Starfish is Peter Watts' first novel and it shows. It starts as something and transforms into something else, to then turn into a series, possibly because of publisher pressure. That doesn't make it less captivating, bleak and capable of getting under your skin and stick there; a fantastic debut.

  The story seems to be about societal rejects being more or less forced to choose to life on the bottom of the ocean, handling gigantic geothermal power stations which feed the never ending hunger for energy on the surface. These people are weird, yucky and very damaged.

  The main character is a victim of abuse that gets off on getting abused, surrounded by people like pedophiles, bullies, murderers, violent criminals and so on that have to somehow work together. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't work. However, slowly, being alone on the bottom of the ocean, surrounded by gigantic yet fragile monsters, she realizes she likes it, as do the others. Freed from the artificial pressures of society and surface environment, they almost turn into a different species.

  Then the story changes subject with the interference of the surface people who just naturally assume they know better and driven by a terrible secret. That secret leads to some extreme events which... end the book and prepare sequels. Starfish does psychopathology, brain organelles, deep marine biology, claustrophobic tension, weird romance, social commentary, deep state politics and the banality of human evil.

  Now, I don't think I want to read the rest of the series. By own admission from the author, this was a short story turned novel. I would rather reread the amazing Blindsight and maybe get to that book's sequel instead. However it was a fascinating story, being mostly uneventful, yet also never boring. How does Watts make that happen?

  I will end with the most hilarious review, from Analog magazine:

Watts’s true enemy is human stupidity, the sort of thing that turns children into walking disaster zones, treats adults as interchangeable things, insists that unchecked fertility is a good thing, and blindly trusts that our artificially intelligent creations must share our priorities. As Watts develops that point, he tells an absorbing tale set in a bizarre world and hinging upon intriguing technology. He’s done his homework well, and it shows.

  

  I said earlier that Circle of Inevitability was half the size of Lord of Mysteries. That was a lie. I only had half of the book. Probably the entire thing is going to be as big if not larger.

  It doesn't matter, though. I reached almost the end of Volume 4, where Lumian becomes Fate Appropriator and decided to finally stop. It was a good run, but whatever comes next is unlikely to bring anything new to the table. Let me explain why.

  In my previous hopeful reviews I said that "Cuttlefish" was improving his writing style, by making the stakes higher and the emotional impact more meaningful. After all, Lumian is a young man driven by both revenge and hope, marred by his sister's death, marked by two gods amongst which one is evil, having a corrupting influence sealed within him. I was envisioning a very different story arc, complete with half villainous failings, followed by righteous redemptions. Or, why not, going full villain. But that didn't happen.

  You see, I already mentioned that these novels feel like someone is telling the story of a manga or anime they have in their head. This series made me remember vividly the Jojo's Adventures series and once it was in my head, I couldn't help see the similarities. They both start with complicated worldbuilding, compelling characters and strict rules, only to devolve into a monster of the episode kind of thing, with consistency being thrown out of the window and the "smart" method for victory becoming more ludicrous as we go alone.

  I do appreciate the opportunity to delve into the Asian way of considering life and conflict, though. A stark contrast with American storytelling, the main character doesn't succeed based on luck and the strength of his emotions, but on careful consideration of the situation and preparation in advance. Even the emotional outbursts or violent episodes are actually a facade for the cold calculation beneath. Also the way in which women just can't seem to help being deferential and submissive to their male counterparts, accepting with just a little bit of dismay that they are smarter, more decisive and grow faster than they are.

  Lumian becomes a carbon copy of the character of Klein Moretti, only he "smiles warmly" instead of "smirking". There is another lesbian duo of relatively weak helpers who the story occasionally focuses a lot on for no good reason. The rules established in the first series are completely broken by a new system of "boons" from external gods, making anything and everything possible, except catching Lumian off guard or actually causing defeat. Even the connection between eras and the link between the current one and the one people have transmigrated from is different. And being a transmigrator is just a regular thing now, anyone and everyone seems to be one.

  But what's worse is that the same psychopathic behavior from the first book, where the end goal is paramount and emotion, physical pain or behavior are secondary, comes back in full force and makes the whole experience feel empty, like you are watching some random guy playing a computer game on low difficulty, always smirking about how smart he is, when the story outcome was already ... inevitable.

