Si's bookshelf: all en-US Mon, 07 Apr 2025 04:23:33 -0700 60 Si's bookshelf: all 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg <![CDATA[Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said]]> 22584
When he finally found a man who would agree to counterfeiting such cards for him, that man turned out to be a police informer. And then Taverner found out not only what it was like to be a nobody but also to be hunted by the whole apparatus of society.

It was obvious that in some way Taverner had become the pea in in some sort of cosmic shell game - but how? And why?

Philip K. Dick takes the reader on a walking tour of solipsism's scariest margin in his latest novel about the age we are already half into.]]> 204 Philip K. Dick 1857983416 Si 3 3.93 1974 Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said
author: Philip K. Dick
name: Si
average rating: 3.93
book published: 1974
rating: 3
read at: 2025/04/07
date added: 2025/04/07
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Falling Into Oblivion (Tendrils of Chrome, #1)]]> 214377963 MODIFICATIONS COME AT A PRICE.

Detective Sol Harkones is tangled in the wires of a deadly conspiracy involving defective body modifications causing permanent brain damage. A suspect is known, but something more dangerous may be lurking in the shadows.

A city plagued by waste.

Violence fills the streets.

Oblivion is within reach.

Falling Into Oblivion is the electrifying first book in the Tendrils of Chrome cyberpunk sci-fi series. If you're a fan of William Gibson's Neuromancer, HBO's True Detective, or Philip K. Dick’s Blade Runner, you will love Aaron M. Payne’s rapid-fire saga.]]> 247 Aaron M. Payne Si 0 to-read 3.93 Falling Into Oblivion (Tendrils of Chrome, #1)
author: Aaron M. Payne
name: Si
average rating: 3.93
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/02
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> ܲ³ 58243480
We think a lot of things. It was perhaps inevitable that some of them would turn out to be wrong.

When the great incursion occurred, no one was prepared. How could they have been? Of all the things physicists had predicted, "the fabric of reality might rip open and giant monsters could come pouring through" had not made the list. But somehow, on a fine morning in May, that was precisely what happened.

For sisters Susan and Katharine Black, the day of the incursion was the day they lost everything. Their home, their parents, their sense of normalcy...and each other, because when the rift opened, Susan was on one side and Katharine was on the other, and each sister was stranded in a separate form of reality. For Susan, it was science and study and the struggle to solve the mystery of the altered physics inside the zones transformed by the incursion. For Katharine, it was monsters and mayhem and the fight to stay alive in a world unlike the world of her birth.

The world has changed. The laws of physics have changed. The girls have changed. And the one universal truth of all states of changed matter is that nothing can be completely restored to what it was originally, no matter how much you might wish it could be.

Nothing goes back.]]> 144 Mira Grant 1645240533 Si 0 to-read 3.84 2021 ܲ³
author: Mira Grant
name: Si
average rating: 3.84
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/01
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[When Gravity Fails (Marîd Audran, #1)]]> 132694
For a new kind of killer roams the streets of the Arab ghetto, a madman whose bootlegged personality cartridges range from a sinister James Bond to a sadistic disemboweler named Khan. And Marid Audrian has been made an offer he can’t refuse.

The 200-year-old “godfather� of the Budayeen’s underworld has enlisted Marid as his instrument of vengeance. But first Marid must undergo the most sophisticated of surgical implants before he dares to confront a killer who carries the power of every psychopath since the beginning of time.

Wry, savage, and unignorable, When Gravity Fails was hailed as a classic by Effinger’s fellow SF writers on its original publication in 1987, and the sequence of “Marid Audrian� novels it begins were the culmination of his career.]]> 288 George Alec Effinger 0765313588 Si 0 to-read 3.92 1986 When Gravity Fails (Marîd Audran, #1)
author: George Alec Effinger
name: Si
average rating: 3.92
book published: 1986
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/30
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 1Q84 (1Q84, #1-3) 10357575 The year is 1984 and the city is Tokyo.

A young woman named Aomame follows a taxi driver’s enigmatic suggestion and begins to notice puzzling discrepancies in the world around her. She has entered, she realizes, a parallel existence, which she calls 1Q84 —“Q is for ‘question mark.� A world that bears a question.� Meanwhile, an aspiring writer named Tengo takes on a suspect ghostwriting project. He becomes so wrapped up with the work and its unusual author that, soon, his previously placid life begins to come unraveled.

As Aomame’s and Tengo’s narratives converge over the course of this single year, we learn of the profound and tangled connections that bind them ever closer: a beautiful, dyslexic teenage girl with a unique vision; a mysterious religious cult that instigated a shoot-out with the metropolitan police; a reclusive, wealthy dowager who runs a shelter for abused women; a hideously ugly private investigator; a mild-mannered yet ruthlessly efficient bodyguard; and a peculiarly insistent television-fee collector.

A love story, a mystery, a fantasy, a novel of self-discovery, a dystopia to rival George Orwell’s � 1Q84 is Haruki Murakami’s most ambitious undertaking yet: an instant best seller in his native Japan, and a tremendous feat of imagination from one of our most revered contemporary writers.]]> 944 Haruki Murakami 0307593312 Si 0 currently-reading 3.94 2009 1Q84 (1Q84, #1-3)
author: Haruki Murakami
name: Si
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2009
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/26
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Big Book of Cyberpunk Vol. I]]> 196966321 VOLUME ONE OF TWO

A genre-defining-and redefining-collection of fiction's boldest, most rebellious, and most prescient genre, featuring a smorgasbord of stories from all over the globe

"The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel." Almost forty years ago, William Gibson wrote the line that began Neuromancer and, more importantly, cyberpunk - a movement that would change the face of science fiction.

Award-winning anthologist Jared Shurin brings together over a hundred stories from more than twenty-five different countries that both establish and subvert the classic cyberpunk tropes and aesthetic-from gritty, near-future noir to pulse-pounding action. Urban rebels undermine monolithic corporate overlords. Daring heists are conducted through back alleys and the darkest parts of the online world. There's dangerous new technology, cybernetic enhancements, scheming AIs, corporate mercenaries, improbable weapons, and roguish hackers. These tales examine the near-now, extrapolating the most provocative trends into fascinating and plausible futures.

We live in an increasingly cyberpunk world-packed with complex technologies and globalized social trends. A world so bizarre than even the futurists couldn't explain it-though many authors in this book have come closer than most. As both an introduction to the genre and the perfect compendium for the lifelong fan, The Big Book of Cyberpunk offers a hundred ways to understand where we are, and where we're going-or simply venture down some dazzling, neon-slicked streets.]]> 880 Jared Shurin 1529921392 Si 0 cyberpunk, currently-reading 4.04 2024 The Big Book of Cyberpunk Vol. I
author: Jared Shurin
name: Si
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/19
shelves: cyberpunk, currently-reading
review:

]]> Surface Detail (Culture, #9) 7937744
With the assistance of one of its most powerful - and arguably deranged - warships, Lededje finds herself heading into a combat zone not even sure which side the Culture is really on.

A brutal, far-reaching war is already raging within the digital realms that store the souls of the dead and it's about to erupt into reality. It started in the realm of the Real & that is where it will end. It will touch countless lives and affect entire civilizations, but at the center of it all is a young woman whose need for revenge masks another motive altogether.]]> 627 Iain M. Banks 0316123404 Si 3 space-opera
It has some brilliant ideas about the nature of reality and simulation. Some of my favourite characters so far. And the usual political subtext and a commentary about power imbalance.

I thought the execution was a little clumsy. Like Consider Phlebas, it tends to go off on a tangent. There was a chunk I’m the middle that, maybe, wasn’t necessary. But it was thought provoking. A good book but not my favourite.]]> 4.24 2010 Surface Detail (Culture, #9)
author: Iain M. Banks
name: Si
average rating: 4.24
book published: 2010
rating: 3
read at: 2025/03/10
date added: 2025/03/10
shelves: space-opera
review:
It’s about a battle over virtual worlds, a revenge story that transcends death, and the ethics of punishment.

It has some brilliant ideas about the nature of reality and simulation. Some of my favourite characters so far. And the usual political subtext and a commentary about power imbalance.

I thought the execution was a little clumsy. Like Consider Phlebas, it tends to go off on a tangent. There was a chunk I’m the middle that, maybe, wasn’t necessary. But it was thought provoking. A good book but not my favourite.
]]> <![CDATA[Mona Lisa Overdrive (Sprawl, #3)]]> 154091 Neuromancer, has written his most brilliant and thrilling work to date... The Mona Lisa Overdrive.Enter Gibson's unique world - lyric and mechanical, erotic and violent, sobering and exciting - where multinational corporations and high tech outlaws vie for power, traveling into the computer-generated universe known as cyberspace.Into this world comes Mona, a young girl with a murky past and an uncertain future whose life is on a collision course with internationally famous Sense/Net star Angie Mitchell.Since childhood, Angie has been able to tap into cyberspace without a computer.Now, from inside cyberspace, a kidnapping plot is masterminded by a phantom entity who has plans for Mona, Angie, and all humanity, plans that cannot be controlled... or even known.And behind the intrigue lurks the shadowy Yakuza, the powerful Japanese underworld, whose leaders ruthlessly manipulate people and events to suit their own purposes... or so they think.

]]> 312 William Gibson 0553281747 Si 3 cyberpunk
One thing I found strange about the previous book, Count Zero, was that it was a completely separate story to Neuromancer. Count Zero was set in the same world as Neuromancer, but it followed different characters and the connection to the first book was tenuous at best. Mona Lisa Overdrive fixes that. It takes all the loose threads from book one and two and ties them into a completed narrative.

There are a few little things I don’t like about Gibson’s writing style. The narrative doesn’t progress as smoothly as you would expect. It’s like, you don’t know where it’s going. It’s disjointed. Then, right around the 90% mark, all the moving parts get slammed together. I’m not a fan of that, but it’s just one small aspect of these novels.
Another thing that could have been better was the characters. They felt a little two-dimensional. Out of about five main characters, only two of them had interesting back stories.

Despite the narrative style, I still think this is culturally relevant. It was ground-breaking when it came out, and even 35-ish years later it still feels ahead of its time. With the way tech companies seem to be getting so powerful and AI getting more advanced every week, Gibson’s work seems to be more relevant than ever. I like to read cyberpunk to stay on top of what’s going on.]]> 4.01 1988 Mona Lisa Overdrive (Sprawl, #3)
author: William Gibson
name: Si
average rating: 4.01
book published: 1988
rating: 3
read at: 2024/12/14
date added: 2024/12/14
shelves: cyberpunk
review:
A tech driven dystopian thriller filled with mysteries, mega-corporations, and the Matrix. The setting is bleak. The people are lowlifes. The tech is out of control.

One thing I found strange about the previous book, Count Zero, was that it was a completely separate story to Neuromancer. Count Zero was set in the same world as Neuromancer, but it followed different characters and the connection to the first book was tenuous at best. Mona Lisa Overdrive fixes that. It takes all the loose threads from book one and two and ties them into a completed narrative.

There are a few little things I don’t like about Gibson’s writing style. The narrative doesn’t progress as smoothly as you would expect. It’s like, you don’t know where it’s going. It’s disjointed. Then, right around the 90% mark, all the moving parts get slammed together. I’m not a fan of that, but it’s just one small aspect of these novels.
Another thing that could have been better was the characters. They felt a little two-dimensional. Out of about five main characters, only two of them had interesting back stories.

Despite the narrative style, I still think this is culturally relevant. It was ground-breaking when it came out, and even 35-ish years later it still feels ahead of its time. With the way tech companies seem to be getting so powerful and AI getting more advanced every week, Gibson’s work seems to be more relevant than ever. I like to read cyberpunk to stay on top of what’s going on.
]]> Great North Road 13573419
Or maybe not so friendly. At least that's what the murder of a North clone in the English city of Newcastle suggests to Detective Sidney Hurst. Sid is a solid investigator who'd like nothing better than to hand off this hot potato of a case. The way he figures it, whether he solves the crime or not, he'll make enough enemies to ruin his career. Yet Sid's case is about to take an unexpected turn: Because the circumstances of the murder bear an uncanny resemblance to a killing that took place years ago on the planet St. Libra, where a North clone and his entire household were slaughtered in cold blood.

The convicted slayer, Angela Tramelo, has always claimed her innocence. And now it seems she may have been right. Because only the St. Libra killer could have committed the Newcastle crime. Problem is, Angela also claims that the murderer was an alien monster.

Now Sid must navigate through a Byzantine minefield of competing interests within the police department and the world's political and economic elite...all the while hunting down a brutal killer poised to strike again. And on St. Libra, Angela, newly released from prison, joins a mission to hunt down the elusive alien, only to learn that the line between hunter and hunted is a thin one.]]> 948 Peter F. Hamilton 034552666X Si 0 to-read 4.05 2012 Great North Road
author: Peter F. Hamilton
name: Si
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2012
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/12
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Exodus: The Archimedes Engine (Archimedes Engine, #1)]]> 205670068
Forty thousand years ago, humanity fled a dying Earth. Traveling in massive arkships, these brave pioneers spread out across the galaxy to find a new home. After traveling thousands of light-years, one fleet of arkships arrived at Centauri, a dense cluster of stars with a vast array of potentially habitable planets. The survivors of Earth signaled to the remaining arkships that humanity had finally found its new home among the stars.

Thousands of years later, the Centauri Cluster has flourished. The original settlers have evolved into advanced beings known as Celestials and divided themselves into powerful Dominions. One of the most influential is that of the Crown Celestials, an alliance of five great houses that controls vast areas of Centauri. As arkships continue to arrive, the remaining humans and their descendants must fight for survival against overwhelming odds or be forced into serving the Crown Dominion.

