Snips and Snails and Puppy Dog Tales

The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year, Volume Six (2011) edited by Jonathan Strahan.

Quick synopsis: This book is exactly what it says on the tin, though "best" is highly subjective.

Brief opinion: Who is Jonathan Strahan and why is his taste in fiction such a bad match for mine? I got a number of these "Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year" from the last ten years or so in hopes of finding new authors to read, but I'm throwing the rest of them out.

Plot: Each story listed below. There are so many of them, sorry this is long.

The Case of Death and Honey by Neil Gaiman. ⭐️⭐️ A Sherlock Holmes story. I don't think I've read one before in my life, and if this was a typical example of those stories, I can't see that changing. Holmes, bored of easy-to-solve murder cases, decides to take on the case of mortality. He solves it through beehives. Somehow. The story doesn't even hint as to how that's possible; Holmes spends a year taking care of a beehive, finds out the secret of immortality. No more details than that.

The Cartographer Wasps and the Anarchist Bees by E. Lily Yu. ⭐️⭐️ I have no idea if there was a message in this story that I missed or if it was just a weird story. A "talking animal" story sort of, but with bees and wasps. But the bees and wasps were politicians and nations. I just didn't get it.

Tidal Forces by Caitlín R Kiernan. ⭐️ Another story I just didn't get. A meandering horror thing. By this point I was feeling either this book wasn't going to work for finding new authors or I had somehow become very stupid.

Younger Women by Karen Joy Fowler. ⭐️ I think this one was a commentary on Twilight. In it an ancient vampire fell in love with (or claimed to fall in love with) a high school girl. The girl's mother wanted to know why a powerful ancient creature would take high school over and over. No good answers were given.

White Lines on a Green Field by Catherynne M. Valente. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ I thought this might be a pen name of Seanan McGuire (she thanked her in the intro to the story), but google says nope. The writing reminded me a lot of McGuire's, it was so lyrical and descriptive. I saved more quotes from this story than I do from a dozen books, which makes sense since Valente is a poet first and foremost.

The story is about Coyote, the mythical trickster, who comes visits a high school and settles into the town for a year. But even more than the story, I enjoyed the writing so much. It was so descriptive and sexy and this was just such a great story. I need to find more things by her.

All That Touches The Air by An Owomoyela. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Humans have settled on another planet, but there are already parasitic aliens on that planet. If the air touches you, they can get inside you and take over. I enjoyed it and will look for other books by this author.

What We Found by Geoff Ryman. ⭐️⭐️ Set in Africa, it was a story of a man trying to live with his father's mental illness. Wasn't very fantasy or sci-fi-ish. DNF.

The Server and the Dragon by Hannu Rajaniemi. ⭐️⭐️ If you really, really like computer networking, you'll love this story. An AI lands on an alien planet and has to set up a network. In exacting detail. DNF.

The Choice by Paul McAuley. ⭐️⭐️ Set after the Earth is messed up by global warming but aliens have arrived to save us, the story was lost in a mess of backstory and I lost interest. DNF.

Malak by Peter Watts. ⭐️⭐️ Some scientists attempted to give a weapons system AI morality. That sounds a lot interesting than the story was. DNF.

Old Habits by Nalo Hopkinson. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ People who die in a shopping mall become ghosts who cannot leave the mall. Unlike typical ghosts, these can't see or hear the living people around them. Good story that ended on a way too open ending/cliffhanger.

A Small Price to Pay for Birdsong by K. J. Parker. ⭐️⭐️ I'm starting to think I'm not a good match for the "best" stories out there. This one was so long winded (others called it "descriptive"), I just wanted to yell "Get to the point already!". It was about two musicians living in the Renaissance and who knows beyond that. DNF.

Valley of the Girls by Kelly Link. ⭐️ DNFed nearly off the bat. The main character's name was shown as "[]" and the second character was "[hero]". It annoyed me too much to try to figure out what the story even was.

