Dune by Frank Herbert
It’s hard to know what to say in reviewing Dune since it is such a classic and a cultural monolith at this point but I’ll do my best! This was my second time reading it with the first time being somewhere during college. Instead of throwing out the book again, I’ve kept this new copy since my personal rule is any book I buy twice I should keep the second copy of rather than keep buying books infinitely. Dune is a fast read for me […]
The 9th Annual of the Year's Best SF by Judith Merril (Editor)
This is a pretty long and comprehensive collection of good SF from 1963 (384 pages, so you’re definitely getting a lot). I enjoyed most of these stories and breezed through this on the Amtrak to and from visiting home. My mom also enjoyed the chunk she read while I was home, so it’s intergenerationally approved. However, nothing in here really blew me away and it all felt pretty standard and not hugely boundary pushing or subversive. Sometimes you do just need to read some classic […]
Man Against Tomorrow by William F. Nolan (Editor)
This was honestly a pleasant surprise in my continual quest to work through the classic SF/F collections in my possession. I think this is in large part attributable to the fact it’s from 1965, so is pre-New Wave. This era clicks with me, as does contemporary sci-fi/fantasy. It’s really only the 1970s and a chunk of the 1980s where I run aground. Man Against Tomorrow is a reprint collection which I enjoyed almost every story in, a real achievement in my opinion. The one con […]
Illuminae by Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff
Nowhere Book Bingo: An epistolary novel CBR16 Sweet Books: Binge (I have already bought the next two books in the series in paperback, so I can read all of them as soon as possible.) Official book description: Kady thought breaking up with Ezra was the worst thing she’d ever been through. That was before her planet was invaded. Now, with enemy fire raining down on them, Kady and Ezra are forced to fight their way onto one of the evacuating craft, with an enemy warship […]
The Vanished Birds by Simon Jimenez
Well I didn’t finish this in time for book club (it was my pick 😂 ) but I did finish it! And it was excellent. [two and a half months later] Okay, so, I am largely incapable of writing reviews in 2024 it seems, but I wanted to say things about this! Firstly, I am going to lower this down to four stars because in the past two months, it really hasn’t stuck with me as much as I thought it would, the way that […]
The Player of Games by Iain M. Banks
The tournament arc is one of my least favorite tropes in any kind of action driven story, be it fantasy or science fiction, in any medium not limited to but including manga, anime, cartoon, comic book, novel, series or stand alone. It always feels like filler, light on character or plot or much of anything, just a random series of conflicts that build up to the main one in which the world/universe/whatever as we know it is at stake. None of that is quite true […]
