This is going to be one of those reviews where even giving it four stars feels like I may as well be panning it, because I didn’t instantly want to elope forever with Carry On unlike, it seems, freaking everyone else. And because everyone has already expounded at length as to why they love it, I can’t really add anything new to that end. So here we are — a four-star review full of gripes. Mea culpa. But really, this book was really good! And […]
A truly stunning sci-fi book for the ages
Wow, this book. There are a few technical elements that initially justified me wanting to leave off the fifth star, but the sheer audacity of the story and the fact that I cannot stop thinking about it a month later make Seveneves one of my favorite books of the year, and certainly the most thought-provoking. Effortlessly checking off a list of “stuff I want in a sci-fi novel,” Seveneves is technical and speculative, extrapolating from cutting-edge current science to detail seemingly inevitable future technology. Equally […]
Just say yes!
There are things Beverly Jenkins does really, really well, and two things that I like much less about her work, that were all evident first when I read Topaz and appeared here in Indigo. So let’s get this compliment sandwich going! This book is about Hester Wyatt, a freed former slave and operator on Michigan’s Underground Railroad. She’s decidedly non-romantic after seeing how passion and love led her father to take on the shackles of slavery to be closer to her and her mother, only […]
History and intrigue and a dash of WTF
I did not do myself any favors waiting so long to review The Serpent Garden, because now what I remember is that this book alternates between being pretty interesting and completely off-the-wall crazy. Let’s start with the good, for which I’ll just refer to the Goodreads summary: “The book opens in Tudor England, where Henry VIII and his Machiavellian counselor Cardinal Wolsey are scheming to put an English heir on the French throne. They are arranging to marry Henry’s pretty, frivolous younger sister, Mary, to […]