The Sunday Post AKA What’s on my (Mostly Virtual) Nightstand 4-21-24

Posted on April 21, 2024April 20, 2024 by Marlene Harris | Author : Marlene Harris | The Sunday Post> Virtual Nightstand

Let’s talk about things like schedule distribution and weight distribution. Sounds boring, doesn’t it? Well, first I have a picture that amply illustrates weight distribution.

Believe it or not, George and Tuna weigh exactly the same. Each cat weighs 14 pounds – which is a lot of cat. Each. But George’s weight is distributed over the length of his rather long body, while Tuna’s well, clearly isn’t. Still, there is a LOT of each of them to love, and they both expect every ounce of it.

(In case you’re wondering, on the ‘Cat Chonk Chart’ the vet has declared George to be ‘A Fine Boi’ while Tuna has crossed into ‘He Chonk’ territory.)

The weight of Reading Reality’s schedule for this week is also a bit chonky, even if it doesn’t seem that way. Because the person attempting to fulfill that schedule seems to have hit overload this week – meaning that what I’m intending may not be what actually appears. We’ll see!

Coming This Week:

Close to Death by Anthony Horowitz (#AudioBookReview)
Lost Birds by Anne Hillerman (#BookReview)
Judge Dee and the Limits of the Law by Lavie Tidhar (#BookReview)
A Murder Most French by Colleen Cambridge (#BookReview)
Chaotic Aperitifs by Tao Wong (#BookReview)

Stacking the Shelves (597)

Posted on April 20, 2024April 25, 2024 by Marlene Harris | Author : Marlene Harris | Stacking the Shelves

Clearly, I went down a reading rabbit hole this week and came out with more books. I found yesterday’s book, The Murder of Mr. Ma, every bit as good as that initial review in First Clue led me to believe. I was teased by the inclusion of Judge Dee, decided not to go diving into the Van Gulik translation/interpretation, at least not yet, found the vampiric version by Tidhar, was delighted to discover that they are all really short (also really cheap if you’re interested) and was off to the races. Races which included the first book in one of the author’s signature series as well.

I picked up the audio of Lovers at the Museum strictly for the narrator, as he voiced one of my favorite characters in Mass Effect Andromeda, and got Fourth Wing because I expect that one of these days I’ll want to see what all the fuss is about – although that day is not yet.

The prettiest cover in this week’s stack, hands down, is The Sins on Their Bones. The Best Life Book Club is plenty cute, but Sins is simply gorgeous – as they so often are.

see loss see also love by yukiko tominaga

judge dee and the executioner of epinal by lavie tidhar

and then and then what else by daniel handler

judge dee and the three deaths of count werdenfels by lavie tidhar

judge dee and the poisoner of montmartre by lavie tidhar

judge dee and the mystery of the missing manuscript by lavie tidhar

judge dee and the limits of the law by lavie tidhar

lovers at the museum by isabel allende audio

For Review:
All For You by Dena Reub Romero
And Then? And Then? What Else? by Daniel Handler
The Best Life Book Club by Sheila Roberts
Mother Doll by Katya Apekina
The Mummy of Mayfair (Irregular Detective #2) by Jeri Westerson
See: Loss. See Also: Love by Yukiko Tominaga
The Sins on Their Bones by Laura R. Samotin
This Will Be Fun by E.B. Asher
The Threshold of Dissent by Marjorie N. Feld
To & Fro by Leah Hager Cohen

Purchased from Amazon/Audible/Etc.:
Agent to the Stars by John Scalzi (audio)
China Trade (Lydia Chin and Bill Smith #1) by SJ Rozan
Judge Dee and the Executioner of Epinal (Judge Dee #7) by Lavie Tidhar
Judge Dee and the Limits of the Law (Judge Dee #1) by Lavie Tidhar
Judge Dee and the Mystery of the Missing Manuscript (Judge Dee #5) by Lavie Tidhar
Judge Dee and the Poisoner of Montmartre (Judge Dee #3) by Lavie Tidhar
Judge Dee and the Three Deaths of Count Werdenfels (Judge Dee #2) by Lavie Tidhar
The Locked Coffin (Judge Dee #6) by Lavie Tidhar
Lovers at the Museum by Isabel Allende (ebook and audio)
Marked by Magic (Tracking Trouble #1) by Lindsay Buroker
Seven Vampires (Judge Dee #4) by Lavie Tidhar

