User Profile

Kelson Reads

KelsonReads@bookwyrm.social

Joined 2 years, 7 months ago

Techie, software developer, hobbyist photographer, sci-fi/fantasy and comics fan in the Los Angeles area. He/him.

Mostly reading science fiction these days, mixing in some fantasy and some non-fiction (mostly tech and science), occasionally other stuff. As far as books go, anyway. (I read more random articles than I probably should.)

Reviews are cross-posted on my website and I have a blog dedicated to Les Misérables.

Fediverse Main: @kelson@notes.kvibber.com (GoToSocial) Websites: KVibber.com and Hyperborea.org

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Jeff Deck: The great typo hunt (2010, Harmony Books) 3 stars

A cross-country road trip with a Sharpie

3 stars

I've mellowed on the subject of typos since this came out, but it was still an interesting read. The best road trip stories are not just a list of events and locations, they're about how the travelers change over the course of the journey. Deck starts out so hyperbolic and grandiose that he comes off as pretentious, but quickly discovers the issue is more nuanced -- and more socially fraught -- than he'd expected.

Retail workers vs. corporate policy, trying to avoid stepping in racial stereotypes, indie shopowners who might be more interested in fixing a misspelling but not have the resources to get it fixed.

It's also a bit more complex than the "two friends on a road trip." He has three different companions, one on each leg of the trip, each of whom brings a new perspective, and they get into the prescriptive vs. descriptive approaches to grammar. …

T. Kingfisher, Lauren Henderson: Summer in Orcus (Hardcover, 2017, Sofawolf Press, Inc.) 5 stars

What kind of quest would Baba Yaga send an 11-year-old girl on?

5 stars

An odd but appealing mix of whimsy and horror, turning portal fantasy tropes on their heads. Baba Yaga, the ultimate witch of Russian folklore, is the quest-giver. Summer's home life is shaped by her mother's severe anxiety. A wolf isn't a threat, but a staunch ally (and a were-creature who turns into a migratory house at night -- you thought Baba Yaga's house was the only one that walked around?). A lich refuses to move on until he finishes his to-read list. Geese are fierce warriors (OK, that part's realistic, except these geese carry spears too), which is fortunate, because 11-year-old Summer herself isn't going to be able to take down the mysterious Queen-In-Chains causing the rot that's slowly destroying Orcus all by herself...or is she?

It's a bit less cohesive than some of Vernon/Kingfisher's more recent YA/older kids' novels, partly because it was originally a serial and partly …

Ursula K. Le Guin: The Word for World Is Forest (Paperback, 2022, Orion Publishing Group, Limited) 4 stars

When a world of peaceful aliens is conquered by bloodthirsty yumens, their existence is irrevocably …

Infuriating to read...and that's the point

4 stars

The novella makes an odd counterpoint to Little Fuzzy: In this case the humans recognized the natives' sapience right away -- barely -- but decide to enslave them and clear-cut their world anyway.

It bounces between several viewpoints: one of the natives who has escaped from slavery, a sympathetic human scientist...and the villain, a gung-ho military type who thinks he's the best of humanity, but shows himself to be among the worst.

It's a tragedy, a train wreck, a slow-moving avalanche, and yet every time there's a chance to pause and maybe resolve the situation, Davidson chooses to escalate things instead.

While it's directly a response to America's actions in the Vietnam War, the themes of colonial exploitation, dehumanization, psyops, asymmetrical warfare and environmental degradation are still very topical.

It's not nuanced. It won't make you think about new ideas like The Left Hand of Darkness, The Dispossessed …

reviewed The Last Unicorn by Peter S. Beagle (The Last Unicorn, #1)

Peter S. Beagle: The Last Unicorn (2008) 4 stars

The Last Unicorn is a fantasy novel by American author Peter S. Beagle and published …

Whimsical and Melancholy

5 stars

Content warning One spoiler, but not if you remember the movie

Mira Grant: In the Shadow of Spindrift House (2019, Subterranean) 4 stars

Nature abhors a straight line. The natural world is a place of curves and softened …

Imagine the Scooby-Doo gang encountering a Lovecraftian horror in Hill House.

4 stars

They manage about as well as you might expect -- which is to say, not very well at all.

It's an interesting mashup of tropes. The teenage detectives are used to traveling around, busting "supernatural" frauds, though they have more serious issues. (The stoner who loves dogs also has severe anxiety, for instance, which is why he avoids people and self-medicates.) And they're just aging out of the demographic when one of them convinces the rest to take on one more case before the band breaks up.

Naturally it's a creepy old haunted house on a cliff above a small, dying coastal New England town that's slowly being eaten away by the sea. And the families disputing ownership of the house both have old claims, and they all seem just a bit off somehow...

You know from the start that they're not all coming back from that last case before …