  Bottom line, I will rate this series 2.5 stars. It's not bad, but it's not good either once the novelty of the point of view wanes. The first one was better and this one feels like a bad carbon copy. Perhaps now I can finally focus on a real book.

  OK, so I started reading the second book of the Lord of Mysteries series. It feels more... experimental. In terms of plot, it's kind of the same, though. Same fish out of water (pardon the pun) starting from Sequence 9 and raising in level, same idea of trying to figure things out, same unexplained quirk that no one else has, even a Tarot Club further on. So, if you expected a continuation of book 1, maybe later?

  Circle of Inevitability starts really slow. Something remotely interesting only happens 15% of this first volume in. But then a lot of mind twisting events go on, ending with an epic twist that I don't want to spoil.

  For me, this is already a sort of challenge, so I will probably finish this book as I did the first, but to be honest I am a bit disappointed. I wanted to know what happened with the characters I knew, not start "a new game" with a different character hoping that maybe I will understand in a few thousand pages how the events in the first book reached any conclusion. Also, the main character doesn't work for me. An orphan saved by a "big sister", a self proclaimed prank master. And if I may pile on that, the story is ridiculous, as it happens in a small village, but with so many high level actors.

  The writing ifeels more experimental: more stakes, more negative outcomes, more emotional evolution, but not that much. The main character doesn't come off as a psychopath as in the first book, but he still veers in that direction when it comes to unbearable pain or personal loss. I personally like the grand god level magic parts, things that would turn a normal person into a quivering mess without any spiritual or mystical influence, but to have characters that just shrug things off and get on with their quest feels like watching someone else playing a video game.

  Bottom line: some improvements, some disappointments. I will continue to read the rest, see how it goes.

  There is no reason to write a post for each "volume" as I have read the whole thing as one book anyway and even the chapter separation is kind of weird, probably because of the serialized nature of the release. Well, I have good news and bad news. Good news is that I've finished this humongous novel. Bad news is that there is a sequel!! :D

  The increase in level of the main protagonist goes on. Not only does he do it faster and easier - in terms of pages dedicated to the difficulty - but so do all of his friends. But there is a catch, of course. First of all the most scary antagonist by far: God of Deceit Amon. Second of all, of course there are levels above sequence 0. And I apologize if me telling you that made you instantly go insane, it's your own fault for not raising to a sufficiently high Beyonder level.

  You see, not only are there gods in the world, but also gods from outside the world, encroaching in. There are some really complicated rules being applied and the final epic battle is truly epic, so I will leave it at that: I finished Lord of Mysteries and I liked it.

  The second book, Circle of Inevitability, closes the story completely and also is half of the first book in terms of size. I wonder if I should be masochistic enough to start reading it as well...

  In Volume 3, the story continues with our protagonist shedding yet another identity and going to Pirate Land. Well, it's called differently, but basically it's a sea full of bad and good pirates, so we're getting a bit of a One Piece vibe. The hero continues to level up with impunity, which kind of makes the story stale, but the new lands and characters are fun enough. Next time, volume 4: Back in Backlund... yeah, it's not called that, but it should have been.

  In Volume 2 the story continues, with the action moving away from the small town of Tingen to the capital of Loen, Backlund. With greater powers come greater enemies and lots of adventure. Cutlefish's style is almost the same as for Volume 1, which means that I can see the manga images in my head while I am reading the text.

  While the fun is still there, it's getting a little old. Our protagonist behaves even more like a gamer advancing in levels in a game playthrough - edited so that we don't see the fails and reloads - and other than the world building which continues to be top notch, it all starts to feel a little repetitive. Yes, the author is moving the action to another city with another culture, with different characters, and in Volume 3 he continues to do so, by moving the action in the pirate infested seas. But even that makes it feel like each volume is another level in a game, compounded by the increase in "sequence" by the lead character. It's starting to get less and less believable that a noob that started "playing the game" a few months before can easily outmaneuver and overpower mature Beyonders, powerful evil spirits, demigods and even gods.

   Yet, you know the feeling. You've read the first 10000 pages, what's 17000 more, right? But I can't stop thinking what this world would have become if the author would have collaborated with a master writer who could have given the plot the emotional depth often found in much less creative works, but necessary for fully involving a reader in the fantastical world. This could have been the Chinese Harry Potter, I kid you not.

