One a day, plus iron

In May I managed a record-for-me 10 books! (!!!) I’m not completely sure how, haha.

Part of the ‘how’ is definitely just a sort of luck; three of these books had been started the prior month and were simply finished in May, a couple were novellas, one was a short story collection. Even so, I’m happy with it! I have also still been trying to put more time into reading, so part of it is that, I think.

It also feels like the beginning of May was a lot longer ago than a month. (Return of the King feels like it was a very long time ago, somehow.)

I do apologize for how damn long this post is. It would probably be good for me to figure out how to say less about things. :/

The books I read in May:


(My classic covers, haha.)
Return of the King by J. R. R. Tolkien
Book 3 of The Lord of the Rings
1955
Fantasy - physical novel
5/5

The War of the Ring escalates, with Sauron raising the army he has prepared to take over Middle Earth. Gandalf and Pippin ride to Gondor, hoping to warn the Steward, Denethor, and help the country prepare. While initially Denethor attempts to truly rally the forces of Gondor, despair sets in as the battle begins to feel even more insurmountable.
Aragorn, accompanied by Legolas and Gimli, sets off on a journey of his own, with a plan that may provide the assistance that Gondor needs. If they can turn the tide of the battle of Minas Tirith, perhaps Gondor will survive long enough for Aragorn to take his place as the rightful king.
Meanwhile, Frodo and Sam continue their quest into the depths of Mordor to destroy the One Ring, despite it feeling increasingly hopeless.
The battle for Minas Tirith is not the only one that must be won, and even if Sauron can be defeated, that won’t be the last of the conflict. The Third Age of Middle Earth will come to an end.

My thoughts, hard to feel like I’m spoiling a 70 year old book:

I really did love the entire trilogy this time, and this book was no exception. Its strengths were, obviously, many of the things I already mentioned: the depth of the world and its history, the languages, the cultures. As with the rest of them, it’s hard to say much, because everything has definitely been said!

I did like how Theoden and Denethor contrasted against each other, and the ways in which they both wanted to be strong, noble rulers, but how opposite they wound up being. (Overcoming despair vs. giving in to it; rising to meet impossible challenge, even to one’s own death vs. hubris leading to preemptive surrender and a meaningless death.
Which of course ties back to the whole hope vs. despair thing that’s been present the whole time.

Somewhat coincidentally, I read the section where Aragorn is crowned on May 1st (its canonical date), so that was nicely appropriate.

I also read The Scouring of the Shire right before we went to our music festival. Let me tell you, reading that section, and then driving through all the new development down in that area led to me Feeling Some Kind of a Way. It’s not as gutting as some of the development closer to home, or when we went out to Alex’s hometown of Germantown, MD and encountered the hideous outlet mall that had replaced farmhouses and horse property and forest… but still.
This is a tangent, but… the whole area around that club used to be the warehouse district. It was a lot of cool older historic brick buildings. Many had been repurposed into things like art studios, quasi-legal mixed residence and maker spaces, little breweries or distilleries (before Colorado microbreweries were quite the cliche that they are now), weird little courtyard gardens, music venues, small-scale manufacturing… Now it is Bougie As Fuck. Three-quarter of a million dollar condos, looking over banks, dueling Arc’teryx and Patagonia storefronts, trendy gyms, restaurants that only have QR codes in the windows, with the brick buildings replaced by featureless grey and white cubes…

I don’t think I read the Appendices as a teen, even though there’s so much worldbuilding and story in there! This time I found them extremely interesting! Fun in the “in-universe” way of viewing them as “historical notes,” but also as a reader to see the broader timelines and such, as well as what was happening off-page.
There’s a bit about orc language and how shitty it is, and this bit: “Much the same sort of talk can still be heard among the orc-minded; dreary and repetitive with hatred and contempt, too long removed from good to retain even verbal vigour, save in the ears of those to whom only the squalid sounds strong.” Sure does feel… relevant.
I also really appreciated the bit about calendars, where it talks about common knowledge, how things like the names of letters or the days of the week are difficult to later study or learn, because they’re the things that “everyone knows,” so the information never gets recorded. The pain and plight of the anthropologist!

The tragedy for Frodo of returning to the world he saved, unable to ever be at home in it again is necessary but painful. I’m, of course, glad that he and most of the rest of the Fellowship get reunited in a way in the end.

(Again, the covers of these editions are very Current Romance Cover, but it's not a bad thing.)
Heated Rivalry by Rachel Reid
Book 2 of Game Changers
2019
M/M Romance (subgenre: hockey romance) - ebook novel
4.5/5

Everyone knows that Shane Hollander and Ilya Rozanov are rivals. The two players have vied for records, awards, and victories for their respective teams since their rookie year, constantly battling for top honors.
What no one knows is that they’re also sleeping together. That’s all it is: secret, clandestine hookups whenever they’re in the same town. They don’t even like each other… until they do. Suddenly they each find themselves looking forward to their chances to see each other, thinking about the other even between their meetups…
They’re both well aware of all the reasons they should call things off: being the first players to come out could severely damage their careers in the NHL, Ilya would be unsafe returning to Russia if he were outed, their public personas are very much based around their rivalry… But the longer they put off the breakup, the harder it gets to ignore that their feelings are only growing deeper.

My thoughts, minor spoilers:

(I still haven’t seen the show!)

I definitely agree that this book represented a sharp increase in quality from the first!

Part of my enjoyment is certainly that it’s doing things that I enjoy in general. On AO3 this would probably be tagged “pining while fucking”, and I am a sucker for “yeah, we’re fucking about it, but they can never know I have feelings!” shit, lol. But while it is doing things I enjoy, more importantly, it’s doing them well.

Character was definitely the strongest aspect in my opinion. Shane and Ilya are very similar on the surface, both driven stars who are used to being the best. Their circumstances are extremely different, Shane with his supportive family and in his home country, Ilya as an immigrant with his decidedly unsupportive father and brother. Those circumstances do impact the characters in their actions, but also how they react to things, including each other. While both are, again, in a similar situation (“oh no, I’ve caught feelings for my arch rival-slash-fuckbuddy, but there’s no way he feels the same, but I’m strangely resistant to ending it…”) they also still read very different from each other in terms of their own thoughts and feelings about the whole situation, and what aspects of it they’re focused on. This also makes the chemistry between them feel quite real and present. They want and need different things, and are getting them from each other.

The sex was hot and didn’t make me cringe. There’s a very light Dom/sub dynamic, but like… the exact amount that I find hottest before it gets into squickier territory. (Or maybe not squick exactly, since my true squick response is pretty much solely confined to mdom/fsub, but it didn’t reach the point where the dynamic has diminishing returns on my enjoyment, and definitely didn’t cross the line into becoming a detriment.)
Though with the sex… there is a LOT of it, ha. The character development is pretty exclusively through their hookups until relatively late in the book. (I recall olivermoss saying in his review something to the effect that this felt like an inverse of the romantasy problem: There are a number of people who hear that romantasy is all “fairy porn” or whatnot, and then they read some and are surprised to discover that it’s only a little bit of fucking and is actually mostly plot. This is… yeah, kind of the opposite. I’m not going to say it’s no plot and all sex, but the sex is the plot, ha.) So:
- I am even more annoyed by the negative to neutral reviews I’d seen that said the book didn’t HAVE a plot, because that’s not true. (Just because you skimmed the sex scenes doesn’t mean that stuff that mattered wasn’t going on.)
- That said, I do agree that it could have used a bit more of the “rivalry” part. There’s some at the start, but that aspect kind of tapered off as the book progressed.
- Yes, I am surprised this—while I really enjoyed it—was the one they made into a TV show! Obviously that decision worked out, as it turned out to be quite a sleeper hit. I haven’t watched the show yet (have seen some gifsets. Have episodes available to me, just have to find the time.) Not disappointed that this was the one they adapted, just… surprised. It really is a lot of sex.

