I received a free advance copy of this from NetGalley for review.
Here’s a book that has the basic idea that humans are hardwired to be pieces of shit,I received a free advance copy of this from NetGalley for review.
Here’s a book that has the basic idea that humans are hardwired to be pieces of shit, and that the solution might be to genetically upgrade us to be better. The first part is obviously true, but the second part has to be pure science fiction because even if you take a turd and sprinkle it with glitter and tie a pretty bow around it, it’s still a piece of shit.
The official plot summary on this is fairly thin, and they’re are some twists and turns so I don’t want to give away much other than to say that it’s set in the near future where after a disaster caused by genetic engineering caused a massive famine that the world has cracked down on all aspects of DNA tinkering. A man named Logan Ramsey who has his own troubled past he’s trying to redeem is working for an agency trying to stop black market science when he gets dosed with something during a raid. While he initially seems to recover, Logan realizes that he is being improved. Hilarity ensues…
I’m not the biggest Blake Crouch fan in the world, and like most of the other books of his I’ve read I found this to be fine. It’s got an interesting idea, and a well thought out world built up. His writing is OK enough, and there is some interesting discussion about the nature of humanity and why we refuse to acknowledge long term threats like climate change.
However, while this is the kind of story that should be right in my wheelhouse it never feels like it elevates to that next level where I’m really excited about turning the pages, and once I’m done I feel a momentary sense of satisfaction and promptly start forgetting about what I just read.
So hardcore Crouch fans will be probably enjoy as might any sci-fi/thriller fans who pick it up. I don’t regret reading it, but it didn’t have much of an impact either. ...more
How do you write a review of the last one of a nine book series without spoiling the entire thing in the process?
Very carefully.
So here we are at the How do you write a review of the last one of a nine book series without spoiling the entire thing in the process?
Very carefully.
So here we are at the end of all things, and I’m not just talking about the finale of this story. While various factions of people continue to battle among the stars, a far more dangerous enemy has been awakened and seemingly won’t rest until humanity has been wiped out. There might be a way to fight back, but it would essentially mean destroying the human race to save it. At the heart of it all are the surviving characters that fans of this series have come to know and love, but what’s left of the crew members of the Rocinante are not what they used to be. Age, violence, regrets, and grief have all taken a toll, and even the ship itself is long past it’s prime. Despite it all, nobody is ready to give up and die just yet.
This series hooked me from the start, and it’s been a franchise that never let me down. New books appeared regularly, and what started as a space opera mixed with a conspiracy story grew into a sprawling epic that got deeper and richer as it progressed. It always had the beep-boops and cool pew-pew space war stuff mixed with politics and espionage that any nerd could appreciate, and the plots were also clever, tense, and intriguing.
While that stuff always worked, what really made this shine was that it was about people. Not perfect people, that’s for sure. Our heroes had their fair share of flaws, and there’s a cynical streak to this story that feels more true every day. Almost nobody can set aside their own grudges and immediate self-interest to take the long view. At one point in this a character states, “Optimism is for assholes.” And considering the last couple of years, I don’t think I’ve ever nodded more at a line in a book.
Still, while The Expanse never felt like a shiny Star Trek style future, it also didn’t feel entirely hopeless. There were times when good people came through in big ways, and even a few points when total jerks had moments of clarity. It never lasts long, but it always gives a reader enough hope that humanity might just stumble through whatever catastrophes it creates for itself. Through it all, we had a core group of characters, and as happens in the best of fiction, I came to care deeply about all of them.
I also appreciate that the authors who make up the James SA Corey name have been very clear about this being it. There will not be any spin-offs, prequels, or anything else done by them with this franchise other than the books and handful of short stories they already wrote. It’s rare to read a story these days that feels completed, and that’s what this is.
They didn’t just finish the story, they finished it well....more
I received a free advance copy of this from NetGalley for review.
Not that long ago, if I read a story in which time travel was possible but instead ofI received a free advance copy of this from NetGalley for review.
Not that long ago, if I read a story in which time travel was possible but instead of it being strictly regulated and only utilized for things like historical research that it was used just for tourism for rich assholes, I’d have said that doesn’t seem very plausible. However, these days I’d say that’s absolutely what would happen if we had time travel because the wealthy will obviously get their way even as it dooms us all.
So in the future time travel is a real thing, and there’s a kind of timeport where the wealthy go to indulge their curiosity, and the place they stay while getting ready to leave is the Paradox Hotel. In the Paradox, January Cole is the head of security, but this was a step down from her old job as a kind of time cop who used to do missions to prevent things like a white supremacist trying to save Hitler at the end of World War II.
Unforunately, extensive time travel can have some nasty side effects like coming ‘unstuck’ so that you start seeing the past instead of the present around you, and this eventually leads to total mind meltdown. January was demoted because of this, but she had briefly found happiness at the Paradox before tragedy struck. Now she’s hiding her worsening condition so that she can stay there and briefly relive her favorite moments when she comes unstuck in time.
