Emma

Originally posted on bluchickenninja.com.

The first thing I liked about this book is that it is the third part of a series and you would never know it. As far as I can tell it doesn't make any references back to the previous books. In fact if it wasn't for the giant ‘3' on the spine you would think this was a standalone novel

I also liked the fact that there was mermaids in it. Now these are not the mermaids you would find in a Disney movie. These are proper lure men to their death mermaids. Or to be technical sirens as they are called in the book. It was nice reading about something you don't normally come across in fantasy novels. Or at least this is the first time I've read a fantasy book with mermaids in it.

The only thing that annoyed me with this book was the magic. I read on Wikipedia that this series was the author imagining what would happen if we had magic in a modern day setting. And I really wasn't keen on it. Now this can work brilliantly, for example in Harry Potter, but the magical world and non-magical parts were kept very separate. In this everything was mashed together, you have angels and mermaids and wizards but you also have electricity and superheroes and Top Gear. It felt weird all that being together.

Not to mention the characters looking for a magical ring who kept making references to Tolkien and talking about hobbits. It was all very strange.

Originally posted on bluchickenninja.com.

The Forever Watch is set on the generational ship “Noah” which is carrying the last surviving humans on a thousand year voyage to “Canaan”. People on board the ship have cybernetic implants in their brains which allow them direct access to the futuristic Nth web; their version of the internet. It also enhances their natural abilities turning them into telepaths, healers and almost animal like bruisers.

The main character “Hana” is the administrator of the city planning bureau. We first meet Hana just after she finishes Breeding Duty. A duty every female onboard ship must do; where they are placed in a coma for 9 months while their womb is used to grow a child. Shortly after she is asked by a friend to help on a case he is working on. As they investigate a murder they end up learning more about the ship and its mission than they ever expected to.

I've been trying to get my thoughts together on how I feel about this book and to be honest I can't. This is not a happy book. You definitely wouldn't want to let your kids read it. But it is fantastic. I really don't want to write too much about it because I don't want to give away any spoilers. The closest book I can compare it to is Across The Universe however this book is still nothing like Across The Universe and it is also infinitely better than it too.

There is one slight problem with this book. It is very technical. Technology plays a huge role in this book and with all the talk of compiling code, analysing networks and artificial intelligence you practically need a computer science degree to understand some of the language. But you can tell the author really knows what he is writing about. From knowing that software is not written from scratch and rather is mashed together from pre-written lines of code. To just knowing that software takes longer to test than is takes to be written. Seriously, I spent 3 years doing computing at college and 95% of that time was spend testing my code. The technology was one of the main reasons why I loved this book but I can understand how someone without any knowledge of computers might be confused by it.

Even though I loved this book I didn't give it 5 stars. I noticed a couple of small grammar errors which were slightly annoying. Some parts of the book I found implausible, the sheer size of the ship for example. And like I already mentioned I had a problem with some of the computer language. However overall I really enjoyed this book. It might not be for everyone but I liked it.

*I received a copy of this book from Hodder & Stoughton in exchange for an honest review.

Originally posted on bluchickenninja.com.

This was surprisingly enjoyable. I found it all strangely fascinating, you sort of get to see how the rich people live. Though most of the time it makes fun of the Oxbridge, art-collecting, well-read, lawyers and political types. It was a very easy book to read, the type of book you would want to take on holiday with you. I would definitely recommend if you are into art or modern day politics.

Originally posted on bluchickenninja.com.

I have to start this review by saying sorry, if at any point I write Voyager instead of Voyage during this review, it's because I have Voyager on the brain and literally can't stop myself from writing that final ‘y'. I'm not even joking, it's like it's automatic now. So yeah my apologies.

Voyage is one of those books that take a while to get into. I didn't truly start enjoying it till nearly 200 pages in. But when I did finally get it, it was like one of those moments where you realise you are in love with a book and it just takes a while for your brain to catch it. It actually got to the point where I wanted to take my time and just enjoy the experience. I think we're now at the point where this is my favourite book of the year.