Borrowed from the Library:
Fourth Wing (Empyrean #1) by Rebecca Yarros

If you want to find out more about Stacking The Shelves, please visit the official launch page

Please link your STS post in the linky below:

A- #AudioBookReview: The Murder of Mr. Ma by John Shen Yen Nee and SJ Rozan

Posted on April 19, 2024April 18, 2024 by Marlene Harris | Author : Marlene Harris | A- Reviews> audio reviews> audiobooks> book reviews

The Murder of Mr. Ma (Dee & Lao, #1) by John Shen Yen Nee, S.J. Rozan
Narrator: Daniel York Loh
Format: audiobook, eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss, supplied by publisher via Libro.fm
Formats available: hardcover, paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: historical fiction, historical mystery
Series: Dee & Lao #1
Pages: 312
Length: 8 hours and 24 minutes
Published by Recorded Books, Soho Crime on April 2, 2024
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

For fans of Guy Ritchie's Sherlock Holmes films, this stunning, swashbuckling series opener by a powerhouse duo of authors is at once comfortingly familiar and tantalizingly new.
Two unlikely allies race through the cobbled streets of 1920s London in search of a killer targeting Chinese immigrants.
London, 1924. When shy academic Lao She meets larger-than-life Judge Dee Ren Jie, his life abruptly turns from books and lectures to daring chases and narrow escapes. Dee has come to London to investigate the murder of a man he’d known during World War I when serving with the Chinese Labour Corps. No sooner has Dee interviewed the grieving widow than another dead body turns up. Then another. All stabbed to death withg a butterfly sword. Will Dee and Lao be able to connect the threads of the murders—or are they next in line as victims?
John Shen Yen Nee and SJ Rozan’s groundbreaking collaboration blends traditional gong'an crime fiction and the most iconic aspects of the Sherlock Holmes canon. Dee and Lao encounter the aristocracy and the street-child telegraph, churchmen and thieves in this clever, cinematic mystery that’s as thrilling and visual as an action film, as imaginative and transporting as a timeless classic.

My Review:

It can be considered both sad and ironic that Ma Ze Ren had left his native China in pursuit of fortune and adventure among the Chinese Labour Corps in the trenches of World War I, survived, immigrated to London and opened a successful shop dealing in Chinese antiquities – having seemingly attained all that he had originally sought – only to be killed in the midst of his shop by means of one of those self-same antiquities he intended to sell.

When they both served in the Labour Corps, Ma Ze Ren and several of his compatriots had come to an agreement with the man who served as the liaison between the Chinese Labour Corps members and the British officers who used them as cannon fodder, Judge Dee Ren Jie, that Dee would make arrangements to send their bodies back home if the chances of war required such service.

The war may be long over when this story opens in 1924, but that contract still holds Judge Dee, so he has come to London to take care of Ma’s final arrangements. But before he can even begin, Dee is taken up in the midst of a labor riot along with other Chinese men protesting for fair wages and treatment in a city that considers them something less than fully human.

Which is where the chronicler of this tale, scholar and author Lao She, comes into the tale. Dee needs to be out of jail before an enemy realizes that he has this nemesis in his clutches. Bertrand Russell wishes to help his friend Dee without getting his own name attached to this scandalous business.

And Lao She is bored out of his mind – even if he is unwilling to admit it to himself – spending his days teaching Chinese language and literature to students who have no love or care for the language or the people who speak it, merely a desire to get a leg up on their fellows in the commercial opportunities opening up in a modernized China.

