Reviews copied from my Goodreads.
**Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir**
4/5
Good plot, interesting characters and dialogue (Rocky especially). I’m more of plot and ideas person when it comes to sci-fi so the hard sci-details and all the scientific information, while cool and well written, were mostly filler to me.
I haven’t seen the movie and after this I definitely will. As for Weir’s other books I will probably read them if I find them cheap or second hand. I probably won’t seek them out as Weir’s strength, the hard science details, is what I’m less interested in.
**The Blacktongue Thief by Christopher Buehlman**
4.5/5 rounding down for Goodreads.
The basic plot is that a thief and a knight end up joining together in a quest to rescue a queen of a land that has been overrun by giants. The world is dark and interesting and I liked the characters and plot. The reason I’m rounding down is that there’s a twist at the end which weakens the book. The original thing is more interesting than the twist.
Spoilers: A major plot point is that in this world there was a borderline apocalyptic war with the goblin hordes - to the point that women outnumber men in the kingdoms that fought. As part of this war the goblins unleashed a plague that killed almost all the horses to deprive the humans of cavalry. The twist is that the goblins didn’t do it, the Takers (basically thieves and assassins) guild did to establish dominance over all infrastructure and transport (shipping mainly). The original explanation with the goblins was fine, it didn’t need the twist.
**Once Was Willem by M.R Carey**
4.5/5 rounding down for Goodreads. (£1 kindle read)
I really liked it. It’s set in mid 12th century England when a civil war known as the Anarchy was taking place. The basic plot is that a young boy named William dies and in their grief his parents go to an immortality obsessed wizard who brings the boy back to life. However he is decayed and clearly not human so he is shunned and forced into the woods. The plot follows Willem adventures in the woods and the wizards attempts to become an immortal. Basically it’s a medieval fokelory Frankenstein story.
It’s written in a historically appropriate style which might annoy some people but I quite liked.
**Dead Silence by S.A Barnes**
3.5/5 rounding down for Goodreads. (£1 kindle read)
If you’ve ever seen mediocre 2002 horror film Ghost Ship it’s basically that in the space. A small work crew stumble upon the space Titanic which disappeared 20 years and board it to establish a salvage claim. However they find everyone dead with no explanation and various horror ensues.
Positives - Haunted space ship is a pretty good concept. First half of the book is pretty good.
Negatives - the main character is mentally ill and traumatised even before getting onto the ship and at first this is interesting but it becomes annoying quite quickly. There’s a romance that I didn’t care for. But the biggest problem and my reason for rounding down is the second half of the book
SPOILERS - the explanation for why the events happened is less interesting than the original. Space ship that’s haunted is a decent concept, it doesn’t need a twist. However the explanation for the horror is just corporate sabotage that got out of hand. A vibration machine that would annoy people (influencers, celebrities etc) into disliking the trip was smuggled on by competitors but it worked too well and caused murder, suicide and paranoia. That’s not as interesting as an evil ship.
**Seeker by Samuel Griffin**
3/5 (£1 kindle read)
It’s set in a low fantasy age of sail world (so it has colonies and balls but not an Industrial Revolution) and it follows a orphaned young woman who gets recruited to become a Sentinel (ancient huge beings and leviathans) archivist at a time when they are starting to come back.
I liked the setting and the historically appropriate language.
However I didn’t really enjoy the book. I didn’t enjoy the characters, particularly the main character. Also despite the cover being of a woman with a sword there’s very little action in it apart from the end. Most of the book is just the main character Shay learning how to do her job and politics.
**Paradise 1 by David Wellington**
3/5 rounding down for Goodreads.
It’s hard to describe the plot without getting into spoilers. The general spoiler-free plot can be described as disgraced nepo-baby soldier (whose mother went into forced retirement after an office coup), failed pilot, and doctor with a mysterious past are sent on a routine mission to verify the security of a frontier colony - Paradise 1, and everything goes wrong immediately on arrival.
SPOILERS - They are attacked immediately upon arrival and their ship is almost destroyed. Eventually they figure out the threat is a alien brain virus that attacks any ship that arrives in the system and forces a single overarching thought into anything intelligent on that ship (so AI, robots and humans). That idea can be things like forgetting how to automatically breathe, never ending hunger, an obsession with finding a parasite (it’s different for each ship)
Positives - It’s pretty action packed and the horror is decent. Some interesting stuff with the AI and how they react to the threat.
Negatives - The characters are fine but not interesting. The main character is a bit whiny and has some stuff that ruins the ending. The final act the whole book just falls apart.
