Category: Books

  • Review: Lightspeed Magazine, Issue 113, October 2019

    Lightspeed Magazine, Issue 113, October 2019 by John Joseph Adams My rating: 4 of 5 stars Another great issue of Lightspeed Magazine. There was only one story I wasn’t a fan of. Science Fiction———–The Beasts We Want to Be (Sam J. Miller) – a historical SF set in Russia after the communist revolution. The SF…

  • Review: Eve: How the Female Body Drove 200 Million Years of Human Evolution

    Eve: How the Female Body Drove 200 Million Years of Human Evolution by Cat Bohannon My rating: 5 of 5 stars I loved listening to this book. The author (also the narrator) does an incredible job taking a look at every difference between male and female bodies and explaining the current scientific knowledge about when…

  • Review: Starter Villain

    Starter Villain by John Scalzi My rating: 4 of 5 stars Just like Scalzi’s previous book, The Kaiju Preservation Society, this one is a real popcorn book. It’s also got a pretty silly movie-inspired premise and I consider them to be in a meta series. As the book blurb says, our protagonist inherits his Uncle’s…

  • Review: Night Watch

    Night Watch by Terry Pratchett My rating: 4 of 5 stars this is my second time reading the book. The rating remains 4/5 stars. I didn’t remember liking this book so much given the fact that I’m not much of a fan of time loops, at least, not since I got use to the idea.…

  • Review: Golden Age and Other Stories

    Golden Age and Other Stories by Naomi Novik My rating: 4 of 5 stars A neat collection of short stories that take place in the world of the Temeriare series. Some of them are simultaneous with the series and some take place afterwards. It’s a fun little reunion with our friends from the last 9…

  • Review: League of Dragons

    League of Dragons by Naomi Novik My rating: 4 of 5 stars A perfect ending to the Temeriare series. There’s finally an ending to the Napoleonic threat – I won’t say whether it follows the same trajectory as in our world. But, more importantly, we finally begin to see dragons finally understand their place in…

  • Review: Mislaid in Parts Half-Known

    Mislaid in Parts Half-Known by Seanan McGuire My rating: 4 of 5 stars Since this novella only just came out on Tuesday (a few days ago), I’m going to be very careful about any spoilers other than what can easily be inferred from the back of the book description. McGuire has formed a main clique…

  • Review: Thief of Time

    Thief of Time by Terry Pratchett My rating: 3 of 5 stars This is my second time reading this book. I left the rating at 3/5 I debated dropping the rating to 2 stars (“It was OK”), but Lu-Tze was enough to keep it at 3 stars. I am not sure if we learned his…

  • Review: Lightspeed Magazine, Issue 112, September 2019

    Lightspeed Magazine, Issue 112, September 2019 by John Joseph Adams My rating: 4 of 5 stars Even though AI has been a constant subject in science fiction for nearly 100 years now, it’s interesting reading the two AI-related stories in the 2023, the year of ChatGPT. Although ChatGPT is still far away from general AI,…

  • Review: Blood of Tyrants

    Blood of Tyrants by Naomi Novik My rating: 4 of 5 stars Oh, Temeriaire, you sweet summer child-dragon (to mix together 2 vastly different dragon-containing series). Yes, you’re learning, but you still are way too optimistic about people, dragons, and battles. This was one of the better Temeriare novels, although so far they’ve all been…

  • My Reading Life in 2023

    My Reading Life in 2023

    By the end of 2023 I had 3049 ebooks and magazines (a change of 256 – pretty even with last year). Of those, 2434 were unread. Some chunk of those – maybe as much as ¼ were giveaways like Raspberry Pi Magazine, HackSpace Magazine, and Tor.com book club freebies. I stopped getting the monthly free…

  • Review: Lightspeed Magazine, Issue 111, August 2019

    Lightspeed Magazine, Issue 111, August 2019 by John Joseph Adams My rating: 4 of 5 stars This issue was one in which I enjoyed all of the stories very much. Science Fiction One Thousand Beetles in a Jumpsuit (Dominica Phetteplace) – a dystopian story taking place “20 Minutes in the Future” that seems to me…

  • Review: The Kaiju Preservation Society

    The Kaiju Preservation Society by John Scalzi My rating: 4 of 5 stars What is this book? It’s a love-letter to science fiction nerds. It shares narrative bits with Jurassic Park. It’s a reminder of how disruptive 2020 was in every day. I had a lot of fun with this story. I think the only…

  • Review: Crucible of Gold

    Crucible of Gold by Naomi Novik My rating: 4 of 5 stars When we last left Laurence and Temeriare, they were in Australia, contemplating retirement. This book has them dragged back in because Napoleon continues to scheme. Thanks to the deviation from our history in which Africa has been wrested from colonialism, Napoleon makes a…

  • Review: I am not a Serial Killer

    I Am Not a Serial Killer by Dan Wells My rating: 3 of 5 stars I’m not a horror person – I got this to listen to with my wife on a car trip. She calls the book Baby-Dexter. She’s not wrong. I think the book fits in a very interesting intersection. It’s (in my…