Middlegame by Seanan McGuire

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I stayed up way too late last night reading. Today I took advantage of the fact that it was raining all day long to sit on the couch with a few cups of tea to finish the book. As I finished I recognized that this was both Seanan McGuire’s masterpiece and probably the book most likely to divide her readers. I doubt there’s anyone who feels “meh” about this book. I think it’s one where you love or hate it.

Prime Deceptions by Valerie Valdes

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Our favorite Cuban spaceship captain is back and I enjoyed it even more than the first book. Now that Eva is her new self and knows there isn’t any more lying to her crew, they can move on to more fun adventures. This book is essentially one long quest to find a specific person and Eva and crew’s attempts to figure out where that person is.

The Black Tides of Heaven by Neon Yang

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I would probably more accurately rate this book as 4.5, but I decided to round up.

Yang does a perfect job in this novella creating just enough history for the world that we feel as though it’s gone on forever. It’s mostly focused on the two main characters, Mokoyo and Akeha, and yet there is so much happening in the background that we learn just enough about. I see it almost as a template for what the time between Sanderson’s Mistborn Era 2 and Era 3 might be like. In this story the world, which seems like a second-world Indonesia (lots of Chinese and Indian infuence), runs on magic-based devices. Only the government Tensors can create these devices and from there comes some of the government’s source of power - the monopoly on technology. In this novella (which spans 35 or so years) a faction grows that begins to invent science-based machines. All of this is fascinating, yet in so many ways it has nothing to do with plot propelling our story.

Save Yourself, Mammal!: A Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal Collection by Zach Weinersmith

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I’m not going to waste time looking it up, but I believe this was SMBC’s first collection. So Weinersmith (or whoever didn’t the formatting) hadn’t figured out the formatting. In order to save space, the comics are all over the place instead of one per page. This isn’t horrible, but it does mean there’s a little extra time to think about each page and see whether this is one large comic (as is sometimes the case) or a bunch of smaller ones.

If Hemingway Wrote JavaScript by Angus Croll

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The intro mentions the natural language nature of Javascript. I wonder if the book had been concieved a few years later if it would rather have been Python or Ruby - both of which are way more like human language than Javascript.

The book is fun and I mostly get it, but to truly get what the author is doing here, I think you would need to be a Javascript dev. The whole point is that the author is nerding out not only on the writing style of the authors they have chosen, but also converting that into Javascript coding styles. As someone who programmed in many languages, but hasn’t touched Javasscript in the the mid-90s, a lot of the elegance of this book is lost on me.

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.

View all my reviews

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.