In any case, now that this issue—the first one I got after my subscription—is done, I can share my overall thoughts about all the novellas and short stories found here! Hope you enjoy. This magazine is accessible via the Clarkesworld website so, check it out there if you want, or subscribe!

• The Lark Ascending by Eleanna Castroianni is a story takes place in some sort of dystopian future, following the memories of a robot that is left behind after a whole house “clean-up”. There’s also a girl whose memory is tampered with, since her dad was rebelling against the State. This robot/toy/assistant knows what happened, but doesn’t do a lot, simply reflecting on how things turned out. This was a bit of a sad story, with some hope in the end. It was heartfelt and I rather enjoyed it!

• An Intergalactic Smugglers Guide to Homecoming by Tia Tashiro follows a smuggler who receives one last mission before she chooses to retire. Helping a whole bunch of little alien microorganisms (that basically fit in a jar) escape from some war. However, she realizes that the assignment has ulterior motives and rebels against her boss and client. This story featured some interesting family backstory and I was very invested on how things would turn out. It didn’t dissapoint at all, it’s among my favorites!

• The Indomitable Captain Holli by Rich Larson is the longest novella and it’s probably the best in the issue, with some excellent world-building and concepts that are explored through the eyes of a little girl playing an AR game guided by a weird sentient AI. This is some really good stuff that puts humans into a weird societal structure evolving through generations and neat family drama. It’s absolutely chaotic and a joy to read!

• The Arborist by Derrick Boden feels more mature in tone, since we follow a group of humans on a terraforming mission that seems to be going wrong. They are using a giant parasitic tree to exterminate the alien flora and fauna and hopefully repopulate later. This one makes you think a lot about the implications of everything going on, and what humanity is willing to go through for the sake of survival, even at the cost of other species. That said, it was a little confusing to me, it could just be me being distracted while reading it.

• The Rambler by Shen Dacheng, I must admit, this killed my momentum reading through the magazine for months—plus finishing The Expanse. It was an absurd story about a bridge that is suddenly able to move like a living being, and escapes from the city to the wilderness. It’s a bizarre adventure through the eyes of some people who have no idea of what to do to deal with this. I just didn’t quite know what the point of the story was and I guess it is just meant to be a wild ride of things a bridge does or some sort of reflection on our own irrational behavior? Something like that?

• Occurrence at O1339 by Kelly Jennings was a short little story about a mining unit called Ruby that receives a communication signal from some alien life, asking them to prove they are sentient with only eleven queries to do submit the right answer, or face the anihilation of the whole human race, or something. It’s just a pretty entertaining quest trying to see how this random AI unit shoulders the responsibility of it all. I was thoroughly entertained, but it’s no masterpiece.

• The Oldest Fun by Natalia Theodoridou is a bit of a weird fantasy/sci-fi/horror thing? It’s about how kids are trapped in a game and vanish and go through some strange things? I am very sure there was a reference to Pac-Man at some point. It’s like Jumanji but a bit more ethereal and with less animal rampages, I think? Just a weird story to read.

Overall, this was very interesting stuff! If I had to rank them, I would do so like this:

1. The Indomitable Captain Holli
2. An Intergalactic Smugglers Guide to Homecoming
3. The Lark Ascending
4. The Arborist
5. Occurrence at O1339
6. The Oldest Fun
7. The Rambler

Either way, I am glad I read all of them! It’s cool to have been exposed to so many writing styles, genres, and authors like this. I will continue to read more of these magazines on my XTEINK X4, at some point!

This is day 17 of #100DaysToOffload and day 12 of #Blaugust2026

The Laconian Empire has fallen, setting the thirteen hundred solar systems free from the rule of Winston Duarte. But the ancient enemy that killed the gate builders is awake, and the war against our universe has begun again.

In the dead system of Adro, Elvi Okoye leads a desperate scientific mission to understand what the gate builders were and what destroyed them, even if it means compromising herself and the half-alien children who bear the weight of her investigation. Through the wide-flung systems of humanity, Colonel Aliana Tanaka hunts for Duarte’s missing daughter. . . and the shattered emperor himself. And on the Rocinante, James Holden and his crew struggle to build a future for humanity out of the shards and ruins of all that has come before.

As nearly unimaginable forces prepare to annihilate all human life, Holden and a group of unlikely allies discover a last, desperate chance to unite all of humanity, with the promise of a vast galactic civilization free from wars, factions, lies, and secrets if they win.

But the price of victory may be worse than the cost of defeat.

This book is the last stand and as such, it had a lot of things going on and it has to deal with bringing closure to plenty of plotlines. This book goes rather fast, introducing a character we already know as the main antagonist of the whole ordeal. Except we also have a returning antagonist and of course the alien menace that wants to destroy all of Humanity!

Somehow—and this is the first chapter of the book but a spoiler if you haven’t read the previous book!—Duarte has managed to regain a certain consciousness. And just like that, he has managed to vanish from Laconia, escaping through unknown means towards the ring gates.

With pretty much no clue as to where he went, Trejo—Laconia’s very, very tired interim leader—gives Colonel Tanaka—featured in the first book of the last trilogy—ultimate authority for a mission to find him. Of course, through her perspective we will discover a rather interesting character with a lot of problems and a temperament that is not particularly pleasant. All she cares about is the mission, but we will soon find out about her secrets, and how these will intertwine and clash with her decisiones and behaviour as the story moves forward.

Elvi is the one who ended up in charge of every investigation regarding alien technology for the Laconian Empire, and with the help of some friends, they’ll be doing their best to decipher the mystery behind the aliens who built the ring gates, as well as clues as to how to defeat the aliens that remain, the ones who have caused Humanity to go unconscious and some ships to go Dutchman or be torn apart in strange ways. There will also be some interesting chatter about what science is willing to do for the sake of knowledge and the like here.

Through Naomi, Holden and Alex, we will follow the Rocinante as they live a life as fugitives alongside Teresa Duarte, the newest teenage crewmate in the ship—actually two counting her dog!—who happens to be the heir to the Empire’s throne and their main shield against the Laconian ships utterly destroying them on sight. Each of these characters will go through some interesting challenges, with Naomi as the leader of the underground, managing 1300 little groups, Jim Holden dealing with his trauma and the stress of making hard decisions for the sake of others, and Alex being separated from his family and keeping the Rocinante afloat.

Teresa will be an interesting view point, due to her advanced education yet her lack of experience and young eyes. Being on the run, she learns to embrace her place in the Rocinante, plus some engineering thanks to Amos, who continues to treat her as a normal kid despite himself being very much not a normal human anymore, which the others still struggle with. Of course, she also has to deal with the fact her father is a crazy person living a power fantasy, and that pretty much everybody is after her.

Another new point of view will be that of Kit, Alex’s son, who has a pretty personal and human story, where he’s trying to do his best to provide for his wife and their young baby, while taking on a trip for new opportunities on a different planet. As normal as this sounds, there will be quite a lot of drama going on here too, and I ended up caring quite a bit for the wellbeing of everybody here.

