He/Him. In the USA... for now. Mastodon
I only track books that I read for pleasure, mostly SF/Fantasy. I've fallen out of the habit of actually writing reviews beyond giving a star rating. It would be nice to get back into that habit.
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From award-winning author R. F. Kuang comes Babel, a thematic response to The Secret …
Content warning Spoilers
I was worried that it was going to lean YA after the main characters returned to Oxford, but it pulled no punches.
Are there really only a handful of professors in Oxford colleges?
Cairo, 1912: The case started as a simple one for the Ministry of Alchemy, Enchantments …
"NYC taxi driver Ranjit Singh has 10 days to prove his innocence ... Bollywood film …
I don’t think it’s a failing of the book. I think it did what it was trying to do. I just wanted something else.
Too sedate for my taste.
Content warning Reveals my takeaway
Masterfully constructed, like Cloud Atlas or Use of Weapons. Utterly willing to kill off characters just as they're getting interesting (I put the book down after it killed one off just a handful of pages after she was introduced, but picked it up again).
After reading How Infrastructure Works, which has the message "We have the tools we need to build sustainable infrastructure for everyone", this book seemed to reply "Yeah, but we won't", but also "But that's okay. We're not so special. Life will go on after we kill ourselves as part of the Sixth Extinction."
Will there be another race
To come along and take over for us?
Maybe martians could do better than we've done.
We'll make great pets!
My friend says we're like the dinosaurs
Only we are doing ourselves in
Much faster than they
Ever did.
We'll make great pets!
— Porno For Pyros, Pets
Depressing, compelling, uplifting. Odd to read after How Infrastructure Works,
A new way of seeing the essential systems hidden inside our walls, under our streets, …
Paints a somewhat hopeful picture. After an examination of what "Infrastructure" means, it argues that we already have the tools we need for sustainable infrastructure, we just need to use them.
When COVID-19 sweeps through New York City, Jamie Gray is stuck as a dead-end driver …
The Bone Shard Daughter is an unmissable fantasy debut from a major new voice in …
Novel, but it didn't really grab me.
An alien armada lurks on the edges of Teixcalaanli space. No one can communicate with it, no one can destroy …
Content warning Ending
All of the plotlines neatly tied up with a bow on them. A bit too pat.
Content warning Ending
Wrapped up everything quite neatly... a bit too neatly. It felt like the authors had gotten too attached to their characters and their world to let anything really bad happen to them.
Still entertaining.
Sancia Grado is a thief, and a damn good one. And her latest target, a …
Content warning Language
I was looking for an adventure book after a few more character-heavy books, and this hit the spot.
I like the trope of a complex magic system or cosmology that the characters don't really understand, but are trying to figure out, and this worked for that.
I thought the writing itself was a little uneven, with some modern idioms in a non-modern setting. I'm also always mildly annoyed when an author makes up a word to stand in for "fucking" while leaving everything else the same. You're using "shit", just use "fuck" too.