Things get more complicated when the government is about to privatize the time travel business, and there’s an important meeting coming up where several rich scumbags with dubious motives will bid on trying to take control of the timeport and hotel. It gets worse when January starts seeing a future version of a murdered man, various weird time related things keep happening, and old secrets related to the core idea of time travel itself start coming out.
There’s a lot of interesting ideas here as well as some cool scenes that put a fun spin on the whole time travel thing. However, overall it lacks the really satisfying feeling of everything coming together like you should in this kind of twisty-turny, timey-wimey kind of plot. It all feels very scattered and kind of muddy.
You could argue that makes sense because our narrator, January, is confused and an unreliable narrator, but she’s also written to be your typical smart-mouthed bad-ass. However, even the stuff that shouldn’t be confusing comes across as wandering all over the place. For example, January is supposedly pressed for time and has too many things to do, yet she just drops everything to go work out at one point. None of it really tracks well, and it all ends up feeling disjointed and unsatisfying.
It’s not a terrible book by any means, and there were elements I enjoyed. It just seems more like a collection of ideas that needed more shaping and editing to turn into a more coherent and compelling story....more
I received a free advanced copy of this from NetGalley for review.
Amnesia in SPAAAACCCEEEEE!!!
A man wakes up from an extended induced coma on-board a I received a free advanced copy of this from NetGalley for review.
Amnesia in SPAAAACCCEEEEE!!!
A man wakes up from an extended induced coma on-board a spaceship alongside two corpses, and he no idea of who he is or how he got there. As he explores the ship, he slowly begins to get his memory back and realizes that he’s Ryland Grace, the sole survivor of a desperate mission to reach another solar system and hopefully find the answers to save Earth from a cosmic catastrophe. With only a sketchy idea of how the ship works Ryland must rely on basic science and improvisation to try and accomplish his mission, but he’ll find more than a few surprises waiting for him when he reaches his destination.
Since The Martian was such a sensation I think Andy Weir is doomed to be one of those authors whose later work is always compared to his debut, and there’s no doubt of some similarities here. The most obvious one is that they both feature smart and funny main characters being alone and having to science the shit out of what they have on hand to get the job done. In fact, it’d be easy to see this as just flipping The Martian’s plot because in it you had pretty much the entire world banding together to save one isolated man, and Project Hail Mary is about one isolated man trying to save the entire world.
However, while it seems at first that both books are working off the same template, Weir only relies on that hook for a while before seriously changing things up and getting very creative. In fact, I suspect that some fans of The Martian are going to dislike this because of how it seems to start out in that near-future type of hard sci-fi that the mainstream is quicker to accept, but then it takes a hard turn into weirder concepts.
I don’t want to say too much because I feel like this is one that benefits from going in knowing as little as possible. Rest assured that even when things get strange that Weir still relies on a funny narrator working off a foundation of real science so that it stays grounded and relatable.
It also has a couple of really good twists, and actually ends up being a far more moving book than I thought it would be. It’s not as good as The Martian because part of the appeal was Weir’s ability to make science entertaining, but now that's part of his brand so it doesn't feel as new and inventive as it did before. It's still a supremely entertaining book that blends a realistic approach with sci-fi and comes up with something that again feels fresh....more
I received a free advance copy of this from NetGalley for review.
Imagine if you could see what was in the news a year from now? Considering how the laI received a free advance copy of this from NetGalley for review.
Imagine if you could see what was in the news a year from now? Considering how the last year is gone, I’d guess it would be more than any sane person could bear.
Adhi Chaudry and Ben Boyce became friends in college even though they couldn’t be more different. Adhi is an introvert and a brilliant computer engineer. Ben is a charismatic salesman type who dreams of making it big. When Adhi develops a theory that would use quantum computing to enable a PC to show data from one year in the future, Ben immediately sees it is an opportunity to start a company that will make Apple and Amazon look like small potatoes. In fact, they even get confirmation that this is what they will do once Adhi gets the machine working and they look ahead a year to see that their corporation, The Future, has made them rich even before they start selling everyone their own machine. There are troubling aspects to the technology, but with the knowledge of what they will do in hand, Ben and Adhi press on even as problems pile up and begin to take a toll on their friendship.
There’s a lot I liked about this clever sci-fi book, and one of the best things was that it's epistolary novel told in texts, emails, and transcripts that bounce around from Ben’s testimony told in front of a congressional hearing just before The Future starts selling the machines to the public to flashbacks about how it all came about. It’s not just a clever gimmick either because there’s actually a reason why it’s told this way that becomes clear late in the book.
The idea of the glimpsing ahead to the future via a quantum computer was also intriguing and very well done. It could have been a concept that came across as wonky or even magical, but Adhi’s theory along with the development process grounds it more than enough to seem feasible.
