About a year ago, I wrote a blog post about how my kids got themselves (and, by extension, me) into Dungeons and Dragons. I wanted to reflect on how far I’ve come since then and where I might go in the near future. Starting off with a quick recap of the linked blog post, my brother David had introduced the kids to D&D via Muk, a module for introducing your kids to D&D. Unfortunately, it was written for an experience adult D&D player or DM to DM for the kids, so we had a few fails with my first time as the DM. Then we moved on to DnD Adventure Club. That was, and continues to be, a huge hit with the kids.

Last weekend I decided to try the Humblewood D&D campaign setting with the kids. For the past year (give or take) we’ve had a lot of fun playing DnD Adventure Club campaigns. Our one major foray in to regular D&D, Dragons of Stormreck Isle, was a failure. I think there were a few reasons for that. First of all, I was fairly new to DMing and so probably not doing as good of a job as I am a year-ish later. Second, since it was a campaign meant to introduce people to both playing and DMing, it came with pre-made characters. I think that meant the kids had less of an attachment to the characters. Also, the session went very slowly as I had to go back and forth through the player handbook, monster manual, and campaign sheet to look up spells, monsters, etc.

This weekend we finished The Wild Trilogy from DnD Adventure Club. The first challenge involved sneaking around an Owlbear. The kids asked about their options and I noted that in addition to sneaking, they could try and distract it. Sam’s dwarf, Grumpy McGrumbles, has a cooking hobby, so he took hits pots and pans and made a bunch of noise so that the Owlbear would follow him around the camp.

After that there was a mini “dungeon” crawl in the basement beneath a wizard’s tower. The girls finally started to get the hang of investigating chambers rather than blindly setting off traps.

I’ve written a lot about DnD Adventure Club, including my last two posts. Today while I was looking at the Pathfinder Humble Bundle, I went to the Pathfinder website to see if they had a page listing differences (since Pathfinder started as a fork of D&D 3.5). I found this page - Adventure Paths. It looks like they’re doing the same thing as DnD Adventure Club, except in Pathfinder 2e and without a kid focus. Also, it seems like each trilogy is building to a larger story (like Buffy the Vampire Slayer with its villain of the season, but also overarching story). It makes me wish that Wizards of the Coast (the Hasbro subsidiary that runs D&D) would do something similar - or if a 3rd party creator did it that it would be tightly coupled to D&D beyond. One advantage of WotC doing the mini-adventures is that they could use them to highlight different aspects of the mechanics or classes. I love that DnD Adventure Club comes with a new character each month with some example backstories. It really helps demonstrate the different races and classes. Also, upon further examination of the Pathfinder adventures I saw that each trilogy is written by a different person (creating opportunities to showcase new writers) and that (at least the one I clicked on) is tied to a campaign setting book. This is SO smart from a marketing point of view. “If you enjoyed your little trilogy in this corner of our world, you might enjoy learning more about it…” Yeah, WoTC should DEFINITELY look into this.

Scarlett was inspired by my previous post and made an animatic-style drawing of some of her favorite moments from the campaign.

The top panel is the party questioning the guards. (The ninja-looking character is Sasha, the character that Scarlett plays)

The next panel is Grumpy using intimidation to question a gnoll. The middle panel is the throwing of gnolls I referenced in my previous post. The last panel on that row depicts the characters examining someone who was shot mid-exposition.

I was DMing the first third of a DnD Adventure Club campaign for my kids today. My son likes to mostly play as Grumpy Mcgrumbles, a dwarven fighter. The kids were attacked by a group of Gnolls. Normally, most of the time, the kids play pretty straightforwardly although they are starting to get more creative. My son decided that since he’s a strong dwarf, he wanted to pick up the Gnolls and throw them into the river or into each other. I wanted to encourage the creativity, so I had him do an athletics check. Between his +7 and a series of lucky rolls, he ends up almost always successfully tossing the Gnolls and the kids and I erupted into fits of laughter as the battle became more and more chaotic. It was even funnier when he finally had a bad roll and so he just picked up the Gnoll and dropped him at his feet.

I’ve been backing a few different D&D 5e adventures on kickstarter, but the one I’m most excited about getting fulfillment on is Obojima: Tales from the Tall Grass. It’s so freakin’ beautiful that I had to hold myself back from getting the package that came with everything. But I’m not the only one excited bout it, I also read this article about it in Wired today. One of the points they make in the article is about how gamers and readers are moving away from Grimdark because there’s already enough of this in the world:

Two years ago, while spending time with my brothers, I played Dungeons and Dragons for the first time ever. David had been introduced to D&D by a coworker during COVID. Tony and Alex apparently had played in high school. I’m not sure when David’s wife started playing, but she joined us that night, too. David played the role of DM and selected a one-off campaign. I had a blast and couldn’t believe that I’d somehow gone most of my life without ever having had someone convince me to play. Incidentally, in our campaign, we accidentally murdered Santa Claus. Ask me about it some time.

My grad school Alma Mater, Stevens Institute of Technology has discovered how your Fitbit or Smart watch could give away your PIN:

Stevens researchers discovered that the motions of your hands as you use PIN pads, which is continually and automatically recorded by your device, can be hacked in real time and used to guess your PIN with more than 90 percent accuracy within a few attempts.

The Stevens team outfitted 20 volunteers with an array of fitness wristbands and smart watches, then asked them to make some 5,000 sample PIN entries on keypads or laptop keyboards while “sniffing” the packets of Bluetooth low energy (BLE) data transmitted by sensors in those devices to paired smartphones.

I still really love using Linux, but I don’t follow the Linux press like I used to. I’ve settled into a comfortable zone where I only follow Fedora and KDE news since that’s what I use. But I followed it very closely for nearly 10 years. Every year there’d be multiple articles asking whether this was the year of the Linux desktop, meaning people would finally see the Microsoft hegemony for what it was and throw off the shackles of proprietary software. It never came. Thanks to Ubuntu and Vista, we almost got there. Then there were the Netbooks, but the manufacturers chose horrible versions of Linux and underpowered machines and Microsoft came out with Windows 7 starter edition. And people went to Macs instead of Linux in the biggest tech comeback of … ever.

Earlier this year I wrote about using xbmc to create your own private Netflix.  I thought I’d update my readers on how I like it.  Here’s what the current version looks like with the default skin:

[caption id=“attachment_5672” align=“aligncenter” width=“500”] xbmc - default skin as of 20121031[/caption]

I have linked it up with trakt.tv to track my tv and movie watching (just like music scrobbling with last.fm) Using it has allowed me to catch up on shows that I might not have otherwise had the time to watch.  It was easy to start going through all the Buffy episodes while waiting to feed Scarlett at night since they were sitting on my computer and I didn’t have to go find the DVDs.

Walkaway by Cory Doctorow

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Got this book for free from the Tor Ebook Club

This book is a refinement of many topics that Doctorow has broached in the past:

- uploading of consciounesses/backups and how that changes things
- living in Capitalism vs leaving capitalism behind
- the violence often used to maintain compliance, even in non-totalitarian countries
- contractors involved in the above-mentioned violence inherent in the system

Chilling Effect by Valerie Valdes

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Description in one line? Cowboy Bebop meets Mass Effect with a Cuban protagonist.

I grew up in Miami, Florida so having a main character speak in “spanglish” brings me back to my childhood. The narrator also nails the voice of our main character, Eva. Overall, the narrator does a good job distinguishing the voices of all the main characters although a character we meet near the end - think this book’s version of the Ed character from Cowboy Bebop - doesn’t get an original enough of a voice to distinguish her in a few scenes.

Maangchi’s Real Korean Cooking by Maangchi

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This book is a companion to Maangchi’s youtube channel. It teaches you how to cook the way she cooks. So it’s authentic to her even if it’s not what you’re used to from Korean BBQ. The recipes are a good jumping off point to tweak the flavors to match what you prefer.

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RELIGION: Ruining Everything Since 4004 BC by Zach Weinersmith

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I’m generally a fan of Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal (the source of these comics) and even though I would identify myself as a Christian, I’m not one of those easily-offended, book-banning types. I found lots of the jokes in here funny, even the ones a more self-serious person would find blasphemous. But all collected together, some of the jokes get a bit repetitious. There are several “why do good things happen to bad people” comics, a few “are you in heaven or in hell?” comics, and at least 2 “do animals go to heaven” comics. Weinersmith does also find some humor in Zen Buddhism, but even some of those are repetitious in theme. I think, really, it’s more the case that there aren’t really enough jokes to tell about religion to create a whole book without repeating yourself. (Even my review is starting to repeat itself!)

Happy Doomsday by David Sosnowski

My rating: 1 of 5 stars

I got this for free from the Kindle First (or whatever it’s called now) program where Amazon Prime members get a free book each month.

It’s been a while since I disliked a book a much as I disliked this one. I kept reading in hopes of redemption because that has happened once or twice. But, alas, it was not meant to be.

Nightmare Magazine, Issue 137 by Nightmare Magazine

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The Cut Cares Not for the Flesh (George Sandison) - It was foreshadowed from the first paragraphs, but if one finds themselves in a horror story, it pays to read the contractual fine-print. I’ve read stories in a similar genre before, but I love the way this one focused more on the characters than the mechanisms behind the magic. Also, some interesting gender dynamics on this one.

Butts: A Backstory by Heather Radke

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This book is definitely more political than the last non-fiction book I read, Eve: How the Female Body Drove 200 Million Years of Human Evolution, but that makes sense. The author’s entire thesis is not so much about butts in the abstract, but more specifically the female butt. As part of that explanation she also considers how the butt was used as one dimension across which to define the differences between European and African bodies. Since race as a concept is itself political (more or less emerging in the Age of Exploration), this causes the book to be more political. This isn’t a knock against it or for it. It just means it’s going to be a bit more contentious and, at times, opinionated than Eve, which was simply talking about science and how our bodies evolved.

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 is almost incidental to the story, merely a way to explore the ideas behind the way humans act under different regimes and how much is conditioned vs free will.

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 and why these differences came about. Bohannon tackles some of the current received wisdom and explains ways in which these hypothesis fall apart. Usually the culprit is folks taking our current situation and trying to explain back rather than going in the actual direction of evolution.

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 villainy business (think Dr Evil and Scott in Austin Powers). Because Scalzi has good writing chops, this turns out to actually be a pretty neat story and not one overly long joke. Just like The Kaiju Preservation Society I feel like this story ends just as it’s really getting started. In a way, both of these books have the feel of a short story with the length of a novel. It’s the only real criticism I have and the biggest reason for just 4 stars.

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. (I remember thinking the Terminator/Terminator 2 time loop was pretty neat) But, as in the best of Pratchett’s books, this one only incidentally has the time loop to set the plot in motion. It’s really a character study about Samuel Vimes. By this point Pratchett has been building him up and getting the audience to really understand how he works. This book puts it all to the test by asking him to make some impossible choices.

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 books.

Volley’s Cow: Almost microfiction length short story in which we find out a bit more about how the draconic parliamentary participation is going.

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 society. Novik intelligently began the series with Laurence the son of an abolitionist and made it clear that if the dragons were indeed sentient, that they had a parallel claim to recognition. Without spoiling what happens in this book, I’m delighted to have seen Perscitia’s role in things.

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 from the student body at Eleanor’s School For Wayward Children who have been the main characters since the first book (with a few exceptions). Once again we follow the clique as they disregard the No Quests rule. I think this book serves as a satisfying sequel to the main Antsy. It also reveals more about the backstories of Eleanor and Kade that seem to be setting up a final climax. I don’t know if McGuire has stated elsewhere if the series will end at 10 books, but if it does, I expect it will at least hinge on Eleanor’s story. If I had to make predictions, it would probably also involve resolving the story set up when we finally saw the inside of the Whitehorn Institute, but McGuire likes to keep things complex. If you look back over the series, not every protagonist has gotten a happy ending. And even some of the supposed happy endings may be “happiest possible” rather than simply happy - think of the Woolcott Twins.

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 name back then, but I think we’re meant to associate him with the person who nudged Brutha in Small Gods. (Or maybe it was explicitly stated, but while reading a few books at once and stretching this one out over months, I’ve forgotten) He’s definitely in Night Watch, so Pratchett had fun with the character.

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, the trope seems to be closer than ever to becoming a reality and so makes reading these stories feel a little different.

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 at least “good”. It started a bit rough. I thought this was going to be like the entry in the series where we start off with Temeriare in the breeding grounds and Laurence on a ship. But Novik has already put us through that wringer, so it was only a short portion of the book and which introduced us to the Japanese dragons. Here Novik leans on the asian association of dragons with water and so we get river and ocean dragons. The society seems halfway between the Chinese and South American dragon situation. They are revered, but aren’t necessarily living among the populace.

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 to be even more likely now than it was 4 years ago when this story was published. That said, I really enjoyed our protagonist and the story overall. I had originally written that I wanted to see more stories in this setting, but on reading the author interview I saw that they have another one coming up in a future issues of Lightspeed.

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 criticism (which is kind of a hidden praise) is that I felt it ended too quickly. We learned the premise and the world and then the climax came and it was all over. I think it may be that, as can be the case with a short story or novella, that the house of cards would have come crashing down if the story went on too much longer. There was a lot of “don’t think about it” hand-wavy things in the setup and maybe they wouldn’t survive strict scrutiny. Scalzi said he created a pop song of a novel and he’s not wrong. He also created a bit of a time capsule of a crazy time that most of the creative world is pretending didn’t happen.

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 deal with the largest “country” on the continent to provide them with transportation to South America to try and get back/get revenge for their family and ancestors recently sold into slavery. As a bonus, this means they harass Brazil and give Napoleon the chance to take a distracted Portugal, leaving Britain without allies.

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 opinion) a little gruesome for YA being in John’s head and reading his sociopathic thoughts. But because it’s YA it’s also pretty tame with some of the horror elements. Also, the first twist about the nature of the killer (it’s not on the GR description, but it’s on some other descriptions - including the movie based on it) somewhat absolves John of some of his inner tension - at least that’s how my wife and I felt. That is to say, based on the nature of the killer, some of what John is debating seems moot. (And that continues with his antagonists at least through book 3, according to my wife)

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 characters and, roughly, dealing with the consequences of the first book. I say roughly because JJB seems to be copying his dad in that there is a greater over-arching plot - or at the very least not every plot point from the last book or this book is resolved. It also doesn’t seem that each book will be standalone. In light of that, it was annoying, and cost the book a star - that our protagonists had backslid a bit. That might be more realistic, vs a linear progression, but with only 2 books out, it seems to waste enough of a chunk of this book getting the characters back to where they were at the end of the last book.

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 dragons equalizing things between the colonies and colonizers (or would-be colonizers). The epilogue seems Mr. Laurence finally come a bit unmoored from society - something that has been about 2.5 books in the making. It presents a very interesting position for the protagonists of our series over the final 3 books in the series. I’m very curious to see where Novik means to take us.

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 good job with the voice of a middle school kid.

Webs (Mary Anne Mohanraj) - Starts off with what seems like a metaphor for being trans and then it adds on a straight story of being trans on top of the metaphor. It’s unfortunately how perennial the issue is that this was written years ago and yet feels fresh now.
The Elephants’ Crematorium (Timothy Mudie) - we’ve seen a few movies/books/etc with a plot in which something ending the cycle of life. This one increases the stakes by considering other animals as well. I found the narrative very emotionally affecting.
Mozart on the Kalahari (Steven Barnes) - I’ve heard expressions similar to the title of this short story. The “moral”, as such, of the story is one we would do well to get more people to think about.

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 finally started to get some movement on that in this book. Additionally, we see the consequences of the actions at the end of the last book. It was very interesting seeing Laurence’s actions and how they are constrained by his culture. I think a modern protagonist would have reacted very, very differently to the situation he finds himself in. In a way, it’s similar to the reason that I enjoy the Imperial Radch books - it’s a sci-fi version of an honor-bound English culture.

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 live in such a rigid society, but I enjoy how the authors play with the difference in how we would respond to the situation vs these protagonists who are bound by their society and not as free as we are to choose their actions.

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 a recontextualization that explains a bit more about the intersection of capitalism and Dr. Moreau’s research. The doctor needs funding for what we would today call genetic engineering as well as for his living expenses since he wants to dedicate himself to his research. Moreno-Garcia places the story in the late 1800s in Mexico when Mayans were rebelling against the indentured servitude ( and in some cases outright slavery ) they had been subject to since The Conquest. So the doctor is able to get money for his hybrid research on the promise that he will provide workers that are even better than humans (for their animal traits) and which do not have any rights whatsoever for being animals. For, while the 1800s does have “science” behind the idea of the white race being superior, there is still some call for ending slavery for non-Whites still being humans (even if lesser humans).

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 journey through America to Italy and back as he explores the types of pizzas. This is not just self-indulgence and it doesn’t just help the reader believe that Reinhart knows what he’s talking about. It also serves to educate us on the origins of pizza and to understand that the pizzas we may have grown up eating are not the only way for pizza to be.

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 about. That is to say, unlike a protagonist from a Doctorow fiction novel, there isn’t any form of civil disobedience offered within the book. Instead, it depends on a bunch of things that will never happen:

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 of Tress is slightly inscrutable if you don’t know The Cosmere, but it mostly work. I’m pretty sure 99% of Yumi works without any knowledge of the Cosmere. This book, on the other hand, is comprehensible without Cosmere knowledge, but a lot of the main character’s thoughts and motivations won’t make any sense.

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. Interestingly, I heard this is just phase 1/3 and Marvel hasn’t even begun phase 2 yet. (COVID and other stuff got in the way, I think)

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.

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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 the style of his Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal comic) and some humor in the explanations of the technologies.

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 exists to us (the readers) to a new world that’s split off into its own timeline where there was a confrontation with supernatural creatures.

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 Butcher do as he says he wants and set more stories in this part of the Dresden timeline.

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 I’ve been talking about overarching plot arcs. This appears to be the penultimate story before the third arch finishes. Afterwards, if Butcher maintains his original plot pace - we’ve got about 3 more books worth of setup leading to a trilogy that is all climax. (Total of 23 books)

Skin Game by Jim Butcher

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Putting aside any feelings you, dear reader, may have about Rick and Morty - I have to say that their episode parodying heists had ruined me any time I come across a heist in any narrative media. That’s right, folks - Harry Dresden is going to be part of a heist!

The plot is mostly a lot of fun. It does continue a few plot threads, including closing one out from the book my wife just finished - I think she’s on book 10). There isn’t too much to say without spoiling the story, but I enjoyed the crew assembly. It was interesting to see their interactions as the plot went on. Butcher is also having fun with the tropes, even having Harry call the item they’re after The MacGuffin.

Cold Days by Jim Butcher

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I won’t know until the next book, but this one seems like the end or Arc 2. We finally learn what was happening with a bunch of loose plot threads. We learn why Rashid has the title he has. Harry and a bunch of his relationships level up to the next level.

Butcher does a good job balancing the overarching book with a more traditional detective plot as Harry has a problem (or 3) to figure out in order to make the right choice at the end. Also, and I’ve been saying this for a few books now - this book REALLY benefits from a reader having read the short stories that take place before this one.

Peter Reinhart’s Whole Grain Breads: New Techniques, Extraordinary Flavor by Peter Reinhart

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Reinhart brings his expertise to the topic of whole grain breads. He’s been a champion of these healthier breads for a while, but here he bring his latest knowledge to bear to create tastier whole wheat and whole grain bread.

I’ve made 2 recipes from this book so far - the whole grain naan and the 100% whole wheat sandwich bread. The naan was great. I had no idea that whole grain naan could taste so good. The whole wheat sandwich bread tasted good, but I made some kind of mistake with the shaping and it ended up with a part in the middle of the bread that would easily rip.

Ghost Story by Jim Butcher

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The ending of this story saved it from being 2 stars in my estimation. I’d been telling lots of people that I viewed books 1-6 or 7 as the first arc of The Dresden Files. By the end of those books you’ve met all the main characters (both protagonist and antagonist). Book 7 or 8 until Changes was clearly the second arc. All the chickens were coming home to roost. Each story seemed to be building up on all the chaos that Harry had sewed throughout Chicago and the Never Never. This book can almost be read as an epilogue to the second arc.

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 meaner than usual.

“Something Borrowed” – from My Big Fat Supernatural Wedding - Fun to see the wedding and how things were able to go awry as a consequence of the fight with the Sindhe.

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 Butcher finally finishes introducing us to the key players in the story.

I half predicted the climactic plot twist, but I couldn’t have predicted where that would lead. I certainly did not predict the end of the book. That said, I wonder if Butcher did it because he’d painted himself into a corner with a previous book and wanted to rid Harry of a certain sword of Damocles hanging above his head.

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 (Violet Allen) - reminds me a lot of the type of story that Charlie Jane Anders would write. Somewhat nonsensical with an irreverent narrator.

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) who “hires” Harry to clear him of murder charges. Doing so brings together plot points from previous books (going as far back as Summer Knight) and gets us to resolve the first climactic part of the story Butcher has been telling over these past 11 novels.

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 it’s like a lot of the previous books (except 9) where we’re just dealing with the consequences of all the prior books. We’ve got the fey, the knights of the cross, Marcone and his inner circle, and a couple others that would be a spoiler to mention.

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 a red herrings and bad conclusions as Harry and friends work to try and figure things out. In typical Dresden fashion, there’s an explosive climax (I won’t say if it’s literal or metaphorical).

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 a lot. Let me illustrate what I was expecting and what I got. What I was expecting is for a book that would follow one or more Star Wars movies and discuss the security issues in each scene (if the scene had any); basically like the Star Wars and Philosophy books that the author mentions in the acknowledgments section. What Shostack does instead is use specific moments in Star Wars to illustrate concepts in a a book that reads like a more entertaining version of the CISSP certification study book. That is to say, it’s not dry, but it’s also WAY more technical than you might expect from the title itself. (Or the trailer for the book)

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 of various scientists (and a Mythbusters host).

View all my reviews

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 in the end.

The series has explored ideas of faith quite a bit, especially when Michael is involved. This one spent a lot of time exploring it. I think Butcher has done a good job in the past, and continues to do a good job here, of finding ways to explain a world in which capital-G God exists and yet isn’t in direct opposition to the vampires and other horror creatures.

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 given to Alan Turing. Turing was responsible for helping break the German code (along with a giant support staff - including lots of female “computers”) and was foundational in computer and information theory. But he was convicted of being gay and forced to endure punishment for that. The story was beautiful, but I found it to be a bit too long.

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 needs to be ready by young adults and parents and anyone else who has to deal with the subject matter either as a victim or a potential helper.

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 meant to be canon. In taking a small chunk and expanding upon it, McGuire can slow things down and give us even more consideration or interiority of the characters.

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 clear that there are more complex rules to the doors and their effects on our world than had even been revealed in previous books.

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

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 case that kicks things off is directly related to the previous book. From that kick-off, things spiral so wildly that I had a bit of trouble remembering just what the case was that set things into motion.

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 an Earth cultural sanctuary.

Waves of influence (DA Xiaolin Spires) - Recently I’ve read a slew of SFF stories dealing with futuristic or fantastical versions of social media. It makes perfect sense given their prevalence and influence on the culture this last decade. This one, written back before the current moment in which it seems Twitter might implode and we might have the next evolution in the space, tackles the facial filter aspect. Any gender can experience dysmorphia from the practice but it seems to have extra urgency in the hands of Spires, who has female pronouns in her bio at the end of the story. I also love the story she has used to explore how this might affect users - quite different from the usual narrative in real life.

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. The ending caught me by surprise, though.

Ncheta (Chisom Umeh) - not too dissimilar from the plots of Small Gods or American Gods, but using African deities. I enjoyed it.

Yumi and the Nightmare Painter by Brandon Sanderson

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

On the Cosmere subreddit there’s always a debate on how the eventual Cosmere films should be made. Some of us think it would work best as an anime. There are certain things like the Mistborn jumping around that might look better with the suspension of disbelief that comes with animation and look silly in live action. But in the past Sanderson has said he’d prefer live action and some folks are VERY opposed to the idea of anime. I mention all of this because as I was reading Yumi and the Nightmare Painter, I found myself thinking this sounds like Cosmere: The Anime. Interestingly enough, Sanderson says at the end of this book that he was partly inspired by the manga Hikari No Go and another one called Your Name.

Apex Magazine Issue 105, February 2018 by Jason Sizemore

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

FICTION
A Witch’s Guide to Escape: A Practical Compendium of Portal Fantasies (Alix Harrow) - The whole reason I got this issue was because of this story, which won some awards. Andrea Johnson writes, in the introduction to an interview with the author, that the story brought her to tears. I didn’t get that far, but it did indeed tug at my heartstrings. It’s not at all what I was expected, but it was still a wonderful story.

Across the Green Grass Fields by Seanan McGuire

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Without giving away the plot or meta-spoilers, I can say that Seanan McGuire has continued to find a way to keep these novellas fresh. All these books have been deconstructions/reconstructions of the Portal Fantasy trope, but I feel this one is the closest to being a commentary on Narnia (without being as direct as The Magicians and Fillory). I’m less familiar with the mythical creatures found here although I at least knew what Kelpies were because of the PBS YouTube show Monstrum.

Lightspeed Magazine, Issue 109, June 2019 by John Joseph Adams

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

SCIENCE FICTION
Between the Dark and the Dark (Deji Bryce Olukotun) - the story starts off with the common trope of generation ships and leaving a ruined Earth. I’ve even come across it a bunch of times during my current SFF magazine binge. But the author introduces some cool new ideas, like the council. The story, therefore, goes in some interesting directions.

Blood Rites by Jim Butcher

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Butcher brings together all the storylines from the previous five books in this larger mystery. It’s a much bigger story than the previous books, but it works very well. I’m glad that Murph and Harry are continuing to develop their relationship. The opening caper is a lot of fun although I’m left wondering if it’s going to lead to any bad consequences for Harry.

Peter Reinhart’s Artisan Breads Every Day by Peter Reinhart

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

In a short time I’ve read 2 Reinhart bread books (and am working on another). It’s interesting to see his bread techniques evolve. Although, he’s careful to say that the techniques in this book aren’t necessarily better than what he developed in the previous books, this one does potentially allow the home baker to do some prep work throughout the week and bake bread on a reasonable schedule. In essence, these are all recipes where you mix the bread and then put it in the fridge for 1-4 days and shape/bake it when you take it out. This means that on baking day you can potentially have your bread cooling after just 2.5ish hours - making it possible to bake and still have a job.

The Frame-Up by Meghan Scott Molin

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I got this book free as a Kindle First Read - or whatever they’re calling it nowadays

This book sits at the intersection of a lot of genres and sub-genres. It’s a mystery, but it’s not told from the point of view of the detective. This causes it to share a bit of DNA with the thriller genre as there are a few times our protagonist finds herself in the middle of something big. It’s also got a giant dose of geek/nerd culture with lots of references. Some will be rather easy for most people to get now that geek/nerd culture is a bit more mainstream. Others are pretty deep cuts. There’s also a bit of a romance novel hidden in here. And a dip into LGBT culture as well. So, it’s a book with a little of something for everyone.

The Everyday Athlete Cookbook: 165 Recipes to Boost Energy, Performance, and Recovery by America’s Test Kitchen

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

ATK teams up with a dietitian and nutritionist to create a series of recipes for “athletes”, defined in the book as people who do vigorous exercise at least 3 times a week. So far I’ve made the rice crispy protein bars and I love the taste. I usually have one before heading to the gym/pool.

The Fifth Elephant by Terry Pratchett

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This is my second time reading this book. Keeping the score of 3/5 stars

Another mystery staring Samuel Vimes. This time he’s been sent by Vetinari to Uberwald as Ambassador. Vetinari purposely chose him because he thinks like a cop and isn’t the usual royalty that gets sent to these things. This turns out to be a good thing because the Dwarves, Vampires, and Wolves are each trying to gain advantage over the other.

Lightspeed Magazine, Issue 108, May 2019 by John Joseph Adams

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

SCIENCE FICTION
Cocoons (Nancy Kress) - This story could very easily have gone to a horror place. But instead it ends up being about the complexity of humanity, the perils of colonizing a new world, and hope.

This Way to Paradise (Rati Mehrotra) - After a rapture-style event, things go nuts in India. We follow a family in the aftermath. A couple great twists to the story.

I’ll be getting caught up on book reviews, so through the end of the year you’ll see at least one book review per day. I’ll still be occasionally writing my usual blog posts, but the most consistent content will be book reviews.

Lightspeed Magazine, Issue 107, April 2019 by John Joseph Adams

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

SCIENCE FICTION
The Archronology of Love (Caroline M. Yoachim) - This short story involves an interesting idea where an alien race has created a VR history, but to make an analogy with archeology, when you view part of the history, you mess up that record and if you move around you mess even more up. (Similar to how digging up an archeology site disturbs the very record being observed) The story isn’t just a neat gimmick - it also has a nice little love story that goes along with it.

Come Tumbling Down by Seanan McGuire

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This book has a more straight-forward narrative style rather than the more poetic one of the last few stories. Chronologically, it takes place after the events of Beneath the Sugar Sky. Books 4 and 4.5 are prequel novellas.

In addition to completing (maybe?) the story of the Wolcott sisters, McGuire continues to explore the themes they’ve been laying down throughout the series. What does it mean to ask children to “be sure”? How much trauma can children (and teens) take? And other topics like body dysphoria - taken to an extreme here with the main plot point.

Juice Like Wounds by Seanan McGuire

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is a short story that was posted to Tor.com that fills in a key story that was briefly mentioned in In an Absent Dream. Even though it was a key plot point in that book, it makes a lot of sense to be separated out from the novella. It would have changed the pacing as well as lessened the emotions from the novella.

Lightspeed Magazine, Issue 106, March 2019 by John Joseph Adams

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

SCIENCE FICTION

The Synapse Will Free Us from Ourselves (Violet Allen) - a story that seems (however horrifying) even more likely now than it did when this issue was first printed. I don’t want to give anything away so I’ll say it would make a great episode of Black Mirror or The Twilight Zone.

On the Shores of Ligeia (Carolyn Ives Gilman) - a nice breath of fresh air in that this story is mostly a story of how and discovery without any dystopian elements.

In an Absent Dream by Seanan McGuire

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Another prequel entry in the Wayward Children series. I read this almost entirely in one sitting because I was transfixed. I love logic fantasy worlds and I loved the idea of this one where the world enforces a sense of balance and fairness. As with many of the novellas in this series, it has a lot of tragic twists and turns for the portal worlds are not forgiving places. (A solid deconstruction of the idea as also explored the Magicians trilogy)

Beneath the Sugar Sky by Seanan McGuire

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This book continues the story from book 1, not book 2. (Which makes sense since Down Among the Sticks and Bones was a prequel) We’re introduced to some new characters and get a little more background on some of the others.

I found it to be a very interesting plot considering the world that McGuire has set up. In a way, because of the existence of nonsense, it feels like McGuire actually needs stricter rules (in her world bible) to keep from either painting themself into a corner or ending up with a cheap-feeling deus ex machine.

Down Among the Sticks and Bones by Seanan McGuire

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This book serves as a prequel to Every Heart a Doorway but should definitely be read after that book in order not to spoil any plot points. The book elicits an incredible amount of emotion and I believe this is due, at least in part, to the fact that the narrative style is that of a children’s book or middle grade book - like the first Harry Potter book or the Chronicles of Narnia. This narrative style is juxtaposed with YA-level content and I think it produces the effect taking us back to those books we read (or had read to us) when we were young while containing the harsher, more cynical tone that we are ready for as adults.

The Burning God by R.F. Kuang

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

R.F. Kuang brought this story to a conclusion in exactly the right way, given the story they were telling. This final entry didn’t begin as depressingly as part 2 (thank goodness!), but Kuang writes realistic fantastical fiction. Both this trilogy and Babel: An Arcane History contain realistic consequences for the actions of their protagonists. Somewhat analogous to the original Mistborn trilogy, it’s not just “kill the evil emeperor and everything is hunky-dory”. There are consequences to civil war.

Lightspeed Magazine, Issue 105, February 2019 by John Joseph Adams

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Here are my reviews per story:

SCIENCE FICTION
Life Sentence (Matthew Baker) - This story’s a real doozy. It’s about a potentially different way to handle criminal punishment. Because this is a well-written story, it’s not simple to decide which system is more cruel - the one in the story or the one in which we currently live. They’re both evil in their own ways. Definitely a powerful story that I recommend to anyone, especially if interested in criminal justice reform and/or abolishment. Also has the added layer (if I’m not misreading the story) of the protagonist being of First Nations descent, which makes it even worse, given the historical injustices.

Lightspeed Magazine, Issue 104, January 2019 by John Joseph Adams

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I think the only story here that didn’t really click with me was “With Teeth Unmake the Sun”. It was beautiful and I appreciated that, but it wasn’t my fave. “Midway” hit me very hard at this age. Endor House is definitely my favorite story in this issue.

Here are the reviews per story:

Science Fiction
With Teeth Unmake the Sun (A. Merc Rustad): This story definitely has beautiful prose, but it also made it very hard to understand what was going on at first. Not my favorite kind of short story when metaphors are real and it’s hard to get a grip on what’s actually happening. Still, a neat set of concepts.

