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.

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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.