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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.

Humanity invents a way of traveling at near light speed by encoding people as energy and reconstituting them at the destination. So one traveler sneaks an engagement ring onto his body when he is scanned, because his ex-wife will also be one of the people sent to the stars. I didn't understand why, but the original encoded group is then sent on to further destinations, giving the main character even more chances at a do-over.

The story does understand just how wrong-headed the attempt at a do-over is.

Reading Character Limit is like watching a man repeatedly punch himself in the face and then blame the people around him for his nose hurting. It is an utterly embarrassing portrait of a narcissistic egotist who believes that he is a genius because he has often been lucky. Musk's purchase of Twitter was a tragedy, in both the literary and dramatic senses. Conger and Mac tell it gently with minimal editorial — why would they need to: these facts are absolutely the worst. RIP Twitter. I could not put this book down.