Once the set-up is established, author Dan Frey then does some very nice work in a way that shows he thought through the implications of this technology even if his main characters haven’t. Adhi and Ben do a few tests that convince them that the future cannot be changed by them knowing the future. Although Adhi is more cautious we see how Ben’s enthusiasm blows past any notions that this is a bad idea.
This is where Frey’s themes become clear, and it couldn’t be more timely than this moment when social media companies who made fortunes by allowing anyone to say pretty much whatever they want have now been forced to reckon with the consequences because it turns out there’s a lot of people who are shameless opportunists who will lie constantly, and there’s even more people ready to swallow everything they say.
That’s why Ben’s character really struck me because he talks a good game about how letting everyone share the information about the future makes for a fair and level playing field and that it would actually make the world better. Yet, the story also shows time and again how he uses that argument to beat down rational concerns and criticisms about the technology he’s trying to sell and how much responsibility he bears for it. Sound like any tech billionaires you know?
Frey uses this to turn what could be the book’s biggest plot hole into a strength. Because if Adhi and Ben can see the future, why wouldn’t they just keep it secret and play the stock market to get rich without taking the tech public and open the Pandora’s Box of letting everyone see the immediate future?
Part of the answer is that it isn’t enough to just be rich, they want to become famous as world changers like Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, or Mark Zuckerberg. Or at least that’s Ben dream, and he can persuade Adhi that it’s his too. Which means they have to let the public know about it so the excuses about doing it for the good of the world start up. Plus, they know that they’ve already done it by looking ahead so why worry about it? They’ve set up a logic loop that demands that they do this even as the warning signs start flashing faster and faster.
On top of all this, it reads like any of those real stories about how some friends started a business, made it big, and then when disagreements come about it, everything falls apart. As you read their emails and texts you can see the cracks starting to form, and there’s a real sense of impending doom because readers can see what’s happening even if they can’t. This has impact because Frey built a real and believable bond between Adhi and Ben so that I was still rooting for these guys even as I was thinking that this was all a terrible idea.
Combine all this with a fantastic ending, and you’ve got one of the better sci-fi books that has extremely relevant themes....more
I received a free advance copy from NetGalley for review.
So this is sci-fi set in the far future where humans caused a bunch of trouble for all the otI received a free advance copy from NetGalley for review.
So this is sci-fi set in the far future where humans caused a bunch of trouble for all the other known alien worlds, and after being driven to the brink of extinction they are still the most hated and feared species in the galaxy.
I can’t fault that story logic.
Sarya is the last known human living under a false identity with the protection of her adoptive mother, Shenya the Widow. (It’s kind of like having the queen from Aliens as a parent.) They live on a space station that is part of the vast Network which connects every alien and AI as well as organizing the structure of every facet of everyday life as well as providing the faster than light travel that connects them all.
When a stranger approaches Sarya with the knowledge that she is actually Human she soon finds herself on the run as she discovers just how big and terrifying the Network really is.
This is one of more unique and well thought set-ups for a future space civilization I’ve read, and it’s filled with interesting concepts. Most intriguing to me was how there are various levels of intelligence for Network users so manipulating lesser rated beings is a key point. I also admired how the story embraces the scale of it all because space is so freaking big that the Network can be enormous beyond all human comprehension and yet still be a tiny part of the galaxy.
However, that also turned out to be a stumbling block because at one point the story shifts away from trying to get us to really empathize with Sarya and instead tries to blow the reader’s mind. Which it does pretty well, but I think some of the emotions of the story got lost will all the effort to impress with the vastness of it all....more
Sociopaths doing scientific research? Why not? We already put them in charge of the government.
Another one of the The Expanse short stories tie-ins giSociopaths doing scientific research? Why not? We already put them in charge of the government.
Another one of the The Expanse short stories tie-ins gives us the scoop on another piece of the story that wasn’t explored in the main novels. This time out we learn about the research team that unleashed the protomolecule from one of the people involved. His backstory as one of the regular folks desperately trying to escape the level of Basic assistance on Earth gives us some more detail on another aspect of society. His account of willingly being turned into a member of a team of sociopaths so that they’ll be willing to break many an egg to make the perfect omelette his chilling, and the story of what happened to them after the events of the earlier books also leads into some of the later story threads.
As usual, it’s not critical to the overall Expanse story, but as bonus material it’s pretty interesting. It’s also worth noting that they used this story as part of the TV series....more
David Draper is a hard working chemistry student who has started a sideline cooking up narcotics for a shady dealer. Since this is happening in the fuDavid Draper is a hard working chemistry student who has started a sideline cooking up narcotics for a shady dealer. Since this is happening in the future on Mars I guess we can finally declare defeat in the War on Drugs, right?
