Novella about Bobbie Draper's nephew. The story itself is not particularly groundbreaking or interesting, but the worldbuilding was fun, and it was grNovella about Bobbie Draper's nephew. The story itself is not particularly groundbreaking or interesting, but the worldbuilding was fun, and it was great to see Bobbie again being her Martian Marine bad self.
Merged review:
Novella about Bobbie Draper's nephew. The story itself is not particularly groundbreaking or interesting, but the worldbuilding was fun, and it was great to see Bobbie again being her Martian Marine bad self....more
When the first chapter was not particularly engaging, I thought, huh, seems like bog-standard swords-and-sorcery fantasy, nothing really grabbing me, When the first chapter was not particularly engaging, I thought, huh, seems like bog-standard swords-and-sorcery fantasy, nothing really grabbing me, I'll finish the chapter and maybe try something else. And then when I finished the chapter and my eye fell upon the first page of chapter 2, which begins with a (female) computer programmer being exasperated at error messages, and suddenly this book became a lot more interesting to me! I am a sucker for the worlds-collide trope, apparently.
I correctly guessed what might be happening at the ending (which turns into a bit of a cliffhanger, but I'd been warned so I already had the next book ready to go), but it played out in a very cool way. I really do love the characters here, as a former computer nerd myself. It is a bit dated (20 whole megabytes of storage, hee!) but so what? ...more
Written in the 1980s about dysfunctional family and community dynamics in the 1900s in a small town in the south. Which means the racist, classist, anWritten in the 1980s about dysfunctional family and community dynamics in the 1900s in a small town in the south. Which means the racist, classist, and feminist issues are rather complicated to unpack. Still, an entertaining story with some humor and several great characters. I could have done without the dialect, but it wouldn't have been the same story....more
The ending is great, with a truly clever conclusion to a hinted-at mystery. Getting there, though, was a frustrating journey. I don't know if it was tThe ending is great, with a truly clever conclusion to a hinted-at mystery. Getting there, though, was a frustrating journey. I don't know if it was the pacing (as others have mentioned), the characterization (which felt uneven - I wanted more depth from the characters), the unconvincing love story, the missing details of worldbuilding that I wanted to flesh out the story and pull me along.
Merged review:
The ending is great, with a truly clever conclusion to a hinted-at mystery. Getting there, though, was a frustrating journey. I don't know if it was the pacing (as others have mentioned), the characterization (which felt uneven - I wanted more depth from the characters), the unconvincing love story, the missing details of worldbuilding that I wanted to flesh out the story and pull me along....more
I loved this book for many reasons: the interesting worldbuilding, the engaging characters (particularly Mulaghesh, who is my favorite, and Sigrud), tI loved this book for many reasons: the interesting worldbuilding, the engaging characters (particularly Mulaghesh, who is my favorite, and Sigrud), the fascinating juxtaposition of gods and magical fantasy with nearly-modern technology and diction. If steampunk is fantasy Victorian, this book is fantasy mid-20th-century eastern Europe, with cars and trains and telegraphs and characters who say things like, "Oh, shit!" But most of all I loved this book for its careful construction, every gun hung on the wall in the first act and fired in the last. Everything is laid out in logical order, as it happens, and if the plot twists are telegraphed and the mysteries are explained ahead of time, I think that's a feature, not a bug.
There are aspects I didn't like as much, of course. There are occasional long infodumpy speeches, and a few trite exchanges that had me rolling my eyes. I also don't like present tense, but this was mitigated somewhat for me by listening to the audio version; and anyway, I do think that Bennett does a good job with the present tense, using dialogue tags sparingly and making the introspection feel real. But overall, I thought this was an excellent and enjoyable read, and I plan to read the next in the series when it comes out.
Merged review:
I loved this book for many reasons: the interesting worldbuilding, the engaging characters (particularly Mulaghesh, who is my favorite, and Sigrud), the fascinating juxtaposition of gods and magical fantasy with nearly-modern technology and diction. If steampunk is fantasy Victorian, this book is fantasy mid-20th-century eastern Europe, with cars and trains and telegraphs and characters who say things like, "Oh, shit!" But most of all I loved this book for its careful construction, every gun hung on the wall in the first act and fired in the last. Everything is laid out in logical order, as it happens, and if the plot twists are telegraphed and the mysteries are explained ahead of time, I think that's a feature, not a bug.
There are aspects I didn't like as much, of course. There are occasional long infodumpy speeches, and a few trite exchanges that had me rolling my eyes. I also don't like present tense, but this was mitigated somewhat for me by listening to the audio version; and anyway, I do think that Bennett does a good job with the present tense, using dialogue tags sparingly and making the introspection feel real. But overall, I thought this was an excellent and enjoyable read, and I plan to read the next in the series when it comes out....more
I read this because a Yuletide request for adventures of the semi-sentient inn at the crossroads of spacetime was very intriguing. And...the semi-sentI read this because a Yuletide request for adventures of the semi-sentient inn at the crossroads of spacetime was very intriguing. And...the semi-sentient inn at the crossroads of spacetime IS intriguing! Everything else is not.