   Anyway, going back to reading the series...

  It all started with a Chinese animation, quite nice and flashy, but also very confusing. Also called Lord of Mysteries, I soon found out that it was based on a series of books by an author with the funny name Ai Qianshui de Wuzei (translated to Cuttlefish That Loves Diving) who published all of them as web novels. So I looked for it online and I found it - on the Internet Archive no less, so I guess legally free? - in EPUB format. I had no idea how many books there are and I just thought this was the first. I was a bit surprised that it took a longer time to load than other books, but I assumed it's some weird Chinese format or something. But no. What happened is that the epub contains ALL of the books: 1400 chapters, 27000 e-book pages!

  The writing style is very direct, it's not bad at all, but it feels different from the usual Western books I have been reading, even if it is an English translation. The world building is amazing, a combination of steampunk and interesting magic, with elements from all kinds of myths - ancient and modern. The story is a bit too linear, with the main character being good at everything and being rational and good and strong and ingenious. A bit of a Martin Sue. But I've only read the first volume, so this might change. Overall, I quite like this series!

  The first volume has about 130 chapters and tells the story of a "keyboard warrior" (an Internet troll, basically) who gets sucked in a fantasy world where magic is real. And before you groan and stop reading, even if it does feel a bit like the setup of a video game, it's quite a complex world with many cultures, interesting characters and complicated magic systems. I was saying above that the animation is confusing, that's because the first five one hour episodes cover the entire first volume. It cuts a lot of things off, reorders or combines characters and storylines, so that it kind of makes sense, but without having read the book I couldn't enjoy it. Also, the animation has more of an anime/manga feel with everybody beautiful and flashy and amazing visuals during battle. The book is less so, more grounded and makes a lot more sense.

  I have to say that writing a book like this is not easy at all. The author planned a lot of it before starting writing and it shows. A lot of effort has been poured into this series and it elevates it to levels above most books in the genre I've read recently. If I have one complaint is that the character gets everything right, even if he's just a kid who spent to much time on the Internet and should have very little life experience. He adapts to the new world like he's playing an RPG game and doesn't seem to feel anything amiss. He comes off as a bit of a psychopath that way, or at least high on some sort of autism spectrum.

  I've already promised myself that if the quality of the book doesn't drop significantly, I will read all of the volumes. In fact, there is no real separation of the volumes. It is indeed a book that has 1400 chapters. So if I stop it will be because I got tired or the writer really dropped the ball. I hope that doesn't happen.

  How do books like this get this high a rating? The Wolfman is a pretentious first person narrative from the viewpoint of the werewolf, adding nothing to the genre, telegraphing all of the moves chapters ahead and ultimately being boring and uninteresting. It's basically Dexter (the books, not the excellent TV series first seasons) if he were a werewolf. Also kind of a punk retard.

  I don't want to spit all over Nicholas Pekearo here, he did write a book and it wasn't all bad, but it also was all not good. The main character comes off as an entitled prick, a coward who can't stand up to his principles, a boring werewolf, too. The story is simplistic and tedious. The world building is non existing. All of the characters, not only the main one, are weird annoying people who act like robots.

  No, this is something that, would it be the debut novel of an author, should get some "you can do better" encouragement and be done with it. I don't recommend it.

  P.S. I know that the guy was a cop and he was killed in the line of duty. R.I.P. But the book is still bad.

  Norstrilia, a contraction of North Australia, is a planet of immortal Australian farmers who export a drug that extends life and expands consciousness. They live simple lives - on purpose - as to not be corrupted by the decadent ways of the large universe around. This drug has made them insanely rich and powerful, but they refuse to leave a life of luxury, while the human world is split into those who would want their wealth for themselves and the Instrumentality, a sort of aall powerful human organization whose only purpose is to preserve the essence of humanity through any means, like for example by introducing diseases or threats or risks so people don't devolve into passive comfortable idiots.

  Cordwainer Smith has multiple strange but brilliant ideas in the book. The Instrumentality itself is something that clearly needs exploring, even if this book does not do that. There are the underhumans, animals surgically uplifted to consciousness in order to serve man and who have almost no rights. A society living in a logical extension of the American 1950 capitalism, where anyone seems to be free to do anything, but in fact they are caught in a power game with dangerous rules.