This has way too many plots going on at the same time, and the stakes are as big as ever, we get to see glimpses of cosmic scale stuff. We will go to a couple places, meet some characters under dire circumstances, do a lot of epic ship manouvers and combat and space wars and the like. The conflict between the underground and Laconian and the alien entities will be something to behold!

Despite everything, I think the book sticks the landing rather well. It does leave me with a lot of questions, but you can sort of guess how things would go from there, and that’s perfectly okay.

I will now provide a list with some spoilered complaints and moments I found weird, which is something I didn’t do for the previous books, but anyway.

In any case, read the whole series right now!

This is day 16 of #100DaysToOffload and day 11 of #Blaugust2026

I’ve recently realized that I kind of spend too much time summarizing things without spoilers, but I’ll just share the summary from the website and then share my thoughts about stuff, I guess? By now, eight books later, you are not, or you should not, be reading this review unless you are already with me, or you read the book and want my thoughts, so yeah, whatever.

Tiamat’s Wrath finds the crew of the Rocinante fighting an underground war against a nearly invulnerable authoritarian empire, with James Holden a prisoner of the enemy.

Thirteen hundred gates have opened to solar systems around the galaxy. But as humanity builds its interstellar empire in the alien ruins, the mysteries and threats grow deeper.

In the dead systems where gates lead to stranger things than alien planets, Elvi Okoye begins a desperate search to discover the nature of a genocide that happened before the first human beings existed, and to find weapons to fight a war against forces at the edge of the imaginable. But the price of that knowledge may be higher than she can pay.

At the heart of the empire, Teresa Duarte prepares to take on the burden of her father’s godlike ambition, but Teresa has a mind of her own and secrets even her father the emperor doesn’t guess.

And throughout the wide human empire, the scattered crew of the Rocinante fights a brave rear-guard action against Duarte’s authoritarian regime. Memory of the old order falls away, and a future under Laconia’s eternal rule—and with it, a battle that humanity can only lose—seems more and more certain. Because against the terrors that lie between worlds, courage and ambition will not be enough. . .

The second book of the third trilogy was quite the read. There are a lot of things happening that I didn’t see coming, like at all.

Every character here is once again, separated from each other for half the book. This was an incredible choice, as well as the addition of Teresa, who gives us a look into how the Empire really works and how things develop from there. As young as she may be, the responsibilities on her shoulders are quite the burden, and it’s interesting how everything pans out through her choices.

This book barely features Holden’s perspective, as he’s trapped and unable to do a lot. Most of the time he’s just reacting to the choices of everyone else, completely oblivious, although he does make a play, and the way things go from there turn out to be extremely important for his survival.

Elvi is pretty important given her position as a scientist, it was nice to see her and Fayez again, I must admit. Her passion for science continues to be infectious, and through her chapters we will see the aliens at play once more. The cosmical events in this book were something I didn’t see coming at all. The alien artifacts and technology, the measures taken by the Laconian Empire to try and harness such power, and her involvement on a huge plot twist made her chapters truly remarkable to me!

Naomi continues to be an incredibly cool individual, and now her role is more important than ever as part of the Rebellion against the Empire. She really will be travelling all over the place avoiding the enemy, by herself. Dealing with all this without Holden gives way to some emotional moments too.

Bobbie will actually clash with Naomi as another leader, in a friendly enough way. As the captain of the one ship that could actually deal any damage to the Empire, her role will be quite vital on this story, aided by Alex.

Alas, Amos goes missing—said very early on the story—Alex is still a loyal, but tired pilot, and many other things happen.

The writing was as good as ever, the plot twists really got to me. It really felt kind of dark and hopeless and a bit sad at times, with a lot of writing decisions I didn’t see coming, including some unexpected losses or changes to the characters. Beware!

As much as I liked the writing, I think the story got a bit weird at times, like they setup a lot of stuff and powered up the bad guys on the previous book, and ended up backtracking quite a bit here. It makes sense within the story and it’s all justified, but a lot of things felt a little shoved aside to make things much more plausible. Still, I give it a pass.

With how things have gone, I am really looking forward to the finale, there’s still so much that needs to wrap up…

Good stuff.

This is day 84 of #100DaysToOffload

The novella can actually be pretty enjoyable even without reading any of the Expanse novels, so you can read this and have no idea of the context, but of course, some of that will spoil the setting and the enjoyment of the novels.

This is your warning to stop reading if you have not read The Expanse.

The protagonist of this story is Cara, a young girl living in Laconia, one of many planets that are being inhabited and colonized by humans in this universe.

Cara has lived her whole life in this place, with no memory of Earth, often confused by how her parents miss things she is doing fine without. As such, her perspective is rather interesting, innocent and naive.

This planet has been rather nice, with a small colony of people settling in, and doing science stuff, such as Cara’s parents, but all of a sudden, a military force has arrived, slowly expanding and building up more infrastructure. This novels deals with the powerlessness of such a situation, although it’s not the main focus.

Laconia houses a variety of unique species, often named based on their similarity to Earth’s. One time, Cara accidentally kills a bird with a small pack of babies. After futile attempts to rescue momma bird—as she called it—that only end up with her breaking more things, trying to also keep the baby birds alive, her equipment is taken away by some strange dogs, who seem to understand her and want to help her. After some time, she discovers they were able to fix the things she broke—a drone that was her mother’s. However, they also fixed momma bird. The repercussions of this are unforeseen to her.

Again, this story is part from The Expanse and in case it’s not clear, it kind of becomes Pet Sematary in space—I never read the book but recall some of the scenes in the old movie. This was a bit hard for me at first given the story is given from a child’s perspective and it has a very different tone, with no presence of any familiar characters. Even so, the writing is strong as ever and it possesses a very eery feeling that kept me hooked during the second half when some events started to unfold.

If you are up for some weird aliens doing weird stuff and humans messing around with things they don’t understand, you should give it a go!

I highly recommend checking all of the Expanse a go though, it has been an awesome series to read through.

This is day 75 of #100DaysToOffload

To Be Taught, If Fortunate is a novella by Becky Chambers, presented as a report sent back to Earth, with the hope of sharing the Lawki 6 mission’s discoveries and data to whoever is there to receive it, fifty years later.

We follow the perspective of Ariadne O’Neill, one of four crewmates and the flight engineer of the Meriam, who were sent to explore four planets in a distant star system, which contain extraterrestrial life. The crew is rather diverse and the relationships between the characters is charming, although they don’t explore them that much, with a lot of things left unsaid. Despite that, I found them relatable and human and I was surprised that I cared so much about them by the end.

The science here was rather interesting, featuring a lot of things that are often unaccounted for in other works—that said I don’t read a lot of hard science fiction. There are pods that let the crew go into “torpor” (basically they sleep and barely age until you arrive to the destination). And there’s lots of details around that, such as how hair and nail would grow so much, or the buildup of crust around the eyes, the weird sensation of having your body grow and age when you feel like you only slept and woke up in an instant, among other things, which something like Alien simply ignores.