Brave Little Toaster by Cory Doctorow. ⭐️ Another reviewer said "I can't help thinking that Doctorow is a bit pretentious..." and I agree. I HATED this one so much. It came off as so smug. I think it was supposed to be funny, but I didn't find it the least bit amusing. I almost DNFed the whole book here. I read another book by this author in 2023 and hated that one just as much as I did this story, so I guess this author is just not for me. (I would have DNFed this one, but in a book where every story was an hour+ of reading time, this one was only seven minutes long.)

The Dala Horse by Michael Swanwick. ⭐️ A "stylish" retelling of Little Red Riding Hood. I don't like retellings and I hated the writing in this one. DNF.

The Corpse Painter’s Masterpiece by M Rickert. ⭐️⭐️ DNFed it fast. I don't even know anymore.

The Paper Menagerie by Ken Liu. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ I had read and loved this one before. I wish I could have read it again for the first time. Set in the real world, a mother has the power to bring origami to life. Her son loves his paper tiger, but when he turns from his Chinese background to a more American one, the magic fades.

Steam Girl by Dylan Horrocks. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Good story, though it lacked an ending. It was about a girl who was bullied and wrote good stories or a girl who was forced onto an alternate Earth by an evil enemy. The story just kind of stopped instead of coming to any kind of conclusion though.

After the Apocalypse by Maureen F. McHugh. ⭐️ Semicolons used as commas, commas misused. DNFed early on.

Underbridge by Peter S. Beagle. ⭐️ Semicolons used as commas. How could such a famous, experienced writer use semicolons incorrectly? Why didn't an editor fix them? DNF.

Relic by Jeffrey Ford. ⭐️ Religious story. DNFed early on.

The Invasion of Venus by Stephen Baxter. ⭐️⭐️ Aliens are invading... but most of the story was about a romantic couple. DNF.

Woman Leaves Room by Robert Reed. ⭐️⭐️ DNF.

Restoration by Robert Shearman. ⭐️⭐️ At first this one seemed interesting. A new person was assigned to help an art museum restore some old paintings (there was a painting for every year of human history, showing what happened in that year). Then it just kept getting more and more weird. Completely illogical things happened. It started to seem like they might be in hell? Then it got just totally unrealistic. I went from maybe-enjoying it to disliking it by the end.

The Onset of a Paranormal Romance by Bruce Sterling. ⭐️ DNF.

Catastrophic Disruption of the Head by Margo Lanagan. ⭐️⭐️ Another retelling of another story. DNF.

The Last Ride of the Glory Girls by Libba Bray.⭐️ Grammar issues (and I don't mean in the character's stylized dialogue). DNF.

The Book of Phoenix (Excerpted from The Great Book) by Nnedi Okorafor. ⭐️⭐️ Humans raised as bio-experiments want to be free. Finished but didn't like.

Digging by Ian McDonald. ⭐️⭐️ DNF.

The Man Who Bridged the Mist by Kij Johnson. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Novella -- 2+ hours to read where most other stories in this book were about an hour. Set on a fantasy or alien world, Mist is a dangerous thing. It usually appears where water does (rivers, lakes, oceans), and kills people. One architect is sent to build a bridge over a great river of Mist. Sounds boring, but it was really interesting (both the technical details, the world building, and all the people he got to know).

Goodnight Moons by Ellen Klages. ⭐️ I'd give this story negative stars if I could. What a fitting end to this slog of a book. Earth is sending a crew to Mars. By completely unbelievable chance, one of the astronauts became pregnant. She send a message to her husband telling him she'll have to abort it. He sent back "I can't let you do that" and then released her news to the media to force her not to abort it. Her feelings on that were never even mentioned. What an awful thing for a spouse to do and she never even got mildly annoyed over it! No reaction at all!

Writing/editing: Some stories were perfect, a couple used semicolons wrong, one used semicolons wrong and had comma issues, one had quite a few issues (like misspellings).

What I Liked/What I Didn’t Like: I'm writing this with 11 more stories still to go: This book is hell. There are way way way too many stories I don't like compared to ones I do, plus it's really long (24+ hours of reading time).

Now that I'm done with it: Even having liked Bridged the Mist and a couple others, holy cow did I hate this book. It felt like it would never end, I just kept reading story after story I disliked.

