Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir
This review is brought to you in three levels, according to your tolerance for spoilers. I would like to state, for the record, I think anyone reading this review who hasn’t read the book should go in knowing as little as possible. If you think that’s just a swell idea, please remain at review level one, no spoilers: only the info you can find on the dust jacket. Level two will have some basic premise spoilers, and I’ll go into a little detail about the […]
A Beautifully Foolish Endeavor (The Carls, #2) by Hank Green
I give this beautiful eyesore of a book five stars. Well, 4.5 rounded up. I kind of don’t know what to say about this book! It was a lot! And, honestly, I liked the first book in this duology (3.5 stars worth), but it didn’t blow my socks off or anything. This one kind of did. I think there was a huge jump in quality here, but also a huge jump in scale. There was a focus on April in the first one that kept […]
Little Fuzzy (Fuzzy Sapiens, #1) by H. Beam Piper
Reading this back to back with Scalzi’s reinterpretation was an interesting experience, not least because the differences were really clear, but what was different was somehow surprising. I’ve read several classic sf books this year, and though they have shared varying tones and subject matters, they share a certain cultural sensibility. This is a very humanist little book, conscious of questions of personhood and exploitation, but it’s also a bit paternalistic. The basic plot here, shared by Fuzzy Nation, is that Jack Holloway is a […]
Babel-17 by Samuel R. Delany
This was an intriguing and well-written book, but I just never seemed to connect with it the way I wanted to. Babel-17 was the last book of my classic sci-fi binge in February, and it was also my least favorite of the three I read (the other two were Way Station and The Stars My Destination). Although, in another headspace, and maybe if I hadn’t had to do the Kindle version (because free) I might have been able to concentrate more and liked it better. […]
Leviathan Wakes by James S.A. Corey (2011) – It’s terrible getting halfway through a 750-page book and realizing you’ve read it before. The good news is that the story is so good that I didn’t care. I like a good spaceship crew story and this one combines space opera with a good mystery and a love story. The story is told by the two strong male protagonists, Miller, an alcoholic policeman on Ceres, and Holden, an executive officer aboard an ice mover. When Holden’s ship […]
Crimson Son 2 by Russ Linten (2017) – It’s not often I have the opportunity to review a book before it’s published, but I was a Beta reader for this book, so I thought I’d kill two birds with one stone and give the author this review since it’s officially out there now. In the first book, Crimson Son, we’re introduced to the world of Crimson Mask. It’s a world very similar to ours except that governments have created super-powered heroes called Augments. But we’re […]