There is more science like that, all throughout the book, but the main “gimmick” consists of slight genetic alterations to help the astronauts get used to a planet! They are applied through patches on the skin during torpor, and constantly checked and used during the mission. For example, when the next planet they visit has double the gravity of Earth, they’ll wake up with augmented muscle mass and bone density.

Another thing I loved about it is the focus on preservation during their exploration efforts. There are a lot of procedures to avoid affecting the environment, and as mentioned before, they adapt themselves to the planet, instead of trying to change the local ecosystem. However, there will also be some moments of tension because of this. The balance of exploration and human curiosity and what right do we have to disturb the natural order of these planets when we are not part of it. Is it okay to turn over a rock if the worms under it will be be affected by the sunlight? But how can we even know that’s the case without doing so? There’s plenty of discussions like that which were quite thought-provoking.

My favorite part however, have to be the planets, and the life they contain! Each will be different and it’s amazing to see how joyful the characters are when they explore and categorize the life forms they find. There’s a lot of variety and descriptions that were livid and interesting to me, but of course, not all living beings all the same, and there is always a danger to exploring the unknown. This was handled pretty well.

And then we got Earth. These characters get to be on this mission for a reason, and in this book space exploration has become a community effort. Humankind working together to reach for the stars. It’s nice, but it’s also not perfect. Before getting to a planet, we will often see news and events of what has been going on. Even worse, the news are 14 years behind. Despite how nice space exploration is, the planet continues to warm up and warfare is still present. The news play an important role, and some of the best plot twists in the story happen because of them.

All in all. The different elements of this novella are put to good use! I also love how much I can tell you about it in this review compared to my previous read—which would definitely be ruined if I said any more. In any case. There is a lot to like here, some great hard science, some good character writing, some tense plot twists and emotional moments, and overall, a sense of hope that remained even during the darkest moments. I highly recommend giving it a go. I am definitely going to check more of Becky Chambers’ works.

Maybe I should return to Outer Wilds too…

The main idea of the novel, which is quickly suggested, is that the whole story happens inside a generation ship. All of our characters are descendants of a colony of humans on a journey through space, but over time, knowledge, purpose and destination was lost, leaving only confusion and a battle for survival.

These primitive societies are many, we got Giants, who are thought to be the creators of the ship, but who are almost extinct and considered a myth by some, the Forwards, who are the most advanced and organized tribe, Outsiders, who look normal but have a strange behaviour and ghost-like powers, other regular human tribes, as well as mutated humans who are strange and malformed and often wander alone in the “Deadways”.

We follow Roy Complain, a man belonging to the Greene tribe, located in “Quarters” who, after losing his woman, ends up joining a group of people with the goal of reaching the “Control Room”, a place where this “ship” can be controlled and taken over, signaled in an old map—relics left by the Giants that are often destroyed or ignored.

In any case, the place has been taken over by flora and fauna, and plenty of other dangers. But these characters will endure it all for the sake of obtaining control, only to end up finding the truth of what happened to the ship many generations ago.

I could tell so much more. I really could, this book goes to so many places, but I don’t even want to spoil them. The wonder of this journey is how these primitive characters react and learn as they begin to understand the reality of their current situation.

By reading reviews online, I’m told that a lot of the topics here are quite recycled and improved in subsequent novels with the generation ship trope. Thankfully for me, the only contact I have with generation ships are the Passengers movie and the Nauvoo from The Expanse series, but none of them have the ship itself or its mystery as a focus, nor how humans change over time while trapped in the middle of nothingness, which this novel does wonderfully.

Like any old sci-fi classics, there are plenty of problems that come with its age, such as the treatment of female characters, the cheesy romantic subplot, or similar. But honestly, all of it makes complete sense to me within the novel—we are talking about a primitive society after all—and I was never taken out by any of it, but your mileage may vary.

Here is my reading progress on it:

Compared to my previous read, the progress here was rather steady, which makes me feel accomplished. Props to the book as well, of course, it definitely kept me entertained once it picked up steam.

The final reveal was satisfactory for me, and how everything fit together, the implications of it all, the tragedy and the hope that persists until the end, it definitely left me thinking quite a bit, even if it feels a bit rushed.

Overall, I still prefer Aldiss’ later work in Hothouse, but I flew through the pages of this one, and I absolutely enjoyed it!

Persepolis Rising is the seventh book of The Expanse series by James S.A. Corey. And it continues the journey in a rather unexpected way—which got spoiled to me many months ago anyway and it’s not that big of a deal according to Amin so whatever.

We are getting closer to the end of the series, only two more main books to go—and maybe a lot of side stories I’ll check out at some point—so spoilers about previous books will be present. You should just give the series a go, I can say it has been absolutely worth it.

Thirty years after the events of the previous books, new colony worlds have flourished, and even if there is struggle here and there, things are looking well. The inner planets and the Belt have become somewhat stable allies, and have managed to get the Transport Union up and running, even if some prejudice persists. Meanwhile, the crew of the Rocinante continues to help out where they can to keep the galaxy at peace.

However, Laconia—the colony world that was claimed by a third of the Martian military—has been working in the background and forming their own nation under Duarte’s rule. Now, they threaten to take over everything Humanity has built thus far. Using ancient alien technology and weaponry developed to be above and beyond everything else, ready to take over and rebuild the colonies under their vision and rule.

This book starts out rather slow I think, although it has some big revelations, about how much happened in the last thirty years as Humanity has expanded to the stars during a period of relative peace, with no big threats and a sense of unity among humans, despite the scale of the space they inhabit by now. We also get a glimpse of what the Laconian Empire looks like from the inside, a regime that has been built with the utmost efficiency, and we even get the perspective of some characters from that side, that give us interesting look to how things are going during the novel.

The Rocinante crew, with Bobbie, Clarissa, Amos, Alex, Naomi and Holden, have grown old, but they are still kicking around, doing side quests and helping out whoever needs it. The Rocinante itself is also old, but it has been kept in check and updated as technology has advanced, an old dog with some nice tricks.

Of course, the sci-fi setting allows for de-aging and similar treatments, a nice way to have a big timeskip while keeping our characters able to flip around and kick the bad guys while looking as cool as ever. They are a family now, but there are some big changes that happen pretty early on, which makes for some interesting conflict between the characters throughout the book.

I especially like the development of Bobbie on this one, but Amos continues to be a favourite, and the struggles he faces during this arc were intense. I was about to cry in one of those chapters, really good stuff.

The stakes on an interplanetary level are huge, and once again, victory is not certain, with things getting worse at every moment. Laconia’s might will prove to be a huge challenge to overcome for our heroes.

The book is written in the same style as ever, keeping me on my toes chapter after chapter, at least during the second half of it, as it takes a bit to pick up.

