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.
This link opens in a pop-up window
After a near-fatal car accident, a young man asks Kinsey to protect him. When he …
Was pretty sure I would need another audiobook for the trip to Lisbon and back, so I queued up a couple of Sue Grafton Alphabet series books.
Years after a meteorite strike obliterated Washington, DC—triggering an extinction-level global-warming event—Earth’s survivors have started …
The concluding book of the Lady Astronaut series starts off with Elma York finally getting to land on Mars. The 2nd Mars Expedition's mission is to establish a base on Mars for later Earth escapees. Only… of course stuff goes wrong, because space is hard. Prior to landing humans, Earth send a series of unstaffed rockets to Mars that dropped supplies. Only when Elma arrives at the drop site to pick up the supplies, which includes the atmosphere scrubber for the second dome, they find it has crash-landed and everything is a loss. The Martians can replace it by cannibalizing one of the engines of their ship, if everything works out all right. There's politics. Intrigue. Gee whiz exploration of Mars. Relationships & emotion. 60s & 70s style colonization tropes with 2020s sensibility & quality of writing. And if you get the audiobook, Kowal narrates the story herself and she …
The concluding book of the Lady Astronaut series starts off with Elma York finally getting to land on Mars. The 2nd Mars Expedition's mission is to establish a base on Mars for later Earth escapees. Only… of course stuff goes wrong, because space is hard. Prior to landing humans, Earth send a series of unstaffed rockets to Mars that dropped supplies. Only when Elma arrives at the drop site to pick up the supplies, which includes the atmosphere scrubber for the second dome, they find it has crash-landed and everything is a loss. The Martians can replace it by cannibalizing one of the engines of their ship, if everything works out all right. There's politics. Intrigue. Gee whiz exploration of Mars. Relationships & emotion. 60s & 70s style colonization tropes with 2020s sensibility & quality of writing. And if you get the audiobook, Kowal narrates the story herself and she is one of the best audiobook narrators ever. Easily 5 stars.
Years after a meteorite strike obliterated Washington, DC—triggering an extinction-level global-warming event—Earth’s survivors have started …
first audiobook for this trip
In Adrian Tchaikovsky's Elder Race, a junior anthropologist on a distant planet must help the …
The Treatment is pretty intense, so I'm going to read Elder Race when the former gets a little too much.
Cop Hater (1956) is the first 87th Precinct police procedural novel by Ed McBain. The …
Three detectives are killed in quick succession in Isola, a fictionalized version of New York City. Fictionalized, according to the author, so he could take liberties with how the cops in New York City actually operate. Full of dames and men who appreciate the swell of a woman's chest and gangs that rumble, cops that harass suspects based on hunches, having a drink or two on the job and a general lack of respect for the Bill of Rights that predated the Warren court. The crime is solved through luck, accumulating evidence (I like this part) and a not very smart impatient criminal. There's a lot of copaganda in it, but the police are not portrayed as being particularly smart.
Discharged from the Barrayan Military Academy, Miles Vorkosigan chances on a jumpship with a rebellious …
Miles Vorkosigan washes out military school and heads to another planetary system to spend time with his grandmother and her family. There he decides to bail out some down & outers using his name and a bit of family money and do some smuggling/inter system trade to recover the money. Things go poorly and the only way through each obstacle is bluffing, and at every step he succeeds but has to face every larger obstacles afterward.
As a sci-fi adventure plot, it's adequate. But Miles "I'm a nice guy using my position to try to get in the pants of the woman who reports to me" vibe really brought me down. At least the character who raped women in the previous book wasn't given a "I was just following orders and feel bad about" pass from the narrative. Which it seemed like it would. There's still some amount of "we …
Miles Vorkosigan washes out military school and heads to another planetary system to spend time with his grandmother and her family. There he decides to bail out some down & outers using his name and a bit of family money and do some smuggling/inter system trade to recover the money. Things go poorly and the only way through each obstacle is bluffing, and at every step he succeeds but has to face every larger obstacles afterward.