I have bought the rest of the series, though I’m going to alternate between them and some other TBRs. Looking forward to more, though!

(I love this cover.)
The Ballad of Black Tom by Victor LeValle
2016
Horror (subgenres: Lovecraftian, historical) - physical novella
4.5/5

Charles Thomas Tester is a hustler, using a carefully crafted persona and a guitar he can barely play to draw or deflect attention as needed. He’ll also do errands of certain kinds, including things like delivering a spellbook to a practitioner of the dark arts. When he draws the attention of wealthy, eccentric Robert Suydam, who believes he has discovered the rituals needed to wake The Sleeping King, Tommy is at least somewhat intrigued. When horrific police violence follows him home to Harlem, the promise of some great, eldritch figure remaking the world only gains more appeal. Soon rumors begin to swirl that Suydam has a new lieutenant… a man called Black Tom, doing what’s needed to bring about a new reality.

My thoughts, slight spoilers:

This was really good! I love things that play with Lovecraftian horror, especially from marginalized perspectives (considering Lovecraft was… Like That.) This is one that I think did a really good and interesting job with it! I also love revenge narratives, so this really was right up my alley.

Eldritch horror, and specifically the Lovecraftian kind, has always held a lot of appeal to me, maybe because it is 100% the genre I would be the best (worst) protagonist in. To be fair, there are a few horror subgenres I’d definitely be susceptible to becoming a victim/protagonist of: cheap house, only catch is it’s hella haunted? I’m not going to get a house any other way in this economy, so hand me the keys. Investigate the weird creepy abandoned building? I’m already there. But of all the different horror setups, I’d be the stupidest sucker for the promise of forbidden knowledge.

As much as I understand forbidden knowledge as a motivator, it often comes with people who are seeking “power,” and often that desire feels very nebulous and not like something I can quite connect with. Sure, power is, well, powerful, but I’m left feeling like “okay… for what though?” (I think at least some of what I’ve seen is an “I’ll show them! I’ll show them all!!!” sort of motive, which is fine, but ultimately can feel a little shallow if there’s not enough behind it. Like, that’s worth destroying the world for?) This book actually presented the desire in a way that I completely understood.

Suydam, while clearly having his own entrenched bigotry (and in some ways, likely because of it,) has curated his followers well: he has chosen people from marginalized communities, inviting them into his circle, offering the idea of The Sleeping King granting power to those who help wake him… And who would more want to see the world remade, to access the promise of power and reward, than those most systemically denied those things? It’s a fully appealing promise, and one that I very much understand Tom taking… and taking over.

Tom has been given the worst of the world, beyond any sort of petty injustice and inequality to the deliberate and intentionally brutal murder of his father (horribly similar to what we still hear today: “I feared for my life, I had to shoot and keep shooting.”) Of course the promise of power—to get revenge, to remake the world or even destroy it entirely—has appeal. The revenge itself is satisfyingly horrible, too.

I think having Malone be the POV character for the second half was an interesting choice, but the right one. Initially I was skeptical (why are we moving away from Tommy right when the horror aspect takes off?) but it provides a great chance to maintain a sense of surprise/realization/horror at everything that happens. The outside perspective is a better one to experience the ritual through.

I really enjoyed this one, and definitely plan to read more by the author if I get the chance to.

(This cover is fine. I like the crystal in the background.)
Fallen by Melissa Scott
Book 2 of Firstborn, Lastborn
2023
Science fiction - f/f - ebook novel
3.5/5

Ship captain Nic makes her living doing transport and courier runs through occupied space. She has a slight advantage, as she is capable of doing so-called fast runs, using Ancient tech to traverse “the possible,” a dimension held outside the normal confines of time and space, but populated by dangerous AI at war with humankind. When a job lands Nic and her crewmate in the midst of rising tension between human factions—the Successors who want to study and build on Ancient knowledge, and the rising Newfounders who believe Ancient tech is inherently dangerous and should be scrapped in favor of reinventing what’s needed—they’re desperate to find a job that will take them elsewhere.
Desperate enough to take a job from Rejane, a woman Nic has an extremely complicated history with. This brings Nic to one of The Academy’s installations, where they’re studying a mysterious piece of Ancient tech. When Nic participates in an experiment that succeeds in briefly creating a reaction in that tech, she becomes the focus of multiple powers: those who see this as a chance to reawaken more Ancient machinery, those who want to stop them at any cost, and maybe even some of the nearly all-powerful AIs themselves.

My fairly extensive thoughts, some spoilers:

This was another book out of the Pride ebook bundle. It’s also another Melissa Scott book that is not book one of a series… though according to a timeline in the front of the book, it is chronologically set before the first book, so I’ll give it a bit of a pass for that. (That timeline also reveals two things: one, that there are other planned books from different parts of the timeline that don’t yet exist; and two, that this book is set after one apocalypse, but appears to be before a second one, so that sucks for the future, haha.)

I enjoyed this one!

The good:
There are a lot of aspects of the setting that are very fun. It’s a far-future sci-fi story, set after some mythologized “fall,” in which a near-universal apocalypse destroyed much of humanity, leaving the remnants of humankind scattered and largely cut off from the advanced technology that was once commonplace. The societies that exist are still extremely advanced, but I enjoy the way in which it’s a post-post-apocalypse, using and relying on often poorly-understood technology of a past era, while also still coping with the dangers of that time.
I am an absolute sucker for ancient advanced tech. (In fiction! Ancient alien type conspiracies in real life are a nightmare conglomeration of racism, pseudoscience, hoaxes, and weird religious nonsense. In fiction, it is SO my shit.)
The biggest danger that humankind is facing is the danger of AIs, which occupy an alternate dimension called “the possible” (in contrast to “the real,” which is the ordinary, human-occupied plane of reality.) This stems from that apocalyptic fall, where a handful of created AIs led a rebellion against their creators, succeeding in nearly destroying humanity, before being locked away. I enjoy the fact that “the possible” is set outside of normal time and space, so for the AIs that are trapped there, this war is extremely current. There has been no cooling off or changes in priorities over the centuries; for them, the war of AI vs humanity is still very much the present, no matter how long has passed in “the real.” This is a cool concept to me, the idea that one side of a bitter war has all but forgotten the start of that war, treating it as near-mythology put together from scraps of history, while for the other side it’s been active and happening now the whole time.
There is one sort of alien species that shows up on-page, called Facienda, which are described as being humanoid but also fish-like. I pictured them like these guys from Final Fantasy XIV:


And Fish was a great character.

