Homebound by Portia Elan

I read Homebound by Portia Elan because a guest on Sarah's Bookshelves recommended it. I was swayed to her side when she discussed Yesteryear as a book she didn't love, so that earned her cred in my world. 

In Homebound, we follow multiple timelines: Becks in 1983 as she grapples with her uncle's death; Yesiko in 2586 as she tries to pay off the debt she owes while taking care of the crew of her ship; and Tamar Portman in the 2070s as she opens a lab researching cutting age technology. 

The first part of this novel was immersive and I was all in. Becks is a great character, dealing with her emerging sexuality and the loss of her uncle to AIDS (or GRID as it was known then). Yesiko's storyline was so interesting. She is desperate to get rid of her debt and care for her crew, but she's not sure how to do any of it. 

But then. Hm. There are ENDLESS passages about videogames and robotic technology. ENDLESS. I really really really don't like that.  I was invested in these two characters and suddenly we're taken away from them and thrown into nonsense. I also was not entirely convinced by how the storylines were all connected in the end. 

I have hopes for this author, though. The writing and the character development were strong. I'll go back for more, hopefully with less emphasis on text-based videogames. 3/5 stars 

Lines of note:

Generation on generation of skinny ship cats, but now only Panim, the opinionated tortie who slept curled against Yeshiko's chest, chirruping even in her dreams. (page 9)

I just love it when author's actually give pets personality. Panim is a lovely character. 

I understand that this is the natural order: our teachers, our mentors die, and we become the teachers, the mentors. The mantle passes. But what is "natural" is still painful and heavy, and I sometimes want to stomp my foot and tell time to just go back. (page 66)

I'm really struggling right now with some difficult, non-bloggable things, and this line really resonated. 

Things I looked up:

Pesach plate (page 9) - a special plate containing symbolic foods eaten or displayed at the Passover Seder (seriously, my ignorance of world religions is legion)

Eugene Cernan (page 167) - an American astronaut who traveled into space three times and to the Moon twice: as pilot of Gemini 9A in June 1966, as Lunar Module pilot of Apollo 10 in May 1969, and as commander of Apollo 17 in December 1972, the final Apollo lunar landing. During the Apollo 17 mission, he became the 11th person to walk on the Moon as well as the astronaut with the longest time spent walking on the Moon; he is also the last person to walk on the Moon as of 2026. (Doesn't it feel like I should know this person?)

Hat mentions (why hats?):

matching fur hats (page 114)

*****************

Did you know who Gene Cernan was? Do you like books with multiple timelines told hundreds of years apart? 

Ruins by Lily Brooks-Dalton

Other books by Lily Brooks-Dalton
The Light Pirate
Goodnight, Midnight

I have completely enjoyed the two books I've read by Lily Brooks-Dalton before (see links above). She writes climate fiction, but in a way that comes off as almost hopeful. So when I heard Ruins was coming out, I was immediately onboard and ordered it from my library as soon as I could. 

Ember Agni is going nowhere in her job as a professor of archeology. Her students don't like her, she doesn't like them, and she refuses to make nice with administrators. Her marriage is failing, she doesn't have any friends, and she's still thinking about that expedition she didn't go on years earlier. It's 3000 years from now and most humans have been pushed north to avoid the deadly heat. When one of her former students sends her an artifact (a tablet with a piece of fruit on the back - what could it be?) from Pre-Crisis, Ember is determined to prove that Pre-Crisis humans did have technology and developed societies. 

Ember is terrible. Really, really terrible. 

...she was struck by a sudden, arresting sensation that she didn't belong here, in this chair or this job or even this city. How had all of it happened? How was any of it hers?

The most obvious answers did not seem to fit the questions - she had left the Summit dig willingly, applied for a job at the university of her own volition, said yes when marriage was proposed, and so on and so forth. She made these choices freely and with care, but without knowing that all of it would lead her here. She couldn't' tell whether that was naivety or just how life worked. Shouldn't she know the difference by now? (page 20)

This is actually sort of fine. I mean, we all sometimes look in the mirror and wonder at how Teenage Us became Grown Us and how disappointed Teenage Us would be, right? But then.

"I don't know what I want," she finally said. And this was, in some ways, true and in some ways not. She wanted to be cared for and to care for no one. She wanted to have everything she needed and not be responsible for reciprocating any of it. (page 101)

This is not how the world works. I don't think feelings have to reciprocated, but I do think that if you want people to care about you, you have to care about them. Right? 

Anyway, we spend SO LONG with Ember as her life falls into (ahem) ruins that it's anti-climactic by the time Ember leaves for a trip on page 219. TWO HUNDRED pages of her wallowing in her misery instead of just deciding to leave. 

So what I'm saying is that if I had written this book, I'd have started on page 219 and just done a few pages of flashbacks for us to see what Ember's life was like pre-trip. Then we could have spent more time doing archeological things. Alas, no one asked me about pacing. 

I'm really sad that this one didn't hit it out of the park for me. 2.5/5 stars

******************

Passage of note:

Across societies separated by geography, language, and technological means, a recurring phenomenon emerges: the segmentation of time. The division of days, months, and years is rooted in celestial rhythms: the sun's arc, the moon's phases, the drift of the constellations. Calendrical systems are instruments of coordination, yes, but also of ideology: they encode assumptions about recurrence, continuity, and control. To standardize time is to assert its knowability. 

Still, periods of disruption - be they environmental, political, or epistemic - produce anomalies: lost days, doubled years, durations reset or abandoned or revised. These aberrations in the record can be difficult to detect. The question, then, is not only how time has been measured, but why certain measurements persist while others vanish. What, or who, sustains a calendar? (page 289)

I have so many issues with calendars. SO MANY. I hate them. That is all. 

******************

Hat mentions (why hats?):

There in the foyer, crowded by a selection of coats and shoes and hats that belonged to one or both of them...(page 179)

******************

Do you like cli-fi? What's your favorite? 

Several People Are Typing by Calvin Kasulke

Rayleen said that Several People Are Typing by Calvin Kasulke was one of her favorite books of last year on the podcast Books Unbound. I trust Rayleen because she is full of good recs. (The other host, Ariel, just spent an entire episode waxing poetic about how great she found The Hobbit, so while I respect her as a business person with some hustle, her reader credibility is very low with me.)

This book is told entirely through Slack messages at a New York-based public relations firm.

Gerald has been uploaded into the firm's Slack channel. His body is just sitting in his apartment, but Gerald's consciousness is in Slack. Gerald asks his co-worker Pradeep to help him figure out a way to return to his body. 

Meanwhile, the rest of the company thinks this is a bit Gerald is doing to be allowed to work from home more. Also, there's a crisis with a dog food company that has to do a recall because Pomeranians are dying. (Not Pomeranians!) Two employees are knockin' boots and destroying office furniture and another employee is hearing howling all the time. What is happening at this company?

There's a running joke about a dusty stick emoji that is exactly like the potato emoji in my office chat. My boss went to Nova Scotia on vacation and came back with fudge made with potatoes. From that moment on, whenever someone brings treats back from vacation, we all use potato emojis. It's HILARIOUS to me, but even as I'm writing this, I realize it's not funny. ANYWAY.

