I was absolutely mesmerized by this book. Maybe it was because I've often thought about what might (or should that be will?) happen when DNA manipulatI was absolutely mesmerized by this book. Maybe it was because I've often thought about what might (or should that be will?) happen when DNA manipulation becomes a common occurrence. My strengths do not go in the direction of science so for a book such as this to completely satisfy my desire for science fiction it has to read as if it *might all just be true*. Never mind if every fact is a proven scientific fact because I'm aware that I'm reading fiction but make it as interesting as possible while exploring where the story is going. My first Blake Crouch and I picked a doozie!
Yes, the explanations of the changing of the DNA is extremely scientific sounding. Yes, it can be hard for some of us to muddle our way through those passages. Thankfully I was enjoying the story so much I didn't mind slowing down for the tough explanations. I'm reading fiction; I will survive reading through content that makes me wonder just how real some of this science is.
Thank you to NetGalley and Random House Publishing, Ballantine Books for an e-galley of this novel. ...more
Thank you to NetGalley and Canongate Books - Severn House for an e-galley of this novel.
This book actually rates 2.5 stars from me but I rounded up toThank you to NetGalley and Canongate Books - Severn House for an e-galley of this novel.
This book actually rates 2.5 stars from me but I rounded up to 3 because I read the entire book and was mildly interested in it in spite of its irritants. The book blurb tells you the plot so I will concentrate on my findings.
1. The reason Major Amanda Bostick's superior officer despised her was never clearly stated. Surely there must have been a story of some kind there. I waited through the entire book and never got the explanation I wanted. 2. Too many of the chapters had a cliffhanger type ending. After being exposed to that style for the first few chapters my interest became practically nil; the drama wasn't dramatic any longer. 3. Too often somebody (usually Amanda) would come up with a plan (the old "I've got a plan" line) but never share it with anybody until much later by which time I really didn't care. Lots of full or partial head nods and winks when Amanda's crew caught on to what she was maybe/probably thinking she would do. 4. Too much telling me what happened instead of describing what took place to me so I could see and feel how the actions made me react. This was especially egregious with the final confrontational scene which made me have serious longings for the good old throw-the-book-across-the-room times (I read on a device so expensive damage might have occurred).
Plainly this novel was not a success for me. This author is prolific in output so if you've read something by Davis Bunn before and liked that style, you will most likely not agree with me at all....more
I am so glad I finally read this book. It's been on my Paperwhite for ages and every time I scrolled by it I reminded myself to read it although, honeI am so glad I finally read this book. It's been on my Paperwhite for ages and every time I scrolled by it I reminded myself to read it although, honestly, I had totally forgotten what the story was about. What I found is a story that explored questions of faith and belief in a future world where those two subjects were adhered to only by a small number of people who were reviled and even despised. They were only tolerated because they were protected by the law. An even odder factor was that Gilead Raca Benedar was a man who followed his beliefs but he was also so skilled in reading the emotions of other people that it gave him a skill much sought by corporate leaders. Oh, they didn't want Gilead as a friend but as a method of analyzing those they were involved with in business transactions. Gilead may be considered a religious fanatic, but he is still a Watcher.
In order to move from one portion of space to another this civilization uses criminals convicted of capital crimes to man the deadman switch. The execution of the criminal turns that person into a zombi, someone to be controlled by the Cloud to pilot the spaceship through unfriendly space using an ever-changing route to keep it secret. So when or is this type of punishment murder, just of a different type? When is it justifiable to supply the zombies for the convenience of others? This is not a preaching novel but it really does show how far humans can go to make allowances in order to get what we want. Written in 1988, this book does not suffer at all because of its age....more
My rating is more of a 3.5 but not up to 4 stars. There were just too many times when it all felt like it was going to morph into The Martian but was My rating is more of a 3.5 but not up to 4 stars. There were just too many times when it all felt like it was going to morph into The Martian but was pulled back from the brink just in time. I loved The Martian, it actually had me breathless at times - not so with Hail Mary because I even put this one down for long stretches and felt no compulsion to dig back in. I even made a trip to the book description page on Amazon at one point to see if I might have chosen a middle grade book by mistake. Not impossible for Weir to want to do something like that but logical thinking said that the science would have been quite a few shades too tough. The Earth is in crisis and this ship is sent on a suicide mission to fix the problem or everyone on Earth dies. Maybe a little too far fetched to believe all of these problems can be solved by one human? Maybe the ending was expected? Maybe it was too predictable? Yes, yes and yes.
