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Zombies vs. Unicorns by assorted.

Quick synopsis: Twelve stories, half about zombies, half about unicorns.

Brief opinion: One or two stories were great, a couple I DNFed, and most were okay.

Plot: Ones I enjoyed:

Love Will Tear Us Apart by Alaya Dawn Johnson. A gay zombie falls in love with the son of a zombie hunter. The writing was really mature.

Purity Test by Naomi Novik. More silly than serious. A unicorn picks up a homeless virgin to help him save some baby unicorns.

The Care and Feeding of your Baby Killer Unicorn by Diana Peterfreund. Silly title, serious story. A little heavy on religion, but otherwise this was my favorite one in the book. In a world where unicorns are evil, horrible beasts, one girl does what was thought to be impossible: She tames and trains one.

Writing/editing: The editing was overall fine, the writing varied between the stories.

What I Liked/What I Didn’t Like: Some of the stories were a little too silly or immature for me or just not to my tastes (using a unicorn to get revenge on your cheating boyfriend), but all in all this book was a fast read.

I have no idea how old the two editors of this book are, but they came off as young teenage girls. Before each story the two would argue about this or that. After the first two stories I just stopped reading the forward. It was "cringy" as kids say.

Rating: 1-Hated / 2-Disliked / 3-Okay / 4-Liked / 5-Loved: ⭐️⭐️⭐️ - Okay. I think the stories I liked and disliked balanced each other out, leaving an overall rating of "okay".
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[I stopped accepting book for review years ago, but Dragonborn looked interesting and it isn't being published until October, so I made an exception for it. I shouldn't have.]

Dragonborn by Struan Murray.

Quick synopsis: "Yer a dragon, Harry." Take Harry Potter but replace magic for dragons, and you have 75% of this book. A girl who is a dragon in human form has to learn to be a dragon and save the (dragon) world.

Brief opinion: I stopped accepting books for review years ago because when I'm gifted a book to review it makes me feel like I have to say only positive things (which of course the publishers know). If I had gotten this book on my own, I would have DNFed it by the halfway point. That's not to say it's a bad book, it just wasn't for me.

Plot: Alex, a young girl, lives with the most domineering and controlling family mother who ever existed. Her father died a couple years earlier, so Alex is trying to just live a normal life with school and such, despite her mother's efforts.

Weird magic stuff starts happening around her town, and so one day Hagrid Oliphos shows up and takes her to Hogwarts Skralla.

Alex, while trying to embrace the fact that she's a dragon, is discovered to have a super special talent to talk to dead dragons. A skill that can save the whole dragon world!

Unfortunately Voldemort Drak Midna is rising from the sort-of-dead, after a magical the special powers that Alex has, in a war that will divide the wizarding dragon world.

Writing/editing: The version I read is an ARC, and contained a warning that there might be typos and such, but even though it hadn't been through its final edits, the editing was good.

The cover image had weird issues, but I chalk that up to this being an ARC.

What I Liked/What I Didn’t Like: A good YA or MG book can be enjoyed by any age reader, but you can't fault the book if it is enjoyable to only young readers. That's the case of Dragonborn. I suspect kids would like it a lot, but as an adult reader it didn't work at all for me.

The adult characters in this book were generally, at best, secondary to the young characters and at worse useless (that thing where adult characters exist only to get in the way of the young main characters). The mother especially was so useless that she was completely unbelievable.

The author did a weird thing with his writing, skipping steps in action. For example:

Weary, hungry, they flew off in search of food. They settled on a rooftop, sharing a bag of chips.

That kind of thing happened a couple times, forcing me to blink in surprise and reread to try to see where the missing action was.

I was very surprised to see the hardcover version of this book is going to sell for $19.99. I haven't bought a physical book in more than 15 years, so that sounds so crazy to me!

One of the adult characters used "wee" ("wee child", "wee snack") endlessly. It felt like every other word out of his mouth was "wee". By the halfway point of the book I was gritting my teeth every time he said it.

On things I liked, I did really enjoy that the main character collected "treasure" before she even knew she was a dragon.

Rating: 1-Hated / 2-Disliked / 3-Okay / 4-Liked / 5-Loved: ⭐️⭐️ - Disliked. I suspect a young reader would like this book a whole lot more than I did though.

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Reach for Infinity edited by Jonathan Strahan.

Quick synopsis: A hard science fiction anthology containing 14 stories.

Brief opinion: I've said it before and I'll say it again: Jonathan Strahan's tastes are polar opposite of mine. All of these anthologies edited by him never work for me.

Of the 14 stories, one I enjoyed and two more were okay, but the rest didn't work for me at all. (These three I liked were ones that generally got the lowest reviews by other readers, which confirms that hard sci-fi is just not for me. I like characters more than technical detail.)

Plot: The story I liked best was Attitude, a novella by Linda Nagata. Set in the future, an innovator finds a way to make a sports league drive moving humanity into space -- all the profits from the new sport she invented go towards building a city in space.

In Babelsberg by Alastair Reynolds was interesting until the ending (a cyborg who was created to explore the universe comes back to Earth for a media tour).

Amicae Aeternum by Ellen Klages. A young girl is days away from joining her family aboard a generational ship and leaving Earth forever. She spends the morning with her best friend doing things for the last time. [While I liked this one, I can see why others complained about it. Other than mention of the generational ship, there was no sci-fi about this one at all.]

Writing/editing: Both were generally okay.

What I Liked/What I Didn’t Like: Hard sci-fi just isn't for me. The three stories I liked were the ones that were more about characters than tech.

Rating: 1-Hated / 2-Disliked / 3-Okay / 4-Liked / 5-Loved: ⭐️⭐️ - Disliked. I have two or three more of these Infinity books on my Kindle, but I might just delete them without reading them. My luck with the series so far has been pretty bad.
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You Like It Darker by Stephen King.

