Reviews and Comments

Tucking into this one because @pluralistic@mamot.fr told me I had to. I don't know how nuts it's going to be, but the first couple chapters start out with some truly wild stories.

Promoting because the author is not allowed to.

#bookstodon #greed #facebook #enshittification

This is not a lightsaber-weilding, blaster firing, starfighter chasing Star Wars novel. This is about a steadily clenching fist squeezing the galaxy and the residents are just beginning to notice.

The novel is well-written, using multiple points of view in order to articulate the differing points of view of people as the shroud of empire begins its inexorable stretch across the galaxy, beginning with Coruscant and the core worlds. There is a lot of politics, intrigue, and discussion in this story, with an exciting side-jaunt to an historical world for excitement.

The book isn't short, but it is a slow burn smoldering at the beginnings of what Andor will eventually become, serving as fodder for anyone who enjoyed that series. If this sounds like you, I recommend this book with its background and all the little intrigues and nuances of Imperial politics it provides to the reader. The most important part of this story is a dawning of what the Empire means to the peoples of the galaxy, using Mon Mothma as an originally naive member of the Senate, and through her eyes we begin to see the true meaning of Emperor Palpatine's reach across the galaxy.

I'm about halfway through this guide to running kubernetes. This book is very well done, with lots of examples that walk the reader through not only effecting changes to their #kubernetes environment, but also really educate the reader as to what's going on under the hood. For all that, it moves along at a quick pace, depending on how much you want to explore or execute variations on some of the commands.

I was showing an out-of-town friend around at Powell's and she mentioned that her husband liked mystery novels. This one caught my eye due to the investigative nature it presents to the reader. She surreptitiously bought two and gave one to me.

So now I'm reading it, and it reminds me of E: A Novel that I read many years ago: bookrastinating.com/book/359398/s/e

The pacing of reading a novel through the characters' email interactions is fast and compels you to "read just one more", so this one is turning out to be quite the page-turner so far.

This book is a great resource for learning about and discovering Japanese knives. And to get there, the author provides the reader with a well-rounded history of both Western and Japanese cooking knives, highlighting their differences, the way they've been shaped by historical events, and how they evolve to address the cuisine typical to their region.

One part history, one part technical know-how, one part catalogue of knife types, and one part cookbook, this is an amazing resource.

I picked this up while walking through the library and was intrigued by the premise, even though Shakespearean adaptations and mash ups tend to fall flat. The beginning was a bit slow, but it picks up after Hamlet encounters the ghost of his father, just as in the original! From there, I really enjoyed the pacing and wit of this book, loving how the author was able to convert the events into a slightly-in-the-future major robotics company.

This is a good read for fans of the original looking for a new take or people that don't hold much love for the source material but are looking for a quick cyberpunk read. The skillful adaptation pushes it into five star territory.

Came across this looking for interesting and recent #cyberpunk themed books. It looks like it could be interesting and the reviews I've seen are fairly positive.

The new characters started out slow for me in Dead Lies Dreaming, but it's been picking up speed ever since I started that one. Here we are on the third novel with Wendy, Eve, Imp, and the crew.

40 pages in and I already know this one's going to be a banger!

#LaundryFiles #reading

From the florid descriptions of the hotel and its guests by the narrator, to her spiraling conflict with Otto, the author's use of language and voice really brings the scenes and characters of the Royal Karnak hotel to life. With a setting superbly matching the events, the woven tale is difficult to put down, but also made me hesitant to pick back up as the characters' actions become more extreme and violent. A faantastic summer read, but also really great for a chilly autumn day when you want both thrilling suspense but also dream of warmer months.

My only complaint was that the novel seemed to plateau for a bit in the middle then really kicked into high gear, racing toward the finish. I'd have liked a more steady build, but the overall length is just about right, and the story arc is thrilling.

I'm on the fence between 4 and 5 stars, and am rounding up because I've continued to think about the book since finishing it and even expect that were I to re-read it, I would discover additional clues and pick up on things I didn't on the first go-through; the mark of a great psychological horror novel.

This was okay. I picked it up in a foreign country, needing something to read on the flight home, and the options for books written in English were slim. It's four vignettes of cute little stories, but we don't really get to know the characters and it's difficult to garner much feeling for what they're going through.

It's not a sci-fi book, but even so, the rules are really contrived, but at least the first character to hear them points out the ridiculousness of the rules, so she was definitely my favorite.

It's a quick, cozy read that's nice enough.

I've had a copy sitting on my bookshelf for a year or so. Now that The Human is almost a year in my rear-view, is it time to return to the Polity universe?

I'm way behind in the Laundry Files series, but I love it because I'll go and check in every so often, picking up where I left off. So here we are, reading The Delerium Brief, published in 2018, in the first quarter of 2025.

And from this I know that Forecast Ops (the section of the Laundry that uses oracles to peer into the future and use eldritch probability theory to prognosticate what is going to happen) is real and the author is in direct contact with them.

You see, the premise is that these secret goverment agencies that protect us from unimaginable powers sleeping in the dark recesses of space or wherever are being defunded and agents of those powers plan to use regulatory capture to remove them from the board. Reading this in 2025, it feels all too real, sort of like trying to find humor in The Onion when there stories are the less bad version of reality. @cstross@wandering.shop uses his prescience to look 7 years into the future and the horrors lying just under the surface.

All in all, a great addition to the Laundry Files series.

I saw this just sitting on the shelf at my local library, not even realizing the James S.A. Corey had released the start of a new series! I had to pick this up and was pleased to see that it's quite a departure from the Expanse series, most notably that we see the aliens in the universe rather than them essentially being dead elder gods.

Having no previous expectations, I went into this completely cold and enjoyed it quite a bit as the authors crafted a rich universe and a number of characters to work with. At least at this point, I don't feel like any of the characters are as rich as those from The Expanse, but I know them through 9 novels + 9 novellas, so I'll give that some time. I'm definitely looking forward to the next one.

I read a couple of these while visiting some friends and picking up their high schooler's volumes 1 and 2. Now my completionist self is slowly working through this real-life-as-a-video-game Korean manga.