Reviews and Comments

Saqer (he/they)

saqeram@bookwyrm.social

Joined 4 years, 8 months ago

cranky and grouchy reader, mostly speculative/science/fantasy fiction

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Carmen Maria Machado: In the Dream House (Hardcover, 2019, Graywolf Press)

For years Carmen Maria Machado has struggled to articulate her experiences in an abusive same-sex …

A handbook of toxic relationship red flags

I loved this book and I couldn't read it in a single sitting because it was intense and brought me thoughts of a past relationship that could have gone down that path.

I recommend it because machado so skillfully lists all the red flags without calling them such, but explores them in detail and how each element manifests itself, or creeps up on you and you don't realize until you're in the thick of it.

I recommed it, and will gift this book to friends.

Nicky Drayden: Escaping Exodus (AudiobookFormat, 2019, HarperCollins B and Blackstone Publishing)

sweet story, many complex relationships

No rating

I'd absolutely recommend this. It's a bit slow paced in the beginning but it picks up closer to the end once the relationship between the people and their world becomes clear. Be prepared for some complex and difficult relationships to form, to break, and to die.

The social world in this story is really well-constructed and thought through: the gender system is very different from what we know as the modern gender system. There's also a "diplomatic incident" that shows how starkly different gender systems can be. I loved it and loved thinking about it.

Garth Greenwell: Cleanness (2020, Farrar, Straus & Giroux)

In the highly anticipated follow-up to his beloved debut, What Belongs to You, Garth Greenwell …

Content warning On writing about sex

S. B. Divya: Machinehood (EBook, 2021, Gallery / Saga Press)

Welga Ramirez, executive bodyguard and ex-special forces, is about to retire early when her client …

Phenomenal Worldbuilding

The book was quite awesome. The worldbuilding was quite phenomenal in a way that was quite intense, and interesting.

The Machinehood Manifesto itself, and its consequences, were quite interesting to think about too. SB Divya really thought through an alternative (and more complex) take on robots than the 3 Laws of Robotics.

Dennis E. Taylor, Ray Porter: All These Worlds (AudiobookFormat, 2017, Audible Studios on Brilliance, Audible Studios on Brilliance Audio)

"Being a sentient spaceship really should be more fun. But after spreading out through space …

I've been enjoying all the scifi references, particularly in the planet naming and city names.

The Bobiverse series feel like quite a different take on space opera, but there's some tendency in the Bobs to be quite "white saviory", and that seems to be addressed in this book (when they get exhausted with all the saving).

commented on Harrow the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir (The Locked Tomb, #2)

Tamsyn Muir: Harrow the Ninth (EBook, 2020, Doherty Associates, LLC, Tom)

After rocking the cosmos with her deathly debut, Tamsyn Muir continues the story of the …

I kept forgetting whether the characters of this series are skeletons or not. There's talk about flesh and tongue, but also the main character was called "skull-face" at some point so far. And I kept forgetting whether I'm thinking of skull-as-skull or skull-painted-on-face. All this thinking happened before I realized I could look at the cover and have that problem addressed.