Among those yearning for a better life is Finn, for whom Earth is not a memory but merely a footnote from humanity’s ancient history. Born on one of the Crown Dominion worlds, Finn has known nothing but the repressive rule of the Celestials, though he dreams of the possibility of boundless space beyond his home.

When another arkship from Earth, previously thought lost, unexpectedly arrives, Finn sees his chance to embrace a greater destiny and become a Traveler—one of a group of brave heroes dedicated to ensuring humanity’s future by journeying into the vast unknown of distant space.]]> 928 Peter F. Hamilton 0593357663 Si 0 to-read 4.17 2024 Exodus: The Archimedes Engine (Archimedes Engine, #1)
author: Peter F. Hamilton
name: Si
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/11
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Service Model 195790861 To fix the world they first must break it further.

Humanity is a dying breed, utterly reliant on artificial labor and service. When a domesticated robot gets a nasty little idea downloaded into their core programming, they murder their owner. The robot then discovers they can also do something else they never did before: run away. After fleeing the household, they enter a wider world they never knew existed, where the age-old hierarchy of humans at the top is disintegrating, and a robot ecosystem devoted to human wellbeing is finding a new purpose.]]> 376 Adrian Tchaikovsky 1250290287 Si 5 cyberpunk It’s about the robots search to find a new purpose and all the people and other robots he meets along the way. All while set against the backdrop of a collapsed society.

First off, this was way funnier than I thought it would be. You wouldn’t think a dystopia about a robot could be funny, but the valet’s naïve nature gets him into odd situations.
It was deadpan and ironic in a very dry and British way that had me laughing out loud at times. The valet has such a child-like sense of optimism that you can’t help but smile at. And as a robot, he had very literal thinking, which made conversations unnecessarily difficult. There’s a subtle sense of satire as the valet starts to question the mundanity of modern life.

As humours as it was it was there’s also a great story in there filled with clever references to other literary works. The works of writers such as Orwell, Kafka, Dante, and a few others were re-interpreted in a more futuristic setting.

I found this robot valet’s journey into the real world to be enlightening, funny, and heart-warming. Not something you expect from a novel written from a robot’s perspective. One of the best novels I’ve read in a long time. Easily a five star read.]]> 3.99 2024 Service Model
author: Adrian Tchaikovsky
name: Si
average rating: 3.99
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2024/12/08
date added: 2024/12/10
shelves: cyberpunk
review:
The story follows a robot valet who loses his master and goes on a long journey.
It’s about the robots search to find a new purpose and all the people and other robots he meets along the way. All while set against the backdrop of a collapsed society.

First off, this was way funnier than I thought it would be. You wouldn’t think a dystopia about a robot could be funny, but the valet’s naïve nature gets him into odd situations.
It was deadpan and ironic in a very dry and British way that had me laughing out loud at times. The valet has such a child-like sense of optimism that you can’t help but smile at. And as a robot, he had very literal thinking, which made conversations unnecessarily difficult. There’s a subtle sense of satire as the valet starts to question the mundanity of modern life.

As humours as it was it was there’s also a great story in there filled with clever references to other literary works. The works of writers such as Orwell, Kafka, Dante, and a few others were re-interpreted in a more futuristic setting.

I found this robot valet’s journey into the real world to be enlightening, funny, and heart-warming. Not something you expect from a novel written from a robot’s perspective. One of the best novels I’ve read in a long time. Easily a five star read.
]]> <![CDATA[Neon Noir (The Cyber City Saga, #1)]]> 217038973
Xia, a lawbreaking freelancer with a haunting past, is the first to notice the strange vanishings. As she puts the pieces together, she reveals a sinister someone is kidnapping Virgins and using their bodies to escape to the promised Utopia. Teaming up with Mai, a Virgin prostitute, Xia’s mission shifts from simple protection as a means for money into an impossible helping the Virgins escape the city.

This mission puts them at odds against both the mysterious Virgin body snatchers and Cyber City’s government—two threats that could end in fates worse than death. As the unlikely duo embark on the impossible, they discover secrets more shocking than the plasma dome that traps the city within.]]> 368 Nina Voss 1965159001 Si 0 to-read 4.59 Neon Noir (The Cyber City Saga, #1)
author: Nina Voss
name: Si
average rating: 4.59
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/06
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[A Fire Upon the Deep (Zones of Thought, #1)]]> 77711 Alternate Cover Edition can be found here.

A Fire upon the Deep is the big, breakout book that fulfills the promise of Vinge's career to date: a gripping tale of galactic war told on a cosmic scale.

Thousands of years hence, many races inhabit a universe where a mind's potential is determined by its location in space, from superintelligent entities in the Transcend, to the limited minds of the Unthinking Depths, where only simple creatures and technology can function. Nobody knows what strange force partitioned space into these "regions of thought," but when the warring Straumli realm use an ancient Transcendent artifact as a weapon, they unwittingly unleash an awesome power that destroys thousands of worlds and enslaves all natural and artificial intelligence.

Fleeing the threat, a family of scientists, including two children, are taken captive by the Tines, an alien race with a harsh medieval culture, and used as pawns in a ruthless power struggle. A rescue mission, not entirely composed of humans, must rescue the children-and a secret that may save the rest of interstellar civilization.]]> 613 Vernor Vinge 0812515285 Si 2 space-opera
The positives first. It had some great concepts. It had a really unique alien race. It had a story played out on a galactic scale.

But none of these ideas were used to their full potential. It just became background information. The story itself wasn’t that interesting. I never felt any reason to root for any of the characters. And for a book with 600 pages, this just felt drawn out and pedestrian.

If it was a short story, I would have liked it. But this was unnecessarily long and repetitive, in my opinion.]]> 4.14 1992 A Fire Upon the Deep (Zones of Thought, #1)
author: Vernor Vinge
name: Si
average rating: 4.14
book published: 1992
rating: 2
read at: 2024/11/27
date added: 2024/11/27
shelves: space-opera
review:
I was underwhelmed by this, to be honest. I had high expectations based on the reviews and the awards, but I can’t say I enjoyed it.

The positives first. It had some great concepts. It had a really unique alien race. It had a story played out on a galactic scale.

But none of these ideas were used to their full potential. It just became background information. The story itself wasn’t that interesting. I never felt any reason to root for any of the characters. And for a book with 600 pages, this just felt drawn out and pedestrian.

If it was a short story, I would have liked it. But this was unnecessarily long and repetitive, in my opinion.
]]> <![CDATA[The Sky Didn't Load Today and Other Glitches (Shacklebound Books Anthologies and Collections)]]> 215536580 Thirty ultra-short science fiction stories from Rich Larson, award-winning author of Ymir, Annex, and Tomorrow Factory.

The Sky Didn't Load Today and Other Glitches collects the best of Rich Larson's flash fiction, stories told in a thousand words or less, into a fusillade of futures. Within these pages, you’ll journey from a biolab bunker under the earth to a fungi forest on an alien planet, from possible tomorrows to the heat death of the universe. You’ll encounter emulated minds, rented bodies, hijinks in deep space and eldritch horror at the seaside.

Thirty new worlds await inside The Sky Didn’t Load Today and Other Glitches. Just be reality is not what it seems, and some glitches are more dangerous than others.]]> 173 Rich Larson Si 0 to-read 4.88 The Sky Didn't Load Today and Other Glitches (Shacklebound Books Anthologies and Collections)
author: Rich Larson
name: Si
average rating: 4.88
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/09
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> DOUBT, Vol. 1 (Doubt, 1) 16002089 408 Yoshiki Tonogai 0316245305 Si 0 to-read 3.85 2007 DOUBT, Vol. 1 (Doubt, 1)
author: Yoshiki Tonogai
name: Si
average rating: 3.85
book published: 2007
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/08
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Escher Man 200488219 A cartel enforcer across South-east Asia must escape a world of paranoia and violence to save his family in this cerebral and multi-layered cyberpunk science fiction novel, from the award-winning author of 36 Streets. Perfect for fans of William Gibson's The Peripheral and Five Minds by Guy Morpuss.

Your name is Endel ‘Endgame� Ebbinghaus. It is Saturday, 3 September, 2101. You’re head of security for Mister Long, boss of the Macau Syndicate, a drug cartel. Your memories are being wiped and re-written. You keep this log because you’re hard pressed to remember what day it is. But today is a special day, mate. This is your last day on the job.�

‘Endgame� is a violent man, the perfect enforcer. But Endel is also a father and husband, haunted by the memories of his estranged family, and the life they once had.

Endel wants them back, and he wants out. But life in the syndicate isn’t one you can simply leave.

Endgame is a violent man. Or is he? In a world where memory manipulation is the weapon of choice for the powerful, Endel can’t tell friends and enemies apart anymore, can’t be sure if he’s a person or a tool.

Trapped in a taut, twisting nightmare, Endel must find a way to escape the labyrinth they’ve made of his mind, and take revenge.]]> 368 T.R. Napper 1803368152 Si 4 cyberpunk
As with most cyberpunk, it’s a warning of the misuse of technology by powerful people.
Tech gets more and more advanced. The little guy gets more and more screwed over.

Usually, I listen to audiobooks at a faster playback. 1.5 or 3.0 if it’s a bad book. I listened to this at regular speed. Wanted to take it all in.]]> 3.90 2024 The Escher Man
author: T.R. Napper
name: Si
average rating: 3.90
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/10/11
date added: 2024/11/01
shelves: cyberpunk
review:
Set in Macau, about 80 years in the future. Main character is an Australian gangster trying to get out of the business to protect his family. It’s got gang warfare, chromed up fights and simulation induced paranoia. A bleak but real view of the future.

As with most cyberpunk, it’s a warning of the misuse of technology by powerful people.
Tech gets more and more advanced. The little guy gets more and more screwed over.

Usually, I listen to audiobooks at a faster playback. 1.5 or 3.0 if it’s a bad book. I listened to this at regular speed. Wanted to take it all in.
]]> Furiously Happy 28220896 #1 New York Times Bestseller

In Furiously Happy, a humor memoir tinged with just enough tragedy and pathos to make it worthwhile, Jenny Lawson examines her own experience with severe depression and a host of other conditions, and explains how it has led her to live life to the fullest:

"I've often thought that people with severe depression have developed such a well for experiencing extreme emotion that they might be able to experience extreme joy in a way that ‘normal people' also might never understand. And that's what Furiously Happy is all about."

Jenny’s readings are standing room only, with fans lining up to have Jenny sign their bottles of Xanax or Prozac as often as they are to have her sign their books. Furiously Happy appeals to Jenny's core fan base but also transcends it. There are so many people out there struggling with depression and mental illness, either themselves or someone in their family—and in Furiously Happy they will find a member of their tribe offering up an uplifting message (via a taxidermied roadkill raccoon). Let's Pretend This Never Happened ostensibly was about embracing your own weirdness, but deep down it was about family. Furiously Happy is about depression and mental illness, but deep down it's about joy—and who doesn't want a bit more of that?]]> 329 Jenny Lawson 1250077028 Si 0 to-read 4.09 2015 Furiously Happy
author: Jenny Lawson
name: Si
average rating: 4.09
book published: 2015
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/22
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Five Minds 56301205
The Earth's growing population has finally been controlled. Lifespans are limited to eighty years, except for those who make an extreme choice: to become a commune. Five minds sharing one body, living for four hours at a time. But with a combined lifespan of nearly 150 years.

Alex, Kate, Sierra, Ben and Mike are a commune. They have already spent twenty-five years together, arguing, reconciling, alliances shifting and re-forming. They travel to a Death Park where games are played in which extra lifespan can be gambled like money. The plan is to win time to upgrade their next host body. But then Kate accepts a dangerous offer, and one of them disappears.

Someone is trying to kill off members of the commune. Is one of them responsible? Or is someone else playing a deadly game? It's hard enough to catch a murderer. It's almost impossible when you might be sharing a body with them...

This brilliant murder mystery blends classic crime with speculative fiction in a stunning debut.]]> 320 Guy Morpuss Si 0 to-read 3.79 2021 Five Minds
author: Guy Morpuss
name: Si
average rating: 3.79
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/12
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Interstellar MegaChef (Flavour Hacker, #1)]]> 207299482 Looking for your one shot to rise to the "top of the pots" in the cutthroat world of interstellar cuisine? Look no further--you might have what it takes to be an Interstellar MegaChef!

Stepping off a long-haul star freighter from Earth, Saras Kaveri has one bag of clothes, her little flying robot Kili... and an invitation to compete in the galaxy's most watched, most prestigious cooking show. Interstellar MegaChef is the showcase of the planet Primus's austere, carefully synthesised cuisine. No one from Earth--where they're so incredibly primitive they still cook with fire--has ever graced its flowmetal cookstations before, or smiled awkwardly for its buzzing drone-cams. Until now.

Corporate prodigy Serenity Ko, inventor of the smash-hit sim SoundSpace, has just got messily drunk at a floating bar, narrowly escaped an angry mob and been put on two weeks' mandatory leave to rest and get her work-life balance back. Perfect time to start a new project! And she's got just the idea: a sim for food. Now she just needs someone to teach her how to cook.

A chance meeting in the back of a flying cab has Saras and Serenity Ko working together on a new technology that could change the future of food--and both their lives--forever...]]> 453 Lavanya Lakshminarayan 1837862338 Si 0 to-read 3.58 2024 Interstellar MegaChef (Flavour Hacker, #1)
author: Lavanya Lakshminarayan
name: Si
average rating: 3.58
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/01
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Ten Low (Ten Low, #1) 56360345
Attempting to atone for her sins, she pulls a teenage girl from a crashed lifecraft. But Gabriella Ortiz is no ordinary girl—she is a genetically-engineered super soldier and decorated General, part of the army that kept Ten prisoner. Worse, Ten realises the crash was an assassination attempt, and that someone wants Ortiz dead...

