Review 742: Superluminal

Superluminal by Vonda N. McIntyre
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This book is one of those that sat on my bookshelves for several decades. I used to be drawn to science fiction more than I am these days. The other day I decided to try the book, see what I make of the beginning at least. Well, the story drew me in and ended up reading the book in about 24 hours.

The story starts out about a newly made pilot, Laenea Trevelyan, a brash woman. To be a pilot the doctors take out your heart and replace it with a machine which you need to control. This is done since people cannot stay awake during transit, which is faster than light travel. As crew you must be put into sleep pods. Laenea has a hard time sticking to the doctor’s orders, staying in the hospital even. When she ventures out, she goes to see her friends who are all crew, but they no longer want to talk to her. There becomes a hierarchy with pilots being looked up to and revered.

Later we meet Radu Dracul who Laenea becomes very friendly with, despite him being crew. Radu is new to earth, being raised on the planet Twilight. He doesn’t know the rules or at least how people are socially. They discover one reason why crew and pilots aren’t friends.

A third person becomes important to the story, Orca whose family has changed their DNA to become more similar to water mammals. They at least speak a common language.

There were some corny bits here and there, perhaps my rating is a bit high, but the story sustained me and I fairly enjoyed it. The book was published in 1983 during a time when there were fewer women writers of science fiction.

Review 725: In Ascension

In Ascension by Martin MacInnes
My rating: 3.25 of 5 stars

I'm a bit on the fence about this book. Some parts I enjoyed, while other parts I was bored and couldn't care less. The book starts with Leigh as a swimmer and diver who gets a spot on a research vessel to explore this extremely deep trench just discovered. It’s the deepest trench ever found. While exploring it odd things happen, mostly to the people who went diving.

Later, Leigh now is working on a research project to develop food from what was recovered in that deep trench exploration. So many details about work and her boss. But the past keeps getting brought up, her sister and her grew up with an abusive father. Now her mother is sick, and her sister thinks she should visit, but now Leigh is working in America, another country and it’s hard to get away. Then she gets high security clearance, and it becomes nearly impossible to leave without jeopardizing her job.

Leigh’s work with the recovered algae becomes integral to a project for space exploration that has to do with an ancient object that passed by Earth. She becomes part of a team training to go out into space, grueling training, in that no one expects will come into use. Until it does, the last chance team is the one sent into space.

The book is told in several parts. Somehow throughout everything nearly none of the characters are developed. There's so much oddness in the book, as well as some intriguing bits too.

Review 721: The Illustrated Man

The Illustrated Man by Ray Bradbury
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This Bradbury book is a series of short stories. The opening, prologue has a man who meets the illustrated man who warns him not to look to closely. But of course, he does. The images on his skin move and talk and tell these stories... An interesting frame, except it doesn't hold up in the final story.

Then the stories themselves have not aged well. All the women hold traditional roles. Many stories feature rockets going to Mars, or other planets, and it is the men. They hold the jobs; women do the domestic work. I suppose it is to be expected for stories written in the late 1940s-50s, but I had hoped for more imagination.

As mentioned, a rocket was in most of the stories. It felt there wasn’t enough variation of the stories. A few of the stories tended towards horror, or somewhat odd. Although the book is clearly science fiction, the writing focus was on the people and relationships, as much as you can in a few pages. The setting of a rocket going to another planet was just transportation. It wasn’t described how it was possible, nor how the time to travel was quick. What mattered to the story was the man being away.

Overall, the book was not as spectacular as I had hoped, just okay.

Review 720: Interference

Interference by Brad Parks
My rating: 2.5 of 5 stars

Matt Bronik is a quantum physicist; his wife Brigid is nearly deaf. They have a son together living near Dartmouth where they work. Brigid works in the library, Matt as a professor and researcher. Their life is unremarkable until Matt starts having a weird medical condition. It came on all suddenly, he passed out and was in a coma like state for several hours.

This happened twice. Brigid was on edge about her husband’s problems. What was going on? Perhaps it was his lab experiments, with a virus that he was working on. It sounded plausible. Matt was also stressed out since he couldn’t seem to get further in his research. He hadn’t published in a while; he needed to publish. Then a ultra rich businessman approached Matt with a crazy job offer. $1 million a year to work in his own lab, only doing research, no teaching, he could focus on research. When Matt refused, he upped the amount.

