BookReview http://rothda.neocities.org/Books.html A nice, short, crunchy, horror novella. It's only a few dozen pages, but you get paranormal investigations, tests for demon possession vs other possession, a variety of scary phenomena, family history, attempted necromancy, and a http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10500.html Sat, 15 Nov 2025 00:00:00 GMT I had a potted-history of Assyria in my head, and I wanted to be able to open up and share that potted-history, but I wasn't all that confident in the freshness and accuracy of my information. Hence this book, so that I could http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10499.html Wed, 05 Nov 2025 00:00:00 GMT "Who?" Part of the early 2000's wave of media that asked "What if super-heroes, but realistic and grounded in the actual world of waiting on hold while trying to talk to customer service?" Unlike some of the other entries in http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10498.html Tue, 23 Sep 2025 00:00:00 GMT Blue Berry the Bear is a metaphor for Christ. Discuss. An extra-ordinarily silly book, more of fan-fiction++ than the usual fine literature that I read. It's flaws are common flaws; a story that goes on too long, a http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10497.html Tue, 23 Sep 2025 00:00:00 GMT Please don't bully the transhumans, they have sensory issues "Give it a suck, boy" - Ana Dolabra More of the same, which is great. We keep the two core characters and their dynamic, and add in a new http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10496.html Mon, 15 Sep 2025 00:00:00 GMT Could have worms - You Apoths always think it's worms - That's because so many people have so many worms A Hugo winner, and you can see why. Reading this reminded me a bit of Teshs' Incandescent, in that it is just the http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10495.html Mon, 25 Aug 2025 00:00:00 GMT A rough-hewn novel, but it stuck the landing and so I ended up liking it by the finish. This story takes place a few tiers down from the usual WH40K story, with the MC being a street level detective. It leans heavily into the noir; http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10494.html Fri, 15 Aug 2025 00:00:00 GMT I can see why the BBC keeps making abridged and poorly performed adaptations of this book; the full and complete version is a nuclear bomb aimed at post-war Britain. Better to neuter the story and hope no one ever notices the full http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10493.html Fri, 01 Aug 2025 00:00:00 GMT The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise The story of four-to-five young lions who fail, time after time, to http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10492.html Tue, 15 Jul 2025 00:00:00 GMT The pandering is pretty thick with this prime piece of Hugo-bait. The author is clearly looking to win some awards in the most basic way possible, by combining sharp writing, interesting world building, a variety of well drawn and http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10491.html Sat, 05 Jul 2025 00:00:00 GMT Closer to what the series should have been. The ideal of this form is the first half of story #14, where Ciaphas's friend has an extra ticket to a show. This is because the friend was intending to ask his crush to the show, but she http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10490.html Wed, 25 Jun 2025 00:00:00 GMT Meh. These books are fine, but they all share the primary flaw of picking from a weird combination of thematic flavors. Too much Gaunt's Ghosts, not enough Wodehouse or Flashman. Also has a moderate flaw that the enemy in many of http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10489.html Sun, 25 May 2025 00:00:00 GMT Better! A decent enough action-investigation, and in particular I liked the ending where the Navigator is forced to Navigate in decidedly more personal terms. I also liked that the author eventually answered the question of "Why http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10488.html Thu, 15 May 2025 00:00:00 GMT Better! Maybe I should have started with the first book in the series, rather than just checking out book #15. On the downside, these 2 data points do seem to indicate that the series gets worse and not better as it goes on. I http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10487.html Sun, 11 May 2025 00:00:00 GMT Very unpleasant, but the ideas were interesting (for the time) and noticeably influenced a lot of later sci-fi works (e.g. Alpha Centauri). So like a lot of Herbert's books really. The main strength of the book is also its main http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10486.html Thu, 08 May 2025 00:00:00 GMT I'm starting to believe that not every WH40K book is a work of great literature. This one was another 3rd tier effort; it seemed kind of cut and paste, and what the author intended to be mystery and conspiracy basically immediately http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10485.html Wed, 30 Apr 2025 00:00:00 GMT I was expecting WH40K's version of Flashman, a comedic and ego-centric rogue who survives interesting times through a combination of low cunning, extreme luck, and a complete lack of morals. The author though did not understand the http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10484.html Mon, 28 Apr 2025 00:00:00 GMT A fun little novella. Takes a common campfire tale, transposes it to WH40K, and bam, a perfectly fine new (gruesome, horrific) story. I have one moderate criticism, but even alluding to it would be a bit of a spoiler, and so I must http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10483.html Mon, 28 Apr 2025 00:00:00 GMT Yet another in the raft of prequel entries for this IP. To be honest I am not sure why they keep making these prequels, perhaps it is because of contractual obligations, like with Sony and the Spiderman franchise? In any case this book http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10482.html Sun, 20 Apr 2025 00:00:00 GMT I went into this book with low expectations, since the basic idea of the book (The CSA was shitty) is a very easy historical and rhetorical target, and what more really needs to be said about it at this point? Also, the idea of http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10481.html Sun, 20 Apr 2025 00:00:00 GMT In this novel a non-union employee falls down and bangs her knee on concrete while working overtime at her job. Unable to take sick days or vacation days, and having neither health insurance nor worker's comp nor a living wage, her http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10480.html Tue, 15 Apr 2025 00:00:00 GMT This is an isekai novel (wait! wait! stay with me) about a lady who, on her deathbed, is transported into the grim fantasy world of the hit novel, Time of Iron. She is promised that if she can get the McGuffin from the Royal Arbor http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10479.html Tue, 01 Apr 2025 00:00:00 GMT This is fine. I've never been *entirely* in love with a Kingfisher book, and this entry continues the tradition. In this case I wasn't all that excited about the main MC (she lacks too much autonomy through too much of the book), http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10478.html Tue, 25 Mar 2025 00:00:00 GMT Another early, delightful, Le Carre book. This is sort of the Post Captain of the series, as it takes familiar characters and transposes them to a different genre. In this case you have your spy people, but they are sent off to a http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10477.html Thu, 20 Mar 2025 00:00:00 GMT Filling in some of the early Le Carre stories that I missed the first time through. I'd heard that his earlier stuff is not that great, but that was a misapprehension! Even his first stories are 1-2 tiers above the common author, http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10476.html Sat, 15 Mar 2025 00:00:00 GMT DNF. I enjoyed the start well enough, but after that it devolves into something that has the affect of an extremely unproductive online discussion/argument, as the members of an eco-action group argue with each other about what to http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10475.html Mon, 10 Mar 2025 00:00:00 GMT Big Trouble in Little Brunhilde / America is meant for people like you / Put this author on a watch list / That's an RIR This is Camilla Bruce's first novel, and it shows both for good and for ill. The story is more http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10474.html Sun, 25 Feb 2024 00:00:00 GMT In some ways this is a perfect book for me; it's just the right size (150 pages, if an author says they need more pages than that they are lying), it's about the correct subject matter (a trackless, wondrous, deadly, horrifying, fae http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10473.html Thu, 15 Feb 2024 00:00:00 GMT I can fix her Classic story of a plucky immigrant family that heads West to achieve the American Dream (cannibalizing society in order to fatten yourself and your wallet). This is the first Camilla Bruce novel that does http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10472.html Thu, 15 Feb 2024 00:00:00 GMT DNF, due to a combination of A) this book is more about the dry science of archeology than it is about providing a history lesson, and B) what history that is built up seems based on the thinnest of reeds, and the narrative assembled http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10471.html Sat, 10 Feb 2024 00:00:00 GMT A dark, gothic, western, weird, adventure story. The first ~50% of the book is propulsive and really enjoyable, as gamblers, gunslingers, bandits, ghouls, lycanthropes, witches, witch-hunters, ghosts, devils, and school teachers http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10469.html Sat, 27 Jan 2024 00:00:00 GMT The Joy Luck Knife Fight Club Alt: Dishonorable warriors can't 'ear you An unusual but interesting 1500 pages of alt-history urban-wuxia gangster-clan soap-opera. The first unusual thing is that http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10468.html Mon, 22 Jan 2024 00:00:00 GMT Why can not two things be true at once? Another dismal British tale of domestic abuse, dark magic, and dogging. As with the Witch in the Well, this story provides a twin narrative. There's one version in which the http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10467.html Fri, 05 Jan 2024 00:00:00 GMT "Genius Losi" - some idiot who narrates audio-books, a complete fool On the plus side, I am here for modernish, Call of Cthulhu type adventure-mysteries as a former mob-hitter and current private detective gets drawn into http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10466.html Wed, 25 Dec 2024 00:00:00 GMT You people need Tzeentch This history book has been on my to-read book for 10 years? 15 years? since apparently it was one of the influences on Frank Herbert's Dune series. And you can see some of the inspirations that http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10465.html Fri, 20 Dec 2024 00:00:00 GMT Apparently I have no idea what I want. I thought a gritty and hard-bitten Laird Barron crime-detective-adventure story would be right up my alley, but in practice not so much. Part of the problem rests with me; I haven't really http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10464.html Fri, 20 Dec 2024 00:00:00 GMT What is a Croning but Laird persevering? I was ambivalent about this book, and at different times during the reading I was placing it at anywhere from two to four stars. The main change in this book is a positive one, http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10463.html Sun, 15 Dec 2024 00:00:00 GMT A surprising number of Satanists Pretty Lairdish. The stories are similar to the early ones of his that I read, though the tone has lightened by about 20%. A prototypical early Laird Barron story has an unbalanced http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10462.html Sun, 15 Dec 2024 00:00:00 GMT The same, but slightly improved, but also starting to wear slightly thin. The main improvement is that the stories are finally free from the long-running antagonist (FM2) that they were fencing with in the first 7 books. This http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10461.html Thu, 05 Dec 2024 00:00:00 GMT happiness requires freedom, freedom requires courage, courage requires setting fire to a cop car This book covers the Peloponnesian War, i.e. ~4 decades of internecine war between the city states of ancient Greece. http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10460.html Wed, 20 Nov 2024 00:00:00 GMT A slower, more genteel, more English, urban fantasy. In this case the MC is a green police officer, who stumbles into the supernatural while on a case and is gradually inducted into more and more of the mysteries of English magic. http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10459.html Wed, 20 Nov 2024 00:00:00 GMT Please clap The library practically forced this on me, by placing it prominently on the "New Reads" shelf and me being bored. It was ... not bad? I've been burned by Bardugo in the past, but this was a slightly more http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10458.html Thu, 10 Oct 2024 00:00:00 GMT More of the same! Wide ranging language and accents, Scottish history, magical physics and magical system building, warm friends and family, and post-apocalyptic wizard politics. The main difference from the first book is that the http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10457.html Sat, 05 Oct 2024 00:00:00 GMT Bam! You've been Bardo'd! Another entry in the sub-genre of YA books where magisterial wizards use their young charges to prosecute old grudges against other established wizards. This time the urban fantasy is set in a http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10456.html Fri, 20 Sep 2024 00:00:00 GMT Moderately amusing, but ultimately not very enlightening. This book covers the funerary chants of those OG furries, the Egyptian priesthood. A person is supposed to learn these chants and rules in order to do well in the Egyptian http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10455.html Fri, 20 Sep 2024 00:00:00 GMT If Alex Verus is the Dresden Files from a better universe, this is the Dresden Files from a crummier universe. It has way too much basic m'lady energy, and when the author noted at the end of book 2 that he wrote that story in 5 http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10454.html Fri, 30 Aug 2024 00:00:00 GMT The resurrectionists were roommates A slow, languid, emotional, well written, and grounded examination of what would happen if Frankenstein's daughter had found his notebooks and started constructing undead dinosaurs. Once http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10453.html Thu, 15 Aug 2024 00:00:00 GMT Can't you see? You are two sides of the same coin! - Fuck you - Fuck you. The Emperor protects. The same, but different. Shares many of the same traits and positive qualities of the Eisenhorn novels, but with a http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10452.html Tue, 30 Jul 2024 00:00:00 GMT Thorn 4 T(zeentch), rising alternately What are you going to do, shoot me? Who watches the watchers? In WH40K's Inquisition, every watcher is responsible for watching every other watcher, http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10451.html Mon, 15 Jul 2024 00:00:00 GMT Against my better judgement, I tried another Seth Dickinson while at the library. I liked the parts with the aliens! I also liked the parts where he tries to lay out new basis elements for reality, I always appreciate it when it a http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10450.html Mon, 01 Jul 2024 00:00:00 GMT "“Young Adult 18+ Mature Themes” is how the bookstore designates books that are pretty simple, reading-level wise, but also have hardcore porn in them that children absolutely should not read. This is where most of Ariel’s http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10449.html Sun, 16 Jun 2024 00:00:00 GMT The Emperor protects I went into this with high hopes, knowing that this is the illimitable Dan Abnett's magnum opus, his largest and most famous series which ties together the threads of his various standalone http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10448.html Wed, 05 Jun 2024 00:00:00 GMT Astrobleme; it means star wound As usual, Abnett does a great job of taking the absurdity of WH40K, and in particular the absurdity of WH40K's 1970-ish mech designs, and somehow turning it into enjoyable and oddly http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10447.html Fri, 05 Apr 2024 00:00:00 GMT A well written but depressing and thematically confused story about a Swedish vampire that goes around, Quantum Leap style, helping out people in trouble. A few notes: from the book's portrayal Finland seems like a truly dire http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10446.html Fri, 05 Apr 2024 00:00:00 GMT what is this, a cross-over episode!? Our Ithacan Snake Boys are back! It turns out that the earlier Iron Snakes novel was an origin story rather than a series of stand alone vignettes, and now the characters from that book are http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10445.html Fri, 15 Mar 2024 00:00:00 GMT hell is forever and it's meant to suck a lot Like Throne of Bones, but for NPR listeners. There's a lot of grossness and gore, but it comes off as somewhat cartoonish and oddly safe. It's not bad exactly, and it does http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10444.html Fri, 01 Mar 2024 00:00:00 GMT there seems to be no escape from this sordid tale A skillfully enough written book, about two long-time, small-town frenemies who are both writing a book about a "witch" that was thrown into a well in the 1800's. The only http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10443.html Sun, 25 Feb 2024 00:00:00 GMT There is a sub-genre of sci-fi that I like, which explores the hypothetical of how quickly could we colonize/industrialize outer space if Earth turned all of its surplus energies towards that task. Notable members include Seveneves, http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10442.html Thu, 15 Feb 2024 00:00:00 GMT A perfectly fine novel about a space marine doing space marine things in various episodes that span a career of space marining. Has Greek flavor. The one historically inaccurate part of the novel is that when a guard dog rushes at http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10441.html Mon, 05 Feb 2024 00:00:00 GMT It was once said about the late, great, Vic Davis that he was like Michelangelo, if Michelangelo only ever worked in the medium of colored macaroni. Dan Abnett is a similar sort; he's a skilled and solid and prolific writer, but http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10440.html Tue, 30 Jan 2024 00:00:00 GMT Ooof. The author has a real gift for creating stories that seem like they will be excellent, and then steadily tumble downhill in quality until they finally end in a rumpled and dirty heap at the bottom of failure-valley. Some http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10439.html Mon, 15 Jan 2024 00:00:00 GMT A somewhat confusingly named book about that is not about Gideon and Harrow and Necromancy, but rather about Yale and Urban Fantasy and Necromancy. The MC is a down on her luck kid, and it is only her ability to see ghosts that gives http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10438.html Wed, 10 Jan 2024 00:00:00 GMT Apparently somewhere between 1915 and 1933 people became fully modern. There were several times that I was reading the diary and was like yeah, these lines are both relevant and helpful in thinking more clearly about an online http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10437.html Sun, 10 Dec 2023 00:00:00 GMT The Roman Empire. Don't think it, Don't say it A YAish fantasy adventure/magic school set in a vague approximation of the Roman-empire. The main conceit of the book is ceding, a process enabled by ancient artifacts which http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10436.html Fri, 01 Dec 2023 00:00:00 GMT *Extraordinarily* silly but also decently fun audio books. Sort of like Supernatural if it started off really dark and munchkinish, and then gradually relaxed and de-powered its characters. The series takes a very Lincoln-in-Bardo http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10435.html Fri, 10 Nov 2023 00:00:00 GMT More of a book report