I must say I found some of the dialogue to feel a little bit repetitive this time around. For example, I think there’s like five or six variations of “this map of space is not true to scale” just to showcase how vast something is, or how small we really are, or something akin. There’s also like three or four “this object is going away but it’s actually us moving”, because of the perspective at zero gravity and the darkness of space (especially in the slow zone). It is nothing bad at all, I think I just noticed it and couldn’t stop doing so later on.

The point of character of the villain is probably the weakest bit. Don’t get me wrong, it is well written, but every single time I just could not help but chuckle and think “how is this guy believing half the things he says?”, which I guess is the point. They are space fascists after all, and even if the ideas are ridiculous, they are also terrifying.

Also, maybe the book is not that slow and it was just me who didn’t commit to it until very late. Here’s a little summary of how my reading progress went:

So, as you can see, I had a lot of hiccups during the whole thing, and maybe if I was better at sticking to it like I did during the last few days, I would have finished this in less than a week.

In any case, this was a very great way to start the last trilogy of this book series, and I am extremely hyped to pick up the next book, once everyone in my Book Club catches up. I won’t say the last person missing, out of respect, but I hope they get it over soon. You know who you are, evil.

But other than “I read this book because a friend shows up on it”, the simple idea, the way it was conceived is just commendable.

Nantucket Lit is a free and open source platform that allows writers to create and share high-quality e-books, maintained by Nicholas Bernhard. You can access these books freely online, or buy physical chapbooks as well! Honestly, I found this to be super charming, and when Amin mentioned to have worked on this project, I immediately pre-ordered the chapbook, which eventually got to my city, if not my house.

I still remember having to go to the post office because Correos de México—the national mailing service here—never finds my address for some reason. It was the middle of the week and I literally asked for an early leave at work—I was too excited to just get there and pick up my purchase.

Sitting down in a bench under some trees in the main plaza downtown, I went ahead and opened the book and took this picture:

Rarely do I get to just sit down and read in absolute peace, and doing so with this book was very comfy. I read half of it, with no pressure and no expectations, and just enjoyed my time there. Once I got to Amin’s story, I decided to head home and left…

Eventually I got to it, but a month or so happened since then, oops.

Since the first few stories were already fuzzy, I ended up not writing my review for it, but given the importance of this work, and since it was quite short, I ended up getting it again—this time in digital form—and give it a quick read during lunch at work.

The second re-read was somehow better than the first one.

Reviews

Overscan features different short stories from a variety of authors. Overall, it contains works that—as any good science/speculative fiction does—reflect on different aspects of reality today, and how it could be in the future. Some are fantasy, some are hard sf, some funny, some are rather thought-provoking and even scary. All of them written by humans, standing up against a world where AI runs rampant and continues to be a nuisance for every sane person out there.

Either way, each story has something to tell, so I’ll just review each of them individually! The book is so short and to the point that I will include mild spoilers here, so feel free to just read it yourself online or buy the EPUB or physical print! Either way, I’m sure you’ll enjoy it even if you read this, you do you.

In the Maize by Nicholas Bernhard.

I must admit! This one is the stranger ones to read for me, it is literally a single page filled with dread, it feels like a lot is happening and there’s just no time to understand what it is. My read on it is that the protagonist wanted to try something new and ended up joining a strange event—a sort of carnival?—where he’s now being hunted by some unknown entity while trying to hide in a corn field, trapped in some sort of alternate space out of time. It’s some wild stuff and the writing says so much with so little yet not enough.

The Warden by Bufallo

This one was very much helped by a reread. A very interesting tale about a man sentenced to death via the electric chair. The way time goes on and on and the protagonist doesn’t want it. The desperation is palbable in every turn of the page. The twist here is that the person who is going to die is not the one impatient and terrified—this is something I didn’t catch at first.

I thought I was seeing a prisoner refusing to accept his death, but it’s actually a man—the warden—unable to watch his only friend die. Another possible read could be that there’s some sort of bipolar disorder, I didn’t quite get it. Either way, the perspective really made it land even more for me.

Hers to Have by Sefton Eisenhart

Probably one of the most real, dystopian stories in this book, as it approaches pure science fiction more than the others. This tale features the “life” of a man who lost the girl she loved, and sheltered himself in drugs and depression until advertising detected his spiraling downfall and did its work, offer a solution. An AI recreation of her.

As time went by technology advances, we go from simple chats, to images, videos, VR technology and hardware. Bills need to be paid, subscription services are upgraded, and a whole fake family is formed. The life of someone refusing to accept reality, embracing the lies instead. A cautionary tale that I’m afraid is bound to happen in the future.

Galápagos Larvae by AT Gonzalez

Probably the most random, weirdly fun yet kinda scary story of the bunch that happens during a tour given in the Galápagos Island at some unknown date in the Discovatorium, a set of buildings where the wonders of the island are studied and showcased as a theme park.

Some special creatures are brought up to the stage, and their evolution in a matter of minutes is shown to the audience as if it’s a magic trick, with the hosts describing things like sellers. This showcase is rather gruesome—nature sometimes is and things eventually go out of control, giving place for some bizarre moments that left me wondering. A rather strong impression, to be honest.

Those Who Breathe Easy by Benjamin Hollon

This was rather interesting, and got me thinking about the implications on a second read in pretty much every sci-fi setting in space. We take oxygen for granted.

A family that goes on some fancy space cruiser—gets uncomfortable because of the limited air. A single mom and her kid, working in a refilling station—selling oxygen to other ships even though it barely sustains itself. The rich on tour give them some pocket change, she has no choice but to abide, they need money, those want comfort.

This disparity is rather thought provoking, foretelling a future where air is a commodity and those who work for it don’t even get to enjoy it.

Lonely Human by Seth Patterson

The longest of the short stories here, this is more of a romance with some fantasy elements in a sci-fi setting. A Human looking for another Human to partner with, being a refugee in an alien city where that’s a rare sight. On his obsession, and in typical manner, he’s unaware he already found love in the one friend who has always been there. You can tell how it’ll go in the first few paragraphs, but the way we get there is rather amusing.

We get to see a granter of wishes, magical paintings, and some rather wholesome moments that I really enjoyed.

Overall, the message about how we seek connection and relationships and the expectations or ideas that often blind us was very interesting, and something we often forget.

The Mirror by David W. Stoner

This one was rather mysterious and probably the more philosophical and mind-bendy of the bunch. It’s a short but intriguing tale about a man who sees a stranger looking at him weird, and without nothing else to do, decides to follow his tracks and see where the man is going. However, the man is actually in a strange timeloop that repeats over and over, and he always loses track of the shadow, of himself, of time.

A lovely one, a very interesting ending to the anthology that left me wondering about how sometimes we lose focus chasing our own shadows, or something like that, I guess, it was hard to interpret this one!

Finishing words

The final pages of the book talk about the authors featured in the anthology, and it’s a section as interesting as the stories themselves. With short bios and some words about the dangers and the damage that LLMs have already caused to the writing meidum.

