Review:: Amped, by Daniel H. Wilson

Title: Amped

Author: Daniel H. Wilson

Format: eBook

Rating: ★★★☆☆

 I thought I'd like Amped better than Robopocalypse. I was right. Unfortunately, though, there's very little substance in Amped, and little that hasn't been worked before.

Review:: Ancient Shores, by Jack McDevitt

Title: Ancient Shores

Author: Jack McDevitt

Format: eBook

Rating: ★★★★☆

Jack McDevitt takes a pretty stock standard science fiction trope and manages to make something bigger than expected out of it. Ancient Shores teems with deep, realistic characters, and a harrowing, yet optimistic look at how humanity reacts to fear.

Review:: Alice in Zombieland, by Nickolas Cook

Title: Alice in Zombieland

Author: Nickolas Cook

Format: eBook

Rating: ★☆☆☆☆

In order for a mashup to work, there needs to be harmony. Harmony can come out of unexpected places. Nickolas Cook misses this mark by quite some distance. He manages not only to fail at matching Lewis Carroll's wit and charm, but goes further, ruining the original cleverness and creating what feels like a desperate, zombie-obsessed madlib.

Review:: Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, by Seth Grahame-Smith

Title: Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter

Author: Seth Grahame-Smith

Format: eBook

Rating: ★★★☆☆

This book was a pleasant surprise. I started it with low expectations, but the amount of research and the quality of the writing quickly won me over. That's not to say that it doesn't have its issues.

Review:: The Age of Miracles, by Karen Thompson Walker

Title: The Age of Miracles

Author: Karen Thompson Walker

Format: eBook

Rating: ★☆☆☆☆

I can deal with books that are skeptical about science, and the way science is being used. I can deal with books with soft science, as long as they don't try to justify it. What I can't deal with is a book that gets all the science terribly wrong, then proceeds to go on an anti-science vendetta. Of course you think science is awful! You don't understand any of it. Spoilers in the review.

Review:: Shakespeare Saved My Life, by Laura Bates

 Title: Shakespeare Saved My Life

Author: Laura Bates

Format: eBook

Rating: ★★☆☆☆

Memoirs should be allowed to be a bit self-absorbed, but in this case, it feels kind of inappropriate. Especially considering it feels like Laura Bates didn't actualize a lot of what she was seeing. However, it's impossible to say that she didn't have a very good impact on some folks.

Review:: Bridge to Terabithia, by Katherine Paterson

Title: Bridge to Terabithia

Author: Katherine Paterson

Format: eBook

Rating: ★★★☆☆

After reading Among Others, I felt like I needed to reread Bridge to Terabithia. I hadn't read it since I was a kid, and I'm kind of saddened to find that it isn't quite the story in my head. Either way, I'm glad I reread it. Spoilers in review.

Review:: Among Others, by Jo Walton

Title: Among Others

Author: Jo Walton

Format: eBook

Rating: ★★★★★

This book was too much right. It hurt. It made me cry. It was worth every tear.

Review:: Soulless, by Gail Carriger

Title: Soulless

Author: Gail Carriger

Series: Parasol Protectorate, #1

Format: eBook

Rating: ★★★☆☆

This book is a cupcake. Very little substance and very sweet. It's a problematic cupcake in a lot of ways, if you look beneath the sprinkles. But there's some nutrition hiding in there somewhere.

Review:: Robopocalypse, by Daniel H. Wilson

Title: Robopocalypse

Author: Daniel H. Wilson
Series: Robopocalypse, #1

Format: eBook

Rating: ★★★☆☆

Unsurprisingly, Robopocalypse is a story of a robot apocalypse. Unsurprisingly, I once again find myself rooting for the robots. There are spoilers in this review.

Review:: Blackout, by Connie Willis

Title: Blackout

Author: Connie Willis

Format: eBook

Rating: ★★☆☆☆

In a world where time travel is used by academics to uncover the past, a group of young historians head off to study WWII. Something is clearly going wrong, but no one seems to notice until it hits them squarely on the head.