than a book. The history is fine, the mystery is fine, the story and cultural bits are fine. It is just that the writing for all of it is very simple and flat, very YA. Sarah Waters could have taken the same http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10434.html Sun, 05 Nov 2023 00:00:00 GMT Enjoyable fairy tales, but also has plenty of good life lessons for young women. E.g. If you really care about a guy, show him by exorcising the ancient fire demon that has been plaguing him, or by saving his slowly melting ice http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10433.html Wed, 04 Oct 2023 00:00:00 GMT Brutally depressing book about the winding down of a genocide and desultory efforts at justice. http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10432.html Mon, 04 Sep 2023 00:00:00 GMT A story about a slightly dysfunctional family of private investigators. Has the virtues of being well written, humorous, fast paced, intelligent, not too light, and not too dark. Would happily recommend this book to anyone who http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10431.html Sun, 30 Jul 2023 00:00:00 GMT What a delightful young man. A clear, succinct, and beautiful little book. http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10430.html Sun, 30 Jul 2023 00:00:00 GMT As Phantasmion awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect. "Yesssss" Quite possibly the first fantasy novel, very definitely another silly book. The book has one http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10429.html Tue, 25 Jul 2023 00:00:00 GMT Like Peter Watts' Rifters, as written by an urban-fantasy-romance author on a deadline. Has plenty of liasons, body horror, viruses, and cosmic apocalypses. Or maybe like a slightly more upbeat Laird Barron with his elder gods who http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10428.html Sat, 15 Jul 2023 00:00:00 GMT Sort of a Chinese, YA version of the Traitor Baru Cormamant. The author uses Chinese history around ~1900 as the foundation for her world, removes the guns, renames a few things, and adds in some fantasy elements. I recently http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10427.html Sat, 10 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMT BRB, starting my Instagram influencer empire teaching young men how to be more alpha like Heathcliff and to avoid the 10 worst mistakes that beta-Linton makes when dealing with women. OK, now that's done, my more formal review is http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10426.html Sat, 10 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMT Some weird, fast, plot-heavy little fantasy books. One of the first thing you notice is that these books have a lot going on; it is rare that 10 pages will go by without a fist-fight, sword-fight, psychic-duel, assassination, battle, http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10425.html Sat, 10 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMT A silly goose of a book. http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10424.html Sat, 10 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMT BADminton, the game of TRAITORS The last le Carre book. It's not his best, but it's still quite good considering his advanced age, the loss of his long time writing partner, and the topicality of the book. The book is relatively http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10423.html Sat, 20 May 2023 00:00:00 GMT The second book in this series of proto-Dresden Files urban fantasies. On the one hand, not that great. Several of the plot points don't make sense, I don't remember many of the characters from the first book, and it falls into the http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10422.html Sat, 20 May 2023 00:00:00 GMT Like the first book, doesn't quite cohere as a novel. The author continues to tell the story of nearish future, hardish sci-fi, space war. I feel though that what he really wants to do is write a history book about that war, rather http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10421.html Wed, 10 May 2023 00:00:00 GMT A series of ~100 jottings, each about some facet of life that has brought the author delight. I am going to include one characteristic entry in full. If you enjoy this entry you'll enjoy the others, and if not, then not. I quite http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10420.html Fri, 28 Apr 2023 00:00:00 GMT Classic Banks. Short, clever, tightly plotted, violent. Imagine 1800's Europe, with competing nation states, but at each of two competing courts one of the courtiers is an alien from the Culture. As the name implies, has numerous http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10419.html Fri, 28 Apr 2023 00:00:00 GMT Low-key murder mysteries set in Laos, just after their mid-70's socialist revolution. Much of the appeal of the books comes from sort of extrinsic factors, e.g. the setting is interesting and new (to me), the tension between socialist http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10418.html Sat, 15 Apr 2023 00:00:00 GMT A lesser Banks. Rather than an infinite sea of stars, the story is set in an infinite sea of multiverses, and at every instant the infinity of existing universes branches into infinitely more infinities of universes. Set in this http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10417.html Sat, 15 Apr 2023 00:00:00 GMT "Meat is a drag on the electron spirit", too true buddy, too true Not the best series. The main character is a twit, and most of the book is about him trying to take his sister, a strong and independent Wendigo, and make her http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10416.html Fri, 07 Apr 2023 00:00:00 GMT A free internet comic that has been a labor of love for one artist for Demiurge-knows how many years. The story and the universe take a while to develop, and the plotting can sometimes lean too much into simplistic or anime tropes, http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10415.html Mon, 20 Mar 2023 00:00:00 GMT Space Opera that is heavy on the Opera and light on the Space. There's a lot to talk about in these novels, since the author varies the concerns pleasantly from novel to novel. There are space battles, there are empires at war, http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10414.html Wed, 15 Mar 2023 00:00:00 GMT Kind of good? These are books number ~16 and ~17 in a long running series. Years ago I had read the first book in the series and bounced off of it, but I found myself liking these later books to a surprising degree. The world and http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10413.html Fri, 10 Feb 2023 00:00:00 GMT All American high school football star goes on an Isekai adventure where he beats up various smaller and less handsome people that he meets. Actually wait, he also beats up a lot of people bigger than him. Not a work of genius, and http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10412.html Wed, 01 Feb 2023 00:00:00 GMT Space opera that is very heavy on the Space and very light on the Opera. The author is one of the prime movers behind the video game Terra Invicta, and the book shares ~85% of its concerns with the video game. Both of them have a http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10411.html Wed, 25 Jan 2023 00:00:00 GMT A murder mystery aboard a space-cruise-liner, which uses The Thin Man as its loose inspiration. I found it to be unreadable. The story is set in a future neo-liberal dystopia, where hordes of wage slaves spend their existence http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10410.html Fri, 20 Jan 2023 00:00:00 GMT What does it mean to be a murder hobo, once you have stopped traveling and stopped murdering people? Who are you even at that point? What does your life mean? An aging orc explores these questions as she settles down and starts a http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10409.html Thu, 05 Jan 2023 00:00:00 GMT A real piece of anti-art. The general vibe is of slightly conservative, aging-and-declining-autist. There is no interesting characterization, and everything from the tech to the plot is only briefly sketched out, and not an actual http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10408.html Thu, 15 Dec 2022 00:00:00 GMT Naruto + LitRPG. Serviceable. It takes ~10 books or so but eventually it starts to get fairly http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10407.html Wed, 14 Dec 2022 00:00:00 GMT A semi-acceptable book so long as you skip over every attempt at characterization and conversation, and just read the parts about sci-fi world building & orbital conflict. Has decent answers as to why aliens are advanced enough to http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10406.html Tue, 25 Oct 2022 00:00:00 GMT Still a banger. Not even one of my favorite Culture books (I thought the text conversations between Minds dragged, as did a lot of the scenes on the Sleeper Service), and yet still enjoyable, entrancing. Banks is such an articulate http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10405.html Wed, 05 Oct 2022 00:00:00 GMT Two perfectly acceptable WH40K books. The author occasionally goes into "tell, not show" mode where he elaborates at length on the themes of the book that we're already very well aware of, but otherwise this is a fine, slow, gothic, http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10404.html Sat, 01 Oct 2022 00:00:00 GMT Re-reading these with the benefit of 10 more years of wisdom, I have to say that they are both still bangers. Two notes: One early interpretation of the books that I had was "wizard school harem", which is indeed a very strong http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10403.html Thu, 15 Sep 2022 00:00:00 GMT Two more Womack books, both set deep in his dystopian DryCo universe. This turns out to be a problem, since it's not a very enjoyable universe. Previous to this I'd read *Random Acts of Senseless Violence*, which leads into the DryCo http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10402.html Sat, 20 Aug 2022 00:00:00 GMT A collection of inventive and beautifully written Weird Tales from the early 1900's. The stories are short & don't overstay their welcome, and tend to be more inventive in the details than in the overall plotting. Also markedly less http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10401.html Mon, 15 Aug 2022 00:00:00 GMT This was one the books mentioned by Ligotti in his survey of anti-self literature. It is the personal account of Suzanne Segal, noted void monk, as she talks about both her early life and her life after losing her sense of personhood. http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10400.html Fri, 05 Aug 2022 00:00:00 GMT Kansas, the root of all evil. Alt-text: "are we the baddies?" A study of the cultivation and spread of anti-leftist mass murder in the third world in the 50's - 70's. In many ways this is a companion piece to Legacy of Ashes, http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10399.html Mon, 01 Aug 2022 00:00:00 GMT Iowa, the death of hope Delightful. The book completely charmed me within the first 20 pages. Since there's great stuff even at the very beginning of the book, I don't want to spoil anything by going into too much detail of the http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10398.html Thu, 28 Jul 2022 00:00:00 GMT Nobody is impressed. We've all spent 48 hours playing a video game before. A weird little book. This is an account of a fictional naval battle, as the straight-laced commander of a destroyer group & convoy are under prolonged attack http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10396.html Sun, 24 Jul 2022 00:00:00 GMT A fast paced & inventive space opera adventure. It reads a bit like a like a one of the more modern and wild sci-fi RPGs, where you have various ships, aliens, human-alien hybrids, hive-minds, cyborgs, alien-cyborgs, psychics, http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10394.html Thu, 21 Jul 2022 00:00:00 GMT A much, much, much ... much, much lesser Vandermeer. This is one of his earlier works, where he decided he wanted to create his own version of Perdido Street Station/Etched City/Viriconium and fully realize the life and history of the http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10393.html Fri, 15 Jul 2022 00:00:00 GMT I am a meat popsicle Reading this book reminded me of the old joke about two mid-westerners who meet and start chatting. They happily realize that they are both Protestants, they chat more and realize they are both Baptists, they http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10392.html Mon, 04 Jul 2022 00:00:00 GMT A solidly written and occasionally moving but also somewhat awkward series of books. From one angle, these books are what happens when someone gets a detailed classical education and decides to take the historical info that they http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10391.html Thu, 30 Jun 2022 00:00:00 GMT A well written noir mystery that is at least partially undermined by its larger themes & world building. First the good: Robert Harris is an extremely solid mystery writer. The book is fast to read, characters are well described, and http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10390.html Tue, 21 Jun 2022 00:00:00 GMT A fine but not inspired murder mystery. The main character does not actually solve anything, and instead just sort of wanders into a room at the wrong time and causes the murderer to reveal themself. I liked the gothness of the http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10389.html Thu, 16 Jun 2022 00:00:00 GMT A book about how women are too emotional to be entrusted with power. Overall not that great. It reminded me of World War Z, where the formula was [national stereotype + zombies]. Here the formula is [stereotyped http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10388.html Sun, 12 Jun 2022 00:00:00 GMT Like the Name of the Wind, but for kids. Follows the adventures of Blossom Culp, a poor & unpopular girl in 1914 rural America, as she uses a combination of wit, deception, and magic to gain a place for herself in a town where http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10387.html Fri, 10 Jun 2022 00:00:00 GMT Fine? Fine. The book is about the effects of racism in housing in America over the last century, with a focus on the legal & governmental policies that resulted in segregated housing. It is aimed more at the academic or legal reader http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10386.html Sun, 05 Jun 2022 00:00:00 GMT A mix of Wodehouse and Bukowski. The story follows the misadventures of a shitbag-academic in post-War England as he tries to hold on to his teaching post at a minor university. Some parts of this work really well, e.g. the http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10385.html Sun, 05 Jun 2022 00:00:00 GMT A Lesser Vandermeer. This is Vandermeer trying his hand at writing a (eco-doomer) thriller, like Lev Grossman did with Codex. And like Codex, it turns out that the task is harder than it seems. The first problem that comes up is http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10384.html Thu, 26 May 2022 00:00:00 GMT A prototypical example of "good" Fritz Leiber; it is consistently intelligent, fast paced & actiony, inventive in its world building & mechanical details, and playful in its plotting & style. It has the joy of surprise, where new and http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10383.html Tue, 05 Apr 2022 00:00:00 GMT A collection of ~50 short, semi-connected stories about various down-and-outs along Cannery Row. These stories are all super-succinct, well written, and somewhat funny/interesting, like something an elderly good-old-boy would tell about http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10382.html Sun, 20 Mar 2022 00:00:00 GMT "He turned me into a Djinn!" "A Djinn?" "I got better." (trust me, in the context of the stories this is *very* funny) There's a lot to like in these books. The most general, positive thing I can say is that this is a book series http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10381.html Mon, 28 Feb 2022 00:00:00 GMT An enjoyable, low-key, Dresden-adjacent series of Urban Fantasy books. I liked it! The book takes an interesting tack in making the protagonist a Diviner, someone who does not have supernatural strength or spells or whatever, but who http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10380.html Sun, 20 Feb 2022 00:00:00 GMT A survivor of last summer's audio-book downloading binge that I found in my folders. Sort of a Hunger Games meets X-Men, that had some initial green shoots of cheesy interest before gradually losing my attention as the story wandered http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10379.html Tue, 15 Feb 2022 00:00:00 GMT Extremely short, which is a quality I like in a book. Has a series of brief, semi-auto-biographical stories about the author's term in ~1917 as a country doctor for several thousand villagers. The general theme of the stories is that http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10378.html Tue, 15 Feb 2022 00:00:00 GMT A book that has moments of promise before dissolving into a mediocre action movie. There's bits of Pitch Black, there's bits of Dead Space, there's various people stuck on a terrible prison planet that becomes more terrible as legendary http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10377.html Sat, 05 Feb 2022 00:00:00 GMT Get this man a dog, stat. A grimmmmmm book that follows an unhappy young man as he becomes an unhappy older man. Stanton starts off doing magic tricks as a carnie, and from there learns how to do cold readings & mentalist tricks, http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10376.html Thu, 20 Jan 2022 00:00:00 GMT Fine? Fine. I had read very high praise for this book, and so perhaps I was expecting too much going in. And it did have competent writing, some decent and well supported twists, and a reasonably fast paced and exciting adventure http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10375.html Sat, 15 Jan 2022 00:00:00 GMT Fine? Fine. I originally chose this audio book series since A) there's a lot of them B) it had been recommended and C) and most importantly, it's about people in spaceships shooting lasers at each other. And the recommendation wasn't http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10374.html Sat, 15 Jan 2022 00:00:00 GMT Nice. Short, pithy, occasionally dark, and often quite funny. I've already seen the movie for this twice, so I had a pretty good handle on the plot, but I still found the book to be an enjoyable read. The movie cleans up a lot of http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10373.html Sun, 26 Dec 2021 00:00:00 GMT The author mixes up the terms "sandbagging" and "snowballing". These are very different things! DNF. The above mix up was the most enjoyable thing in the first 80 pages, the story was just kind of joyless and boring and pointless. http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10372.html Mon, 20 Dec 2021 00:00:00 GMT Fine. It has the same strengths as the first story in the series, but also the same flaws. On the strengths side you have inventive spell/monster design (though not quite as impressive as the first book), solid and distinctive http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10371.html Mon, 20 Dec 2021 00:00:00 GMT Not as clever as I first hoped, but I was still affectionate towards the book at the end. The basic idea is that there is an Anti-Memetics Division that is supposed to deal with artifacts/creatures/ideas that can erase themselves from http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10370.html Fri, 10 Dec 2021 00:00:00 GMT This was a superficially normal thriller/mystery, about an investment banker between jobs who has been hired to look for an ancient and possibly mythical book inside a forgotten library. This normal story is then paired with more http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10369.html Tue, 07 Dec 2021 00:00:00 GMT A fine ending to the 9 books of the Expanse series. This final book has many of the same thematic elements and plot beats as the earlier books, and though they've reached their expiration date, they haven't truly begun to go rancid and http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10368.html Fri, 03 Dec 2021 00:00:00 GMT I'm not sure what all the fuss is about. These novels seem to be childishly simple in terms of writing and plot. And the portions are small too! This mystery