Quick synopsis: 12 stories, some darker than others.

Brief opinion: I LOVED one story, liked a couple of them, disliked a couple, but didn't DNF any of them.

Plot: 12 stories (half short stories, half novellas):

Two Talented Bastids - A typical "King" story. Two men gain talents (one writing, the other painting) from supernatural means. ⭐️⭐️⭐️ -- Didn't love it, didn't hate it.

The Fifth Step - No good deed goes unpunished. A man just trying to help someone out died for it. ⭐️ -- I really, really hated this one. Maybe I don't like dark stories so much anymore? A good guy dying for no good reason (just because someone else is evil) was really unpleasant to read.

Willie the Weirdo - Generic horror story. Weird kid gets possessed. ⭐️½ -- I didn't like it at all, but I (just barely) didn't dislike it as much as Fifth Step.

Danny Coughlin's Bad Dream - Such an amazingly good story! And luckily the longest novella in the book! What begins with a nightmare ends with a normal guy getting hounded by an obsessed, mentally ill cop. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️- Loved it!

Finn - What was even the reason for this story? Guy gets (literally) tortured, for no reason at all. The whole point of the story just seemed to be the torture (physical, waterboarding, and other stuff). ⭐️ -- I can't stand reading about torture. Hated this one.

On Slide Inn Road - It was during this story I decided that I really don't like dark stories anymore. A family got robbed and abused by two men. ⭐️⭐️ -- Disliked it a lot.

Red Screen - I feel like I didn't get (or maybe didn't believe?) this one. Aliens possess people. Is a guy's wife possessed or just growing away from him? ⭐️⭐️ -- Disliked but in an unemotional way.

The Turbulence Expert - This one didn't feel like it fit with the "dark" theme. It's not physics that keep planes up in the air, it's peoples' belief. So when a plane is going to hit bad turbulence and maybe crash, they call in a Turbulence Expert to keep it up in the air. ⭐️⭐️⭐️ -- It was okay, but I didn't like it or believe it.

Laurie - Mostly a story of grief and puppies, but also of alligators eating people. ⭐️⭐️⭐️ -- okay.

Rattlesnakes - The father from the Cujo book, 50 years later. A ghost story. ⭐️⭐️ -- I really don't like ghost stories, I can never believe them. This might have been scary to some, but it was ho-hum to me.

The Dreamers - Mad scientist goes wrong. The setting (early 1970s) was more interesting to me than the story. ⭐️⭐️ -- The story never pulled me in, the "science" and other world stuff was too unbelievable to me.

The Answer Man - A man's life, from graduating college to death in his old age. Three encounters with a mythical creature shape his life's path. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ - I liked this one a lot, I fully bought into the world it was set in (it was mostly ours, after all). I believed the effects the creature could have on a person. Also, I felt like King's life experience/age (77) showed in all the best ways.

Writing/editing: Both were perfect. Even when a story didn't work for me, I kept reading it because he's a great writer. Usually I'd DNF at least a couple stories in an anthology, but I only considered it once in this book (during Finn/the torture).

What I Liked/What I Didn’t Like: Having written 50+ books and hundreds of short stories/novellas, it's no wonder he's such a good author.

What I liked most about this book was that the characters were generally older. It's interesting to read a story where the main character is in his 70s.

The Danny Coughlin's Bad Dream novella was so good. It was one of those cases where I made time during my day to read.

Rating: 1-Hated / 2-Disliked / 3-Okay / 4-Liked / 5-Loved: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ -- Liked. If I averaged out the ratings for the 12 stories my stars would be 2.5, but the ones I liked I REALLY liked, so overall I enjoyed this book a lot.
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Lightspeed (November 2012, Issue 30) by various.

Quick synopsis: A sci-fi anthology magazine. Mostly stories (from short to novella) with interviews of authors/artists and some nonfiction articles. I only read the stories.

Brief opinion: Unlike previous issues, this one didn't have any stories I enjoyed. The issue's main story was by Orson Scott Card, and an interview with him was included, which made me side-eye a bit.

Plot: The stories I liked: None, sadly.

Writing/editing: Both were fine.

What I Liked/What I Didn’t Like: Previous issues had had at least a couple stories I liked. I'm not sure if I have any other issues of this on my Kindle, but if I do I'll give them a chance.

Rating: 1-Hated / 2-Disliked / 3-Okay / 4-Liked / 5-Loved: ⭐️⭐️ - Disliked.

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Bridging Infinity by various.

Quick synopsis: An anthology of hard science fiction stories about, as the title implies, bridging infinity. Which in this case mostly meant engineering things having to do with getting into space.

Brief opinion: Out of fifteen stories in this book, only two or three worked for me. To be fair, I somehow missed that this was "hard" sci-fi until I started writing this review. I like my sci-fi softer, more character-orientated.

Plot: The stories I liked:

Rager in Space by Charlie Jane Anders. A party girl ends up going into space with her even more party girl roommate, and ends up saving the lives of everyone on the ship by being a party girl (the AI learned about having fun from her). Very silly, but the bar for "stories I liked" was extremely low in this book.

Cold Comfort by Pat Murphy and Paul Doherty. The idea in this was interesting, but the writing didn't hold up at all. Woman invents a way to solve global warming, powered by social media.

Travelling into Nothing by An Owomoyela. The story I enjoyed most. A death row prisoner is saved by an alien who needs her brain to pilot his ship. Other than the silliness of Rager in Space, this felt like the only story in the book with emotion and connection between characters (yeah, I know, that's not what hard sci-fi is about).

Writing/editing: Both were generally fine, though some stories had weird editing or formatting issues.

