella, and I plan to continue with the rest of the series eventually.

Audiobook: Kevin R. Free did a good job. It isn't a must listen for me, but it's certainly a decent option if like me you do a lot of audiobooks.

Full Review

I've said this before in other reviews, but I'm not a huge fan of the Novella series trend that seems to be happening. I generally like longer stories. I often don't feel like they are priced the same as full novels where it seems like I'm not getting my money's worth, especially in audio.

I got the ebook of this for free, then promptly forgot I had it and bought the audio on a daily deal. I might not have read it otherwise. I really love the premise of this. I don't read a lot of sci-fi, but what I do tends to be very character-driven space opera. There don't tend to be a lot of robots/androids. This is still very character-driven. However it's much smaller in scope. Oh and the protagonist is some kind of cyborg who calls himself Murderbot.I liked the humor a lot. It's not so much laugh out loud funny as it is clever/wry. That suits me just fine.I also really like the humans in this book. The interaction between Murderbot and his humans was what really moved this story rather than the plot. I feel like the crisis could have almost been anything and it wouldn't have mattered.

I'm not rushing out to pick up Artificial Condition right away due to it being a novella instead of novel, but it's on my wish list and I'm sure I'll get around to it eventually.