story was only 65 pages http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10367.html Tue, 30 Nov 2021 00:00:00 GMT Kind of a mess. This book was brought to my attention by Driftglass, who singled out Stuart Stevens as the sole Never-Trump media figure to fully admit that the Republican Party's problems did not start in 2016, but rather have been http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10366.html Tue, 30 Nov 2021 00:00:00 GMT Great, but also greatly deranged. Continues the story of Stepjan Blackheart, a power-hungry power-bottom who lives for drama, as well as a cast of 100+ other characters as they slowly, ever so slowly, advance the timeline of the Known http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10365.html Mon, 15 Nov 2021 00:00:00 GMT Well, this is no Tabloid Dreams. I read a few of the short stories and the author seems sad about something? Unclear what it is. Has she tried getting outside and walking more? Would that help? Maybe watch some anime? http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10364.html Fri, 15 Oct 2021 00:00:00 GMT A new entry in the genre of LitTRPG (Literary Tree RPG). Reading this made me deeply ambivalent. One the one hand, it makes me think we should revert to an earlier save. Just erase all the books, movies, tv, and other stories we have http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10363.html Tue, 05 Oct 2021 00:00:00 GMT Ok, first the good. The author follows the old advice about catching the reader's interest within the first few lines/pages, and starts her story with the protagonist trying to sneak through a window, but really having to struggle http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10362.html Thu, 30 Sep 2021 00:00:00 GMT The Oubliette: Heresy: sometimes ok? Deacon of Wounds: A documentary about Florida's COVID response. Darkly Dreaming:A short and not particularly distinguished drama about a masked ball. Pour one out for Deshi though, the http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10361.html Sat, 25 Sep 2021 00:00:00 GMT Some of the take-aways here are that A) horror stories really lend themselves to audio book readings and B) WarHammer stories do this in triplicate, since they give the authors and readers license to take everything to an extreme and http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10360.html Wed, 15 Sep 2021 00:00:00 GMT A comprehensively deranged artistic creation. On the one hand I don't want to criticize the book, since I think that gives the book more validation than it is worth? On the other hand, I also *really* want to criticize the book. The http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10359.html Mon, 23 Aug 2021 00:00:00 GMT Lesbians! ... ... ... Waters returns to form with this book and then some. It is waaaaaaaaaaay more prurient than her other books, and is also slightly simpler and sweeter and more broadly drawn. Kind of like a Dicken's story, http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10358.html Fri, 20 Aug 2021 00:00:00 GMT I was expecting a long Warhammer40K audio-book, instead I got a short WarHammer40K audio-drama. It was delightful! The audio team leaned into the strengths of the medium and was wonderfully over the top, while the writing was sweetly http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10357.html Wed, 18 Aug 2021 00:00:00 GMT Kind of a mess. The basic idea is that a cynical engineer sets up a bunch of Home Alone type traps to defend a city under siege. Or put another way, it is a _The Martian_ type outing where a super clever engineer and his crew come up http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10356.html Fri, 13 Aug 2021 00:00:00 GMT "Like a microwaved orchid, this book is sticky and hot" - singer/poet One Direction So, right away this book has 2 red flags: First it is focused on a sci-fi empire that is based off the Mayans/Aztecs, and second it purports to say http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10355.html Thu, 05 Aug 2021 00:00:00 GMT "Your strategy was so bad that it confused me" - random Starcraft player after I defeated him, ~2014 An odd but not entirely terrible series of books. They're sort of like YA versions of the Dresden novels, with tense situations and http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10354.html Fri, 30 Jul 2021 00:00:00 GMT Betrayal! Sarah Waters and I have a deal: she writes slow, beautiful, lesbian romances, and I give her 4 and 5 star reviews. This book though? Zero lesbians. *Zero*. Instead, I get an ultra-slow burn ghost story set in a British http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10353.html Wed, 30 Jun 2021 00:00:00 GMT There was an online discussion about free will, and then on the same day I saw this book at the library and picked it up. Synchronicity? No, Mistake! There is this phenomena where, for some reason, the published writing about free http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10352.html Tue, 15 Jun 2021 00:00:00 GMT Some extremely thin gruel, and yet this is all that I actually require from a mil-sci-fi-series on audio book. It is not good. But it is just barely sufficient to listen to while doing yard work, as opposed to it's failure of a younger http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10351.html Sat, 15 May 2021 00:00:00 GMT An important PSA about why you shouldn't become an agent for an intelligence service. All downside, only the promise of an upside, you are the one taking all the risks and hanging out on a limb. It's like the adage about a poker table; http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10350.html Sat, 08 May 2021 00:00:00 GMT Amazing. Iconic. An Artistic masterpiece. Kim Stanley Robinson, *this* is how you write a novel. http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10349.html Sat, 01 May 2021 00:00:00 GMT We will sustainably power the world by hooking a generator up to KSR's handwaving (Book #3 of my "Spring" into the Apocalypse reading list.) There's a lot to be said about this book, but for the most part other people have said it http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10348.html Sat, 01 May 2021 00:00:00 GMT - Item 1 on checklist: Do not die (Book #2 of my "Spring" into the Apocalypse reading list.) A little bit Dr Strangelove, a little bit Fallout, and a little bit Threads, told in a succinct, simple, and effective style. Also the http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10347.html Fri, 23 Apr 2021 00:00:00 GMT Decent quality, and there is so much of it. All of the Expanse novels have the same essential plot: some assholes attempt to use alien artifacts to become the new lords of humanity, the protagonists try to stop them, 600 pages of events http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10346.html Tue, 20 Apr 2021 00:00:00 GMT (Book #1 of my "Spring" into the Apocalypse reading list.) Really dumb, really bad. I had heard some noise that this was a fun book, sort of an updated Red Storm Rising, but: A) a few decades of left-wing reading have completely http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10345.html Thu, 01 Apr 2021 00:00:00 GMT The beatings will continue until the writing improves An uneven book that has occasional excellent chapters. The conceit of the book is that each of its ~200 chapters is told in a different style, as the narrator (Maria) outlines her http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10344.html Fri, 12 Mar 2021 00:00:00 GMT Satisfactory and extremely long. Years ago, I liked the first Expanse book that I read, but I did not think it was anything too great & so I decided to not read any more of these door-stopper novels. Then the TV series came out, and http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10343.html Wed, 10 Mar 2021 00:00:00 GMT My favorite Waters so far, and the first one I think where it consistently crosses the line from fan-fiction+++ over to genuine art. There are some standard Water's elements: an extremely strong sense of place, where the day-to-day http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10342.html Mon, 01 Mar 2021 00:00:00 GMT A competently written book, however it it is focused on themes that I'm not particularly interested in & it has poor world building/is not really concerned with the consistency of its world. The basic idea is that the book explores the http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10341.html Sat, 20 Feb 2021 00:00:00 GMT An excellent book, and with just a few adjustments I think Sarah Waters could produce a truly great novel. Waters already does several things well; her writing is measured but of high quality, she does an excellent job of creating a http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10340.html Mon, 15 Feb 2021 00:00:00 GMT Raisins are Nature's candy A well written PSA about the importance of not murdering people. The writing was excellent; brief and elegant in many of the conversations, more descriptive and evocative in many of the actions. As usual http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10339.html Wed, 10 Feb 2021 00:00:00 GMT All Dragoons are Bastards According to the NYTimes, this is one of the best mystery novels of all times. The NYTimes is incorrect. This book was written in 1950 by an English lady, and while the writing is often skillful and http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10338.html Fri, 15 Jan 2021 00:00:00 GMT I liked the title! And that concludes the complements section of this review. The book is an alt-history semi-sci-fi, where the year is 2050 and a Chinese Empire and an Aztec Empire have a cold war on earth and a hot war on Mars. http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10337.html Fri, 04 Dec 2020 00:00:00 GMT Still good! I was killing time and picked this up to read a few pages, and of course I ended up re-reading the entire thing. As before, the first ~60% is excellent, the middle 30% is ok, and the last 10% goes back up to great. What a http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10336.html Fri, 20 Nov 2020 00:00:00 GMT Decent! A dyad hijacks a ship going to the outer colonies, thinking that this prize will be their ticket into joining the pirate gang that has taken over Barbary Station. The Situation on the Station is not what they thought however, http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10335.html Wed, 04 Nov 2020 00:00:00 GMT An interesting but somewhat flawed outing by Novik. Perhaps the fault is my own; I love the concept of the book (dark and tricksy magic school) and the author (Novik, GOAT dragon-romance writer) and so I had really high expectations for http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10334.html Sun, 25 Oct 2020 00:00:00 GMT Ok, wow. As someone else described it on the internet, this 350 page book was basically one long boss battle. Every single stop is pulled out and every single past character and power gets involved. My earlier complaints about the http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10333.html Thu, 01 Oct 2020 00:00:00 GMT I was waiting for some image processing to finish, and this book was laying around, and thus history is made. Previously I had read every Witcher novel except for this one, but now I can say that I've read them all. My copy of Season of http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10332.html Fri, 25 Sep 2020 00:00:00 GMT I decided to try this out, in order to see what sort of atrocity Rowling is perpetrating now. Initially I was impressed by the book; the writing was fine, the descriptions were good, and it had slow and detailed character interactions http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10331.html Tue, 15 Sep 2020 00:00:00 GMT An inadvertent re-read. I wanted to just look up a few tidbits from the book, but as with Annihiliation I ended up re-reading the entire thing. I think the trick of this book is that the political struggle before the war is very http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10330.html Tue, 15 Sep 2020 00:00:00 GMT A book that might have been decent or even good if the protagonist wasn't such a doof. The idea is that a mercenary book hunter and fixer, Corso, has been hired at an extravagant rate to investigate the authenticity of an ancient book. http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10329.html Thu, 20 Aug 2020 00:00:00 GMT A not very good entry in the canon that comes across particularly poorly via audiobook. The basic problem is that the book is long and the plot is short, and the difference between the two is made up by absurdly lengthening what should http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10328.html Wed, 12 Aug 2020 00:00:00 GMT A neat and fast-reading sequel that failed to really come together for me like the first one did. Part of this is due to the fractured narrative, as the main character has partial amnesia & sensory glitches & unreliable flashbacks & http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10327.html Mon, 10 Aug 2020 00:00:00 GMT Two shortish tales by Vance that I read while waiting for Windows updates to clean themselves up (40GB of wasted space? really?). Green Magic is classic, beautiful Vance, just 30 pages of constantly creating and unfolding. Assault on a http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10326.html Mon, 10 Aug 2020 00:00:00 GMT A serviceable entry in the series. Jim Butcher has been much slower than normal to publish this most recent book, due to A) divorce-and-remarriage and B) trying to move into a new house, and the changing living conditions disrupting his http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10324.html Tue, 28 Jul 2020 00:00:00 GMT Another bit of Glen Cookery. Outside of The Black Company this is probably his most famous and well regarded book; it takes the general formula of _Das Boot_ and submarine warfare and flings it all into space. I liked the result, and http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10323.html Thu, 21 May 2020 00:00:00 GMT A novella about a very young, very beautiful, and very sociopathic Witch in New York. The book's narrator is odd; she has an extremely flat and straightforward affect, is utterly amoral, and while intelligent and perceptive she http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10322.html Sun, 17 May 2020 00:00:00 GMT Rhysable! Another story of a lady who somehow parlays good money and a lack of responsibilities into a terrible situation. Although this time she is assisted by Mr Rochester. This was my second attempt at Rhys, and I think I just http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10321.html Mon, 20 Apr 2020 00:00:00 GMT The third book in the series changes the format, and rather than being about the awakening and acceptance of the sexual bond of the main character with his wolf, the story instead switches to a harem format, as the protagonist and his http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10320.html Mon, 20 Apr 2020 00:00:00 GMT A neatish novella by a talented author that is lessened by the work that it critiques. The idea of the novel is similar to Atwood's Penelope, except that rather than critiquing and re-imagining the role of women in the Odyssey, this http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10319.html Wed, 08 Apr 2020 00:00:00 GMT A perfectly absurd book. In the dim warrens of my mind I had Jane Eyre lumped in with all the other 1800s English fiction. I was expecting it to be like Austen's books with extended sentences, careful character portraits, and gradual, http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10318.html Mon, 30 Mar 2020 00:00:00 GMT A fast, creative, gritty, and violent mystery-adventure that is true to its characters and world. The last and the best in the LowTown trilogy. After a moderately disappointing second book I was expecting the decline to continue, http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10317.html Fri, 20 Mar 2020 00:00:00 GMT Another Book People purchase, this time of modern mediocre terror tales. The basic formula is similar to M.R. James: each ~30 page scary story has a brief intro and outro, an initial investigation, and a stint of grounded and http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10316.html Fri, 20 Mar 2020 00:00:00 GMT The story of a viking prince coming to terms with being a furry. The first books covers young puppy love and then teenage dog love, while the second book has the main character forming a bond with a dangerous and sexy wolf. I liked http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10315.html Sun, 15 Mar 2020 00:00:00 GMT Yoon Ha Lee gravely disappoints me by failing to produce a second work of genius. Instead, he merely wrote an enjoyable and fast reading and dramatic space opera. I liked this book, but it wasn't a continual stream of new ideas and http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10314.html Tue, 18 Feb 2020 00:00:00 GMT A middling and uneven continuation of the Lowtown mystery novels. I solidly enjoyed the first Lowtown novel, but this second one felt more rushed. It was less whimsical and more derivative, and had fewer interesting things going on. http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10313.html Wed, 12 Feb 2020 00:00:00 GMT A pure and great book. The author, Sarah Waters, wisely decided to center her story around lesbians, who are the foundation upon which all great art is built. In addition to the lesbians, the book has memorable and well drawn http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10312.html Thu, 06 Feb 2020 00:00:00 GMT Not good! Trying to listen to this reminded me of trying to listen to the Wheel of Time books ~15 years ago. There's this combination of extreme slowness, predictability, boring characterization, 1950's gender views, and just http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10311.html Sun, 26 Jan 2020 00:00:00 GMT Not a bad novel, but not a great one either. The basic idea is that a second-rate gay author is traveling the world to avoid thinking about his ex's wedding. He deals with travel travails while sorting through memories and http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10310.html Fri, 24 Jan 2020 00:00:00 GMT The final entry in this year's Christmas of Counter-insurgency event. This was another elder book, one that had I originally read during high school, and then last re-read about (calculates...) 