Overall, I consider this book, as small and humble as it is, to be a triumph, a victory and a flag set to signal the way that we should follow. To keep real art alive, to write words true to our hearts.

Be it despair, be it hope, about sadness, about love, as long as it is human, it will reach beyond screens and pages like no AI ever will.

This one is absolutely recommended. Just check it out, get a printed copy or the ebook. You won’t regret it.

This is day 15 of #100DaysToOffload.

After all his travels and misadventures. Murderbot has decided to help out the friends he ran away from after all.

Murderbot has found some useful evidence for its human friends, however, it may as well be too late for them. GrayCris, the evil corporation that does a bunch of evil illegal things, has managed to put Murderbot’s friends in a predicament, as Dr. Mensah, Murderbot’s best friend and guardian, is now held hostage by them until they pay a ransom.

Finding itself in a lose lose situation, Murderbot will do all it can to save everyone, and get its friends to safety. Facing against powerful enemies, and a bunch of advertising.

This was another pretty fun novella that I really enjoyed, but once again like the last couple books, the chapters of these are just way too long for me. I kept avoiding a read because I couldn’t squeeze enough time to get it done, and I always felt weird leaving a chapter midway through. In the end I accepted it, but I still don’t like it. The story was pretty awesome anyway! Lots of cool action moments and Murderbot being Murderbot. Really enjoyed the high stakes at every moment as well, it really was a page turner when I got into it.

This is day 13 of #100DaysToOffload

Most of the time for my reviews I try to do my own summary of things, but this time I am a little lazy, so excuse me if I copy-paste the one on the back cover:

The Free Navy—A violent group of Belters in black-market military ships—has crippled the Earth and begun a campaign of piracy and violence among the outer planets. The colony ships heading for the thousand new worlds on the far side of the alien ring gates are easy pray, and no single navy remains strong enough to protect them.

James Holden and his crew know the strenghts and weaknesses of this new force better than anyone. Outnumbered and outgunned, the embattled remnants of the old political powers call on the Rocinante for a desperate mission to reach Medina Station at the heart of the gate network.

But the new alliances are as flawed as the old, and the struggle for power han only just begun.

Okay so, this book really is—as the whole series has been—kind of awesome. And it continues the story of the previous one almost immediately.

This entry features a lot of different points of view, and I have to admit, it’s probably the strangest decision of the book, it provides a lot of cool information, but it can be confusing. We will see the different angles, not just from the crew of the Rocinante’s, but also some returning characters like Avasarala, and from people on the Free Navy or the Belt other than the main antagonists.

I have to admit I was a bit lost a couple of times, as some new character was mentioned and they had crewmates that I didn’t know and then we saw a chapter with the view of that other crewmate, and I can’t help but wonder why not just stay with one of the perspectives? It works out in the end but it’s a bit confusing.

The conflict itself was really, really interesting and multi-faceted. I quite enjoyed how the main antagonist devolves into madness as the story goes on, the guy is totally crazy for power, and how that affects the Free Navy and the solar system at large was fascinating.

I was also happy to see the crew back together again since the previous book had everyone all over the place, and there are also some new friends made along the way!

While the conflict of the book is quite big and deals with a lot of different sides and variables, it must be said that it also feels like something else is being setup for the next one. There’s a couple questions lingering since a book or two ago that are still unanswered.

Unlike pretty much every book since this one, there’s no mention of alien activity of any kind. There’s not scientific mystery or cosmical phenomenon, or a carastrophic planet-sized event to be found here.

What you will find though, is some epic space battles and chase sequences. Humans against humans, as usual. The moment to moment action was just epic to read, and I was helplessly flying through the pages as I realized that somehow I had read four chapters in one sitting, and counting.

There are some incredible plot twists ahead that will change the future of the political landscape going forward, and that’s something I’m really interested on, to see how the next book continues.

So yeah, good book, go read the whole series now!

After uncovering its past and helping some humans along the way, Murderbot decides to help out the humans from the first book, who have gotten in trouble partly because of its escape. He begins looking for clues about GrayCris’—the shady company that almost got it and its humans killed back in the first book—and any illegal activities they’ve made before. For this, Murderbot ventures into a planet that GrayCris “failed” to terraform, alongside a new group of humans with the mission to assess and try to continue the terraforming efforts.

Of course, the evil company simply wanted to do evil things and everything is going to go wrong.

This book introduces a couple of new characters that are pretty cool! And as always, Murderbot simply can’t handle how nice they are to each other because it’s used to humans being mean and treating it like a machine (and it likes it that way because it can get away with being unnoticed most of the time and just watching tv shows).

Miki is a new bot character—that is not an android— who is treated as an equal by its owner (For Murderbot it’s a pet bot) and it’s just so innocent and oblivious to how other humans are actually pretty mean and take advantage of you. The back and forth between it and Murderbot is pretty fun.

Anyway, the stakes of this book are high and there are a lot more epic action sequences. I was hooked and the setup and concepts were fun. Seeing Murderbot figure out how to deal with the problems and enemies ahead was very entertaining.

The only caveat I have to this book is that some chapters drag on for a while. I feel like it could have been split a little more evenly, but given the extended action sequences, maybe it was a necessary sacrifice to keep the flow going, although I ended up breaking it myself when I just couldn’t read a whole chapter with the free time I had at hand.

Still, great book and continuation to the story! I think that my next book will finallt be a return to The Expanse! we’ll see.

Murderbot ventures in a journey to uncover the truth of its past—deleted from its memory by the company who built it—and figure out a new purpose in life after escaping from the people who freed it in the frist place.

As it sneaks around from place to place, hacking security systems and trying to go unnoticed by disguising itself as an augmented human, Murderbot will end up inside a ship bot (named ART) with way too much processing power and quite a personality. Thankfully, it’s not too bad, and it’ll aid Murderbot on its quest, against Murderbot’s will, but whatever.

To get to the planet that hides Murderbot’s past, it pretends to be a security consultant for a group of humans. The way this job develops is quite interesting, since it’s doing the same work it did as a SecUnit, except that nothing is forcing it to. How Murderbot comes to terms with that, as well as the revelations behind its pasts, provide some interesting moments on the story.

The action that happens when everything goes wrong, all the world building to the series, and the character ART, the research transport (I don’t want to say what the A stands for) that pretty much becomes Murderbot’s companion (and its worst enemy) throughout this journey, are definitely some great additions to this series, which I quite enjoyed.

These books start to get good right when they are about to end, which is kind of a shame! But well, I guess there are many more books to read for a reason, I already started Rogue Protocol, which is the next one on the list.

Overall, this second book builds on what the first one did, and pretty much improves everything, good stuff.

I actually don’t think I have a lot else to say, it really feels like I’m reading one big book, so these reviews are bound to be kind of short, whatever!

Anyway. All Systems Red is the first book of The Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells.

I bought the whole series (and a couple extra books) from the recent Humble Bundle—which will last for another week at the time of writing—and decided to give it a proper try, as I’ve heard good things about it for a while.

