Daughters of Doubt and Eyerolling

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The Great Toilet Paper Crisis of 2055 – Doomsday Book

People have told me to read this book with words like:

  • it won the Hugo and the Nebula awards
  • it’s Time-Travel into the 14th century
  • you are a history nerd and love Sci-Fi/Time-Travel stories

I must say there is one thing Connie Willis got right, during an epidemic that’s fortunately being quarantined early on, there is a shortage of toilet paper and we are reminded of it at least once every chapter. Having lived through the great toilet paper crisis of 2020, I can say this was the most accurate prediction about the future the book had to offer.

For a book written in the late 1980s and first published in 1992 it lacks in extrapolation of existing technology and culture. It basically goes one step forwards and two steps back. Oxford, Great Britain, in 2055 is as backwards as the 1960s. The height of modern technology, ignoring the time travel device that is never really explained, are video telephone landlines which cannot take a message. My cultural highlight of 2055, a university student kisses a girl in the hallway and that leads to uproar about his amoral behaviour. Oy vey!

Okay, Willis might not have nailed the future, but surely the past she must have? Nope! The fourteenth century is dirty, everyone stinks, walks around in rags and it’s actually a wonder how humankind survived after all. Kivrin, the MC, is equipped with the latest information about the fourteenth century; you know, the century of the witch burnings (17th century onwards), the century where basically everyone is a cut-throat or a rapist, where people are exactly as filthy as cliché wants us to believe. Furthermore, her brain-enhancer-translator doesn’t work properly. She cannot understand Middle-English although she has spent three years learning the language. She understands Latin, though. And I’m still wondering why Kivrin had to learn German for this trip. It can’t have been 14th century German, otherwise the little genius and her translator might have worked out what the people are talking about.

Long story short – I’m no Connie Willis:

Past timeline: Kivrin is stranded in 1348 instead of 1320, where she was supposed to land. She falls ill with the plague. The dirty, smelly people, who aren’t all cut-throats even if they are dirty and smelly and scarred and in ragged clothing, help her. She’s bedridden for a long time, but needs to get to “the drop”, the site where she landed and will be picked up again.

Future timeline: It’s Christmas time. People have left the university in droves to spend the holidays with their families. The only available time travel technician in all of Oxford comes down with a virus infection shortly after Kivrin was sent into the past. That’s the catalyst for the lockdown of the city. The techie dangles important information before the senior staff, but falls into unconsciousness every time he might be able to help out with his information.

I see what Willis wanted to do with the book. There was supposed to be a certain allegory between both timelines. There was supposed to be some comic relief. But what I will remember: Not all people in the 14th century were cut-throats, especially the children were adorable. Toilet paper is going to be scarce during a lockdown.

1/5 Harpy Eagles

Hole-y bookshelf, batman!

Finna by Nino Cipri, published 25 February 2020.

Ava and Jules work minimum wage jobs at a Swedish big-box store. No, not that one, another one. The one with wormholes opening inside their showrooms; where Ava and Jules have to use a device called FINNA to find a customer who has been sucked into the multiverse through that wormhole. They are definitely not paid enough to risk their lives in alternate universes, but the customer is king; and your boss is your overlord.

Fun novella about what might happen if a wormhole opened in an IKEA that is definitely not an IKEA.

3/5 Harpy Eagles

When a hermit has to leave her elevator

Scotto Moore’s Wild Massive was published on 07 February 2023.

Scotto Moore’s Wild Massive is a glorious web of lies, secrets, and humor in a breakneck, nitrous-boosted saga of the small rejecting the will of the mighty.

Welcome to the Building, an infinitely tall skyscraper in the center of the multiverse, where any floor could contain a sprawling desert oasis, a cyanide rain forest, or an entire world.

Carissa loves her elevator. Up and down she goes, content with the sometimes chewy food her reality fabricator spits out, as long as it means she doesn’t have to speak to another living person.