Lao is supposed to be clandestinely exchanged for Dee – but Lao gives away the game with every move he makes and every word he’s not supposed to be uttering. So a prison break it is, with Lao, Dee and Russell scattering along with the rest of the prisoners.

But Dee still has a mission, Lao has acquitted himself well in the melee and has acquired a taste for danger and adventure he never realized blazed within him. Reluctant partners, resistant friends, together they will uncover not one but two murder plots in a fascinating tale that takes readers from the homes of the intelligentsia to the alleys of Limehouse – with a stop among the pioneers of the silver screen along the heights and depths of its way – only to arrive frantic and breathless at one of the first principles in any investigation:

FOLLOW THE MONEY

Escape Rating A-: The Murder of Mr. Ma was the highlighted review in the online mystery/crime review newsletter First Clue several months ago, and something about that review caught my attention and held it more than long enough for me to mark the title in Edelweiss as “Highly Anticipated” and immediately grab it when my anticipation was rewarded with the availability of an eARC and later an early audiobook.

(The above is a hint. If you love mysteries, subscribe to First Clue!)

The comparison in many reviews of this book are to Holmes and Watson, particularly the Holmes played by Robert Downey Jr. in the Guy Ritchie movies – because that particular version of Holmes is considerably more active than most.

As has been confessed before, I am a sucker for a Holmes pastiche, so I would have been interested in this book on that basis alone, but I think that quick comparison sells Dee and Lao and The Murder of Mr. Ma a bit short in this particular instance.

There is a surface resemblance in that Dee is the more active and experienced investigator – with or without resorting to the martial arts – while Lao, like Watson, is the newbie at this particular game and is tasked with creating a record of the adventure rather than necessarily figuring out the solution on his own. And if this combination appeals, Barker & Llewelyn are a bit closer analog than Holmes and Watson in more ways than the initially obvious.

What takes this story up another notch or ten is that both Dee and Lao were real historical figures – who never met due to having lived centuries apart. But Lao was a Chinese scholar in London during this period in real life, while Dee was a figure out of legend whose adventures were popularized by Robert van Gulik in the mid-20th century. (So if you think Dee’s name sounds familiar, that’s most likely the reason.)

Of course, what makes any mystery is the way the case itself is laid out and investigated, and that’s where this one draws the reader in its whirlwind every bit as much as Dee pulls Lao along in his wake. Because at first it seems as if the murder was a result of the prejudice and anti-Chinese sentiment that Dee, Lao and their countrymen face on every side in London in 1924, not helped at all by the popular “Yellow Peril” movies that play on and sensationalize the British fear of “the other”.

But the more Dee and Lao, with the able assistance and frequent succor of Dee’s friend Hoong, search for clues and motives, the less that simple but terrible conclusion feels like the entirety of the answer – not that it doesn’t underlay that answer but it’s just not the whole of the thing. Particularly as that answer is made even more elusive by Lao’s struggles with his pride and his naivete, and Dee’s ongoing attempts to extract himself from his opium addiction.

This is a mystery with layers surrounding layers, wheels within wheels, two investigators neither of whom are having their best day and criminals whose overweening pride finally gets in their way. And it’s marvelous.

The audiobook, narrated by Daniel York Loh, was a delight, but as is so often the case, I switched to text near the end because I couldn’t figure it out either and I just HAD to know. I have two and only two quibbles with the whole thing. I REALLY wanted Lao to get over his mooning over his landlady’s daughter because it was obvious from the beginning that he was deluding himself about his prospects and almost willfully blind to the obvious. His vain hopes and how thoroughly they were going to be dashed took a lot of audio time. My other quibble – a much bigger one – is that the short story that introduced this fascinating pair “The Killing of Henry Davenport” in the Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine does not appear to be available online, and that there’s no second book firmly fixed on the horizon. Dee’s and Lao’s investigations NEED to be a series. So much. So very much.

