heavyboots finished reading Termination Shock by Neal Stephenson
Termination Shock takes readers on a thrilling, chilling visit to our not-too-distant future – a …
Reread number 3 or 4? Still a really great book!
Reviews and Comments
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heavyboots reviewed Big Book of Cyberpunk by Jared Shurin
A genre-defining--and redefining--collection of fiction's boldest, most rebellious, and most prescient genre, featuring a smorgasbord …
An absolute ton of great stories
5 stars
So I am pretty ruthless about devouring anything cyberpunk-related and yet probably 80% or more of these stories were new to me. (And also, a lot of good ones!) Pretty highly recommended if you like cyberpunk as a genre!
Just be warned, it is loooong at about 1180 pages of stories. It took me literally all my possible reserves at the library to make it through this giant tome, lol.
heavyboots rated Thornhedge: 4 stars
Thornhedge by T. Kingfisher
There’s a princess trapped in a tower. This isn’t her story.
Meet Toadling. On the day of her birth, she …
heavyboots rated Mammoths at the Gate: 4 stars
Mammoths at the Gate by Nghi Vo
The wandering Cleric Chih returns home to the Singing Hills Abbey for the first time in almost three years, to …
heavyboots rated The Adventures of Amina Al-Sirafi: 4 stars
The Adventures of Amina Al-Sirafi by Shannon Chakraborty
Amina al-Sirafi should be content. After a storied and scandalous career as one of the Indian Ocean’s most notorious pirates, …
heavyboots rated The Tusks of Extinction: 5 stars
The Tusks of Extinction by Vajra Chandrasekera
When you bring back a long-extinct species, there’s more to success than the DNA.
Moscow has resurrected the mammoth, but …
heavyboots rated The Magicians: 5 stars
The Magicians by Lev Grossman (Magicians, #1)
A thrilling and original coming-of-age novel about a young man practicing magic in the real world
Quentin Coldwater is brilliant …
heavyboots rated Lake of Souls: 4 stars
Lake of Souls by Ann Leckie
Hugo, Nebula, and Arthur C. Clarke award-winner Ann Leckie is a modern master of the SFF genre, forever changing its …
heavyboots rated Service Model: 4 stars
Service Model by Adrian Tchaikovsky
o fix the world they first must break it further.
Humanity is a dying breed, utterly reliant on artificial labor …
heavyboots rated Ghostdrift: 4 stars
heavyboots reviewed Someone You Can Build a Nest In by John Wiswell
Discover this creepy, charming monster-slaying fantasy romance—from the perspective of the monster—by Nebula Award-winning debut …
Not bad but not great either
3 stars
The central premise is monster meets girl while pretending to be human and falls in love. Hijinks ensue. But the monster spends a lot of time struggling with what it is to be human and simultaneously being incredibly canny about human relationships. Which is kind of a clash and drew me out of the story a number of times.
Also, without getting too spoilery, suffice to say I liked the beginning portion of the book more than the ending portion after various twists.
heavyboots rated Elder Race: 3 stars
Elder Race by Adrian Tchaikovsky
In Adrian Tchaikovsky's Elder Race, a junior anthropologist on a distant planet must help the locals he has sworn to …
heavyboots rated The Sword of Happenstance: 3 stars
The Sword of Happenstance by Steven Brust, Skyler White
From the best selling, award winning, masters of fantasy, comes a charming story about a prince who wasn't, a king …
heavyboots reviewed The Tainted Cup by Robert Jackson Bennett (Shadow of the Leviathan, #1)
In Daretana’s greatest mansion, a high imperial officer lies dead—killed, to all appearances, when a …
Another amazing world from the author of Foundaryside
5 stars
Told from the perspective of a rather stick-in-the-mud assistant investigator to a genius detective who has been banished to the hinterlands for unspecified faux pas against powerful people of the Empire, we follow as their investigation goes from strange to dangerous as it threatens powerful people and the very walls the Empire is founded on.
The primary conceit for the universe he creates this time is that genetic alterations are but a flask of chemicals away and the whole Empire is largely run by various highly modified individuals. The narrator has just been given his first modification, making him an engraver, which means he has perfect memory of anything he views or hears or smells. He is the eyes and ears for the investigator, relaying the physical clues to her from which she deduces the rest.
Strongly recommended read! Really well plotted, great characters and a fascinating world for them …
Told from the perspective of a rather stick-in-the-mud assistant investigator to a genius detective who has been banished to the hinterlands for unspecified faux pas against powerful people of the Empire, we follow as their investigation goes from strange to dangerous as it threatens powerful people and the very walls the Empire is founded on.
The primary conceit for the universe he creates this time is that genetic alterations are but a flask of chemicals away and the whole Empire is largely run by various highly modified individuals. The narrator has just been given his first modification, making him an engraver, which means he has perfect memory of anything he views or hears or smells. He is the eyes and ears for the investigator, relaying the physical clues to her from which she deduces the rest.
Strongly recommended read! Really well plotted, great characters and a fascinating world for them to run around and get in trouble in.
