Solitaire
by Kelley Eskridge
Rating: ****
Read 8/10/2013
I loved Jackal. Loved her with all my heart. I had a harder time loving (or more importantly, making sense of) Jackal’s world. While I found it totally consistent, what there was of it, I felt like whole chunks of it remained in Eskridge’s head, where I couldn’t get at it. I needed more background, more story. I wanted this book to be about 4 times longer than it was.
Will be reading more Eskridge directly.
Sorry Please Thank You
by Charles Yu
Rating: **
Read 7/23/2013
As a rule I’m not a big short story fan. I dug Yu’s How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe so much I thought I’d give these a try. They are wildly creative and to my eye also wildly uneven. Not unexpectedly, Yu plays with the nature of reality and perceptions and illusion. Some of it was terribly clever and some of it was too clever by half. The story I liked best struck me as what Redshirts wanted to be and wasn’t.
Worth reading if only to witness genius writing running amok, playing and gamboling in the sketchier regions of the mind.
Redshirts
by John Scalzi
Rating: **
Read 7/18/2013
This was my first Scalzi. I read it because it won the Locus and is up for the Hugo, and I feel like I need to keep my hand in, see what current SciFi that isn’t Bujold or Walton looks like.
I was moderately amused by this 4th wall-breaking story, but I kept hearkening back to Heinlein. There were no moments herein quite as delightful as when Miss Gay Deceiver translated her crew to Oz. Once again, the grandmaster spoils it for me, notwithstanding the fact that when I tried to re-read The Number of the Beast a few years ago I could not. My memories of that extended in-joke are enough.
So, this story. Amusing, especially if you are a Star Trek TOS fan. None of the characters really came to life for me during the story, but the three codas are pretty wonderful and redeemed the story for me.
Love Minus Eighty
by Will McIntosh
Rating: ****
Read 04/05/2013
Wow, this was a wild and engrossing story. The worldbuilding was seamless, the characters strong, and the ending delightful in its ambiguity. At first, I was caught up in the horror of the poor bridesicles’ plight and I had to keep putting the book down and walking away. But as I got further into the book and got to know the characters, I couldn’t put it back down till I found out what happened.
I loved the way McIntosh connected all the threads together in the book, and I really enjoyed the ride. Recommended.
I got this ARC at ALA free.