A Library Girl's Familiar Diversions

REVIEW: Six Wakes (book) by Mur Lafferty

2026-10-25T23:41:57.444-05:00

Six Wakes is a science fiction mystery. I bought my copy new.

Review:

In the future depicted in this book, cloning was invented a long time ago and is now used to help people with the money for it be functionally immortal. You get a "mind map" made and, when you die, your mind map will be put into a new body, and you'll continue on just as you were, minus whatever experiences you had since your last mind map.

This book stars six newly awakened clones on a ship traveling to a new planet, hopefully a new home. The six clones are all criminals who were given the option of being the "awake and aware" crew on the ship, making sure nothing goes wrong with the ship or any of the passengers in stasis, in exchange for full pardons once their work is done. However, something very clearly has gone wrong.

Maria, the ship's cook and janitor, is one of the first to wake up, surrounded by evidence of a bloody struggle. There's also Wolfgang (the intense security chief), Katrina (the captain), Joanna (the crew's doctor), Paul (the ship's engineer, an absolute mess), and Hiro (the pilot). Neither Maria nor any of the others have mind maps that go back further than the start of their voyage, despite evidence that the ship has been traveling for decades. Most of their previous bodies show evidence that they were attacked, but there are a couple details that add to the group's confusion and concern. For one thing, Hiro's previous self seems to have committed suicide - according to the rules of cloning, those who commit suicide aren't supposed to be brought back via cloning and mind-maps. What are they supposed to do now that Hiro's already been brought back? Also, Katrina's previous self is grievously injured but not actually dead. She could be an important witness, but, at the same time, two instances of a person aren't legally allowed to exist at once.

There's no evidence that any of the passengers in stasis were affected by whatever happened, and the only awake and aware humans on board are the six clones who recently woke up. Their ship's AI is damaged, and their route has been changed. It seems likely that one of the six crew members was responsible for everything that happened, but, if so, which one of them killed everyone, and why?

I love me a good sci-fi mystery, and this was definitely one of the good ones. It was twisty, with a limited cast of characters, and it made full use of the fact that it was science fiction - this is not a mystery that could have been transplanted into a contemporary setting.

Every crew member had secrets, and the fact that they all had a criminal background of some sort (their fellow crew members weren't allowed to know the specifics of their crimes, although they could sometimes guess) meant that any one of them could be hiding means and motive to kill the rest. Hiro might have been responsible for changing the ship's route, but he'd died before all of the rest of them. Maria, as the cook, might have been responsible for the deadly changes to the food printer, but it wasn't poison that killed most of them. And was there a hidden reason why Katrina wanted her previous self immediately killed, or was she simply justifiably horrified at the thought of having two instances of herself in the world?

Readers gradually learned everyone's secrets via sections from everyone's POVs and flashbacks to their lives prior to coming on to the ship. Seeing everything come together was a lot of horrifying fun.

REVIEW: Road Trip with a Vampire (book) by Jenna Levine

2026-10-25T22:34:21.587-05:00

Road Trip with a Vampire is paranormal romance, the last book in Levine's vampire series. I bought my copy new.

Review:

Grizelda "Zelda" Watson spent hundreds of years as a giant magical trouble-maker, teaming up with vampire pals like Reginald "Reggie" Cleaves (see My Vampire Plus-One) to have fun and cause chaos. However, due to an event that got out of her control, Zelda was scared into going straight, and she's spent recent years pretending to be a regular human, running a yoga studio with two friends who have no idea what she can do and who she used to be. But trying to keep her magic bottled up is easier said than done, and the tiny spells she does to bleed some of it off don't seem to be enough anymore.

Then she meets hot amnesiac vampire Peter, who Reggie sent her way in the hopes that she'd be able to help him figure out what happened to him. Zelda doesn't want to add a vampire to her new "normal" life, but, for a vampire, Peter seems very nice. Unfortunately, whoever he was working with in the past that he can't remember seems to very much not be nice. Reluctantly, Zelda decides that a road trip is in order: she and Peter will get his memories back, deal with whoever's been threatening him and those near him, and, in the meantime, Zelda will figure out just how much magic she needs to use on a regular basis to keep her powers in check.

This wasn't bad, but I'd say it was probably the weakest of Levine's vampire books, and it included what I felt were a lot of missed opportunities. A big one was Zelda herself. This was a woman with impressive powers, who was so old that, for once, it wasn't the vampire of the pair who could be accused of cradle-robbing, and who had no solid memories of where she came from and what her people were like. It felt like there was a whole big story there about Zelda's origins, and I thought we might at least get a glimpse of some of it as she learned that being more comfortable in her own skin did not necessarily equate to the deaths of all the fragile mortals around her. Unfortunately, Levine opted to do absolutely nothing with the mysteries surrounding Zelda's past.

I enjoyed Zelda and Peter's interactions, and the progression of their romance was nice enough, but then Peter got his memories back and certain revelations came to light, and Zelda's sudden feelings of betrayal and doubt really didn't make much sense. It was like the author needed to drag things out a little longer, and this was the best way she could think to do it. It was frustrating.

All in all, this was an okay read but could have been so much better.

REVIEW: Killer Underwear Invasion!: How to Spot Fake News, Disinformation & Conspiracy Theories (nonfiction book) by Elise Gravel

2026-10-25T21:12:16.955-05:00

Killer Underwear Invasion! is a children's nonfiction book. I bought my copy new.

