Category Archives: Reviews

books, Post-Apocalyptic, Reviews, science fiction

One Day All of This Will Be Yours by Adrian Tchaikovski

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Stars: 4 out of 5.

This was a delightful little novella and a very nice introduction to the author, as far as first impressions go.

The story itself is quite an interesting take on time travel that I haven’t seen explored before, even though there is a certain logic to it. If someone was sent back in time to change the past, the present they come back to wouldn’t be like the one they left. And if they are sent again to change it back because say another faction changed something in the past to suit their agenda… well, there is no guarantee that the change they make will bring back the same present they were born in. 

So what you have left with in the aftermath of a time war is a bunch of time agents trying to fulfill the agenda of governments that don’t exist anymore, or have never existed, depending on the twists the time war took along the way. That just keep changing things and fighting each other through time because they have no present to come back to. In some cases, they never even existed in the new present, because their parents never met or they died when they were a child.

This is meaningless slaughter both of people and of the time continuum until one time agent realizes that time is already so irrevocably broken that fighting over it doesn’t make sense anymore. His solution? Eliminate all the other time agents, then eliminate anyone who might ever invent a time travel machine. Anywhere. Anywhen. It’s brutal, it’s ruthless, and it’s very in character with our protagonist.

He isn’t a nice person. I would go as far as call him a psychopath, but anyone who’d fought in a time war for endless iterations of said time would have to be. He sits in the bottleneck between the broken remains of the time that was before and doesn’t let anyone with time travel technology get past him into what will become after. And he is perfectly happy to enjoy his little paradise of now in solitude. Until a time traveler comes from that after and claims that he created their whole civilization…

It was a fun read, even though all the characters in it were equally awful. Like I already said, the protagonist is a killer with absolutely no remorse or scruples, and the people he is fighting against are coming from a society that is just as awful, so as a reader I couldn’t really root for either of them. They both deserved to be erased out of time for different reasons. Heck, the only character I was rooting for was the dinosaur, but that’s because how cool would it be to have a pet dinosaur?

But even thought the characters are awful, it’s a fun romp through the broken shards of time watching them heap horrible things on each other. The ending was not what I had expected, but I admit that it has a certain poetic justice to it. It also leaves the door open for a sequel.

All in all, this was an enjoyable read that kept my attention for an afternoon and I wouldn’t mind revisiting this if the author ever writes a sequel.

PS: I received an advanced copy of this book via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

books, Cyberpunk, Reviews, science fiction

Dogs of DevTown by Taylor Hohulin

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 Stars: 3.5 out of 5

I don’t usually read a lot of cyberpunk. Mostly because the few books I tried, I couldn’t get into the story. I did love the game Cyberpunk 2077, even though it had its own bugs and frustrating moments. So when I read the description of Dogs of DevTown, I decided to give it a try, and I’m happy I did. This is more of a novella then a novel, so it’s short and very readable. I think I knocked it out in two evenings, even though I wasn’t rushing myself.

I like the imagery the author created. The multicolored holograms reflecting off the skyscrapers of DevTown. The sea of humanity clogging the streets at any time of day or night, looking for their next vice. The rain, the stench… It is a tantalizing but also depressing image, since this DevTown, even though modern looking, seems soulless and unforgiving. I reminded me a little about the dystopian landscape of Blade Runner, and I love that movie (the original one.

I also liked our protagonist. Shan is prickly and can come across as rather rude and uncaring, and she tries very hard to live like she is an island, but I have known people like that. In her line of work, the only person you can trust is yourself. The only person you can afford to care about is yourself as well. She tracks and kills people for money after all. So if she wants to stay on this side of the grave herself, she can’t ask too many questions. Just enough to find the person she is paid to kill and get the job done. She gets paid, then she forgets about it. Much safer to live that way… only nobody is really an island, no matter how much they try. And sooner or later something happens that will make even the most isolated person decide to dig deeper. 

The other characters in the book were sufficiently fleshed out to be interesting, even memorable for some of them. I found the main villain rather over the board though. Also, there is a big logical hole with the villains motivation. I won’t talk about it here because that would spoil the book, but that made the villain a lot less believable for me, and elicited a few eyerolls until I finished the story.

My biggest problem with this book, and the reason I only gave it 3.5 stars, is a huge plot hole that the author left in the story. I understand that he probably wrote himself in a corner and didn’t know how to keep the story going if he patched that particular plot hole, but it was so big and obvious, a semi truck could have fallen into it. 

