I want humanity to spread to the cosmos, to colonize the Moon, Mars, the asteroid belt or anything other than Earth in whatever order possible. Personally, I think asteroids are our best first bet, but it doesn't matter as long as I am presented with a well crafted argument and solution plan. Unfortunately, How We'll Live on Mars is not that.

  Stephen Petranek starts with the old idea that colonizing Mars will be a human endeavor that will bring glory and scientific evolution and the betterment of humanity. It well may be, but as history demonstrated no one cares about anyone else and certainly not for "the world"; they care for wealth. Until the ninth chapter, the author fails to provide any inkling on how a colony on Mars would generate wealth and even there he sees it as a port and manufacturing place for resources extracted from asteroids and nothing more.

  I was curious on how Petranek will solve some thorny issues like the chemical composition of the soil, cosmic radiation, medical emergencies and so on. Don't get me wrong, I think with 8 billion people to spare we can afford to lose as many as they are needed as long as they volunteer. I am a strong proponent of individual will and agency and so I despise people who stop progress for fear of losing a few lives. But the author provides nothing but wishful thinking and, when faced with a problem he cannot fix with a simplistic solution, he pivots to another, bigger yet unrelated, problem to which he finds even bigger solutions.

  In fact, without solving the basics, like how to get there in one piece and how to support life once we get there, chapters about terraforming Mars (in centuries!!) are completely useless.

  I like Stephen Petranek's optimism. It inspires me to want to look at space colonization more carefully, find solutions and finally do it. However, when that scrutiny is turned on the book itself, only dust remains. This book is more like a science fiction story from a guy who didn't know how to write fiction and not a realistic manual on how to achieve human expansion on Mars.

  Bottom line: I want us to get to Mars, and quick, but this book is nothing but day dreaming.

  In a world where humans have solved the issues with biological-electronic interfacing you have people, electronically enhanced people, biologically enhanced robots and robots. One of these part biological robots is thinking for itself and... that's the story in All Systems Red. Some corporate shenanigans, some shooting, some world building, but in the end I wasn't charmed by the characters, the idea or the world itself. Probably it all becomes better in the next (at least five) books written by Martha Wells in the same series, but I don't think I am going to follow through.

  Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed reading the book. It was fun, it was pulp, it was short, but I didn't feel that need for more when it ended.

  One of the things that turn me off from AI stories is when they act and feel and think exactly like a human. In this book in particular, this makes sense somewhat, because the main character is a mix of electronics and biological tissue, but I felt no real difference between the bio-robot and the robo-human characters. System AIs were stupid and robotic while Murderbot is watching TV shows for fun because... it has a skin?

  I can only assume that further down the line they discover it's a Robocop-like situation, that might fix this obvious issue with the story, but frankly I don't care.

  Bottom line: a short fun read that lead me nowhere, but was good while on vacation.

  I only remember about Ready Player One that it was fun and pleasant to read, with kids exploring a virtual universe of cultural references to reach the magical MacGuffin. Ready Player Two is almost none of that, instead being boring, by the numbers and most of it written as exposition. It's like Sorento tried to write a Ready Player One book. I really did not like it. What was Ernest Cline thinking?!

  The exposition writing style is the thing that annoyed me first. You know when you are reading a book and it has to explain some thing that happened in a previous book, so it takes some well placed paragraphs to talk in the past about that? Well, this book starts with a third of it written like this. A complete third of the book is just exposition! And maybe it would have been OK if it were fun exposition, but no. It basically says "remember the good fun we had in the other book and the glorious feeling of victory? Well, that all went to shit immediately".

  It then proceeds on explaining (also in past tense) how two incredibly sci-fi things just... happened: first a complete machine to brain interface that is just there and you can put it on your head and then... an interstellar starship?! Which, BTW, does nothing for the entire book. It's an impossible to believe part of the story that then has no impact on it.