  In all of that comes a Norstrilian boy who, with the help of an ancient AI, manipulates the market and becomes the richest man in the universe, buying Old Earth in the process. This reveals the web of power in the human world and takes us on a wild journey to Earth and back.

  Typical of the era, becoming the richest person ever removes any agency from the boy. From the beginning to the end of the book, he is passively "helped" along a path not of his choosing. The fact that he might have chosen said path if he knew anything about the world is irrelevant. The fact that he feels it's a good path more akin to Stockholm syndrome. The world is huge, amorphous, predatory. Without that "help" he wouldn't have survived anyway. His body is changed to an underperson's, his mind is changed by forced therapy - for his own good, his thoughts are read and analysed, his decisions are made for him. If it weren't also for the drug addled naivete of the 1950s sci-fi, this would and should have been a horror story.

  All in all a very intriguing book that seems to combine interesting ideas, but ultimately not doing much with them. A combination of Dune, if the Fremen were Aussies, and Stranger in a Strange Land, which was also a hard to enjoy book with great drug addled ideas in it.

  Eden is a stupid book. I won't discuss the writing acumen of Tim Lebbon, because it is irrelevant to this. The story is dumb, the characters are stupid, the pretext of an eco thriller is weak as water. There is almost nothing redeemable about this.

  Let me summarize this for you: dumb liberal hippies go into an area they shouldn't have gone, completely unequipped for what they planned to do, illegally, but completely convinced they had all the right to do it, and die. Or at least I think they do, because there is no way they survive after what happens 50% of the book, unless a Deus ex Machina is employed. Wait, what? They employed one? Ugh!

  None of the characters is more than cardboard, but even so it's annoying cardboard! Entitled, emo, incompetent cardboard. There is even a former Israeli soldier who left because he saw a Palestinian parent and his children being gunned down by snipers in his army. And it makes sense, it's horrible, but even so I couldn't empathize and saw him as ridiculous because of all the people he was in the group with.

  Now, there are supernatural or body horror elements in the book, but they are like someone took them from somewhere else and slapped them over this ridiculous story of bleeding heart idiots going into a forbidden zone for no conceivably good reason. The world is a mess, people have polluted it and fouled it close to extinction, but do you know where I know this from? Exposition at the start of the book. There are "evil" guardians of the zones created to preserve biological diversity who kill randomly people who go there. Even without the supernatural element, that would still be quite OK, think of African reservations and poachers. But no, our American friends believe that anyone doing harm to nature is bad, except them. And do you know where I know this? From fictional excerpts of random sources from the beginning of each chapter.

  I could go on and on. As a basis for a number of scathing reviews, this book is perfect. Right now I am making efforts to limit the scope of mine. What would be the point of writing pages and pages of vitriolic hate about something that is the exact opposite of literature? So I stop here. This is a book written by a person inside a bubble which itself is in a bubble, hidden in an enigma of how someone could write then publish this and not realize how bad it is.

  Existential Physics: A Scientist's Guide to Life's Biggest Questions is a short book covering several main ideas, each in their own chapter. You could easily just read the conclusion at the end of each, if you don't care for the details. While the book is nice and easy to read, I've watched most of Sabine Hossenfelder's YouTube videos and the book doesn't bring much more to the table.

  I've read it really fast and I agree with most of its points. Yet I kind of decry Sabine's falling into criticizing bad science most of the time, instead of focusing on the really good one. Yes, people are monkeys and scientists are people. Yes, science is about the search of better questions and funding is for the answers themselves. Yes, personal beliefs will influence and corrupt even the most brilliant scientists. But I don't want to read about this once I am already aware of it!

  Call me escapist, but I would have liked the book more if it has more positive focus than the negative.

  A pretty interesting idea, playing quantum mechanics and the idea of superposition collapse applied to the whole human race. Quarantine is short, but dense, it requires attention to understand the characters and the heavy scientific ideas. I wish it wasn't yet another private eye kind of setup, but it's a good book.

  I have been planning to read some more Egan for decades, so I am glad I did. I do feel that I may have read this book in the past, but it was before I started recording what I read and I didn't remember anything specific anyway. It's a very idea heavy book, though, like most Greg Egan stuff. I liked the book, but I didn't read it as carefully as I should have in order to really enjoy it.

