Coffee & A Chat – Science Fiction Month

It’s a new glorious day folks. We spent last night having a very small going away party for a friend and celebrating the results of the election. So I come to you this morning, slightly hungover and slowly sipping this coffee. Oh, the wonders that are coffee. I was sick this last week (not covid, I was tested), and threw up coffee. It only put me off for one day. My love of coffee knows no bounds.

Okay well, I don’t see myself ever getting into coffee enemas, so I guess there are SOME bounds.

As many of you are already fully celebrating, November is Science Fiction Month. Usually, I hop on board another blog’s hosting of a sci-fi extravaganza, but not this year. I’m just not feeling the commitment this go-around. If you wish to join in those festivities however, check out Imyril’s blog. It is a great time.

I did decide to take on a sci-fi giant and since it’s a thicker book, I didn’t want to feel rushed reading to make blog content.

I’m already 344 pages in and I am thoroughly enjoying it. I look forward to a lazy Sunday and getting more of this in.

What are your plans for Sci-Fi Month?

Red Mars (Mars Trilogy #1) – Book Review

Published Date: October 1, 1993

Publishing Co.: Spectra Books

Pages: 572

Goodreads Synopsis.

Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

There have been many times that I have said, “The more actual science in science fiction, the better the book,” but, I have met my match it seems. This is the first book that I encountered where I can say that there was too much science and it really dragged me down.

Red Mars explores the possibilities of what will happen when the human race has finally destroyed Earth beyond repair and how they might attempt to terraform and colonize Mars. We follow this idea as they send the first 100 scientists to the planet and they begin the dangerous adventure of building a world that humans can come to. The story is told from the perspective of several different scientists who’s expertise varies and opinions on how things should be done, varies even more. There is conflict but also love and friendship, but preparing a planet for the arrival of a whole other planet, weighs heavy on shoulders on a planet with less gravity.

This book tread the line of being horribly boring and then quickly turning around and being terribly fascinating.

After almost a month and 572 pages of reading, that’s all I really have to say about the book. It was an okay read but not a series that I will be continuing.

Retribution Falls – Book Review

4 out of 5 stars

I have a GR friend who is always suggesting new books to me, we shall call him, Sir Lancer. I have this wonderful habit of adding said books to my TBR pile, or even purchasing them outright based on his suggestion. This wonderful habit evolves into myself not reading them for quite sometime, despite the recommendation. So this past week, I decided that it was time to break my own habits and crack open a Sir Lancer novel!

I am most pleased with that decision.

If you find these things fun: steampunk, swords, guns, cannons, smuggling, piracy, rebellion, daemonism, golems, people with mechanical body parts, airships, sky battles, and alcohol just to name a few things; then you should quit reading this and sign yourself up for adventure immediately!

The crew of the Ketty Jay are a mixed bag of nuts. All hiding from their pasts, all keeping their secrets to themselves, all while attempting to function as a decent crew.
But when they take a job that ends in unintended massacre, set up by an unknown enemy, they must come together quickly to clear their names for neither side in this brewing war believes them.

For most of the book, I enjoyed the other characters more than the MC. However, towards the end even the Cap’n was growing on me. The entire book was entertaining, spunky and at parts hilarious. If you happen to be stuck in a book rut, like I was when I picked this up, it will easily turn the tide for you.

Mighty fine suggestion Sir Lancer.

A Princess of Mars – Book Review

4 out of 5 stars

Finally. Finally, a classic that lives up to the hype. I had almost given up on catching up on all the classics that I have missed but my faith has been renewed.

I loved the memoir style in which it was written. Memoirs have a tendency to become a little plain or boring in my general opinion of such things. But, when the memoir is about your adventures about waking up unexpectedly on Mars, well what could possibly be boring about that?

Burroughs’ creation of the Martian races and civilization were inspired and fun. Great vicious Martian beasts that really only craved a little love from their masters should teach cold hearted humans a thing or two about the animals in their own lives.

My only issues with the story was the easiness with which the hero accomplished some of his more difficult tasks and the love-at-first-sight relationship with the princess. There lies a trope that I’ve always had issue with, but I can manage to overlook it should the story itself prove worthy.

Of course, when I really enjoy a book they always leave off in a cliffhanger fashion.

The Girl With All the Gifts – Book Review

I’ve read a lot of zombie apocalypse novels. A lot. There have been so many variations and so many different origin stories. Some good, some horribly, horribly bad. Then there are the ones that don’t really offer anything new, and poor characterization. These are the most disappointing of the bunch. There are so many things you can do with a zombie apocalypse that it blows my mind when an author manages to make you sleepy at the end of the world.

This novel has a small, boring bump around the 100 page mark but other than that, it was an original zombie apocalypse tale. Persevere, it’s worth it.

That’s me at the very end of the novel.

There’s a strange little girl, a creepy military dude, an angst ridden teacher and a doctor that is dying to slice open the little girl’s brain. What more of a description do you really need from me?

I swear that I’m not being lazy by not giving you any hints of the plot line. Some things are just better savored for oneself.

Now that being said, I wasn’t blown away in awe like a lot of other people either. I didn’t cry at any part, as much as some people swear that it’s so human it will make you cry.
Maybe my heart is just dead, but I still love puppies so I doubt it.

The Three-Body Problem – Book Reviewish

DNF at 26%

I didn’t get far enough to say that there is anything wrong with this book. (Hence, why I’m not actually rating it.) In fact, a lot of the science stuff was fun but I was just not connecting with it. Plus, a more exciting sci-fi book came in from the library and I’ve been enjoying that more already and I’m only 55 pages in. (The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet)

Here’s the summary though because some people in my Goodreads group really enjoyed it. It just wasn’t for me:

“1967: Ye Wenjie witnesses Red Guards beat her father to death during China’s Cultural Revolution. This singular event will shape not only the rest of her life but also the future of mankind.

Four decades later, Beijing police ask nanotech engineer Wang Miao to infiltrate a secretive cabal of scientists after a spate of inexplicable suicides. Wang’s investigation will lead him to a mysterious online game and immerse him in a virtual world ruled by the intractable and unpredicatable interaction of its three suns.

This is the Three-Body Problem and it is the key to everything: the key to the scientists’ deaths, the key to a conspiracy that spans light-years and the key to the extinction-level threat humanity now faces.”

Among Wolves – Book Review

(This will be my first book review in which you experience my ire for crappy writing. I do not mince my words and don’t feel remorse about such things.)

Among Wolves by R.A. Hakok

I think I’m being pranked.

Because I’m looking at reviews and ratings by other people of this book and they are all 4 to 5 stars. And all I can think, is that you guys have a taste for garbage. You enjoy the three day old banana peel sitting at the top of the trash can. When no one is looking, you’re snacking on moldy bread that fell on the floor beside the trash can that someone was too lazy to pick up and throw away properly.

This book is that trash can. A massive heap of garbage.

I mean, the only way you could have possibly liked this is if you don’t read a lot of post-apocalyptic/sci-fi books. The best sci-fi, has actual plausible science in it, at least partially.