18.25 years ago. When I first read the http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10309.html Wed, 15 Jan 2020 00:00:00 GMT I decided to read this as my next book in the Christmas of Counter-insurgency event. I had remembered (dimly, from a plane ride, from 15 years ago) that the Red and the Green was primarily about the Irish uprising of 1916, with only http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10308.html Sat, 28 Dec 2019 00:00:00 GMT Primary Exports: Edge, Woke, Sadness Ooof, this book. I had heard good things about this fantasy novel over the years, and I wish I hadn't. The book has qualities, but it also serious flaws, and I went into the experience with http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10307.html Sun, 15 Dec 2019 00:00:00 GMT A novella about a young person's mysterious disappearance. Has important life lessons about not trusting French people, and how American's lack of vacation days keeps us out of trouble. The story is well written, but like most http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10306.html Sat, 30 Nov 2019 00:00:00 GMT A novella about how wolves solve everything. Nice fairy magic and descriptive http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10305.html Mon, 25 Nov 2019 00:00:00 GMT Annnnd another late-Halloween reading. This time it is approximately 30 short stories by MR James, written around 1900-1930. He is mostly known (at least to me) for his story Oh, Whistle, And I'll Come To You, My Lad, and that story http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10304.html Wed, 20 Nov 2019 00:00:00 GMT A late-Halloween horror story, this is a modern tale of demonic possession. It failed to spark joy. The writing was well below fan-fic levels of quality and really the book should never have been instantiated as a physical object. One http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10303.html Sun, 03 Nov 2019 00:00:00 GMT A number of spooky and weird stories for Halloween, with a minor theme of unalterable Fate and free will. They range from the excellent to the serviceable. Dark Air - A cheerful story of body horror, off the grid http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10302.html Sun, 20 Oct 2019 00:00:00 GMT A modern fairy tale that warns of the dangers of the sunk cost fallacy. When the protagonist's baby is stolen by goblins, the smart play would be to just take the L and move on, maybe pop out another one in a bit. Instead the http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10301.html Thu, 10 Oct 2019 00:00:00 GMT Damned monkey paw. A few years ago I made a comment about the mainstreaming of fantasy and super-hero elements, and how this was a good trend since they were moderately enlivening what would otherwise be very boring, staid, and http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10300.html Sat, 05 Oct 2019 00:00:00 GMT A mostly acceptable but very dry and uninspired history of socialism over the last few hundred years. The most interesting bits: - A lot of the history of socialism is of people asking for more rights and a fairer deal, and then http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10299.html Tue, 01 Oct 2019 00:00:00 GMT A neat beer and pretzels and necromancers and lesbians and spaceships story that is great fun but doesn't quite rise to the level of greatness. The story is FanFiction++; it can be tropey and fan-servicey but does so with a quality that http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10298.html Thu, 19 Sep 2019 00:00:00 GMT Northfear leads to Northanger. Northanger leads to Bath. A rather silly Austen novel where the author allows herself to be more whimsical than usual. She lightly satirizes romances and moderately satirizes gothic novels, and http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10297.html Mon, 16 Sep 2019 00:00:00 GMT A collection of decent, but not great sci-fi short stories that did not have too many surprises. Perhaps the biggest surprise on opening it up was the thought that "wait, haven't I read these before?" And after going through a couple http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10296.html Tue, 10 Sep 2019 00:00:00 GMT Well written and creative short stories that take lurid tabloid headlines and ground them in interesting characters with nuance and detail and various thoughtful elaborations on the writing prompt. That's the good part! The bad part is http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10295.html Thu, 01 Aug 2019 00:00:00 GMT The quality is terrible, but at least the portions are enormous. This book killed any further interest I had in Sanderson; it's a ton of extruded dreck that re-uses many of his ideas and themes from the MistBorn series. I got about 80% http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10294.html Thu, 25 Jul 2019 00:00:00 GMT I picked this Leiber book to read next because, well, Texas. And I was rewarded for my faith! One way to describe the novel is that it is Fritz Leiber does Fall Out. The story is set ~100 years after a massive Atomic war, as a http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10293.html Fri, 05 Jul 2019 00:00:00 GMT I was reminded of this book ~5 years ago, when the pre-production hype for _True Detective, Season 2_ mentioned that the show would explore the occult history of the Los Angeles highway network. Which both seemed awesome and made me http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10292.html Sun, 30 Jun 2019 00:00:00 GMT While not as helpful as I would have liked, this book did at least do a good job of explaining the I Ching in a readable way to the layman audience. I picked up this book because, inspired by PKD and the like, I've been mulling over http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10291.html Tue, 25 Jun 2019 00:00:00 GMT An unfortunate mil-sci-fi adventure novel. I really wanted to like this book, since I like the author and it is his first published fiction and I'd like him to succeed. However, while some of the ideas in the book are neat, the book http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10290.html Sat, 15 Jun 2019 00:00:00 GMT A fast paced and well translated Wuxia adventure. It follows Xiao, a drifter with a heart of gold and a hand of steel, as he is wrapped up in the machinations of corrupt lords and evil kung fu masters. There's also a romance woven in, http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10289.html Thu, 30 May 2019 00:00:00 GMT A mystery novel set in rural, post war Britain: there is an unsettling stranger, a late night argument, a dead body in the morning. It's now up to 12 year old Flavia De Luce to conduct a shadow investigation in order to clear the family http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10288.html Thu, 30 May 2019 00:00:00 GMT An adventure series that benefits from its great premise and good world building, but is otherwise mostly at a "serviceable" level of story telling. First off, the idea behind the series is a personal favorite: super-powers have entered http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10287.html Tue, 30 Apr 2019 00:00:00 GMT Another extremely fast reading book. In this case, the adventure is about a group making an overland hike through enemy territory to recover a politically priceless heirloom locked away in an ancient and hidden temple. The setting is http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10286.html Sat, 30 Mar 2019 00:00:00 GMT Short sci-fi adventure books about a security bot that has hacked its governor modules and is now free. While not great literature, they are fast literature, and it's easy to read (and difficult not to read) each of these books in a http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10285.html Mon, 25 Mar 2019 00:00:00 GMT Finally, some realistic mil-sci-fi! This book was a great palate cleanser after the terrible, boring, dumb, paint-by-numbers Markos Cloos books. This also the first Abnett book that I've read, and I can see why he's regarded as one of http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10284.html Wed, 20 Mar 2019 00:00:00 GMT Possibly good, but with a very unappealing opening. The main character's weak-tea humor is a very poor thematic match for her suicidal thoughts and actions. It might get better, but the start of the book seemed very clumsy. http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10283.html Wed, 20 Mar 2019 00:00:00 GMT An enjoyable fairy tale that starts off grounded before slowly and then rapidly moving into the fantastic. The writing and characters are nicely done, the isolated and wintery setting is fantastic, and I enjoy seeing more takes on http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10282.html Tue, 19 Mar 2019 00:00:00 GMT Get you a guy who looks at you like Andevai does, with arrogance and contempt. Wait, no, don't do that. Jesus that is a terrible idea. Why would you ever do that? The book starts off reasonably enough. The setting is an alt-history http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10281.html Sun, 10 Mar 2019 00:00:00 GMT A darkly, darkly comic adventure/mystery set in Yeltsin's Russia. It's a bit _Death of Stalin_, a bit _Dying Earth_, and a bit _The eXile_. The protagonist is a mid-level Russian business man who for the most part has stayed http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10280.html Fri, 01 Mar 2019 00:00:00 GMT Page 97. :D No, seriously, page 97 (Shulamith Firestone) and then the Pankhursts have the best names and the best ideas. http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10279.html Thu, 28 Feb 2019 00:00:00 GMT A collection of clever short stories by the author of _Nine Fox Gambit_. I enjoyed the stories, but they are some of the author's earliest work and they're a little less polished, a little more MFA than her later books. The short http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10278.html Sat, 23 Feb 2019 00:00:00 GMT A Jeeves and Wooster fan-fic that mostly succeeds. This is another one of those literay high-wire acts, where if the conceit failed the novel would go absolutely and horribly awry. But it mostly manages to stay on the wire, and the http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10277.html Mon, 18 Feb 2019 00:00:00 GMT Reading _The Fever_ spurred me to re-read _Complicity_, since _Complicity_ is basically what happens when the narrator of _The Fever_ decides to take direct, serial killer action. And while I do still like _Complicity_, it wasn't http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10276.html Sun, 10 Feb 2019 00:00:00 GMT A decent enough, YA type adventure in the vein of Spirited Away. A young lady goes on an adventure to rescue her father in a mythical-medieval Europe, faces challenges, and makes friends and clever decisions along the way. I was http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10275.html Wed, 06 Feb 2019 00:00:00 GMT A very short and very provoking book, but not one that I'd fully agree with or one that really applies to me, a person who has donated double triple digits of money to Elizabeth Warren. The basic idea is that the rich are terrible http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10274.html Tue, 05 Feb 2019 00:00:00 GMT Would you like to commit war crimes? Y/N Y Oh no! The JAG is on your case for killing more American civilians than the average 9/11 attacker. How unfair! Is this all the fault of the liberals? http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10273.html Mon, 04 Feb 2019 00:00:00 GMT Perhaps my favorite Polansky book, this is a short and stark tale of gun-slinger violence and betrayal and revenge. This is what Abercombie's _Best Served Cold_ should have been, with larger than life characters, fast and violent http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10272.html Sun, 03 Feb 2019 00:00:00 GMT Not a terrible book, but also not one that particularly excited me. The basic outline is that during the days of the Roman empire, a Vancian scoudrel type merchant character goes up from the Roman portions of Gaul and into the http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10271.html Wed, 30 Jan 2019 00:00:00 GMT Booof. This book is the extremely first person account of doing a tour duty in Afghanistan as an army grunt. It doesn't necessarily tell you anything you didn't know about the war there, but it does present the things that you http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10270.html Wed, 16 Jan 2019 00:00:00 GMT This is a double review: The first part of the review is for the recent SyFy series, _NightFlyers_, and the second part of the review is of the collection of sci-fi stories by George RR Martin, which includes and is named after its http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10269.html Wed, 16 Jan 2019 00:00:00 GMT ***!Spoilers!*** An interesting and well written book that completely failed at several key points. The basic structure of the novel is that it's a standard piece of literary fiction, with the normal elements of growing up and http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10268.html Thu, 10 Jan 2019 00:00:00 GMT The same, but different. The narrative advances a few years, and rather than a young buck trying to complete his heroes journey, we now have a Sheriff trying to preserve his family and his town in a changing world. The structure of http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10267.html Sun, 30 Dec 2018 00:00:00 GMT A surprisingly high quality adventure story set in an Old, Weird West that has had a ShadowRun-type awakening of magical talents in the wake of the Civil War. There were a lot of things to like about this novel. The powers are http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10266.html Sun, 30 Dec 2018 00:00:00 GMT A theoretically humorous fantasy novel that falls down due to some regrettable comedy choices and conflicting thematic elements. The basic idea of the novel is to take what Venture Brothers did to super heroes and apply the same http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10265.html Tue, 25 Dec 2018 00:00:00 GMT An acceptable and semi-educational thriller set in ancient Roman times, in the few days immediately before the Vesuvius eruption. The surprising strength of the novel comes from the focus on the system of aqueducts that interlaced the http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10264.html Tue, 18 Dec 2018 00:00:00 GMT Another re-read, although this time the stories didn't hold up as well. My reaction to several of the short stories changed, with some aging poorly while others I appreciated more. This isn't too surprising, the stories are basically http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10263.html Sat, 15 Dec 2018 00:00:00 GMT Another re-read of a childhood favorite. In this case the story held up better (or my body chemistry was better), and I really enjoyed it even though I've read the book ~4 times now. The basic idea is that this is the coming of age http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10262.html Sun, 25 Nov 2018 00:00:00 GMT "The muscles of her nose contracted." What other author would write a sentence like that? None, that's who. When she wants to Iris gets crazily and wonderfully and clinically precise in drawing her characters. Also a good book in http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10261.html Thu, 15 Nov 2018 00:00:00 GMT Despite the shortness of the book it never really grabbed me. The main author was offputting; after years of reading _Harpers_ I'm allergic to his style of writing and it was only a few sentences in before I was annoyed with him. And http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10260.html Thu, 15 Nov 2018 00:00:00 GMT Despite the generic title and forgettable cover art, this is actually a fairly high quality fantasy book. It's kind of what you would get if you took Game of Thrones, but turned everything down by 30%-40%. The events are dangerous and http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10259.html Thu, 15 Nov 2018 00:00:00 GMT The fabled missing link between Jane Austen and Iris Murdoch. The first 30 pages of this book did nothing for me, being set amidst year ~1900 English people, which are the worst. There is the smallness of thought, the constraint of http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10258.html Sun, 07 Oct 2018 00:00:00 GMT Brave Story is like the Thomas Covenant books, but you know, for kids! It is a slow but ultimately likeable adventure about a Japanese school boy pulled into a fantastical world of strange creatures and magic. The basic idea is common http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10257.html Fri, 05 Oct 2018 00:00:00 GMT A warm, interesting, and occasionally misguided general science book that I wish had been published 15 years later. The topics vary widely; the author basically went to 200 scientists and asked each of them to talk about the most http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10256.html Sun, 16 Sep 2018 00:00:00 GMT An upper middling urbane fantasy story. The setting is a 1900's alt-London that is ruled over by jerk mages. The magic in the story is semi-Vancian; the mages do not cast spells themselves, rather they use true-names to summon and http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10255.html Sat, 15 Sep 2018 00:00:00 GMT Another book that doesn't *quite* justify being printed on paper. Hyena is a bunch of extremely short stories about doing drugs, having regrettable sex, and just generally lumpen-proling it up. It's kind of a modern, low quality http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10254.html Thu, 06 Sep 2018 00:00:00 GMT Another weirdo book, consisting of 36 short stories. In this case the setting is a sort of post-Oryx and Crake world where our civilization has been destroyed and replaced with the seeds of something different, possibly better. The new http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10253.html Mon, 20 Aug 2018 00:00:00 GMT This is a book. After that, I'm not quite sure what to say about it. It has just about every content warning out there, and I can count on zero hands the number of people I would recommend it to. There's a fair amount of murder and http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10252.html Sat, 14 Jul 2018 00:00:00 GMT There is a board-game reviewer that I like, and he says that the three most important qualities for a game are "pacing, pacing, and pacing". I don't think this entirely transfers to novels, but it mostly does, and I'd give "pacing" at http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10251.html Sat, 07 Jul 2018 00:00:00 GMT A poignant reminder of how far technology has brought us; just as 90% of the populace used to be farmers in order to feed the needs of the nation, so to it used to require an entire 200 page book to do the same work that we could do http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10250.html Sun, 01 Jul 2018 00:00:00 GMT A short and delightful reframing of the life of a historical pope through the lens of an Ars Magica campaign. The author takes the known historical facts and key incidents, and then re-imagines them in the light of magic and http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10249.html Wed, 30 May 2018 00:00:00 GMT A skillfully written, but also kind of dumb, historical-fantasy-war-adventure. One the one hand, the author is a good writer, and he has a fast paced and action filled story with descriptive and well done combat and realistic http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10248.html Wed, 23 May 2018 00:00:00 GMT An unfortunate and bloated book. I ended up Benjamin Buttoning this novel. The first part of the novel was boring and dumb (e.g. the sci-fi author failed to fully engage with how his technology would change life, e.g. we still have http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10247.html Sat, 12 May 2018 00:00:00 GMT A series of sharp and well crafted short stories about South Vietnamese people coming to America. Some of the stories are humorous, some are melancholy, some are peaceful, and a surprising number involve the death of small animals. The http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10246.html Thu, 10 May 2018 00:00:00 GMT Another shockingly competent genre fantasy entry. In this case, I feel like what happened was that a marketing guy came up with the idea "let's publish an enormous story cycle about a sexy, 16 year old looking vampire in the WarHammer http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10245.html Sun, 22 Apr 2018 00:00:00 GMT This was a quick re-read to see if there were any useful thoughts or impulses-to-thoughts for me in Kreutzer Sonata, a book that I remembered as being fairly out there. The answer turns out to be "no". The best you can say about it is http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10244.html Thu, 12 Apr 2018 00:00:00 GMT An unfortunate litany of heresies. This book is filled with mistakes, misconceptions, blindnesses, willful blindnesses, incorrect thoughts and perceptions, and just generalized wonky ontologies. It can't have anything but an evil http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10243.html Sun, 01 Apr 2018 00:00:00 GMT I listen to a fair number of podcasts by professional game reviewers, and one of their inside jokes and bete-noires is the word "fun". "Fun" is a word that people turn to very naturally, and yet it doesn't convey much information beyond http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10242.html Wed, 28 Mar 2018 00:00:00 GMT Puts the "new" and the "weird" into "New Weird". Bourne is an imaginative delight. At various times this story reminded me of Perdido Street Station, Nabokov, Pit People, The Road, The Thing, Oryx and Crake, On My Way to Paradise, http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10241.html Thu, 22 Mar 2018 00:00:00 GMT Yep, this is Scalzi. I read about 60 pages near the front, and then skimmed another 40 pages near the end. It's pretty Scalzi. http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10240.html Tue, 20 Mar 2018 00:00:00 GMT Well, this was better than the last book in the series. The cover art is nice, the book is long enough for things to actually happen, and some of the things were neat. Still, the book has disappointments. It is too simple, it http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10239.html Fri, 16 Mar 2018 00:00:00 GMT I felt bad for the tree that died to bring me this book, and in general it felt weird to see this sort of writing on paper rather than on a computer screen. Sufficiently Advanced Magic is somewhere way down on the Geek Hierarchy, http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10238.html Sat, 10 Mar 2018 00:00:00 GMT I was taking a trip and looking for something to listen to on the way. A web search for "best audio books" turned up