The 'aliens' that visit the inn turn out to be werewolves and vampires, which makes me feel a bit cheated, it's like bog-standard urban fantasy masquerading as sf, and there's a love triangle setup which just made me roll my eyes. For the most part I don't care for romance novels, with or without supernatural elements. I think maybe I was expecting something more like Spider Robinson's Callahan's Crosstime Saloon, so I was disappointed. I did like the Star-Wars-ish bazaar world, but other than that I was fairly meh on the story, and don't plan to read the rest of the series (of which there are a lot). ...more
This book starts with a discussion of how to define fascism, then takes us on a roughly chronological tour of dictators and strongmen from Mussolini This book starts with a discussion of how to define fascism, then takes us on a roughly chronological tour of dictators and strongmen from Mussolini (the first leader to declare he would "drain the swamp!") through Trump, though there are digressions on thematic notes, for example comparing fascism on the left in one era to fascism on the right in another. She makes the point that there is no universal mold for a fascist leader: some are educated, some are not, some micromanage and are intensely interested in the running of a country, others want only to be loved and feared, and have others do the work. Some were elected through democratic process, and then subverted that process to give them more and enduring power, while others took power in coups or were born into the position.
I particularly enjoyed the anecdotes she drew from her own experience as UN Ambassador and Secretary of State, though I wonder if her impressions of, say, Vladimir Putin or Kim Jong-il, were different at the time than in the stories she tells now, years later with the patina of hindsight and later events. But I admire her even-handedness, her assessment and acknowledgement of the positive aspects of bad people and bad regimes.
Her point, at the end, is that we should not say "it can't happen here," because it certainly can, and perhaps it has already begun. (Mussolini likened the process of consolidating power to that of plucking a chicken - take only one feather at a time, and the chicken doesn't notice until it's plucked.) She doesn't think Trump is a fascist, exactly, but she does feel he has no respect for democratic institutions and is undermining them. And conditions are ripe for a fascist takeover of the United States (and many other threatened democracies around the world): people have moved to the left and the right, with little compromise or desire for a middle ground; tribalism is on the rise, and othering people not in your group; income inequality is fostering resentment.
The solution to these problems and the way to preserve democracy, in her view, is to have empathy for others. And interestingly, one of the last podcasts I listened to before this book suggested that empathy and kindness are the tools we need to get past the pandemic, too....more
This well-researched and carefully-written book by two Washington Post journalists is an account of not quite the first three years of the Trump presiThis well-researched and carefully-written book by two Washington Post journalists is an account of not quite the first three years of the Trump presidency. It begins with Michael Flynn's phone call to Russian Ambassador Sergei Kislyak that touched off the Mueller investigation, and focuses mostly on Trump's response and reactions, the panicked attempt of the people in the administration to do damage control, and the reverberations throughout the cabinet and military brass. His lack of interest in the actual work of governing comes through loud and clear, as does his reliance on personal loyalty rather than on expertise, and his alacrity to fire those he doesn't feel give him enough of the former. The stories of the adults in the room trying to deal with messes of Trump's making are pretty depressing, and most end with a dismissal. The choice is stark: be an honorable person, stand up to Trump, and get fired; try to mitigate or moderate Trump's orders to stay within the law (and, eventually, get fired); or sell your soul for conservative judges and environmental rollbacks, and fly under the radar (until you get fired).
Reading this book is much like reading the Washington Post of the past three years; it's interesting, but a little dry, and sometimes I wished I had a diagram or timeline to help me keep track of who just got fired, and who's Secretary of State now. But its real shortcoming, which is not the authors' fault, is that it ends with a hasty epilogue detailing the "perfect" phone call and the Congressional investigation leading to impeachment, that is, just as things get interesting - and before things completely went off the pandemic deep end. I imagine the authors had decided that the publication of the Mueller report made a reasonable endpoint for their account, a bookend to Flynn's call that began it, and then a new episode of crazytimes began just as they were finishing up, and so they summarized the events of summer and autumn in a sort of Cliff's Notes cliffhanger. Will Congress impeach Trump? Will the Republicans in Congress stand up for what is right? And as we know, the answers are yes, no, and none of it makes any difference now because Trump's handling of the pandemic has pretty much wiped away every other consideration, not just because it's more awful than anything else he's done (though pressuring a foreign government to imply that a political opponent is dirty is a terrible thing, it did not actually kill anybody) but because it's the most recent and therefore on everyone's minds....more
A fairly solid ending to the series; most of the hanging threads were resolved, and I liked the tension and high stakes, though I'm still not a fan ofA fairly solid ending to the series; most of the hanging threads were resolved, and I liked the tension and high stakes, though I'm still not a fan of the breathless first-person present tense, and also not a fan of teenagers, whether mortal or fairy. I was happy to see characters from the previous books I think, though I would have enjoyed it more had I re-read the previous books just before reading this one. ...more
Two stars means "it was okay," and that's how I felt about it; I probably wouldn't have finished were it not an audiobook, though I liked the fantasy-Two stars means "it was okay," and that's how I felt about it; I probably wouldn't have finished were it not an audiobook, though I liked the fantasy-Japan monsters and culture, and Okami who is fantastic comic relief and reminded me a bit of Varric from Dragon Age. Weirdly paced, a rather peculiar MacGuffin, and although things came together near the end, I felt as though a lot of threads were not obviously going places until then.