  Since the Oasis is basically Meta, with a working metaverse, the author does some lazy mental gymnastics to explain how it is still a good thing and how Wade is not Zuckerberg. Only it fails completely. I mean, we are meant to believe Wade temporarily joins the dark side only to recover later, while still remaining a positive character, but he comes up as a hypocrite who has no actual control over himself or what happens. After reading the first half of the book you hope Zuckerberg is going to take over, because Wade is so much worse. And then, the antagonist and a new quest are revealed by matter-of-factly presenting another impossible technological leap.

  No. This book is a total failure. Every character (including the wonderful do-gooder Samantha, voice of conscience and princess of awesome) is unlikeable, the writing style is amateurish and feels like an accountant explains in a board meeting what has happened while the plot is full of holes and deus-ex-machinas. But worst of all, by far, is that the book is not fun at all. 

  Clive Thompson is a technology journalist and therefore perfectly position to write a book about how digital technology really affects us. Does it destroy the world? No! Instead, it makes it better. Most of the time and if used well. In Smarter Than You Think, we read about how computers take over some of our tasks, then enhance them when used cooperatively, how new ways of thinking, awareness and literacy are unlocked by technology and how education can be used to improve how we use tech which then in turn can be used to upgrade education. So this is one non fiction book that paints technology in a rosy light and looks forward to the future. We need more of these.

  A few things popped up for me while reading this book. First a quote about teachers and medics. If you reach into the past and you pluck a doctor from 20 years ago and bring them in the present, they will not function well, as they did not keep up to date with the latest discoveries and techniques developed. However, a teacher from 200 years ago can still find a job teaching children. The job hasn't fundamentally changed in centuries... until now. Reading about how good teachers have evolved to make use of digital technology is inspiring.

  Then there was the concept of pluralistic ignorance, where people choose to behave in ways they do not adhere to because they are unaware of the position of the people around them. It was sobering. The book shows how the Internet can help dispel this problem by sharing awareness. That is not the same as "spreading awareness", the governmental and social warrior mindset which requires all people to think alike, but the increase in transparency of what people really think.

  Finally there was a small bit about how pessimistic or negative views are statistically interpreted as more serious, realistic and intelligent than positive ones. Which makes writing the book a bit braver and also explains why everyone is whining all the time.

  Of course, this book was written in 2013. Many things have happened since and the toxicity of public discourse combined with the insidious techniques corporations and groups in power use to manipulate everything can sour even the most optimistic of people. However I found the book still relevant and bringing a fresh sense of hope, without feeling like someone tried to push their worldview down my throat or predict the future for me. Instead it studies the many and often unpredictable ways in which people use technology to make things better.

  I can't say it's a masterpiece, but I enjoyed reading a positive and realistic book like Smarter Than You Think. It was a welcome alternative to the gloom and doom we see directed towards us on a daily basis.

  A Lush and Seething Hell is a collection of two novellas: The Sea Dreams It Is the Sky, where vast magical forces play with death and torture in a fictional Chile inspired South-American country, and My Heart Struck Sorrow, a story of dark magic working through verse and song.

  John Hornor Jacobs writes well, dragging the reader into the worlds of his mind, however I found it difficult to stay there. Perhaps it's the alert lifestyle of today, full of interruptions and distractions, but it felt easy for me to stop reading and it needed some effort to start again. It took me two weeks to read it all and even then it required a conscious decision to push through, though it's not a large book.

  Both stories have a common structure: people who are following the narrative of another and thus are drawn into the same world. Reading about reading, so to speak. They have elements of cosmic horror, although most of it is implied or not clearly explained - the traditional way of approaching the genre - intimating that even the tiniest brushes with these hidden realms are terrifyingly dangerous. What they both reminded me repeatedly is House of Leaves, though not so convolutedly detailed, and only marginally of any Lovecraftian work.

  Bottom line: I liked both stories, the world building, the style, the slowly getting under the skin horror elements, but I did feel the writing dragged a little.