Review:

Using lots of silly examples, this book aims to teach younger readers how to recognize misinformation, think about the motivations behind those spreading it, and evaluate their sources. Gravel talks about five reasons people make up "news," why people believe it (emotions, confirmation bias), and some of the first steps to spotting misinformation.

So, the "how to evaluate sources" bit is actually only a small portion of this book, and it makes it sound simpler than it can be, when you consider that some people call people "experts" when they're really not. Still, this is a difficult topic, and I can't imagine that it was easy to try to write about it in a way that was accessible and useful to younger readers.

The various "fake news" examples were amusing, and watching them spiral out of control was certainly more fun than a lot of real-life examples would have been.

REVIEW: Charlotte's Web (book) by E.B. White, illustrations by Garth Williams

2026-10-25T20:40:18.781-05:00

Charlotte's Web is a children's book. I bought my copy new.

This review is, I guess, spoilery? It's hard to say.

Review:

Eight-year-old Fern is horrified when she learns that her father plans to cull a piglet who's the runt of his litter. Her father reluctantly lets her bottle feed the pig, which she names Wilbur, and he thrives, but eventually he grows big enough that Fern's father insists he has to be sold. Luckily, Fern's Uncle Homer is willing to buy him, so Fern can continue to visit him daily. Wilbur's new home is much more boring than living with Fern was, and he struggles to find a friend until he meets Charlotte, a spider.

This was a reread that I was prepared to have reduce me to tears, but to my surprise it wasn't nearly as much of a "crying book" as I recalled. There was lots of warning about Charlotte's eventual fate, if you knew to pay attention to it. It was sad to know she was alone at the end, but Charlotte herself was never shown to be afraid or regretful. She'd accomplished what she'd wanted to accomplish.

I couldn't help but laugh at the number of people who conveniently accepted that it was Wilbur who was special because that's what the words in Charlotte's webs said, even though the actual miracle everyone kept witnessing was a spider who could write. It might've even been frustrating, if Charlotte had wanted recognition for her work, but for her, the most important thing was that her friend Wilbur was safe.

I had forgotten that Fern could hear and understand what the animals were saying (to the point that her parents, particularly her mother, were worried about her). While I understand that it was part of showing that she was growing up, it made me a little sad to read about her going to the barn less and less to spend time with Henry.

All in all, this was an enjoyable reread. I liked the way White accepted all the animals as they were and didn't try to sanitize their natural behaviors to make them "nicer." Wilbur genuinely enjoyed laying around in mud and manure, and Wilbur's initial impression of Charlotte was that she was bloodthirsty, due to her diet of live flies, but that was just part of how she lived.

Extras:

Black-and-white illustrations throughout. Also, my copy of this book included a nice foreword by Kate DiCamillo.

REVIEW: Born Different (book) by V. Nator

2026-10-25T00:09:42.186-05:00

Born Different is a monster evolution LitRPG fantasy. I bought my copy new.

Review:

Click hatches from an egg at the same time as their many other siblings, but while most of those siblings rush out and immediately get eaten by other larger monsters in the Rockford Hamlet Dungeon that is their home, Click is more cautious. They learn from others' experiences and gradually figure out how to catch their own food...only to find themselves at the mercy of a bully of a larger sibling, who forces them to hunt and then steals all their food. After evolving enough to scare off their bully and move on, Click continues to learn how the world works and tries to make the best choices it can whenever the System prompts it.

Meanwhile, the humans living outside Rockford Hamlet Dungeon aren't wild about the signs that the dungeon is awakening. Adventurers have been called in to clean the place out enough to force it back into dormancy. They represent the biggest threat Click has ever encountered, and Click will do whatever they can to protect their home and their people.

The cover for this one snagged my attention and made me think of Okina Baba's So I'm a Spider, So What? I was happy to see that this wasn't just a rehash of that series - Click was a monster right from the start, rather than a human reborn as a monster, and Click's evolutionary path went in a completely different direction from the one taken by the main character in Okina Baba's story.

Overall, this book was just...okay. Click, unlike their siblings, was born with a much higher Intellect level. Unfortunately, you could really see the author struggle with how to write from the POV of a nonhuman character trying to learn about the world without referencing behaviors, concepts, body parts, etc. that only a human would be familiar with.

It was relatively interesting, seeing where Click's evolutionary path would go and how they'd go about solving various problems. I think readers were supposed to sympathize with Click as a very smart little spider bullied by one of its brawnier siblings, but I wasn't entirely sure I actually liked this character whose evolutionary choices seemed designed for mind control. Still, Click was a monster, and I didn't really need to like them in order to want to see where their story would take them.

There's no indication on my copy of this book that this is part of a series, but this is definitely only the very beginning of a larger story - just as Click was starting to get new ideas, inspired by seeing human technology and weapons in action, the book ended. It looks like this was originally published on Royal Road, so I checked there, and there are a few additional chapters and indications that the author hopes to publish another volume after this one, but the last update was almost 2 years ago. Even though this was only a so-so read for me, I wouldn't mind continuing it for at least another volume or two, so I guess we'll see whether those additional volumes ever happen.

REVIEW: My Husband and I Sleep in a Coffin, Vol. 1 (book) by Wu Shui Bu Du, illustrated by Oniku and Chikage, translated by Liting Xiao

2026-10-24T23:04:27.865-05:00

My Husband and I Sleep in a Coffin is fantasy danmei (Chinese m/m) fiction. I bought my copy of this volume new.

This review includes spoilers.

