Welcome to Litsy!

Another eight books in September. All picks, even though several of my reviews started with some statement like “I don't normally read/like...“

2 romance, 2 SFF, one thriller, one nonfiction, one picture book, and one MG historical (the 80s count as historical to the target age group! 😬). The Outside edges out the others as my favorite, but I wholeheartedly recommend anything here if it looks good to you.

I'm not normally into cosmic horror. It's hard to make “secrets mortal minds were not meant to know“ both compelling and comprehensible, in my opinion, but Hoffman managed. It's set in a future where the gods are powerful AIs that limit humans to 1960s-level technology. Yasira is a brilliant autistic physicist who is drawn involuntarily into the conflict between the Gods and the terrifying, heretical Outside.

“Coffee made everything better, apart from the fact that Yasira was alone with a mass murderer, surrounded by technology she didn't understand, and a planet's fate hanging in the balance. Well, the coffee helped her concentrate, at least.“

I wasn't quite sure what I was getting into with this one but I had a good time while reading. Yasira was entirely too relatable for me and I really kept rooting for her with all the trouble she was pushed into. This world is a weird one in which supercomputers have taken over mankind's religion and destiny.
#CalibreRoulette
#BuriedAliveChallenge

#BookReport
I finished only one book this week but I'm also 75% in to my current book and expect to finish it sometime today. I've enjoyed all that I've read this week though.

#WeeklyForecast
My next goal is to finally finish up #TheWheelOfTime by reading New Spring and then I'm heading to We which is a buddy read with the SFFBC on goodreads.

Starting my next #CalibreRoulette pick with Simon by my side.
#CatsOfLitsy

This Audiobook has a very interesting premise and a very good narrator, but the pacing is really slow and getting to the answers requires an amount of patience that I just don't have right now. I heard the Audiobook until Chapter 15 when I stopped caring enough to go on listening. I might pick this up later in calmer times.

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2874377029

This had such amazing world building- AI gods! Cyber-enhanced angels! Lovecraftian horrors from the space-time abyss! Overall it all worked reasonably well but at times in seemed like it might collapse under its own weight. There is a dash of Dune a-la anti-technology restrictionists, a touch of gothic horror, & a truly mad-scientist to round things out. I‘d like to see more from this world. Hopefully Hoffman has more books planned.

#FridayReads

Very draggy and not the interesting draggy where you get extra characterization or cool imagery - the this book repeats stuff five times type of draggy.

Feel like Vandana Singh or Yoon Ha Lee could have turned it into a good novella. (Singh kinda already has: it's called "Peripeteia")

Author's first novel and the ideas / overall plot were okay. If there is a sequel I will probably give it another chance.

Good start but rapidly took a noise dive.

Not offensive so it's not a good hate read, just so many chapters that add nothing and could have been excised with minor plot tweaks and way too much rehashing events after they occured. I already read the event - I don't need lengthy conversations directly explaining how the characters feel about it - it was clear already.

Want to know the ending but wish the bloat was highlighted so I could skip it.

A genius autistic female scientist, AI Gods, post-human angels and a Lovecraftian Outside force that creates chaos and madness. Quite the mind bender.

I'm hearing this for #spaceoperaseptember

I think the thing that slowed me down at points in this book was the hard SF bits (to be mildly heretical myself, I'm a scientist with very little time for hard SF), but I really enjoyed the weird ideas and the characters. I'd happily read a sequel, or something else in this world.

It has taken a bit for this book to grab me and I feel kind of bad about. Turns out I don't want catastrophic energy generator failures, I want ruthless genderqueer angels that are about to have some technical difficulties.

Next up, because my month of whim reading has been too grounded so far...