roadtripreader's Reviews (357)

A murderbot after my own heart.

Everywhere I've gone in the reading communities, fellow scifi/fantasy fans, not-so-really-fans and dabblers have been singing this series praises to anyone who would listen. Now I normally wouldn't touch hype with a ten foot pole, but I did for Brandon Sanderson and TJ Klune and so I decided to dive right in for Martha Wells (plus her fans seemed less like rabid stans and more like ...you know; normal.). So here I am, completely blown over by the first installment of this series.

What's to love in this series

1. A high tech Sapient-Sentient Humanoid robot with gaps in her memory, built to be security, meant to take orders and be around people but there's just one catch she hates interacting with people. And; she doesn't even need to follow orders if she doesn't want to. And one more thing - she is a binge-watcher of entertainment content. Seriously Murderbot, that's an addiction right there, speaking as a former entertainment and content addict..

2. A planet that sounds like a cosmic treasure trove of some hidden horrors and delights and a few teams surveying the lands for their own purposes. Until, something goes wrong.

3. Great elevation of suspense in stages and seeing everything through Murderbot's eyes, the reader slowly comes to the same realizations in real-time.

4. Murderbot has a self-esteem issue. She believes she is a lazy half-focused SecUnit and that she is easily replaceable. She is not. She is so not any of those things.

5. The big resolution of the conflict was reminiscent of something I read recently that was done just as well - the massive corporate coverup in Ironclads, Adrian Tchaikovsky. This one went multiple steps further with boardrooms, lawyers, press junkets and more.

Murderbot. I'm coming for more of your adventures.

Book 2 in the series is as lopsided as that crooked sponge Pierre made in Season 1 of the Great Canadian Bake Baking Show I mean that showstopper was a cake, it was baked, it was crooked but it just wasn't wow. And Julian the Builder-Baker was hella likeable. This is much the same case with this book.  The characters of note are "almost" in every way. Almost intriguing, almost curious, Almost fantastic.  Now, the book is not great and it's not good. It's that inbetween- satisfactory and nice. 


So I've realized that I'm not a fan of modern day poesic witches and their spells that sound like bad poetry. It's giving " The power of three will set you free" Charmed Halliwell Sister vibes (no shade to the original series). I rolled my eyes when Elspeth Peach was reciting her cutsie protection spell.

Listen to this and tell me you don't want to cackle:

Earth, Fire, Water, all three
Elements Astral, I summon Thee
By the moon's light
On this special night
I call to thee to givr us your might
By the power of three
I conjure thee
To protect our sweet Poppy
And all that surrounds she
So I will, So mote it be
So I will, so mote it be

C'mon this is the stuff the little dweebs and dwebettes would practice as kids pretending to be witches. At least Wingardium Leviosa sounds like an exotic spell.

Now I prefer witches like you know THE WITCH staring Ana Taylor Joy. No poetry, no ryhming just the right amount of devil-speech or heck any of the old "Witch languages" in Europe and equally petrifying. 

And yet; I still want it to be cozy. Is that too much to ask?

For now, this earns a 3.5 at best. I did like it, just didn't love it.

Ah yes, the Great Adventures of Dad at the Corner store.

Don't do that - you'll let the space-time continuum in. Fortunately The Milk

What a unique take on an alien invasion and treading multiple timelines. Imagine just minding your business having your latte or about to dig into a hot dog at lunch but suddenly getting beamed up into a spaceship by a bunch of semi-competent alien blobs who have mistaken you as the representative of the human race - or worse, their leader. Yeah, the adventuring dad has that mindset of well, "what if I pressed this button - what would happen?" And I gotta say I love that let's just try it spirit, in small doses.

Dad goes on a wild adventure but keeps a tight hold on the milk because after all - you can't have cereal without milk (I've been doing it wrong, see I munch on dry cereal when I read. No good). From walking the plank to landing in a massive hot air balloon basket and so many adventures thereafter - this dad went through the wringer for that bowl of cereal laddie.

I may not be in middle grade, but I have taught it and my students would love this book.

