(Illuminae 3) Obsidio

“Hey, if hostile battleship takeovers were easy, everybody would do it.”

“The die is cast. But today we will shake the table upon which it lands.”

) & full cast

(Illuminae 3) Obsidio by Amie Kaufman & Jay Kristoff

Audibook Narrator(s): See List Below...
epub - 539 pages. Audiobook - 13:02:00 total

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My Rating:

HINT: This is book three of a trilogy. There are spoilers in this review. If you read the first two books in the trilogy, you'll be starving for this one.

Highly recommended 4.5 star science fiction novel. Obsidio is book three in the Illuminae series and here, at the end of the trilogy, we learn what Illuminae files are. But that's largely the conclusion of this book.

We start in a darker place. What started as a criminal hijacking of a criminal mining operation so far from the civilized galaxy that the nearest taco truck of a jump point station feels like it's a light year away - yet this bad actor company attacking another loose cannon company is now teetering on... not killing billions of people. No, not even trillions of people, but 2 entire universes. Billions of galaxies in each.

Generally: Spoilers certainly.
What? Two freaking UNIVERSES?

Yes, on a macro scale: This little SNAFU has developed some serious consequences. But this is a people story!

(Illuminae 2) Gemina

“It may comfort you to know that your death, while astonishingly violent, will likely be mercifully swift.”

“This tiny moment. In between the time you decide to pull a trigger and the time death arrives. There's just you and it and everything you're about to take away. It's too big. It goes forever.”

(Illuminae 2) Gemina by Amie Kaufman & Jay Kristoff

Audiobook Narrator: Full Cast Listed below
Epub 646 pages, Audiobook 12:33:39 total

Title and Author links to where you may purchase the book. This is a rating primarily of the audiobook although I did read along in much of the ebook.... It easier to read the ebook in portrait, if your eyes are about 300% better than mine.

My Rating:

Highly recommended 5 star science fiction thriller novel, extraordinaire. If you don't want spoilers don't read the reviews of a second book in a trilogy? A review of a second book in a multi-book series is not possible without spoilers -- unless you say just about nothing, which I've grown weary of doing.

I will try NOT to be explicitly & blatantly spoiling but if you read even one sentence further, and you didn't want spoilers

... We both messed up. You read the blurbs, other reviews, and now this one.

Here we go...
We start again in media res. We are in the proceedings of the trial of Bei-Tech's massive crime which is pretty much all of what the previous book, Illuminae, is about. By now we know who is on trial, who they are related to, what atrocities they've wrought, and why Kady's boyfriend, per se, was ever at Kerenza to begin with. (Gives me Glenn Close quivers. Not sorry.)

Illuminae

 

(Illuminae 1) Illuminae by Amie Kaufman & Jay Kristoff

Audiobook Narrator: Full Cast Listed below Tiltle and Author links to where you may purchase the book. This is a rating primarily of the audiobook although I did read along in much of the ebook.... which isn't exactly easy. It's a visually challenging book.

My Rating:

Highly recommended 5-star science fiction thriller novel. I believe if there were a writer's class strictly for "in media res" it would show this book. Kady is breaking up with Ezra, period! She's escaping school so as to not see him... except the school, well the whole planet is under attack from space, and things are blowing up, and it's an illegal space mining thing more like a planet that is largely ice, as I recall.

Generally: Just try to keep up. Things are happening fast. You don't know anything, everything is confusing but it's okay... you've been there. If you're young you'll recognize it, if your family has fought, you'll recognize it, I made notes about "the fog of war" as it kind of struck me deep and personal at some points.

Thing is, when life does this, and I think it does this to everyone, there's just forward. If that is not what is happening with you when "that" happens or if you don't very quickly decide that's what you are going to be doing right about now... you're out of the game. In a book like this, or in 'the fog of war' you're likely dead.

No joke, survival rate is real low when real life sh.t starts getting tornado/hurricane/earthquake/volcano/war like REAL.

A Memory Called Empire

 

(Teixcalaan 1) A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine

Narrator: Amy Landon, Thank you for your excellent performance.

I pre-reviewed this having finished 70+% of it. I had issues but this novel being a Hugo winner I assumed things would really turn around. Today, less than a week later I'm mildly recommended this 2020 Hugo Award winning novel! A 3.5 star science fiction/thriller/suspense novel.

With this one... what threw me off were two things. My glowing "pre-reviews", which are all scrapped. And reviews which I routinely try to ignore were all glowing with praise, excitement, maybe even some worship. I do try to ignore other reviews, but really, let's be honest. When we grossly disagree, do we really want to stir to pot, so to speak?

The things I wish I did straight up in every review is say, "good/bad" this genre, (fantasy, gnomes & vampires), sci-fi epic expansionists, or so forth. I recommend or not, maybe something I thought cool or that sucked. That way in a sentence or two you can largely make up your mind, if you trust me, to add it to a list or scrap it for later. Then I try to be consistent with babble, but fail miserably.