What I Liked/What I Didn’t Like: This just wasn't the book for me. Hard sci-fi isn't a match for my tastes; I like reading about characters, relationships, and character growth more.

Rating: 1-Hated / 2-Disliked / 3-Okay / 4-Liked / 5-Loved: ⭐️⭐️ - Disliked. "It's not you, book, it's me." I just wasn't the right reader for this one. I have a bunch of other Infinity books on my Kindle, I need to look up and see if they're all hard sci-fi or not.

Edit: Based on Goodreads reviews, this was one of the least popular books of the series. I'll try another ...Infinity one, since I have a few of them on my Kindle.
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The Year's Best Fantasy: Volume 3 by assorted.

Quick synopsis: A dozen or so stories of various flavors of "fantasy".

Brief opinion: I'd like to start a petition to prevent people from using "best" in the titles of these sorts of books.

Plot: Each of the stories had its own plot, but not a single one stood out.

Writing/editing: The editing was fine overall, the writing varied.

What I Liked/What I Didn’t Like: I pick up anthologies in hopes of finding more authors to read. There wasn't one single story in this book that made me look up what else the author had written.

Also "Best" in the title made me extra grumpy, since none of these stories worked for me at all.

Rating: 1-Hated / 2-Disliked / 3-Okay / 4-Liked / 5-Loved: ⭐️⭐️ - Disliked.


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Lightspeed (May 2013, issue 36) by assorted.

Quick synopsis: Basically an anthology book plus nonfiction articles and interviews. I skipped the latter two things.

Brief opinion: The first story was so good! It feels like forever since I last had that warm "This is SUCH GOOD WRITING!" feeling. The second story was pretty good as well, though the following ones were more hit and miss.

Plot: The three I liked:

"The Garden" by Eleanor Arnason was not just my favorite story in the book, it's my favorite thing I've read in a while. Alas I discovered her in a previous anthology (and I have some of her books waiting for me on my Kindle already), so she's not a new author I can track down for more books to read. But this novella is set within a book series of hers (yet is 100% stand alone), so I'm going to get the first book of that series as well.

"The 5th Wave" by Rick Yancey follows a 16 year old girl as she tries to survive an alien invasion that has killed off most everyone else. Really smart and entertaining! I have to check out the book series this was set in.

"The Aarne-Thompson Classification Revue" by Holly Black. A very weird story that I went back and forth on if I liked it or hated it, but I ended up leaning towards liking it. I don't usually read the kind of things Holly Black writes (urban fantasy/romance), but this story had no romance in it, so it worked more for me.

Writing/editing: Both were good.

What I Liked/What I Didn’t Like: Even if many stories in a Lightyear issue don't work for me, there are usually enough that do for me to stick with this publisher.

Rating: 1-Hated / 2-Disliked / 3-Okay / 4-Liked / 5-Loved: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ - Liked. The Garden earned at least a whole star on its own.

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Though I read the text books, I've been listening to the Dungeon Crawler Carl series on Audible (so this is sort of a reread?). The narration is so good! It's a whole production, though only one man does the voices.

Book 52: Carl's Doomsday Scenario (book 2)
Book 53: The Dungeon Anarchist's Cookbook (book 3)

My review of the text version of them is here.

My opinions from that review still stand, but the narrator is so entertaining that even the parts of the story that are a slog are still okay.

Overall I'm enjoying the series a lot. I'm listening to book 4 now, and own 5-7.
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This makes 12 DNF books in a row. I've gotten to the point where I think it's a me-issue...

DNF #43: Fever by Deon Meyer. A post-apocalyptic set in South Africa (and translated from Afrikaans). The story is told from long after the pandemic that killed off 90% of humans, after a new peaceful town was settled. The narrator was 13 at the time the town was being founded, and this book is sort of a history of the town's founding and growth. Which is all well and good, but knowing the town succeeded takes all the tension out of the story -- we know the characters succeed, so the story is just all the mundane details like how they pick who gets which house.

Not the worst story I ever read (I loved all the Afrikaans words peppered in), but I was bored with it. DNFed at about 18%.

DNF #44: The Blighted Stars by Megan E. O'Keefe. I knew going in that this was a sci-fi/romance book and I never ever ever ever read romance, but the sci-fi part sounded interesting so I thought it might work for me. The story follows a crew stuck on an alien planet, with the lead scientist and his security guard falling in love.

To give the author credit, the romance was really slow to form and seemed realistic, I just really do not like romance books. DNFed about 21% in, just as the two were getting the hots for each other.

DNF #45: The Mountain Crown by Karin Lowachee. Lowachee's first book was one of my favorite books ever, but I've read a half-dozen of her books since then and none worked for me at all. This one really, really did not work for me. (Native oppressed woman has to return to her homeland to talk to a dragon.) I hated the writing. DNFed early on.

DNF #46: Centaur Rising by Jane Yolen. Set on a farm in the real world, a meteor shower happens one night, and the next morning the farm's pony is pregnant. There are no stallions around, so it's a mystery to the characters how it happened. A few months later, the pony gives birth to a centaur.

I really thought I'd stick this book out, but by the halfway point I realized I had no feelings for any of the characters and didn't care about how the story would be resolved. DNFed at 50% point.

DNF #47: Grounded by Aisha Saeed, S. K. Ali, Jamilah Thompkins-Bigelow, and Huda Al-Marashi. While I don't usually read books about real people in the real world, this one was such a fun sounding idea I gave it a chance. Four kids stuck in an airport during a storm, each kid's POV chapter written by one of the four authors. The big upside to this was each of the kids had a unique voice from the others, that was wonderful.

