Sassinak by Anne McCaffrey and Elizabeth Moon (1990) Two writers for the price of one! Or, since it’s three novellas, six for the price of one? This is an interesting read, mostly because of the first book (it’s split into three books). Sassy, or Sass, is a young colonial girl on a distant world who sees her family killed by slavers and is kidnapped, along with the other children. “Conditioned” to obey and kept under the worst conditions, the children are sold as slaves based on […]
English 101, Dreadnaught 0
Jack Campbell’s The Lost Fleet – Dreadnaught (1998) – My daughter (Bothari43) is right (as usual). It’s much harder to write a review of a bad book than a good one. I don’t even know where to begin with The Lost Fleet – Dreadnaught, the tenth book in a series of space operas by Jack Campbell. It looked like a book I’d love – lots of space weaponry, square-jawed heroes fighting aliens, stalwart teammates, and daring adventure. Unfortunately, the book was annoying from the start. […]
Titles Are the Worst Part of Everything
So. This is my first attempt at a Cannonball Read book review. I suppose I could have looked at the plethora of reviews that are already out there from people with actual experience. But no. Research is for losers. I prefer to either fail spectacularly or just sort of kinda do it well enough to not be the worst thing ever. Most of my books that I am able to make my way through will be absorbed via audiobook, so whether I used my eyes […]
Come for the spaceship protagonist, stay for the emooootions.
Breq is smart. Breq is capable and knowledgable. Breq is thoughtful, empathetic. Breq yearns for social justice. Breq mourns for lost love. Breq loves to sing, but has a bit of a temper. Breq used to be a spaceship. Well, if we’re going to get technical, Breq was the artificial intelligence who inhabited the spaceship Justice of Toren, and also thousands of ancillary human bodies (whose previous inhabitants had, um, vacated the premises). Now she only inhabits one, and almost everyone she has ever known […]
Our own worst enemy
SPOILERS for previous books in the Expanse series! Goodreads summary: “The gates have opened the way to thousands of habitable planets, and the land rush has begun. Settlers stream out from humanity’s home planets in a vast, poorly controlled flood, landing on a new world. Among them, the Rocinante, haunted by the vast, posthuman network of the protomolecule as they investigate what destroyed the great intergalactic society that built the gates and the protomolecule. But Holden and his crew must also contend with the growing […]
A Space Opera Without Music
I remember adding this book to my queue about two years ago. I bought it six months ago with two of the sequels because I anticipated really liking it. I read a fair bit of science fiction as a kid and I’m just starting to come back around to it. I wanted to read Leviathan Wakes because it sounded interesting, had excellent reviews from people I respect, and a supremely awesome tagline. Leviathan Wakes is a little bit of Firefly, a little bit of Battlestar […]