The Frugal Wizard’s Handbook for Surviving Medieval England by Brandon Sanderson

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I was part of the kickstarter that funded this book

I did not immediately jump into this book (Sanderson’s Secret Project #2) because it was not a Cosmere book. (The Cosmere being the equivalent of the MCU for almost all Sanderson’s fantasy books) Once I finally got to it, I was a little hesitant at first. The tone was somewhat like an adult version of Sanderson’s Alcatraz series (a middle grade series). Although, seemingly like Sanderson, I’m a fan of dad jokes - this could get a bit tiring over the course of a novel.

Fantasy Magazine, Issue #89, March 2023 by Arley Sorg

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Relatively quick read this month. Here are the reviews per story:

Enchanted Mirrors Are Making a Comeback. That’s Not Necessarily a Good Thing. (Mari Ness): I recognized the author’s name, but I couldn’t remember where I recognized it from. Then it hit me, Ness is the author of a series of Tor.com articles that I love in which they compared Disney movies to the original fairy tales and also wrote about production issues and other background information about those movies. So of course Ness would write a short story with this subject. I think it’s done with the appropriate amount of wit and humor to keep it from sliding into eye roll territory. I hope to see more short fiction from Ness in the future.

The Dragon Republic by R.F. Kuang

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This book started off in a very hard to read place because the author had to deal with the aftermath of the first book. It made everything Rin goes through feel earned. Nothing comes too easily. But it did mean that it was a while before I reached a point where I couldn’t stop reading.

It works very well as the second book in a trilogy. There are lots of twists and turns that mirror the chaos of war. Rin struggles with many internal questions - who to trust, are soldiers responsible for their actions in war, who are your friends, and more. But there’s also lots of well-written action.

Uncanny Magazine Issue 26: January/February 2019 by Lynne M. Thomas

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This issue started off unevenly for me, but I ended up liking most of the stories and non-fiction essays.

A Catalog of Storms (Fran Wilde): A fantasy world in which weather becomes sentient. I failed to gel with the premise or consequences of the world. I think maybe part of it was me being unable to figure out at first if it was supposed to be a SF or fantasy world and whether what was happening was metaphorical or physical.

Carpe Jugulum by Terry Pratchett

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This is my second time reading the book. Dropped the rating from 5/5 stars to 3/5 stars.

On this second time reading through the Discworld books, I’ve come to realize that I really prefer the Witch books to the Rincewind/Wizard books. Usually (or at least up to this point), the Witch books have been parodies or retellings of Shakespeare or Fairy Tale stories. This one is used by Pratchett to formally introduce Uberwald. It will play a larger and larger role in future Discworld books (including City Watch books). Uberwald is where horror creatures like vampires and werewolves come from. It also includes Igors (although within this book we only know of one family line of Igors).

Nightmare Magazine, Issue 126, March 2023 by Wendy N. Wagner

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A great selection of stories this month! Here are my reviews per story:

The Dizzy Room (Kristina Ten): While I didn’t have the ESL issues the main character has, I definitely got my first computer around the same time. I remember playing all these edutainment games like Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing, Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego, and (of course) Oregon Trail while my brothers played Reading Rabbit. I really enjoyed the twist - since it was in a horror magazine, I knew it was coming, but it was great seeing it gradually emerge.

Lightspeed Magazine, Issue 103, December 2018 by John Joseph Adams

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This was an awesome issue of Lightspeed magazine where I really enjoyed every story. I was especially happy to find out that I started out my Lightspeed magazine subscription with this issue because for the next 5 issues they had stories by Ashok K Banker that all take place in the same universe and I loved the story in this issue. Here are my reviews per story:

Legends & Lattes by Travis Baldree

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I read this book along with the Sword and Laser group on Goodreads as the April 2023 book pick. I’m glad this ended up being the pick. That said, this is probably going to be a very divisive book. It’s a book in which, to some degree, “nothing” happens. Our main character is an Orc member of a fantasy adventuring party (think RPGs or Lord of the Rings). She wants to retire to start a coffee shop in a fantasy world where coffee is new (and unknown in the city she chooses).

When the Tiger Came Down the Mountain by Nghi Vo

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I got this book for free from the Tor.com ebook club

Once again Vo creates a novella from The Singing Hills Cycle that I had so much trouble putting down. Vo expands the world a little more as Chih ends up in the north this time, traveling with the mammoth corps.

Vo finds another way for Chih to end up in story telling and recording mode without feeling repetitive with the first book. This time the names are mostly (from what I can tell) Vietnamese so I wonder if this is a retelling/remix of a Vietnamese legend. What I loved was mixing this with a (view spoiler)[Thousand and One Nights (hide spoiler)] situation to create a greater sense of tension.

The Story Behind: The Extraordinary History Behind Ordinary Objects by Emily Prokop

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I’ve always liked books, articles, and podcasts about little trivia like this. There are so many objects in our world and they each have a history! We often gloss over those things that have existed since we were born. For me that includes all the items on the cover (like the traffic lights and the slinky). What separates this book from others in the same genre is that the author isn’t afraid to say when the true story is unknown or when there are multiple claims to the creation of a particular object.

Super Power, Spoony Bards, and Silverware: The Super Nintendo Entertainment System by Dominic Arsenault

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This book is written at the level of a college paper with lots of footnotes, citations, etc. There are even some sections of chapters that get into some heavy terminology that didn’t really mean anything to me. But overall, I found the book to be written in a very approachable way.

What was incredibly fascinating to me was that, given my age, I lived through the NES -> SNES transition. I remember all the commercials and the rivalry with Sega. I remember wondering why some arcade games were way better on the Sega Genesis. I remember being incredibly impressed with late-era SNES games like Super Mario RPG and Donkey Kong Country. And I remember strange translations, but not knowing why they were so strange.

Nightmare Magazine, Issue 125 by Wendy N. Wagner

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Another issue of Nightmare Magazine I bought to read and discuss with the wife. I bought it thinking she’d prefer Who The Final Girl Becomes (having only read the synopsis), but our favorite ended up being Home.

Who the final girl becomes - an interesting examination of the trauma of being a sole survivor. Obviously, horror stories wouldn’t be the same if we always examples the aftereffects, but it can be illuminating to explore it occasionally. As they state in the author interview, the story becomes (at least partially) a critique of the true crime genre. The trans aspect of the story is interesting. At first I thought maybe it was giving the wrong message that there was a transition that took place in the face of trauma. But the author also presented a more traditional transition, so perhaps it’s even better because it presents how complicated real life is.

Spelunky by Derek Yu

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I have enjoyed many of the books in the Boss Fight Books series. They’re each unique in their own way, but this is the only one (that I know of) written by the creator of the game. It was fascinating to read Yu’s thought process as he chipped away at various ideas and finally ended up at Spelunky.

Yu mentions in the final chapter that his game came about at the right time for an indie resurgence, but it’s especially interesting reading this book at the same time as Super Power, Spoony Bards, and Silverware: The Super Nintendo Entertainment System, a history of the SNES. That is a period where, on consoles, it was more or less impossible to be a bedroom developer because of the way Nintendo controlled the market. So this book also functions as somewhat of a history of the early days of the indie video game market.

Rupert Wong, Cannibal Chef by Cassandra Khaw

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I bought this book as part of a story bundle collection.

I haven’t read any of the other books in the “Gods and Monsters” universe, but (as one of the ads at the back of the book says) it’s somewhat similar to American Gods. The gods of various religions and traditions are real and interact with humanity. This book (more like novella) takes place in Malaysia where Rupert Wong cooks humans for some gods or demi-gods. Interestingly, this story has almost nothing to do with that.

By the end of 2022 I had 2793 digital books and magazines (a change of 264). Around twenty-four of those came from free books I get monthly from Tor.com and Amazon Prime. This year I’m also going to start the amount of audiobooks I have: 144. In 2022 I started up my libro.fm subscription and listened to quite a few great audiobooks.

Although this year I read some cookbooks and comics, I read far fewer of each of those than in other years. The biggest surprise was the discovery of the trilogy starting with Gideon The Ninth. The world is so incredibly vast and the narrative voice was so much fun. I heartily recommend it to all. The Becky Chambers stories starting with the book A Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet was the nice, cozy story that I needed as the real world continued to get crazier and crazier.

Continue? The Boss Fight Books Anthology by Gabe Durham

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This whole collection of essays makes me think a lot about the semi-gonzo video game reviews that Tim Rogers is known for. The shorter format allows the authors to be much more creative than they can be in the full-size Boss Fight Books. It’s a very fun read overall. Here are my thoughts per entry:

Ken Sent Me - A fun piece about playing Leisure Suit Larry back in the 1990s and more recently. I was also a big fan of the Sierra games of the period, although I never played LSL. The essay is written with just the right amount of humor for talking about an early Sierra game.

Witches Be Crazy: A Tale That Happened Once Upon a Time in the Middle of Nowhere by Logan J. Hunder

My rating: 1 of 5 stars

Ever since I put this book on my shelf “digital-on-deck” - most likely somewhere around 2019 - I’d been looking forward to reading it. The title seemed interesting and the description on Goodreads seemed fun. (I got this book as part of a Humble Bundle) It seemed as though it might fall into either a Terry Pratchett-like parody of fantasy or maybe a fractured fairy tale. At first it seemed to go alright - it had some dad-joke level puns, and I like those. (eg a town called Farrawee) Or a Who’s-on-First style joke with someone named Herrow.

The City We Became by N.K. Jemisin

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A love letter to New York meets Lovecraftian Horror and you get this book.

I believe this is probably one of those love or hate books with very little room in between. As someone who married into a NYC family, I was able to nod along with a lot of the narration in the book. I could see some of it going over the heads of people less familiar.

Nettle & Bone by T. Kingfisher

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Well, that was incredible and deserving of all the praise it got. I was already a fan of T. Kingfisher from when my eldest daughter convinced me to read A Wizard’s Guide to Defensive Baking, but this was just so perfect to me.

It’s essentially a fairy tale, but told for adults. Not in the way that Shrek or other fractured fairy tales make everything into sexual innuendo and fart jokes and so on. Just a fairy tale that can go a little darker, maybe speak about material that would be a bit much for the average child. Even mundane things like the politics of kingdoms and how that affects the choices we have. In that way it reminded me a lot of Tress of the Emerald Sea, which I just read last month. Except Tress has a more whimsical nature to it and is being narrated by a narrator that is in conversation with the reader. So more about the tone than the style as Tress is also told as a fairy tale for adults. One other commonality is that Tress is Princess Bride if Princess Buttercup had more agency. This book is a typical fairy tale if one of the princesses had more agency. This book also has more horror elements to it. The market scene also gave me strong vibes of the spa in Miyazaki’s Spirited Away. In fact, the book seemed to have a somewhat similar tone to his manga and anime in that it’s mostly naturalistic, but with magical/supernatural elements sprinkled throughout.

The Last Continent by Terry Pratchett

My rating: 1 of 5 stars

This is my second time reading. I dropped the rating from 2 to 1 star

The first time I read this book, I thought, “I’m done with Rincewind stories”. And this second time around cemented that. The book is essentially Pratchett riffing on every Australian stereotype, Mad Max parodies, and what I think (having learned about it recently, but not having seen it) a parody of The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert.

The Valancourt Book of Victorian Christmas Ghost Stories by Tara Moore

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Thoughts as I first read through this collection:
Boy, modern English is so dumbed down. I love to read and read voraciously and still found it so laborious to read some of these short stories. Everyone speaks in purple prose and it takes a bit to figure out what each sentence is saying. (And that’s before even considering the words that have morphed since then)

Tress of the Emerald Sea by Brandon Sanderson

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

As a Kickstarter backer on this campaign, I was able to read this book immediately on the first day of the year and I bet it will be tough to find another book that I will love more this year. As the back of the book (and Goodreads description) says, this book is basically “What if Brandon Sanderson wrote The Princess Bride?” It even has a Vizini battle of wits moment and an eel moment! I do not know if the regular commercial versions of the books will have the amazing art in the kickstarter versions, but definitely find a way to see the illustrations - they are beautiful!

Dead Man’s Hand by James J. Butcher

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This first book by Jim Butcher’s son has prose that reads like a combination of his father’s prose and John Scalzi’s prose. It’s fun and sarcastic, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t serious stakes. I was actually quite happy that Butcher tends towards realism. For example, in a scene where a character normally would have rallied to a heroic speech, the character acts according to what we know of their personality.

A Very Scalzi Christmas by John Scalzi

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A great collection of Scalzi short stories and flash fiction about Christmas. If you like his sense of humor, you’ll enjoy the book. Depending on your reading speed, probably a little over an hour to complete.

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Babel, Or the Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators’ Revolution by R.F. Kuang

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

It will be very interesting to compare this book to Seize the Stars when I get to it next year. Both involve the seeming impossibility of pushing for justice against a society and economy that is dependent upon injustice. Whereas this book is relatively realistic, Ms Fan’s book is YA and may turn out to be more hopeful than realistic.

Shakespeare’s Sonnets: Abridged Beyond the Point of Usefulness by Zach Weinersmith

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I was more of a fan of the abridged Bible, but that’s probably because I have more familiarity with the Bible than Shakespeare. Still, it’s interesting to see how old negging is.

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Flour Water Salt Yeast: The Fundamentals of Artisan Bread and Pizza by Ken Forkish

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I’m not an incredible baker, I’m an average baker. When I bake breads - my family is often happy with the taste, but my wife always says - “All that work and we could have bought bread that’s just as good from Wegmans.” So, not show-stopping or anything. And, out of all my hobbies, I practice it the least often because of the time commitments. (Gotta be home to start the bread, proof the bread, bake the bread)

The Blackcollar by Timothy Zahn

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I’ll start off with a reminder that I use the tooltips for Goodreads ratings and 2 stars is “it was ok”. It may possibly have hurt that this was my first Zahn novel and I’ve heard so much about him because of the Thrawn Star Wars novels. But I think it’s really more that the novel reads like it was written in the 1980s (which it was). It’s full of that “karate stuff is cool " feeling from the 80s that culminated in films like The Karate Kid. I tend to do alright with Golden Age SF because I like the philosophical aspect behind most of the characters’ dialogue. But the 1980s seems to just fall into an uncanny valley - it’s almost like the modern SF I read, but just full of enough older tropes to feel a bit clunky. This story also seemed to revolve a bit too much on the one character in the know always having a bunch of gambits going on at once and refusing to reveal anything to the main character. So sometimes the wins felt a bit cheap. I also think the idea of training super karate soldiers to fight aliens just doesn’t make sense in the context of an interspecies war.

Nightmare magazine 122: November 2022 by John Joseph Adams

My rating: 1 of 5 stars

I really was not feeling it with this issue. The editor mentions that these are all stories in Weird Horror. I’m not a big fan of Weird Science Fiction either, so I’m not surprised these stories all bounced off of me.

Devil Take Me - The main character is a kid in an abusive household. Things got a little too metaphorical and weird and I couldn’t really understand the source of the horror or what was going on.

The Lost Metal by Brandon Sanderson

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Well, Sanderson has completed Era 2 of the Mistborn series. Originally intended to just be a bridge novella, Sanderson expanded it to 4 books. (Not surprising since he wrote 4 books during COVID out of boredom)

If you’ve been reading the books from Mistborn Era 2, you know that Sanderson has used it to bring the series more into the cosmic war between gods that appears to be the full Cosmere story. Previous entries were mostly confined to easter eggs and the mention of a rival god known as Trell. This book takes things up to 11 and, if you haven’t read other parts of the Cosmere before this, you will be partly lost and partly truly missing out on the consequences of what’s going on as part of the mystery Wax and friends are solving.

The Sacred Land by H.N. Turteltaub

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Once again we join Menedemos and Sostratos as they sail around the Med. This time they head to Phoenicia and Israel. I was very curious what a pre-Hellenized Isreal would be like and what our Sostratos would think about the Isrealites. As usual it was a fun journey through history with our usual cast of characters. By this point in the series you should know whether or not you enjoy this writing which is centered on philosophical debates, traders haggling, and Hellenic partying and sexual escapades. It’s more of the same which is exactly what I wanted.

Money: The True Story of a Made-Up Thing by Jacob Goldstein

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I know a lot about money and its history and I still learned a bunch in this book. Jacob Goldstein, who also narrates, uses his podcast-acquired skills to make the stories he uses to illustrate the history of money very accessible. It felt like I was listening to a podcast series with a bunch of episodes (each chapter) that were fascinating and illuminated a lot about the history of money. I strongly recommend it to anyone who wants to understand money and what’s been happening in the world economy over the last few decades.

97 Things Every Programmer Should Know: Collective Wisdom from the Experts by Kevlin Henney

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I think this book is best read by someone who’s been in the software field for a few years - it provides the perspective to truly understand what the Experts are communicating. I think a recent CS grad could certainly understand the words and concepts, but would be lacking the perspective of working in the real world with real life-cycle requirements and customer requirements and time crunches.

Chokepoint Capitalism: How Big Tech and Big Content Captured Creative Labor Markets and How We’ll Win Them Back by Rebecca Giblin

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Rebecca Giblin and Corey Doctorow have written an incredibly important book for everyone to read, whether you’re a producer or consumer of cultural products (books, movies, music, etc). They do a great job of explaining how, over a bunch of industries, a handful of companies have made themselves into both monopolies and monopsonies. This allows them to screw over both the producers and the consumers by being the sole buyer and seller. Also shows how certain things like Spotify playlists are actually pretty insidious. (Spoiler: it’s because they train you not to care about the artist so that if the artist threatens to take their music off, no one will care)

The Memory Librarian: And Other Stories of Dirty Computer by Janelle Monáe

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This was a very interesting collection of short stories. They are companion piece to the dystopia described in Janelle Monáe’s concept album Dirty Computer. That said, these stories are mostly full of hope. They also depict a world in which there is more room for LGBT+ members and with intersectionality. That is to say, yes, the LGBT+ individuals are hated within the dystopia of New Dawn, but within the various communities explored in the short stories, everyone who’s against New Dawn is OK with the LGBT+. This is a world where no one blinks at pronoun preferences or various types of couples. (Except in one story where the weakness of not accepting it is kind of the point of the story) Most of the morals and lessons of the stories are pretty obvious (at least to me), but I feel like Monáe and her collaborators do a good job of not distracting from the quality of the stories.

One of Us Is Dead by Jeneva Rose

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The wife wanted something we could listen to while doing a bunch of driving last weekend. I don’t remember how we found this particular book, but she said it sounded fun. And she was right!

The book centers around a bunch of alcoholic women who are married to rich men. (Although some of them are also entrepreneurs in their own right as well as being married to rich men) They tend to often meet up at an exclusive hair salon and the proprietor of the salon is another protagonist. Each chapter is told from the POV of one of the women and is narrated by a different voice actor. This provides a bit of meta-fun as we get to hear how each voice actor narrates the others characters who are speaking in their chapters. I may have been imagining things, but I felt that they put different inflections into the other characters’ voices depending on their relationships to one another.

Jingo by Terry Pratchett

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

This is my second time reading this book. Rating dropped from 4/5 to 2/5 stars

For a City Watch novel, this one is a bit of a weak procedural. Pratchett somewhat goes back to meandering storytelling as we go back and forth between Vimes’ storyline and the storyline with Vetinari, Nobby, Colon, and Discworld’s version of Leonardo DaVinci. Vimes’ story isn’t presented as a straightforward mystery anyway. It’s mostly about how war makes people dumb as they get swept up in nationalism. There’s a slight mystery tugging at Vimes’ mind, but it’s not really central to anything. It just shows (near the end) that he was clever for not buying the simple explanations to things.

Stay Crazy by Erica L. Satifka

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This book definitely sticks to its title. Our protagonist is suffering from a few mental ailments and they play into the story in all sorts of ways. Sometimes it leaves us with an unreliable narrator. Other times it appears to give the narrator the ability to have a greater understanding of the world around her compared to the “normal” folks around her.

The Cage of Zeus by Sayuri Ueda

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This book is 1 of 2 books I was reading at the same time heavily using Science Fiction as a metaphor for modern issues. (The other is The Memory Librarian: And Other Stories of Dirty Computer)

The Cage of Zeus is written in the style of a Golden Age SF novel. That is to say, the characters spend many pages debating the philosophical issues of the novel. So if you like those old novels (think Asimov or Arthur C Clark), you’ll probably like this one.

Trafalgar and Boone in the Drowned Necropolis by Geonn Cannon

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This book continues on from the last one, but the author does a good job of catching readers up. If you like a Victorian era archaeological adventure story, you can do much worse than this. It works well and the story is enjoyable.

Warning: not for small children, contains explicit sex.

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Nona the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Well, that was certainly something.

Tamsyn Muir seems to have created, with this series, a true experiment in making a genre book more about the journey than the destination. This is the second book in which almost nothing happens for most of the book. In fact, this is moreso the case in this book. It is not hard to see how this was originally just meant to be a small chunk of what is now book 4, Alecto the Ninth. In reality, the action in this book could have been just a few chapters of Alecto. And yet, this didn’t lead to a lower rating from me, because, by dedicating a whole book to this story, Muir earns the emotional payoffs with the characters.

Beauty: A Retelling of the Story of Beauty and the Beast by Robin McKinley

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

My utter enjoyment of this book is inexplicable to me. The subtitle says that it’s a retelling of Beauty and the Beast, but McKinley doesn’t change too much from the original tale. Mostly she makes Beauty’s sister’s not be caricatures of vanity.

Yet there’s something about the way that McKinley wrote the story that just had me entranced the whole time. I couldn’t get enough of it and tore through it in record time (allowing for the fact that I was just reading it in snatches throughout the week).

Calamity by Brandon Sanderson

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This is a perfect conclusion to the trilogy. Sanderson does a good job extending out everyone’s character growth and the natural progression of the story.

I don’t remember if, while reading the earlier books in the trilogy, I made the leap of Calamity as a metaphor for Satan. Satan is often referred to as Morning Star and Calamity has been shining up in space this whole time. This book makes the metaphor more explicit as Sanderson has Calamity explain that he has pushed the epics to greater paranoia in the hopes that it would exacerbate their cruelty.

Nightmare Magazine, issue 120 by John Joseph Adams

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Once again I bought an issue of Nightmare Magazine to share the stories with my wife. The descriptions on the site seemed interesting and, indeed, they were. The description that got me to buy it was for the short story Concerning the Upstairs Bathroom. That one turned out to be my favorite. Overall, a good issue and you can’t go wrong for only $3.

Let’s Talk About Hard Things by Anna Sale

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A well-written and well-narrated book that’s just on this side of a self-help book. There is some advice, but it’s really mostly a series of vignettes that illustrate some points the author wants to make as well as showing that there are sometimes counter-examples. It made me think about a lot of assumptions I’ve been carrying around regarding the various topic areas. I’d recommend it to just about anyone.

Nightmare Magazine 49: October 2016. People of Colo(u)r Destroy Horror! Special Issue by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I got this to read together with my wife who lives horror I ended up really enjoying most of the stories.

Wish you were here - the history of a revolution and civil war overlaid on a ghost story with a set of entitled tourists. First story out of the gate meets The editor’s mission perfectly.

The Man Who Could Be King: A Novel by John Ripin Miller

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I got this book for free as part of the Kindle First Reads program

I like to geek out on many things and one of those is history. Thanks to books like 1776 I already knew that it was only through a series of coincidences and good luck paired with General Washington’s leadership that we won against the British. But I had no idea just how many mutinies there were or even that there was a week (the subject of this book) where things could have gone in a very different direction.

Hogfather by Terry Pratchett

My rating: 1 of 5 stars

This is my second time reading this book. Rating went from 2 stars to 1 star.

I didn’t like this book all that much when I first read it and I liked it even less this time around. I don’t like The Auditors as Death’s antagonist. Susan as a Discworld Mary Poppins is a joke that isn’t quite enough to carry a whole book. Death once again not doing death stuff….meh. And the Wizard b-plot seems to mostly exist to keep the story from just being novella length.

Annihilation Aria by Michael R. Underwood

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I don’t know if it’s from reading this book right after Becky Chambers Wayfarers series, but this book did not pull me in the way the other series did. It was fine, but I just finished it more out of obligation to finish than because I wanted to know what came next.

I think the best thing the book had going for it is that the antagonist was a 3D, fleshed out character rather than an out-and-out villain. He had rational motives that had more to do with the culture he was born into and political ambition than with mustache-twirling evil. The fact that he was part of a faction advocating more peace and financial gain than war also kept his species from being from a Planet of Hats.

The Breaking Light by Heather Hansen

My rating: 1 of 5 stars

I got this book as part of Amazon’s Kindle First Reads where Prime members get a free ebook from a selection of ebooks each month

I didn’t like this book for 2 reasons:

1. It’s derivative in all the ways that don’t work for me. It’s got a Fritz Lang Metropolis setup that I’ve seen done a million times before from books like Red Rising to a half dozen anime. It tries to draw lots of parallels to Romeo and Juliet, but in that play, the families are equals. Here our Juliet is a poor girl in a gang and our Romeo is a rich boy who is trying to fight the city’s corruption. It IS a YA book. Maybe it works better for young folk who don’t know where the book cribs from.

The Boys, Volume 3: Good For The Soul by Garth Ennis

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Things are a little less profane and a little more of the story gets revealed. Maybe Ennis felt he had to be edgy in the first 2 volumes just to shock an audience into interest? That said, there’s still plenty juvenile gross out humor (Little Hughie’s face after a certain event) and the continued use of homophobic language to an extreme amount I haven’t heard since the middle school playground.

The Boys, Volume 2: Get Some by Garth Ennis

My rating: 1 of 5 stars

This continues the feeling that Ennis is simply trying to be as profane as possible just because. The first story revolves around a super hero (kind of like a Batman crossed with Iron Man) who suddenly is unable to keep from having sex with anything living around him. The second story is actually a good, fun mystery but Ennis has a main plot point revolve around the main antagonist constantly having to use a vibrator.

Jumanji by Chris Van Allsburg

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Interestingly enough, I heard an audiobook of this picture book. It was on sale recently at libro.fm and I was curious about how a picture book became one of the first live action/adventure movies I saw as a kid. This book basically reads as a less whimsical, less rhyme-y version of The Cat in the Hat. The kids are left alone (oh, the freedom of kids in kid-lit) and they find Jumanji at the park. The parents leave them with the admonition of “not one thing out of place” because they’re coming back with more adults for an adult party. The game has the same effects in the book as it has in the movie.

Phenomenons: Every Human Creature by Michael Jan Friedman

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

What if you took Wild Cards and started off from a more modern place than the 1980s. What would you have? Well, for one thing, less gay slurs and stereotypes. For another, starting with a less sleazy, more modern NYC. I Kickstarted (at the level to get a Tuckerization) because I was a big fan of Mary Fan’s writing. As I mention below, during the Red Sky in Mourning review, my only real criticism of this shared world anthology is that the stories seem too short. Maybe it’s something about the way these authors write compared to the Wild Cards authors, but I feel like I’m just getting into the grooves of the stories in this anthology before they’re over. They’re currently working on a second anthology and I’m hoping things can expand a bit the second time out. I also think it would be neat to have them maybe have tighter intertwined stories like Wilds Cards 2 and 3. Or maybe a full-length story like later Wild Cards volumes. If you’re a fan of superhero comics, but wouldn’t mind experiencing it as prose, this is a good anthology for you.

The Galaxy, and the Ground Within by Becky Chambers

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

We have reached the end of the Wayfarers series. As has been the case throughout the series, this is less about a specific plot than it is about getting to spend time with the characters that inhabit Chambers’ Wayfarers universe. As soon as I heard the prologue (for I was listening to the audiobook version) I had a strong suspicion this was going to be a Closed Circle plot. This suspicion was strengthened when it was revealed that we’d have a bunch of different aliens that, if it WAS a Closed Circle plot, would be stuck depending on each other and having to work past each others’ differences.

Set My Heart to Five by Simon Stephenson

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is my favorite book of 2022 so far. I don’t remember what it was about the write-up on the Big Idea section of Scalzi’s blog that caused me to add this book to my TBR pile, but I’m glad I did.

As the description of the book says, our main character is a bot who suddenly finds himself experiencing emotions. What made the book an almost non-stop read for me was the voice in which the story is told. It’s as if Jared is telling us, conversationally, the story of what happened to him. To imagine the tone of this narration, imagine if Data from Star Trek: The Next Generation and the alien from Resident Alien were combined and then wrote their descriptions of humanity and all the weird things we do as we navigate the world. One example:

Record of a Spaceborn Few by Becky Chambers

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Chambers continues to make each book in this “series” a standalone that’s tangentially related to the other books. The second book continued with a couple characters from the first book, but otherwise did not interact with them at all. This book is related to the others in that one of the protagonists we follow is the sister of the first book’s captain. It doesn’t appear to have any connections to the second book unless I missed it.

All the Paths of Shadow by Frank Tuttle

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I got this book as part of a StoryBundle bundle, so I didn’t specifically buy this book because I wanted to read it. It turned out to be a nice book in a steampunk-lite second world. (Steampunk-lite in that there are dirigibles. And it’s a Victorian setting. But deep into the book you find out that most of the stuff that would traditionally be explained to run on steam are actually running on mundane magic spells)

As Yet Unsent by Tamsyn Muir

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A bit bummed this wasn’t included in the audiobook of Harrow the Ninth. That said, it was easy to find on Tor.com.

As you find out near the last third or so of Harrow the Ninth, some of the survivors of the first book have been busy with a project of their own. This short story is a bit of a bridge that helps us see how they got there. There are still a lot of unanswered questions (perhaps until Nona comes out this Sept), but it does fill in a bit of the info. More interesting to me is the character study aspect of the story.

A Closed and Common Orbit by Becky Chambers

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This book is both a follow-on to the previous one that picks up right where it left off and can be enjoyed as a standalone book. That’s quite a magic trick that Becky Chambers plays there, but it works very well. Essentially, the end of the first book necessitates the characters in this book leaving all the other characters alone and not really interacting with them. It’s also a very different kind of story. While The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet is basically Firefly, with our crew going from planet to planet having vaguely linked adventures, this book all takes place in one place.

The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet by Becky Chambers

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

If, like me, Firefly’s untimely demise has left a hole in your SFF heart ever since you discovered it (it was DVDs for me back when Netflix was about DVDs), then this book is probably perfect for you. The big difference is that the crew of the Wayfarer is not escaping the law, they’re more like contractors for hire. In this case they’ll help create a wormhole for you so that you can get from point a to point b in hours instead of years or millenia. The captain wants to go for big government contracts so he hires Rosemary, our new-to-space character so that the reader has someone that’s learning along with them.

A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K. Le Guin

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Whenever I heard about this series, there are two things I heard about it:

1. “Studio Ghibli really screwed up their adapdation”
2. “Harry Potter is a huge ripoff of this book and I don’t believe that JK Rowling had never heard of it when she wrote Harry Potter.”

I can’t speak to the first one. But the second one is WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY overblown. At least, based off of this first book in the series they are almost nothing alike. I saw MUCH, MUCH greater similarities between Battle Royale and The Hunger Games. For starters, the first Harry Potter book is a children’s book (or at most a Middle Grade book) written in a very British kid’s book sort of plot. And as a whole it’s more of a children’s boarding school genre than fantasy or magic for large portions of various books (except the last one or two). By contrast, UKLG was tasked to write what we would now call a YA book. There is no focus on the school except as a setting for our young protagonist to act like a young man and be pressured by his rival into doing something stupid. We then spend the rest of the book with Ged (our protagonist) as a young man - they may have said his age at one point, but basically 17-19 years old or thereabouts. It has nothing in common with HP other than the fact that the main character attends a wizarding school.

Harrow the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This book was a bit of a tough read as a sequel. In many ways it is completely unlike the first book. The first book is full of exploration and action. Gideon is our way into this world and boy are they a fun lens into the world. This time we find ourselves following Harrow. Harrow isn’t narrating. In fact, if you listen to the audiobook, rather than read the book, the narrator is a dead giveaway thanks to the audiobook narrator’s voice. But we’re following Harrow around. There are many ways in which this could have been interesting given the analytical mind Harrow seems to have in the first book. But, for reasons that it takes 75% of the book to unwind, Harrow’s mind is a bit unwell. (this NPR article articulates what I am trying to get across here https://www.npr.org/2020/08/06/899472… )

Good Nintentions: A 30th Anniversary Tribute to the Nintendo Entertainment System by Jeremy Parish

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This repackaged magazine special was quite the stroll down memory lane. This is the system where I became a gamer. But it’s also the system where I was a very little kid and when games cost something like $100 in 2021-money. So I had very few of these games and rented some of the others. The history behind the Nintendo was fairly well-known to me, having read a few video histories, but the histories behind games and their ports was new to me. The same way that early 80s and 90s anime got strangely butchered in its journey to the US (lookup how what we know as Robotech was put together), some of these games were full of very strange edits. I also knew about Nintendo’s puritanical stretch and how it affected the translation of later SNES RPGs like Final Fantasy and Chrono Trigger, but the way it affected some of the NES-era games ventured into the bizarre.

Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I definitely can see what all the hype was about. This was a book that always left me guessing at what was coming next. Perhaps my usual trope detection failed me, but it seems to at Tamsyn Muir was able to keep things constantly fresh with plot twists that I mostly didn’t see coming. Even the one that they kept telegraphing (relating to one of the necromancers) turned out to be different than what I was expecting. We’re almost left with more questions than answers, but yet I felt like they did a perfect job creating a story filled with satisfying character arcs.

Feet of Clay by Terry Pratchett

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This is my second time reading the book. Reduced rating from 4 stars to 3 stars

We’re back to The Watch and this is the Watch I remember - not just a detective/police procedural, but also a play on office politics/political correctness. This comes from the non-humans now being allowed on the force and female dwarves wanting to take advantage of living in the city to express their femininity. (Until now Pratchett always made a joke that it was hard for dwarves to figure out if the person they wanted to date was the opposite sex)

Cyborg Legacy by Lindsay Buroker

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I got this book as part of a StoryBundle.com bundle - I wouldn’t have otherwise bought book #8.6 out of a series I’ve never read. But the description said it worked as a standalone story. In the intro to the book, the author confirms this. So I jumped in.

This book did not disappoint. It was an incredibly fast read - I think my ereader (Kobo) marked it as 155 pages. But Buroker does a good job of quickly setting up the world and our characters before jumping into the main plot. I don’t know if the main series is like this, but the narrative is a lot more fun than you’d think based on the cover (I know, I know…. don’t just a book by its cover) or the description. There are heavy topics discussed and there’s death and violence. But there’s also a sweet married relationship that involves flirting and innuendoes. There are pilots who make wry comments. The main characters don’t take themselves too seriously except when it makes sense to the plot.

The Sins of Our Fathers by James S.A. Corey

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This novella occurs after the events of the last novel and brings us up to date with the ONE person who we didn’t get a conclusion for in the main series. I remember wondering if James SA Corey had forgotten about this person. But no, they were just saving them off for their own novella. It’s a very fast read and I really like the mixed message of the ending. It also must have been interesting writing this (I assume) as COVID raged around us and showed JSAC how well it could and couldn’t unite us.

The Autumn Republic by Brian McClellan

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

It’s the conclusion to the Powder Mage Trilogy and so things generally move fast once we get past the first few chapters that catch us up to where everyone has ended up since the end of book 2. Each chapter definitely left me wanting to continue reading. For that reason I forbade myself from reading at night because I knew I’d end up reading too late into the night.

Maskerade by Terry Pratchett

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This is my second time reading Maskerade, the rating remains a 3/5 stars

We have another outing with the Lancre Witches. Pratchett moves us from parodies of Shakespeare to a parody of Phantom of the Opera. In true Pratchett fashion, this is not really the point of the narrative. Instead it’s about the silliness of Opera and about Agnes Nitt finding herself. I believe Anges was a bit character in the last Witches story - part of the emo-coven that the older witches found so silly. She’s moved to Anhk-Morpork to be out of Granny Weatherwax’s influence and joins the Opera. Nanny, noticing that witches have to exist in triplets - “the maid, the mother, and the….other one” - contrives to find another witch in Lancre. Unfortunately, there aren’t any maidens to be found in Lancre. And so Granny and Nanny head out to Anhk-Morkpork to provide comic relief while Agnes has her story.

Attack Surface by Cory Doctorow

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I was a Kickstarter backer on this book/audiobook

I think there’s a side novella or short story I haven’t read in the Little Brother series/universe, but as far as I know, this is the first one that isn’t from Marcus Yallow’s perspective. Instead, this one is from Masha Maximov’s point of view. She was mostly an antagonist to him in the previous books, although meant to be a sympathetic one vs her bosses at DHS, or whatever agency she was working at.

Terms of Enlistment by Marko Kloos

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

As I mentioned in one of my updates, this book follows in an esteemed lineage. We have Starship Troopers, written from the perspective of a Korean War vet. It’s the epitome of society to join the military. The Forever War, written by a Vietnam Vet, in which Earth’s best and brightest are wasted on a pointless war. Scalzi’s Old Man’s War series is a reconstruction of the genre - showing some tropes to be silly and others to make sense within the genre. This book, written within the last decade, is about the military as an escape from a crapsack future in which most folks are on the dole and instead of The Projects being some apartment buildings, it’s whole cities. The military is an escape of sorts - a way to live a sort of middle class life. And I think that’s actually not too far from the truth in the modern USA military, although scaled down. That is to say that our current military recruits far more heavily from poorer parts of America for the enlisted folks. And so it can potentially be a way up into the middle class for some people.

Interesting Times by Terry Pratchett

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is my second time reading this book. I didn’t record a prior rating

I remember liking this book the first time I read it. I definitely enjoyed the parodies of the Confucian system and the mistakes at translating from one language to another. But I had forgotten a lot of it, especially the Cohen the Barbarian part.

Upon re-read this is my favorite Rincewind book. I think there’s only one more - the one where he’s on XXXX (Discworld Australia) and I don’t remember liking that one. Of all the Rincewind books this one has the most well-baked plot. It makes me wish Rincewind got more stories like that, although his first stories were also Pratchett getting to know what would eventually become the massive Discworld series. Basically (mild spoiler), Two-Flower has returned to the Agatean Empire (Discworld China with a little Japan thrown in) and written a travelogue. This has led to Rincewind being involved in a plot back in the Empire, so he’s requested. Well, they ask for the Great Wizzard and, eventually, the faculty at Unseen University realize it’s Rincewind. He ends up sent there and eventually gets involved in his main plot (don’t want to spoil it). While there is a bit of Rincewind runs from problem to problem and ends up somewhere, it’s much more focused this time around. We also get to understand the Agatean Empire from his point of view. It’s a nice compromise from the absolute chaos of his first 3 books.

The Empress of Salt and Fortune by Nghi Vo

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I received a free copy of the novella as a voting member of WorldCon 2021

That. Was. Awesome! It’s no wonder that it won the Hugo for best novella. I wasn’t able to get to it in time to vote, but this month it’s the Sword and Laser pick and I’m so glad that it was! Because this story seems short even for a novella (71 pages in my PDF version; not counting the preview for the next entry in the series), it’s a bit hard to convey too much about why I liked it without spoiling the story. Here’s my attempt:

Star Wars: From a Certain Point of View by Elizabeth Schaefer

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This collection had all kinds of stories, from dramas to silly stories. I loved it! Here are my reviews per story:

Raymus (Gary Whitta) - a story from the point of view of the captain side so is boarded at the beginning of A New Hope. The anthology starts off well by giving some pathos to one of the first characters to did in the movie. It gets a little sadder when you find out where he’s from.

Soul Music by Terry Pratchett

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

This is my second time reading the book. Original rating was 4/5 stars

I’m surprised that I had previously rated this book as 4/5 because I don’t remember liking it that much. That was confirmed on this re-read. Yes, the book continues Death’s story from Mort, but so much of the story seems a retread. Once again Death stops being death for a while. This time it’s his granddaughter, Susan, who takes up the mantle. Sure, what she does with it is different than what Mort did, but it’s still repetitive. The rest of the book is mostly an excuse to have a bunch of band names that are plays on words from 1950s-1980s band names.

Leviathan Falls by James S.A. Corey

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

And so The Expanse is over (except for the Epilogue novella still to come). I think this was the perfect conclusion to the series, everything about it was the perfect cap to all that had come before. We even learned why the proto-molecule creator’s enemies were upset with them.

This book had less to say about humanity, technology, politics, etc than the previous books because James S.A. Corey have already said all they wanted to say. This was just the end to the story. The pace of the book seemed to me to be closer to that of the Imperial Radch series for a good chunk of the book. But that allowed JSAC to provide the appropriate levels of empathy with the protagonists for what was to come in the end. I think some of the neatest meditations in this book were explorations of what it would mean to lose individual identity and what it would be like for a civilization that arose from a slower-paced animal - analogizing, for example, to a tortoise society.

In Calibre, I now have 2529 ebooks and e-magazines, 2026 unread. To be fair, I get a free book from Tor.com and Amazon.com every month. This also counts any ebooks I’ve bought for the kids, many of which I will not end up reading. (I also have some number of physical books and audiobooks I do not wish to count)

I started off the year continuing previous trends - reading sequels and programming books. Speaking of sequels, I finally finished The Expanse (well, there’s one more short story or novella coming, but the main series is done)  I added in the Discworld series as a series I can read while waiting for the microwave at work or other places where I usually don’t have my phone with me. I’d intended to read the Tor.com blog posts on the Discworld read-along, but never got around to it in 2021. Then, sometime around the summer, the 2021 WorldCon Hugo nominations voting copies were made available so I scrambled to try and read as many of those as I could before voting time in order to make an informed voting choice. Programming books fel by the wayside. I didn’t really make any kind of significant dent in my cookbooks, either.

Rave Master, Vol. 11 by Hiro Mashima
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Things continue along at a manga’s pace. The characters have a few fights in the same location and we learn more about how various characters and/or their ancestors/mentors are intertwined. I’m curious where Mashima takes things from here, especially given the infamous kiss.

View all my reviews

Rave Master, Vol. 10 by Hiro Mashima
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

At the end of Volume 9 I had no idea where Mashima could take the story. It seemed he had painted himself into a corner, perhaps not knowing if he’d get to go past volume 9. He expands the story by making all the smaller gangs that were held in check by Demon Card now vie for position at the top. Our main characters also have to finish finding the Rave in order to get all the answers to all their questions. It continues to be a silly and weird ride.

Harmony by Project Itoh
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This book is clearly a reaction to Japanese society, but it’s also prescient (given when it was written) about our current situation where no one wants to experience anything that could bother them. It’s incredible that he saw this coming 11 years ago. This is not to say that I’m one of those people who rails against “cancel culture” and so forth. I think it’s a positive thing, in general, that folks who traditionally did not have a voice in the world now can speak out against injustice. But there is definitely a vocal minority who refuses to deal with anything that might unnerve or challenge them. Of course this thin line (which I imagine myself to be on the correct side of) is why I originally considered starting off this review with the sentence “This book is dangerous.” I could definitely see some people taking this book as an example of why everyone should be able to say and do anything; who cares what others think?

Ancillary Mercy by Ann Leckie
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This book was the perfect ending to the Imperial Radch trilogy. It continues in the same vein as the previous two books: deeply introspective within the context of Anander Miaanai’s war with herself. The final chapter (which, of course, would have been an epilogue in any other book) comments on what turns out to be the thesis of the entire trilogy: sometimes you’re just a cog in the machine (no pun intended). You’re not the chosen one. The entire fate of the universe doesn’t hinge on you. In fact, it’s entirely possible that there’s absolutely no effect of the events of the trilogy. (At least in the present timeline) Most likely, of course, is that eventually Anaander decides to eliminate Breq for daring to stand against her, no matter which Anaander we’re talking about. But for now that doesn’t matter.

Aces Abroad by George R.R. Martin
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Up until now, we’ve been very America-centric with the Wild Cards series. In fact, except for the first book, it sometimes seemed as if there were only cases in New York City. With this book, things are expanded out. Sometimes it’s because some of the spores dispersed over other countries (of course, not as strongly as they did in the USA). Other times, it’s because of births or other forms of generational transmission.

Koreatown: A Cookbook by Deuki Hong
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Let me start with the good:
- The photography in this book is beautiful
- The interviews with various celebrities and chefs are great
- The narrative style of the recipe intros work well
- the section on the the Korean pantry is important and well-written

The neutral:
- Even my wife, who has been cooking for our family (and previously, her family) for somewhere around 35 years (mostly off the top of her head without a recipe) found that once you’ve experienced America’s Test Kitchen recipes, everything else is substandard. We tried to make the Pajeon (seafood pancakes) for dinner and there were lots of assumptions that made it come out less than ideal.

Head First Go by Jay McGavren
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I will admit that I just skimmed over the web server part. I barely write web backend stuff in Python, I’m not about to do it in Go any time soon. My main goal with this book was to finally learn Go after having heard about it for 2-3 years now. This book turns out to be a very good resource for that. I have no idea how well it would work for someone who’s never programmed before, but for me it’s my 4th or 5th programming language and for most languages the basics are all the same (just like most languages have nouns, verbs, articles, etc) and it’s all about learning the details. I’ve been able to use what I’ve learned here to solve some problems for Advent of Code (a December programming set of puzzles) although I did have to go out to the official documentation a little to figure out things not covered in this book (like regular expressions).

The Poppy War by R.F. Kuang
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I recieved this book as part of the Hugo 2021 nominations packet

This book was GREAT! I can definitely see why its series was up for a Hugo nom this year. I wasn’t able to get past the first book before it was time for Hugo voting, but I looked forward to reading this book every day. There was never a time where I felt I had to push through the book. It even had such a great start:

Men at Arms by Terry Pratchett
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is my second time reading this book. I left the rating the same

When it comes to the Anhk-Morpork based books, Pratchett lays in the final brick in the foundation for all that will come. The Night Watch is elevated to full Watch. We get more interactions and elaborations on how the Guilds work and how Vetinari pulls all the strings. Carrot grows a little, even as he retains his essential “Carrot-ness”. Pratchett builds on adding in all the fantasy and horror characters that he started back with Reaper Man and introduces Angua, our werewolf watch-person. We also have the return of Gaspode and Detritus from Moving Pictures. Reading all of these in a row and thinking about them critically for these reviews has made me realize that Pratchett has moved towards really making Anhk-Morpork (and greater Discworld) seem like more real, lived-in places as he settled into it as a long series. It feels as alive as Gotham, especially as written by Scott Snyder.

Learn You a Haskell for Great Good! by Miran Lipova?a
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Learn You a Haskell (or LYAH as it’s known on Stack Exchange and other parts of the internet) is the most often recommended resource for learning Haskell. I think it has a lot of things going for it.

1. It’s available on the net for free if you don’t want to (or can’t) buy it
2. It’s got a conversational tone that reminds me of what I love most about the Perl O’Reilly books
3. The author does a good job comparing and contrasting with imperative programming languages (almost all the ones you’ve heard of, if you’re heard of any programming languages).

The Ruin of Kings by Jenn Lyons

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I received this book for free as part of the 2021 Hugo Voting Packet

This was a great, fun book. The only point I really had against it is that eventually with all the fantasy names and locations and history, things eventually got a little convoluted to where I couldn’t remember who was related to whom and it really starts to matter in the last quarter of the book. The book has an interesting framing device - one of the book’s characters, Thurvishar, has written a report to the Emperor to document what happened. The introduction even includes a bit of lampshade hanging about the fact that he’s going to have to tell the real-world reader some things that the in-world reader (the Emperor) would already know.

Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution by Steven Levy

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This book is the story of the beginning of computers, written in the 1980s. I’d already read about many of the events portrayed in the book via other books or magazine articles. But this was nice and detailed. I like Steven Levy’s style. He really brings the people profiled to life. Knowing where computers have ended up - which companies and movements have won - makes it an especially interesting read compared to when it was first published and people weren’t sure where the industry was going or if it would crash like the Atari crash of the 1980s.

Riot Baby by Tochi Onyebuchi

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I got this book for free twice: Tor.com ebook club and Hugo Award nomination

This book was very, very hard to read. It ripped open so many of the psychological wounds from the past decade in which I finally, truly understood the injustice of being black in the 2010-2020s. That we STILL haven’t healed past the original sin of this country. This book force-feeds you the pain of the lived experience. It takes place in our world until it splits off into a 20 minutes into the future - a future that seems all too likely to happen. Where we continue to give up more and more to algorithms and surveillance. I’m in the tech industry, I’ve seen the tech that’s coming. There are some folks trying to help, but we still keep making unbelievable errors. It’d be so funny if it wasn’t so (bleeping) sad.

Axiom’s End by Lindsay Ellis

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I received this book for free as part of 2021 Hugo voting process.

Also, a reminder that I use the Goodreads tooltips for ratings - 3/5 means “liked it” - it’s not a bad rating. Let’s use the whole scale, guys!

I have been following Lindsay Ellis on Youtube for a few years now - both with her older videos that originally appeared on some other website (and no longer exist on YT as of mid-2021) and her newer stuff. I love her deep dives into various story-telling concepts and it’s pretty clear she definitely understands what she’s talking about. So I was pretty excited when I found out she released a book.

Lords and Ladies by Terry Pratchett

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This is my second time reading Lords and Ladies

Throughout this re-read I have asked a question in my reviews: Is this a good jumping on point for The Discworld. I have tried to give justifications for an answer in either direction. This is the first book where, at least in the version I have - American Paperback - Sir Pratchett himself mentions that to really enjoy this book you need to have been following the last few Witches books. In fact there’s even a potential reference made by Weatherwax to the seemingly retconned Equal Rites. Mostly the book is an almost direct continuation of Witches Abroad, picking up where the previous one left off as the Witches arrive back home in Lancre.

The Last Emperox by John Scalzi

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Well, that was quite the trilogy! Scalzi took all that he had been building up over the three books and used them to create a satisfying ending. If this isn’t your first Scalzi series you won’t be surprised by the ending. Don’t get me wrong, it had all kinds of twists and turns that surprised and delighted me. But I mean Scalzi is the kind of author where the protagonists aren’t all full of plot armor. Brandon Sanderson is often (although not always) like this too. I prefer the higher stakes compared to, say, X-Men where any death is temporary annoyance.

Django 2 by Example: Build powerful and reliable Python web applications from scratch by Antonio Melé

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

If you want to learn Django, definitely get the newer version of this book that covers Django 3. That said, this book was VERY helpful in getting me started with Django for the first time. My brain tends to work better with “by example” or project-based books because it shows how the pieces come together. Whenever I’ve come across programming languages and/or frameworks (Django, Rails, Flask, etc) that only have toy examples I’ve often had a hard time moving from there to a real application. (or at least a harder time than when I have those project-based examples)

Network Effect by Martha Wells

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I got this book for free by being a World Con member for the 2021 convention. It’s part of the review packet.
So, that was really flippin’ good. I wasn’t sure how well Martha Wells would do at transitioning from novella length Murderbot to full-length Murderbot. Not because I doubt her skills - she’s been writing for a long while (mostly in fantasy, I believe). But we all know that what works in a short-form doesn’t always work long-form. But this book rocks. I would say there was only a very small section - maybe 1 or 2 chapters that seemed to drag a little bit. Otherwise, the scope was just increased to keep a similar pace.
Wells also introduces a lot of new potential directions for this series to go. If nothing else, there’s a big difference with (view spoiler)[ the introduction of SecUnit 3 (hide spoiler)]. We get the return of ART who indeed seems to continue to deserve the moniker that Murderbot has given it. Wells also does a good job of moving everything forward with Murderbot, Dr. Mensah and the others rather than remaining static. Overall, it’s a huge triumph and I need to get to the next Murderbot book after I’m done reading for the Hugos.
Right now, between this series and The Interdependency, this one edges out the win. I still have a few other series to read for the series category, but I REALLY love this Murderbot series. If you liked the Novellas, I think you’ll like this one a lot.

Small Gods by Terry Pratchett

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is my second time reading this book. I dropped the rating from 5/5 to 4/5.

As usual, Terry Pratchett uses the fantasy of Discworld to shed light on reality. This book is less whimsical than other Discworld book although it does have its humor and does get a bit silly with the philosophers in the Discworld equivalent to Ancient Greece. He takes the same concept as (future?) collaborator Neil Gaiman’s American Gods- a god’s power is relative to the amount of believers it has - and uses it to provide a withering look those who go along with the excesses of the church without even truly believing in their god. Om, god of the Omnians has been reduced in power because he has only one believer left. This despite Omnia being a theocracy with enough pilgrims to keep the Omnian Dibbler working and a large Inquisition that everyone is afraid of. People are essentially operating out of fear (of the system) and habit. Even more than when I first read this 10ish years ago, this just makes me think of the American Christians who are super Christian when it comes to hate and yet forget Christ’s own words when it comes to caring for the poor, sick, defenseless or turning the other cheek or giving up all your riches to follow him (looking at you, Prosperity Gospel Preachers).

Lightspeed Magazine, June 2014: Women Destroy Science Fiction! Special Issue by Christie Yant

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is one of my favorite collections of stories and one of the best anthologies/magazines I’ve read so far in 2021. A lot of the stories in here a phenomenal. There are also a lot of authors in here who, in the past 6-7 years have become quite a bit more famous. That’s fun. The essay section was a little sad in the repetition of negative situations the women found themselves in. There were rays of hope in there, too. And I hope things are getting better. I’m certainly trying with my kids to raise them without gender limits.

The Consuming Fire by John Scalzi

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Scalzi continues to kick butt in the second book of The Interdependency. I’m used to the second book of a planned trilogy to be all setup for the third book which can mostly be climax. Yet, within this book Scalzi continues to have mini-climaxes and story beats and surprises.

The story continues to be a sort of updated Dune/Game of Thrones type story with multiple families vying for control of the Emperox. Some of them want to manipulate her and others want to unseat the Wu family from their position at the top. There’s also what seems to be a throwaway line involving some simulated folks that isn’t paid off in this novel, so I assume it’s going to turn out to be a huge plot point in book three. The big difference is that Emperox Cardenia is coming into her own rather than being sideswiped by the events and deaths in book 1.

Witches Abroad by Terry Pratchett

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This is my second time reading the book

Our third outing with the Witches and the second one that includes Magrat Garlick. This one is part parody of the travelogue and part parody of Fairy Tales and Fairy Godmothers. It also introduces the Discworld version of dwarf bread; my first time hearing about it. This made it extra funny when I encountered it in the Lord of the Rings books.

The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes by Suzanne Collins

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I listened to the audiobook narrated by Greg from Crazy Ex-Girlfriend as I drove the 900-something miles from Maryland to Florida and it was better than I thought it would be. Ms Collins has avoided most of the annoying tropes that often plague prequels. There aren’t too many of what I call “cute” moments (eg in the Star Wars prequels seeing the Death Star original plans). Mostly those are limited to District 12 once again being the focus, the Hanging Tree song’s origins, an appearance of the katniss plant, and the origins of Mockingjays.

The Collapsing Empire by John Scalzi

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I can’t believe I waited so long to read this book, it’s so great. The quick summary: Isaac Asimov’s Foundation Series meets the family competition dynamics of Frank Herbert’s Dune. Interesting to read at the same time as The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes. Both books use the idea of segregated resource management as a form of control. In Hunger Games’ Panem it’s each district being in charge of a particular resource. In The Interdependency it’s each family guild controlling a resource.

Exit Strategy by Martha Wells

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is the perfect ending to the original Murderbot novella quartet. All the threads from the previous three books finally line up in a way that sets Murderbot up for its debut novel. Murderbot takes everything its learned and developed in order to solve the biggest problem its had yet.

The first couple novellas could have been picked up as standalones, but this one really only truly makes sense as the finale, so don’t bother picking up unless you read the first three.

Rogue Protocol by Martha Wells

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Another great entry in the Murderbot novellas! Our favorite SecUnit is once again involved in a mystery while working on the overarching plot of the novellas to figure out what happened during the incident that led it to override its governor as well as help out the humans from the first novella in their legal fight.

Artificial Condition by Martha Wells

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

After reading the second entry in The Murderbot Diaries, I’m sold on why this is such a hit with everyone. Martha Wells takes what was great about the first one - an android who just barely understands human irrationality (although suffering from some himself since he’s made of both synthetic and human tissue) and has to solve a mystery in an update from the older Golden Age format of I, Robot - and changes just enough to keep it incredibly interesting. Tore through this one in just two days and I’m already a few chapters into the next one. This one’s definitely going to be a strong contender for Hugo for best series.

All Systems Red by Martha Wells

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I got this book for free from the Tor.com eBook club. Also, would have gotten it for free from the Hugos 2021

I know I’m late to everyone’s favorite genderless, somewhat on the autism spectrum, Murderbot but I really loved this book a lot. I had no idea what to expect because when I’m going to read something, I tend to avoid all spoilers, even the back of the book text. What I found was a a great mystery story with a murderbot that’d been put on protection duty. The irreverence Murderbot has for their job and for humans in general reminded me a lot of what I really liked about the Knights of the Old Republic character HK-47. The book was funny without being slapstick or parody. It was more or less the perfect length so we’ll see what happens when I get to the novel-length entry eventually.

Necessity by Jo Walton

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This book was the perfect cap on the trilogy. Told in a series of POV chapters that shuttle back and forth through time, the book forms the perfect meta-analogy to the way the gods experience time. Their personal time is moving forward even as they move forward and backward through our timeline.

We also get a perfect conclusion to the story of The Just City and why Athene was allowed to set it up. The scene with Zeus reminded me of the Christian gnostics and it really provided a very interesting answer to the question Christians always ask - why did God create us? The answer is (view spoiler)[ as we learn more and become more excellent, so does God (hide spoiler)].

Black Powder War by Naomi Novik

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Black Powder War is another great entry by Ms. Novik in the Temeraire series. It picks up almost immediately after the previous book ended. Now Temeraire and crew must head to the Ottoman Empire. Oh, and for variety, Ms Novik has their ship burn down so they have to travel along the ancient (and at this point mostly non-existent) Silk Road.

Crimson Son by Russ Linton

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I got this book from a Story Bundle called “Immerse or Die”. The editor of the bundle had a process that went something like, “I got on the treadmill and started reading. If the book wasn’t pulling me in by the time I finished my 30 minutes, it was eliminated.” I didn’t find it quite that engrossing, but I did enjoy it and by the time the climax arrived, I kept wanting to turn the pages to see what would happen next.

Reaper Man by Terry Pratchett

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This is my second read. I have dropped the rating from 4 stars to 3 stars

I love Discworld’s Death. He makes any book better by his presence and so I especially love the books that feature Death. In this book Death is the A story. As we’ve seen throughout the previous 10 books, he’s developed a slightly more human personality. There was even that book a while back (Mort, I believe) where Death became a short order cook for a while. Apparently the auditors of reality don’t like this and Death now has a life timer. He ends up living out the rest of his life in a rural town and has a character growth arc.

The Most Dangerous Game by Richard Connell

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

My enjoyment of this short story (or was it long enough to be a novella?) was only marred by the fact that the story is so famous that I’ve seen it referenced and parodied a million times. Of course, that’s part of what made me want to finally read it.

First, point of clarification, I always thought the “game” in the title was the hunt. But “game” refers to the animal. As in the phrase “an elephant is a game animal”

Final Fantasy VI by Sebastian Deken

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I was a kickstarter backer on the campaign for this book

I’ve been waiting for this book for a while. This game, along with Chrono Trigger, was very formative in my early gaming years. The book decides to focus on one of the greatest things about Final Fantasy VI (FF3 in the original US release), the music. I can’t argue with the fact that Uematsu’s music is incredible - I own a bunch of Final Fantasy soundtracks. That said, my preference would have been for a few chapters on the music. Mr. Deken’s work views FF6 entirely through the lens of music. It is definitely a unique lens and one that he is very well situated to opine on. It makes this book special compared to others that would tackle the same subject. It’s also what you get with a Boss Fight Book - a book that is HIGHLY dependent on how the author relates to the subject - for better and for worse.

Auberon by James S.A. Corey

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

As the back of the book (so to speak…this is only available as an ebook at the moment) says, this novella is a chance to see what Amos’ old colleague Erich is up to. The novella starts off with a quote about a changing of the guard that mirrors the opening to The Churn. It appears that Erich has learned the lessons of that book and applied them to his current enterprise. At the same time, this novella really isn’t about Erich and his crime empire at all. (Although that probably would have been a pretty great novella in its own right). Instead it’s about Governor Rittenaur and, despite being listed as #8.5 in the series, it might reasonably fit in better as 7.5. The plot takes us back to right when Laconia has taken over and Governor Rittenaur is sent in to be in charge of the most important star system in terms of riches and potential scientific developments. It’s a story about colonizers and colonies that is mature enough to show that neither side is perfect. In a way, who you side with in this story says more about you than it does about anything else. Within that story, it’s also about ideological purity vs the real world. As we’ve already seen in a few novels, Duarte’s leadership style enforces and creates a hierarchy that does not tolerate deviations because they’re so certain that they are on the right side. One can form so many parallels to history in that.

Death Masks by Jim Butcher

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

If Goodreads had half-stars, I’d definitely give this one 4.5 stars. Butcher has taken everything I like about the Dresden files and eliminated a lot of what was annoying. Dresden has FINALLY earned the trust of Murphy on the SI unit at the Chicago PD. It was getting tiresome having them fight over dumb stuff. By the same token, Dresden is finally not trying to be such a hero that he holds back info from Murphy in a way that both endangers them and causes her not to trust him. Over the last couple books, Dresden and Marcone have reached a level of respect for each other. Sure, Dresden still would prefer to keep Marcone uninvolved, but at least he’s realized he shouldn’t be so childish.

Lightspeed Magazine, April 2014 by John Joseph Adams

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This was a GREAT issue. I don’t think there was one story that wasn’t top-notch. My favorite SF stories were Codename: Delphi and Exhalation. My favorite fantasy was The Only Death in the City. The Afterparty excerpt was great and I added the book to my To Read list. As I normally do with collections or SFF magazines, below are my reviews per story. (They roughly align with my status posts, but sometimes I have to trim the statuses to remain within the character limits)

Generation Xbox: How Videogames Invaded Hollywood by Jamie Russell

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Anyone who has followed my book reviews on Good Reads or my blog knows that I have read quite a bit of video game history. Whether it’s a history of video games starting with the miltiary and university campuses, a book like A Mind Forever Voyaging: A History of Storytelling in Video Games or the Boss Fight Books series - I’ve gone through quite a bit of video game history. So when this one started off with Atari and the ET game I was a little wary. By this point anyone my age or older with any bit of knowledge of video game history knows of the crash in the 80s and how it was (at least partially) caused by Atari’s horrible ET game. The Indiana Jones game would have been news to me if I hadn’t seen a long Ars Technica article about it last year. So a slightly boring start for me.

Programming Perl by Tom Christiansen

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I’ve effectively finished this book, although I’ll admit to skipping the section called “reference”; the book had already gotten deeper into the weeds than I needed at the moment.

I’ve read a lot of programming books over the past 15 years (and a few before that when I was a young buck trying to learn exactly what one could do with “computers” or on the “Internet”). But rarely have I read a programming book as delightful to read as this one; especially since it focuses so much on the internals of the language. But the book is written with that dad-joke-ish programmer humor that keeps it from ever getting too dry.

Moving Pictures by Terry Pratchett

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

This is my second time reading as I do my Discworld re-read. Dropped the start rating from 3 stars to 2 stars.

This one seems a slight step backwards in the progression of Discworld novels. It’s not really about any character growth and we more or less get a sitcom-like reboot at the end. It appears Pratchett had not yet decided that we wanted to continue to modernize Anhk-Morpork as he would in the later novels. We do get a few new characters. Windle Poons is introduced here and continues into the next book, Reaper Man. Our main character’s class mate later features as a grad student who does the Discworld version of particle physics research. Otherwise, it’s another story in which too much magic allows Lovecraftian monsters a way to come in from the demon dimensions. Other than that it’s almost a Flintstones-level parody of Hollywood in which you look for the Discworld equivalent of real-world things - like 20th Century Fox being Century of the Fruitbat Pictures.

Introducing Go: Build Reliable, Scalable Programs by Caleb Doxsey

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Over my many years as a programmer (and now boss of programmers) I’ve read many of O’Reilly’s series - Learning {language}, Programming {language}, {language} in a Nutshell, {language} Pocket Reference. This is the first time (that I can remember) that I’ve read a book in the “Introducing” series. I’d say this book is great for someone who already knows how to program, but wants to get a feel for the syntax Go uses. That does mean that the early chapters that introduce conditionals and loops are a bit elementary, but I have a hard time feeling that someone who’s never programmed before would really get the later chapters with pointers. Each chapter ends with some questions that makes me wonder if this book was developed to be a textbook for an introduction to programming high school or university class. It would certainly work well for a dev who has the support of a teacher and/or TAs.

After the Fall, Before the Fall, During the Fall by Nancy Kress

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

A reminder that I go by Goodread’s tooltips for the star ratings. At the time I’m writing this, 3 stars is “liked it”

This is a very compelling short novel (or maybe novellette? or novella?) That jumps back and forth between 3 time periods, although eventually two of them coalesce into one. In the future (2035) humanity is hanging on by a thread after some kind of world-ending disaster has struck. The best parts of the story focus on the interpersonal conflicts in a “society” that cannot afford them. More than at any time in which you’ve ever hear the platitudes, the group really does need to be put above individual needs.

Lies of the Beholder by Brandon Sanderson

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This novella is a great wrap-up to the story of Stephen Leeds. Now that the trilogy is published as one volume, I think that’s going to be your best way to get into the story. For this final entry, we find that Leeds seems to be losing a grip on his ability to keep himself sane by expanding out into various aspects. It’s such a short story there’s not too much more to be said about it, so I’ll consider the entire story.

The Gryphon’s Skull by H.N. Turteltaub

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

As per usual, I had a lot of fun with this historical fiction taking place in Ancient Greece. Just like the first book, the story revolves around cousins Menedemos and Sostratos and their journeys around the Aegean during the trading season. Looks like Mr. Turteltaub wanted us to have a different experience than last time - and that makes perfect sense in terms of keeping readers from getting bored. And so while the first book had lots of chapters revolving around various symposia, this time there was none of that. Instead, in addition to the usual bits of haggling, we get to meet Ptolemy who happens to be in one of the cities they stop in for trade. So this book gets to veer a bit into the Ancient Greek version of a military novel as the cousins end up doing a few missions for Ptolemy.

