Tag: Book

Scalzi is one of the authors that I  automatically read.  It’s not spoiling anything to say that the premise of the book is that Earth’s Moon is suddenly turned into…cheese.  I will note that at the end of this post I will have a fairly large spoiler, so don’t read the last paragraph if you haven’t already read the book.

I read the book fairly quickly, and didn’t realize that each chapter was a day in the cheese-lunar cycle although the chapter headings should have been the clear tip-off.  I was more concerned with tracking the various characters and situations described.  If you like the patented Scalzi Snark, there’s no shortage of it in this book.

About the various characters–there are many to like, and a couple to despise. Surprisingly, even for something taking place over such a short time, there are some wonderful character arcs.

SPOILER ALERT:

I mean it.

Really, gonna just talk about the end here.

Nah-Nah-Nah-Nah-Nah-Nah-Nah-Nah

OK, if you scrolled this far, you meant to, so here’s my last bit of commentary.  More than any Scalzi book in recent memory, this book’s end disappointed me.  I suppose it should be viewed as a modern fable, but the moon reverting (or coming back) to its normal state felt hugely disappointing to me coming without an explanation.

I will say that the story of the men in the diner, and the has-been rocker and his ex-wife are wonderful writing and worth the telling.  Also, the advice to the young writer given at a workshop seemed pulled from experience and I wasn’t surprised to read about its origins in the Afterward.

I will be curious to read other reviews and interviews about this book to see if others were reading in  more levels to it than I saw.

 

I did an earlier Short Take on the first book in the series.  This week in a marathon I read the last four books in the series. Only one was over 250 pages so you don’t have to be impressed.

I thought the last book, System Collapse, was intriguing. There was a crucial plot point that ‘Murderbot’ came up with that I  wouldn’t expect from someone who doesn’t consider himself human.

I can see this series going on for a long time, and I am really interested to see how the Murderbot TV show coming out in mid-May on AppleTV gets interpreted.  I was trying to catch up on the series before the TV debut and I met my goal a couple of weeks early.

I have one friend in particular who tells me about good SF, and I am always laughably behind in picking up new authors to read.  The original short story “The Lady Astronaut of Mars” was published in 2012 and the three prior books in the series were published in 2018 and 2020.  I read them all in 2024 and this fourth book I read within a month of its release! (I also have read a standalone book not in this series by the author.)

This series takes place as an alternate history where women were not originally disqualified as astronauts.  The alternate timeline extends as the story does, with this book taking place in 1970.  I really liked this latest entry and devoured the book in less than two days.  I highly recommend it. If you haven’t read the series yet go back and start with the original short story, which you can find free at what is now reactormag.com.