Review:

Wang Xiaomie is an ordinary gay nerd who's basically lived alone since he was very young. One day, he wakes up in a coffin, greeted by a handsome man named Wen Fengjin who keeps calling him "Mian Deng." Wen Fengjin insists that Wang Xiaomie is the reincarnation of his beloved Mian Deng, brought back into Mian Deng's preserved corpse after a thousand years of waiting.

Wen Fengjin tells Xiaomie all about how Mian Deng was his shixiong (older martial brother), and about how the two of them ended up coming across an elixir of immortality that attracted countless assassins. In the end, Mian Deng and Wen Fengjin were badly injured. They decided that one of them should eat the elixir and, after much argument, Mian Deng was chosen, only for him to trick Wen Fengjin and give it to him instead. This transformed Wen Fengjin into a corpse-like monster with no heartbeat, alone in the world without his Mian Deng, until the present day, when Wen Fengjin's efforts to bring him back finally worked. However, the process isn't entirely complete - Wang Xiaomie is essentially tied to the divine tree that brought Mian Deng's body back to life, and can't leave the area for long without becoming a true corpse again.

It's a lot to take in, and no matter how much Wang Xiaomie insists that he has no memories of life as Mian Deng, Wen Fengjin seems convinced that that's who he is. Wen Fengjin seems to be more than a little bit unstable, but he's also hot and willing to see to Xiaomie's every need as much as possible, so Xiaomie tries to accept the situation. The main drawbacks are the lack of internet and modern technology within the vast mausoleum Wen Fengjin constructed for Mian Deng and himself.

This book was a bit like if you took MXTX's Scum Villain's Self-Saving System and paired Shen Qingqiu up with the original violently murderous Luo Binghe. I honestly had no idea what to expect - for a while there, I thought the author might pair Wang Xiaomie off with someone else, probably the one grave robber, Zhen Bei. This seemed especially likely when it was revealed that Wen Fengjin was secretly doing things to Wang Xiaomie to make him less likely to go against Wen Fengjin's wishes.

But no, it turned out that the author was actually serious about pairing up Wen Fengjin and Wang Xiaomie. Meanwhile, readers learned that, in addition to drugging Xiaomie, Wen Fengjin was also lying to him about their past and the state of their relationship, had engaged in necrophilia with Mian Deng's dead body, and had (maybe - the writing was vague enough that it was hard to tell) raped Mian Deng when he was still alive. You would think that, when Xiaomie himself found all of this out, he'd have noped out of there, but instead he just...accepted and forgave it all?

Wen Fengjin had some monstrous minions that were written about and generally treated as though they were creepy-cute pets, which worked only as long as you didn't think about it too hard and remember that they used to be Wen Fengjin's human followers. Taken moment to moment, there were some funny, nice interactions between Wen Fengjin and Wang Xiaomie, and there were several revelations throughout the story that surprised me and kept my attention. I was definitely never bored while reading this. But I was never personally able to get past everything Wen Fengjin had done (and was still doing) to Mian Deng/Wang Xiaomie.

Extras:

A couple full-color illustrations, black-and-white illustrations throughout, a character guide, and a glossary.

REVIEW: Godzilla and Godzilla Raids Again (book) by Shigeru Kayama, translated by Jeffrey Angles

2026-10-24T22:09:35.810-05:00

Godzilla and Godzilla Raids Again is a collection of novelizations of the first two Godzilla movies, written by the person who outlined the original stories of those movies. I bought my copy new.

Review:

The two stories in this are pretty basic, not very subtle, and a bit melodramatic. They were okay. I found the first one to be better than the second one. I hadn't seen either of the first two movies prior to reading this, although I've since watched the 1954 Godzilla.

What really made this collection shine, for me, was translator Jeffrey Angles' afterword, which put the stories in context and explained how Kayama originally intended Godzilla to be a warning about the dangers of nuclear war. I can only imagine how frustrating and difficult it was to watch that message essentially morph into "kaiju battles are cool." (But they are cool. I'm so sorry.)

REVIEW: Terrible Old Games You've Probably Never Heard Of (nonfiction book) by Stuart Ashen

2026-10-21T01:07:36.286-05:00

Terrible Old Games You've Probably Never Heard Of is nonfiction. I bought my copy new.

Review:

This covers 19 terrible games originally released between 1980 and 1995, in alphabetical order, with occasional interruptions for interviews in which Ashen asked folks to talk about the game that most disappointed them. Ste Pickford, a game designer, got a longer section that went over some of the games he worked on, as well as what the industry was like at the time.

I really appreciated that each of the games included screenshots and detailed descriptions of what gameplay was like. I have played (and rage-quit) some games that included game-breaking bugs, and I've played games that have deeply disappointed me. Thankfully, I don't think I've ever played games quite as bad as most of the ones in this book. SQIJ! in particular would have had me wondering if it was meant to be some kind of weird modern art piece.

While I enjoyed reading about the games, I found the author's humor to be a bit bland.

I was surprised to see that the book had an index, until I actually looked at it and realized that it was just an extension of Ashen's jokes, and a kind of lazy one at that. I'm pretty sure that "Occasional fart noises" was mentioned on more than just page 109, for example.

REVIEW: Hello World: Being Human in the Age of Algorithms (nonfiction book) by Hannah Fry

2026-10-21T00:38:19.231-05:00

Hello World is nonfiction. I bought my copy new.

Review:

This looks at all the different areas of our lives in which algorithms are used and talks about the benefits and drawbacks of that. This was originally published in 2018, several years before ChatGPT was released, and I couldn't help but wonder what the author might say today.