  If you like your hard science cyberpunky sci-fi, this is for you.

  It took me forever to read this book because it's pretty dense. It's absolutely packed with detailed references and obscure intellectual (and sometimes not even that) International and French memes. Michel Houellebecq writes really nicely, but his Frenchness is pretty extreme. :)

  In Serotonin we follow (yet another) chronically depressed French guy who has no life or job, but enough resources to not worry about that and enough education so he can analyse, criticise and provide possible improvements to absolutely everything, while he is regretting his past female relationships, actively pursues others while philosophising about the differences between men and women in matters of sex and love, then switching to an antidepressant that inhibits his libido, making such problems moot. Various anecdotes fill in the space and provide context for the guy's view on things.

  That's basically the entire book. There is nothing to like except the various musings of the rather unlikeable yet charismatic character and everyone else is just a prop in his story. Introspective and honest in these inner thoughts, but thus revealing nothing but unpleasant desires and ideas. Natural for him, but too much information perhaps for unwilling third parties and the reader.

  Reminded me of Camus and Bukowski a little bit: entertaining, yet at the same time less interesting. Felt like I've read one of these books, I've read them all. I have to praise the writing style, but perhaps I was not in the right mood to appreciate the content.

  I tried. I really tried. I was even going to finish the book, since I've abandoned a few in the last few weeks, but I just couldn't go on. It was clear that none of the major story arcs were going to have any closure by the end of Elvenbane and I couldn't care less about any of the characters. It was trope after trope after trope, a female lead who seems to have no flaws and always falls on her feet - mostly because of innate attributes or luck, mustache-twirling villains, everybody is oppressing women and young ones in particular, dragons, elves, human mages, even a brother-sister infatuation, to just catch every single cliché. The world building was shallow and the focus of the book was instead on ideas on how the world should be, what is fair, who is attractive and who is not and so on, their feelings.

  Basically, this is a young adult fantasy from the '90s: too old to face Internet scorn and too new to be actual fantasy and not derivative corporate bookstore slop.

  Not even sure who wrote what. The book I have says it's written by Mercedes Lackey. The online says it's Andre Norton, sometimes with Mercedes Lackey, both women, only Norton was 80 when the book was published. Honestly, I don't care.

  The problem I have most is that the plot is inconsistent. I don't want to get into details, but there are many jarring events that just contradict whatever happened before. Simple example: the magical Mary Sue teleports with her mind a big deer for food. Apparently you can do that, but the result is instant death for the animal. At no point in the book does she do that with any of her enemies. But there are bits where she smugly teaches people what they could do with the little magic they know. 

  Bottom line: the occasional bright spots were not worth slogging to finish this book. It's derivative, tropey, amateurish and could have been edited to half the length. Feels like a publishing house money scheme.

  For my review of the same book in 2019, go here.

  Imagine a project that needs an underground group of dedicated scientists to even exist as a concept. They would have to lobby in secret, fight vindictive NASA administrators, tremendous bureaucracy and extremely tight and political budgets that change randomly to even get the concept noticed. A combination of very custom marketing has to be employed to get key people on your side. And then... you have to work on it, through changing administrations and conditions, for more than a decade, to make it happen. And then, you risk losing it all at launch in a single moment, or break down during its path or even hit something after achieving all mission objectives but before sending back the data. Oh, did I mention that it has to do everything by itself, because the speed of light lag between the probe and yourself is four hours?

  Chasing New Horizons: Inside the Epic First Mission to Pluto is the story of New Horizons, an unlikely first mission to Pluto and very likely the last mission to Pluto, perhaps even the last to reach that distance from the Sun. It is important to understand the mindset of the people working on this, the real scientists and engineers who are masochistic enough to work in these conditions. Alan Stern did lead the project with close friend David Grinspoon writing the book based on their many interviews.

  It's a really useful and inspirational book. It takes you out of the stupid world of news cycle monkey politics because, even if it features its own brand of politics, it remains always in the background, the true focus staying on the purpose of the mission, the passion of the people involved, the true measure of humanity. It gives one hope that we're not all terrible. For that alone it should get maximum rating.

  But the book is also well written, easy to read and understand. Recommended to all of the Trekkies who didn't succumb to the "Star Trek is Anglo-Saxon capitalist propaganda" downers, but also to all who dream of something better for themselves and the world.