Which means that I leave this review pleased that Lao finally let himself get hit with the clue-by-four regarding Miss Wendell, and that rumors of a second book leave me with hope on that front as well.

A+ #BookReview: What Cannot Be Said by C.S. Harris

Posted on April 18, 2024April 17, 2024 by Marlene Harris | Author : Marlene Harris | A+ Reviews> book reviews

What Cannot Be Said (Sebastian St. Cyr, #19) by C.S. Harris
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, large print, ebook, audiobook
Genres: regency mystery
Series: Sebastian St. Cyr #19
Pages: 368
Published by Berkley on April 16, 2024
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

A seemingly idyllic summer picnic ends in a macabre murder that echoes a pair of slayings fourteen years earlier in this riveting new historical mystery from the USA Today bestselling author of Who Cries for the Lost.
July 1815: The Prince Regent’s grandiose plans to celebrate Napoléon’s recent defeat at Waterloo are thrown into turmoil when Lady McInnis and her daughter Emma are found brutally murdered in Richmond Park, their bodies posed in a chilling imitation of the stone effigies once found atop medieval tombs. Bow Street magistrate Sir Henry Lovejoy immediately turns to his friend Sebastian St. Cyr, Viscount Devlin, for help with the investigation. For as Devlin discovers, Lovejoy’s own wife and daughter were also murdered in Richmond Park, their bodies posed in the same bizarre postures. A traumatized ex-soldier was hanged for their killings. So is London now confronting a malicious copyist? Or did Lovejoy help send an innocent man to the gallows?
Aided by his wife, Hero, who knew Lady McInnis from her work with poor orphans, Devlin finds himself exploring a host of unsavory characters from a vicious chimney sweep to a smiling but decidedly lethal baby farmer. Also coming under increasing scrutiny is Sir Ivo McInnis himself, along with a wounded Waterloo veteran—who may or may not have been Laura McInnis’s lover—and a charismatic young violinist who moonlights as a fencing master and may have formed a dangerous relationship with Emma. But when Sebastian’s investigation turns toward man about town Basil Rhodes, he quickly draws the fury of the Palace, for Rhodes is well known as the Regent’s favorite illegitimate son.
Then Lady McInnis’s young niece and nephew are targeted by the killer, and two more women are discovered murdered and arranged in similar postures. With his own life increasingly in danger, Sebastian finds himself drawn inexorably toward a conclusion far darker and more horrific than anything he could have imagined.

My Review:

Most readers, myself included, read mysteries for what one author has called “the romance of justice”. What we love about the genre is that no matter how dark the deed, the investigator is able to figure out ‘whodunnit’, justice triumphs and evil receives its just desserts, followed by the reader’s catharsis that order has been restored to the world.

That’s not what happens in this case – because it can’t. This is a case where there can be no justice. Even though the investigator does manage to figure out ‘whodunnit’ there is no catharsis to be had and it would be wrong if there were.

Two bodies are discovered in Richmond Park, a mother and her 16-year-old daughter. That they are cut down in the prime of – or even worse at the beginning of – their lives is unjust enough. Then the situation gets worse.

The bodies are posed in repose, in exactly the same way that the bodies of another mother and daughter were found in that same park, near that same spot, fourteen years previously. It’s the grief over the deaths of his wife and daughter that put Magistrate Henry Lovejoy on the road that led to his first case with Viscount Devlin nearly a decade later, and could be said to have changed both their lives.

Seeing these two bodies – so like his own wife and daughter – make Lovejoy question whether in his zeal to bring SOMEONE to justice all those years ago he pushed for the wrong man’s conviction and execution. In his reinvigorated grief, his crisis of conscience is profound. Yet he still soldiers on in a case that he should have passed on to another Magistrate. Because someone else might get it wrong – as he might have fourteen years ago. He has to see this through – even if – or especially because – he may have apologies owing now, at the end, that won’t begin to redress the damage he caused at the beginning.

