Brian Behrend’s microblog
Consistently surprisingly weird (in great ways) with some extremely well fleshed out, endearing characters that I was rooting for all the way until the end. I thought the author Ryka Aoki had lost me there for a minute near the end but there’s a couple final twists that really wrap up this combo of science fiction, fantasy, classical music, and donuts with a completely satisfying ending.
Rating: 4 stars
? Crossposted on Goodreads
? Buy Light from Uncommon Stars on Bookshop
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
Posted over on the main site, my ten favorite movies of 2023 as well as the favorite books I read last year.
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
Someone returned a book to a Pennsylvania library 120 years overdue. It was checked out in 1904. I guess I feel a little less bad about that book my kid lost for 3 months now.
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
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
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
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
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