Entertaining far-future adventure with genetically engineered animal/human hybrids, AIs bonded to human hosts and used as weapons, and schemes spanning tens of thousands of years.

Unfortunately, this one just did not work for me. The main character is a 10-year-old deaf (and, I believe, possibly autistic) child, and it’s narrated in a first-person, nearly stream-of-consciousness style, which (in-universe) is the child dictating in sign language to a caretaker who translates what he says. In actuality, the book was originally written in Italian, and has been translated to English. So there are multiple levels of abstraction and translation, and I’m at a loss as to how much of the final writing style and choices were the character’s, an artifact of the in-universe translation from sign language, the author’s, an artifact of the real-world translation from Italian, or some combination of all of those. The end result was that I just didn’t enjoy it.

Darker and weirder than _Finna_, complete with elements of body horror, but just as fun to read, and still with the same optimistic current to it. Liked this one a lot; a strong start to this year’s PKD lineup.

Navigating working with someone after breaking up with them is hard enough. Doing that while also navigating a multidimensional IKEA isn’t easier…but can be surprisingly helpful. A quick, funny, and fun read.

An anthology of people living with mental illnesses and magic. Not the old tropes of magic being a sign or cause, but magic as a tool to help cope with the struggles. Definitely some dark moments, but overall, a thread of hope runs through all of the stories. 

A somewhat amusing murder mystery and courtroom drama; basically Law & Order: TOS starring Samuel Cogley. Unfortunately, the poor treatment of the two primarily female characters (one an overly stereotypical shallow, bitter wife; the other bitter at past events who fares badly) marred my enjoyment.

A recommendation from my 10-year-old niece (V.E. Schwab is her favorite author), this was a fun fantasy adventure through multiple magical Londons. Neat worldbuilding and magic rules and styles; perhaps a bit more violent than I would have expected from a pre-teen’s recommendation (apparently Schwab also writes YA books, which is how my niece came across her, but this is one of her adult novels), but her parents also read and enjoyed it, she’s none the worse for reading it, and I’ve certainly read far worse.

Near-future technothriller in Stephenson’s trademark “neat stuff infodump” style. Weird to read something so new that it that references both Covid and the Jan. 6th insurrection.