The Beauty of the End by Lauren Stienstra
I’m starting out with a bang this year by doing my first review in January! I’m all over the place with CBR’s. Last year I did 1 review for 2 books and I did it on NEW YEAR’S EVE! Yes, the day reviews were due and CBR 17 was closing. To cut myself some slack 2025 was a wee bit of a dumpster fire for my family. We had divorce, cancer, family moving in, too many cats, un-divorce… (everyone is fine now!) The year before […]
Womb City by Tlotlo Tsamaase
Womb City by Tlotlo Tsamaase takes place in some far future Botswana. The world is practically a crime free utopia for men – thanks to a lack of privacy and misogyny. And with body hopping technology, people can practically live forever. The setup is like Minority Report meets Altered Carbon. I think. I’ve only seen part of one of those. Nelah is a successful and kinda famous architect with a seemingly supportive husband, a seemingly supportive secret lover, and a criminally prone body. (I appreciated the […]
The Last Murder at the End of the World by Stuart Turton
I loved Stuart Turton’s The 7 ½ Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle (except for one aspect of the ending) so I picked up his The Last Murder at the End of the World. I didn’t like it quite as much as his other book, but it was a solid and diverting read. Slight spoilers ahead. The story takes place on an island that is surrounded by a deadly fog. Almost 100 years before, the human population created this dangerous fog (it’s never said how or why) […]
Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir
If you liked Andy Weir’s first novel, The Martian, then Project Hail Mary won’t disappoint as another witty, funny, creative sci-fi adventure. Suspend your belief for this one, as moments of sudden clarity, synchronicity, and serendipity abound. But in order to save the world, everything has to fall perfectly into place, and I was here for it! In some ways, Weir’s protagonist, Ryland Grace, is an everyman archetype – an unassuming middle school teacher with no real drama or intrigue in his life. But in […]
Childhood's End by Arthur C. Clarke
A gift, very belatedly read, from the lovely Lauren after she came to visit us in London en route to a meditation retreat, which is a very short way of summarizing one of my very fascinating friends. What a wild book that ended up popping up in conversation with friends much more than I expected! I’ve been in a mood asking people about what they’d do if we were in a Star Trek world where it’s post-scarcity and everyone can do whatever it is they […]
The Gate of the Feral Gods by Matt Dinniman
Dungeon Crawl Carl is still going pretty strong in book 4. Carl, along with Donut, and a few others are on floor 5, which seemingly requires a bit of teamwork or at least coordination between groups. It really takes a while for the story to get going, maybe a little too much time doing some scene setting that just doesn’t seem that necessary. The probably haunted buried temple thing likewise has some good potential that really doesn’t get developed. The flying gnomes and the camel […]