I read this book to try to find new authors to read, but all the ones I like mostly only write short stories. I got a couple collections of short stories from them, but no new books to read...

Rating: 1-Hated / 2-Disliked / 3-Okay / 4-Liked / 5-Loved: Averaging all 32 stories comes to 2.06, so that would be two stars for the whole book, but I hated it so much that so I'm knocking off a star. ⭐️

Skyward by Brandon Sanderson.

Quick synopsis: What first seemed like yet another "spunky teenage girl vs dystopian government" story quickly become so much more. A sci-fi story set on an alien planet, humanity is trying to survive against what seems an impossibly strong alien race.

Brief opinion: I really, really loved this story. Through the first chapter I thought it would be the same story I've read so often, but it quickly became a cool, unique sci-fi story.

Plot: Spensa's one goal in life is to become a pilot (of a space fighter ship) like her father. But when it turns out her father is a coward who had to be killed by his own squad, Spensa is left in a bad place. The only thing this last of the human race cares about is honor, victory, and fighting. There's no room for, or trust in, the daughter of a coward.

Spensa fights her way into flight school, when even the highest ranking military people don't want her anywhere near the military.

She eventually finds an ancient ship and an ability (or defect) in her brain that could change the entire war.

Writing/editing: The writing was great! I felt like I was always on the edge of my seat through it all. The editing though... In his acknowledgement he thanked a copyeditor, a proofreader, and a whole team of alpha, beta, and gamma readers who helped find editing issues, so how did so many get through? (It was far, far, far from unreadable, but a traditionally published book really should have no editing issues in it...)

What I Liked/What I Didn’t Like: I loved how many layers there were to the story and how clues were scattered through the whole thing.

The relationships (friendships mostly) were all believable and everyone grew through the story.

Often times in a YA book the adult characters are nothing but cardboard cutouts and roadblocks, but that wasn't at all the case here.

And what I really like is that there are three more books already published in this series and a bunch of novellas! On to book 2!

Rating: 1-Hated / 2-Disliked / 3-Okay / 4-Liked / 5-Loved ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️- Loved. I didn't even have to think about that for a moment.

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Edit: I found two DNF books on my Kindle that I never mentioned. I'm listing them here just to get them in my count.

DNF #87: Conservation of Shadows by Yoon Ha Lee. Usually I like this author, but the language in this collection of short stories didn't work for me.

DNF #88: The Forever Ship by Scott Bartlett and Joshua James. Poorly written self-published book with a ton of purchased 5 star reviews.

Scorpio (Frontlines: Evolution Book 1) by Marko Kloos.

Quick synopsis: Set on an Earth colony on a distant planet, aliens are intent on wiping out the humans and taking the planet for themselves. Alex and her dog Ash are two of only 150 humans left.

Brief opinion: This should have been the perfect book for me. The story sounds so good (a small number of people and a couple dogs trying to survive against an alien force), but I spent most of the book bored out of my skull.

Plot: On a distant planet named Scorpio, more and more humans are arriving to turn it into another planet for humanity. Then one day the "Lankies" (60+ feet tall aliens) show up. There is no communication between the two races, the Lankies just try to kill off humans whenever they find them on a planet.

Before the story started, most of the humans on the planet were killed by the Lankies. As the plot begins, it's eight years later and there are just a handful of humans left. Humans and a few military dogs.

Though Alex is young (a teenager), she works as one of the dog handlers, so she goes out with the military troops on missions. The first half of the book was just missions to try to find supplies while avoiding the Lankies.

Around the 50% point the humans' luck runs out and they're about to be overrun when the space marines arrive to fight the Lankies (they had had no idea any humans were left on the planet). The humans and few dogs are rescued.

The next 40% or so of the book was just Alex trying to get used to living on Earth again. Unsurprisingly, since this is a military sci-fi story, in the end Alex decides to join the armed forces to fight the Lankies.

Writing/editing: The technical writing and editing were both very good. But story-wise... I can't put my finger on why this story was so mind-numbingly boring. The missions had action in them, but the didn't hold my attention at all. Alex's time on Earth was even more boring. For some reason I did enjoy reading the ending (Alex in the recruiting office).

