Michigander (USA), city planner, sci fi/fantasy/RPG nerd, he/him. Mastodon: @murph@a2mi.social
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Annihilation on a sealed passenger train crossing corrupted Siberia in the 1890s.
Overall very good. Strong vibe of crushing vulnerability in the haunted unknown throughout. Perhaps a few too many characters in the ensemble: I found some of them hard to track from one appearance to the next.
When you bring back a long-extinct species, there’s more to success than the DNA.
Moscow has resurrected the mammoth, but …
When you bring back a long-extinct species, there’s more to success than the DNA.
Moscow has resurrected the mammoth, but …
A snarky, chatty, supportive 101 on backpacking. Not that much information that was new to me (I, like the author, spent much of my youth on trails) but a fun read and sound advice. Very much reinforced the "it's been too long" thought that made me pick it up.
In the middle of investigating a story on the moon, Scorn comes back online to …
A short cyberpunk-lite whodunnit starring an angsty AI journalist (ze/zir) investigating zir own previous instance's disappearance. Fast read with meditations on personhood and a good sense of humor without being comedic.
In the middle of investigating a story on the moon, Scorn comes back online to discover ze has no memory …
Sea of Silver Light is a science fiction novel by American writer Tad Williams, the …
Lots going on in this book, the fourth in the series, finally knocking over all the dominoes that had been set up in the prior 3x900-pages of the series. By the time you're looking at this book, you hardly need me to tell you what's it's about, so I won't.
It reminded me why I appreciate Tad Williams' super-long series, though. He's able to use that space to set up so much and make characters so fully human that it doesn't feel like the books should be any shorter, and the payoff is big: the climax here was hundreds of pages long, and then took another hundred pages of flashbacks and exposition to fully unravel, and then there were enough endings that Peter Jackson would be envious, and I teared up at least three times in reading those endings.
In this reread of the series, I also very much appreciated …
Lots going on in this book, the fourth in the series, finally knocking over all the dominoes that had been set up in the prior 3x900-pages of the series. By the time you're looking at this book, you hardly need me to tell you what's it's about, so I won't.
It reminded me why I appreciate Tad Williams' super-long series, though. He's able to use that space to set up so much and make characters so fully human that it doesn't feel like the books should be any shorter, and the payoff is big: the climax here was hundreds of pages long, and then took another hundred pages of flashbacks and exposition to fully unravel, and then there were enough endings that Peter Jackson would be envious, and I teared up at least three times in reading those endings.
In this reread of the series, I also very much appreciated the little "net feed" vignettes that open each chapter, each a short story in a hundred words, some linked, and many seeming so very prescient as to the 20 years that have followed the series' publication.
Picked this up expecting a book on food systems. It was not that.
While it contains many charming personal anecdotes about specific foods, as well as historical vignettes about those food items, those are primarily used as metaphors to address economic topics. E.g. you assume at your peril that an item without a "spicy" icon on a sichuan restaurant menu does not contain chili peppers -- and nor should you assume that care work does not matter just because it is not paid.
Overall, an entertaining taster menu of critiques and alternatives to the free-trade/free-market hegemony of contemporary economic practice, though you'll need to look elsewhere for a deep dive into any of the topics covered.
Ester's family was torn apart when a manticore killed her mother and baby brother, leaving …
A novella of roc trainers in fantasy not-Persia. I quite enjoyed this, as an example of fantasy where only a couple things from a folklore are taken as part of the setting, and a human story told around those changed points. Pacing a little off in places and might have had trouble holding together a longer book, also CW for a killed child.
Cory Doctorow's Attack Surface is a standalone novel set in the world of New York …
I'll read anything Doctorow puts out. Enjoyed this techno-thriller, though the pacing felt vaguely off at times. Had a bit of Heinlein-esque unsubtle author monologuing through the mouths of charismatic and hypercompetent characters on the nature of technology as at best a tool for connecting and enabling humans to participate in person-to-person organizing and democracy, rather than as a magic wand that makes the world better -- you can clearly feel the period and mood he was writing this in.
Cory Doctorow's Attack Surface is a standalone novel set in the world of New York Times bestsellers Little Brother and …
A changeling and a human child who were switched at birth must work together to save both their worlds.
