Walking on the Moon

This is another Murderbot novel, and I’ve not had much to say about the preceding chapters beyond “good fun.” in Network Effect, I found that Martha Wells brought together a lot of the character threads that she placed in earlier novellas into a powerful emotional climax in the middle of a rollicking space adventure.

She has spent those early novellas putting the sets in place and establishing character details that feel like tropes – and in some ways are – that are combined here to have more depth and power than I had been expecting. She snuck up on me, she did and in the best way. I’m not going to say much more so she can sneak up on you.

Strongly Recommended.

Record of a Spaceborn Few is Becky Chambers again creating a character drive SF story in a richly textured world. It’s more a coming-of-age story than an adventure story, but those are adventures in their own way.

I re-read my gushing review of A Closed and Common Orbit and a lot of what I said there applies to Record as well. It’s set in a different part of her galaxy, but the same intricacy and depth is there. As many SF authors do, she creates a society based on familiar social principles pushed far enough to make things unfamiliar and uses that to talk about those principles. I find the way those ideas are explored is more thoughtful and reasonable than many more polemic versions of that setup.

Her writing remains impeccable, though I did find one chapter a little more on the nose than I was expecting. It didn’t take me out of the story, but it did jar a bit.

Strongly Recommended.

I do like me some Carl Hiaasen. Fever Beach is his usual chaotic and comedic send up of politics and people who annoy him. This time he’s set his sights on right wing militia types and politicians who take advantage of them. I’m no fan of fools with guns or folks who use them for their own ends, so I enjoyed Fever Beach a good deal.

I think this was written before the uptick in ICE enforcement. I understand that these are different, but if you are looking to escape from images of folks in camo toting guns around American cities, I’d escape elsewhere.

Recommended.

I normally read books in the strict sense of the word, which is to say I don’t do a lot of audiobooks. That’s not prescriptive, it’s just the way I generally prefer to engage with books. But Nate DiMeo who does The Memory Palace, read the 1930 version of the The Secret of the Old Clock when it entered the public domain this year. I’d heard him read Walt Whitman’s Song of Myself as a bonus episode of the Memory Palace before the 2016 election. That so entranced me that I pretty much listen any time he wants to read a long form piece. So, Nancy Drew.

I quite liked it. The mystery is twisty enough that it keeps you engaged, even if the title gives a bit away. The characters are for kids, so there’s only so much going on there. But everything worked and was engaging enough without talking down too far.

What I really did enjoy was seeing how 1930 the whole book was. There’s a plot point about the fact that many roads are still unpaved. One of the characters is an elderly woman whose health is declining rapidly and without a family around her, there’s really no hope of health care without having substantial means. And the depiction of a black caretaker is right out of Amos and Andy. Nate read the book cold and his surprise at this portrayal is a thing. He presses on, but he’s outright apologetic at several points.

It was also interesting to see what people put in children’s books at the time. The strict gender roles are in effect, but Nancy is depicted as being very self-sufficient. I remember a line to the effect of “Of course, Nancy Drew could change a tire, but didn’t relish the task.” She also fixes a boat engine. Great stuff. There’s some evidence pilfering and illegal liquor as well. I think I support all of that when needs must.

I see there was a 1959 rewrite, which I expect sanded some of those edges off, but having a look at the original was good fun.

Recommended.