Even being almost a decade behind the times, this book was a nice reminder of the many areas of our lives in which algorithms play a part - there were several real-world examples mentioned that were completely new to me. Fry tried to keep a very balanced look at everything, emphasizing that blindly trusting algorithms wasn't a good idea, but also underscoring the benefits of using algorithms vs. not.

It's a nice, accessible read overall. That said, after reading Karen Hao's Empire of AI, Fry's book feels a bit too optimistic.

REVIEW: Incidents Around the House (book) by Josh Malerman

2026-10-20T23:54:43.379-05:00

Incidents Around the House is horror. I bought my copy new.

Review:

At least in the print version, narration/action in this book is left-justified, dialogue is indented, and there are spaces between. The author has a note at the beginning about this being intentional, part of signaling that everything is being related from the POV of a child.

The child is eight-year-old Bela. She doesn't seem to have any friends outside her home, but she does have her Mommy, Daddo, Grandma Ruth...and Other Mommy, who lives in her closet. Or at least who used to live in her closet. Other Mommy has been coming out a lot more recently, to the point that Bela is worried her Mommy and Daddo will see her. There's also the issue of the question Other Mommy has taken to asking Bela: "Can I go into your heart?" Bela isn't quite sure what Other Mommy means by that. She's said no every time, but, considering that Other Mommy has been her friend for so long, maybe she should say yes?

It didn't take me too long to get used to how the text was set up. Adjusting to Bela constantly calling her dad "Daddo" was harder. I'm guessing it was meant to signal how close she felt to him, but it felt a bit weird, probably because I've never known any kids who call their dads that.

Overall, I thought this book was nicely creepy. At the start, there was a feeling that Other Mommy could maybe be an imaginary friend, or maybe started out that way before morphing into something else. There were times when it was hard to tell whether Bela was actually talking to her mother, or whether it was Other Mommy pretending to be her mother, hoping to get her to say yes to her question.

It was apparent early on that there were issues with Bela's parents' marriage - as much as adults like to think kids don't notice stuff, they do, and Bela's desire to keep Other Mommy hidden felt rooted in her desire to keep her family from changing. Then again, there were times when Bela mentioned Other Mommy's eyes moving lower down on her face, and she could easily have been wanting to avoid freaking her parents out.

Once Bela's parents realized that something was haunting either their house or their child, the rest was an exhausting quest, on their part, to try to free themselves and keep Bela safe. I admit to having an "oh hell, what am I about to read?" reaction to the first ambiguous mentions of their final plan. Thankfully, the plan didn't involve doing anything to Bela directly, but rather finally telling her the full truth about everything.

I don't know that the ending was exactly a surprise, but at the same time I'd hoped for something...better? There was some ambiguity to the ending that was a little annoying, but, considering how things turned out, maybe that was for the best.

REVIEW: There Is No Antimemetics Division (book) by qntm

2026-10-19T01:04:12.539-05:00

There Is No Antimemetics Division is a blend of horror and science fiction. I bought my copy new.

Review:

The Antimemetics Division is responsible for the research, containment, and, in rare cases, destruction of antimemes, ideas, objects, and beings that somehow have the ability to prevent themselves from being perceived or remembered, and which can often directly attack memories. Employees in the Antimemetics Division have to regularly take special drugs just to be able to remember their own work and what they do.

Initially, this book looked like it might be composed of a series of short stories that all have the Antimemetics Division in common. The first chapter, which I realized I'd previously seen in the form of a short live action film, gives readers a taste of what antimemes are capable of and how the employees in the Antimemetics Division function. Then we leave those characters behind and move on to someone who's apparently a new recruit in the Antimemetics Division, desperately trying to survive an encounter with an antimeme that will eat their memories into nothingness over the course of 15 minutes to two hours.

Eventually, though, a broader story takes shape. The Antimemetics Division is fighting a war, but it's a war they're unaware of. The more they learn, the more they're forced to forget, and the more ground they lose. At the same time, it's somehow a war they think they can win.

This was a fascinating puzzle of a read, even if it was occasionally a little hard to follow, and even if I occasionally had trouble believing that everything could come together just the way it did. I mean, yes, you can be very good at what you do and come up with backup plans for your backup plans, but eventually it comes down to a lot of luck.

The author lost me a bit at the very end. I couldn't fully wrap my brain around whatever it was that was supposed to keep the whole cycle from happening all over again. Still, it was an interesting enough read overall.

REVIEW: Laika: The Magic Behind a Stop-Motion Dream Factory: Two Decades of Groundbreaking Animation from Coraline to Wildwood (nonfiction book) by Ozzy Inguanzo

2026-10-19T00:14:13.499-05:00

Laika: The Magic Behind a Stop-Motion Dream Factory is nonfiction. I bought my copy new.

Review:

This looks at Laika, a stop-motion animation studio based in Portland, Oregon, and several of the people who work there. There are chapters on development and design, pre-production and construction, puppet fabrication and rapid protoype, animation and production, post-production and visual effects, and archives and exhibitions.

The photographs, of which there were many, were fabulous. I knew Laika was responsible for the movie Coraline and the upcoming movie Wildwood, but I hadn't realized they were also responsible for several other stop-motion movies (which have now been added to my "to be watched" list, along with Wildwood). I mostly started reading this because my current student worker is studying animation and is particularly into stop-motion animation. I didn't actually know anything about Laika going in, but it did occur to me, while reading this, that stop-motion animation overlaps nicely with my love of the work that goes into making miniatures.