It’s weird that I only realized while reading this that while Mars has been a big part of The Expanse series with a couple of major characters being born on the red planet, that we actually haven’t spent much time there in the books. The most interesting aspect of David’s story is how it gives us a taste of a society in which the long term goal is terraforming the planet, and everyone has a very defined role to play. David isn’t a bad guy, and we realize that what he’s doing is one of the only ways he can rebel within a rigid structure where he has precious few moments of free time. With his Aunt Bobbi back on Mars and living in his house after leaving the Marines, he is growing increasingly frustrated at the life that’s been laid out for him.
This gives us a big of background on what Bobbi dealt with after the second book, and while the David story isn’t anything fantastic it’s an interesting deeper look at a part of The Expanse story that we don’t see much of elsewhere....more
While I’ve read all of The Expanse books and love the TV series I hadn’t gotten around to checking outIn space no one can hear you commit a war crime.
While I’ve read all of The Expanse books and love the TV series I hadn’t gotten around to checking out all the tie-in short stories, and this first one fills in the backstory of Fred Johnson. Since Fred is a former military officer from Earth who left all that behind to become one of the key leaders of the Belters he’s been something of an enigma so it was nice to get this story that explains why Fred turned his back on Earth and exactly what happened to earn him the nickname ‘The Butcher of Anderson Station.’
Since I’d already seen this dramatized on the TV show it didn’t give me quite the emotional punch that it could have. Plus, much like the other tie-in The Churn I could argue that it was short enough to be worked into the actual novels at some point instead of being extra material. If you’re a fan of the series it’s definitely worth a look although you’re not missing critical information if you don’t check it out....more
I received a free advance copy of this for review from NetGalley.
You load sixteen drones, and what do you get? Another day older and deeper in debt…
ItI received a free advance copy of this for review from NetGalley.
You load sixteen drones, and what do you get? Another day older and deeper in debt…
It’s the near future, and the giant company Cloud dominates the economy with its massive warehouses that are essentially cities where the employees live and work. However, the CEO of Cloud, Gibson Wells, has just announced that he’s dying of cancer so there’s change on the horizon as a couple of new employees meet during the hiring process. Paxton’s dream of running his own business was destroyed by Cloud, but now he needs a job so he finds himself on a security team. Zinnia acts like just another person looking for work, but in reality she’s been paid by a mysterious client to infiltrate Cloud and uncover some of its secrets.
Unfortunately, it’s hard for Zinnia to find holes in Cloud’s security, and even harder when she is worn out from long shifts spent running to fill orders. A relationship with Paxton might be her best way to complete her mission, but can she use him like that if she actually likes the guy?
On the surface this seems like your standard dystopian tale with some idealistic folks trying to take down an evil corporation, but this book is deeper and more subtle than that. For starters, the characters aren’t stereotypes. You might expect Paxton to be bitter and angry about his company being destroyed by Cloud and having to go to work for them, but he’s actually a guy who still believes that he can achieve his dreams by good ideas and hard work. Zinnia isn’t a radical trying to change the world either. She’s a mercenary doing a job for money, and while she has no love for Cloud she’s not looking to take it down either.
We also hear from Gibson Wells in the form of messages he’s releasing as he does a final farewell tour of the company he built, and that includes some of his history. At first his folksy tale of how he started Cloud with little more than an idea and some furniture scavenged from a closed school gives us the impression that this is the American dream taken to its fullest potential. Especially when Wells lays out that part of his goal for creating the Cloud facilities was to provide good jobs while helping to stave the increasing ravages of climate change by making the greenest facilities possible. It all sounds very reasonable, maybe even honorable. Yet as we learn more and more about how Cloud actually works Wells’ defense of his business tactics start to ring increasingly hollow.
For example, all the Cloud employees are on a rating system where their performance is constantly evaluated and a star value assigned which Wells explains came from his old grade school days when he always tried to get all the points possible on his assignments. That sounds good, but when average performance might get you fired then it’s a constant battle to be great, even perfect. Which then means that the standards shift to a point where people literally have to run themselves ragged to meet the minimum performance level.
Another thing the book does an excellent job at is showing just how falling into a routine might be the most dangerous and depressing aspect of all. There are several points where both Paxton and Zinnia get into the rut of just doing their job, returning to their small apartments, watching TV, falling asleep, and then doing it again. This, more than anything, might be the thing that lets Cloud flourish. If your employees have to expend so much physical and mental energy to get through an average workday that they just want to collapse into a stupor every night then they’re never going to have the time or gumption to try and shake things up in any way.
So this is a well written book with a timely message that I thought it was excellent. It also depressed the hell out of me because I read it on device I got from the company that Cloud is obviously based on. Now I’m posting a review on a website owned by that same corporation. Even though I don’t directly work for that company it’s changed my life in many ways, and I went along with it because it was cheap and convenient without wondering too much where it all ends. Oops.
Even worse is that after reading this now, at a time when billionaires make the rules and the bottom line is used to justify everything they do, I don’t see a way that it gets better without humanity going all the way down Fury Road and just starting over.