Irritations: Tatsumi was hit by the stupid stick early on, though (again) the presumable reason for this is revealed near the end. The writing is repetitive, with a lot of boring angsty introspection, and Kagawa overuses the verb "stated" (characters "state" their dialogue rather too frequently) and also uses "greet" frequently, always intransitively, which just sounds wrong to me. (That is: "Hello, samurai," the woman greeted.) ...more
I'll start with a mostly-unspoilery assessment: The beginning's a bit difficult, as it's in second person POV (most of the first 3/4 of the book is inI'll start with a mostly-unspoilery assessment: The beginning's a bit difficult, as it's in second person POV (most of the first 3/4 of the book is in second person POV), set in a completely different milieu than the first with mostly unfamiliar characters, and dialogue and flashbacks that seem to contradict basically everything that happened in the first book. But those inconsistencies are hooks that pull you on. I spent most of the first part of the book thinking, "okay, this makes no sense, but there's got to be a REASON this makes no sense," and coming up with various ideas and drawing tentative conclusions, and eventually I was gloriously rewarded. It takes a while, though; the pacing's a bit off, with a perhaps slower-than-needed build and a rushed conclusion, but it's well put-together, with clever foreshadowing that makes you go "aha" when you get to the payoff. If you enjoyed Gideon the Ninth for the necromancy, the odd combination of science fiction and gothic horror, the sheer wackadoodle-iness of the writing, and the lesbian-flavored loyalty kink, you will get all that and more here. (If you were put off by the memes, apparently there are memes here, too; I tend to miss that sort of thing because I'm not super meme-savvy. Also, if reading about dissociation, delusion, and possible insanity will upset you, you may have issues with this book.)
More about this book, slightly and vaguely spoilery but no more than you'd get in a pro review, I think; spoilers for Gideon the Ninth, so don't click if you haven't read the first book: (view spoiler)[I was really happy to see that not only do we revisit (some of) the first book's characters in flashback (from Harrow's POV), there is a sort of afterlife that is accessible to necromancers, which was implied but not shown in the first book, and we meet some of the dead characters in the 'now' as well. . (We learn towards the end of GtN that the reason Abigail Pent was killed first was that she is a 'speaker to the dead' - so that neatly cut off any exploration in this direction. But I am pleased that in a universe with necromancers, death is not necessarily the end of the narrative, since that wasn't clear from GtN.)
A lot of the worldbuilding holes are filled in here; we learn why the Emperor Undying is at war, and what that kind of war entails, and why becoming a Lyctor involves what it does. In some sense it's another highly-bounded scenario, in that most of it takes place on a space station inhabited only by the Emperor and his Lyctors, but we do get glimpses of other worlds and other people. We also learn the answers to questions more explicitly raised by the first book, but of course, many new questions are raised.
But it's a wild and crazy ride, with a lot of angst, pining, conflict, despair, and triumph along the way. Also a lot of modern internet references, most of which I'm sure I missed; but there are some wonderful nods to fandom, including a series of confabulated delusions incorporating AU type scenarios, culminating in, I shit you not, a coffeeshop AU that made me laugh out loud. (To the point that I went into the Locked Tomb discord server, where I had been up until then a lurker, and requested access to the special HtN channel just so I could squee about the marvelous and stupid pun that made me lose it entirely.)
I will say that the tagline "the necromancers are back and they're gayer than ever" is a bit misleading. The LGBTQ content of this book is about on a level with that of the previous book. Also, I thought the structure of Death here remarkably like that of the Old Kingdom books (not calling plagiarism - it's just that they both clearly draw on the same lore); and Ianthe lost her arm at the end of GtN, and in this book she gets a gilded version, so I'm already writing the crossover in my head. (hide spoiler)]...more
I have mixed feelings about this book. The subject matter is fascinating, and I appreciate that Roach goes off on interesting tangents, exploring the I have mixed feelings about this book. The subject matter is fascinating, and I appreciate that Roach goes off on interesting tangents, exploring the human dimensions of...human dimensions, so to speak. I enjoyed learning about how we sense taste, what saliva does, how the different parts of the digestive system contribute to the essential job of getting nutrients to the body, and the theories, both correct and wildly incorrect, about how digestion works (and how doctors studied and tested them back before modern medical tools). I really liked that Roach asked questions that might not have been strictly on topic - how and why is pet food flavored? why do we crave crunchy things? could Jonah have survived in the whale, really? - and found the answers fascinating.
I am less of a fan of Roach's coyly humorous asides, which unfortunately were made even more annoying by Emily Woo-Zeller's reading. Also, Woo-Zeller's attempts at accents (for dialogue and quoting from historical sources) were uniformly terrible and distracted me from the material. ...more
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