Review | Barbarian Alien by Ruby Dixon

Twelve humans are left stranded on a wintry alien planet. I’m one of them. Yay, me.

In order to survive, we have to take on a symbiont that wants to rewire our bodies to live in this brutal place. I like to call it a cootie. And my cootie’s a jerk, because it also thinks I’m the mate to the biggest, surliest alien of the group.

Women of Earth are being abducted by aliens. Fortunately, they are able to flee into the arms of the sexy blue aliens of Not Hoth. So goes the series Ice Planet Barbarians. Barbarian Alien is the second book in the Ice Planet Barbarians series by Ruby Dixon. I had heard this series follows different main characters in each book so I was quite pleased to find the characters in book one were still present in the background of Barbarian Alien. I need to check up on my friends, you know?

Barbarian Alien follows Liz and Raahosh. Liz could use a lot more patience, but I do love love and I found them to ultimately be a sweet couple. I needed a bookish escape and the wild world of Not Hoth provided.

⭐⭐⭐★★
3/5 stars

Source: library borrow. This is a review of my reading experience.

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Review | Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel

Source: borrowed from my library. This is a review of my reading experience.

 

A novel of art, time travel, love, and plague that takes the reader from Vancouver Island in 1912 to a dark colony on the moon five hundred years later, unfurling a story of humanity across centuries and space.

Edwin St. Andrew is eighteen years old when he crosses the Atlantic by steamship, exiled from polite society following an ill-conceived diatribe at a dinner party. He enters the forest, spellbound by the beauty of the Canadian wilderness, and suddenly hears the notes of a violin echoing in an airship terminal--an experience that shocks him to his core.

Two centuries later a famous writer named Olive Llewellyn is on a book tour. She's traveling all over Earth, but her home is the second moon colony, a place of white stone, spired towers, and artificial beauty. Within the text of Olive's best-selling pandemic novel lies a strange passage: a man plays his violin for change in the echoing corridor of an airship terminal as the trees of a forest rise around him.

When Gaspery-Jacques Roberts, a detective in the black-skied Night City, is hired to investigate an anomaly in the North American wilderness, he uncovers a series of lives upended: The exiled son of an earl driven to madness, a writer trapped far from home as a pandemic ravages Earth, and a childhood friend from the Night City who, like Gaspery himself, has glimpsed the chance to do something extraordinary that will disrupt the timeline of the universe.

A virtuoso performance that is as human and tender as it is intellectually playful, Sea of Tranquility is a novel of time travel and metaphysics that precisely captures the reality of our current moment.'

The best thing about book club is we are reading books we otherwise wouldn't have. Even though I enjoyed Station Eleven, I haven't been making time to pick up Emily St. John Mandel's other books.

I wish I had known The Glass House and Sea of Tranquility were connected. I would have read The Glass House first. I don't think it affected my enjoyment, though. I enjoyed reading Sea of Tranquility!

There was a section in Sea of Tranquility that triggered the covid lockdown memories - be aware. It really brought me back to those early days.

Sea of Tranquility is a time travel/time trippy type of story. It's well crafted and even a bit mindblowing. I have very low mental capacity right now but I was able to follow and understand (mostly!)

Emily St. John Mandel is a wonderful writer and one I hope to keep making time to read.

⭐⭐⭐⭐★
4/5 stars

Review | Shards of Earth by Adrian Tchaikovsky

Source: personal purchase. This is a review of my reading experience.

Shards of Earth is the first book in Adrian Tchaikovsky's The Final Architecture series.

The Arthur C. Clarke award-winning author of Children of Time brings us an extraordinary space opera about humanity on the brink of extinction, and how one man's discovery will save or destroy us all.

The war is over. Its heroes forgotten. Until one chance discovery . . .

Idris has neither aged nor slept since they remade him in the war. And one of humanity's heroes now scrapes by on a freelance salvage vessel, to avoid the attention of greater powers.

After earth was destroyed, mankind created a fighting elite to save their species, enhanced humans such as Idris. In the silence of space they could communicate, mind-to-mind, with the enemy. Then their alien aggressors, the Architects, simply disappeared—and Idris and his kind became obsolete.

