A Psalm for the Wild-Built (Monk & Robot, #1)
by Becky Chambers
What a delightful, thoughtful, and introspective story about purpose and self worth. And robots.
Rating: 5 stars
Favorite movies and books of 2023
Posted over on the main site, my ten favorite movies of 2023 as well as the favorite books I read last year.
The Mountain in the Sea – ★★★★★
A little unsatisfied with the main mysteries wrapped up and some details left unexplored, but overall really enjoyed this quite a bit. Thought the main character was great as well as the various AIs, and in particular really found the idea of the point-fives conceptually intriguing.
Rating: 5 stars
? Crossposted on Goodreads
? Buy The Mountain in the Sea on Bookshop
All Systems Red (The Murderbot Diaries #1) – ★★★★★
Great, quick read that I didn’t want to put down. Enjoyable humor and strong premise and character development of the titular murderbot. I was disappointed at first by the very last couple pages but then I remembered there’s 6+ other books that it leads into and am a lot less critical of how it wrapped up.
Rating: 5 stars
? Crossposted on Goodreads
? Buy All Systems Red on Bookshop
Relic (Pendergast #1) – ★★★★½
Really enjoyable thriller. Been making my way through Preston and Child’s independent books while waiting for this book to become available at the library. Relic was considerably more interesting and generally better than any of those so looking forward to making way through more of these. Interested to see how Pendergast goes from side character to the namesake of the 20+ book series.
The Agent Coffey character was one of the worst “idiot cop who’s in charge of everything and keeps blowing it for our heroes” trope characters in any media though. Just comically stupid and obnoxiously stubborn.
Rating: 4.5 stars
Mickey 7 by Edward Ashton – ★★★½
I could have done without the handful of pretty average and vaguely sitcom/rom-com adjacent chapters when the multiple appears early in the last third, but I enjoyed the writing style and dialog of this quite a bit.
This ended up being pretty slight particularly with regards to the conflict/mystery of the planet itself and wrapped up the issue with the multiple quickly and unsatisfyingly, but the premise and execution (pun intended) of the expendable concept in general was really good so I’m interested in seeing where Ashton took this in the sequel. Especially considering because of the decisions Mickey makes at the very end of this.
(I’m also now excited for the Bong Joon-ho/Robert Pattinson movie version Mickey 17 coming out early next year I found out about while writing up this review.)
Rating: 3.5 stars
? View my Goodreads review
? Buy Mickey 7 on Bookshop
Chrysalis (Jeremy Logan, #6) – ★★★½
Well after reading six of them I’m still not really sure what exactly a Jeremy Logan book is, but I’m not sure Lincoln Child knows either. They’re at least nice easy reads/listens.
I liked this book pretty well but its another Logan book where Logan doesn’t really do all that much. And does even less enigmatology (hey look that is actually a “real” word after all) related business. The final conclusion was flat out dumb/silly and the epilogue was not much better, but overall it was a mostly solid little tech thriller with not as much mystery or thrills as it should have had.
Despite my complaints, I still overall enjoyed the series and am looking forward to the Child/Preston books coming available via Libby. Hopefully those will be both better and more consistent.
Rating: 3.5 stars
? View my Goodreads review
? Buy Chrysalis (Jeremy Logan, #6) on Amazon
Review: Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow – ★★½
The characters, Sadie in particular, just never seem to get more mature in their thoughts or their actions despite anything that happens in their lives. The constant reappearance of the toxic, abusive character with only cursory mentions of what is often literally sexual assault never really seems as introspective as it should. Of course, Sadie and Sam’s own relationship is equally toxic pretty much throughout.
Just incredibly immature thoughts on relationships, work, video games, and life in general.
Rating: 2.5 stars
? View my Goodreads review
? Buy Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow on Amazon
Restarted “Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow”
Restarted Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow today and made it back to same point I bounced off the first time.
Three chapters in and I really dislike the book up to this point. College Sadie and the terrible professor is sooooo dumb and his dialog and personality are so transparently awful. I can’t tell at this point if the author Zevin is this clueless about relationships or if Sadie is about to turn into a non awful character any minute.
It doesn’t help how bad the video game stuff is early.
Calling Street Fighter etc “martial arts games” made me cringe. This is also how I feel watching any baseball or football fiction. It must really be hard writing about nerdy details in a way that doesn’t alienate people not intimately familiar with the concepts.
The Codex (by Douglas Preston) – ★★½
Ooof. Wasn’t awful but was certainly stilted/poorly written in spots. Not nearly as interesting or in my wheelhouse as the Lincoln Child books I’ve been reading. (Ironically, I’ve been catching up with all these old Preston and Child books while I wait for the first Preston & Child book Relic to be available on Libby.)
I think the voices/accents the reader uses in the audiobook likely made it even worse, but even for a book from 20 years ago this was pretty culturally incompetent. And it saved some of the worst racism for a totally unnecessary final coda that doubled down on bigotry and some of the worst language yet.
I read Preston’s Tyrannosaur Canyon on vacation ages ago and liked it, so despite struggling with this one I’m still eager to reread that and check out the rest of the Wyman Ford books. Hopefully they’re a little more fun and a lot less dated in their perspective.
Rating: 2.5 stars
? View my Goodreads review
? Buy The Codex on Amazon