Category: Books

  • Review: Long Past Dues

    Long Past Dues by James J. Butcher My rating: 3 of 5 stars (a reminder that I use the star rating tooltips on the goodreads site. 3 stars = “I liked it”.) Butcher, the son, is back with another entry in The Unorthodox Chronicles. Book 1 was a buddy-cop plot. We’re back with the same…

  • Review: Tongues of Serpents

    Tongues of Serpents by Naomi Novik My rating: 3 of 5 stars Just like the Africa book, this one is a lot of just passing the time without much happening. Then in the last few chapters we get a bunch of bombshells about how the world continues to differ from ours because of the the…

  • Review: Lightspeed Magazine, April 2018

    Lightspeed Magazine, April 2018 by John Joseph Adams My rating: 4 of 5 stars SCIENCE FICTION What is Eve? (Will McIntosh) – Will does a great job with the story. The reader can probably guess the general direction of the story, but it’s the details that make it shine. I think he also does a…

  • Review: Victory of Eagles

    Victory of Eagles by Naomi Novik My rating: 4 of 5 stars I found this book to be a nice change of pace from book 4. It was more exciting and moved the plot along quite a bit. We’ve had the dragon suffrage plot as a Chekov’s Gun since around the first book and we…

  • Review: Empire of Ivory

    Empire of Ivory by Naomi Novik My rating: 4 of 5 stars I have come to the realization that what I enjoy in this series is similar to what I enjoy in Anne Leckie’s Imperial Radch series – I enjoy the formality of the systems that govern the main character’s lives. I wouldn’t want to…

  • Review: The Daughter of Doctor Moreau

    The Daughter of Doctor Moreau by Silvia Moreno-Garcia My rating: 4 of 5 stars I was not familiar with the original (The Island of Doctor Moreau Illustrated), but my wife tells me the plot is fairly similar (based on her recollection of the Marlon Brando movie). What we get out of Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s retelling is…

  • Review: American Pie: My Search for the Perfect Pizza

    American Pie: My Search for the Perfect Pizza by Peter Reinhart My rating: 4 of 5 stars As a cookbook this one is fascinating. It will not be a huge surprise to those who have read Reinhart’s other bread books, but the first half of the book is entirely prose. Reinhart takes us on a…

  • Review: The Internet Con: How to Seize the Means of ComputationReview:

    The Internet Con: How to Seize the Means of Computation by Cory Doctorow My rating: 3 of 5 stars This is a good book that I want everyone to read so they understand why the tech is so broken right now. At the same time I think it’s hampered by the very forces it talks…

  • Review: The Sunlit Man

    The Sunlit Man by Brandon Sanderson My rating: 4 of 5 stars The Year of Sanderson is over (book-wise anyway). This book is the most Cosmere book of the year. Both Tress of the Emerald Sea and Yumi and the Nightmare Painter were basically standalone stories that happened to have Hoid in them. The ending…

  • Review: House of X/Powers of X

    House of X/Powers of X by Jonathan Hickman My rating: 4 of 5 stars This is Hickman at his most Hickman. There are repeated timelines, conspiracies, and a semi-non-linear story that goes out 1000 years from the time of the first book. It’s more sci-fi than a typical X-Men book. It’s also, almost 100% setup.…

  • Review: Compulsory

    Compulsory by Martha Wells My rating: 3 of 5 stars Almost too short, it’s definitely microfiction. Murderbot is still Murderbot, but doesn’t get to shine with such a small word count. View all my reviews

  • Review: Soonish: Ten Emerging Technologies That’ll Improve and/or Ruin Everything

    Soonish: Ten Emerging Technologies That’ll Improve and/or Ruin Everything by Kelly Weinersmith My rating: 4 of 5 stars A popular science book about emerging technologies. I’m not sure if it’s because Kelly Weinersmith is actually a scientist, but they do a good job probing potential downsides to each of the technologies. Zach provides cartoons (in…

  • Review: Battle Ground

    Battle Ground by Jim Butcher My rating: 4 of 5 stars And so it appears we have finished the most recent Arc of the Dresden files. We tied together everything that has come before and just like the previously named book Changes this one changes a whole bunch. We’ve now left the world as it…

  • Review: Brief Cases

    Brief Cases by Jim Butcher My rating: 5 of 5 stars Overall, these stories are more relevant to the main storyline than the Brief Cases stories were. Definitely recommend reading where it takes place in the timeline. A Fistful of Warlocks – Lots of fun with wizards in the wild West. Would like to see…

  • Review: Peace Talks

    Peace Talks by Jim Butcher My rating: 4 of 5 stars What a way to end a book. Thank goodness I’m reading this when book 17 is already out. That said, I’m not sure the next book isn’t going to have a cliff-hanger based on what’s supposed to happen in that book. In these reviews…