"We don't split hairs about who is a better slave master" - Minith, the unassuming Economic

This novella stayed with me for days after reading it. I would be busy attending to something in the office, take a break and think back on Torquell, and atavism. I'd be taking my puppies and border collie out for a spa day and a frolic in the vast fields beyond my backyard, and Sir Peter Grimes and his arrival at that small and green village would flash before my minds eye. I'd be air-frying succulent steaks and getting out salads on the plates before me, and I would find myself thinking of "defaulter's pie", (we know what that is) and Isadora eating it with gusto. I'd be watching the news and stories of private war mercenaries marching back into the the house of the Madman of Russia, loudly proclaiming they're leading a coup only to back down just as fast as they announced it (seriously, who publicizes their desired coup to the "coupee", Wagner fools) and I found myself re-imagining Torquell's Revolution, past the murder of that Ogre - his real Rubicon and all the way up to his dinner with Isadora. So the crux of it right there on the table between glasses of wine and cooked meats - atavism gave way to the ogre and in the end, the ogre is as all the other ogres were before.

What a tale of excess, gluttony, power and the never ending vicious cycle. In the end, the human race is the ouboros

Mort, Mort, MORT. His name is Mort, not boy or that fellow or you there or sir. Oh and he's changing fast; becoming realer than real and more solid by the day, brown eyes becoming blue fireballs and that voice - oh boy, that voice. And he has the weight of the universe on his shoulders.

I wouldn't say Mort is ambitious, nay, maybe stubborn and determined? I mean, that combination alone is bound to upset the apple cart. From waiting until the very last stroke of midnight to be apprenticed right up to the duel of fates...just kidding - but there is a duel of sorts. And everything in between. Mort and Death are actually quite symbiotic. Mort carrying out the task that Death carries out and Death having a quasi-existential crisis inside multiple fabrics of time. In the end, I have to say I believe Death feels affection, familial attachment even but I won't go so far as to say Death feels love. Oh but he sure does love curries. WHY WOULDN'T I LOVE CURRY? ~ I imagine Death asking in that voice.

I will say this, Sir Terry Pratchett took death and made the entity feel relatable. I have adored the personification of death in a few books, The Book Thief, Under The Whispering Door, Sandman but this is the first time I found myself laughing out loud and blurting out between tears "Gosh I love Death" which granted kind of freaked me out at first.

In the end, this is the WEIRDEST love story out there and I totally dig it.

I distinctly remember watching "Don't look up" and contemplating what I would do if I knew for certain that our world was ending in a few months (and what I'd do if half the population refused to believe it because...fake news. *sigh*). I have a list, I edit it once in a while but it's not a Bucket List. This book reminded me that I need to add "moving to a tropical climate" as a final stop so I can go out with a view of the great blue ocean just before some massive fireball touches down on us. I hate winter....and Autumn so I would rather just bake my way to the apocalypse. The argument for "The Bad Place" gets easier if you tell me it's warm down there.

Okay so first things first, what I found strangely enjoyable was that the names in this book are absolutely bonkers for both people and places. I found myself literally pausing to go "wait huh? Okay cool" whenever a name would pop up. Let's take a gander at people shall we: Henry Palace, Mr Victor France, some guy named Dotseth, Another named Mr Gompers-, and Eric with a K who didn't immediately appear to be the devil as with all Eriks (but wait, turns out he was a bit of a doomsday religionist so...50/50 living up to the K in his name). I spent a quarter of the time reading these names like "Hmmm, is Winters playing a word game, some hidden code because no way does every name sound so ridiculously unreal." And the places. There is a street called School Street but no school, and a neighborhood called Pill Hill and there may have been pills there who knows- come on this has got to be an inside joke between the author and someone.

Anyway, to the Last Homicide Detective in a world that has given up, thrown in the towel and is actively counting down the few short months to annihilation.

To say that this book is a unique approach to the end of the world feels like an understatement. Here is a newly promoted detective, tasked with rubber stamping inevitable suicides as the mental health of the planet's inhabitants takes a beating with the knowledge that it all end in 5 short months. Yet here is detective Henry Palace (focused, careful, neat and has a thousand blue notepads) and he's caught a murder. Nobody cares, dead now or dead in 5 months, the outcome is the same. Murder, Suicide or flaming asteroid with no regard for the planet in its way - the outcome is the same. Everyone winds up dead. So why does he insist on following the motions of "investigating" and asking questions? A part of me thinks it's because he is newly promoted, and it's his first murder case - but nope, I think Palace is wired to follow through in an almost militaristic way. He doesn't just go through the motions passively - he is active (don't mistake that for energy) and thorough.

Perhaps that is how he wants to go out - as the detective who solved the last open murder case in the world.