I particularly enjoyed the various employee spotlight sections, as well as all of the little "making of" details about Laika's various movies sprinkled throughout the book. All in all, this was an engaging read in addition to being fabulous just to look through.

REVIEW: The Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death (nonfiction book) essays and photographs by Corinne May Botz

2026-10-18T23:46:33.184-05:00

The Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death is nonfiction. I bought my copy new.

Review:

Frances Glessner Lee created the Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death to act as teaching tools for police detectives. Each one depicts, in miniature, a crime scene based on a real-life crime scene or combination of crime scenes, along with some pertinent details such as the identity of the victim, when the crime was reported and who reported it, and initial statements from the first person or people questioned.

This starts with an introduction by Richard B. Woodward and then moves on to a couple essays by Corinne May Botz. Eighteen of the Nutshell Studies (there were originally twenty) then each get their own section, with several color photographs (close-ups, as though taken by a six-inch tall person walking through each of the scenes), the basic information provided to detectives using them for training purposes, and a diagram highlighting various areas of the scene. Some of the Nutshell Studies include crime scene investigator analyses. The book wraps up with more detailed information and solutions for five of the Nutshell Studies - the others aren't included because the Nutshell Studies are still used for training purposes to this day.

I was ridiculously excited just to have this book in my hands. This is probably the closest I'll ever come to seeing the Nutshell Studies in person. While I enjoyed Bruce Goldfarb's 18 Tiny Deaths overall, it didn't have nearly enough information about the Nutshell Studies, so this helped fill that gap.

Somewhat, anyway. The photographs were both wonderful and extremely frustrating. They were great for showing the level of detail that Frances Glessner Lee put into the scenes, but there were several instances where intriguing things mentioned in the diagram descriptions were impossible to match up to the photographs, either because the photographs weren't focused on those areas or were just plain taken from the wrong angle.

The detailed solutions for five of the Nutshell Studies at the end seemed to indicate that each included lots of additional information besides the miniature scene and basic information included in the book - the solutions mentioned the results of autopsies, information provided by further questioning, etc. I didn't recall any of that being mentioned anywhere else in the book, which made me wish that Botz had included more detailed information about how the Nutshell Studies were used. I think Goldfarb's book might have covered some of that, but it's been a while.

Woodward's introduction struck me as being dismissive of Lee's work, although thankfully Botz's essays were generally better, albeit with more speculation about Lee's motivations and psychology than I might have liked.

REVIEW: The Beauty's Blade: Mei Ren Jian (book) by Feng Ren Zuo Shu, translated by Yu, illustrations by Gravity Dusty

2026-10-12T01:26:13.589-05:00

The Beauty's Blade is a Chinese baihe (f/f) fantasy book. I bought my copy new.

Review:

Fu Wanqing is both a great beauty and a formidable fighter. Although she is considered the heir of the House of Valor, she causes nothing but trouble for her father and behaves as if nothing in the world has anything to do with her. There is only one person she considers her true rival: Yu Shengyan, the cold and indifferent high priestess of the demonic Jadewater Guild, which opposes the House of Valor and other members of the Lightpath Alliance.

Seemingly, all Fu Wanqing wants is to challenge Yu Shengyan to a duel, but for some reason Yu Shengyan refuses to even draw her blade, despite the fact that Fu Wanqing crippled her shijie. Fu Wanqing does at least extract a promise from Yu Shengyan to stay by her side for three months, giving her more opportunities to get her to agree to a duel, in exchange for a rare medicine that will allow Yu Shengyan's shijie to walk again.

It's a risky agreement for the both of them, with the Jadewater Guild and the House of Valor so at odds, but neither of them cares. As they spend more time with each other, their rivalry begins to morph into something more, but Fu Wanqing still has her own secret goals to accomplish.

Oof, this was messy. It's more of a revenge story with some occasional steamy flirtatious moments between Fu Wanqing and Yu Shengyan than it is a romance, although it takes ages for the revenge aspects, including the motivations behind them, to start to come together. Until that point, this mostly reads like a story about the men in the Lightpath Alliance fretting over a missing statue/map while Fu Wanqing giggles and drapes herself across Yu Shengyan's lap.

If you've read MXTX's Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation, it's difficult not to compare Fu Wanqing and Yu Shengyan to Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji. Unfortunately, Fu Wanqing doesn't have Wei Wuxian's charm, and Yu Shengyan doesn't get anywhere near Lan Wangji's level of development. I was especially disappointed about Yu Shengyan - it felt like the author had barely scratched the surface of her character by the end of the book. We got a few details about how she was raised, and endless mentions of how icy and emotionless she was, and that was about it. I couldn't even tell you for sure what it was about Fu Wanqing that eventually won her over.

Fu Wanqing was a frustrating character. She came across as a chaotic villain who got away with causing trouble, sowing discord, and literally just flat-out killing people who annoyed her because she was pretty. Like, one guy literally forgot for a bit that he hated her and wanted to kill her because she was so gorgeous.

It turned out that there was actually a reason why she behaved the way she did, beyond just "she's a spoiled rotten little monster," but it took way too long for those reasons to be revealed. Some sort of glimpses at how character relationships had developed and degraded would have been nice. Instead, the author kept introducing dozens of guys whose brains were mostly located in their pants. Fu Wanqing and Yu Shengyan's spicy flirtatious moments were well-written, but everything else was pretty weak.

