Category: Review

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Review

“Altered America: Steampunk Stories,” or, “one or two good ones and a whole lot of depressing”

Cat Rambo
An anthology, but all the stories are written by one author, so just the one name at the top here. And just the one link, as well, if you’d like to read it. 

“Clockwork Fairies”

The protagonist here, though I feel that may not be the right word, is as if someone heard a quote about “the small-minded man” and wanted to write a character who was the epitome of that epithet. Ugh.

“Rare Pears and Greengages”

I came to London, where the air smells like smoke and despair.

And really that sums this story, and the feel of the book so far, up: smoke and despair.

“Memphis BBQ”

This story was pretty fun, but it’s the second time we’ve had a protagonist I’d describe as some sort of terrible. The lady isn’t interested, dude, leave her alone.

“Laurel Finch, Laurel Finch, Where Do You Wander?”

Abraham Lincoln isn’t above necromancy, it seems, which made the civil war a rather short affair.
That said, I desperately want more of the main character of this one – she deserves a whole novel to herself.

“Snakes on a Train”

Oh, now that’s a neat pairing for a detective movie: a telepath and a robot.

“Rappacini’s Crow”

And we’re back to everything being depressing forever. Cool.

“Her Windowed Eyes, Her Chambered Heart”

I’m reminded of Castle Heterodyne, which can only be a good thing.

“Web of Blood and Iron”

Now I’m disappointed that I’ve never seen a conspiracy theory claiming vampires own the global transportation network.

“Ticktock Girl”

I’m slightly confused by how the ‘moments’ work – are they just an arbitrary segmentation of time? I mean, probably, since they worked well for the structure of the story, but still, I want to know more. I enjoyed this one.

“Seven Clockwork Angels, All Dancing on a Pin”

There’s some serious hand-waving of science going on in here, but I do like the resulting riff on the core concept. I just wish it was all a bit better-explained.

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Review

“Vintage: A Ghost Story,” or, “I don’t think this book was intended to be hilarious but IT IS”

Steve Berman
I’ll begin by saying that, just before I read this book, I tried reading one that was about lesbian werewolves,1 and it was bad.2 So it’s not getting reviewed here; instead, I switched to this one, and it was so much better. Like, not only was it better-written, it was also just one of the best ghost stories I’ve ever read. Strong vibes of Sixth Sense or Ghost Whisperer, depending on which you used to watch.34
It also gets a strong plus from me for being what I refer to as “queer propaganda” – namely, any book that includes queer characters for purposes other than the “Bury Your Gays” trope. Representation is important, y’all.
That said, the title of this post comes from the fact that I switched to my normal ‘scary movie’ tactic, namely sarcastically commentating all the way through. Which turned it into an oddly hilarious experience, because the main character did a good deal of the scary movie tradition of “making horrible, horrible decisions.” The biggest one goes to “falling in love at first sight,” with the notable kicker being “falling in love with a ghost.” C’mon, man, that’s all sorts of bad choices right there.
And it just goes from there. It’s actually pretty fun, and as I already said, probably my favorite ghost story experience. As is my traditional link for books I like: have a read.

  1. This combination wasn’t a coincidence; I think, in this book, being a lesbian came with being a werewolf? I didn’t actually read far enough to find out for sure. ↩
  2. Like, I made it about three pages in and I’m betting I could tell you the plot of whole first half of the book with pinpoint accuracy, and the I could call the generalities of the second half. Also, the writing was on the ‘trying to hard’ side of the scale. ↩
  3. I was a Ghost Whisperer fan, but I also distinctly remember reading the first book of a series based on Sixth Sense and being terrified by the concept of being able to see all those ghosts. ↩
  4. Additional note to that one: I just found out the author of that book also wrote Boy Meets Boy and I’m having a “small world” moment about an author, this is weird. More entertaining: his Wikipedia page doesn’t mention the Sixth Sense books at all. ↩
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Review

“City of the Saints,” or, “stop what you’re doing and go read this book”