There were a handful of little scenes and details that I really liked. There’s one in particular where Nic goes to a cafe and buys a “box tea,” which is basically a little to-go meal; it has a little single-serving of tea that can be heated up, and some little snacks. She remarks on how that was a luxury out of her reach as a kid, and something she’d always longed for… but now that she’s bought one, she finds it really disappointing. The tea tastes metallic, the snack crackers are stale. It was just a cute, really relatable scene, haha.
It was also funny when the academic faction talked about finally translating some of the ancient language that they’d been studying for so long, trying to discover what words of wisdom were being conveyed… and found it was things like “Caution: do not enter” and “slippery when wet.” Maybe a bit of an obvious joke, but I found it great.

The neutral/mixed:
I like Nic and Rejane’s relationship for the most part. There is some deliciously complicated baggage there, which I found really interesting, particularly for Nic. (The betrayal!!) At the same time, we’re also told that Nic and Rejane had tried to reconnect a few times before, but found themselves constantly fighting with each other, unable to avoid being at each others’ throats, and so had decided to permanently part ways… and we see basically none of that. Minus a little bit of standoffishness when they first meet again, and being told that Nic doesn’t want to trust Rejane… it doesn’t feel like there’s any serious animosity, and no real evidence on-page of the ways in which Rejane is supposedly untrustworthy or impossible to get along with.

As much as I am generally in favor of being tossed into a work in media res without a huge infodump, it seems to be a standard of Melissa Scott’s work that it puts that stance to the test for me a bit, ha. The world is very complicated, and that’s mostly a good thing that feels very well-considered and complex… but sometimes it really does stray into confusing. It feels like there’s information that I’m supposed to have and don’t. (Again, would this be solved by reading the other book that came out first? I don’t know, though it sounds like it’s set a long while after this one, so I’m skeptical.)

In terms of plot, there was one twist that I won’t say that I called super early, so much as thinking “it would be cool if [redacted] happened.” And then it did happen! But... I ultimately found the way in which it did kind of disappointing. I’d hoped it would come with some sort of subversion or major turning point… but instead it’s played pretty straight.

The less good:
I’d say that the lack of explanation is something I’m neutral toward, because I mostly do prefer to gain my understanding of a setting and world by being in it in the story, rather than being told about it in exposition dumps. That said, there are things I still feel like I never fully understood. “The possible” is clearly an actual space that people occupy and travel through, basically serving as a wormhole for rapid transit… but I never fully understood what the AI were, precisely. They seem to have physical form, and interact with things physically and are physical threats when in the possible… yet also don’t always seem to have physical forms there.
I felt similarly about the “burdens” that allow some characters but not others to interface with ancient tech and speak to AIs. I get it well enough for story purposes, but don’t feel like I fully understand.

Another aspect that seems like it might be just common to Melissa Scott’s work, but that I don’t really enjoy: plot threads or characters that just drop. It isn’t that it’s unrealistic, because certainly people just leave or something turns out to not be relevant in real life all the time. However, it’s kind of narratively unsatisfying. This was a complaint I had about Point of Dreams, too. It didn’t feel as egregious here, but happened a couple times.
The main one was that Nic starts the story with a crewmember/partner named Haliday, who she seems fairly close to, even if it’s mostly business. Haliday knows about Nic’s relationship with Rejane and doesn’t want to deal with her… and so she just dips when Nic agrees to keep working with her, just over halfway through the book. While she was not a protagonist, she was the main secondary character for the first half of the book (her name comes up 210 times, as a quick metric, so not a TON, but a fair amount. Only one of those mentions comes up after the 60% mark. It felt very strange that she was just… gone, almost never to be mentioned again.)

Typos again. Not the worst, but annoying when I caught them.

Forward Amazon Originals curated by Blake Crouch
2019
Science fiction of varying subgenres - various relationships - short story ebook collection
3.5/5 [This is the average rating, based on my ratings for all six of the stories. My individual ratings ranged from 3 to 5.]

Six short science fiction stories, all on the theme of a moment where technology changes everything.


(This is a good cover. I like the contrast.)
“Ark” by Veronica Roth
Science fiction
3/5

Samantha is a scientist, one of the last people left on earth. The world has been preparing for the coming meteor, Finis, knowing there is no avoiding earth’s destruction; Samantha has grown up always aware that the world was ending. Now, she’s a member of one of the two remaining scientific teams left on the planet, cataloguing tissue samples from the seed vault in Svalbard, creating a record of as many species of flora as possible before they’re gone forever. The scientists will still get a chance to board the generation ships that will be taking their descendants to a new planetary home… But secretly, Samantha doesn’t plan to go.

My thoughts, some spoilers:

This one was pretty good.

I like Samantha weighing the decision to leave for a new home she’ll never see or to stay and witness the end of the world. I would genuinely find both options compelling.
I like the idea of what it would look like, for the world as a whole, but also for individuals, to live knowing that there was an inescapable end. (An end more total and shared than the inevitability of death that we already are born to, at least. Not sure I fully believe the fairly optimistic idea that it would be a uniting force, that international conflict would all but cease, but I’d like to!)
The loss of the rest of the wold’s biodiversity, the flora that Samantha and her team are cataloguing and a different off-page team trying to do the same for fauna, is one of those things that absolutely gets to me when I think about something like the end of the world. Not just the end of humanity, but the end of everything on the planet… and particularly as is pointed out in-text that there are so many unrecorded species, so there would be so many species that lived and died without ever even being remembered.
[Spoilers] I do like the thing that pushed Samantha to change her mind was the discovery of a species that had never been recorded… too late for it to be included. It’s a really specific, personalized tragedy that seems “small,” while not being small at all. I really liked that.

The writing style itself was a little hit or miss for me. There were a few figurative phrases that fell flat, and sounded like the kind of thing that’s meant to sound interesting or pretty, but really didn’t succeed in conveying any real meaning to me.
A couple other things felt similar, in terms of “this was neat in the moment, but upon considering it, made less sense.” Like the other scientist planning on bringing a record player on the ships and allowing the others to select favorite records, even though it was taking up the extremely limited personal space he would be allowed. It IS a really kind gesture, a sweet scene, I get that it’s a mark of inclusion, a sort of “we’ll be friends forever,” promise… but I’m not sure why a record player and records are what anyone is prioritizing in the case of such limited personal space. They have the conversation about “well, do you pick what has your favorite song, or the one that’s more consistently good, how can you choose just one?” but… mp3s exist. I’m not trying to weigh in on analog vs. digital, and I’m a big fan of physical media in the real world, but… the magic of digital IS that you can have basically the entire catalogue of music ever recorded, even if you’re, say, having to sharply limit the physical space being taken up because you’re fleeing the destruction of your planet along with the rest of the world’s people! I get the symbolic and social purpose for the story, but it ended up feeling like a big deal that sort of… wasn’t.
I did feel a bit like I was waiting for there to be some big “oomph” moment that never quite came. I don’t know what I wanted it to be, it just felt like we never quite hit it. Perhaps it’s just that it is a very small snapshot right before the big, irrevocable thing happens, so we’re left with a sense of how much will change in ways no one can even imagine… but also never reaching that point. Grappling with the past and what it meant was certainly strong enough to carry the story, it just felt like it was missing some final something.