I was pleasantly surprised to see that most of the books are rather short novellas, that can easily be read in under 4 hours, there is a proper novel down the line though, which I’m interested in checking out at some point.

All Systems Red follows Murderbot, a SecUnit tasked with protecting a group of humans surveying an undocumented planet.

SecUnits are constructs built from human and mechanical parts, made to kill and follow orders. They are owned by some nameless mega-corporation to be sold as slaves for a variety of contracts.

This Murderbot character in particular managed to hack its governor module, making it capable of disobeying orders if desired. However, instead of becoming a mass murderer or looking for freedom, it just wants to be left alone and watch its favorite TV shows downloaded from the company’s archives, while still acting as a SecUnit is expected to act.

The plot is a simple “someone is trying to kill us so we got to escape from the planet,” however, what makes this story great is how everything is told from Murderbot’s perspective.

This character is pretty relatable! It’s uncomfortable around humans, it doesn’t want to talk about it, it wants to do its job and go back to its room and watch some shows and just get it over with. Just like me!

The rest of the cast is rather forgettable, they are not the focus of the story at all, but they work and act like actually smart human scientists, which is nice to see. Especially after I watched all of the Alien movies where pretty much everyone but the protagonist dies for dumb reasons.

Overall, this works as an introduction to what this character is about and I am looking forward to seeing more of Murderbot in this interesting universe. There’s some worldbuilding but a lot of things are still left unexplored.

This is the first book I read on my phone in a while, but I’ll continue the series on my Kobo because I like all my stats in one place.

By the way, Kev read the book too!, so check his own thoughts if you want to know a different perspective—although he liked it quite a bit too.

Looking forward to the rest of the series!

Nemesis Games is the fifth book of The Expanse series by James S.A. Corey, and it continues to be a pretty fantastic space opera, in my opinion. This review will inherently include some spoilers from the previous four books, but I hope not much.

Well, after all of what happened in the previous book, the Rocinante is in dire need of repairs, and the whole crew is pretty much stuck on Tycho Station, just living day after day.

Eventually, Naomi, Amos and Alex decide to leave and go to different places with different reasons. Naomi gets called by someone from her past as a Belter in the more extremist side, and she chooses to face it alone without the others. Amos goes back to Earth, since a significant family member passed away, and he also wants to visit some old friends. Alex goes to Mars, to try and make ammends with his ex-wife, and meet up with some acquaintances as well. Holden ends up alone in Tycho, but is soon approached by Monica Stuart, the famous journalist and reporter, as she investigates a strange phenomena happening on the ring gates.

Entire ships are dissapearing as soon as they enter the gates, losing contact, vanishing from thin air. What is causing this? Is it just data tampering? is it the protomolecule, or some other alien species? Who knows, but ships are still going, and some of them keep going missing.

With the rings and all of the planets at Humanity’s disposal, more and more people are venturing to the other side. This has lead to lots of different problems, as the balance of things is completely off. Mars, once the pride of human progress with its terraformation efforts, now seems like a complete waste of time with so many planets out there that could sustain life as is. Earth, the birthplace of Humanity, is sending lots of ships out there as well, as overpopulation is a problem, and new opportunities are out ther. The OPA and the Belters face different issues, as Fred Johnson wants to control the traffic around the rings with Medina Station as a way to balance power with Earth and Mars, meanwhile the Belter society, used to life in space, is struggling to find a purpose and support, as they can’t really go down a planet after living their whole lives in zero g, and who wants to do that anymore?

The problems, politics, and conflict that ensues from this is really interesting. Suddenly, our characters will end up entangled in a conspiracy with huge implications for all of humankind as we know it.

Amos stands out once again as a favorite of mine on his journey on Earth and the characters he meets, from family to old friends. He’ll end up facing huge threats, and will team up to save those he cares about, he’ll deal with whatever is on his way to get back to his family. No matter the odds, Amos is always the last one standing, what an absolute unit.

Alex remains as the best pilot of them all, and although his journey to Mars starts out a little bit boring to me, the way he collides with the main plot gave me some of the best space action I’ve read in a while, and the fact that (spoilers but kind of obvious) he’ll team up with Bobbie once again is just pretty epic overall, and her paper on the whole thing will be vital as well.

As for Naomi, her backstory is filled with incredible revelations that redefine her character, she faces the devils of her past and the results of the choices she made, or that she was forced to make. However, her evolution and all the challenges she’ll overcome, the sacrifices and plans she comes up with, and how everything will affect the relationship with the crew, and Jim, when they see each other again, kept me absolutely hooked on her side of the story.

As for Holden, as he is in Tycho station, away from everyone and faced with this problem after problem, he and Fred Johnson will end up trying to keep it together and uncover who is behind what, and try to maintain everything in control as the OPA starts to crack and he can’t do a thing to stop it. The way Holden deals with the feeling of loneliness, the longing for his family, the sense of helplessness as everything crumbles down around him while he can’t reach his friends. It’s stressful and really interesting stuff.

I absolutely loved this book, it gave me an outlook on all the characters that are part of the crew, getting to know a a lot more about each of them and their feelings and how they see each other. The way the act around themselves and with others is also really interesting to read.

I completely flew over the last few chapters. This book deals with the conflict between the different human factions even more than the previous ones, although the alien side of things is not as present, but no need to worry, humans will prove again how they are their own biggest threat on this one.

Yet again, a worthy sequel to the amazing universe that is The Expanse.

This book won the Hugo award back in the 50s, and it deals with some pretty interesting concepts, mainly, a war across space and time between two factions, the Spiders and the Snakes, both altering events and bending reality for their own motives.

The story is written in first person, from the POV of Greta, an “entertainer” living in The Place, an area separated from regular time and space where soldiers go to rest and recover after the countless battles. Basically, she’s somewhat of a therapist/nurse/prostitute, under a more sanitized word, I guess.

There are other entertainers and soldiers, and they are very diverse. People from ancient Rome, or Crete, or Nazi Germany, or a future alien from Venus, or an ancient alien from the Moon, among others.

Most of the plot happens only inside this place, known as The Place, essentially, a bar/spa/hospital/brothel. The actual war and action happens off-screen, and it’s only mentioned here and there in conversations.

This took me by complete surprise, I kind of expected a grandiose epic story with a military style and timey-wimey stuff. Maybe some sort of predecessor to books like Ender’s Game, or a similar vein? What I got instead is a bunch of people giving speeches to each other and talking about their life experiences before ending up on this conflict.

At one point, The Place gets “Introverted”—completely cut off from the flow of time and space—with no way out. To make matters worse, an atomic bomb is set to explode in half an hour. So, the story becomes a bit of a detective story trying to figure out who did it, and trying to reverse this mess.

This was a very interesting book, but it was really hard to understand, the structure of the sentences, the accent of some of the characters. it was almost incomprehensible, and instead of going word by word, I found myself reading the beggining and end of each paragraph, trying to make sense of what the middle implied based on the context.

