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Recommendation from Jason Lemieux.

Cory Doctorow recommendation.

It's been so long since I read 1984, the world felt familiar but I had no idea what was coming. Kind of like real life, maybe too much like it?

Recommendation from my cousin David Sudermann.

A Cory Doctorow recommendation.

I don't know if I'm just too siloed, but I don't remember ever seeing this pretty jaw-dropping story in the news. It's a good look at how law enforcement is coping with encryption technologies, though the implications for the general public are only touched on. It would be more fun if law enforcement's efforts weren't wasted fighting a futile war on drugs, but I appreciated it more for the investigation than the good guys versus bad guys spin.

Ultimately, the novel was unsatisfying, but not in the way that comes from careless writing or a lack of vision on the part of the writer. Rather, it's unsatisfying in the same way that life is--you understand why it has to be that way, and although you often wish things could be different, you can't help but glory in the moments that were given.

I don't want a movie of this, I want a video game where the player gets to explore the city of Cahokia. Through it, we get to see the author's vision of Indigenous cultures entering the 20th century but on their own terms. It's colorful, adventurous, brutal, brazen - perfect setting for a politically charged noir murder mystery.

I nearly abandoned this when it opened with detectives at a murder scene, a prelude I realized I've come to associate with formulaic slop. And I wasn't sure I would still enjoy noir as much as I once did. It doesn't take long for the wildly imaginative dimensions of the story to burst forth from the outrageously explosive plot. The alternate history is both utopian and dystopian in noir proportions, full of interesting observations, implications, and jazzy interludes.

From Cory Doctorow's review.

The broken earth has a lot of appealing elements (sorry) with narrative experiments going on at different scales. Some worked better than others for me, none were total flubs. The power dynamics between characters are fairly well balanced, but sometimes the characters felt a little too imaginary to me.

Deserts and a great review from @SallyStrange

Based in technicat's review :)