Voyage is an alternate history, to be more specific it asks what might have happened to NASA if Kennedy survived the assassination attempt in 1963. In fact you could almost read Voyage as a sequel to 22/11/63 by Stephen King (I will admit I haven't finished that book yet but I'm assuming it ends with Kennedy not dying). The result of Kennedy not dying is he encourages NASA to continue on after landing a man on the moon and send a mission to Mars.

The thing I love about this is that sending a crew to Mars isn't easy, and Baxter makes it quite clear how not easy this is. And I don't mean just the science and technological advancements that need to be made. I mean the whole politics and stuff that happens back on Earth. In fact I would say that the parts of the story which take place on Earth is more fascinating than the parts in space. Because you get to see all the behind the scenes details of what it's like to work at NASA.

I love that Baxter went into the tiniest details of what would have changed because NASA went to Mars. Even even noted at one point how Gene Roddenberry was working on The Next Generation and decided to go in a whole new direction because of what was happening at NASA (hey any authors reading this, one sure fire way for me to love your book is to mention Star Trek, just saying).

But I think the best thing about this book is the main character. It is a female Geologist who joins NASA to become an astronaut. And this is important because it sort of blew my mind when I realised this book (and it only took my 95% of the book to realise this) is really about all the changes that had to happen as NASA for a female astronaut to become the first human on Mars.

I have read a lot of science-fiction and even now sci-fi is really a male dominated genre and the books are mostly about male protagonists and it was so refreshing to finally find a book about a female scientist. And not just that but it details all the misogyny that she had to overcome to be allowed on that mission. And it wasn't even like she was put on the mission because she was a female, in fact at one point she is told she won't be on it specifically because she is a female, but eventually through hard work she gets it and yeah. I liked that.

I want to point out this isn't a spoiler, in fact you find out very early on that York is put on the mission. The book is just written in a very strange order (and this is one of the things I didn't like about it), where the story from leaving earth to standing on mars is told at the same time as going from landing on the moon to setting out to Mars. It gets really confusing at some points especially because there are no true chapters which means the story feels like it jumps around quite a bit. It's still enjoyable but you really need to pay attention. My other complaint about this book is the large number of characters and yet again that may be my fault rather than the books (I'm not good with names).

Originally posted on bluchickenninja.com.

The first thing I'm going to say is part of the reason why I was so surprised by this book is that I picked it entirely based on the cover. I had not heard of Ready Player One, I was just in Waterstones looking for something to read on a long train journey. Ready Player One just happened to be in the ‘buy one get one free' section, like literally the only reason I bought this book was because I would get it half price. I'm sure everyone knows that picking a book based on its cover is very hit or miss so I was amazed that not only was it better than I expected, it was about all the things I love.

I will fully admit that this is one of my all time favourite books, but it's really not the greatest story. Large parts of it are based on other games and movies, there is even a chapter when Wade (our main character) plays Matthew Broderick's role in Wargames. This is also a part of the reason why I think a movie adaption could be extremely difficult to make.

But I don't think it's good enough to say I like this book because it mentions nerdy stuff, I already liked that and would still like it if I hadn't read this book. I think I like the fact that it acknowledges nerd culture and acknowledges the fact that nerd culture is becoming mainstream. I mean it's now cool to like Star Trek and Doctor Who. I love the fact that people don't have to hide that part of themselves and this book celebrates it. Being a nerd and knowing lots of stuff about movies and games makes you cool.

I love the fact that a huge part of this is set in an MMO and even mentions some of the downsides of being a gamer (weight gain and living in your parents basement). Though I am not a child of the 80s and sometimes didn't know what Wade was referencing I still enjoyed those parts. I also really love how it comments on data privacy. Look if you're a nerd and you like science-fiction, gaming and the 80s you will probably like it.