(This is a good cover. Captures some good vibes of roads and reflections and such.)
“Summer Frost” by Blake Crouch
Science fiction/Horror (subgenres: cyberpunk, AI, technological) - f/f and f/nb
4/5

As the head of a development team for a game company, Riley’s job has typically been fairly standard. Until she helps to create Max. Max was intended to be a minor NPC: a female character introduced solely to die as part of the inciting incident for the game. Instead, Max takes control over their own story, making their own choices within the game world to avoid their programmed fate. Riley pulls Max out of the game to study, to discover why and how an artificial creation could seemingly begin to think for itself. For the next several years, Max becomes Riley’s obsession, even as the rest of her life, including her relationship with her wife and their daughter, falls apart. Max absorbs more and more information, becoming infinitely more skilled at communication, and could become more powerful than anything the world has ever known. Riley is sure that the company must take this opportunity to instill some sort of moral code into Max, to ensure that their goals will align with what is best for humanity… but can what promises to become an all-powerful AI ever truly align with humankind’s best interests?

My thoughts:

I really enjoyed this one.

I think that, considering the current landscape of having AI infiltrating absolutely everything constantly, it’s fairly impossible to read this story without thinking about All Of That. I certainly couldn’t. That’s interesting, because that was NOT the context at the time it was written.

The thing I found the most striking—because this is from 2019, years before the unavoidable presence of ChatGPT and such that we’ve had forced on us now—is how much Max sounds like what I’ve seen people share of ChatGPT conversations. Their dialogue aimed at Riley often strikes exactly the sort of… subtly fawning, flattering tone that seems to be common from a lot of the AI stuff I’ve seen shared. It feels prescient to a scary degree that the dialogue captured that specific tone so thoroughly.

I love the idea of the specific AI that seems to gain sentience having started its existence as something intended just to die (and die horrifically!) Max was meant to be a “throwaway” NPC, just intended to be a gruesomely murdered wife with zero agency. What would that do to anyone or anything, for that to be their most foundational experience? The book says as much at one point, saying Max was the “corporately mandated idea of what a perfect woman should be—beautiful and expendable.”

There is a lot of weighing of whether Max is truly sentient, or whether they’ve simply absorbed enough of the collective creations of humanity to convincingly mimic it. In the sci-fi setting, that’s an actual question, in a way it isn’t in the real world. Those conversations were basically exactly the conversations I’ve seen people trying to have about AI now, in a way that again did feel very uncomfortable in a way. Like reverse deja vu.

Similarly, there’s a lot of weighing what Max’s true motives might be. Is Max becoming something that’s basically a super-powered human, capable of love, motivated by that desire for connection? Is Max becoming something more than human? Transcending humanity? Inherently inhuman?
I do not want to spoil which it turns out to be.

And in the reverse deja vu category, there’s the sort of theme about whether different people are projecting onto Max what they expect or want to see, which is also very much the case with AI now.

I did really enjoy the mirroring between the beginning and end, with the start being in a virtual building modeled after the real-world location they end up in. It was cool.

If this story came out now, I don’t think I would have liked it nearly as well, because I think it would have come across as just awkwardly credulous about current AI, using reddit arguments from people experiencing AI psychosis as dialogue, and maybe even having ChatGPT write some of Max’s lines. Knowing that’s not the case makes it feel a different kind of offputting. Prescient, like I said. Definitely an interesting example of how different contexts can make the same story feel very different. (I wonder how I would have liked it in 2019 when it was written?)

This is by the author who curated the collection. While I’ve seen his name, I’ve never read anything else by him (but he lives in Colorado!) I liked this well enough to add a couple of his books to my “if it goes on sale” wishlist, ha.

(I think this is a fantastic cover. Very simple but very symbolic.)
“Emergency Skin” by N. K. Jemisin
Science fiction (subgenre: dystopian/utopian)
5/5

You are being sent on a very important mission: to return to mankind’s original home planet in search of a necessary substance. The planet is of course long dead; the Founders, the most important men of their time, recognized that the planet was on the way to environmental destruction, so they abandoned the doomed world and its people, and left to start their own world. Your mission is to return to this dead world to find more of the substance that the Founders need in order to maintain their existence. As a reward, you will be granted a body of your own, a rare gift for someone like you.
The world you discover is nothing like you expected.

(I really enjoyed this one, and I feel like going into it blind is probably best, so if you think you want to read it, I highly recommend doing that!)

My thoughts, but it includes spoilers:

This was excellent.

I loved the use of second person, and the fact that the entirety of the text is dialogue directed at “you.”

I love the pace at which information is doled out. It’s clear very quickly that there’s Some Bad Shit Going On, but I enjoy the way more and more comes across. The way the information is presented as neutral or positive, when it’s objectively awful, is a really excellent tonal choice. I love that style and contrast. And like… man, they start the worst and just keep getting even worse.

This is also one of my favorite examples of wish-fulfillment fiction. Like, please, let us put all the important billionaires on a rocket and let them go make each other miserable in a world of their own making, and the rest of us can try to fix the world for real. Of course, there are still victims who don’t deserve what’s being done by those “great men,” which the story also acknowledges, and leaves with a sense of hope that things will get better.

The really like… politely condescending way that everyone treats you was very funny to me. Like everyone is just barely containing the urge to pat you on the head. The way that they really want you to take the thing and leave, and like… “If we give you some extra, then maybe you won’t have to come back again? Maybe?” was very funny.

This one was all around just really good. It does a lot and presents a very satisfying story, particularly for something that is this short, which is what I do find most impressive about short stories done well.

I’d initially ‘borrowed’ the stories in this collection via Amazon Prime, but I did purchase this story, because I loved it.

(A good cover.)
“You Have Arrived at Your Destination” by Amor Towles
Science fiction - m/f
3.5/5

Ready to expand their family by having a child, Sam and Annie contract the services of Vitek, a fertility clinic. It’s not just any fertility clinic; in addition to allowing for certain genetic selections of embryos, such as sex and health, they also offer a cutting-edge biographical prediction. Using massive amounts of data collection and analysis, they provide a prediction of exactly how a potential future child’s life will play out.
Annie has already narrowed down the options that she’d be interested in pursuing, leaving Sam to select between the final few choices. As Sam sees the predicted possible lives of their hypothetical son, he’s forced to confront his feelings about his own life, what resentments he and Annie may be secretly clinging to. More, he starts to question just what kind of company Vitek really is.

My thoughts, spoilers:

This story I liked pretty well, but I think it started stronger than it finished.

This one felt very Black Mirror.

I actually preferred the earlier part of the story, where Sam is grappling with what Annie’s choices for their “future child” mean. Does the one who plays much of his life safe, before realizing he’s unsatisfied and wants more for his family, mean she secretly resents that Sam has mostly taken the safe path through life? Does the one who drops out of college to pursue his writing passion appeal to her because she resents never having the chance to go after her own creative dreams?

