July 14, 2018

  • Review

    5.0 rating based on 1,234 ratings

    My Absolute Darling (Gabriel Tallent, 2017)

    This was fantastic. Very dark and disturbing, but essentially redemptive in the end.

July 8, 2018

  • Review

    3.5 rating based on 1,234 ratings

    Echopraxia (Firefall, #2) (Peter Watts, 2014)

    Still full of fascinating ideas, but didn’t work for me the way the first book of the series did. The Vampires and Gods and what have you were a bit too fantastic for me and take the foreground in this installment, leaving me less satisfied.

July 3, 2018

  • Review

    3.0 rating based on 1,234 ratings

    The Colonel (Firefall 1.5) (Peter Watts, 2014)

    A short story that tells us what’s been happening on Earth while the Firefall saga continues in space. Onward to book two in the series!

  • Review

    4.5 rating based on 1,234 ratings

    Blindsight (Firefall 1) (Peter Watts, 2010)

    Hard SF with… vampires? Okay, sure. I love books that can stretch my understanding of what’s possible – real flights of imagination. Not just “West Wing on a gas giant” or “King Arthur, but robots” stuff. This fit the bill quite nicely. If there are aliens in the story I really want them to be, well alien.

June 29, 2018

  • Review

    4.0 rating based on 1,234 ratings

    The Freeze-Frame Revolution (Peter Watts, 2018)

    Got to love a novel that measures time in millions of years. This is my first encounter with Watts, but I’m diving into one of his bigger, more challenging novels (Blindsight) immediately after reading this.

June 27, 2018

  • Review

    5.0 rating based on 1,234 ratings

    In The Distance (Hernan Diaz, 2017)

    I’ve read a few novels about the final days of the American frontier, but none have given me this visceral sense of the immensity and the brutality of that landscape.

    A (very) rare five-star review from me.

June 24, 2018

  • Review

    4.0 rating based on 1,234 ratings

    Convenience Store Woman (Sayaka Murata, Ginny Tapley Takemori (Translator), 2018)

    A short glimpse into the very odd existence of a misfit in a world with little room for misfits. I’d mention Catcher In The Rye and Confederacy of Dunces as American counterparts, but this feels less grand and more subtle.

June 22, 2018

  • Review

    4.5 rating based on 1,234 ratings

    American War (Omar El Akkad, 2017)

    Reading this during the Trump-induced immigration crisis and creation of internment camps made this a difficult respite from the news. Still, what a fantastic read.

    El Akkad spends little time on exposition about this climate-shocked future America. Instead, he focusses on the impact of geographic and political upheaval on a small group of climate refugees in the American south some 70 years from now.

    I found it fascinating, compelling, and beautifully written.

June 11, 2018

  • Review

    4.0 rating based on 1,234 ratings

    Sea of Rust (C. Robert Cargill, 2017)

    This was loads of fun. Having killed all humans, robots now need to worry about being killed by global AI.

June 6, 2018

  • Review

    3.0 rating based on 1,234 ratings

    The Outsider (Stephen King, 2018)

    King mixes real-world police fiction with supernatural horror with greater success in The Outsider than the Mr. Mercedes series. I got mad at the latter because it flipped genres without warning and I felt cheated. I knew what I was getting with The Outsider, so it didn’t bother me.

June 1, 2018

  • Review

    3.0 rating based on 1,234 ratings

    Bandwidth (2018) by Elliot Peper

May 13, 2018

  • Review

    4.0 rating based on 1,234 ratings

May 12, 2018

  • Review

    5.0 rating based on 1,234 ratings

    The Overstory (Richard Ford, 2018)

    Absolutely wonderful. Such rich language, such wonderfully explored characters.

April 13, 2018

  • Review

    4.0 rating based on 1,234 ratings

April 4, 2018

  • Review

    4.0 rating based on 1,234 ratings

March 11, 2018

  • Review

    3.0 rating based on 1,234 ratings

March 4, 2018

  • Review

    5.0 rating based on 1,234 ratings

February 20, 2018

  • Review

    3.0 rating based on 1,234 ratings

February 19, 2018

  • Review

    4.0 rating based on 1,234 ratings

February 11, 2018

  • Review

    4.0 rating based on 1,234 ratings

February 6, 2018

  • Review

    4.0 rating based on 1,234 ratings

January 23, 2018

  • Review

    4.0 rating based on 1,234 ratings

January 14, 2018

  • Review

    4.0 rating based on 1,234 ratings

January 7, 2018

  • Review

    4.0 rating based on 1,234 ratings

December 23, 2017

  • Review

    4.0 rating based on 1,234 ratings

December 19, 2017

  • Review

    4.0 rating based on 1,234 ratings

December 15, 2017

  • Review

    4.0 rating based on 1,234 ratings

November 30, 2017

  • Review

    3.0 rating based on 1,234 ratings

November 17, 2017

  • Review

    3.0 rating based on 1,234 ratings

November 6, 2017

  • Review

    4.0 rating based on 1,234 ratings