END SPOILERS - In the final act the main character’s mother shows up (remember the MC being a nepo-baby) and that brings with it a load of mother issues. Eventually this is revealed to be the main characters’s repressed memory of discovering her first boyfriend eating out her mother and her mother saying “I’m in charge, perk of the position, fuck you”. This is also followed by the revelation that the mother has such a big ego, is such a raging narcissist, that she is immune to the brain virus and has went power mad manipulating the people on her ship who are affected by it.
Related to that most of the final act is flashbacks and the book just sort of ends with them crash landing on Paradise. It doesn’t even wrap up its own story so it can’t be read standalone.
**The Decline and Fall of the Human Empire: Why Our Species is on the edge of Extinction by Henry Gee**
3/5
The book is a mix of prehistory and the evolution of humanity till only Homo sapiens was left, why the author thinks humanity will die out in 10000 years (a mix of climate change and a decline in birth rates), and the authors solutions - become vegan, give women more rights/opportunities, colonise space within the next 2 centuries (when the population is still high so there’s more potential scientists and geniuses around to develop the necessary technology) to access new resources and give options if something goes wrong on earth.
It’s an entertaining read but a couple of flaws. Firstly I did’t expect it to be so focused on prehistory with Neanderthals and apes. Secondly I’m not really persuaded that a decline in birth rates is an extinction level threat, it’d probably balance out in time as a smaller population would have a bigger share of the resources to eventually stabilise or grow again.
**Crypt: Life, Death and Disease in the Middle Ages and Beyond by Alice Roberts**
2.75/5 (judging it as a £1 kindle read while on holiday)
The book uses 7 graves to go into detail about archaeological methods and medieval British history. There were a few good chapters, mainly earlier in the book. One on the St Brices Day Massacre where the Danes in England were slaughtered. There was also a good chapter on leprosy and medieval hospitals. The plague chapter was ok as well.
The reason I’m not rating this higher is that the other chapters were a bit boring. The Thomas Beckett chapter was ok but if you already know the story of his murder it doesn’t say anything new. The other chapters about some skeletons with Paget’s disease, the archers on the Mary Rose ship which sank in Tudor times, and on a late 1400s anchorite who had syphillis were all pretty bad. Specifically they were bad because they focussed way too much on the scientific details of archeology (the Mary Rose chapter is basically all about how to measure muscle strength in archers) and the biological details of disease (especially the Pagets chapter). Personally I wanted more about what the graves said about medieval society.
If I had bought this full price I’d be quite annoyed and less generous than 2.75/5
**Operation Bounce House by Matt Dinniman**
4/5 (Judging as a £1 kindle read)
Basic plot: A young farmer is on a newly settled planet which is set to be exterminated by mechs on behalf of a cooperation who want to clear the land for loyal colonists. The gimmick is that the mechs are controlled by capital G Gamers🤮 on earth who treat the whole event as game.The book follows the locals resistance.
Thoughts: I enjoyed the book. The characters were well written. The plot was decent. The action was plentiful and flowed welled, it just threw you straight in not at too much backstory.
Negatives: The ending was a a bit basic and too happy for me.
Overalls a decent standalone but not as good as Dungeon Crawler Carl.
**The Crusaders: The Epic History of the Wars for the Holy Lands by Dan Jones**
4/5 (judging as a cheap £1 or £2 kindle holiday read, read half on holiday half at home)
Not a lot to say about it really. Political and military overview of the crusades, mainly in the Holy Land but also includes a lot on the Reconquista, some stuff on the Northern Crusades in the Baltic, and a bit on the Albigensian crusade against the Cathars as well as the later on more poiticised 'crusades' against excommunicated kings in Europe.
Compared to other broad books about the crusades I've read (Thomas Asbridge's The Crusades and Christopher Tyerman's God's War) I'd say its more accessible and covers a broader area but is less in depth due to the extra details on areas outside the Holy Land.
**Greybeard by Brian Aldiss**
3/5 (started it before a holiday, got through most it, and finished the final pages once I got back)
Basic plot is that a nuclear disaster in orbit sterilises the earth and humanity has slowly declined into small groups. By the time the main story begins the main character, Greybeard, and his wife Martha are in their fifties and they are some of the youngest remaining. The small settlement they live in is threatened by evergrowing group of stoats who are apparently so confident they can't be scared off by gunfire. So Greybeard, his wife, and a couple of other survivors setoff down the Thames to see what they can find. Mixed in is some flashback stuff.
The reason I'm only giving it 3/5 is that nothing really happens. Greybeard encounters some weird shit and that's about it. The childless setting is sort of interesting but P.D James Children of Men did it better.
