Threats: What Every Engineer Should Learn From Star Wars by Adam Shostack

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

A reminder that I use the tooltips on GR and 3 stars is “I liked it”

This book doesn’t have nearly as much Star Wars as I was hoping for, but the Star Wars aspect still helps a lot. Let me illustrate what I was expecting and what I got. What I was expecting is for a book that would follow one or more Star Wars movies and discuss the security issues in each scene (if the scene had any); basically like the Star Wars and Philosophy books that the author mentions in the acknowledgments section. What Shostack does instead is use specific moments in Star Wars to illustrate concepts in a a book that reads like a more entertaining version of the CISSP certification study book. That is to say, it’s not dry, but it’s also WAY more technical than you might expect from the title itself. (Or the trailer for the book)

SCIENCE: Ruining Everything Since 1543 by Zach Weinersmith

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I’m a huge fan of Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal, a nerdy web comic (like XKCD, but not stick figures). What elevates this book beyond a simple collection of science-themed SMBC strips is the ending where Weinersmith creates strips from personal anecdotes of various scientists (and a Mythbusters host).

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Proven Guilty by Jim Butcher

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This book seemed to be more of a return to form in the sense that Harry has a lot of detective work to do here to figure out what’s going on. As usual, we have a bunch of seemingly disparate plots that come together in the end.

The series has explored ideas of faith quite a bit, especially when Michael is involved. This one spent a lot of time exploring it. I think Butcher has done a good job in the past, and continues to do a good job here, of finding ways to explain a world in which capital-G God exists and yet isn’t in direct opposition to the vampires and other horror creatures.

Uncanny Magazine Issue 19: November/December 2017 by Lynne M. Thomas

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

“Making Us Monsters” (Sam J. Miller & Lara Elena Donnelly) - A story that takes place during WWI and the inter-war period. The main characters are gay and the story serves mostly to remind me of the horrible treatment given to Alan Turing. Turing was responsible for helping break the German code (along with a giant support staff - including lots of female “computers”) and was foundational in computer and information theory. But he was convicted of being gay and forced to endure punishment for that. The story was beautiful, but I found it to be a bit too long.

Lost in the Moment and Found by Seanan McGuire

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is the hardest book to read of the entire series. There’s a content warning at the front of the book that explains why - but it is truly one of the cruelest. I think it’s also a book that needs to be ready by young adults and parents and anyone else who has to deal with the subject matter either as a victim or a potential helper.

In Mercy, Rain by Seanan McGuire

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I’m very much in favor of the way McGuire makes use of short stories within this series. They expand upon the stories from the main books without requiring those stories to be bogged down. In a sense, these are deleted scenes, except they’re meant to be canon. In taking a small chunk and expanding upon it, McGuire can slow things down and give us even more consideration or interiority of the characters.

Where the Drowned Girls Go by Seanan McGuire

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I think this is the best book McGuire has yet written in the Wayward Children series. It’s a culmination of all that has come before and seems to be setting up something big for either book 9 or book 10. It’s clear that there are more complex rules to the doors and their effects on our world than had even been revealed in previous books.

Skeleton Song by Seanan McGuire

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

A beautiful short story that finally reveals Christopher’s world and how he ended up back in the real world. It’s beautiful and somber and, as always, cruel in a unique way.

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Dead Beat by Jim Butcher

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Even though there’s a timeskip of, I think, a year - this book is a direct follow-on from the previous one. That is to say that Dresden spends a big chunk of the book dealing with the consequences of the last one. Even the case that kicks things off is directly related to the previous book. From that kick-off, things spiral so wildly that I had a bit of trouble remembering just what the case was that set things into motion.

Clarkesworld Magazine, Issue 144, September 2018 by Neil Clarke

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

A Study in Oils (Kelly Robson) - a neat blend of science fiction and fantasy, I love how the author evokes the setting. I can really picture it in my mind. Although not entirely unique, I like the idea of an Earth cultural sanctuary.

Waves of influence (DA Xiaolin Spires) - Recently I’ve read a slew of SFF stories dealing with futuristic or fantastical versions of social media. It makes perfect sense given their prevalence and influence on the culture this last decade. This one, written back before the current moment in which it seems Twitter might implode and we might have the next evolution in the space, tackles the facial filter aspect. Any gender can experience dysmorphia from the practice but it seems to have extra urgency in the hands of Spires, who has female pronouns in her bio at the end of the story. I also love the story she has used to explore how this might affect users - quite different from the usual narrative in real life.