Reviews and Comments

Warning: For me, this book doesn't really work on its own, it's a setup for a series. Scalzi builds an interesting society that mixes progressive social norms with a feudal economy in a way that is close enough to believeable to work. Unfortunately his characters are still a bit on the bland side, and some of the more interesting ones tend to die or disappear from the plot (hopefully they'll return later.) The plot on its own is good and I'll definitely stick with this series.

Light and fluffy steampunk fantasy alternate-history jaunt. A fun premise and a lot of potential but I found the story a little too shallow and the characters way too bland.

Re-read 2016, dated but fun.

The few interesting tidbits this book contains are repeated ad nauseum in a very disorganized manner. The writing is dull and repetitive and the attempts at controversy are so contrived they could have been taken from the Daily Mail. Oh wait, they were. Never mind.

Possibly the best from Robinson in a very long time (though I skipped Shaman, for now.) This one surprised me halfway by going off in a totally different direction than expected, but the main themes are the same as always. Ecology, human physiology and psychology, sociology. I was looking for a a more detailed delving into the starship-as-earth closed ecology analogy, but perhaps that will come later.