Side Jobs by Jim Butcher My rating: 5 of 5 stars “Restoration of Faith” – for all Butcher’s disclaimer that this is amateur hour, it still reads rather well. Enjoyable story with a sort of proto-Harry. “Vignette” – a fun bit of flash fiction. The only thing that felt weird was Bob seeming a bit…

Changes by Jim Butcher My rating: 4 of 5 stars Changes, the title promises us, and changes we do get. As I was reading the story, I told my wife, I think this is the close of another grand story arc. She’s at about book 6, which I considered the be the first arc where…

Lightspeed Magazine, Issue 110, July 2019 by John Joseph Adams My rating: 3 of 5 stars I was wondering what happened to the novellas in the newer issues – editorial in this issue answers the question – they were taking longer short stories and felt the novella section was redundant. Science Fiction—The Null Space conundrum…

Turn Coat by Jim Butcher My rating: 4 of 5 stars This book combines the two types of Dresden novels into one. It’s both a story concerned with the overarching Dresden plot and a typical detective case. As the back of the book blurb says, this time it’s Morgan (Dresden’s nemesis on the White Council)…

Small Favor by Jim Butcher My rating: 4 of 5 stars This entry in The Dresden Files was a real page-turner. I couldn’t stop myself from continually telling myself “just one more chapter”. Once the plot kicked off, it was kinetic the whole time. This one was once again departure from the case structure. Instead…

White Night by Jim Butcher My rating: 5 of 5 stars This is my favorite Dresden in a while. While it’s still tied up in the overarching story, this one is more of a return to a typical detective story. Murders abound and Harry has to find the killer. Like a proper detective book there…

Threats: What Every Engineer Should Learn From Star Wars by Adam Shostack My rating: 3 of 5 stars A reminder that I use the tooltips on GR and 3 stars is “I liked it” This book doesn’t have nearly as much Star Wars as I was hoping for, but the Star Wars aspect still helps…

SCIENCE: Ruining Everything Since 1543 by Zach Weinersmith My rating: 4 of 5 stars I’m a huge fan of Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal, a nerdy web comic (like XKCD, but not stick figures). What elevates this book beyond a simple collection of science-themed SMBC strips is the ending where Weinersmith creates strips from personal anecdotes…

Proven Guilty by Jim Butcher My rating: 4 of 5 stars This book seemed to be more of a return to form in the sense that Harry has a lot of detective work to do here to figure out what’s going on. As usual, we have a bunch of seemingly disparate plots that come together…

Uncanny Magazine Issue 19: November/December 2017 by Lynne M. Thomas My rating: 3 of 5 stars “Making Us Monsters” (Sam J. Miller & Lara Elena Donnelly) – A story that takes place during WWI and the inter-war period. The main characters are gay and the story serves mostly to remind me of the horrible treatment…

In Mercy, Rain by Seanan McGuire My rating: 4 of 5 stars I’m very much in favor of the way McGuire makes use of short stories within this series. They expand upon the stories from the main books without requiring those stories to be bogged down. In a sense, these are deleted scenes, except they’re…

Where the Drowned Girls Go by Seanan McGuire My rating: 5 of 5 stars I think this is the best book McGuire has yet written in the Wayward Children series. It’s a culmination of all that has come before and seems to be setting up something big for either book 9 or book 10. It’s…

Skeleton Song by Seanan McGuire My rating: 3 of 5 stars A beautiful short story that finally reveals Christopher’s world and how he ended up back in the real world. It’s beautiful and somber and, as always, cruel in a unique way. View all my reviews