As a sci-fi adventure plot, it's adequate. But Miles "I'm a nice guy using my position to try to get in the pants of the woman who reports to me" vibe really brought me down. At least the character who raped women in the previous book wasn't given a "I was just following orders and feel bad about" pass from the narrative. Which it seemed like it would. There's still some amount of "we still have to honor him for the good stuff he did" though.
In his first case as lead investigator with London’s crack murder squad, Detective Jack Caffery …
First in a series, where Jack Caffery is the new detective in the unit and gets a case where 4 bodies of prostitutes are found buried in a shallow grave. Suspicion falls on a few different folks. The author includes a few chapters from the perspective of the criminal in a fairly transparent try at misleading the reader. Once you get to the twist, you'll see it too. Enjoyable for me because the detective work is less movie plot magic wandism and more basic forensics. However, there's a fair amount of sensationalism. And as for the crime itself, many aspects of it seem unlikely and overly intricate to further the sensationalism and plot twists.
Cop Hater (1956) is the first 87th Precinct police procedural novel by Ed McBain. The …
Checked out from San Diego Public Library through Link+ & SFPL.
Chiamaka is a Nigerian travel writer living in America. Alone in the midst of the …
Next book
When twenty-year-old nursing student Frances “Frankie” McGrath hears these words, it is a revelation. Raised …
New list for books from the 2025 Libby Awards. As always, entries on the list on sfba.club have covers & descriptions. YMMV with versions of the list once it has been propagated to other server.
The Women won the category Book of the Year — Adult Fiction.
Boys and men are struggling. Profound economic and social changes of recent decades have many …
New addition to the list of books that appeared on the If Books Could Kill podcast. Podcast episode here.
When Cordelia Naismith and her survey crew are attacked by a renegade group from Barrayar, …
Cordelia Naismith's science team is ambushed by a Barrayaran military unit while conducting a survey of what they thought was an unclaimed world. In a double-cross, some in the unit mutiny and strand their leader Aral Vorkosigan on the planet as well. Vorkosigan, known as the butcher of Komarr for slaughtering innocent people there, has claims to wanting a bloodless capture. In order to survive, both of them must trek tens of kilometers to a claimed supply cache and learn to trust each other.
Thus begins a number of encounters between Cordelia and Aral, interspersed with a few scenes of Cordelia on her own. Nobody believes her that she thinks Aral is different. And will Aral be forced by his war-like society to live up to the stereotypes with respect to Cordelia?
I'm not going to explicitly spoil this, but this follows romance rules in a very romance inspired book. …
Cordelia Naismith's science team is ambushed by a Barrayaran military unit while conducting a survey of what they thought was an unclaimed world. In a double-cross, some in the unit mutiny and strand their leader Aral Vorkosigan on the planet as well. Vorkosigan, known as the butcher of Komarr for slaughtering innocent people there, has claims to wanting a bloodless capture. In order to survive, both of them must trek tens of kilometers to a claimed supply cache and learn to trust each other.
Thus begins a number of encounters between Cordelia and Aral, interspersed with a few scenes of Cordelia on her own. Nobody believes her that she thinks Aral is different. And will Aral be forced by his war-like society to live up to the stereotypes with respect to Cordelia?
I'm not going to explicitly spoil this, but this follows romance rules in a very romance inspired book. Don't read this for the unexpected plot twists. Read this for the solid characterization and some clever plotting for how Cordelia turns her relationship with Aral into an advantage for her world, the Beta Colony.
In his first case as lead investigator with London’s crack murder squad, Detective Jack Caffery …
Really liked this. review this weekend.
In his first case as lead investigator with London’s crack murder squad, Detective Jack Caffery …
Content warning spoiler for what's happened so far
The police have already figured out the murders that happened at the beginning of the book. But there's 16 chapters to go, so something is up. It's been quite good so far.
Merry Gentry, princess of the high court of Faerie, is posing as a human in …
There's a lot of sex in the first 31% (according to Kobo) of this book and I have to put it down because writing that makes sex this tedious ain't for me.
So far, Merry Gentry:
There's a lot of sex in the first 31% (according to Kobo) of this book and I have to put it down because writing that makes sex this tedious ain't for me.
So far, Merry Gentry:
None of them make much sense and drag on with how sexy and good at sex faeries are because eye color and auras and somesuch
I gave up.