Reviews and Comments

sometimes just talking/thinking about trauma is too traumatic

You had me at "All men are criminals."

Besides learning that the eumelanin molecule itself is a fascinating thing that could be the building block of successful tech that integrates with human bodies, I also learned about Mauna Kea, racism and sexism in scientific institutions, and Afro-Caribbean spirituality. Definitely recommend. You might not learn as much about physics as you expect, but that's OK. The rest of it is just as important. Maybe more so.

Excellent memoir.

OK, I might read the sequel.

I have started listening to this book at 1.5x speed, something I rarely do, because although Ikenna is irritating as fuck in her rashness and inability to catch on when people are manipulating her, I still want to find out whether she chooses to stick with the bigoted republic in which she was raised, whose rulers killed her grandfather, or do the sensible thing and defect to the substitute family who were reaching out to her and offering her support as well as an escape hatch.

Another interesting book from my local library's expanding collection.

If you're someone who, like me, is constantly searching for new books to read, I urge you to sign up for your local library's newsletter. Mine divides it by subject so I get a bi-weekly list of new sci-fi and fantasy titles.

This is kind of like a mash-up of Hunger Games, GI Jane, and Tananarive Due's African Immortals series (because of its obsession with blood). The protagonist is a little dumb and a lot violent, but you have to excuse her because she's Black and female and blessed with God-granted superpowers in a society that hates all three of these things. Also her grandfather, who raised her, recently died, and she just discovered that he was actually murdered. Plus, what with the superpowers that make her faster and stronger and quicker to heal than the average bear, if she weren't a little ignorant and slow to catch on, she would have zero weaknesses and there wouldn't be much of a story.

Still good, although the narrator, or perhaps it's the fault of the recording, had a tinny, grating timbre.

One thing I really enjoy about these Brother Cadfael mysteries is that mostly the perpetrators don't go to jail. They get exiled or killed through their own machinations, or their crime had extenuating circumstances and Cadfael helps them get away with it.

Based on this rave review from Cory Doctorow, I am putting this high up on my to-read list!

pluralistic.net/2025/05/06/nevereverland/#lesser-ormond-street

This chapter about melanin is so fascinating and surprising. Melanin is a conductor, that is also an insulator, depending on the presence or absence of water? Melanin could be a building material? Melanin could be the key to constructing materials for bioelectric implants? Awesome stuff, and Dr. Prescod-Weinstein is right to consistently rail against the exclusion of Black people from academia and physics in particular. Damn, Fedi, she was here and then she left. Imagine how much cooler this place would be if us white folks had been a smidge more hesitant to do microaggressions, a tad less disbelieving of the direct first-hand reports of racism and white supremacy from her and others like her.

I bought a paper copy! There's no way an audiobook could do this justice.

I have so many questions. Sound-based thought waves? The galaxy has speed zones? Ultimately though it was such a good story that I don't care much about the answers. I was super impressed by (since he was writing in 1993) and absolutely love Vinge's idea of a galaxy-wide internet that's hundreds of millions of years old and nobody knows who started it. That to me seems extremely plausible, given a universe with multiple sentient space-faring species. This was SO much fun, and anyone who loves science fiction should definitely read it.

Mostly action adventure with scifi accents. Cas makes a sympathetic protagonist, and there is some good character development. The background info about the scifi stuff leaves us wondering and wanting more, but that's a pretty minor concern since the action scenes are top notch. Fun read.