Reviews and Comments

An enjoyable, quick read. The conceit isn't particularly interesting, but the story is engaging nevertheless. In that regard, reading this felt rather like watching an episode of Poirot or something.

A good read. I don't find Joe's stuff engaging in the way that a truly amazing book is, where you sit there enraptured until you absolutely have to go to bed or do something else, powering through page after page, but it's enjoyable and nags at me to keep at it. The story is quite grim in an unpleasantly realistic way, and sometimes it can be tiring, but the story he's telling is engaging and every paragraph serves to build up to a climax you can feel coming a long way off. I also appreciate that Joe's characters genuinely feel fleshed out - they grow and backslide, and have some dimensionality to them. All in all, not a bad read.

It's hard to write good fantasy that manages to be deeply cynical in a way that feels realistic rather than grimdark; this book hits the mark with aplomb. Interesting characters, and the writing manages to communicate their POV and worldview not just by describing their thoughts, but through what they say and do. A very enjoyable read.

A very enjoyable Stephen King - Richard Chizmar collaboration that feels like it belongs in the same universe with the first novella. Not quite as good as the first one IMO, but it feels like a neat little vignette in Gwendy's life and I still enjoyed it. As horror goes, it's a very light touch.

Note: Spoilered section contains spoilers for Wind Through the Keyhole as well as the Gwendy series.
I really enjoy how King seems to be making a lot of his villains more interesting - between Maerlyn in the Wind Through the Keyhole and perennial badguy Walter/RF in the Gwendy series, it's kind of neat to see King continuing to build on these time-honoured characters.

Featured on an episode of the delightful if at times very smugly snotty podcast "I Don't Even Own a Television", Slow Bullets is a nice little soft sci-fi novella about a prison ship in a very dire situation. Alistair Reynolds enjoys his grimdark stories and this is no exception, but it's a short and enjoyable little glimpse into a world in great peril. There's a bit of a smug anti-religiousness that some people might find grating, but I felt it was tempered by having characters observe that there were positive things brought to the table by the "believer" faction as well. On the whole, if you enjoyed Revelation Space this is worth a quick read. If you've never read anything by Reynolds though, I'd suggest starting with something else.

I find Charles Stross' works to either be very good, enjoyable and thoughtful (Eschaton #1, the Laundry series, etc), or very much not my thing (Accelerando.) This work falls, fortunately, into the former category. Stross spins up a believable, well-fleshed out post-human world ruled by a very believable form of future capitalism run amok, and takes the reader on a journey that contains some genuinely enjoyable twists and turns. All in all, a very enjoyable read.

An enjoyable and nicely-illustrated novella that didn't overstay its welcome.