Enno Rehling

There's clearly a pattern to these books. Historians in danger of getting stuck in the past, experiencing a lack of modern medicine, and chaos back home in Oxford. Overall, the department seems to be very poorly run.
This is the first book of several set in WW2, and despite the aforementioned repetition, I'm going to read the second part to find out how it ends.

The road trip in the final chapter is very funny. The rest of the book is classic John Green, and reminded me so much of An Abundance of Catherines that I figured I knew how it would end for our hero, except it totally didn't.
Still, the sameness of these books really makes me want to take a break from reading them.

If you felt that the fifth book didn't hold up to the usual standards of quality, then prepare for a surprise. This sixth installment manages to be worse. It needlessly continues the story in Mostly Harmless, is entirely derivative, rehashes old jokes, and tells us more about the Vogons than anyone should ever want to hear.
My advice is to re-read the first three books instead.

This was awful. As Scalzi says of himself in the introduction, he writes good action and good dialogue. Having made my way through two of his attempts to write female protagonists, I'm confident that this is something he can't do.

Angsty and too long, this internal monologue actually makes me like and respect his character of Jane Sagan a great deal less. Which is a shame, because I loved her in Old Man's War and Ghost Brigades, and in the small role she played in Last Colony :-(

First of all: I loved it! The Sci-Fi themes were exactly in my wheelhouse, and I enjoyed how the author made sure to wrap up all of her characters' loose ends at the end, not leaving us to wonder about anything.

Warning: There is once again talk of pandemic in here, though not as close up and personal as it was in Station Eleven or even in The Glass Hotel.

It's not exactly a sequel to Glass Hotel, but it's set in the same universe, after the events of that book. You probably don't need to read these books in order, but I got a little kick out of the connections.

Disclaimer: I received an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Malaka is a teenager between two worlds, trying to hold on to her relationship with her father and his new family. At an age where a young person finds out who they are, she doesn't fit in at home in America, and even less so in the middle east.

This book felt authentic, Malaka's struggles are relatable, and there's occasional humor to be found in the “fish out of water” situation, but it's mostly serious and everyone is struggling to find meaning in their complicated lives.

The title gives it away: This book features the Spanish inquisition (and not the one with the comfy chair). There are also seven rings (not for the dwarf lords), an angel of death, and a trip to Manchester that serves to bring us some more WW2 history and a rare bit of Seawall origin story that I greatly enjoyed. And of course, Peter is going to be a dad and his family are as charmingly idiosyncratic as ever. If I have any complaints, it's that there weren't more references to classic jazz.

Nothing much happens in this book, and yet it's wonderful. A variety of alien species are stuck together in a small family-run space motel, and they get along, because by some lucky coincidence, they are the nicest cosmopolitan outsiders that their respective species has to offer.

Becky Chambers' Wayfarers universe has always impressed with its wide range of unusual alien races, from bugs to dinosaurs, and this book gives us a lot of backstory for several of them. My favorite scene was the one where they discuss the phenomenon of cheese, and universally agree that humans are the weirdest. I'm especially thankful for the extended epilogue that brings each individual's story to a satisfying happy end.

As someone who has spent most of his life immersed in other cultures, speaking and thinking in a language that I love but that's not my own, Mahid's sens of not-belonging resonated well with me. She and all the other major characters were well realized, and had complex interior lives that made this book very enjoyable.

If I am not mistaken, “They should have sent a poet” is a quote from Contact, which is very fitting because this book deals with a very unusual first contact scenario, so much of Teixcalaan culture revolves around poetry, and because Martine writes beautifully.

The spin on the alien hive-mind is what elevates this book to five stars for me, the parallels to Lsel's imago technology and the empire's Sunlit and Shard pilots were wonderfully drawn.

A worthy successor to what was a spectacular first book in this series.

Cora the mermaid is near and dear to my heart since her first appearance in this series, and I was happy to get a book where she is the main character this time (although Sumi also makes an appearance later). She's been haunted since her last quest, and hopes a drastic change will help her get over that, but changing schools turns out to be more than she bargained for.

This was very intense at times, but fantastic like all the books in the series. There's hardly any book I look forward to more than the next one, but I'll take a short story in the meantime, so hello, Skeleton Song.

Funny! Mickey is immortal by virtue of being able to make a backup of himself that can be downloaded into new clone bodies. He has thus far died 6 times, which makes his current body Mickey7. Death is a pretty regular occurrence when you're the official Expendable on an interstellar colony ship that landed on a hostile planet. When he's assumed to have died a seventh time, and Mickey8 steps out of the cloning vats, that's when his troubles really begin, though.

This book is a fun spin on the whole “what makes you yourself?” question in SF that's also coming up when you discuss Star Trek transporters, mixed in with a good dollop of other issues, this book was a ride.

I don't usually read short stories, but this collection may serve to change my mind. I love a book that explores new ideas, or puts a new spin on an existing trope, and these short stories do that, and cover a wide range of them.

I'd already read Six Months, Three Days elsewhere, so that set my expectations, and I'm happy to say they were met. From classics like time travel in The Time Travel Club to the over-the-top gonzo style of Rock Manning Goes For Broke, there was something for everybody here. The medical horror of Don't Press Charges And I Won't Sue was probably my least favorite story, but that's partly because of the real-world politics that it mirrors, which are none of the story's faults.

I'm very happy to have received an ARC of this book from Netgalley, even though it took me months to get around to actually reading it, on account of my enourmas TBR pile.