this book (the recommendation was from before the monstrous acts for which Aziz is now famous), and I decided to http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10237.html Mon, 05 Mar 2018 00:00:00 GMT Harry Potter meets Blood Sport. Alternatively, Name of the Wind without the sex, engineering, or economics. The story reads quickly and is generally likeable and well put together (e.g. there an appropriate number of Checkov's Guns http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10236.html Sun, 04 Mar 2018 00:00:00 GMT A silly novel about sci-fi fighting that is further flawed by its right wing flare ups. One way to describe Perilous Waif would be as the novelization of a _Total Annihilation_ match. There's a lot of robots building larger robots http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10235.html Mon, 12 Feb 2018 00:00:00 GMT The reviews on the cover of this book say that the author is: "One of fantasy's premier voices." and "Parker's way with words can be as beautiful as it is technical." and "Parker's skillful control of pacing, expert rendering of http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10234.html Sat, 27 Jan 2018 00:00:00 GMT This was another "CJ Cherryh" incident, a shameless attempt by T. Kingfisher to pass herself off as a male author. Fortunately, I noticed that her story focused on romance, humor, emotion, evocative description, and interesting http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10233.html Wed, 10 Jan 2018 00:00:00 GMT This was a re-read from 20 years ago, of a 180-page book that I read in one sitting while sitting in Barnes and Nobles. The re-read was kind of a lark, and because I was curious as to how badly the book had aged. And the answer is, not http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10231.html Fri, 08 Dec 2017 00:00:00 GMT This was a re-read of an Iris Murdoch novel that I last read 15 years ago, and that I greatly liked and frequently think back to. The novel largely holds up, though I always forget just how entirely strange Murdoch's writing is. The http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10230.html Sun, 03 Dec 2017 00:00:00 GMT The synopsis on the back of the book is 90% accurate, so I will just parrot it here. Low Town is a low fantasy low life mystery story, and it is clever, dryly funny, and very fast to read. I'm not a huge fan of mysteries, but this one http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10229.html Mon, 27 Nov 2017 00:00:00 GMT I wanted to like this audio book, if only as a way to throw further shade at NK Jeminisen. Unfortunately, it was a mixed bag, a fairly non-compelling mixed bag, and probably the worst Jim Butcher book that I've read. In more http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10228.html Mon, 20 Nov 2017 00:00:00 GMT A delightful, clever, funny, bleak, and pleasantly rambling series of eastern-European fantasy novels. I initially heard about the Witcher books from a friend who loaned me the first novel in the series. So when it was time for me to http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10227.html Fri, 10 Nov 2017 00:00:00 GMT The Honorverse series by way of Jim Butcher. While this story takes place in the upper atmosphere rather than in space, it does involve many of the same thematic elements of daring and honorable ship captains, grim naval and marine http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10226.html Tue, 01 Aug 2017 00:00:00 GMT A funny and sweet story that covers the thirty year time span between Jesus' birth and death. The tone of the book is generally light and comedic, and for the most part its humor works and occupies a space somewhat above Dave Barry http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10225.html Tue, 01 Aug 2017 00:00:00 GMT A failure of a book. While competently written, the author completely failed at presenting characters and situations that a reader might care about or emphasize with. A majority of the main characters were unlikeable and uninteresting. http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10224.html Tue, 19 Sep 2017 00:00:00 GMT [Ed 1: Publish or Perish! This is the second version of the review, as a failing hard drive took out the first version before it was published to the web. I liked the first review better; this is just a tribute to that first http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10223.html Sat, 16 Sep 2017 00:00:00 GMT A likable and clever book about a fantasy world after its Gods have been driven out. The previous steady-state of the world was that Bulikov ruled everything, and Bulikov's rule was assured by the frequent miracles and intercessions of http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10222.html Fri, 01 Sep 2017 00:00:00 GMT Seveneves is not a great book, and maybe is not even a good book, but it is an interesting book. The structure of the story is divided into two parts. In the first part the moon is blown up, which is good as far as it goes. Stupid http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10221.html Wed, 06 Sep 2017 00:00:00 GMT A novel about bird law and bird persons This belongs to the "etoliated" class of fantasy novels, along with _Viriconium_ and _A Stranger in Olondria_. These are fantasy novels with fancy words, fancy authors, and http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10220.html Fri, 25 Aug 2017 00:00:00 GMT I've heard about Reynolds for years, and had this impression of him as someone who wrote hard, dry, sci-fi that was realistic but perhaps a little too much so. You know, a man's man's sci-fi author, someone who will combine physics http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10219.html Sat, 12 Aug 2017 00:00:00 GMT This was a collection of short stories set in the Dresden universe, mostly collected from various anthologies that Jim Butcher has published in over the years. As with most of his work, the stories are extremely fast reading, and have a http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10218.html Tue, 01 Aug 2017 00:00:00 GMT I was so excited when I randomly saw this at the library and read the first part of its book jacket. A novelization of Solium Infernum? Sign me up! In practice though the novel completely fails to cohere in any way. It is all over the http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10217.html Sun, 30 Jul 2017 00:00:00 GMT A vast disappointment after the other two Jacqueline Carey books that I read which were all about dragons, magic, clever LOTR re-imaginings, and other such wholesome things. This book is all about terrible gender roles and bosom-heaving http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10216.html Sun, 30 Jul 2017 00:00:00 GMT I was so excited when I randomly saw this at the library. John Gardner? I love John Gardner. So I took this home and started reading. Huh, not that great. But maybe it is just setting up something neat later on? Hmmm, doesn't seem to http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10215.html Sun, 30 Jul 2017 00:00:00 GMT A well-written story of heists, cons, and criminality set in a low-fantasy world that contains Benders of different types but also pre-modern technology and guns. If you can imagine a series of dark and gritty Avatar episodes set in http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10214.html Mon, 24 Jul 2017 00:00:00 GMT This is a bit inside-baseball, but I've decided to change how I score novels and have gone back and re-balanced all my old scores based on the new system. In the old system, I was trying to fit all of human writing into a 1 to 5 http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10212.html Fri, 21 Jul 2017 00:00:00 GMT A short book (200 pages) that seemed even shorter. We already know the characters from _Every Heart a Doorway_, and this prequel goes into how Jack and Jill became the characters that they are in that first book. This doesn't work http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10211.html Mon, 17 Jul 2017 00:00:00 GMT A fun and fairly straight forward book about a down and out air-ship crew and their heists and misadventures. It's a bit like a steam-punk version of FireFly (or maybe Serenity). The first half of the book is the better half, and http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10210.html Fri, 14 Jul 2017 00:00:00 GMT A fast paced and clever space-opera that is like the novelization of the best parts of a StarCraft game. The setting is the Korean version of WarHammer 40K, where a militarized, totalitarian, and cruel/wasteful society is busily http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10209.html Wed, 12 Jul 2017 00:00:00 GMT “You might as well go out and shoot everyone you see and then shoot yourself." - Dwight D. Eisenhower A straight forward, factual, and brutally depressing account of CIA history that is based on http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10208.html Thu, 06 Jul 2017 00:00:00 GMT This will be an inverted-sandwich review, where I talk about the bad, then the good, and then the bad. As a teen I read a couple of Al Franken's books at Barnes and Nobles, and as per best practices I just read http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10207.html Mon, 26 Jun 2017 00:00:00 GMT This was a re-read, as I seem to be re-reading the entire Culture series book by book for the 2nd (and in some cases 3rd or 4th) time. This is at least partly due to my efforts to get more people to read the Culture novels (which http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10206.html Tue, 20 Jun 2017 00:00:00 GMT I skimmed through this one, just to confirm my first impressions of the author. Yep, he is god-awful. And so many murders. Why so many murders? http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10205.html Sun, 28 May 2017 00:00:00 GMT Another delightful anthropology book. From what I can tell, the defining feature of field anthropologists is a certain insane self-confidence. In this case it is a young and introverted American lady who goes to study a Nigerian http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10204.html Tue, 23 May 2017 00:00:00 GMT A short, readable, layman's take on drug use in the Nazi regime. This isn't so much a magisterial history book as it is an author who found an interesting angle and sources and then ran with it. The book is full of stories and http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10203.html Wed, 10 May 2017 00:00:00 GMT A book that fit what I was looking for. I've been wanting to read some Jack Womack, but the internet has been letting me down, and this book filled the want nicely. The Fortunate Fall is a mid-90's cyber punk story, set 250 years in http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10202.html Wed, 10 May 2017 00:00:00 GMT A lesser Wodehouse. There are some sensible chuckles, but it is definitely inferior to PGW's more famous books. http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10201.html Fri, 28 Apr 2017 00:00:00 GMT I can confidently say that this is a fine book to listen to while laying down caulk. They switched narrators for this one, and while the new narrator is not as outstanding as the old he is still perfectly serviceable to listen to http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10200.html Mon, 24 Apr 2017 00:00:00 GMT 420 Blaze it up like Merlin! That is what I would say if I was at all into drug-wizard culture(1), which I am not, but the book is. The book is also into a general hipsterism and cool-struggle(2), and sexing many people causally(3), http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10199.html Thu, 20 Apr 2017 00:00:00 GMT Before anything, there are 2 notes for this book. One is that I listened to it via audio book, and it benefited from an amazing narrator. The narrator has several great accents and is not afraid to use them. His Bishop Woosley is http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10198.html Sun, 16 Apr 2017 00:00:00 GMT Unlike most fantasy series, this one has been steadily getting better as it goes. The third entry is my favorite one yet, and it avoids/ameliorates some of the problems that I had with the first two entries. The schemes are a bit http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10197.html Sat, 25 Mar 2017 00:00:00 GMT Going into this book, my expectations were kind of low. I remembered the previous entry in the series as having high points, but also as being marred by being somewhat turgid writing and a somewhat generic thieves guild setting and http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10196.html Sun, 19 Mar 2017 00:00:00 GMT A series of short stories that are set in Abercombie's universe and fill in the back story to his main characters or add a bit of detail and color to some of his tangential characters. I've always had trouble enjoying Abercombie, but http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10195.html Sat, 11 Mar 2017 00:00:00 GMT On second thought, let’s not go to Japan. ‘Tis a silly place. A series of 5 short and silly stories about love and folly in feudal Japan. Some characteristic events are: a young married woman accidentally gets http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10194.html Thu, 09 Mar 2017 00:00:00 GMT A quietly enjoyable and complex mystery novel set in pre-modern China. The protagonists are good without being overbearing, and the chapters have a nice variety as they switch between the abstract/intellectual focused Judge Dee, and http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10193.html Tue, 07 Mar 2017 00:00:00 GMT A short and likable novel that does several neat things but ultimately does not rise to greatness. The first thing you notice about it is the cover art, which is just about perfect. The next thing is that the story is a http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10192.html Mon, 06 Mar 2017 00:00:00 GMT This is Sherlock Holmes by way of Jack Vance. The novel contains ~8 short stories, each of which involves the clever Magnus being roped into solving one mystery or another on a different world. Magnus will investigate and solve the http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10191.html Sun, 05 Mar 2017 00:00:00 GMT On the book jacket there is a review blurb comparing this to a combination of "Douglas Adams and Stephen King", and that is almost a perfect description. I would substitute Laird Barron rather than Stephen King, since the horror http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10189.html Fri, 06 Jan 2017 00:00:00 GMT I tried this audio-book out, as I was looking for something to listen to on my walks and Metafilter had recommended the John Cleese recording. It was a disappointment. I made it ~30% of the way through before getting tired of the http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10188.html Tue, 03 Jan 2017 00:00:00 GMT This sequel was mostly a disappointment. I had hoped for more originality; instead I received more plots taken from Season 2 of Alphas. I'm really not sure how the author will finish out the trilogy as Alphas only aired for 2 http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10186.html Sun, 25 Dec 2016 00:00:00 GMT A fast paced and competently written action novel about a version of the modern world where a small percentage of people have developed super powers. Think James Bond or Tom Clancy but with powers. The powers aren't explicitly super http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10185.html Tue, 20 Dec 2016 00:00:00 GMT Not a terrible book, but not one that really grabbed me either. I liked the initial descriptions of the strange electric planet, and the writer is good at writing. I didn't really jive with the story though; the author gave the Mary http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10184.html Mon, 19 Dec 2016 00:00:00 GMT If the room's a rockin' it is because I am being oppressed. A potentially neat fantasy setting based around earth benders, ruined by victim porn. So, so much victim porn. As far as I can tell it is all the book http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10183.html Mon, 19 Dec 2016 00:00:00 GMT A very interesting summary of 30 years spent with a small Amazonian tribe. Reality consistently does better than the creations of sci-fi and fantasy authors, and reading about the Piraha was fascinating. The book covers the language http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10182.html Thu, 15 Dec 2016 00:00:00 GMT God never closes a door without opening a hole. If Robert Aickman is a bit too oblique in his strange tales, Laird Barron is perhaps not quite oblique enough in his working-class tales of Mythos-horror. http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10181.html Thu, 15 Dec 2016 00:00:00 GMT Probably the best general history of WWI that I've read. It covers all the relevant topics (pre-war situation and concerns, politics, technology, strategy, tactics, art, post-war settlements, etc. etc.) and at a reasonable depth and http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10180.html Fri, 18 Nov 2016 00:00:00 GMT An extremely fast and enjoyable urban fantasy read. My previous experience with the Dresden Files has all been via audio book, where James Marster and his dulcet tones have LARPed their way with me through the series. I've really http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10179.html Sat, 12 Nov 2016 00:00:00 GMT A counterpoint to _We Are All Completely Fine_. In this book the characters are not survivors of horror movies, but instead are survivors of journey's to magical lands, e.g. Narnia, Wonderland, Hades, Ravenloft, etc. The young http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10178.html Fri, 11 Nov 2016 00:00:00 GMT I picked these two Vance books somewhat at random; it turns out that they are books #2 and #3 of a pentalogy. Doh. Still, it works out ok as they are largely separate stories that can be read independently. This series is Vance's http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10177.html Fri, 04 Nov 2016 00:00:00 GMT A short novel of horror and action about a bunch of survivors from various horror movie-plots who have come together in a therapy group. It's a bit like if a single person had survived each of the scenarios from Cabin in the Woods, http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10175.html Tue, 01 Nov 2016 00:00:00 GMT An early work by Philip Palmer that is doesn't quite succeed, and seems more like a prototype for what he would do successfully in his later books. Palmer relies on a gonzo energy in his books, with all the dials turned up to 11 and http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10173.html Mon, 31 Oct 2016 00:00:00 GMT The final book in the Southern Reach trilogy. While not bad, the finale was not as good as the previous two entries, and it felt more like an extended epilogue than a true successor. Both of the first two books were at least http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10172.html Sat, 29 Oct 2016 00:00:00 GMT An exciting concept for a book that is let down by somewhat less than exciting execution. The conceit is that the book is in the form of a multiple choice test, with each question on the test acting as a short story or poem. So far http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10171.html Thu, 13 Oct 2016 00:00:00 GMT http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10170.html Thu, 13 Oct 2016 00:00:00 GMT In my review of Water Born, I did not have any negative points to make, as I thought the author did a great job in everything he set out to do. In Black God, you still have the good qualities of Water Born. However, they are alloyed http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10169.html Tue, 30 Aug 2016 00:00:00 GMT An enjoyable and well written fantasy adventure. The author has detailed and crunchy world building, neat mysteries to unravel, likeable and interesting characters, and a plot that ends nicely. It is not an absolutely amazing story, http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10168.html Sun, 28 Aug 2016 00:00:00 GMT Shut up! Don't make fun of me because of the title, this is *serious* literature. It won a Hugo award back in the 60's, and was the next Vance book that looked appealing. As always, Vance is swift and immensely inventive. Vance has http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10167.html Sun, 14 Aug 2016 00:00:00 GMT One time after I won a StarCraft match, my opponent insulted me by saying "you played so bad it confused me." He had a point, and I was reminded of his words while reading this book. The book isn't bad, but it does have stretches