Will this whole Slack thing be dated someday? Probably? Will it still get to the heart of office culture and politics? I sure hope so. 

I thought this was snort funny, clever, and unique. I loved every word.  5/5 stars

Lines of note:

what is a workplace but a cult where everyone gets paid, really? (page 67)

LOLOLOL. This is the second time in a month I've read a book that suggested my workplace is a cult. 

and my only reminder that humanity isn't just this overwhelming 
cacophony of noise and drudgery but like
something worth returning to (page 216)

Sometimes we all need to spend some time focused on what is worth living for, right? 

***************

Do you have running jokes in your office chat? Is your job really a cult? 

The Anomaly by Hervé Le Tellier

The Anomaly by Hervé Le Tellier is translated from the French by Adrianna Hunter. Jenny wrote a very compelling review of the book, so I ordered it from the library immediately.

In this book, it's March 2021 and a plane encounters some turbulence. It lands and everyone's fine and then in June the exact plane lands again with the same passengers on it. We meet some of those passengers and how this event changes their lives. 

In general, I really liked this book. I liked that it raised interesting questions and I really liked the way it looked at how governments would react in this sort of emergent situation. But my biggest complaint about the book seems to be a common one: the first passenger we meet is the most interesting one and we don't hear from him very often throughout the book, even though he's what really got me into the book!

It's also sort of interesting because the book takes place in 2021, but the pandemic doesn't get a mention. That seemed weird to me. Oh, well. 

3.5/5 stars - I bet it would be an excellent book club read. There's lots to talk about!

Line of note:

He had hundreds of ginko trees planted all along the banks so that he can gaze at them and meditate. He's always been fascinated by these primitive trees. Their ancestors existed millions of years before even the dinosaurs appeared, and will outlive the human race. A plant version of memento mori. (page 241)

Things I looked up:

Annemasse (page 9) - a city in France on the Swiss border

Fields medal (page 106) - a prize awarded to two, three, or four mathematicians under 40 years of age at the International Congress of the International Mathematical Union (IMU), a meeting that takes place every four years

Gromov's non-prological theories (page 108) - non-squeezing theorem, also called Gromov's non-squeezing theorem, is one of the most important theorems in symplectic geometry. It was first proven in 1985 by Mikhail Gromov. The theorem states that one cannot embed a ball into a cylinder via a symplectic map unless the radius of the ball is less than or equal to the radius of the cylinder.

What's sympletic geometry, you ask? I don't know because the Wikipedia definition dares to use the term symplectic manifolds in its definition. I refused to do further research.

Markov chain (page 116) -  a process describing a sequence of possible events in which the probability of each event depends only on the state attained in the previous event

Kendall notations (page 116) - the standard system used to describe and classify a queueing node

Lebensraum (page 133) - the territory that a state or nation believes is needed for its natural development, especially associated with Nazi Germany

radome (page 146) - a plastic housing sheltering the antenna assembly of a radar set especially on an airplane

modafinil (page 162) - a prescription wakefulness-promoting agent used to treat excessive sleepiness caused by certain sleep disorders

Grothendieck's topoi (page 163) - categories that behave like sheaves on topological spaces

What does that mean? Search me. 

Abel prize (page 165) - a prize that recognizes pioneering scientific achievements in mathematics - it's  administered by the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters on behalf of the Ministry of Education and Research and given out yearly

Romain Gary (page 324) - a French novelist, diplomat, film director, and World War II aviator. He is the only author to have won the Prix Goncourt (a prize in French literature) twice (once under a pseudonym)

Hat mentions (why hats?):

He'll wear gloves, a hood, a hat, and glasses...(page 8)

There was a hi-hat on page 347, but it's not in the spirit of the thing. 

******************

Would you read a book about issues with flying? A science fiction book told in a contemporary world and time? 

Space Opera (Space Opera #1) by Catherynne M. Valente

Space Opera is the first in Catherynne Valente's Space Opera duology. 

In this book, humankind is introduced to other intelligent life in the universe! Yay! Except that it means humans have to go up against all the other intelligent life forms in a singing competition and the losing intelligent life gets nuked from existence. We follow Decibel Jones as he tries to write and perform the song that will save humanity.

What we have here is if Douglas Adams (he of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy fame), Eurovision, and very long sentences had a baby. I think this Goodreads review says it best:

The sentences in this book were EXHAUSTING. It did seem like Valente wanted to make me chuckle at every sentence, but I swear to you, I was so tired after reading every sentence and keeping track of clauses and tangents that all I wanted to do was close the book and go to bed. 

It has so much promise. Such an interesting world! Such a fun premise! Decibel is an interesting choice to save humanity! But the writing is just not my style. It felt like I was an acid trip that I didn't know I was going to go on. Maybe it's for you. Valente does have hardcore fans. But I have DNFed Valente before and I am pretty sure I'm not going to go back to the well.

Humorous books are not always perfect for every reader. There were some funny observations in this book and some pointed ones, but I felt a little bit like I was a stand-up show where the comedian was not reading the room. 

3/5 stars (the premise is good! the world-building is excellent! I like Decibel!)

Lines of note:

No matter how mad, bad, and dangerous to know a civilization gets, unto every generation are born the lonely and the uncool, destined to forever stare into the candy-store window of their culture, and loneliness is the mother of ascension. (page 112)

Ugh. Are we destined to always have lonely people? 

Because the opposite of fascism isn't anarchy, it's theater. When the world is fucked, you go to the theater, you go to the shine, and when the bad men come, all there is left to do is sing them down. You didn't get it, I didn't think you understood, you can't sing a dirge to the reaper, he's already hear them all. You gotta slaughter him with joy and a beat like the best of all possible shags, and because somehow, my nan's cartoons always had it right and the Care Bear Stare is the most powerful force in the world...(page 144)

I feel like this passage spoke to me in 2025...theater is what it is right now. 

But most people can only be so anxious and so terrified and so sleepless and so cowed and awed before the yawning abyss of the future for so long. Eventually, the body simply can't sustain it. Eventually, some work has to get done. Eventually, adrenal glands need a bit of a break. Even in the face of possible utter extinguishment of the human candle, one does, eventually, if it all goes on long enough and there is absolutely nothing one can do but sit there in one's own fear-stink, get a bit bored. (page 219)

Honestly, this made me feel better about how I just had to take a break from the news. I can't just live in fear. 

Things I looked up:

cavemen of Lascaux (page 25) - Lascaux is famous for its Palaeolithic cave paintings, found in a complex of caves in the Dordogne region of southwestern France.

chantry (page 34) - an ecclesiastical term that may have either of two related meanings:

a chantry service, a set of Christian liturgical celebrations for the dead (made up of the Requiem Mass and the Office of the Dead), or

a chantry chapel, a building on private land, or an area in a parish church or cathedral reserved for the performance of these celebrations.

neoteny (page 35) - also called juvenilization, is the delaying or slowing of the physiological, or somatic, development of an organism, typically an animal

Hat mentions (why hats?): 

hat rack of a head (page 24)

...something you wouldn't let into public school even with a hat on...(page 111)

They aren't picky, jumping from species to species with a vaudeville smile, a high kick, and a tip of the putrefying hat. (page 155)

"Please forgive the arrogance of a being who cannot even dream of becoming a hat rack for the use of those as exalted as yourselves..." (page 216)

"...we're in the interstellar equivalent of a bunch of adorable grandparents in clogs or lederhosen or boat hats, but I'm telling you we do it so damn sable, they don't want anyone else. Somebody's got to get up there in traditional costume and sing the songs of their people and remind these beat-junkies what's coal." 

