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eiion's reviews
84 reviews
Do You Dream of Terra-Two? by Temi Oh
3.5
Loving anything is bound to the pain of losing it.
This was a good book, but some pretty glaring flaws and frustrations just made it miss the mark a little too much.
This book is about a group of 5 children who are trained for most of their lives to be sent to a place called 'Terra-Two' - an Earth-like planet capable of supporting life where they are going to be sent to establish humanity on this planet as well. Putting aside the obvious ethics concerns and the fact that no governement would ever fund this one way trip just to have a few babies on another planet, it had an interesting premise. But this book did expect me to suspend a decent amount of disbelief, and some of it was just not easy.
For one: Whoever is in charge of the psychiatric assessments for this program needs to be fired and then never allowed to work with children ever again. These were the least adjusted teenagers that have ever been featured in a book. A suicide the day before launch, constant bullying and comparing themselves to each other, one of them having prophetic dreams that was sending her into basically religious psychosis, and then one of the teens literally almost murdering another one in the airlock over a dispute about a video game. I know very well that 18 year olds can be BRUTAL, but this was a little much. I am a lot worried about all of them! It was just a really really bad mix of a bunch of kids without developed brains being sent into the depths of space for months that was going to turn into 23 years. Yeah, I just don't know what the psych department expected. And the adults that were on board were absolutely 0 help at all. "Oh, they'll figure it out" doesn't work when I think they're all losing their minds.
Despite all of that craziness, the plot was still really touching, and ended up going a completely different direction than I thought it would, probably for the best. I'm glad it ended where it did, even if it wasn't what I expected. I cried, I'll admit it, and there were parts of that book that just absolutely floored me. It was so well written, it was so touching, and if you looked past the very surface level "children losing their minds plot" I think you'll find a book full of metaphor, full of commentary about our human experience, our ties to Earth, and what it means to love something. I found this book to be just so beautiful, that it somehow made up for all of the flaws.
Was it perfect? Not by any means. But if you're looking for emotional sci-fi, it works. You have to be willing to look past the fact that all of these kids desperately need some recreational weed and just sink into the story, but if you can do that, it's worth it.
This book is about a group of 5 children who are trained for most of their lives to be sent to a place called 'Terra-Two' - an Earth-like planet capable of supporting life where they are going to be sent to establish humanity on this planet as well. Putting aside the obvious ethics concerns and the fact that no governement would ever fund this one way trip just to have a few babies on another planet, it had an interesting premise. But this book did expect me to suspend a decent amount of disbelief, and some of it was just not easy.
For one: Whoever is in charge of the psychiatric assessments for this program needs to be fired and then never allowed to work with children ever again. These were the least adjusted teenagers that have ever been featured in a book. A suicide the day before launch, constant bullying and comparing themselves to each other, one of them having prophetic dreams that was sending her into basically religious psychosis, and then one of the teens literally almost murdering another one in the airlock over a dispute about a video game. I know very well that 18 year olds can be BRUTAL, but this was a little much. I am a lot worried about all of them! It was just a really really bad mix of a bunch of kids without developed brains being sent into the depths of space for months that was going to turn into 23 years. Yeah, I just don't know what the psych department expected. And the adults that were on board were absolutely 0 help at all. "Oh, they'll figure it out" doesn't work when I think they're all losing their minds.
Despite all of that craziness, the plot was still really touching, and ended up going a completely different direction than I thought it would, probably for the best. I'm glad it ended where it did, even if it wasn't what I expected. I cried, I'll admit it, and there were parts of that book that just absolutely floored me. It was so well written, it was so touching, and if you looked past the very surface level "children losing their minds plot" I think you'll find a book full of metaphor, full of commentary about our human experience, our ties to Earth, and what it means to love something. I found this book to be just so beautiful, that it somehow made up for all of the flaws.
Was it perfect? Not by any means. But if you're looking for emotional sci-fi, it works. You have to be willing to look past the fact that all of these kids desperately need some recreational weed and just sink into the story, but if you can do that, it's worth it.
The Silverblood Promise by James Logan
4.5
This book reminded me of 'The Lies of Locke Lamora' in the best way possible. It was exactly what I was looking for at the time, and was just a great fantasy book. The world building was set up in an easy to understand yet super immersive way, and getting to explore the city with Lukan made it feel like we weren't the only ones trying to understand what was going on. Caught up in this whirlwind plot of a murder, past failings, and a city that was rapidly threatening to fall to dark forces, Lukan was in over his head before he could even start to realize it.
