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I came back to this book after taking a bit of a book-reading-break where much of my reading time has been consumed by news and magazines. So what better way to return than to dive into the familiar world of the Frontiers Saga?

“Who Takes no Risk” takes, or rather continues to take, a turn toward the futile and sad. There’s a darker, more desperate, atmosphere hanging over this book than what has been the norm so far, and even though we still get a fair share of plot-powered improbable successes, the feeling of “this is a series where things will generally go well” is being gradually dismantled. Which is a good thing.

There’s also a couple of really great sub-plots in this book, and it’s almost a bit of a pity that they’re bundled in with such a substantive main plot. They don’t exactly serve to add much levity, but I found the sub-plots more emotionally engaging than the main plot. They gave me time to digest what was happening, rather than being a full-on series of events that were thrown at me.

This book has flaws. Some, if not all, of the main set pieces feel a bit dragged out, and once it’s obvious what is going to happen, it takes too long for it to actually happen. But while this series took the leap from being a joyously superficial, feel-good space opera to a more emotionally absorbing story many, many, books ago - this book definitely serves to affirm that fact.

It seems that most of the discussion around Utopia is “What is this actually?” Is it a genuine vision of the perfect world? A work of Satire? A joke?

To me it reads like a very interesting thought-experiment. I think it’s quite clear that the ideal world that is being described is in no way ideal. If anything, the island of Utopia seems more like a prison island designed to maximise output than like an ideal community. However, it’s a very interesting thought-experiment with a lot of interesting ideas. Some might be genuinely good, others are presented in a way which makes it very evident (at least when read today) why they would never work in reality.

In any case, it was very interesting to read the origins of the phrase Utopia - and, if what was written hear was meant (or, perhaps more likely, taken) seriously, it’s also interesting to see how times have changed.

In Rouge Protocol we continue following our favourite Murderbot further into space, and on the way to a far out mining facility, our Bot encounters some people they may have to work with in order to further their own goals. Murderbot also has to confront the most confusing of concepts: friendship.

The Murderbot series so far has been a delight, and this book is not an exception. In this book we get a secondary bot character, a bit like a puppy, that confuses Murderbot with it's attitude of trust and kindness. Of course, there is a bunch of shooty shooty bang stuff as well to keep the space action side of the story alive.

This really is a very hard book, and series, to describe. It's not like anything else I've read, and it's so much fun to get to see the world through the eyes of a sentient bot who is, in theory, more or less stripped of emotion - but who has enough of a theoretical knowledge of it to recognise it. And... maybe to feel it as well? Maybe they will start feeling more and more as time goes by?

In any case, if you haven't, start at the start of the Murderbot Diaries and start reading them.

Mrs. Spring Fragrance is a short story collection consisting of stories taking place mostly within Chinese communities in the US (seemingly around the Seattle area). Most of the book consists of short stories which are very much for adults, with a few short stories for children toward the end.

The short stories, as a whole, can be described as rather dark. The overarching theme is that of a clash between those who grow up in or moved to the US, taking on the culture and values you'd associate with the US (mostly women), and those who live their lives in the Chinese community of the US in what they see as the traditional Chinese way of life (mostly men). I don't know to what extent the attitudes depicted are accurate - but I expect they are based on the lived experience of the author. Fortunately, these stories were written over 100 years ago, so I'd expect a lot to have changed since then. The stories mostly revolve around men with a possessive attitude toward their wives, and the ladies they want as their wives, and the stories just get darker and darker. Occasionally, I almost laughed out loud at the creativity with which a story which was always going to end badly ended up badly in a different, unexpected way.

Despite the thematic darkness of the main short stories, the stories for children are lovely! The general theme is that of "the greatest rewards and happiness come from making others happy", and they follow a nice line of being fairytale-like while still not being entirely predictable.

Overall Mrs. Spring Fragrance was an interesting collection to read. Some stories are weaker than others, but at least half of them pack a proper punch.

I'm going through my Goodreads-reads, and noticed that not a single of my Goodreads-friends have read this book. And, as this is one of the best books I know of that no one seems to have read, I see this as a good occasion to write a (very) late review of this book, which I still remember vividly, over nine years after I read it.

The Hitchhiker’s series is undoubtedly great, and this book is different, but it’s just as fantastic in a different way. It’s a travel-memoir in which Douglas Adams travels to see species that are in danger of going extinct, describing both his journey and the animals. It’s funny, thoughtful, at times properly heartbreaking and feels incredibly real: the emotions of Adams really comes through in the text.

This is a book I’ve gifted several times, and one of those books I think everyone should read for many reasons. It has the obvious conservationism message, but it also a great travel-diary in it’s own right. It’s as funny as you’d expect a book by Douglas Adams to be, and really brings out a different side of his writing from what shines through in his fiction. Go read it!