  Something that feels inspired heavily by Octavia Butler, Semiosis starts with a very interesting premise and continues through generations of human colonists on an alien planet. However, each chapter introduces a new generation, thus abandoning characters and attachments introduced before. In the end it simply feels too clinical, with characterization lacking luster, while still remaining a captivating read.

  The plot centers around a human colony on a distant alien planet. There are only a few dozen people and, with some equipment failures, they find themselves at the mercy of the world's inhabitants. Which are intelligent plants! It is a very interesting premise and both the generational span of the story and the cold calculations of different species that must coexist despite their massive differences reminded me a bit of Xenogenesis. However, Sue Burke didn't have the cruelty required to thoroughly violate her characters that Butler had, so in the end the mood was more positive, perhaps reminiscent of '60s sci-fi, with lots of deliberations and rational arguments as a major part of the story.

  Bottom line: I liked the book. Could have been better, but as a debut it's pretty good. I will probably read the second book sooner or later, because the world of Pax is so full of potential, however I do believe Semiosis can be taken as a standalone story without the need for a continuation.

  Edward O. Wilson was a biologist who died at the end of 2021, aged 94. Nicknamed "ant man" for his world renowned expertise of ants, he championed concepts such as sociobiology and biodiversity. Reportedly, he was a very nice man, beloved by most of the people he interacted with. And yet, I didn't hear of him because of his scientific writings, but because of a vitriolic article published by Scientific American. In it, the author used Wilson's death and the renewed interest in his autobiography, Naturalist, to decry Wilson's views ("problematic beliefs"). He had tried to explain everything through biological lenses, for example that individual characteristics are caused by evolution and those characteristics cause the characteristics of a group or society or race in a particular environment. The article's author considered that as proof of "scientific racism", but was immediately shut down by scores of scientists who debunked her entire article and pretty much proved she didn't even read the books she was supposedly basing her writing on.

  So even when I try to filter out the political idiocy that pollutes every aspect of modern life and try to keep up to date with science and technology, I still fall into these toxic holes. Ironically, one of the last chapters in Naturalist talks about how weird it was for one of his colleagues to try to explain biology ideologically (in that case Marxism). Anyway, so I decided to read the book. I usually love autobiographies, especially those of scientists and other driven people, because it makes me feel as they did. Even if prompted by an ugly example of human stupidity and malice, still something good could come of it.

  Alas, while the book is interesting and takes the reader through much of Wilson's life and work, it merely describes his passion for nature, rather than evoke it. Even as it starts with a personal history and childhood, it feels strangely impersonal. A small boy with hearing issues and partial vision in one eye (accidentally caused by him trying to handle a spiked fish), he was nevertheless taught to never run away from a fight by his father, partially schooled in educational institutions that prepared children for military careers and had overall the belief that anything is possible, once you put your mind to it.

  I have no doubt that his approach to life wasn't as analytical as it is portrayed in the book, but what exactly that was is hard to glimpse from this biography. Wilson published Naturalist when he was 65 and, while I am sure he worked some time on it, he treated it as any of his scientific books at the time: facts, history based on journals, actions, expectations, results. I liked the book and I liked Wilson, but I wouldn't particularly recommend Naturalist for anything than a glimpse in Wilson's nature (pardon the pun).

  Strange the Dreamer was a book that, while not perfect, was well written and showing a lot of promise. If anything, I was surprised to see that Muse of Nightmares will be the second and final book of the series, because I couldn't understand how everything begun or hinted at in the first book could be wrapped up. And indeed it wasn't, which doesn't mean that I didn't enjoy reading the book. I feel the series lost a lot of unrealized potential, though. By focusing on the main characters, now starstruck lovers that would do anything for each other, Laini Taylor left all the others behind, without a growth arc or closure. Not only that, but she also brings in another antagonist, from the past of one of the slain gods, so she has even less space to work in.

  Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed the first book so much that I immediately started on the sequel and I've read this one really fast, too. It was entertaining, it was exciting and it was intense in places. But it wasn't better than the first book and the way it ended, with everything nice and cozy and people realizing their dreams and resolving their inner conflicts and helping each other and so on and son on, made have a feeling of jarring fakeness.

