Full disclosure: I’m already a fan of John Birmingham, and I talk to him occasionally on Twitter; so I read A Girl in Time with some preconceptions, and more than a little positive spin on my bias. Birmo is a big fan of manipulating both time and history in his recent fiction; his very excellent Axis of Time series (three full-length novels and three novellas) plays hard and fast with 21st Century military forces being inadvertently sent back to WWII and the massive fallout from […]
The Rook Files: Revisiting the Supernatural MI5
I have been reading a lot this year, and nearly all the books I have read have had me thinking about being used and being of use. Daniel O’Malley’s excellent Stiletto, which revisits the Checquy and it’s collection of supernatural government servants, fits right into this pattern. For those who have not read The Rook, the background here is that Britain has a entire government agency made up of agents with mysterious powers, ranging from people who increase the fertility of those who surround them […]
The Doomsday Book
Doomsday Book by Connie Willis This genre-bending story is a medical thriller, near-future time travel, and historical fiction novel all in one. Despite the subject matter, it’s a rather cozy novel; the kind you read while sipping tea on a rainy afternoon. While reading, I kept thinking that it had no right to be as good as it was because the overall story is rather thin: girl travels in time, professor tries to get her home. Well, maybe it’s a bit more complicated than that. […]
The Stars Are Out Tonight
Tor.com has a book club where you can download a free ebook every month and this book was one of their selections last year. Even though I grew up reading a lot of classic science fiction, I am sometimes wary of it because it isn’t necessarily that compelling. For instance, reading something like the Foundation books by Asimov, where it’s a lot of ideas hitting you left and right but no characters to really anchor the story. While Spin has its roots in that sort […]
A Giant Woman Should Be More Exciting
I picked up a free copy of this book at Worldcon last year. I find free copies tend to be hit and miss, usually it’s a book that a publisher really wants to promote. The last one I had read was Red Rising which was just awful, so I was a bit nervous about this one. But the cover was very appealing. I know they say you shouldn’t judge a book by the cover, but who hasn’t picked up a book thinking it was going to […]
Good Concept That Didn’t Pan Out
This book was recommended to me by a bookclub friend. “Lesbian scientists!” she said. “There’s a drug that makes people see God (or Gods or G-d),” she said. It sounded like a cool idea, reminding me a little of Nexus by Ramez Naam or some post-William Gibson kind of thing about our modern technology gone just a little too far. My overall experience of reading this book was just “meh.” The concept did sound pretty interesting and it begins with a character who is a […]
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