Before the halfway point though, my interest was gone. Reading about real kids in a real world setting just doesn't hold my attention. Even interesting kids like these.

DNF #48: Dark Run by Mike Brooks. An old west story set in space. The writing/characters/voices bugged me so much that I DNFed it really early on.
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DNF #40: The Fiddle is the Devil's Instrument by Brett J. Talley. An anthology of Lovecraftian horror stories. Two stories into the book, I googled the author. I don't usually read Lovecraftian stuff, so I thought maybe I had enjoyed a story by him in some other anthology.

Turns out he's a mega pro-Trump guy, he made some nasty posts about Democrats, so I have zero interest in continuing this book or buying anything by him.

DNF #41: The Copula by David T Kellogg. This self-published author describes this as "Handmaid's Tale meets Hunger Games" (and he also said "Perfect for fans of books like The Hunger Games, Handmaid’s Tale, Ender’s Game, Divergent, and Maze Runner" -- could you reference any more popular books?).

This was the weirdest, distasteful, probably some kind of kink disguised as fiction thing. Women had to be controlled otherwise their sexuality would destroy the planet (really, it said that), they were trained to fight to the death for the right to sleep with a guy and have a baby.

DNF #42: Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea by Barbara Demick. I never read nonfiction. I love learning things, but I like spending my reading time on fiction. Still, this sounded really interesting though, and I thought it would be "story" enough to keep my interest (the life stories of people in North Korea), but it was just too nonfiction-ish for me. Dry (to me) and full of facts and dates.

For a country as insular as North Korea is, Barbara Demick did a really good job researching it and digging up defectors to talk to.

If I had had to read this for work I'd happily spend work hours reading this, but for my casual, relaxing reading time I just wanted to move on to a fiction book.
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Beasts of Tabat by Cat Rambo.

Quick synopsis: Set in a world where all sorts of mythical creatures are enslaved by humans, a "shifter" (were-animal) who can't shift and THE BEST FIGHTER TO EVER STEP FOOT ON THE PLANET live their lives and don't really do much.

Brief opinion: I rated this five stars in 2017, but eight years later I could barely finish it. One of the two main characters was the worst, but clearly the author loved her. [Reread from 2017, original review here.]

Plot: In a world where most gladiators hold the top position for two to three years max, Bella has been the champ for 20+ years. This may or may not be because even the gods love her.

Teo is a shifter who cannot shift, so his family sends him off to serve the church for life instead. Teo has issues with that plan, so runs off to the city to find his (and everyone's) hero Bella.

For the first 90% of the story there is really not much happening, just the two living their lives. By the time the plot started picking up in the last 10%, my interest was completely gone. Something something revolution in the city building.

Writing/editing: There were some editing issues.

What I Liked/What I Didn’t Like: Bella was the worst character ever. Too good, too perfect, most of her chapters (half the book) were just her having sex and being loved.

Teo's chapters were somewhat more interesting, but the book lost my attention pretty early on.

The only thing I really liked was the world: The "Beasts" (all sorts of mythical creatures of varying intelligence, from animal to smarter than humans) were all owned slaves, and they were the most interesting part of the story. I wish the book had been about them.

Rating: 1-Hated / 2-Disliked / 3-Okay / 4-Liked / 5-Loved: ⭐️ ½ - Hated

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Flight Plan by Eric Walters.

Quick synopsis: In an instant, anything with a computer chip in it stops working. This includes planes in the sky. This story follows the next couple months after a flight crew has to make an emergency landing.

Brief opinion: Entertaining if you don't think too much about anything in the story.

Plot: 13 year old Jamie is on a plane when every piece of technology in the world stops working. Luckily that plane had only just barely started taking off, otherwise this would have been a very short book.

Once they crash/land, the flight crew bands together to take care of their passengers for the rest of time, because that is their Duty™.

The story followed them as they crossed country on foot to get Jamie and the others home.

Writing/editing: Both were fine. The author used a lot of exclamation points, which was odd, but since the main character was a 13 year old boy I tried not to think too much about it.

What I Liked/What I Didn’t Like: If I didn't think much about anything, it was a fun story. But the moment you started thinking about any element of the plot, everything fell apart.

Basically this was an episode of The Walking Dead, just without the zombies. Gangs of bad people, communities of people trying to survive. Nothing really new in the post-apocalyptic genre.

The main character, Jamie, was (supposedly) a 13 year old boy, but the teenager never acted like one -- from the first page he came off as more of a mature adult.

The other characters around Jamie tended to annoy me; they were unrealistically Good and Noble and always did what they thought was Right and Ethical. You could almost read the capital letters on those in the story.

Very oddly, in chapter one it was established that the boy's favorite genre to read was post-apocalyptic/dystopian stories... but never once did he use that knowledge once he found himself in that exact situation. Strange.

Rating: 1-Hated / 2-Disliked / 3-Okay / 4-Liked / 5-Loved: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️. Sometimes I got grumpy when I thought about this or that, but as long as you keep your brain turned off, this is an entertaining read.

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DNF #37: The Spook's Apprentice by Joseph Delaney. The author wanted to write YA for boys, which might be why the characters didn't hook me? Story/setting was okay, but I guess the book just wasn't meant for me. DNFed at 47%.

DNF #38: Semiosis by Sue Burke. The characters in this story were an afterthought, which just didn't work for me. I liked the characters in the first chapter, but each chapter followed a new generation of people. I need to be able to connect with the characters, so this book just wasn't for me. DNFed 13% in.

DNF #39: The Cats of Silver Crescent by Kaela Noel. How could cat characters be so awful! The story and setting didn't work for me either. DNFed at 24%.
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A Stitch in Time by Andrew J. Robinson (the actor who played Garak for all seven seasons of Deep Space 9).

