Terris: Wrought of Copper by Alex Flagg

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

If you are really into The Cosmere you tend to REALLY be into the Cosmere (just take a stroll through r/Cosmere on Reddit). So it would be a shame to miss out on all this background information about the Terrismen in this Mistborn series even if you’re not going to play the RPG. Don’t read this book until after you’ve read Misborn 1 or you will be spoiled story-wise. I think it’s pretty safe to read after that as the spoilers it has for book 2 are pretty minor. It MAY spoil a death from book 2….it has been over a year since I started reading this, but other than that, I think it’s pretty safe to read after book 1. I wouldn’t read it too long after the first Mistborn Trilogy because it has pretty much no relevance to the Wax/Wayne series since that one takes place something like 700 years after the first trilogy.

Promise of Blood by Brian McClellan

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

As I work through my To-read list, we come to another book I added around 2014. This one was after Mr. McClellan had been interviewed by Sword and Laser (and 4 years before I’d ever heard of Brandon Sanderson). His idea of powder mages - a Napoleanic look at magic sounded incredibly refreshing. I was never a big fantasy person, preferring science fiction, but so much of the fantasy I’d come across was stuck in Tolkien’s shadow - medieval-ish with dwarves and elves and so on. Of course, in the time since I heard about this book I’ve read all of Sanderson’s Cosmere novels and others have also taken a look at other fantasy genres like Silk-punk. But that didn’t make this book any less good, only less special.

The Mongoliad: Book Two by Neal Stephenson

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is a very hard book to properly review. Unlike a typical book in a trilogy (or however many books it ends up being - at the time this book was published it was a trilogy), this book does not contain a story that begins and ends within the larger story. But as this book started I realized this would be the case. It essentially just continues exactly where the last one left off as if this was not a series of books, but rather one large book that’s been split into publishable chunks of 300 pages each. (Although, to put the lie to my point, the final chapter does have a very satisfying final sentence for ending a book)

Childhood’s End by Arthur C. Clarke

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This is some old-ass science fiction. It’s interesting that on my recent trip I ended up reading 3 SF stories from my to-read list that were all from the 1950s. It’s definitely got a lot of that Zeerust where we’re incredibly far into the future, but it’s still analog interfaces to computers and they still take up entire buildings. At one point someone who’s essentially the human representative from the world gets faxes from all over the world in order to know what’s going on. Of course, some of the female representation is dated - although not as badly as the PKD short stories I read on the same trip I read this book. And there was a great intro to the version I read which was written in 2000 in which Clarke acknowledges how the world passed him by as well as including a revised chapter one written in the 80s.

Mr. Spaceship by Philip K. Dick

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Another Philip K Dick story from the 1950s. This one falls squarely in the pop SciFi of the magaines of the times. The science is so bad it’s hilarious. What was a lot more fun was all the anachronisms from that time. Yes, we have spaceships that can travel to other systems in no time, but people don’t have portable computers - they take paper files around. And the battle displays are clearly analog. It’s definitely in that very old Asimovian storytelling style where the story is a bit of a mystery that the reader and protagonist have to solve. Of course, it’s also incredibly a product of its time when it comes to women. The story ends with the protagonist’s wife (who divorced him) essentially being kidnapped and forced to repopulate a planet with him. And, after a passionate kiss it’s all good.

The Eyes Have It by Philip K. Dick

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This story is so short, the Gutenberg license at the end takes up the majority of the pages, but it’s still a fun story. Or, well it is to me and I imageine my boss would also love it. But we’re both degenerates who LOVE puns. This is also a great short story for kids around 3rd or 4th grade when they’d really and truly understand all the idioms being used. Essentially, a short story from the 1950s in which the protagonist reads a book containing a bunch of English idioms that convinces him the characters are aliens. If you love puns, you’ll love it. If you hate puns, run away from the story right now

Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Only my third 5-star review for 2019, but boy does Ms. Leckie deserve it here. It’s everything I love about SF including a gigantic, fully realized world with a culture that makes sense as a consequence of the world she’s created. It really reminded me of the worlds I’ve come to know in Brandon Sanderson’s Cosmere.

Interestingly, for a year in which I also read The Just City, Radch society seems to be a corrupt Plato’s Republic and/or Confucian China situation where tests determine how awesome you’re supposed to be, but some apparent corruption affects parts of the narrative, esp with Lt. Awn. As always with one of these narratives, there’s the tension between feeling like the powerful families are powerful because they’re meant to be (whether because of God or not). There was also the cocus on tea, Bollywood-like films, and many-armed gods and goddesses. South Asian/Asian (if you look at the Confucious stuff) space culture maybe? So I thought it was interesting she mentions Roman society during the extra interview included at the end of my ebook version. Of course there’s some of that too, particularly in the social stratification among the powerful families.

Sirena by Donna Jo Napoli

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Another book that was on my To-Read list since 2014. I *think* I heard about it on Boing-Boing, but I wasn’t making good use of my GR shelves that way back then to keep track of such things. Wherever I heard about it, I was expecting this to be a retelling of Hans Christian Anderson’s The Little Mermaid. (Looking at the other Donna Jo Napoli books I have on my To Read list - Beauty and the Beast, Mulan, etc - it’s not hard to see why) But this turned out to be so much better for my sensibilities - it’s really more of taking the barebones of the Anderson telling and porting it back to the original Western source of mermaids - the Sirens of Greek Mythology.

Dead Man’s Deal by Jocelynn Drake

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Wow, Ms. jocelynn Drake did something pretty rare among the trilogies I’ve been reading for the past half decade - she made a second book in the trilogy that doesn’t end on a cliffhanger. My memories of books I read when I was younger have this happening more often. But I know I have written many, many reviews on Goodreads where I talk about how hard it is to rate the second book because it’s a setup for the third. So it was nice and refreshing to have a second book in a series where if Ms. Drake had never continued, we’d be satisfied with the ending. That said, she certainly provided enough change in the status quo that I’m curious to read the next book and find out what happened.

Kingdom Hearts II by Alexa Ray Corriea

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

As with the best books in this series, Ms. Corriea has a deep passion for the game she’s writing about and it had a profound impact in her life. Over a number of chapters, she makes a great case for why this series is capable of deeper reflection than it would seem for a game with Donald, Goofy, and Cloud McCrono-face the protagonist (Sora). She does a great job blending the history of the series as well as pulling in information from later games to show the deep universe the creator put together in this series. It’s a game I own, but never got to play as I got it in college and from that point on I’ve had trouble finding the time needed to complete a jRPG. After reading this book, I’m keen for my kids to play it during that magical 9-14 years old where jRPG melodramatics play so hard. (And I think part of why FF6 and Chrono Trigger hit me so hard while I never really got into FF7 - FFX)