DJ Butler
Alright, who remembers Wild Wild West? It was this weird steampunk western movie that Will Smith was in, came out in the 90s at some point, and was just a strange experience all around. But it was also cool, because steampunk is great and adding it to a western isn’t a twist that you see often enough, so I enjoyed it.
This book? This is what that movie wishes it could’ve been. Not only is it all sorts of steampunk craziness, it’s also set in an alternate history world where the Utah Territory became the Kingdom of Deseret,1 an independent nation led by Brigham Young, the independent Republic of California is issuing their own currency, and after clockwork machinery made slavery irrelevant, Harriet Tubman wound up as the President of the Reunited States of Mexico. A big world with a lot of things going on, for sure.
The story also has a lot going on – the first few chapters gave me a vibe along the lines of Oceans Eleven, somehow – I think it was the “ensemble cast” thing going on. You’re bounced from character to character, but they’re all in the same room together, and trying to get a grasp of their varying motivations and goals is a heady rush. The Civil War is coming up fast, and everybody knows it… but with strong nations sharing an actual border wit the United States, there’s some political maneuvering to be done. Deseret has a military tech lead over everyone else and would be a strong ally on either side, and the favor of Young is not something to be trifled with.
I’m not going to give much more away here, but I’ll say it again: I loved this book, and I couldn’t recommend it more. It was a delight to read, and I’m hoping there’s more by this author that I can dive into later on. Give it a read.

  1. Based on what almost happened – the Mormon settlers wanted to name the state “Deseret” originally. ↩
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Review

“Eternal Voyager,” or, “hedonism is a fairly natural result of a post-scarcity, post-death world”

Conor Kostick
I don’t think I’ve reviewed anything by Kostick before, but I’ve definitely read some of his work – his Epic series was delightful, and shares something in common with this collection of novellas: a lot of playing around with virtual worlds.

“Kudos”

Slightly on-the-nose about it, but as a card-carrying millennial I am contractually obliged to like a story about the evils of capitalism.
The nice thing is that, in the setting of a post-scarcity and apparently post-death virtual utopia, the whole thing becomes aggressively about the service economy, and also makes the whole thing low-stakes enough that it’s just a nice story.

“Aliens”

Again, a very cool concept thanks to the interesting setting. I’m enjoying the little references to Epic, as well – there are both name-drops and references to the actual storyline.

“Revenge Upon the Vampyres”

In a world where people can’t die, thanks to the ability to restore themselves from backups,1 finding a way to make the stakes high can be a bit difficult. It’s played nicely in this one.

“Dancers Beyond the Whorl of Time”

A nice prologue story, answering a few questions I’ve had building up from little references in the other stories.

“The Siege of Mettleburg”

I’m feeling like I should check the publish dates of these stories and Epic, because this one really felt like a precursor to the larger novel.

“The Murder Mystery”

A nice follow-up to the previous story, and a bit of interesting discussion of the relationship between the virtual world in which the stories take place and the physical reality in which it’s anchored.2

All in all, it’s a nice little box set of books, and it’s not too pricey, either. Have a read.

  1. And, I must say, this is one of my most-wanted science fiction technologies. ↩
  2. You can’t have a digital world without a pile of servers somewhere. ↩
Categories
Review

“The Alchemy of Stone,” or, “I’m fine with clockwork AI but apparently compact videotape is where I draw the line“

Ekaterina Sedia
This was a very… interesting book. And I say this because, beyond that, I’m not sure how I feel about it. I didn’t really enjoy the plot, but I found everything else fascinating – the world in which it takes place has a weird set of rules unlike any I’ve seen before, and it fits well with the unique main character.
And it’s interesting that, despite my interest in this sort of thing, I haven’t actually read many books where the narrator is a machine. That’s the real twist to this book – and no, it’s not a spoiler, because they’re clear about what they are – and it plays remarkably well. It’s done remarkably well, too – the perspective is slightly off of what you’d get with a human narrator, and I think the author did a wonderful job of using that difference to tell the story they wanted to tell.
So I suppose I’m comfortable recommending it – as I said, I didn’t actually like what all happened with the plot, but the storytelling was interesting enough that it held my interest the whole time, and I do think reading it was a good use of my time. Have a read.