Now, fifty years later, Idris and his crew have discovered something strange abandoned in space. It's clearly the work of the Architects—but are they returning? And if so, why? Hunted by gangsters, cults and governments, Idris and his crew race across the galaxy hunting for answers. For they now possess something of incalculable value, that many would kill to obtain.

Do you ever like a book and have nothing to say about it? My book club read Shards of Earth as our February book selection. We had book club today, and no one really had anything to say. The few of us that showed up and read it liked it (which was a little surprising to be honest), but we struggled to find things to talk about.

I annotate when I'm reading and I had a lot of tabs in this book, but I think pretty much every one of them dealt with unspace and the Architects. For me, unspace and the Architects were everything in this book. I feel like either my mind kind of glossed over everything else or it was just too much for me to grasp right now (highly possible). There were a lot of characters and politics and places.

So - I enjoyed parts of this book very much, but it's also not a favorite of mine outside of the fact that this book gave me the wonderful creeps and it's not even a horror book. I'm starting to realize how many frightening things are in scifi books. I need to start reading more each year than I normally do.

Having read Children of Time, I really thought Shards of Earth would stand on its own outside of the series its in, but that was not the case. The way it ended made it feel like this book was really just the beginning. At 500+ pages, that's a chunky beginning. But I'll be reading more! I need to know more about the Architects and what is going to happen.

I recommend Shards of Earth but not as a first Tchaikovsky book. Read some of his other stuff first so you will trust him enough to read through this one.

3/5 stars
⭐⭐⭐★★

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Review | Piranesi by Susanna Clarke

Piranesi is a cross-genre novel by Susanna Clarke.

Piranesi’s house is no ordinary building: its rooms are infinite, its corridors endless, its walls are lined with thousands upon thousands of statues, each one different from all the others. Within the labyrinth of halls an ocean is imprisoned; waves thunder up staircases, rooms are flooded in an instant. But Piranesi is not afraid; he understands the tides as he understands the pattern of the labyrinth itself. He lives to explore the house.

There is one other person in the house—a man called The Other, who visits Piranesi twice a week and asks for help with research into A Great and Secret Knowledge. But as Piranesi explores, evidence emerges of another person, and a terrible truth begins to unravel, revealing a world beyond the one Piranesi has always known.

What a strange and wonderful book.

How do I even review Piranesi? This is 100% a book that is best to go into blind. I'm so glad I chose to avoid reviews for this one so I'm going to keep my review vague and avoid talking about the details of Piranesi.

I do want to mention if you decide to try Piranesi, don't put it down. I would actually recommend reading it in as few sittings as possible, but I mean don't DNF it. For most of Piranesi I had no idea what was going on and I assumed I wouldn't care about the characters that I was struggling to get to know, but I was wrong. I wound up loving the characters and loving Piranesi. This strange little book has turned out to be one of my favorite books of the year.

I wondered throughout reading Piranesi who I would even recommend it to if I wound up loving it, but now that I've finished reading it, I would recommend it to anyone willing to take a chance on a unique story. If you love finding a reading experience unlike anything you've read before, you should definitely consider picking up Piranesi.

5/5 stars
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

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Book Review | Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky

Children of Time is the first book in Adrian Tchaikovsky's Children of Time series.

Adrian Tchaikovksy's award-winning novel Children of Time, is the epic story of humanity's battle for survival on a terraformed planet.

Who will inherit this new Earth?

The last remnants of the human race left a dying Earth, desperate to find a new home among the stars. Following in the footsteps of their ancestors, they discover the greatest treasure of the past age -- a world terraformed and prepared for human life.

But all is not right in this new Eden. In the long years since the planet was abandoned, the work of its architects has borne disastrous fruit. The planet is not waiting for them, pristine and unoccupied. New masters have turned it from a refuge into mankind's worst nightmare.

Now two civilizations are on a collision course, both testing the boundaries of what they will do to survive. As the fate of humanity hangs in the balance, who are the true heirs of this new Earth?

So I hate spiders. But what I do love is reading about alien life forms. That is a favorite thing. There are uplifted (intelligent) spiders in Children of Time, and they are honestly the best story line of the book.

Children of Time also follows a dual timeline of a ship crewed by the last humans.