There was a somewhat intriguing secondary romance, but it never got the page-time necessary to become truly good.

All in all, this was disappointing.

Extras:

A couple full-color illustrations, black-and-white illustrations throughout, and a character guide and glossary. The character guide was nowhere near detailed enough to be helpful.

REVIEW: Cute Animals That Could Kill You Dead (nonfiction picture book) words by Brooke Hartman, pictures by María Garcia

2026-10-12T00:10:39.986-05:00

Cute Animals That Could Kill You Dead is a children's nonfiction picture book. I bought my copy new.

Review:

This covers a lot more animals than I expected, giving each one two pages, the first of which provides some basic information and the animal's "cuteness factor," and the second of which explains what they can do that makes them so fearsome and/or deadly. The animals covered include: Tarsier, Slow Loris, Grasshopper Mouse, Hedgehog, Northern Pygmy Owl, Bumblebee Bat, Sea Otter, Platypus, Ladybug, Jumping Spider, Bottlenose Dolphin, Sea Bunny, Poison Dart Frog, Flying Gecko, Black-footed Cat, Fennec Fox, and Honey Badger.

If you interpret the "you" in the title to mean "you, the reader" the way I did, the title of this book is pretty deceiving. Many (most?) of the animals mentioned would have difficulty killing a human, whether they were a child or an adult. A bumblebee bat (Kitti's hog-nosed bat) is deadly towards flies (gobbling up as many as 4000 insects in less than an hour is impressive), and you wouldn't want to be an aphid around a ladybug, but the average reader would be just fine.

The stylized cute vs. fierce illustrations were okay, but I was really glad that the last couple pages included photographs of each of the animals.

REVIEW: Flip the Script (book) by Lyla Lee

2026-09-28T02:15:12.829-05:00

Flip the Script is YA f/f romance. I bought my copy new.

Review:

Hana is a lifelong K-drama fan who's just achieved her dream of being cast as the lead in a new K-drama. It feels like all her hard work and the stress of her family moving to Seoul is finally paying off. Even better, she's dating her costar, Bryan Yoon, a K-pop heartthrob who's shifting his career into acting.

Except that the show isn't doing as well as hoped, and Hana's relationship with Bryan is actually just a marketing stunt designed to increase ratings. Hana isn't the slightest bit interested in Bryan and, at least initially, the disinterest is mutual.

In yet another attempt to help the struggling show, a second lead actress is brought in - none other than Minjee Park, Hana's acting rival and former best friend. Even as their characters face off in a messy love triangle with Bryan, Hana and Minjee reconnect and renew their friendship in real life...and Hana comes to the realization that she has a crush on Minjee.

I assumed that this would be a bit of a messy read, with lots of drama as Hana falls for Minjee while Minjee thinks she's dating Bryan, and Bryan develops feelings of his own for Hana. Thankfully, it wasn't nearly as messy as I expected. Several potential misunderstandings were dealt with much more quickly than I thought they would be.

I enjoyed spending time with the characters and got weirdly invested in their TV show. I agreed with Hana, Minjee, and Bryan that the show would have absolutely bombed with its original ending. Would things actually have turned out as well in the real world as they did in this book? No idea, but it's nice to think that the answer could be "yes."

REVIEW: Ninefox Gambit (book) by Yoon Ha Lee

2026-09-28T01:19:26.469-05:00

Ninefox Gambit is sci-fi. I bought my copy new.

Review:

This takes place in a far future world where people's belief systems and the calendars they agree upon can somehow affect the physics behind how everything works. All the action is centered around a place called the Fortress of Scattered Needles, which has been taken over by rebels following a heretical calendar.

Captain Kel Cheris of the hexarchate has recently fallen into disgrace for her unconventional tactics. The situation at the Fortress of Scattered Needles gives her a chance to redeem herself, although she almost immediately comes to regret her proposed solution, which involves allying herself with the long-dead tactician Shuos Jedao. Jedao was widely regarded as brilliant, but he was also a madman who, in the end, killed both friend and foe alike, and Cheris had no idea that his "resurrection" would involve tying him to her mind and body. It's not a comfortable position to be in, to say the least.

My experience reading this reminded me heavily of the first time I read Ann Leckie's Ancillary Justice: so much confusion. I had to wrap my brain around what "Kel," "Shuos," "Nirai," and other words meant. The way weapons functioned was supposedly tied to some sort of advanced mathematics connected to the calendar everyone followed - in practice, it felt a lot like battle magic with no specific rules. It didn't help that the author was disinclined to actually describe anything. I did my best to go with the flow, but it was disheartening when I realized, more than halfway through the book, that I could still barely picture anything that was going on.

Jedao could play Cheris so easily that it was tough to fathom why anyone in command would have thought it was a good idea to pair him up with a Kel (soldiers who, as part of their training, are imprinted with an instinctual desire to obey their superiors). Then there were the servitors, robots that most of the Kel seemed to view as little more than tools but that were more sentient than they let on. There was clearly a lot going on under the surface that Cheris, the primary POV character, was unaware of, and I was, for the most part, willing to see where the author would go with all of it.

Unfortunately, the ending fell flat for me. It felt like the world, characters, all of it held readers at arm's length, and by the time an attempt was made to try to close the gap, it was too little, too late. It's possible that the next couple books bring everything together in a way that'll change my mind and make me appreciate the characters and world more, but I'm not sure I have the willpower to continue on.

REVIEW: Lucky Day (book) by Chuck Tingle

2026-09-28T00:26:36.641-05:00

Lucky Day is horror. I bought my copy new.