First thing I messed up on this novel was thinking "Hugos" mean something. I recall thinking J. D. Powers meant something then read some article where they were selling me that McDonald's was the best restaurant in the USA.

Born in Fire by K. F. Breene

(Fire & Ice Trilogy 1) Born in Fire: Ebook: 26 Chapters, 259 pages (Pocketbook Pro app),
Audiobook: 10:24:10 

Audiobook Narrator: Nicole Poole

For spoiler sales blurbs, which I attempt to avoid. Read the sales blurbs at Goodreads, Bookbub, or Amazon Ebook & Amazon Whispersync Audio or your favorite book source

(Fire & Ice Trilogy 1) Born in Fire by K. F. Breene

My Rating:

I recommend you put Ms. Breene on your "To Read" list. I've read at least 10 of her books, many of them twice. I've not found one I would not recommend.

First, thanks Katie for Born In Fire. I haven't laughed so hard since Don Quioxte in 2019.

Generally:
Our protagonist is Reagan. Reagan isn't easy to like at first. She comes off a bit pretentious. No worries. I've learned to trust Ms. Breene.

Reagan is a bounty hunter in New Orleans. She was strutting down Bourbon Street in her black army boots, made for kicking in teeth, black leather pants with gun holstered on her leg, and a sword strapped to her back. A little girl broke away from her parents and ran towards her. She stopped to pick up a string of pink beads on the street. After picking them up she said to Reagan, "Pink's my favorite color."

Reagan stared back at her, struck mute. Then replied, "Mine too." The little girl smiled and ran back toward her parents.

"So is mine?" She thought, "No way!", but worse, "Why wasn't that kid afraid of her?"

A Pivot in Time

Cowards die many times before their death. The valiant never taste of death but once.” —Shakespeare (Julius Caesar, Act II, Scene II)

 

(Alien Artifact 2) A Pivot in Time by Douglas E. Richards

Pivot in time: 9 Parts, 62 chapters 417 pages 13:59:19 total audiobook time.

Audiobook Narrator: Dan Bittner

For spoiler sales blurbs, which I attempt to avoid, or to pick up your copy to enjoy check out Goodreads, Bookbub, or Amazon Ebook, Amazon Whispersync or your favorite book source.

My Rating:  

Highly recommended 4.5 star science fiction/thriller/suspense novel. The story of an "alien artifact" discovered in the earlier novel (Alien Artifact 1) The Enigma Cube and the continuing adventures of the people involved in learning to understand this artifact that continue in this book.

Generally: We start in media res (in the middle of a scene) with Otto Richter, also known as Jim Connolly, waking up, in chains, a prisoner. Fortunately for "Jim" he's fluent in several languages, so when Senator Marcus Dorso starts asking him questions in Latin, he isn't entirely baffled.

No mistake, Jim is baffled and confused. Who wouldn't be after traveling 2000± years into the past from 1971, causing him to black out and luckily not die with his heart disease. An experiment only the great Otto Richter would dare with his near super intellect in his rather imaginative effort to reunite with his granddaughter, Kelly Connolly, who we also know from The Enigma Cube.

Meanwhile, back in 2027, The Chinese and their super advanced technology, along with their iron will, have not given up on obtaining the US "Enigma Cube". The Chinese have found another duplicate of the alien artifact. They intend on capturing the US copy, Kelly Connelly, and Justine Boyd who both appear to understand how it works, so they will have both known cubes and be the exclusive power in the world to wield such a powerful device.

My Notable Notes: These are just notes to remind me what was going on during any given time reading the novel and are not meant to be all-inclusive. I often take no notes.

• Ch 1-32 Otto goes back to Roman Times of Jesus in an attempt to reunite with his own family in a convoluted scheme that should land him in 2027 eventually.
• Meanwhile, our protagonists Kelly and super soldier Justine <spoiler>

Middlegame by Seanan McGuire

I'm writing this review on 7/2/20. I finished reading Middlegame on May 31, 2020. This is relevant with regard to a fairy tale I will mention later.

I picked up this ebook & audiobook after reading an article on the 2020 Hugo award nominee finalists. Middlegame was among them and there-after I read a great deal of praise for Seanan McGuire.

I'd never heard of Seanan McGuire before that article. I read Middlegame. Now I own several Seanan McGuire books & audiobooks.


Lately, when reading, I tend to think, "This reminds me of…"

The Left Hand of Darkness

By Ursula K. Le Guine

Read in 3 session on June 20, 25, & 27, 2020. Recommended.  4.5 stars rounded down.

Charlie Jane Anders’ Afterword comments on the Left Hand of Darkness immediately brings to my mind, Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift.

The one thing I remember so vividly about Gulliver’s Travels is that in addition to it being a travelogue, it was even more a handbook on Governments and political etiquette. 

In so many ways, The Left Hand of Darkness is Gulliver’s Travels... aka "Genly’s Travels."

I think many folks were moved by Le Guin’s “Abisexual” alien humans.  It might have impacted me more had I not been so impacted by Octavia Butler’s “Dawn” decades ago.  That book literally haunted me for decades.  Still does.