I originally gave this book 3 stars when I read it back in 2019, but I can't remember why my rating wasn't higher. It has remained with me and I've been wanting to reread it ever since. As per usual when I reread something, I'm upping my rating. Children of Ruin (the sequel to Children of Time) came out a few years ago, but I haven't read it yet. It's been hard for me to read the chunky, epic books that I used to read, but I've made a few changes to my reading life this year that will free up more time for the chunky SFF books I've been missing.

I recently found out the third book (Childen of Memory) will be coming out later this year so this turned out to be perfect timing to jump back into this universe.

The only other book I've read by Adrian Tchaikovsky is Walking to Aldebaran which I really enjoyed as well. I'd love to read a lot more of his catalog. I've heard amazing thing about his fantasy novel Guns of the Dawn.

If you haven't read anything by Adrian Tchaikovsky, it sounds like you can really start anywhere with his books, but I do recommend this one if you love science fiction and discovering new species (even if that new species happens to be spiders!).

4/5 stars
⭐⭐⭐⭐★

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Book Review | Upgrade by Blake Crouch

The mind-blowing new thriller from the New York Times bestselling author of Dark Matter and Recursion

“You are the next step in human evolution.”

At first, Logan Ramsay isn’t sure if anything’s different. He just feels a little . . . sharper. Better able to concentrate. Better at multitasking. Reading a bit faster, memorizing better, needing less sleep.

But before long, he can’t deny it: Something’s happening to his brain. To his body. He’s starting to see the world, and those around him—even those he loves most—in whole new ways.

The truth is, Logan’s genome has been hacked. And there’s a reason he’s been targeted for this upgrade. A reason that goes back decades to the darkest part of his past, and a horrific family legacy.

Worse still, what’s happening to him is just the first step in a much larger plan, one that will inflict the same changes on humanity at large—at a terrifying cost.

Because of his new abilities, Logan’s the one person in the world capable of stopping what’s been set in motion. But to have a chance at winning this war, he’ll have to become something other than himself. Maybe even something other than human.

And even as he’s fighting, he can’t help wondering: what if humanity’s only hope for a future really does lie in engineering our own evolution?

Intimate in scale yet epic in scope, Upgrade is an intricately plotted, lightning-fast tale that charts one man’s thrilling transformation, even as it asks us to ponder the limits of our humanity—and our boundless potential.

So. Much. Science. That was all I asked for, and that's what I got!

Upgrade is Blake Crouch's latest science thriller. I enjoyed Dark Matter and I loved Recursion so I was really excited to read Upgrade.

All I knew going into Upgrade was it dealt with genetic engineering. This was correct, but it was quite different than I was expecting! I loved all of the science in Upgrade. One could argue there was too much science, but I love the way Crouch introduces all of the science in his books. He makes it so accessible. He can make the most complicated science understandable.

My biggest complaint with Upgrade is I just didn't care about the characters. There were high stakes and there was a lot of action - I just didn't have that connection with anyone that would have made the action and the stakes so much more suspenseful for me. Even with the entire world at stake, I kind of feel like I've already been living that since 2020. It's not Blake Crouch's fault, but I don't even want to read about viruses or pandemics anymore. I'm over it.

Overall, I enjoyed Upgrade. I got just what I was asking for, but it's not going on my list of favorites for the year. I need more character development so I can root for someone. I will still be standing in line for the next Blake Crouch science thriller, though. The science is certainly something I will continue to want more of. 

⭐⭐⭐★★
3/5 stars

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Book Review | Feral Creatures by Kira Jane Buxton

Feral Creatures is the second book in the Hollow Kingdom series by Kira Jane Buxton.

 

In this stunning follow-up to Hollow Kingdom, the animal kingdom's "favorite apocalyptic hero"is back with a renewed sense of hope for humanity, ready to take on a world ravaged by a viral pandemic (Helen Macdonald).

Once upon an apocalypse, there lived an obscenely handsome American crow named S.T. . . .
 
When the world last checked-in with its favorite Cheeto addict, the planet had been overrun by flesh-hungry beasts, and nature had started re-claiming her territory from humankind. S.T., the intrepid crow, alongside his bloodhound-bestie Dennis, had set about saving pets that had become trapped in their homes after humanity went the way of the dodo.
 