So the author goes to great lengths to tell us that Shan has no mech augments whatsoever. He also makes sure we know that she has never been on the Net, because she doesn’t have mech augments or a port to jack into the system. So how can she catch a virus that transmits itself through the Wi-Fi and Bluetooth signals that connect different mechs to the Net? She doesn’t have any, remember? Okay, maybe it’s a virus that can jump the hardware to wetware barrier (insert eyeroll here). It’s a cyberpunk book, so everything is possible. So I could have rolled with the fact that unaugmented Shan caught a computer virus. 

The problem though is that she is a closed system. She doesn’t have mech. She isn’t connected to the Net. No Wi-fi, no Bluetooth, remember? So how is the creator of the virus able to communicate with her? It’s a virus that infects mech. She is full human. There is no logical way for it to happen.  That’s the point where I lost interest in the story. I can only suspend my disbelief so much.

But if you are willing to ignore that particular problem and just roll with it, this book is a fun read. Plus, it’s short, so it’s a nice little pallet cleanser between longer books.

PS: I received an advanced copy of this book via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

books, Reviews, science fiction, Soft Science Fiction, Space opera

The Exiled Fleet (The Divide 2) by J. S. Dewes

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Stars: 5 out of 5.

I thought the first book was excellent (and you can read my review if you are interested), because it introduced us to an unusual world full of flawed but engaging characters who were faced with an impossible situation. It was literally life or death. The book was fast-paced and very readable. 

I’m happy to say that the second book lives up the expectations set up by the first. Rake and the Sentinels have stopped the progression of the Divide and saved the galaxy, but the fact remains that the Legion abandoned them at the edge of nowhere. Their reserves are dwindling, morale is low, and Cav is once again faced with an impossible task – invent a warp drive from scratch to move the giant derelict ship towards the only existing warp gate and into the galaxy proper. If he can’t succeed, all the remaining Sentinels (that’s four thousand people) starve to death. No pressure.

I thought the stakes were high in the first book. Well, they are even higher here. Especially for Rake and Cav. Because it doesn’t matter that you managed to save as many Sentinels as you could from the collapsing Divide. If you can’t get them back into the inhabited part of the universe and find a base of operations.

As I had mentioned in the first book, the author has a talent for creating very relatable characters. And I’m not just talking about the main protagonists, but also about most of the supporting characters. Some of them are only introduced for a couple pages, and I’m already in love with them. Like all the Corsairs and grumpy Gideon.

In this book, most of your characters will have to face the consequences of their past actions and inactions. Rake will call on a life debt she’d never planned to have. Cav will discover an earth shattering truth about his past. and Jackin… let’s just say that we learn a lot more about who he was, and how he ended up with the Sentinels.

All of them will have to deal with the past and also find a new purpose and a way to move on. Because no matter how monumental a task escaping the Divide was, what awaits them is even bigger. Because the universe is about to get a lot smaller, and a lot of races will fight over the available real estate. Humanity has to present a united front or be wiped out. And right now, humanity is anything but united. Rake and Cav have their job cut out for them. But at least now they have a lot more allies and resources. 

I can’t wait to see where this story will go from here. I really hope a certain character is still alive, and that our heroes will mount a successful rescue in the next book.

PS: I received a free copy of this book via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

books, Ghost Story, Horror, Reviews

Nothing but Blackened Teeth by Cassandra Khaw

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Stars: 2.5 out of 5

I have a hard time formulating my feelings towards this story. On one hand, it was a quick and easy read. The amount of research that went into the Japanese folklore and traditional housing was impressive, though I kept getting a lot of Fatal Frame vibes out of it. Which isn’t bad in itself, because that game scared the crap out of me.

On the other hand, the story itself is rather meh, at least to me. 

It’s a typical haunted house story where a group of friends decide to spend the night in a reputedly haunted house and bad things happen. Well, in this case, two of the friends want to get married in that particular haunted house, like starting your married life by drawing attention of a ghost is such a good idea.

So the premise has been done before. In fact, that’s like the classic of all slasher/horror movies – a group of friends in a confined space, getting offed one by one in horrible ways… Thankfully, this is a ghost story, not a slasher story, so the bloodshed won’t be as pronounced.

My problem with this story is that I hated all of the characters. They were horrible people both to themselves and to each other. Honestly, I had no clue how they could even call each other friends. It seemed like they all hated each other guts. Nothing in their behavior spoke of friendship. Of old resentments that have been left to fester? Yes. Of past infidelities that nobody speaks about but are still there, like a big elephant in the room? Certainly. Real friendship? Not a trace. 

