Reviews and Comments

Pulling one off my mountain of unread books.

The prose is merely functional. There's a lot of "As you know, Bob..." Using the wrong words. Using the wrong math.

And at 27%, i still don't care about the central mystery: a radiation filled lunar vehicle buried under regolith in the center of a forbidden zone. Apparently a secret landing on the moon in the 1980s. But there's no reason for me as a reader to care. The MC gets an itch to find out the story, but that's the only hook. The MC being curious is not transitive to the reader. There's no stakes.

I have no recollection of putting this on my hold list at the library. Now that I have it I'm going to give it a shot but something is screaming to me that this will be one I put down. It's SF but neither the author nor the book is on ISFDB. So I half expect to post a DNF message in a couple days.

In typical Lee Child fashion, Reacher figures out the scheme ⅔ of the way through, but refuses to tell anyone else, including the reader. Until the conclusion. At that point he monologues the conspiracy at its perpetrator and we get to see how it all fits together.

Except it doesn't. There's a few plot holes that are never filled.

Also, one of the bad guys is someone 7-ish inches taller than Reacher. Because he's huge, he has a big house. The man builds a "regular" house but has everything scaled up 50% so he'll fit. But holy heck does the prose drone on about it through multiple chapters, like no one ever wandered the halls of a European castle with wide hallways and giant doors. No, this oversized house takes extra getting used to that of course only Reacher can adjust to in quick fashion. Pfft.

The first half-century of Mars colonization told from the perspective of a half dozen members of the first 100 colonists, each representing a faction or a school of thought. One there because they get off on hard work, one there for a personal political legacy, another there to make money for the capitalists, one for preservation & research, one for terraforming as fast as possible, one to create a new society, one who spearheads a Mars for Mars colonists movement…

Too dry and long for me to really enjoy it.

Military S.F. in the Captive's War universe. Standard unit-bonds-and-drops-to-a-planet with the James S.A. Corey voice.

There's an extended argument between characters at this point about whether the scientist-colonists of Mars should follow the hierarchy devised by their governments (the US and Russia) or start fresh.

It occurs to me there's a ton of research into organizational structures, and the closest Robinson comes to including it is a reference to having psychologists evaluate people prior to allowing them to join the mission, and include the head psych on the mission. The managers in charge on board, Maya & Frank, aren't organizational experts. As a manager by trade, not having this expertise on board seems like an oversight.

story about a young man who gets stuck in an ancient wood as it's protector in tree form. if you like faeries and dryads and stories about them, this may be for you. like stories about gods, it's not my thing.

Have set Libby to notify me when the library has copies.

Paleobotanist Kirk Johnson and artists Ray Troll take an epic road trip through fossil beds & museums of Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, Utah and New Mexico, describing & drawing the flora, fauna & geology of the lands that were buried under the Great Plains and then uplifted back into surface proximity by the Rocky Mountains. Troll's artwork steals the show. If you've seen his shirts you now the distinctive style. Sadly, either I got a bit inured or the book just tails off a bit toward the end, where it feels more like a mad dash to get back to Denver on time than the more thoughtful gee-whiz exploration that it starts off as. This is the recently published second edition, and a lot of the narrative has been updated to reflect happenings since the original publication in 2007.

Finished creating a list for all the works cited in Reactor Magazine's article "Reviewers’ Choice: The Best Books of 2024". There's a lot of really interesting looking books mentioned there. This is the last book from that.

The list can be found on SFBA.club. If you follow me, your bookwyrm instance should have the list as well. I made sure all the books on the SFBA.club version have high-res covers and descriptions, but other instances will only pick that up if they didn't already have a copy of the book listed. (There's two short stories without covers.)

John Ferguson is a minister in the Free Church of Scotland as it is trying to establish itself. With no parish to support him, he takes a job for an estate landlord to "clear" or remove the last remaining tenant on a remote island owned by the estate. Although conflicted, he really needs the money. Shortly after arriving, he falls off a cliff and is rescued by Ivar, the tenant he is supposed to evict.

A really well-written story of a relationship between John and Ivar. You get a bit of the history of the Scottish Free Church, a bit of the history of the Highland Clearances, a few moral dilemmas deftly handled, some feminism appropriate for the time, and North Sea adventures. I suspect this is quite good as a read, but it's amazing narrated by Russ Bain with a Scottish accent, a bit over 3 hours in length.

Clare Fergusson gets embroiled in a series of gay-bashing crimes in Miller's Kill. Spencer-Fleming captures how liberal uncomfortableness with homosexuality contributes homophobia even when they think they are supportive. But the gay-bashing is too obviously calculated and the ultimate motivation is economic. It's a too-fantastic of a scheme. As a police procedural, the story doesn't hold together well either due to how involved Russ Van Alstyne (the Miller's Kill police chief) allows Clare Fergusson to be. He can bring in professionals, but allows a hard-charging Fergusson to drive the investigation, even when he says it's a bad idea.