Then Matt had a third episode. This time it turns out that he was kidnapped. The rest of the book is about what happened to Matt. Naturally, a veteran detective gets involved and we get his POV. Through most of the book it switches between Brigid and the detective.

Brigid becomes way more involved in trying to find her husband than would happen in real life, her sister helps out with the son. A few of Matts colleagues become involved. All these people pose lengthy theories of what happen and how. Then a new fact arises and they switch the theories around and discuss at length. All of this with the how involved the wife is and all the discussions kinda bugged me. I know its fiction, but it was so far off from what would really happen. Brigid goes on scene to a spot they think Matt is being held. No police would allow the wife to wander around while they collect evidence.

Anyway, the book was okay. There are some twists, of course, and at least one, the most crucial seemed forced. The science was minimal I had hoped for more.

Review 712: The Ephemera Collector

The Ephemera Collector by Stacy Nathaniel Jackson
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This was an unusual and unexpected book format, reminded me of a post-modern style book, but it wasn’t that. It is not a straightforward book by any means.

There are pages of images, some that repeat are a timeline that I found helpful to understanding the full story. There are other images, maybe some from a dream journal. There are poems and excerpts, from a journal maybe. It’s not very clear where these textual parts.

There are two stories here. The main frame of the book is with Xandria Anastasia Brown, who is an archivist at Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens. In 2035 she's been having health issues, particularly memory lapses, and passing out, when an event happens at the library. It has to do with BlackoutWika, which she established but wasn’t involved in this event. She became locked in her office, which happily contains essentials for surviving for a few days. Xandria doesn’t understand what is going on. Yet she still strives to continue working with the archives, she is focused on the work.

The very opening of the book has Xandria talking in an interview on her 300th birthday. Something happened to her medically that caused her to stop aging.

The second story takes place further in the future, at Diwata, an underwater community that was built to escape the devastation on the surface. While other communities went into outer space, this group, the Black Reconstruction Collective, established themselves off the coast of California.

There is an audiobook for this but I’m not sure if that would translate well as there is much here that is visual, not just what was mentioned above, but also with the formatting. There are bots that communicate which is identified by brackets, maybe audio can adapt that part. Anyway, not sure this is one to attempt in audio.

Overall, there were parts of this book I liked, some I did not. There was some repetition, which I didn’t like, and some parts of the book were confusing. I found the bot named sassafras interesting.

Review 705: The Vigilante Life of Scott Mckenzie

The Vigilante Life of Scott Mckenzie by Shawn Inmon
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This is the seventh book in the Middle Falls Time Travel series, one of the few series I've continued to follow. While the writing itself isn't particularly strong, with more exposition than anything else, the central premise is compelling enough that I have kept reading them.

The time-travel premise in each book is that the main character dies, often self-inflicted in some way, then is “reset” as the same person to an earlier, pivotal point in their life. The character remembers what happened in their previous life, so they can make changes. This premise is what I find interesting. What would someone do differently if they could change the trajectory of their life?

In this book, Scott McKenzie is a Vietnam veteran wounded both physically. Emotionally he was wounded from early in life, as he grew up in a violent house, until age ten, when his father killed his mother then himself. It took Scott several "lifetimes" to discover his purpose, stopping those who would harm innocent people. This book contains considerably more violence than the previous books in the series, which did not appeal much to me.

Although each novel is a standalone story, characters from earlier books occasionally make appearances. That happens here as well, when Scott eventually meets and befriends the main character from the previous book. Perhaps my memory is not what it used to be, but I barely remembered Scott from that earlier story. Or, maybe he wasn’t mentioned much in that prior book. In any case, I do enjoy the crossovers.

One unexpected bonus with this book was that my husband listened to it with me during a road trip to a family wedding. Since he doesn’t read as much as me, it was nice to find a book he and I both could enjoy, and help make the long drive pass more quickly.

Previously Read Middle Falls Time Travel Series books:

• Book 1: The Unusual Second Life of Thomas Weaver
• (4 stars) July.2024
• Book 2: The Redemption of Michael Hollister
• (4 stars) July.2024
• Book 3: The Death and Life of Dominick Davidner 
• (3 stars)  September.2024
• Book 4: The Final Life of Nathaniel Moon
• (4 stars)  April.2025
• Book 5: The Emancipation of Veronica McAllister 
• (3 stars)  April.2025
• Book 6: The Changing Lives of Joe Hart
• (3 stars)  May.2025

Review 695: Automatic Noodle

Automatic Noodle by Annalee Newitz
My rating: 3 of 5 stars



A short book with robots as the main characters. They wake up and the restaurant they work in is no longer in operation, so they start it back up themselves.