Thank you to NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group - Ballantine for an e-galley of this novel....more
This entry in The Murderbot Diaries comes directly after book five and is, once again, much too short for my liking. However, I can't come up with a pThis entry in The Murderbot Diaries comes directly after book five and is, once again, much too short for my liking. However, I can't come up with a page number that would satisfy my longing for more wit and charm (yes, a bot can be charming if you overlook some elements of their personality) from this SecUnit. Hmm, 500 pages of Murderbot? Give it to me Ms Wells and let me test it out. Anyway, just so you will not be surprised, this offering is approximately 176 pages long and it fairly flies by.
SecUnit is on the spot when a dead human is found on Preservation Station. Our main characters are all still here (from story #5) keeping Dr. Mensah safe from GrayCris. The question now is whether this dead human could have any connection to GrayCris agents trying to kill Mensah. Preservation Station Security doesn't want to work with a SecUnit because, well, who does, but they have no choice in the matter so Murderbot begins his own semi-private investigation while working with security and promising he won't do anything to hinder either the Station or their security department. All of this and no chance for him to download media; a SecUnit could become very cranky from all these distractions.
This story is a good mystery puzzle and I think it would work well as a full length book if it had a little more meat on its bones. Murderbot is back to making astringent comments about humans and their abilities but always speaking to himself so nobody gets their feelings hurt. He also doesn't have to kill too many humans when things do go into action mode so the Security Department head for Preservation Station begins to accept his abilities and rely on him. I loved it and sincerely advise you to read all the stories in order so you will understand why so many other readers love him just as much as I do.
Thank you to NetGalley and Macmillan-Tor/Forge Tordotcom for an e-galley of this story....more
Five stars for an absolutely stunningly beautiful work of fiction. There is no letdown following the end of A Memory Called Empire, in fact this one wFive stars for an absolutely stunningly beautiful work of fiction. There is no letdown following the end of A Memory Called Empire, in fact this one was even better for me because there was more action and more contact with the alien being on the edge of the known galaxy. How can you use your conventional weapons against an enemy who has means of destroying your own ships that you cannot understand? Fleet Captain Nine Hibiscus finds herself having to do things she hoped never to even contemplate just to survive the initial contact. And it just keeps getting worse.
It was March 2019 when I read the first book in this series, and I enjoyed that book very much, but I still had some trouble being able to immerse myself into this story as it began. I would definitely suggest that you read A Memory Called Empire before you begin this one because the author has not given the reader an easy style access into this new novel; the Prelude might not make complete sense to readers until they have gotten someway into the story. I went back and read it again when I had read the first two chapters and it was much more enjoyable then. I found it fascinating that a novel written with such beautiful language should present readers with an alien being so different from that.
Thank you to NetGalley and Macmillan - Tor/Forge Tor Books for an e-galley of this novel....more
I'm surprised by how ambivalent I am with regard to this story. It should have been just right for me with the emphasis placed on artificial intelligeI'm surprised by how ambivalent I am with regard to this story. It should have been just right for me with the emphasis placed on artificial intelligence but this didn't strike me as a futuristic adventure of humans and AIs but a moral dilemma of how the AIs should be treated by humans. This world sounded like it would be interesting to read about because, essentially, all humans are addicted to pills of all types as augmentation for improving themselves. They even formulate their own drugs of choice which help them compete with AIs. Machinehood is a terrorist organization which announces that all pill production must stop within a week and when that doesn't happen they begin to kill the largest pill funders. The main character is working as a Shield (read that as bodyguard) for one of the pill funders.
There seemed to be so many opportunities lost when I would have liked to get closer to the main character and gotten to see how this world really worked. As one example Welga Ramirez almost dies while working as a shield but instead of showing readers what scientific advances repair her body there is just the destruction and then a day passes and Welga is all better.