But hey, it’s still a good book so go ahead and read it. Just maybe try to find a copy in an independent bookstore....more
If I wasn’t hoping that death is just an endless, dreamless slumber before then I sure am now.
Richard ‘Dodge’ Forthrast made billions with the video gIf I wasn’t hoping that death is just an endless, dreamless slumber before then I sure am now.
Richard ‘Dodge’ Forthrast made billions with the video game company he founded, but money doesn’t help him when a routine medical procedure goes sideways and leaves him braindead. However, Dodge once signed up with a cryonics company to have himself frozen after death, and that old legal agreement becomes the impetus for his friends and family to pour resources into tech that eventually can digitally map Dodge’s mind as part of an uneasy alliance with an ailing billionaire, El Shepherd, who is desperately trying to find a way to cheat death.
Years pass, and eventually Dodge’s consciousness is brought back in a digital realm, but he has no real memories of who he was. Operating mainly on instinct, Dodge starts shaping the world he now inhabits into something approximating his old reality, and eventually the living begin adding more dead mapped minds to that space. Slowly, a community that Dodge oversees begins to grow, but Shepherd doesn’t like the world that Dodge and his people have made so he finds a way to make sure that he’ll be in charge once he dies and gets his brain plugged in.
That’s a lot of plot for one book, but since this is a Neal Stephenson novel there’s all that and more. In addition to the story of Dodge in his digital world there’s the stuff with his friends and family dealing with all the technological and legal issues that arise from starting and maintaining a virtual afterlife. There’s also a long subplot that details how the internet and social media eventually becomes so awash in bullshit that everyone needs a personal editor to weed out the nonsense they don’t want to see, and the trend of people only believing what they choose creates whole reality challenged zones of the United States based on ‘alternative facts’. All of this stuff takes up a good chunk of the first half of the book, and I was enjoying that part quite a bit.
However, in the second half the focus shifts much more to dead Dodge in his computer world, and that’s where it got incredibly tedious. Stephenson does a lot here that draws on various religious creation myths with Dodge essentially becoming a Zeus like figure before the thing shifts into a more Christian style story with Dodge being cast in the Lucifer part by Shepherd. That’s an interesting idea, but the execution of it goes on for so long that I lost patience with the whole thing because it starts reading like someone tossed a Bible and a copy of Lord of the Rings into a blender.
Another part of the problem is that Stephenson also baked in some video game influence here, and as a guy who helped create a huge MMORPG type game it makes sense that Dodge’s approach to building and living in a digital world would feel somewhat like that. However, while it can be fun to play a video game like Civilization yourself, it’s boring to just watch someone else do it, and that’s what reading this book felt like for a good part of it.
Oddly, Stephenson also never really deals with the big questions that the story brings up. Like, are Dodge and the others in the cyber world falling into the rhythms of Greek mythology and Christianity out of some subconscious instinct that recalls those stories, or is it possible that our reality is also just some kind of artificially created existence that and the creation of these kinds of places just plays out in patterns?
Another aspect I didn’t care for was using the characters like Dodge and some of his family and friends who were also in Stephenson’s thriller REAMDE. I really enjoyed that book as one of Stephenson’s more straight ahead stories, and I especially liked Dodge in it. So to just essentially kill him off in the early going here is a bummer that puts a retroactive pall over that book.
Maybe the thing that bugs me most about this is that it’s essentially two rich guys battling to control what happens to people after they die. As the book lays out it would take an enormous amount of resources to develop something like this so it’s just cold hard reality that the first people to be able to live on past death would be wealthy.
However, it seem incredibly unfair that the privilege they enjoyed in life would then carry over to the point where they literally get to shape reality to their view of how things should be. Even good guy Dodge never questions why he gets to choose how things are going to work once everyone who dies starts getting uploaded. We just know that Shepherd was a jerk in life and in death so we’re supposed to root for Dodge, not ask why he gets all the power.
We already live in a world where obscenely rich assholes get to make all the rules. I was really hoping that death would be the end of that so I didn’t much enjoy a long story about how these fucks could maintain control after we all croak. Can you imagine what happens if the Koch brothers were essentially gods who could shape reality to what they want it to be?
If that’s the way it was going to be then I’d take a hard pass on the afterlife and just settle for the comfort of a long dirt nap. Reading about that idea isn’t a lot of fun either even if Stephenson tries mightily to convince us that it’d be cool just so long as the right rich guy is in charge....more
I received a free advance copy from the publisher for review.
Lee Crowe is the kind of private investigator who isn’t above taking a shady job from a dI received a free advance copy from the publisher for review.
Lee Crowe is the kind of private investigator who isn’t above taking a shady job from a defense attorney as part of an effort to intimidate a federal witness. While working on that project he comes across the body of a wealthy young Claire Gravesend who fell from a roof and smashed into a Rolls Royce.
