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.…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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.…

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.…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…