Sins of Empire by Brian McClellan

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

If you put a godstone on the mantle in act one….

Just to get my one issue out of the way - this trilogy is really just one giant book broken in 3. This book doesn’t really have a resolution at the end. In a strict technical sense, at least one of the storylines finishes up.

I really enjoyed this return to the world of Powder Mages, Privileged, and Knacked. We have the return of one of my favorite characters, Olem, as well as Vlora. Since the last series they’ve gone mercenary and for their storyline we follow as they have to deal with the missions they’re hired for. Just like the previous series we also have a couple more storylines that will eventually link up. One of them involves Michel, a member of the Blackhats - a gestapo-style police/intelligence force in Fatrasta. The other storyline is about Ben Styke. I don’t remember if we saw him in the previous series since people later bring up that he worked with Taniel Two-Shot.

Fugitive Telemetry by Martha Wells

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Murderbot continues to be awesome. As with most mysteries, there isn’t too much to say that won’t end up being a spoiler. Muderbot continues to grow as a character while also not losing that which makes Murderbot such a delight to read. It’s similar to the way I feel about the alien character in Resident Alien.

I could potentially see a long life for the TV show as a mystery-of-the-week show that leaves the novels and novellas in the series behind after the first season.

Middlegame by Seanan McGuire

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I stayed up way too late last night reading. Today I took advantage of the fact that it was raining all day long to sit on the couch with a few cups of tea to finish the book. As I finished I recognized that this was both Seanan McGuire’s masterpiece and probably the book most likely to divide her readers. I doubt there’s anyone who feels “meh” about this book. I think it’s one where you love or hate it.

Prime Deceptions by Valerie Valdes

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Our favorite Cuban spaceship captain is back and I enjoyed it even more than the first book. Now that Eva is her new self and knows there isn’t any more lying to her crew, they can move on to more fun adventures. This book is essentially one long quest to find a specific person and Eva and crew’s attempts to figure out where that person is.

The Black Tides of Heaven by Neon Yang

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I would probably more accurately rate this book as 4.5, but I decided to round up.

Yang does a perfect job in this novella creating just enough history for the world that we feel as though it’s gone on forever. It’s mostly focused on the two main characters, Mokoyo and Akeha, and yet there is so much happening in the background that we learn just enough about. I see it almost as a template for what the time between Sanderson’s Mistborn Era 2 and Era 3 might be like. In this story the world, which seems like a second-world Indonesia (lots of Chinese and Indian infuence), runs on magic-based devices. Only the government Tensors can create these devices and from there comes some of the government’s source of power - the monopoly on technology. In this novella (which spans 35 or so years) a faction grows that begins to invent science-based machines. All of this is fascinating, yet in so many ways it has nothing to do with plot propelling our story.

The word irreverent is tossed around way too flippantly these days, however, if there’s one site that deserves it, it’s ZeroPunctuation. ZeroPunctuation is a site where a British guy living in Australia reviews video games within a video format weekly. He often makes fun of games and the genres they belong in. The animation is extremely simple, yet remarkably effective. It’s slightly more than xkcd, but not much more than stick figures. The way he does this is brilliant and it must be seen in order to explain it correctly. Just one warning, if you get queasy over profanity, do NOT visit his site.