Blame!, Vol. 2 by Tsutomu Nihei
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Where the first mostly just had atmosphere, this one is giving us some real plot guts and I'm vibing it.

Super high-tech cyberpunk far future SF more strange than anything we usually get now. Its imagination is wild.

Let's go beyond uploads and downloads of minds and just hit full layered Geiger realities, gravitational guns, networked genes, wooooo!

I miss this unhinged stuff. Truly.

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Blame!, Vol. 1 by Tsutomu Nihei
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Hardcore cyberpunk. As in, cyborgs, endless strange city one must climb, hardly any dialogue, and nothing but the mystery of:

What the hell is happening here?

That being said, it's strange and wonderful in a grotesque way, making me think it's a deep technological sink hole with most of humanity dead or changed to varying degrees.

Indeed, I get a very lovecraftian feel out of this. The atmosphere is pretty divine. Or rather... hellish.

The architecture is Geigerish as hell.

Pretty fun and bloody. I'm hooked enough to want to know WHY and WHAT the hell is going on. And that's a big ask.

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A Just Determination by John G. Hemry
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is a very comfortable read. It bills itself as JAG in space and delivers with just that. It's not law heavy, despite the billing, but just follows a junior command through his first days on a ship. The SF portions are very, very light, but that's not really the point.

It's competence porn with quite a bit of focus on little mistakes and bad leadership and the snags and help you'll find all around you, with the end being a focus on standing up for what you believe is right.

That's actually a bit more important than it seems when you're looking at a military ship, of course, and the whole thing is just--comfortable. Like a well-worn tv show.

No complaints. I enjoy the change of pace.

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Scales: FINALIST FOR THE PHILIP K. DICK AWARD 2026 by Christopher Hinz
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Manage your expectations. This isn't a SF horror or a true thriller in any sense of the word. So, no Jurassic Park for the new age.

It is, however, a light-toned and fairly charming look at man-made lizard people being groomed for the military and an adventure that's not so much military-minded as a reaction to the whole "we made dino-men" in general.

And there's a romance.

Hell, if I didn't know any better, I'd have thought this was written by Scalzi.

That being said, it was still a fun read. I wouldn't call it groundbreaking, but it was entertaining, and that's a good thing.

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Ode to the Half-Broken by Suzanne Palmer
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I've been a pretty big fan of Suzanne Palmer's Finder series but it should be noted that she also wrote a Hugo nommed story about robots in space.

And this novel is definitely in that universe, although fixed right on Earth after the robot apocalypse.

A lot of people will see a connection with the Murderbot series (I don't think so, too much) or with Becky Chambers (only a bit), but for me, I see all kinds of shades of Cargill's Sea of Rust and Roderick and Adrian Tchaikovsky's Service Model here.

Sure, robots, definitely more along the line of hate and healing, revenge and true justice--all while taking the guise of an old warrior wanting nothing but peace and finding it with a found family--while not ending it there.

I rather enjoyed it. No less because it had something a bit deeper to say, too. Something pertinent today. I won't spoil it. But this is definitely a good read.

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SUBMERGED: A hacker thriller by John Wilander
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Most books I read about hackers rather skim over the ways and means, assuming the reader either doesn't care or has a twitter attention span. I'm glad this one doesn't. It has that in common with the first book in the series.

And in case I'm not clear on this, I LOVE the fact that it geeks out on real hacking with all the ways and means. It's very informative, even if I can't confirm or deny that it's real. It FEELS real, and that's kinda the point.

But that isn't the real point of this particular novel. This is a true technological thriller. A crack team doing a more realistic mission impossible, complete with real consequences, massively researched Russian locales, and a quite plausible--and indeed likely--look at the real scope of cyber-warfare between nations.

Updated to today. Which is, as you know, messed up. As in, totally out of control. Misinformation central. But hey, being lied to has now become normal.

My only slight immersion break was the whole submarine part, but despite the cover, it's only a small portion of the goodies. No matter how it might bill itself as a mission impossible, it felt just a bit too mission impossible when dealing with the nitty gritty realism that the book does so well everywhere else.

But then, that may be just me. I really enjoyed the book, otherwise.

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Providence by TurtleMe
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Okay. This book is kinda a hot mess. And while it DOES have enough good stuff to keep it afloat and cool and definitely worth reading, the bad stuff is still truly annoying.

Like the broken, broken again, broken yet again magic ass-pulls. This makes me think we're going back to the truly mysterious magic system days where it's all built on "if you just believe hard enough, you'll get it", but without faith. Just the plain old somehow Palpatine came back, but for magic rules. Like Cecilia. Or rather, all Cecilia. And while the whole fate mastery bit was cool on the surface and a bit deeper, it's still TOTALLY an ass-pull.

So yeah, between that and just a tad too many PoVs that I didn't care about--sorry, Nate--I just kept hoping to get through the main plot for the sake of just MOVING ON at last.

But fortunately, we do. And it was pretty cool, despite all the annoying bits. And so I'm not QUITE done with this series since there's another one coming out. :)

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