So it doesn’t seem plausible, at least to me, that the protagonist would insist on staying in that house and would follow along with their crazy schemes. From the little background we get on her, I would have imagined that she would have high tailed out of there ASAP, just like their friend Lin suggests. That all “I’m staying because they are my friends” line isn’t plausible when you consider the relationship dynamics described in the book. That’s no friendship. That’s co-dependent abuse.

And because all of the protagonists were such horrible people, I couldn’t care less what happened to them, which also diminished the impact of the story for me. In fact, I’m rather disappointed that more of them didn’t die in that house. If none of them had walked out of there come morning, I would have cheered, actually.

I am beginning to think that this author just isn’t for me. She is great at creating interesting and frankly disturbing worlds and premises, but I simply can’t connect with her characters. I had that problem with the Rupert Wong series, and I have that problem with this novella as well.

PS: I received a free copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. 

books, Dark fantasy, Fantasy, Reviews

Foundryside (The Founders 1) By Robert Jackson BEnnett

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Stars: 4 out of 5

Robert Jackson Bennett is a Creator of Worlds, and yes, the capital letters are fully intended here. Every time his new book comes out, I am amazed at this man’s imagination. His Divine Cities trilogy is in the top 10 of my most favorite series ever. That worldbuilding was absolutely top notch and like nothing I had ever read before. And he delivers again with Foundryside.

Imagine a world where certain words inscribed into inanimate objects can give the truly magical characteristics? A few glyphs put on a carriage wheels can persuade that wheel that it is going downhill, even if it’s on a flat surface, so the wheel will roll forward even if in reality it goes uphill. What you get is a self-propelling carriage that doesn’t need horses or engines. Imagine the implications for such a technology? Imagine how rich and powerful the Merchant Houses who control this art have become? No wonder they guard their glyphs and techniques with murderous jealousy.

Now imagine a person who, through a horrible and inhumane experiment, can interact with these scribed objects and sometimes use them in ways not intended by their creators. That would make Sancia a very good thief indeed… Until she is commissioned to steal an object from a heavily guarded warehouse. Now all the merchant houses want her dead, and everyone wants the artifact in her possession. All Sancia wants is to stay alive.

I loved everything about this story – the worldbuilding,  the characters, the tension and the seemingly overwhelming odds our protagonists face. I also liked that ultimately this is a story of transformation. Yes, objects are transformed by the art of scrivening, but more importantly, human beings are transformed by the circumstances and encounters they make during that book. Sancia is the best example of it. She starts the story as a loner who doesn’t trust anyone and struggles with her ability, considering it more of a curse than anything else. She comes to the end of this book as an almost different person – she has found friends and has mastered her ability, but she has also found a purpose. And a group of misfits was transformed into a found family as well. But not all the transformations are good ones, unfortunately, because one good man was transformed into a mindless monster, though I think there is still hope for him and he will come back in future books.

The reason why I gave this book 4 instead of 5 stars is because the protagonists seem less mature than in the author’s other series, even though the book isn’t categorized as YA, so that was a little off-putting for me, but that’s only my preference, since I’m not much into young adult books. Hopefully, Sancia will do more maturing in the next books of the series because I definitely want to check them out.

If you like great worldbuilding, like I do. If you like fast paced stories with twists and turns and wonderfully flawed characters, you should definitely check out this book.

PS: I received an advanced copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

books, Reviews, science fiction

Too Like the Lightning (Terra Ignota 1) by Ada Palmer

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Stars: 1 out of 5

DNF at 42%.

I was lured to this book by the abundance of 5 star reviews. I was really looking forward to reading it… The first chapter had me baffled, confused and disappointed. But I decided to stick around to see if the story would actually get good and justify all those raving reviews… it didn’t. And as you can see, I stuck around for almost half of the book waiting for something to happen, so I think I gave it more than a fair chance.

I have so many problems with this book this review would become a laundry list of complaints if I were to touch on all of them. So I will limit myself to the aspects that raked me the most.

First, this story is told to the reader post-factum by a narrator that was there for some of the events and collected oral accounts of witnesses for the events he wasn’t part of. That can actually work, if done well. I read a few books told postpartum and loved them… But that doesn’t work if the narrator constantly breaks the fourth wall and addresses the reader directly. I was about ready to throw my tablet at the wall after the third “Dear reader, you might not know but blah-blah-blah…”. After the fifth one, I was contemplating murder.