Palpitations: The Highway To Never After by S.K. Munt

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This book gets a few extra points from me for taking place in Australia. All too often we get zombie/vamp tales taking place in the USA, England, or Europe (in that order). In fact, the only other apocalyptic Australian book I can remember reading is Jam.

Anyone who’s read my reviews for a while now knows the following:
- I have lots of books I didn’t specifically buy - they came from Humble Bundles, Story Bundles, or free books from Barnes and Noble or Amazon
- I create my Digital To-Read bookshelf every 1-2 years, setting my reading order

The Boys, Volume 1: The Name of the Game by Garth Ennis

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

This is a pretty rough book. I mean, I think it probably wins for most trigger warnings for a commercially released comic. Since Watchmen we’ve had a few different takes on super heroes being less noble than the DC and Marvel heroes we all know. Irredeemable, Vol. 1 has most of the heroes remain good, but their pettiness causes issues. Jupiter’s Legacy, Vol. 1 explores super heroes as a metaphor for pop stars who have a complete lack of accountability. What The Boys does differently (at least in Volume 1) is to provide a a check against the heroes by the group funded by the CIA.

Wayward Stars by Mary Fan

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This book picks up right where the previous one left off - Iris Lei and the rest of the abolition are trying to plan out their next steps. From there, the plot goes off into a few twists, but in a fairly expected progression. The end is satisfying on its own, but it seems like Ms. Fan might have been setting up at least a trilogy if not an on-going series.

Eric by Terry Pratchett

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This is my second time reading the book. Dropped rating from 4 stars to 3 stars

A seemingly novella-length tale featuring the return of Rincewind, unseen since the events of Sourcery. The story is a parody of Faust (my paperback version even has Faust crossed out and replaced with Eric in the header for each page). As such, it’s a return to the earliest Discworld books - a series of pastiches as each of Eric’s wishes goes all malicious genie on him. The B story is a slightly more conventional story involving hell as a parody of office culture. The head demon has made hell incredibly boring with memos and team building and all the things that the movie Office Space made fun of.

Guards! Guards! by Terry Pratchett

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is my second time reading this book

We finally are introduced to The Patrician as he will be portrayed for the rest of the Discworld books. He’s no longer the overweight Patrician we saw in the first two books. He’s infinitely more cunning and frightful, especially because he’s not overly mean or violent. We’re also introduced to my favorite character in Ank-Morpork: Carrot, a human raised by dwarves. His innocence and literal-mindedness remains a wonderful trait throughout the series as Pratchett uses the City Watch as both police procedurals and to explore ideas of diversity in a fantasy world. Colon and Nobby are a fun straight man, fun guy pair - reminds me somewhat of Wax and Wayne (from Brandon Sanderson’s Mistborn Era 2) although the class difference isn’t quite as pronounced. I will grow to like Vimes eventually, but not the Vimes from this book. Lady Ramkin is also a great parody of how the confidence of privilege can really skew how you view the world. Of course, it also leans hard on the comedy trope that’s in a lot of British novels - if you act like you *should* be in charge, people will comply.

InvestiGators: Off the Hook by John Patrick Green

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Another fun entry in the Investigators to read with the kids. The cast of characters continues to grow and reward re-reads of previous books with lots of references to previous events. It’s evident now that Green has written each book to lead into the next. I wonder if he has an endgame in mind or is just taking it one book at a time. Once COVID is over, if he comes back to Baltimore Comic-Con I’ll be sure to talk to him about it.

Princess Academy by Shannon Hale

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

My preschool kids have been enjoying Shannon and Dean Hale’s The Princess in Black series (I reviewed a few entries last year). So when I found out that Shannon Hale also does middle grade and young adult books, I recommended them to my oldest, the nine year old. After she read the trilogy, she asked if I could read it with her at night so she could share the books with me. So we began a semi-nightly ritual of reading a chapter a night.

Parable of the Talents by Octavia E. Butler

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Welcome back to the crapsack/grimdark world of America in the 2020s as created by Octavia Butler in the 1990s. It is sometimes eerily prophetic. More about that later.

The addition of Lauren’s daughter’s (Larkin) annotations to her mother’s journals provides a very interesting context to the stories. Similar to the chapter openings made up of Encyclopedia entries in Asimov’s original Foundation book, it helps to prove a premise that has been making the rounds on the internet for some five years now - that spoilers aren’t necessarily bad. When we read Larkin’s annotations, we understand something about the future. We know that Larken suvives to adulthood. We know that she resents her mother and Earthseed. We know that Earthseed as a movement lasts. But we still want to read on to learn the details of how we got there. It’s why people went to see Titanic in the 1990s even though they knew the boat was going to sink.

Pyramids by Terry Pratchett

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This is my second time reading this book. I have dropped the rating from 5 to 3 stars

This book is all but divorced from all the other Discworld books. There’s at least one other one like this one - Small Gods. In that sense, it makes a sort of nice introduction to Discworld because it can be read on its own and one can understand Pratchett’s Discworld humor. There is some slight continuity - the idea of Ank-Morpok having crime guilds to regulate the amount of crime. Death, of course. But for the most part, it sits fine on its own.

Cook’s Illustrated 2019 by Dan Souza

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

As usual, a great collection of the year’s issues. I’ve already made a couple recipes from this book and America’s Test Kitchen continues to excel.

View all my reviews

Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I’ve had this book for about four years, ever since I got it in a Humble Bundle. I knew that I wanted to read Octavia Butler some day, but I hasn’t gotten around to it yet. Then NPR’s Throughline decided to do an episode about Octavia Butler and I wanted to read something before listening to the episode. So I asked the hosts via Twitter what book I should read. They recommended the two Earthseed books. I tore through this one, finishing it in just four days.

Third Daughter by Susan Kaye Quinn

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I got this book as part of the Storybundle.com Extraordinary Steampunk Bundle. I had no idea what to expect when I started reading it. Based on the cover, I figured it was basically a Steampunk novel taking place in India rather than England. That, alone seemed kind of interesting. As I read through the book, it quickly became apparent that this was actually taking place in an alternate Earth with an India-like culture spread across three countries. After just a few chapters, the book becomes a spy thriller and I found myself unable to put the book down. Many times, while reading, I would keep telling myself “just one more chapter.” While this trilogy seems to have been plotted as one large story, this book has a story that comes to a satisfying ending.

Wyrd Sisters by Terry Pratchett

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is my second time reading this book. The rating went up from 3 to 4 stars

This book revisits Granny Weatherwax, but while it keeps a lot of her personality traits, it seems to at least half-retcon the events of Equal Rites. The earlier book seemed to point to witches sticking strictly to headology while this one just has it as a preference. While Pratchett does keep Granny’s unreliable broom, she seems a lot more comfortable on it than she did in the previous book. Did she grow to like it or simply an outgrowth of ignoring the first few Discworld books?

The Great Hunt by Robert Jordan

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This book was quite a slow burn. (And I know some of the later books in this series are strongly disliked for keeping the story running in place) About a quarter of the way through the book I was certain this would be the end of my stroll through the Wheel of Time. But, gosh darn it!, Robert Jordan pulled it through at the end. The climax was pretty incredible and we learned some very interesting aspects of the in-world history. I thought the best part was the damane sul’man backstory which reminded me a lot of the backstory to The Handmaid’s Tale. There was definitely some schaudenfreude there.

A Wizard’s Guide to Defensive Baking by T. Kingfisher

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Well, that was quite an excellent book! My 9-year-old read it and then wanted to share it with me, so she asked me to read it to her before bed. I must say, this book was a lot more sophisticated than I expected from the title and from the expected audience. It’s quite a mature take at the subject matter; T. Kingfisher definitely believes in the maxim of not talking down to her audience. There are themes of death, PTSD, fantasy racism, wrongful arrest by the state, war, and so much more. It really does prepare kids, mentally, to deal with the fact that the adults don’t have it all together. The key, of course, that it does so realistically. It’s not the cruel or ineffectual adults of British kids novels, these are adults doing their best and still failing; or acting under selfish motives.

The Official Scratchjr Book: Help Your Kids Learn to Code by Marina Umaschi Bers

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Many of you may be familiar with Scratch if you’ve got kids about 15 or so years old or younger. It’s the hot language for the elementary and (in some places) middle school set to teach programming. It’s particularly great for the younger kids because programming takes place using blocks that slot into each other. This allows for the kids not to have to worry about spelling or curly braces or semicolons. You just plug blocks into each other and code. I scoffed at it at first until I saw the complex programs kids can create with Scratch. Scratch Jr is almost exactly the same thing, except it’s for younger kids and it’s a tablet program.

Sourcery by Terry Pratchett

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This is my second time reading this book

I believe this book marks the inflection point from the retconned books to the more continuity focused books. It appears that Equal Rites has already been retconned away by this book or else Rincewind is ignorant of those events when he tells Conina that no women enter the doors of the university. Although, I guess we can’t trust him too much because I believe even this one mentions that women work in the kitchens and so forth.

Mort by Terry Pratchett

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is my second time reading Mort

I dropped the rating from 5/5 to 4/5 because I’m using the tooltips for the ratings. I really enjoyed this book a lot. In my re-read this is the first tone I have enjoyed without any reservations. But it wasn’t “amazing”.

This is the first Discworld book that can be read completely independantly of the others. Are there some Easter Eggs if you’ve read the first 3 books? Sure. There’s mention of Granny Weatherwax’s Discworld version of “marital aides”. You’ll know why the librarian at the Unseen University is an Orangutang. And this will be the second time you meet Death’s adopted daughter. But, outside of that, this really is a great standalone book. If I wanted to do a survey of British fantasy humor (say I was a University professor), I could assign this book and folks would get the idea without feeling that they were being dropped 4 books into a 30-something book series.

Equal Rites by Terry Pratchett

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This is my second time reading this book

This is DEFINITELY a book of its times. I remember in the late 80s and early 90s there was a lot of fiction around whether women could really equal men in the workplace. Why then? I guess because it’s one generation removed from the Civil Rights era in the 60s and 70s? I know the backlash had grown by then, leading to Atwood to write The Handmaid’s Tale. Of course, that leads later into the Girl Power movement.

The Light Fantastic by Terry Pratchett

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This is my second time reading this book

This second time around I dropped the rating from 4 stars to 3 stars. The book is definitely an improvement over The Color of Magic. I think, perhaps, Pratchett was starting to consider that Discworld might extend beyond a couple books. That said, from my memory, there’s about 1-2 more books that contain plot points that are effectively somewhat retconned later. A the very least, Equal Rites seems to never be spoken of again - and Discworld seems to revert to male wizards and female witches. And I can’t remember if Sourcery has last consequences or not.

This year continued last year’s trend of Sequels, Sanderson, and Science Fiction Magazines. Every series I mentioned last year was a series I continued reading this year - The Expanse, The Asylum Tales, Red Rising, The Dresden Files, The Mogoliad, Wild Cards, and the Illumination Paradox. (The only exception was Red Rising - I’m done with that series after the first trilogy.) I also continued to read sequels in The Wheel of Time, The Powder Mage series, The Just City, and Temeriere. As I did last year, I also read lots of books on electronics and programming as I started to beef up that chunk of my hobbies. As you’ll see if you read my 2020 programming post, this was a good year for me in programming. I also continued trying to catch up with Clarkesworld Magazine.

Twinmaker by Sean Williams

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

When I started out with this book, I wasn’t sure if I was going to like it. It seemed to lean a bit heavily on the young adult plot with the love triangle aspect and the whole wanting to be Internet famous subplot. But it turned out those were just there to introduce the reader to the world and provide some stakes for our main character.

The Color of Magic by Terry Pratchett

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Dropping the rating from 4 stars (original) to 3 stars (second time through).

This is my second time reading through this book. First time was somewhere between 10-15 years ago. Going through it again, I realized just how much Mr. Pratchett improved as he iterated upon Discworld. Or, perhaps, it’s more accurate to say that this book had a different purpose than later Discworld books. This one is, essentially, a parody of where fantasy had evolved in the decades since The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings. Pratchett takes tons fantasy tropes, hero’s journey tropes, fish out of water tropes and obliterates them or subverts them. A lot of what he introduces here continues throughout the 30+ book series, but there are places where I’m sure he would have done things differently had he known he’d carry on beyond a couple books.

Rhythm of War by Brandon Sanderson

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Another masterwork by Brandon Sanderson in his Cosmere. I will say that, at times, some of the story seemed to drag, particularly character growth of the main characters. But not only is this made up by the incredible payoff at the end (I literally kept waking up the night I finished it as my brain obsessed over the epilogue and what it means for this series and the Cosmere as a whole), but the reader needs to consider this is book 4/10 in a planned series. Even with Sanderson having planned Stormlight as two five-book arcs, that would still mean that the climax of the arc would lie in the next book.

The Red Church by Scott Nicholson

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I got this book as part of a Humble Bundle years ago. It was my first occult horror, unless you count Dean Koontz books, which - now that I think about it - seems to share at least some genre space with this book. Quick note for anyone new to my reviews - I use the Goodreads tooltips to inform how many stars I give a book. At the time I’m writing this review, 2 stars is “it was OK”.

Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is the second time I’ve read this book. This first time was something around 20 years ago and it was definitely a 5-star book to me at the time. I’d never read anything like it. Reading it in 2020 is very interseting. Some of the things have come true and other, like the Metaverse, seem to be on the cusp of actually happening.
Given the way 2020 is going, Stephenson’s neo-liberalistic view of the world with burbclaves (an idea he continues in The Diamond Age) seems realistic and every time I read about for-profit prisons I think back on this book. Yet, for a book “in the future” it’s just so interesting to see the anachronisms - lack of smart phones, in fact stating that very few folks have computers or internet access, the fact that hackers would necessarily be affected due to being able to understand binary. Not so much anymore - there are many hackers like myself who primarily use higher level languages. Even game designers, who used to be the last holdouts of C are using C++ and C# (in Unity) and even Python-like languages (in Godot).

Apex Magazine Promo Issue 2020 by Jason Sizemore

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A mini issue to get folks ready for the relaunch of Apex Magazine. I truly enjoyed the stories in here and I can’t wait until the next real issue in January. Below is what I thought of each story:

The Legacy of Alexandria: a dystopia with elements of afro-futurism that seems every so prescient with the moment we’re in right now. The biggest bummer of the author now being an editor in Apex is that the magazine won’t be graced with this work for the foreseeable future.

The Brisket Chronicles: How to Barbecue, Braise, Smoke, and Cure the World’s Most Versatile Cut of Meat by Steven Raichlen

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

When I first heard about this book, I was slightly skeptical. An entire book on brisket? Really? Isn’t it just (maybe) two ways? Dalmation rub and spicy rub. Maybe 4 ways if you count low and slow and Texas Crutch style. But no, Raichlen presents nearly every way to make brisket from around Planet BBQ; from Texas smoked to Jewish braises to sandwiches from all nationalities - it’s all here. The result is a book that takes you from the practical to the impractical (brisket chocolate chip cookies? really?) and gives a little history throughout to explain the history behind various dishes. I put lots of recipes on my list of dishes to try; I’m especially excited to try the German bierfleishe. He’s also got a bunch of recipes to use up leftover brisket including breakfast hashes, ramen, and salads.

A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms by George R.R. Martin

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I really enjoyed this short story collection about Maester Aemon’s brother when he was a squire for Sir Duncan the Tall. I think, perhaps, because these short stories didn’t have to do the heavy lifting for the main narrative in A Song of Ice and Fire, they get to be lighter and more fun fare. At the same time, it does fill in a bit of backstory for Westeros and provide the ability for GRRM to give us examples of how history repeats itself.

Dawnshard by Brandon Sanderson

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Disclaimer: I was a kickstarter on the campaign that provided an early copy of this novella a reward

This was a great book. It is also fascinating in the sense that, as I was reading it I kept thinking that you could about 80% read this book without having read the preceeding 3 books (and 1 novella) in The Stormlight Archive. You wouldn’t understand ANY of the implications of the final chapter or epilogue, but I think you probably could have enjoyed the story anyway.

Bait by Annie Nicholas

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

If you’ve been following me for a while, you know I’m not a huge romance person. This is my second romance, and coincidentally, also my second paranormal romance. But I’ve got acquired some romance books via giveaways, Humble Bundle, Story Bundle, and Amazon’s Kindle First giveaways. I am trying to read “all” my books rather than constantly spending money on the next new thing. So I ended up getting to Bait.

Little Women by Louisa May Alcott

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Reading this book was very interesting. I don’t know what edition I happened to pick here, but the edition I read was a Barnes and Noble giveaway from years ago when I first got my Nook. As such, it had a nice, long intro into Louisa May Alcott’s live, the story, and some modern interpretations of the story. As to Ms. Alcott’s story, I was already familiar with it from an episode of The History Chicks - it was bonkers and she knew most of the literary geniuses of the time as family friends. The book also had tons of footnotes to explain slang and other terms that have fallen out of disuse.

Thrilling Adventure Yarns by Robert Greenberger

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I participated in the Kickstarter for this anthology because of meeting Crazy 8 author Mary Fan at Farpoint. I’m quite glad I did because nearly all of these knocked it out of the park! And those that didn’t were still good stories that I enjoyed reading.

I’ve been into pulp fiction ever since picking up the Big Pulp series at Baltimore Comic-Con nearly a decade ago. There’s something really fun that can come from allowing a story to go whereever it goes - even if that ends up being a prurient place. Additionally, the tropes behind these stories have been done to death - so in 2020 you know that authors are going to be playing with reader expectations to provide new kinds of twists. Or they will bring to the surface what was only coded before - like LGBT characters (for which you could actually go to jail for having in your stories back in the day).

Indian-ish: Recipes and Antics from a Modern American Family by Priya Krishna

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

It’s not quite as Indian as I’d hoped, but that’s not what it claimed to be. It actually is exactly as promised: an American-Indian fusion collection of recipes consisting mostly of recipes from the author’s mother. I did write down a few recipes to try.

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Ruby Wizardry: An Introduction to Programming for Kids by Eric Weinstein

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This year one of my goals was to learn a new programming language. Ruby is supposed to be pretty easy for beginners so I figured it’d probably end up being a snap for someone like me who’s been programming for a while. The only book I happened to already own was this kids’ book that I had bought for my kids. They haven’t yet wanted to use it (although they’ve gotten into Scratch)k but it worked fine for me. Indeed it was, and I couldn’t help making comparisons between Ruby and Python the whole time. The two languages are incredibly similar. Ruby clearly seems to be inspired by Perl, but is still a lot more readable as almost plain English. (Although some of the shortcut refactorings can be pretty hard to get if you’re not a Ruby person)

The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Like, I imagine, most Americans (or at least most Americans 40 and under - ie Millenials and Younger) my only exposure was to Disney’s The Jungle Book. I had no idea the original was a collection of short stories. I’d heard it was “Old School British Racist"TM. But I’m on a Project Gutenberg quest to read the classics that I never got to (school never assigned it). This was one of them. As I write this, I’m also reading Little Women for the first time. Overall, I liked The Jungle Book. Seems like it was meant to be an asiatic Aesop’s Fables. It’s cute and I’d probably share it with my kids. I didn’t really care for all the songs/poems, but it’s a neat bit of flavor. Yes, it does have some attitudes against Indians that are racist, but it doesn’t permeate the stories. I think, depending on your ability to read those things, it’s fine. And since it’s free on Project Gutenberg, it’s not like you’re enriching someone for these attitutes.

The Gospel Reloaded by Seay Garrett

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This was my second time reading this book. I got it back when I was getting a bunch of similar books - I have Gospel According to the Simpsons and Philosophy of Seinfeld books as well. For this particular one, I didn’t enjoy the format as much as I remembered enjoying it the first time around. At first the chapters just follow one another, building up on the previous chapters. Then they become somewhat more self-sufficient. What I enjoyed most was remembering about the Gnostic Gospels and how much the Wachowskis really put into these movies.

Hippopotamister by John Patrick Green

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I interviewed John Patrick Green at Baltimore Comic-Con 3 years ago.

You can watch it here!

Although I liked the concept behind Hippopotamister, my oldest (the right age for it at the time) didn’t care for it. But now, one of my twins is really into his other series - InvestiGators. Since the second book still isn’t out (I think it comes out at the end of this month), I got them Hippopotamister. It was a huge hit tonight.

The Mongoliad: Book Three by Neal Stephenson

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This book was a great cap to the long trilogy (although - put together I think it’s not longer than a Brandon Sanderson Stormlight Archive book). While the first third of the book continues to build things up, we’ve met just about everyone by the time we’ve arrived here and so the last 2/3 of the book is a wild ride. It feels like the tension just keeps building until you’re on a giant roller coaster ride to the bottom once the climax proper begins. I can’t really talk about too many specifics in the third book in a trilogy without getting into spoilres, so instead I’ll talk about what I thought was best about this book.

Don’t Stand Too Close to a Naked Man by Tim Allen

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is my second time reading this book.

I first read this book in middle school because I really liked Home Improvement. Kind of reminds me of the joke Eddie Murphy tells in Delirious when he sees a young kid in the audience. “You thought I’d be up here at Buckwheat saying ‘o-tay’ and all that”. I read above my age, but it didn’t mean I was ready to understand everything in the book, particularly the more adult stuff like married life or being a parent. It did leave an impression on me because I was able to completely remember the first chapter.

Spiced: Unlock the Power of Spices to Transform Your Cooking by America’s Test Kitchen

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

As usual for a book by America’s Test Kitchen, there’s a good combination of educational content and tasty recipes. I’ve already made a few recipes from this book, most recently the spiced ragu which had a unique taste due to its use of Five Spice Powder. It was not out of place, after all, for a while the spice trade passed through Italy. But it was also not a boring same-old Italian recipe. It went over pretty well with the family, as well.

Clarkesworld Magazine, Issue 143 by Neil Clarke

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

This issue’s stories didn’t really work as well for me as the last few issues have.

Thoughts per story:

The veilonaut’s dream: explorers at a spatial discontinuity explore it for money. Partially a tale of exploitative labor and partly a tale of the stages of grief.

The Anchorite Wakes: There are little hints here and there that something odd is going on. It is all revealed in the last few pages and it’s quite an incredible world hidden from us until that point. Very neat story and ending.

InvestiGators by John Patrick Green

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Read this to my four-year-olds and I found it to be a blast. Most of the word-play went over their heads. In fact, after finishing it with my four-year-olds, I recommended it to my 8-year-old. We’ll see what she thinks. This is definitely one of those books you can read with the kids and, if you like Dad Jokes and Puns, you’ll be enjoying it rather than wishing you were doing something else.

Jumpstarting the Onion Omega2 by Wolfram Donat

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

A good intro to the Onion Omega2 and Omega2+ boards. Unfortunately, the Onion folks have changed their interface, making a large portion of the book no longer accurate. You can kind of work your way through it if you’re technical and have a history with Linux on embedded devices.

View all my reviews

Getting Started with Soldering: A Hands-On Guide to Making Electrical and Mechanical Connections by Marc de Vinck

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I haven’t soldered in at least a good 15 years, if not more. I couldn’t remember the technique and I didn’t want to mess up my components for a new project I’m working on, so I read this book. It does a VERY good job of walking you through the basics, including what to do when things get messed up. It even has an advanced chapter at the end for surface mount soldering. I would highly recommend anyone who’s either new to soldering or wants to renew their skills.

Clarkesworld Magazine, Issue 142 by Neil Clarke

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

An almost perfect issue (in terms of my tastes) in which I loved all but one of the stories. Here are my thoughts-per-story, which may have some more text than my status updates if I came up against character limits during updates:

Gubbinal: In a future where we’ve colonized Saturn’s moons, our protagonist hunts for artifacts created by self-replicating robots. The plot then shifts into something perhaps more fantasy than SF and ends in quite a fascinating way.

Jumpstarting the Raspberry Pi Zero W by Akkana Peck

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This book is a great introduction to creating electronics projects with the smallest raspberry pi at this time. Seriously, it’s the same size as an Arduino MKR board - like a stick of gum. I wish I’d read it before starting my raspberry pi adventures, because I learned a few tips, particularly for running headless. The author spots a good job providing code examples and a decent variety of projects. The wearable project is the most impractical when you compared to an adafruit flora, but still provides important information. Overall a great resource if you want to go the raspberry pi route for electronics hacking.

The Crimson Campaign by Brian McClellan

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This trilogy is definitely turning out to be one of those 1 book broken up into 3 trilogies than a series of stories following the main characters. The last book was a slightly cleaner break, but still ended with a lot still unresolved. This one, on the other hand, ends on a cliffhanger….well on a cliff….a mountain. Almost nothing is resolved in this book. Although one of the plots was, thankfully, resolved; that’s a good thing because I don’t think the protagonist involved in that plot could take much more.

Clarkesworld Magazine, Issue 141 by Neil Clarke

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is one of those issues where I liked every story and every non-fiction essay. Read below for my thoughts per story.

A space of one’s own: a whimsical dystopia that reminds me of the Terry Gilliam film Brazil. I’m a world of overcrowding buildings can be resized and reconfigured.

Vault: another dystopia. This time there is a bit of a video game metaphor (at least to me) in the fact that the protagonists gain energy based on how many athletic tricks they do while traversing a planet. Explained away as causing their suits to collect more sunlight. The climax comes late, but could be an interesting universe for more stories.

Clarkesworld Magazine, Issue 141 by Neil Clarke

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is one of those issues where I liked every story and every non-fiction essay. Read below for my thoughts per story.

A space of one’s own: a whimsical dystopia that reminds me of the Terry Gilliam film Brazil. I’m a world of overcrowding buildings can be resized and reconfigured.

Vault: another dystopia. This time there is a bit of a video game metaphor (at least to me) in the fact that the protagonists gain energy based on how many athletic tricks they do while traversing a planet. Explained away as causing their suits to collect more sunlight. The climax comes late, but could be an interesting universe for more stories.

Clarkesworld Magazine, Issue 140 by Neil Clarke

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A nice balanced collection. My favorite was Cold Comfort. Below are my per story reviews and/or thoughts.

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A Vastness: A very interesting story of what we do when we’re so driven, we are willing to risk everything. And a great ending that was very unexpected. It felt a bit shorter than these usually are, so it was extra neat to have it work so well.

Rave Master Vol. 9 by Hiro Mashima

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

While this continues the shonen tropes of the hero who can’t be beaten just because of his “can-do” attitude, Mr. Mashima increases the stakes and gives a compelling story behind the rise of Demon Card and the paths of the two Gales. It even has a silly joke to make up for the ridiculous name “Demon Card”. Apparently it was supposed to be “Demon Guard” and a typo messed it up. I wonder if it’s one of those katakana/kanji jokes or not.

Ancillary Sword by Ann Leckie

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I’m a huge world-building junkie. It’s one of the reasons I love science fiction and fantasy. And, as I realized while writing the previous sentence, it’s also why I love history non-fiction books and podcasts. I love learning about the society and what drives people to act the way they act. Humans are all human and have always had the same desires, but how those manifest and how we react to them are defined within our cultural contexts. An insult that might have demanded a duel in 1800s America might now simply result in a screed on Twitter. So, I loved the first book’s building up of Radchai culture. In the first book, the plot was almost incidental. It was a TRUE trilogy in that it reads, in retrospect, as the beginning of an incredibly long book.

Clarkesworld Magazine, Issue 139 by Neil Clarke

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A nice, solid collection this month. Here are my per-story thoughts:

Carouseling: An extremely sad and touching story about a couple and an experiment at a CERN-like lab. Wonder if the story was written/conceived back when everyone was afraid the collider would make a black hole. (That’s not what happens, but I could definitely see it as an inspiration).

Rave Master Vol. 8 by Hiro Mashima

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

We learn a bit more about what’s going on with Rabarrier, but mostly it’s a volume that is the continuation of the fight started in the last volume. (And it doesn’t finish here, either) Manga is the master of decompressed storytelling.

View all my reviews

Rave Master, Vol. 07 by Hiro Mashima

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

A nice mix of some silly chapters and finally getting a lot closer to the mystery of Haru’s dad. Actually, with where we are now in the story I’m curious how there are some 20 more volumes.

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Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

The book that had me saying “wtf?” in a good way from the get-go. The first chapter is like The Princess Bride in that it sets up what I believe is a fictionalization of the author, but not as a forward or introduction - as the first chapter. So for the first few pages I have no idea what’s going on. Once I get it, it’s pretty interesting - especially given the title page and the fact that, apparently, this is officially Slaughterhouse-Five or The Children’s Crusade.

Bound by Donna Jo Napoli

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This was a much more beautiful Cinderella story than the Disney one and a much less gruesome one than the original German one, even if there was still some foot destruction. First of all, this is my second fairy re-telling by Ms. Donna Jo Napoli, having read Sirena last year or the year before. Both times, she was a master at putting us in the head space of her protagonist and creating a compelling story.

Rave Master, Vol. 06 by Hiro Mashima

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Although this volume is full of a lot of gobble-de-gook about the end of time, we do get a relatively fun fight that consumes most of the chapters. Kind of reminds me of Dragon Ball Z in that way. Also, if Seig Hart can be believed, not only do we learn about Elie’s past, but we also learn about the origins of Rave. Things might change, but for now I do give the author credit in that (unless I missed it) it wasn’t one of those things where Dark Bring was also created at the same time. Also, we got this supposedly touching moment:

Wild Cards III: Jokers Wild by George R.R. Martin

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I don’t know if they did this consciously or if it was simply the consequence of a series that started in the 1940s and ended in the (at the time) present day of 1980s, but I think it’s fascinating that this first trilogy (in a 19ish book series) has each successive book compressed in time. The first book is a regular shared world anthology in which it’s clear who wrote each story and each is self-contained - if providing a history for the next one. It takes place from the 40s to the 80s. The second book is one story in which POVs change with each chapter. It spans a year or so (if memory serves). This book is one story in which each chapter is a POV change, it’s impossible to know who wrote which characters, and it only takes place over the course of about 24 hours. It definitely gives a certain feel of whiplash like slamming on the breaks to have the timelines compress like that.

The Cuban Table: A Celebration of Food, Flavors, and History by Ana Sofia Peláez

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Mostly cookbook and part history of the Cuban diaspora and those still in Cuba. I really enjoyed the stories that surrounded each recipe and chapter. It really put many of the dishes into a personal space for the author.

I’ve already cooked a few dishes from the book and they were great. It’s a good time for me to get to a book like this because it is not as precise as America’s Test Kitchen, but I have the cooking skills necessary to do well with the recipes. A few years ago I wouldn’t have done very well at all.

Throne of Jade by Naomi Novik

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This book explores the consequences of the first book’s revelation: Temeriaire is not just a Chinese dragon that was meant to be a gift to the French, he is a Celestial - the breed of the imperial family. Thus, after a bit of British bureaucratic struggle, Laurence and Temeraire are off to China. The plotting of this book is relatively slow outside of the four battle scenes. This is not a negative - I think Ms. Novik uses it to properly convey to a modern audience just how long a boat trip from England to China would take.

Rave Master Vol. 5 by Hiro Mashima

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The story has kicked into manga overdrive. Lots of mysteries all over the place. Hints that Haru Glory’s dad is maybe in Demon Card. Finally some clues about who Elie might be. The former is more likely to be a red herring, the latter seems to pretty strongly be true. This volume is dominated by a fight scene that’s been coming since the first volume. But Mashima also gave the side characters (both protagonist and antagonist) their own battle while the main one was raging on. All of the Demon Card enemies have special powers and one of the goons can shoot glue out of an eyeball-looking thing on his head. Which led to this…

Clarkesworld Magazine, Issue 135 by Neil Clarke

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Some COVID-circumstances led to me finishing the second-half of this two months after starting. So I don’t quite remember the themes that piece together this issue, but here are my per-story thoughts:

The Rains on Mars: A delicate story of loss and how running away from loss can have consequences. Very nicely done.

Crossing LaSalle: Complex issues surrounding mortality and self-worth in a world in which people can have their brains loaded into new bodies.

The Princess in Black and the Hungry Bunny Horde by Shannon Hale

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

If you read the first two books with your kids and then were about to give up, do not do so! When I read the second book, about Princess Magnolia’s birthday, to my four-year-old twins I was disappointed. Just like the first one, the princess has someone snooping around as she runs off to fight monsters. Also, there was no payoff on the Goat Herd Boy wanting to become a super hero. Sure, this book series is for Kindergarten to Second-Graders, but it was just too repetitive.

Rave Master, Vol. 04 by Hiro Mashima

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Part of me wonders - is this just meant to be a comedic manga hero’s journey or is it a straight up parody? I can’t tell from this volume. Story-wise it concludes the story from the previous volume about the town where it always rains. I thought the plot twist for that section was interesting, even if the overall story is kind of lacking in stakes - which is why I wonder if this is meant to be parody. Afterwards we continue the medium-term arc of trying to get a piece of Rave that landed in a mountain. Once again, a few interesting story points, but no real consequences yet.

