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scmbradley

scmbradley@bookwyrm.social

Joined 1 year, 11 months ago

Former academic, stay-at-home dad, hobbyist programmer/data nerd. Reads mainly SF/F and historical fiction. Follow me on Mastodon!

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scmbradley's books

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Vajra Chandrasekera: The Saint of Bright Doors (Hardcover, 2023, Doherty Associates, LLC, Tom) 4 stars

Fetter was raised to kill, honed as a knife to cut down his sainted father. …

Magical realism vibes, unsatisfying narrative, but well imagined and well written

3 stars

I can't quite pin down why I didn't get on with this book. It's well written, there's some interesting worldbuilding, but ultimately, the story is kind of unsatisfying. I don't really like magical realism, I'm not sure if this counts as magical realism (it's set in a whole distinct fantasy world, it's not got much realism there) but I get magical realism vibes from it, and I think I didn't like it for the same reasons I don't like magical realism. (Which I also can't really pin down or express precisely).

reviewed Unconquerable Sun by Kate Elliott (The Sun Chronicles, #1)

Kate Elliott, Kate Elliott: Unconquerable Sun (EBook, 2020, Tom Doherty Associates) 4 stars

Princess Sun has finally come of age.

Growing up in the shadow of her mother, …

A fun space opera

4 stars

I enjoyed this. A few times I found the writing a bit jarring: weird word choices, odd turns of phrase, but the story was interesting and the characters reasonably well defined. The best part of the book was the worldbuilding. I really liked the setting that Kate Elliott has created. There's definitely scope for more fun stories in this universe.

I will probably read the sequel or sequels but I'm not in a desperate rush to start the next book,

Nick Harkaway: Titanium Noir (2023, Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group) 5 stars

Cal Sounder is a detective working for the police on certain very sensitive cases. So …

A solid near-future thriller

5 stars

In the future, the very wealthy are functionally immortal, and also literally just bigger than normal folk. That is the very silly, very on-the-nose premise of this otherwise enjoyable and down-to-earth thriller. Despite its near-future setting, the prose feels authentically "noir". The main character is likeable and the plot has the right amount of twists and turns: you can follow along, but you can't quite predict it.

Nick Harkaway: Titanium Noir (2023, Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group) 5 stars

Cal Sounder is a detective working for the police on certain very sensitive cases. So …

I'm really enjoying this. I read Gnomon and found it very weird, but this is much more straightforward. Harkaway captures a kind of techno-noir vibe perfectly. The fact that the rich and powerful are literally much larger than other people is a kind of hilariously on-the-nose, absurd touch in the middle of an otherwise quite down-to-earth near-future thriller.

Rosemary Kirstein: The Language of Power (Paperback, 2018, Rosemary Kirstein) 4 stars

A satisfying fantasy tale

5 stars

I really enjoyed this. The slow-burn reveal of the over-arching plot of the whole series is handled so so well.

Each of the Steerswoman books are great, individually, but taken together it's one of my favourite series I have read. I'm not going to give a summary of the story, because I don't want anything I write to count as a spoiler for earlier books. But it's a lot of fun, probably my favourite so far. Apparently books five and six are in the works. I can't wait.