What I Liked/What I Didn’t Like: Other reviewers described this book as "the intro book to a series" and that's kind of what it felt like. It wasn't a book, it wasn't a story in its own right, it was just getting Alex into the military so the author could write the rest of the series.

Even after reading the whole book, I feel like I don't know Alex beyond "teenage girl". She felt more like a tool of the author than a real character.

I was really, really annoyed when Ash the dog utterly vanished at the 50% point of the book. He's on the cover! Then poof, gone, no more interaction with him and the story continued as if he had never existed. (This goes with Alex not feeling like a real person. She was Ash's handler, they worked together daily on the planet.)

Also I really, really didn't like "Lankies" as a name for the aliens. I get that they were tall/lanky, but still.

Rating: 1-Hated / 2-Disliked / 3-Okay / 4-Liked / 5-Loved: ⭐️⭐️ - Disliked. I suspect the series will get better after this introduction book, but I don't think I'll continue with it.

If you've only watched the Little House on the Prairie TV series and you think Charles Ingalls was a great father and wonderful husband, do not read this review or this book unless you're willing to see how wrong that fiction is.

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Caroline: Little House, Revisited by Sarah Miller.

Quick synopsis: The original Little House on the Prairie books were told from Laura's (middle daughter) POV. This book told the same story, but from Caroline's (Laura's mother, Charles's wife) POV.

Brief opinion: I have never hated such a well written book before. I kept thinking I should DNF it, I wish I had gone with that feeling. Charles Ingalls drove me insane. How could a man love his wife and kids, yet not once consider their feelings, wants, or needs? Was it because women were so little valued back then? Not considered as important as men? Or was it just Charles's personality? UGH. This was the WORST.

Plot: Set back in the 1870s, Charles, pregnant Caroline, five year old Mary, and three year old Laura had a good life. Nice home, safe area to live in, extended family all around them. But Charles has, as Caroline described it, feet full of wanderlust. He could not be happy in one place.

So he packed up his little girls, his newly pregnant wife, and gave away most of their belongings so he could go west. Caroline knew the risk to her pregnancy from spending weeks in a wagon bouncing over rough trails. The whole family knew the risks of "Indians" and such. Not to mention selling their beloved home and giving away most of their belongings. But Charles wasn't happy in one place, so off he dragged his family.

The first third of the book was them traveling in the wagon. It felt as slow to read as it must have been for them traveling. It felt like it took me weeks to read it. Small things happened, but the author seemed to describe every single day on the road.

When finally they reached Kansas, Caroline was quite dismayed that "Indian Territory" had "Indians" in it. Charles couldn't care less, he wasn't worried at all even though his wife and children were scared out of their skin. Native Americans would just enter their home whenever they liked, look over their stuff, and take what they want. One day a pair of them forced Caroline cook bread for them. Charles literally could not understand his wife being scared. In the end they hadn't hurt her, so why had she been scared?

The end of the story made me want to pull my hair out and throw my Kindle across the room. After the months long wagon trip, after a year of trying to make a home in Kansas, they turned around and went back to where they started from (somewhere in the East, I forget which state it was). The sale of their previous house fell through, so they went back there to live.

This whole story for nothing! Pointless pain, pointless travel, pointless making a home in a new, wild state. All the characters ended up exactly where they had started! Just with more loss, more pain, fewer belongings!

Writing/editing: The technical writing was fine, the editing was good. The pacing was really off though. The first third of the book could have been made into a single chapter.

What I Liked/What I Didn’t Like: I cannot believe how much I hate Charles Ingalls now. I should have known; I know TV shows are rarely accurate to their sources. I saved so many quotes from the book about him and other things that drove me crazy.

She would not have them shame themselves on her account.

All through the book, the women had to protect the men's egos. If the man looked upset, the woman had to do something to make sure he didn't cry and shame himself. It was always the woman's responsibility to make the man look good!

whiskers... whiskers... whiskers... whiskers... whiskers... whiskers...

Only once in the whole book was the word "beard" ever used. Otherwise it was endless "whiskers". Ugh, I hated that so much.

