Review

  • Reading,  Review

    Book Review: The Shepherd’s Crown

    by The last Discworld novel and the first of the Tiffany Aching stories I truly loved. The previous ones were fun in their way, progressing from a decent read to true enjoyment, but none come anywhere near this tale. There may be emotional reasons for that other than just the story itself. Of course, I’ve always enjoyed the Nac Mac Feegle. Right up to the end, Sir Terry continued his efforts to build inclusiveness into the societies of the Discworld, expanding the definition of the word “people”. He reminds us that both goblins (who have come a long way in recent books) and witches are people, too, along with everyone…

  • Reading,  Review

    Book Review: Homo Deus

    by I read Mr. Harari’s previous book, Sapiens, a couple of years ago. In spite of the title similarity, this is not the same kind of book, except where it is. The book looks at potential answers for two significant questions. What have been the major feats and accomplishments of our species in the past? What are the major tasks we are looking towards in the future? In the early chapters, answering that first question, there’s a lot of similar material to Sapiens. It’s summarized and presented differently, but a lot of it is familiar ground if you’ve read that book, with perhaps a little more detail as we get…

  • Reading,  Review

    Book Review: Shadow of the Torturer

    by I tried to read this book in 2014 and hated it. In fact, this was one of the first one-star reviews I ever gave, deciding that a DNF doesn’t rate more from me. Since that attempt was less than three years ago, I initially didn’t see the need to put myself through that again. And then, in the course of my Hugo/Nebula/WFA novel winners quest, I found an audio version and thought maybe I could manage that while commuting. And I was right, but I still didn’t enjoy the book. There were several times I probably would have stopped or skipped ahead if I hadn’t been driving at the…

  • Reading,  Review

    Book Review: The Aleph and Other Stories

    by This is a strange collection of strange stories. Before now, I wasn’t familiar with Mr. Borges’ work, and I’m still not sure I am, especially since he appears to have been fairly prolific from what I’ve read about him since finishing this. Not every story in this collection comes under the headings of science fiction or fantasy, at least not when I’m looking at them. But that’s okay. First, it’s good to step out of your comfort zones now and again. Second, to some degree, I enjoyed every story in the book, and that’s not something I can usually say. Third, the historical pieces here capture moments in time…

  • Review

    Book Review: The Humans Who Went Extinct

    by In spite of the title, this book is less about the Neanderthals than you might expect. It’s far more about the rather small amount of fossils we’ve built our understanding of the habits and cultures and migrations of early humans (of several species) on. Particularly, it pays a lot of attention to climatological details that are frequently considered part of the background. Before we get excited and turn over everything we think we know about the Neanderthal extinction and where they lived and why, the author regularly admits that he doesn’t have remotely complete data to work with either. A lot of his world building and theory making is…

  • Reading,  Review

    Book Review: The Fountains of Paradise

    by Part of my quest to read all of the Hugo and Nebula novel winners. This book won both in 1980. This is probably what Robert Heinlein would have classed as a “gadget story”. Granted the gadget is awfully big, a ground to geosynchronous orbit space elevator, it’s still a gadget. And if some of the characters are more dimensional than in the typical gadget story, that’s a good thing. At its heart, this is a novel about the quest towards an idea and turning that idea into reality. There’s a lot of well thought out science and engineering going into this book, and the characters are all competent folk…

  • Reading,  Review

    Book Review: Cibola Burn

    by Book four in The Expanse series, and the one I’ve enjoyed the least so far. I did still enjoy it, but not as much. This is a different kind of book than we’ve gotten in the series so far, smaller in scope in a lot of ways, but set up for a lot of character development that isn’t realized as well as I would like. For a book that was so focused around Holden and Amos, I should have gotten to know them a lot better, but Amos was totally in a supporting role, and Holden is seen too much through other people’s eyes, mostly a woman who thinks…

  • Reading,  Review

    Book Review: Gloriana

    by Part of my quest to read all of the World Fantasy Award novel winners. This book won in 1979. This book starts out so description laden it’s hard to stay awake. On several occasions, that description slides into list making and the lists are long enough that it feels like that scene in Holy Grail when we’re learning about what people ate when the Lord bestowed the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch on his followers, except no one is available to say, “Skip a bit, Brother.” When we finally do get to the point where there are characters, we skip from character to character without warning or apparent reason and…

  • Reading,  Review

    Book Review: Proxima

    by So there were things I really liked and things I really hated about this book. The science works well, from the physical construction of the new world around Proxima Centauri (Per Ardua, named for the RAF motto Per Ardua Ad Astra, through adversity to the stars), is a well-visualized and well thought out world with an interesting population of alien creatures. Back in the solar system, things work just as well, with a good mixture of extrapolated technology and technology indistinguishable from magic that makes hard SF set a couple of centuries in the future work. And I like several of the characters, two of my favourites (for completely…

  • Reading,  Review

    Book Review: A Daughter of No Nation

    by So considering what happened when I read the novel preceding last year’s Aurora Winner, maybe it shouldn’t be a surprise that I didn’t read the book that comes before this one in the series, but I didn’t actually plan it that way, or even think about it. While it’s obvious within a few pages that this is a sequel, you probably don’t need the first book to enjoy this one. It may help with a few little things, but A Daughter of No Nation is fairly self-contained. Fairly. There’s an alternate/parallel/future world that may or may not be Earth. People live there. It’s 90% or so ocean. They call…