Reviews and Comments

This was originally published in 2012 (as an audio story) and 2013 (as a short story), six years before The Calculating Stars. I think that if I had read it before reading the novels, I would think it a rather banal story of an astronaut reminiscing.

However, because I read it after two novels about Elma York, it hits me in the feels as a coda to a long relationship between Elma and her husband Nathaniel. The series devotes significant words to their domestic relationship, not just to the details of going into space. It's one of the most well written science fictional relationships I've ever read. So reading about their lives nearing their ends means something, even though the story of a relationship at the end is banal in the details.

Set in an alternate history where fascism won during World War II and Lindbergh has taken a turn as President of the US. Times are tough for the handful of working class people who appear in the story, and they face temptations trying to get ahead. A few temptations that arise under fascism, where one can get ahead by denouncing others.

I have a whole buncha short stories that Tor.com published online and then put out in free EPUB format before they started selling them. They're great reading while having breakfast at a diner counter.

A goblin enters an inn, stumbling into the scene of a murder. A band of thieves surround two of their own lying dead on the floor. While they don't trust each other, which thief of the group is the one who committed the murders?

Free short story ebook from Subterranean Press.

I've been waiting for 2 years for this to come back in print, and I've just ordered the new edition from the artist's web site.

Robin wakes up in a cabin in a pastoral compound. He's been kidnapped by a hitman (Buki) who claims to disappear his victims instead of kill them like he's been contracted, because he doesn't like killing.

I loved this story because Thompson lets the reader discover what's happening as his characters discover it. Things are weird enough to be intriguing but not so out there that I couldn't make any sense of it.

The description on the Subterranean Press web site (where this ebook can be downloaded for free) is a bit too spoilery for me, so I'm glad I didn't read it before downloading.

I just couldn't get into the audiobook.

This book is really testing my desire to know how it ends.

Remember back in the late aughts/early teens when steampunk was all the rage? This was published on Tor.com (with a free epub download) in October 2010.

Claude Stone is affianced to Desiree Southland, the mixed race daughter of an English lord. Claude's views are not so great: "I knew Lord Southland disapproved of me, although his antipathy puzzled me. If he hoped to marry off his mulatto daughter, I was his best prospect. Not many men were as free of prejudice as I was."

Desiree is enamored of building clockwork devices. Claude does not share her interest, but allows that he can indulge her fancies. However, Lord Tyndall is quite keen to see Desiree Southland's clockwork fairies.

Rambo really nails the personality of a certain type of performative ally in just a few words and pages.

Thought the first book in the series was solid, but the second was dreck. However, I need to know how it ends so I'm going to put myself through this.

Set immediately after the caper in Worth Dying For, which was set immediately after the events of 61 Hours. Reacher tries to hitchhike to Virginia to meet with the agent whose voice he likes whose name I've forgotten. Except the people who pick him up are involved in some criminal conspiracy, which Reacher figures out pretty quickly. The FBI is behaving hinky too.

The setup makes very little sense. Half-assed conspiracies within half-assed conspiracies. About ⅔ of the way through (by the reckoning of my Kobo), the author stops trying to maintain the house of cards and just transitions into the end-game where it's mostly shooting.

The whole thing is very slapdash. Now I'm wondering if the series is slowly sliding toward craptasticness. I'm really hoping there's a bright spot or two or I'll have to find a new series for my palate cleansing.

Someone is leaking specs for a new sniper rifle. Because of a highly contrived setup, the Army has to call Reacher in to wine and dine the 4 female suspects without them knowing he's undercover. A prequel story set before Reacher leaves the Army and becomes the drifter that moves through most of the books.

Roger Gale has three daughters, a traditional married homebody, a free spirit who gallavants around the world, and a driven professional. Most of His Family is Roger either thinking about his daughters and what they should do, or trying to talk them into doing what he thinks they should do. Only Deborah, the professional who wants to improve the lives of New York's tenement dwellers, is interesting. And there only when the story doesn't veer into the possibility of her getting married and living the more traditional life that Roger wants her to. Plodding and dreary.