All these quotes will tell you all you need to know about Charles:

The day after the whole family almost died crossing a flooded river:
Caroline opened her mouth. Closed it. Had it truly come to him only now?

He never wanted to plan, he thought things would just work out on their own:
Not like Charles, who enjoyed everything the world laid out before him right to the moment it ran out.

Charles's usual blitheness.

His inability to understand that to a woman and children, "Indians" could be a threat:
It was as if he had no concept of malice, Caroline marveled.

Charles simply could not comprehend that she was at their mercy each time an Osage walked into their house.

And Charles, her husband, had the personality of a child:
The look on his face belonged to a child.

He understood. Or rather, he agreed. He did not understand.

Charles smiled back without knowing why, happy, as always, to have pleased her.

All those quotes add up to one thing. I hate the term "manchild", but I swear there is no better way to describe Charles. Did he love his family? Yes. Did he give them one speck of consideration? No. Was he able to think of anyone other than himself? I don't think so. All he cared about was what he wanted or what he would enjoy.

How often the world seemed to bend for Charles, Caroline thought.

And this drove me up a wall. When Caroline dared to feel bad or sad, she discounted her own feelings:
What she felt was nonsensical, she scolded herself.

Rating: 1-Hated / 2-Disliked / 3-Okay / 4-Liked / 5-Loved: ⭐️ - Hated. I have no idea why this book was on my Kindle, I don't remember picking it out. It was written well, and I guess people who loved the other books might enjoy this one as well, but it just wasn't for me.

DNF #85: Ashen Winter (Ashfall #2) by Mike Mullin. After loving the first book so much, it pains me to DNF this one. Book 1 was such a realistic, believable look at a post apocalyptic world, while this book was the opposite.

Nonstop action scenes. The teenage main character being stupid as hell and yet coming out on the other side fine. The whole reason for this story made no sense at all: Alex and Darla were safe on his uncle's farm with food and family, but Alex decided to go look for his parents. Everyone, including Alex, knew they were most likely dead. Plus, even if they were alive, they could be anywhere within two states or further away. With no transportation besides bicycles and walking, no communication other than talking, how do you find someone in that large of area? When there are life-threatening dangers at every turn?

And even worse, when I finally gave up on this book and read reviews, I saw that a love triangle was added into this book. Sigh.

DNF this book. I won't be reading book 3, though I will check reviews to see how this trilogy ends. (Edit: There's supposed to be a book 4, so I guess it's not a trilogy. However his publisher "stopped publishing books" and there hasn't been a peep online from the author since 2018, so who knows.)

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone by J.K. Rowling. [I know the issues with JKR; she got no money for this copy of the book.]

Quick synopsis: Harry Potter, the "Boy who lived", experiences his first year at Hogwarts.

Brief opinion: It's been 20 years or more since I last read this one, and wow it did not hold up at all. The story was so simplistic, some of the characters were the worst (Hagrid must be the most stupid man in both the wizarding and muggle world), and it was just so... superficial. No depth. Just fluffy light "of course the good guys win" story.

Plot: Is there a person on the planet who doesn't know the plot? Harry Potter, abused by his aunt and uncle, turns out to be a wizard and goes off to the best magical school. There he meets the well known characters Snape, Hagrid, and the rest. The conclusion of this one has him besting Voldemort (spoiler!) with help from Dumbledore.

Writing/editing: Editing was perfect, as I'd expect for an almost 30 year old, so-beloved book.

What I Liked/What I Didn’t Like: I was really surprised at how much I didn't enjoy this rereading. I've read Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality (a fanfic the length of 4-5 books that takes HP and makes the story adult/reasonable/believable/realistic) so many times, the original book can't hold a candle to it.

I wouldn't say the characters are caricatures, but they were just so basic. So completely lacking in depth. Hermione was smart and annoying. Ron was a friend. Snape was mean. Hagrid was too stupid to live a friend. Forget about the characters growing, they never even got more of a description than those basic things.

Harry traipsed through the entire plot, it never felt like he was in real danger or that it was hard for him to win. (This might be because I knew the story so well though.)