That is, dear reader, until S.T. stumbled upon something so rare—and so precious—that he vowed to do everything in his power to safeguard what could, quite literally, be humanity's last hope for survival. But in a wild world plagued by prejudiced animals, feather-raising environments, new threats so terrifying they make zombies look like baby bunnies, and a horrendous dearth of cheesy snacks, what's a crow to do?
 
Why, wing it on another big-hearted, death-defying adventure, that's what! Joined by a fabulous new cast of animal characters, S.T. faces many new challenges plus his biggest one yet: parenthood.

I laughed, I cried, I fell in love.

Told through the POV of animals in a post-apocalypse trying to save the last human on Earth, Feral Creatures was an absolute joy to read.

Feral Creatures is fantasy, scifi, and horror all rolled into one. It's a rare and beautiful book. The first book in the series Hollow Kingdom was one of my favorite books of 2019, and I have zero doubts Feral Creatures will be in my top books of the year list this year. (I have such a book hangover now!)

If you haven't read Hollow Kingdom, I highly, highly recommend you pick that one up and continue on with Feral Creatures. This series is such a gift!

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
5/5 stars

Review copy provided by publisher

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Book Review | The Trials of Koli by M.R. Carey

The Trials of Koli is the second book in the Rampart Trilogy by M.R. Carey.

The Trials of Koli is the second novel in M R. Carey’s breathtakingly original Rampart trilogy, set in a strange and deadly world of our own making.

Beyond the walls of Koli’s small village lies a fearsome landscape filled with choker trees, vicious beasts and shunned men. As an exile, Koli’s been forced to journey out into this mysterious, hostile world. But he heard a story, once. A story about lost London, and the mysterious tech of the Old Times that may still be there. If Koli can find it, there may still be a way for him to redeem himself – by saving what’s left of humankind.

I'm continuing to really enjoy this series. I think The Trials of Koli was even better than The Book of Koli. There's more of what I wanted from the first one - more POV, more world building.

I loved having the perspective of someone who was still in Mythen Rood (Spinner) as well as Koli's viewpoint outside of the village. I enjoyed all of the characters and their relationships throughout The Trials of Koli. I'm also glad we got to learn more about the choker trees and the nature of the world they are living in.

The Rampart Trilogy feels like one big book split into three parts so I don't think The Trials of Koli can be read on its own. It's a solid middle book, though. I will definitely recommend the series as a whole if I enjoy the final book as much as I've enjoyed the first two installments.

⭐⭐⭐⭐★
4/5 stars

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Book Review | The Space Between Worlds by Micaiah Johnson

The Space Between Worlds is a debut science fiction novel by Micaiah Johnson.

An outsider who can travel between worlds discovers a secret that threatens her new home and her fragile place in it, in a stunning sci-fi debut that’s both a cross-dimensional adventure and a powerful examination of identity, privilege, and belonging.

Multiverse travel is finally possible, but there’s just one catch: No one can visit a world where their counterpart is still alive. Enter Cara, whose parallel selves happen to be exceptionally good at dying—from disease, turf wars, or vendettas they couldn’t outrun. Cara’s life has been cut short on 372 worlds in total.

On this Earth, however, Cara has survived. Identified as an outlier and therefore a perfect candidate for multiverse travel, Cara is plucked from the dirt of the wastelands. Now she has a nice apartment on the lower levels of the wealthy and walled-off Wiley City. She works—and shamelessly flirts—with her enticing yet aloof handler, Dell, as the two women collect off-world data for the Eldridge Institute. She even occasionally leaves the city to visit her family in the wastes, though she struggles to feel at home in either place. So long as she can keep her head down and avoid trouble, Cara is on a sure path to citizenship and security.

But trouble finds Cara when one of her eight remaining doppelgängers dies under mysterious circumstances, plunging her into a new world with an old secret. What she discovers will connect her past and her future in ways she could have never imagined—and reveal her own role in a plot that endangers not just her world, but the entire multiverse.

 

I read The Space Between Worlds over my Thanksgiving break, and I can't believe I haven't taken the time to post a review for it yet. It's without a doubt going to wind up on my best of the year list. I can't believe this is a debut! I'm excited to see what Micaiah Johnson comes up with next.