Clarkesworld Magazine, Issue 138 by Neil Clarke

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

An issue in which I enjoyed pretty much every story. I didn’t detect the theme as easily in this issue as I usually do. The novella that anchors this issue, The Persistence of Blood, is really well-written.

Here are my per-story thoughts:

Tool-Using Mimics: The author takes a photo - perhaps a real take or perhaps from a copypasta forum and comes up with a bunch of possible micro-stories that could go along with the photo.

The Princess in Black by Shannon Hale

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

If you have little girls or little boys who love princesses and a little mischief, this book is a great first chapter book. I read this to my four year old twins and they really loved it and immediately asked for the next book. I’m going to admit that some of the jokes and sarcasm DEFINITELY went over their heads. But if they re-read it when they’re in first grade, I think they’ll be the perfect age to get all the jokes. Additionally, it introduces them to the idea of chapters without the chapters being too long. Overall, I think it’s a great kids book with great illustrations.

Rave Master Vol. 3 by Hiro Mashima

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

All the manga tropes continue piling up. This book has the “pervert who wants to watch the girl in the hot springs” trope. Compared to the last two books this one is just wrapping up the last storyline and then ramping up for the next one. Kind of a weird set of chapters to package together because while the story they tell is necessary, it makes this book on its own kind of dull. The story was originally serealized, so maybe that has a factor in the pacing. I think at this point you’re either into the story of the RAVE MASTER vs DEMON CARD or you’re not, so you’re moving on to Vol 4 or have already quit.

The Bob’s Burgers Burger Book: Real Recipes for Joke Burgers by Loren Bouchard

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

There are a lot of crazy burgers in here. What did you expect from a book inspired by a blog inspired by burger puns in a cartoon voiced by H. John Benjamin? And yet… the authors worked with some chefs to massage the blog’s burgers and, while I’m not going to try all of these, I wrote about 2 dozen burgers recipes in my To-Make list. If you like puns and Bob’s Burgers, you’ve basically got reason enough to get this book. But if you don’t mind getting a little adventurous with your burgers (which I do, although I find my smash burgers to be the holy grail of burgers), there is some real value in owning this book. If you’re looking for a more serious one, I’ve done a lot of recipes from Weber’s Big Book of Burgers: The Ultimate Guide to Grilling Backyard Classics and highly recommend it. (Their grilled fries recipe tasted a LOT better than I thought it would)

Clarkesworld Magazine, Issue 137 by Neil Clarke

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This issue was full of longer piece, but also pieces I loved so much. I was cracking up so much with Solderin’. I felt pretty emotional with Umbernight, especially as I am getting older like the protagonist and slowly being replaced by the next generation. I also really enjoyed The Power is Out - I couldn’t stop reading that story. And The Girl-Thing was a good story, despite the few nits I had to pick with the narrative style.

Clarkesworld Magazine, Issue 136 by Neil Clarke

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This one was a tough choice between three stars and four stars. The stories I didn’t like: “Say it Low, Say it Loud” and “Her Smoke Rose Up Forever” I REALLY didn’t like. But from the stories I liked, some of them like: “A World to Die For” and “Lighthouse Girl” I REALLY liked. And the Non-fiction section helped push it over the edge.

Rave Master Vol. 2 by Hiro Mashima

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Nobody does comics storytelling like the Japanese. Some 400 pages in we’re still meeting new characters and we haven’t really gone anywhere story-wise. Plotwise it’s a pretty standard journey plot a la Journey to the West, Dragonball, or even Pokemon. Haru, our main character, is battling foes with nonsensical magic/karate and joining up with other youths who have other insane powers. This volume introduces us to Ellie, a typical tsundere heroine who leaves destruction in her wake. Overall it’s fun, but we’ll see how it goes since it’s looking like the plot itself probably isn’t going to matter as much as the journey.

The Philosopher Kings by Jo Walton

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I had no idea how the story could continue after The Just City. It seemed to have such a finality to it. Yet Ms Jo Walton has really shone with this sequel. It finds a way to build on just about everything from the first book in a way that makes perfect sense while continuing to introduce even more ideas. Just as with the first book, it’s told through diary entries of the main characters and so it’s it’s an exploration of Platonic ideals as they interact with reality. One of our point of view characters is a child born after the events of The Just City, so we get a new perspective from someone who knows about the successes and failures of the first city.

Rave Master, Vol. 01 by Hiro Mashima

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I think this is the first manga I’ve read since DeathNote. I’m having a little trouble getting into this, but maybe it’s just one of those stories that starts off a little strange and then finally builds up to a plot? It does tell the story over 30-something books.
Of course, there are some gems of dialogue like this (read from right to left):

I got it as part of a Humble Bundle, so I’ve got the whole series, leaving me without any reason not to go on. So we’ll see where this goes.

Summer Knight by Jim Butcher

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Things continue to evolve in Dresden’s Chicago. By this point it’s become obvious to me that the main series (as opposed to short stories) requires the reader to read them all in order rather than just jumping in to any particular case. Like a season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, each story builds upon the previous one. This one contains characters from Fool Moon playing a huge part, a deal that Dresden made in Grave Peril forcing a big part of the plot, and both women in his life only have resonance if you’ve been reading since the first book.
As far as the case, I think it proceeds on a good pace. While, as usual, I couldn’t solve it ahead of time, all the clues are there for you to trace back and see that Jim Butcher isn’t cheating. This one involves The Fae and so it’s a good thing that over the past 3 years of fantasy humble bundle books, I’ve been learning about faerie rules. They do a decent job explaining stuff, but knowing that there are Summer and Winter Sidhe Courts ahead of time allowed me to just focus on the story.
As I was recommending this book to a fellow SF fan, I realized that this book (and the series so far up to this book) is VERY male-gaze-y. It doesn’t bother me, but knowing about that (and this book was - SURPRISINGLY - written almost TWENTY years ago), does make me think twice before recommending it if the person might take that the wrong way.
Anyway, I’m definitely enjoying the series and it’s on to book 5 whenever that shows up in my To-Read list.

Stronger Than a Bronze Dragon by Mary Fan

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is the second book I added to my to-read list after meeting Ms. Fan at Farpoint 2019. Even though both Starswept and this one are rated 4 stars, that’s more a consequence of only have 5 stars to choose from, because I enjoyed this book more than Starswept. STaBD had two things going for it steampunk and immediate action. Taking the last one first, as I noted in my Starswept review, the early, slow chapters are key in providing a base from which to deviate in later chapters. But there’s just something so exciting about a book opening up with a bunch of warrior women fighting demons that makes you want to keep going. (By the way, I’ll admit to my unconscious bias - until specifically called out, I’d assuming our main character was a man)
So … Steampunk. I’m not the type of person who cosplays Steampunk or anything, but as a genre it always starts things at a higher level when I find myself in a Steampunk world. Ms. Fan, however, has given me something new and fun here. Most Steampunk takes place in England, The Commonwealth, and occasionally, on The Continent. But this story takes place in Victorian China. And it has demons and ghosts and stuff and my ignorance over Chinese mythology leaves me unsure how much is made up by Ms. Fan and how much is known mythology.
The story turns out to be part mystery, part unwanted arranged marriage, part Mulan, and part romance. And it works! Sure, Anlie is a bit of a Tsundere character and that can get a little tiresome, but she does eventually learn some character growth. If you like Steampunk, but are tired of the same old stuff, check this out and you may find yourself pleasantly surprised.

Soleil by Jacqueline Garlick

My rating: 1 of 5 stars

It is a real bummer for me to give this book 1 star. I really enjoyed the first book in the trilogy. The second book was fun. But this book… kind of just felt like perhaps this series should have been a duology instead of a trilogy. While the first third or so was a good bit of fan service, it could have maybe just been a post-script novella? The rest of the book was just full of the introduction of all sorts of new rules and technology to the way the world worked that I didn’t think made sense in the third book of a trilogy. On top of that, the last chunk - from when our main characters end up in a canyon until the end just didn’t make any god forsaken sense. (view spoiler)[Who rebuilt the dead people? I kept thinking it was all going to end up being a dream or parallel universe or something (hide spoiler)]
This book might be great for you. And that’s OK. I don’t want to “yuck” anyone’s “yum”. But it did not work for me. This is why there was such a gap between updates towards the end. This is why I read more than one book at once. So if one isn’t motivating me, I’ve got others to still be excited about. Anyway, a real bummer because I believe Ms. Garlick had a blast creating this series and really seems to love the characters. I enjoyed interacting with her on twitter while reading the first book and going through all the fun twists and turns there. Anyway, I’m rambling…

Serious Python: Black-Belt Advice on Deployment, Scalability, Testing, and More by Julien Danjou

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is an AWESOME book that has completely transformed the way I code in Python. That might sound like the opening to a parody review, but I’m being sincere. One of the best things about Python is that it has a low barrier to entry and it’s easy to get started programming. One of the worst things about Python is that it has a low barrier to entry and it’s easy to get started programming. I’ve been going through the past 15ish years with just a surface-level understanding of my favorite programming language.
On my biggest, most used (by others) Python program, I’ve gone from code to looks like this ( https://github.com/djotaku/ELDonation…) to a package that’s published on PyPi ( https://pypi.org/project/eldonationtr…) and auto-generated documentation( https://eldonationtracker.readthedocs…), pulling from my Python docstrings ( https://eldonationtracker.readthedocs…) with even more ways I’m going to fix/optimize my code and make it more Pythonic. I think this is the best book I’ve read on Python programming since the Mark Pilgrim book that got me into Python that decade and a half ago.

Over the Wine-Dark Sea by H.N. Turteltaub

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This is the second time I’ve read this book, the first time being nearly 20 years ago when it first came out. A few key bits had stuck with me, like Menedemos’ womanizing and a battle at sea. But after 20 years, most of the details had faded, so it was almost like reading it anew.
As a history geek, I found it a lot of fun to read historical fiction that isn’t set in one of the traditional time periods like Victorian England or Napolean’s Reign. The two characters also make great foils for each other, impulsive Menedemos and his philosopher/wannabe-historian cousin Sostratos. While it’s obviously a work of fiction, it was neat to see what things are the same about humans no matter how far back you go (haggling, superstitions, balancing desire with prudence) while other things are so different (how they viewed meals, technology, gender relations).
Perhaps obviously, since the main characters are sea traders and the majority of the book takes place during the trading season, it’s structured almost as a series of episodes, each taking place in a new city. There isn’t a truly overarching plot and it’s both metaphorically and literally about the journey, not the destination(s). The biggest narrative momentum comes from Sostratos’ character growth, but even that is relatively minimal.
Overall, I think it’s a pretty fun read, particularly if you’re interested in ancient Greece.

Clarkesworld Magazine, Issue 134 by Neil Clarke

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I wasn’t quite into this one as much as some other recent issues. Here are my reviews per story:

Prasetyo Plastics - Less of a traditional story and more of a meditation on unbridled capitalism that does not descend into a libertarian dystopia. Rather, it’s another that asks if we truly realize what we’re doing to this planet on a scale that we believe has never been attempted before.

Starswept by Mary Fan

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I met Ms. Fan at Farpoint 2019 at her booth after seeing some of the panels she was on. We started talking about her books and I was intrigued and put this book and Stronger Than a Bronze Dragon on my To Read list. I also started following Ms. Fan on Twitter, and from getting to know her via tweet, she has put a lot of herself into this book: She went to college for music and has original compositions on her site: https://www.maryfan.com/songs.html. There are silks performances in the book and Ms. Fan is currently attending classes to get better at performing silk (Cirque de Soliel type stuff) routines.
As for the book itself, let me start off with non-spoilery stuff. First off, as you can see, I gave it 4 stars. So if you like YA science fiction and are willing to stretch your definition of what can be in SF, you will probably enjoy this book. This book is very focused on the performing arts aspect of our protagonist, Iris Lei, with mostly backgrounded science fiction elements until the latter parts of the book. And it never becomes hard SF. Again, if you’re OK with that, I think you’re in for a real treat.
The book has a slow start, which can be tough for some, but I think it’s important for many reasons: it really drives home how dedicated to the craft Iris Lei and her fellow students at Papilio are; it serves to really highlight Iris’ relationships, which is a KEY plot point in the second 60% of the book; and it really makes us crave the inevitable scene change, allowing Ms. Fan to really make that an emotional hit.
The only thing that was a bit of a miss for me was Iris’ love story plot points. I don’t have any problems reading YA, but the further I get away from it, the less I can truly relate to the relationship woes of the main characters. Intellectually, I know it feels like it’s the most important thing when you’re that age. But knowing how much it’s not just takes me out of it.
I think the novel comes together well. It was clearly written as a trilogy (almost nothing is resolved at the end of this book), so we’ll have to see how it all works as a narrative, but I liked the story.
OK, Spoiler time now. The rest of this’ll be spoiler-filled so I can better talk about the plot. You should have everything you need to know above about whether to read the book if you can’t stand any spoilers.
The plot has a lot of similarities to A Planet for Rent by Yoss, but with a different set of metaphors. A Planet for Rent was, obviously, a metaphor for a post-Cold War Cuba with the Aliens serving as the First World and the way they treat the Cubans. Starswept felt to me like it contained two separate metaphors. Part 1 of the book clearly seemed like a metaphor for college debt when doing a degree in the arts. The Papilians LIVE for their performances. Some may have more or less intense feelings than Iris Lei, but they seem to all be doing it for a love of performance. Yet, just like in real life, most people who are awesome musicians are not going to be in the London Philharmonic (assuming there’s good pay that comes with that prestige). Some will end up in orchestras where they need a spouse to support them. Many will end up teaching the next generation. And nearly all will end up with crushing debt they don’t have the ability to pay back. But, as long as they’re not starving, the joy of performance may outweigh the financial issues.
Starting in Part 2 of Starswept, the narrative changes to a slavery metaphor. I was a little torn about what the best real-world analogue was. On the one hand, we eventually discover an Abolitionist movement and the characters are treated as little more than objects by the Adryil. So that would seem to point to African slavery of the 1600-1800s. But then there’s the aspect that the Earthling performers are being told they’re getting a better life and their government is complicit in understanding that they’re being sold into slavery. This points to a couple potential sources. The simplest, of course, is modern slavery. There are people right now who were told they should go to the USA, Japan, or the UAE to get better jobs. Once they get there their passports are confiscated and they become slaves and/or sex workers. There may also be a tie to how the Chinese workers who came to the Americas were lied to. They were shipped over to work here and then told they needed to pay their way back, but were paid such a low wage that they were stuck here. This leads to many Chinese populations in the Americas, including the Chinese population in Cuba. Either way, while we have lots of foreshadowing that things are not what they seem (especially once Damiul starts teaching Iris how to not be mind-controlled), I think Ms. Fan does a good job of portraying how bad things can go for those who are unknowingly sold into slavery.

Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat: Mastering the Elements of Good Cooking by Samin Nosrat

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I’ve been really improving my cooking by leaps and bounds thanks to America’s Test Kitchen’s books. They make sure recipes are perfect (or as near as can be) in terms of directions, ingredients, etc. They have truly spoiled me to the point that I often hate other cookbooks. But, as my wife says, you’re not truly cooking until you can just look at the ingredients in the house and come up with food on the fly. Or know how much salt the food needs by tasting it. So, after seeing Samin Nosrat’s Netflix show (which shares its name with this book), I added the book to my wishlist.
I received it as a gift and I’m very glad that I did. While it’ll definitely take me a few times of re-reading the first half of the book (the part that talks about how to use salt, fat, acid, and heat in cooking without presenting any recipes) to absorb all the ideas, I’ve already been able to use some of the ideas (particularly around salt) to improve my ability to improvise in the kitchen as well as finally be able to do that enigmatic part that ends most ATK recipes - “salt to taste”.
If you’ve a 100% beginner cook, I still recommend America’s Test Kitchen as the best training wheels you can find. I’m still planning on using my ATK books and getting more because when you’re doing an unfamiliar recipe (say, from another region of the USA or another country) it’s pretty hard to improvise because you don’t know what the platonic ideal tastes like. But if you want to move to the next level, I’d put this near the top of your list by Kenji Lopez-Alt’s The Food Lab (I haven’t read it, but EVERYONE loves it) or McGee’s “red book”.

A Man On the Moon: The Voyages of the Apollo Astronauts by Andrew Chaikin

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The book that was used by Ron Howard, et al to make the Apollo 13 movie!
I got this book as part of a space-themed Humble Audiobook Bundle. As I was choosing the next audiobook I’d listen to whenever I ran out of podcast, I decided to go for non-fiction book. And so I started my journey through a couple decades of NASA history. Once things get going (ie the men are on their way to the moon), Chaikin does an excellent job of switching POVs throughout the mission to give us some insight into each man’s thoughts, challenges, and even prank ideas. Since hacks/hackers originate with the MIT train team and the Stanford/Caltech student pranks, it’s no surprise that NASA missions had the same kinds of Easter Eggs one finds in video games (especially in the more wild-west era of video game development before everything became AAA multi-million dollar games in the late 90s; of course with the re-emergence of indie games you’re seeing them again). As examples, there were jokes embedded in their instruction manuals, various parts of the spaceships, or in coded messages back and forth with NASA HQ.
As someone born a generation too late, with the much less exciting Hubble, Spacelab, MIR, etc in my lifetime, Chaikin did a great job of both putting me into the mindset of America at the time and humanizing the astronauts. (Like the best historians do for the Founding Fathers we always learn about from a distance in school). If you’re interested in NASA history, I think it’s harder to find a better recommendation than this book.

Clarkesworld Magazine, Issue 133 by Neil Clarke

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

As usual, the per-story reviews are below this section. But first, a ranking of said stories.

The stories I REALLY liked: The Sum of Her Expectations, The Last Boast-Builder in Ballyvoloon, Intro to Prom, Shiomah’s Land
Great: Red Lights, And Rain
Good: The Psychology Game
Not a fan: The Nightingales in Platres
The per-story reviews:
The Sum of Her Expectations: First of all, I love what the title is a reference to within this story. I like the idea of the aliens and I also love the possible metaphor of what happens with the contruction bots in the planet they’ve left behind. In the end, the story is a metaphor for dealing with trauma and I really like how it came together.
The Nightingales in Platres: An alternate future story in which some Greeks get on a generation ship to try and emigrate to a new planet. I’m not a fan of how the story went, but they can’t all be something I love.
The Last Boat-Builder in Ballyvoloon: A future in which we created an AI “organism” to remove plastics from the sea and things got out of hand. I think more of the public needs to read stories like this before we try some hare-brained idea to deal with climate change or pollution.
The Psychology Game (translated): A future (except it takes place in 2020 ;) ) in which there’s a reality TV show where people get psychological help. The twist is that the psychologist might be an AI and neither the patient nor the audience knows. Turns out to almost be in the structure of some of the non-fiction in Clarkesworld where it’s exploring a non-fiction subject with some fictional examples. Also, never thought of this before:
“And to be honest, human therapists have feelings too. If you keep on unloading your emotional garbage onto them, wouldn’t they suffer too? Sometimes I think using human therapists is kind of inhumane.”
Intro to Prom: Oh, man - what an incredible story. A perfect tale of corporate greed and how it affects the little folks. I can 100% see something like this actually happening (which is sad and scary). WOW.
Shiomah’s Land: I correctly guessed what’s the twist would be in terms of the origins of this world. But that did not take away from how well-written it was and how it made me feel the emotions of the main character. I’d love to read another story in the same universe.
Red Lights, And Rain: The fallout from a time war. It takes a lot of good twists and turns and I was not expecting the ending.

Soleil by Jacqueline Garlick

My rating: 1 of 5 stars

It is a real bummer for me to give this book 1 star. I really enjoyed the first book in the trilogy. The second book was fun. But this book… kind of just felt like perhaps this series should have been a duology instead of a trilogy. While the first third or so was a good bit of fan service, it could have maybe just been a post-script novella? The rest of the book was just full of the introduction of all sorts of new rules and technology to the way the world worked that I didn’t think made sense in the third book of a trilogy. On top of that, the last chunk - from when our main characters end up in a canyon until the end just didn’t make any god forsaken sense. (view spoiler)[Who rebuilt the dead people? I kept thinking it was all going to end up being a dream or parallel universe or something (hide spoiler)]

Serious Python: Black-Belt Advice on Deployment, Scalability, Testing, and More by Julien Danjou

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is an AWESOME book that has completely transformed the way I code in Python. That might sound like the opening to a parody review, but I’m being sincere. One of the best things about Python is that it has a low barrier to entry and it’s easy to get started programming. One of the worst things about Python is that it has a low barrier to entry and it’s easy to get started programming. I’ve been going through the past 15ish years with just a surface-level understanding of my favorite programming language.

Over the Wine-Dark Sea by H.N. Turteltaub

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This is the second time I’ve read this book, the first time being nearly 20 years ago when it first came out. A few key bits had stuck with me, like Menedemos’ womanizing and a battle at sea. But after 20 years, most of the details had faded, so it was almost like reading it anew.

Clarkesworld Magazine, Issue 134 by Neil Clarke

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I wasn’t quite into this one as much as some other recent issues. Here are my reviews per story:

Prasetyo Plastics - Less of a traditional story and more of a meditation on unbridled capitalism that does not descend into a libertarian dystopia. Rather, it’s another that asks if we truly realize what we’re doing to this planet on a scale that we believe has never been attempted before.

Starswept by Mary Fan

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I met Ms. Fan at Farpoint 2019 at her booth after seeing some of the panels she was on. We started talking about her books and I was intrigued and put this book and Stronger Than a Bronze Dragon on my To Read list. I also started following Ms. Fan on Twitter, and from getting to know her via tweet, she has put a lot of herself into this book: She went to college for music and has original compositions on her site: https://www.maryfan.com/songs.html. There are silks performances in the book and Ms. Fan is currently attending classes to get better at performing silk (Cirque de Soliel type stuff) routines.

Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat: Mastering the Elements of Good Cooking by Samin Nosrat

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I’ve been really improving my cooking by leaps and bounds thanks to America’s Test Kitchen’s books. They make sure recipes are perfect (or as near as can be) in terms of directions, ingredients, etc. They have truly spoiled me to the point that I often hate other cookbooks. But, as my wife says, you’re not truly cooking until you can just look at the ingredients in the house and come up with food on the fly. Or know how much salt the food needs by tasting it. So, after seeing Samin Nosrat’s Netflix show (which shares its name with this book), I added the book to my wishlist.

A Man On the Moon: The Voyages of the Apollo Astronauts by Andrew Chaikin

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The book that was used by Ron Howard, et al to make the Apollo 13 movie!

I got this book as part of a space-themed Humble Audiobook Bundle. As I was choosing the next audiobook I’d listen to whenever I ran out of podcast, I decided to go for non-fiction book. And so I started my journey through a couple decades of NASA history. Once things get going (ie the men are on their way to the moon), Chaikin does an excellent job of switching POVs throughout the mission to give us some insight into each man’s thoughts, challenges, and even prank ideas. Since hacks/hackers originate with the MIT train team and the Stanford/Caltech student pranks, it’s no surprise that NASA missions had the same kinds of Easter Eggs one finds in video games (especially in the more wild-west era of video game development before everything became AAA multi-million dollar games in the late 90s; of course with the re-emergence of indie games you’re seeing them again). As examples, there were jokes embedded in their instruction manuals, various parts of the spaceships, or in coded messages back and forth with NASA HQ.

Clarkesworld Magazine, Issue 133 by Neil Clarke

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

As usual, the per-story reviews are below this section. But first, a ranking of said stories.

The stories I REALLY liked: The Sum of Her Expectations, The Last Boast-Builder in Ballyvoloon, Intro to Prom, Shiomah’s Land

Great: Red Lights, And Rain

Good: The Psychology Game

Not a fan: The Nightingales in Platres

The per-story reviews:

While I continued to read lots of cookbooks in 2019, this was the year of Sequels, Sanderson, and Science Fiction Magazines. On the sequels front, I finished The Cosmere (except for White Sands Vol 3), continued The Expanse, The Asylum Tales, Red Rising, The Dresden Files, The Mogoliad, Wild Cards, and the Illumination Paradox. For Sanderson, I not only finished the Cosmere, but I also started The Reckoners and read from his mentor (Robert Jordan - Wheel of Time) and his protege (Brian McClellan - Powder Mage Trilogy). As for magazines, it was all Clarkesworld, but I wanted to keep the alliteration in that sentence.

Steelheart by Brandon Sanderson

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Can Sanderson write a great non-Cosmere book? The answer is a resounding ‘yes!’

I’ve read quite a few superhero decontructions and reconstructions (most famous being Watchmen and Irredeemable), but Sanderson brings something new to the genre, partially by focusing on the folks affected by gods walking among men. (Which, I just realized, brings the idea of superheros being our version of the Greek gods full circle) This is also what I loved about A Song of Ice and Fire that got swept away for the Game of Thrones adaptation. When the powerful bicker, it’s the powerless that suffer. This book is also a bit of a mystery as we are missing a lot of information and while David, the main character, knows a lot more than we do when the novel starts, he still is missing a lot of information. Sanderson does a good job of planting lots of little clues so that the plot twists are well-earned. Even though I guessed one of the plot twists, I was thrown off by the way in which it manifested. (view spoiler)[Yes, Prof was an epic. No, he wasn’t working for Steelheart to infiltrate The Recokoners (hide spoiler)] The ending really hits hard and works quite well.

Breakfast: The Most Important Book About the Best Meal of the Day by The Editors of Extra Crispy

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Received this as a gift.

I guess I’m spoiled by Milk Street, Meathead Goldwyn, and America’s Test Kitchen, but reading a collection of blog posts put into a book with a bunch of vague recipes (although some seem to be better written) was just kind of meh.

Clarkesworld Magazine, Issue 132 by Neil Clarke

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Antarctic Birds: Some kind of science experiment with genetic engineering - I’m a little confused at first about what’s going on. My least favorite kind of story - at the end I still barely understood what was going on.

Little /^^^\&- - A very weird story about planet-sized aliens (or planets that have gained sentience?) messing with Earth. Wow, that ending was profoundly weird. It was still a pretty fun read, though.

Make: LEGO and Arduino Projects: Projects for extending MINDSTORMS NXT with open-source electronics by John Baichtal

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I had been waiting to mark this book as read until I finished all the projects, but the reality is that might take years; not because the projects are hard, but because I can’t quite get the wife to justify all the extra expenses for toys.

Clarkesworld Magazine, Issue 131 by Neil Clarke

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

With this issue, there were a ton of stories that had killer endings and worlds that I wanted to spend more time in. Strongly recommend!!! See below for a per-story review that may expand on my status updates:

Twisted Knots: A story involving a character who sees the world in geometric terms. It turns out to be a beautiful story about loss and dealing with loss.

Grave Peril by Jim Butcher

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Harry Dresden continues to grow, making less of the same mistakes and earning new friends. I particularly loved his partnership with Michael and how their personalities compared and contrasted. This entry in the series finds Harry trying to figure out why there are more ghosts than usual terrorizing Chicago. This one was a little harder to try and predict the solution to the mystery, but it did make sense as things went on.

Clarkesworld Magazine, Issue 130 by Neil Clarke

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Another awesome series of stories compiled by Mr. Neil Clarke. I loved all but the last fiction story and enjoyed the non-fiction. Here’s what I thought of each story/article:

An Age of Ice (a translated story): A story involving a multi-generational family and a world in which cryonics are realistic. About how the world changes because this exists. It’s a very short story, but quite poignant.

Noir by Jacqueline Garlick

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Ms. Garlick picks up exactly where the last novel left off, so I would recommend reading this immediately after the first book, since I was a little confused for the first little bit until I remember what was going on. She uses this book to push the readers further into this world in two ways. First of all, she expands the POV characters so that we can get a first-hand look into more than just Eyelet and Urlick’s thoughts. Second, she dramatically expands on the world and the magic of the world that our characters live in. Primarily, and incredibly scary, is the exploration of the kingdom’s madhouse which not only leans hard on all the tropes of the evil madhouse, but also adds on top of that a layer of malicious magic. There is a bright spot with the comedic relief character in the madhouse that had me alternately laughing and gasping, given the circumstances.

NBA Jam by Reyan Ali

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I love the various titles in the Boss Fight Books series; all the moreso when they involve games that meant a lot to me. NBA Jam (which I had filed in my head as NBA Jams), is one of those games that my brothers and I sunk countless hours into. We were always more into arcade or silly sports games like Ken Griffy Jr. for the SNES or Midway’s NHL game for the N64 than sports sims. NBA was right in that perfect spot where it wasn’t too focused on b-ball and having lots of players on the screen. Instead it was fast-paced and easy and fun and silly - great for pre-teen to teen Eric and brothers.

Cook It in Your Dutch Oven: 150 Foolproof Recipes Tailor-Made for Your Kitchen’s Most Versatile Pot by America’s Test Kitchen

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Some pretty awesome recipes that I can’t wait to try and one I’ve already tried. While not as full of photos as their Illustrated line of cookcooks, it’s still got a lot of great photos to showcase what your finished dishes should look like. It’s also got the signature America’s Test Kitchen recipes that tell you why the recipe works as well as where they’ve taken shortcuts that make it easier to cook without sacrificing on taste.

Clarkesworld Magazine, Issue 129 by Neil Clarke

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I think the only story I wasn’t into was “Neptune’s Trident”. Otherwise, a top-notch issue. Especially liked the non-fiction essays this time around.

My thoughts on each story (a slightly wordier version of my status updates where character limits kept me from expressing it all)

Fool’s Cap: I was *so* sure I’d guessed the reveal, but the author got me. There were a couple subtle clues of what the ending would end up being, but I was already too committed to the one I thought was coming.

Clarkesworld Magazine, Issue 128 by Neil Clarke

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

After last month’s reveal of James Tiptree, Jr as a pseudonym, pretty funny to have a story of “his” in this issue! Overall another great issue. I think my favorite universes were from “We Who Live in the Heart” and “Running the Snake”.

Here’s what I thought of each story (a slightly more wordy version of my status updates):

Breasts: A Natural and Unnatural History by Florence Williams

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This book was depressing as hell. I added it to my To Read list 5 or so years ago when I heard about it on Fresh Air. Don’t get me wrong, the author has an entertaining style. There were lots of chuckles as I read various witty things she said. It’s just that the core thesis of the book - or at least the thread that seemed to tie everything together - was that the modern world was screwing over everyone with breasts, men included.

Clarkesworld Magazine, Issue 127 by Neil Clarke

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is, as per usual, a great issue of Clarkesworld Magazine. Once again Clarke’s affinity for bringing Chinese SF to the fore gives us a great, fun story in The Robot who liked to tell tall tales. The non-fiction section also has some really great essays that made me think while also being entertaining.

Make: Bluetooth: Mobile Phone, Arduino, and Raspberry Pi Projects with Ble by Alasdair Allan

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The book was fine. The projects in here didn’t draw me in as much as some of the other Make electronic books I’ve recently read. I think it’s because most of them were a bit less useful in my house given the need to satisfy the wife aesthetically.

Fool Moon by Jim Butcher

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I typically read 1-3 fiction books at once (depends on whether I’m caught up on my podcasts and listening to an audiobook), going back and forth between books I already own (say from Humble Bundle or Story Bundle) and books I have to buy. I don’t usually have to worry about getting confused about the plots or anything because the books are pretty different. Somehow, this time I ended up reading two supernatural detective books at the same time - this one and Dan Shambles #5. Not only that, but both books had cases involving multiple types of werewolves. The only deleterious effect is that I kept forgetting that Dresden is in Chicago instead of New Orleans.

Working Stiff by Kevin J. Anderson

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The world of Dan Shamble, Zombie P.I. is a fun world full of dad jokes and groan-worthy puns. The author doesn’t take himself too seriously and so it’s easy to have fun and roll with it rather than end up rolling your eyes at it. This collection of Dan Shamble short stories does a good job of introducing, and then having fun with, the regular cast of characters. If you like your noir/hard-boiled detective novels with a bit of camp, this is for you. Here’s what I thought of each of the stories within:

Morning Star by Pierce Brown

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This initial Red Rising Trilogy is a little like the original Matrix Trilogy (if you haven’t heard, there’s apparently a fourth in the works). The first one was a triumphant, mostly fun story. At the end, our protagonists haven’t 100% won, but you could imagine it happening. Then the second one just crushed all that hope and made you feel dumb for believing in the narrative of the good guys always winning. Finally, the third entry in the story keeps that crapsack worldview and manages another, less satisfying ending.

Make a Raspberry Pi-Controlled Robot: Building a Rover with Python, Linux, Motors, and Sensors by Wolfram Donat

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Donat does a great job of giving the reader everything they need to know to build a rover (like the Mars rover) out of a Raspberry Pi and some motors and sensors. It’s definitely a project I intend to add to my ever-growing list of hardware hacking projects. This book gives you enough info to get started while also pointing out places where the user could go off and make it their own. Very great balance and I heartily recommend.

The Eye of the World by Robert Jordan

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I don’t know if Robert Jordan knew this series was going to be a ton of books, but he clearly knew it was going to be more than one. In a book about the making of Star Wars, the author uncovers that the old rumor that Lucas spread that he started in the middle of the story because it’s more interesting than the beginning is a lie. However, the concept he was falsely trying to get across certainly is true. This book is SLOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOW. The reason I gave this book 4 stars instead of 3 is that, like Lord of the Rings, which every high fantasy book written since is in conversation with, the extra slow beginning is important as a contrast for the adventure our protagonists go through.