I was happy that Harry didn't completely win in the end, Dumbledore swept in and saved him.

Rating: 1-Hated / 2-Disliked / 3-Okay / 4-Liked / 5-Loved: ⭐️⭐️⭐️ - Okay. It's probably closer to 2.5 stars. I skimmed through the trials near the end of the book (Fluffy the three headed dog, LARP wizarding chess, the flying keys, etc). I'm not going to be continuing with the series, I might just read Methods of Rationality again instead.

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DNF #84: Zombie Train by David Macinnis Gill. Take a bunch of unlikeable characters and put them into an unbelievable setting and you have this book.

Somehow a handful of 12 year olds were running a modern day train through the zombie apocalypse. The train never stopped moving, but somehow when kids hopped off the train to do something or to have long conversations they were never left behind.

Dogs of War has another cover that I like better than the one of the edition I read, so I google image searched and noticed something odd.



What was that text under it? So I clicked the link and it went to: Hot Fur The Wolf, the worst looking self-published book ever.

Dogs of War by Adrian Tchaikovsky.

Quick synopsis: Set in the future, humans invent "bioforms" (8 foot tall, half animal/half human, with all sorts of cyber augmentation) to do the fighting in wars for them. But what do those bioforms think? Are they human? Do they have rights?

Brief opinion: Reread (my review from 2017) in preparation to read book 2 next. I rated it "loved" at the time, though it was more "okay" this time.

Plot: Rex is an 8 foot tall mastiff/human mix with all sorts of weapons and other tech inside him to help him be a Good Dog (a good soldier, always obeying his Master).

But what happens when his Master is engaging in his own little personal wars in third world countries? When he has his bioform troops committing war crimes? And when the bioforms have no choice but to obey?

There were two stories in this book: Rex's personal one (which I enjoyed), but the larger one was about legal, political, and social impacts of bioforms (which didn't hold my interest at all).

Writing/editing: For a traditionally published book, the editing was seriously rough through this book. Frequent basic editing mistakes.

What I Liked/What I Didn’t Like: I really liked Rex's struggle against his basic instincts as a dog: His need for a master, his need to obey, his need to be a Good Dog.

Sadly I didn't like basically everything else. I can see what the author was trying to say, but in a story it just didn't hold my interest at all. (In my 2017 I skimmed all the chapters not about Rex's personal story, this time I read them all.)

There were two chapters in the book that were chapters from a book one of the characters was writing. I loved those chapters! They gave a much better view of the impact of bioforms on the world than all the chapters set in a courtroom.

Rating: 1-Hated / 2-Disliked / 3-Okay / 4-Liked / 5-Loved: ⭐️⭐️⭐️ - Okay. It pains me to not rate this higher. Hopefully book 2 will be better.


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DNF #84: Women of the Plains: A Tale of 100,000 Years Ago by Brandon S. Pilcher. The writing was clunky and the story's logic made no sense outside of cartoons (like the main character kicked a boulder in anger, but it turned out to be a rhino).

Alien Clay by Adrian Tchaikovsky.

Quick synopsis: Sent as a prisoner to work at a labor camp on an alien planet, Professor Daghdev finally gets to study alien life in person, with all the horror that can include.

Brief opinion: Tchaikovsky is such an amazing sci-fi author. This was one of the best books I read in a long, long time.

Plot: In an extremely authoritarian world, Professor Daghdev is a dangerous thing: a political dissent. Eventually he's taken prisoner and sent off on a one-way trip to a labor camp on a hostile alien world -- Kiln.

His life there has no value. The prisoners on Kiln have no rights. The paid staff and prison guards could not care less what happens to them, and everything on the planet seems to want to "eat" them.

Eating them would at least be a quick death, but what the planet Kiln does is instead infect creatures and taking them over. Filling them with other living creatures until they're simply a meat puppet. (Body horror anyone?)

Eventually Professor Daghdev and the other prisoners discover the truth of Kiln...

The Planet Kiln [This section contains spoilers! Skip it if you intend to read this book.]

The planet deserves a subsection of its own. It was so unlike Earth, yet so realistic and believable!