  In short, it's a decent book to finish the story, but it went by too fast, paying no attention to characters dragged along from the beginning and left in the dust, focusing too much on love scenes and less on consequential events, using McGuffins all over the place and making people not think of solutions that were employed just pages later by the antagonist using their own powers.

  Like Minya using her powers to force ghosts to do her bidding, regardless of their own desires, so did Taylor corral her characters through the narrow confines of her planned storyline.

  Strange the Dreamer is a fantasy book with good writing, characters and story. I will probably start reading the second book in the series immediately. The style reminded me of Brandon Sanderson a bit: beautiful and imaginative world, empathetic and compelling characters who are mostly good at heart, even when they are villainous and a bright spirit that celebrates love, curiosity and exploration.

  More than that, this is a normal book, one that is focused on the plot and characters and has no agenda other than telling a good story. I had feared the worst when I saw Laini Taylor is a writer of Young Adult fiction, has bright magenta hair and started with comics. Glad to see my fears so unfounded.

  The main characters are Lazlo, an orphan boy with a love for knowledge and myths, obsessed by the existence of a mythical city of the desert, and Sarai, a half goddess with blue skin and a rather sad existence. But there is more: libraries full of mystery, alchemy, magic, gods, desert warriors, young love, explosions, a sky fortress and more.

  What I felt was the biggest issue with the book is the introduction of so many characters that had an episodic effect on the story or even none at all. There is a part of the story where there are hints of rivalry and intrigue with another character, then it escalates and then... months pass, on the road, and those two characters don't interact at all. The desert trip itself is less than fulfilling, after reading so much about how cruel and difficult the desert is. And then there are characters like the warriors or the girl who climbs things for fun. I hope they will have more of a role in the second book, because otherwise why introduce them at all?

  Bottom line: I feel great promise from Laini Taylor. I liked this book a lot and it's her second, but I expect even greater things from her in the future.

  Dave Grohl sounds like a very nice person. He says only good things about people, he is passionate and goofy and everybody seems to like him. The Storyteller: Tales of Life and Music has a whooping rating of 4.5 on Goodreads with many stellar reviews, especially the audio version that Grohl is narrating himself. But I only read the book, which to me seemed to lack a lot of the strong emotions I am used to associate with well written autobiographies. And a book called "The Storyteller" should feel well written.

  It's not like I didn't enjoy the book, but it never goes deeply into anything. Made out of disjointed chapters that factually focus on various events in Dave's life, it merely describes Grohl's feelings, but doesn't make the reader empathize and feel them. There is a scene (I call it a scene, because it really does feel like a PG-rated movie rather than reading an honest self reflection) where the band is playing in Sweden, Dave falls and breaks his leg. He doesn't feel the pain, because of all of the excitement and adrenaline (ahem!) and gets back on stage and plays from a chair while a doctor is holding his leg in position. After the concert he starts feeling the pain but the chapter ends. The whole thing is related just as deadpan as I did here. You don't get to experience being on stage, singing with a broken leg in front of so many people, the concern of other people washing over you, the pain, the fear or even the effect of having to play the guitar and sing from a sitting down position. It all feels remote, curated, antiseptic.

  You know when actors talk about their involvement in a movie and they praise everybody and everything, making it sound all great and perfect? That's what The Storyteller felt like to me.

  And I did check out the comments and reviews for the book and, while others feel like me, most people seem to have emotionally connected with Dave Grohl and thoroughly enjoyed the experience. Is it because they were already fans and loved any piece of lore they could get about their favorite performer? Is it because I didn't get it? The book told stories, but I didn't feel them true. A better title would have been: "A Birdseye View of Dave Grohl's life: Random Scenes Seen From Afar"

  Bottom line: an informative yet ineffectual biography.

  I was expecting a deep dive into the fascinating biological realm of the fungi - I even postponed reading it until I could give it my full attention. Instead, I got a long string of tiny chapters, each telling some story related to fungi, but never going anywhere. A book that is part journal, part cook book and part history anecdotes and has the compelling title The Secret Life of Fungi cannot say so little about fungi and be so shallow.