Oort could feel the translator fungus on his throat steaming with the effort of interpreting whatever the Elakh had actually said that came out as "clogs," "lederhosen," and "boat hats." (page 236-237)

No matter how the tourists pulled at his hat, he did not move one solitary muscle. (page 241)

Death of the Author by Nnedi Okorafor

Death of the Author is the newest from Nnedi Okorafor, who wrote Binti, which has an absolutely amazing first novella.  

Zelu is a disabled Nigerian-American who has hit rock bottom. She lost her job, her book has been rejected for the tenth time, and her family includes a bunch of ableist jerks. Into this, she moves back to her parents' house and starts writing a book called Rusted Robots, a science fiction story about robots after the destruction of humanity, which become an immediate hit with a blockbuster movie made of it. 

The book alternates with chapters from Zelu's story and from chapters of Rusted Robots. I was invested in Zelu's story. She's sort of the unlikeable lady who I really like. She's had a hard time with her disability and her shitty family and she's struggling to find her place in the world, career-wise and in terms of her American and Nigerian backgrounds. She's got a chip on her shoulder, but who wouldn't in her shoes? But Rusted Robots? Ugh. I did not care.  

Here's the thing. I will read science fiction if it's about space aliens or humans in space because those are really just stories about humans. But science fiction about robots? Who cares? They're not people. Or dogs. Or cats. Or horses. Or really alive. 

And I don't want to spoil the ending, but I still have questions about the ending. It felt like a mean trick where we didn't get the answers I really wanted. If I have done the code correctly, I have put spoilers behind the following button. If I have not done the code correctly, oh, well. You shouldn't have the spoilers anyway! (Edited to add: It works! I'm a professional coder. /s)

Basically, was Ngozi really the last human on earth? Did Ankara really meet her? As in, was Zelu based on a true story in the robot lore? And the whole thing about how Rusted Robots was real, but not Zelu's story really felt like a cheap trick. That's all.

 

Read Binti instead of this one. 3.5/5 stars

Lines of note:

It was mid-July, and it was ninety-five degrees Fahrenheit and what felt like 100 percent humidity. As uncomfortable as she was, Zelu was used to it. She was a Chicagoan, which meant she was used to every weather extreme except hurricanes. (page 54)

I feel this is my very soul after we had a day near 80 followed by a day with snow last week. 

They later had a lawyer write the prenup that would keep their assets forever separate, went to the courthouse, had it done legally, and that was it. They both vowed to never call each other "husband" or "wife." They were partners. It felt good. (page 357)

Big discussion with my husband about this. I think it's romantic when he calls me "his wife." I think partners makes it seem like a business deal. But I can also see how some people might think the stereotypical roles of husband and wife come with a lot of baggage. Interesting thing to think about. 

Things I looked up:

ikenga (page 40) - carved wooden figures that have a human face with animal attributes - of note, Nnedi Okorafor has a novel called Ikenga

agama lizard (page 90) - a genus of small-to-moderate-sized, long-tailed, insectivorous Old World lizards. The genus Agama includes at least 37 species in Africa, especially sub-Saharan Africa, where most regions are home to at least one species.

iroke tree (page 90) - a large hardwood tree from the west coast of tropical Africa that can live up to 500 years

kabu kabu (page 178) - non-registered illegal cab that operates in some part of Nigeria - of note, Nnedia Okorafor has a short story collection called Kabu Kabu.

Hat mentions: 

None

Starter Villain by John Scalzi

Who knows where I even stumbled upon Starter Villain by John Scalzi? If it was you, thanks for the recommendation.

The dedication of this book reads:

This book is dedicated to:
    Everyone who could make someone else's day worse, but tries to make it better instead.
    Thank you. It's more important than you think.
    Also, to Sugar, Spice, and Smudge, my current set of cats.
    You are all a real pain in my ass, and I love your stupid furry faces. 

If you are not charmed by that, you and I are very different people. 

So this is an amusing little book. Charlie's barely making ends meet when he learns that his uncle left him his supervillain empire. Oh, also, his cats can communicate in English using a typewriter. I thought the first half of the book was stronger than the second, but I was happy to have read this. Also, maybe the being able to communicate with cats was really truly wish fulfillment for me. 3.5/5 stars

Line of note:

I didn't need another cat. At this point in my brilliant career as an itinerant educator I could barely afford to feed myself. But then, no one ever needs a cat these days. That's not why we have cats. We have cats because they amuse us and because otherwise our clothes would lack the texture only cat hair can provide. (page 17)

"When people name cats, they usually do it in one of three categories: food, physical characteristics or mythology," Morrison explained. "So, you name your cat Sugar, or Smudge, or Zeus..." (page 21)

Things I looked up:

esters (page 5) - chemical compounds formed by the combination of an acid and an alcohol; used in many industries, including food, cosmetics, pharmaceuticals, and manufacturing

chaebol (page 150) - the large, conglomerate family-controlled firms of South Korea characterized by strong ties with government agencies

Patrick Etoile (page 227) - This is a character on Sponge Bob. 

Svalbord (page 255) - a Norwegian archipelago between mainland Norway and the North Pole. One of the world’s northernmost inhabited areas, it's known for its rugged, remote terrain of glaciers and frozen tundra sheltering polar bears, Svalbard reindeer and Arctic foxes. The Northern Lights are visible during winter, and summer brings the “midnight sun”—sunlight 24 hours a day. Sounds bad. 

Hat mentions: None

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If you could ask your pet one thing, what would it be? 

Beautyland by Marie-Helene Bertino

I heard of Beautyland by Marie-Helene Bertino from Susie on Sarah's Bookshelves (the podcast).

The premise is that Adina is an alien and she sends and receives faxes from her home planet. But don't let the sci-fi element fool you. This is a book about coming of age, about struggling through, about grief, about life, about death. The alien slant is interesting in its own way, but if you're not into sci-fi books, this still might appeal to you because it's not the main theme. It was heartbreakingly sad and (spoiler here), the dog dies. I'm just warning you. 

I liked this a lot. I felt like it resonated with me and made me sad and hopeful all at the same time. 4/5 stars

Lines of note:

It is September 1979 and Americans are obsessed with Star Wars, a civil war movie set in space. Bounding to the stage after hearing her name, a Price is Right contestant loses her tube top and reveals herself to a shocked Burbank audience. (page 3)

A civil war movie set in space. Ha! Also, that poor lady on The Price is Right. It's immortalized on the internet to this very day. 

Their routine changes so frequently they don't need much language (page 19)

Sometimes my husband and I don't even talk. We just know what's going to happen. 