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Review

“War Hawk,” or, “whoops guess I’ve got ten more new books to read again”

James Rollins and Grant Blackwood
I’m not kidding about that title, by the way; I’ve mentioned that I enjoy this genre of action novel, and Cussler takes a firm second to Rollins in terms of writing quality.1 And apparently Rollins has been writing at a prodigious rate – there’s something like eight new books in his Sigma Force series that I still haven’t read, so that’s all exciting.2
“War Hawk” actually is a Sigma Force novel – or at least, tangentially related. Sticking to my Cussler comparisons, it’s like how the Dirk Pitt and the Oregon Files series take place in a shared universe, and occasionally overlap – the main character in “War Hawk” showed up as a supporting character in some of the earlier Sigma Force books3 and some of the cast of the Sigma Force books are supporting characters in this one. It’s a nice touch, and I think it works well, although the reasons for not involving them more were a bit contrived at times.
Like I said already, Rollins writes higher quality books than Cussler; in the above-linked Cussler review, I make a complaint about a pretty elementary mistake in some of the book’s usage of the Spanish language.4 Meanwhile, in this book, which involves a lot of talk about artificial intelligence (something I know a wee bit about), had only one or two little things for me to pick nits with.5
The moral of the story is, I quite liked the book – more than Piranha, for sure, and enough that I just went downstairs and grabbed one of the other Rollins novels that I own to give it a quick re-read. And hey, how could I not recommend a book where the narration is occasionally from the POV of a dog? Give it a read.6

  1. Now, quantity, it’s hard to beat Cussler on quantity, he’s one of those factory authors like James Patterson. ↩
  2. Well, exciting until I remember that I have homework and responsibilities to get to, at which point it becomes something between annoying and saddening. ↩
  3. Ones that I hadn’t read, apparently, so I’m out of order now, which is annoying. ↩
  4. It’s gotta be pretty elementary if I, with my whopping high school class-level knowledge of Spanish caught it. ↩
  5. When I get to those moments I try to pay less attention so it doesn’t ruin the rest of the book for me, but with the small amount of attention I was paying, the inaccuracies could still be written off as “an expert on the subject making an inaccurate comparison while explaining to the layperson narrator” so it actually could still work. Nicely done. ↩
  6. Fun story: this is a different edition of the book than the one I have; I suspect it’s because I’m on American Amazon, and seeing the US edition first; the version I have, I bought at a used-books sale while studying abroad, so it’s still got a €3 price tag on the back. ↩
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Review

“All the Paths of Shadow,” or, “magic that requires an engineering degree is my aesthetic”

Frank Tuttle
This book was so satisfying to read. Like, pretty much everything I predicted was going to happen, I was right about, but it managed to do that in a way that didn’t make me go “ugh this is so predictable” as much as it did “yes I was right!” Things were a wee bit different than I expected in places, which helped, but overall I just had a lot of fun with the book. Probably my favorite of the books I’ve read in the past week or so.
So, your basic summary: it’s in a London-patterned city, which is about to host the Accords, a once-every-five-years meeting of the heads of the various kingdoms that make up the Islands. For a while I was trying to map the Islands to the British Isles, but eventually I realized that it’s more of an amalgamated British Isles and Europe – there’s a very clear Germany in there, and somebody that I think was supposed to be a vaguely Slavic nation? Of course, you’ve got the England that’s the main setting, and the Scots make a great appearance.
The timeline was a bit interesting, too – it was set in the 19th century, I believe, but since the setting is so far off of the real world, it sorta makes sense that their history was also way different. Add in the fact that you’ve got magic everywhere, and it’s pretty dang interesting.
And oh, the magic in this one, it was wonderful. I love magic systems where you can tell there’s a clear sense of the order underlying it, like the author has sat down and worked out how it all works. And this one is done so well, and integrated with the engineering capabilities of that era, to the point that I honestly thought there was going to be a bit of a twist early on that revealed that magic was actually just engineering with some serious flair to it. The first spell that’s worked is basically using an enchanted chain to find the angle between two points… and then the caster goes and does a bunch of trigonometry to figure out exactly where the big spell they’re planning needs to be cast. It’s wonderful.
And my, I’ve gone quite a ways without touching on the characters or the plot at all, which were also both wonderful. The protagonist is a delight, the first female Royal Thaumaturge, and she’s exactly as done with the geopolitics of the Accords as I would be in her place. And man, is the supporting cast fun – Mug, her familiar, is a delight, and her mentors are also off in the corner being the peanut gallery. It’s seriously fun.
I’m hoping I’ve done a good enough job of convincing you you should read this joke. If I have, here’s the link.

