Blood of Tyrants by Naomi Novik

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Oh, Temeriaire, you sweet summer child-dragon (to mix together 2 vastly different dragon-containing series). Yes, you’re learning, but you still are way too optimistic about people, dragons, and battles.

This was one of the better Temeriare novels, although so far they’ve all been at least “good”. It started a bit rough. I thought this was going to be like the entry in the series where we start off with Temeriare in the breeding grounds and Laurence on a ship. But Novik has already put us through that wringer, so it was only a short portion of the book and which introduced us to the Japanese dragons. Here Novik leans on the asian association of dragons with water and so we get river and ocean dragons. The society seems halfway between the Chinese and South American dragon situation. They are revered, but aren’t necessarily living among the populace.

In 2023 I just didn’t have the urge to do as much programming as in years past. I felt more of a tug towards video games, reading, and baking/cooking. So this recap will be quite a bit shorter than usual. A couple upfront themes and ideas: The programming was essentially Go and Python. I started reading a book about Julia, but didn’t do any new programming in Julia. I mostly worked on new code vs maintaining older code.

By the end of 2023 I had 3049 ebooks and magazines (a change of 256 - pretty even with last year). Of those, 2434 were unread. Some chunk of those - maybe as much as ¼ were giveaways like Raspberry Pi Magazine, HackSpace Magazine, and Tor.com book club freebies. I stopped getting the monthly free Prime books since I no longer have a way to liberate them. I ended the year with 197 audiobooks (a change of 53). A lot of those were for Danielle - more on that later.

Lightspeed Magazine, Issue 111, August 2019 by John Joseph Adams

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This issue was one in which I enjoyed all of the stories very much.

Science Fiction

One Thousand Beetles in a Jumpsuit (Dominica Phetteplace) - a dystopian story taking place “20 Minutes in the Future” that seems to me to be even more likely now than it was 4 years ago when this story was published. That said, I really enjoyed our protagonist and the story overall. I had originally written that I wanted to see more stories in this setting, but on reading the author interview I saw that they have another one coming up in a future issues of Lightspeed.

The Kaiju Preservation Society by John Scalzi
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

What is this book? It’s a love-letter to science fiction nerds. It shares narrative bits with Jurassic Park. It’s a reminder of how disruptive 2020 was in every day.

I had a lot of fun with this story. I think the only criticism (which is kind of a hidden praise) is that I felt it ended too quickly. We learned the premise and the world and then the climax came and it was all over. I think it may be that, as can be the case with a short story or novella, that the house of cards would have come crashing down if the story went on too much longer. There was a lot of “don’t think about it” hand-wavy things in the setup and maybe they wouldn’t survive strict scrutiny. Scalzi said he created a pop song of a novel and he’s not wrong. He also created a bit of a time capsule of a crazy time that most of the creative world is pretending didn’t happen.

Crucible of Gold by Naomi Novik

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

When we last left Laurence and Temeriare, they were in Australia, contemplating retirement. This book has them dragged back in because Napoleon continues to scheme. Thanks to the deviation from our history in which Africa has been wrested from colonialism, Napoleon makes a deal with the largest “country” on the continent to provide them with transportation to South America to try and get back/get revenge for their family and ancestors recently sold into slavery. As a bonus, this means they harass Brazil and give Napoleon the chance to take a distracted Portugal, leaving Britain without allies.

I Am Not a Serial Killer by Dan Wells

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I’m not a horror person - I got this to listen to with my wife on a car trip. She calls the book Baby-Dexter. She’s not wrong. I think the book fits in a very interesting intersection. It’s (in my opinion) a little gruesome for YA being in John’s head and reading his sociopathic thoughts. But because it’s YA it’s also pretty tame with some of the horror elements. Also, the first twist about the nature of the killer (it’s not on the GR description, but it’s on some other descriptions - including the movie based on it) somewhat absolves John of some of his inner tension - at least that’s how my wife and I felt. That is to say, based on the nature of the killer, some of what John is debating seems moot. (And that continues with his antagonists at least through book 3, according to my wife)

Long Past Dues by James J. Butcher

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

(a reminder that I use the star rating tooltips on the goodreads site. 3 stars = “I liked it”.)

Butcher, the son, is back with another entry in The Unorthodox Chronicles. Book 1 was a buddy-cop plot. We’re back with the same characters and, roughly, dealing with the consequences of the first book. I say roughly because JJB seems to be copying his dad in that there is a greater over-arching plot - or at the very least not every plot point from the last book or this book is resolved. It also doesn’t seem that each book will be standalone. In light of that, it was annoying, and cost the book a star - that our protagonists had backslid a bit. That might be more realistic, vs a linear progression, but with only 2 books out, it seems to waste enough of a chunk of this book getting the characters back to where they were at the end of the last book.

Tongues of Serpents by Naomi Novik

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Just like the Africa book, this one is a lot of just passing the time without much happening. Then in the last few chapters we get a bunch of bombshells about how the world continues to differ from ours because of the the dragons equalizing things between the colonies and colonizers (or would-be colonizers). The epilogue seems Mr. Laurence finally come a bit unmoored from society - something that has been about 2.5 books in the making. It presents a very interesting position for the protagonists of our series over the final 3 books in the series. I’m very curious to see where Novik means to take us.

Lightspeed Magazine, April 2018 by John Joseph Adams

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

SCIENCE FICTION

What is Eve? (Will McIntosh) - Will does a great job with the story. The reader can probably guess the general direction of the story, but it’s the details that make it shine. I think he also does a good job with the voice of a middle school kid.

Webs (Mary Anne Mohanraj) - Starts off with what seems like a metaphor for being trans and then it adds on a straight story of being trans on top of the metaphor. It’s unfortunately how perennial the issue is that this was written years ago and yet feels fresh now.
The Elephants’ Crematorium (Timothy Mudie) - we’ve seen a few movies/books/etc with a plot in which something ending the cycle of life. This one increases the stakes by considering other animals as well. I found the narrative very emotionally affecting.
Mozart on the Kalahari (Steven Barnes) - I’ve heard expressions similar to the title of this short story. The “moral”, as such, of the story is one we would do well to get more people to think about.