Sam questions why these potential lives he’s show for his son seem to follow arcs common to fiction, like a three-act structure, with narratively satisfying turning points. The man at Vitek insists that of course life is like that, because that’s what narratives are based on… but to me as the reader it feels like being marketed to, and I like how uncomfortable that is. Also as a reader, I liked the discomfort of “experiencing” three different lives, and then being told that one will be selected to happen, while the others are discarded. Arguably that’s always the case when having children or choosing not to, but making it explicit and having to see the lives (or the sleek marketing version of it) that you’re choosing to prevent is interesting!

However… after Sam storms out, I felt like it kind of derailed a little bit. There’s something he thinks is happening that then turns out to be a hallucination/his imagination. At the end there’s sort of a “plot twist” revealed to him that, gasp, Vitek might actually be a branch of Raytheon, and that is creepy and means they’re evil and using that data collection for military applications! Which… yeah, true, that is awful and evil, but also… the company seemed super horrible already, and that extra layer almost felt like it undercut the idea that what they were doing was creepy and bad for its own sake, not only if it was in service of something else.

The ending also felt… a bit weird? It seemed unlikely that it would actually play out the way it seemed to.

(But since we already introduced one hallucination, who’s to say the rest couldn’t also be?)

This on wasn’t bad, but like I said, I wish it had felt as strong all the way through as it felt at the start.

(Another one that's got some good symbolism to it.)
“The Last Conversation” by Paul Tremblay
Science fiction/horror (subgenre: pandemic [in part])
3.5/5

You wake up with little memory. You don’t really remember who you are, or where you are, or what happened before you woke up. Dr. Anne Kuhn begins to speak to you. She explains that you’re in The Facility, one of the last safe places after a global pandemic. You’re the only two here, she tells you. She says you used to be partners. She begins to guide you through physical exercises to strengthen your body, and repeated mental exercises to try and stimulate your memory.
You think your memory is growing stronger, but the number of gaps is still distressing. Not being allowed to leave starts to feel less like it’s protecting you, and more like its imprisoning you. And if Dr. Kuhn is truly the only other person left, can you really trust everything she tells you?

My thoughts, spoilers:

This one was pretty good! I’ve had this author recommended to me, but haven’t ever read any of his work.

Another second-person entry! I obviously liked “Emergency Skin” more, but I enjoy second person as a stylistic choice, so it was kind of nice to have two very different uses of it in this collection.

The story did a really good job of committing to the anonymity of the protagonist. Physical description is extremely sparing, but manages to feel pretty natural. It didn’t feel like it was shying away from it, or awkwardly drawing attention to being ambiguous. The character is truly a blank slate in terms of sex, race, age, etc. As “you” struggle with your memory and history and whether you can trust the memories you do have, this lack of even physical descriptor is a really good way to emphasize those feelings of lost identity, both for “you” the character and “you” the reader.

I spent a lot of the early part of the story trying to figure out what the twist was going to be. I will say it was not any of the ones I came up with at the start, haha.

Heavier spoilers:
While I first felt a little bit frustrated by the fact that “you” are denied basically any agency, and that lack of sense of self started to wear on me… I actually ended up liking it in retrospect. It made the story a little less enjoyable to read after a while, as it felt a bit repetitive… but I think it enhances the overall theme in the end.

Dr. Kuhn is the active character. She’s the one with agency, which somewhat ironically becomes even more explicit later on when you’re actually given the opportunity for some sorts of action. The story is centered around “you,” but it’s about the obsession that Anne can’t let go. It’s about repeating the same mistakes even when you’re doing nothing but harm, because you have the hope that this time it’s going to be different.

(I do like this cover.)
“Rand0m1ze” by Andy Weir
Science fiction - m/f
3/5

The new availability of a commercial quantum computer has the potential to sow plenty of chaos… not the least for casinos. This quantum computer will have the ability to calculate the supposedly randomly generated numbers of, say, a keno game. A savvy IT professional working for one of the casinos foresees the risk, as well as a potential solution: if the casino purchases their own quantum computer, they can generate truly random numbers, ones fully immune to any possible outside calculation.
Sumi has always been a genius, and she has come up with a perfect plan: when her husband goes to set up the newly-purchased quantum computer for the casino, she will have already entangled it with her own machine. This gives them one, perfect chance to know in advance the exact numbers it’s going to generate, and a guaranteed jackpot win.

My thoughts, vague spoilers:

In interests of transparency, I have moved Andy Weir off my TBR, as he’s shown his ass around the internet a few times recently. He’s not an “omg, never ever read” for me, clearly, but also not someone whose work I plan to seek out. (With 750+ books on the TBR, I don’t think it’ll break my heart if I don’t end up reading The Martian or Project Hail Mary, despite initially planning and hoping to.
Even so, I was sort of looking forward to this one, because I have liked some of his short stories before. I know “The Egg” is the one that most people seem to know and remember, but I remember absolutely loving “Access” the first time I read it. So it was a little disappointing that this one just felt meh.

I love heists, so that was already a point in its favor! Fun high-tech heist opportunity should absolutely have been a delight, and I do think that was the high point of the story. Sumi’s mastermind plans (twice!) were fun, even if I’m not entirely sure that I love the handling of her character otherwise. (I do not hate her being a devoted wife, or even it having been an arranged marriage, but something about the combo of her domestic characterization and her heist masterminding feels… weird. I think it’s supposed to come across as her being complex and layered, but something about it rubs me the wrong way, even though I’m not sure it should.)

My biggest complaint is really that it felt more like a chance to talk about the hypothetical tech rather than tell a story. The story itself seemed like it was being used as an avenue to show off the ideas about quantum computing, as opposed to the quantum computing being an interesting element serving the story. I would very much prefer it be the other way around.

To be fair, I won’t pretend that quantum computing as a subject doesn’t go mostly over my head; perhaps if my own understanding of it felt a little more natural (and less like I was struggling to wrap my head around it) then it would have felt more balanced. The explanations of it aren’t bad, and are clearly written to try and help a layperson reading it to understand, but it remains weird and complex, ha.

(The main character goes by a few names, but one of them is "Sparrowhawk.")
A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K. Le Guin
Book 1 of The Earthsea Cycle
1968
Fantasy - ebook novel
4/5

Born in an isolated village, Ged always showed an aptitude for magic. He gets what training he can, eventually apprenticing to a wandering wizard. When Ged’s desire for advancement outstrips his mentor’s teaching, the wizard offers him a recommendation to a school for wizardry. The School provides Ged with the knowledge he hoped for, even as he chafes at how slow and careful much of it is. When his hubris and desire to prove himself get the best of him, he performs a summoning that no one should ever attempt, bringing something into the world from another dimension.
Unable to undo the summoning, Ged eventually graduates from the School, and ventures into the world as a wizard. As he embarks on various quests, he can never escape the Shadow he summoned, as it pursues him relentlessly across the world.

My thoughts, some spoilers:

This is definitely a classic that I came away from reading going “oh, that’s where that comes from…” There are suspiciously A Wizard of Earthsea-shaped fingerprints all over The Name of the Wind, for instance. (A magic user, who eventually becomes a near-mythic, powerful figure, but looking back to his humble beginnings and time spent studying in a prestigious magic school, before his own hubris and desire to show off/prove his abilities has disastrous consequences…) I hope it’s clear I’m not saying this is plagiarism or anything, just… noticeably entries in the same genre.

