Bookpost: Several things, including the new Murderbot

[roadrunnertwice]

qntm — Fine Structure

Feb 4

This novel covers some of the same ground as Ra, but I didn't like it as much — it didn't feel as coherent and directed, which drained some of the impact of the big gonzo ideas. Anyway, read Ra! I can't yet speak to There Is No Antimemetics Division, but I'll probably get to it at some point. (Actually, that's what I meant to read this time, but the hold line at the library was pretty saturated, so I diverted.)

John Scalzi — When the Moon Hits Your Eye

May 15

Kind of high-concept — the setup is that, in a miraculous occurrence that cannot be explained or comprehended, the moon turns to an equivalent mass of cheese, and then we spend 28 chapters flitting from character to character (only rarely making repeat visits to someone) to show a world Staying Entirely On Its Bullshit Despite It All.

Well-written and fun, but I think it ultimately felt a bit slight? Well... hmm. It's possible the ending will stick with me.

I found the end annoying — everything goes back to the way it was, as randomly as it began, and then a hundred years later it's fully accepted that it was all a globally-coordinated "megahoax." Kind of the whole thesis of the book is "what we do in the face of the senseless," and I feel like that ending is an especially grim final answer that I don't really have a response for.

Andrea K Höst — the Touchstone series (re-reads)

Jan 26, Jan 26, Jan 27, Jan 29

I was just in a mood to re-read some junkfood.

Andrea K Höst — In Arcadia

Feb 3

Oh yeah, so I noticed a couple years back that Höst had done another sequel to the Touchstone series, and this one was a romance novel about Cass's mom. Okay! Sure!

I liked this. Yeah, okay, it's very hetero, as is the original series, and I could name some ways to improve that. But it's doing some interesting and satisfying stuff against the standard grain of the portal fantasy format, which was also something I liked about the other, prior epilogue — it's really committing to exploring the consequences of deciding to stay in the portal world, whereas usually the decision to stay (or return) is the end of the story.

At the end of said prior epilogue, a significant chunk of Cass's old life decided to pick up stakes and hop through the gate the next time its rotation came around, including her mom, her brother, one of her aunts, two of her friends, and a friend's dying sibling. But then what? Laura's suddenly a dependent of her adult child, her other kid is on the struggle bus, and everyone's finding it a bit oppressive to be under global tabloid scrutiny every time they stick their nose outside their guarded compound. She's trying to restart her art career from scratch and there's still feelings from her divorce that she never finished unpacking. It's messy! I liked that.

Graydon Saunders — A Succession of Bad Days, Safely You Deliver, Under One Banner (re-reads)

Mar 19 – Mar 26, or thereabouts

Yep.

Martha Wells — Platform Decay (Murderbot... 7?)

May 25

It's Murderbot, I liked it.

I'm looking forward to some more exploration of Murderbot's burgeoning artistic/documentarian career, but this isn't that; it's a real fucked up extraction mission in a much bigger and more chaotic environment than our protagonist is used to dealing with. Also, it has started reluctantly going to therapy, and seems to be benefiting from that a bit.

There was something I mentioned in an old review of one of the other novellas in the series: something where the answer to an ongoing mystery turned out to be much less complicated than it looked, but then also paradoxically more complicated because of the way it didn't weave into the rest of the backstory in a tidy and contained way. A deliberately ragged edge that smudges the boundary between the small and comprehensible plot and the big incomprehensible world that surrounds it.

Anyway, this has that going on.