Reviews and Comments

I did not love this book the way I loved Bennet's Divine City series, but this was still pretty good.

It has a well thought-out magic system that made me wonder if these were people living inside a computer simulation who had found a way to hack the source code.

I'll definitely read the next installment in the series because I want to know what happens next.

This collection was a good way to sample a bunch of fantasy series.

Spoiler Alert: Fantasy characters don't seem to have much luck having relaxing, fun vacations.

Bonus: One character spends much of the story as a talking dog.

I've liked the Martha Wells Murderbot books so much that I thought it would be a good idea to try one of her older books.

It turned out to be a good decision, and also a surprise. Because City of Bones is nothing like the Murderbot books.

You know in Calvin and Hobbes when the image would switch from the simple line drawings of the regular cartoon to incredibly detailed painting like images, so you'd realize that Waterson could draw any picture he wanted to? This is like that. Murderbot although incredibly powerful is sweet and naive and the adventures are like something in a comic book.

City of Bones has a Byzantine culture and the main character is a jaded outsider who has mostly learned how to navigate his way to survive. I found it entirely satisfying.

Martha Wells can clearly write any kind of story she wants to.

These guys are certainly not just coasting. I'm looking forward to #8

A book by A. Lee Martinez is guaranteed to be fun and have characters you like.

This one has a bunch of gods and the main one is a luck god who mostly manifests as a talking raccoon.

And a talking raccoon is at least as good as a talking cat.

This is hard science fiction in the believable space ship sense.

It's also social science fiction in how it deals with politics and political movements.

It's also, and this is the main thing for me, a story about people that I found myself caring about right from the beginning.

I really like how in Robinson's recent fiction he shows how systems could change to make things better.

It was fun watching how someone could use Youtube and other social media to deal with alien first contact.

But for a serious sci-fi fan, I wanted more aliens.

This is a strong finish to the trilogy.

I especially like the "servicer" characters, who are basically sentient robots that the humans are barely aware of as thinking beings. I hope Yoon Ha Lee gives us more of them.

Murderbot is a delight.

Hyper competent at dealing with danger.

Hopeless at interpersonal dealings.

It's fun reading about a character who seems to have all sorts of amazing experts living in his head. It was particularly cool how he considered what others thought was a mental illness to be an asset.

I really enjoyed this.

I liked the little crossovers with the Thorn series.

Spoilers follow:
Things get mostly wrapped up.
Jalan and Snorri both survive.

I see no reason that we can't have more novels about them.

It's fun reading about a character who seems to have all sorts of amazing experts living in his head. It was particularly cool how he considered what others thought was a mental illness to be an asset.

When this book arrived on my e-reader from the library it was a real good news, bad news things.

Good news, because I'd get to spend more time with Murderbot. Who it is a delight to spend time with.

Bad news, because this maybe means I won't have any Murderbot time to look forward to.