Quick synopsis: Garak's autobiography, written as a letter to Dr. Bashir. He writes about his whole life from childhood to the rebuilding of Cardassia after the Dominion War destroyed it.

Brief opinion: Holy cow, how was this even so good? Knowing it was written by an actor, I expected not to like it at all. But it was so good! All of Garak's life and Cardassian history were all perfectly believable. It was so well written!

Plot: The story of Garak's life, though it went back and forth in time instead of being linear.

Garak's young adulthood spent at an institution that focused on State Intelligence (as in spy work), to his work in the Obsidian Order (the Cardassian spy agency), to his fall from grace, to his exile on Terok Nor, to him being purposefully left behind when the Cardiassians pulled out and the space station was renamed to Deep Space 9.

The book closed with the beginning of Cardassia recovering -- the survivors needing to form a new government, build shelters, etc. When things were so bad that no one even knew how many people are left alive on the planet.

Writing/editing: I suspect this was a scan of a physical book, though a well edited one. There were a few minor issues here and there, but they seem to have come from being scanned (like a word having a space in the middle of it).

What I Liked/What I Didn’t Like: The one and only thing I didn't like was the title. Garak is a tailor, so "A Stitch in Time" was just too unsubtle and uncreative.

Everything else about the book was outstanding. I can't believe Robinson hasn't written more!

I listened to a sample of him reading the audio version of this book, and wow that was so good too. If I had unlimited Audible credits, I'd get a copy of that.

Rating: 1-Hated / 2-Disliked / 3-Okay / 4-Liked / 5-Loved: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️- Loved! Really loved it from beginning to end. If you like Garak as a character, this is a must-read. Garak's voice was perfect through the whole book!
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The Frugal Wizard’s Handbook for Surviving Medieval England by Brandon Sanderson.

Quick synopsis: Humans have found that alternate dimensions exist, so of course they start selling them.

Brief opinion: I loved the idea behind this story (less messy time traveling!), but the story itself alternated between annoying me and putting me to sleep.

Plot: A man wakes up in medieval England with no memories (traveling across dimensions can scramble your brain). He has to survive swords and magical spirits while trying to remember who he is.

Bad guys from the "real" Earth arrive, and main character remembers who he is (which turns out to be a bad thing -- he was such an unlikeable character).

Conflict builds until the literal gods step in and take sides in the war between the good guys and bad guys.

Writing/editing: Holy cow, the writing in this book was just not a match for me. It was supposed to be funny, but not one single joke in the entire book even mildly amused me -- they were so unfunny that they annoyed me.

What I Liked/What I Didn’t Like: How can you read a story told in first person when you hate the main character? This was a short book, but it felt like I was reading it forever. I wish I had DNFed it.

Rating: 1-Hated / 2-Disliked / 3-Okay / 4-Liked / 5-Loved: ⭐️ - Hated. This was nothing like Sanderson's usual books.

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DNF #33: Columbus Day (Expeditionary Force Book 1) by Craig Alanson. The reviews of this book were better than the book itself. "my statistical maths book was better" and "Male author who's never touched a woman before wishes the USA had a dick so he could destroy his throat with it" were among the more amusing lines from reviews.

Aliens invade and the US military will save us all. Way too jingoistic for my tastes.

DNF #34: Icebreaker by Lian Tanner. The writing didn't work for me and I didn't like any of the characters. DNFed early on.

DNF #35: Drive: An Expanse Short Story by James S. A. Corey. I keep trying to get into the Expanse universe (both TV show and book series) and I keep failing. I thought this short story might hook me, but (unsurprisingly) I was pretty lost without knowing any of the characters.

DNF #36: Navola by Paolo Bacigalupi. Bacigalupi writes amazingly good end of the world/environmental disaster stuff, but he got bored of that so tried his hand at fantasy. It's 99.9% historical fiction and .1% fantasy. None of the characters worked for me, so DNFed it pretty early on. I'll stick with Bacigalupi's more typical stories.
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I Must Betray You by Ruta Sepetys.

Quick synopsis: Set in Romania in 1989, the citizens of the country are starving under Nicolae Ceaușescu. The story follows a young boy (Cristian) as he lives through the end of Ceaușescu's rule and revolution.

Brief opinion: I almost never read books set in the real world, but I'm always interested in stories set in Communist countries and I've never read one set in Romania, so I picked this one up. For a YA book, it was quite chilling! It glossed over very little (torture was briefly describe but sexual assault was only mentioned in a line -- that had to have been happening a lot more during this time).

Plot: Romania, 1989. The secret police have every apartment bugged. Nearly every citizen is reporting on their neighbors. And everyone has to wait on hours long lines for the most rotten bits of food. People can be dragged in and questioned/tortured for any reason at all... or for no reason.

Cristian is a boy (preteen? teen?) living at home with his family. Parents, grandfather, brother and sister all living in a one bedroom apartment that usually has no electricity or heat. He's a good student, but his grandfather remembers when the country was free and speaks too often and too loudly of that.

The family comes to the attention of the secret police and things go from bad to worse for Cristian. Eventually revolution spreads across the country, but the story handles it as a realistic thing: So much death, pain, and a slow shift of power until the military changes sides.

Writing/editing: Both were excellent.

What I Liked/What I Didn’t Like: There were only two things I didn't like, one small and one big:

The small one was that every chapter (all 81 of them) had a title in Romanian -- untranslated. I wish a translation had been included.

The big one was that I didn't enjoy the ending (the revolution, though it wasn't so much a "happy ending"). It makes complete sense to include it when you're telling the story of Romania and Ceaușescu, but I was more interested in the secret police, neighbors spying on neighbors, and life under Communist dictatorship rule.

