Reviews and Comments

It was good! The setting is fantastic! There are smaller versions of atoms, and there are smaller humans and rabbits built from these. The smaller humans have the same number of atoms and the same weight as the big ones. They are just small. And fast. And sweat a lot. And hear/see higher frequencies.

This gives the setting a lovely sense of familiarity (gnomes!) and novelty (they can walk through steel walls!).

Perhaps to add a dose of normalcy, the technology and society is mundane. They make phone calls, hire private detectives, write to the council, and worry about road works. I think that's reasonable. But perhaps a few interesting technologies could have added a dose of cool! One pervasive setting-specific technology is rescalers. But they just make conversations between scales more mundane.

Same with the characters. They are all very sensible. You know how annoying it is when a character in a book does something silly that they could have avoided by thinking for a second? Well somehow the opposite can be annoying too.

The plot is okay. A bit too sensible, haha! Like, the big secret technology is discovered in a laboratory trial stage, far from any world domination-stage trials. (That's okay.) The plot structure is a bit haphazard. Of course we jump between the scales and that's cool. But it's basically a tiny glimpse of Scale 1, a good dose of Scale 4, and then 80% Scale 7. So unfair! I think I'll go protest against those shifty little gnomes!

I had one question throughout the book: Scale 1 is not the same as rootlife, right? It's already half that. So what happened to rootlife humans? I expected to find out the horrible truth at the end, but no. Looks like I will have to make up my own horrible theory!

It's great! Most of the book is great stuff that I was expecting: experiments and findings about bees. What I did not expect is the biographical bits about historical bee researchers. These are very short, so absolutely don't distract from the bee content. But they are also amazing! Never a boring figure. Everybody was a freed slave, fighting the nazis, ending up in an insane asylum, or something else equally gripping.

The bee content is focused on the individual bee and does a good job of reining in the "hivemind" myth a bit. My only issue with the bee content is that it assumed more bee knowledge of me than what I have. On the first pages it explains that bee hives are pitch dark and crazy crowded. That bees only live a few weeks and collect only around 1 gram of honey over their lives. That's amazing and I need more basic information like that. Around the middle of the book I learned that bees only leave the hive after they are already a few weeks old! Tell me more!

I quite enjoyed reading it, but was a bit let down in the end. I like LitRPG. Gaining skills and leveling up is so much fun. But in the end this book is nothing beyond that. I was hoping for more. I could be playing a video game myself instead of reading about someone else playing it, you know?

The book has an intriguing start that foreshadows a much more complex story. But apparently that's saved for book #20 or so. There is no progress at all on that background story in this book! I feel cheated!

Actually I would be fine with that. Two things could save the book easily for me. Good characters. There is a small roster of characters, but no friendships form. Something is wrong with the main character. He's looking at humans as tools to be used. He even tortures a guy. This is never acknowledged as an issue, so maybe the author doesn't recognize it? Anyway, this makes it hard for relationships to form, and so there is no character-driven drama.

The other thing that could save the book is clever use of abilities. If we're all about game mechanics, let's run with that! But that all falls flat. He gets a useful (if cliché) ability. He uses it. It works! Level up. Another ability. It works as well! From page to page this works well, but I'm left waiting for him actually doing something unexpected. It never happens.

The book actually tries in the final battle. But the only improvement over the "get ability — use ability" formula is that it's "get ability — don't mention it for a long time — use ability". Also the final battle is about something that we never cared about through the rest of the book, so I wasn't invested in it at all.

There is one scene that I liked: It's falling in the hole and becoming a Jumplomancer. It's a fun class. It's surprising. It relies on an ability that we knew about, but haven't seen in action yet, and didn't know would work like this. It involves some quick thinking and luck on the part of Joe. Just stuff the book full of that and it would be fine!

To explain where I'm coming from, Sufficiently Advanced Magic has lots of friendships, lots of clever use of mechanics, and fair attempts at humor.

I think the book may have something political to say too, that I'm wary of. "Your quest is to genocide this other people. Don't forget the women and children!" "No problem, boss!" I'm hoping they won't actually do it. (They just get the quest in this book.) But why not devote one sentence to acknowledging that this may not be the right thing to do? Say "Joe raised an eyebrow at that."

Another case is Joe thinking "Equality of outcome was tyrannical." It's absolutely not what the problem is at the mage's college. They have an evil artifact and archmage mind-controlling everyone. Sounds more like a slogan? Yeah, searching for it I get "Dave Rubin, Ben Shapiro, and Jordan Peterson to decry equality of outcome as a thinly veiled guise for tyranny and oppression." Damnit.