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Review

“The Somniscient,” or, “how has nobody here ever heard of a union?”

Richard Levesque
This book was a wild ride, and it was awesome. There were twists and turns everywhere, but at the end I was like “okay, yeah, that all made sense” – it never hit the “what is even happening” level, y’know?1
It’s set a bit less than 200 years in the future, and I do quite enjoy the way that changes in technology are integrated. Basically, someone went ahead and finished up Elon Musk’s Neuralink technology. It’s a mix of augmented reality interfaces for doing things and the ability to record and replay dreams, with direct control of the body’s sleep cycle built in. Which sounds handy, except it was made in a realistic world, which means it was funded by venture capitalists, which means it was turned into the most horrifyingly capitalist version of the technology possible. After the technology made it possible for people to cheaply entertain themselves, the world’s economy started slowing way down… so the company, with some backing by the government,2 set it up so it costs money to sleep.3
And, as I pointed out in the title of this post, apparently nobody has ever heard of forming a union, because the workplace environment is pretty abusive. The main character starts off in his Cube, which is roughly a dorm room with the aesthetics if a cubicle, where he pays extortionate rates in order to… not die. As a fun bonus, the Cube is owned by, and in the headquarters of, the company he works for – the same company that controls the technology that’s in everybody’s heads. It’s basically straight out of the nightmares of the people who pushed through the first worker’s rights laws.
And… I’m going to leave it there, actually. That’s a good amount of background, and anything else I can say would spoil some of the fascinating plot. I definitely recommend giving it a read, though – I’ve read a couple short stories that Levesque wrote, and I think I liked this one better than either of those, to be honest. Either way, though, go have a read.

  1. that was a terrible sentence, Grey, why are you trying to write a book review after having gotten up at 3 am, Grey ↩
  2. The book only ever specifies that the US government was involved, but I assume the rest of the world would’ve done something similar, otherwise the geopolitics of the situation would be different. ↩
  3. The relationship is a bit different, of course – after a while the company realized they could cut out the middleman and wound up replacing all the currencies with ‘Z’s, their own currency that’s just a measure of how many hours of sleep you can get. ↩
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Review

“Wonder City Stories,” or, “it’s like Oprah ran around handing out queerness to everyone”

Jude McLaughlin
I’m going to start off with a quote from the teaser for the sequel that’s in the end of the book:

“How did your mom keep hold of a device like that anyway?” Megan said, tossing the end of her rainbow-patterned scarf – knotted for her by her gay vampire landlord Zoltan – over her shoulder. He told her that vampires have a lot of free time at night, and knitting was one way he used it. I’m not sure I believe that.

This book was delightful. I read it in one day, and I’m genuinely sad that I finished it because I want there to keep being more.1 It’s basically my entire aesthetic rolled into one thing, and I can summarize it with two words: queer superheroes!
Expanding a bit, though, because it’s actually mostly about people other than superheroes. The cast of main characters includes the vehemently-not-a-superhero daughter of an infamous heroine, a retired WWII-era superhero, the (unpowered and) almost-divorced-wife of a comatose current hero, and quite a few other folks around the edges. It’s a delightfully diverse cast, and it does a really fun job of playing around with some of the ways that superheroes interact with a society that isn’t too unlike our own.2
Plus, y’know, it’s Hella Gay. And, as a nice bonus that takes it away from the annoying majority of LGBTQ-inclusive media, the LGBTQ characters get to do things other than be in the background or die!3
So yes, I absolutely recommend it, go have a read.4

