*I received a free review copy in exchange for an honest review of this book.

Contact by M. D. Neu is a contemplative take on an alien contact narrative. Showcasing a small slice of normal life right before everything goes to hell, lingering on the depressing reality that some things, some people, feel too broken to fix, irreplaceably missing.

This books is inter-office politics made interstellar, filled with small personal connections and petty grievances that make the aliens feel like humans, in a good way. But that's just the surface stuff. Fundamentally this is a book featuring beings in different stages of loss and grief while having to figure out how to continue living. The aliens are the last survivors of a dying world, hoping to find somewhere to land and try to live, having a chance to start over while hoping not to lose everything they had before. The main human character experiences an enormous loss, and his path to healing starts here but will undoubtedly continue in the next book. I wasn't expecting this pace, this willingness to wallow and linger in grief, in lost plans and shattered expectations. Beyond that, I wasn't expecting it to be done so well. The language is simple and clear, making it quick to read and easy to understand. It has a bluntness at points that makes me think some of the hardest and most awkward conversations were pulled from experience.

It’s the first part of what will hopefully be a much longer narrative. I enjoyed the book, but it definitely feels like the first half (or even first third) of something much grander. Not every writer wants a doorstopper, and that's fine, but I would want that here. Luckily, the author knows this, which is why it ends with "To be continued in Conviction". It bodes well when my main quibble is that I want more, as soon as I can have it.

This book requires a content warning for homophobia directed against the main character(s). It's handled well within the text, but please take care of yourselves. Due to current real-world events (in spring 2020), it also needs cws for lockdowns, panic buying, and terrorism.

Virtual Vandals wasn't for me. A YA thriller set in 2025, using VR as a setting for shenanigans and espionage, with the pov character singlehandedly confronting a gang who has figured out how to punch in virtual space. Fast-paced, awkward 1990's slang. In fairness, I hear the series gets better. It expects the reader to have a certain level of technological knowledge, and then explains the rest, but we've moved on to have stuff that is often much cooler than what it depicts. It didn't work for me, but I don't think it's bad. 

This was a bizarre book for me to read. It was published in the late 1990's, and trying to read and review it in 2020 is pretty trippy. It swings wildly between political screeds about politics set over a century after it was published, and action scenes which never feel dangerous because no one we care about ever is hurt. You can disagree with regards to the opening scene, but my counterpoint would be that the injuries there are on a literally nameless and faceless crowd, plus one person whose name we learned three pages ago. As for the word choice, while I don't begrudge the author failing to anticipate which words would no longer by hyphenated a mere two decades after the book's release (e.g. "on-line"), the thing that totally broke immersion in the story was the constant return to 1990's slang while highlighting that it was specifically slang from over a century ago. There are phrases that we use now that are decades or even centuries old. But, when I, in my normal life, use one of these phrases, it's because they've either remained relevant or returned to relevance in the culture around me. I don't recognize "the bees knees" because I've read a book of early 1900's slang, I recognize it because someone used it around me, and I later learned that it arose in a particular era and stuck because it's evocative. 

Word choice aside, I found it difficult to get into this one. Maybe it's just not the right genre for me. In case it's the right genre for you, here goes: Virtual Vandals is a teen power fantasy revolving around computers and being a lot smarter than the adults in the next room. It features descriptions of a navigable virtual-reality landscape that would be more interesting to me if I weren't already familiar with Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson, but since I wouldn't give that particular book to a preteen, I won't begrudge the imagery here too much. The main character is always the best, in a frustratingly smarmy kind of way, and when he's briefly in danger he's the only one who has any good ideas for how to get out of it. One of the conceits is that the antagonists have figured out how to inflict damage with virtual objects, and even that isn't enough to make me worry for the pov character. I found him boring at best and insufferable at worst. There's very little meaningful characterization of the main female character, and most of it revolves around how she appears as an avatar and finally as herself. It was enough to make me uncomfortable, but the problem was mostly a lack of sufficient meaningful information to go along with physical descriptions. 

I didn't like it, but I wouldn't try to argue with anyone who does care for it. It doesn't inspire strong positive or negative feelings generally for me, just confusion and the feeling that I'd rather read something else.

*I received a free review copy in exchange for an honest review of this book.

Conviction depicts life after paradigms shift and tragedy strikes. It's about continuing to live, with all the small conversations and interpersonal politics involved therein, even/especially when your new co-workers are from another planet.

