Exit Strategy Shouldn’t Work As A Sci-Fi Book I don’t understand how Murderbot (the book series) keeps getting away with this. Exit Strategy is a slog to read for so long, with exposition being thrown at you with a density I am unsure how anyone is expected to navigate. But, by the end of it,…
Dark Harvest is a novella from 2006 I oopsed into reading because I wanted something short and spooky for October—and then only finished it a few days ago. And now, having discovered that it’s getting a film adaptation that appears to be trapped in some bureaucratic/logistical hell and will come out eventually, it seemed a perfect book to give a review.
Crypt of the Moon Spider Abandons Its Plot In Its Own Wordbuilding Chaos I went into Crypt of the Moon Spider not knowing two important things about it. The first is that it’s not a monster story, not really. It’s a medical horror book tinged with cosmic horror elements. Perhaps in the sequel, it’ll swing…
Lucky Girl, How I Became A Horror Writer (I’m shortening that to Lucky Girl) is a story that purports to be about Krampus. It’s not really. Its genre is horror—but it’s almost never scary. And the tagline about a person becoming a horror writer is a portal to so many other issues I’ll rant about later.
I fear repetition in my review of Rouge Protocol. At this point, it’s clear that the series is a continuous stream of one-off adventures. SecUnit goes to a place—usually to find out the answer to something—and meets some humans and is then pushed into an action scenario where SecUnit has to save those humans.
I Found a Circus Tent in the Woods Behind My House is a stark contrast to the first book in the “I Found Horror” series. It’s technically the second book, but was published first. I’m unsure of why it’s set up that way, except perhaps to give a better starting impression.
With I Found the Boogeyman Under My Brother’s Crib, Ben Farthing has done it again. So far, I’ve reviewed Circus Tent and Puppets Living in Apartment (titles shortened because of how long they are) and with this third review, he’s proven it’s no fluke. This person knows how to write horror, knows how to write a strong twist, and consistently impresses me.
Artificial Condition continues my internal war with how I feel about The Murderbot Diaries. Despite it being more technobabble than almost anything else, the story remains intriguing and engaging off the back of the main conceit: what if a rogue AI designed to kill wanted to be left alone to watch television?
The Luminous Dead is perhaps one of the hardest reviews I’ve done in a long time. The nature of the work has clashed with my usual operations.
“Slow Time Between the Stars” has almost no plot. And that’s perfectly fine. If you try to read it expecting a plot—or really even conflict—to arise, then you’ll be disappointed. This is pure idea-based science fiction. It’s continuous interesting ideas. That’s it.
“Just Out of Jupiter’s Reach” is a fascinating, humanist piece of science fiction. Despite having almost no conflicts, barely anything that counts as a propelled plot, it’s intriguing all the way through. Reading it instills so many emotions: sadness, joy, wistful nostalgia, and the exact type of curiosity that incredible concepts have all the power to invoke.
“The Long Game” is actually a story about very short periods of time and the exploitation of a species. Its title refers to one idea in the story, among a few different, some related, some not, concepts—and the greatest strength of this one, like “How It Unfolds,” is how interesting those ideas are.