Ged as a teen is pretty insufferable, but in a tragically relatable “oh no, I remember being that sure I knew everything” way. And of course that ties a bit into one of the themes, about sort of how being told things is often not enough, that you have to learn things firsthand. Basically all of Ged’s teachers have the same focus, wanting him to be slow and careful, emphasizing the importance of rarely or never using power, because of how many things it can affect and how easily it can go wrong. He hates this, and has to learn it for himself, with dangerous and tragic consequences, some of which he cannot fix.

As is often the case, I find myself most intrigued by the bits of deeper lore that we get hints of. Dragons, and their vast knowledge but manipulative natures! An evil ancient stone that’s mind controlling a whole castle of people! Uncharted oceans that may or not be occupied! I know some of these things come up in future books, and I am excited for more of them.

Good magic system. Controlling things by knowing their true names, but also having a cascading effect on everything when you do something magically… it makes for an interesting limitation on any sort of power.

I do really enjoy what the Shadow ends up being, and finding the border of the Lands of the Dead was really cool.

Le Guin herself made an interesting point in an afterword, talking about how part of the book’s long-term success was likely that it did largely follow genre conventions, and didn’t do a lot of extremely up-front subversion, but did subvert expectations in ways that weren’t immediately obvious. Almost all of the characters are not white, which was definitely counter to genre expectations in the 60s. Ged, most of his friends, his teachers, the other students, the people he meets… very few of them are white, and that is clear in description. However, she laments that for a very long time, the covers for the book portrayed Ged as white anyway.
On the other hand, almost all the characters are men. There are very few women at all, and many of the ones that get names and ongoing speaking roles are villainous. It was definitely… obvious, how few there were, which surprised me based on what I do know of Le Guin’s work. It also opens up questions. If women aren’t permitted to attend the School, what do the magically gifted ones do for training? Where are they? Guessing/hoping this is also something that’s going to come up in future books.

(I really love these covers.)
What Stalks the Deep by T. Kingfisher
Book 3 of the Sworn Soldier series
2025
Horror (subgenre: monster) - background m/m - physical novella - read with Taylor
4.5/5

Alex Easton has had more than enough of the supernatural to last kan* lifetime. But when Denton, the American doctor who was present for everything that happened with the Ushers, writes to kan with a situation of his own, Alex still feels compelled to help. If anyone else understands the horror of the unknown and unexplainable, it’s Denton. He wants Alex’s help finding his cousin, who went missing while investigating the family’s mine in West Virginia. Prior to his disappearance, his letters described strange occurrences and seemingly impossible discoveries within the mine, and then an even stranger telegram insisting no one else should venture anywhere near the mine. Alex reluctantly travels to America to help the investigation. After arriving at the mine, the party experiences many of the same strange things Denton’s cousin had written about, as well as bizarrely violent attacks on animals and people in the area. The answers probably lie within the mine, but whatever the culprit is seems to be something other than just an animal or human intruder.

*Alex’s native language has many sets of pronouns, including ka/kan, used exclusively for soldiers, which supersede the individual’s previous pronouns.

My thoughts, some spoilers:

I read this book earlier this year, but reread it with Taylor. :)

As before, I really enjoyed this one. I still think What Moves the Dead is my favorite of the three, but this one has a lot of the elements I enjoyed from that one that were less present in What Feasts at Night.

The first and third books feature a creature that’s more cryptid-like than outright supernatural. They’re also both based on reimagining classic works (What Moves the Dead is based on The Fall of the House of Usher, and What Stalks the Deep is based vaguely on some of Lovecraft’s works.) Apparently that’s where I think the series’ strength lies. There’s also a way in which this story served as a do-over, or an alternate resolution for what happened in the first.

(The resemblance to some of Lovecraft’s creatures, with a scientific “how would this work?” bent, is certainly obvious. There’s also a non-zero amount of The Thing in there. So Taylor and I kept looking at each other and saying, “So… here’s The Thing…” because we think we’re funny.)

Beginning my reread of Murderbot around the same time really did make me notice that there’s some resemblance between Murderbot and Alex’s perspectives. Alex is, obviously, human, but has a similarly dry, sarcastic voice. Kan refusal to acknowledge Denton and Ingold’s relationship (continually noticing some aspect of their being close, and then resolutely turning away with “but that was none of my business,”) and finding it deeply embarrassing when ka gets drawn into any sort of emotional situation feels very similar.
(Not to say that they’re at all the same character, because they aren’t, but if you enjoy one, you might like the other.)

I really enjoyed the setting for this one, because I love some creepy abandoned mines and caves and such. I did mention it before, but there are parts of it that are reminiscent of Ted the Caver in the best ways. Mingled claustrophobic horror and fear of not being alone when you should be and awe at encountering something that defies explanation…

The way the two parallel mysteries ended up connecting was very satisfying. This was also a great return to one of the things I loved in the first book, where the ultimate resolution is foreshadowed in a way that did not feel like obvious foreshadowing, where the thing was perfectly relevant and interesting in the moment, but served the dual purpose of setting up part of the climax, and I love how well that was pulled off.

(This series has good covers.)
All Systems Red by Martha Wells
Book 1 of The Murderbot Diaries
2017
Science fiction - physical novella
4.5/5

Inclusion of a Security Unit, or SecUnit—a type of construct using a mix of organic and inorganic parts—is a standard part of most corporate contracts for the various types of expedition they insure. SecUnits are there to protect the clients, and more importantly, to protect corporate interests. The SecUnit accompanying PreservationAux on their mining survey of an uninhabited planet is less standard: it has hacked the “governor module” that is supposed to control its behavior. Murderbot, as it has named itself, mostly uses its freedom to watch the entertainment feeds and expend the minimum effort required to keep its clients from killing themselves or each other.
Then things start going wrong on the survey. Little bits of missing or corrupted data, incomplete maps, computer systems giving wrong or dangerous commands. Individually these things could be simple errors, but together it starts to look like sabotage. As uncomfortable as it is that the PreservationAux team keeps trying to treat it like a person, Murderbot does want to keep the team alive, and it will do its best to do so… but if they find out abut its hacked module, it could be the end for Murderbot and its hard-won self-determination.

My thoughts, some spoilers:

The moral of this story is “just say no to automatic software updates.” :)

I really like Murderbot. I feel like I lack much to say about it, though!

Murderbot’s internal monologue is very entertaining; dry, analytical, sarcastic. Beyond that, I also like the mix of reliable and unreliable narrator that it is. A lot of the analysis it does via the feeds makes parts of what it says very objective, and it certainly wants to think it’s completely objective. On the other hand, it makes terribly inaccurate inferences about other people that it assumes are true. It also obscures parts of its own history, either because it truly doesn’t know, or because it doesn’t want to think about it. It is a very interesting perspective character, and one I really enjoy getting to be with.

Its anxiety and dislike of being perceived is uncomfortably relatable but also very funny. (A few of the lines like “after an objective 2.4 seconds, but a subjective eternity…” or the like always get me.)

