Ethereal87

Ethereal87 , 5 months ago

Upgrade by Blake Crouch put his work on my radar. The premise sounded intriguing and I couldn’t put the book down. It led me to Dark Matter, Recursion, Pines, and Abandon, of which only Abandon I opted to quit reading. He went from essentially nobody to me to “Ooo, there’s a new book coming out!” in the span of this year.

My other surprising hit was getting back into reading comic books and diving into Radiant Black and the associated Massive-Verse stories. It felt like a blend of superhero and Power Rangers style storytelling and parts of it felt very unique and interesting to me (how they handle the main character and where the power of Radiant Black is in the comics releasing now is really cool, trying to avoid spoilers!). It also comes across as a more realistic version of the stories that superhero/PR tell where there’s social media and dialogue that comes across as real speech. I think of it akin to Star Trek vs. The Orville, both great but I see the path of how we get from here to the type of world The Orville embodies but the people on Star Trek don’t feel exactly like real people by today’s standard and it seems that much farther out.

Ethereal87 , 5 months ago

Your comment about who typically likes and doesn’t like this book is really interesting because I loved the book AND love playing games. I hadn’t heard this criticism of the book before.

I think reading your comment in hindsight, yes that DOES strike me as off looking back on it now but I don’t think it stuck out while reading to me outside of one Metal Gear Solid reference that made me quirk an eyebrow and knew it wasn’t right.

Ethereal87 , 6 months ago

Alright, we’ve got some overlap here, let’s see…

• The Red Rising Saga. I’m working through book 6 right now as an audiobook and I’m sneaking in a few minutes wherever I can. Definitely expands its scope as the series goes on and while I feel like I’m losing context for some of the new/returning characters at this point, I can follow enough to go along with it. The main character is born into the lowest caste of the society and works to infiltrate the highest caste. It’s a long ride and ebbs and flows from hopelessness to triumph throughout the course of it.
• The Combat Codes Saga. Probably closer to science-fantasy then fiction, but an interesting idea about nations using hand-to-hand combat to settle wars, territory, etc…I have only read the first book so far but I enjoyed it a lot.
• Alex Benedict - I would encourage this more as a filler or inbetween books series. Binging all of the books can make them feel very samey. The core idea is that all of the books except the first one are told from the perspective of a colleague/assistant/“jill of all trades” woman who works with one of the most famous artifact hunters in the far future. Each book is essentially chasing an archeological mystery of some sort.
• The Jubilee Cycle - I found the first book a long time ago at random in one of those discount bookstores and picked it up based on the cover alone. It’s about a future where everything you do costs you money, to the point where political parties debate whether or not autonomic functions like breathing should cost money. The prose is a little dry and the author works as a translator, but I enjoyed the world that he built up as the main character peels back the layers of this society after he gets essentially bankrupted by a mysterious and unknown transaction.
• Teixcalaan - Can’t link the series for some reason. The main character is an ambassador to the ruling empire of the galaxy, trying to figure out who killed her predecessor and a conspiracy surrounding him. It felt very dense when I started it but I enjoyed it a lot!

Ethereal87 , 6 months ago

I think the flaws of the characters decisions either come from gambles that don’t pay off or there are levels and movements they don’t see happening (and sometimes both). Their failures feel…earned if that makes sense? To be fair, it’s been a few years since I started the series so it can mush all together in my head :)

Ethereal87 , 6 months ago

Man, there really was rampant voter and electoral fraud!

It’s astounding how much the Right projects onto their political enemies the stuff they’re already attempting. They can’t not tell on themselves.

Ethereal87 , 9 months ago

I’ve been looking for some kind of alternative to io9 over the years and this looks perfect! Not as exhaustive as their list but theirs is also monthly vs. this one appears to be twice a month (September is here)

Since I already skimmed through the io9 one, a few of these were already on my radar to check out this month. Androne, The Circumference of the World, and City of Bones all were interesting to me off this list.

I’m also excited to see Gundog is getting a proper release. I loved listening to the podcast version last year. It felt just like a chapter a week of an exciting mecha audiobook.

Ethereal87 , 11 months ago

I mean, the job of a governor (or President) isn’t to legislate like this. Laws should come from the elected representatives under the guidance of the head of state. And of course we’ll all be outraged when an Republican does this when they’re in power and they enact some god awful nonsense. We should push for better accountability from our elected officials and less of this universal declaration of whatever our current overlord sees fit to do.

With that out of the way, holy crap is he clever to edit “2024-25” into “2425” and set this program up for a very long time (assuming it doesn’t get struck down somehow).