To get the General off-world, they must cross the moon's lawless wastes, face military hit squads, savage bandits, organ sharks, and good old-fashioned treachery. But as they race to safety, something else waits in the darkness. Something ancient and patient. Something that knows exactly who Ten is, and what she is really running from.]]> 332 Stark Holborn 1789096626 Si 4 space-opera
Set on a lawless planet where your organs are stolen if you stand still for too long. A ship crash lands in the desert and a medic with complicated past promises to help the survivor get off-world.

It was a good start to a series, but I think I'll read books two and three before I share my thoughts.]]> 3.78 2021 Ten Low (Ten Low, #1)
author: Stark Holborn
name: Si
average rating: 3.78
book published: 2021
rating: 4
read at: 2024/09/29
date added: 2024/09/29
shelves: space-opera
review:
Fast paced, brutal and trippy as hell.

Set on a lawless planet where your organs are stolen if you stand still for too long. A ship crash lands in the desert and a medic with complicated past promises to help the survivor get off-world.

It was a good start to a series, but I think I'll read books two and three before I share my thoughts.
]]> <![CDATA[I Have No Mouth & I Must Scream]]> 20813135 Ich denke, also bin ich109 Jahre nach dem Ende des Dritten Weltkriegs leben nur noch fünf Menschen. Sie hausen in unterirdischen Stollen, immer am Rande des Verhungerns, und werden jede Minute ihres Lebens von einem Supercomputer gefoltert, der ein Bewusstsein erlangt hat � und mit ihm unendlichen Hass auf seine Erbauer. Es gibt nur einen einzigen Ausweg für die gequälten Menschen � doch welcher von ihnen wird stark genug sein, ihn zu wählen? Die Kurzgeschichte „Ich muss schreien und habe keinen Mund� erscheint als exklusives E-Book Only bei Heyne und ist zusammen mit weiteren Stories von Harlan Ellison auch in dem Sammelband „Ich muss schreien und habe keinen Mund� enthalten. Sie umfasst ca. 22 Buchseiten.]]> 20 Harlan Ellison Si 0 to-read 3.72 1967 I Have No Mouth & I Must Scream
author: Harlan Ellison
name: Si
average rating: 3.72
book published: 1967
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/27
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Thrill Switch 62587788
To see if this is a copycat or something more sinister, Ada must confront her father’s killer: the enigmatic Jazlin Switch. What she discovers will change the face of both the real world and the metaverse forever...]]> 262 Tim Hawken 0645579106 Si 0 to-read 3.93 2022 Thrill Switch
author: Tim Hawken
name: Si
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/27
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Prey of Gods 30129154 From anew voice in the tradition of Lauren Beukes, Ian McDonald, and Nnedi Okorafor comes The Prey of Gods,a fantastic, boundary-challenging tale, set in a South African locale both familiar and yet utterly new, which braids elements of science fiction, fantasy, horror, and dark humor.

In South Africa, the future looks promising. Personal robots are making life easier for the working class. The government is harnessing renewable energy to provide infrastructure for the poor. And in the bustling coastal town of Port Elizabeth, the economy is booming thanks to the genetic engineering industry which has found a welcome home there. Yes—the days to come are looking very good for South Africans. That is, if they can survive the present

A new hallucinogenic drug sweeping the country . . .

An emerging AI uprising . . .

And an ancient demigoddess hellbent on regaining her former status by preying on the blood and sweat (but mostly blood) of every human she encounters.

It’s up to a young Zulu girl powerful enough to destroy her entire township, a queer teen plagued with the ability to control minds, a pop diva with serious daddy issues, and a politician with even more serious mommy issues to band together to ensure there’s a future left to worry about.

Fun and fantastic, Nicky Drayden takes her brilliance as a short story writer and weaves together an elaborate tale that will capture your heart . . . even as one particular demigoddess threatens to rip it out.]]> 400 Nicky Drayden 0062493043 Si 0 to-read 3.76 2017 The Prey of Gods
author: Nicky Drayden
name: Si
average rating: 3.76
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/17
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Dawn (Xenogenesis, #1) 60929
The Oankali survive by genetically merging with primitive civilizations—whether their new hosts like it or not. For the first time since the nuclear holocaust, Earth will be inhabited. Grass will grow, animals will run, and people will learn to survive the planet’s untamed wilderness. But their children will not be human. Not exactly.]]> 248 Octavia E. Butler 0446603775 Si 4 space-opera 4.15 1987 Dawn (Xenogenesis, #1)
author: Octavia E. Butler
name: Si
average rating: 4.15
book published: 1987
rating: 4
read at: 2024/09/11
date added: 2024/09/11
shelves: space-opera
review:
Really imaginative and thought provoking. Strange setting, unique aliens and a compelling protagonist. Need to read the rest of these.
]]> <![CDATA[The Will of the Many (Hierarchy, #1)]]> 58416952 At the elite Catenan Academy, a young fugitive uncovers layered mysteries and world-changing secrets in this new fantasy series by internationally bestselling author of The Licanius Trilogy, James Islington.

AUDI. VIDE. TACE.

The Catenan Republic � the Hierarchy � may rule the world now, but they do not know everything.

I tell them my name is Vis Telimus. I tell them I was orphaned after a tragic accident three years ago, and that good fortune alone has led to my acceptance into their most prestigious school. I tell them that once I graduate, I will gladly join the rest of civilised society in allowing my strength, my drive and my focus � what they call Will � to be leeched away and added to the power of those above me, as millions already do. As all must eventually do.

I tell them that I belong, and they believe me.

But the truth is that I have been sent to the Academy to find answers. To solve a murder. To search for an ancient weapon. To uncover secrets that may tear the Republic apart.

And that I will never, ever cede my Will to the empire that executed my family.

To survive, though, I will still have to rise through the Academy’s ranks. I will have to smile, and make friends, and pretend to be one of them and win. Because if I cannot, then those who want to control me, who know my real name, will no longer have any use for me.

And if the Hierarchy finds out who I truly am, they will kill me.]]> 639 James Islington 1982141190 Si 0 to-read 4.61 2023 The Will of the Many (Hierarchy, #1)
author: James Islington
name: Si
average rating: 4.61
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/30
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Around the World in Eighty Days]]> 54479 252 Jules Verne 014044906X Si 0 3.95 1872 Around the World in Eighty Days
author: Jules Verne
name: Si
average rating: 3.95
book published: 1872
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/29
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Power vs. Force: The Hidden Determinants of Human Behavior (Paperback)]]> 19795 341 David R. Hawkins 1561709336 Si 1 pseudo-science I did a few back-of-a-napkin calculations, and the energy levels he describes don't exist in nature (Assuming you use Joules. He never metions what form of energy he's measuring or what units he's using).]]> 4.13 1985 Power vs. Force: The Hidden Determinants of Human Behavior (Paperback)
author: David R. Hawkins
name: Si
average rating: 4.13
book published: 1985
rating: 1
read at: 2021/06/05
date added: 2024/08/18
shelves: pseudo-science
review:
Pure pseudo-science. He's just putting arbitrary numbers to emotions. Applied kinesiology isn't a thing. Most of this book is barely coherent rambling with a few sciencey sounding words thrown in for good measure. There's just no point in reading this.
I did a few back-of-a-napkin calculations, and the energy levels he describes don't exist in nature (Assuming you use Joules. He never metions what form of energy he's measuring or what units he's using).
]]> <![CDATA[Deathstalker (Deathstalker, #1)]]> 629068
Now, on the run from Imperial starcruisers, shady mercenaries, and just about everyone else in the Empire, Owen’s options are limited. Though the name Deathstalker still commands respect in certain quarters, out on the Rim, Owen is lucky he can cobble together a makeshift team of castoffs, including an ex-pirate, a cyborg, and a bounty hunter. But allies won’t be enough to save him.

If he’s to live, Owen can either run forever…or take down the corrupt Empire. To do that, he’ll need the fabled Darkvoid Device—an artifact dating back to the first Deathstalker and perhaps the only weapon powerful enough to help this ragtag rebellion win. The time has come for Owen to finally embrace his Deathstalker heritage…and all the blood and death that go along with it.

Deathstalker is the first book in New York Times bestselling author Simon R. Green’s beloved space opera series.]]> 571 Simon R. Green 0575601604 Si 0 to-read 3.95 1994 Deathstalker (Deathstalker, #1)
author: Simon R. Green
name: Si
average rating: 3.95
book published: 1994
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/18
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The City & the City 4703581
Borlú must travel from the decaying Beszel to the only metropolis on Earth as strange as his own. This is a border crossing like no other, a journey as psychic as it is physical, a shift in perception, a seeing of the unseen. His destination is Beszel’s equal, rival, and intimate neighbor, the rich and vibrant city of Ul Qoma. With Ul Qoman detective Qussim Dhatt, and struggling with his own transition, Borlú is enmeshed in a sordid underworld of rabid nationalists intent on destroying their neighboring city, and unificationists who dream of dissolving the two into one. As the detectives uncover the dead woman’s secrets, they begin to suspect a truth that could cost them and those they care about more than their lives.

What stands against them are murderous powers in Beszel and in Ul Qoma: and, most terrifying of all, that which lies between these two cities.

Casting shades of Kafka and Philip K. Dick, Raymond Chandler and 1984, The City & the City is a murder mystery taken to dazzling metaphysical and artistic heights.]]> 312 China Miéville 0345497511 Si 4 What makes this stand out is its unusual setting. A sort of two state city that works like no other.
Excellent prose and a clever political subtext on cultural identity.
Will definitely be reading more Miéville in the future.]]> 3.90 2009 The City & the City
author: China Miéville
name: Si
average rating: 3.90
book published: 2009
rating: 4
read at: 2024/08/15
date added: 2024/08/15
shelves:
review:
A contemporary detective story with a bit of a twist. It has all the usual tropes of a police procedural novel. The usual gruff and cynical main character. An investigation that should be an open and shut murder case. A mystery that will keep you guessing until the end.
What makes this stand out is its unusual setting. A sort of two state city that works like no other.
Excellent prose and a clever political subtext on cultural identity.
Will definitely be reading more Miéville in the future.
]]> Planetside (Planetside, #1) 35657891 A seasoned military officer uncovers a deadly conspiracy on a distant, war-torn planet�

War heroes aren't usually called out of semi-retirement and sent to the far reaches of the galaxy for a routine investigation. So when Colonel Carl Butler answers the call from an old and powerful friend, he knows it's something big—and he's not being told the whole story. A high councilor's son has gone MIA out of Cappa Base, the space station orbiting a battle-ravaged planet. The young lieutenant had been wounded and evacuated—but there's no record of him having ever arrived at hospital command.

The colonel quickly finds Cappa Base to be a labyrinth of dead ends and sabotage: the hospital commander stonewalls him, the Special Ops leader won't come off the planet, witnesses go missing, radar data disappears, and that’s before he encounters the alien enemy. Butler has no choice but to drop down onto a hostile planet—because someone is using the war zone as a cover. The answers are there—Butler just has to make it back alive…]]> 384 Michael Mammay 0062694677 Si 0 to-read 3.93 2018 Planetside (Planetside, #1)
author: Michael Mammay
name: Si
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/11
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Bastion (The Immortal Great Souls, #1)]]> 59521676 Scorio will rise from the ashes to conquer the ten layers of hell.

Reborn without memories, Scorio learns that he is a Great Soul, a legendary defender of the ancient city of Bastion. That within the hallowed halls of the Academy and under the stern eyes of the underworld’s greatest instructors he will enjoy enormous privilege, rediscover unique and wondrous powers, and one day return to the millennium-old battle against their infernal foes.

Until he is betrayed. Singled out and sentenced to die for crimes he can't remember, Scorio is hurled to his doom—and forgotten.

But from even the dimmest spark an inferno may one day rage.

Clawing his way back from oblivion, Scorio vows to return to the Academy at any cost. To emerge from the ruins and within those golden walls defeat his elite classmates in a quest to ascend the ranks and change the course of history. For only then will he learn about his forgotten past, and why his enemies have rightly feared him since the day he was reborn.]]> 829 Phil Tucker Si 0 to-read 4.42 2021 Bastion (The Immortal Great Souls, #1)
author: Phil Tucker
name: Si
average rating: 4.42
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/09
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Blindsight (Firefall, #1) 48484 Two months since the stars fell...

Two months since sixty-five thousand alien objects clenched around the Earth like a luminous fist, screaming to the heavens as the atmosphere burned them to ash. Two months since that moment of brief, bright surveillance by agents unknown.

Two months of silence while a world holds its breath.

Now some half-derelict space probe, sparking fitfully past Neptune’s orbit, hears a whisper from the edge of the solar system: a faint signal sweeping the cosmos like a lighthouse beam. Whatever’s out there isn’t talking to us. It’s talking to some distant star, perhaps. Or perhaps to something closer, something en route.

So who do you send to force introductions on an intelligence with motives unknown, maybe unknowable? Who do you send to meet the alien when the alien doesn’t want to meet?

You send a linguist with multiple personalities, her brain surgically partitioned into separate, sentient processing cores. You send a biologist so radically interfaced with machinery that he sees X-rays and tastes ultrasound, so compromised by grafts and splices he no longer feels his own flesh. You send a pacifist warrior in the faint hope she won’t be needed, and a fainter hope she’ll do any good if she is needed. You send a monster to command them all, an extinct hominid predator once called “vampire,� recalled from the grave with the voodoo of recombinant genetics and the blood of sociopaths. And you send a synthesist � an informational topologist with half his mind gone � as an interface between here and there, a conduit through which the Dead Center might hope to understand the Bleeding Edge.