In this future a war just ended, California is no longer part of the United States and California has strict rules about robots and what they can do, such as not run a restaurant without a human owner.

There's a lot of stuff thrown in the book, but it's so short it's surface level, skimmed over, just mentioned. Some of it makes you wonder why the author even bothered. Did it improve the story, likely no. Anyway, I found the story okay overall.

Review 693: The Memory Hunters

The Memory Hunters by Mia Tsai
My rating: 4.5 of 5 stars



I got hooked into this story and had a hard time putting the book down. I kept grabbing for it whenever I could, so despite its page length I read it fairly quickly. However, the last part of the book spoiled some of the story line for me.

The world building was very interesting, loved the concept of people being able to dive into the past and see things that happened before just by using some mushrooms. Our main character, Key, was particularly gifted and had perfect memory.

Kiana Strade, known as Key, came from a famous and rich family. Her grandmother was form head curator and founder of the Institute of Human Memory. Her mother was head resifix (like a priest) for the city of Asheburg and her father a ctiy councillor. Her mother hoped Key would follow her and not her mother. But Key wanted to work for the museum, do field work, and get away from all the demanding public in the city.

All hunters had guardians, and hers was Vale, a fierce stout woman that was quick to anger. Vale came from the south, where the storms were frequent and lived with losing ones home to the waters happened too often. She was poor, her family depended on her to send money home.

The story begins with Key finding something very interesting about the deep past, and perhaps the beginning of the rituals. The memory was also very strong and wouldn’t leave Key’s mind. This could happen to memory hunters, being haunted by a dive. Yet this find of Key’s seemed so important.

This is a start of a series, but I may just leave it there. In any case, I have to wait until the next book, and I'm not too big on series in general.

Review 655: The God Peak

The God Peak by Patrick Hemstreet
My rating: 2.5 of 5 stars


This second book in the trilogy was fairly similar to the first book. The team we met in book one had been split and remained so. One group was being kept hostage, Team Chuck, much like what happened in the first book, but by a different sort of organization.

Most of the book was about Team Chuck plotting to escape and get back to the other group, try to control them, along with what that group was up to…world peace, anyone?

Overall the book was somewhat okay, but far from great. Again, the ending was left hanging, not everything was resolved. Looks like this third book failed to happen, which is okay, as I’m not sure I could take another one.

Review 653: The God Wave

The God Wave by Patrick Hemstreet
My rating: 3 of 5 stars


The concept of this book was intriguing to me, or at least what I knew about it – a neuroscientist has tapped a region in the brain that allows humans a new ability. Well, a neuroscientist along with a mathematician and a robotics engineer – it took a team, plus the research subjects from various fields.

After their initial success the mathematician Matt, became the business driver of their new start-up, Forward Kinetics. Matt was relentless in wanting a good contract with deep pockets and when a military contract was offered Matt pushed the team to sign on. Of course this goes in a direction most the rest of the company founders wasn’t interested in.

A good portion of the book was about how the new technology was developed and starting up the business. It ended with quite a lot unresolved, but not quite a cliffhanger.

Most of the characters feel somewhat flat and not fully fleshed out, with many of few the attempts at doing not working well. I grimaced a few times while reading this. Not stellar writing, yet with the ending, it feels like part one of a two part book, so I’m continuing on for now.

Review 638: Artemis

Artemis by Andy Weir
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I like Weir's books, as they can be fun science fiction and high octane. This one is also high octane and off-world located on the moon, a small city called Artemis.

The main character is Jazz Bashara who is a porter, moves things for a living, and on the side is also a smuggler for extra cash. She’s young and maybe mouthy, stands up to just about everyone. When her top client offers a million credits (slugs) for disabling some heavy equipment she says yes, even though that type of job is way outside her norm. And things go sideways, of course it does.

This plot device of things failing to go as planned seems to be Weir’s m.o. in writing. Then goes into how to fix things. And since you’re in a small enclosed area where live is easily endangered things are amped up.

It usually works in his books, but didn’t work as well here. Not sure if it was the character who seemed unbelievable, or just the plot line overall. I did like how there were many women as the main characters and major areas, but they mostly acted like men just with female names.

