The first book, Nigerians in Space, was interesting, but was almost more of a spy thriller, barely touching on SF. This is not only more of an SF story, but is also a stronger book. A few of the characters carry over from the first book, but the plots aren’t directly connected, and reading the first isn’t at all necessary to enjoy this one. With both books, I greatly enjoyed the African setting and the blending of SF tropes with African history and culture. A strong start to my PK Dick Award reading this year.

The funniest of this year's PK Dick nominees, and another short, quick read. When professional diplomats can't make any headway in connecting with an alien race of pink blobs, who better to send than a smartass Jersey girl? I got a lot of laughs out of this one, and Rose makes a perfect (if nontraditional) ambassador.

Not as much of a dreary slog as I'd anticipated (not due to the author at all, but to the setting), but still a post-apocalyptic "everything sucks and we're trying desperately to survive" slog. While I can recognize that it's well written, I was tired of post-apocalyptic slogs even before it looked like they were going to be even more prescient than I'd ever thought (this one even has a US/Mexico border wall), which I know colors my impression of the book. At least this one does have moments of peace, beauty, and hope here and there; even filtered through the lens of a wounded, PTSD-suffering ex-soldier, those moments were appreciated.

Another one that wasn't a bad book - better than many I've read, in fact - it simply didn't engage me. I'm not exactly sure why, but while the universe was interesting, the characters didn't grab me. Not a bad book at all, but likely not my favorite of this year's nominees.

Good end to an excellent trilogy. Fascinating to know how close we are to some of the concepts used in these books (not "tomorrow" or "this decade" for much of it, but in many respects we're closer than you might think). I'm not entirely sure how I'd feel about this sort of tech becoming a reality, either…though I hope I'd handle it's existence better than the various antagonists did.

So far, this is my favorite of this year's P.K. Dick nominees, but I always feel odd putting the final work of a trilogy as my choice (as it in many ways depends upon the setup of the prior books in the series, which then seems a little unfair to single standalone books that don't have 1800 pages to build their universe). We'll just have to see what I think of the final three nominees.

Really enjoyed this one. The shifting versions, stories, and settings for the same characters was fascinating and very well handled. Technically also a post-apocalyptic novel, which generally isn't my favorite genre, but this was far more than just that, and far more interesting because of that.

Very good. I'm just a somewhat burned out on post-apocalyptic fiction; even the best stories tend to be overly quite depressing, with people doing their best to survive in horrible circumstances.

I really enjoyed this one -- as it "warns" in its cover blurb, it's neither a novel with a straightforward narrative, nor an anthology of self-contained short stories. It's more of a series of interconnected vignettes set at various points following some kind of event that shattered time and space, and often involving powerful AIs. Not easy to describe, but just the kind of experimental weirdness that works well for me, and a lot of really neat concepts dealing with time, artificial intelligence, consciousness, and more. My first four-star rating from this year's P.K. Dick nominees.

Neat book (well, books, I suppose, as I read the first book in the series immediately beforehand, so they kind of meld together into a single entity in my brain). I liked it, but I didn't entirely get into it; while the story was good (though more for the exploration of the crumbling society than for the noir mystery that drives the plot), I'm a bit over-apocalypsed at the moment. Also, the book is written with a first-person present tense point of view, and while not as jarring as some other books I've read that are written this way (like the Hunger Games series), it's a style I've always found a little odd, and not my favorite. So, good marks for ideas and worldbuilding (or world destroying, I suppose), minus a few points for style and gloominess.

Really neat blend of alien invasion, psychic abilities, and the Nigerian setting. As with 2017 #PKDickAward nominee _After the Flare_ by Deji Bryce Olukotun, I really enjoy the non-Western setting and influences.