★★★☆☆ Weird and obscure

Exodus from the Long Sun

Gene Wolfe

I read this ten years ago. I remember the series, but not so much this one book. The Book of the Long Sun is OK Science Fiction, but not as good as The Book of the New Sun. Wolfe's trademark obscureness is elevated to such an extent that I never quite figured out what was going on.

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★★★★☆ To dream with a little help from my friends

The Lathe of Heaven Ursula K Le Guin ** spoiler alert ** In 1975 Ursula K. Le Guin won both the Hugo and the Nebula for best novel for The Dispossessed . This was by no means the first time the same book had won both the Hugo and the Nebula. However, Le Guin had accomplished the same feat once before, in 1970 with The Left Hand of Darkness . As far as I knew at the time, she was the only author to have done this twice. ( Arthur C. Clarke also did it, but later.) Therefore I read The Left Hand of Darkness and The Dispossessed , and subsequently everything by Le Guin I could get my hands on. Thus I came to read The Lathe of Heaven . It is, I believe the first novel she wrote. It was not the first novel she published -- presumably the success of Left Hand of Darkness relieved the reluctance of some publishers. Le Guin was the apogee of a movement. At the time I read Lathe of Heaven ...

★★★★★ El is not a gun

The Golden Enclaves Naomi Novik What we learned from Book 1, A Deadly Education : El (that would be our heroine and first-person narrator) is not capable of sacrificing others to save herself. In Book 2, The Last Graduate , we learned that El is a thermonuclear warhead -- a destructive force so powerful as to be entirely incomparable to other magic-users. We also know that El's own great-grandmother, the Speaker of Mumbai, made a prophecy about El, "She will bring death and destruction to all the enclaves in the world". (The enclaves are polities in which the world's most powerful wizards live together.) In 1999, Brad Bird made an excellent animated film, The Iron Giant , about a sentient robot weapon. The Iron Giant says of himself "I am not a gun". This is the problem El faces -- how not to be a gun... She writes that she is her "own personal trolley problem to solve". If you have read A Deadly Education and The Last Graduate , you will not...

★☆☆☆☆ Petty Evil 101: Corporate edition

Power Jeffrey Pfeffer I read this eleven years ago (21-Sep-2011). At the time, I wrote this brief note to myself: Based on the first chapter or two, a singularly repulsive little book. It's basically "Petty Evil 101: Corporate edition". Amazon review Goodreads review

★★★★☆ Something new!

Floating Hotel Grace Curtis You know those science fiction novels in which there are four point-of-view characters, and each character gets point of view for a chapter, then we move on to the next? (I think Gibson 's Cyberspace trilogy was the first time I really noticed it.) You know how you never know quite what's going on, and it's all very confusing? Well, in Floating Hotel Grace Curtis takes it to the max, and SOMEHOW, she makes it work! Floating Hotel takes place on the Abeona, a hotel that is also a spaceship, so it floats through space. Don't expect a lot of technobabble -- the Abeona is determinedly retro-chic. For instance, the Abeona's messaging system is paper messages sent through pneumatic tubes. There are of course a whole bunch of people on the Abeona -- staff and guests. Each chapter is told from the point of view of one of these characters, a different one each time. There is just one character who gets two chapters, and by th...

★★★★☆ Making heroes of Rednecks and Hillbillies

Demon Copperhead Barbara Kingsolver You already know that Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver is a retelling of David Copperfield by Charles Dickens . Indeed, it is so faithful a retelling that, if the publisher had not already spilled the beans, I would feel compelled to mark this review a spoiler because of mentioning David Copperfield . If you have read David Copperfield at all recently, then you will recognize the characters and the major plot points as you read Demon Copperhead . (I last read David Copperfield when I was a kid in the late 1960s, so I was blessedly free from this detailed anticipation as I read Demon Copperhead . I did, however, check out the Wikipedia plot summary of David Copperfield on finishing Demon Copperhead , so I'm up to speed on both plot outlines.) And this, I say, is absolutely fine! If you're going to steal, by all means, steal from the best! I am co...