Damn, but the rich even get to die in luxury.
Claire had been acting oddly before dropping out of sight. The police are calling it a suicide, but her mother isn’t convinced and hires Lee to find out the truth. Investigating Claire quickly proves to be dangerous business, and when Lee makes a shocking discovery things really start getting weird.
One of the things I loved about this one is that we start with what seems to be a gritty neo-noir tale about a morally ambiguous private detective, and that’s the thread that’s maintained even when the story starts shifting into other territory. While there are elements of other genres brought in, the style and themes are constant throughout the book.
That really works because the main draw here is the character of Crowe who we eventually learn is a disgraced former lawyer who was once on the doorstep of real wealth and power, but he lost it all once his well-connected wife got bored with him. Now Crowe seems to have few lines he won’t cross like after discovering Claire’s body he takes a picture and sells it to a tabloid for a nice payday.
Despite apparently having no moral code we see throughout the book that Crowe is more complex than a guy willing to do any dirty job for money. Having once had a glimpse behind the curtain of privilege to see how rigged the game is he has no compunction about cheating himself. Even as he’s willing to work for the benefit of the wealthy there’s also resentment simmering in the background, and once he starts learning the truth about Claire Gravesend he’s capable of outrage and wanting to see some justice done.
Jonathan Moore has very quickly become one of my favorite writers, and I think this is his best one yet. There’s some very slick genre fusion going on here along with good character work, and the plot makes it a compulsive page turner. But I think the most impressive thing is how he creates an almost dreamlike atmosphere at times, and yet also blend that with much more grounded elements. This is most definitely a hard boiled crime novel in tone, but there are also scenes that would be right at home in a David Lynch or Stanley Kubrick movie. It’s an intriguing mix.
This is one of the best books I’ve read this year, and I’d also highly recommend all these other ones by Moore:
What if anyone who gets murdered returned alive almost instantly? That sounds like an improvement for humanity, but just think about what it would do What if anyone who gets murdered returned alive almost instantly? That sounds like an improvement for humanity, but just think about what it would do to Netflix’s stock price if new true crime documentaries were no longer a thing.
That’s the big idea here. For an unknown reason the nature of death changes one day. If someone is killed by another person their corpse vanishes, and they appear unharmed back in their homes. Only deaths from natural causes or accidents are permanent with only one in one thousand victims of violence not returning. Not only does this guarantee that the homicide rate drops to zero, it also offers opportunities for do-overs. Like if someone is getting surgery and they’re about to expire on the table, you could kill them instead, and then they’d reappear in the same shape they were just a few hours earlier. You aren’t fixing any long term health issues, but you could give doctors a second chance or save someone who was just in a car accident.
That’s where Tony Valdez comes in. He’s a government approved Dispatcher who is authorized to terminate people about to die so that they’ll return. A lot of people find what he does creepy or immoral since he has technically murdered over a thousand people, but Tony looks on it as saving lives, not taking them. However, when another Dispatcher vanishes, and there are signs of foul play Tony ends up reluctantly helping a detective by showing her some of the shady underground ways Dispatching is used.
This is a really intriguing concept, but unfortunately it was John Scalzi who came up with it. I’ve liked some of his books and generally think he’s entertaining, but the reason I stopped reading his stuff is that he relies almost exclusively on dialogue with almost no descriptions or deep dives into the sci-fi concepts he comes up with. This is a prime example because this is a pretty cool premise that opens up a whole bunch of potential storylines, and you could go crazy deep with some of them.
However, rather than sit down and really dig into that Scalzi is content to just toss together a quickie mystery that only hints at the bigger implications of what this would mean for the world. Yeah, he gives a few glimpses of it, but it’s mostly just relayed from Tony to the detective in exposition. There’s only a tiny bit of acknowledgement paied to how this would be a massive game changer in terms of religion, philosophy, and science.
Still, as a free Audible Original read by Zachery Quinto, it’s a fun two-hour listen. I just wish that a writer willing and capable of really making a meal out of this idea had come up with it....more
I received a free advanced copy of this from NetGalley for review.
I’ll bet Blake Crouch filled up at least five large whiteboards with diagrams tryingI received a free advanced copy of this from NetGalley for review.
I’ll bet Blake Crouch filled up at least five large whiteboards with diagrams trying to figure out the plot for this one.
NYPD Detective Barry Sutton tries to stop a woman about to jump off a high rise building, and she tells him that she’s suffering from the rare False Memory Syndrome which has given her the memories of another entire lifetime including a son who doesn’t exist. Barry become intrigued by the woman’s story, in part because he is mourning his own daughter who died years earlier, and he begins to look into her life. In a parallel story set 11 years earlier, Dr. Helena Smith is struggling to get funding for plans to build a machine capable of recording a human memory, and her project seems dead in the water until a mysterious investor steps in.