http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10166.html Sat, 06 Aug 2016 00:00:00 GMT The second audio book I listened to while moving, and unfortunately it is also a secondary or lesser Le Carre. On the plus side, I like the things Le Carre does with chronology and his increasingly free-form way of ordering the plot http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10165.html Thu, 28 Jul 2016 00:00:00 GMT An interesting sci-fi novel that has bright spots and smart ideas, but that ultimately fails to rise to greatness. First though, some disclaimers. The novel was originally written in Chinese, before being translated to http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10164.html Wed, 20 Jul 2016 00:00:00 GMT A low key but enjoyable and highly readable set of short stories set in the Game of Thrones universe. They remind me a bit of the Witcher series in that you have somewhat standard fantasy scenarios that rapidly veer into new and http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10163.html Fri, 15 Jul 2016 00:00:00 GMT A well written but slightly silly mystery novel. The conceit is similar to a Vance short story, that the population of a city has split into two cultures which are physically intermingled but pretend not to see each other except in http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10162.html Sun, 10 Jul 2016 00:00:00 GMT Reviewing this book presents a dilemma. Exactly how many stars do you remove from a story for being incredibly racist? For now I've settled on 1.5 stars. The stories in this collection are pulpy and actiony, and represent a kind of http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10161.html Mon, 20 Jun 2016 00:00:00 GMT A compilation of clever and hilarious short fantasy stories. It's a bit like taking Dungeons and Dragons, It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, and Oscar Wilde, and then mixing them all together. The typical story takes the http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10160.html Fri, 10 Jun 2016 00:00:00 GMT A lesser Banks book. In the story, humanity has long since achieved vast levels of technological prowess, re-shaping the earth and leaving for the stars. The characters are those who live on Earth millions of years after this http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10159.html Wed, 01 Jun 2016 00:00:00 GMT Another delightful Palmer book. This one makes use of his strengths (xenophilia, crazy creativity, action-movie violence) by placing the action on an enormously fecund alien jungle world. A group of human scientists and soldiers are http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10158.html Mon, 16 May 2016 00:00:00 GMT This is a triple book review for the Last Policeman trilogy. Usually I will read a book, wait a day or three, and then write a review. That process did not work for this series though, since I read one of these books a day for three http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10157.html Sun, 08 May 2016 00:00:00 GMT The story of an English woman living in Paris after WWI. She has an investment income that supports her and she supplements that by borrowing from rich friends, so she doesn't really need to work. She spends her time eating at http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10156.html Sun, 01 May 2016 00:00:00 GMT A set of 6 extremely oblique stories about the weird and the strange. The stories are all written nicely enough, but I thought they suffered from an excess of detachment. In general, the protagonist of the story either A) doesn't http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10155.html Sat, 30 Apr 2016 00:00:00 GMT Another Watts book. This one is about half-way between the near-genius of Blindsight and the sludge of his Rifters/Maelstrom series. On the plus side, many of the "space" parts of the story were well done. The approach to Icarus http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10154.html Wed, 20 Apr 2016 00:00:00 GMT A well written, slow burning ghost story. I liked the way the author captured the smell of the wind and the night, I liked the ghost-house on the marsh flats where sea, land, sky, and fog joined into one. I liked how the story http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10153.html Fri, 15 Apr 2016 00:00:00 GMT This was a re-read; apparently The Barrow is what I turn to when various plotless books have reduced my reading velocity to zero. The Barrow was better the second time around; I was prepared for the wat, and I could think more about http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10152.html Sun, 03 Apr 2016 00:00:00 GMT A slow paced and dreamlike story. It follows the elderly narrator on a walking tour of the modern English coast and its run-down towns and abandoned sites. He weaves together laconic dreams, dying towns, European imperial history and http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10151.html Wed, 30 Mar 2016 00:00:00 GMT A decent collection of short stories. There is a fair amount of body horror, some dream like sequences, and a little sci-fi. Some of the stories were repeats for me; there is one repeat from the odious MJ Harrison, and one repeat http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10150.html Tue, 15 Mar 2016 00:00:00 GMT Another enjoyable and fast paced action/pulp-sci-fi Palmer book. In this book the author returns, at least a little, to the timeline/universe of Version 43. This was a surprise to me, since I always thought of Palmer's world building http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10149.html Tue, 01 Mar 2016 00:00:00 GMT A wonderfully absurd space adventure story. If the book wasn't recommended to me, there would be no way in a thousand years that I would have opened this book up. The cover art is in 70's sci-fi pulp style, and the tagline is http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10148.html Tue, 16 Feb 2016 00:00:00 GMT A detective story written in 1920, about a two-fisted private detective who solves mysteries and kills every single criminal in a small town. I liked the book, though I wouldn't necessarily want to read many more like it. The http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10147.html Wed, 10 Feb 2016 00:00:00 GMT A collection of wonderful short stories that arrive from the past, the present, fairy tales, alternate time-lines, and who knows elsewhere. The stories share some of the same themes as KJ's excellent book _Etched City_, but also http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10146.html Sat, 06 Feb 2016 00:00:00 GMT A neatly written and quickly paced book about several thousand recently dead Norwegians coming back to life. The process seems to have happened through some sort of mystical mis-filing. The newly risen are alive but mostly inert, http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10145.html Fri, 29 Jan 2016 00:00:00 GMT If Viriconium was depressing, The Narrator was angrifying. Like Viriconium, the book starts off brilliantly. Everything about it is wonderfully off and new and different, like it was sent from a foreign country or a different http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10144.html Mon, 25 Jan 2016 00:00:00 GMT This is fantasy by way of Thomas Bernhard's Frost. The stories are masterfully written and terribly, terribly, demotivating. After finishing each 50 to 200 page story, I just wanted to lie down and take a nap, and gather strength http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10140.html Mon, 04 Jan 2016 00:00:00 GMT Yrugh. My least favorite Holt book; I dropped this one after ~70 pages. The main character's voice in this is even worse than in the previous novel. He tries to be a lovable rogue in a wacky world, but the humor is at about the http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10139.html Fri, 25 Dec 2015 00:00:00 GMT My second least favorite book by Holt. Unlike the Walled Garden, which I quite enjoyed, this historical Athenian novel did not work for me. There is a lot of dad-humor in it, and parts of it seemed written by Dave Barry, or perhaps http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10138.html Sun, 20 Dec 2015 00:00:00 GMT Uzumake is a series of Japanese comic books, or as they call them over there, "visual novels". There are ~20 issues in the series, where each issue covers one incident in the gradual infection and corruption of a village by a http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10137.html Tue, 15 Dec 2015 00:00:00 GMT A pleasant enough book, though I'm not sure I really understood it. The main lesson of the book seems to be that it sucked to live in the 1600's? Or that it 1.2f * sucked to be a woman back then? The story is a bit like Uprooted, http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10136.html Sun, 15 Nov 2015 00:00:00 GMT Nice, really nice. This is a wandering book of semi-fantasy, semi-actual literature, with a mix of adventure, crime, romance, and occasional warps in the fabric of reality. One of the two main characters is a doctor who's idealism http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10135.html Sun, 01 Nov 2015 00:00:00 GMT An odd, brutal, funny, and well crafted sci fi mystery of shifting perspectives. The book is recent, but in many ways it reminds me of classic 70's sci-fi. Like a lot of 70's sci-fi, it is less about science and more about the http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10133.html Tue, 13 Oct 2015 00:00:00 GMT First off, I like Vinge. He is a genuinely smart fellow, and while his characterization is often wooden, and his plot lines are occasionally flat, he has well thought out science fictional and programming related ideas that I usually http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10132.html Sat, 03 Oct 2015 00:00:00 GMT An enjoyable fantasy story about a kingdom (and an odd-couple wizard duo) fighting a malevolent, powerful, and infinitely patient forest spirit. The forest spirit is somewhere between the omniscient antagonist in _The Wise Man's http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10131.html Sat, 26 Sep 2015 00:00:00 GMT This was a re-read, as I wanted to sample this novel again before giving it as a gift. And wow, Consider Phlebas is still really, really good. Let me just start listing off superlatives: hugely inventive, great detail and http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10130.html Sun, 20 Sep 2015 00:00:00 GMT Editors Note: I read this entire book while on 4 hours sleep, and while stranded on a balcony. I do not claim that this review represents my normal, completely objective and impartial opinions. So! The Goblin http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10129.html Tue, 15 Sep 2015 00:00:00 GMT This is sci-fi. This is a big, 500 page block of sci fi. It is not bad? It is not original in its ideas at all, but the execution is pleasingly competent and generally enjoyable. It is a bit like an actiony 1970's sci-fi book, but http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10128.html Sun, 13 Sep 2015 00:00:00 GMT Authority is the delightful sequel to the wonderful Lovecraftian gem that is _Annihilation_. _Annihilation_ is a constant stream of action, revelation, and betrayal. From the very first the protagonist is struggling to survive in http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10127.html Sun, 06 Sep 2015 00:00:00 GMT A decently written but rather silly space opera. The basic (and neat) idea is that there is space emperor, who has used cloning and brain implant technology to create countless duplicates of herself. Each duplicate is linked via http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10126.html Fri, 04 Sep 2015 00:00:00 GMT Enough has been said about this book elsewhere that I'm not sure I need to elaborate on it too much. The first time I read this was about ~15 years ago, and I loved it at the time. And I still kind of love it? There are sentences http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10125.html Tue, 01 Sep 2015 00:00:00 GMT A series of brilliant but dry short stories. The stories tend to be abstract, self-referential, and experimental. They are what you would expect from a very smart South American who is skilled at writing and has an advanced CS http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10124.html Thu, 20 Aug 2015 00:00:00 GMT This was an inadvertent re-read, as I had purchased a copy for a friend and wanted to just refresh my memory of a few parts. Lol, we know how that turns out. I enjoyed the book on the second time around, though not nearly so much as http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10123.html Tue, 04 Aug 2015 00:00:00 GMT I picked this up since it seemed like it might be neat, and at the very least I could mine it for ideas to use in different games that I run/make. I ended up with the "least" scenario. The book is not particularly fun to read. It's http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10122.html Thu, 30 Jul 2015 00:00:00 GMT A wonderful, absurd, surreal, and darkly comic novel about a man condemned to die. It is like Nabokov took the last section of _The Stranger_, stretched the narrative out like taffy, and then subjected Meursault to a hundred http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10121.html Sat, 11 Jul 2015 00:00:00 GMT I started off my new Nabokov campaign by randomly choosing this, and Wowwwwwww. The Enchanter is like the Wasp Factory on crack. It is the hipster version of Lolita, for people who were into old men who were into young girls before http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10119.html Sat, 13 Jun 2015 00:00:00 GMT Another wonderful Le Carre book. It starts with a brutal and amazing in media res, and moves outward from there to explore the various ties of family, friendship, love, history, money, and betrayal in an international criminal http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10118.html Wed, 10 Jun 2015 00:00:00 GMT Lol. I am definitely giving a copy of this to two of my engaged friends. http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10117.html Sun, 07 Jun 2015 00:00:00 GMT A decent book, that loses a some of its enjoyment simply because times have changed and much of it is no longer that relevant. The story has two main parts that are woven together. The shorter and more enjoyable part is a http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10116.html Wed, 03 Jun 2015 00:00:00 GMT Another re-read, this time of the first Iain Banks book that I ever read. The Wasp Factory is still a snappy and hilarious little novel, and it is still a great and small and clear example of the qualities that I love so much in http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10115.html Wed, 27 May 2015 00:00:00 GMT As always, it is a bit of a shock coming back to Murdoch. Her style is so odd in some ways, moving between unprovoked bursts of metaphysics and high-flown desire to a cold blooded evaluation of psychological/social/sexual mechanics. http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10113.html Mon, 18 May 2015 00:00:00 GMT Ok, I read another one. In my defense, I had already checked it out from the library and left it in the bathroom. It was an improvement over the first one, in that there was an actual action scene. There was also the weird and http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10112.html Sun, 10 May 2015 00:00:00 GMT This book is a sort of low quality imitation of David Weber's already low quality Honor Harrington series. _Trading in Danger_ does at least make you appreciate all the things the Honorverse books did well. For all their flaws, the http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10111.html Wed, 06 May 2015 00:00:00 GMT A disappointing and tepid book. There are two basic elements to this book. One is a sort of slice-of-life story telling in 1950's - 1970's Russia, especially amongst the scientists, engineers, and managers. It's natural to compare http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10110.html Mon, 04 May 2015 00:00:00 GMT A surprisingly sweet Le Carre book, which is partially spoiled by a predictable and strident ending. This review is a bit spoilery, so if you are interested in reading the book I would perhaps stop... here. The story http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10109.html Fri, 24 Apr 2015 00:00:00 GMT This is a fairly standard Banks' sci-fi novel, which is another way of saying that it is wildly inventive, smart, enjoyable, and engrossing. Banks has a wonderful ability to create completely enchanting worlds, such that after http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10108.html Mon, 06 Apr 2015 00:00:00 GMT I came to this book with high hopes. The Blind Assassin won the Booker Prize, and when I think of Booker Prizes I think of Iris Murdoch's wonderful _The Sea, The Sea_. Unfortunately, Atwood is not quite an Iris, and I don't think http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10104.html Tue, 17 Mar 2015 00:00:00 GMT First off, despite the title this is not a zombie book. I know, it fooled me too. The book is instead a semi-humorous, semi-auto-biographical account of the writer's life, with most of the story taking place in England around the http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10103.html Thu, 12 Mar 2015 00:00:00 GMT A novel about a Manichean struggle that goes on in a 1960's British town. The novel follows the lives of several people in the town, especially their childhoods, and tracks them as they develop and intertwine. The tone of the novel http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10001.html Fri, 30 Jan 2015 00:00:00 GMT This series has been an ongoing read for the last couple of months, and one that I have very much enjoyed. Most of the episodes are the brain-children of Mike Mignola, who is that rare and wonderful triple-threat of http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/10000.html Thu, 01 Jan 2015 00:00:00 GMT An unusual Le Carre novel. The novel is not really a mystery, since the central conspiracy and murder are both revealed/strongly indicated early on in the novel. And it is not really a thriller either. Many of the "spy" aspects of http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/9999.html Thu, 01 Jan 2015 00:00:00 GMT A serviceable biography of Abraham Lincoln. I don't think it had a great amount of insight, its analysis of Lincoln's speeches and religion was often uninspiring, and it has a couple of places where it basically says "we don't have http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/9998.html Thu, 01 Jan 2015 00:00:00 GMT These were two short adventure stories written by Burroughs around 1915-1930. They are ok, for the time period, maybe? The stories read very quickly, and at times are plot to the exclusion of all else. On these occasions it reads http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/9997.html Thu, 01 Jan 2015 00:00:00 GMT A well written, Eastern themed urban fantasy novel that sort of wobbles out of control in the last third of the book. I did enjoy the first two thirds of the book though. The writing is fine, the eastern mythology is new to me in http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/9996.html Thu, 01 Jan 2015 00:00:00 GMT An enjoyable set of short stories from Glen Cook, one of my favorite childhood authors. I haven't read anything from Cook for a while, so it was good to see that he holds up. The stories have a variety of settings (modern day, near http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/9995.html Thu, 01 Jan 2015 00:00:00 GMT A well written, bloody, sci-fi action novel that is badly flawed by its wing-nut techno-libertarian world-building. It's kind of like _Atlas Shrugged_ crossed with a _A Deepness in the Sky_ crossed with a well-written Halo novel (Do http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/9994.html Thu, 01 Jan 2015 00:00:00 GMT A somewhat mawkish war novel set during the three day Battle of Gettysburg. The PoV characters are mostly Confederate or Union leaders (e.g. Longstreet, Lee, Chamberlin), and the author creates fictional inner lives and dialog for http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/9993.html Thu, 01 Jan 2015 00:00:00 GMT A perfectly absurd book. I read this 900 page tome while dreadfully sick, unable to move from bed or really do anything else. And that is the ideal way to read this book, and about the only way that I could recommend reading it. http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/9992.html Thu, 01 Jan 2015 00:00:00 GMT The title of this anthology is wildly inaccurate; the stories