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Tag: 4-star

Exhalation–Ted Chiang

This is a collection of short stories. Some of them really stuck with me, some of them dragged on far too long and I wouldn’t have kept listening had I not been on an airplane. I enjoyed the author commentary after each story. Two stories really stuck with me. The first, Exhalation, is about some robots who begin to learn who exactly they are and how their universe was created, due to the fact that…

The Beauty–Aliya Whiteley

I found out about this author last month from a promotional post on Bluesky for her latest book (Presumably The Misheard World, though I can’t find the post) and now I’ve read two of her books. I am not generally a horror fan, but I think it is more gore and graphic violence, and this book, while not without violence and gore, didn’t read as horror to me. I guess I need to keep expanding…

Record of a Spaceborn Few–Becky Chambers

I started this book about a month ago, and just couldn’t get into it. After a few weeks, and starting and finishing my previous book, I decided to try again. This time, for whatever reason, I was able to get into the characters and the world and I finished it in about 5 days. I read “A Long Way to a Small Angry Planet” several years ago and I knew that this book was set…

Skyward Inn — Aliya Whiteley

I am still trying to process this read. Due to some personal things, I have not been able to read or write in about 2 months. I tried to read and listen to several books, and just couldn’t get anywhere. I saw a post about this author on Bluesky, and her writing was described as literary, surreal, and unexpected, but also this novel was fairly short, so I decided to give it a try. Apparently…

The Forever War–Joe Haldeman

There isn’t a lot I can say about this book that hasn’t already been said. I saw (did not meet) Joe Haldeman at the Nebula’s last year, but this book has been recommended to me so many times for so many years. I finally decided to give it a shot. It’s a war novel, and due to time dilation with relativistic travel, while only a few years pass in the experience of the protagonist, hundreds…

Usurpation–Sue Burke

I was glad to come back to this world. I enjoyed learning about Pax and Steveland and how the plant live on that planet worked. At the end of book two, Steveland sent seedlings to earth, as well as a Glassmaker, so I was looking forward to seeing that interaction. Instead, this book took a quite different turn, showing the aftermath of a global war (the Insurrection) that took place within the last few decades.…

Future’s Edge — Gareth L. Powell

Most of humanity has been slaughtered, and we, along with refugees from other alien civilizations across our local spiral arm have fled to a camp at the edge of the void, waiting to board slow ships that will carry us away from the Cutters. That is a heck of a premise, and it is exactly the type of SF I love to read. It literally says in my bio that I am a “spaceships and…

Ancestral Night — Elizabeth Bear

I have been very busy for the last 10 days and haven’t had a chance to blog this book that I finished about a week ago. This was an interesting read. I didn’t know the gender of the main POV character until about half-way through the book. It didn’t matter, and I think that was a choice by the author. I also liked how the tech is described in just enough detail that you know…

The Recollection–Gareth Powell

This book has been on my TBR pile for a long time and I finally picked it up for my birthday (which I share, one year different, with GLP!) this year. This story begins with two brothers arguing because both are in love with the same woman, and she had feelings for both as well. Before they can reconcile, the older brother gets transported through a mysterious arch that appears randomly in the tube station…

The Last Emperox—John Scalzi

In the afterword to this book, Scalzi says that this is the first intentional trilogy he has written. That was an interesting fact to learn. This book follows the thread, picking up right where book two ended. There were a few surprises, not the least of which (SPOILER ALERT) was the death of the (seriously spoiler alert. I will pause and put it in the next paragraph… it will be safe to read after the…