I liked everything else. All the characters, from big to tiny, were completely believable. The setting was so well described. The writing was great.

Rating: 1-Hated / 2-Disliked / 3-Okay / 4-Liked / 5-Loved: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️½. My interest wavered through the ending, even though it made complete sense to finish the book with the revolution.

[Edit: Ah ha, this author also wrote Between Shades of Gray, which I read in 2017, about a young girl living under Communist in Lithuania. I gave that book five stars; clearly I need to read more by this author!]

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DNF #32: Braking Day by Adam Oyebanji. An adult fiction book that felt very much like a YA one. (Some people might mean that as an insult, but I don't.)

Set on a generation ship leaving Earth and heading for a new world, Ravi is an engineer-in-training... and also the worst kind of YA main character. He was supposed to be a smart kid, but even when the lives of everyone on the ship could be at risk, he never did the smart thing: Just tell an adult what's happening.

DNFed about 40% in.
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NPCs (Spells, Swords, Stealth Book 1) by Drew Hayes.

Quick synopsis: Adventures in a D&D-like world.

Brief opinion: [Originally read in 2015, review here.] Ten years ago I rated this book as "Loved", but a decade later I had the opposite feeling about it.

Plot: The story started in the real world. A group is playing Dungeons and Dragons Spells, Swords, & Stealth. The players are all young boys (teens? pre-teens?) and they're just the worst, most miserable people ever.

Their characters got killed and the story shifted to the game world -- how all the NPCs in the game world react to four people just falling over dead (the PCs had earlier eaten poison mushrooms by mistake).

The story follows four NPCs and they take the roles the PCs had had -- they become adventurers.

Writing/editing: The writing style didn't work for me and there were a couple of editing issues.

What I Liked/What I Didn’t Like: I liked the idea of this story, but for some reason it was such a slog to get through. I kept wanting to DNF it from the 20% point or so on, but I had loved it in 2015, so I thought the issue was me.

By the 50% point I didn't care what the issue was, I just wanted to DNF it, but instead I kept pushing through. I finished it, but I wish I had dropped it early on -- I didn't enjoy it at all at any point.

Rating: 1-Hated / 2-Disliked / 3-Okay / 4-Liked / 5-Loved: ⭐️⭐️ - Disliked

DNF #31: The Werewolf's Guide to Life: A Manual for the Newly Bitten by Ritch Duncan and Bob Powers. A fiction non-fiction book. As the title says, it was like a reference manual for werewolves. No plot, just a reference manual.

There was nothing wrong with it, and it was even kind of interesting, but without a plot I had no drive to read it. Still, I got more than a third of the way through it.

DNF #32: The Misfit Soldier by Michael Mammay. I really disliked the main character and the writing style, so I checked reviews and saw my initial feeling on the book was correct (plus it's sexist, though I hadn't gotten far enough in to see that yet). DNFed early on.
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Saturation Point by Adrian Tchaikovsky.

Quick synopsis: Set in the near future when the Earth is becoming too hot for humans, evolution does what evolution does... and humans do what humans have always done.

Brief opinion: A really heavy-handed global warming story. This was going to be my vacation read, but it was short enough that I finished it before I left. I'm glad I did, since I didn't like it much and I'd rather read something I'm really enjoying while I fly.

Plot: A large portion of Earth (the "Zone") is no longer fit for humans to live in -- it's too hot and too humid, humans die in minutes there. Twenty years ago a research group entered the Zone to see if something could be done to make it fit for humans. All of them died except Dr. Jasmine Marks.

As the story opens, Dr. Marks is contacted to go back into the Zone (which no one has in the 20 years since she was last there) to help rescue an aircraft that went down.

The truth comes out quickly enough -- there was no aircraft, but there are secrets that will change the future of humanity.

Writing/editing: Tchaikovsky's books always have basic editing issues (things that spellcheckers won't catch, like using "head" instead of "hear" -- "She couldn't head him"). I'm guessing his publisher must cut corners on editing, which is really frustrating.

What I Liked/What I Didn’t Like: The Zone was very well described and I could picture it easily. I didn't like any of the characters though, especially the main character -- for a doctor who had experience with the Zone, she really came off as rather stupid (another review described her as "really, truly, deeply quite stupid").

Rating: 1-Hated / 2-Disliked / 3-Okay / 4-Liked / 5-Loved: ⭐️⭐️⭐️ - Okay. Rating it okay is being generous.

-----

I never ever ever listen to audio books. My brain just can't pay attention to them, I miss too much. But so many people said the audio book version of Dungeon Crawler Carl was amazing, so finally I signed up for Audible and listened to it. They were all right!

You can find the plot details in my original review from last year here: https://thistle-chaser.livejournal.com/1746238.html

The narrator, Jeff Hays, did so many voices, it felt like a cast of people instead of just him.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️- Loved. I loved it in the text version and I think I loved it even more in the audio version.

On to listening to book #2 next!
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Lightspeed Magazine, Issue 61, June 2015: Queers Destroy Science Fiction! by Assorted.

Quick synopsis: Basically an anthology book plus nonfiction articles and 30 essays.

Brief opinion: I skipped the articles and essays and only read the fiction (I was hoping to find some new authors). I enjoyed some of the stories, but a lot weren't to my tastes.

Plot: Varied in both subject matter and lengths (everything from flash fiction to novella).

Surprisingly there was one story (Helping Hand) that had been made into a Love Death + Robots episode. Happy surprise to encounter it here! (The episode wasn't bad, but the story was better.)

There were a couple stories I enjoyed (maybe 2 of 14?), but even scanning a list of titles in this issue I couldn't recall which ones they were, so I guess they hadn't made much of an impact on me.

Writing/editing: Both were generally fine.