The characters were also such an eclectic and fun bunch, and it really leaned in to the whole found family trope, which was super touching. Flea is going to be a fantastic character that I hope we get to see grow up.
I don't have any major criticisms here - some things that happened felt a little too convenient, and some of the writing was maybe a little bit clunky, but this was a debut novel and there was no part of it that made me feel like I was reading something juvenile or unfinished.
Overall, this was just a really good fantasy book. I will definitely be continuing with book 2 whenever it comes out, and you best believe that I will be watching to see when it does!
The characters were also such an eclectic and fun bunch, and it really leaned in to the whole found family trope, which was super touching. Flea is going to be a fantastic character that I hope we get to see grow up.
I don't have any major criticisms here - some things that happened felt a little too convenient, and some of the writing was maybe a little bit clunky, but this was a debut novel and there was no part of it that made me feel like I was reading something juvenile or unfinished.
Overall, this was just a really good fantasy book. I will definitely be continuing with book 2 whenever it comes out, and you best believe that I will be watching to see when it does!
Fractal Noise by Christopher Paolini
3.5
This was a good book, but it wasn't anything new, and it wasn't anything special. I think Paolini absolutely has it in him to write good sci-fi books, but this one wasn't mindblowing and I did soft DNF his other sci-fi novel, so there's something there that is, unfortunately, missing. Part of it, I think, is that this book doesn't add anything new to sci-fi genre. It's not massively inventive or anything, but it is fun, and the reason the concept of an alien structure that is incomrehensible and intriguing is done so much is because it works so well.
I think the main issue I had with this book is that the characters are all so mindblowingly annoying. They're incredibly one dimensional, I don't care about any of them (including our MC), and even when you do start to get invested in the stakes of what's happening to them, they somehow manage to blow it once you get attached. Every single person made an objectively stupid mistake at some point throughout the story, and every single mistake they made was both infuriating and absolutely unrealistic for a professional team of corporate space faring explorers and contractors.
The only thing that could have justified the things that they did and the stupidity that was some of their decisions was the massive, possibly alien loudspeaker that was shaking the ground beneath them and sending whipping winds and a giant THUD throughout the landscape every 10.6 seconds. But this wasn't explained well. We didn't see their descent into madness, they just sort of... fell off the deep end at one point, and they had been making enough dumb decisions throughout the story even before they encountered this alien object that it wasn't ridiculous to assume that they were all fighting over 1 collective braincell.
It wasn't a bad book. I did enjoy the plot, and I obviously kept pushing through the characters because I knew that I actually did really want to figure out what was going on. The allure and mystery kept me going, and even though this isn't something that adds to genre of sci-fi, it was still well done and well explored.
I had fun reading it, even though I know that it objectively wasn't an amazing book. As frustrating as it was, it was still enjoyable, and casual fans of sci-fi would probably really enjoy it.
I think the main issue I had with this book is that the characters are all so mindblowingly annoying. They're incredibly one dimensional, I don't care about any of them (including our MC), and even when you do start to get invested in the stakes of what's happening to them, they somehow manage to blow it once you get attached. Every single person made an objectively stupid mistake at some point throughout the story, and every single mistake they made was both infuriating and absolutely unrealistic for a professional team of corporate space faring explorers and contractors.
The only thing that could have justified the things that they did and the stupidity that was some of their decisions was the massive, possibly alien loudspeaker that was shaking the ground beneath them and sending whipping winds and a giant THUD throughout the landscape every 10.6 seconds. But this wasn't explained well. We didn't see their descent into madness, they just sort of... fell off the deep end at one point, and they had been making enough dumb decisions throughout the story even before they encountered this alien object that it wasn't ridiculous to assume that they were all fighting over 1 collective braincell.
It wasn't a bad book. I did enjoy the plot, and I obviously kept pushing through the characters because I knew that I actually did really want to figure out what was going on. The allure and mystery kept me going, and even though this isn't something that adds to genre of sci-fi, it was still well done and well explored.
I had fun reading it, even though I know that it objectively wasn't an amazing book. As frustrating as it was, it was still enjoyable, and casual fans of sci-fi would probably really enjoy it.
Fugitive Telemetry by Martha Wells
4.25
I love this series. I genuinely just adore every moment of it. MurderBot as a character is great, and the way we see them grow, learn, and change throughout the series has such a special place in my heart. That being said, I don't think this was the strongest installment.
Fugitive Telemetry actually takes place before Network Effect, back on Preservation, despite being published afterwards. So if you're reading in published order (like I was), this is sort of a step back from what we did on Network Effect, and I think that that is the biggest downfall of this book and where it sits in the series. If I had read this before Network Effect, it probably would have been rated just a little bit higher.