The Space Between Worlds is a multiverse story. In this reality, they have discovered a way to travel between the dimensions, but you can only travel to a world where you have died and therefore do not exist. There are so many things that make this a great novel! I flew through it in just a couple of days.

This book is perfect for fans of Blake Crouch's Recursion. I was excited to see it rank so highly in the Goodreads Choice Awards. It got my vote!

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
5/5 stars

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Book Review | Ready Player Two by Ernest Cline

Ready Player Two is the science fiction sequel to Ready Player One by Ernest Cline.

An unexpected quest. Two worlds at stake. Are you ready?

Days after Oasis founder James Halliday's contest, Wade Watts makes a discovery that changes everything. Hidden within Halliday's vault, waiting for his heir to find, lies a technological advancement that will once again change the world and make the Oasis a thousand times more wondrous, and addictive, than even Wade dreamed possible. With it comes a new riddle and a new quest. A last Easter egg from Halliday, hinting at a mysterious prize. And an unexpected, impossibly powerful, and dangerous new rival awaits, one who will kill millions to get what he wants. Wade's life and the future of the Oasis are again at stake, but this time the fate of humanity also hangs in the balance.

First of all, I enjoyed reading Ready Player Two.

I hated Wade's character in the beginning. That was really bumming me out, but Ready Player Two turned into a treasure hunt book with a countdown timer. Those are two of my favorite story elements so I was EXCITED. I loved the stakes of the countdown timer (as I always do), but treasure hunts should take a long time. Cline got that aspect right in Ready Player One.

Here's the most important part, right? The references! There were a lot more music and movie references in Ready Player Two, and I was here for every single one them. They were written just for me.

This wasn't a perfect book, but neither was Ready Player One. It was fun and it was nostalgic, and I had a great time playing.

⭐⭐⭐⭐★
4/5 stars

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Book Review | The Book of Koli by M.R. Carey

The Book of Koli is a new science fiction/post-apocalyptic novel from M.R. Carey.

Beyond the walls of the small village of Mythen Rood lies an unrecognizable world. A world where overgrown forests are filled with choker trees and deadly vines and seeds that will kill you where you stand. And if they don't get you, one of the dangerous shunned men will.

Koli has lived in Mythen Rood his entire life. He knows the first rule of survival is that you don't venture beyond the walls.

What he doesn't know is - what happens when you aren't given a choice?

The first in a gripping new trilogy, The Book of Koli charts the journey of one unforgettable young boy struggling to find his place in a chilling post-apocalyptic world. Perfect for readers of Station Eleven and Annihilation.

Why did I read The Book of Koli?

I adored The Girl with All the Gifts. That makes me automatically take a closer look at anything M.R. Carey releases. I loved the sound of this trilogy. It's been a while since I've read a really great dystopian, and a deadly forest sounded perfect!

The Strengths

I immediately fell in love with the language in this. I think some readers may have trouble with the grammar and other nuances, but I really connected with Carey's writing in this one. There was poetry to his voice and his language here, and I just really enjoyed spending time with it.

I also loved the characters. Koli is a bit of a Harry Potter type of character. He's the star of the show, but all of his supporting characters are more powerful and more interesting. Monono reminded me a lot of the operating system in the movie Her. If you liked The Book of Koli or Her, I highly recommend the other!

I loved the world building, but this is also going to appear in the weaknesses for The Book of Koli. I'm a sucker for post-apocalypse and natural forces outweigh political forces for me every time. I can't wait to learn more about this world.

The Weaknesses

The Book of Koli is the first book in the Rampart Trilogy. It helped tremendously seeing the covers for the next two books on the back of my Koli paperback. I was prepared to only receive the first third of a complete story, but I'm never going to be 100% OK with a book not being able to stand on its own.

My expectation going into reading The Book of Koli was the environment was going to play a huge role in this trilogy. Hopefully it still will, but there was a lot less man versus nature than I was expecting. I want to know more and I want to see more! The good news is we are just getting started.

Would I recommend The Book of Koli to others?

Yes! Especially if you have loved other books by M.R. Carey. I'm really excited for the rest of the trilogy, and the next two books are at the top of my most anticipated list.

⭐⭐⭐⭐★
4/5 stars

Review copy provided by publisher

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