Getting Started With Raspberry Pi by Matt Richardson

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is a really GREAT book that, more than some of the other books with the same title, is about Getting Started with electronics; the Raspberry Pi, in this case. The author does a REALLY GOOD job explaining the basics of getting started with the Pi, the basics of Linux, and a bunch of ways to use the electronics part of a Raspberry Pi with some fun real world examples. (Controlling a lamp over the net or making a Photobooth that can automatically add mustaches, hats, etc) If I’d had this book back when I bought my Raspberry Pi B (back when that was new), I would have done lots of projects with it by now. Instead, it’s been sitting in my basement. (Now, the new RaspPi 4 is great enough to easily play 1080p vids over the net and I’m loving running Librelec on it)

Qt5 Python GUI Programming Cookbook: Building responsive and powerful cross-platform applications with PyQt by B.M. Harwani

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

On the plus side, this book gave me the knowledge I needed to finally complete a GUI for my Extra Life Donation tracker program ( https://github.com/djotaku/ELDonation…). I’d tried many different GUI toolkits and none of them was getting me what I wanted. I wanted to use QT since I love using KDE, but it was just too complicated and free posts on various blogs didn’t quite take me far enough. So for that I’m grateful to this book. There are also future improvements I’ll be able to make to my code thanks to this book.

Getting Started with Adafruit FLORA: Making Wearables with an Arduino-Compatible Electronics Platform by Becky Stern

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

First of all, lots of kudos for the authors including lots of photos. Many of the other microcontroller books I’ve read from MAKE have had illustrations, but this one actually has photos and that’s very helpful when illustrating sewing.

After reading this I’m inspired to mess around with some wearable tech, but also extremely terrified of screwing something up as someone who’s done little to no sewing. However, I might end up teaming up with my mother-in-law who’s a great seamstress to work on some projects. Just need to decide on a plan of attack first.

Getting Started with Arduino by Massimo Banzi

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Massimo and his co-writer do an excellent job creating an introduction to the Arduino board. I started mucking around with the boards before reading this book because I’d done some projects with Atmel chips in undergrad (a couple decades ago) and I do software programming on the side. But I wish I’d read this book first as it would have saved me time on figuring stuff out on my own that’s unique to Arduino as well as stuff that I’d forgotten in the intervening decades. Programming hardware chips is very different from general purpose programming for a computer or cell phone. Not only are resources on the chip a lot more limited (although, in the case of the Raspberry Pi - getting closer and closer to a regular desktop), but input and output is also more limited. These microcontroller boards are meant for automation projects where you set something up (like a system to water your plants based on whether or not it is going to rain) or limited interactions. They’re running in a never-ending loop and that requires a different mindset.

Korean Home Cooking: Classic and Modern Recipes by Sohui Kim

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Beautiful photos and well-written recipes fill this book. I’ve added lots of them to my to-cook list. My only disappointment is that the BBQ section is more about grilling indoors than true BBQ.

View all my reviews

Love, Fishie by Maddy Gaiman

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Since Maddy Gaiman wrote this when she was 8 and I have a nearly-8 year old who loves to read and write, I figured it’d be a fun book to read together. She enjoyed it even though poetry isn’t her thing. I thought it was pretty neat that Maddy and Neil Gaiman write poems to each other. Overall, it’s a pretty neat collection.

Double Life by S. Usher Evans

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I met Ms. Usher Evans at Baltimore Comic-Con a year or two ago and she is a very prolific author. If any particular book of yours isn’t your cup of tea, you can try another - she has magical school YA, fantasy, and SF as well as others. This book is one of her science fiction books.

Geekomancy by Michael R. Underwood

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

To me, this book is Buffy meets Ready Player One done well. As I discussed in my RPO review, it was just way too overhyped for me vs what it delivered. This one, on the other hand, seemed to come from a more genuine place and fit in better into the story. Also, I love Buffy while dystopias (which I’ve been reading since middle school are starting to really bum me out). Anyway, this isn’t an RPO trash session, let’s get to this book.

The Circlet Treasury of Erotic Steampunk by J. Blackmore

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

As I’ve said many times before - I’ve been exploring more genres recently instead of locking myself into just one. I don’t remember how this ended up in my To-Read list back in 2014, but it’s definitely different than my usual fare. That said, my preferences for stories in this collection mirrored my preferences in the video world. I’m not a consumer of erotica movies, shows, etc. I don’t find sex entertaining for its own sake. But I do think that sex can be very contributory to a plot. Sometimes it can be a move forward for a character (see the many permutations of that in 1999’s Cruel Intentions) and other times it can just make the plot more true to life (see various movies either about dating - the opening to Train Wreck or the quarter-point of Forgetting Sarah Marshall - or married life) So in this collection I preferred the stories that were good Steampunk stories that happened to have good sex vs the ones that were just the literary equivalent of porn. The highest compliment I could give to any of the stories in this collection was some variation on - “I want to see more in this story’s universe!”

Clarkesworld Magazine, Issue 126 by Neil Clarke

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

“Two Ways of Living” - A world in which humans can essentially hibernate by eating a ton of calories and then a chemical cocktail to go unconcious. Additionally, the person does not age. The short story essentially serves as a meditation on what kind of person would do such a thing and what their reasons might be. I’m not sure how I feel about the ending.

Drive by James S.A. Corey

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Prequels can be a tough thing to get right. The reader/audience already knows where things are going. Can you have any real tension? Well, if you’re JSAC, you know a great way to do it - by having it involve none of the characters of the main series and setting it generations in the past. Considering the point of this story is to document how the Epstein drive comes to be, it’s surprisingly touching and personal. Or rather, not surprising at all because my favorite aspects of JSAC’s writing have been the way they can write both a very character-centric plot and keep attention to the details - whether scientific, political, or economic.

Astrophysics for People in a Hurry by Neil deGrasse Tyson

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I think the best way to describe this book is to reference the last chapter and Neil DeGrasse Tyson’s catchphrase on his podcast - the Cosmic Perspective. Even though I already knew a bunch of the info in the book (at least at the basic level), when I really thought about it, it was so hard to wrap my mind around the infinitely large and small quantities referenced by NDT.

Clarkesworld Magazine, Issue 125 by Neil Clarke

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

“Assassins” - At it’s most basic level, this is a story about people forming emotional attachments with virtual characters. What I think makes this short story so compelling is that this is already the case with much less fidelity than a Star Trek holodeck or even convincing virtual reality. People form emotional bonds with video game characters - the previous book I read (A Mind Forever Voyaging) - documents this happening back in the text adventure days. It still happens today. And it happens with book characters, anime characters, characters on TV shows… So it doesn’t take a huge leap of faith to understand the emotional attachments in the more VR-capable world of the short story. Additionally, the main character has her own emotional issues and perhaps some neuro-atypical things going on. As a short story it’s masterfully told, but I think it would also be fun to explore this world some more in another short story or in a longer story.

A Mind Forever Voyaging: A History of Storytelling in Video Games by Dylan Holmes

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

It was nice to take a break from fiction to read this analysis of the evolution of video game narratives through time. Chronologically, the game goes from text adventure games through point and click adventure games to JRPGs and then to the blending of narrative with FPS engines before ending with Heavy Rain. The book is relatively short for its subject matter and decades of coverage (200-something pages on my Nook in epub format including the glossary) so the author has to cut out a lot. He’s honest and upfront about this which, for me, took the sting out of “why did he mention this one and not that one?”.

One Night in Sixes by Arianne “Tex” Thompson

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I added this book to my To Read list back in 2014 after hearing Ms. Thompson interviewed on Sword and Laser. I had a slightly different impression of what the plot would be - I think the interview focused on the character of TwoBlood - but the story I got was still great. Since I really liked the world Ms. Thompson creates here so much, I want to start with what I didn’t like about the book rather than ending with what I didn’t like. In list notation:

Terris: Wrought of Copper by Alex Flagg

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

If you are really into The Cosmere you tend to REALLY be into the Cosmere (just take a stroll through r/Cosmere on Reddit). So it would be a shame to miss out on all this background information about the Terrismen in this Mistborn series even if you’re not going to play the RPG. Don’t read this book until after you’ve read Misborn 1 or you will be spoiled story-wise. I think it’s pretty safe to read after that as the spoilers it has for book 2 are pretty minor. It MAY spoil a death from book 2….it has been over a year since I started reading this, but other than that, I think it’s pretty safe to read after book 1. I wouldn’t read it too long after the first Mistborn Trilogy because it has pretty much no relevance to the Wax/Wayne series since that one takes place something like 700 years after the first trilogy.

Promise of Blood by Brian McClellan

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

As I work through my To-read list, we come to another book I added around 2014. This one was after Mr. McClellan had been interviewed by Sword and Laser (and 4 years before I’d ever heard of Brandon Sanderson). His idea of powder mages - a Napoleanic look at magic sounded incredibly refreshing. I was never a big fantasy person, preferring science fiction, but so much of the fantasy I’d come across was stuck in Tolkien’s shadow - medieval-ish with dwarves and elves and so on. Of course, in the time since I heard about this book I’ve read all of Sanderson’s Cosmere novels and others have also taken a look at other fantasy genres like Silk-punk. But that didn’t make this book any less good, only less special.

The Mongoliad: Book Two by Neal Stephenson

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is a very hard book to properly review. Unlike a typical book in a trilogy (or however many books it ends up being - at the time this book was published it was a trilogy), this book does not contain a story that begins and ends within the larger story. But as this book started I realized this would be the case. It essentially just continues exactly where the last one left off as if this was not a series of books, but rather one large book that’s been split into publishable chunks of 300 pages each. (Although, to put the lie to my point, the final chapter does have a very satisfying final sentence for ending a book)

Childhood’s End by Arthur C. Clarke

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This is some old-ass science fiction. It’s interesting that on my recent trip I ended up reading 3 SF stories from my to-read list that were all from the 1950s. It’s definitely got a lot of that Zeerust where we’re incredibly far into the future, but it’s still analog interfaces to computers and they still take up entire buildings. At one point someone who’s essentially the human representative from the world gets faxes from all over the world in order to know what’s going on. Of course, some of the female representation is dated - although not as badly as the PKD short stories I read on the same trip I read this book. And there was a great intro to the version I read which was written in 2000 in which Clarke acknowledges how the world passed him by as well as including a revised chapter one written in the 80s.

The Eyes Have It by Philip K. Dick

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This story is so short, the Gutenberg license at the end takes up the majority of the pages, but it’s still a fun story. Or, well it is to me and I imageine my boss would also love it. But we’re both degenerates who LOVE puns. This is also a great short story for kids around 3rd or 4th grade when they’d really and truly understand all the idioms being used. Essentially, a short story from the 1950s in which the protagonist reads a book containing a bunch of English idioms that convinces him the characters are aliens. If you love puns, you’ll love it. If you hate puns, run away from the story right now

Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Only my third 5-star review for 2019, but boy does Ms. Leckie deserve it here. It’s everything I love about SF including a gigantic, fully realized world with a culture that makes sense as a consequence of the world she’s created. It really reminded me of the worlds I’ve come to know in Brandon Sanderson’s Cosmere.

Interestingly, for a year in which I also read The Just City, Radch society seems to be a corrupt Plato’s Republic and/or Confucian China situation where tests determine how awesome you’re supposed to be, but some apparent corruption affects parts of the narrative, esp with Lt. Awn. As always with one of these narratives, there’s the tension between feeling like the powerful families are powerful because they’re meant to be (whether because of God or not). There was also the cocus on tea, Bollywood-like films, and many-armed gods and goddesses. South Asian/Asian (if you look at the Confucious stuff) space culture maybe? So I thought it was interesting she mentions Roman society during the extra interview included at the end of my ebook version. Of course there’s some of that too, particularly in the social stratification among the powerful families.

Sirena by Donna Jo Napoli

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Another book that was on my To-Read list since 2014. I *think* I heard about it on Boing-Boing, but I wasn’t making good use of my GR shelves that way back then to keep track of such things. Wherever I heard about it, I was expecting this to be a retelling of Hans Christian Anderson’s The Little Mermaid. (Looking at the other Donna Jo Napoli books I have on my To Read list - Beauty and the Beast, Mulan, etc - it’s not hard to see why) But this turned out to be so much better for my sensibilities - it’s really more of taking the barebones of the Anderson telling and porting it back to the original Western source of mermaids - the Sirens of Greek Mythology.

Dead Man’s Deal by Jocelynn Drake

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Wow, Ms. jocelynn Drake did something pretty rare among the trilogies I’ve been reading for the past half decade - she made a second book in the trilogy that doesn’t end on a cliffhanger. My memories of books I read when I was younger have this happening more often. But I know I have written many, many reviews on Goodreads where I talk about how hard it is to rate the second book because it’s a setup for the third. So it was nice and refreshing to have a second book in a series where if Ms. Drake had never continued, we’d be satisfied with the ending. That said, she certainly provided enough change in the status quo that I’m curious to read the next book and find out what happened.

Kingdom Hearts II by Alexa Ray Corriea

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

As with the best books in this series, Ms. Corriea has a deep passion for the game she’s writing about and it had a profound impact in her life. Over a number of chapters, she makes a great case for why this series is capable of deeper reflection than it would seem for a game with Donald, Goofy, and Cloud McCrono-face the protagonist (Sora). She does a great job blending the history of the series as well as pulling in information from later games to show the deep universe the creator put together in this series. It’s a game I own, but never got to play as I got it in college and from that point on I’ve had trouble finding the time needed to complete a jRPG. After reading this book, I’m keen for my kids to play it during that magical 9-14 years old where jRPG melodramatics play so hard. (And I think part of why FF6 and Chrono Trigger hit me so hard while I never really got into FF7 - FFX)

Aces High by George R.R. Martin

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

As usual for an anthology, I’m going to post my thoughts on each story, but before I get to that, my thoughts on the book as a whole. It was a big change from the previous book and that might be good, bad, or neutral to you. The first book, our introduction to the Wild Cards universe, was basically a series of stories that took place in the same universe and used the same characters (everyone LOVES to play with Croyd) but there wasn’t any unifying story outside of Dr. Tachyon coming to terms with the effects of the virus. But the stories mostly stood alone and even explored different narrative techniques like a Hunter S. Thompson parody. By contrast this book is one tight story that goes from beginning to end strongly being involved in each of the stories. It also once again expands the Wild Cards universe, more literally than metaphorically. Where this works best is with the theory of the small man of history. Many of the characters are just doing their own thing and only tangentially interacting with the PlotDevice.. It’s constantly changing hands and driving the plot and almost no one understands what’s going on until near the end of the book. But everyone’s actions are leading towards the various major plot points of the anthology.

His Majesty’s Dragon by Naomi Novik

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I added this book to my Goodreads To Read list in 2014. The reasons for doing so are lost to time and slightly baffling. I don’t believe I had any previous experience with Ms. Naomi Novik. I’m not a big fantasy person (I’m certainly much more of one thanks to Sanderson than I was in 2014). That leaves 3 possibilities: a recommendation from someone whose opinions I admire, a fondness for historical fiction, and/or my love of counter-factual history. Either way, five years later it had big expectations to fill. AND IT SUCCEEDED. I’m kind of mad at myself for not getting to this earlier.

Huckleberry: Recipes, Stories, and Secrets from Our Kitchen by Zoe Nathan

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

My favorite part of this cookbook has been the intros to each chapter. Mrs Zoe Nathan has organized the chapters into the time of day needed to start working on the items to be ready to open Huckleberry for breakfast. Her stories are entertaining and reveal a lot about her personality. My second favorite part is that each recipe has an intro that explains the origins of the dish as well as pairings and substitutions that work well with the recipe. The only bad thing is that her recipes use a LOT of butter. A LOT. So while all baked goods are less healthy for you than, say, veggie dishes or even some burgers, these are not for those taking lipitor. That said, I ear-marked a good 2 dozen or so recipes I’d like to make, including a banana-poppy seed muffin I can’t wait to make this weekend.

The Calculating Stars by Mary Robinette Kowal

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I decided to participate with the Sword and Laser book club for the February 2018 pick. Before I get to the review proper this was a very interesting time to be reading this particular book. At Farpoint 2019 I attended a panel about SFF books in alternate timelines. Simultaneously I read The Just City which makes the point that our moon missions should have been called Artemis, not Apollo for Apollo is the god of the sun and Artemis of the moon. I wonder if it was just in America’s 1960s we couldn’t name something as militarily important as the moon missions after a goddess? Also, in the book they think about launching from Brazil and I just saw a headline a few weeks ago about one of the US private space companies considering launching from Brazil. And I recently learned that female astronauts were a real thing that politicians killed because of ego.

Grilled Cheese Kitchen: Bread + Cheese + Everything in Between by Heidi Gibson

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I didn’t know there could be so many kinds of Grilled Cheese Sandwiches, although as a coworker remarked - “Technically, most of those are melts, not grilled cheese.” Fair enough, but I still loved the various suggestions for different sandwiches. If I’m at home I usually end up making the same roast beef or smoked ham sandwich, so it’s nice to have someone say, “hey, these tastes all work really well together!” Because once you get past a PB&J, for all the effort it takes to make a sandwich (including washing and cutting the veggies, cheese, etc) you really don’t want such a basic food to taste bad. Also, to be honest, I’ve NEVER been a basic grilled cheese person. They always just tasted greasy to me. Even better, and elevating this book into 4-star territory is the chapter that provides recipes for soups to pair with the grilled cheese sandwiches.

Rachel Khoo’s Kitchen Notebook by Rachel Khoo

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This is the first time I’ve read a cookbook written by a European and it was interesting to see where they are similar and different. Some of them really intrigued me and some of them were a bit too far. But I look forward to making a few of them, particularly the tomato soup with chickpeas as croutons.

The Just City by Jo Walton

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I’d had this book on my To Read list since 2014 when I read about it on Boing-Boing. I don’t remember what they said about, but something piqued my interest. Of course, when you have a To Read list that’s hovering near 400 books, it takes a while to get to things. In his case, it was a good thing because eventually I nabbed it for free from the Tor eBook club. If you’re into SFF, I think it’s one the best deals you can get in exchanged to be emailed at from a company. So what about the book?

Persepolis Rising by James S.A. Corey

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Holy Time-Skip, Batman! As is clear from the first chapter (and maybe the synopsis? I never read those once I know I’m going to read a book because they tend to spoil a bit or mess with my expectations) we’ve jumped 30 years into the future. I would have to say that is probably the second ot third best thing James S.A. Corey have done in this series. Yeah, earlier on there was a five year time-skip, but things for the crew of the Roci and the Solar System as a whole hadn’t changed much. But with this book we get something that I wish more authors (and the comic book industry) would do - show us what happens to the characters we have become attached to when they’ve grown old and had to deal with the consequences of their actions. (Or, in the case of the Mistborn series of trilogies - what happens 700 years after you massively change the world) I was constantly enjoying seeing the world that was the consequence of the actions of book 6 (and, to some extent, all of Holden’s life since the Protomolecule).

Bread Illustrated: A Step-By-Step Guide to Achieving Bakery-Quality Results at Home by America’s Test Kitchen

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Even though I started this book nearly a year ago, I haven’t made any of the recipes yet. This is mostly because I didn’t get a stand mixer until late last year. That said, I’m very confident I’m going to really enjoy this book. Why? Well, I’ve made recipes from Dinner Illustrated and the multiple pictures is VERY helpful when you’re trying to a new cooking skill. Second, I’ve made their bread recipes from their magazines and other books and they’ve often been really awesome (with only a few misfires - and those could have been chef error). Tonight, for example, I made their recipe for North Carolina Cheese Bread from Cook’s Country June/July 2017 and it was a huge hit with both myself and the wife (and she will NOT hesitate to tell me I’ve “ruined her dinner” if the food isn’t up to par for her). Like most of ATK’s topic-based cookbooks, the intro section is VERY comprehensive and has everything you need to know to start baking so that you have a one-stop shop to learning how to bake bread. Often the same cannot be said of most cookbooks which assume some domain knowledge. I’ve used some of the intro section from this book when baking bread and biscuits from other recipes.

Bowls!: Recipes and Inspirations for Healthful One-Dish Meals by Molly Watson

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

BOWLS! They’re both a new phenomenon and one of the oldest ways to eat food. My younger brother recently suggested eating at one of those food-court style places that are really trendy right now and nearly all ten of the restaurants there had at lest one dish that was a bowl-based dish. The first 2/3s of this book are great for the cooks like my wife and mom who just need a suggestion and can use that to come up with wonderful food. The last third was for me, who needs recipes of an entire dish which I can then make small modifications to.

Vegetables on Fire: 50 Vegetable-Centered Meals from the Grill by Brooke Lewy

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I think the recipes in this book allow your veggies to be first-class citizens on the grill. Plus they provide some pretty awesome items for your vegetarian friends to eat instead of the usual mushrooms or tofu burgers. The dishes I’ve made have been pretty good and I hope to try many more of them.

Project Fire: Cutting-Edge Techniques and Sizzling Recipes from the Caveman Porterhouse to Salt Slab Brownie S’Mores by Steven Raichlen

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Last summer I made the grilled breakfast quesadillas and just that item is worth the cost of this book. Also, grilled bacon turned out to be pretty awesome and way less messy than in a pan. That said, a good chunk of this book is going to have to wait for next summer, for while I BBQ and Smoke in the winter, grilling is a lot harder because it tends to involve opening the lid a lot more or even not using the lid at all. That said, Raichlen does have a few smoke-roasting recipes here, in other words, indirect grilling. I have less experience with Raichlen recipes than Meathead recipes, but the few times I made his recipes last year I was pretty happy. One I’m looking forward to trying is a hot and fast version of pulled pork. I love my low and slow 12 hour pulled pork sandwiches, but if the faster way can work some of the time, that’s a much faster route to some extremely delicious food.

Cook’s Country Magazine 2018 by America’s Test Kitchen

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

As per usual with these reviews - I’ve already made a couple recipes from this bundle of 2018 Cook’s Country issues. It was, of course, great! In 2018 Cook’s Country continued the tradition of recipes from around the USA with fun stories about the food origins along with the special sections at the end: 5 Ways to make a dish, Cooking for Two, Master Class, One-Pan meal, and slow cooker recipe. It continues to be a great resource for cooking although if you get America’s Test Kitchen’s various cookbooks you’ll inevitably end up with some duplicated recipes. Right now the recipe I’m most looking forward to trying is Amish Friendship Bread.

Strange Dogs by James S.A. Corey

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This review will contain spoilers for The Expanse book series, but not this book.

When we last left the universe of The Expanse, the good guys appeared to have won, except for the ship the rebels had sent into one of the gates. It was implied (or maybe outright stated, I can’t remember) that they were working on tech related to the protomolecule to use as a weapon for the rebels. Or maybe they were pretending to do so because there’s no honor among thieves.

All That Outer Space Allows by Ian Sales

My rating: 1 of 5 stars

It’s very interesting to be reading this (well, listening as an audiobook) at the same time as The Calculating Stars as both of them tackle women’s issues, the Baby Boomer Era America, and space travel. But whereas I’m really enjoying The Calculating Stars, I really did not like this book.

Skipped Parts by Tim Sandlin

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Supposedly (according to the cover on the version I selected on Goodreads) this was made into a movie. I found this so incredulous that I looked it up on IMDB. Apparently it was made in 2000 and is rated R so MAYBE there’s hope it actually comes close to this book. There are parts of this story that hinge on the main characters (especially the kids) saying “fuck you” to someone and there’s some very young kids fooling around. But Sandlin also wrote the screenplay so maybe it’s as close to the book as he wanted.

Riley Parra Season One by Geonn Cannon

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

It seems every year I’ve been reading a book about a detective working in our world, if our world was an urban fantasy. The last two I’ve read Dead Witch Walking and Neon Noir: A Delilah Street Paranormal Investigator Anthology were in an alternate Earth where it was known that there were supernatural beings. This book is more like Buffy in that a couple folks know that the supernatural - Angels and Demons in this case - are real. Otherwise it’s more or less a normal world. Although, unlike Buffy, God’s side actually has something to do rather than sit by as demons just run things.

Churrasco: Grilling the Brazilian Way by Evandro Caregnato

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The book starts off with a biography of the author, one of the founders of the Texas de Brazil restaurant chain. It then gives a brief history of where Churrasco came from in Brazil. After a primer on the tools and cuts of beef they get to the recipes. Interestingly, there are a decent amount of non-grilling recipes in here.

Then Will The Great Ocean Wash Deep Above by Ian Sales

My rating: 1 of 5 stars

I don’t usually say this because I can understand people having different opinions about fiction, but I’m baffled by the higher scores on this book. The first two in this quartet had a conventional plot; even if the stories were mostly about the journey with just a little twist tacked onto the end. But on this one I didn’t even understand how the two stories fit together. The book provides a history less at the end so we understand in which way Mr. Sales different from our timeline, but I almost feel the fact that this one hewed so close to reality that he had to do that was a failure compared to the other two books. Oh well, we’ll see what happens with the fourth one.

White Sand, Volume 2 by Brandon Sanderson

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

As per usual, the second volume in a trilogy keeps setting things up without any resolution. The same applies here. That said, I do like the forward momentum in Kenton and Kris’ respective stories. While it is nice to see an illustrated version of Mr. Sanderson’s work, I can’t help wishing this were just a prose novel. There’s so much detail that I know we’re not getting because comics are a “show, don’t tell” medium. Still, the story’s kind of neat and it’s fun to see a new magic system. Interestingly, Kenton helps someone named Trell and I could have sworn that’s the name we’ve heard about in Mistborn Era 2? Clearly this story takes place before Mistborn Era 2 because we know that Kris has been exiled from her planet and we know that she’s on Scadrial around the time of Mistborn Era 1 books 2 and 3. So maybe this Trell ends up on Scadrial somehow? Or maybe (and this is rare for Sanderson) it’s just reuse of a name that has nothing to do with it.

The Eye With Which The Universe Beholds Itself by Ian Sales

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This is definitely one of those stories that’s more about the journey than the destination. I was wondering the entire time what the point of the story was going to be. It literally took place en route somewhere and in flashbacks. Overall an OK story with a heck of a twist at the end. Felt very pulp science fiction. It appears the four short stories (of which this is the second) don’t have anything in common other than the first story introduced the idea of alternate timelines and so each is in a different NASA timeline. (Which actually reminds me somewhat of Hickman’s The Manhattan Projects, Vol. 1: Science. Bad.)

The South’s Best Butts: Pitmaster Secrets for Southern Barbecue Perfection by Matt Moore

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I gave this book a three, but it’s really more of a 3.5 rating. The stories of all the pitmasters that Matt Moore interviews are a 4. They really bring to bear the diverse people who work the pits to make BBQ throughout the south. The recipes are a 3 as compared to the recipes Steve Raichlen, America’s Test Kitchen, or Meathead provide.

Python 3 Object-Oriented Programming: Build robust and maintainable software with object-oriented design patterns in Python 3.8, 3rd Edition by Dusty Phillips

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I’ve rarely done object-oriented programming in Pytnon and haven’t done any serious OOP since undergrad, nearly 20 years ago (and in Java). i found this book to be very well written and a good way to become an expert in the Python way of doing OOP. I discovered new and more efficient ways to write functions I’ve been writing that should allow me to have more easily maintainable code.

Arcanum Unbounded: The Cosmere Collection by Brandon Sanderson

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

The first book I started in 2019! I started reading it yesterday while working on photos (sometimes writing metadata to the files takes a little bit so I wanted to have some reading to do while waiting). That evolved into me just reading and forgetting about my photos and, therefore, finishing in one day. (Well, I had read a lot of the novellas earlier because I’d received them separately via the Sanderson humble bundle) Why? So many reasons.

What is Obscenity?: The Story of a Good For Nothing Artist and her Pussy by Rokudenashiko

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I first heard about Ms. Rokudenashiko on the Daily Show years ago. A couple years ago I remembered her story and added the book to my wishlist. In 2018 I got it for Christmas. I had no idea the book was a manga, I thought it was just a regular prose book. It works so well as a manga, I’m glad the story was told that way.

This year I continued last year’s trends of reading cook books and stories I’d purchased as part of a Humble Bundle or Story Bundle. This led to some great surprises like Singularity Girl, which I really liked and Kissing Booth Girl which had a bunch of haunting short stories. Because it was the 200th anniversary, I started off the year reading Frankenstein for the first time ever. I read that together with the Sword and Laser book club. Much later in the year I also read Zer0es with the book club. This year I read my first Cuban SF novel with A Planet for Rent and that was a really neat read. But there were two big universes I tackled in 2018. I read nearly all of the novels in The Expanse and I read nearly all of the remaining books, short stories, and novellas in Brandon Sanderson’s Cosmere. In fact, reading all of Mistborn Era 1 and 2 and the Stormlight Archive books 1-3 (all that’s out now) took up nearly all of my reading time. I’d set a goal of reading 45 books. I read 81, but would have read many, many more had it not been for the 1000+ pages of each of the Stormlight Archive books.

Babylon’s Ashes by James S.A. Corey

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This book is probably the most direct sequel so far in The Expanse. It pretty much picks up right where the last one left off (not counting the interstitial novella). One thing JSAC use for great effect in this book (and I think more than any of the previous ones) is to use the POV-ness of the chapters to jump back and forth in time. So chapter X ends and then chapter X+1 actually rewinds things a bit and provides a new perspective on what happened in chapter X. It mostly worked well.

Muffins & Biscuits: 50 Recipes to Start Your Day with a Smile by Heidi Gibson

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Written by the owner of a bakery, this book has relatively easy-to-follow recipes and beautiful photos of the muffins and biscuits. I’ve made one biscuit recipe in here and it’s already a staple of our weekend big breakfasts. Many recipes end with instructions for variants you could make from the base recipe. If you’re looking to expand your muffin and biscuit repertoire, this book is worth having.

The Future is Japanese: Science Fiction Futures and Brand New Fantasies from and about Japan by Masumi Washington

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Another anthology. As usual, I’ve included my status updates with some spelling fixes. Overall it was a very uneven collection in terms of what I enjoyed. The stories all seemed to run hot or cold for me with nothing lukewarm.

An Election by John Scalzi

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

A fun little short story about an election in a very diverse district. I kind of want to see more of this world which I think is the mark of a good short story.

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You’re Not Fooling Anyone When You Take Your Laptop to a Coffee Shop: Scalzi on Writing by John Scalzi

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

If you are an aspiring writer, Scalzi tells it like it is and gives you a good feeling for what it might be like to be a modern writer. No writing tips here - that’s for other types of books. This one is about being a writer and making a living.

White Sand, Volume 1 by Brandon Sanderson

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

It’s very odd reading a Sanderson comic rather than a prose book. So much of what’s great in his books involves the background information and the inner monologues of the characters. That said, it is neat to see a visual representation of his world. There are some setups here that seem easy, but that’s usually not Sanderson’s way. Then again, this was one of his first stories. His intro mentions being inspired by Dune and it’s not hard to see where that fits in with the story thus far. It’ll be interesting to see how this fits in with the rest of the Cosmere. Onto volume 2.

Neon Noir: A Delilah Street Paranormal Investigator Anthology by Carole Nelson Douglas

My rating: 1 of 5 stars

This book might be for you. It was most assuredly not for me. The world was OK, but three things kept me from enjoying it:

- The reveals or answers to the cases seemed to come out of left field (compare with Sanderson where a reveal or twist makes you realize all the hints that were dropped all along)

The Way of Kings by Brandon Sanderson

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I want to start off by thanking Tor.com for being DRM-free. It’s great to see a major publisher doing this.

With that out of the way, this was a massive story. It’s quite a different pace from everything I’ve read so far (Elantris and related stories, Warbreaker, Mistborn Era 1 and its Ars Arcanum stories). Mistborn, the previous longest story I’d read, was structured more like a traditional trilogy. The first book was satisfying on its own. The second one was mostly setup and the third one was the climax. With The Stormlight Archive being a 10 book series made up of two five-story arcs, this book was almost entirely setup. That’s not to say there wasn’t character growth, because otherwise it would have been a poor and boring story. Dalinar and Kaladin have quite a bit of growth. Syl surprised me although she’s still a bit to much mystery. Shallan and Szeth have fascinating storylines with insane reveals near the end. All the interludes are full of great characters. But in terms of the story, not too much happens - this is what kept it from being a 5 star book to me.

The Complete Cook’s Country Magazine 2017 by America’s Test Kitchen

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Halfway through 2017 the magazine underwent a visual revamp to modernize the look. I think it works fairly well. What I continue to enjoy about Cook’s Country is the back half which is both educational and contains tailored sections - a recipe for 2, a one pan recipe, slow cooker, etc.

Mega Man 3 by Salvatore Pane

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

As usual for this series, it’s a combination of a history of the game covered and an autobiography of author. Although I never played Megaman 3 (or played very little of it) I did own Megaman 2 and so it was great that the author touched on the entire series and the spinoffs.

A nice hit of nostalgia from another gamer who grew up in the NES era.