The story itself was fun, I have no issues with what we were given and I did like seeing MurderBot interacting with the humans of Preservation and taking on a role that it had never really encountered before: detective for a murder mystery. But it just felt a little unnecessary. After Network Effect, I was itching to go forwards, to see what would happen with ART's crew and the new era of MurderBot. And to go backwards made this book feel more like filler than anything else. It introduced characters and an organization that didn't feel super important because... well, I've read what comes next in MurderBot's life, and they're not a part of it! It didn't add to the overall story, because the plot had already progressed beyond that point. Again: If I had read them in chronological order, this issue would be nonexistent, but I didn't know, so published order it was.
This one was much more of a standalone because of the things mentioned above, and was still a very entertaining read, even if it killed some of the momentum I had for the series just because it was placed in a weird order. If you haven't read the series yet, you 100% should, but make sure you READ THIS BOOK AS NUMBER 5!
A fun little adventure in the MurderBot universe and, even if I wished I had read it in a different order, it was a nice breather following the chunky book that was Network Effect.
Fugitive Telemetry actually takes place before Network Effect, back on Preservation, despite being published afterwards. So if you're reading in published order (like I was), this is sort of a step back from what we did on Network Effect, and I think that that is the biggest downfall of this book and where it sits in the series. If I had read this before Network Effect, it probably would have been rated just a little bit higher.
The story itself was fun, I have no issues with what we were given and I did like seeing MurderBot interacting with the humans of Preservation and taking on a role that it had never really encountered before: detective for a murder mystery. But it just felt a little unnecessary. After Network Effect, I was itching to go forwards, to see what would happen with ART's crew and the new era of MurderBot. And to go backwards made this book feel more like filler than anything else. It introduced characters and an organization that didn't feel super important because... well, I've read what comes next in MurderBot's life, and they're not a part of it! It didn't add to the overall story, because the plot had already progressed beyond that point. Again: If I had read them in chronological order, this issue would be nonexistent, but I didn't know, so published order it was.
This one was much more of a standalone because of the things mentioned above, and was still a very entertaining read, even if it killed some of the momentum I had for the series just because it was placed in a weird order. If you haven't read the series yet, you 100% should, but make sure you READ THIS BOOK AS NUMBER 5!
A fun little adventure in the MurderBot universe and, even if I wished I had read it in a different order, it was a nice breather following the chunky book that was Network Effect.
Network Effect by Martha Wells
5.0
Network Effect was what we had all been hoping for, deep down: A full length MurderBot book. What I really loved about this installment was how nicely it tied everything together. Obviously in Exit Strategy, we saw MurderBot return back to Mensah, Preservation, and to the reunion that we had been building up towards since MurderBot left at the end of All Systems Red and started searching for clues in the other 3 novellas.
In this, we saw the return of old characters, the introduction of new ones, and the start of a new journey for MurderBot and its friends. There was so much development here, which I genuinely just adored, and obviously, you know that any book withART in it will hold a special place in my heart. I really felt like MurderBot got to explore a lot more about its connections in this book, which is my favourite part of its development. Obviously, seeing its humanity and its emotions evolving is fun, but there's something really special about MurderBot finally having friends and people that it cares about.
And of course, the entire arc with ART was just absolutely perfect. They had a baby together are you kidding me??? Granted, MurderBot did, well, murder the baby within the same day but I promise it was really sweet. Their connection and their relationship (platonic? romantic? special third option of robot relationship thing that's somehow both platonic and romantic and really adorable regardless?) is just so touching and I absolutely love seeing them work together.
This also wouldn't be a good review without mentioning Three, who I genuinely hope becomes a more constant character in further books. As much as I adore MurderBot, I think we missed a lot of its development in All Systems Red relating to what it was like being newly freed from its governor module. I have really high hopes that Three will be a valuable addition to the team and will be a great way to see some of the early development of a free SecUnit.
There is almost no criticism I can supply about this one. I honestly just loved it, and I think it's a great way to explore and wrap up certain parts of MurderBot's story and life and a great introduction to the next 'era' of MurderBot adventures.
In this, we saw the return of old characters, the introduction of new ones, and the start of a new journey for MurderBot and its friends. There was so much development here, which I genuinely just adored, and obviously, you know that any book with
There is almost no criticism I can supply about this one. I honestly just loved it, and I think it's a great way to explore and wrap up certain parts of MurderBot's story and life and a great introduction to the next 'era' of MurderBot adventures.