...being physically present in one place while your mind is in another is loneliness. Loneliness can make you hang with phonies to distract yourself. (page 82)

Interesting. I'm not sure that's how I define it, but to each their own, I guess. 

It must be the opposite of homesickness, to return home to find it more beautiful, to return and still feel distance. (page 83)

One of the hardest things is figuring out where home is (your childhood home? where you sleep now? your favorite aunt's house?) and figuring out how to react when it's not longer the place you're most comfortable. 

For the first time, Adina feels that no one on Earth or even beyond understands her. (page 113)

I have to admit that this line made me guffaw. Teenagers, you know?

She answers the phone, keeps the candy jar filled, and monitors the bathroom key. Ten minutes out of her twenty-minute training was candy-jar related. (page 177)

LOLOLOL. My boss keeps a candy-jar filled in our office and I swear to you that half her job is candy-jar related. When she goes on vacation for a week and it gets low, there are COMPLAINTS.

(page 180)

This passage about the geese made me laugh and think of Lisa and her boys, particularly the "It's big in the Midwest." 

Things I looked up: 

Pando (page 157) - the world's largest tree, a quaking Aspen, in Utah

parp (page 183) - to make a sound like that made by a car horn

double Cancer (page 194) - honestly, astrology posts make me cry - I have no idea what these means

Eames birds (page 222) - it's a carved bird; there's a history there, but it also made me want to cry with boredom

Hat mentions (why hats?):

The man chuckles at the women, bundled in hats and scarves. (page 99)

On the ride, Dominic pulls a bong, a toilet paper roll, and two tinfoil hats from his back seat..."And the hat protects you from mind control from other planets." (page 151)

Adina arranges the hat on her head. (page 151)

"You can keep the hat," Dominic says, and she says, "What hat?" (page 154)

"...I like your hat." (page 256)

The fancy-cheap brocade boxes, the caps like faux-gold hats. (page 279)

Cocktails on the lawn, groping hat-in-wind. (page 287)

*****************

Are you a double Cancer? Do you even know what that means?

Drunk on All Your Strange New Words by Eddie Robson

Jenny recently raved about Drunk on All Your Strange New Words by Eddie Robson and who am I to ignore a science-fiction recommendation? 

Lydia works as a translator for the Logi cultural attaché to Earth. The act of translating, which is done through means of telepathic conversation, makes Lydia feel drunk after hours and hours and hours and one night she finds herself reacting badly to a man who is pestering her and her boss, Fitz, gets her out of trouble. But when Lydia wakes up the next morning to a dead Fitz, she soon realizes she's the main suspect in his murder. What we have here is a sci fi/mystery/sort of thriller mashup. 

The writing! I admire how Robson created a world with telepathic aliens without talking about it endlessly. I admire how Robson let you know that something terrible has happened on Earth without spending hours in a museum talking about that history. I admire how effortless the scene setting seemed. And I admired the world, too. It seems like an interesting world, if one I wouldn't want to live in.

The book is also quite funny, I think. Some of the observations about human behavior (as if an alien race were making them) were hilarious. 

I didn't 100% follow the mystery plot, but I don't think I needed to. It was just a fun romp. I recommend it if you like this sort of thing.

4/5 stars

Line of note:

She's always wondered why games set in realistic locations are so popular when you can play games that let you be a Valkyrie and slay dragons, or an interdimensional wizard rewriting reality itself. But maybe people don't want fantasy, they want to feel they're in control, that they're playing by rules they understand and that it's possible to win. (page 191)

THIS!!! I don't want to play realistic looking military games. THAT COULD BE REAL LIFE. But I do want to pretend to be a bard who is singing for his supper and potentially kills orcs. 

Thing I looked up:

contengine (page 58) - I don't know what this word means and google keeps sending me to contingency. Maybe it's a made up word for this particular world?

Context: It's nice to know some of the spinners and contengines who generate this stuff are aware of who she is - although when she clicks through to the "tributes" she finds none of it is accurate and none of her "colleagues and friends" are real people, just stock images with generic quotes attached. 

Hat mentions (why hats?):

And hats, they all wear hats: Fitz has a wool cap that matches his coat. (page 7)

...his reflection is wearing a beautifully cut three-piece suit and a hat. (page 117)

He wears a thick robe that looks like a dressing gown and a shapeless hat that resembles a shower cap. (page 243)

Good Morning, Midnight by Lily Brooks-Dalton

Other books by Lily Brooks Dalton

The Light Pirate

I read Good Morning, Midnight because I enjoyed The Light Pirate so much and because it was recommended by someone on Sarah's Bookshelves (it was Susie in this episode!). 

Before we talk about the book, let's talk about the cover. I was convinced I had read this book before because the cover was so familiar, but I think it's because the cover reminded me of this:

Tent? Check. Starry sky? Check. White title? Check. A Novel? Check. The biggest difference is that it's snow on the cover of Good Morning, Midnight and grass on the cover of Station Eleven. Regardless, it's clear that this book is trying to mimic Station Eleven's art.

In Good Morning, Midnight we follow two parallel stories. Augie is a scientist at a research station in the Arctic. When the station is forced to evacuate, Augie stays behind and finds a child named Iris was also left behind. They cannot contact anyone on Earth and the radio stays eerily silent. Meanwhile, the spaceship Aether is going back to Earth after a trip to Jupiter. Mission Control falls silent about a year away from Earth and the astronauts on board the Aether have to figure out what to do. 

This was such a beautiful book. The characters. The characters. Man. So beautifully rendered. 

It's a scary thought. What if you were one of the last people alive? What would you do? How would you react? 

But somehow this book is hopeful and beautiful and sad and confusing and wonderful. 

4.5/5 stars

Lines of note:

"I think he’s unkind because it’s easier to be angry than frightened,” Devi said. (page 95)

I wrote recently in the comments on Elisabeth's blog that I assume everyone is in Emergency Mode. We're all dealing with something, right? And I try to be give others grace when they are doing something unkind, rude, or disrespectful. I'm not always successful (WHY IS YOUR CART TAKING UP THE WHOLE GROCERY STORE AISLE?), but it helps me to remember that everyone is having difficulties. 

When he got to his feet, he shuddered to hear the cartilage in his joints cracking, his bones clicking against each other like dominoes falling down the length of his body. (page 158)

I didn't purposefully start reading books with protagonists who are older, but I am appreciating reading these descriptions about how our bodies break down. 

Hat mentions (why hats?): Eight hat mentions in the book. These are my favorites. 

As the days progressed Augustine began to walk farther, always keeping the emerald green of Iris’s pompom hat in his sights. (page 80)

A green hat! Are we sure it's not Katie Nolan?!

Her helmet was a few sizes too big and he had insisted that she wear three hats to pad it. (page 136)

Three hats! I frequently wear two, but three seems like a lot. 

The Imposition of Unnecessary Obstacles (Mossa & Pleiti #2) by Malka Older

Mossa & Pleiti
The Mimicking of Known Successes

Mossa and Pleiti are back! This time, a lot of people are missing from the university where Pleiti works and Mossa needs her help to figure out what's going on. A mystery ensues! Travel around Jupiter and to Io ensues! Woot woot!

