@mlawton@mstdn.socialFinished reading "Carl's Doomsday Scenario" by Matt Dinniman.
Book two of Dungeon Crawler Carl picks up right where the first left off: Carl, Donut, and Mordecai grinding through the Over City, with a murder mystery woven into the escalating levels.
Still funny and chaotic, but Carl, Donut, and Mordecai feel more like a cohesive team, rather than individuals grouped together.
5/5 ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
@deabigt@universeodon.comOut Law (The Dresden Files #18.75) https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/8657375990?utm_medium=api
@laimis@mstdn.socialThoroughly behind on my reading this year, softball has consumed me, but managed to finish this little nugget:
Charlatans: How Grifters, Swindlers, and Hucksters Bamboozle the Media, the Markets, and the Masses https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/225819376-charlatans
@nelson@tech.lgbtJust donated to Standard Ebooks, the organization that publishes very high quality ebooks for out-of-copyright books. I've read a bunch of their editions over the past few years, most recently A Room With a View.
@deabigt@universeodon.comThe UFO Experience: A Scientific Inquiry https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/8364029692?utm_medium=api
@mlawton@mstdn.socialFinished reading "Dungeon Crawler Carl" by Matt Dinniman.
Earth's surface is demolished overnight and survivors are funneled into a televised alien dungeon crawl. Carl and his ex's cat, Princess Donut, have to play a rigged game — or die trying.
I was tepid on LitRPG as a genre, but I really enjoyed this one. First book in a long series, but I finished wanting more.
4.5/5 ⭐⭐⭐⭐✨
@stefan@gardenstate.socialThis book was less good then the first one but it was mostly a pacing problem. I'm unclear if I will continue on the next when it comes out. we'll see.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/223641089-to-ride-a-rising-storm
@deabigt@universeodon.comThe History of the Ancient World: From the Earliest Accounts to the Fall of Rome https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/8364033805?utm_medium=api
@mlawton@mstdn.socialFinished reading "Mal Goes to War" by Edward Ashton.
Mal is a free AI trapped in a human body when war cuts him off from infospace, protecting an augmented girl and the ragtag crew they pick up along the way.
Murderbot-meets-Mickey7 in mostly good ways, with decent chemistry in the group. But Mal's internal conflicts play out in a literal castle, and for software, that never made sense to me.
3/5 stars ⭐⭐⭐
@mlawton@mstdn.socialFinished reading "The Wreck of the Mentor" by Eric Jay Dolin.
A whaling ship wrecks on a reef near Palau in 1832. The surviving crew are swept into local tribal conflicts and years of captivity before a rescue can be arranged.
Sprawling and packed with moving parts: sailors, warring factions, era politics, and cultural friction.
Ultimately a bit unwieldy, as it'd be impossible to land all of those aspects in a tight manner.
4/5 ⭐⭐⭐⭐
@david@boles.xyzHands as the Language of Thought: Correcting a Kant Attribution
There is a line about hands that travels well. It reads cleanly, carries an air of philosophical dignity, and arrives in print wearing the name of Immanuel Kant. "The hand is the visible part of the brain," runs the most common English form, or, in an older rendering, "the hand is the outer brain of man." The phrase appears in publishing copy, in teaching materials, on Goodreads quotation pages, in popu…
@deabigt@universeodon.comTorchwood Tales: Torchwood Audio Originals (Torchwood Audiobooks, #1-10) https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/4549722356?utm_medium=api
@mlawton@mstdn.socialFinished reading “Platform Decay” by Martha Wells.
Murderbot and Three, a newly freed sec unit, run a rescue mission across a torus station orbiting a strip-mined planet.
Eight books in, Murderbot is still discovering itself. The emotion-check module forces an honesty it can’t hack around.
Corporate reach extending across systems, strip-mined planets, the grinding machinery of exploitation…not hard to extrapolate from our present universe.
5/5 ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
@deabigt@universeodon.comPersian Fire: The First World Empire and the Battle for the West https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/8364030664?utm_medium=api
@mlawton@mstdn.socialFinished reading "Seasons of Glass and Iron" by Amal El-Mohtar.
