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Yes I like this one. It's a "boring" book, slow and a bit repetitive. It's, among other things, about the sea, about birds, and about wanting to die, like the birds are dying.

It's a world that is almost realistic. I don't know if people can really swim so far and so fast and survive such cold water, but it doesn't sound completely implausible that these people can. Or if that one injury scene makes sense. No idea.

But the big thing is extinction. All animals are dying. The sea is mostly empty. One character says that rats and cockroaches will probably survive. But seagulls are gone, and crows are declared extinct. Crows? Really? I can't believe that crows will die before humans. (Also, I watched a documentary that said octopuses thrive because sharks are getting fewer.) But I don't have to. That's just what this book world is like, and I don't mind.

There's a lot of cold weather and frustrating relationships and life going wrong.

Just your average socialist vampire novella about climate change, featuring a comfortably cynical leftist podcaster discovering his own values and what he'll do for them.

(also, lots of drugs and a shitty narrator who thinks he's a nice guy to trans women)

I will go on the record and say that I generally dislike vampire stories. I watched Sinners recently with some friends and I hated how much it was like "hey it turns out it's vampires, thank goodness everybody has already internalized vampire tropes so we can immediately deal with them". Leaning on tropes is such a lost worldbuilding opportunity.

Needless to say, I was delighted about the ideas in this book around vampires being naturally long term thinkers, concerned about how the mass of humanity was treating the planet. But also about being vampires. In some ways, this reminds me of the setup of the Philip K. Dick short story Human Is, where a kind alien replaces an abusive husband and the wife knowingly pretends that he is still her husband. But, this story is also a larger authoritarian dream, of wishing powerful beings will show up and parentally take care of the irresponsible children of humanity who can't be bothered to care for each other or the planet.

It's very much a book of the current moment, and despite everything ends with some much needed, unexpected optimism about possibility and change.

The shtick: intelligent robots traumatized by war, capitalism, and oppression struggle together to establish a noodle shop in war-torn, separatist San Francisco.

Other than thinking robots and tube delivery technology, the worldbuilding is a fever dream of the current moment despite being set in 2064: it's got crypto, LLMs, delivery apps, ghost kitchens, slang like "rizz". But it's unfair to take this aspect too seriously; it's not a hard sf novel trying to speculate about the future. At its heart, it's a comfy emotional novel about forming community around food in a ruined future.

It's fluffy, it's fun, it was something I needed right now.

(No idea about punctuation since I'm reading the audiobook. But yeah this bit caught me.)

Ok, ich bin so froh, dass ich das gelesen hab. Ich mag Tamara Bach, weil die Geschichten für mich sehr lebendig sind und sich echt anfühlen. Das ist mir bei den Jugendbüchern manchmal ein bisschen peinlich, wenn ich das so als Erwachsenes sag. Aber naja. Diesmal ein Kinderbuch. Könnte mir auch peinlich sein, ist es aber nicht. Das Buch ist einfach wunderschön, und es passiert gar nicht viel, aber es ist trotzdem nicht langweilig. Und wieder fühlt es sich einfach sehr echt an für mich.

Das mit "echt anfühlen" ist nochmal stärker im Kontrast, weil ich davor ein Erwachsenen-Buch von Thomas Brezina gelesen hab, und genau wie seine Kinderbücher fühlt sich das kein bisschen echt an. Es macht Spaß, fühlt sich aber auch sehr weit hergeholt und ein bisschen überspannt an.

Jedenfalls. Dieses Buch ist sehr süß. Ich schmelze ein bisschen.

It's good. But even harder to read than the first book, in which everyone has been thoroughly retraumatised, which shapes what happens in this one. But also, again, the plot knows very little mercy. If something can go horribly wrong, it probably will.

It's the blurb that caught me, in a "I feel like I relate to this on a deeper level" way, without knowing if I relate to the baby moose or the human parents, one of whom happened to birth it. So I will probably be disappointed because the book is supposed to be fun, not deep!

This one is so intense. It's a very hopeful story, but not an easy one. Don't expect anyone to be rewarded for doing the right thing. Don't expect an almost almighty kingdom to have mercy.

I'll definitely be reading the second book. That was a cruel little cliffhanger.