inside aren't so much urban fantasy as they are a collection of fantasy stories that happen in a city, or nearby a city, or off the coast of a city, or in the ruins of a http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/9991.html Thu, 01 Jan 2015 00:00:00 GMT A surprisingly enjoyable read. I was initially intrigued by the book when I opened it at random and read a scene between a corrupt and licentious Bertie Wooster and his zombie Jeeves as their attempt to subborn a pederast MP goes http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/9990.html Thu, 01 Jan 2015 00:00:00 GMT Several hundered musings by a Japanese noble from a millenia ago. The musings are a mixed bag, and in some ways it is like reading random excerpts from the bible. Some musings are useless nonsense, and talk about a minor point of http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/9989.html Thu, 01 Jan 2015 00:00:00 GMT A sci-fi adventure story that a so-called "friend" recommended to me. It reads like a semi-passable Star Wars fan fiction. The world building was profoundly uninventive (Blasters, force powers/jedi, Millenium Falcon stand in), the http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/9988.html Thu, 01 Jan 2015 00:00:00 GMT A somewhat sub-par Scalzi novel that focuses on tech and robots that directly interface with the brain. The book is set in the near future, but the basic plotline/tech conceit is recycled from his _Old Man's War_ series. If you've http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/9987.html Thu, 01 Jan 2015 00:00:00 GMT A perfectly decent urban fantasy detective story. This was one of the earlier entries into the genre, and distinguishes itself by A) never going too dark, unlike a lot of entries in the genre and B) having the protagonist be a wind http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/9986.html Thu, 01 Jan 2015 00:00:00 GMT An enjoyable short story. I've never been able to read a Landry novel before, simply because I find the main character and his "humor" to be terribly repellant. This time though, I employed the Thomas Covenant solution (skip any http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/9985.html Thu, 01 Jan 2015 00:00:00 GMT An interesting and enjoyable modern thriller that walks on the edge between science and magic. The conceit of the book is that certain word patterns can short circuit decision making and force someone to obey a command. This http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/9984.html Thu, 01 Jan 2015 00:00:00 GMT This was an informative and humorous book that mixes personal anecdote, company politics, and a broad overview of the financial markets in the 70's and 80's. The story follows the author through his recruitment, training, and http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/9983.html Thu, 01 Jan 2015 00:00:00 GMT A very odd book. It contains dozens of 2 and 4 page stories, and then one 50 page whale of a story. Over and over, I would read the first third of a story, and think "Why am I reading this? It makes no sense, is not enjoyable, tells http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/9982.html Thu, 01 Jan 2015 00:00:00 GMT This story combines gothic soap opera with some uninspiring meta-literary ideas. Like N-thousand books before it, Shadow of the Wind focuses on writing, books, and the love of reading. Many of the characters are book sellers, http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/9981.html Thu, 01 Jan 2015 00:00:00 GMT A decent generalist history of the Comanches and, well, their rise and fall. The book presents a meandering mix of historical developments and personal stories from the frontier. The history part is fairly straight forward and http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/9980.html Thu, 01 Jan 2015 00:00:00 GMT Apparently there is this new term, "basic", e.g. How to tell if you are a basic b**** This was pretty much the most basic possible fantasy novel. One of way of putting it is that Talion is the inverse of the Name of the http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/9979.html Thu, 01 Jan 2015 00:00:00 GMT Yurghhh. I'm not sure if it is the author or just my own baggage, but this book did nothing for me. The basic story is a sort of Unknown Armies type situation set in Las Vegas, with a sort of sub-par No Country For Old Men type http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/9978.html Thu, 01 Jan 2015 00:00:00 GMT An enjoyable set of fantasy short stories. These were written by Poland's most famous fantasy author, and provided the setting for the Witcher series of video games. The stories aren't bad at all; as my friend said they are like http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/9977.html Thu, 01 Jan 2015 00:00:00 GMT A jumbo sized graphical novel which tells a variety of myths and stories about a proto-bronze age earth. The stories are warm hearted, creative, and quietly funny, sort of like ScaryGoRound crossed with the Greek and Inuit and Old http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/9976.html Thu, 01 Jan 2015 00:00:00 GMT This is the sequel to Fortune's Pawn, a book I quite liked. This one didn't turn out so well though. The storyline is darker, and lots of the fun characters from the first book are turned into assholes. The story also tries to http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/9975.html Thu, 01 Jan 2015 00:00:00 GMT Based off the title, and the cover art of a cloaked figure with a ball of magic power in one hand and a blinged-out trident in the other, I can tell that this will be fine literature. This is an evolved form of the http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/9974.html Thu, 01 Jan 2015 00:00:00 GMT This book was similar to Annihilation, in that much of it is about people exploring an alien and hostile environment. In this case the environment was the scene of a brief alien visit (the Roadside Picnic of the title), where the http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/9973.html Thu, 01 Jan 2015 00:00:00 GMT An account of the 12th expedition into Area X, a chunk of Florida that has been warped by the presence of some non-Euclidean entity. The previous 11 expeditions have ended in collective murder/suicide or worse(?), so you can http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/9972.html Thu, 01 Jan 2015 00:00:00 GMT "For ten years we have been engaged in negotiations, and yet the enemy's intentions remain inscrutable." - Hoang Dieu (1829-1882) A letter from the commander of the citadel of Hanoi to the emperor just before the citadel's http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/9971.html Thu, 01 Jan 2015 00:00:00 GMT Another Greg Bear book, this one not so good. Kind of terrible really. I slogged away at this for a week only to find that I was on page 120, and still had another 180 pages to go. I then resorted to flipping to chapters further on, http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/9970.html Thu, 01 Jan 2015 00:00:00 GMT A well done but somewhat uncompelling sci fi story about the creation and outbreak of an intelligent "plague". It had a fair number of similarities to Watt's _Maelstrom_, but I liked this version better since the characters, http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/9969.html Thu, 01 Jan 2015 00:00:00 GMT Another very romantic Lois McMaster Bujold book. The hero of this book is the senile, depressive, shut-in aunt character from the previous book, which along with the title had me completely unexcited about starting this novel. http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/9968.html Thu, 01 Jan 2015 00:00:00 GMT The story of a young Christian girl who endures various trials and tribulations at tertiary school, before finally being pushed too far and shooting half the people in her class. The writing is very simple and spare, http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/9967.html Thu, 01 Jan 2015 00:00:00 GMT I finished the book last night, and, um, wow. The markings in this book mostly consist of three runes. The first rune, the Rune of Fantasy-Adventure, is the most successful. The main storyline is interesting, http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/9966.html Thu, 01 Jan 2015 00:00:00 GMT A beautiful and lush book that has some of the best descriptive scenes I have ever read. I'm usually not a person who gets off on lengthy descriptions of scenery, material goods, clothes, poetry, flora, mud, ghosts, towers, falling http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/9965.html Thu, 01 Jan 2015 00:00:00 GMT I normally don't review interactive fiction, but when I do it is genuinely creative and interesting. This story is by Christina Love, who also wrote the excellent _don't take it personally, babe, it just ain't your story_. Hate Story http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/9964.html Thu, 01 Jan 2015 00:00:00 GMT A fast moving and enjoyable urban-slum-fantasy-detective story set in a South Africa. The conceit here is that particularly heinous acts (e.g. most murders) result in A) a sort of karmic blackness that will quickly devour a person, http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/9963.html Thu, 01 Jan 2015 00:00:00 GMT A very young adult book. The book describes what Conquest of Elysium players know as a Conjunction with the Plane of the Dead, where the spirits of the departed come back to haunt the places where they died. The proper response is http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/9962.html Thu, 01 Jan 2015 00:00:00 GMT Kind of an odd Le Carre book. The first half of the book is great, and has a weird similarity to one of my favorite Iris Murdoch novels, The Black Prince. There is a dried up, risk-averse and retired Treasury agent (ok, in this http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/9961.html Thu, 01 Jan 2015 00:00:00 GMT A generally enjoyable beer and pretzels fantasy adventure story. The main idea is that there is a Thieves Guild, and a clever & roguish thief, and nobles and merchants, and some plots and cons and sword fighting and magic. At http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/9960.html Thu, 01 Jan 2015 00:00:00 GMT A collection of Japanese "ghost" stories. The stories were written in the modern age, but are set back in the 1700's-1800's amongst a collection of laborers, craftspeople, and house hold servants. The stories are OK? They tend to http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/9959.html Thu, 01 Jan 2015 00:00:00 GMT A really delightful and fast paced space-adventure-romance story. A friend described it as urban fantasy set in space, and that is spot on. You definitely see the sorts of tropes and story beats and fast paced writing style that http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/9958.html Thu, 01 Jan 2015 00:00:00 GMT "M de La Tour d'Azyr's concern for Aline on that morning of the duel when he had found her half-swooning in Mme de Plougastel's carriage had been of a circumspection that betrayed nothing of his real interest in her, and therefore http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/9957.html Thu, 01 Jan 2015 00:00:00 GMT A *very* short and fast adventure story (short story?) with a few twists. The quest is given and accepted by page 5, and the combat encounters are done by page 60. The setting is a little Lovecraftian, a little real-politik, and http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/9956.html Thu, 01 Jan 2015 00:00:00 GMT A short, fast, mildly humorous read about a necromancer in mid-century England trying to get his soul back from the Devil. A fair number of the jokes and asides fall flat, especially at the start, but towards the middle and end of http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/9955.html Thu, 01 Jan 2015 00:00:00 GMT The quoted reviews for this book are actually dead on, so I'm not sure that I have too much else to add. "Stephen King meets Ibsen." Yep, it is a ghost/exorcism story that is well written and deeply tied into family. "I read is all http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/9954.html Thu, 01 Jan 2015 00:00:00 GMT This a joint review for both Galveston and Night Watch. http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/9953.html Thu, 01 Jan 2015 00:00:00 GMT http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/9952.html Thu, 01 Jan 2015 00:00:00 GMT A collection of Japanese myths, supernatural stories, haiku's, and musings that was compiled around the year 1900. The myths are short and occasionally interesting, though I think I liked the butterfly haiku's better. The author was http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/9951.html Thu, 01 Jan 2015 00:00:00 GMT A sci-fi novel that has been compared by some to Ian Bank's Culture novels. And yes, Ancillary Justice does have an inventiveness in far-future cultures and couture and language and religion and planet formations and such. And yes, http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/9950.html Thu, 01 Jan 2015 00:00:00 GMT A collection of enjoyable and weird sci-fi short stories. The stories are from the distant past (1950's and 1960's?), and are set in the far, far future. The stories are not sci-fi in the sense that they have lots of science, http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/9949.html Thu, 01 Jan 2015 00:00:00 GMT A series of alternate-history-detective stories which follow an aristocratic investigator and his mage assistant around as they solve high crimes. While the stories aren't bad per se, they really aren't that good either. They also http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/9948.html Thu, 01 Jan 2015 00:00:00 GMT A collection of short stories set in the Smiley universe. In this case we are following one Ned through a series of recollections of his life in the service. Many of the short stories check in with characters from previous books, http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/9947.html Thu, 01 Jan 2015 00:00:00 GMT This isn't a great book, or a hugely intelligent or clever book, but it is at least wrong in interesting and provocative/demonstrative ways. The setting is the world in 2040, where technology promises/threatens the creation of http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/9946.html Thu, 01 Jan 2015 00:00:00 GMT A collection of enjoyable meta-fictional short stories. Generally the stories involve characters who are playing a role in someone else's story, or who have some sort of dual role where they are both themselves and participating in http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/9945.html Thu, 01 Jan 2015 00:00:00 GMT A high quality modern fantasy story. The book is set in the 1970's of an alternate timeline, where magic has started to filter back into the world. And unlike every other instance of this conceit, the Resurrection Man actually does http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/9944.html Thu, 01 Jan 2015 00:00:00 GMT A rather odd little sci-fi novel. In some ways it is constantly imaginative, as it describes the various ways that mechanical life has adapted to the different niches of the universe. You never meet just a "person", instead they http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/9943.html Thu, 01 Jan 2015 00:00:00 GMT A very sweet book. It's a bit like Game of Thrones, if the Gods were just and cared about people, and goodness and faithfulness were rewarded, and true love came to deserving young nobles. Ok, so not very much like Game of Thrones. http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/9942.html Thu, 01 Jan 2015 00:00:00 GMT An enjoyable book, but one that is still very much a product of its times and doesn't have that much useful to say 50 years later on. Kind of a disco fever type of thing. The story starts with a brutish man stranded in space by an http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/9941.html Thu, 01 Jan 2015 00:00:00 GMT A series of short adventure stories set in a nominally sci-fi universe. The stories read a bit like episodes from the original Star Trek, where a brave and clever band of starship captains, ambassadors, and scientists deal with new http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/9940.html Thu, 01 Jan 2015 00:00:00 GMT This was an interesting book. The basic ingredients are comedy and melodrama, sort of like an 18th century Joss Whedon work. The comedy has aged well, and the comedic passages are enjoyable and move the plot along in an agreeable http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/9939.html Thu, 01 Jan 2015 00:00:00 GMT A delightful book. I went into this expecting it to be difficult, hard core literature that puts hair on your chest, but no, it hums along. I think the only thing that could have made this better is if towards the end, when the http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/9938.html Thu, 01 Jan 2015 00:00:00 GMT Another wonderful Le Carre novel. This time the main theme is how being a sort of psychologically fluid and ungrounded con-man is an ideal preparation for being a spy. In this sense it is reminiscent of the Tailor of Panama, though http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/9937.html Thu, 01 Jan 2015 00:00:00 GMT http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/9936.html Thu, 01 Jan 2015 00:00:00 GMT Kind of terrible; the final battle and its re-curring weapon hand offs reads like a parody of itself. Hmm, what else. The main plot beats are obvious from the start even to an oblivious person like me, the protagonist is actively http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/9935.html Thu, 01 Jan 2015 00:00:00 GMT A decent book that unfortunately collides with many of my hang-ups. I'm not much of a foodie, and this book spends endless words describing all the delicacies that people eat. As far as I can tell, no one ever eats any fiber in http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/9934.html Thu, 01 Jan 2015 00:00:00 GMT A decent enough book, but its subject matter is almost exactly covered by a Computer Science/Electrical Engineering degree. The interesting bits were in the ancient history; a monk who discovered binary encoding in the 1500's, a http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/9933.html Thu, 01 Jan 2015 00:00:00 GMT http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/9932.html Thu, 01 Jan 2015 00:00:00 GMT http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/9931.html Thu, 01 Jan 2015 00:00:00 GMT In this story one of the members of a group dies, thus freeing up her long time partner. The majority of the book is the maneuvering that the characters do to take advantage of this free relationship slot, and see it filled according http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/9930.html Thu, 01 Jan 2015 00:00:00 GMT http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/9929.html Thu, 01 Jan 2015 00:00:00 GMT http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/9928.html Thu, 01 Jan 2015 00:00:00 GMT http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/9927.html Thu, 01 Jan 2015 00:00:00 GMT An enjoyable and well written book, though quite definitely meant for the young adult set. http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/9926.html Thu, 01 Jan 2015 00:00:00 GMT An inventive and mostly enjoyable russian themed fantasy/spy novel. One of the reviewers compared it to Le Carre's work, which is just mind boggling wrong. LeCarre is all about deep psychological study, while in this the characters http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/9925.html Thu, 01 Jan 2015 00:00:00 GMT A delightfully bleak book. At any point during the story you can ask yourself "Are things going to get worse?" and the answer will be "Yes!" http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/9924.html Thu, 01 Jan 2015 00:00:00 GMT Another one of LeCarre's classic spy novels. The hero is Smiley, a wonderfully understated British spy. His approach to concealing his intentions and not giving info away is to always be completely gray and benignly bland. He goes http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/9923.html Thu, 01 Jan 2015 00:00:00 GMT http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/9922.html Thu, 01 Jan 2015 00:00:00 GMT Another bleak LeCarre novel. This book represents something of a transition from his early works. In those books the Western spies might use truly terrible means in a sort of Special Circumstances way, but they were at least fighting http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/9921.html Thu, 01 Jan 2015 00:00:00 GMT I asked my friend for