Ready Player One by Ernest Cline

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

When it comes to my experience of this book, there are a few things that marred my enjoyment. When I first heard of it and didn’t know all the info about it I did by the time I actually read it, it sounded interesting and I added it to my To-read pile. Problem is, if I bought every book that caught my attention, I’d be broke. So things languish on there there for years. Meanwhile, I buy book bundles from Humble Bundle or Story Bundle (and not all of those or I’d be broke, too) because if they have authors or a theme I’m really interested in, it’s usually about a dollar a book. Both of these combined to make me enjoy this book less. On the former, everyone I know (mostly family) who’d read the book made a big deal about how it was definitely a book for me since it has video games and lots of 80s references. So a bit of over-selling there. Then, from the latter, I ended up with Massively Multiplayer in one of the book bundles. It was actually published a year before Ready Player One and, on a basic level, has the exact same plot. It even has the exact same Moral or Lesson at the end of the story. So when I decided to move Ready Player One to the top of my queue before the movies meant that everyone (not just book readers) would know the plot and it’d be too hard to keep from spoilers, I ended up reading an over-hyped book with a plot that was already stale.

The Complete Cook’s Country Magazine 2016 by America’s Test Kitchen

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I’ve already made some recipes from this collection of all the 2016 issues. As usual, the test kitchen rocks. The few I didn’t like were recipes where I was challenging my tastes. The learning, 5 ways, dinner for two, and slow cooker sections are great ways to expand your skills. While I like both this and Cooks Illustrated, I do like that Cooks Country is in color.

Mistborn Adventure Game by Brandon Sanderson

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I’m not a dice RPG gamer, but I did want to read the short story in here - “The 11th Metal”. It’s a prequel for the first book of the first Mistborn trilogy. That said, it’s definitely best not to read before having read the first book of the trilogy unless you want some spoilers. Actually, I think the best place for a reader would be to read it after the second book as the reader would be able to get even more out of it. Story-wise it’s in the category of the fan service prequel. There’s no reason to read it other than to see a main character from the first book before that character was good at their job. Nothing is revealed that wasn’t already sufficiently revealed in the first book. So it’s all fan-service fun. That said, if put together with revelations from the last book in the trilogy, it does raise some interesting questions.

The Hero of Ages by Brandon Sanderson

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I cannot believe how well Sanderson made this entire trilogy fit together. Each book was amazingly plotted and, as a whole, the trilogy is so well put together. No part of the trilogy was wasted and each detail Sanderson provided was vital to the story as a whole. Some of the key plot points for this book went all the way back to the first chapters of the first book. The ending to this book would have had me flipping tables over and yelling from how well it all worked if everyone hadn’t been asleep in the house.

The Plot to Hack America: How Putin’s Cyberspies and WikiLeaks Tried to Steal the 2016 Election by Malcolm Nance

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The biggest weakness this book has is that the author was in a hurry to get it out before the elections were over because he assumed Americans make decisions based on being informed instead of based on emotions. If he’d waited a bit, not only would the book contain the outcome, but also some more recent revelations, like the Facebook and Twitter stuff.

The Witch of Portobello by Paulo Coelho

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I like to avoid spoilers wherever possible, I even stay away from reviews and trailers for most movies and books. But in the last few years I’ve come to the conclusion that (with the exception of detective stories and murder mysteries) if a story is good, it will still be good if you know the ending. For example, any historical non-fiction book and even some historical fiction. This book is a great example that this can definitely be true. The reader learns in the first chapter that The Witch of Portobello is dead. The rest of the book is essentially the story of how she ended up dead. But knowing where the story is going does not detract from it. Au contrair, it actually leads to a kind of reverse mystery story.

Best Mexican Recipes by America’s Test Kitchen

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Once again, a great cooking tome by America’s Test Kitchen. Opens by explaining the Mexican pantry. Then recipes that are well-structured with great explanations. So far I’ve made one recipe and the family loved it. I can’t wait for it to warm up a bit as they have a lot of grill recipes in there (although it’s mostly indoor cooking)

Caliban’s War by James S.A. Corey

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I read this book in 10 min - 1 hour chunks so maybe I missed something. But who the (expletive) is Caliban and why was this his war? (If it’s a spoiler don’t tell me. If it was (view spoiler)[ Nguyen’s (hide spoiler)] first name, you can gently remind me.

There are multiple times I found myself staying up so late I’d only get a few hours sleep before work because James SA Corey found a way to make this book even more action-packed and exciting than the first one. Perhaps that’s because this is the second book in a nonology instead of a trilogy. Or maybe it’s because of the introduction of such awesome characters as Crisjen Avasarala and Bobbie Draper along with more time with the amazing Alex. Seriously, I never knew political thrillers could be this great (and I already appreciated the genre), but I think Avasarala made it so great. And her magnificence made the twist in her plotline land even harder.

Beyond Lies the Wub by Philip K. Dick

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

As expected from a Philip K Dick book, that was trippy. Talky in the style of golden and silver age science fiction, but I have a fondness for the style as some of my first science fiction exposure was in that style.

Not a bad plot, it’s a quick read and available free from Project Gutenberg.

The Secret History of Star Wars by Michael Kaminski

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This book upended the way I’d thought about the Star Wars movies and stories for the past 20 years. First of all, given George Lucas’ original intention of having an endless James Bond-like serialized series of movies removes any arguments I had about what Disney has been doing with what has frankly been a mostly neglected franchise (film-wise) since the first movie came out in 1977. Second, the book explains why Lucas changed his mind - a combination of his divorce draining him of money and the movies draining him of life. Third, and the biggest reason Kaminski wrote this book, it dismantles the legend of episodes 4-6 (as we now know them) having been the middle of a story that Lucas always had in his head. The truth is both better and worse; especially as we see other ways the story could have gone if he hadn’t been drained by the experience.

Sex & Violence by Jimmy Palmiotti

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

A recent Humble Bundle featured a sampler for Jimmy Palmiotti’s Paperfilms indie publisher. I was intrigued and went to the site where one can buy DRM-free versions of the books. Pulp is a lot of fun and it has a long history with comics so I figured I’d check it out.

Indeed, this is some grade-A pulp. Two stories are contained within and both contain sex and violence. The first is a Taken-esqu romp through the seedy part of Portland The second is an homage to Rear Window.

The Well of Ascension by Brandon Sanderson

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Over on the Cosmere subreddit (one of the good ones in which most people are very nice and just getting together to geek out on something), when I finished The Final Empire they warned me that The Well of Ascension was kind of stationary - not as action-packed or information-heavy as the first book. I wasn’t surprised to hear this. As I’ve remarked countless times, most trilogies have a first entry that kind of stands alone and the second one ties strongly into the third one. (EG The Matrix, The Hunger Games)

Chester 5000 XYV: Isabelle & George by Jess Fink

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I thought the first book was a great example of how erotic fiction could also be a work of art. Jess Fink did so much with so little. Despite a lack of dialog, a great story was told and titillation was had.

This one builds on the last and goes in a slightly different direction. The first book is an artful story of love. This book attempts to do more and so while it loses the beauty in simplicity of the first book, it gains in demonstrating how a complex story can be told without words. (and also be erotic)

Chester 5000 XYV by Jess Fink

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The old cliche is that no one watches porn for the story. But books and comics have always had the ability to be more cutting edge; perhaps because the budget is so much smaller, making the stakes lower.

Somehow, Jess Fink elevates things in Chester 5000 XYV. It starts off with the unusual setting of steampunk Victorian times. While I’m sure tons of erotic fiction has been written to take place in Victorian times, it’s still a fascinating period considering the attitudes of gender roles and sex at the time. But what I think really makes this book special is it’s lack of dialog. There’s something special about a silent comic that requires extra emotion to be expressed with half of what makes up a comic missing.

Amberville by Tim Davys

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This is one of the top five weirdest books I have ever read. It takes place in a world of stuffed animals, but that has both almost no bearing on the story and is key to the main plot. What I mean is that it’s never revealed that actually they’re toys in a toystore or a messed up version of the 100 Acre Woods. The fact that they are stuffed animals is not part of some plot twist. (The thought that it might be a twist kept distracting me the entire time trying to find out the clue) But at the same time, the entire plot of the book, which in a way I don’t wish to spoil, revolves around life and death depends entirely upon the fact that, as stuffed animals, they can’t be killed in the ways that we can.

Murder at the Vicarage by Agatha Christie

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Well, that was nothing at all like I expected. I’m not entire sure what I expected, having never read anything by Agatha Christie. Mostly I expected it to be stuffy and I expected it to suck. It was written so long ago, I was sure all the tropes would be stale. But I actually enjoyed myself quite a bit with thie book I’d gotten for free during a Barnes and Noble free book Friday many years ago.

The Emperor’s Soul by Brandon Sanderson

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I read this book without knowing anything about it other than the fact that it takes place on the same planet as Elantris, Part 1 of 3. I didn’t have the book description as I got it from the Sanderson Humble Bundle and often their ebooks are missing metadata. I’m glad I didn’t know anything about it, because that made the plot, as it unfurled, even more amazing. I was expecting the book to revolve around the magic of the Dor or something related to Elantris, but it was completely separate outside of mentioning a couple cities/regions from Elantris (the book, not the place). In fact, the most recent reading order from the Cosmere subreddit has this book taking place before Elantris. If you want to have as much fun as I did, stop reading this review now and go read the novella.

The Kissing Booth Girl and Other Stories by A.C. Wise

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I got this book in Storybundle’s LGBT+ Bundle and the title and description of this book are what got me to pick up the entire bundle. I didn’t even realize I already knew A.C. Wise’s work from its appearance in Clarkesworld Magazine. As I mentioned during a couple of the status updates, Wise seems to be a thematic protege of Philip K Dick. A lot of her short stories involve unreliable narrators who often aren’t sure if they’re dreaming or remembering things correctly or even being honest with themselves. It’s certainly not the first time I’ve come across unreliable narrators, but with how intimately Ms. Wise writes her characters it’s even more jarring not to know how much of the story is “real” and how much is not even real to the narrator. It really does put the reader into the position of TRULY being in someone’s head, with all its messiness; a strong contrast to other books that are written from a 1st Person POV but are very clear-headed.

The Final Empire by Brandon Sanderson

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Well, that felt like reading a JRPG - in fact there are some (very, very loose) alignments with the plot of Final Fantasy VI. But what I really mean by that is the fact that Sanderson’s Allomancy ends up reading like the mana draws one has to undertake in those games. Although the different metals vice just one mana source can also draw parallels to the magic system in The Witcher (game, not books - I haven’t read the books). There are three things that made me love this book and push it into 5-star territory: tight plotting, a comprehensive magic system, and a great heist plot with memorable characters.

Superman: The Unauthorized Biography by Glen Weldon

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I already knew almost all of this; well, the outline, anyway. I’ve been reading comics on and off for three decades and ever since discovering sites like Comic Vine and reading Grant Morrison’s Supergods, it’s been easy to learn about plots and trends that took place when I wasn’t reading. (Or even before I was born) In fact, it’s almost requesite when reading Grant Morrison’s comic work if you want to understand all the references. And for the way that I and my infrequent collaborators on www.comicpow.com write, it’s important to understand the history of the characters or writers. But what Waldon provides is a great sense of context for all the trends in Superman’s history. He provides a through-line that shows how the trends that have buffeted Superman have swung pendulously. He also emphasizes the true essence of Superman and that any deviations from that essence are when changes go too far and end up rejected for they leave us with a hero that is Superman in name only.

Frankenstein: Or the Modern Prometheus by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I finally read Frankenstein. Coupled with Dracula a few years ago, I’ve now read both famous monster books. Even moreso than with Dracula, the book was a far cry from the popular conception of Frankenstein.

Things that are completely different:
-the monster is not created in a castle in a town of villagers -> it’s done in a college dorm
-therefore no pitchforks and no Frankenstein defending his monster -> he regrets bringing him to life immediately after doing so
-there is no Igor -> Frankenstein keeps the secret of the monster to himself for the entire book
-the monster doesn’t roar or speak in caveman-speak -> he speaks more eloquently than anyone you know today

There there 3 big trends in my reading in 2017: 1) I decided that my new policy for making sure I got to all the books I was buying in Humble Bundles and Storybundles (and, therefore, not just wasting my money on a “good deal”), was that every time my To-Read list would get to its end, I would start with the earliest book I’d added to Calibre and then work my way up, adding at least one book from each bundle or Project Gutenberg raid. This is why I ended up reading books like Hunt at the Well of Eternity and Black Mercury. 2) I read a LOT of cookbooks. A couple years ago I got into serious BBQing and grilling rather than simply throwing some burgers on the grill on Memorial Day and Independence Day. This year I got into indoor cooking. It started with making bread in a dutch oven and just cascaded into me making 1-2 of our family’s meals per week (on average). 3) I started series I’d been hearing about or discovered via Humble Bundles. This includes getting sucked into Brandon Sanderson’s Cosmere universe of books via Humble Bundle, starting GRRM et al’s Wild Cards series, and finally starting The Expanse. I’ve also continued my trend of reading multiple books at once. This has the side effect of keeping me interested in reading as I don’t get trapped  by a boring book.

Dead Witch Walking by Kim Harrison

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I got the book as a part of a bundle, and I’ll say that the cover (same as the one currently associated with the book on Goodreads - a red-head in a backless top and black pants) kept me away from the book for a while. It seemed it might not be up my alley. Interestingly, the cover is a counter-example to the Trope “Covers always Lie” (mostly attributable to comic book covers). It is essentially a depiction of the opening scene of the novel.

Chew, Vol. 3: Just Desserts by John Layman

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I finally got the last hardcover book and I can read Chew in its entirety. I’ve only read the first five trades. After that the anticipation was driving me nuts, so I resolved to wait until the series was done to read it all in one shot. That’s what I’ve just started this week. In the end, I’ll have a massive review of the series. Today entry #3.
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Chew, Vol. 2: International Flavor by John Layman

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I finally got the last hardcover book and I can read Chew in its entirety. I’ve only read the first five trades. After that the anticipation was driving me nuts, so I resolved to wait until the series was done to read it all in one shot. That’s what I’ve just started this week. In the end, I’ll have a massive review of the series. Today entry #2.
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2011 review:
Chew: International Flavor # 1 – Chew: International Flavor
This book is just as great as the first one. We take a bit of a pause from what I believe to be the main storyline – the reason Mason left. Still, there are plot threads from the first book that get some more play in this book. So it’s not ignoring continuity at all, but it is definitely taking its time to get to resolution.

Chew, Vol. 1: Taster’s Choice by John Layman

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I finally got the last hardcover book and I can read Chew in its entirety. I’ve only read the first five trades. After that the anticipation was driving me nuts, so I resolved to wait until the series was done to read it all in one shot. That’s what I’ve just started this week. In the end, I’ll have a massive review of the series.
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Big Pulp: Interrogate My Heart Instead by Bill Olver

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

As per usual for anthologies, a collection of my status updates:

“Interrogate my Heart Instead” - an interrogation in a fascist regime that goes to some interesting places because of its brevity and the look inside the interrogator’s head.

“What Blooms in Winter” - HOLY MOLY! Now, that’s a poem.

“Double Prints” - BAM. Raw, raw poetry!

Lumière by Jacqueline Garlick

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Book #71 for 2017 was this gem I’d overlooked on previous trawls through Calibre to select which book I’d read next. I’d have to check Calibre later to check my tags, but I’m pretty sure I got this book from one of the Storybundles - maybe Steampunk or maybe Alternate History. Either one works given what we learn of the world throughout the book. This is a long-winded way of saying that I didn’t choose this book on its own merits, I own it because it was part of a bundle I found interesting.

Paul Ryan by James Folta

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

disclaimer: I was in the Kickstarter for this

I was excited about this project because we need a laugh from politics now. Also, it was going to be style parodies of various magazines. But, I forgot something - humor is very subjective. And so I often found myself wondering when I was going to finally finish this blasted thing. Just as with my biggest criticism of SNL for the past decade or so - the smaller articles tended to work best. The longer ones just stretched what was usually a pretty thin joke even thinner.

Eden M51 by G.R. Paskoff

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I recieved this book in exchange for a review (I think - I can’t remember, but I know it was something I either got for review or as a free prime read-ahead book)

This book combined a few things I enjoy: space sci-fi, religion, first contact, and thriller mysteries. Overall the combination works well. Paskoff does a good job nesting the mysteries so that the reader is still discovering new truths about the plot at the 95% mark. I also appreciate that Paskoff knows his strengths and weaknesses and so does fade to black sex scenes rather than subjecting us to potential entries to the awkward sex scenes article the guardian puts out every year.

Truckers: The First Book of the Nomes by Terry Pratchett

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

While this book started off kind of slowly, it does eventually pick up and get pretty darn interesting. The story begins with the last of the nomes making a desperate play to try and leave their lives behind because they’re in danger of going extinct. The lack of nomes doesn’t leave them with enough “manpower” to hunt or keep predators away. They end up at a department store and discover that thousands of nomes live there.

Specials by Scott Westerfeld

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The story of Tally Youngblood is over. At least, the Extras chapters that were included at the end of this book seemed to suggest it was a kind of epilogue to the Tally Trilogy.

I didn’t like this book as much as the the first two. The thing is, I can’t quite put my finger on why that is. Westerfield certainly writes great chapter-ending cliffhangers. This is probably one of the fastest completion times of any books I’ve read this year. It pulled me in enough that I spent the last few nights reading for half an hour before passing out asleep. Yet, as a whole it didn’t pull me in. My pop-psychology studies have warned me that trying to put a finger on why you like or dislike something tends to end up with your brain making up a plausible answer that isn’t necessarily the right answer. But, I guess if I had to put my finger on it it’s that some of the wins like (view spoiler)[ Shay converting over in Diego (hide spoiler)] felt a little unearned after all the animosity between them. The book, for all its setup (especially if you include Pretties) seems a little rushed at the end.

Leviathan Wakes by James S.A. Corey

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

So, I’m late to this series. There’s 7 books out of a planned 9 (plus novellas). There’s a TV show that I hear the authors love, despite its deviations from the books. (I haven’t seen it yet) I heard an interview on Sword and Laser with the two men who make up James S.A. Corey and the series intrigued me; especially the part where the first book was a noir detective story. I LOVE those. Plus I’ve really been getting into working-man-in-space stories since many of our SF stories are about the best of the best (or people destined to become best of the best). JSAC makes a reference to Alien in an interview added to the end of this book and I agree with that.

To Pixar and Beyond: My Unlikely Journey with Steve Jobs to Make Entertainment History by Lawrence Levy

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I think this book would probably pair quite well with Creativity, Inc.: Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration, although I haven’t read that one. If it’s about the movies they were making at the same time that this book takes place, that’d be brilliant. If it’s also about management, that wouldn’t be horrible - at the very least it would be told from a different point of view - from that of an insider. This book is about how Steve Jobs tapped Lawrence Levy to be the CFO of Pixar in its darkest hour. Levy then leads the company through a series of situations that without a combination of his skill and some luck would have left us in a poorer cultural state.

Milk Street: The New Home Cooking by Christopher Kimball

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

As you know by now, I like my recipes to have introductions. These can serve many purposes. They can introduce an unfamiliar recipe, contain a bit of biography, or explain different techniques the author has tried so that as you improvise you don’t repeat mistakes unnecessarily. Chris Kimball does all of that and also has some ideas about replacing ingredients if you can’t find the ingredients he’s talking about.

Project Smoke: Seven Steps to Smoked Food Nirvana, Plus 100 Irresistible Recipes from Classic (Slam-Dunk Brisket) to Adventurous by Steven Raichlen

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Everything you ever wanted to smoke, plus a bunch of tips. Very clear guidelines on the tools you need and what food to buy. A great intro paragraph or two on why Raichlen likes this food and why his recipe works. Also, sometimes some alternate ways to cook - like grill vs smoker or hot vs cold-smoking. Note, this one is not for tyros. Newbies would be better served by Raichlen’s BBQ Bible or Meathead’s book: Meathead: The Science of Great Barbecue and Grilling

Cook It in Cast Iron: Kitchen-Tested Recipes for the One Pan That Does It All by America’s Test Kitchen

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I’ve only made a couple recipes from the book, but I love a lot about it. I like the technical section that opens the book. I really like all the descriptions that preface each recipe. It gives you an idea of what they tried and how it screwed them up - key since everyone I know who’s a really good cook improvises. So why end up making a mistake they already made? It also gives context to the recipes and where they come from. I added a good chunk of the recipes to my to-cook personal wiki. I’ll adjust the stars later if the recipes turn out to be hard to follow - but that usually isn’t the case when it’s something from America’s Test Kitchen. (This is from the Cook’s Country side of the house)

Weber’s Big Book of Burgers: The Ultimate Guide to Grilling Backyard Classics by Jamie Purviance

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

What it says in the title and more. It’s burgers, dogs, etc. All the stuff you think of when you think of prototypical non-nerdy American grilling. Lots of good recipes with lots of variation - including lots of variations on veggie burgers that aren’t mushroom-based. There are a few even I (an avowed carnivore) would like to try. If I had to fault the book it would be that, unlike Meathead, America’s Test Kitchen, or Milk Street - there’s no context to the recipes. You just have recipe after recipe. No mention of why the ingredients work or where Jamie Purviance got the recipes from. I’ve grown to really appreciate this context and how it helps me appreciate the recipe and understand how it was put together so that I understand how best to modify it as I go through iterations.

Barbecue Sauces, Rubs, and Marinades–Bastes, Butters & Glazes, Too by Steven Raichlen

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Raichlen has put together a great book on all the things that add flavor to our grilled, BBQ’d, and smoked foods. As is his style, he adds a biography for each of the recipes that explains where it comes from or where he discovered it and what it goes well with. He also includes a few recipes that include both the meat and the accompaniment. I wish he had more pointers to recipes from Project Smoke or the Barbecue Bible to help provide more illustrations of what goes well together. A lot of it was “this goes well with grilled beef”, but I wish I had just a few more examples of which flavors go well together. Especially when talking about bastes and butters that would likely be combined with rubs, seasonings, or other flavorings. Speaking of which, he has lots of sections with definitions and I now know the difference between those.

Raichlen’s Burgers by Steven Raichlen

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

What I like about this book is that Raichlen gives a little biography about each burger recipe. I’ve got tons of new recipes to try. I also like that he’s got some recipes for sides and sauces at the end. It’s not as comprehensive as some of his other books, but I got it free in exchange for getting his newsletter, so I wasn’t expecting too much.

Masters of Doom: How Two Guys Created an Empire and Transformed Pop Culture by David Kushner

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Once again Will Wheaton knocks it out of the park as narrator.

Kushner does a great job telling the story of The Johns who created Doom. I was just a kid when those games were coming out and while my dad didn’t mind us playing Castle Wolfenstein and Doom, my mom wasn’t cool with it. So most of this was on my periphery and it was great to read the history of how transformative this game was and what a genius Carmack was with his engine work. I wish the book was an update version that covered the VR work Carmack has done recently - it ties in perfectly with the threat Kushner was pushing about VR and Snow Crash and how Doom was the first step in that direction.

The Mongoliad: Book One by Neal Stephenson

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This book grew on me slowly. At first I was intrigued, but wasn’t hooked. But eventually I grew to really love both the Gansukh/Lian chapters and the Korean/Japanese fighters’ chapters. The historical fiction is Neal Stephenson at his best and I did eventually enjoy the chapters with Cnan and the Shield-Brethren.

To some degree the western chapters are a medieval road trip/quest story. The Gansukh chapters are a palace intrigue story. They don’t really overlap other than both have Ogedai Khan as a central character.

Golden Son by Pierce Brown

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

To be fair to Mr. Brown, I find it hard to fairly rate second books in a trilogy. They have to both be the middle part of what is essentially one large story split into 3 books (or pdfs or epubs) and also as a standalone book have a beginning, climax, and resolution. So this tends to leave them a little unfulfilling. I’ve noticed (and mentioned in a few reviews) that with most modern trilogies the first book is more of a complete book in order to get the reader hooked into the series. The second one seems to be disappointing because it can’t resolve anything or else there wouldn’t need to be a third book. So this book might have a lower rating than I would rate the trilogy as a whole.

The Bloodline Feud by Charles Stross

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This book was a free giveaway for Tor’s ebook club

This book checks a lot of boxes for me: thriller, science fiction, multiple universes, alternate histories. But I just couldn’t get into it as much as I wanted to. I think it was mostly around the way Stross writes his dialogue. I can’t quite figure out exactly what it is about it, but it just didn’t do it for me.

Buying Time by Joe Haldeman

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Earlier this year I read The Forever War for the first time after having read Starship Troopers. So when there was a Humble Bundle with a bunch of books I didn’t care about, but which had a book by Joe Haldeman, I jumped on the bundle.

Having read these two books, the biggest thing I’ve noticed abut Joe is that he is GREAT at world-building. It doesn’t mean the story suffers, but I almost want to read more to wander around his worlds than I do for the story to continue. What’s the world here? Some scientists invent The Styleman procedure - undergoing this procedure reverses the aging process. As long as you go through it every 10 years, you can remain a perpetual 20-year-old (body-wise). That, by itself, would be a near world. But in order to get the initial financing to setup The Styleman Institute, they wanted to use it to redistribute wealth in the world. The process would cost $1 million dollars and the person who did it would have to give away all their money and posessions to the institute, which would then spread it around various charities. This is also a world where people take pleasure trips out into space and where there are lawless colonies among the asteroids. (And also on Florida)

Meathead: The Science of Great Barbecue and Grilling by Meathead Goldwyn

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

There are literally tons of BBQ cookbooks out there. Why this one? Well, Meathead does something most of them don’t - he backs up his techniques with science. BBQ has existed as long as mankind so a lot of what we do is just father->son or mother->daughter (or some combination of gen 1 to gen 2) and a lot of it is wrong. Humans suck at intuition. So Meathead along with Dr Blonder use science to backup their techniques and ideas. This leads to 2 great benefits.

Race for the Iron Throne: Political and Historical Analysis of “A Game of Thrones” by Steven Attewell

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I heard about this book when Steve Attewell appeared on Boars, Gore, and Swords - my favorite Game of Thrones podcast. On that episode he mentioned how both GoT and the books pull from a variety of historical periods, not just dark ages England. The fact that he is a real historian analyzing the books seemed too great to pass up so I got the book.

The Lives of Tao by Wesley Chu

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

While reading The Lives of Tao I kept having this nagging feeling in my head that there was something familliar aobut this story. Then it hit me, it seems as though Wesley Chu was given the writing prompt, take Scientology and make it into a viable science fiction story: Aliens in people’s bodies responsible for the pain in the world.

Science: Abridged Beyond the Point of Usefulness by Zach Weinersmith

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Weinersmith acknowledges on the last page that he may have ignored notes from PhDs to make a joke work. That said, there’s enough truth in here that every one I’ve shared the section of their degree with has found it really funny. It’s a quick read and a great gift for the science nerd in your life.

The Holy Bible: Abridged Beyond the Point of Usefulness by Zach Weinersmith

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This book is like God Is Disappointed in You except each book of the Bible is only 1-2 setences. Like the other book, the humor comes from finding a funny way to express what’s actually in there. I think this book (if you bought the e-book version) makes for a bunch of fun pages to put up on your cubicle or print up in a calendar with one book per month for a few years. But I enjoyed GiDiY more because the extra text allowed the satire to be a bit deeper by being even more truthful to content of the Bible. That said, it was pretty fun to read the entire Bible in about five minutes.

Orbital by Andrew Mayne

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Recieved this book in anticipation of a review

As I mentioned in my review of the previous book of this Duology, I got this book free and so I went back and bought the first book. Where the first book is a self-aware reconstruction of the thriller action book, this book is more of a detective novel; in SPAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACE! So it’s a MUCH, much slower pace than the first book. As I mentioned in my status updates - that’s fine with me because the pacing should serve the story. And detective stories are usually a much slower pace than thrillers.

Station Breaker by Andrew Mayne

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Let me start off with the only thing that bothered me. Our protagonist, David Dixon, is so genre savvy that he knows he’s in a thriller novel. Not on a 4th wall breaking sort of way, but I’m his inner monologue he knows all the tropes to avoid. He even refers to the McGuffin as the McGuffin. But for the plot to kick off, he has to hold the idiot ball for the first couple chapters, ignoring sign after sign that something is up. The inconsistency threatened to take me out of the story for the first bit.

Wild Cards by George R.R. Martin

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

With anthologies, I *usually* just present the status updates I made while reading, sometimes with some modifications since there are character limits on the updates. However, Wild Cards is a bit different. Like the Machine of Death anthology that Dan gave me, Wild Cards takes place in a shared universe. However, MoD was very loose in its canon and sometimes the stories even contradicted each other as long as the premise of how the machine worked remained. Wild Cards is more like the comics it is adapting to a novel format - it’s a shared universe with a coherent timeline and characters appear in subequent stories - especially Croyd. So I’ll have a slightly more conventional review followed by my traditional anthology style.

Clarkesworld Magazine, Issue 124 by Neil Clarke

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A great issue. As always Neil Clarke selects some pretty amazing stories for this issue.

The Ghost Ship Anastasia - It’s the space trope no character is ever wise to - you DO NOT inspect a distress call on a space ship!

So of course things go pear-shaped. The specifics of this story involve ships run by AIs and an experimental Bioship in which the ship is partly metal and partly living matter.

Elantris, Part 3 of 3 by Brandon Sanderson

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Well, I’m done. That is one heckuva first-time novel for an author. I have a feeling this Sanderson kid is going places. Joking aside, it was a well-done novel that leaves the world open for a slew of books in the universe, but if we never get another, it’s still a great story. I covered a lot of themes for this story in the other two reviews so I’m going to try and stick to new themes as much as possible for this one.

The Hope of Elantris by Brandon Sanderson

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

First of all, I listened to the Graphic Audio version and I don’t know why they switched narrators from the main book. The narrator is fine, but pronounces everything completely differently. Sometimes I didn’t realize the narrator was talking about a character I already knew.

As for the story it’s completely unnecessary. Unlike other side-quels that deal with a very different location (and perhaps plot) from the main story, this one takes place alongside our story. It provides no drama since we know what is going to happen to the Elantrians. And a story without stakes is a pretty boring story.

Infomocracy by Malka Ann Older

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Infomacracy is depressing to read. It’s fun to read. It’s a good political thriller, particularly if you happen to be an Internet junkie. I’d recommend it to anyone. But it’s depressing. Before we get there, let’s talk about the less depressing stuff. The book cover I have mentions Snow Crash. Unlike Snow Crash, a lot of the tech is just minutes away from existing.Back then, the idea of the information overlay in the real world was still science fiction. Now, we have had Google Glass. While the first version was a spectacular failure, more and more companies are piling on the augmented reality bandwagon and my sister-in-law has use her phone to do real-time translation of signs in another country. I’ve been waiting for this world since I was a kid and it’s finally nearly here. That’s exciting.

The Camelot Shadow by Sean Gibson

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I got this book free for a review

I never knew I wanted to read a Dan Brown-style thriller that takes place in Victorian England. But one day I became Goodreads friends with Anne Hannah because I love her review style. I especially love her no-nonsense take on comics. One day Sean Gibson started making funny comments on her reviews. I went over to his reviews and immediately became GR friends with him. It may or may not be your cup of tea, but his reviews were right up my alley. Back in may he mentioned on his GR author’s blog that he’d be giving away copies of this book for a review. I read the description and it sounded nuts. And I was afraid - what if Sean is great at funny GR reviews, but not a great author? What if I have to give the book a low review? But my curiosity over how this plot could work over-rode my fears.

Elantris, Part 2 of 3 by Brandon Sanderson

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

As the middle section of a novel, it was mostly concerned with expanding backstory and a few false starts at the climax. (Intentional false starts….more of a meta note) The three main thesis Sanderson seemed to have for this part of the book were:

1. Intellectual faith vs emotional faith - This mostly concerned the Doraki priest. (I’m listening to the audiobook so I’m going to go with the spelling of Hrathin). Sanderson continued to make Hrathin’s plot much more complicated than a simplistic good and evil plot. Yes, he’s part of an empire that sees itself as under a godly mandate and yes he must convert the city or they’ll be destroyed by the empire, but while the religion is being forced upon these people, he’s not an evil person. In fact, I wonder if Sanderson, who I found out via the Cosmere reddit is a member of the LDS, didn’t see some comparison to the Prophet Jonah. If you weren’t raised religious or didn’t pay much attention to the actual Bible you probably only know him as the guy who was in a whale’s stomach (like Gepetto in Disney’s Pinocchio). But the story in the Bible has God telling him that he needs to convert the city of Ninevah or else God’s going to destroy them. (Sound familiar?) Of course, things diverge there because Jonah hated the Ninevans and wanted them to die so he skipped out on his deal - hence the whole whale thing. In Hrathin’s case, he is a more militant follower so he does not skorn the idea. In fact, he is haunted by the massacre that followed his previous success at city conversion. While modern humans in non-theocratic countries view it as bad that he wants to force-convert the citizens, he really is trying to save the lives of an entire city. But getting back to plot point in this book - he struggles with the fact that his relationship to his religion is purely intellectual. His intellect makes him a very entertaining sparring partner with Serene, but it means he cannot compete with Deloth over followers. He can logically get you to see his point, but most people need that emotional connection to join a religion. Of course, the emotional followers are the fanatics and this is causing a bigger and bigger problem for him.