A short story collection — fairy tales, fantasy, and poems centering women's resilience and identity, gathered from years of El-Mohtar's commissioned work.
"John Hollowback and the Witch" is a delightful slow burn: a man guilty of wronging women, yet innocent in having no memory of it. "The Truth About Owls" handles displacement better than most novels.
4/5 ⭐⭐⭐⭐
@pre@boing.worldThere's a bit in QualityLand [ #books #reading #socialMediaBan
@deabigt@universeodon.comThe Complete Cyber Seed Compendium (Cyber Seed, #1-5) https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/8364021510?utm_medium=api
@mlawton@mstdn.socialFinished reading "The Trees" by Percival Everett.
Absurdist crime fiction as a vessel for some of American history's worst crimes.
In Money, Mississippi, a series of murders targets white residents, each leaving behind a corpse resembling Emmett Till. Two black MBI detectives investigate as the killings spread nationwide.
Detectives Jim & Ed's dry humor keeps it light enough for the horror to land harder. Haunting & thought provoking.
4/5 st…
@mlawton@mstdn.socialFinished reading "Whistler" by Ann Patchett.
Daphne runs into her former stepfather at the Met, four decades after divorce ended their one year as family.
A slow, beautiful portrait of people revised across decades. Everyone gets re-seen, with the kindness and introspection to do it justice. Eddie, her mother, her father, even the life Skip Hotalling lives as contrast to the choices Eddie makes.
5/5 stars ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
@deabigt@universeodon.comBefore Columbus: The Americas of 1491 https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/8364040957?utm_medium=api
@mlawton@mstdn.socialFinished reading “Tokyo These Days, Volume 1” by Taiyo Matsumoto.
A veteran manga editor quits after 30 years, then quietly visits artists, famous and forgotten, assembling an artistic endeavor not fully revealed.
Rich characters won me over: reserved Shiozawa most of all, though flawed Chosaku is who I want to learn more about. Very much part one, setting the table. Might be my first manga?
4/5 stars ⭐⭐⭐⭐
@deabigt@universeodon.comBy the Light of the Moon: A Novel https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/8364032353?utm_medium=api
@mlawton@mstdn.socialFinished reading "The Deep Sky" by Yumi Kitasei.
Humanity's first generation ship, headed towards a habitable planet, is knocked off course when a bomb kills three crew. Asuka, the alternate who barely made the mission, must find the saboteur.
The locked-room mystery and the impostor syndrome angle are well done. But the crew blurs together, and the captains' unexplained trust in Asuka is anemic.
3.5/5 ⭐⭐⭐✨
@mlawton@mstdn.socialFinished reading "Seascraper" by Benjamin Wood.
In an early-60s English coastal town, a young shrimper works the sands to support his mother while keeping his fledgling guitar playing & singing a secret — until a film director arrives to scout the shore.
Two lives cross in opposite directions: as Thomas glimpses a way out of the mundane, the man who inspired him has doors closing around him. Bleak, then quietly hopeful.
4/5 stars ⭐⭐⭐⭐
@mlawton@mstdn.socialFinished “The Language of Liars” by S.L. Huang.
Ro is a linguist trained to jump into the mind of a Star Eater — a mysterious species whose ability to mine a critical element makes interstellar travel possible. When he succeeds, he finds a civilization far more complex than anyone prepared him for.
Colonial justifications corrupt everything they touch. Once the “lives are at stake” argument becomes available, there’s no moral high ground left.
4/5 ⭐⭐⭐⭐
@mlawton@mstdn.socialFinished reading "Star Wars: From a Certain Point of View"
Forty short stories, written by an all-star collection of authors, retell "A New Hope" through the eyes of the supporting, fringe characters... each with their own life to lead and their own shift to get through.
Fun throughout, with my favorites being "The Sith of Datawork" and "Born in the Storm" — both find comedy in the mundane machinery of the Empire.
4/5 ⭐⭐⭐⭐
