3 More

Man. there are just too many bargains on eBooks, and interesting economics books! Unread collection up to 59 books. So I was going to tear through 6 or so sci-fi & fantasy books. But after reading 3, I noticed I had not cleared the April magazine stack - oops! I blame it on now getting Sky & Telescope, Scientific American, and Wired in digital format. Here's the 3 I did read.

1st, "Tiamat's Wrath", by James S.A. Corey, 608 pages, 2019. The Expanse novel #8. Our old friends are back, the latest plot pivot appears to be pretty much played out. It seemed like they could have wrapped the whole thing up with this one, but I think we're still going.

2nd, "Radicalized", by Cory Doctorow, 308 pages, 2019. Doctorow is the bard of the revolution. He does not pull any punches, he pummels you with social justice - good for him. There are 4 unrelated novellas:

1. People fighting their profit-generating appliances;
2. The Man of Steel turns SJW and faces a racist and nativist backlash;
3. The title novella shows people being radicalized by insurance company death panels;
4. The final story is about survivalist yuppies getting their just desserts.

All 4 stories are excellent.

3rd, "A Memory Called Empire", by Arkady Martine, 478 pages, 2019. I think this got some good press, but I am definitely not going to read any more books with "empire" in the title. I don't want to read about feudalism. This a fairly inept empire too, supposedly covering 1/4 of the galaxy but still expanding in a manual rather than an automatic manner, with a lame succession method and techno-phobia. Pretty unbelievable. The characters are sympathetic and plucky I guess, and there is lots of action. The setting feels Chinese (ideogram based language) but the characters are described to look like Mayans. I had convinced myself this was a stand-alone novel but Kobo says it is "Teixcalaan #1". I don't think I will continue with the series.