Category: Book Reviews

Atom­ic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones by James Clear My rat­ing: 4 of 5 stars The book is good except for the end­less sports analo­gies. I should have known this would hap­pen since the book opens with the tale of a major injury the author suf­fered while […]

WE ARE MERIDIANS: BOOK ONE by S. Ghali My rat­ing: 2 of 5 stars There I was, mer­ri­ly read­ing along in this sci­ence fic­tion book. Then WHAM, S. Ghali ruined it com­plete­ly. How? They depict­ed the main female char­ac­ter as hav­ing an irre­sistible attrac­tion to the alien who was her ene­my min­utes before, a mem­ber of […]

Suck­er Punch by Lau­rell K. Hamil­ton My rat­ing: 3 of 5 stars Bor­ing! If I had­n’t been hav­ing trou­ble find­ing enough to read, I would­n’t have fin­ished it. I thought there was too much talk­ing in Ser­pen­tine, but this vol­ume takes the cake. While Ani­ta is osten­si­bly in a small Michi­gan town because a the­ri­anthrope has […]

Mar­que and Reprisal by Eliz­a­beth Moon My rat­ing: 4 of 5 stars Anoth­er decent, though not amaz­ing, book from Moon. I messed up in not doing my review as soon as I fin­ished, because I moved straight on to vol­ume three in the series, Engag­ing the Ene­my. Obvi­ous­ly, the series did get more engag­ing in book two! View […]

Trad­ing in Dan­ger by Eliz­a­beth Moon My rat­ing: 3 of 5 stars I want­ed to like Vat­ta’s War as much as I did The Ser­ra­no Lega­cy, but this one near­ly lost me at some points. Maybe it’s intend­ed for a young adult audi­ence? Con­sid­er­ing the age of the main char­ac­ter, that may be the case. Still, I […]

Lies Sleep­ing by Ben Aaronovitch My rat­ing: 5 of 5 stars I just fin­ished Lies Sleep­ing after read­ing the entire series straight through, so this review is about the series as much as about the ulti­mate entry in it. Wow! I’ve been immersed in the mar­velous world Aaronovitch cre­at­ed for us, and it’s a shock com­ing back. […]

Against the Odds by Eliz­a­beth Moon My rat­ing: 5 of 5 stars I just fin­ished read­ing the entire Ser­ra­no Lega­cy series by Eliz­a­beth Moon, and I’m expe­ri­enc­ing fic­tion let­down syn­drome. You know, when you’ve been total­ly engaged in a mar­velous world that’s so believ­able, and then sud­den­ly, it’s over! It’s hard to come back to this world […]

Ser­pen­tine by Lau­rell K. Hamil­ton My rat­ing: 3 of 5 stars I’m hav­ing a lit­tle trou­ble fig­ur­ing out a rat­ing for this, the 26th (!) book in the Ani­ta Blake series.  On the plus side, the book kept me engaged to the point of being a dis­trac­tion when I need­ed to do oth­er things. Also, Hamilton […]

Lost Con­nec­tions: Uncov­er­ing the Real Caus­es of Depres­sion – and the Unex­pect­ed Solu­tions by Johann Hari I just fin­ished this book, which I lis­tened to while dri­ving. I find myself wish­ing that I’d read it on my Kin­dle, instead, in order to be able to take some notes. It’s a rich read, full of mentions […]

The Anni­hi­la­tion Score by Charles Stross This is the sixth book of the Laun­dry Files, and the first to be nar­rat­ed by Mo instead of her hus­band. The plot keep me thor­ough­ly engaged, and I enjoyed Mo’s voice — it was a nice change. I fin­ished the book utter­ly wrung out, and I think that […]