Review:

Vera, her mother, and her friends are celebrating the upcoming publication of Vera's book. Vera has finally gotten the courage to come out to her mother as bisexual and tell her that she and Annie are engaged. It's going badly, and then the disaster that's later known as the Low-Probability Event begins.

All over the world, but particularly in the US for some reason, horrible and statistically unlikely things happen, killing millions. Fish fall from the sky, causing an accident that results in Vera's mother's death. Vera witnesses one of her friends get beaten to death by a chimpanzee with a typewriter. All around her there is bewildering death and destruction, and in the end all Vera can do is run and keep running.

Four years later, Vera is a shadow of her old self, limping along on the checks she gets as one of the survivors of the Low-Probability Event. She barely has the willpower to exist, and yet she also can't bring herself to commit suicide. Caring about anything seems utterly futile.

Then Special Agent Layne, from the Low-Probability Event Commission (LPEC), shows up at her door. He's investigating a statistically impossibly lucky casino, the exact casino Vera wrote about in her book. The LPEC thinks it has some sort of connection to the Low-Probability Event and, in spite of herself and her determination not to care about anything, Vera finds herself drawn in.

When people start dying in this one, you just have to roll with it, because there's just so much going on at once. At one point, there's an attempt to explain how some of the weirder stuff happened, but there's a lot of stuff that just...is. For example, I don't think we ever learned how, exactly, that one poor woman ended up with umbrellas in both her eyes.

Vera and Special Agent Layne were an odd pairing, the woman who was determined not to care about anything and the guy determined to enjoy every hobby, TV show, and general experience he could. I enjoyed following along with them, and I was looking forward to where Tingle would take the LPE stuff. He's so good at cosmic horror.

The ending was a lot. I'm still not entirely sure how I feel about all of it. But at least I enjoyed the journey.

REVIEW: Infrastructure: A Guide to the Industrial Landscape, Revised & Updated (nonfiction book) by Brian Hayes

2026-09-27T22:26:43.742-05:00

Infrastructure is nonfiction. I bought my copy used.

Review:

This is organized into thirteen chapters: "Out of the Earth" (mining), "Waterworks," "Food and Farming," "Oil and Gas," "Power Plants," "The Power Grid," "Communications," "On the Road" (roads, highways), "The Railway," "Bridges and Tunnels," "Aviation," "Shipping," and "Wastes and Recycling."

Of the infrastructure books I've read so far, this one uses probably the broadest definition of "infrastructure" - I didn't disagree with it, but it meant that there were areas that were covered that I hadn't encountered before, at least not in this way. It made me wish that Hayes had occasionally stopped and provided "big picture" diagrams of how things worked, rather than just photographs of particular examples. Particularly for the things that were entirely new to me, diagrams probably would have made more sense than photographs.

This was not a quick read. I struggled through the first chapter on mining and considered DNFing, only to find my interest renewed in the chapter on waterworks. I eventually figured out that there were just some aspects of infrastructure that interested me more than others and made myself keep going. It probably didn't help that, physically, this book was awkward to read, heavy and a bit too large to hold comfortably.

Still, I appreciated Hayes' enthusiasm for the subject and that there were photographs of nearly everything he talked about in the book. This edition was published in 2014, and I couldn't help but wonder how certain sections might have differed in a more up-to-date volume. For sure there would have been more in the portion about data centers.

All in all, this was a worthwhile read, even if it was occasionally a struggle for me.

REVIEW: Simply AI (nonfiction book) by DK editorial staff, with contributions by Claire Quigley and consulting with Hilary Lamb and Joel Levy

2026-09-27T21:51:51.025-05:00

Simply AI is nonfiction. I bought my copy new.

Review:

This starts with the history of artificial intelligence, then explains the difference between classical and statistical artificial intelligence and how they work, then goes into the various ways AI has been and may in the future be used, and finally wraps up with some philosophical quandaries and the benefits and drawbacks of AI's usage in the real world.

This was a frustrating read. While actual real-life ethical concerns about AI were brought up, mostly in the final section, there seemed to be far more random mentions of concerns about and the implications of AI achieving sentience. In fact, when I got to page 140's declaration that "In reality, AI applications have, at best, limited and specific abilities, and cannot think for themselves," I found myself wondering if whichever editor or consultant who wrote that text had paid attention to the many prior pages speculating about AI sentience.

When you've got a book that's, let's say, about half graphics and half text, 155 pages doesn't provide a lot of space for explaining things. I really wish the classical and statistical AI sections had been a bit less simplistic.

REVIEW: The Essential Anime Guide: 50 Iconic Films, Standout Series, and Cult Masterpieces (nonfiction book) by Patrick Macias and Samuel Sattin, illustrated by DenQ

2026-09-15T23:03:21.279-05:00

The Essential Anime Guide is nonfiction. I bought my copy new.

Review:

While there are works that most people with a broad knowledge of anime would agree should probably be listed or at least mentioned in a book about "essential" anime, there will always be disagreements. And different people have different areas of expertise and blind spots - in their introduction, Macias and Sattin mention bringing in some additional writers who could speak with more authority about various movies and series than they could. Even with other authors handling those chapters, Macias and Sattin were presumably still the people choosing the 50 works the books would be focusing on. As someone who's been a big shoujo and slice-of-life fan, there were works I'd have picked that didn't match up with what the authors chose, although in many cases, works I might have featured were at least mentioned in passing in info boxes or during chapters focused primarily on other works.

