I have moved my Bookwyrming to @kingrat@sfba.club
This link opens in a pop-up window
Jack Reacher is back, dragged into what looks like a series of grisly serial murders …
The story points out the absurdity of many crime fiction coincidences, but also relies on major coincidences. Almost as if the author is telling the reader, "yes, I know this is absurd, but we all enjoy this convention."
Unbalancing (2022, Tachyon Publications)
So far, there's not much story here. Flowery language and 102 politics around sexuality and neurodiversity.
Ex-military policeman Jack Reacher is lying low in Key West, digging up swimming pools by …
Jack Reacher is an ultra-competent former military policeman, but now drifts around the US solving crimes. If you have a problem, no one else can help, and if you can find him, maybe Jack Reacher can help you. That's the opening line for the A-Team, but it fits Jack Reacher.
Anyhow, Jack Reacher starts off this episode in Key West where a private detective has found him. After denying that he's Jack Reacher, he finds the P.I. dead on the side of the road, missing all his fingers.
What sets this one apart from the previous Jack Reacher books I've read is that Reacher has a crisis of confidence partway through. He's made mistakes. And in this case, he may not be able to save all the appropriate characters. Sure, we know Reacher's gonna make it; there are quite a few books still to go in the series. But for …
Jack Reacher is an ultra-competent former military policeman, but now drifts around the US solving crimes. If you have a problem, no one else can help, and if you can find him, maybe Jack Reacher can help you. That's the opening line for the A-Team, but it fits Jack Reacher.
Anyhow, Jack Reacher starts off this episode in Key West where a private detective has found him. After denying that he's Jack Reacher, he finds the P.I. dead on the side of the road, missing all his fingers.
What sets this one apart from the previous Jack Reacher books I've read is that Reacher has a crisis of confidence partway through. He's made mistakes. And in this case, he may not be able to save all the appropriate characters. Sure, we know Reacher's gonna make it; there are quite a few books still to go in the series. But for the first time it felt like the others might not. So there's a little bit of additional suspense that not present in the earlier books.
Unbalancing (2022, Tachyon Publications)
Charlie Jane Anders (@charliejane@wandering.shop) put this in her best-of-2022 column at the Washington Post, so I'm gonna try it out.
Station Eleven is a novel by the Canadian writer Emily St. John Mandel. It takes …
Book is more interesting now, but the interpersonal connections are a little bit contrived.
Station Eleven is a novel by the Canadian writer Emily St. John Mandel. It takes …
Starting my next fiction read.
Radical Candor is a simple idea: to be a good boss, you have to Care …
The author praises Noam Bardin's directness. However, I've seen how Noam Bardin tech bro attitude left out trans people. Very indicative of someone with privilege who can be direct without consequences.
Radical Candor is a simple idea: to be a good boss, you have to Care …
Who doesn't want to be a kick-ass boss?
For a book about passions and someone's motivation for murder, the narrative operates at a distance from the emotions of its characters. Fairly early on, detective Kyoichiro Kaga divines from the clues (Sherlock Holmes style) who the murderer is. Much harder to suss out is the murderer's motive, and the reader is taken through several iterations of the question "but what is the real reason behind what they did?" 3.5 stars for an inventive form and drawing power to keep me interested in the layers being uncovered. But demerits for the emotion of the text not being in line with the emotion of the characters.
This was a fun read.
Cairo, 1912: The case started as a simple one for the Ministry of Alchemy, Enchantments …
What if Egypt was quickly modernizing in the 1910s and also djinns and other spirits were real? One djinn seems to be haunting team car 015 in Cairo's overhead public transportation system. Agents Hamed and Onsi have been dispatched by the ministry to solve the problem.
Hamed is stuffy, but trying to be okay with modernization. Onsi is English educated and fits in better, but is a rookie agent.
They're charming, and the world Clark has created is interesting and has lots of potential.
Emperor of Ruin (2023, Orbit)
Content warning Mild spoilers
In the magic system of this series, there is deiat, the power of creation, which may only be wielded by the Chosen. And there is dhaka, the power of biology, which is wielded by ghouls. Select humans are able to wield one or the other. In Emperor of Ruin, we learn what started the wat between Chosen and ghouls. The stories left by the extinct Chosen to their human heirs, leave out key truths.
However, when I look at how it all ties together, a fair amount just doesn't make sense. It doesn't ruin the story for me, but after finishing i have so many "but why would you do that?" questions.
Maya's and Gyre's and their friend's stories all wrap up satisfyingly, though never with a sense that it could all go wrong. There are a lot of side quests to collect almost everyone and everything for the final battles. The author did not want to leave any character behind, even those that play little part in the end.
Tantalizingly, there's options for continuing new chapters in the world in future stories.
Overly complex crime in the end, and that irritates me.
Cairo, 1912: The case started as a simple one for the Ministry of Alchemy, Enchantments …
Queueing this up as my next read
It's 1963, and riots and sabotage plague the space program. The climate change caused by …
Content warning Mild spoiler
Books 1 & 2 featured Elma York, who had anxiety (undiagnosed at the start) and they were a great view of a character who could have a mental illness and still be heroic.
The Relentless Moon features Nicole Wargren (sp?) who is now revealed to have anorexia. She is also an astronaut. Betting this will also be a great portrayal.