Too little time; sleeping when I should be reading and reading when I should sleep. Mostly English language SF/F, but I occasionally read other fare.
What it means when I rate something: ★★★★★ - This moved me in a way that changed my life. ★★★★☆ - I loved it. ★★★☆☆ - It was OK ★★☆☆☆ - Meh, it was entertaining at least ★☆☆☆☆ - Complete trash (if I dislike something, but it is well written I'd rather not give it any rating. The single star is reserved for the real trash). Addendum: I will not rate badly written stories by obvious first time writers. If you have managed to self publish your first story and people actually read it, I'm not going to piss on your parade. I'll reserve that single star for your next book (or the fifteenth one for that matter).
Note: I have heaps of books imported from another database where the rating used was 1-6 (dice), so some books are rated higher than I would normally. I'll be adjusting stuff as I work my way thru the list of books (once I have fixed the 300 or so books that didn't import automatically :P)
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The war raged across the galaxy. Billions had died, billions more were doomed. Moons, planets, the very stars themselves, faced …
While learning the ropes from a crafty Jazz Age bank robber, a young stowaway discovers their authentic self, a hidden …
Cordelia knows her mother is . . . unusual. Their house doesn’t have any doors between rooms—there are no secrets …
The long-awaited explosive climax to the first arc of the Number One New York Times bestselling Stormlight Archive.
Dalinar Kholin …
The long-awaited explosive climax to the first arc of the Number One New York Times …
Pretty sure this one will be the reason I wont be close to reaching my 50 book goal for this year.
Summer, 1545. England is at war. Henry VIII's invasion of France has gone badly wrong, and a massive French fleet …
Two twinned worlds are waiting for war …
America is caught in a deadly arms race with the USA, its …
Inheriting your mysterious uncle's supervillain business is more complicated than you might imagine.
Sure, there are the things you'd expect. …
Promoted for his gallantry in the war against India's rebellious Mahratta confederacy, Richard Sharpe is …
Har lest et par av disse nå, og konklusjonen er at Richard Sharpe er Englands Morgan Kane.
Promoted for his gallantry in the war against India's rebellious Mahratta confederacy, Richard Sharpe is uncomfortable with his newfound authority …
Andrew Yancy, late of the Miami Police, soon-to-be-late of the Key West Police, has a human arm in his freezer. …
How humanity came to the planet called Anjiin is lost in the fog of history, …
Content warning Some spoilerish thoughts
My main and (almost) only complaint about this book is that it ends just about when it starts to get really good.
It starts a bit slow, and first few chapters feels like they were just backstory filler we needed to slog thru before the action starts in earnest. The frequent foreshadowing - and not very subtle, in some cases just stating things like "this is the last time he will see her again" - definitively contributed to this.
But then the alien Carryx arrive and it really takes of. One thing that stands out in hindsight is how this alien invasion avoids most of standard SF tropes. Reading this book felt a bit like when I read all those old (outdated even half an age ago) Golden Age of SF histories as a boy, when everything seemed fresh and wonderful. Except what happens to the humans invaded here isn't wonderful, it is horrible.
These aliens aren't Martians invading because they are jealous of our women/food/water - these aliens are a brutal colonialist empire just after grabbing planets to gather resources in their Endless War. This isn't a clash of civilisations - this is a gunboat showing up to a remote island, shelling the natives on first sight and kidnapping a boat load of them to see if the population is useful as slaves, or if they all should be exterminated. No hard feelings, just ice cold logic and calculations. The transport from Anjiin to the closest alien stronghold is reminiscent to the nightmarish transport on slaver ships, or the freight cars going to an extermination camp - except aliens at least attempts to keep most of their cargo alive. Freight across the stars is expensive after all.
On arrival the instruction is clear - be useful or die - but also frustratingly unclear, because the alien overlords doesn't care enough to understand their new slaves.
And this of course is mirrored in the captive humans own attitudes to their fellow slaves. Outside of Dafyd, none of the others even consider that the other species enslaved by the Carryx may have their own agendas or struggles. At least not until another group of alien slaves decides the humans are making too good progress on their tasks.
Hopefully this theme will be further explored in remainder of the trilogy. Because being human is to try to understand and have empathy.
How humanity came to the planet called Anjiin is lost in the fog of history, but that history is about …