I listened to the audiobook, which is the best way to read Weir’s books as they do enhance the reading experience.

Review 637: Anyone: A Novel

Anyone: A Novel by Charles Soule
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

A sci-fi thriller book that has an interesting concept - what if you could *flash* into someone else's body? Their consciousness is taken over by you, they go inert, same with your original body, your prime.

Well, the way the book was written the tech wasn't explained very convincingly and overall the writing felt sloppy and kinda phoned in. I would have quit reading except I did want to see how it would play out.

Maybe I will add a few more notes, but not sure the book is really worth it.

Review 618: Where the Axe Is Buried

Where the Axe Is Buried by Ray Nayler
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I zipped through this book, hard a hard time putting it down. It’s a science-fiction, political, dystopian, techno book, taking place in the future (far?). A bit confusing through the first part of the book, different POVs and different technologies. At first I just wanted to get beyond the confusing part. Then I was sucked in.

This is a future where everything and everyone is watched constantly. In the free west it is for advertising purposes, in the totalitarian states it is to ensure the people are controlled. Many countries are run by A.I. Prime Ministers, and The Federation is run by a president whose consciousness gets transferred to new bodies one the old ones deteriorate. Then there are the dissidents. The book is mostly about the dissidents.

The book is a commentary on totalitarianism and artificial intelligence. Starts out with a very gloomy outlook but ends with hope and possibility.

Review 617: Red Rising

Red Rising by Pierce Brown
My rating: 2 of 5 stars



I didn't like this one too much. First book in the Red Rising Saga, and I won't be continuing on. Too much of the book was about the war games between the kids at the training school. Felt like hunger games in some major ways, but not as appealing, the main character wasn't as likeable. Maybe it was how masculine this book felt? Not sure this is really a young adult book either.

Review 615: I Who Have Never Known Men

I Who Have Never Known Men by Jacqueline Harpman
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Maybe 3.75 is a better rating than 4.

A dystopian book, without a lot of answers. The narrator doesn't have a name, only called The Child, as she was young when her and 39 other women were put into the bunker. The men guard them closely. She knows nothing other than this bunker, can only learn what the women tell her. As she becomes a teenager she wants to know more.

Interesting and simple book, and yet it isn't.

Review 610: Dissolution

Dissolution by Nicholas Binge
My rating: 3.5 of 5 stars

Science fiction book that at the heart is a relationship between two people Maggie and Stanley.

We begin with an elderly Maggie being interviewed by a Hassan. They seem to be an empty pool. She doesn't remember anything at first. Hassan gives her a drug to help her specific memory recall and he wants to know everything, every detail. He claims that this will help Stanley get his memory back. Hassan seems almost not human...

Why, how? She wants to know but he won’t say, except that the memory care facility he has been in, is the cause of it. Hassan urges her to stay focused on what he wants to know. He is in control.

During the interview Maggie recalls how she takes these dives into the past, into Stanley’s memory even. Maggie learns more about her husband than she did while they were married for all those years.

In between these interviews are chapters on Stanley, his youth then later. He was an awkward boy, from a working class family and a brutal father. But Stanley was wicked smart and got himself into a good school with a scholarship. He stands out and a professor takes him under his wing, only the select are welcome, and here Stanley shines. And here his life begins.

Somehow the disconnect of these chapters do come together okay. The book does have some repetition due to the nature of Maggie going into Stanley’s past and her revealing this to Hassan. At times the book felt elongated unnecessarily. There were some really good interesting parts. Yet, it felt compiled from a handful of other stories and books, such as The Time Traveler’s Wife, some of Resident Evil, and a bit of Philip K Dick, etc... Overall, and enjoyable audio book.

Review 587: The Changing Lives of Joe Hart

The Changing Lives of Joe Hart by Shawn Inmon
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This is the sixth book in the Middle Falls Time Travel series. Each book addresses something slightly different. This time the main character, Joe Hart, tries to change history. First by trying to prevent his two friends deaths while young, more globally to prevent John Lennon's death in New York.

Another twist with this story is that when Joe Hart dies it is accidental and he is still “rebooted” like in a video game, In previous books this resetting of one’s life happens when the death was self-inflicted. The moment the character returns to is when they were on the cusp of making an important life choice.

This book fell a little into a pattern somewhat like the other books, despite the difference, which actually are quite small. One of the reasons I typically don’t read long series books is they do become somewhat formulaic. However, I did decide to continue on with these as they do tend to make one think about grander philosophic questions which makes them interesting.