It has a winding pace as a budding romance is side-by-side with Todd adjusting to a new life on a spaceship and the new duties of his position, punctuated by very real danger as a group of humans are murderously unhappy about the presence of the Nentraee. The first book, Contact, was about grief and anguish, and this one is driven by remembrance, contemplation, and continuing on as the ones who are still here. The slow pacing is punctuated by terrorists plots, but while a thriller-style book might focus on the plotters, instead there are waves of conversations and clues which slowly build the feeling that something is going wrong, somewhere, and it will need to be fixed, as soon as Todd can figure out how, and get someone to listen. The whole thing has a very bureaucratic feel, conveying the feeling of helplessness and futility that arises from being very sure that there's a problem, but that certain thresholds will need to be met, hoops jumped through, and people convinced, just to get to the stage where we can think about figuring out how to know what's happening. 

I love the inter-species romance. It's shy and tender, full of all the awkwardness of a new relationship, including spending a very long time figuring out if the other person is even interested. Their different histories are portrayed as a strength for this new relationship, instead of as a source of tension. It was very calming to have this storyline as an exploration and a fun throughline amidst tragedy. I love the way it's a source of growth and healing for both of them. Any small misunderstandings, once discovered, are dealt with as they arise, rather than festering just to drive the plot or produce conflict. 

If book one felt like the first half of something grander, book two feels like it could be enough. If there weren't any more books, I'd understand, but I want there to be. Part of that feeling is that the urgent threat left over from book one is addressed pretty well in book two, and while the layers of conspiracy have room to go deeper, this would be okay as the ending to the story. On the other hand, given how the immediate threat was resolved, there's definitely room for either new dissonance, or for additional layers of plans from the same antagonistic group in a future book. The ending feels more finished than book one (which had a cliffhanger leading into book two), but the in-story plans announced at the end make me want to have more here.

The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress pleasantly surprised me with how good it is. It has polyamory (healthily), a sentient computer, a point-of-view character with a prosthesis, and serious discussions of morality/ethics under oppression and during/after revolution.

The language and code-switching is cool, I knew enough of the words in the polyglot that I only missed things borrowed from Russian. The world building is on the right side of the balance between info dump and sparse description that all sci-fi books have to navigate. The polyamory and polygamy is described well, has a bit of a “relationships... in SPACE” feel but is really cool. Overall I have no qualms recommending this to someone, and I enjoyed it a lot. The main cw is for sexual assault/murder, but even that is handled very well and described in as low-stress of a way as is possible while still including it.

Akata Witch is tiring but good, a book which conveys the miasma of fear, doubt, stress, anger which are part of living with systemic racism. It is about coming of age, gaining confidence, but never forgetting that life is dangerous and everyone will die someday.

This was an incredibly draining book to read. It was great, I definitely recommend it, but the first half to two-thirds of the book conveys how emotionally drained and constantly stymied the main character (Sunny) feels. Even the word "Akata" from the cover is an insult wielded against Sunny and others. Definitely check out this one, but make sure you have the emotional space to be okay if the themes in this book hit you hard.

The Mutation brings a new level of revulsion and body horror to a series already full of both. It features a kind of believable and deeply terrifying portrayal of Atlantis. Jake is trying to be a good leader but it's getting really tough.

This whole series is dark, but for the last few books we've been treated to new and horrifying types of darkness. It's not so much that it's getting darker, as that it's spreading out to the sides in a pool of creepy stuff.

The Animorphs are on the run from the Yeerks' morphing sensor. This book turns a slightly silly premise into a visceral horror and complex ethical dilemma when a bison accidentally gains the morphing technology. The usually body horror cws apply.

They're all dark, but now we have a new, more complex flavor. This also offers up the very worrisome implication that if any creature touches the cube they might become able to morph. They'll have to keep it very well sealed, for even more reasons now.

Cassie is getting a better sense of herself and what she wants, but she's becoming more conflicted about her role as the ethical one. She's circling around but hasn't yet voiced the thought that it's not better if someone else does something because she won't, but I can see the shape of that building, especially in her dynamic with Rachel.

Jake is out of town and Rachel leads in his place. This book builds upon the differences between Rachel and Marco as leaders, highlighting Rachel's strength as a reactive tactical thinker and Marco's more careful planning.

I like the addition of the Garatron, it's nice to see more alien species. I don't remember if this one comes back, but I like the description of it.

The last chapter is so damn sad, I just... the feeling is building in these books that something has to give, something's going to break. The message that even if the Animorphs manage to win they'll never really be done is so unrelenting and heartbreaking.

Cassie tries to save a life and ends up on the other side of the world, saving a different one. This one continues the wave of books which work out some long-running personal struggle for individual Animorphs.‬

I’m anticipating that this book has indeed helped her settler her internal struggle, but at the very least some advice she received will help her have a heuristic that works for her (if she internalizes it). I really like how each Animorph is getting some epiphany or resolution that helps with their conflict, not someone else’s. They’re all very different people and what helps settle or guide one of them just won’t work perfectly for the others.