You send them all to the edge of interstellar space, praying you can trust such freaks and retrofits with the fate of a world. You fear they may be more alien than the thing they’ve been sent to find.

But you’d give anything for that to be true, if you only knew what was waiting for them…]]> 384 Peter Watts 0765312182 Si 0 to-read 4.01 2006 Blindsight (Firefall, #1)
author: Peter Watts
name: Si
average rating: 4.01
book published: 2006
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/07
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[His Last Bow (Sherlock Holmes, #8)]]> 754713 242 Arthur Conan Doyle 0755334434 Si 4 4.26 1917 His Last Bow (Sherlock Holmes, #8)
author: Arthur Conan Doyle
name: Si
average rating: 4.26
book published: 1917
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2024/08/07
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Blood of Elves (The Witcher, #1)]]> 6043781 The New York Times bestselling series that inspired the international hit video game: The Witcher.
For over a century, humans, dwarves, gnomes, and elves have lived together in relative peace. But times have changed, the uneasy peace is over, and now the races are fighting once again. The only good elf, it seems, is a dead elf.

Geralt of Rivia, the cunning assassin known as The Witcher, has been waiting for the birth of a prophesied child. This child has the power to change the world - for good, or for evil.

As the threat of war hangs over the land and the child is hunted for her extraordinary powers, it will become Geralt's responsibility to protect them all - and the Witcher never accepts defeat.

The Witcher returns in this sequel to The Last Wish, as the inhabitants of his world become embroiled in a state of total war.]]> 398 Andrzej Sapkowski Si 3 fantasy
We didn’t get much of Geralt in this. I thought the titular Witcher would have more lines.
But, while I’m not blown away with the writing style, I like the heavy European folklore influence. I liked it enough to continue with this series.]]> 4.05 1994 Blood of Elves (The Witcher, #1)
author: Andrzej Sapkowski
name: Si
average rating: 4.05
book published: 1994
rating: 3
read at: 2024/07/28
date added: 2024/07/28
shelves: fantasy
review:
Blood of Elves. This was mostly an introduction to this world and it’s characters. A setup for the next book and not so much a story of its own. Also, the plot was a little disjointed. Like it was intended as more short stories and he just crammed a few of them together, maybe.

We didn’t get much of Geralt in this. I thought the titular Witcher would have more lines.
But, while I’m not blown away with the writing style, I like the heavy European folklore influence. I liked it enough to continue with this series.
]]> The Book of Elsewhere 202950650
There have always been whispers. Legends. The warrior who cannot be killed. Who’s seen a thousand civilizations rise and fall. He has had many names: Unute, Child of Lightning, Death himself. These days, he’s known simply as “B.�

And he wants to be able to die.

In the present day, a U.S. black-ops group has promised him they can help with that. And all he needs to do is help them in return. But when an all-too-mortal soldier comes back to life, the impossible event ultimately points toward a force even more mysterious than B himself. One at least as strong. And one with a plan all its own.

A mind-blowing epic of ancient powers, modern war, and an outcast who cannot die. Combines Miéville’s singular style and creativity with Reeves’s haunting and soul-stirring narrative, unlike anything these two genre-bending pioneers have created before, inspired by the world of the BRZRKR comic books.]]> 352 Keanu Reeves 0593446593 Si 0 to-read, tbr 3.26 2024 The Book of Elsewhere
author: Keanu Reeves
name: Si
average rating: 3.26
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/07/23
shelves: to-read, tbr
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Kingdoms of Death (Sun Eater, #4)]]> 57443696 The fourth novel of the galaxy-spanning Sun Eater series merges the best of space opera and epic fantasy, as Hadrian Marlowe continues down a path that can only end in fire.

Hadrian Marlowe is trapped.

For nearly a century, he has been a guest of the Emperor, forced into the role of advisor, a prisoner of his own legend. But the war is changing. Mankind is losing.

The Cielcin are spilling into human space from the fringes, picking their targets with cunning precision. The Great Prince Syriani Dorayaica is uniting their clans, forging them into an army and threat the likes of which mankind has never seen.

And the Empire stands alone.

Now the Emperor has no choice but to give Hadrian Marlowe--once his favorite knight--one more impossible task: journey across the galaxy to the Lothrian Commonwealth and convince them to join the war. But not all is as it seems, and Hadrian's journey will take him far beyond the Empire, beyond the Commonwealth, impossibly deep behind enemy lines.]]> 544 Christopher Ruocchio 1473218357 Si 4 space-opera 4.44 2022 Kingdoms of Death (Sun Eater, #4)
author: Christopher Ruocchio
name: Si
average rating: 4.44
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2024/07/17
date added: 2024/07/17
shelves: space-opera
review:

]]> Starfish (Rifters, #1) 23310335 Watts is investigating monsters. Gigantic deep sea monsters, surgically-altered-from-human monsters, faceless jellied-brain computer monsters--which monsters are human, which are more than human, which are less? Watts keeps the story line stripped down to showcase the theme of dehumanization. The anonymous millions who live along the unstable shore of N'AmPac come under threat (a triggered earthquake, and perhaps a disaster that's slower but even more pitiless) from their own dehumanized creations. But Watts is less interested in whether Lenie can save the dry world as in whether she can save herself. In Starfish, Watts stretches the boundaries of humanity up, down, and sideways to see whether its dimensions reveal anything we'd be proud to be a part of. --Blaise Selby

]]> 324 Peter Watts Si 0 to-read 4.10 1999 Starfish (Rifters, #1)
author: Peter Watts
name: Si
average rating: 4.10
book published: 1999
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/07/07
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Forever War (The Forever War, #1)]]> 21611 278 Joe Haldeman Si 4 space-opera 4.14 1974 The Forever War (The Forever War, #1)
author: Joe Haldeman
name: Si
average rating: 4.14
book published: 1974
rating: 4
read at: 2024/06/28
date added: 2024/06/28
shelves: space-opera
review:
Way ahead of its time. Highly recommend.
]]> Neon Leviathan 48731972
Twelve hard-edged stories from the dark, often violent, sometimes strange heart of cyberpunk, this collection � as with all the best science fiction � is an exploration of who were are now. In the tradition of Dashiell Hammett, Philip K Dick, and David Mitchell, Neon Leviathan is a remarkable debut collection from a breakout new author.]]> 364 T.R. Napper 0648663590 Si 4 cyberpunk These stories are about the shift in power dynamics that come with the exploitation of such technology.

A bleak view of the future where memory has become removed from human experience and reduced to mere data or a commodity. And with the manipulation of memory comes the loss of identity, purpose and freedom of the marginalised.

A stark warning of things to come, given most of our memories are in our phones these days.
Stop and ask yourself, how often do you google an actor because you can’t think of their name?
How well do you remember your last trip, without looking at photos?
How many news stories do you remember when they stop appearing in your news feed?

I also recommend 36 Streets by the same author.]]> 4.21 2020 Neon Leviathan
author: T.R. Napper
name: Si
average rating: 4.21
book published: 2020
rating: 4
read at: 2024/06/17
date added: 2024/06/21
shelves: cyberpunk
review:
Neon Leviathan is a series of cyberpunk short stories set between 2030 and 2190 and thematically linked by memory. Memory recording, transfer, deletion, manipulation.
These stories are about the shift in power dynamics that come with the exploitation of such technology.

A bleak view of the future where memory has become removed from human experience and reduced to mere data or a commodity. And with the manipulation of memory comes the loss of identity, purpose and freedom of the marginalised.

A stark warning of things to come, given most of our memories are in our phones these days.
Stop and ask yourself, how often do you google an actor because you can’t think of their name?
How well do you remember your last trip, without looking at photos?
How many news stories do you remember when they stop appearing in your news feed?

I also recommend 36 Streets by the same author.
]]> <![CDATA[Batman, Volume 3: Death of the Family]]> 17671913
One year ago, the Joker limped off the streets of Gotham, mutilated and scarred when someone had taken the pale white skin right off of his face.

But now, the Dark Knight’s greatest foe has returned but for once, Batman doesn’t seem to be his target. Instead, the Joker turns his vile hatred towards Commissioner Gordon, Alfred, Robin, Nightwing, Batgirl, Red Hood and Red Robin � the only family Bruce Wayne has left. The Clown Prince of Crime will unleash his most unpredictable, vicious and psychotic assault ever on everyone Batman holds dear.

Can Batman stop his arch-rival’s most deranged assault ever? Or will the cost of a deadly secret be a family member’s life?

#1 New York Times best-selling creators Scott Snyder (American Vampire) and Greg Capullo (Spawn) present the long-awaited return of the Joker, as he unleashes his most terrifying, personal assault ever on the Dark Knight.

Collects: Batman #13-17 along with backup stories illustrated by award-winning artist Jock (Batman: The Black Mirror).]]> 176 Scott Snyder 1401242340 Si 1 4.31 2013 Batman, Volume 3: Death of the Family
author: Scott Snyder
name: Si
average rating: 4.31
book published: 2013
rating: 1
read at: 2024/06/17
date added: 2024/06/17
shelves:
review:
Got bored. Put it to one side. Forgot I was reading it. DNF, I guess.
]]> <![CDATA[Moon Witch, Spider King (The Dark Star Trilogy #2)]]> 33832433
In Black Leopard, Red Wolf, Sogolon the Moon Witch proved a worthy adversary to Tracker as they clashed across a mythical African landscape in search of a mysterious boy who disappeared. In Moon Witch, Spider King, Sogolon takes center stage and gives her own account of what happened to the boy, and how she plotted and fought, triumphed and failed as she looked for him. It’s also the story of a century-long feud—seen through the eyes of a 177-year-old witch—that Sogolon had with the Aesi, chancellor to the king. It is said that Aesi works so closely with the king that together they are like the eight limbs of one spider. Aesi’s power is considerable—and deadly. It takes brains and courage to challenge him, which Sogolon does for reasons of her own.

Both a brilliant narrative device—seeing the story told in Black Leopard, Red Wolf from the perspective of an adversary and a woman—as well as a fascinating battle between different versions of empire, Moon Witch, Spider King delves into Sogolon’s world as she fights to tell her own story. Part adventure tale, part chronicle of an indomitable woman who bows to no man, it is a fascinating novel that explores power, personality, and the places where they overlap.]]> 626 Marlon James 0735220220 Si 4 fantasy, mythology 4.16 2022 Moon Witch, Spider King (The Dark Star Trilogy #2)
author: Marlon James
name: Si
average rating: 4.16
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2024/06/09
date added: 2024/06/09
shelves: fantasy, mythology
review:
3.5 ish. Personally, I enjoyed the first one more.
]]> Vurt (Vurt, #1) 17401136
Take a trip in a stranger’s head. Travel rain-shot streets with a gang of hip malcontents, hooked on the most powerful drug you can imagine. Yet Vurt feathers are not for the weak. As the mysterious Game Cat says, ‘Be careful, be very careful�. But Scribble isn’t listening. He has to find his lost love. His journey is a mission to find Curious Yellow, the ultimate, perhaps even mythical Vurt feather. As the most powerful narcotic of all, Scribble must be prepared to leave his current reality behind.

This edition also includes three additional short stories by Noon.]]> 368 Jeff Noon 0230768806 Si 2 cyberpunk The characters were a blend of weird and reprehensible. The protagonist’s main objective was disgusting.
The setting was bold and bizarre.
The plot meanders from one idea to another with no clear sense of progress.

Would not recommend and probably won’t read the sequel.]]> 4.09 1993 Vurt (Vurt, #1)
author: Jeff Noon
name: Si
average rating: 4.09
book published: 1993
rating: 2
read at: 2024/05/30
date added: 2024/05/30
shelves: cyberpunk
review:
Set in an edgy futuristic Manchester and told from the perspective of a group of Vurt addicts and the Cronenberg-esque creature they live with. They spend their days stealing Vurt feathers, evading the shadow cops, and entering the psychedelic shared hallucinatory worlds of the Vurt.
The characters were a blend of weird and reprehensible. The protagonist’s main objective was disgusting.
The setting was bold and bizarre.
The plot meanders from one idea to another with no clear sense of progress.