Social media is hyped up to an incredible extent in the story with masses of robotic cameras swarming everywhere recording anything and everything that happens throughout both personal and business situations. People watch the videos and vote their thumbs up or down by placing virtual coins in a tip jar resulting in income for the people featured in the videos. Jobs are performed with the knowledge that you can get higher tips if you put on a better or different performance; the performances even enter into what is usually the most private of interactions.
My attachment to Welga was absolutely nil and the mission of the Machinehood group wasn't anything I cared about either.
Thank you to NetGalley and Gallery Saga Press for an e-galley of this novel.
My main reason for reading anthologies is my hope to find a story so interesting as to make me chose a book by an author with a work included in the cMy main reason for reading anthologies is my hope to find a story so interesting as to make me chose a book by an author with a work included in the collection. Finding a new author I'm interested in would be the icing on the cake. Well...it didn't happen here. I'm really quite surprised at how I reacted to these stories; they were interesting enough while I was reading them I didn't go exploring at all. Each time I came to a story submitted by an author I had either read about or I had actually read a book authored by them I figured that this one would be different - something about this one would really engage my attention. I read it and then I finished it and then I forgot what it was all about. I had to go back and look it up, but here are some of the story subjects: superhero recruitment, shape shifter, alien visitor, ghost haunting, end of the world, a giant native and memory loss.
Thank you to NetGalley and Shadowpaw Press for an e-galley of this anthology. ...more
How I do wish book rating systems allowed for decimal designations of some sort. The previous two books in this trilogy (hmm, can't help but wonder ifHow I do wish book rating systems allowed for decimal designations of some sort. The previous two books in this trilogy (hmm, can't help but wonder if that will really hold true) were solid 5 star books for me. This one wasn't as good for me but it certainly didn't slip too far backward either. 4.5 would definitely come closer to an accurate rating. I latched on to one of the main big concepts flowing throughout the series and discovered in this book that I had been sold a slightly incorrect bill of goods. I was disappointed about that.
I do not recommend that any reader begin this Salvation Sequence series with this third book. Author Peter F. Hamilton never does any kind of recap of at least book two - Salvation Lost, so anyone new to this series will be pretty much lost the whole time. The concepts in this series are large and it takes the full three books for them to unfold completely. But, was it completely? There seemed to be some niggling dangling threads still unresolved. As with the first two books I thoroughly enjoyed the portions of the book which described what was happening on Earth. Living under protective shields and having Olyix ships bombarding those shields constantly made the efforts of the human population so poignant, a touching tribute to the human will to survive. Most of the earth portions take place in London which is suffering under what the people are calling Blitz2, a description that took me back to the real history of an heroic population trying to find some normal ways of living during the World War II years. That touch of quasi realistic life made portions of the book more relative to me.
I must admit that I bought into what was being urged on me throughout the first two books, so the conclusion of this third book made me go back and re-read portions to see if I had gotten what was being presented correctly. After thinking over the full story I can't help but wonder if this is really the end. There is a very large number of characters in these books and it seems a shame for them to stop being used to tell stories. Maybe some of them will migrate over into another series and the adventure can continue.
Thank you to NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group, Ballantine for an e-galley of this novel. ...more
Wow, this one ticked all the boxes for me. From first page to last I was hooked.
Dr. Brookllyn Jens is a doctor working from an ambulance ship going tWow, this one ticked all the boxes for me. From first page to last I was hooked.
Dr. Brookllyn Jens is a doctor working from an ambulance ship going to the rescue of those in distress in space. She and the crew of the Synarche Medical Vessel I Race To Seek the Living have located the ship sending the distress call, Big Rock Candy Mountain, a ship that left Terra about six hundred years previously, and Llyn and her team must make the jump from her ship onto Big Rock Candy Mountain to ascertain the situation that required the distress signal. Reading the names of those space ships you may think this is a book with lots of comedy at it's core, which is what I was thinking for a while, but that's not what you will get at all. Finding out what the situation is aboard the vessel in distress is the first step in getting any survivors back to Core General, the largest hospital in the galaxy.