Most of the book is dialogue or internal thoughts, there is not a lot of action going on. It was an interesting writing decision, mentioning some incredible events that could probably be their own whole novel, in just a few sentences, or even a one-liner.

Like, the implications of time travel, Nazi Germany winning the war, Greece not being the center of humanities and philosophy of its time, and similar changes with lots of ramifications throughout history, they just happened, there’s that, that’s it.

The intricacies behind how the characters ended up there in the first place, taken away from their original time streams in different ways, some even multiple times. The mystery behind the two sides of the war, who are they even fighting for, is there a point to it all? I think it’s crazy how many things are going on and simply left aside, I am not even dissapointed, those were conscious decisions that I kind of respect for the sake of telling the story the author wanted to tell.

At the time most writers liked to justify the rationale behind their sci-fi stories, some including equations and proofs of how everything worked, logic and hard science. The Big Time is much more trippy and doesn’t really feature any geniuses. If it wasn’t because of the dated language I would have enjoyed it a lot more.

Something that helped a bit was the LibriVox audiobook, thanks to that I could understand some words and know how to pronunciate them. I tried to read and listen at the same time but I ended up drifting behind as soon as some new word showed up and I had to look it up. Listening at night before sleep to the chapters I had read throughout the day proved better than reading along.

I’m happy to have given this one a try, it had been on my mind for many years because it seemed like a cool concept for its time. It may not have lived to my expectations but I think it’s worth a try anyway, definitely a unique take on the concept.

This is day 83 of #100DaysToOffload

The Space Merchants was originally published in 1952, that’s 73 years ago, and it always boggles my mind to think about that. In this novel we follow the perspective of Mitchell Courtenay, a “star class copysmith” who is quickly rising to the top of an advertising company, that is pretty much ruling the world at this point.

Most people are consumers, with horrible lives and repetitive work, endlessly paying off debts that will only grow as they keep on existing. It is a sad reality that is not quite fiction in today’s world.

This book is a satire, a style I hadn’t really read before. Most events and characters are bizarre and somewhat foolish. The protagonist will say the most outlandish stuff as a matter of fact, when it comes to how humans can be controlled and suggested, it sounds ironic, and kind of funny, and at the same time, terrifyingly accurate. There were a few quotes I found quite thought provoking, which I’ll share later.

Courtenay’s next venture: a propaganda campaign to get people convinced that Venus rules. Even though the planet is absolutely not suitable for human life, he is doing everything to change public perception, so Venus is seen as the next frontier where Humanity shall expand to.

However, things will not go as planned, as there’s a conspiracy against him that will strip him of his identity and privilege, and he’ll end up at the the bottom of the barrel, forced to work as a slave and experience the life of a consumer.

Of course, as this guy is kind of smart, he’ll work his way up and try to uncover this conspiracy, by inflitrating the Consies, a faction of “terrorists” that opposes the consummerism of the modern world.

The way this book goes from A to B to C is quite remarkable. There will be some loose ends, but none of them matter that much. The point is how the protagonist evolves and changes after facing different sides of society and how it works.

A lot of the themes in the book remain incredibly relevant to this day, the idea of consummerism and corporations out of control, the overpopulation of the planet and the scarcity of resources, the inequality of the economic landscape and everything else. It has barely dated at all in those regards.

However, the science aspects of it can be a little hit or miss, although I think that’s just kind of charming. Computers don’t exist, basically everyone is addicted to smoking, phones just work as they did in the 50s. There are things I didn’t even understand because of how dated it is. According to some summaries I saw, rockets are being used as a transportation method within the planet? I didn’t even get that while reading, I just assumed they were regular planes. All those issues can be easily overlooked, if a little confusing some times.

The one thing I thought was kind of weird, is the romance, of course there’s a romance. However, it really isn’t that bad, and the satirical tone of the whole thing helps a lot to not take it super seriously either. I was barely annoyed by it, I’m only bringing it up because there’s little else to complain about.

Overall, I really got hooked by this book as soon as I returned to it, I think it’s worth checking out, entertaining, thought provoking, and a roller coaster filled with twists and turns that lead to pretty crazy places. I highly recommend it.

This is day 64 of #100DaysToOffload

Quotes

I don’t highlight quotes that often, but this book had some pretty interesting ones, so I couldn’t help it. I should do it a bit more often for future reviews.

Science is always a step ahead of the failure of natural resources. After all, when real meat got scarce, we had soyaburguers ready. when oil ran low, technology developed the pedicab.

He could have played his part in the world, buying and using and making work and profits for his brothers all around the globe, ever increasing his wants and needs, ever increasing everybody’s work and profits in the circle of consumption, raising children to be consumers in turn. It hurt to see him perverted into a sterile zealot.

It is always easy to persuade a consumer that the grass is greener far away.

It was an appeal to reason, and they’re always dangerous. You can’t trust reason. We threw it out of the ad profession long ago and have never missed it.

She’d been brought up in a deeply moral, sales-fearing home, and you couldn’t expect her to commit the high commercial crime of breaking a labor contract without there being a terrific emotional lashback.

…I could not relax in the presence of so many books without a word of advertising in any of them. I am not prude about solitary pleasures when they serve a useful purpose. But my tolerance has limits.

From now on, I really think I have to contain some mild spoilers at least when it comes to the progress of the series as a whole. This is the fourth book of The Expanse after all, so I will assume you’ve read the previous three books, or watched the show, or have some idea of how things have developed so far..

I will not spoil anything about the book itself, of course, or at least I’ll try not to.

After Holden and company witness how all of the ring gates that lay dormant in the slow zone begin to wake up, the way to countless solar systems across the galaxy is now open. Humanity finally reaching the stars, doesn’t seem too far fetched anymore.

As soon as one of those planets is deemed suitable for human life, a rogue Belter ship claimed it as their own and began to colonize it, they name the planet “Ilus”. After some time, an Earth ship is on its way to what they decided to call “New Terra”, with the goal of studying the planet, mine it for resources and of course, to claim it as their own, after making a deal with the belters, and dealing with all the paperwork on Earth to do things “right.”

When things eventually go wrong. Holden is tasked by Earth and the OPA to act as a mediator and try to resolve the local conflict going on, but the tension would only rise, as the planet itself hides a mystery that endangers everyone on it.

This book, was just as fantastic as the others. I can’t help but say the same thing book after book, it keeps being true.

Like before, the story jumps across different perspectives. This time, it features Basia, a character mentioned only by name in the previous book, who is part of the Belter colony and wants to protect his family, and his new home. Havelock, who was Miller’s partner in the first book, is now part of the security team for the Earth ship, and tries to keep things in check and train a militia, in case things go south. Finally, Elvi, a scientist from Earth, that wants to figure out the best way to coexist with the local biology, and study the different forms of life in the planet.

Holden joins the party after plenty of chaos has already been done, and now has to clean up the mess and try to make amends. But of course, it’s not that simple. Eventually, things will turn out to be much more dangerous and cosmical than expected, and boy does it get kind of crazy this time.