Would not recommend and probably won’t read the sequel.
]]> Saga, Volume 11 29237226
Collects SAGA #61-66]]> 153 Brian K. Vaughan 1534345930 Si 4 4.25 2023 Saga, Volume 11
author: Brian K. Vaughan
name: Si
average rating: 4.25
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2024/05/12
date added: 2024/05/12
shelves:
review:

]]> Count Zero (Sprawl, #2) 22200
A corporate mercenary wakes in a reconstructed body, a beautiful woman by his side. Then Hosaka Corporation reactivates him, for a mission more dangerous than the one he’s recovering to get a defecting chief of R&D—and the biochip he’s perfected—out intact. But this proves to be of supreme interest to certain other parties—some of whom aren’t remotely human....]]> 308 William Gibson Si 4 cyberpunk 4.03 1986 Count Zero (Sprawl, #2)
author: William Gibson
name: Si
average rating: 4.03
book published: 1986
rating: 4
read at: 2024/05/07
date added: 2024/05/08
shelves: cyberpunk
review:
Technologically and thematically very ahead of its time. Less jargon than Neuromancer, making it much easier to read. Characters could use a little more work. Overall, it was a good read.
]]> I Am AI: A Novelette 128614184
Ai is a cyborg, under the guise of an AI writing program, who struggles to keep up with the never-blinking city of Emit as it threatens to leave all those like her behind.]]> 63 Ai Jiang 1959565095 Si 0 to-read 4.02 2023 I Am AI: A Novelette
author: Ai Jiang
name: Si
average rating: 4.02
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/04/28
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Spider-Gwen, Vol. 0: Most Wanted?]]> 25066786
COLLECTING: EDGE OF SPIDER-VERSE #2, SPIDER-GWEN 1-5]]> 136 Jason Latour 0785197737 Si 4 3.82 2015 Spider-Gwen, Vol. 0: Most Wanted?
author: Jason Latour
name: Si
average rating: 3.82
book published: 2015
rating: 4
read at: 2024/04/28
date added: 2024/04/28
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[PLUTO: Urasawa x Tezuka, Vol. 4]]> 6285607
Contains Chapters 24 to 31.]]> 200 Naoki Urasawa 1421519216 Si 4 4.46 2006 PLUTO: Urasawa x Tezuka, Vol. 4
author: Naoki Urasawa
name: Si
average rating: 4.46
book published: 2006
rating: 4
read at: 2024/04/22
date added: 2024/04/25
shelves:
review:

]]> Gateway (Heechee Saga, #1) 218427
When prospector Robinette Broadhead went out to Gateway on the Heechee spacecraft, he decided he would know which was the right mission to make him his fortune. Three missions later, now famous and permanently rich, Rob Broadhead has to face what happened to him and what he has become... in a journey into himself as perilous and even more horrifying than the nightmare trip through the interstellar void that he drove himself to take!]]> 278 Frederik Pohl 0345475836 Si 4 space-opera 4.07 1977 Gateway (Heechee Saga, #1)
author: Frederik Pohl
name: Si
average rating: 4.07
book published: 1977
rating: 4
read at: 2024/02/15
date added: 2024/04/20
shelves: space-opera
review:

]]> Excession (Culture, #5) 12013 Excession, the Culture's espionage and dirty tricks section orders Diplomat Byr Gen-Hofoen to steal the soul of a long-dead starship captain. By accepting the mission, Byr irrevocably plunges himself into a conspiracy: one that could either lead the universe into an age of peace or to the brink of annihilation.]]> 500 Iain M. Banks 0553575376 Si 0 to-read 4.20 1996 Excession (Culture, #5)
author: Iain M. Banks
name: Si
average rating: 4.20
book published: 1996
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/04/18
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Rise of Endymion (Hyperion Cantos, #4)]]> 11289
But first they must embark on a final spectacular mission to discover the underlying meaning of the universe itself. They have been followed on their journey by the mysterious Shrike--monster, angel, killing machine--who is about to reveal the long-held secret of its origin and purpose. And on the planet of Hyperion, where the story first began, the final revelation will be delivered--an apocalyptic message that unlocks the secrets of existence and the fate of humankind in the galaxy.]]> 709 Dan Simmons 0553572989 Si 4 space-opera 4.15 1997 The Rise of Endymion (Hyperion Cantos, #4)
author: Dan Simmons
name: Si
average rating: 4.15
book published: 1997
rating: 4
read at: 2024/04/10
date added: 2024/04/10
shelves: space-opera
review:
Great ending to a great series.
]]> Womb City 61725531 WOMB CITY imagines a dark and deadly future Botswana, rich with culture and true folklore, which begs the question: how far must one go to destroy the structures of inequality upon which a society was founded? How far must a mother go to save the life of her child?

Nelah seems to have it all: wealth, fame, a husband, and a child on the way. But in a body her husband controls via microchip and the tailspin of a loveless marriage, her hopes and dreams come to a devastating halt. A drug-fueled night of celebration ends in a hit-and-run. To dodge a sentencing in a society that favors men, Nelah and her side-piece, Janith Koshal, finish the victim off and bury the body.

But the secret claws its way into Nelah's life from the grave. As her victim's vengeful ghost begins exacting a bloody revenge on everyone Nelah holds dear, she'll have to unravel her society's terrible secrets to stop those in power, and become a monster unlike any other to quench the ghost's violent thirst.]]> 416 Tlotlo Tsamaase 1645660567 Si 0 to-read 3.19 2018 Womb City
author: Tlotlo Tsamaase
name: Si
average rating: 3.19
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/03/26
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch]]> 14185
Cover illustration: Chris Moore]]> 231 Philip K. Dick 1407247425 Si 4 I’m going to talk to my suitcase about this one.]]> 4.02 1965 The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch
author: Philip K. Dick
name: Si
average rating: 4.02
book published: 1965
rating: 4
read at: 2024/03/20
date added: 2024/03/22
shelves:
review:
This was as bizarre as you could expect from PKD. Just when you think you know where it’s going, it changes into something else.
I’m going to talk to my suitcase about this one.
]]> <![CDATA[Mushroom Blues (The Hofmann Report, #1)]]> 205981469 ENTER THE FUNGALVERSE. Blade Runner, True Detective, and District 9 meld with the weird worlds of Jeff VanderMeer, Philip K. Dick, and China Miéville in Adrian M. Gibson’s award-winning fungalpunk noir debut, now with a foreword from acclaimed author Nicholas Eames and six pieces of original interior artwork in this ONE-YEAR ANNIVERSARY EDITION.


Two years after a devastating defeat in the decade-long Spore War, the island nation of Hōppon and its capital city of Neo Kinoko are occupied by invading Coprinian forces. Its fungal citizens are in dire straits, wracked by food shortages, poverty, and an influx of war refugees. Even worse, the corrupt occupiers exploit their power, hounding the native population.


As a winter storm looms over the metropolis, NKPD homicide detective Henrietta Hofmann begrudgingly partners up with mushroom-headed patrol officer Koji Nameko to investigate the mysterious murders of fungal and half-breed children. Their investigation drags them deep into the seedy underbelly of a war-torn city, one brimming with colonizers, criminal gangs, racial division, and moral decay.


In order to solve the case and unravel the truth, Hofmann must challenge her past and embrace fungal ways. What she and Nameko uncover in the midst of this frigid wasteland will chill them to the core, but will they make it through the storm alive?

]]> 410 Adrian M. Gibson Si 0 to-read 3.95 2024 Mushroom Blues (The Hofmann Report, #1)
author: Adrian M. Gibson
name: Si
average rating: 3.95
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/03/15
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> A Song for a New Day 43401925 In this captivating science fiction novel from an award-winning author, public gatherings are illegal making concerts impossible, except for those willing to break the law for the love of music, and for one chance at human connection.

In the Before, when the government didn't prohibit large public gatherings, Luce Cannon was on top of the world. One of her songs had just taken off and she was on her way to becoming a star. Now, in the After, terror attacks and deadly viruses have led the government to ban concerts, and Luce's connection to the world—her music, her purpose—is closed off forever. She does what she has to do: she performs in illegal concerts to a small but passionate community, always evading the law.

Rosemary Laws barely remembers the Before times. She spends her days in Hoodspace, helping customers order all of their goods online for drone delivery—no physical contact with humans needed. By lucky chance, she finds a new job and a new calling: discover amazing musicians and bring their concerts to everyone via virtual reality. The only catch is that she'll have to do something she's never done before and go out in public. Find the illegal concerts and bring musicians into the limelight they deserve.But when she sees how the world could actually be, that won’t be enough.]]> 384 Sarah Pinsker 1984802593 Si 4 3.95 2019 A Song for a New Day
author: Sarah Pinsker
name: Si
average rating: 3.95
book published: 2019
rating: 4
read at: 2024/03/02
date added: 2024/03/02
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Black Science, Vol. 8: Later Than You Think]]> 38812860
Rick Remender and Matteo Scalera set their sights on the End of the Eververse as the Dimensionauts begin their final journey into the Onion construct to fix everything that ever went wrong--or damn all of eternity to the void.

Collects BLACK SCIENCE #35-38
]]> 112 Rick Remender 1534306943 Si 4 4.02 2018 Black Science, Vol. 8: Later Than You Think
author: Rick Remender
name: Si
average rating: 4.02
book published: 2018
rating: 4
read at: 2024/03/02
date added: 2024/03/02
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[PLUTO: Urasawa x Tezuka, Vol. 3]]> 6235979 When robots become so highly advanced in function, yet so similar in kind to humans, societal resistance is inevitable. In this backdrop of technophobic discrimination, Europol’s top robot detective Gesicht and Atom, the most advanced robot in the world continue their investigation into the serial murders of the great robots of the world. The leaves of this mystery masterfully unfold into a complex intersection of reactionary robot hate groups, global politics, and an exploration of robot identity.

Contains Chapters 16 to 23.

]]> 200 Naoki Urasawa 1421519208 Si 4 4.42 2006 PLUTO: Urasawa x Tezuka, Vol. 3
author: Naoki Urasawa
name: Si
average rating: 4.42
book published: 2006
rating: 4
read at: 2024/02/24
date added: 2024/02/24
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Shadow of the Gods (The Bloodsworn Saga, #1)]]> 52694527 Set in a brand-new, Norse-inspired world, and packed with myth, magic and bloody vengeance, The Shadow of the Gods begins an epic new fantasy saga from bestselling author John Gwynne.

After the gods warred and drove themselves to extinction, the cataclysm of their fall shattered the land of Vigrið.

Now a new world is rising, where power-hungry jarls feud and monsters stalk the woods and mountains. A world where the bones of the dead gods still hold great power for those brave - or desperate - enough to seek them out.

Now, as whispers of war echo across the mountains and fjords, fate follows in the footsteps of three people: a huntress on a dangerous quest, a noblewoman who has rejected privilege in pursuit of battle fame, and a thrall who seeks vengeance among the famed mercenaries known as the Bloodsworn.

All three will shape the fate of the world as it once more falls under the shadow of the gods . . .]]> 480 John Gwynne 0356514188 Si 4 fantasy 4.19 2021 The Shadow of the Gods (The Bloodsworn Saga, #1)
author: John Gwynne
name: Si
average rating: 4.19
book published: 2021
rating: 4
read at: 2024/02/17
date added: 2024/02/17
shelves: fantasy
review:
The first half dragged a little, but the second half made up for it. Could have leaned into the fantasy elements a bit more. But, if you’re into berserkers and axe fighting this will be your thing.
]]> <![CDATA[Titan Hoppers (Titan Hoppers #1)]]> 61401192 Courage Iro will shatter the Gates of Power to protect his fleet.

Born talentless, Iro has all but resigned himself to a life of drudgery, watching his sister hop across to the massive space titan for supplies. But when the titan explodes and his sister is killed, Iro finds a new determination to take her place. He’s not about to let weakness prevent him.

When the fleet encounters a new titan, filled with powerful monsters, deadly traps, and mysterious cloaked figures, Iro is the first to spontaneously manifest a new talent. Now sent to a different ship, to train with others far beyond his strength, Iro will have to train twice as hard just to catch up.

To protect his fleet, and to uncover the mysteries of the titans, Iro won’t just open the Gates of Power. He’ll break them.

A progression sci-fantasy perfect for fans of Cradle and Iron Prince.]]> 476 Rob J. Hayes Si 0 to-read 4.30 2022 Titan Hoppers (Titan Hoppers #1)
author: Rob J. Hayes
name: Si
average rating: 4.30
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/02/15
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Rendezvous with Rama (Rama, #1)]]> 112537 243 Arthur C. Clarke 1857231589 Si 4 space-opera 4.12 1973 Rendezvous with Rama (Rama, #1)
author: Arthur C. Clarke
name: Si
average rating: 4.12
book published: 1973
rating: 4
read at: 2024/02/10
date added: 2024/02/10
shelves: space-opera
review:
Interesting concepts with real world physics. Imaginative setting. Characters were a little dry. Slow paced and technical, but the bizarre nature of Rama will keep you wondering.
]]> Oblivion Song, Vol. 1 36477721
Collects OBLIVION SONG #1-6.]]> 144 Robert Kirkman Si 4 3.75 2018 Oblivion Song, Vol. 1
author: Robert Kirkman
name: Si
average rating: 3.75
book published: 2018
rating: 4
read at: 2024/02/07
date added: 2024/02/07
shelves:
review:

]]> Diaspora 156785 443 Greg Egan 3453161815 Si 0 4.12 1997 Diaspora
author: Greg Egan
name: Si
average rating: 4.12
book published: 1997
rating: 0
read at: 2024/01/21
date added: 2024/01/21
shelves:
review:
First half was thought-provoking. Then I zoned out.
]]> Frankenstein 39810297
Junji Ito meets Mary Shelley! The master of horror manga bends all his skill into bringing the anguished and solitary monster—and the fouler beast who created him—to life with the brilliantly detailed chiaroscuro he is known for.

Also included are six tales of Oshikiri—a high school student who lives in a decaying mansion connected to a haunted parallel world. Uncanny doppelgangers, unfortunately murdered friends, and a whole lot more are in store for him.

Bonus: The Ito family dog! Thrill to the adventures of Non-non Ito, an adorable Maltese!]]> 408 Junji Ito 1974703762 Si 0 to-read 4.02 1999 Frankenstein
author: Junji Ito
name: Si
average rating: 4.02
book published: 1999
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/01/20
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Space Punks (Space Punks #1) 175954296 One hundred years ago humanity won the war against Artificial Intelligence, but at a horrible price. At least so it seems�

David ends up in a high-security prison on the Martian moon Deimos, but he has no memory of how or why he got there—something that doesn’t really matter since anyone sent to this hellhole is sent there to die. Luckily, David meets Aztec, a purple-haired cyborg girl, who is as fierce as she is captivating.

