Nomad Scry

This is very much a middle book - how effective (or useless) it is won't be known until I read the next book. The most interesting stuff mostly happens outside the society, with many many hints about interesting things to come.

The audiobook is (again) a pain to get into because each character has their own voice actor and, despite how good each narrator is (and they are), it's difficult for me to adapt to each voice in order to understand what they're saying. I'm positive I missed parts of the story due to shifting narrators.

While this one is still a "special boy/girl" sci-fantasy, I did like the constant edging of foreshadowing betrayal immediately followed by descriptions of how nice a character is. In fact, when a significant betrayal did come, I didn't believe it and more than halfway expect to find it reversed later on the series. The ratio of fantasy to sci-fi felt weird to me but I couldn't say why.

I'm glad I read this. The ENIAC 6 deserve more respect and more awareness of how much they brought to programming. I expected the quiet sexism of having their work accepted but not their value as people. I wasn't expecting modern jackasses to try to erase their contributions and deny their importance.

Enjoyable. It's only in retrospect that certain plot issues come to mind, which is fine. I'm curious to see what the authors do with the story in the next book.

Edit: I forgot to mention this thing that Amma does. She loooooves crosswords, so she spells words out. And she's infected Ethan with this highly irritating habit. I -should- deduct a star just for how much this interrupted my listening.

Despite initially feeling like a bog standard urban fantasy, this world is one of the more interesting twists on magic in the open. The idea of magic and tech battling it out on an over level, the fascinating take on vampires, and whatever the deal is with Simon (sp?)... Beyond all that, I like Kate. Her reaction to the little girl makes her so much more interesting than she was in the first book.

My only issue is semi spoilerific. When Kate is sparring with Kieran, she uses a Word on him. Later, during the flare, she uses the same word against the bad guys. Afterwards, Kieran seems surprised and questions her about it. That didn't make any sense to me. I'm guessing it's an editing gaff, but... perhaps I'm missing something?

I'm ready for whatever comes next for the crew of the Jenny. I didn't fall in love with any of the characters but the story never went where I was expecting and I can't believe the speed of the read. I'm talking McCaffrey fast.

I wish more folks would read Gamblin's writing so I could get more of his creations to read.

I'm a sucker for vamps, but I'm fully aware that most of the time there isn't any redeeming value to the tale. Which is why I was happily surprised at the level of re-invention of the vampire mythos. The only real story issue I had was the way in which the plot lines culminate. Perhaps I missed some clues through the story, but it felt a little like going down a white water in a tube, where everything rushed in with little to no control in either my hands or those of the protagonist. Which is not in any way to say it wasn't fun. I think I'll add the next book in this series to my everlong queue.

I feel conflicted about Majesty's Offspring. There were aspects of the story that I enjoyed, that kept me turning pages, and there were others that annoyed me. For instance, it is totally petty of me, but I hated the idea of some sort of gravity streams surrounding the pirates hidden base. I'm sorry, but gravity doesn't flow, flux, stream, or change directions. That's not something that a far future device can fix either, because the proposed gravity streams were supposed to be some sort of semi-natural phenomenon. The final kicker, though, is the way the book ends. It just stops. Though this is merely the first book in a series, there is no wrap up or conclusion of any kind for any of the characters throughout. The book just... stops. And that really annoys me.

(I believe the accepted wisdom is that the things that most annoy you in another person's story are the same areas that you are weakest at. In this instance, I'm quite sure it is true.)

Some of the very nifty art sequences didn't work for me. Instead of elevating the action up off the page and into 3D reality, I just wasn't able to follow the action. I suspect that the story, as a heart warming tale of innocence being slaughtered, would have resonated with me a lot more if I hadn't been struggling to “read” the visual aspects. Which is really a shame because the art is definitely pretty.

There were a few interesting world building ideas here, which kept me going. The annoying offhand sex-shaming was very off putting. Overall, this felt like a writer just learning the craft, and that this should have been a trunk novel.

However, the narration was so flat and inappropriately affected that I'm not entirely sure how much of my distaste was actually his fault instead of the writers.