July 26, 2019

  • Review

    3.0 rating based on 1,234 ratings

    Infinite Detail (Tim Maughan, 2019)
    Reminded me a lot of Cory Doctrow novels, in a good way. As a technology collapse pushes the world back to the dark ages, technology also continues to exist and stir memories for some lost in the middle of the chaos.

July 20, 2019

  • Review

    3.0 rating based on 1,234 ratings

    This Is How You Lose the Time War (Amal El-Mohtar, Max Gladstone, 2019)
    I can see why people like this flowery, metaphor-filled fantasy full of word-play and clever ideas. But it felt a bit over my head. I don’t feel that often, but on occasion I find a book that wants me to be smarter than I can put the effort into being.

July 16, 2019

  • Review

    4.5 rating based on 1,234 ratings

    Theory of Bastards (Audrey Schulman, 2018)
    Boy I’m glad I picked this up despite the apparently intentionally off-putting cover art. It’s a story of a near-future where the technology isn’t the story. It’s about human relationships with much of the action being between Bonobos and other Bonobos, or Bonobos and humans.

    Loved it.

July 13, 2019

  • Review

    3.0 rating based on 1,234 ratings

    Fall; Or, Dodge in Hell (Neal Stephenson, 2019)

    Yeah, this is a bit of a mess.

    Easiest way to explain this loonnng-ass book is that you start out in a fair approximation of a William Gibson novel, but slowly end up in Lord of the Rings. And not really in a good way.

    Still giving it three stars because I enjoy Stephenson’s writing style even when he loses the plot like this.

June 21, 2019

  • Review

    4.0 rating based on 1,234 ratings

    Children of Time (Adrian Tchaikovsky, 2015)
    This is the kind of Sci-Fi I love. Really out there in terms of concepts. Some brain-stretching ideas, but still enough character development that you care about the people (and such) involved rather than just the ideas.

June 8, 2019

  • Review

    4.0 rating based on 1,234 ratings

    Borderless (Eliot Peper, 2018)
    Second in the Analog techno-thriller series. In a not too distant future, ultra-hackers manipulate the world to stop the world from being manipulated. 

    Or something like that. 

June 2, 2019

  • Review

    3.5 rating based on 1,234 ratings

    Longer (Michael Blumlein, 2019)
    A compact story about love and career and passion once humans become quasi-immortal.

May 26, 2019

  • Review

    4.0 rating based on 1,234 ratings

    World of Trouble (Ben H Winters, 2014)
    Last book of the “Detective at the end of the world” series “The Last Policeman”. The planet will only exist for another two weeks, but there are mysteries that need to be resolved before we reach the end.

    Lovely. Wraps the series up beautifully.

May 20, 2019

  • Review

    3.5 rating based on 1,234 ratings

    The Hunting Party (Lucy Foley, 2019)
    I think there is a name for this type of murder mystery, but can’t come up with it. A group of people is off somewhere isolated (in this case a hunting cabin in the north of England). A murder happens and everyone becomes a suspect.

    It’s a decent example of the genre, whatever it’s called.

May 8, 2019

  • Review

    3.0 rating based on 1,234 ratings

    Delta-v (Daniel Suarez, 2019)
    Suarez writes great techno-thrillers but this is not one of his most thrilling. His tech is often based on some real-world concept (drones, DNA editing, etc.) that he wildly extrapolates and then he drops happless victims into the mix.

    Here he’s taken more of a “hard SF” approach to things, doing a detailed analysis of how asteroid mining might work. It’s interesting enough, but long on details and (relatively) short on thrills.

April 19, 2019

  • Review

    4.5 rating based on 1,234 ratings

    The Lost Man (Jane Harper, 2019)
    Jane Harper is quickly becoming one of my favorite mystery writers. All set in Australia, most in the outback, her stories are sharply written character studies of people lost in a massive, hostile environment. And murder and deceit.

April 7, 2019

  • Review

    4.5 rating based on 1,234 ratings

    The Light Brigade (Kameron Hurley, 2019)
    A1 time travel novel. Loved it.

March 30, 2019

  • Review

    4.0 rating based on 1,234 ratings

    The Raven Tower (Ann Leckie, 2019)
    A rare fantasy novel for me but I loved it. There are many gods in the world and they influence far more than we know. Wonderful language, highly engaging.

March 9, 2019

  • Review

    3.0 rating based on 1,234 ratings

    Nine Perfect Strangers (Liane Moriarty, 2018)
    An odd “murder in a remote location” mystery set in Australia. Enjoyable but not particularly memorable.