Battle Royale Slam Book: Essays on the Cult Classic by Koushun Takami by Nick Mamatas

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

It’s been over a decade since I read Battle Royale. It was a book that amazed me with its emotional resonance. It was the first book that ever made me tear up with the lighthouse scene. The author did such a great job building up both the stakes and the relationships, that it was devastating to read. I have enjoyed many a book since then, but few in number are the books who have affected me so much.

Uncanny Magazine Issue 1: November/December 2014 by Lynne M. Thomas

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Yet another demonstration of authors who are doing great things with the short story format. I’ll definitely be buying other issues. As usual for magazines and anthologies, a collection of my status updates.

“The Uncanny Valley” - An intro and the the mission statement of the magazine.

“If You Were …. White” - About Jungleland and a premise not unlike Roger Rabbit (the movie, not the book) where all the animal actors in movies were sentient.

Warbreaker, Part 3 of 3 by Brandon Sanderson

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

First of all, let me say that the voice acting and foley/music is so great in this series. In this third installment as characters reveal their true natures we end up with different voice performances from the actors. Very good job.

That out of the way, onto the review. It’s possible if I were more familiar with fantasy tropes I might have seen the twists coming, but I was caught completely by surprise as more and more of the story unspooled. In the best cases, I was only one step ahead of Sanderson while I’m often able to spot all the Checkov’s Guns (or wands) in literature, TV, and movies. As is always the method of a good writer, it was all there. Even the prologue gives a hint as to who Vasher is.

Uncanny Magazine Issue 1: November/December 2014 by Lynne M. Thomas

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Yet another demonstration of authors who are doing great things with the short story format. I’ll definitely be buying other issues. As usual for magazines and anthologies, a collection of my status updates.

“The Uncanny Valley” - An intro and the the mission statement of the magazine.

“If You Were …. White” - About Jungleland and a premise not unlike Roger Rabbit (the movie, not the book) where all the animal actors in movies were sentient.

Put this in your brain by Stu Norvath

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

As usual, a collection of my status updates. Overall a good set of essays. Some deeper than others.

Intro - Neat intro by a member of MCR about the role that games play in our lives

“Backward Flow” - About Dune the game and book that I wouldn’t have understood a couple years ago. “As an upper-class white man,

Warbreaker, Part 2 of 3 by Brandon Sanderson

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Sanderson continues to weave together 3 narratives in a way that makes me really invested in each one. Well, to be fair, for most of this part of the book I viewed Vivena’s sections with resignation. Interestingly, both sisters are naive in their own ways. Vivena is naive through an overly focused education and a position of privilege. Siri is naive from always blowing off her education and those around her having a vested interest in keeping her in the dark. The difference is that Vivena comes off as a stuck up snob for most of her character arc in this part, although things rally near the end when she finally starts to accept her status as a blasphemer and tries to use it for good.

Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, Parts 1 & 2 by John Tiffany

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I’d like to start off by addressing the big thing I’ve noticed with this story - while it has 3.5ish stars on Goodreads, a quick scroll through the reviews reveals that’s mostly the average of 1 star reviews and 5 star reviews. There are very few people who “meh” this story. They either love or hate it. My current theory, mentioned in one of my status updates, is that this is because a huge swath of the world (or at least the Anglophile world) grew up with Harry and Co as their buddies. It was both their intro into magical fantasy and a friend who was going through the same age-related issues (until the civil war at the end which would only be relevant for a certain chunk of the world). This didn’t happen for me. I think I was in high school when they started coming out - I was certainly done with college by the time the last books and movies were coming out. So the Boy Who Lived was a well-conceived and well-fleshed out story to me, nothing more. Never waited to get the books at midnight. Shoot, by the time I wanted to read the books, I waited a few more years for Ms Rowling to offer them DRM-free on Pottermore before I’d buy them. So I read them last year or maybe 2015.

Pay Me, Bug! by Christopher B. Wright

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I said it in a few status updates, but after I finished the book last night I was even surer in my convictions, this should be animated. Why not live action? Well, as we’ve seen in all the super hero movies, actors hate having their faces obscured - it’s their biggest asset. So they keep it visible even if it doesn’t make sense in the context of the plot. In this book, the characters spend 1/3 to 1/2 of the book sporting completely different faces. That wouldn’t fly in Hollywood. Also, Hollywood tends to think you’re dumb so they’d resist it thinking the audience would get confused. The success of the Adult Swim shows and Archer have shown that there’s an audience for animation that falls outside the realm of an animated sitcom. With the tone of the book, it could succeed in an Archer animation style - perfect by that team when they worked on Sealab 2021 for adult swim. It could also beautifully work with Watanabe’s Cowboy Bebop style. (Although that would perhaps be too expensive for American TV? Maybe Netflix would do it?)

Warbreaker, Part 1 of 3 by Brandon Sanderson

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I am pretty sure I’ve never read Sanderson before. I’ve just not historically been that much of fantasy guy. I’ve read more fantasy in the past few years than I have in the preceeding decades. However, I do know the name and I know he’s supposed to be very good. So when they had a Sanderson Humble Bundle a month or so ago, I jumped on it. The bundle contained a bunch of audiobooks and a couple days ago I finally had listened to all my podcasts. So I loaded up the first Warbreaker audiobook by GraphicAudio.

The Trinity Paradox by Kevin J. Anderson

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Got this in the Time Travel Storybundle

This book was a good read. That said, I was disappointed, given the title of the story - The Trinity PARADOX. I thought it was going to be like Back to the Future 2 where our main character ended up in the alternate timeline and then had to somehow stop herself from creating the alternate timeline. Or multiple people would try to change it or something like that.

The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I wanted to read this book before talk of the TV show caused the plot to enter the wider zeitgeist and ruin it for me. I’m going to put any big spoilers in the spoiler tag, but this is a book from the 80s and there’s a TV show now that everyone is talking about. (At least 2 podcasts I listen to have spoken abou it) So if you want a pristine read - stop reading this review or anything else online and go read it! Amazon said it’d take 5 hours to read and I think that’s more or less on point. You can finish it over a couple of afternoons if it’s that important to you. OK, now that we have those preliminaries out of the way we can begin with the review proper.

Lightspeed Magazine, March 2013 by John Joseph Adams

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Got this as part of a Humble Bundle in 2015, I think. Finally got around to it. There were some really great and moving stories in here. As usual with anthologies, a collection of my status updates:

“Things Undone” (Novella) - That was a crazy emotional ride. We often read time travel stories concerned with what might change.

You Are Not So Smart: Why You Have Too Many Friends on Facebook, Why Your Memory Is Mostly Fiction, and 46 Other Ways You’re Deluding Yourself by David McRaney

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This is a great book that I think would have blown my mind if I hadn’t already been listening to Mr McRaney’s podcast for the past few years. However, if you’re in to amateur psychology and understanding all the ways that your brain is getting in the way of your life, this is a great book. It’s also great for understanding the world. There’s a chapter that explains why people end up with Realistic looking Sex Dolls (those creepy Japanese ones you’ve probably seen) or super old men. Another chapter explains why we always have issues telling if someone is flirting with us or just being nice. Overall it’s a fun read - David used to be a journalist so he has a conversational style that works well.

Whiskey and Water by Elizabeth Bear

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This book was hard to read. I enjoyed it, but it was definitely hard. Goodreads says it’s the second book of this series and it probably is (the info is populated by GR people who volunteer to be librarians and is sometimes wrong). So I’m sure part of my difficulties come from jumping in past the initial narrative. Ms Bear has created a semi-alternative world that is complex and full of complex characters. This realism to the characters is what drew me in despite how much I had to work. Ms Bear also did a great job at making this an acceptable entry point into the series as she explained characters’ relationships to each other whenever they were introduced.

Clipping Through: One Mad Week In Video Games by Leigh Alexander

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I discovered Ms. Leigh Alexander when she appeared on one of the E3 podcasts at Giant Bomb. I found her perspective fascinating in a sea of men. I was still too new to this world to understand why this led to so much hate and abuse that she hasn’t been back on. (At least that’s how I understand what happened) Since then I’ve followed her on twitter (and even made an ass of myself with a tweet to her) and I generally enjoy her reading of the industry and games. From her pieces, she seems to be slightly older than me, but we’re roughly from the same era in video games and so it’s a voice that speaks with the same cultural background and that’s always neat.

Big Pulp Fall 2011: On The Road From Galilee by Michael D. Turner

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A fun anthology that had more stories I liked than didn’t. As usual for an anthology, a collection of my status updates as the review:

“On the road from Gallilee” - time travel and it tackles the age-old question. But they deal with it in a very creative way.

The Machine God by MeiLin Miranda

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Well, this story functions quite well to continue the story from Black Mercury. We see the fates of many of the characters from the previous novel, but this really is quite a different story with a different focus. The series is going from mostly Steampunk to Steampunk Fantasy in this book while also exploring ideas of colonialism, fallen empires, and racism. (Also university and identity politics)

Black Mercury by Charlotte E. English

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This book started off seeming as though it would be some sort of Victorian, Steampunk Speed Racer. But that turned out to just be a red herring to introduce us to the characters and set up some of the conflicts. I also thought it would focus more strongly on the floating island, Inselmond. It seemed as though it would be one of those islands that feature in many anime and JRPGs where the rich or magical live. Nope, that served as a McGuffin of sorts - although in a lot of ways the Black Mercury of the title is practically a McGuffin, but there might be some debate about that.

Massively Multiplayer by P. Aaron Potter

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I don’t really think this book was “AMAZING”, but I gave it an extra star for doing a good job of messing with my expectations. I’ve been reading nearly 30 years now so it’s very hard for an author not to fall into the trap of various tropes that leads me to be able to guess the plots of most books before they get to their twist. (With the exception of noir or detective novels and some POV books like ASOIAF because the characters have an extra-limited perception of what’s going on)

Hunt at the Well of Eternity by Gabriel Hunt

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I’m pretty dang sure I got this book during one of B&N’s free ebook fridays. I don’t know if they still do that, but it’s something they used to do when I first got my Nook. There’s no way I would have bought this book on my own. That said, this book is just as pulpy as you’d expect from the cover - a painted look from back when they would use illustration rather than photos for book covers and a mostly naked woman watching a muscular man dispatch someone else. This cover’s pretty accurate to a scene in the book except that the woman isn’t wearing a bikini - she’s fully clothed, but her recently ripped shirt has exposed her bra.

Augie and the Green Knight by Zach Weinersmith

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Disclaimer: I was a kickstarter backer on this book

I Kickstarted this book because I liked Weiner’s work on Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal and because the description sounded appealing to me - create a book that would appeal to a young, nerdy female. I’ve two daughters and the one who can talk (the other is only 15 months old) appears to be genuinely curious about the world around her and might relate to Augie in this book.

Angel’s Ink by Jocelynn Drake

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

While in some ways this is an OK thriller, it makes for a very fun read. Ms Drake has created a very interesting universe which has the relationship between witches/warlocks and humans as the inverse of Harry Potter. In HP the magical world is kept hidden from muggles to prevent persecution. But in this alternate version of our world, humans know that warlocks have god-like powers and are keen to make themselves scarce when warlocks and witches are around.

Pretties by Scott Westerfeld

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This is the middle book of a trilogy (I think….maybe a quadrilogy? Because there’s another book called Extras). Therefore, not much happens narratively. I think it continues to have pretty good metaphors for teen life revealed via this dystopia, but it was slightly disappointing to not really move forward very much compared to the first book. In fact, it takes the entire book to do what they planned at the end of the first book. Like the middle book in a trilogy, there is a lot of fleshing out of the world, and that’s neat.

Singular Irregularity: Time Travel Gone Terribly Wrong by Kimber Grey

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Disclaimer: I was a Kickstarter backer on this anthology.

As usual for an anthology, here’s what I thought of each story.

“Standing Still - A police psychologist confronts someone that looks liek he’s going to blow people up. The entire short story is their conversation. I think it suffers only slightly from being in a time travel anthology because it takes a while for one of the characters to admit that. I thought I knew what the twist was going to be, but damn you, Donald J Bingle, for screwing with my emotions on that ending.Great job”

The Girl with All the Gifts by M.R. Carey

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

When I first added this book to my To-Read list on Goodreads about 3 years ago, I thought it was another take on the Akira concept - some kids being experimented on by the government and it turned out they made the kids too awesome and so the kids murder everyone and escape. It turned out to be much, much worse. I’ve read a lot of dystopias, but this one was the most disturbing one I’ve read. If you want to go in completely ignorant of the rest, go read it now. The rest of this review will contain mild spoilers (as in revealed in the first chapter) and any heavy spoilers will have the spoiler tag.

The Forever War by Joe Haldeman

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This version of The Forever War contains an intro by Scalzi. In it he basically talks about how he somehow avoided reading TFW when it first came out and it’s a good thing because he would have done Old Man’s War differently. He mentions that lots of fans and haters assumed he stole from Haldeman. I DON’T see it. At. All. Starship Troopers - that’s different. A case can be made that Scalzi updated Starship Troopers for OMW. (That, of course, is unfair to Scalzi and the creativity that went into OMW….I’m just saying if you’re going to be making “plot stealing” comparisons….that’s a much better one).

Absolute Power: Tales of Queer Villainy by Erica Friedman

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

disclaimer: I kickstarted this anthology

Before I get to my usual anthology review in which I collect all my status updates into one place, I wanted to mention a bit about why I kickstarted this book and how I like the overall collection. One day I was trawling through the fiction section of Kickstarter when I came across this book (which had a different title at the time) and it ticked a few boxes for me. First of all, I’ve always found it fun to read a story from the villain’s point of view. So often authors take the easy route and create an anti-hero if they want to tell a story without a goodie-two-shoes protagonist. To make a villain sympathetic takes work. Second, it was clear some of the stories would take an irreverent tone. While good parody and satire are hard to pull off, I’m pretty tolerant about mediocre parody and satire. Finally, while LGBT characters are starting to take off - especially in YA fiction, it’s still somewhat of a relative rarity. Even harder to find is a LGBT character that doesn’t conform to heteronormative tropes: the sexy lesbian, the lispy gay guy, etc. Most aren’t aware of bears and other categories and that LGBT people come in as many shades of the rainbow (no double-entendre intended) as straight people do. So it was fun to read about things like seduction from a woman’s point of view, from a bi point of view, from a transgender point of view and see how they’re the same and how they’re different. And there are stories in which it matters that the characters are gay super heroes and stories in which it matters as much as the super hero being left-handed.

Starship Troopers by Robert A. Heinlein

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I never saw the movie that came out in the 90s (or was it 2000s) and it seems like that’s a good thing. From everything I’ve heard from others it has about as much to do with this book as World War Z has to do with its namsake. I added it to my To-Read list ages ago because I read somewhere - Wikipedia or TV Tropes that The Forever War was at least partially a response to Starship Troopers by someone who viewed war differently because of the Vietnam war. Both are often cited as seminal to the genre of military space science fiction. So as I continue to read the classics of both literary and genre fiction, I figured I’d check this one out. Boy am I glad I did.

Tampa: A Novel by Alissa Nutting

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I am too young to have experienced it first-hand, but for a minute there in the 70s pornography went mainstream. Everyone was talking about it. It was “in” to see it. Regular theaters (as opposed to shady sex theaters) were showing movies like Deep Throat and Debbie Does Dallas. It was being discussed out loud rather than in hushed tones. To me, that’s what the buzz around Tampa about three years ago was like - everyone was talking about this book. While I do follow some smut fans on here who write VERY entertaining reviews, this was more like EVERYONE talking about it. So, after reading a portion of the first chapter and seeing the hyperbolic inner monologue of our main character, Celeste, I put it on my To-Read list. Also, it takes place in my home state of FL - where all the nutjobs live. There it sat for quite some time.

Hanzai Japan: Fantastical, Futuristic Stories of Crime From and About Japan by Nick Mamatas

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Got this as part of a bundle at Storybundle.com and I have to say that it was more enjoyable than I thought it would be. Frankly, some of the stories are scary in that the crime depicted is horrific and yet it’s told in such an engaging way. Also, this is a book in which reading the introduction is a good idea.

The Emperor’s Agent by Jo Graham

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

And so my first book of 2017 is done, although it’s a bit of a cheat as I started it at the end of 2016.

I purchased this book as part of a book bundle - I think it was on StoryBundle.com. The relevance of that is that I didn’t buy the bundle for this book and I hadn’t realized until starting it that it was the fifth book in a series. As far as that goes, I think the book functions quite well as a standalone book. Taking a quick look at the descriptions of other books in the series - it appears that only book 4 (the one preceding this one) is directly related to the characters here. So other than not knowing the conceit of the way the world works in the Numinous World series, you’re not out of luck starting here.

It’s a bit late in the year for this, but it’s been busy. 2016 started off with me heavily reading comics, but that petered off as I took on more and more responsibility for the twins. It takes time to write articles of the quality I prefer to write for Comic POW!. It’s also the year in which I read George RR Martin’s series A Song of Ice and Fire. You might have heard of it? The first book in the series is called A Game of Thrones. I enjoyed reading it and it provided a lot of insight to the show. It was also a good time to read it as it is generally no longer spoilery for the show. The extreme length of the books, however, meant I read less books than I might have otherwise read for the year.

CBLDF Presents: She Changed Comics by Betsy Gomez

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Disclaimer: I backed the Kickstarter on this book

I’d like to start off with my one big criticism of this book - not enough images! I understand why they had to do it. When you’re printing a book, each page is expensive, especially when you’re printing in color. But when you’re covering an industry based on images and we only have 1-2 images per creator, it’s hard to get a good feel for the creator’s body of work. I think it would have been nice to have a supplementary PDF with a few more examples per artist. (Yeah, I know I could Google them, but for a curated product, it’d be nice to do a little less work)

Working for Bigfoot by Jim Butcher

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

“Maybe,” he said in a slow, rural drawl, “you could explain to me why I found you in the middle of an orgy.”
“Well,” I said, “if you’re going to be in an orgy, the middle is the best spot, isn’t it.”

I’ve heard of the Dresden Files before, but I’d never checked it out. I thought it was about World War 2 and I constantly confused it with Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five for some reason. But in a great example of the value of book bundles (like Humble Bundle or Story Bundle), I ended up with this book via a book bundle and when I looking for a new book to read recently, the description stood out. I also recognized Butcher’s name, having spent the last few years listening to Sword and Laser and getting a feel for a bunch of SFF authors I hadn’t been familiar with.

The Razor’s Edge by Joss Llewelyn

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A book that passes the Bechdel test with flying colors. All the important characters are women and the guy who would be a love interest in any other telling of this story only appears sporadically and only gets a couple kisses near the end. Maybe it’s just the circles I run in, but it seems if you want good genre fiction led by women characters, look no further than steampunk. Although, this book is like steampunk’s weird cousin.

Piranha Frenzy by Colin F. Campbell

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is a book that either anticipates or was written in reaction to gamer-gate. I think wherever you fall on that is probably the biggest predictor of whether you are capable of liking this book. I’m not saying if you were on the side of the journalist that you will automatically think this was a good book, but if you weren’t I find it hard to believe you’d like this book at all. A quick primer if you pay no attention to video games journalism or think pieces about the harassment of women online. A woman, Zoe Quinn was (still is?) working on a video game. Her ex wrote a blog post saying she slept with some guys for positive coverage for her game. Then, out of proportion to the fact that whether or not she did this, it’s just video games (for CTHULHU’S SAKE) people started harassing her and sending her death threats and all kinds of stuff. Google it if you care.

Lovecraft’s Monsters by Ellen Datlow

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

As usual for an anthology I will post my status updates per story. Before I get to that, I wanted to note that this is the first time I’ve read anything Lovecraftian. (There were Eldritch horrors in the first couple Discworld books, but I had no idea what that was at the time) I think these authors did a great job creating stories based on or inspired by his creatures. If, like me, you’re a Lovecraft neophyte, be sure to read the introduction as it helps explain some of the concepts. And now the stories:

The Magician’s Land by Lev Grossman

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Like a beautiful fractal, this book is doing the same thing on the individual story level and on the series level: joining together all the threads. This book starts off with Quentin trying to get money on by participating in a magical mission impossible after having been kicked out of Fillory in book 2. It then pivots to Janet, Eliott, Josh, and Poppy in Fillory where things are going a bit screwy. By the end of the book the two plots have not only joined, but have revealed themselves to be workings towards the same goal from different ends. In the same way, this book ties together all the plot threads from books 1 and 2 and has characters and plot points from all of those joining together. I’ll get back to this below in the spoiler section. Before I get to the spoilers, I do want to say that Grossman also does a great job with the fact that our characters have grown over the seven years we’ve known them.

God’s War by Kameron Hurley

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

““I’d rather find a call box,” Nyx said.
“God does not answer the phone.”

There isn’t one person among us heavy users of Goodreads who doesn’t know the truth behind taking the phrase “don’t judge a book by its cover” literally. Now I have found incredible books by being attracted to their covers, but sometimes you miss out if that’s all you depend on. Take this book, for example. I don’t remember when or how I got it. It might have been back when I was religiously (no pun intended) making sure I took advantage of Barnes & Noble giving away a book every Friday or it might be from a Humble Bundle or something. Either way, I’d skipped over it because the cover and description made it look like it was going to end up being a Romeo and Juliet story. She’s from country X and he’s from country Y and they have to learn there’s something more important out there!

The Magician King by Lev Grossman

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

“Well, good. don’t go digging too deep, Quentin. Don’t stir. Shit. Up.” Fogg enunciated the obscenity crisply. “Right now you have the air of somebody who thinks he knows better. Humility is a useful quality in a magician, Quentin. Magic knows better, not you. Do you remember what I told you the night before you graduated? Magic isn’t ours. I don’t know whose it is, but we’ve got it on loan, on loan at best.”

The Dispatcher by John Scalzi

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Well, that was a great little read. If you were worried John Scalzi was a one-trick pony, worry no more. This thriller is a great little romp through a world in which no one dies anymore…or at least, can’t be murdered. Scalzi does a bunch of great world-building in which he shows us what happens to a world in which you effectively can’t die because of murder anymore. It’s alternately bitingly witty and a little sobering. I’m not entirely sure if I want more stories in this universe or if it’s best that you just have this little tidbit before things fall apart from too much introspection.

Star Wars: The Crimson Empire Saga by Mike Richardson

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

As far as Star Wars stories go, it was OK. It goes along with Dark Empire in the immediate aftermath of Return of the Jedi. Everyone’s making their power plays after Emperor Palpatine’s death. I haven’t seen Star Wars VII so I don’t know what direction Disney has taken the franchise, but what I like about these pre-Disney Star Wars canon stories is that they show that rebellion is not just overthrow the Emperor and then everything is fine. There’s still an entire bureaucracy with some inertia and people who were doing just fine under the old system and would like to have it stay, thank you very much.

The Manga Guide to Physics by Hideo Nitta

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This Manga Guide has more of a story than the electricity one, but less than the calculus one. The style is very wacky - like a comedy manga and it reminds me a lot of Azumanga Daioh with all the digressions, daydreams, and general surrealism. It does a good job explaining physics, especially if you’re learning physics without calculus. Like many other books in this series, it uses real world examples (primarily tennis in this book) to explain the principles and why a student should bother learning physics if they aren’t going to become an engineer or scientist.

The Magicians by Lev Grossman

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Well, that was quite a ride. I’ve come to the conclusion that calling this book Harry Potter in College does a disservice to Lev Grossman’s creativity and sets the reader up for false expectations. This story is a trilogy, but it does not cover three years in our protagonist’s college life. Instead the first book covers at least 6 years if not more of Quentin’s life. Instead this book is a mix of the idea of a Wizard School and the Chronicles of Narnia. Before I get deeper into that, one more thing to address: the way the main characters act.

The Manga Guide to Calculus by Hiroyuki Kojima

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

While the book didn’t happen to explain calculus in the way I best understand it, I think it did do a pretty good job of explaining it. More importantly, I think the book does an excellent job of explaining why calculus is important outside of engineering. I’m not sure if my undergrad requires Calculus for journalism students, but the journalists at the center of this book certainly make an argument for how it can help data-driven journalists derive good first-order approximations for their stories and fact-check data given to them by others. All too often kids fail to glom onto subjects because they can’t see how it applies to them in the real world.

The Manga Guide to Electricity by Kazuhiro Fujitaki

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I think it was a cute way to get across the basic principles that govern electricity. I’d recommend it to anyone who has an interest in the way electricity works. It works fine for adults, but if you have a kid who’s maybe 10 or so who’s getting into electricity and the types of kits they used to sell at Radio Shack, this would be a great way to explain the way electricity works. It’s fun while being quite informative.

Constellation Games by Leonard Richardson

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I’m in a sweet spot now where there are a lot of authors that seem to be about the same age as me give or take a decade. So I’m starting to see more and more references I can relate to. The main character of this book, Ariel Blum, seems to have also grown up in the video game revolution of the 80s. I appreciate his not-Laura Croft, Dana Light, in a way that I doubt those much older or younger than me would. And, while it’s not singular in this respect, a book told mostly through blog posts, IMs, and emails, definitely speaks to me as someone who straddles the Gen X/ Millenial age cutoffs. Ariel’s work on phone games continues to be more and more relevant as clickers and free to play games become ever more prevalent.

Uglies by Scott Westerfeld

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I finally caught up with all the others on my feed and read this book. I don’t know if it was part of some book club or if it just spiraled as each person I follow recommended it to each other. This is another book from s book bundle I’d bought (I think Humble Bundle).

This was an example of one of times where the book cover kept me from reading it earlier rather than encouraging me to read it. The title “Uglies” together with a sheet over someone’s head and the blue fingernails; I thought it was going to be some teen drama book or something I wouldn’t enjoy. Instead I found a YA dystopia that kept me glued to the page. As a testament to Mr Westerfeld’s writing ability, although I had fun pointing out dystopia tropes in my status updates, he proves that tropes are not necessarily bad by incorporating them in an exciting way. So, if you’re familiar with dystopias (particularly of the YA variety) you’ll be familiar with the story beats, but not necessarily with the execution.

Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency by Douglas Adams

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This is the first time I’ve read this book. Until now I’d only read The Hitchhiker’s Guide series. It definitely has a different tone to it while still being a very British and funny book at its core. That might have to do with the fact that it was originally an unused Dr Who script or it might just be that Mr Adams was writing in a different universe with a different tone. There’s definitely something very modern in a sort of 80s or 90s way about this book - the way it talks about computers and algorithms that we just don’t talk about nowadays. We take PCs for granted, but Adams, like Richard, was a computer geek when that was still a pretty new thing.

Tithe by Holly Black

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Another book from that Humble Bundle that had a bunch of Simon and Schuster YA books. This book was OK. Not my cup of tea, but not bad. As I said in my status updates, Ms Black is pretty good at subverting my expectations. I’ll get back to this in a moment.

For someone who could not really care less about “the fey” as fairies are apparently called, especially if they’re spelled “faerie”, I’ve ended up with a lot of fey books via various bundles. So there are lots of tropes I’m not familiar with, like the fact that faeries are apparently deathly allergic to iron. Why is that? Does it have to do with why we don’t see faeries now? Because of the iron age of humans? Luckily, this book was written for people were a little less familiar because it explained things like changelings, kupies, and the iron allergy.

The Three-Body Problem by Liu Cixin

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

It has been very interesting reading this book. As someone who started reading SF in the 80s, I’ve read my share of American Cold War SF. But I’ve never read a full length Chinese SF novel. As I’ve often commented, what’s interesting with other cultures is seeing where we’re similar and where we’re different. For example, Da Shi, the cop, is similar to a detective cop in a American fiction. That makes sense - a detective is essentially an amateur psychologist. And humans are very similar in a lot of ways, including in the way in which criminals think. Some of the differences in the way the characters think or act defy an easy characterization, but showcase how our cultures think differently.

A Dance with Dragons by George R.R. Martin

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

So, I’m done….I’m caught up. What a journey this has been. If one of the previous books was about the fallout from the War of Five Kings upon the smallfolk of Westeros, this book was about the fallout among the prominent families and rules of the kingdoms. It looks like everything is now ready for the climax of book 6 and denouement of book 7.

Super Mario Bros. 3 by Alyse Knorr

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Even though I’m older than the author of this book, I have a different, though similar, relationship with this game. I don’t know if it’s because I didn’t have a lot of friends growing up or because my parents were (at the time) struggling to make ends meet, but I completely missed the marketing blitz of SMB3. I only heard of The Wizard a decade or more later.

Bleeding Violet by Dia Reeves

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I bought this book as part of a Humble Bundle. This book wasn’t the reason I bought the bundle. I avoided it for a long time because the cover made it look like something I wasn’t going to enjoy - perhaps a romance or paranormal romance. But two things made me start reading it:

1. I’d read a romance by Marjorie Liu last year and it wasn’t horrible. I wouldn’t actively seek them out, but apparently they’re not all cheesy bodice rippers.

Arcanum 101: Welcome New Students by Mercedes Lackey

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I kept going back and forth between 2 stars and 3. I’d probably consider it 2.5 stars, but that’s not an option and I felt like giving the book the benefit of the doubt. I purchased the book as part of one of the first book-related bundles I ever bought. (I *think* from Storybundle) This wasn’t the book that made me buy it.

A Feast for Crows by George R.R. Martin

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The previous book was mostly about how the war had affected the common folk. While some of that is still present in this book, this time it’s mostly about how the aftermath of the war affects the noble folks. Mostly they’re working on dealing with consequences of their scheming. It’s almost entirely based out of King’s Landing, but includes their deals with the Freys and others. It’s interesting seeing how complicated unwinding some of those deals are. It would be an exaggeration to say it was a Pyrrhic victory, but it wasn’t nice and tidy either.

Star Wars: Dark Empire II by Tom Veitch

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The story had some fun elements like a steampunk Jedi with a steampunk spaceship. But overall, it was a flat sequel that undid a lot of what mattered in the previous story without doing much the advance that main story. That’s probably because the source material, unless I’m misremembering, was a couple graphic novels. There isn’t a lot of room there to change a lot about the Star Wars extended universe. The only thing that made me groan was the catch-phrase-ification of a lot of the main characters’ famous sayings from the first trilogy.

Ansible by Stant Litore

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Like Wool, a series of short stories that slowly reveal more and more if this world. It’s hard to say too much without ruining the beauty of this story. Let’s just say that it is much more terrifying than I thought it would be from the descriptions. And, as I predicted, when you get to the last story, it really hits you with a real whammy.

Bible Adventures by Gabe Durham

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

It was interesting to read about this game from someone that had a similar upbringing and encountered it for the the first time at church, as did I. It was always a weird thing to exist, especially since I didn’t know at the time why it was a blue cartridge. He does a great job of reviewing the history behind the company that ended up creating the Wisdom Tree subsidiary. It was a crazy time to be in the games business and the company was no exception. I also enjoyed the look at the games that came out after Bible Adventures and how they were similar and different in scope and intent. As always, I love the personal story adject of the book as well.

Lightspeed Magazine, July 2010 by John Joseph Adams

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

As usual for anthology-type things, an expansion on my status updates. But, before that, let me just say that I love science fiction and fantasy short stories and listen to SFF/F podcasts to hear them. So this was a very fun read.

“No time like the present” - One of the things that I both love and hate about short stories is starting in media res. It feels like short stories aren’t allowed to introduce the world. You have to figure it out as the story goes along. Sometimes this can be fun in a detective sort of way. Sometimes it can be frustrating as you learn something halfway through that completely changes your understanding of the first half. Again, sometimes that can be fun like in Fight Club. Sometimes it’s just annoying. This time it was fun and I think having a kid narrator was part of the reason.

Dune by Frank Herbert

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Well, that was quite a journey - both in the amount of time it took me to finish the book and in the scope of the book itself. I guess I’ll consider it in that order. This book, like all sci fi books that deviate so much from how we live today that everything has a new name, is hard to get into. While it is good narrative form to jump into the story without walls of text explaining everything, when it’s as alien as this (no pun intended) it becomes impossible to know what’s going on. And that makes it hard to get invested in the story. Additionally, in order to have the big payoff at the end, Herbert spends a lot of time without much going on. I know I spent a lot of time wondering why this was such a heralded book in our fandom.

Video Games Are No Fun by Kill Screen Magazine

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

As I usually do with an anthology-style product, I’m just moving over my status updates.

“Big Buck- I’ve seriously misjudged this game all these years”

“King of the Ogres - Although I never got into WOW, I’ve faced similar issues with others (sometimes peers and sometimes the older generation) not understanding games as a diversion as valid as whatever they do for fun.”

A Clash of Kings by George R.R. Martin

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

As I said with the previous book, there probably isn’t too much that’s new to say about this book given its age and the popularity of the TV show.

I think I once read that ASOIAF was originally meant to be a trilogy and this book definitely has a feel of expanding the narrative without resolving much. A lot is set up and I’m definitely ready for book 3, but if I’d been reading this when it first came out, I wonder if it would’ve contained enough forward momentum on the plot to keep me engaged in the series.