Aztec isn’t in prison by coincidence: she’s been hired to help someone escape and brings David along on the jailbreak.

And that’s only the beginning of David’s adventure. He winds up on a spaceship with the most notorious mercenaries in the galaxy.

However, this crew is far more than mere guns-for-hire. Secrets and hidden identities abound aboard this mysterious vessel, which turns out to be a warship in disguise. As David struggles to reclaim his memories, he finds himself entangled in a vast conspiracy that holds the potential to reshape humanity's fate.

And the seemingly defeated enemy lurks in the shadows, ready to strike again�

Cyborgs, robots, mechs, and epic space battles!

Spacepunks is an adrenaline-fueled adventure, the perfect read for fans of The Expanse and Cyberpunk 2077.]]> 381 Anna Mocikat Si 4 space-opera, cyberpunk 4.45 Space Punks (Space Punks #1)
author: Anna Mocikat
name: Si
average rating: 4.45
book published:
rating: 4
read at: 2024/01/17
date added: 2024/01/17
shelves: space-opera, cyberpunk
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Stars and Bones (Continuance #1)]]> 58520263
Seventy-five years from today, the human race has been cast from a dying Earth to wander the stars in a vast fleet of arks—each shaped by its inhabitants into a diverse and fascinating new environment, with its own rules and eccentricities.

When her sister disappears while responding to a mysterious alien distress call, Eryn insists on being part of the crew sent to look for her. What she discovers on Candidate-623 is both terrifying and deadly. When the threat follows her back to the fleet and people start dying, she is tasked with seeking out a legendary recluse who may just hold the key to humanity’s survival.]]> 347 Gareth L. Powell 1789094283 Si 4 space-opera The characters were an odd bunch, the talking cat in particular.
The world-building was decent. The alien was original.
Would recommend it to fans of the Alien franchise, or maybe fans of Cixin Liu.
Might pick up the sequel at some point.]]> 3.49 2022 Stars and Bones (Continuance #1)
author: Gareth L. Powell
name: Si
average rating: 3.49
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2024/01/10
date added: 2024/01/12
shelves: space-opera
review:
This was a fast paced and enjoyable blend of hard sf, horror and mystery.
The characters were an odd bunch, the talking cat in particular.
The world-building was decent. The alien was original.
Would recommend it to fans of the Alien franchise, or maybe fans of Cixin Liu.
Might pick up the sequel at some point.
]]> <![CDATA[The Hidden Girl and Other Stories]]> 51070072
Ken Liu is one of the most lauded short story writers of our time. This collection includes a selection of his science fiction and fantasy stories from the last five years � sixteen of his best � plus a new novelette.

In addition to these seventeen selections, The Hidden Girl and Other Stories also features an excerpt from the forthcoming book three in the Dandelion Dynasty series, "The Veiled Throne".

Contents:
- Ghost Days (2013)
- Maxwell's Demon (2012)
- The Reborn (2014)
- Thoughts and Prayers (2019)
- Byzantine Empathy (2018)
- The Gods Will Not Be Chained (2014)
- Staying Behind (2011)
- Real Artists (2011)
- The Gods Will Not Be Slain (2014)
- Altogether Elsewhere, Vast Herds of Reindeer (2011)
- The Gods Have Not Died in Vain (2015)
- Memories of My Mother (2012)
- Dispatches from the Cradle: The Hermit - Forty-Eight Hours in the Sea of Massachusetts (2016)
- Grey Rabbit, Crimson Mare, Coal Leopard (2020)
- A Chase Beyond the Storms: An excerpt from "The Veiled Throne", Book 3 of the Dandelion Dynasty
- The Hidden Girl (2017)
- Seven Birthdays (2016)
- The Message (2012)
- Cutting (2012)

]]> 432 Ken Liu Si 0 to-read 3.97 2020 The Hidden Girl and Other Stories
author: Ken Liu
name: Si
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/01/08
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Synners 304806 435 Pat Cadigan 1568581858 Si 2 cyberpunk The prose was verbose, repetitive and a little pretentious. The second half of the book is just chaos.
In terms of pacing, it was very slow moving. It kinda makes a point about media exploiting people’s addictive nature. But not well.

So� I don’t know.]]> 3.71 1991 Synners
author: Pat Cadigan
name: Si
average rating: 3.71
book published: 1991
rating: 2
read at: 2024/01/08
date added: 2024/01/08
shelves: cyberpunk
review:
The first half of the book introduces two new characters per chapter. Most of them turn out to be unimportant. The characters that stick around till the end are shallow and neurotic. The reader has no reason to root for the good guys (or the bad guys).
The prose was verbose, repetitive and a little pretentious. The second half of the book is just chaos.
In terms of pacing, it was very slow moving. It kinda makes a point about media exploiting people’s addictive nature. But not well.

So� I don’t know.
]]> Feed 169756 Identity crises, consumerism, and star-crossed teenage love in a futuristic society where people connect to the Internet via feeds implanted in their brains.

For Titus and his friends, it started out like any ordinary trip to the moon—a chance to party during spring break and play with some stupid low-grav at the Ricochet Lounge. But that was before the crazy hacker caused all their feeds to malfunction, sending them to the hospital to lie around with nothing inside their heads for days. And it was before Titus met Violet, a beautiful, brainy teenage girl who has decided to fight the feed and its omnipresent ability to categorize human thoughts and desires. Following in the footsteps of George Orwell, Anthony Burgess, and Kurt Vonnegut Jr., M. T. Anderson has created a not-so-brave new world—and a smart, savage satire that has captivated readers with its view of an imagined future that veers unnervingly close to the here and now.]]> 308 M.T. Anderson 0763622591 Si 0 to-read 3.55 2002 Feed
author: M.T. Anderson
name: Si
average rating: 3.55
book published: 2002
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/01/04
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Amazing Spider-Man, Vol. 7: The Book of Ezekiel]]> 237553 144 J. Michael Straczynski 0785115250 Si 3 4.09 2004 The Amazing Spider-Man, Vol. 7: The Book of Ezekiel
author: J. Michael Straczynski
name: Si
average rating: 4.09
book published: 2004
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2023/12/26
shelves:
review:

]]> Quantum Physics for Poets 9221598 338 Leon M. Lederman 1616142332 Si 0 to-read 3.97 2010 Quantum Physics for Poets
author: Leon M. Lederman
name: Si
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2010
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/12/25
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Parallel Worlds: A Journey through Creation, Higher Dimensions, and the Future of the Cosmos]]> 33418 361 Michio Kaku 1400033721 Si 2 pseudo-science 4.21 2004 Parallel Worlds: A Journey through Creation, Higher Dimensions, and the Future of the Cosmos
author: Michio Kaku
name: Si
average rating: 4.21
book published: 2004
rating: 2
read at:
date added: 2023/12/23
shelves: pseudo-science
review:
DNF. Filled with irrelevant information about the complete history of cosmology. Limited experimental evidence. Written more as a philosophical idea than a scientific theory.
]]> <![CDATA[PLUTO: Urasawa x Tezuka, Vol. 2]]> 6236051
Atom, a boy robot whose sophisticated AI programming seamlessly blurs the distinction between man and machine, starts his own investigation into the serial murders of the great robots of the world. When he discovers that the killer’s motives may be connected with the geopolitical events of the recent past, he realizes that the case is far larger than anyone could have ever imagined.

Contains Chapters 8 to 15.]]> 208 Naoki Urasawa 1421519194 Si 4 4.46 2005 PLUTO: Urasawa x Tezuka, Vol. 2
author: Naoki Urasawa
name: Si
average rating: 4.46
book published: 2005
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2023/12/14
shelves:
review:

]]> Aliens: Bishop 131950092
Massively damaged in Aliens and Alien3 , the synthetic Bishop asked to be shut down forever. His creator, Michael Bishop, has other plans. He seeks the Xenomorph knowledge stored in the android’s mind, and brings Bishop back to life—but for what reason? No longer an employee of the Weyland-Yutani Corporation, Michael tells his creation that he seeks to advance medical research for the benefit of humanity. Yet where does he get the resources needed to advance his work. With whom do his new allegiances lie?

Bishop is pursued by Colonial Marines Captain Marcel Apone, commander of the Il Conde and younger brother of Master Sergeant Alexander Apone, one of the casualties of the doomed mission to LV-426. Also on his trail are the “Dog Catchers,� commandos employed by Weyland-Yutani.

Who else might benefit from Bishop’s intimate knowledge of the deadliest creatures in the galaxy?]]> 496 T.R. Napper 1803364513 Si 0 to-read 3.92 2023 Aliens: Bishop
author: T.R. Napper
name: Si
average rating: 3.92
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/12/11
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[System Collapse (The Murderbot Diaries, #7)]]> 65211701 Am I making it worse? I think I'm making it worse.

Everyone's favorite lethal SecUnit is back.

Following the events in Network Effect, the Barish-Estranza corporation has sent rescue ships to a newly-colonized planet in peril, as well as additional SecUnits. But if there’s an ethical corporation out there, Murderbot has yet to find it, and if Barish-Estranza can’t have the planet, they’re sure as hell not leaving without something. If that something just happens to be an entire colony of humans, well, a free workforce is a decent runner-up prize.

But there’s something wrong with Murderbot; it isn’t running within normal operational parameters. ART’s crew and the humans from Preservation are doing everything they can to protect the colonists, but with Barish-Estranza’s SecUnit-heavy persuasion teams, they’re going to have to hope Murderbot figures out what’s wrong with itself, and fast.

Yeah, this plan is... not going to work.]]> 245 Martha Wells 1250826977 Si 2 space-opera The main problem is the character development. Murderbot has adjusted too well to humans, so its personality doesn’t show. What made Murderbot such an outstanding character in previous novellas was its complete disinterest in people, its cynicism, and its sense of superiority. But in this instalment SecUnit is acting like a regular team member. Its dynamic with ART was less aggressive. You might as well be reading about a regular human.
Some more characters were introduced. All forgettable.
And the plot developed. But only a little.
There was also [REDACTED]]]> 4.19 2023 System Collapse (The Murderbot Diaries, #7)
author: Martha Wells
name: Si
average rating: 4.19
book published: 2023
rating: 2
read at: 2023/12/05
date added: 2023/12/05
shelves: space-opera
review:
This one won’t have you sweating from your organic parts.
The main problem is the character development. Murderbot has adjusted too well to humans, so its personality doesn’t show. What made Murderbot such an outstanding character in previous novellas was its complete disinterest in people, its cynicism, and its sense of superiority. But in this instalment SecUnit is acting like a regular team member. Its dynamic with ART was less aggressive. You might as well be reading about a regular human.
Some more characters were introduced. All forgettable.
And the plot developed. But only a little.
There was also [REDACTED]
]]> Starter Villain 61885029
Charlie's life is going nowhere fast. A divorced substitute teacher living with his cat in a house his siblings want to sell, all he wants is to open a pub downtown, if only the bank will approve his loan.

Then his long-lost uncle Jake dies and leaves his supervillain business (complete with island volcano lair) to Charlie.

But becoming a supervillain isn't all giant laser death rays and lava pits. Jake had enemies, and now they're coming after Charlie. His uncle might have been a stand-up, old-fashioned kind of villain, but these are the real thing: rich, soulless predators backed by multinational corporations and venture capital.

It's up to Charlie to win the war his uncle started against a league of supervillains. But with unionized dolphins, hyperintelligent talking spy cats, and a terrifying henchperson at his side, going bad is starting to look pretty good.

In a dog-eat-dog world...be a cat.]]> 264 John Scalzi 0765389223 Si 2 There wasn’t enough villain stuff in this. No evil plans. No action. Only one laser and a few dolphins. You expect the obligatory monologue, but all you get is lessons in economics.
The humour kind of falls flat at best. It was crude at worst. Overall, the plot, the characters, and the setting all felt bland.
So, final thought: Meh.]]> 4.09 2023 Starter Villain
author: John Scalzi
name: Si
average rating: 4.09
book published: 2023
rating: 2
read at: 2023/11/30
date added: 2023/11/30
shelves:
review:
An everyday guy inherits a villain empire from his recently deceased uncle. There is also a cat in this.
There wasn’t enough villain stuff in this. No evil plans. No action. Only one laser and a few dolphins. You expect the obligatory monologue, but all you get is lessons in economics.
The humour kind of falls flat at best. It was crude at worst. Overall, the plot, the characters, and the setting all felt bland.
So, final thought: Meh.
]]> <![CDATA[Before the Shattered Gates of Heaven (Shattered Gates Volume 1)]]> 54129903 An epic adventure of interstellar war, visionary transformation, and cosmic mysteries!

Growing up the lowest of the low in a cruel, alien underworld, Sabira dreams of something more. More than being forever unseen, toiling in tunnels and mines, and never seeing the sky. She dreams of a life of honor, glory, and conquest among the stars.

She has only one way to make her dreams come true: victory in the deadly fighting pits of the Divine Masters.

When death and defeat seem certain, a chance encounter saves Sabira's life, but challenges everything she holds sacred. Confronted by shamanic visions and unimaginable revelations, she must choose between faith and loyalty or mystery and liberation. The lives of everyone she loves, and of worlds across the galaxy, weigh in the balance�

Bryan S. Glosemeyer's novel delivers a fast-paced, thrilling sci-fi adventure set in the distant future, filled with vivid worlds, compelling characters, and gritty action.

