User Profile

Phil in SF

kingrat@sfba.club

Joined 1 year, 5 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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Phil in SF's books

To Read

Currently Reading (View all 5)

2025 Reading Goal

96% complete! Phil in SF has read 27 of 28 books.

Lois McMaster Bujold: The Warrior's Apprentice (EBook, 2018, Spetrum Literary Agency) 4 stars

Discharged from the Barrayan Military Academy, Miles Vorkosigan chances on a jumpship with a rebellious …

How To Lead A Military Without Trying

3 stars

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 …

reviewed Birdman by Mo Hayder (Jack Caffery, #1)

Mo Hayder: Birdman (EBook, 2012, Grove Press) 4 stars

In his first case as lead investigator with London’s crack murder squad, Detective Jack Caffery …

Enjoyable police procedural

4 stars

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.

Lois McMaster Bujold: The Warrior's Apprentice (EBook, 2018, Spetrum Literary Agency) 4 stars

Discharged from the Barrayan Military Academy, Miles Vorkosigan chances on a jumpship with a rebellious …

There was another view of the fight between Elena and the Pelian on the screens; Miles had a dizzy sense of being in two places at once, as if his atman had left his body, then realized he was looking at them through another Oseran's suit.

The Warrior's Apprentice by  (Vorkosigan Saga, #2) (50%)

new vocabulary: atman

  1. The spiritual life principle of the universe, especially when regarded as immanent in the individual's real self.

  2. A person's soul.

Lois McMaster Bujold: The Warrior's Apprentice (EBook, 2018, Spetrum Literary Agency) 4 stars

Discharged from the Barrayan Military Academy, Miles Vorkosigan chances on a jumpship with a rebellious …

But she nailed me a while ago, when she couldn't find Aral— seems she wants Aral to stand the boy up in a corner somewhere and brace him for – er –swiving the servant girls, which ought to embarrass them both thoroughly.

The Warrior's Apprentice by  (Vorkosigan Saga, #2) (13%)

new vocabulary: swive

have sexual intercourse with

avatar for kingrat Phil in SF boosted
Kritika Rao: Surviving Sky (2023, DAW) 3 stars

High above a jungle-planet float the last refuges of humanity—plant-made civilizations held together by tradition, …

3.75/5⭐ reading experience, but the world build/story couldn't stick the landing. #bookstodon

3 stars

Good job really exploring a broken marriage. Plant-based tech was neat, though hard to conclude