What I Liked/What I Didn’t Like: One story not just used neo-pronouns but extra-neo ones? The main character's pronoun was "e". I just couldn't read that story at all, it tripped me up too much.

Rating: 1-Hated / 2-Disliked / 3-Okay / 4-Liked / 5-Loved: ⭐️⭐️⭐️ - Okay. I didn't hate many of the stories, I loved none of them, most were some variation on okay.


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Eyes on the Ice by Anna Rosner.

Quick synopsis: Set in the 1960s in Communist Czechoslovakia, a family tries to survive under the brutal regime.

Brief opinion: I enjoy reading stories set in this period, but this one was more lightweight than usual (probably because the target audience was younger). Still, it was interesting and I enjoyed it.

Plot: Lukas and his brother Denys love all things hockey. While their focus is on trying to play (equipment is too expensive, but they make do with what hand-me-downs and used skates), their parents are just trying to feed the family and survive.

One day the "Eye" (secret police) arrest their father and their whole family falls apart. The mother (who had just given birth) had to try to parent and somehow feed her four kids (Lukas, Denys, their younger brother Alex, and the newborn baby girl).

The ending, which involved an escape by hijacking a train, wasn't all that believable, but also happened in real life (the book is based on that event/family).

Writing/editing: Both were very good.

What I Liked/What I Didn’t Like: The only complaint I have isn't a fair one: I would have liked this to be darker, more of the horrible details of that time period made clearer. This was a middle grade book though, so within that restriction the amount of darkness and detail seems reasonable.

Rating: 1-Hated / 2-Disliked / 3-Okay / 4-Liked / 5-Loved: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ ½ - Liked.
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Bravelands: Thunder on the Plains #2: Breakers of the Code by "Erin Hunter" (Rosie Best).

Quick synopsis: A young cheetah (Stride) is helping a holy elephant to save the world. A buffalo calf (Whisper) is trying to save her brother and through him the world. A young hyena falls in with the dark side.

Brief opinion: "Erin Hunter" (a group of eight writers working under that name) has published 400+ books in 20 years. All of them follow the same formula; this book was no exception.

Plot: Stride the young cheetah has lost his mate, so now he's traveling with a honey badger to try to save her spirit from the Great Devourer (evil god). And also save the world.

Whisper the buffalo calf needs to save her younger brother (Echo) and restore him to his place as rightful leader of the herd. And also save the world.

Breathsnatcher the young hyena is trying to save her clan, and in doing so makes bad choices and ends up working with the evil god.

Book 2 of 6. If you've read any other series by the Erin Hunter group you'll know exactly where all this is going.

Writing/editing: While the writing is fine (I think Rosie Best is the best of the Erin Hunter writers) I wish she had done even basic research on the animals she's writing about. For example, repeatedly she described the cheetahs as having retractable claws...

What I Liked/What I Didn’t Like: I don't like that the gods of the world are real, actual things, but they are in all the other book series "Erin Hunter" writes, so that's just part of the same formula they never stray from.

Rating: 1-Hated / 2-Disliked / 3-Okay / 4-Liked / 5-Loved: ⭐️⭐️⭐️ - Okay. I didn't dislike it, but it didn't hold my attention either. I doubt I'll continue with this series.

DNF #27: Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry. For some reason the author spoiled his whole story in the book's Forward. That annoyed me, but I also didn't like his writing at all, so DNFed pretty early on.

DNF #28: The Arctic Code by Matthew J. Kirby. This is an author I usually like, and the idea was interesting (thanks to environmental damage, the Earth has entered a new ice age), but the story just didn't hold my interest at all.

DNF #29: War Stories: New Military Science Fiction by various authors. I read this (for a second time) in 2024, I guess I forgot to delete it off my Kindle? Anyway, it was way too fresh in my memory to read again.

DNF #30: Foreigner by C.J. Cherryh. While the idea was really interesting (spaceship from Earth crashes on an already populated alien planet), the writing drove me up a wall. Redundant? It was redundantly redundant in the most redundantly redundant way it was redundantly possible to be redundant.
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DNF #25: The Dark Tower III: The Waste Lands by Stephen King. It makes me very sad that I'm DNFing this series, I loved it 20 or so years ago. But I disliked book 1, hated book 2, and book 3 just didn't hold my interest at all (I made it about two-thirds of the way through).

I think giving a series almost three books to interest me is fair, so I'm just DNFing the whole thing now.

DNF #26: The Spellshop by Sarah Beth Durst. Have you ever met someone who claims to have social anxiety so bad they can't function? Can't make a phone call, can't go outside, even an everyday interaction is something they say is beyond them? Well this main character makes that kind of person look like a social butterfly.

The story never hooked me, the main character was the worst, and checking the reviews I saw this was the kind of romance I hate most (sexy male character loves the main female character for zero reason, and she's all "he could never love me"...) so I just DNFed it.
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The Drawing of the Three by Stephen King.

Quick synopsis: Near death, Roland the last gunslinger has adventures in the 1960s and 1980s US.

Brief opinion: Do you have a lack of the word "nigger" in your life? Then get reading this book! I swear it was used more times than I've heard or read in the last 30 years total. Also the story was zero fun at all; I skimmed or skipped multiple chapters. Also it had what every good, believable romance needs: Instant love...

Plot: Picking up just a few hours after after book 1 ended, Roland wakes up on a beach. A lobster-like creature is attacking him. It bites off two of his fingers and one of his toes. He fights it off, then continues down the beach. The wounds quickly become infected and he becomes very sick.

He finds a door just hanging in thin air. By going through it, he ends up in Eddie (heroin addict)'s body while Eddie is in the middle of trying to transport cocaine into the US. Roland helps Eddie through that, including a shoot-out with a mafia boss and his gang.

