Reviews and Comments

Stjaerna

Symposiarchin@wyrms.de

Joined 2 years, 8 months ago

philosophy / fiction / comics / unwritten tales / perhaps the stars

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Die letzte Kosmonautin (Paperback, German language, Fischer Tor) No rating

This book was terrible. For a fictional setting in which the DDR never ceased to exist is contains surprisingly little social insights into what a world like that might look like. You might think that its strengths are more on the science side, given that the author frames himself as a writer of hard science fiction, but the science part is tame and uninspired at best. The characters are one dimensional gender clichés, especially the female kosmonaut whose personality consists of having children, thinking about those children, using high tech cameras to watch her children's playground from orbit and fearing she might not be able to see her children grow up. Women, am I right lol?

No, srsly, it's a bad book and if you want to check out what German SF has to offer, pick something else (preferably Dietmar Dath).

Catfishing on CatNet (2021, Tor Teen) 4 stars

Because her mom is always on the move, Steph hasn't lived anyplace longer than six …

A few chapters in I just couldn't stop. Sharing an overall positive view of technology with books like Charlie Jane Anders' All the Birds in the Sky or Becky Chambers' Wayfarers Series, this novel doesn't shy away from some dark places and trusts its teenage audience to grasp the complexity of an extremely online society that is super connected but als super trackable.