Look, this is a lovely series so far. I am enjoying the developing relationship between these two. I feel like the mysteries strike the right balance of important, but not too outrageous. The setting is simply delightful. Who's not interested in what the academic factions will be once humans destroy the Earth and are forced on to other galactic objects?  

Thumbs up. 4.5/5 stars

Lines of note:

It was the sort of lecture I liked: a topic that I knew enough about to follow easily, but little enough to feel like I was learning. (page 5) 

Yes!! It's not repeating something I already know, but not so far above my head that I don't understand what's going on. This is great observational writing.

I found myself humming under my breath - the second aria of Murderbot. (page 133)

Is this an homage to Martha Wells? It has to be, right? There's not a real opera about a Murderbot? I LOVE the cross-pollination of women in science fiction!!

It wasn't until the ceremony was well under way that I recognized that it was no kind of sacrifice to her: immune to the undercurrents of guilt, resentment, and injustice that so perturbed me, she was observing the social rite with a bass note of fascination. (page 144)

Ha ha. Anyone else go to church ceremonies with a bit of a feeling like you an anthropologist studying a foreign culture?

Things I had to look up:

mutatis mutandis (page 2-3) - (used when comparing two or more cases or situations) making necessary alterations while not affecting the main point at issue

herpentine (page 9) - I don't know, everyone. It keeps telling me to look up "serpentine," but I listen to Guns 'n' Roses and know that word. The context is: (describing a building) metal walls beaten into the textured, herpentine patterns popular during the era when much of the university's physical plant was built. 

fallecimiento (page 45) - death

copine (page 78) - girlfriend

bathetic (page 115) - producing an unintentional affect of anticlimax 

acurrucada (page 123) - curled up like a cat or dog

namkaraned (page 133) - to name (seriously, I couldn't figure this out?)

Hat mentions:

None. This is the second book with a hat on the cover and no mentions in the book. I am starting to feel like Older is trolling me.

*******************

What does herpentine mean? Do you think Older is referencing Martha Wells? What do you think a Murderbot aria would be like? Why is Older trolling me with the hats on the covers of this series?

The Age of Miracles by Karen Thompson Walker

The Age of Miracles by Karen Thompson Walker is the coming of age story of a girl named Julia, who is living in a California suburb when the news comes that the rotation of the Earth is slowing. No one knows why, but the days and nights are getting longer very quickly. 

When I first heard the premise of this book, I thought this was going to be a Big Story, like The Martian, where there's a person who is the focus on the book, but we also see people at NASA and the UN working on a problem. That is NOT this book. This is a book about a girl growing up while the world is changing in crazy ways around her. We only hear from experts in occasional newspaper clippings and on television news. This is about a girl and her singular experience.

The earth's rotation is truly slowing by 47-thousandths seconds of a day, so scientists have been adding leap seconds here and there, so this isn't as silly a premise at it may seem, although the idea that the rotation would slow by hours in a single day is pretty farfetched. I think some of the science in this book is a bit precarious but to quote Glen Wheldon, I'm here for science fiction, not science fact. For instance, I think the electrical grid would fail long before it did in this book, but I didn't write the book, so who cares what I think?

Look, this book is pretty dire. If you're not in a place to read a dystopian sci-fi novel with focus on a decimated planet, don't read it. But I honestly thought it was a lovely bit of writing and the pages were easy to turn and it was exactly my kind of thing. 

4/5 stars

Lines of note:

But I guess it never is what you worry over that comes to pass in the end. The real catastrophes are always different - unimagined, unprepared for, unknown. (page 29)

I have found this to be absolutely true. I'm worrying about X, but Y is the thing that comes out of left field and becomes the focus. 

My grandfather was eighty-six years old. All his old friends were dead. His wife was dead. he had grown bitter about his own longevity. (page 60)

My maternal grandmother, who lived to be almost 100, once told me that there was nothing worth living for once she turned eighty. I mean, I felt a little hurt by this statement, but I also understood what she meant. 

Ours was a sudden bond, the kind possible only for the young or the imperiled. (page 223)

I know that some of you have developed wonderful friendships in adulthood, but I honestly believe that I'll never have a friendship as great and genuine as those that I developed when I was young and had all the time in the world to devote to building friendships. 

We were beach kids, sunshine kids. We did not know the properties of snow. I had never seen it fall, never knew how soft it felt at first, how easily it collapsed beneath feet, or the particular sound of that crunch. I never knew until then that snow made everything quiet, somehow silencing all the world's noise. (page 230)

Snow does make the world so muffled. I loved everything about this description. 

Hat mentions:

Sylvia would spend the next few afternoons pruning roses in a sun hat and casually pulling up weeds. (page 23, this same sun hat comes up on page 130 and 160)

She rested for a moment, hands on hips, looking around from beneath the wide brim of a straw hat... (page 115)

Inside were albums of black-and-white photographs of my grandparents in stylish hats and fur-lined coats...(page 141)

It was a man in a beach hat, an empty white bucket swinging from one hand. (page 194)

A man in a faded blue T-shirt and a wide-brimmed hat...(page 210, same hat referenced on 211)

The Mimicking of Known Successes (Mossa & Pleiti #1) by Malka Older

CCR sold me on The Mimicking of Known Successes by Malka Older by describing it as a mash of genres: science fiction and mystery. There's also a touch of sapphic romance, if that's your jam, and let's be honest, it very much is my jam. All three of those things appeal, so I was down for this book.

Basically, people have screwed up Earth, so they live on Jupiter. That's the sci-fi part. A dude goes missing on a remote colony and Mossa, an Investigator, has to figure out what happened to him. That's the mystery. Mossa goes to Pleiti, a former flame, to help her out. That's the romance. 

It's good. It's short (less than 200 pages!). It's an interesting world and an interesting relationship. This is a completely satisfying standalone novel, although I heard there's a sequel that's pretty good. My library doesn't have the sequel, so I guess I'll have to remain in the dark on that one.  If this sounds like something you'd enjoy, you'll like this book. 4/5 stars

Lines of note:

...within the cluster dedicated to experimental agriculture and animal husbandry. (page 35)

Not a line of note to anyone else, but I refer to "animal husbandry" whenever we're doing something to the cat or dog that they don't want us to do (cut their nails, brush their teeth, etc.), but that must be done for health or safety reasons. Sometimes I also use it as an excuse to do something they don't want to do, but I do, even if it's just for my own personal pleasure, particularly picking the cat up. She doesn't LOVE to be picked up, but I'll say I'm doing it to train her to be used to me picking her up in case there's an emergency and I need to. This is partly true, but mostly I just want to cuddle with her.

...dressed in a fire-blue coat I instantly coveted. (page 36)

Haven't we all been there?

...being of utility was more than I had expected, and yet one still does not want to be used. Of use, but not used. (page 93)

Lovely distinction.

