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One of the great little quips in this recasted novelization of Shakespeare's Hamlet.

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

Intellectual Property law meets the rules of occult magic. Which one is more arcane is difficult to ascertain.

It's this kind of quippery that makes these books a joy to read.

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?

@Tattooed_Mummy I'm glad it was good. Anything with an interrobang in the title deserves a try!

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.

Checked out from the library to mark the end of dry January, I'm working my way through the stories and some of the cocktails, necessitating a number of trips to pick up ingredients I didn't have on hand.