But when a mysterious shapeshifter from an ambiguous world lands on top of her elevator, intent on stopping a plot to annihilate hundreds of floors, Carissa finds herself stepping out of her comfort zone. She is forced to flee into the Wild Massive network of theme parks in the Building, where technology, sorcery, and elaborate media tie-ins combine to form impossible ride experiences, where every guest is a VIP, the roller coasters are frequently safe, and if you don’t have a valid day pass, the automated defense lasers will escort you from being alive.

Wild Massive: The #1 destination for interdimensional war.
Rate us on VacationAdvisor™!

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250767745/wildmassive

Like Battle of the Linguist Mages this seemed to be the perfect book for me. I was looking forward to the audiobook ARC and when I got to it I basically listened to the whole book in one very long session. For one, the book is massive. Also, I was certain should I put it down, I wouldn’t pick it up again.

It was interesting and I kept waiting for the weird to unfold and make sense, but –here’s the rub- the ending unfolded the weird but left me unsatisfied. All that – slow info-dumps to get the world-building across and fast paced action scenes – for a rather lame ending. I wish there had been a tiny bit “more” here, though I am not sure how this more could have looked liked.

To sum this up: It’s a wild ride with Sci-Fi and Fantasy elements and I have the feeling that I didn’t truly understand what this genre-bender was about, or that I missed some critical information.

3/5 Harpy Eagles

Quick Reviews – December ’22 Part II

Here’s the promised second part for December. Well, what can I say, I read a lot.

Pulling the Wings Off Angels by K. J. Parker, published 15 November 2022.

Look, another KJ Parker! That's how I approached this novella. I just like the writing style of Parker's first person POV novellas. 

The story follows a young man who was born with the proverbial silver spoon in his mouth, likes gambling and suddenly owes a loan shark quite a substantial sum of money. Without wanting to spoil too much, our miserable first person narrator finds himself in a pickle that he might not be able to get out of. Because fate and the sins of his forefathers, justice and mercy are all working against him; as well as that well-meaning brilliant professor of his, Saloninus. 

As much as this is a metaphysical/religious/philosophical work and at times felt a bit 'preaching to the choir', I truly enjoyed it. Not least because of Saloninus, who is a self-professed genius. 

4/5 Harpy Eagles


A Very Scalzi Christmas by John Scalzi, published 30 November 2019.

Scalzi put fifteen snippets of Christmas fun into this collection. There are interviews, short stories, informational articles and poems. 

As much as I liked the short stories, I have to say that I liked the interviews the most. There's one with Santa's lawyer, for example. My favourite was the one with Santa's reindeer wrangler. 

It's a selection that you can dip into and don't have to scarf down like a plate of the most delicious Christmas cookies. I said can! You can, of course, also just read them all in one sitting as I did. 

5/5 Harpy Eagles


The Christmas Killer by Alex Pine, published 29 October 2020.

The review copy for this debut novel had been on my TBR for far too long. I have heard a lot of good about this series and am glad that I actually got to it. 

The ARC was a rather tough read. There were grammar errors and the prose and dialogues sounded very clunky and stilted at times. I hope this has been edited out before the book went public. 

What rankled me most, though, was how easy it was to sniff out who the murderer was and what their motive was. I was fairly certain early on that I had the right person and then only kept on skimming the text to find out whether I was right. I was. 

As I said above, the series has a lot of fans and I hope the sequels improved in quality compared to the first book. 

2/5 Harpy Eagles


The Dresden Files by Jim Butcher, series published since 2000.

Yes, I might be late to this Urban Fantasy series, but this just means I have lots of books to binge on. 

A friend from Litsy sent me the first book in the series, Storm Front (2000), felt ages ago. I had another book to read to get my self-set goal of reading twenty physical copies off my shelves, so I chose this. Well, I was in for a treat. 

Harry Dresden, the wizard protagonist of the series might be a little old-fashioned in his believes and in the way he works and lives (anything invented after the 1940s doesn't really work around him), but he soon grew on me. Even if he notices the erectness of the nipples of the woman in front of him before he notices the colour of her eyes. I have yet to see him mistreat a woman. In fact, he recognises that women are often far stronger than men and behaves fairly gentlemanly around women. 