I really enjoyed the new characters’ points of view, they all brought something to the table!

It was nice to let Havelock shine for once, and to see the choices he makes and the way his character developes as the story progresses was quite entertaining. He is just really good at what he does too, if a little bit stubborn. Through him, we’ll learn what most of the Earthers in the ship think about the situation, as well as internal conflict between what he is asked to do and what is the right thing to do throughout his journey.

Elvi is almost like a second mediator, being one of the scientists that interacts with Belters the most, while also disagreeing on things like the way they have tampered with the ecosystem without any care. Her relationship with Holden is also kind of interesting, if a bit weird. Through her, we’ll meet other scientists and colonists, how they deal with disaster and finding solutions to their problems.

Basia is an interesting fellow. He is the father of the dead child Holden and company found in Ganymede’s secret laboratory, so, he has quite a lot of trauma and guilt, and a grudge against those that want to take away the new planet and way of life he has managed to build for him and his family, which we’ll get to know pretty well. He has made mistakes, and the way he deals with all of that is a common theme throughout his story.

And of course, Holden is Holden, and he will do everything he can to protect his people, and to find a way to balance everything out. Of course, Miller’s ghost is still haunting him with random quests and revelations about the planet in question.

The planet itself is a really interesting setting, there are some really vivid descriptions of the flora and fauna, as well as signs of an alien civilization that inhabited the planet at some point. How some characters deal with gravity and having a sky above their heads is kinda fun too.

Overall, I really liked this book. I think it has some problems in the way a few characters are portrayed, the villain was pretty clear from the start, and I couldn’t really take him very seriously. But he devolves in interesting ways later on, so I will give that a pass. The dangers faced and the revelations made here were quite mind-blowing, and at the same time, I felt like they weren’t enough. Still, it kind of feels like the beginning of a new trilogy, so I understand the plot keeping some cards hidden for now. I am quite excited to start the next with my reading club soon!

This is day 62 of #100DaysToOffload

This was a fun book of detective fiction to read along with @isa. It had been a while since I’ve read something that was not science fiction, and I was feeling like going for another work by Agatha Christie, so, I went with the second novel featuring Hercule Poirot inveatigating a rather curious case!

Basically, after getting a letter from some rich guy in France, Poirot heads over to help him solve his case, only to find out he has been murdered before he could get there! So, Poirot decides to solve the mystery behind his mysterious demise and find out who did it. Things get only more and more complicated as new findings come to light and even a whole new corpse is found too…

This one was fun! The mystery was pretty cool and it left lots of clues that would make the reader be able to guess who is behind everything! But of course there’s many things that only complicate the investigation further.

The characters were rather fun, Hastings and Poirot are as charming as ever, there’s a bit of a Sherlock Holmes parody detective too that gives us plenty of misinterpreted clues and hypotheses, and a couple of interesting female characters as well that added to the story.

I think I liked this one more than the first one, which had so many names it was hard to track who was doing what. Everything was more understadable to me this time, but I guess it helps that I was ready for it from the start.

To read this I used my Kobo and a physical copy I got from a book fair in my state, my sister got it for me while I was at work, and it was a pretty nice paperback edition! It had a pretty neat font too I gotta say.

Anyway, nice book! I am looking forward to read some more of Poirot’s adventures.

This is day 17 of #100DaysToOffload

I quite liked this one, like Caliban’s War, it introduced many new characters and perspectives, building up on the Expanse’s universe in quite a lot of ways.

From here on out, I don’t know if I can review these books spoiler-free, they connect to each other so much, I think I could ruin the whole thing if I’m not careful with what I say. However, I’ll try.

The story is about a gigantic ring of alien origin in space, for reasons explained in the previous books. The ring is being monitored by the different factions of Humanity, and, after a certain thing happens, we discover it’s actually a gate, that leads to some unknown location. For reasons explored in the book, James Holden and his crew decide to—or are forced to—fly there, and there are many more ships that want to study or see what’s up. However, unexpected things start to happen, and everything turns to chaos.

The new characters of this book were a bit of a mixed bag for me, I found some of the perspectives to be more exciting than others, however, in the end all the characters were quite great. Everything was a roller coaster, I just wanted to keep on reading page after page. It has some ups and downs, but when those moments come, when the science fiction, the action, the cosmic dread and everything form the perfect mix, it was simply fantastic.

This book also does have one of the best mind bending cosmical revelation moments I’ve read in a while, so if you like that kind of trippy stuff, it’s here!

I will say, this was the first time where I actually felt like some things were too convenient. I know it’s sci-fi and everything can happen, but I am not talking about Deus Ex Machinas, it’s just some of the choices made by characters, or some of the lucky moments they go through and the like. It did not ruin the fun most of the time, but I found it a little weird.

Other than that though, Abaddon’s Gate delivers! Great space opera, I will read the next one in January.

This is day 11 of #100DaysToOffload

Roadside Picnic is one of the most unique books of science fiction I have read. A first contact story where we don’t get whats going on, things happen too quickly, and the aliens leave without further to do, and the world keeps spinning.

The only trace of their Visit is some areas known as The Zones, where strange phenomena and dangerous traps can ben found at every corner, as well as strange objects and alien technology beyond human understanding, that lies there for whoever is willing to take it.

Those who venture inside the Zone to scavenge those goods are known as stalkers. The artifacts they find they then sell to whoever is willing to pay, making it a lucrative, if dangerous job. Of course, the government is trying to investigate and find a use for those objects as well, so being a stalker is very much illegal.

In this story we follow Red, a stalker who is trying to have a normal life, but he finds himself returning to the Zone time after time. He is just a random guy who is pretty good at his job, and every time he keeps telling himself it will be the last.

Most of the characters are pretty much regular people trying to adapt to this new world, there’s barely any geniuses or amazing discoveries done thanks to the new alien technology, and if there is, it’s clear it’s being used for very simple purposes, like using a rocket engine to start a fire.

At the time, and still today, science fiction is seen from the lenses of formidable heroes, brilliant scientists and engineers. In this book, most people are normal humans, and talk like a normal human (althought I think some of it is lost in translation), and most of the physics and technology in the novel has nicknames and slang that is not really scientific, simply based on what an artifact does or looks like, such as empties, bugtraps and shriekers.

What I liked the most about this story is its exploration on how humans would react to this, as a whole. Nobody is trying to contact the aliens or to figure everything out, we don’t even get to know how they looked, or find any kind of message. The principles behind the Zones are a complete mystery to humankind. The technology is far too advanced, and the dangers are far too high for any efforts to bring any significant results.

The implications of it all are big, the insight of some of the characters about our place in the universe. One of my favorite bits was a conversation that shares lots of thoughts and ideas about the reason for the visit, how it affects society as a whole, and despite it all, Humanity keeps moving forward and adapts to this new reality as the status quo.

A fantastic read that only takes a few hours to read and really brings a very interesting outlook to life and our place in this universe. I highly recommend this one!