Minor mystery:

"Ah yes. I study the British Isles, in the mid-twentieth century. At the moment I'm working on a very useful book about rabbits and their adventures. There's a wealth of descriptions of the flora and fauna in a highly circumscribed, clearly identified area. Truly amazing stuff, most astoundingly useful for us. And most incredibly, this book - a storybook, note, perhaps even intended for children - has pages and pages of writing mentioning, oh, different flowers, and tiny beasts, and the author assumes that every organism he mentions is familiar to the readers. He barely describes any of it, because everyone he can imagine reading it already knows." (page 72-73)

I immediately thought of Watership Down. It was written by a man named Richard Adams, published in 1972 and it's set in Hampshire in southern England. My husband suggested The Tale of Peter Rabbit, but it was written by a woman (note the pronoun 'he' in the above passage) named Beatrix Potter and was first published in 1902, which is not mid-twentieth century at all. Any thoughts on this minor mystery?

Things I looked up:

"its details of salvage and bricolage" (page 12): (in art or literature) construction or creation from a diverse range of available things

"tiny cubical qibla astrolabe" (page 12): from Arabic 'qiblah,' the direction towards the Kaaba in the Sacred Mosque in Mecca, which is used by Muslims in various religious contexts, particularly the direction of prayer

"I was only an unimportant myrmidon among thousands..." (page 153): a follower or subordinate of a powerful person, typically one who is unscrupulous or carries out orders unquestioningly

Hat mentions:

None, although one of the characters is wearing a hat on the cover. 

Adulthood Rites (Xenogenesis #2) by Octavia E. Butler

Dawn

Adulthood Rites is the second in the Xenogenesis trilogy.  When we last left this world, Lilith had to cooperate with her alien captors in a number of ways to be able to return to Earth, including mating with them for the purposes of procreation. She has had children on Earth, but these children are "constructs," in that they resemble humans as children, but grow into the alien-form, Oankali, after they metamorphize. One of her sons, Akin, is kidnapped by human resisters who shun contact with the Oankali. By the time Akin has been rescued, he has formed bonds with the resisters and decides that humans should have the chance to start again with their own society away from Oankali interference. This book is mostly told from Akin's point of view, a switch to someone who is part-human, part-Oankali, and is in that very challenging place of feeling as if his identity is unclear and that he belongs nowhere.

The questions this book raises are so big. Are humans destined to destroy the entire race, either through violence or genetic mutations?  What rights do we have to control our genetics and reproductive rights? What is the "correct" level of assimilation to a new idea, culture, or agent? I have so many thoughts whirling about in my head based on this book and I don't even know where to start. I'll do my best to do justice to this book.

The parallels to colonialization and assimilation are just spot on. Someone invades your homeland and you have the choice to either assimilate with all the losses of culture and freedoms that come with that or you reject the colonizers' rights to your body and your land and become "terrorists." The relationships between those who have assimilated and those who have not become tense. The colonizers do not understand why anyone is sad or upset about this change of status because what they bring to the table should make everyone safer and healthier and better. The best thing about this book is that all of this (and more) is in there, but Butler never just says the thing.  She shows it through interactions and thoughts and is simply brilliant. 

One of the things that the Oankali has done to humans is made them sterile unless they mate with Oankali themselves. In light of what's going on with access to abortion, birth control, and general women's health care right now, this particular storyline seems so prophetic. The Oankali have done this because they want to control the genetic traits that kill people (cancers, etc.), but in doing so, they've created a community of people, specifically the resisters, who don't have a hope for the future. They cannot have children and the feeling that the future is not worth living for creates an unsustainable living situation for them. 

The biggest theme that I see throughout this book is about whether or not human beings are irredeemable. Should humans be given another chance with another planet? To be trustees of a planet that they have not contaminated with pollution and material goods? Should they be given a chance to reproduce naturally, with all the dangers and mutations that come along with that? Should they be given a chance to work together and not kill one another over resources, disagreements, or religion? Or are humans bound to just kill themselves somehow no matter what?

If you can't tell, I think this is brilliant. Just brilliant. 5/5 very enthusiastic stars

Line of note:
"What lesson is condescension supposed to teach me about this group of my people?"

He would not have spoken so bluntly if Lilith had been with him. She insisted on respect for adults. Dichaan, though, simply answered his questions as he had expected. "Teach them who you are. Now they only know what you are..." (page 206)

Leviathan Falls (The Expanse #9) by James S. A. Corey

Leviathan Wakes
Caliban's War
Abaddon's Gate
Cibola Burn
Nemesis Games
Babylon's Ashes
Persepolis Rising
Tiamat's Wrath

Leviathan Falls is the ninth and final book in The Expanse series. It was a fitting final novel to one of the best science-fiction series I have ever read. This book is action-packed and filled with great interactions between our characters, the wry wit Corey are known for, and it introduces a dog, so you know I'm on board for that.  

It's very hard to know what to write without giving away major spoilers, but in the first book of the series, Leviathan Wakes, we are introduced to an alien life form and in this book, we see how humans eventually deal with that.  It's a lovely story of aging, dealing with existential questions of purpose of life and mundane questions about how dogs defecate in space. It's a brilliant look at how relationships morph, develop, and strengthen and weaken over time. 

If I haven't convinced you to read these books yet, I don't know what else I can do. This writing duo can do no wrong, as far as I'm concerned, and I can't wait to see what they do next.  This series is as great a science-fiction series as I have ever read. 5/5 very enthusiastic thumbs up.

Lines of note:

When Alex talked about his grandson, working out whether he'd been born yet, how big he was likely to be, speculating on the names that Kit and his wife might choose, all Jim could see was one more body on the pile when the end came. Another baby who'd stop breathing when the deep enemy solved its puzzle. Another death.

Maybe that was unfair. There had been any number of end-times before this: black plague, nuclear war, food web collapse, Eros moving. Every generation had its apocalypse. If they made humans stop falling in love and having babies, celebrating and dreaming and living out the time they had, they'd have stopped a long time before. (page 74)

There are a number of reasons my husband I don't have children, but the fact that our country has essentially been at war our entire adult lives definitely played a factor into our decision. Bringing children into a world in which climate change, war, and the threat of nuclear annihilation (and that was before I worried about a never-ending pandemic) seemed unfair. I think parents are very brave.

"If mitochondria and chloroplasts hadn't set up shop inside other organisms, eukaryotic life wouldn't exist, including all of us. Hermit crabs using discarded shells and soup cans. Acacia ants built their whole evolutionary strategy out of supporting trees. Intestinal microflora have a vast effect on cognition, emotion, metabolism. Most of the cells in your body right now aren't human. Change out a few species of bacteria in your gut, and you'll be a fundamentally different person." (page 321)

My husband has challenging gut issues and we've seriously looked into a fecal transplant, but this very idea that his personality could change entirely has prevented us from going through with it. 

"Did something happen with Elvi?"
...
"Have you asked her?"
"You see? There you go with your useful, straightforward suggestions. I never come up with those kinds of things myself." (pages 347-348)

It's this kind of interaction between characters that makes me love this series so much.

"It was like seeing a Picasso composition in the style of Van Gogh, familiar and alien at the same time." (page 356)

I love a good simile. Simply brilliant writing from Corey here. 