Together the two (Roland really sick now and Eddie going through withdrawal) continue down the beach and find another door. Through it is Odetta Holmes/Detta Walker, a woman with "schizophrenia" (dissociative identity disorder/multiple personality disorder, but I guess when this book was published in the 80s, they called it schizophrenia?). I'm sure he helped her out with something, but I couldn't stand her character and I skipped her chapters.

Together the three find a third door, through it a sociopath. Roland takes control of his body to get revenge for something the sociopath did to Odetta, buy a bunch of boxes of ammo and antibiotics, and then steals a cop car and goes on a high speed trip through New York City.

Eddie falls in love with Odetta instantly, and before the book ends she has "married" him (taken his last name, no way to really marry).

Writing/editing: The one positive about this book is that the writing was a lot closer to King's standards than The Gunslinger was.

What I Liked/What I Didn’t Like: Remember how in my review of book one I complained that female characters existed only for Roland to fuck or to have angsts over when they were murdered? The first 50% of this book was even worse! There were no female characters at all other than two really minor characters (flight attendants)! Ugh.

But worse than that was the racial stuff. At the 50% point we meet the third main character of the series, Odetta Holmes/Detta Walker. Her Detta Walker personality spoke in the most "jive turkey" slang possible. It was so unpleasant to read. It felt like a racist caricature (which it sort of was on purpose, but that didn't make it any more enjoyable to read).

The whole book just felt so unnecessary. Half the book was set in Eddie's America and most of the other half in Odetta/Detta's. Sure we needed backstories on these two main characters, but an entire book?

Rating: 1-Hated / 2-Disliked / 3-Okay / 4-Liked / 5-Loved: ⭐️ ½ - I really, really did not enjoy this book.
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The Gunslinger (Dark Tower 1) by Stephen King.

Quick synopsis: The world's last Gunslinger (kind of like a knight but of the Old West) moves through a world nearing its final days.

Brief opinion: Decades after this book was originally published, King wrote a new, very long Forward talking about how the writing in this book isn't up to par anymore, and I agree with him. He's had nearly 50 years of writing experience since he wrote this book, and that shows. It's not bad at all, but some of the writing and a couple plot choices were noticeably not up to his current standards.

Plot: Roland (unnamed for most of the book, referred to only as the Gunslinger) is the last of his kind. The last Gunslinger. People and the world have "moved on" -- the world is winding down, not many people left, soon everything will be dead.

Roland's last quest is to find the Dark Tower, but a step along that way is to kill the Man in Black. Most of the book is him chasing that man, through a desert and through a network of caves under a mountain.

Along the way Roland finds a boy from our world (Jake). The two travel for a time before Roland has to make a decision: Save Jake's life or kill the Man in Black.

Writing/editing: King was 23 when he wrote this, and at that time he intended for this to be an epic series on par with Lord of the Rings, and that shows. The writing is at times unnecessarily wordy, and he seems to shove in fancy words when a simple one would have fit better. I don't have my Kindle at hand, but in one place he used a word that means "unable to feel sensations" to describe a cave wall...

What I Liked/What I Didn’t Like: My biggest issue with this book was the lack of roles for women in this story. The 3? 4? named female characters in the book existed only for him to fuck or for them to be killed to give the Gunslinger emotional pain (or both). It was so disheartening to read.

I did really like the worldbuilding a lot. A fantasy world (or parallel one?), but with hints of things from our world.

This was a reread, sort of. I read it in the early 1980s, long long before I was doing reviews so I have nothing to link to. Unfortunately I still remember the big plot points (and how the whole series ends).

Rating: 1-Hated / 2-Disliked / 3-Okay / 4-Liked / 5-Loved: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ - Liked. On to book 2!
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And with this post, we're done with this round of the Alphabet Game.

Y: The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year, Volume Four
Z: The Zodiac Legacy: Convergence

The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year, Volume Four by Jonathan Strahan (editor).

Quick synopsis: 28 or so of the so-called "best" stories of the year (2010).

Brief opinion: Either the "best" is subjective or 2010 was the very worst year ever for stories. Of the last "best of..." anthology I read edited by Jonathan Strahan I said "Who is Jonathan Strahan and why is his taste in fiction such a bad match for mine?" I felt that even more strongly this time.

Plot: Of the 28 or so stories, there were only two that were better than awful, and even then not enough for me to remember their plots.

The final story was about a cat in Japan, but it had the same issue many bad talking animals stories share: The cat might as well have been human, she knew too much, she didn't come off as a cat at all.

Writing/editing: Technical-wise, both were fine.

What I Liked/What I Didn’t Like: Of the first three stories, two had detailed sex scenes, and further into the book was a story that was nothing but an alien raping a woman. I'm not a prude, but wow that was a lot of sex.

But all in all, this collection of stories completely, 100% did not work for me in the slightest.

Rating: 1-Hated / 2-Disliked / 3-Okay / 4-Liked / 5-Loved: ⭐️ - Hated. This book made me hate reading...

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DNF #21: The Zodiac Legacy: Convergence by Stan Lee and Stuart Moore. I would 100000% believe that Stan Lee had a hand in writing this. It was full of "comic book logic" -- stuff you have to turn your brain off for and just go along with (like a class of middle grade students going to Hong Kong for a class trip...).


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Two DNFs I found on my Kindle that I seem to have forgotten to post about.

DNF #22: Kelcie Murphy and the Academy for the Unbreakable Arts by Erika Lewis. Harry Potter with Irish mythology. Too unoriginal for me. Yawn.

DNF #23: The Leopard Behind the Moon by Mayonn Paasewe-Valchev. Set in a world in an African myth. I thought it would be interesting, but the "world logic" was just too unrealistic for me.

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