The Bloodline Feud by Charles Stross

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This book was a free giveaway for Tor’s ebook club

This book checks a lot of boxes for me: thriller, science fiction, multiple universes, alternate histories. But I just couldn’t get into it as much as I wanted to. I think it was mostly around the way Stross writes his dialogue. I can’t quite figure out exactly what it is about it, but it just didn’t do it for me.

Buying Time by Joe Haldeman

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Earlier this year I read The Forever War for the first time after having read Starship Troopers. So when there was a Humble Bundle with a bunch of books I didn’t care about, but which had a book by Joe Haldeman, I jumped on the bundle.

Having read these two books, the biggest thing I’ve noticed abut Joe is that he is GREAT at world-building. It doesn’t mean the story suffers, but I almost want to read more to wander around his worlds than I do for the story to continue. What’s the world here? Some scientists invent The Styleman procedure - undergoing this procedure reverses the aging process. As long as you go through it every 10 years, you can remain a perpetual 20-year-old (body-wise). That, by itself, would be a near world. But in order to get the initial financing to setup The Styleman Institute, they wanted to use it to redistribute wealth in the world. The process would cost $1 million dollars and the person who did it would have to give away all their money and posessions to the institute, which would then spread it around various charities. This is also a world where people take pleasure trips out into space and where there are lawless colonies among the asteroids. (And also on Florida)

Meathead: The Science of Great Barbecue and Grilling by Meathead Goldwyn

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

There are literally tons of BBQ cookbooks out there. Why this one? Well, Meathead does something most of them don’t - he backs up his techniques with science. BBQ has existed as long as mankind so a lot of what we do is just father->son or mother->daughter (or some combination of gen 1 to gen 2) and a lot of it is wrong. Humans suck at intuition. So Meathead along with Dr Blonder use science to backup their techniques and ideas. This leads to 2 great benefits.

Race for the Iron Throne: Political and Historical Analysis of “A Game of Thrones” by Steven Attewell

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I heard about this book when Steve Attewell appeared on Boars, Gore, and Swords - my favorite Game of Thrones podcast. On that episode he mentioned how both GoT and the books pull from a variety of historical periods, not just dark ages England. The fact that he is a real historian analyzing the books seemed too great to pass up so I got the book.

The Lives of Tao by Wesley Chu

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

While reading The Lives of Tao I kept having this nagging feeling in my head that there was something familliar aobut this story. Then it hit me, it seems as though Wesley Chu was given the writing prompt, take Scientology and make it into a viable science fiction story: Aliens in people’s bodies responsible for the pain in the world.

Science: Abridged Beyond the Point of Usefulness by Zach Weinersmith

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Weinersmith acknowledges on the last page that he may have ignored notes from PhDs to make a joke work. That said, there’s enough truth in here that every one I’ve shared the section of their degree with has found it really funny. It’s a quick read and a great gift for the science nerd in your life.

The Holy Bible: Abridged Beyond the Point of Usefulness by Zach Weinersmith

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This book is like God Is Disappointed in You except each book of the Bible is only 1-2 setences. Like the other book, the humor comes from finding a funny way to express what’s actually in there. I think this book (if you bought the e-book version) makes for a bunch of fun pages to put up on your cubicle or print up in a calendar with one book per month for a few years. But I enjoyed GiDiY more because the extra text allowed the satire to be a bit deeper by being even more truthful to content of the Bible. That said, it was pretty fun to read the entire Bible in about five minutes.

Orbital by Andrew Mayne

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Recieved this book in anticipation of a review

As I mentioned in my review of the previous book of this Duology, I got this book free and so I went back and bought the first book. Where the first book is a self-aware reconstruction of the thriller action book, this book is more of a detective novel; in SPAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACE! So it’s a MUCH, much slower pace than the first book. As I mentioned in my status updates - that’s fine with me because the pacing should serve the story. And detective stories are usually a much slower pace than thrillers.

Station Breaker by Andrew Mayne

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Let me start off with the only thing that bothered me. Our protagonist, David Dixon, is so genre savvy that he knows he’s in a thriller novel. Not on a 4th wall breaking sort of way, but I’m his inner monologue he knows all the tropes to avoid. He even refers to the McGuffin as the McGuffin. But for the plot to kick off, he has to hold the idiot ball for the first couple chapters, ignoring sign after sign that something is up. The inconsistency threatened to take me out of the story for the first bit.