Shattered Gates Volume 1 collects all four previously released novellas, Part 1: Trickster’s Pit, Part 2: Infiltration Crew, Part 3: Eon, Part 4: Sacrificial Altars, and includes a complete Lexicon.]]> 416 Bryan S. Glosemeyer Si 4 space-opera The self-proclaimed Divine Masters orchestrate fights to the death with the survivors gaining a military rank.
The world building had a lot of original tech, a very bleak setting and some trippy mind-bendy stuff.
The action scenes were fast paced and visceral with a videogame-esque brutality.
Thematically, it was heavily anti-religious (or anti-cult-based military to be specific).
The main character is brain-washed. As she sees more of the outside world it leads to a lot of internal conflict.

(Full disclosure, I got this for free from the author in exchange for an honest review.)]]> 4.29 Before the Shattered Gates of Heaven (Shattered Gates Volume 1)
author: Bryan S. Glosemeyer
name: Si
average rating: 4.29
book published:
rating: 4
read at: 2023/11/27
date added: 2023/11/27
shelves: space-opera
review:
Set in an underground pit on another planet. A world run by a race of vicious alien overlords. They have enslaved humanity through a combination of force and a cult like theocracy.
The self-proclaimed Divine Masters orchestrate fights to the death with the survivors gaining a military rank.
The world building had a lot of original tech, a very bleak setting and some trippy mind-bendy stuff.
The action scenes were fast paced and visceral with a videogame-esque brutality.
Thematically, it was heavily anti-religious (or anti-cult-based military to be specific).
The main character is brain-washed. As she sees more of the outside world it leads to a lot of internal conflict.

(Full disclosure, I got this for free from the author in exchange for an honest review.)
]]> The Automaton 63261133 ***2023 Best Indie Book Award Winner for Science Fiction***

Humanity is on the cusp of extinction. Deteriorating populations threaten the planetary economy and risk the collapse of humanity itself. In desperation, human-like machines are built to serve where man no longer can.

These are the Automata.

Five thousand years later, humankind no longer walks the Earth, but has ascended beyond biology to float above Earth in a hemisphere-spanning supercomputer. When an anomaly arises on Earth that not even a post-biological civilization can comprehend, XR-345x—a long-deactivated top-of-the-line automaton—is awoken in a derelict facility deep within the overgrown jungles of Africa.

With help from Hank—a mysterious holographic A.I.� XR must learn of the advent of the automata and the resulting civil unrest, to a war that destroyed humanity’s trust in their would-be saviors, to racial disparities that divided the globe, to love eventually building a bridge that ultimately saved the human race.

At the same time, a violent automaton faction threatens XR, the anomaly, and what they represent for the future of Earth. Time is one thing the automaton does not have.]]> 334 Ian Young Si 0 to-read, tbr 4.19 The Automaton
author: Ian Young
name: Si
average rating: 4.19
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/11/27
shelves: to-read, tbr
review:

]]> <![CDATA[River of Gods (India 2047, #1)]]> 278280
In the next few weeks, they will all be swept together to decide the fate of the nation.

River of Gods teems with the life of a country choked with peoples and cultures--one and a half billion people, twelve semi-independent nations, nine million gods. Ian McDonald has written the great Indian novel of the new millennium, in which a war is fought, a love betrayed, a message from a different world decoded, as the great river Ganges flows on.]]> 597 Ian McDonald 1591024366 Si 0 to-read 3.92 2004 River of Gods (India 2047, #1)
author: Ian McDonald
name: Si
average rating: 3.92
book published: 2004
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/11/25
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Generation Ship 63876699 In this riveting, stand-alone novel from Michael Mammay, author of Planetside, the beginning of a new human colony must face tyrannical leaders, revolution, crippling instability, and an unknown alien planet that could easily destroy them all.

In 2108, Colony Ship Voyager departed Earth for the planet of Promissa with 18,000 of the world's best and brightest on board. 250 years and 27 light years later, an arrival is imminent.

But all is not well.

The probes that they've sent ahead to gather the data needed to establish any kind of settlement aren't responding, and the information they have received has presented more questions than answers. It's a time when the entire crew should be coming together to solve the problem, but science officer Sheila Jackson can't get people to listen.

With the finish line in sight, a group of crewmembers want an end to the draconian rules that their forebearers put in place generations before. However, security force officer Mark Rector and his department have different plans. As alliances form and fall, Governor Jared Pantel sees only one way to bring Voyager's citizens together and secure his own a full-scale colonization effort. Yet, he may have underestimated the passion of those working for the other side...

Meanwhile, a harsh alien planet awaits that might have its own ideas about being colonized. A battle for control brews, and victory for one group could mean death for them all.]]> 608 Michael Mammay 0063252988 Si 0 to-read 3.72 2023 Generation Ship
author: Michael Mammay
name: Si
average rating: 3.72
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/11/19
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies]]> 20527133 Superintelligence asks the questions: what happens when machines surpass humans in general intelligence? Will artificial agents save or destroy us? Nick Bostrom lays the foundation for understanding the future of humanity and intelligent life.

The human brain has some capabilities that the brains of other animals lack. It is to these distinctive capabilities that our species owes its dominant position. If machine brains surpassed human brains in general intelligence, then this new superintelligence could become extremely powerful—possibly beyond our control. As the fate of the gorillas now depends more on humans than on the species itself, so would the fate of humankind depend on the actions of the machine superintelligence.

But we have one advantage: we get to make the first move. Will it be possible to construct a seed Artificial Intelligence, to engineer initial conditions so as to make an intelligence explosion survivable? How could one achieve a controlled detonation?]]> 352 Nick Bostrom 0199678111 Si 0 to-read 3.86 2014 Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies
author: Nick Bostrom
name: Si
average rating: 3.86
book published: 2014
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/11/15
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Player of Games (Culture, #2)]]> 18630 293 Iain M. Banks 0061053562 Si 5 space-opera “This is the story of a man who went far away for a long time, just to play a game. The man is a game-player called “Gurgeh.� The story starts with a battle that is not a battle, and ends with a game that is not a game.�

First off, to anyone who stopped at Consider Phlebas, this book had a much better plot structure and more relatable characters. The overall style is different. You might consider reading this one if you had mixed feelings about Consider Phlebas, or even starting with this one to get into the culture.

The protagonist, Gurgeh, is a super arrogant game player. He is part of the culture, which is so advanced in terms of technology it has eliminated all need for work. This allows the people of the culture to pursue their hobbies as much as they want with no distractions. Gurgeh, being obsessed with games of all types cannot resist traveling to Azad, a more primitive society whose emperor is decided by a super complex board game.
The world building was excellent. The two worlds were greatly contrasted. Gurgeh’s home is very hedonistic and has no crime due to its post scarcity and advanced technology. Then Azad being a very hierarchical society with a very brutal side to it adds an element of culture shock to the story.
The game itself isn’t described in to much detail. The reader is only told that it’s a board game and who’s winning so the book never becomes too weighed down by tedious details. Also the fact that the technology of the games is primitive works to the books advantage because even after 30 something years it doesn’t feel dated.

Would definitely recommend Player of Games to anyone regardless of how much sci-fi they read in the past. It’s a reasonably accessible space opera with a lot of ideas, and the reader isn’t punished for not understanding all of the sci-fi or philosophical elements. It’s a little brutal in parts so a more sensitive reader might want to look up content warnings first.

I will definitely be continuing with the culture in the future.]]> 4.28 1988 The Player of Games (Culture, #2)
author: Iain M. Banks
name: Si
average rating: 4.28
book published: 1988
rating: 5
read at: 2022/05/23
date added: 2023/11/11
shelves: space-opera
review:
“This is the story of a man who went far away for a long time, just to play a game. The man is a game-player called “Gurgeh.� The story starts with a battle that is not a battle, and ends with a game that is not a game.�

First off, to anyone who stopped at Consider Phlebas, this book had a much better plot structure and more relatable characters. The overall style is different. You might consider reading this one if you had mixed feelings about Consider Phlebas, or even starting with this one to get into the culture.

The protagonist, Gurgeh, is a super arrogant game player. He is part of the culture, which is so advanced in terms of technology it has eliminated all need for work. This allows the people of the culture to pursue their hobbies as much as they want with no distractions. Gurgeh, being obsessed with games of all types cannot resist traveling to Azad, a more primitive society whose emperor is decided by a super complex board game.
The world building was excellent. The two worlds were greatly contrasted. Gurgeh’s home is very hedonistic and has no crime due to its post scarcity and advanced technology. Then Azad being a very hierarchical society with a very brutal side to it adds an element of culture shock to the story.
The game itself isn’t described in to much detail. The reader is only told that it’s a board game and who’s winning so the book never becomes too weighed down by tedious details. Also the fact that the technology of the games is primitive works to the books advantage because even after 30 something years it doesn’t feel dated.

Would definitely recommend Player of Games to anyone regardless of how much sci-fi they read in the past. It’s a reasonably accessible space opera with a lot of ideas, and the reader isn’t punished for not understanding all of the sci-fi or philosophical elements. It’s a little brutal in parts so a more sensitive reader might want to look up content warnings first.

I will definitely be continuing with the culture in the future.
]]> <![CDATA[Cyberpunk 2077: No Coincidence]]> 62966999
The newly-formed gang - consisting of a veteran turned renegade, a Militech sleeper agent, an amateur netrunner, a corporate negotiator, a ripperdoc and a techie - must overcome their differences and work together lest their secrets come to light before they can pull off the next deadly heist.]]> 416 Rafał Kosik 0759555958 Si 3 cyberpunk The plot clever enough, but some of the sub-plots felt like dead ends.
The bleak setting and the high tech weapons were the highpoints.
The audiobook had some problems with pov changes.
Overall it was fast paced and always held my attention.]]> 3.51 2023 Cyberpunk 2077: No Coincidence
author: Rafał Kosik
name: Si
average rating: 3.51
book published: 2023
rating: 3
read at: 2023/11/02
date added: 2023/11/03
shelves: cyberpunk
review:
The characters were a mixed bag of misfits banding together for a heist. They were well thought out, but their motivations weren't always clear.
The plot clever enough, but some of the sub-plots felt like dead ends.
The bleak setting and the high tech weapons were the highpoints.
The audiobook had some problems with pov changes.
Overall it was fast paced and always held my attention.
]]> The Graveyard Book 2213661
There are dangers and adventures for Bod in the graveyard: the strange and terrible menace of the Sleer; a gravestone entrance to a desert that leads to the city of ghouls; friendship with a witch, and so much more.

But it is in the land of the living that real danger lurks, for it is there that the man Jack lives and he has already killed Bod's family.

A deliciously dark masterwork by bestselling author Neil Gaiman, with illustrations by award-winning Dave McKean.]]> 312 Neil Gaiman 0060530928 Si 4 4.15 2008 The Graveyard Book
author: Neil Gaiman
name: Si
average rating: 4.15
book published: 2008
rating: 4
read at: 2023/10/26
date added: 2023/10/26
shelves:
review:
Gaiman is a brilliant story teller. For a book set in a graveyard the characters were so colourful. Would highly recommend this, especially to younger readers.
]]> <![CDATA[Demon in White (Sun Eater, #3)]]> 50156751 The third novel of the galaxy-spanning Sun Eater series merges the best of space opera and epic fantasy, as Hadrian Marlowe continues down a path that can only end in fire.

Hadrian has been serving the Empire in military engagements against the Cielcin, the vicious alien civilization bent on humanity's destruction. After Hadrian and his Red Company achieve a great victory, a cult-like fervor builds around him. However, pressures within the Imperial government scared of his rise to prominence result in an assassination attempt, luckily thwarted.

With the Empire too dangerous to stay, Hadrian and his crew leave for a massive library on a distant world. There, he finds the next key to unlocking the secrets of the Quiet: a set of coordinates for their origin planet, unnamed and now lifeless. Hadrian's true purpose in serving in the military was to aid his search of a rumored connection between the first Emperor and the Quiet, the ancient, seemingly long-dead race linked to so many of Hadrian's extraordinary experiences.

Will this mysterious lost planet have the answers?]]> 784 Christopher Ruocchio 1473218322 Si 4 space-opera 4.61 2020 Demon in White (Sun Eater, #3)
author: Christopher Ruocchio
name: Si
average rating: 4.61
book published: 2020
rating: 4
read at: 2023/10/23
date added: 2023/10/23
shelves: space-opera
review:

]]> <![CDATA[PLUTO: Naoki Urasawa x Ozamu Tezuka, Vol.1]]> 1725523 192 Naoki Urasawa 3770467574 Si 4 cyberpunk 4.40 2004 PLUTO: Naoki Urasawa x Ozamu Tezuka, Vol.1
author: Naoki Urasawa
name: Si
average rating: 4.40
book published: 2004
rating: 4
read at: 2023/10/08
date added: 2023/10/08
shelves: cyberpunk
review:

]]> <![CDATA[A Closed and Common Orbit (Wayfarers, #2)]]> 29475447
Together, Pepper and Lovey will discover that no matter how vast space is, two people can fill it together.

The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet introduced readers to the incredible world of Rosemary Harper, a young woman with a restless soul and secrets to keep. When she joined the crew of the Wayfarer, an intergalactic ship, she got more than she bargained for - and learned to live with, and love, her rag-tag collection of crewmates.

A Closed and Common Orbit is the stand-alone sequel to Becky Chambers' beloved debut novel The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet and is perfect for fans of Firefly, Joss Whedon, Mass Effect and Star Wars.]]> 365 Becky Chambers 1473621445 Si 3 space-opera All the characters were well thought out and had a great dynamic.
But there was no clear antagonist or a time-sensitive objective, so the story felt low-stakes.]]> 4.35 2016 A Closed and Common Orbit (Wayfarers, #2)
author: Becky Chambers
name: Si
average rating: 4.35
book published: 2016
rating: 3
read at: 2023/09/27
date added: 2023/09/27
shelves: space-opera
review:
It has an intriguing AI main character, offering a unique perspective on the colourful world the story is set in.
All the characters were well thought out and had a great dynamic.
But there was no clear antagonist or a time-sensitive objective, so the story felt low-stakes.
]]> The Stars Are Legion 29090844
On the outer rim of the universe, a galactic war has been waged for centuries upon hundreds of world-ships. But these worlds will continue to die through decay and constant war unless a desperate plan succeeds.

