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The Last of 2023 Books
Dec. 27th, 2023 09:33 pmI bought the John Scalzi Humble Bundle despite having pretty much everything in it in one format or another, and read all the short stories I hadn’t read before. All of them are cute ideas starring Scalzi Protagonists™ that are about the right length for what’s there. I’m counting the collection as one book.
• After the Coup is a Old Man’s War side-story where Harry ends up in exhibition gladiator combat against an alien species he hasn’t been adequately briefed about.
• The President’s Brain is Missing feels like it was written for a Bush-era imaginary president, a relatively harmless idiot whose advisors effectively manage him to do good for the country. It’s a sci-fi story disguised as political satire, but takes some time to get there.
• The Shadow War of the Night Dragons Book One: The Dead City: Prologue reads like Scalzi’s entry in the Eye of Argon anthology, a deliberately overwrought fantasy setting full of hilariously purple prose, unpronounceable names, and heavy exposition…that’s ten pages long.
• Unlocked: An Oral History of Haden’s Syndrome is a companion piece to the Lock In novels, detailing the disease and technological response that created the future those novels take place in. And it…hits different, post-covid. The entire premise of the setting is a massive epidemic that presents as the flu but then kills a lot of people and leaves lots more with debilitating after-effects; and the USA floods money into treatments and technology, primarily because the first lady gets sick. It’s prescient in some ways but hopelessly optimistic in others, and I don’t recommend reading it at this point.
I gave a fair shot to Double-Crossing the Bridge by Sarah J. Sover, one of the books I picked up at Philcon, but it just didn’t work for me. A story of millennials screwed by the system, except they’re all trolls in an undercity below human civilization, and there’s an evil pack of billy goats who are a metaphor for prejudice or something? Anyway, this spent far too much of the first few chapters of what is ostensibly a heist story giving us the lowdown on sexual attractiveness standards among underdweller species, and it’s not witty enough to hold my interest despite that.
System Collapse (Murderbot Diaries #7) by Martha Wells - Picking up right after the last book, this deals with the remaining and ongoing problems on the same planet, a combination of various humans trying to get themselves murdered and our favorite SecUnit trying to both protect them and deal with its own trauma from the previous book. I maintain that I prefer the self-contained sci-fi whodunit nature of the novellas, but I’m certainly sticking with the series.
I'm Glad My Mom Died by Jennette McCurdy - There are interesting parallels between this and Wil Wheaton’s book; the twenty-year gap between their ages means little when the problem is child stardom and narcissistic parents. There’s a quote about McCurdy turning “lemons into lemonade”, and yes, while it seems like she’s gotten herself together, her childhood through her twenties was a giant mess of abuse, eating disorders, poor mental health and slow, messy recovery. She’s a very good writer, though, so I’d be interesting to see what else she comes out with. (I’ll also note that I never saw her TV work—her Nickelodeon era was too late for me and too early for my son.)
Lost in the Moment and Found by Seanan McGuire - The latest Wayward Children book, another standalone. This one comes with a big trigger warning for a lead-up to (but no actual incidence of) child abuse. And knowing what I do of McGuire’s history, this feels like a book she wanted to write specifically for that successful escape. It’s also about growing up too fast and losing your childhood without realizing it, and being manipulated by adults who should know better for their benefit, which is a very clear parallel to the victims of abuse. I’m not sure this is as strong a story as some of the others, but it’s another one where there’s a thesis to unpack from it.
That puts me at 28 books logged in 2023, basically on par with 2022.
• After the Coup is a Old Man’s War side-story where Harry ends up in exhibition gladiator combat against an alien species he hasn’t been adequately briefed about.
• The President’s Brain is Missing feels like it was written for a Bush-era imaginary president, a relatively harmless idiot whose advisors effectively manage him to do good for the country. It’s a sci-fi story disguised as political satire, but takes some time to get there.
• The Shadow War of the Night Dragons Book One: The Dead City: Prologue reads like Scalzi’s entry in the Eye of Argon anthology, a deliberately overwrought fantasy setting full of hilariously purple prose, unpronounceable names, and heavy exposition…that’s ten pages long.
• Unlocked: An Oral History of Haden’s Syndrome is a companion piece to the Lock In novels, detailing the disease and technological response that created the future those novels take place in. And it…hits different, post-covid. The entire premise of the setting is a massive epidemic that presents as the flu but then kills a lot of people and leaves lots more with debilitating after-effects; and the USA floods money into treatments and technology, primarily because the first lady gets sick. It’s prescient in some ways but hopelessly optimistic in others, and I don’t recommend reading it at this point.
I gave a fair shot to Double-Crossing the Bridge by Sarah J. Sover, one of the books I picked up at Philcon, but it just didn’t work for me. A story of millennials screwed by the system, except they’re all trolls in an undercity below human civilization, and there’s an evil pack of billy goats who are a metaphor for prejudice or something? Anyway, this spent far too much of the first few chapters of what is ostensibly a heist story giving us the lowdown on sexual attractiveness standards among underdweller species, and it’s not witty enough to hold my interest despite that.
System Collapse (Murderbot Diaries #7) by Martha Wells - Picking up right after the last book, this deals with the remaining and ongoing problems on the same planet, a combination of various humans trying to get themselves murdered and our favorite SecUnit trying to both protect them and deal with its own trauma from the previous book. I maintain that I prefer the self-contained sci-fi whodunit nature of the novellas, but I’m certainly sticking with the series.
I'm Glad My Mom Died by Jennette McCurdy - There are interesting parallels between this and Wil Wheaton’s book; the twenty-year gap between their ages means little when the problem is child stardom and narcissistic parents. There’s a quote about McCurdy turning “lemons into lemonade”, and yes, while it seems like she’s gotten herself together, her childhood through her twenties was a giant mess of abuse, eating disorders, poor mental health and slow, messy recovery. She’s a very good writer, though, so I’d be interesting to see what else she comes out with. (I’ll also note that I never saw her TV work—her Nickelodeon era was too late for me and too early for my son.)
Lost in the Moment and Found by Seanan McGuire - The latest Wayward Children book, another standalone. This one comes with a big trigger warning for a lead-up to (but no actual incidence of) child abuse. And knowing what I do of McGuire’s history, this feels like a book she wanted to write specifically for that successful escape. It’s also about growing up too fast and losing your childhood without realizing it, and being manipulated by adults who should know better for their benefit, which is a very clear parallel to the victims of abuse. I’m not sure this is as strong a story as some of the others, but it’s another one where there’s a thesis to unpack from it.
That puts me at 28 books logged in 2023, basically on par with 2022.
