Monstrous Regiment by Terry Pratchett

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is my second time reading the book. I lowered the rating from 5 to 4 stars mostly because 5 stars is “it was amazing” and 4 stars is “really liked it” so that’s a more honest assessment.

This is a book that I remembered fondly and, thankfully, the re-read did not reveal that the book had been visited by the Suck Fairy. In fact, I found it a bit more clever than I remembered. I still remembered the big twist - it’s a bit too big to forget, but I had forgotten how it was revealed.

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.