Terra Ignota is now my favorite series! Perhaps the Stars nailed the finish. Everything is fantastically concluded, and it has something cool saved up even for the last pages.

First, how does this volume compare to the previous three? It's a bit different. Or maybe I'm different — a few years passed between.

We have a new narrator, who I think is intentionally bland. So we ache for Mycroft Canner's voice even more. The first 100 pages are like the boring parts of Iliad. But it doesn't stay like that. In fact, the prose grows ever more epic as we get closer to the end. An example:

Just as the hour came when shadows lengthen into fingers, and the weary ploughman smiles knowing labor’s end approaches with the goldening of the light, a force of Cousins broke through the barricades around the palace shell. Quick as a flock of gulls that race along the churning, white-maned surf, they arced their way up to the largest gleaming central face of the man-made mountain range of conjoined pyramids that form great Caesar’s home.

I just really enjoyed the poetry. But also the style is more tightly bound to the plot than in previous books. The Iliad and Odyssey are not just referenced, they kick down the doors and burst into the story.

And all that weirdness works perfectly together. The theological part is breathtaking. The sci-fi part is cool. The Homeric part is surprising but justified and welcome. The plotting and scheming is still strong. The societal part lends itself most to discussions with friends. (Which Hive would you be?) And the ending is amazing. Even if you were hoping for a happy ending, there is no way you were hoping for an ending this happy. Who can even conjure this?

It's great! I love a setting where everything is so weird that you know it will take several books to even start seeing the big picture. The structure is perfect for this: The "empire" is one faction in a complex universe, fighting some enemies we don't know anything about. The eight houses seem to be the back country of the empire, only hearing tales from the front. The Ninth House is a pariah among the houses, not communicating with anyone. That's the Ninth House normally, but in present day it's worse: almost everyone is dead and the leader is just pretending. Harrow's great at pretending. From the point of view of Gideon it's as if Harrow knew everything. And compared to Gideon she really knows a lot! Gideon knows so little, there's a scene where she's befuddled by a bathroom.

I'm a sucker for these crazy alien universes. My favorite is how the Ninth House is all black and doom and gloom and skeletons and necromancers. Then we get to the First House and it's sunshine and glamour and skeletons and necromancers.

There's a lot of characters and a lot of stuff happens. I think there are different ways to enjoy it. You could read it with a fresh mind and just remember stuff, so when someone smiles at "the cavalier with the radiant topaz eyes" (not an actual quote), you know who that is. Or you could take notes, so when they turn right at the end of the dark corridor, then left on the stairs and up through the opening, you could look up on your map where you are. Or do like my sleep-deprive self did and just not worry about this stuff. She extruded some thanergy from a phalange? Good on her, whatever all that means.

There's a lot of action and world-building, but the bones of the book are in drama. Everyone is 200% full of emotions all the time. It's fun. I've started [b:Harrow the Ninth|39325105|Harrow the Ninth (The Locked Tomb, #2)|Tamsyn Muir|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1602323622l/39325105.SY75.jpg|60943273] already.

I liked it and I'm excited for the next book.

I gave it 3 stars, because I find myself disappointed with Brandon Sanderson's "alien dimensions". It's the same as in Stormlight Archive. There is a mysterious alien dimension! (The Nowhere here, Shadesmar in Stormlight Archive.) It serves as the basis of all magic! Mystical creatures dwell there! Ancient portals let our heroes eventually enter the alien dimension!

It all sounds so exciting and in both cases I was so hyped! And when we see the alien dimensions they are kind of interesting. I'm kind of happy with them. But what happens there is surprisingly boring. They travel a lot? They meet mystical creatures and those just help/hinder their travels in mundane ways. They entered these fantastic alien worlds, and just do the exact same stuff as they do on any other weekday. To make things worse, what they do in the alien dimension is to a degree detached from the real world. Spensa even laments this a lot.

Plus the Path of Ancients is a massive infodump. It helps break up the boredom of traveling, but there's not a lot of drama you can build on travels and infodumps. For characters we only have Spensa, M-Bot and a new cast. Just like in Starsight. I think the new cast was great in Starsight. But I didn't find it memorable in Cytonic. Chet is a cartoon character. Peg's character is hard to follow. She becomes best friends with Spensa after she wrecks her knee because she's a good pilot? The new alien species are flat. A humanoid with big teeth that plants a tree. A birdman. And some crystals. Only the crystals are functionally different from humans, and they can't do anything.

With all those complaints, the book still does its job for worldbuilding. Maybe we just have to chalk this one up as one huge infodump. We learn everything about the history and mysterious workings of this universe. I'm on board with all that, it's a cool universe!