This was so, so good for me with a high percentage of interactions with various AI systems. Plots featuring those are some of my favorite science fiction reads. This book features a female lead who is old enough to have a grown daughter, not a situation I've encountered before, and Llyn tends to rely much more on her intellect to manage situations and solve problems than physical abilities. I do tend to get rather tired of the oftentimes standard spunky/feisty female lead. The hospital is under a terrorist attack but there don't seem to be any clues about who could be causing the chaos.
Elizabeth Bear also writes wonderful alien characters. And the augmentations that have been perfected in this future were so easy for me to become accustomed to. I liked the way the human and alien species worked together and the complexity of the problems they had to solve. Altogether this was a marvelous reading experience for me and I'm chomping at the bite for the next book in this series to be released. I also have plans to begin reading the first book in the White Space series. Happy dance, happy dance!
Thank you to NetGalley and Gallery Books/Saga Press for an e-galley of this novel. ...more
Updated: September 22, 2o20. In my original comments I noted that Macmillan/Tor-Forge offered an excerpt of this book for early review and I didn't unUpdated: September 22, 2o20. In my original comments I noted that Macmillan/Tor-Forge offered an excerpt of this book for early review and I didn't understand why they were willing to provide such a large excerpt. Well, all has been explained because it turns out this is a very long book, over 850 pages, and the portion used for an ARC turned out to be just a small whetting of the appetite. I've now read the entire book and was very impressed with the plotting and the world Christopher Paolini invented for his epic science fiction story to take place in. There is definitely good sounding science fiction (if it's not factual, it sure does sound like it) along with multiple alien species and fights-to-the-death between all elements in space and on various planets and moons. The concept is big and the reader is taken along through all the twists and turns necessary to get this big story told. (Notice big twice - supersized, like a burger!) What keeps it from being a five star rating from me is the comedic aspect sprinkled throughout. Here I'm whizzing along at breakneck speed finding out about an original alien species only to be stopped dead in my tracks when I'm told they are going to be called Jellies. That just did not work for me and I actually resented having them trivialized in that way. A space system called Bughunt? If these types of things don't jerk you out of the story, then you will be just fine. They jerked me around for the whole book and made it hard for me to take it seriously. Now, having said those things, I want to thank the author for "Fink-Nottle's Pious Newt Emporium". I'm sure Gussie would be thrilled to know his beloved newts made it into a science fiction epic novel.
Original review: June 2020. Macmillan/Tor-Forge was offering a partial galley of their September 2020 release by Christopher Paolini titled To Sleep in a Sea of Stars. While I don't quite understand the concept behind offering only a portion of a book for advance reading I am an inquisitive kind of person so I accepted their offer. I based my four star rating on how involved I was in this substantial portion of the book and how interested I am in continuing the story once the novel is available. How likely would I be to purchase the full novel? Highly likely!
Paolini is a new author for me so I had no advance ideas about what style or proficiency of writing I might find once I began to read. The premise concerns a team who have been doing testing on Andrasteia, an Earth-sized moon, for the past four months to check that it is safe for the colonists who will soon be arriving to terraform this moon into an active living space. Kira Navarez is the xenobiologist on the crew so she is given the assignment to make a quick trip back to the moon's surface to check out a drone that has stopped transmitting. With their ship leaving the next day to return to base Kira isn't very happy with having to go back down for a check of what had gone wrong with the drone. At first Kira is ecstatic when she discovers an alien artifact but that quickly turns to concern when she gets hurt and needs to be rescued. Before that rescue can take place she looks down and sees her boots covered with dust - a dust that shouldn't be there.
As I said, this sample is quite a good sized portion so I do feel that I have read enough to be comfortable with the author's style of writing. What happens to Kira is not a new, never seen before science fiction circumstance but I did become invested in her wellbeing quite quickly so I'm concerned about what will happen to her next and what consequence this alien artifact will have on the existing portions of populated space. The book can go in any number of directions from the end of this excerpt and the author has written this portion so well it has made me curious about what will happen next. I'm looking forward to finding out what happens with Kira and the alien artifact....more
This second book in the Outriders series was slightly different from the action-emphasis first thriller, but it was still a good read for anybody who This second book in the Outriders series was slightly different from the action-emphasis first thriller, but it was still a good read for anybody who likes watching a black ops group work their incredible feats of espionage. The tools used by the Outriders are light years ahead of a basic cold war or modern spy group so it was entertaining to see what weapons and support material the author would imagine for the team's use. Some of it was intriguing to think about.
