6.26.2025
Here are some other books I was less enthusiastic about. Again, I'm not a critic and my take shouldn't mean much, but what good is having a blog if you can't spit your opinions once in a while.
Dungeon Crawler Carl
I like games. Particularly role playing games. When I have to access to a video game console I have to ration myself to keep from disappearing into it. This is a narrative in first person by a character in a combat-heavy video game, including all the mechanics and cheesier elements of the form. That considered one might think I would enjoy this book. I didn't.
Redshirts
Had a good time until the epilogue (which is of considerable length) then I just couldn't take anymore. Even Wil Wheaton's audio narration, usually excellent, couldn't save it for me. Somehow actually made it worse. Anyway, fun Star Trek parody until it goes all meta and turns into something else altogether. I follow the author on Bluesky and I get the impression he's a good guy and I approve of his existence in general. I'll give him another try. He has a new one out about how the moon is made of cheese. This makes me nervous. Not the physics of it, but it feels like a huge conceit to make as a reader and the result will either be hilarious or awful.
Red Mars
Reads like historical fiction set in the future. Epic, sweeping, grand, full of eccentric characters, and doesn't care if you're bored or not. It started strong and the opening sequence had me hooked. After that there's a lot of barren terrain to traverse to get to the interesting stuff. Not bad but maybe a bit long and I tried to start the second one (Blue Mars) and it's even longer. I may never know what happened to those colonists but I'm guessing a few of them or their children survived because there's a third book (Green Mars).
Artemis
Least good Andy Weir I've read. Even lunar sabotage couldn't keep me from feeling uncomfortable about the way the character was written.
Matt Dinniman
John Scalzi
Kim Stanley Robinson
Andy Weir