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It's clear that John Scalzi enjoyed writing Starter Villain as much as I enjoyed reading it. Like his other shorter recent novels (notably The Kaiju Preservation Society), you really get a sense that he just was having fun and putting that fun down on the page. And that fun really comes through.

Nothing in Starter Villain is very serious, from sentient cats to ridiculous cabals that were literally the inspiration for Bond villains. It starts quickly and engages you both with humor and a tightness of prose that doesn't include anything it doesn't need. But throughout all that he still manages to capture some real character development and invest you in the outcome.

While I loved Starter Villain, I will say that I don't think he perfectly nailed the landing, at least not like he has in other books of the same vein. But even with that, the book is short and ends well enough that I still set it down satisfied with the experience. It's a perfect holiday or airplane read and you won't regret picking it up.

I requested that my library get a copy of Suncatcher by Alia Gee after it showed up on a list of solarpunk fiction books. My overall take on it is that it was interesting and mostly engaging but honestly it felt like it was self-published and in desperate need of a talented editor. I think with someone doing both some more proof-reading and helping to call out parts of the book that were clunky, under and overexposed, or just felt rushed or unfinished then it could have been fantastic and reached a far wider audience.

The bones of the book, story, characters, and world-building are all very good. The casual approach to the dystopian future it's set in serves to make it a bit more jarring and I really liked the representation of such a setting being not lawless and anarchic but instead corporate and bureaucratic. I also liked the concept of the fact that the aether – the in-universe virtual world – was based in raw data and each user experienced it differently leading to interesting confusion and interpretations of the goings on inside. I loved the concept of the armada of solar harvesters the protagonist finds herself among and how that collective and positive community was such a radical departure from the rest of the country, but I would have liked to hear more about that social conflict, other societies, and how they all fit together.

It struck me that Gee was on the verge of getting at something really deep and poignant in the relationship of the main character with her sister, but missed the mark just a bit in telling the right amount of back story to frame their history, with some of the exposition needing to be earlier in the book to better grasp their dynamics.

I also felt like there were a few too many stories trying to be told at once. In many ways the story of Radicand's father could have served as the backdrop to the Toby/Ezekiel one and turned into its own book in a sequel. The second final showdown also felt very unnecessarily tacked on and should have been fleshed out more as a third act in a longer telling of one of the story lines.

All told I really liked what Suncatcher could have been but was less enthused with where it ended up. I suspect that a lot of books start out in exactly its state before getting dialed in and cleaned up in a professional editing process. It looks like this may have been one of Gee's only books, released in 2014 and nothing since, and that makes me sad. She clearly has some good ideas and a lot of promise as a storyteller. I wish she could have found the additional support she needed to build Suncatcher into the saga it deserved to be.

My brief review of Splinter in the Sky by Kemi Ashing-Giwa is that it's a good, engaging space opera and fans of the genre (especially ones who prefer sci-fi novels that don't feature lots of non-human characters) will enjoy. Because of the linear narrative and single point of view character, it took me a few chapters to get into the story and familiar with the setting, but once I did I had trouble putting it down.

My only complaint is that early on a lot was made of the linguistic element of the colonialism that was the main theme of the book but with no clear idea of who was speaking what languages and when it became difficult to relate that back to the overall story, and the whole concept faded out as the action picked up. It would have been nice to see something like a different font or italics used for some of the dialog or a deeper dive into language challenges later in the book.

But ultimately that's a minor nitpick and I think you should read Splinter in the Sky. I'm excited to see what else is in store from Ashing-Giwa.

If This Book Exists, You're in the Wrong Universe is the last (latest?) book in the John Dies at the End universe by Jason Pargin (earlier titles published under the pseudonym David Wong). I've enjoyed all four books and hope that there will be more. The books are all weird and funny and somewhat philosophical but more in the stoner philosophy than the heavier and more important stuff. If you make it through the first few chapters of any of these books and find them engaging then you'll probably like the whole series.

Since I haven't talked about previous books as I read them this comment is covering the whole series but the books are so much alike in both themes and style that my feelings apply to them all.

The books are primarily from the point of view of David Wong, a bit of a loser who through chance and being friends with questionable characters finds himself wrapped up with the town's oddly prevalent supernatural side. Over the course of the four books, we follow David and his friends as they ineptly battle with cosmic forces that exist outside our universe and on a scale inconceivable to our meat brains. Some of the themes are genuinely scary and can trigger a bit of existential dread while other bits tend so far into absurdity as to be a bit comical (but that's part of the point).

Ultimately, these books are a meta comedy horror series sort of like the book version of Cabin in the Woods. They're easy to read and fast-paced, never needing to work hard to keep your attention and draw you into the next chapter. I had a few genuine chuckles at moments and found myself rooting for and invested in the characters as we see the them mature (a little) and develop (slowly and by baby steps).

Grab the first of these and give it a shot. If you don't take it too seriously, it's a really enjoyable series.

I really enjoyed @pluralistic@mamot.fr‘s latest #solarpunk book, The Lost Cause. I think one of the things Doctorow does well is to imagine a near future that is entirely plausible and doesn’t rely on new magical technology. This book, set a generation into the future, feels like a very plausible path from here to there and that makes it much more engaging than some similar works.

Like his other near-future novels that I’ve read, Doctorow is realistic about political changes and simply extrapolates out the trends that we’re currently seeing. In his vision of the next generation facing the climate emergency there are still hyper-capitalists trying to “fix” everything by sticking their heads in the sand and assuming technology will save us, arch conservatives who want to undo all the progress and close the doors to their increasingly fragile sanctuaries, idealistic progressives going to the front lines to apply real solutions to fix things, and lots of folks who care but are mostly comfortable and willing to let others do the heavy lifting.

The book follows one of those idealistic youths as he navigates reckoning with trauma, family on the other side of the aisle, and figuring out how to truly make a difference in everything from the broader climate crisis to hyper-local political divisions and even violence. It’s a slightly narrow view that only includes the single perspective, but we move along with the protagonist as he tries to understand the people he works with and works against. Because of that we get a lot of reflection on his own trauma and how it shaped him as well as some empathy for those facing the same challenges but from a different perspective.

The Lost Cause is a quick, engaging read. It’s full of more food descriptions than a George R. R. Martin book, highlighting the shifting palates of a generation raised focusing on lower-carbon food sources and diverse communities, so be prepared for it to make you hungry. If you like solarpunk and other near-future fiction that offers a hopeful vision for how we get to and through the looming crises, then The Lost Cause should be on your reading list.