February 17, 2019

  • Review

    3.5 rating based on 1,234 ratings

    Invisible Planets: Contemporary Chinese Science Fiction in Translation (Ken Liu (translator), Anthology, 2016)
    SF anthologies are of course hit and miss but I liked a lot of this. The collection includes some commentary on the writers and stories which helps. Chinese SF is great because you get a double dose of oddness – the SF and the culture shock of non-western writing.

February 3, 2019

  • Review

    3.5 rating based on 1,234 ratings

    Countdown City (Ben H Winters, 2013)
    Second of three books in the Last Policeman series – a detective novel set in the final days of the earth before we get hit by a giant asteroid. 

    Some people freak out during the apocalypse, others just keeping doing what they know best.

January 9, 2019

  • Review

    4.0 rating based on 1,234 ratings

    An Ocean of Minutes (Thea Lim, 2018)
    Time Travel Love Stories is a very real sub-genre. This is a pretty good addition.

January 1, 2019

  • Review

    4.0 rating based on 1,234 ratings

    Kingdom of the Blind (Louise Penny, 2018)
    The 14th Inspector Gamache novel. Still going strong.

    I shared a love of these novels with my mom who died a few months ago. I’d pre-ordered this for her to read on her Kindle so I read with extra sadness.

December 26, 2018

  • Review

    4.0 rating based on 1,234 ratings

    Austral (Paul McAuley, 2017)
    Sadly climate-change SF seems all to real these days. McCauley writes thrillers in an SF context. Quite enjoyable.

December 22, 2018

December 21, 2018

  • Review

    4.5 rating based on 1,234 ratings

    Asymmetry (Lisa Halliday, 2018)
    Complex, compelling. One of my faves of 2018.

December 15, 2018

  • Review

    4.0 rating based on 1,234 ratings

    Ambiguity Machines and Other Stories (Vandana Singh, 2018)
    One of a few Indian SF books I decided to read this year to broaden my horizons. An enjoyable collection of short stories.

October 28, 2018

  • Review

    4.0 rating based on 1,234 ratings

    Lake Success (Gary Shteyngart, 2018)
    One of Shteyngart’s best. Takes the madness of modern living and makes it personal, and manic, and funny.

October 5, 2018

  • Review

    4.0 rating based on 1,234 ratings

    The Stars Are Legion (Kameron Hurley,
    This was mind-blowing. One of my favorites of the last year.

August 31, 2018

  • Review

    3.5 rating based on 1,234 ratings

    The Price You Pay (Aidan Truhen (pseudonym), 2018)

    Whoa. This is one in-your-face crime novel. Not for the faint-of-heart. That said, it can be fun to get inside the head of a charming sociopath every now-and-then. As long as you can get out again.

    I saw someone guessing this is a Nick Harkaway novel and I’m pretty sure it is.

    I am a fucking asymmetric criminal startup. I got limited expertise in criminal strategic warfare. I hotdesk and I outsource and I franchise, but what I mostly have is a core concept, forward momentum.

     

August 26, 2018

  • Review

    4.5 rating based on 1,234 ratings

    Ball Lightning (Liu Cixin, Joel Martinsen (Translator), 2005/2018)

    Liu Cixin really is a worthy successor to A.C. Clarke – the first author I became obsessed while a mere wee tike). This is a new English translation of an older novel that doesn’t quite have the expansiveness of Three-Body Problem, but was still a joy to read.

August 11, 2018

  • Review

    3.5 rating based on 1,234 ratings

    The Incendiaries (R.O. Kwon, 2018)

    A great debut novel by R.O. Kwon. Cults and terrorism examined from a new angle. Maybe it’s “cult adjacent” more than about cults.

August 1, 2018

  • Review

    3.5 rating based on 1,234 ratings

    My Year of Rest and Relaxation (Ottessa Moshfegh, 2018)

    Moshfegh writes wonderful stories about damaged women doing terrible things. This fantastical story of a woman going to extreme lengths to avoid the consequences of her life didn’t please me as much as her earlier novel Eileen, but it was satisfying nonetheless.

July 29, 2018

  • Review

    2.5 rating based on 1,234 ratings

    Give Me Your Hand (Megan Abbott, 2018)

    Sometimes when I’m reading a murder mystery told from the suspect’s perspective, I like to think about the same book told from the detective’s perspective. In this case, the detectives would have to be the most bumbling cops ever to not figure out what’s happening here. I’m not sure a novel set in 2018 can just ignore modern forensics and the ubiquity of surveillance technology.

July 22, 2018

  • Review

    2.0 rating based on 1,234 ratings

    This is a near-future story about people having babies. It won a bunch of awards, but I can’t say I get it. The people seem very parochial in their opinions about reproduction and what they want from their kids. I hope we progress a LOT more than over the next century.