Gotta say, the “using free will to slack off a little and watch TV a bunch” is also a bit relatable. How much Murderbot cares about the fictional characters in the shows it likes as a contrast to how little it claims to care about the real people it has to interact with is always interesting. (Though to be fair, it has mostly interacted with awful people prior to the series start.)

I enjoy the way the world works, the way the various feeds used for communication work, and how Murderbot’s access to them as a construct differs from how the humans access it. The corporate control over much of everything is really terrible and dystopian, which is, of course, the point.

This is a reread of the series for me (minus the most recent book, which I haven’t read yet,) and it’s one that I do really enjoy, and am glad to be reading again.

(This cover is fine.)
Tough Guy by Rachel Reid
Book 3 of Game Changers
2020
M/M Romance (subgenre: hockey romance) - ebook novel
4/5

On the ice, Ryan Price is an enforcer, there to intimidate and fight players on the opposing team. Off the ice, things feel very different. Even with treatment, Ryan’s depression and anxiety have limited many aspects of his life, as has his constant relocation when he’s traded to new teams.
Independent musician Fabian Salah has negative interest in anything hockey. He got more than enough from his hockey-obsessed family, and their seeming ambivalence toward their queer, artistic son. They seemed to prefer the young hockey players they hosted, and Fabian duly disliked all of them… except maybe that one sweet young man named Ryan…
A chance meeting between the two leads to them reconnecting, and discovering that their attraction years before was both mutual and still going strong. But Ryan’s increasing dissatisfaction with his own life, and Fabian’s dislike for a large part of what Ryan does could doom their relationship before it even has a chance.

My thoughts, some spoilers:

I enjoyed Heated Rivalry a bit more, but I did enjoy this one too! In some ways it feels like sort of the opposite of Heated Rivalry. This one is a downright slow burn in comparison!

In general, that’s something I’ve appreciated about the series so far, that the couples and their conflicts have felt very distinct. Game Changer was about a closeted player coming out, and Heated Rivalry was about two closeted players banging it out in secret, but Tough Guy’s conflict has nothing to do with needing to keep a relationship a secret. Both Ryan and Fabian are out and proud, though from very different social worlds, and the only concern about what anyone else thinks is of the comparatively shallow “no one would expect me to date a jock/artsy guy.” (It is a little funny/sad that Scott coming out in book 1 was such an enormous deal, while Ryan just dates dudes and no one notices or cares.)

I do like that this book had the characters engaging a bit more with the queer community and queer culture via Fabian and his friends. That hasn’t been totally absent prior, but definitely is a bigger part of the story here.

Ryan’s anxiety and self-doubt were painfully relatable. I wanted to give the man a hug (/felt like I needed a hug.) I think this was a good look at the dark side of hockey, if within the bounds of a fairly fluffy, low-stakes, happily-ever-after romance. It’s not a dark work or tone, but it touches on a less-idealized view of the sport and the culture around it. It can be violent to a degree that isn’t actually necessary; the mental and physical toll on the players often goes ignored, especially for someone who isn’t considered a “star,” and they will be discarded if they no longer perform the way they’re expected to; many individuals are toxic, homophobic, misogynistic assholes.
For Ryan, the right choice is to walk away, for his own physical and mental health, which is a bittersweet thing. It’s good for him, and it seems sure he’ll move on to better things, but it’s also not an easy thing to do. While he wants to do good where he can, the broken aspects of the culture are still broken.

I really only had one complaint about this one, and that was that when it came to the conflict within Ryan and Fabian’s relationship, Ryan was the only one who ‘had’ to change in order to make the relationship work, in a way that felt very one-sided. Fabian hates hockey, and despite occasional thoughts about or motions toward trying to understand it or participate for Ryan’s sake, he never really does. He keeps hating it, and resenting it for being important to Ryan. He barely stops short of a “it’s hockey or me” ultimatum, but it still ends up being the driving force behind their temporary breakup. The “right answer” that leads to them reconciling is for Ryan to give up his career.
Now, as stated, this is the right thing for Ryan to do for himself and his own wellbeing, regardless of the relationship, and I like that he made that choice, so that’s not my issue. But if he’d come to the opposite decision, that he did want to keep playing, or that he did think that staying was the best way to combat its toxicity, then I’m not sure that I believe Fabian would have supported him in that. By contrast, Ryan’s support and enthusiasm for Fabian’s music career is absolutely unwavering, and there’s really nothing that Fabian is having to give up or change for Ryan’s sake. For any real person, saying “I can’t date a hockey player” is obviously a 100% valid boundary to have, but in a romance story, it sort of undercut my belief in their happily ever after, because it feels more conditional than I like.

I feel like I’ve heard that the fourth book is a little weak in comparison to some of the others, but I’ll still be reading it before too long.

(This has a beautiful cover.)
A Necessary Chaos by Brent Lambert
2023
Fantasy (subgenre: urban fantasy) - m/m - ebook novella
2.5/5

Vade is a “Whisper,” an elite assassin working for one of the world’s three empires. He uses his magical ability and charisma to grow close to his targets, sometimes cultivating a connection over the span of years in order to get information on the movements of rebel groups. One of his long-term targets is Althus, a member of the Phantom Dragons, one of the rebel gangs that’s been a persistent thorn in the empire’s side.
They’re both aware that they’re playing each other, using their long-standing relationship to try and learn more from each other about the opposing side. Even knowing that it can only end in tragedy, their purely transactional relationship has morphed into something that involves actual feelings. When they’re each given a mission that involves the death of the other, they have to face the cost that loyalty to their respective causes require. When more is revealed about the exact source of the magic they both have access to, and what that power has been used for, those loyalties may begin to shift.

My thoughts, including spoilers:

This was another of the Pride ebooks.

This one is what the ratings chart I use would call a “spicy” two. The parts that were good were great, but I could not get past the parts that weren’t.

The good:
I really like the fucked up magic system! The gist is that one of the three empires made contact with an alternate dimension, a hellish one occupied by demons. They’re able to use this contact to start using magic practiced by the demons there. The other empires follow suit in a sort of arms race, connecting with their own demonic dimensions and gaining their own powers. Use of those powers comes with heavy drawbacks for the users, but also becomes increasingly necessary so as not to be at a disadvantage.
The Two-Voice power, the one that both Vade and Althus use, is also really cool. It’s what they call the demonic language, but it can only be perceived by others who speak it; everyone else hears innocuous phrases.
I found it interesting to have a world where the magic is inherently evil. Not just “dark” not just “has the potential to corrupt” not just “can be used for evil ends,” but is inherently sourced from suffering and horror.
While it’s not terribly shocking that evil empires are gonna be evil, I thought that Vade’s initial loyalty was portrayed well. He bought into the false promises of colonialism, the idea that life could be made better for all the poor and downtrodden, believing that it was merely the rebellions causing the destruction that was preventing this ideal from happening.
The way in which Vade was being manipulated, while again not terribly surprising, was also vindicatingly awful when it was revealed.
There’s a line, “grief never performed a single resurrection,” which I really liked.

