• Au­thor: K.J. Park­er
• Rat­ing: ★ ★ ★ ★
• See in goodreads

Review:

Are the char­ac­ters ni­hilis­tic, ca­su­al­ly cru­el, sex­ist? Sure. It's a prob­lem­at­ic book in that way.

The "this is Con­stantino­ple ex­cept where I need to change it to help the plot" is prob­lem­at­ic in its own way, too.

Is it some sort of "see, I am not racist be­cause I swapped peo­ple's colours around from the close his­tor­i­cal par­al­lel I am us­ing" crap? Oh yep.

BUT ... I read it in two days, it was fun. So make of that what you will, it's what it is.

• Au­thor: K.J. Park­er
• Rat­ing: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★
• See in goodreads

Review:

This was a ton of fun. I was won­der­ing why the tone sound­ed so fa­mil­iar when I saw "a pseu­do­nym for Tom Holt" and then I re­mem­bered I re­al­ly liked "Ex­pect­ing some­one taller", which he wrote.

Think of this book as sort of his­tor­i­cal fic­tion, but with­out all that sil­ly busi­ness of hav­ing to do re­search about his­to­ry and find­ing an event you have to learn a lot about and then have your plot fol­low rough­ly the out­line of what hap­pened.

Nah.

Just think: "Ro­man­s, Con­stantino­ple, siege, yep, sounds fun!" then write a book that ... sounds ro­man? Ex­cept ro­mans are maybe blue?

Read it in one day, al­ready start­ed on the sec­ond book.

• Au­thor: Nne­di Oko­rafor
• Rat­ing: ★ ★ ★ ★
• See in goodreads

• Au­thor: An­nalee Newitz
• Rat­ing: ★ ★ ★ ★
• See in goodreads

Review:

This book has lots of great things, and just a tiny cou­ple of not-­so-­great ones.

The not-­so-­great ones I have de­cid­ed are ir­rel­e­vant to any­one else that is­n't me, be­cause they are *per­son­al­ly* not-­great.

On the oth­er hand, the good parts are re­al­ly re­al­ly good. I'd say just read it.