Rogue by J.T. Vaydensen

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Disclaimer: I got this book free in exchange for a review

Rarely does my opinion of a book change so drastically from beginning to end (and throughout). When I started the book, I was wary of where it was going to go. It seemed a bit too nice and clean. Then, mid-way through I started thinking I’d give it maybe three stars. And at the end it ended up with 4. It’s not a perfect book by any means. But it won me over, by golly, and somehow I just ended up really liking it.

God Is Disappointed in You by Mark Russell

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

When I was a kid I was a huge Bible nerd. I read The Picture Bible at least 5 times front to back (one of my first comics, now that I think about it). I’ve read MOST of the Bible a few times. (I usually skimmed Numbers and Deuteronomy). Back then I used to fantasize about someone writing the Bible in the regular vernacular. I’d mostly grown up with King James and NIV. NIV wasn’t bad, but it was still hard to get a perfect grip on things. After a while, I came across more translations and a few of those Bibles had good intros about how hard it is to make a good translation. Essentially you can either go for literal exactness or the spirit of the words. And those choices make a big deal when you’re talking about fundamentalists choosing whether or not to hate someone based on what the Bible says. So I gave up on my fantasy.

Who Censored Roger Rabbit? by Gary K. Wolf

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This book is completely different from the movie it inspired, the movie I’ve loved since I was a kid and have found layers to appreciate as an adult. It isn’t bad, it’s just wholly different. I’ve written in some reviews on here and in other places that in the past few years I’ve come to terms with the idea of adaptations. Movies and books will never be perfectly similar because adaptations require each to play to the strengths of the medium in which it’s in. This, however, is much more than an adaptation. The movie took 80% of the same characters and the thinnest connection to the plot in here and then made its own thing. And that’s good, because this book’s plot points are quite a bit too convoluted for a movie, especially a mass-market movie.

The End of All Things by John Scalzi

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This book is as fitting an end to the series as the third one was. Scalzi does a good job of wrapping things up so that if this book truly was the end of all things Old Man’s War, you’d be pretty satisfied. I don’t know if he knew whether his $10 million deal with Tor would pan out or what it would contain specifically, but we know now he’s contracted for one or two (I can’t remember the exact number) more books in this series. Still, if he died tomorrow and/or never wrote another book in the series, this would be a good end.

The Human Division by John Scalzi

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

As I stated during one of my status updates, the structure of this book reminded me of I, Robot. In that short story collection, Asimov has a couple guys who work for US Robotics (or whatever the company’s called) who somehow always end up being on the scene when one of the robots finds a loophole through the Three Laws of Robotics. I loved both the “cruelty” of the situations Asimov put the guys through and their logic steps as they solved the problem. I don’t know if Scalzi was directly influenced by I, Robot, but the crew of The Clarke end up in a similar situation with Wilson and Schmidt playing the parts of the two guys from US Robotics. The book is also structured as a series of short stories with a bit more of an overarching plot linking them than in I, Robot, but they almost function as singular stories.