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The first thing you should know about “The Moon Is Down” by John Steinbeck is that it was written in March 1942 as Allied propaganda. It tells a story of the invasion and occupation of a small northern European village. The parties are not named, but it’s a clear depiction of the invasion of Norway by SS troops. It was clearly written to bolster the resolve of Allied soldiers and remind them that a larger, more powerful force is no match for the human spirit and our innate desire for freedom.

The second thing you should know is that it was published simultaneously as a novel and a play. The book is written in a manner that makes this clear. Short, impactful episodes with powerful dialogue tell a story of how the villagers resist their occupier; how the village mayor negotiates with and debates the decisions of the invading general; and how much of a moral, emotional and physical strain occupation is on the occupier.

I’m an anarcho-pacifist, so wartime propaganda leaves me uninspired, but I think this book is worth reading. The Moon is Down is a short, concise book (barely over 100 pages), but we’re not robbed of Steinbeck’s glorious, soul-inspiring writing style:

“In marching, in mobs, in football games, and in war, outlines become vague; real things become unreal and a fog creeps over the mind. Tension and excitement, weariness, movement–all merge in one great gray dream, so that when it is over, it is hard to remember how it was when you killed men or ordered them to be killed. Then other people who were not there tell you what it was like and you say vaguely, “yes, I guess that’s how it was.” ― John Steinbeck, The Moon Is Down

Second, the book is clear about the corrosive futility of occupation and the resistance of the human spirit, even when ‘conquered’ by outside forces. In this present day, as the world watches another occupation attempt to crush the spirits and destroy the hopes of millions of people in Gaza, we see the truth in statements like, “They know that ten heads lopped off will destroy them, but we are a free people; we have as many heads as we have people, and in a time of need leaders pop up among us like mushrooms.”

I’m not in love with this book, but it’s a fascinating read and there are some very deep, universal truths peppered throughout that are worth consideration 83 years and six milllion “never agains” later.

This is the Murderbot novella that feels the most forgettable to me. It's not bad, but partially it's that it has the most action in it, which is fine and good but isn't really what I'm here for. I do like that it establishes that there are still dangers out there for Murderbot, even as it is wildly competent in its own domain.

When I’d called it a pet robot, I honestly thought I was exaggerating. This was going to be even more annoying than I had anticipated, and I had anticipated a pretty high level of annoyance, maybe as high as 85 percent. Now I was looking at 90 percent, possibly 95 percent.

The best part of this book is Miki, the human-form bot that Murderbot can't help but be irritated by. Miki ends up being a great foil, especially around Murderbot's feelings of not-jealousy about Miki's relationship with its human Don Abene.

Billy Boyle is a young Boston cop whose family pulls strings with their Congressman and "Uncle Ike" (Eisenhower) to get a cushy officer position rather than an infantry position in WW2. Ike wants to use him as a special investigator, and the first case is to root out a man who is part of the Norwegian government in exile and also a Nazi spy. While on the grounds of Beardsley Hall, where the Norwegian government-in-exile is located, one of two men competing for King Haakon's ear appears to be murdered. Boyle's search for the spy is now also a search for a murderer.

I found the story enjoyable, especially the early parts of the book where Boyle lays out how he's not really a top-notch detective. Rather he's barely made the rank when he was inducted. And the initial investigation stuff is great too, as it involves things like following money, interviewing staff, and searching rooms. Later in the story the investigation turns more to speculative means, and I don't enjoy that as much. However, the story throughout also includes a lot of the developing friendship between Boyle, British Second Officer Daphne Seaton, and Polish officer-in-exile Piotr "Kaz" Kazimierz. That made up for the investigation veering into methods I dislike in my fiction.

Lastly, the ending is pretty unbelievable, and doesn't hold together on its own terms. I didn't really mind that much, but if you like your mysteries to make sense all the way to the end, this is not the book for you.

I wonder sometimes if too high expectations make me more likely to be disappointed in a book. I feel like the Mossa and Pleiti series should be my jam: it's lesbian scifi detective fiction set on an Oxford-esque Jupiter space habitats. This one was pretty good, but the first book is still my favorite.

The details of the mystery in this book are the most solid of the trilogy, and (in some ways) I like Pleiti getting a chance to try to do some investigating on her own. Unfortunately, the romance angle suffers from acute "please just talk to each other" syndrome where they each worry on their own about what the other is thinking and feeling.

This is also maybe a minor and petty opinion, but it felt like this book over-did loan words from other languages; arguably, in universe this could be part of the academic study of past earth so I can give it a little bit of a pass. However, it feels like a :chart_with_upwards_trend: from the first book which had none (to my poor memory), to the second book with a few, and this third book where it was so frequent as to almost become jarring. I could believe in the adoption of words like chisme or pues or klopt, but ... chiacchierare? chismoseando?