This second story centers around a weaponized asset that has been parked in deep space to be used, if needed, by the United American Federation as protection against an attack by the government of Mars. Now that asset has been hijacked and the race is on to find Sungrazer as well as track down the organization technologically advanced enough to steal the ship in the first place. A new character is introduced in this story which results in a shift in emphasis from only the Outriders and their high tech military view of the problem to a civilian working undercover on Mars. It takes a while for Elliott to be linked up with the Outriders so his portions of the story left me wondering what his purpose was for being included for quite a long time. It all worked out.
Sungrazer is a good story but that's probably so for me since I had already read Outriders. The second book seemed to have a lot of unexplained circumstances that left me puzzling over how the scene being described reached that point. How did the crew find Link? The formatting of the Kindle version also tripped me up many times because one scene would end and another begin without using spacing to show me the plot had moved on to another situation. Just a couple of blank lines would have kept me from reading portions over again to figure out what I had missed and finding I hadn't missed anything it was just not well formatted. As of the date of this review I cannot find that a third book is set for release. I hope there will be a third book because I would certainly want to read it. ...more
Two people are in the act of committing a crime in a hospital parking lot in Philadelphia when the two criminals and their victim are abducted by alieTwo people are in the act of committing a crime in a hospital parking lot in Philadelphia when the two criminals and their victim are abducted by aliens. Next occupation - part of a work crew making repairs to an alien spaceship. Wow, the potential for this book was seemingly huge. Unfortunately the story just meanders along until about the last several pages where the reader and the abducted find out what the big bad space plot is all about.
I was surprised by this book because all the other Timothy Zahn books I've read were so much better than this one. The main character is a 19 year old criminal who just happens to also be an alcoholic. Zahn glosses over the times and trials of Nichole fighting her alcohol addiction while being held on a spaceship by turning her into Saint Nichole. That character development happened so quickly you blink and you've missed when it happened. Something is going on behind the scenes on this spaceship and I found it to be mildly interesting to speculate about what it might be as I read the book. There is a second book in this Sibyl's War series due to be released in 2019 and I can only hope there is more action in that one. ...more
Thank you to NetGalley and Macmillan Tor/Forge for the eGalley of this novel.
After reading the preview excerpt of this novel I was really looking forwThank you to NetGalley and Macmillan Tor/Forge for the eGalley of this novel.
After reading the preview excerpt of this novel I was really looking forward to reading the entire book. Yes, this can be classified as a Space Opera, but it is not going to satisfy readers who expect a great deal of action. Everything takes place in this story at a slower pace, more low-key action than battle episodes. As an example, we find that a war has begun from a sentence in the middle of a paragraph. The book relies heavily on language, vocabulary, specific words to set scenes. There is a lot of emphasis on the poetry of the Teixcalaan world and how that figures in their politics. The language in this book is beautiful and the story revolves around the formulas of correct communication which govern every aspect of life on this planet.
Mahit Dzmare has been appointed as the new Ambassador to the Teixcalaanli Empire - which is huge, from her home, Lsel Station - which is very small, because a new ambassador is required. No explanation is given for why, just send someone immediately. Now Mahit has landed in the City and her job is to use diplomatic means to keep the Station from being gobbled up by the Empire. She also has to keep a certain technological advancement from coming to the notice of the rulers of Teixcalaanli while trying to discover how the previous ambassador died. A tall order since she has found that things aren't going nearly as well on the planet as she had been lead to believe.
There is a long Glossary of Persons, Places, and Objects which I made frequent use of. The language of this planet gave me no clues as to what word meanings might be and you will thank the author for including this listing of words. There is also a section on the "pronunciation and writing system of the Teixcalaanli language" for your use if you are interested in the formal construction of the language. This part didn't help me because I didn't use it. This novel is an amazing accomplishment for a debut author. It would be an amazing accomplishment for an author with great experience in crafting a novel. Congratulations, Ms. Martine. ...more
So this is what it feels like to know there isn't another novella about Murderbot waiting for me to read. Hmm, I don't think I like this sensation verSo this is what it feels like to know there isn't another novella about Murderbot waiting for me to read. Hmm, I don't think I like this sensation very much. It's a really good thing Martha Wells already has a full length novel in the works so those of us who have formed an addiction to the adventures of our favorite SecUnit can wait (im)patiently for our next indulgence.
