Author: Eric Mesa

  • Review: Turn Coat

    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)…

  • Review: Small Favor

    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…

  • Review: White Night

    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…

  • Happy 20th Anniversary Fedora Linux and Happy Fedora 39 Release Day!

    Happy 20th Anniversary Fedora Linux and Happy Fedora 39 Release Day!

    I can’t believe I’ve been using Linux for 20 years already! I started off with Fedora Core 1 (Yarrow) 20 years ago. It was in this book: Boy has the technology come a long way in those 20 years! One of my earliest desktop screenshots from back then: Now one of my more recent desktops:…

  • Review: Threats: What Every Engineer Should Learn From Star Wars

    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…

  • Review: SCIENCE: Ruining Everything Since 1543

    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…

  • Review: Proven Guilty

    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…

  • Review: Uncanny Magazine Issue 19: November/December 2017

    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…

  • Review: Lost in the Moment and Found

    Lost in the Moment and Found by Seanan McGuire My rating: 4 of 5 stars This is the hardest book to read of the entire series. There’s a content warning at the front of the book that explains why – but it is truly one of the cruelest. I think it’s also a book that…

  • Review: In Mercy, Rain

    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…

  • Review: Where the Drowned Girls Go

    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…

  • Review: Skeleton Song

    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

  • Review: Dead Beat

    Dead Beat by Jim Butcher My rating: 4 of 5 stars Even though there’s a timeskip of, I think, a year – this book is a direct follow-on from the previous one. That is to say that Dresden spends a big chunk of the book dealing with the consequences of the last one. Even the…

  • Review: Clarkesworld Magazine, Issue 144, September 2018

    Clarkesworld Magazine, Issue 144, September 2018 by Neil Clarke My rating: 5 of 5 stars A Study in Oils (Kelly Robson) – a neat blend of science fiction and fantasy, I love how the author evokes the setting. I can really picture it in my mind. Although not entirely unique, I like the idea of…

  • Review: Apex Magazine Issue 138

    Apex Magazine Issue 138 by Jason Sizemore My rating: 4 of 5 stars Original Fiction The Relationship of Ink to Blood (Alex Langer) – I world have interpreted the actions this story very differently had it not been in a SFF magazine. But in Hebrew we have different expectations about what’s real and what’s not.…