  It's not even a long book, it's a one evening read, but it never explains enough to shed light on the subject, it brings in unrelated ideas from too many other directions and has no continuity or narrative thread. It's just a series of episodes that might be interesting, but most of the time are completely forgettable. I don't know what Aliya Whiteley thought when deciding on this format, but I personally loathe it. She doesn't love fungi, she loves hearing herself say things.

  While it happens after Alien: The Cold Forge and features one of its characters, Alien: Into Charybdis is standalone enough to not feel like a sequel. It can be read by itself with no problems. That being said, you should start with The Cold Forge, also by Alex White as it brings not only extra context, but is a very decent book.

  Into Charybdis tells the story of human sacrifice on the altar of corporate/military greed, with the aliens as a trigger and then used more like a backdrop. In that sense, it's very similar to Cold Forge. While there is plenty of creature action, the focus is never on them, but on psychotic humans who are the true monsters. That's both interesting and frustrating, but there are plenty of new features that subvert expectations and expand the Alien universe even if, as curious as this sounds, both novels are set in the Prometheus timeline of Alien and even features black goo. That someone can write a decent story in the universe corrupted by that stupid movie is a testament to White's talent.

  Now, without spoiling stuff too much, there is an idea that I really want explored further, the one of the human alien hybrid. While the book ends things pretty definitively, there is some wiggle room left so that that idea could be continued in a third book. It would be a terrible loss to have reached this point and not go a little further.

  Bottom line: I liked The Cold Forge and I liked Into Charybdis, which managed to outdo the first book without just making things bigger and exploding more and instead bringing new ideas, building on the old ones and even subverting expectations. I don't know about other Alien books, but I will follow what Alex White writes next in this universe.

  I've read several fantasy satires before and some of them were absolutely brilliant. Now, I am not saying that Dark Lord of Derkholm is not good, for it is competently written and complex in both plot and characters. What I am saying is that it is not that funny. Reading the book is like hearing a corporate colleague make fun of what happens at the office, which should be entertaining and humorous, but comes off as sad and frustrating. The trigger for change in the magical land is a conspiracy of women who couldn't bother to consider the emotional consequences of their actions to the people they supposedly love. And the ending was terrible as well, with a slap over the head moral that lacks any subtlety.

  I didn't know Diana Wynne Jones was famous. She wrote Howl's Moving Castle, which I had no idea was a book, on which Ghibli's anime was based, among many other works. Anyway, I had no expectations, but still I stand disappointed. First published in 1998, Dark Lord of Derkholm is quite prescient with its very interesting premise: corporate psychos from Earth (or something similar) manage to find a doorway to a magical land which they immediately proceed to exploit for their own gain. The inhabitants of said magical land need to find a way to protect it.

  The book is a not so subtle satire of our own magically beautiful land that we, through inaction, let it be despoiled by greedy idiots who can't think further than the length of their noses. But that's all that it is. There are a lot of inconsequential characters, a lot of setup and world building that leads nowhere and a final act in which so many new characters and races and lands are added for no good reason. The ending neatly closes all story lines, but in a blunt and narrated way that I felt very dissatisfying.

  Bottom line: interesting premise, competent writing, but a rather bland and inconsistent story.

  Oh, wow! I vaguely remember Sven Hassel as an author of war novels, written with irony and humor, because this is how I remember people referring to his books. I might have even read some of them, but I was a child and if I did I don't remember and clearly they made the wrong impression on me. Because reading Legion of the Damned, especially now, in times of war in Ukraine threatening to spill over, was an amazing experience. I think this is one of the most anti war books I know about and one of the best I've read. One thing is for sure: Vladimir Putin did not read this book.

  Apparently Sven Hassel himself asked that this book be considered a documentary and in it there is a scene where a few German soldiers, unwillingly fighting for the Nazi regime, swear that whoever survives must write a book to expose to the world the horror and hell they went through. Well, he did write the book and thirteen others after. I don't know if I will have the courage to go through them all.