My second problem is that a combination of good ideas doesn’t make a good story. I got the impression that the author got so enamored with their worldbuilding, that they forgot to actually tell a compelling story. We get introduced to Bridger, this boy wonder who will supposedly change the world, in Chapter 1… then we don’t hear about him again until almost 30% into the book. Instead, we are introduced to an endless parade of characters, places, and philosophies, that I honestly stopped caring about after about the third chapter. My reaction became “yawn, who are all these people?” 

It felt like a kid showing me their collection of random shinies they have accumulated over the years – they are all pretty and unique on their own, but they have no connection to each other. Like I said, a collection of ideas doesn’t make a story.

The final nail in the coffin of this book, at least for me, was when at 42% mark we finally come back to Bridger… then the narrator has to recap something that happened before (and he wasn’t present to witness, so it’s a third party account of a third party account). Yay, we finally have some action, even if related post-factum! Things are happening. Shenanigans are afoot… and then the action grinds to a screeching halt because a new character is introduce and it takes three pages to describe him, and what he is wearing, and how they are standing, and how others are reacting to him… Momentum = dead.

That’s when I threw my hat and decided to bid the book goodbye. This is a sad moment, because I probably won’t bother checking out other books by this author because my first impression was so disastrous.

PS: I received a free copy from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

books, Reviews, science fiction, Soft Science Fiction

Fated Blades (Kinsmen 3) by Ilona Andrews

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 Stars: 5 out of 5

Excellent modern take at the Romeo and Juliette myth, only if both Romeo and Juliette decided to join forces  and kick ass.

Once again, I am happy to announce that you can’t go wrong with an Ilona Andrews book. They all range from good to excellent, no matter what series you pick up. Though I have a particular soft spot for Kate Daniels and the Innkeeper series. 

I somehow missed all the other books in the Kinsmen series (an oversight that I will rectify as soon as I get a hold of the first two books), but I loved this entry into the series. Oh, and by the way, you don’t need to have read the previous books to enjoy this one. I went in fresh and ignorant of the world of Rada and enjoyed it immensely. Each book is meant to be read as a standalone, from what I gathered.

Anyway, here is the set up. The Adlers and the Baenas are the only two secare families on Rada, and they had a blood feud going ever since the first colonization. The reasons for that feud have been lost to the sands of time, but the families still hate each other on sight and try to kill each other on occasion. So imagine the leaders of these two families, Ramona Adler and Mathias Baena, being put in such a situation that to save their families and their reputations, they have to become allies. Sparks fly and enemies dies.

What I like about Ilona Andrews books is that her characters are always alive, especially the protagonists, and most of the supporting characters as well. They are vivid, they jump out of the page at you, and they are believable. Both Ramona and Mathias are very strong individuals who had to become the heads of their respective families at a very young age. They aren’t just figureheads. They are smart, business savvy and efficient. They are also deadly when it comes to wielding their secare weapons. And they had been married to their work basically, and rather unhappy in their personal lives, even if they didn’t realize it until the proverbial shit hit the fan and their spouses eloped with each other.

I like that they respect each other even though they are sworn enemies. They recognize each other’s strengths and combine them in order to get the results they want – get their families’ research back and eliminate a treat. And the rest of their relationship sparks from that place of mutual respect. They are strong and independent and well adjusted individuals that don’t need each other to be happy. They choose each other. Now that’s how a real relationship should be.

This book is a breeze to read. It’s fast, it’s witty, and it flies by in a whirlwind of dance and secare blades. I wish it was a bit longer because I devoured it in a day.

My only complaint is that the main villain of the story (I am talking about the in-laws from hell), was a little bit caricaturesque. How could a successful politician, even non-Rada native, be so ignorant about kinsmen politics? That’s not very believable. But that’s a very small gripe towards what is otherwise and excellent book.

Thank you, mighty authors, you did it again!

books, Dark fantasy, Fantasy, Grim Dark, Reviews

Black Stone Heart (The Obsidian Path 1) by Michael R. Fletcher

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Stars: 5 out of 5

I don’t usually like grim dark as a genre, because most books are too grim and too dark for me (and yes, the pun is totally intended). What I mean is that most authors dish out gore and violence for the sake of it instead of integrating it into the plot. So after the gazillionth gruesome murder or ignoble rape, I as a reader become unsensitized to it. Plus, if horrible things (including death) can happen to any of the characters, you get less attached to them, so when bad things happen, you just shrug and move on. 

