Books shelved under “Ebook”

Self-driving cars, or more broadly, autonomous vehicles (AVs) are really cool. I’m excited to see them become a reality. Nevertheless, there is a lot of hype around this topic. It seems like most of what I read about the subject comes from someone connected to the tech industry or the auto industry (or both), and that always makes me suspicious. No One at the Wheel: Driverless Cars and the Road of the Future is a…

So, um, owing to a clerical error on my part, I read this before reading #51: The Absolute. Oops! I will definitely go back and read that before going on, but just keep this fact in mind while reading this otherwise perfect review of #52: The Sacrifice.

Ax has kind of had it with humans in this book, at least at first. Cassie gave up the morphing cube on purpose, and now…

The Quantum Labyrinth: How Richard Feynman and John Wheeler Revolutionized Time and Reality is a history book masquerading as a physics book, and I like that. I’m just as interested in the history of science as I am in science itself. As the title implies, Paul Halpern focuses on the lives of Feynman and Wheeler, protégés who individually and collectively had their fingers on the pulse of physics for much of the twentieth century. Halpern…

For a while now, I’ve been eschewing posthumanism. Walking on the wild side of nanotechnology was starting to get too much like science fantasy for my tastes. The Quantum Magician is an exception that I’m happy I made: Derek Künsken’s story of a genetically engineered con artist is delightful, and it explores posthumanist ideas in a way that feels fresh. Although I wouldn’t say any of the characters (not even the protagonist) endeared themselves to…

An interesting departure from Miles’ arc in the Vorkosigan universe, Ethan of Athos takes us to the outskirts of Lois McMaster Bujold’s fantastic future vision of a far-flung, loosely-connected group of human societies in space. The eponymous protagonist comes from a planet colonist by an extreme religious group comprising only men; they reproduce through artificial wombs, and Ethan is one of their reproduction specialists. With this set-up, Bujold not only reverses the “planet of a…

I learned about Hope Never Dies from Twitter, and am I ever glad I did. I don’t read a lot of spoofs and parodies, but when I do, I like to read ones like Andrew Shaffer’s. It is delightful.

Joe Biden has been out of office for a while now, and while his former friend Barack is living the high celeb life, old Joe is … well, feeling his age. His life gets shaken up…

Last Cassie book is best Cassie book.

#50: The Ultimate is, quite simply, vicious. In its final arc the Animorphs series discards any pretense that this is anything less than a series about children being at war. Cassie, Jake, and the other Animorphs are the de facto leaders of a resistance comprising some free Hork Bajir, pacifistic Chee, and their parents (and maybe a peaceful group of Yeerks, but we haven’t heard from them…

Maybe I’m just reading these books in real-time—because it has been nearly 3 years since I read The Lives of Tao and about that amount of time has passed in between books. The Deaths of Tao is a worthy sequel, and arguably it’s better than the first book, though I’m not sure I’ll be as enthusiastic about it as I was in my review of The Lives of Tao. I love Wesley Chu’s creativity…

In what might be one of the most efficient stories in the series, The Diversion delivers an emotionally intense blow to the Animorphs as Applegate hammers home to her readers that nothing will ever be the same.

In Tobias’ last solo turn as narrator, we learn that the Yeerks have finally clued into the possibility that these Andalite bandits are actually humans. So they’ve begun a massive project of sifting through DNA samples, trying…

I enjoyed Storm Glass more than I thought I would when I first started. For whatever reason, I’m not aboard the young adult fantasy train right now, which is a shame, because there’s plenty of young adult fantasy I want to read, but I’m hesitant to go into it until I’m in the right mood! Still, I received this from NetGalley in exchange for a review, so a reading and a review it will get!

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Is truth beauty and beauty, truth? It can be hard to tell.

In Lost in Math: How Beauty Leads Physics Astray, Sabine Hossenfelder argues that these two concepts are not equivalent. As the subtitle implies, Hossenfelder feels that theoretical physicists are too obsessed with creating “beautiful” theories, in the sense that the mathematics that underpins the theories (because these days, theories are basically math, even though, as Hossenfelder stresses, physics isn’t math) must be…

Decidedly mixed feelings about this one! The Return asks some important questions about Rachel and her attitude towards fighting this war against the Yeerks. It also features the much-anticipated … uh, return … of David, one-time Animorph. Yet, like many Animorphs books, I find that the actual story/plot doesn’t bear up under the weight of the themes the series is trying to explore.

This is a deep cut, even for this series, but I’m really…

One Way is obviously trying to capitalize on the renaissance of Mars fiction, but if I had to liken it to an Andy Weir novel, it wouldn’t be The Martian—it has more in common with Artemis. This is a story of survival on Mars, yes, but it’s also a mystery wrapped up in corporate intrigue. S.J. Morden starts by asking what might happen if we sent convicts to construct a Mars base ……

Digging once more into my impressive Angry Robot subscription backlog, I come upon this frustrating gem of a fantasy novel. Seven Forges has many of the hallmarks I like about epic fantasy: political conniving, a cool setting, and varied characters who speak honestly and make mistakes. James A. Moore’s writing is, for the most part, clever and even fun. However, I have some reservations about the portrayal of women and the male gaze—read on to…

Second Review: January 27, 2019

I’ve just finished another TNG rewatch, and I’ve noticed a lot of things, or been looking at the show, in a different way this time around. That’s what I love about revisiting media I enjoy: you always notice new things. Although I don’t typically re-read a book so close in time to my first reading, the hardcover of Sadie has been calling to me ever since it showed up in…

Here we are, the last of the Animorphs Chronicles books. The impending conclusion of the series feels a lot more real having read this, and not just because the book opens with the Ellimist alluding to one of the Animorphs dying!!111.

Despite the book being set during the final battle of the last book, however, this book was published following #47: The Resistance. Julie, my guru of all things Animorphs, did everything short…

The Woken Gods has a wicked premise: what if the deities of various ancient mythologies were real entities, but at some point in time, for reasons lost to us, they were put asleep or fell asleep? What happens, then, if they wake up and return with a vengeance, and the only people who can stand against them are a shadowy secret society called the Society of the Sun that just happens to have made it…

Kara is still split on this one, folks. Atom Land: A Guided Tour Through the Strange (And Impossibly Small) World of Particle Physics tries to teach us about … well, particle physics. Specifically, Jon Butterworth takes us on a tour of the different particles in the Standard Model of physics, explains the three fundamental forces that interact with them, and then expands our horizons by briefly touching on the frontiers of physics research. The subject…

Last year I reviewed A Tyranny of Petticoats, which came on my radar because I received it in a Book Mail box from Book Riot. When I saw The Radical Element on NetGalley, I wanted to see how the second volume of this anthology series compared. Thanks to NetGalley and Candlewick Press for the eARC! I adored this book for what it is, and while I didn’t love every story, it was a great…

Previously, on Animorphs…

The Animorphs have literally just succeeded in contacting the Andalite command. The Deception picks up with no time passing. The conversation goes about as poorly as you might expect. After the Animorphs narrowly escape with their lives, they discover that the former Visser Three is now Visser One (!!!!!) and there’s a new Visser Two in town who wants to fuck everyone up by starting a nuclear war.

So what do our…