There was no set number of species on the planet. Every creature (plant, animal) was made up of other creatures. So you might have one creature that specializes in being eyes, another that is really great as a digestive system, and another that simply rocks at being legs. The three might get together, then bring in a "skin" kind of creature and whatever else it needs. So every creature is unique because it is a collection of other creatures to make one whole.

Even the most hostile interactions, predator and prey, are still working to a pattern of mutual benefit.

There was a quote I hadn't saved, something like "If Daniel in the Lion's Den happened in Kiln, the lion would eat Daniel's legs and then attach Daniel's body to its back, becoming his legs."

But let me tell you about Kiln. It makes Earth look like a boxing match. How do you become the fittest on Kiln? It's not about how many enemy empires you can trample to dust with your sandalled feet. Surviving on Kiln is all about how much life you can interlock with.

Earth is about death (killing things, eating things), Kiln is about life. Everything works together which benefits everything, instead of some things benefiting at the expense of others. (That sounds kind of like a political/social message, doesn't it? There was a lot of commentary on that in this book.)

With Kiln germs it's like Earth microbes with a doctorate in invasive fuckery.

You won't die once Kiln takes hold of you, you'll become part of Kiln. First microbes get inside you, then larger things...

One of the coolest parts of this book was that what starts as body horror becomes something good. Kiln inside humans is better than humans are alone. Or does it? That's up to the reader to decide.

Writing/editing: As much as I like Tchaikovsky, it annoys me that he doesn't use serial commas. Also he writes "forever" and "anyways" as two words, which kept tripping me up.

There were also a few editing issues, such as missing periods at the end of a sentence.

"Yeet" was used, which made me grit my teeth. I suppose this book was set in 2023-2024? But by the rest of it I would have thought way in the future -- mankind is on multiple other planets.

There was also a line "There's no holdout of political grousers claiming someone else won the election" which, while could happen on some fictional planet, felt very current times-y (not to mention, this story did not take place on our-Earth).

What I Liked/What I Didn’t Like: I felt like I was holding my breath through this whole book (all 12 hours or so of it). At the 30% point I thought something really bad was going to happen to the main character, but I glanced at the bottom of the screen to see how much of the book was left, and figured it couldn't happen since there was 70% more story. But it did! And the story just kept getting better and better from there... until the end.

As much as I loved most of the story, the ending (last 15% or so) didn't hold my interest as much. I never try to guess what's happening next in any book -- I want the story to carry me along. But I guessed everything that happened in the end, which was very disappointing. (It felt like nothing else could happen in the end; I'm not sure what that says about a story.)

Since the main character is a biologist, a bunch of technical/scientific terms were used. I had to look up so many words with Kindle's feature -- I love that! New words are such a bonus to a great story!

The worldbuilding... *chef's kiss*. The alien planet was so believable! And yet so alien!

I wish there could be more books in this setting, but it feels very much like a stand-alone book.

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

S: Sunspots
T: Fall Down 7 Times Get Up 8
U: Amal Unbound

Amal Unbound by Aisha Saeed.

Quick synopsis: Due to her spunky attitude, young girl Amal ends up as an indentured servant (basically a slave) in the home of the most powerful man in that area of Pakistan.

Brief opinion: I don't usually read books set in the real world, but really enjoyed this one up until the ending.

Plot: Amal is a young girl with a loving family. She's permitted to go to school, and unlike many girls she learns to read. She wants to be a teacher. But after a run-in with the story's Big Bad Guy (Jawad Sahib), she ends up an indentured servant in his house.

Spending most of her time as basically a slave in the home, she slowly gets to know the others working there (paid staff and more indentured servants).

Eventually there's a chance for her to stand up against Jawad Sahib, she takes it, and the story wraps up in one big (unbelievable) happy ending.

Writing/editing: Both were good.

What I Liked/What I Didn’t Like: I've read a couple other books like this before (Pakistani/Muslim girl gets caught by a traditional group and loses all of her freedom and rights), and they all have the same issue: Happy endings.