  1. There’s some good news, though – evidently it’s the first volume of an ongoing web serial, so I’ll just go ahead and keep reading once I’m done with this review. ↩
  2. Really, those sorts of interactions are what I want from my superhero media; it’s unrealistic to expect things to be entirely the same, with a layer of cool battle scenes on top, because there’s so many implications in all that- just think of the economics of car insurance in a world where “yeah a villain threw my car at a hero” is a normal occurrence. ↩
  3. No, I’m not bitter at all, why do you ask? ↩
  4. A final note, here because I can’t attach footnotes to the actual title: having a whole group of queer people like this isn’t ‘unrealistic, considering the percentage of the population that’s queer,’ Twitter Rando: we group together. Safety in numbers, and all that – to be honest, the ‘token gay friend’ thing is more unrealistic, especially in a metropolitan area. ↩
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Review

“Bartleby and James,” or, “is… is the Queen a zombie?“

Michael Coorlim

“I may be able to calibrate my Forensic Viewers and attune them to his particular N-Ray signature.”
“I don’t know what that means.”
“My science goggles can track him.”
“Brilliant!”

I own a lot of books that are basically riffs on the concept of Sherlock Holmes, and this is another one. But it’s also one of the most fun that I’ve read – the characters interact well with one another, and I rather identify with the narrator-protagonist.

“All we are is meat, Bartleby. Flesh and bone.”
“What of the soul?” Bartleby poured his own cup.
“Oh, do grow up.”
“I’m serious. There’s something indefinable that separates man from the animals.”
I spoke with a slight singsong while pouring a dollop of cream into my cup. “A sense of pretension about it, perhaps. Delusions of gods, of spirits, of magic, and other humbug.”

Beyond that, the story is pretty interesting – it’s written in a sort of anthology style, so it’s more a collection of short stories than anything else, but they’re put together in chronological order, and good lord do they have some fun stuff going on with the background. I spent the whole second story entirely wrong about who did it, muttering “realpolitik” to myself.1
In looking up the link to put here, I see that it’s an ongoing series, and boy am I ever tempted to get the rest of them. I’ll wait until I’ve finished the rest of my bits of reading that I need to do, but oh, these are going on the wish list. I definitely recommend this one.

  1. To be fair, I wasn’t too far off the mark, but still, I was wrong. ↩
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Review

“All These Shiny Worlds II”

I’ve read the first anthology in this now-series, and I’m finally getting around to the second one. As I usually do with anthologies, I’ll be splitting it up so that each short story gets its own short review. And, before we launch into that, I’ll give a quick review here: it’s worth getting. Here’s your link.

Out in the Dark

Meryl Stenhouse
Oh, I’m already enjoying the focus on science fiction in this anthology. And these days, I’m also a big fan of stuff being realistically concerned about the impact of climate change – like the ever-increasing importance of naval superiority as the seas rise, and the sorts of defenses you’d need to keep a city from drowning.

Alter Ego

Russ Linton
See, I kinda get where the whole “fourth person perspective” thing was going… but I’m not sure if it worked for me. I mean, superheroes, so a plus in my book, but still, told a bit oddly.

The Silk of Yesterday’s Gown

Misha Burnett
Oh, that was darker than I was expecting, and the opening paragraph makes it pretty clear that it’s going to be fairly dark. Yikes.

A Rough Spirit

Dave Higgins
For a bit of a ghost story, I do enjoy that I had to stop to laugh at the main character’s obliviousness at one point:

“If it pleases Hiroto-sama, I am called Anew. I have some skill in massage if the noble lord has woken with any stiffness?”
He tried to keep his gaze on the small bowl and not the scrubbed skin beyond it. “A little rice and a sip of water will suffice.”
“My brother has strong fingers if-“
She’d noticed something was wrong too. He needed to distract her. He slid the tray closer. “Tell me of Hayabiro while I eat.”

Other than that, I’ve gotta say, this whole thing is “stuff happens to this guy and he overthinks it,” but it was surprisingly entertaining the whole way through.

The Apprentice Appears

Bryce Anderson

Elsie pressed the trigger, sending a taxidermied squirrel flying through the air.