Chauvinism or no chauvinism aside, there are wizards, ghosts, demons, literal fairy godmothers, vampires, werewolves,... All the ingredients for a good Urban Fantasy. And it's set in Chicago, not New York, or London or a small town somewhere out in the back of beyond. 

I'm three books in and I know I have to get to the next one sooner than later. 

Also, the audiobooks are narrated by James Marsters, who does an excellent job. Even when I am reminded of Spike from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, especially when he, as Harry, is talking about vampire lore. 

4/5 Harpy Eagles

A lockdown book like no other – Kaiju Preservation Society

John Scalzi’s Kaiju Preservation Society was written during the lockdown/Covid pandemic. Instead of writing a dark and gloomy book about everyone having to stay at home, Scalzi wrote a book that definitely makes you forget the current world situation and lets you dive into its fictional world.

Our main character Jamie Gray is stuck with a depressing job as a food delivery driver, when a chance meeting with an old acquaintance leads to a new job at “an animal rights organization“. The quotation marks are completely necessary, because in this case the animals are kaijus from a parallel world. Think Godzilla. And of course people are thinking about weaponizing them.

I liked how Scalzi uses the real world pandemic situation and how it affected a lot of us and turns it into a story of this one guy being at the right place at the right moment, so that he can save the world. It is a light-hearted story that has exactly the right amount of science not to overload the casual sci-fi reader. There’s also edge of your seat action, which is well-balanced with humour and some pop-culture references that should make you chuckle.

If you have abstained from reading any lockdown fiction, you might want to make this the exception for the sheer escapism the novel offers. Apparently that was also the reason Scalzi wrote the book, see his afterword/acknowledgements.

5/5 Harpy Eagles

The Lady Duck Of Doom listened to the audio version of this book – narrated by Wil Wheaton, one of my favorite narrators for nerdy stuff. Wil Wheaton delivers the book with so much passion and humor, its impossible to not love it and, at times, laugh with him, as you can clearly hear his amusement during some passages.

6/5 Duckies

Quick Reviews – December ’22 Part I

I suppose there will be a part two towards the end of the month, just because I seem to be reading at least one book a day at the moment.

The Last Tale of the Flower Bride by Roshani Chokshi, expected publication day 14 February 2023.

A gorgeous UK cover. A Gothic tale with beautiful lyrical writing and different folk tales woven into it. 

Sadly, the very slow plot never really gripped my attention. 

Trigger warning: the relationships between the MCs is toxic, which made reading the story not easier. 

2/5 Harpy Eagles


Arden St. Ives trilogy by Alexis Hall

How to Bang a Billionaire (2017)

Arden St. Ives is a student at Oxford when he meets billionaire Caspian Hart. There is chemistry, but although Arden would like to pursue the relationship Caspian doesn't want to ... at first.

Arden is a bit neurotic, yet playful and has an interesting approach to life. Caspian has this dark secret that will be uncovered by the end of the trilogy. There is a billionaire throwing his money around, but it's kind of natural rather than OTT. It's not as steamy as I expected it to be, nor full of weird BDSM.

This first book ends without a cliffhanger. Still, you -just like me- might want to read the next book in this gay 50 Shades of Grey trilogy you didn't know you'd want to read until you started it. 

4/5 Harpy Eagles

How to Blow it with a Billionaire (2017)

Arden and Caspian are trying to make their relationship work, but the odds are stacked against them. Caspian is a workaholic and has limited time to spend with Arden. 

This book ends in a cliffhanger of sorts. There is a possibility for a happily ever after in the third book though.

5/5 Harpy Eagles

How to Belong with a Billionaire (2019)

Spoiler free! 
Arden and Caspian have a long way to go to get their HEA. 

The most important thing for me was knowing that Ardy-Baby was okay. We also get to see more of Ellery (Caspian's sister) and Bellerose (Caspian's PA), which makes me hope that either of them gets their own book in future. 

4/5 Harpy Eagles


The Paradox Hotel by Rob Hart, published 22 February 2022.