That’s why I was pleasantly surprised by this book. Yes, it’s dark. Yes, it’s violent. But both of those things are integral to the story and the worldbuilding, not just written for shock value. So while I was squeamish in some parts of the book, and didn’t agree with a lot of the decisions the protagonist made, those were never out of character.

Now let’s talk about the two aspects that make or break a book for me: the worldbuilding and the characters.

The worldbuilding here is wonderful! You can feel the weight of history in the description of the cities and villages the protagonist is traveling through. We know that thousands of years ago, there was a vast and powerful empire that was ruled by the Demon Emperor. The empire was prosperous, but that prosperity came at the price of countless sacrificed souls that were fed to the demons who built and operated the cities, maintained the roads and made sure the vast imperial machine functioned properly. 

We don’t know what happened, but there was a horrible war that scarred the face of the earth and overthrew that demon empire, leaving empty cities that were still perfectly preserved and maintained by bound demons, but stepping into them meant death for simple mortals, because the wizards, who emerged victorious from this war, had eliminated all demonologists. Nobody was left to talk to demons.

It the world better or worse after the war? That would be for the reader to decide. Sure, no more innocent souls are sacrificed to the demons, but what’s left of humanity now lives in the equivalent of our Dark Ages. Poverty, disease, huge disparity in living conditions between the wizards and nobles and the rest of the populace. And this society is stagnant. The wizards are happy to keep the status quo. There had been no progress, no innovation, no effort to improve the living conditions in a thousand years since the Demon Empire fell. So you bet you this place is violent and dark.

Now let’s consider our protagonist. He is a blank slate at the beginning of the book. He literally emerges from the ground with no memories of who he was. But his willingness to kill and commit violence is there from the start. I would say that he doesn’t even bat an eyelash at his first 2 murders. He has some questions about his third one, the young boy, but it’s more in the vein of Was the old me really someone who could kill so easily, than in the vein of OMG what did I just do? I could have incapacitated and bound him. I didn’t have to kill him. 

The more we learn about Khraen’s past, the more we realize that he isn’t much better than the Demon Emperor he used to be, no matter if he keeps telling himself that he will be a better person. He is just as selfish, prone to anger, and ready to commit the worst of atrocities then justify them afterwards. I had to murder that woman because my undead girlfriend needed body part. And since she was already dead anyway, why not collect her soul to feed to a demon later? That sort of things. 

And the further in the story we go, the worst Khraen gets. No matter what justifications he invents in his mind for the horrible things he does, he is slowly become the same monster he sees in his shattered memories. Only the Demon Emperor committed his atrocities to  serve his god and to preserve and empire, the new Khraen just wants revenge on all the wizards who, in his eyes, betrayed him and took what’s his. Neither justification is valid, in my point of view.

Yet despite the violence and the increasingly unlikable protagonist, this book grabs you and keeps you hooked. I want to know what happened to the old Demon Emperor to make all of his allies turn against him. I want to know who shattered his obsidian heart. I want to know which necromancer has Henka’s heart or if she lied about it. I want to know what happens next, so I will definitely be buying the next book in the series.

books, Dark fantasy, Fantasy, Reviews

Papa Lucy and the Boneman by Jason Fischer

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 Stars: 3.5 out of 5

That was a very unusual book. I struggle to even put it in a category. Scifi? Fantasy? Post Apocalypse? Grim dark? A little bit of both with a bunch of other stuff mixed in?

I admit that I struggled with rating this book because there are certain aspects of it that I absolutely loved, and others that I was less than thrilled about. I had to make a compromise and settle on 3.5 stars.

Let’s talk about the thing I absolutely loved – the worldbuilding. This is a gritty and unforgiving world that wasn’t created for the human race. In fact, we learn pretty early on that humans came to this world as refugees from their own dimension that was facing immediate destruction. So even though the air is mostly breathable, the water potable, and the soil can grow imported crops, most of the native plant and wildlife can kill you in dozens of imaginative albeit rather painful ways. Not to mention that what livestock and crops the refugees brought with them have slowly been dying out or mutating beyond recognition through the centuries since their arrival.

