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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.

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

Until I looked this up on Goodreads and saw "The Tales of Pell #1" I didn't know there would be more books in this series. That there will be at least one more is excellent news.

If you like kind-of-goofy fantasy stories that aren't all dark and gloomy where characters have a remarkably modern sensibility, this is for you.

Warning: There are puns. But not too many for me, and I'm known for not liking puns. I think I'm okay with them here because it's the characters who say them, not the narrator, and it's not like when you're talking to someone who is only listening for words you say that they can make puns on and don't really care about what you're actually talking about.

Bonus: There is a talking goat. And he's a lot of fun. Easily as much fun as a talking cat. Perhaps not as much fun as a talking rodent, but he's good. This talking goat, Gustave, has a personality that is consistent with the personality of goats that I met in my youth.

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.

Until I looked this up on Goodreads and saw "The Tales of Pell #1" I didn't know there would be more books in this series. That there will be at least one more is excellent news.

If you like kind-of-goofy fantasy stories that aren't all dark and gloomy where characters have a remarkably modern sensibility, this is for you.

Warning: There are puns. But not too many for me, and I'm known for not liking puns. I think I'm okay with them here because it's the characters who say them, not the narrator, and it's not like when you're talking to someone who is only listening for words you say that they can make puns on and don't really care about what you're actually talking about.

Bonus: There is a talking goat. And he's a lot of fun. Easily as much fun as a talking cat. Perhaps not as much fun as a talking rodent, but he's good. This talking goat, Gustave, has a personality that is consistent with the personality of goats that I met in my youth.

This isn't fantasy or science fiction, so I wasn't inclined to read it, but Manon told me I'd like it.

She was right.

Even though I've followed the music of many of Tom Wilson's contemporaries, I've never followed his music.

But he has a fascinating story and he tells it beautifully.

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.

These were well written stories, but they were bleak. And lately, I'm not in the mood for bleak stories.

This is a satisfying second book in what is apparently going to be a trilogy.

Mark Lawrence is now on my must-read list.

I particularly like that each of the three series of his that I've read have very different protagonists and the stories have very different feelings.

This deepened my understanding of modern genocides, but it didn't help overcome the feeling of hopelessness I get 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.

This is a satisfying second book in what is apparently going to be a trilogy.

Mark Lawrence is now on my must-read list.

I particularly like that each of the three series of his that I've read have very different protagonists and the stories have very different feelings.