Reviews and Comments

Phil in SF

kingrat@sfba.club

Joined 1 year, 6 months ago

aka @kingrat@sfba.social. I'm following a lot of bookwyrm accounts, since that seems to be the only way to get reviews from larger servers to this small server. Also, I will like & boost a lot of reviews that come across my feed. I will follow most bookwyrm accounts back if they review & comment. Social reading should be social.

2024 In The Books

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Edda L. Fields-Black: Combee (Hardcover, 2024, Oxford University Press) No rating

The story of the Combahee River Raid, one of Harriet Tubman's most extraordinary accomplishments, based …

And with the addition of this book, I've now completed the Pulitzer Price for History list on SFBA.club (sfba.club/list/115/s/pulitzer-prize-for-history). If you follow me, there should be a version of the list on your server. I've added descriptions and high quality covers on SFBA.club; what shows up on other servers may be a crapshoot.

started reading Dead Connection by Alafair Burke (Ellie Hatcher, #1)

Alafair Burke: Dead Connection (EBook, 2010, Henry Holt) No rating

In Alafair Burke's electrifying thriller, Dead Connection, a rookie detective goes undercover on the Internet …

I've also had Alafair Burke's 212 on my TBR pile for a while, but it's the 3rd book in the Ellie Hatcher series. So I went and got the 1st book in the series on Libby because I hate starting series after the first book.

reviewed Manifold: Time by Stephen Baxter (Manifold, #1)

Stephen Baxter: Manifold: Time (EBook, 2003, Del Rey)

The year is 2010. More than a century of ecological damage, industrial and technological expansion, …

Do you like potheads going on about mathematics?

Reid Malenfant has a plan to go to the stars, and it's very Musk-like even before Musk was a thing. OK fine. Most of the first 12% of this book (which is where I pressed the eject button) is taken up by a sophist discussion of the chances of human survival. So here's the argument: either human population grows exponentially/polynomially, it levels off at a sustainable level, or it crashes. Following so far? The fact that you are alive means that the most likely outcome is the third. Here's the logic: In the first two scenarios, the vast majority of all humans will live in the future. So if you picked someone (you) randomly, you'd most likely be in the far future! Because you are here, the most likely outcome is that humans die off soon. In the story, within 240 years at the most.

First of all, this is …

Andy Weir: Project Hail Mary (AudiobookFormat, 2021, Audible Studios)

Ryland Grace is the sole survivor on a desperate, last-chance mission - and if he …

Problem, science(y) experiment, solution

Content warning Contains minor spoilers

reviewed Falling Bodies by Rebecca Roanhorse (The Far Reaches, #3)

Rebecca Roanhorse: Falling Bodies (EBook, 2023, Amazon Original Stories)

A young man caught between two disparate worlds searches for his place in the universe …

Decent except for the incredibly predictable end

On a space station, no one knows you are the former Patty Hearst. Kidnapped by terrorists, Patty Heart shoots her adoptive father when the rescue mission arrives and is convicted of that. In some sort of deal, Patty gets probation and anonymity on a distant space station university. OK, It's not really Patty Hearst, it's Ira and his adoptive father is a senator in a race of alien conquerors of Earth, and this is somewhat of an analog for indigenous kids getting adopted by White colonizers. OK, but the story is too short to get into Ira's inner life and that's needed to make the ending not feel didactic.

reviewed Make Me by Lee Child (Jack Reacher, #20)

Lee Child: Make Me (EBook, 2015, Delacorte Press)

“Why is this town called Mother’s Rest?” That’s all Reacher wants to know. But no …

I wish I could have skipped the "Deep Web" parts

After a string of less than enjoyable Reacher novels, this was one I liked. As frequently happens, Reacher stumbles into a town based on its name ("Mother's Rest"). Turns out there's crime happening there, and Reacher is a one man A-Team. Reacher and former FBI Michelle Chang form a duo looking for her partner, Keever who stumbled on something happening and then disappeared. Reacher and Chang go from Mother's Rest to Oklahoma City to Chicago to Colorado Springs to Los Angeles to Phoenix to Menlo Park and finally back to Mother's Rest mostly because the actual criminals in Mother's Rest are very Keystone so Lee Child has to introduce lots of other elements to fill out the book. Which is all acceptable to me… except that the Menlo Park dude is someone building a super secret search engine for the "Deep Web" which Child explains is the Tor project. Searching …

Ezra Klein, Derek Thompson: Abundance (AudiobookFormat, 2025, Simon & Schuster Audio)

To trace the history of the twenty-first century so far is to trace a history …

I agree with them, but this is underwhelming

I agree with many of the authors' conclusions and political positions, but this book is mostly a facile argument for "abundance". It's best feature is the articulation of an "abundance" (as opposed to scarcity) political theory. But the chapters arguing that it is right rely on anecdote and suffer from severe survivorship bias (the logical fallacy that examining winners reveals how to succeed). As I noted in a comment, they also subject degrowth to a pretty withering critique that they do not subject their own theory to: degrowth is a political dead end because it includes policies like vegetarianism that are political non-starters. Nowhere in the book do they talk about how one of their core positions, subsidize things you want like heck, is a really hard sell because it means giving a lot more money to people who have money. Another of their core positions is that liberals value …

commented on Make Me by Lee Child (Jack Reacher, #20)

Lee Child: Make Me (EBook, 2015, Delacorte Press)

“Why is this town called Mother’s Rest?” That’s all Reacher wants to know. But no …

Ugh. Reacher goes to someone who's built a super secret search engine for the "Deep Web" and it's several pages of "reverse the polarity" level of hacker cliche. Dude, I don't want to see you butcher my profession! Just butcher professions I don't know anything about!

reviewed Void by Veronica Roth (The Far Reaches, #2)

Veronica Roth: Void (EBook, 2023, Amazon Original Stories)

An intergalactic luxury cruise to a distant port is a world unto itself in this …

Flat

Maintenance tech on an interstellar ship investigates the murder of a passenger because those in charge don't want to. Flat & uninspired.

Django Wexler: Everybody Wants to Rule the World Except Me (EBook, 2025, Orbit)

Dark Lord Davi rules the kingdom, but she must now break the time loop that …

Fun take on "Chosen One" fantasy

After Davi becomes Dark Lord, she leaves her horde in the hands of Mari and heads to the Kingdom to see if she can broker a peace between the wilders and humans. Humans in power don't really want peace though. And neither do most of the wilders Davi has left behind. And behind all of it is the question as to why she kept being reborn whenever she died, with the same mission to save humans every time.

A fun plot and the characters are still fun. Wexler intersperses the story with lots of bawdy, footnoted asides. But not as good as the first book, sadly. I think that's because the first book didn't need to answer the questions. The final book kind of needs to, and those answers are too convoluted, and only hold together if I didn't think too hard about them. Still fun, so it gets a …

commented on Abundance by Ezra Klein

Ezra Klein, Derek Thompson: Abundance (AudiobookFormat, 2025, Simon & Schuster Audio)

To trace the history of the twenty-first century so far is to trace a history …

Halfway through, and so far it's argument by anecdote. Also, so far it's just a litany of what's wrong, with little in the way of policy recommendations beyond "do more of the things you want" and "pick some goals, not all goals" and "judge by outcomes, not process". Well, tell us which goals you think we should have! Much like I think people who think we should cut budgets should recommend cutting specific programs.