Reviews and Comments

A light, amusing novella in which city employees try to save their city from alien murder hornets.

Not a book I would have read if not given by my Dad. The first half covering the early history of AI is fine and I learned a bit. The second half covers the period since the current actors got their start and is really little more than access journalism with all its flaws. Never more than tepid criticism of some awful people while coverage of others borders on hagiography.

A novella of intrigue among a group of traveling actors. The setting is what is now France but perhaps 800 years in the future in a world that has mostly reverted to 19th century technology but with remnants of much more advanced tech. A fun read.

An engaging, if sometimes cliched, family drama with all the absurdity and violence of modern America as backdrop.

This is another story of survival in a near future dystopia. There is the expected darkness here but also, at times, an odd soft-focus. Still, an engaging tale.

Of niche interest to be sure, Paper Dreams offers up a look at the PBM hobby from the start in 1970 or so through 2024.

Typical of recent Scalzi. Absurd and entertaining with a dose of social commentary.

Part memoir and part rumination, in Question 7 Flannagan improbably connects family history, H.G. Wells, colonialism, the bombing of Hiroshima and more. A fascinating read.

Overy looks at both the decision making process leading up to the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki as well as the role of the these bombings in ending the war. An interesting reassessment of the simplistic tale typically told.

Uhlman is best known as a painter and that comes through in much of his prose. Reunion is the story of a brief friendship between two students during Hitler’s rise to power. Like in Taylor’s Address Unknown, the corrosiveness of fascism is on full display here.

Steinbeck wrote The Moon is Down for the Allied propaganda effort during WWII. A crisp little novella of the conquered and the conquerors.

Memory, family and the line between human and other animals are among the topics Fowler explores in this odd novel. An intriguing cast of characters, not least the occasionally unreliable narrator, keep things interesting.

I tore through this one. A history of the near future written in urgent prose and brief chapters. An adventure story of a family attempting escape from a flooded New York. A coming of age tale. Excellent.