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Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen (Vorkosigan Saga, #16)

2016-01-29 00:00

Cover for Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen (Vorkosigan Saga, #16)

Review:

It's a Vorkosi­gan book by Lois Mc­Mas­ter Bu­jold, so you know what you are go­ing to get:

* Puns
* Gen­tle prose
* Some jokes
* A sto­ry where the en­e­mies are or­ga­ni­za­tion­al and lo­gis­tic chal­lenges in a peace­ful en­vi­ron­men­t.

Ok, that last one is most­ly the case with the re­cent Vorkosi­gan book­s. Long gone are the in­ter­stel­lar in­trigues and space­ships fight­ing wach oth­er. Now? Our pro­tag­o­nists are faced with the fol­low­ing ques­tion­s:

¿What do I do with all this con­crete mix­er?

¿Should I ask her out, or is it go­ing to be weird be­cause she is the wid­ow of my ex-lover we use to have three­somes with and we are hav­ing com­pli­cat­ed 3-­par­ent ba­bies and tech­ni­cal­ly the re­gent of the plan­et where I am the top mil­i­tary au­thor­i­ty?

You know, that sort of book.

The Three-Body Problem (Remembrance of Earth’s Past, #1)

2016-01-27 00:00

Cover for The Three-Body Problem (Remembrance of Earth’s Past, #1)

Review:

It's very good. It's al­so sur­pris­ing­ly dif­fi­cult to read be­cause of the miss­ing res­o­nance of the cul­tur­al and his­tor­i­cal ref­er­ences. Sure, I know about Marie Curie, but what hap­pens when a char­ac­ter men­tions Wu Chien-Shi­ung "went even fur­ther than Marie Curie"? Sure, she went fur­ther be­cause she be­came a physi­cist af­ter Marie Curie died! Why is she even brought up?

Is that some in­her­ent chi­nese chau­vin­ism in the orig­i­nal tex­t? I have no idea, but I pre­fer to take it as an ex­tra op­por­tu­ni­ty: a nov­el about alien con­tact writ­ten by a mild­ly alien writ­er. Sure, a "re­al" alien would be much dif­fer­en­t, in fact it would prob­a­bly be un­in­tel­li­gi­ble to me. So this is the mild sub­sti­tute.

I liked it a lot.

Shift (Silo, #2)

2016-01-21 00:00

Cover for Shift (Silo, #2)

Review:

And I am done with this se­ries. Had to force my­self to fin­ish read­ing it, to be hon­est. Not that there's any­thing **wrong** with it, but it was just ... I don't know.
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