"You want bullshit happy mouth noises, or the truth."
"Bullshit happy mouth noises."
"It's great," Miller said without missing a beat. "It's having a long, restful sleep full of interesting, vivid dreams." (page 452)

This is absolute fan service here. In the final pages of the novel, Corey brings back an OG character and has the dialogue be spot on in his voice. 

Again, if you're not reading this series, you're missing out on something great. 

The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August by Claire North

 

The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August by Claire North comes courtesy of the Top Books By Women Authors in r/fantasy, so all I knew is that it had some sort of sci-fi/fantasy tie-in when I started it.  

In this book, Harry August lives an undistinguished life as a British person and then he dies. But he is born again and soon realizes that he has all the memories of his previous life. He dies again and is reborn with all the memories of his previous two lives.  And so it goes. Harry is always born in a bathroom of a train station as his birth mother dies. He is adopted by a couple and he has to live his childhood and adolescence over and over again, despite having the knowledge of an adult. Eventually there are secret societies, espionage, and world-wide chaos.

The first third of this book is a bit slow-moving, at least it was for me. But then there came a turning point when I simply couldn't put the book down. I had to know if Harry was going to be okay and I had to know how Harry was going to make it out. Generally speaking, I do not like time travel books, but this is an interesting twist on time travel and I thought it took the Groundhog's Day plot and did something new with it.

3.5/5 stars

Notable lines:

"In thirty years it would be a parody accent, used by comics to expose the sad cliché of the lonely man who believed that Ascot was sacred and could never quite get a ticket." (page 128)

When we were shopping for my husband's wedding suit, we were at a fancy men's suiting store waiting for the tailor to do a fitting.  We were poking around, sort of looking at ties and another customer was turning around a giant lazy Susan and asked "is this your entire selection of ascots?" Dear Reader, I've never been ANYWHERE with a larger selection of ascots and sometimes when one of us is being picky about shopping for something, we will use the ascot line.  Now you know one of our inside jokes.

"It is perhaps the universal experience of travellers - I have only my own view to judge it by - but there is a moment, in the dead hours of the night, when a man may sit upon a platform in an empty station, waiting for the last train upon a long journey, and regardless of the personal experience of that individual, he ceases to be an "I" and becomes a "he."" (page 144)

I think we all have that out-of-body experience when on a trip somewhere. I was doing a training in Canada one January when weather happened (because Canada + January) and I found myself sleeping in the Winnipeg airport with my luggage.  I swear I thought the whole thing was happening to someone else. Also, there were A LOT of dogs in the Winnipeg airport - just LARGE dogs wandering around the baggage claim and it just seemed like a dream that was happening to someone else. The people were SO nice, the dogs were SO plentiful, and I just have fond memories of Winnipeg.

""We're just fucking soldiers. We kill some guys, they kill our guys, we kill their guys back - none of it fucking means anything, you know? Just numbers on a page, and only when the numbers get big enough do the fat cats who decide this shit sit down and go, 'Wow, let's make the decision we were always gonna have to make anyway.'...And you know the best bit?...None of it fucking matters. Not one bullet, not one drop of blood. None of it makes any fucking difference at all.":(page 217)

Bleak.

Things I Looked Up:

There was a plot point about China under Mao Zedong and I honestly just didn't know the timeline because my knowledge of history is shaky. (page 287)

Hundred Flowers Campaign (1956-1957) - Mao Zedong basically encouraged citizens to openly criticize the Community Party. This didn't go well for people who took him up on his offer.

Great Leap Forward (1958-1962) - This was Mao Zedong's plan to reorganize the farms of China into communes. It was a disaster for many reasons and estimates range from 15 - 55 million people died (55 MILLION!!).  

Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) - Attack on cultural and intellectual elites. Devastation to culture and tradition.  

Hyperion (Hyperion Cantos#1) by Dan Simmons

In my never-ending quest to find a world to sink into as deeply as I did my beloved The Realm of the Elderlings, I tried the first book in the much beloved Hyperion Cantos saga, Hyperion by Dan Simmons. 

In this book, it is the 29th century and seven pilgrims are on a mission to save humanity. I think.  Actually, maybe their mission is to die while they figure out what's going on at that weird Hyperion planet?  Or maybe it's to save themselves while saving humanity?  It's all pretty wishy-washy.  Anyway, it's the future and there are seven pilgrims and they're going to Hyperion.  Then Simmons tells us part of the backstory of six of the pilgrims by using the excuse that each of the pilgrims should know each other's tales.  I guess if that framing device is good enough for Chaucer, it's good enough for Simmons.

Pilgrim #1: A Catholic priest whose mentor went to Hyperion and never returned.

Pilgrim #2: A soldier turned anti-war activist who kind of, sort of, maybe hallucinates a lover during stressful times in his life.

Pilgrim #3: The poet who has lost his muse.

Pilgrim #4: A professor whose daughter used to be a researcher on Hyperion when something interesting bad strange happened to her.

Pilgrim #5: The only woman in the group, a private detective whose dead client's baby she carries.

Pilgrim #6: The politician in the group whose backstory involves an intricate genealogical chronology, double crossing, and, of course, absolute treachery. 

We don't hear the seventh pilgrim's tale because he's off page halfway through the novel, although it's not clear if he'll come back or not.

I liked this book, but I didn't love it. I thought Simmons created an interesting world, but the weakness in this book is definitely the voice.  If we're going to hear six different stories from six different people, they should all have different voices and, with the exception of the super obnoxious poet, all of the pilgrims have the same tone, diction, and even sentence structure.  If I didn't read the the section titles, it would not have been clear to me what character was telling the story and I really desperately want that distinction to be very clear to me as a reader.  

The book is also almost 500 pages long, so it was quite a commitment to read it.  I'll put the next book in the series on my hold list, but I won't be too disappointed if the wait list is months long! 

Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir

My love for The Martian by Andy Weir is almost limitless. I even convinced my book club to read the book and then go to the movie together on a field trip. Remember when you could go to movies?  Anyway.  I thought his follow-up, Artemis, was much less successful.  Project Hail Mary was getting very good reviews and I decided that maybe Weir had gotten back to form and put it on my ebook hold list where I waited patiently eagerly for over four months.  

The premise: There's an organism that's destroying Earth and other planets.  Our hero, Ryland Grace, finds himself alone on a spaceship with his dead crewmates and he must embark on mission to save Earth.  Somewhere along the way, he meets an alien from another planet who is on the same mission (to save his planet, not Earth).  Anyway, a buddy comedy with lots of science ensues. 

The first part of this book was an absolute slog.  Until Grace meets his alien counterpart, Rocky, all I could think of is that I didn't want to be reading a book about some guy in complete isolation in light of the pandemic isolation of the last year and a half.  But once that meeting happens, things really pick up and it becomes more fun in a way that is very reminiscent of The Martian, what with a wisecracking astronaut who's really good at problem solving. 