  The book starts with Hassel being tried for desertion and, because of a woman sacrificing herself to say she seduced him into it, his life is "spared" and he is sent to a concentration camp. He survives the atrocities there only to be "pardoned" and sent to the war, as part of a battalion of convicts. More horror follows, only for him to be captured by the Russian army and send to a prison camp. Again, pain and pointless suffering ensues, but he survives and escapes, only to be sent to fight again in a war he and all of his comrades consider pointless, barbaric and inhumane. He suffers personal loss, he almost goes mad, but he has his friends and together they keep each other alive, mentally and physically. Then he is wounded and has to go through the horror of military hospital, where people are actually competent and kind, but death and suffering is inevitable. And after all of this, the ending might be the most heartbreaking of it all.

  The traditional portrayal of hell is a place where devils take great pleasure torturing sinners in perpetuity. You read this book and you realize how childishly optimistic that vision is. Try to imagine something similar, but where devils are educated, kind and compassionate and punishing sinners is just as much a punishment for them, forced to do it and loathing the pointlessness and brutality of it all. Yet one cannot escape the system Satan implemented, himself too far removed to be witnessing the horror and pain he architected and immune to retribution.

  Sven Hassel is a very good writer, perhaps because he is writing from his heart and it just pours out of him, and the subject is terrible and captivating at the same time. Yet the best part of the book, for me, was the feeling of joy in the little things, the things we take for granted and these damned people enjoyed every single one of them, whenever rarely afforded, to the fullest. Stripped of the complacent veneer of civilization that most humans live under, they lived every moment as if it were the best and last of them all. At no time is there an accusation or bitterness towards another people or group, or attempts to vilify anyone other than the bourgeois and generals that started and perpetuated war, from both sides, to appease unknowable urges that no ordinary person understands or supports.

Bottom line: a very strongly recommended book, one that I think is so apropos of these times, not only because it applies to war in general, but also because (from pure coincidence) the war locations described are places like Donetsk and Kharkiv (which is razed to the ground in the book, as the Germans retreat). The writing is both sweet and personal, educated and educational. It's a heart laid bare and printed into words. A must read.

  Imagine if the fairy godmother would teach Cinderella the very basics of magic, warned her to not do it, then promptly vanished forever. Then imagine Cinderella was French right around the time of the French Revolution. That's the plot in a nutshell.

  All That Glitters has the hallmarks of greatness: good writing, a very interesting world and a character that grows with the reader. However, I found it really difficult to finish it. I believe the reason was the telegraphing of the protagonist's suffering, making me think of all the horrid things that were going to happen to her, only for her to actually find rather convenient and facile ways of getting out of trouble. 

  And I have to tell you that it was a weird feeling throughout. Made me feel guilty for fearing of all the bad things that were predictably going to happen to the heroine and then resentful of Gita Trelease for letting her off the hook. I mean, this girl and her sister have to deal with the death of their parents, systemic classism, being disconsidered for being women, having a violent addict and gambler of a brother that leeches from them even the money for food and rent, nobles, sorcerers and, of course, the worse of it all, romantic triangles! We can't miss those. And the only solution, a form of magic that feeds on one's sorrow and actual blood and only gives illusions in return.

  Now, of course, this is the first book in a bloody series, luckily a duology, at least for now. There are no standalone books anymore. Therefore the author has all the opportunity to grow as a writer, torture her protagonist to her and the readers' content and determine the most important thing of them all: who is Camille going to marry? Can you imagine being able to turn anything iron into coins for a limited time and not once considering what (or who) else can you turn into what? Maybe that will happen in the next books, but I won't be reading them.

  Bottom line: a definite success of a debut and full of potential and value. However it seems the author and myself are focusing on different things in life and even if we witness the same story, we only want to see the parts the other doesn't. I guess the book appeals more to the feminine side of the reader.