Book Review: Wastelands: Stories of the Apocalypse (Wastelands #1) by John Joseph Adams

Wastelands: Stories of the Apocalypse
by
John Joseph Adams

Title: Wastelands: Stories of the Apocalypse by John Joseph Adams

Rating: 🌟🌟🌟(3 stars)

Publisher: Night Shade

I've had this on my shelf for years and finally pulled it from my bookshelf to read. There were 22 stories and as with all anthologies, some resonate more than others. 3.5 stars overall.

Thoughts on my favourites:

Book Review: Nemesis Games (The Expanse #5) by James S.A. Corey

Title: Nemesis Games (The Expanse #5) by James S.A. Corey

Rating: 4 stars (🌟🌟🌟🌟)

Publisher: Orbit

 This was what I enjoy about The Expanse! After a bit of a disappointment in reading Cibola Burn, I was a little reticent to jump right into another. My husband decided he wanted to get back to watching the show so I figured I'd read the book for the season before we did.

Book Review: Cibola Burn (The Expanse #4) by James S.A. Corey

Cibola Burn (The Expanse #4)
by
James S.A. Corey

  Title: Cibola Burn (The Expanse #4) by James S.A. Corey

  Rating: 3 stars (🌟🌟🌟)

  Publisher: Orbit

I fell off on my Expanse reading but I feel like this is a bit of a detour in the series and it's one I could have skipped. I had been excited to see what the first adventure after the Ring gate opened would be so I was primed to love this. Alas, I didn't.

Book Review: Logan's Run by William F. Nolan

Logan's Run
by 
William F. Nolan

  Title: Logan's Run by William F. Nolan

  Rating: 3 stars (🌟🌟🌟)

  Publisher: Vintage

Over the last several years I've watched a number of 70s science fiction movies: ( Logan's Run, Soylent Green, Westworld, etc.) and read the books when I could. I finally got a copy of Logan's Run and gave it a read.

Book Review: Refuge by J.J. Blacklocke

 

Refuge
by
J.J. Blacklocke

Title: Refuge by J.J. Blacklocke

Rating: 4 stars

Publisher: Aethon Books

I'm a sucker for stories set on space stations and this also had trade, politics and diplomacy so I had to request this on Netgalley. Add in some planetary destruction and I was completely intrigued.

Book Review: The Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson

 

The Ministry for the Future
by 
Kim Stanley Robinson

Title: The Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson

Rating: 3 stars (🌟🌟🌟)

Publisher: Orbit

For half of this, I thought I'd rate this around 2.5 stars but around the 56% mark, I felt like the story hit its stride (or I acquiesced to it). I began enjoying it more and couldn't put it down. By the book's end it had me feeling so hopeful that I felt that for me, this was more a 4-star event. So strong 3-star for the whole thing.

Book Review: Good Neighbors by Susan Langan

 

Book Title: Good Neighbors by Sarah Langan

Rating: 4 stars (🌟🌟🌟🌟)

Publisher:  Atria Books

The Monsters Are Due On Maple Street, people (Twilight Zone reference)! And the ecological breakdown isn't helping. 

Book Review: Goldilocks by Laura Lam

 Title: Goldilocks by Laura Lam

 Rating: 3 stars (🌟🌟🌟)

 Publisher: Headline Publishing Group

 

  I came for the climate change and got a whole of lot internal character angst. A lot. I liked this overall but I didn't love the way it was told. The timelines going back and forth really sapped the pace and suspense of both.

Book Review: Parable of the Sower (Earthseed #1) by Octavia Butler

 

Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler

 Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler

  Rating: 5 stars 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟

  Publisher: Open Road

My five-star reads are far and few between as I have strict criteria for them. But when I find them, they grab me and I know they'll remain a part of me always. So that happened with The Parable of the Sower This is one that kept me up late into the night, struck a chord with me and is one I'd read again.

Book Review: Falling Free by Lois McMaster Bujold

 

Falling Free by Lois McMaster Bujold

Rating: 3 Stars 🌟🌟🌟

Publisher: Baen

This was another book in the box of old books we inherited and had a space station on the cover and if you've read my reviews, you know how this goes. This also happened to be the first of Lois McMaster Bujold that I've read. What can I say, there are a lot of books to get around to in life but I'm getting in my fair share of old science fiction in 2020.

Book Review: Star Wars: From a Certain Point of View by Elizabeth Schaefer

Star Wars: From a Certain Point of View by Elizabeth Schaefer
My rating: 4 stars 🌟🌟🌟🌟
Publisher: Del Ray


Oh, this was a fun read! Forty short stories, each from the POV of side characters in Star Wars: A New Hope. This is just my sort of read because I love SW and have always been eager for the wider GFFA experience. The galaxy is bigger than the Skywalkers and others also have thoughts, dreams, problems, lives, deaths and a point of view. I didn't love all of these but such is to be expected in a compendium of short stories but there was plenty here that I did love. Some of my favourites follow:

Book Review: The Exiles Trilogy: Three Novels by Ben Bova

The Exiles Trilogy: Three Novels by Ben Bova
My rating: 2 stars  🌟🌟
Publisher:  Berkley

I picked this up because it was in a box of old books that we inherited and it featured scientists exiled on a space station because they're on the cusp of completing the human genome project and the World Government is worried that this knowledge will be too much for society to handle. It sounds silly of course because real life didn't proceed that way at all but it may have been more plausible when this was written in the 70s. Anyway, the blurb had me at "space station". This compendium has all three novels in the Exiles Trilogy and they were quick reads.

