Reviews and Comments

Dan Dean

dandean@books.theunseen.city

Joined 1 year, 5 months ago

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Elder Race (2021, Tordotcom) 4 stars

A junior anthropologist on a distant planet must help the locals he has sworn to …

A short a humorous take on Tchaikovsky's theme of humanity spanning incomprehensible lengths of time

4 stars

In Tchaikovsky's "Children of Time" we saw his remarkable story of humanity's folly and brilliance as it spread across the galaxy, attempting to be it's own kind of god  – succeeding in unexpected ways while also failing spectacularly. In Elder Race he shows us a shorter and more humorous version of this failure as a holdover of an advanced form of humanity loses their ability to relate to humanity's successor, but really all they want is to feel connected to others and to belong.

A Deadly Education (Hardcover, 2020, Del Rey) 4 stars

A Deadly Education is set at Scholomance, a school for the magically gifted where failure …

Good in every single way

5 stars

I love this book and this series. I’m reading A Deadly Education for the second time, and it’s just as fun as the first time I read it. One thing I love about Novik’s style in this book is how she interleaves the background context so thoroughly into the unrelenting pace of the narrative. There’s so much more to love about this book - just read it!