Tag Archives: Tor.com

Book Review of Gods, Monsters, and the Lucky Peach – by Kelly Robson

I borrowed a paperback copy of Kelly Robson‘s Gods, Monsters, and the Lucky Peach from the local library.

Description from Goodreads:

Discover a shifting history of adventure as humanity clashes over whether to repair their ruined planet or luxuriate in a less tainted pass.

In 2267, Earth has just begun to recover from worldwide ecological disasters. Minh is part of the generation that first moved back up to the surface of the Earth from the underground hells, to reclaim humanity’s ancestral habitat. She’s spent her entire life restoring river ecosystems, but lately the kind of long-term restoration projects Minh works on have been stalled due to the invention of time travel. When she gets the opportunity take a team to 2000 BC to survey the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, she jumps at the chance to uncover the secrets of the shadowy think tank that controls time travel technology.

Review:

Not bad, and I liked it a lot more by the end than I did the beginning. I thought the way the two narratives were interspersed and eventually intersected was really clever and I liked the world with it’s generational differences and integrated tech. (And I love that the main character is an 83-year-old woman.) But honestly I was bored for a lot of the time while reading this. So, my overall experience was middle of the road.

Book Review of The Haunting of Tram Car 015, by P. Djèlí Clark

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I borrowed a copy of P. Djèlí Clark‘s The Haunting of Tram Car 015 from the local library.

Description from Goodreads:

The Haunting of Tram Car 015 returns to the alternate Cairo of Clark’s short fiction, where humans live and work alongside otherworldly beings; the Ministry of Alchemy, Enchantments and Supernatural Entities handles the issues that can arise between the magical and the mundane. Senior Agent Hamed al-Nasr shows his new partner Agent Onsi the ropes of investigation when they are called to subdue a dangerous, possessed tram car. What starts off as a simple matter of exorcism, however, becomes more complicated as the origins of the demon inside are revealed.

Review:

This was only a novella. So, here’s a short review for a short book. I basically loved this. I adored Hamed and his new partner Onsi. I loved the setting and the world. I thought the dialogue was sharp and the story satisfying. My only complaint is that on occasion I felt like the tone of the dialogue was inconsistent. But for the most part I just loved this.

There is also a free short story called A Dead Djinn in Cairo, on the Tor website, that is set in the same world, with a minor crossover of characters. I loved it and recommend reading it.

Book Book Review of Rogue Protocol (The Murderbot Diaries, #3), by Martha Wells

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I borrowed a copy of Martha Wells’ Rogue Protocol from the library. I previously reviewed the previous books, All Systems Red and Artificial Condition.

Description:
SciFi’s favorite antisocial A.I. is again on a mission. The case against the too-big-to-fail GrayCris Corporation is floundering, and more importantly, authorities are beginning to ask more questions about where Dr. Mensah’s SecUnit is.

And Murderbot would rather those questions went away. For good.

Review:
I’m still loving Murderbot, the sarcasm and social anxiety works so very well. My complaint here is that the series is starting to feel like a serial, instead of stand-alone novellas. This book references past events and people a lot more than previous ones. Other reviewers complained about this series being broken up from the beginning. But, knowing Tor specializes in novella length works, I understood it and still considered each book a separate entity. This seems to be fading as the series goes on and that makes me sad because I really HATE serializations. That said, I want more and more of Murderbot please.