That’s all I want to say about the plot to anyone who hasn’t read the book, and I’d urge any reader to go in not knowing more than that because what follows mixes a clever sci-fi concept with an engaging thriller that turns the very idea of existence inside out.
To dig into this deeper without giving the ending away….(view spoiler)[ I absolutely loved the time travel aspect of this with the idea that reality is shaped by consciousness so it should be possible to go back into our own memory and change things. The fallout from that, with the other memories eventually kicking in for those affected by it, is a terrifying way of expanding the scope that eventually scrambles the eggs of all of humanity. Helena’s chair is a Pandora’s Box that can’t be unopened even with time travel, and that creates a cruel trap. You can’t make this right without using time travel, but every trip back once things go to hell just means that eventually another timeline comes crashing down on everyone. (hide spoiler)]
I was a little worried about the whole ‘sad Daddy’ aspect of Barry having a dead child at first because my complaint about Crouch’s other reality bending book Dark Matter was that it leaned on the trope of a man-doing-it-all-for-his-family, but I was pleasantly surprised with how the book eventually became a much bigger story without ever losing the emotional component of that backstory either.
Overall, this was mind-bending and horrifying page turner with some very cool ideas that had me on the edge of my seat while reading....more
If you’re a fan of this series the very first sentence will break your heart.
Do things get better after that? Let’s see what one of the characters hasIf you’re a fan of this series the very first sentence will break your heart.
Do things get better after that? Let’s see what one of the characters has to say about the possibility of good things happening after bad things:
”Sometimes it’s just one shit sandwich after another.”
Truth.
So yeah, there are a couple of moments in this that absolutely suck if you’re invested in these characters. That’s not to say that all hope is lost, and that there aren’t some good fist-pumping “Hell yeah!” moments. There are plenty, but there is a steep price to pay for them. It’s still worth it though.
That’s pretty much all I have to say about this one. It’s nigh on impossible to talk about the eighth book in a nine book series without spoiling the previous ones so I’m just going to once again urge that any sci-fi/space opera fans try this if they haven’t already. Oh, and the TV show based on it that is now on Amazon Prime is well worth watching, too....more
The only good thing about having a major snowstorm knock out power to your house for three days is that you can really catch up on your reading. ThankThe only good thing about having a major snowstorm knock out power to your house for three days is that you can really catch up on your reading. Thankfully once the Kindle ran out of juice I still had a stack of stuff from the library as well as some recent purchases from a used book store to keep from thinking about how my toes were growing numb.
It’s the near future and America is still so tangled up in various conflicts overseas that the draft was re-instituted. Jack Daley was one of the reluctant citizens called to duty. Jack turned out to be a pretty good shot and was trained as a sniper and during his deployment he killed several people before being wounded and sent home. Despite some dark times thanks to his PTSD Jack has started building a career as a writer as well as enjoying his relationship with his girlfriend Kit.
Jack receives a chance to make some serious money by writing up a novelette based on the idea for a horror movie about an obese serial killer who might be an alien. The assignment comes from a famous film director who has the basic story concept but is looking to get it written up as a book to see if it would make a good film. With a potential fat payday on the line Jack throws himself into the work and is making good progress. That’s when he receives a mysterious package with a rifle inside it as well as a demand: If Jack follows instructions and uses the gun to kill a ‘bad man’ he’ll make a small fortune. If he refuses then Kit will be killed.
Since he doesn’t want to murder anyone Jack and Kit try to alert the authorities as well as make themselves impossible to find. However, they can’t get anyone to take them seriously, and the bad guys have an uncanny ability to keep tracking them down.
I’ve been a big fan of Joe Haldeman for some time, but this novel is hard to get a handle on. Even though the concept seems easy enough as a sci-fi thriller it takes a long time to get going. The first part is mainly about Jack’s life as he works on the book and goes on some bicycle trips as part of his research for it. We even get a chapter in which he meets Kit’s parents for the first time that really serves no purpose. There’s also the book-within-the-book with Jack’s chapter’s about a really gruesome serial killer doing his business. The rifle and the threat don’t even arrive until about halfway through a book that isn’t that long.
Even when we get to the aspect you’d think would be the conspiracy thriller it seems disjointed and low key with Jack and Kit kinda sorta trying to lay low, but there’s not really a sense of danger in any of it even when they get found. The ultimate resolution doesn’t make a lot of sense either.
So this book is a mess, but it’s an oddly fun mess. I really liked the character of Jack who is a funny guy just trying to live his life. Despite being a decent sniper in the army he’s not really a bad-ass, and as he points out several times he’s not a super assassin. He wasn’t even the best shot in his platoon, and he really doesn’t want to ever hurt anyone again.
