Leaving_Marx rated Exit Strategy: 4 stars
Exit Strategy by Martha Wells
"Martha Wells's Hugo, Nebula, Alex, and Locus Award-winning, New York Times and USA Today bestselling series, The Murderbot Diaries, comes …
Printer, anarchist, illustrator, & enthusiast of the printed word.
FediBanter: @Thundering@kolektiva.social
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ I want everyone to read it and think of it often ⭐⭐⭐⭐ Great book, fun, and uncomplicated ⭐⭐⭐ Good, feel complicated about if I wasted my time ⭐⭐+⬇️ I hate read this
This link opens in a pop-up window
"Martha Wells's Hugo, Nebula, Alex, and Locus Award-winning, New York Times and USA Today bestselling series, The Murderbot Diaries, comes …
“The end was near.” —Voices from the Zombie War
The Zombie War came unthinkably close to eradicating humanity. Max Brooks, …
This was a really fantastic novel and I think you should read it. With a heavy hand in world building and exploration of linguistics and translation this novel gave so many hints and tidbits of the world without creating a complete picture which left you will so many paintings of these worlds with just enough to have you pondering the world just outside the frame.
It is really impressive the amount of world building that was built into a standalone novel, I would read anything, including fan fiction, created in the universe after finishing it.
The story itself and it's interactions were fantastic. There was many times I was left feeling so alien from the valleys that divided characters that I truly believed that there was alien consciousnesses so different than ours, rather than a metaphor for human struggles.
The plot was very hard to predict and kept my rapt …
This was a really fantastic novel and I think you should read it. With a heavy hand in world building and exploration of linguistics and translation this novel gave so many hints and tidbits of the world without creating a complete picture which left you will so many paintings of these worlds with just enough to have you pondering the world just outside the frame.
It is really impressive the amount of world building that was built into a standalone novel, I would read anything, including fan fiction, created in the universe after finishing it.
The story itself and it's interactions were fantastic. There was many times I was left feeling so alien from the valleys that divided characters that I truly believed that there was alien consciousnesses so different than ours, rather than a metaphor for human struggles.
The plot was very hard to predict and kept my rapt attention as it twisted and turned building and referencing with clues and surprises that I honestly didn't know where we were going including the conclusion.
China mieville is one of my favourite contemporary authors because his writings bring in politics, class and revolution in such honest and contextual ways that I am left feeling like through the story I am newly a revolutionary within a different world and power dynamics.
I think everyone should read it. And talk about it with friends.
Content warning Very general spoilers
This was not the novel I was expecting. Following up the children of time series with this standalone book was really useful cause it put into perspective that Adrian Tchaikovsky is a solid sci-fi biologist, choosing to explore world's and evolution among so many creatures beyond mammals.
Some of the highlights of this book include communist Neanderthals and solid queer representation, to the point that this book felt like a subtle nod to his take on the culture wars and progressive inclusion. While not revolutionary, I feel like this novel produced a solid soft spot in my heart for the author, whom previously I could infer had some systemic critiques of power, but this book felt less like I needed to read into that understanding.
As for the content and story overall, it was a bit of a slow burn in many ways, with a lot of world building and some classic sci-fi motifs. Sometimes books give you just enough info about the world that your yearning for more, but this novel I found gave me so much that I wish the balance of world building and plot narrative had skewed just a bit away from world building Into the story arch.
I am not done yet but I want you all to know I am deeply into this book. And it's my #1 2024 read.
Just finished the last compilation in the METAtropolis series and it is a mixed bag. I was pretty happy with the final two stories in the series which had Bashar reprising his role and the general timeline development across stories and characters which took us from a recent collapse world to what is probably 120 years later.
The first book in the series really felt like a certain idealism, horizontalism, and anti-capitalism diffuse amongst the stories. as the series, and the world, goes on capitalism, class stratification and political power creep back in as it is consolidated and exercised in the radical and new forms of life that developed in the first series.
Positives is carnies made their first appearance in the universe in this book, negatives beyond the above mentioned development in the universe is that the stories just came off more "action-adventure" and less world building and social …
Just finished the last compilation in the METAtropolis series and it is a mixed bag. I was pretty happy with the final two stories in the series which had Bashar reprising his role and the general timeline development across stories and characters which took us from a recent collapse world to what is probably 120 years later.
The first book in the series really felt like a certain idealism, horizontalism, and anti-capitalism diffuse amongst the stories. as the series, and the world, goes on capitalism, class stratification and political power creep back in as it is consolidated and exercised in the radical and new forms of life that developed in the first series.
Positives is carnies made their first appearance in the universe in this book, negatives beyond the above mentioned development in the universe is that the stories just came off more "action-adventure" and less world building and social questions explored.
And there wasn't a new stories from my favourite Ukrainian nuclear fall out specialist !?!
Anyways, jay Lake, the editor and an author from the series died after a fight with cancer a year after this was published and with his passing, the world's of METAtropolis were retired.
RIP Jay RIP METAtropolis
First off, I am dying for mingrelin khachapuri with the cheese inside and the cheese on top.....
Anyways this is an old memoir from a English journalist living and flailing about in Georgia in a time where wars with ethnic cleansing were rampant in the region, power was spotty and on maybe 1-2 hours a day, and drugs, desperation, and no work was rampant in Georgia. It was a really good read, and while the landmarks, friendliness and warmth, beauty, and prose were all very familiar and nostalgic, the Georgia I travelled in has come along away. With a stable electrical grid, low crime rates, little drug use outside of club drugs (fentanyl is still a problem there too) and some work and some forms of stability it really seems like things have improved for the lives of people in the country.