So yeah, I figured, going in, that I'd find myself questioning some of the authors' choices. I don't recall wildly disagreeing with any of the inclusions (except maybe the choice of Naruto Shippuden rather than Naruto), and all of it made for interesting reading. And boy did the nostalgia occasionally hit me strongly. It's been ages since I last thought about Tekkonkinkreet.

There are no screenshots of anything, so you do miss out on the visual aspect of these series/movies, but overall I thought this was a pretty good read.

REVIEW: Nefertiti the Spidernaut: The Jumping Spider Who Learned to Hunt in Space (nonfiction picture book) written by Darcy Pattison, illustrated by Valeria Tisnés

2026-09-15T22:20:18.949-05:00

Nefertiti the Spidernaut is a nonfiction children's book. I bought my copy new.

Review:

I think I might have found out about this book during a period of time when Facebook's algorithms decided that posts about jumping spiders might interest me. Or maybe someone mentioned Nefertiti and I found this book while looking for more information about her? Children's nonfiction is great for interesting little niche nonfiction topics.

This starts with Stefanie Countryman receiving a Johnson jumping spider egg sac in February 2012. Four spiders from that egg sac survive, and Nefertiti is the one selected to go to the International Space Station in order to test a hypothesis that jumping spiders wouldn't be able to hunt in microgravity. There are details about how Nefertiti's suitability for space was tested, what her habitat on the space station was like, how the experiment went, etc. The book continues until Nefertiti's eventual death a few months after returning to Earth.

This was an interesting read that got across all the necessary basic information. The end of the book included slightly more detailed sections about Johnson jumping spiders and the work that went into creating Nefertiti's space station habitat. I particularly liked reading more about the creation of Nefertiti's habitat, since I'd wondered how her fruit fly supply worked.

REVIEW: Orbital (book) by Samantha Harvey

2026-09-15T01:33:15.150-05:00

Orbital is literary fiction with a very light tint of science fiction. I bought my copy new.

Review:

Orbital follows six astronauts and cosmonauts as they go about one day, 16 orbits of the Earth, in their space station. We get little glimpses of their thoughts and lives, as well as a few glimpses of how things are going on Earth, where a typhoon is developing. The science fiction aspect is very light - as these people on the space station are going about their day, other astronauts are about to land on the Moon a second time (I think? it was either that or a Mars mission - I didn't note down the details).

This book is a poem that was allowed to balloon to 200+ pages. It had occasional nice, lovely moments, and I didn't hate it, but in the end is was a lot of reflection and zero plot. Yes, we got some focus on the characters and their inner lives, but it was all too soft and dreamlike to really stick with me. There were only really six characters, and yet I could just barely keep two or three of them straight in my head - the rest tended to blend together.

I read this in two sittings, mostly because I really needed to get it done in time for my book club meeting. During the first sitting, I nearly fell asleep, which was when it occurred to me that this book was very much like the podcast Nothing Much Happens: Bedtime Stories for Everyone, but in space.

REVIEW: Goosebumps: Welcome to Dead House (book) by R.L. Stine

2026-09-15T00:31:40.756-05:00

Welcome to Dead House is the first of the Goosebumps books. I don't think I ever read it.

Review:

Twelve-year-old Amanda and her younger brother Josh are upset to be moving to a house in Dark Falls, four hours away from their old home. It's a bigger place, but it's dark and somehow menacing. Amanda keeps thinking she sees a boy in the house, and her bedroom's curtains billow in a breeze that doesn't exist. Things come to a head when their dog Petey escapes and Josh becomes convinced he went to the cemetery.

This doesn't have as effective a hook as some of the other early Goosebumps books, which was maybe why (I'm fairly sure) I never read it. Still, I thought the build-up for this one had some genuinely creepy moments. My favorite was probably when Amanda realized that every kid in town seemed to have previously lived at their house.

One spoiler for animal lovers: Petey the dog doesn't make it.

REVIEW: Goosebumps: The Haunted Mask (book) by R.L. Stine

2026-09-14T23:51:06.099-05:00

The Haunted Mask is one of the earlier entries in R.L. Stine's Goosebumps horror series for kids. I bought my copy new.

Review:

Eleven-year-old Carly Beth is easily scared, which Steve and Chuck, two boys at her school, take full advantage of, doing things like giving her a sandwich with a worm in it and tricking her into thinking she's being bitten by a tarantula. She's so upset that she decides she needs a super scary costume for Halloween in order to properly get back at them.

I vaguely recall reading some of the first Goosebumps books, including this one, and deciding that I was probably too old for them. As with Christopher Pike's books, the original covers were, in a lot of ways, more memorable than the books themselves. Although this was technically a reread, I'd forgotten pretty much everything except the very end.

The setup for this reminded me a bit of Stine's Hit and Run (which was published only a year prior to this book), just aimed at a younger audience. Carly Beth, like Hit and Run's Eddie, has several really awful pranks played on her and decides to get even. Steve and Chuck weren't quite as terrible as Winks, but that was probably because they were too young to somehow acquire a human corpse for their "jokes."

Overall, I preferred this book's "tormented main character decides to get even" storyline more than the one in Hit and Run. Possibly because I felt more sympathy for Carly Beth? She never intended to hurt anyone, and the mask affected her in ways she never expected.

It did irk me somewhat that Stine couldn't manage to stick to his own rules. Technically, Carly Beth removed the mask twice, which shouldn't have been possible.