Despite the plot not making a lick of sense and the book seeming kind of aimless overall, I had a pretty good time reading it just because I liked Haldelman’s story about this guy writing a serial killer story. Maybe I wouldn’t have enjoyed it as much if I had anything else to do, but it was fun enough when you’re huddled a blanket with no TV or heat....more
This is a set of pretty good Star Wars stories that was completely ruined for me by the art. It’s not even all the art, it’s just one particular aspecThis is a set of pretty good Star Wars stories that was completely ruined for me by the art. It’s not even all the art, it’s just one particular aspect of it. So more’s the pity.
Apparently Salvador Larocca used photorealistic style on the major character’s faces so he did some kind of tracing off actual pictures of the actors and then these were colored in tones to make them look more like photographs, not drawings. The results at times look like a child scissored out the faces of the actors from magazine photos and then glued them into Star Wars comics.
What’s even weirder is that I could at least understand why it’s done for people like Harrison Ford and Billy Dee Williams. But at one point the same thing is used for a random Imperial officer who is in a few panels so then I’ve got some strange dude’s face stuck into my Star Wars comic. Why was this necessary?
It looks sooooo awful that it immediately took me out of all the stories it was used in which was too bad because there was some interesting plots here, especially the one about R2-D2 going on a one-droid rescue mission to save C-3PO after he’s been captured. That’s the only reason I didn’t give this one star....more
Luke Skywalker is still trying to find a way to become a Jedi, and rogue archaeologist Doctor Aprhra has a crystal containing the essence of an ancienLuke Skywalker is still trying to find a way to become a Jedi, and rogue archaeologist Doctor Aprhra has a crystal containing the essence of an ancient Jedi Master. Aphra has a plan to see a mysterious queen who receives visitors only once a year and will grant a favor to unique life forms. Since Luke is crazy strong with the Force, Aphra believes he’ll catch the queen’s eye, and she will help them unlock the crystal. Despite Aprhra’s previous employment with Darth Vader and their less than friendly previous encounter Luke is so desperate to gain knowledge about the Jedi that he agrees to go along with her.
Because what could possibly go wrong with teaming up with someone who has a history of double crossing every one she deals with at a place called The Screaming Citadel?
This is another entertaining story that blends the nostalgia of the original Star Wars trilogy with the best of this new Marvel line with Doctor Aphra and her companions. There’s a lots of good action, funny banter, and a pretty creepy storyline about what the queen is actually up to. It's nothing next-level great, but it's a solid Star Wars story....more
Shady space archaeologist Doctor Aphra has finally managed to quit working for Darth Vader without ending uA long time ago in a galaxy far, far away….
Shady space archaeologist Doctor Aphra has finally managed to quit working for Darth Vader without ending up dead. Now along with her two murderous droids and the fierce Wookie bounty hunter Black Krrsantan she’s just trying to find precious artifacts to sell so she can pay off debts she owes. However, her business plan gets delayed when her archaeologist credentials are revoked thanks to a person from her past. To get back in business Aphra will have to outwit Imperial forces and track down the mythical resting place of an ancient sect related to the Jedi.
Aphra is the best new creation in these Star Wars comics, and this title focusing on her was a lot of fun. My major gripe about this line of Marvel comics has been that by setting it between A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back and concentrating on the major players from the movies that it's impossible to do real drama or tell us a story of importance since we already know how it all ends. By doing this we get to follow exciting new characters in the familiar universe without knowing what comes next.
It’s also liberating to get a story about a genuine scoundrel who has no allegiance to the Rebellion or the Empire. Aphra is solely out for herself doing her own thing which provides the opportunity to introduce other characters and concepts we haven’t seen before. Plus, she’s just an entertaining character as an anti-hero surviving by her wits and stubbornness. And her droids really want to torture and murder people which I continue to find hilarious....more
I was in the middle of reading this volume when I the news broke that Chris Pine is not going to do the next movie so now I’m left wondering if these I was in the middle of reading this volume when I the news broke that Chris Pine is not going to do the next movie so now I’m left wondering if these comics are the only new stories I’m going to get set in this version of Star Trek. It’s like 1969 all over again! Except I guess I still have Discovery. And this new show that they announced with Patrick Stewart coming back as Picard. OK so it’s not all gloom and doom as far as the future of the Federation goes.
This is another pretty solid volume. It relies less on retelling new versions of the TOS stories, and that makes it more interesting. There’s one decent arc that plays off the fall out of the first two movies that involves Section 31. Then there’s several other shorter side adventures that would all make pretty good episodes like the Enterprise itself being given a humanoid form after an encounter with advanced alien tech. My favorite involves a crossover to an alternate universe in which the entire crew has been gender swapped so that we get to see Captain James T. Kirk meet Captain Jane T. Kirk. (And no, they don’t have sex although I’m pretty sure they were both thinking about it.)
Getting away from just retelling the TOS adventures and building off the alternate timeline helps this a lot, and the writers are coming up with some fun new ideas that feel like Trek stories. ...more
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