Need I say more? It’s hilarious, as is everything of Anderson’s that I’ve read. On this one alone, it’s worth reading the entire book.

Merge

Simon Cantan
This is the short story version of this comic, and I think it works even better than the actual comic did. To be fair, it’s a bit more hopeful than the comic – there’s robots outside the simulation, so things are still getting done, but still.

Without a Care in the World

Richard Levesque

Then he cleared his throat and said, “I am now officially invoking the Asimov Act – uh, I mean the Sentient Technology Emancipation Act, under the conditions of which you are obligated to release this independent being from servitude immediately.”

The Lancer

David Kristoph
Okay, remember when I said Merge was dark? This was darker. Yikes.

Bodies of Evidence

Jefferson Smith

“Okay Lou, I can squeeze you in. And how will you be paying?”
“On account. Maladein Industries.”
“One moment, please.” She was gone for over a minute. “Hello, Lou? I’m not showing any accounts under that name. The closest match I have is for SKULL International Consortium of Evil, Local Rep: Sheldon Maladein.”
“Damn, I forgot about the merger. That’s us. Sorry.”

I’m a big fan of “daily life in a world with superheroes” kind of things, and this definitely delivered on that.

Borrowed Lives

I.A. Watson
The editor’s note did a good job of covering it: it’s an exploration of how a new technology would fit into everyday lives. (The actual plot contains a bit more intrigue than that, but still.)

“The law hasn’t caught up with this, Mik. Why would there be a law against something nobody knows is possible?”

The Earth Ship

Graham Storrs
Imperialism is always the same, isn’t it?

Digital Commander

J.S. Morin
Oh, I liked this. It’s a pretty possible future, and the way the world-changing advances in technology were being handled as they were being developed? Downright responsible.

The Traveller

Christopher Ruz
Oh, this is not what they should’ve ended on, my heart can’t take it.

Categories
Review

“Piranha,” or, “that’s not actually how the Spanish language works”

I’ve had a bit of a soft spot for Clive Cussler for a long time. I started reading his books pretty young – distinctly younger than you’re really supposed to be reading his books, I’m sure, but oh well. It’s not like waiting until I was an actual adult was going to make me find the stilted romance subplots less awkward.1 Of his series, the Oregon Files have always been my favorite – at first it was just because it mentioned my home state, and I like when things do that, but after that it’s just because I enjoy the concept more.23
Piranha delivers on what I want from a book in the series; a touch of history, a baddie with a high-tech schtick, and a whole lot of cool fight scenes. Plot-wise, I didn’t really have any problems with it; everything tied together pretty well, I thought, and I had fun trying to figure out what the aforementioned high-tech schtick was before the book revealed it.4
To be honest, I don’t really have a whole lot to say; Cussler books are somewhat formulaic. But so is, say, cooking; it’s the little variations that make it interesting. I enjoyed reading it, and I’m comfortable recommending it to people if you want an airport-bookstore novel.5 Go have a read.6

  1. Seriously why does there have to be a heterosexual romance in everything, it’s ridiculous ↩
  2. I still occasionally devote some time to mapping out how I’d build it if I were to create my own version of the Oregon. ↩
  3. There’s also a good bit of devotion to the series just because it’s how I found one of my favorite authors. ANECDOTE TIME: when the Kindle first came out, I was in the middle of reading Cussler’s Dark Watch. A family friend had a Kindle and offered to let me try it out; rather than dig around in their books, I pulled up the Kindle Store and tried to download the sample of the book I was reading at the time. I misremembered the name, though, and wound up downloading the sample of Night Watch by Terry Pratchett. I read the whole sample and, the next time I went to the library, checked out the book so I could finish reading it. Since then, I’ve read almost every novel Pratchett ever wrote. (I also wound up buying one of those original Kindles; I’m still sad that it broke, the PaperWhite is nice but just isn’t as good as the original was.) ↩
  4. I also really appreciated the lack of a stilted romance subplot; the book thought about doing it, at one point, but only made it as far as “he thought she looked good in her outfit” and then dropped that whole thing, which was nice. ↩
  5. That’s not intended as an insult; I think it’s a pretty valid description of the category of books that Cussler writes. ↩
  6. I just realized I didn’t actually explain the title of this post; long story short, there’s a scene in the book where the difference between “he said” and “she said” is used to move the plot along… except the characters are speaking Spanish, a gendered language, so that kind of slip-up wouldn’t actually happen. It irritated me disproportionately. ↩
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Review