The final episode in getting Murderbot back to its humans so it can help them take down that nasty GrayCris corporation is every bit as interesting, imaginative, and exciting as the previous three have been. Murderbot is having a sort of crisis trying to figure out where it belongs. Or even who it belongs to, if anybody. I am having a sort of crisis trying to refrain from attaching a gender to Murderbot and thinking of it as human. Did I almost see Murderbot show some emotion or was that just me imagining things? Doesn't matter. My next pleasure will be reading all four novellas in order to get the full experience as if they had appeared in novel form. By that time the next great adventure might be ready for all of us who are (im)patiently waiting. I hope. ...more
Thank you to NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group - Ballantine for a digital galley of this novel.
If you check out the Amazon.com information fThank you to NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group - Ballantine for a digital galley of this novel.
If you check out the Amazon.com information for this book it shows 544 pages, the Goodreads info shows 400. I can tell you it definitely feels more like the 544. And it started off so well with Richard K Morgan getting the noir element just perfectly blended with the science fiction. I was fully on board with Hakan Veil and his backstory of the four months of the year cryo sleep, coming out of the coma on "hot" ready to shred and destroy pretty much anything that got in his way. This seemed like it was going to be my kind of dark hero with the Mars background and culture just adding to the good stuff. Then I began to notice my reading was slowing down and slowing down and then just not getting anywhere at all. Okay, I persevered and read about almost every kind of political and criminal backstabbing plot you could think of. I grew weary! I got bored! I wanted so much to like this a whole lot, but just couldn't make it happen.
I think if about half of this book's plot had been saved for another book it would have been fine. As it was, there was just too much and too many. There is profanity coming from every character but I can understand the need for that - all of these characters were dark, dirty, or damaged. However, what I hadn't bargained for were the explicit sex scenes. Yikes, that's not what I want to read in my science fiction novels. I've got an imagination, otherwise I wouldn't be reading science fiction; I can imagine those scenes for myself. And don't think it was there to emphasize the relationship between the two characters, that had been done very well before the sex scenes. All in all, I wanted to like the book much more than I did....more
I enjoyed this book quite a lot. It is a science fiction novel with enough humor included to give a lightness to the story for a nice change of pace iI enjoyed this book quite a lot. It is a science fiction novel with enough humor included to give a lightness to the story for a nice change of pace in the genre. Some of the instant science was a little eyebrow lifting for me and the passage of time was uneven to the extent of making me go back to read some passages over; it wasn't me, it was the author. But, even with some problems I can say I enjoyed the book enough to have had some chuckles along with some hold-my-breath moments when the fate of planets was hanging in the balance.
The deep space ship Magellan has an AI called Maggie who stays on alert while her crew of 157 "peoplecicles" continue their cryosleep rotations. Maggie decided she must alert Captain Allison Ridgeway to the anomaly she has noticed. Ahead of the Magellan is an object in space that isn't moving; the readings would make you think it was a rock, but how did it get there without moving at all? Other members of the crew are awakened so the item can be observed. The next decision begins a chain of events which leads to the destruction of planets, the impending destruction of Earth and the interactions with multiple alien nations.
This book has just about every type of character you would want to meet in a slightly tongue-in-cheek science fiction novel. In fact, it would make a quite good television serial with the geeky science guy, the ultra-macho military guy, the strong-but-reasonable female captain of the exploration ship, the good alien and the really bad aliens plus all the important supporting cast. But there is actually some very good sounding science involved so it isn't all funny and light hearted. My favorite novels are mysteries and thrillers, but when the body count begins to get me down I want to spend time with something different. For me fantasy or science fiction is what I reach for. I'm very glad I went with science fiction this time because this novel gave me just the reading pleasure I was looking for. ...more
Thank you to NetGalley and Macmillan Tor/Forge for a digital galley of this book.
If you are thinking about starting to read this series of novellas, IThank you to NetGalley and Macmillan Tor/Forge for a digital galley of this book.