State of the Reading:: The Ultimate Reading Challenge

So I keep mentioning the reading challenge I'm doing (or at least I feel like I am...) and I've linked to the copy on 9gag. I think it might have originally been from Pop Sugar, but to investigate that further would involve reading Pop Sugar...

I stumbled on the challenge via HabitRPG, where someone set up a challenge in the Legendary Book Club of Habitica guild (that I run and is currently reading Blackout, by Connie Willis). It's made it super easy to keep track of the challenge and I get rewarded for it. I only have a few left to tick off at this point... More info on the challenge and my status after the jump.

Review:: Looking for Jake, by China Miéville

Title: Looking for Jake

Author: China Miéville

Format: eBook

Rating: ★★★★☆

China Miéville is best known for his novels, but in short stories he's able to play with his craft in ways that wouldn't work in longer fiction. He left me wanting and unfulfilled time and time again, but simultaneously positive there was no other way for things to end.

Review:: Break and Enter, by Rachel Haimowitz and Aleksandr Voinov

Title: Break and Enter

Author: Rachel Haimowitz and Aleksandr Voinov

Format: eBook

Rating: ★★★☆☆

I'm not usually the kind to pick up romance novels, but when I saw this one described as "man on machine on man" I just couldn't resist.

Review:: When Gravity Fails, by George Alec Effinger

Title: When Gravity Fails

Author: George Alec Effinger

Format: eBook

Rating: ★☆☆☆☆

I was thrilled when I stumbled upon this noir detective cyberpunk novel, often ranked as one of the hidden scifi gems. I was especially excited when I realized there was a trans character! Then I remembered that this book was published in 1987. I quickly became less enthused.

Review:: Gone With the Wind, by Margaret Mitchell

Title: Gone With the Wind

Author: Margaret Mitchell

Format: eBook

Rating: ★★★☆☆

This is a Great American Novel, a novel of manners, a bildungsroman, a romance, historical fiction, and very, very long. It is a tale of the inevitable fall of the status quo, a tale of rebuilding, and a tale of loss once again. But mostly, it's very, very long.

Review:: The Road, by Cormac McCarthy

Title: The Road

Author: Cormac McCarthy

Format: Paperback

Rating: ★★★☆☆

Do you like books in which absolutely nothing happens? Do you like apocalypses? I DO! If you don't, you probably will hate this book.

Review:: The Night Circus, by Erin Morgenstern

Title: The Night Circus

Author: Erin Morgenstern

Format: eBook (epub)

Rating: ★★★☆☆

With beautiful, fluid writing, vivid descriptions, and continual hints to a bigger mystery, The Night Circus weaves a pretty (but not stunning) Fantasy tale set in the 19th Century.

Review:: Yokai Attack!, by Hiroko Yoda and Matt Alt

Title: Yokai Attack!

Author: Hiroko Yoda and Matt Alt

Illustrator: Tatsuya Morino

Format: eBook (epub)

Rating: ★★★☆☆

A nice, but not super in-depth bestiary, covering yokai, traditional Japanese monsters. Its worth it for Tatsuya Morino's illustrations, which are supplemented with older, more traditional pieces of art.

Review:: Liminal States, by Zack Parsons

Title: Liminal States

Author: Zack Parsons

Format: eBook (epub)

Rating: ★★★★☆

What is the worst thing you can do to a grief-stricken windower who has a death wish? Grant him eternal life. The only problem is, when you mess with forces you don't truly understand, you almost always get unintended consequences.

Review:: Light, by M. John Harrison

Title: Light

Author: M. John Harrison

Format: eBook (epub)

Rating: ★☆☆☆☆

Making sense is a stylistic choice. A stylistic choice that this book firmly opted out of. That’s not to say that’s always a bad thing. There are a few books where “not making sense” works rather well. This is not one of them.