trashy fantasy books, and he gave me this. He was right on the money. This is basically the novelization of a D&D campaign, something like Keep on the Borderlands, and it works for about the first 300 http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/9920.html Thu, 01 Jan 2015 00:00:00 GMT An adventure book about hunting vampires in the 1980's. Has weird gender and religious politics, and a hilarious eroge interlude in the middle of the book, but the action sequences are of an enjoyable quality. http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/9919.html Thu, 01 Jan 2015 00:00:00 GMT http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/9918.html Thu, 01 Jan 2015 00:00:00 GMT A delightful book. At its best it takes the gritty-sword-and-shield action of Glen Cook and combines it with something approaching the fecund and inventive world building of Ian Banks. I'm not sure that the plot quite holds http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/9917.html Thu, 01 Jan 2015 00:00:00 GMT Short stories about the government agency that fights Kaiju (Godzilla type monsters) which periodically invade Japan. The stories are written like Saturday morning cartoons, using light and broad strokes. The stories are generally http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/9916.html Thu, 01 Jan 2015 00:00:00 GMT I know I am giving up all of my GoodReads cred by saying this, but I liked this book a lot. To repeat my review of _BaneWreaker_, this is a well done Sauron apologetic which re-arranges the original story in interesting ways while http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/9915.html Thu, 01 Jan 2015 00:00:00 GMT This is by far the best Sauron apologetic that I have read. While there is not an exact mapping, the characters and events in the book are clearly modeled after the The Hobbit and The LoTR, with just a bit of Covenant and other http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/9914.html Thu, 01 Jan 2015 00:00:00 GMT A perfectly enjoyable and fast-reading space opera. One third of the book goes to space battles, one third to politics/world building, and one third to surprisingly non-terrible romances. The world building and sci-fi elements are http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/9913.html Thu, 01 Jan 2015 00:00:00 GMT A perfectly enjoyable and fast-reading space opera. One third of the book goes to space battles, one third to politics/world building, and one third to surprisingly non-terrible romances. The world building and sci-fi elements are http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/9912.html Thu, 01 Jan 2015 00:00:00 GMT An extremely engaging, informative, and detailed history of the Civil War. I read the first 200 pages straight through, which is usually something that happens with trashy fantasy novels, not histories of the US politics of http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/9911.html Thu, 01 Jan 2015 00:00:00 GMT Terrible. God-awful. Racist. Cliched, like literally adventurers-meet-in-a-tavern cliched. Fellates SCA people like Cory Doctrow does IT people. These are a few of the things I thought while reading the first part of this book. http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/9910.html Thu, 01 Jan 2015 00:00:00 GMT http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/9909.html Thu, 01 Jan 2015 00:00:00 GMT http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/9908.html Thu, 01 Jan 2015 00:00:00 GMT In many ways, this is the same book as _In the First Circle_. In both books, plot is mostly tossed out in favor of dozens of slices of life from various people in a collective. It's difficult to identify a common tone of these http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/9907.html Thu, 01 Jan 2015 00:00:00 GMT A depressing book, but high quality and occasionally quite moving. The First Circle refers to a system of gulags for the engineers who are too useful to be sent to hard-labor camps. Those in the First Circle of hell enjoy a measure http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/9906.html Thu, 01 Jan 2015 00:00:00 GMT Well, this novel certainly was surprising. Like _Downbelow Station_, the previous book I read by CJ Cherryh, this one starts with a vulnerable young man being sexually tortured by a 100+ year old harridan with immense http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/9905.html Thu, 01 Jan 2015 00:00:00 GMT After the cliff-hanger ending to Starfish, I was really excited about starting Maelstrom. That excitement steadily drained away over the course of this dreary book, until by the end I had precisely zero interest in the series.Why is http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/9904.html Thu, 01 Jan 2015 00:00:00 GMT http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/9903.html Thu, 01 Jan 2015 00:00:00 GMT A middling Culture novel, which is to say a great sci-fi novel. You have many of the standard Culture tropes, however the quality and inventiveness of the details is such that even a partial re-tread is still a delight to read. The http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/9902.html Thu, 01 Jan 2015 00:00:00 GMT A nice, filling portion of Banks. Not his greatest book, but Inversions is still a solid Culture book which is a very good thing indeed. Although perhaps "solid" isn't the best way to describe a book about deceptions and reversals. http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/9901.html Thu, 01 Jan 2015 00:00:00 GMT A decent summary of a mostly uninteresting war. I've never read much about the Mexican-American war, and I picked up this book to fill that gap. Every battle in the war follows the same basic pattern:1) An advancing American army http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/9900.html Thu, 01 Jan 2015 00:00:00 GMT This is a deeply flawed story. On the one hand, it describes a completely alien universe. The narrator is a shape shifter with multiple eye/brain nodes that can extrude appendages at will and reproduce in a fashion similar to http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/9899.html Thu, 01 Jan 2015 00:00:00 GMT http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/9898.html Thu, 01 Jan 2015 00:00:00 GMT A very enjoyable and somewhat bleak near future sci-fi story. Peter Watts definitely has a style, and if you've read Blindsight then you will know what to expect here. The standard elements include extreme and inhuman environments, http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/9897.html Thu, 01 Jan 2015 00:00:00 GMT I checked this out in hopes of solidifying my knowledge of the period, which has always been somewhat mushy. The book is a good overview; it's readable, factual, and avoids numbing military detail. I'm still not sure I'll remember http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/9896.html Thu, 01 Jan 2015 00:00:00 GMT As this is from Murdoch, the book gets five stars. The next question is, how does it compare to her other works? Unfortunately, not very well. I don't usually say this, but the book would be much improved if it was twice as long. http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/9895.html Thu, 01 Jan 2015 00:00:00 GMT A somewhat ok overview of WWI. Based on other readings on the subject (Guns of August, Castles of Steel), I'm not sure that the author gets all of his facts/analysis right. For instance, when talking about a given battle or http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/9894.html Thu, 01 Jan 2015 00:00:00 GMT This was a somewhat depressing and somewhat infuriating book. One measure of its effect is that after reading it, I nearly commented on a political thread on Facebook before regaining my senses. _Fiasco_ details the errors made in http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/9893.html Thu, 01 Jan 2015 00:00:00 GMT I tried to get Massie's other WWI book, Dreadnaught, but sadly all the library had was _Castles_. Dreadnaught is about the pre-war naval design and procurement process (exciting!), while _Castles_ is about the actual fighting of the http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/9892.html Thu, 01 Jan 2015 00:00:00 GMT (I originally wrote this as a reply to a metafilter thread which was bashing on Rofuss, but decided against posting it. But I couldn't just delete it entirely, could I? So I am including my response here, since it touches on some of http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/9891.html Thu, 01 Jan 2015 00:00:00 GMT http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/9890.html Thu, 01 Jan 2015 00:00:00 GMT After reading the very enjoyable and informative _Collapse_, this was a disappointment. First, it is not about the way enterprising European's spread enlightenment using the above mentioned tools. Rather, the book is about how the http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/9889.html Thu, 01 Jan 2015 00:00:00 GMT A series of early and beautiful short stories set in the Culture universe. "A Gift from the Culture" would have been enough to sell me on Banks even if he had never written anything else. I also particularly liked the titular http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/9888.html Thu, 01 Jan 2015 00:00:00 GMT Look to Windward is a strong entry in the Culture series. It is delightful, emotional, intelligent, witty, and wildly inventive, with nice tie ins to past events and the far future. Plus it has sentient cats, in their little cat http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/9887.html Thu, 01 Jan 2015 00:00:00 GMT This book has the interesting property of becoming twice as awesome each time you finish another 50% of the story. The first 140 pages? Meh. There is mostly just this nervous tension as Albinus wrecks his life and marriage, a bit http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/9886.html Thu, 01 Jan 2015 00:00:00 GMT A surprisingly light and upbeat Banks work. If you were reading _The Business_ with no prior knowledge of Banks, you would think it was a curiously inconsequential business-mystery-thriller. No one gets badly hurt, no one dies of http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/9885.html Thu, 01 Jan 2015 00:00:00 GMT Around page 200, I finally had to face the inevitable. This book was bad. Like, really, truly terribad. I want to love all of Iain Banks' work and shower him with 4 and 5 star reviews, but there is no way to justify it with _A http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/9884.html Thu, 01 Jan 2015 00:00:00 GMT http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/9883.html Thu, 01 Jan 2015 00:00:00 GMT http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/9882.html Thu, 01 Jan 2015 00:00:00 GMT http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/9881.html Thu, 01 Jan 2015 00:00:00 GMT http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/9880.html Thu, 01 Jan 2015 00:00:00 GMT http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/9879.html Thu, 01 Jan 2015 00:00:00 GMT http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/9878.html Thu, 01 Jan 2015 00:00:00 GMT A decent space-opera-romance. The plotting was fine, the writing was of upper-middle quality. I could never quite get into it though. The male lead is kind of a douche and belongs to a douche society, and I never wanted really http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/9877.html Thu, 01 Jan 2015 00:00:00 GMT I'm not exactly sure how to rate this. If a good book has an absolutely terrible ending, how many stars is that? The ending is truly, awfully, horrible. I stopped in disgust with just ~30 pages to go, which I think is a first for http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/9876.html Thu, 01 Jan 2015 00:00:00 GMT Kind of second rate Honor Harrington stuff. On the plus side, it is quick reading, and never really offensive or anger-making. http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/9875.html Thu, 01 Jan 2015 00:00:00 GMT An enjoyable, quick reading sci-fi story, like something Peter Watts might write on ecstasy. The story starts on Ganymede in the years after a nanotech accident(?) caused rainbow-goo to consume the inner solar system. We follow the http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/9874.html Thu, 01 Jan 2015 00:00:00 GMT Mostly delightful. The exploration of the world and its magic system was a continual draw, and was generally more compelling than the plot/characters. The magic system is original as far as I know, and if a studio somewhere is not http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/9873.html Thu, 01 Jan 2015 00:00:00 GMT I simply could not get into this book. The protagonist works at developing video games and this subject matter forms a fair bit of the start of the book. I have at least a tangential knowledge of video game development, and http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/9872.html Thu, 01 Jan 2015 00:00:00 GMT http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/9871.html Thu, 01 Jan 2015 00:00:00 GMT Reading this made me think of a relatively new insult in online gaming, calling someone a "tryhard". The author needs to learn to slow down. Don't whip out the heavy handed symbolism at the very start. Warm the audience up, http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/9870.html Thu, 01 Jan 2015 00:00:00 GMT A delightful book. The first chapter is a bit overblown and had me worried, but after that it settles down into a series of beautiful vignettes from the GWOT. There is a very direct and unmediated feel to the stories. Physical http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/9869.html Thu, 01 Jan 2015 00:00:00 GMT While not bad, The Year of the Flood was not up to the level of _Oryx and Crake_, and was at its worst where it intersected with the original book. Atwood should stick to her policy of avoiding sequels. First, the good. Atwood's http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/9868.html Thu, 01 Jan 2015 00:00:00 GMT This is a simply excellent piece of work. One measure of its success is that after reading 700 pages of non-fiction, I was sad that the book was over and wished that it could continue on to cover more of history. The time period is http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/9867.html Thu, 01 Jan 2015 00:00:00 GMT While slightly space opera-ish, this book mainly looks at the people who are usually on the sidelines of such stories. The novel focuses on the politics and life experiences of refugees, workers, administrators, and merchants caught http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/9866.html Thu, 01 Jan 2015 00:00:00 GMT At the end of this book, I was reminded of the end of _Burn After Reading_. "What have we learned Palmer?""I don't know sir""I don't fucking know either""I guess we learned not to do it again"I'm not sure if it was the fault of the book http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/9865.html Thu, 01 Jan 2015 00:00:00 GMT http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/9864.html Thu, 01 Jan 2015 00:00:00 GMT http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/9863.html Thu, 01 Jan 2015 00:00:00 GMT This book has major flaws. The first and unforgivable flaw is that from page 100 on, every POV character is being mind controlled by vampires. (Spoiler!) It is like this endless un-skippable cut scene, where none of the characters http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/9862.html Thu, 01 Jan 2015 00:00:00 GMT http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/9861.html Thu, 01 Jan 2015 00:00:00 GMT Kind of bad. In general it reads like a talented undergrad's paper, or maybe an autistic grad student's. The book suffers from a lack of context; often it will just start listing out facts and anecdotes without explaining how they http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/9860.html Thu, 01 Jan 2015 00:00:00 GMT Somewhat interesting, but not very helpful. The book covers Afghan history, as well as the more recent and ongoing debacles in that country. Generally, the book regards the US/British as bad and the Afghan tribal councils as good. http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/9859.html Thu, 01 Jan 2015 00:00:00 GMT Finally, an Ender's Game for the fairer sex. In it a YA is forced, through no fault of her own, to be dressed up in beautiful costumes, debate which of two hawt boyfriends to choose, eat as much delicious food as she can stand, http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/9858.html Thu, 01 Jan 2015 00:00:00 GMT http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/9857.html Thu, 01 Jan 2015 00:00:00 GMT A pleasant, light, and well-written, book. While the story does have alien races and exotic planets, it is not really sci-fi and does not contain new ideas. Indeed, it is firmly rooted in the 60's-70's mindset that produced the http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/9856.html Thu, 01 Jan 2015 00:00:00 GMT http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/9855.html Thu, 01 Jan 2015 00:00:00 GMT http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/9854.html Thu, 01 Jan 2015 00:00:00 GMT A series of Lovecraftian short stories, and I mean that in the best possible sense of the word. Contains tales of chasing down a forbidden and destroying knowledge through books, tombs, and minds. Edit from 5-10-2018 If http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/9853.html Thu, 01 Jan 2015 00:00:00 GMT Peter Watts, why couldn't you have written a more cheerful book? Did your parent's remove the happiness centers of your brain to make room for the writing modules? This story takes a group of post-humans, their vampire captain, and http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/9852.html Thu, 01 Jan 2015 00:00:00 GMT As with most Stross books, the premise is absolutely delightful but the execution doesn't quite keep up. I know I said no more sex-bots in my sci-fi, but I've been meaning to read this ever since listening to Robyn's FemBot, so I http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/9851.html Thu, 01 Jan 2015 00:00:00 GMT This book is why the aliens from Blindsight will beat us. http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/9850.html Thu, 01 Jan 2015 00:00:00 GMT An interesting book which is a bit too much like a movie. The writing is not problematic, and does a reasonable job of capturing the sort of gothic-Victorian tone that Dracula and similar books use. There are plenty of nested http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/9849.html Thu, 01 Jan 2015 00:00:00 GMT A surprisingly enjoyable read. The story is set in a future where humanity has been knocked down by a combination of global warming, bio-engineering gone amok, and the collapse of the petroleum economy. In particular, it is set in http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/9848.html Thu, 01 Jan 2015 00:00:00 GMT http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/9847.html Thu, 01 Jan 2015 00:00:00 GMT A fairly solid fantasy adventure book. This isn't really at the same level as Game of Thrones or Name of the Wind, but it is not actively bad, and was enjoyable to read. The author apparently writes movie scripts too, and the book http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/9846.html Thu, 01 Jan 2015 00:00:00 GMT This book was a complete disappointment. It doesn't have an index, the chapter headings are entirely obscure, and I can never find the stat blocs when I try to use this during play. The basic problem is that they devoted far too http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/9845.html Thu, 01 Jan 2015 00:00:00 GMT A thoroughly delightful book. _The Player of Games_ is intelligently written, fast paced, and very playful. The book takes Gurgeh, master game player, from his peaceful, utopian home in the Culture to the primitive Empire of Azad. http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/9844.html Thu, 01 Jan 2015 00:00:00 GMT A long winded and deeply stupid book about a vampire who spends 500 years searching for the absolute perfect caretaker for his library. The ending is ironic though, since just as he is winnowing down the candidate pool everything is http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/9843.html Thu, 01 Jan 2015 00:00:00 GMT *Massive Spoilers*The Ruins is a story of conflict between Man and Nature. In this case Man is represented by 5 sheltered and somewhat ditzy college kids, while Nature is championed by a malevolent, mile-wide, super-intelligent, http://rothda.neocities.org/SingleServePages/9842.html Thu, 01 Jan 2015 00:00:00 GMT