If you are thinking about starting to read this series of novellas, I would advise you to try to read the first two before you get going with this one. This is entry three in the four part Murderbot Diaries and the author has been expanding the interactions this SecUnit has with humans and its reactions to their all too messy human emotions. Each book has the SecUnit interfacing with an AI developed to perform a specific type of task and this book features Miki, a robot that has formed almost human feelings and loyalties to the humans she is around. Murderbot doesn't do emotions so its having to suppress how it feels when it watches Miki and her human "friends". The big problem is that Murderbot needs to hijack the feeds coming through Miki so it has to put up with lots of the "human friends" stuff.
The first part of this story has Murderbot acting as onboard security on a transport ship in order to hitch a ride to make a connection with another ship. Just the idea of Murderbot mediating disputes like the weighty problem of who left the cracker wrapper in the galley restroom sink had me smiling like I was slightly off my rocker. This unit is a killing machine and all of those talents for ending arguments instantly (and permanently) had to be subjugated so it could get closer to its destination. The snarky, sarcastic comments keep on coming from this main non-humanoid character and the author does a wonderful job of giving a depth and dimension hard to accomplish in such a short piece of fiction. I've loved each episode as it has been released, I'll looking forward to the final release in this series. I was absolutely delighted to read in a Tor.com newsletter that Martha Wells is working on a full length novel featuring Murderbot. No release date was mentioned but that's okay, I'll wait. ...more
Part two of the Murderbot Diaries turned out to be different from the first short book in many ways but the writing by Martha Wells remained wonderfulPart two of the Murderbot Diaries turned out to be different from the first short book in many ways but the writing by Martha Wells remained wonderful and my interest in Murderbot has only increased. Somehow I can't help but think that was the goal all along. Yes, I was going to mount a mini-protest (involving only myself) against the price and I did that. I held out for six weeks and it turned out to be a loooong six weeks. Now let's move along folks, nothing to see here.
Murderbot is a SecUnit in search of answers. He really needs to know if he went rogue and killed humans and destroyed other SecUnits so he's hitching a ride on board an AI piloted ship making a cargo run to Ganaka Pit's location, the mining company facility Murderbot needs to revisit. No humans are aboard the ship but it doesn't take long for the AI to ping Murderbot to say his cover is not successful and the AI, ART, recognizes him as a bot/human construct with his governor module damaged. ART is a very powerful AI but he's bored. Helping Murderbot get to the mining company will be easy, getting access to the places he wants to go will be harder. That problem is solved by Murderbot hiring out as a security specialist to a group trying to get their research material back from their former employer. Naturally nothing goes as it was planned.
If there is no ART in the third story in this series, I'm going to be very disappointed. It is such a wonderfully developed character that it almost stole the story from Murderbot. Now Murderbot has some answers but still no satisfaction. He's on the move again, we won't know where until the next episode is released. I'm taking slow, deep breaths....more
I wanted to read this book because I have been so impressed with other books written by Peter Hamilton. I am so glad I didn't have much of any idea whI wanted to read this book because I have been so impressed with other books written by Peter Hamilton. I am so glad I didn't have much of any idea what the story would be about so I could discover everything for myself. I think the book blurb gives away too much of the story the author is trying to tell and leaves the reader with fewer surprises.
Salvation is told from a past, present and future perspective. The backstory segments are quite long, novella length long, and under other circumstances I would have become impatient with being kept away from what the "real" story - the present - was about. That didn't happen in this book because the backstories were all critical to placing the characters in the present, plus they were mini-stories within the book and were as superbly written as the present and future segments. This novel had me questioning the motives of every character, whether they were human or alien. The science was especially intriguing for me with an incredibly large corporation discovering the means of traveling around earth or planet hopping with their transport system. I had read books containing similar transport methods but this one explained it better for me and sold me on the concept. The methods used for extending life also gave me much food for thought as did the religious beliefs at the core of the justifications for actions taken. This was a thought provoking novel for me.
This was one of the best books I've read in a long time and I eagerly await Salvation Lost, second in the Salvation Sequence series. Definitely five glowing stars.
Thank you to NetGalley and Random House Del Rey for a digital galley of this novel....more
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