Didread: Off-Peak City, System Collapse, Ra, Outside

Another batch of reviews. And!! Finally!!!! The last crumbs of the 2023 backlog! 🙌🏼

Bonus Level: Cosmo D — Tales from Off Peak City, vol. 1

Nov. 11, 2023

Hahaha oh my god this ruled.

This is a berserk free-jazz shitpost of a game. It's a first-person walk n talk with charmingly gross graphics, some really nice uses of dynamic musical soundscapes (important objects mutate the music when you approach!), an intricate pizza-making minigame, and a surreal story about androids and mind control. I named my character "Yonkers."

Anyway, watch the trailer — this game is exactly what it looks like (positive).

Martha Wells — Witch King (reread)

Jan. 2, 2024

I just recently reviewed this, so nothing new to say.

Martha Wells — System Collapse (Murderbot #7)

Nov. 22, 2023

This was great.

Plot-wise, it directly follows Network Effect, with everyone still figuring out how to extricate themselves from the planet and ART's crew working together with the Preservation gang.

Character-wise, this is maybe low-key the big one! The climax is such a big turning point in Murderbot's sense of self and conception of agency!

This is maybe an esoteric way to say this, but I feel like this is the Finder: Talisman of the Murderbot series. If you know, you know.

Ada Hoffman — The Outside

Feb. 23, 2024

This was decent, and had an intriguing spacefaring take on Lovecraftian cosmic horror. I liked it enough to finish it, but probably not enough to read the following books in the series.

qntm — Ra

June 17, 2024

Readable online.

This was really good! And had an incredibly pessimistic (but very satisfying) ending.

It starts off as a meandering and curious exploration of a world that very much resembles our own, except that magic is a real branch of physical science that was discovered in 1972. And then it Fucking Goes Places. Gonzo hard SF with a dizzying scope.

2023, 2020, and 2019 book censuses

I was looking back to check something, and it turns out I never posted a book census for the years of 2019 and 2020. It was a very distracting time! Anyway, what I actually want to post is a diagram charting the ups and downs over time, but I don't have time to make that at the moment, so I'm just gonna get the raw info up.

With this missing info filled in, the picture I already perceived becomes a bit clearer: the pace of my reading cratered in 2020 and has not yet recovered, although 2022 was an especially bad year and seems to have been an outlier.

2023

• 18 fiction (15 by female authors, 3 by male authors)
  • 11 of these were re-reads
• 3 nonfiction (1 by female authors, 2 by male authors)
• 2 comics (1 by a male author, 1 by a mixed-gender team)
• 8 games with significant stories

2020

• 18 fiction (10 by female authors, 8 by male authors)
  • 13 re-reads
• 3 nonfiction (all by male authors)
• 3 (ish?) comics (all by female authors)
• 8 games with significant stories

2019

• 32 fiction (17 by female authors, 14 by male authors, 1 by non-binary authors)
  • 12 re-reads
• 5 nonfiction (1 by female authors, 4 by male authors)
• 10 comics (5 by female authors, 2 by male authors, 1 by non-binary authors, 2 by mixed-gender teams)
• 2 games with significant stories