Anat, leader of the Katazyrna world-ship and the most fearsome raiding force on the Outer Rim, wants peace. To do so she offers the hand of her daughter, Jayd, to her rival. Jayd has dreamed about leading her mother’s armies to victory her whole life—but she has a unique ability, and that makes her leverage, not a leader. As Anat convinces her to spend the rest of her life wed to her family’s greatest enemy, it is up to Jayd’s sister Zan—with no stomach for war—to lead the cast off warriors she has banded together to victory and rescue Jayd. But the war does not go at all as planned�

In the tradition of The Fall of Hyperion and Dune, The Stars are Legion is an epic and thrilling tale about familial love, revenge, and war as imagined by one of the genre’s most imaginative new writers.]]> 512 Kameron Hurley Si 0 to-read 3.66 2017 The Stars Are Legion
author: Kameron Hurley
name: Si
average rating: 3.66
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/09/26
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Dauntless (The Lost Fleet, #1)]]> 112292
Captain John "Black Jack" Geary's legendary exploits are known to every schoolchild. Revered for his heroic "last stand" in the early days of the war, he was presumed dead. But a century later, Geary miraculously returns from survival hibernation and reluctantly takes command of the Alliance fleet as it faces annihilation by the Syndics.

Appalled by the hero-worship around him, Geary is nevertheless a man who will do his duty. And he knows that bringing the stolen Syndic hypernet key safely home is the Alliance's one chance to win the war. But to do that, Geary will have to live up to the impossibly heroic "Black Jack" legend...]]> 293 Jack Campbell 0441014186 Si 0 to-read 3.97 2006 Dauntless (The Lost Fleet, #1)
author: Jack Campbell
name: Si
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2006
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/09/26
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Second Foundation (Foundation, #3)]]> 29580 256 Isaac Asimov 0553803735 Si 4 space-opera 4.27 1953 Second Foundation (Foundation, #3)
author: Isaac Asimov
name: Si
average rating: 4.27
book published: 1953
rating: 4
read at: 2023/09/25
date added: 2023/09/25
shelves: space-opera
review:

]]> Saga, Volume 10 29237224
Collects: Saga #55-60.]]> 160 Fiona Staples 1534323341 Si 4 space-opera 4.30 2022 Saga, Volume 10
author: Fiona Staples
name: Si
average rating: 4.30
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2023/09/24
date added: 2023/09/24
shelves: space-opera
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Ninefox Gambit (The Machineries of Empire, #1)]]> 30623070 Ninefox Gambit, centers on disgraced captain Kel Cheris, who must recapture the formidable Fortress of Scattered Needles in order to redeem herself in front of the Hexarchate.

To win an impossible war Captain Kel Cheris must awaken an ancient weapon and a despised traitor general.

Captain Kel Cheris of the hexarchate is disgraced for using unconventional methods in a battle against heretics. Kel Command gives her the opportunity to redeem herself by retaking the Fortress of Scattered Needles, a star fortress that has recently been captured by heretics. Cheris’s career isn’t the only thing at stake. If the fortress falls, the hexarchate itself might be next.

Cheris’s best hope is to ally with the undead tactician Shuos Jedao. The good news is that Jedao has never lost a battle, and he may be the only one who can figure out how to successfully besiege the fortress.

The bad news is that Jedao went mad in his first life and massacred two armies, one of them his own. As the siege wears on, Cheris must decide how far she can trust Jedao–because she might be his next victim.]]> 364 Yoon Ha Lee 1849979928 Si 2 space-opera The characters were mostly two dimensional. Jedao was the only interesting character. The villain especially needed to be expanded upon.
The first and last 10% were exciting, but the middle 80% dragged.
The prose didn’t flow. Every line felt like it was explaining something rather than telling you something.
Overall, it was a little difficult to read.]]> 3.60 2016 Ninefox Gambit (The Machineries of Empire, #1)
author: Yoon Ha Lee
name: Si
average rating: 3.60
book published: 2016
rating: 2
read at: 2023/08/30
date added: 2023/08/30
shelves: space-opera
review:
Interesting concepts, but the technology and political system were not fully explained.
The characters were mostly two dimensional. Jedao was the only interesting character. The villain especially needed to be expanded upon.
The first and last 10% were exciting, but the middle 80% dragged.
The prose didn’t flow. Every line felt like it was explaining something rather than telling you something.
Overall, it was a little difficult to read.
]]> Flowers for Algernon 18373 Winner of both the Hugo and Nebula Awards, the powerful, classic story about a man who receives an operation that turns him into a genius...and introduces him to heartache.

Charlie Gordon is about to embark upon an unprecedented journey. Born with an unusually low IQ, he has been chosen as the perfect subject for an experimental surgery that researchers hope will increase his intelligence � a procedure that has already been highly successful when tested on a lab mouse named Algernon.

As the treatment takes effect, Charlie's intelligence expands until it surpasses that of the doctors who engineered his metamorphosis. The experiment appears to be a scientific breakthrough of paramount importance, until Algernon suddenly deteriorates. Will the same happen to Charlie?]]> 311 Daniel Keyes 015603008X Si 4 4.19 1966 Flowers for Algernon
author: Daniel Keyes
name: Si
average rating: 4.19
book published: 1966
rating: 4
read at: 2018/11/10
date added: 2023/08/24
shelves:
review:

]]> Time Out of Joint 698034
But he gradually begins to suspect that his life - indeed his whole world - is an illusion, constructed around him for the express purpose of keeping him docile and happy. But if that is the case, what is his real world like, and what is he actually doing every day when he thinks he is guessing 'Where Will The Little Green Man Be Next?']]> 255 Philip K. Dick 037571927X Si 4 Ragle Gumm makes his living from a newspaper competition. But something is not quite right...]]> 3.87 1959 Time Out of Joint
author: Philip K. Dick
name: Si
average rating: 3.87
book published: 1959
rating: 4
read at: 2023/08/19
date added: 2023/08/19
shelves:
review:
It’s 1959. In a small American town,
Ragle Gumm makes his living from a newspaper competition. But something is not quite right...
]]> <![CDATA[Endymion (Hyperion Cantos, #3)]]> 3977
Two hundred and seventy-four years after the fall of the WorldWeb in Fall of Hyperion, Raoul Endymion is sent on a quest. Retrieving Aenea from the Sphinx before the Church troops reach her is only the beginning. With help from a blue-skinned android named A. Bettik, Raoul and Aenea travel the river Tethys, pursued by Father Captain Frederico DeSoya, an influential warrior-priest and his troops. The shrike continues to make enigmatic appearances, and while many questions were raised in Hyperion and Fall of Hyperion, still more are raised here. Raoul's quest will continue.]]> 563 Dan Simmons 0553572946 Si 3 space-opera 4.17 1996 Endymion (Hyperion Cantos, #3)
author: Dan Simmons
name: Si
average rating: 4.17
book published: 1996
rating: 3
read at: 2023/07/29
date added: 2023/07/30
shelves: space-opera
review:
Plot was good. All the world hopping was good. I found the characters less engaging than the characters in the first two books.
]]> <![CDATA[The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Century 1910 (The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Century, #1)]]> 6086315 83 Alan Moore 1603090002 Si 2 3.42 2011 The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Century 1910 (The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Century, #1)
author: Alan Moore
name: Si
average rating: 3.42
book published: 2011
rating: 2
read at:
date added: 2023/07/25
shelves:
review:

]]> Burning Chrome (Sprawl, #0) 22323 Johnny Mnemonic to the technofetishist blues of Burning Chrome.

Johnny Mnemonic (1981)
The Gernsback Continuum (1981)
Fragments of a Hologram Rose (1977)
The Belonging Kind (1981) with John Shirley
Hinterlands (1981)

Red Star, Winter Orbit (1983) with Bruce Sterling
New Rose Hotel (1984)
The Winter Market (1985)
Dogfight (1985) with Michael Swanwick
Burning Chrome (1982)]]> 226 William Gibson 0060539828 Si 4 cyberpunk 4.07 1986 Burning Chrome (Sprawl, #0)
author: William Gibson
name: Si
average rating: 4.07
book published: 1986
rating: 4
read at: 2023/07/25
date added: 2023/07/25
shelves: cyberpunk
review:
Way easier to read than Neuromancer.
]]> Rose/House 52263339 Dust jacket illustration by David Curtis.

Arkady Martine, the acclaimed author of the Teixcalaan Series, returns with an astonishing new novella.

Basit Deniau’s houses were haunted to begin with.

A house embedded with an artificial intelligence is a common thing: a house that is an artificial intelligence, infused in every load-bearing beam and fine marble tile with a thinking creature that is not human? That is something else altogether. But now Deniau’s been dead a year, and Rose House is locked up tight, as commanded by the architect’s will: all his possessions and files and sketches are confined in its archives, and their only keeper is Rose House itself. Rose House, and one other.

Dr. Selene Gisil, one of Deniau’s former protégé, is permitted to come into Rose House once a year. She alone may open Rose House’s vaults, look at drawings and art, talk with Rose House’s animating intelligence all she likes. Until this week, Dr. Gisil was the only person whom Rose House spoke to.

But even an animate intelligence that haunts a house has some failsafes common to all AIs. For instance: all AIs must report the presence of a dead body to the nearest law enforcement agency.

There is a dead person in Rose House. The house says so. It is not Basit Deniau, and it is not Dr. Gisil. It is someone else. Rose House, having completed its duty of care and informed Detective Maritza Smith of the China Lake police precinct that there is in fact a dead person inside it, dead of unnatural causes—has shut up.

No one can get inside Rose House, except Dr. Gisil. Dr. Gisil was not in North America when Rose House called the China Lake precinct. But someone did. And someone died there. And someone may be there still.

Limited: 1000 signed numbered hardcover copies]]> 128 Arkady Martine Si 0 to-read 3.59 2023 Rose/House
author: Arkady Martine
name: Si
average rating: 3.59
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/07/20
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Meru (The Alloy Era, #1) 60898230 One woman and her pilot are about to change the future of the species in an epic space opera about aspiration, compassion, and redemption by Hugo and Nebula Award finalist S. B. Divya.

For five centuries, human life has been restricted to Earth, while posthuman descendants called alloys freely explore the galaxy. But when the Earthlike planet of Meru is discovered, two unlikely companions venture forth to test the habitability of this unoccupied new world and the future of human-alloy relations.

For Jayanthi, the adopted human child of alloy parents, it’s an opportunity to rectify the ancient reputation of her species as avaricious and destructive, and to give humanity a new place in the universe. For Vaha, Jayanthi’s alloy pilot, it’s a daunting yet irresistible adventure to find success as an individual.

As the journey challenges their resolve in unexpected ways, the two form a bond that only deepens with their time alone on Meru. But how can Jayanthi succeed at freeing humanity from its past when she and Vaha have been set up to fail?

Against all odds, hope is human, too.]]> 432 S.B. Divya 1662505094 Si 0 to-read 3.60 2023 Meru (The Alloy Era, #1)
author: S.B. Divya
name: Si
average rating: 3.60
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/07/18
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[A Psalm for the Wild-Built (Monk & Robot, #1)]]> 55077657 Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9781250236210.

Centuries before, robots of Panga gained self-awareness, laid down their tools, wandered, en masse into the wilderness, never to be seen again. They faded into myth and urban legend.

Now the life of the tea monk who tells this story is upended by the arrival of a robot, there to honor the old promise of checking in. The robot cannot go back until the question of "what do people need?" is answered. But the answer to that question depends on who you ask, and how. They will need to ask it a lot. Chambers' series asks: in a world where people have what they want, does having more matter?]]> 147 Becky Chambers Si 0 to-read, tbr 4.25 2021 A Psalm for the Wild-Built (Monk & Robot, #1)
author: Becky Chambers
name: Si
average rating: 4.25
book published: 2021
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/07/18
shelves: to-read, tbr
review:

]]> The Jinn-Bot of Shantiport 65211707
Lina, a daughter of failed revolutionaries, has no desire to escape Shantiport. She loves her city and would do anything to save its people. This is, in fact, the plan for her life, made before she was even born.

Her brother, Bador, is a small monkey bot with a big attitude and bigger ambitions. He wants a chance to leave this dead-end planet and explore the universe on his own terms. But that would mean abandoning the family he loves―even if they do take him for granted.

When Shantiport's resident tech billionaire coerces Lina into retrieving a powerful artifact rumored to be able to reshape reality, forces from before their time begin coalescing around the siblings. And when you throw in a piece of sentient, off-world tech with the ability to grant three wishes into the mix� None of the city's powers will know what hit them.]]> 404 Samit Basu 1250827515 Si 0 to-read, tbr 3.53 2023 The Jinn-Bot of Shantiport
author: Samit Basu
name: Si
average rating: 3.53
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/07/17
shelves: to-read, tbr
review:

]]> Dreamsnake 263021 312 Vonda N. McIntyre 0553296590 Si 2 3.87 1978 Dreamsnake
author: Vonda N. McIntyre
name: Si
average rating: 3.87
book published: 1978
rating: 2
read at: 2023/07/02
date added: 2023/07/02
shelves:
review:
A little bland and slow moving. Not sure what the point was.
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