Book Review: Network Effect (The Murderbot Diaraies #5) by Martha Wells

Netwrok Effect by Martha Wells

Network Effect by Martha Wells
My rating: 3 stars 🌟🌟🌟
Publisher: Tor

Well. I'm going to be an outlier here... I didn't love it. 

Book Review: Liquid Crystal Nightingale by Eeleen Lee

Liquid Crystal Nightingale by Eeleen Lee
My rating: 3 stars 🌟🌟🌟
Publisher: Abaddon

At the very end of this story is a book blurb for Tangle's Game by Stewart Hotston and I was still reeling from the end of Liquid Crystal Nightingale and it occurred to me that both these books literally end mid-scene and I was doubly peeved! How did I happen into this circumstance again?! Is this now a thing for some would-be standalones? Why is this a thing? That aside, I slashed a star off my rating. 

Book Review: Planetside (Planetside #1) by Michael Mammay

Planetside by Michael Mammay
My rating: 4 stars 🌟🌟🌟🌟
Publisher: Harper Voyager

This was a fun read but it ended on the kind of mid-scene cliffhanger that made me want to toss the book across a room in frustration.

Book Review: Red Moon by Kim Stanley Robinson

Red Moon by Kim Stanley Robinson
My rating: 2 stars
Publisher: Orbit

I was so excited to read this but it just turned out just a smidge above okay.

Book Review: Colony War by Tarah Benner

Colony War by Tarah Benner
My rating: 🌟🌟 (2 stars)
Publisher:  Blue Sky Studio

It's been a while since I posted reviews as my 2020 was crazy before Coronavirus so there's a bit of a backlog (because I kept reading just not posting here). Currently, I'm reading cozy mysteries so there's likely be a torrent of reviews of them after this backlog is posted. Now, let's get to Colony War!

This is one of those books in a series that you read and realize, you could have skipped entirely for all the forward momentum in plot that took place. The relevant bits could have been pared down and split between the first book and the third (heaven help me, I'm going to begin reading that one tonight).

Book Review: Colony One by Tarah Benner

Colony One (The Elderon Chronicles #1) by Tarah Benner
My rating: 🌟🌟🌟🌟 (4 stars)
Publisher: Blue Sky Studio

I was in the mood for a space station story so I decided to give this a read. It's been in my TBR pile for a while and one of my resolutions this year is to whittle away at that more than I have in the past.

Book Review: Permafrost by Alastair Reynolds

Permafrost by Alastair Reynolds
My rating: 🌟🌟🌟🌟 (4 stars)
Publisher: Tor.com

This is my first read of 2020 and it was a good one! The world has gone through something called the Scouring where environmental upheaval leads to almost complete societal collapse and pretty much an extinction event and that has left humans with a final generation and one plan to save the future. There are two timelines that play out and converge here and I thought it was well done (and I'm not usually one for time travel stories). I felt the beginning was a bit slow but near the middle things really picked up and by the end, I wanted to know what happens next.

Book Review: Summer Frost by Blake Crouch

Summer Frost by Blake Crouch
My rating: 🌟🌟🌟🌟 (4 stars)
Publisher: Amazon Original Stories

"Why did you kill your husband?" I ask. "Not husband. Oscar kill Max with knife two thousand thirty-nine times."

I'm by no definition a gamer but I am one who enjoys Blake Crouch's writing. I loved this! If not for a true terminus of an ending, I could have read a full-length novel of this story. Max, a NPC (non-playing character) breaks out of their programming (I suppose being murdered 2039 times is a grim but good teacher) and sets out on a course that their maker and mentor never saw coming. I'm giving no spoilers (it's short, go read it!) but will say this had a lot to say about humans good and bad.

This is the second story I've read this year that has an AI (view spoiler)[deploying nanobots are the final solution to deal with humanity. (hide spoiler)] I am unsettled.

Here's to Max, the expendable NPC who shouldn't have survived the prologue, but wound up writing the epilogue for the world. Glitch, indeed.

This was easily & by far, my favourite of all the stories in this series. Highly recommended.

A couple of my favourite quotes:

">>>Good morning, Max.>>> Hello, Riley.>>> What have you done since our last session?>>> Max read 895,013 books."

"In the end, all we have is math."

Summary: A video game developer becomes obsessed with a willful character in her new project, in a mind-bending exploration of what it means to be human by the New York Timesbestselling author of Recursion.
Maxine was made to do one thing: die. Except the minor non-player character in the world Riley is building makes her own impossible decision—veering wildly off course and exploring the boundaries of the map. When the curious Riley extracts her code for closer examination, an emotional relationship develops between them. Soon Riley has all new plans for her spontaneous AI, including bringing Max into the real world. But what if Max has real-world plans of her own?
Blake Crouch’s Summer Frost is part of Forward, a collection of six stories of the near and far future from out-of-this-world authors. Each piece can be read or listened to in a single thought-provoking sitting.