Previously Read Middle Falls Time Travel Series books:

• Book 1: The Unusual Second Life of Thomas Weaver
• (4 stars) July.2024
• Book 2: The Redemption of Michael Hollister
• (4 stars) July.2024
• Book 3: The Death and Life of Dominick Davidner 
• (3 stars)  September.2024
• Book 4: The Final Life of Nathaniel Moon
• (4 stars)  April.2025
• Book 5: The Emancipation of Veronica McAllister 
• (3 stars)  April.2025

Brief Review 578: The Time Machine

The Time Machine by H.G. Wells
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I saw a movie version of this years ago, so I knew the story line. Still I found myself enthralled. I listened to the audiobook version narrated by Scott Brick. One of the rare times I listened to the entirety in one go, without stopping. It's short enough you can do that. What a classic!

Review 574: The Emancipation of Veronica McAllister

The Emancipation of Veronica McAllister by Shawn Inmon
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This is the 5th book in the series: Middle Falls Time Travel.

While this was a very quick read, I didn’t like this book as much as the others in the series. The storyline was okay, it was the writing style. None of them are excellent in the craft of writing, but they are plot driven and the questions and premise make these books interesting.

For this book the writing style was bugging me. One example is the pointing out at this time there wasn’t certain technology or way of doing things today. It happened a few times and was clunky and pulled me out of the story. (like reminding us cell phones didn’t exist.)

For this book we have a woman POV for the first time in the series. Veronica’s character was near the end of the previous book, taking her life as she was dying of cancer. This taking of one’s own life is what resets the character’s life, and goes back to a pivotal point. For Veronica who was 80 or so she reverted back to a teenager in the last few months of high school before graduation. The next day she meets her husband to be, at least in the first life.

Veronica ends up having several lives, each restarting at the same point and the story repeats some of those first moments for most of those restarts. Yeah, that gets repetitive too. Veronica ends up killing herself during each life as she isn’t fulfilled and wants to do it again, until she finally gets it right.

What the author choses to fill in these lives is always an interesting choice as well, and maybe didn’t make the best decisions. There were moments that seemed to make no sense why it was included and other moments that were didn’t get fully explored.

Yet, there are still glimpses of philosophical questions that these books bring up. Some that are explored in the series such as: What would you do different if you had a chance to do it again? What would you do the same? Ultimately, what is your best life?

I will read the next book, since I have it and these are short books. Then I will consider about continuing the series or not.

Other Middle Falls Time Travel Series books:

• Book 1: The Unusual Second Life of Thomas Weaver
• (4 stars) July.2024
• Book 2: The Redemption of Michael Hollister
• (4 stars) July.2024
• Book 3: The Death and Life of Dominick Davidner 
• (3 stars)  September.2024
• Book 4: The Final Life of Nathaniel Moon
• (4 stars)  April.2025
• Book 6: The Changing Lives of Joe Hart
• (3 stars)  May.2025

Review 569: The Final Life of Nathaniel Moon

The Final Life of Nathaniel Moon by Shawn Inmon
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is the 4th book in the series: Middle Falls Time Travel, and was slightly different than the previous three. The author’s note at the end helps to explain it as this story was something he had thought about for a very long while, since before he started writing novels.

The premise of each book in this series has an essential part, which is being called time travel: a character dies, then is reborn again as the same person, but at an earlier part of their life and they remember everything. I find this an interesting premise. What would someone do differently if they could change the trajectory of their life? The person always returns to a pivotal moment in their life.

In this book there the main character, Nathaniel Moon is born as a new person and changed. The first glimpse of this is when he talks to his mother while still in the womb. At age four he discovers he can heal people.

This book brought in more philosophy or spirituality than the previous three books. This was a fairly short book and the ending seemed to come abruptly, but after finishing I can see that it was a good stopping point.

So far I'm still intrigued about this time travel concept and will continue the series.

Other Middle Falls Time Travel Series books:

• Book 1: The Unusual Second Life of Thomas Weaver
• (4 stars) July.2024
• Book 2: The Redemption of Michael Hollister
• (4 stars) July.2024
• Book 3: The Death and Life of Dominick Davidner 
• (3 stars)  September.2024
• Book 5: The Emancipation of Veronica McAllister 
• (3 stars)  April.2025
• Book 6: The Changing Lives of Joe Hart
• (3 stars)  May.2025