Reviews and Comments

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agafnd@bookwyrm.social

Joined 4 years ago

i read a lot of science fiction but also a lot of other random stuff. libraries are good. i also like the little free variety of library, used bookstores, & the high seas. he/him

my fake and arbitrary rating system: - 5 stars: good. i recommend it - 4 stars: fine, but not entirely my cup of tea - 3 stars: not good, but with some redeeming qualities that might make it worth reading - 2 stars: bad, with a few redeeming qualities - 1 star: horrible

mastodon: @agafnd@www.librepunk.club

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reviewed This Is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar

This Is How You Lose the Time War (Hardcover, 2019, Simon and Schuster) 4 stars

Two time-traveling agents from warring futures, working their way through the past, begin to exchange …

probably not for everyone, but it's very good

5 stars

it's a magical realist (?) romance in a science fiction Time War setting, an unusual choice, but one that works well, given how strange the consequences of warping causality would be. If you can get ahold of the audio book, it's pretty good, has different readers for Blue and Red.

reviewed Middle Ages by Eleanor Janega

Middle Ages (2021, Icon Books, Limited) 5 stars

Popes! (Up to 3 at once!)

5 stars

it's a friendly, easily digested introduction to medieval history. It's only 176 pages long (& half of those pages are taken up by charming medieval-style cartoons) and covers approximately 1000 years of the history of a continent-sized area, so of course it's sparse on details. Gets away from the Victorian-era mythos that pop culture is rife with.

reviewed Dawn (Xenogenesis, #1) by Octavia E. Butler

Dawn (Xenogenesis, #1) (1997) 4 stars

Lilith Iyapo has just lost her husband and son when atomic fire consumes Earth—the last …

dawn

4 stars

The Oankali have strange and disturbing ideas about consent, which makes this an uncomfortable book to read. (This is, like, intentional, though.)

There's a disregard for singular 'they' as a genderless pronoun, instead 'it' is used to refer to the Ooloi; this doesn't feel as bad as it might because it's apparently the pronoun that the Ooloi chose to use for themselves in English

The biggest problem I have with it technically is that not all that much happens for much of the book? At least the first half is spent with Lilith just learning things about the Oankali. Which is interesting, but pretty slow

commented on Dawn (Xenogenesis, #1) by Octavia E. Butler

Dawn (Xenogenesis, #1) (1997) 4 stars

Lilith Iyapo has just lost her husband and son when atomic fire consumes Earth—the last …

Content warning thinking about queermisia as directed at cishet people

reviewed Endymion by Dan Simmons

Endymion (Paperback, 1996, Bantam Books) 4 stars

The multiple-award-winning SF master returns to the universe that is his greatest success--the world of …

catholics in space

5 stars

I read Hyperion and the Fall of Hyperion a few years ago, and was a bit worried that I'd need to have them fresh in my mind going into this one. The events of the previous books are referenced quite a bit, but this book also takes place around 200 years later, so it sort of makes sense for me to only remember the original story in broad strokes.

It has the quality of, appropriately, epic poetry, due to its complicated setting, and very deliberate story beats (which also make it feel a bit like a fairy tale). If I have a criticism of the writing technically it's that sometimes the description felt overly detailed (I do prefer this to books which don't explain what's happening enough).

There's some stuff which felt Questionable. I think I want to read the next (and final) book before making up my mind …