These stories are always so realistic and reasonable, right up until the end. The girl escapes the seemingly impossible to escape situation and returns home to her family or her western boyfriend. I guess most people would want a happy ending, but it just completely ruins the realism of the story for me.

Also, there was a moment when Jawad Sahib showed a glimpse of humanity and actually seeing Amal as a person. I hoped so hard that the author would run with that plot point, but after the one glimpse it never came up again.

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


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DNF #77: Sunspots by Gary Martin. Unlikeable characters. At first the story held my interest, but soon enough my attention wandered away and was never pulled back. The author described the book as:

The original idea behind 'Sunspots' was for it to be vaguely similar to Star trek, (which he loves all of) but with swearing and knob gags.

Star Trek + cursing and dick jokes? Pass.

His whole author's blurb was full of so many typos (as you can see from "Star trek" in that quoted line).

DNF #78: Fall Down 7 Times Get Up 8 by Naoki Higashida (translated by KA Yoshida). There was nothing wrong with this book, but I read no nonfiction, so I'm not sure what made me pick this one up. Written by a Japanese autistic boy, about what he thinks of the world.

I made it nearly to the halfway point, but the book is so short that wasn't much reading at all.

M: The Last Mapmaker.

The Last Mapmaker by Christina Soontornvat.

Quick synopsis: Sai, pretending she has a social position she doesn't, becomes an assistant to a mapmaker and ends up on an adventure crossing the seas.

Brief opinion: I LOVED most of this story, but everything being wrapped up so quickly in the end strained believability a bit.

Plot: Set in an Asian-ish fantasy world, this MG book tells the story of 12 year old Sai's life. After growing up in the Fens (the slums) with her father in and out of prison and much of her time homeless, by believable chance Sai ends up with a job someone of her station shouldn't have been able to get.

In the story's world, your family's status is everything. Since Sai's family has no status at all, she has to pretend to be from a better family to keep her new job as the mapmaker's assistant.

When the Queen decides her empire needs to expand, Sai and Master Paiyoon (the mapmaker) end up on a mighty ship, headed south through seas "no one" had ever traveled through before. (One of the great parts of this story was how it repeatedly talked about how "newly discovered" lands had actually long since been discovered, especially when populations were already living on them.)

Unfortunately the story's Bad Guy is on the ship as well. She wins Sai over to her side, Sai betrays Master Paiyoon, and eventually there are storms, dragons, shipwrecks, and confrontations before an almost too happy ending.

Writing/editing: Both were perfect. I love this author's writing so much!

What I Liked/What I Didn’t Like: Rereading this section, I realize my list of things I didn't like is long. I loved so much of the story, nearly all of it! My two fair complaints are just about the ending.

There were only two things I didn't like in this book. One is an unfair thing to dislike, the other is a fair one.

Unfair of me to dislike: Everything that went wrong in the story, every bad thing, was a result of Sai not trusting adults -- even adults who had long since proven trustworthy to her. I spent so much of my reading time frowning and being grumpy over her. HOWEVER, she grew up in what was basically the slums, her father and all the adults around her were untrustworthy petty criminals. She had zero reasons to trust adults. So her character was written perfectly... but it was still frustrating.

Fair of me to dislike: I had been certain this was a book series. At an hour of reading time left, I googled so I could get the next book, only to find this was standalone. There was so much story left, nothing was wrapped up, but so little of the book left.

30 minutes of reading time, same situation. I couldn't for the life of me understand how the author would wrap up so much with so few pages left.

15 minutes left, same thing.

In the last short chapter, the author tied up all the plots that weren't directly impacting Sai. So many plot threads, all concluded in a couple lines or a paragraph or two. It was really frustrating. (Though I suspect young readers would only care about Sai, so that would probably be better for them.)

Bonus third thing I didn't like: In the rush of the story's ending, there was mention that the whole nation's system of the importance of family status was changing. I really did not buy that such a big change could happen so quickly or for so little reason.

Rating: 1-Hated / 2-Disliked / 3-Okay / 4-Liked / 5-Loved: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ ½ -- Four and a half stars. I wish I could have given it five, but the ending was just too rushed for me (though adult readers aren't the book's target audience).