★★★☆☆ Good fairy stories, dreary ruin stories, and a John Hughes movie

Patreon Year 3 Seanan McGuire I will begin by clarifying what I am reviewing here. Seanan McGuire has a Patreon Creator page. Patreon is a website where artists can share their work with subscribers. Subscribers pay a certain amount (usually monthly, but that varies from artist to artist), and in return get access to things ("rewards" in Patreon-speak) that the artist posts on Patreon. "Things" can mean images, videos, or (most relevantly in this case) eBooks. Typically there are multiple reward tiers -- the more you pay, the more you get. McGuire set up her Patreon page in June 2016 and has posted a story every month since then, which makes 63 now (August 2021, when I am writing this), plus a few one-time extras. These "stories" can be pretty substantial literary works. For instance, the reward for July 2021 was a short novel. The way Patreon works, if you subscribe to a tier, you typically get access to everything that was posted for that tier at any...

★★★☆☆ Historical Fantasy of India and England

City of Stolen Magic Nazneen Ahmed Pathak Nazneen Ahmed Pathak 's City of Stolen Magic begins in a small village in what was then India and is now (I believe) Bangladesh. Chompa and her mother Amina live there. They are witches, and that, Amina knows, is a dangerous thing to be. Chompa, a rebellious kid, is difficult to convince, but learns the hard way when her Ammi is kidnapped. Her mother's old friend Mohsin shows up to take Chompa away to the city of Dacca (modern Dhaka). Chompa and Mohsin hear rumors that Ammi is being held in London, and make arrangements to travel there. London is the City of Stolen Magic named in the title. As explained in an extensive Author's Note, City of Stolen Magic , although a fantasy, is firmly rooted in the real history of India and Britain. The main villain is The Company, instantly recognizable as the East India Company , whose business was the economic exploitation of India by Britain. In City of Stolen Magic...

★★★★☆ Matrimonial predators

The Brides of High Hill Nghi Vo We catch up with Chih, who is accompanying the Pham family -- Mr and Mrs Pham and their daughter Pham Nhung to the castle of Lord Guo. The Phams are a family of merchants down on their luck, and Nhung has been proposed in marriage to Lord Guo. She and Chih met cute, and she asked them to accompany her to Lord Guo's castle for the marriage negotiation. Chih appears to have a mini-crush on Nhung, which she appears to encourage. Chih desperately misses their neixin Almost Brilliant, who is mysteriously absent. Nhung is naturally worried about being married. Chih, who knows many stories, true and fictional, about husbands and wives, would like to reassure her, but cannot honestly do so. Stuff happens. You will recognize the story pretty quickly. It's Bluebeard. You probably already figured that out -- the plural "Brides" in the title kind of gives it away. In this one Chih faces serious personal danger, more immediate than in any other S...

★★★☆☆ Advice I am not going to follow

The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals Michael Pollan Michael Pollan is a person who cares deeply about food. I am not (which is a little strange, since I worked 31 years as a neuroscientist studying feeding behavior). “Thou shouldst eat to live; not live to eat.” ― Socrates I am definitely a person who eats to live. There are a few books in what I call the "history of substances" genre, for instance The True History of Chocolate , A Perfect Red , or A History of the World in 6 Glasses . I find these fascinating and would be happy to find more. I picked up The Botany of Desire: A Plant's-Eye View of the World and The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals because I thought they were books in this vein, and The Omnivore's Dilemma was getting a lot of love from my friends. Well, my hopes were not completely disappointed. The Omnivore's Dilemma does indeed contain fascinating information a...

★★★☆☆ Ghosts and grief

Installment Immortality Seanan Mcguire I read Seanan McGuire 's Discount Armageddon in May, 2021. It was the first book by McGuire I had ever read, and I was immediately hooked. It was full of life, and so funny! The Aeslin mice alone were worth the price. I subsequently went on to read every extant Incryptid novel and story, as well as McGuire 's Octboer Daye series, and eventually every work of fiction she's published that I could find. The first two thirds of Installment Immortality are puzzling. They do all the obvious, concrete things right. The characters are well-drawn and interesting. This is the second Incryptid novel focused on Mary Dunlavy, who has long been one of my favorite Incryptid characters. The plot is intricate, complicated and unpredictable enough to be interesting, and yet not so complicated as to be difficult to follow. It continues the old Price Family vs Covenant of S...

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