The Paradox Hotel caters for the super-rich who are about to embark on or have come back from a trip to another century at the Einstein Intercentury Timeport. Grumpy January Cole is the head of security at the hotel and her day just got harder. She's unstuck, which means she is no longer rooted in time. She sees her dead girlfriend, different timelines and there is a dead body not even her AI bot can see. On top of that, four trillionaires are about to meet for a summit to bid on the hotel. 

January is the perfect cynical sarcastic detective to find out who killed the dead body. She's pressed for time though, her mind is crumbling, and time is acting up in the weirdest way. 

It's a time travel detective story with a noir vibe, LGBTQ+ representation, and a very diverse found family. 

4/5 Harpy Eagles


The Locked Attic by B.P. Walter, published 24 November 2022.

I get that thrillers thrive on secrets, but this story was full of rather obvious secrets. Not only that, the secrets were dangle in front of me like a carrot in front of a donkey; they were clearly just used to make me turn the pages.

I didn't mind the non-linear storytelling. I was much more peeved that the two POV read very similar; shouldn't a teenager sound different from his mid-thirties mother? 

And why was the secret in the titular Locked Attic not the main topic of the story? The title and blurb are misleading. 

I really liked the author's The Dinner Guest, but his last book The Woman on the Pier and this book didn't really work for me. 

1/5 Harpy Eagles

Quick ARC Reviews – November 2022

If This Book Exists, You’re In The Wrong Universe, by Jason Pargin.

This is the fourth book in the John Dies at the End series. All the other books in the series were written under Pargin's pen name David Wong, who is also the main character of the stories. 

Like the three other books in this series, this book can be read as a standalone. Reading the other books in the series, in order or not, won’t help with that feeling of “what the … am I reading here?” It's a bonkers wild ride with aliens and magical soy sauce and parasites and a magical egg that demands human sacrifices and ...

In other words, a novel where you have to trust that the author knows what they were doing and go with the flow. 

4/5 Harpy Eagles


The Conductors (Murder and Magic book 1) by Nicole Glover, published 02 March 2021.

I liked the idea of the story, Underground Railroad conductors turned detectives, and there is magic involved. Sadly, I didn’t like the way the story was told. 

Too many characters are introduced at the beginning of the story and they all lacked backstory, so keeping up with who was who was difficult. 

The magic system is not well explained. It’s not clear what makes a magic holder and how exactly the magic works. All I understood was that constellations are used as sigils and those make up a spell. 

The mystery is interesting, but since there was too much telling, via dialogue between the two main characters Hetty and Benjy, it was not very engaging. 

This speculative fiction woven into a historical fiction story was not for me. Still, I am hoping the next books in the series are better. 

3/5 Harpy Eagles


The Immortality Thief by Taran Hunt, published 11 October 2022.

This is the story of that quirky side-character who seems to always stumble into situations without ever having had the ambition to be a hero. Alas, he's about to become the hero he never wanted to be and here is his story. 

There is a thousand year old space ship about to be sucked into a supernova. Sean Wren, refugee, criminal, linguist, and FTL pilot, and two other felons are offered a pardon when they rescue important data about the Philosopher's Stone from the space ship before it goes up in flames. What's supposed to be a quick job soon turns into alien encounters, sociopolitical debates and a rather predictable outcome. 

I liked the short chapters and the chapter titles. I did not enjoy the 600+ pages of the book. The story could have been told in half the page-count. 

3/5 Harpy Eagles


Legends & Lattes by Travis Baldree, first published 22 February 2022, US publication 10 November 2022.

TheMarquessMagpie wrote a wonderful review about this book earlier this year. You can find it here. I agree wholeheartedly. 

This book is like a hot mug of coffee and a warm cinnamon roll on a blustery autumn day. Simply delicious, heart-warming soul-food. 

5/5 Harpy Eagles

Paradox Series Review

Almost a year ago, I published a review of Fortune‘s Pawn by Rachel Bach, lamenting about my book buying ban. The end of the book was a large scale cliffhanger, and I wanted the next books RIGHT NOW.