Wendell writes well, and tells stories -- some …
First off, I am dying for mingrelin khachapuri with the cheese inside and the cheese on top.....
Anyways this is an old memoir from a English journalist living and flailing about in Georgia in a time where wars with ethnic cleansing were rampant in the region, power was spotty and on maybe 1-2 hours a day, and drugs, desperation, and no work was rampant in Georgia. It was a really good read, and while the landmarks, friendliness and warmth, beauty, and prose were all very familiar and nostalgic, the Georgia I travelled in has come along away. With a stable electrical grid, low crime rates, little drug use outside of club drugs (fentanyl is still a problem there too) and some work and some forms of stability it really seems like things have improved for the lives of people in the country.
Wendell writes well, and tells stories -- some of her own, more of local people and adventurous journalist expat types -- which tie in the regions long history and experiences within the USSR with the 90's conflicts that inform so much contempt and politics in the region today.
All in all, it really want some khachapuri.
This was a fun conclusion to the series. Felt this mild contempt to so many characters in this series the whole time but more so to the larger government structures and politicking. Good book, would have gotten 5 stars if there were dog characters. 😜
I was really curious about this book more for its author than because I really needed to learn about the Russian Revolution. China Mieville is a pretty successful sci-fi and fantasy author whose works blend surrealism, fantasy, and politics. But beyond his successful fiction he also writes and edits an unconventional communist journal called Salvage from England and publishes some non-fiction like this book on the Russian Revolution.
From the introduction Mieville responds to the unasked question," why do we need another history book about the Russian revolution?" By suggesting that rather than being just another history text that he undertook an attempt to write a narrative of the revolution that follows it from its embers to insurrection.
It read confidently as a hybrid narrative/history book which prioritizes the debates, actions, and tensions of the revolution over citations and scholars opinions on it. That being said, this narrative does take …
I was really curious about this book more for its author than because I really needed to learn about the Russian Revolution. China Mieville is a pretty successful sci-fi and fantasy author whose works blend surrealism, fantasy, and politics. But beyond his successful fiction he also writes and edits an unconventional communist journal called Salvage from England and publishes some non-fiction like this book on the Russian Revolution.
From the introduction Mieville responds to the unasked question," why do we need another history book about the Russian revolution?" By suggesting that rather than being just another history text that he undertook an attempt to write a narrative of the revolution that follows it from its embers to insurrection.
It read confidently as a hybrid narrative/history book which prioritizes the debates, actions, and tensions of the revolution over citations and scholars opinions on it. That being said, this narrative does take the Bolsheviks as the protagonists, follows them and Lenin most closely and regularly reflects the tensions and power struggles amongst intellectuals and party members, and secondarily the tensions between the vanguard and the Russian people, whose aims and desires don't often line up. Truthfully the "leaders" are presented as perpetually trying to catch up or tamp down the insurrectionary actions of the streets.
I think there are so many interesting people in the revolution but as is the case of history, this won still disproportionately tells the story of the victors. The people in the streets, the anarchists, soldiers and their wives, factory workers, beggars, and terrorists feature as secondary characters moving the story forward but as a supporting role to the debates and discussions of the central committee, Soviets and duma in their power struggles.
All in all, well written and presented, giving me a better understanding the key Leninist texts and debates and in what context they were written, and some very cool asides about bad as women and anarchists doing while shit.
I would recommend it with a caveat, if you can't stand Communists or Lenin enough to get through a history text, then skip it, or read the critical afterword before investing in the rest of the text to make you feel better.
Redshifts was funny, goofy, satirical. Definitely a fun read. I went in blind without a synopsis and I'd recommend the same for you.
If you're a fan of lower decks or the Orville you'll probably like it. Or truly hate it. But at 300 pages it is worth the risk.
The first book in the old man's war trilogy was different than I expected. It was campy, humours, and much more straightforward in its delivery of a sci-fi action story than I am used to.
Most sci-fi I have picked because of its stewing political subplots, the meta commentary podcasts everywhere and the social commentary masked as alien species and totalitarian power relations.
This book was fun, and if critical of the colonial and war-mongering society that features at its heart, it has an over-the-top presentation which reminded me of the starship troopers movie.
Definitely a brain off, retro futures good read and I am looking forward to seeing if there is more interesting subplots developed in the following novels.
Content warning Very general spoilers
Confessor by Elizabeth Bear is a cool and divergent theme in the metatropolis universe. Following the cop trying to crack a crime storyline, we are deep on the woods and unravelling a mysterious black site and what goes on within.
It is interesting to see regular engagements with cops in this world that sees them as general low tier, disliked, corrupt members of these more institutional societies, some terking work as private eyes, some on the payroll. The whole societies saviour narrative isn't present but at the same time it consistently plays up the "few good cops" vibe, working against the "bad guys" who are regular corporate and mafia actors and also the people on the take or politicking within the cops themselves.
I wish there was a bit of vision in the series that fantasized about a world without penal and carcerial systems, but wear it seems progressing or interesting is the balkanizing, federating, green, and tech fronts and this is where I think the authors explore the most interesting content.