We're a plural system who loves queer & anarchist scifi.
But recently we just read a few randomly picked up mystery books in a row, in German, and we tend to review books in the language we read them in. That or similar may happen again, be warned.
No reading goals, just feelings.
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A librarian with a knack for solving murders realizes there is something decidedly supernatural afoot …
Ooof. I enjoyed reading it, but I really don't like it. Just when I think all the demon business will explain away the "ooooh handing people over to the police is fun", it turns out it doesn't, at all.
A librarian with a knack for solving murders realizes there is something decidedly supernatural afoot in her little town in …
Bob Johansson didn’t believe in an afterlife, so waking up after being killed in a …
So, turns out Bobs are not always a great match against the powers of the universe.
I got distracted from this one a lot, and I think I missed some details because of that. Idk if it was less interesting to me or if I was in the wrong mood. It was definitely less fun, and I disliked the speaker. I preferred the one of the German version, which is very very rare.
Bob Johansson didn’t believe in an afterlife, so waking up after being killed in a …
"You'd be amazed what can come out when all the Bobs get together to brainstorm"
— For We Are Many by Dennis E. Taylor (Bobiverse, #2)
Yes this is a very plural series
Bob Johansson didn’t believe in an afterlife, so waking up after being killed in a …
Ok, well, I thought it'd be good to switch to the original for part two, but actually I liked the German audiobook narrator much more.
German ebook
Soooo, ok. It's a story about Bob, a tech bro whose biggest problem in the world is that his girlfriend cheated on him, who dies suddenly, gets frozen (he made the contract just in time) and awakens as a computer program property of the laughable theocracy the US developed into.
None of the politics are very deep – FAITH is characterised by mean priests, lots of bomb-y infighting and silly acronyms, there is no word about marginalised groups. Which works out just fine, since it is mostly the scenic backdrop for Bob.
Sent into space as the AI pilot for a self replicating space probe, Bob gets to live all his nerd dreams. Of course, as a former engineer and scifi convention goer, he is uniquely qualified for all the tasks in the universe. He is the programmer, designer and strategic mastermind needed in any situation he enters. He gets …
Soooo, ok. It's a story about Bob, a tech bro whose biggest problem in the world is that his girlfriend cheated on him, who dies suddenly, gets frozen (he made the contract just in time) and awakens as a computer program property of the laughable theocracy the US developed into.
None of the politics are very deep – FAITH is characterised by mean priests, lots of bomb-y infighting and silly acronyms, there is no word about marginalised groups. Which works out just fine, since it is mostly the scenic backdrop for Bob.
Sent into space as the AI pilot for a self replicating space probe, Bob gets to live all his nerd dreams. Of course, as a former engineer and scifi convention goer, he is uniquely qualified for all the tasks in the universe. He is the programmer, designer and strategic mastermind needed in any situation he enters. He gets to do tons of fun and sometimes questionable things – improve on the design of his space craft, invent subspace communication, discover a species in their stone age and play god to them.
Except, and this is what makes it fun to read, it's not all him, not Bob. Bob self-replicates as planned, and it is immediately clear that the others aren't just copies of him, they all have their own quirks and interests and go for different roles in their big explory space adventure. So yes, it is a very plural story, I'm glad to report. Not just in this way, also, like, they create some more characters in their VR environments, and one certainly acquires a personality.
So like. This is not deep. This is a light-hearted exploration of scifi cliches and a bunch of quick answers to big questions, all via a generic yet likable cast of Bobs. It's a lot of "eh, let's see what happens" and hand waving on a cosmic scale with varying degrees of accountability. I really enjoyed it, I don't remember another so deeply the-opposite-of-diverse story that I enjoyed so much. I think I'll go for part two!
German ebook
Die deutsche Übersetzung ist gar nicht mal so schlecht. Einziges Problem: ich hab verpasst wofür "KMI" steht und denke jetzt immer "keine und mittlere Intelligenzen".
German ebook
So far this is fun, like, it's about a generic but friendly tech bro getting to live his nerd dreams and explore Fun Concepts. It all doesn't really feel too real, which I like.
I finished it, but it was more stressful than anticipated. There's a ton of abuse, sexualised violence is a central plot element.
It goes to a very abuse-y direction that I'm not really in the mood for. Maybe the blurb would have told me so, I'll never know.
Am very much in the mood for some low thinkiness copaganda rn.
Ok yeah this one has a few nice pages about the tiny things that live in water. I like those. If this is the book that I remember from when I was a kid, then it's quite likely that I only really read those pages and ignored the rest.
The explanation of how lenses of magnifying glasses work is really bad imo, I totally didn't get it. I understood more from Wikipedia than from this! But the explanations of electron microscopes, on the other hand, were pretty good, I never got those before and I feel like now I have a vague idea of what they do.
All in all I would have preferred more details on the tiny things that live in water. But it was an ok book.
I certainly learned something about bears.... and about procyonidae! The choice to include the latter was probably partly because they're called "small bears" in German, and partly because messy classification. (Like, red pandas are included, but nowadays Wikipedia says they belong somewhere else anyway.)
My favourite facts are these brown bear facts: - with the different subspecies, brown bears can weigh anywhere between 80 and 600 kg - brown bears in different areas prefer different kinds of seeds etc :)
Well, this was enjoyable but mostly superficial, the kind of thing that every explanation of what cats are says. I enjoyed the historical and physiological bits the most (there's a page that has pictures of different big cats with their mouth open so their teeth are visible, that one's good). The behaviour bits were a bit irritating because all of the "why do cats do that" is presented as solid facts, but afaik a lot of it is just one theory among many. And the advice for cat owners also seemed a bit superficial and potentially sometimes wrong? Idk.
I'm a bit disappointed this this doesn't have the depth of the more technical books in the series!
Norris Black • Amber Blaeser-Wardzala • Phoenix Boudreau • Cherie Dimaline • Carson Faust • …
I've read the first couple of stories, and am starting to think I might be in the wrong mood for this. I liked "Kushtuka" by Mathilda Zeller, there's a lot of blood, but also a supernatural component and a somewhat satisfying setup. And the foreword was really cool. The other three stories were also stories about humans being cruel, but without anything that made them easier to stomach for me, stories about abuse, sometimes with the twist of bashing back. I don't really feel up to much more of that.