A few months later, I splurged and bought book 2 and 3 of the series. I am happy to say that they stay as fast paced and action-packed as the first one! The love story is engaging, and there are twist, turns, and backstabbing involved the whole way through. The science fiction universe with it‘s dangers and inhabitants is fun, but not full of new and exiting ideas. And it does not have to be to make this series a delight to read!

5/5 Ducks

Quick Reviews – August 2022

Husband Material by Alexis Hall, published 02 August 2022.

The sequel to Boyfriend Material is not just as good as the first book, it's better. Knowing the characters already, it's seeing them grow and struggle and overcome obstacles, which makes it so much better. There were lots of LOL moments for me, but just as many moments where I empathised with both main characters and their struggles. 

Hall clearly knows how to write stories and how to play to the strengths of the English language. 

Caveat: The structure of the book kind of made the ending obvious, but it's the best ending for Oliver and Luc.

5/5 Harpy Eagles


Rosaline Palmer Takes the Cake by Alexis Hall, published 18 May 2021.

Yes, another Alexis Hall book. I read this first book in the Winner Bakes All series in preparation for the upcoming sequel, Paris Daillencourt is about to Crumble (publishing day 18 Oct 2022). 

Does Hall know how to play with tropes? Yes! This novel features a love triangle, which is extremely well-executed; compared to all those cringe-y YA love triangles. Furthermore there's a sesquipedalian eight year old, witty banter and lots of cake since the love interests meet at a national baking competition.

Eventually though this is a story about personal growth and standing up for yourself. 

4/5 Harpy Eagles


The A.I. Who Loved Me by Alyssa Cole, published/released 19 December 2019.

An A.I. hotty who has to figure out his humanity, a woman suffering from PTSD following an accident, and an interesting (though not entirely unexpected) twist towards the end of the story. 

This audiobook-only sci-fi romance story was more interesting than I had expected. I thought this would be far more sizzling romance than sci-fi, but the SF parts of the story were well thought through. 

The dual point of view narration by Regina Hall and Feodor Chin is enhanced by the addition of a whole cast of narrators. 

4/5 Harpy Eagles


Grand Theft Astro by Scott Meyer, published 29 July 2021.

The Audible Originals audiobook-only story is about Baird, a thief, who, on her latest heist, had been infected with a virus that has no cure yet. She has seven days to live. Her 'handler' tells her that in order to ensure a proper medical treatment Baird not only has to steal certain components of the cure, she also has to remain in stasis while she's not actively stealing. While in stasis she's being transported to her next place of 'work', which often takes several years. 

So far I was on board, if a bit sceptical about how gullible the protagonist is; accepting and relying on all information necessary provided by the handler only. 

Then the book seemed to turn to middle-grade level without being for that audience. While scoping out the places Baird has to rob, she's told everything about how the security systems work by the security people themselves. The way she then executes her heists is supposed to be funny/comical; I thought not. But that might be me. 

I gave up after the second heist. It read too much like an underdeveloped middle-grade book with way too much tell and very little show. 

1/5 Harpy Eagles


Belladonna by Adalyn Grace, published 30 August 2022.

The audiobook of this YA gothic/paranormal fantasy novel was good. The narrator, Kristin Atherton, did a good job giving each character a distinct voice. Especially Death's voice was rather sultry.  

To be honest, I might have bailed on the book had it not been for the audiobook. Why would I have bailed? It was a bit too long-winded for my taste. There was too much woe-be-me by the main character, Signa. And the mysteries were, given I had paid attention from the start, obvious to me. Add jarring anachronisms and I'm normally out. So kudos to the narrator.

If you liked Kingdom of the Wicked, you will certainly like this book. After all, it's a story of romance between a not-so-mere mortal and Death. 

2.75/5 Harpy Eagles

The Measure

The Measure by Nikki Erlick, published 28 June 2022.

Boxes arrive, for any person on earth older than 22 years. The boxes contain a piece of string, showing how long the life of the person will be.

What would you do if you received such a box? Would you open it? Do you want to know how many years you have? How does society deal with this phenomenon? Are people with short strings worth less than “long stringers”?

Told from several different POV the stories are interwoven and make up a fantastic book of speculative fiction!

5/5 Harpy Eagles

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