“Oath Keeper,” or, “I was very wrong about where this book was going”

I’m gonna be honest, I didn’t actually intend to finish this book so soon after I read the last one, but it sorta just happened. Whoops.1
So, first things first: this is the second book in an ongoing series, and I kinda doubt I can get through a review of it without at least slightly spoiling the first one, so if you, like me, hate having things spoiled, and you haven’t read the first book, go do that.
Now, on to the second: much like the first, it’s got a lot of different plot lines going on at once. One or two got dropped entirely, which I thought would make things a bit easier to follow, but they got replaced with different new ones. Seriously, the cast of this series is spreading like nobody’s business. Which kinda works, I guess – it makes the whole thing feel bigger, but manageably so, to have so many different angles on the same underlying plot.
And that plot, I must say, got more interesting than I was expecting: most of the way through the first book, and a good bit of the way through this one, I thought I had a good grasp of where the series was going. It felt a bit like a Star Wars arc: you get some success in the first book, everything goes to hell in the second, and in the third you’ll pull it all back together, good guys win, fireworks and a party in a forest with a bunch of weird small creatures.2
And boy, was I wrong about that. I still think it’s possible for the arc of the series to be wrapped up in the third book,3 but what actually needs to be wrapped up is very different from what I was expecting to need to be wrapped up.4
It was a very solid addition to the series, though; the first book took a bit to get going, but this one has done a much better job of capturing that Septimus Heap-style “I have no idea what’s going on, so many questions, I can’t stop reading” feeling.5 I definitely recommend it – though, as I said before, read the first one, and then the second one.

  1. I’ve also realized how well I’m doing for reading Jefferson Smith’s books; with this one done, I think there’s only one non-children’s book he’s got published that I haven’t done a review of, and it’s in my To-Read pile. ↩
  2. There’s definitely a few analogues between the two series, you’ve gotta admit. ↩
  3. Which, I should note, doesn’t actually exist yet. Not that I’m mad about this or anything. ↩
  4. But seriously, I really hope there’s going to be a third one, because the ending of the second is such that I could see that being the end of the series, but the sheer amount of unanswered questions would drive me insane. ↩
  5. I’m referring to it as a ‘Septimus Heap’ thing because that’s the first series I can remember reading that really did that; media-wise, I think it might have been the Atlantis animated film that Disney did as a direct-to-VHS/DVD thing when I was a kid?
    Tangent off this tangent: that was a good movie, and I’m disappointed that the spin-off TV series turned out to be so meh and only got three episodes. What an under-appreciated movie. ↩
Categories
Review

“Strange Places,” or, “I don’t know if it’s the *places* that are the strange part”

In the “books I don’t know how I wound up with” category, we have Strange Places. I actually wound up starting the second book in this series before the first, which was a bit annoying – I’m not a big fan of spoilers, y’know, and accidentally spoiling the ending of the first one wasn’t the best thing that could’ve happened.
Still, I did enjoy the book; the way it begins is definitely interesting, and I think I enjoyed that part the most. About a quarter of the way in1 it jumps off the rails, though, and even a bit of fourth-wall-breaking “this is so weird” from the narrator/protagonist didn’t work to keep me from calling the book out on the suddenness of it all.
Still, the story is interesting, and I’m invested enough that I’m going to go back to the second book and continue reading. From the first book I’ve figured out a bit more about how everything works in the setting, but plot-wise it’s all loose threads still hanging there.2
Which is where I’ll leave this review – fairly short, but I’m supposed to be on vacation right now, and this is ostensibly work,3 so I’m going to cut it off here and go back to getting sunburned on the beaches of southern California. If you’re interested in the book, here’s the link.