This is a harsh world and you get a distinct feeling that the human race isn’t welcome there. If fact, it’s on borrowed time. Even without failing crops and livestock dying out, less and less people are born each year. Cities that were full of people and hope for a new future when they just arrived in this world now stand abandoned. Roads and highways are crumbling because if lack of use, and great feats of architecture that had once made life easier (like aqueducts and sewerage channels) are now broken and forgotten…

This general decay and desolation is very reminiscent of some of the darker works by Glen Cook, like the Black Company series, or the Dark Tower cycle by Stephen King. There is a sense of wrongness about the land, like the world had “moved on” and left the humans behind, to slowly die out. And of course, humans being humans, they find new and imaginative ways to abuse and kill each other. Did I mention this book is dark? Very, unforgivably dark.

This is where I will need to mention the part that I didn’t like, and that’s the characters. They are all absolutely depictable horrible excuses for human beings, especially those who fancy themselves gods instead. There isn’t a single one of them that has anything that even resembles a moral compass, and the atrocities they commit seemingly in passing were so bad at times that I found myself rooting for the natives. 

For me, it is rather hard to like a book when I just want to kill all of the protagonists to either put them out of their misery or to prevent them from committing any more atrocities. And in the case of the Boneman, who seems the least horrible of them all, his sin is the one of inaction. He sees the horrors his brother is committing. He saw all the horrors he committed in the past…  yet he follows him nevertheless. Like  fateful hound devoid of free will. Don’t’ know about you, but to me that’s a character that’s extremely annoying to read about.

I understand that the author’s idea was to show that his characters deserve the fates they will be getting and that the horrible actions they committed are counterbalanced by the harshness of their environment… Kinda like they deserve the prison they ended up with because they are all so horrible. 

I can appreciate that idea, but I don’t like it. Maybe because my tolerance for pain and suffering and people behaving like absolute Neanderthals has significantly lowered during these 2 pandemic years. I want to have at least one protagonist I can root for. I am not interested in following a bunch of villains and settle for the less villainous of them surviving in the end. 

But other readers might find this book right up their alley. So I would say give it a try, to discover an unusual world if nothing else.

PS: I received an advanced copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

books, Reviews, science fiction

Fugitive Telemetry by Martha Wells (Murderbot diaries 6)

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 Stars: 4 out of 5

I am always excited about a new Murderbot novella or novel (though we only have one of those in the series so far, book 5, and what an excellent book that was!) because Murderbot is my favorite misanthropic paranoid SecUnit with a prickly personality and a heart of gold. It is hilarious to hear it tell itself how he doesn’t like people and how they annoy it, and how they make its life difficult… while doing everything in its power to protect those same people. 

It’s also very telling that he cares deeply for those who it considers his friends (like the members of the expedition who first discovered that it is a person, not just a piece of equipment), but he also can’t help but get invested in the wellbeing of complete strangers. This is abundantly clear in this story especially, when it discovers that there is human trafficking of sorts going on through the station and that a batch of refugees had gone missing. You would think that it would just shrug and leave the case to Station Security, since it doesn’t have anything to do with protecting his employer, but you would be wrong. SecUnit can’t help himself – though it would never admit it even to itself, it cares about what happens to people, especially if it sees something that goes against its moral compass. 

I also like how it starts to grudgingly admire the society on on this station, even though it keeps calling it too naïve and unrealistic. Despite that, I’m pretty sure that SecUnit would do everything in its power to protect the station, if needed.

It’s also rather sad to see that SecUnit automatically assumes the worst in people he isn’t familiar with, especially when it comes to their attitude to it. And it is notoriously bad at reading people’s emotions, thus misinterpreting their reactions half the time. Seriously, I think most of the station has a grudging respect for it now, even if it doesn’t realize that. Certainly, by the end of this book, most members of Station Security treat it with respect and even a certain comradery.

This is definitely a must read, especially if you love Murderbot like I do and enjoy following its sarcastic inner monologue. I would suggest that you read this book before you pick up book 5, even though this is listed as book 6. The reason for this is that chronologically speaking, the events in this book happen a couple months after the end of book 4, while Murderbot was still settling into the life on the station, so its attitude towards certain people is different than in book 5. If you are unaware of that, reading this book after book 5 might be rather confusing, as in “I thought they were already grudging allies, so why is it reacting like this person is an enemy” confusing. Besides, I think some of the events from this book are mentioned in passing in book 5 (like the episode with the corporate assassins).

Anyway, go pick up this story and spend a pleasant evening with everybody’s favorite sarcastic, drama-binging SecUnit.

PS: I received an advanced copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.