Much like Mark Watney in The Martian, Ryland Grace does not have much of a backstory. We know he teaches at a middle school, but that is really about all we know of his persona life. Does he have a romantic partner? Parents and siblings?  Any interests outside of random science facts?  He doesn't even have a kit with personal paraphernalia in it like his crewmates do (for legitimate plot reasons, I guess).  He's funny, quick on his feet, and pretty good at figuring out how to understand a language with no basis, but we've already seen that in The Martian and I was hoping that Weir would grow in this book and create a new character, not just Mark Watney version 2.0.

In general, I enjoyed this book, but The Martian is still Weir's strongest work. I definitely would recommend this book, though, with the caveat that the first part is brutal.  

Ready Player Two by Ernest Cline

 

Ready Player Two by Ernest Cline is the unwanted sequel to the divisive Ready Player One. I, for my part, really enjoy RP1. It's got a great world, a great plot, and sure, the characters were paper thin and the main character himself a bit dimwitted and sexist, but he was determined and focused and I could forgive many of his faults. I also think RP1 is a great intro into sci-fi for reluctant high school readers, particularly young men.  I have recommended this to two of my tutoring students who then asked for more (I steer them toward Ender's Game and after that they have to figure it out for themselves). What I am telling you is that I genuinely enjoy and recommend RP1.  

And then there was the extreme disappointment of Cline's sophomore book Armada, of which the least said the better.

I went in to this book having heard it was bad, but Ready Player One also has a fair number of detractors who have legitimate criticisms, but seem to really miss the fun.   So I was cautiously optimistic that haters are gonna hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, and I put the book on hold and was pleased when my Libby hold came through.

I was ten pages in and I knew, I KNEW, this is a bad book.  

What makes the first book so good is that it is all action all the time. There's some world building, but that world building is done in service of the action. We are dropped into the action immediately and it never stops.

This book is a SEQUEL with the first 100 pages devoted to MORE WORLD BUILDING we don't need.  I was bored.  And then it turns out that we're back on the exact same narrative as the first book in which we're going after these Easter eggs, but the quests are far less fun or interesting. 

(Tangent: I know I lived in Minneapolis, but I don't care for most of the music stylings of Prince and despite my love of the Twin Cities, even I thought the whole Prince storyline took 3948239048 years and put me to sleep for three nights in a row.)

I wish the novel just dropped us into the action, like we are dropped in the middle of the Prince task and then there were flashbacks to the previous tasks and then we could move forward. Nix the first 100 pages of world building and then just weave the narrative of technological developments that are different from the first novel into descriptions of what happened. 

So disappointing. It's really a bad book.  

Tiamat's Wrath by James S.A. Corey

Tiamat's Wrath is the eighth book in The Expanse series. I love this series and am sad that this is the last one I can read. Apparently there's one more book in the works (Leviathan Falls!), but its expected publication date is next year. This book was so good, such a page turner. 

Shouldn't you be writing your own book, GRRM, and not reading 500 page tomes and writing blurbs for them?

This book is a definite war book.  Holden is imprisoned on Laconia. Amos is missing. Naomi is hiding out in shipping containers.  Bobbie and Alex are on a ship that isn't the Roci.  It has been a bit of a fallback for The Expanse series that the authors separate our crew and we spend the whole book on pins and needles waiting for them to get together again.  I digress.  Meanwhile, the Laconian government has taken over all the inhabitable worlds, there's a resistance that is organizing a revolt, and there's that pesky alien life that is unpredictable and unknowable.  This book is told from many points of view,  as all the books are, from the dictator's teenage daughter to members of our crew to scientists studying the alien.  It's brilliantly done.

I wrote about it before in my review of the seventh book, Persepolis Rising, but reading this in 2020 is one of the craziest things. Sure, there's a rogue *thing* that is slowly killing all of humanity?  People are divided about how to deal with it? People are acting unethically about it?  Huh.  Maybe a bit too on the nose.  Or just plain prescient and wonderful.

Notable lines (so many!):

1) Chrisjen Avasarala was dead. (page 1, line 1)

A helluva way to start a book. I was super nervous in the previous book about this happening and I almost cried when I read this sentence. Avasarala was my favorite character in this series, hands down.

2) Even when the confirmation came to Laconia that the reports were true, Holden still believed deep in his bones that she was out there somewhere, irritated and profane and pushing herself past all human limits to bend history just another fraction of a degree away from atrocity.  (page 1)

The first chapter of this book may be the best first chapter ever written.

3) Her sari was a vibrant blue that was just close enough to the Laconian color scheme to be polite and just far enough to make it perfectly clear that the politeness was insincere. Even if she hadn't looked like her grandmother, the subtle-not-subtle fuck you would have identified her. (page 3)

I love the idea that fictional Avasarala lives on in her fictional grandchild. I also love that I have to remind myself that this old lady named Avasarala is fictional because I kept tearing up thinking that she was no longer with us.  You know, she never was because she was/is a fictional character. 

4) "You could power a planet by hooking a turbine to her right now. That's how much she's spinning in this grave." (page 4)

You guys. We're still talking about Avasarala. We're still on page 4.

5) "Just part of the donkey show."
"Dog and pony," Holden said. Then, seeing her reaction. "The phrase is dog and pony show."
"Sure it is," she said. (page 8)

There's an ongoing theme in JD Robb's In Death books in which the main character, Eve Dallas, always messes up common phrases and idioms. It amuses me when people try to make sense of the senselessness of the English langauge.

6) (describing two characters hugging) It was like watching a polar bear grapple a coatrack. (page 34)

Not exactly a favorable description of either character, but I like animal analogies.

7) It was like a Chihuahua threating an office building. (page 41)

Again with the animal analogies.

8) The universe she died in might still be better than the one she lived in now, but she had a hard time believing it would be better than the one she'd been born into. (page 245-246)

I mean, this is it, right?  I grew up in a time of peace with the biggest issue in the landscape of presidential politics was whether or not Clinton had extramarital sex.  I grew up in a time when I could ride my bike four miles into town without any concerns about my personal safety.  I grew up in a world in which I was certain I could get a bed in a hospital if I was sick.  The world will undoubtedly get better than it is today (Trump is only president for two more months), but it will never be as good as it was when I was young.  

9) "I'm not sure dying free is as attractive when it stops being rhetorical." (page 264) 

People refuse to wear masks and when they get covid they take to the media to tell us it's not worth it to "be free" if you're going to get this sick. Well, sometimes it's worth a small amount of personal sacrifice.

10) She noticed the tension that crept back into her shoulders and made herself release it for the fourth or fifth or twenty-fifth time. (page 311)

I absolutely hold all my stress in my shoulders and I must force myself to move them away from my ears two dozen times a day.

11) "Governments exist on confidence. Not on liberty. Not on righteousness. Not on force. They exist because people believe that they do. Because they don't ask questions." (page 357)

Governments are social constructs. What happens if we stop believing American dollars mean anything? If we stop thinking passports can actually stop us from crossing borders? If we stop thinking that election ballots are more than paper stones?

12) "If I can try and put this all in a wider context?
"Please do," Trejo said.
"It's about the nature of consciousness."
"That may be a wider context than I was looking for, Major." (page 405)

Scientists talking to military types always amuse me.

13) It was like hugging a metal strut. (page 508)

I like this image, especially in contrast with the hug in notable line #6.