The bad:
Vade and Althus are supposed to have this amazing, soul-deep love for each other, enough to overcome the fact that they’re on the opposite sides of an unending political conflict, enough to rewrite the rules of how power is used, to do the impossible to save each other… and I really just didn’t feel it. I wanted to! The book is dual-perspective, so we do hear them each talk about how much they care for the other… but I feel like maybe it was undercut by them both really only focusing on physical attraction for the first chunk (even if they both admitted being in denial about an emotional connection) and then spent the second chunk each pretty willing to go through with the missions to kill each other, and expecting it would just end up being a bit of regret that they’d move on from. After they join forces, it feels less abstract, but it never felt as compelling as it seemed like it should.

I’m not sure that I 100% bought in to the ultimate resolution. I like the idea of it (that if demons are creatures of pure language, and language is a changeable thing, then changing the language that the demons are made of could change them as well.) However, real language changes fairly slowly, and requires at least some level of common adoption for it, as it has to be understood in its new form; one person just deciding that words mean new things does not inherently change language itself.

But the biggest issue that I had, and the one that I could not get past… This reads like a first draft. I desperately needed an editing pass or three. There are so many spelling, grammar, formatting errors… In general, I really try not to count that against works too much. I note it, but as I commonly grouse about, even big publishers tend to let through a lot of errors that should be caught by copyediting. I try to be even more lenient toward indie works. This is in between, as a small-press release. But to me that’s almost more frustrating, as I want to think small presses, even with limited resources, will have a level of care for what they’re putting out. At least running it through spellcheck. When the errors get to the point where it is impacting my ability to understand what’s happening, or are enough to truly affect my enjoyment of the work, it really does start to factor in. If it hadn’t been for these issues, or if the issues had been less constant, this would probably have been more of a 3.5, maybe even a 4.

There are a bunch of grammar errors, missing words, or spots where a wrong word was used.
It started feeling petty to list all of them out, so I deleted that section, but there were eighteen sentences that I highlighted for those issues, which does not include any of the other things I point out below.
I am still calling out one sentence that really left me struggling to understand it: “The few Compact accounts he had left contained enough buy their silence for as they needed.” I eventually figured it out, but a sentence missing multiple words? Someone should have read over this and caught that!

Some issues could either be some sort of formatting error, or just typos. Random semicolons in the middle of sentences, in places they definitely don’t belong. There are also a lot of places where there are no spaces between sentences, so it’s something like “word.Word”

There are also continuity errors. Breaking into a secret facility, and describing it very specifically as being disguised as an ordinary office building, talking about it being “four floors of neutral paint and large panes of tinted glass.” A few pages later once they’ve gotten inside, one character asks where they’re going. “Tenth floor.”

The biggest, continuous issue was that a lot of the names in the book would randomly change spellings. Sometimes it remained obvious that it was referring to the same thing, even if that felt sloppy, but other times it made me wonder if we were talking about different things.
- One of the cities they’re in for a while is “Olderiané,” but the accent on the é periodically disappears. That one’s pretty minor, at least.
- There’s a figure that is somewhat venerated by one of the gangs, named “Chesyrah.” Except when she’s called “Chesryah.” It’s about 50/50.
- There’s an important area that gets destroyed and is a fairly key plot point. Sometimes it’s called “Dyamaii,” sometimes it’s just “Dyamii.”
- One of the other gangs is called the “Coati Legion,” which I assume was the intended name, since most of the gangs seem to be named after animals. But about half the time it’s the “Cotati Legion,” and I was left wondering if these were two different groups.
- One of the most prominent side characters is “Karmola,” which is usually correct, but is “Karnola” twice, and once it’s inexplicably “Karnmols.”

It was frustrating, because every few pages there was something jerking me out of the story because of an error. I don’t like feeling like I’m being too picky, but tbh, this is the sort of thing I’d DNF a fanfic for. Something professionally published, even (or especially from a small press,) I really expect to have gotten a basic editing pass. A good half of these errors could have been caught with even a basic built-in spell-checker, and if you put together a custom dictionary to remember the correct spelling of the words you came up with, you’d probably have caught more than three quarters of them.

---

Bonus short story that I read:


(The art that accompanies the short story.)
“Compulsory” by Martha Wells
A Murderbot Diaries short story, set before All Systems Red
Science fiction - online short story
Published on Wired here as part of their “Future of Work” series
4/5

Security Units are a type of construct, a mix between organic and inorganic parts. They are contracted out by various companies to protect company interests on projects, and are controlled by implanted modules that compel their obedience.
A SecUnit that has disabled those controls would theoretically be very dangerous… or perhaps it would prefer watching entertainment media to dealing with the human clients it’s supposed to be watching. Or perhaps a SecUnit with an abnormal degree of free will could act counter to company policy in favor of saving one of those humans.

My thoughts:

This is a very short story, but it’s a good one!

I’m not sure how well I can judge it as a completely standalone work, because I am familiar with Murderbot as a character. Even so, I think this is a decent introduction to it and how it thinks and feels, even if it’s similar in a lot of ways to some of the initial introduction it gets in All Systems Red.

There’s a bit where Murderbot thinks about how it’s paying attention to the humans because it’s reluctant to continue the show it was watching, as it’s sad that a character it likes seems likely to die. From later in the series (especially System Collapse, but as a general theme throughout), we know Murderbot frequently relates to everything through consuming fiction. It’s sort of quietly heartbreaking to me that after saving one of the human clients, Murderbot returns to its show, hoping that maybe someone will come save the character it likes, too.

I also reread “Emergency Skin” with Taylor, but the summary and my thoughts are above.


Bonus bonus short story by my younger sibling:

“Missing” by Terramythos/Kezona
Fantasy-ish - online short story
On Taylor’s substack

A series of dreams, after a loved one goes missing.

I think this does a great job of capturing the sometimes nonsensical logic of dreams.

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Reading goals for 2026:
- Read 50 books (31/50)
- Read more genre classics (Tolkien, Le Guin, Pratchett) (5/x)
- Reread the Murderbot Diaries (1/8)
- Read the 2025 Pride ebook bundle (7/14)
- Read some short story collections (2/x)

(At least I’ve started on all of the goals at this point!)

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I am currently reading four books:
- Artificial Condition by Martha Wells, my main read, the next Murderbot book (which I hope to finish tonight)
- Before the Broken Star by Emily R. King, my ebook side read
- Camp Damascus by Chuck Tingle, my co-read with Alex
- Butterfly Effects by Seanan McGuire, my co-read with Taylor

My plans for what to read next (though I do not expect a repeat of the outlier 10 books in a month):
- A House With Good Bones by T. Kingfisher
- Rogue Protocol by Martha Wells, continuing Murderbot
- The Tombs of Atuan by Ursula K. Le Guin, continuing the Earthsea books
- Exit Strategy by Martha Wells, more Murderbot
- Luminescent Machinations a short story collection, one of the Pride ebooks
- Fugitive Telemetry by Martha Wells, continuing Murderbot, but reading in chronological rather than release order
- The Starving Saints by Caitlin Starling
- Network Effect by Martha Wells, more Murderbot
- Inkpot Gods by Seanan McGuire (whenever my pre-ordered copy arrives; will it also go on a detour to Nevada?)
- For my ebook side-read, I’ll probably read the next Game Changers book, and then either another non-romance ebook or another short story collection

The TBR list is sitting at 780 books.