  1. Pushing the limit of my ‘no spoilers’ rule here, I know. ↩
  2. I think there’s three books, but I only have two, so… I’m going to be sad when I finish the second one, aren’t I? ↩
  3. At least, according to the organizational systems in my task- and time-tracking software it is. ↩
Categories
Review

“Things 3”, or, “it’s like they brought the best of Material Design to iOS”

So, in my last post about what apps I use I gave a fairly glowing review of Things 2, my to-do list app of choice. The third version of the app has finally been released, and now that I’ve been using it for a few weeks I figured I’d give it a bit of a review.1
Things is a suite of apps: it’s available on macOS and separately on iPhone and iPad. They’re linked together by Things Cloud, a free account for a service that works incredibly well.
The main paradigm hasn’t changed all that much since Things 2: it’s still (roughly) a Getting Things Done style, with the centerpiece being the ‘Today’ list and the various Areas of Responsibility. The biggest change, aside from the UI, is how Projects are handled: you can now create subheadings within projects, to keep everything a bit more organized, and each individual task can now have a ‘checklist’, so you’ve got another layer of hierarchical organization to take advantage of.2
Where Things 3 really shines is the UI, and it’s pretty clear why it took Cultured Code so long to release a new version: a ton of work went into it. To be honest, my main guess about what happened is “they started work on an Android version, then quit on that to go back to working in the Apple ecosystem, and stole all the best ideas from Material Design along the way.”3 Adding a task is as simple as the plus button that now lives in the very reachable bottom-right corner; if you want to put it somewhere specific, you drag the plus button over the area you’d like the to-do to go, and it gets smoothly inserted there. Drag an item to the right to schedule it for a later date – or to set a reminder at a certain time of a day, another new (and much-awaited) feature – and to the left to send it to an Area or delete it. Projects are even easier to work with, thanks to a filling-circle motif for their completion status.4
Getting somewhere is easier, as well – on macOS, you can just start typing, and as long as you didn’t begin with the spacebar5 it starts searching in your Areas and Projects for whatever list you’re typing. iOS includes the same mechanic, with the added step of pulling down6 to open the keyboard.
Beyond that, it’s just little touches that make everything nicer: the UI as a whole is brighter and more open; setting the ‘when’ for an item on macOS accepts natural language input, so I can just start typing ‘tomorrow’ and it’ll know what I mean; you can close the sidebar, or pull it open wider, on macOS. The biggest win for me is the ‘Upcoming’ view – it links in with your calendar7 to show events as scheduled8 alongside all of your Scheduled items and anything with a due date. OmniFocus has had a feature like this for a while, and it was one of the biggest things that almost got me to switch, so seeing that come to Things is delightful; it’s nice being able to see the whole week (or as far as you’d like) in advance.
All told, I consider Things 3 a great update to a great app, and I can happily continue to recommend it. If you don’t have any sort of to-do list manager, pick it up on your iPhone and Mac; if you’re all-in on it, like me, or are just one of those people who can actually get all of their work done on an iPad, get it there too.

  1. This blog used to be for stuff other than reviews, but I’ve run out of fun travels and I don’t do much else so… here we are, I guess. ↩
  2. It’s nice for, say, a grocery list: going grocery shopping is only one Thing To Do, so it makes sense to keep it as a single item, but you still want to be able to check off the various items you’ve got to buy. ↩
  3. And yes, that’s where I got the title of the post from: roll credits. ↩
  4. It’s reminiscent of the way Things 2 handled Projects in the ‘Projects’ view of the macOS app, with a progress bar filling the space behind the name, but now consistent across all of the apps. ↩
  5. Which remains the ‘add new’ shortcut, so you won’t even need to rewrite any muscle memory. ↩
  6. Think ‘pull to refresh,’ it’s a pretty standard pattern in iOS. ↩
  7. Very easily, too; macOS and iOS include some very nice calendar APIs ↩
  8. That link also makes an appearance in the Today view, where you get a quick overview of your schedule for the day; if I didn’t add calendar events as often as I do, I could actually stop having Calendar.app open on all of my devices all of the time, and let Things handle that as well. ↩