I liked it! The plot flies straight as an arrow with no side-plots that only become relevant 1,000 pages later. I really needed a book like this after some other recent reading!

I 100% agree with Zach's review about the shortcomings. Some basic questions about the Hoops are never explained. For example, each Hoop has two sides. With two Hoops on each world, that's four portals. But the worlds seem to be organized along a string, just one after the other. (Based on the cover and the single points of Sadema and Celema.) So I guess either both sides of a Hoop go to the same world, or both Hoops have one side for each of the next/previous worlds. There are scenes contradicting both possibilities. They definitely travel from Hoop to Hoop, as in Jierra. But they also travel a lot going round and round on the "ring road" around "the hill". They can even walk from world to world, so it sounds like using the same Hoop? (No idea how big the worlds are, but there are cities in them.)

If the ring road just loops around the same Hoop, why do you have to walk the long ring road around it? Why not circle it closer to the edge in two minutes? On the long way to Celema we have this conversation:

"If we stayed at this edge, and just circled it until we hit the nub ... ?" she joked.

"We could try the same measurements," Montano conceded. "And see if the gap was small enough to bridge. But that would be a lot of work, for no reward."

How is that a joke? I was wondering the same thing! And how is that an answer?

Greg Egan's web page with extra explanations doesn't help me on this either. The very first simple example is "if we ignore one of the Hoops and just consider the effects of a single one." It seems to describe pretty much what's in the novel. What does the other Hoop do?

Okay, enough complaining! I liked the characters. They are not very complex, but each of them is an individual and their personalities have interesting chemistry. There are a few evil-for-no-reason characters, but the people we get to know are all really smart and nice. We see a utopistic society in the vein of [b:News from Nowhere|189746|News from Nowhere|William Morris|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1172550120l/189746.SY75.jpg|13352231]. It also raises a lot of questions that are not answered, but I guess we're here to do topology, not sociology. (I wouldn't have minded.)

The plot has a number of awesome parts that I don't want to spoil. Like suddenly being stranded in an alien land. The ending is indeed abrupt. I kept trying to turn the page. There's not even a "The End" leaf at the end. I don't mind that too much. It's nearly impossible to make an ending satisfying.

PS: I actually figured it all out. It's not well explained in the book, but the worlds are not along a string. They are organized in a cobweb with four neighbors to each world. Hence navigation is pretty challenging. There are many nubs, but Celema is unique. It lies in a "straight line" from Sadema, which they correctly assume would lead them in a loop. Question on Stack Exchange

Oh no! This is Murderbot Diaries #6? I wanted to read #4.5. I mixed up the books. And I didn't even notice! So maybe nothing happens in #4.5 and #5? I'll find out soon.

Anyway, it was a nice read. A detective story, with a bit less action than the first four books. It still has its charm, particularly in how Murderbot interacts with a bit larger and less morally black and white cast.

The description of scenes and technologies was sometimes a bit too detailed to keep me interested. Okay, there's all that stuff there, but why do I have to know all this? Will any of this help me find the killer?

In the end I didn't find the killer. It can be totally my fault, but I naturally feel like the book failed at foreshadowing and leaving clues.

I see a missed world-building opportunity on the political side too. Will the slaver corporation be okay with Preservation supporting escaped slaves? Will Preservation be okay with the slavers assassinating people on their station? Where do we go from here?

This was surprisingly short and awesome! The main character thinks of themselves as an violent, unfriendly, selfish outsider, but they are actually the opposite. They love everyone around them and will sacrifice themselves any chance they get. That was a surprise.

So contrary to what I expected this is a really happy, hopeful book. It's also very exciting with continuous action. The main character's personality is the primary focus of the series and I think it's well done. I don't think you should look at it as an exploration of AI but rather as an exploration of real human neurodivergent experiences. And only good things happen to them. (Okay they get bitten, shot, and crashed, but that's not something they really mind.)

The book is rather light sci-fi. The AI aspect is not serious. The space aspect is not serious. Planetary exploration is not serious. But it's still fun and it makes good use of being set in the future. There are lots of digital systems (drones, cameras, updates) and a lot of "hacking". People can basically hack anything as the plot requires. I don't actually find this entirely unrealistic. Are computer systems today more secure than 20 years ago? I don't think so. It's not a stretch to expect they will be even less secure into the far future.

Another source of plot elements, fun, and commentary on the real world is the social structure of this future. Companies that try to cut costs anywhere they can. When you're exploring an alien planet. With the robots you were contractually obliged to rent.