Devlin has a crisis of another kind, as the more he delves into this case, both the past tragedy and the present conundrum, the less ANY of it makes sense. The mother had enemies. The daughter had indiscretions. There are plenty of people with motive to kill the mother and even a few who might wish to eliminate the daughter but seemingly no one with this deep an animus for them both – although the husband/father certainly comes closest. As those closest to the victim or victims often do.

It’s only when Devlin sets aside his initial assumptions that logic forces him to reckon with the maxim later attributed to Sherlock Holmes, that “when you have eliminated all which is impossible, then whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.” In this case, a truth that is so heinous, so previously unthinkable, that no one who confronts it with him can even conceive of a just punishment.

But one desperate man can see – if not justice – at least an ending.

Escape Rating A+: This was, as is usual for my reading in this series, a one-night read that wouldn’t let go of me until it was over. Which doesn’t mean that I’m over it. Sebastian St. Cyr, Viscount Devlin, certainly was not at the story’s end.

One of the things that has always fascinated me about this series is the way that even though the murder is always solved, the amount of justice available to be served along with that solution is always limited.

Not that this era didn’t punish its criminals harshly – and as is often shown during the course of the series – unjustly. Rather, it’s that Devlin investigates crimes among the highest and mightiest, and as the saying has always gone, “the rich are different from you and me”.

In other words, Devlin often finds himself in the middle of cases where many of the suspects and even the perpetrators are above the law and protected, as is the case of one suspect here, by someone even higher.

Also, in investigating the dark and dirty underbelly of the glittering Regency, Devlin all too often finds practices that, while perfectly legal, turn both his stomach and ours. As is true in this particular case, as his wife, as well as the murder victim, were pushing hard for reforms in the commonly abused apprentice system – not to mention the vile practice of baby farming – and ruffling plenty of important feathers along their reforming way.

That feather ruffling could have been a motive for one of the murders, but not both. A big part of what keeps the reader turning pages in this one is watching the normally indefatigable and unflappable Devlin flag and flap because the pieces of this puzzle don’t add up – not even badly.

And not that we ALL don’t hope that the husband did it and that Devlin can make THAT stick. Alas, that hope is in vain – which is good for the story in a peculiar way because that would have made things much too easy and considerably less unsettling for both Devlin and the reader.

In the end, this is a story about bringing the unthinkable into thought, and just how much justice is even possible in a case that is indubitably true that absolutely no one will want to believe. Those are hard questions, and they are just as valid in contemporary mystery as they are in this historical iteration.

This series, centered on the riveting character of Sebastian St. Cyr, Viscount Devlin, and the equally compelling cast of friends and enemies – definitely the enemies! – that have gathered around him and his “poking his nose into situations where many believe it does not belong” has had this reader caught in its unshakeable grip since that very first book, What Angels Fear, so very long ago. The fascination hasn’t let go yet, and I don’t expect it to.

What I, maybe not expect but certainly hope for, is yet another page-turning story in the Sebastian St. Cyr series, hopefully this time next year!

#BookReview: The Practice, the Horizon, and the Chain by Sofia Samatar

Posted on April 17, 2024April 16, 2024 by Marlene Harris | Author : Marlene Harris | B Reviews> book reviews

The Practice, the Horizon, and the Chain by Sofia Samatar
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss, supplied by publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: paperback, ebook
Genres: science fiction, space opera, dark academia
Pages: 128
Published by Tordotcom on April 16, 2024
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

Celebrated author Sofia Samatar presents a mystical, revolutionary space adventure for the exhausted dreamer in this brilliant science fiction novella tackling the carceral state and violence embedded in the ivory tower while embodying the legacy of Ursula K. Le Guin.
"Can the University be a place of both training and transformation?"
The boy was raised as one of the Chained, condemned to toil in the bowels of a mining ship out amongst the stars.
His whole world changes―literally―when he is yanked "upstairs" to meet the woman he will come to call “professor.” The boy is no longer one of the Chained, she tells him, and he has been gifted an opportunity to be educated at the ship’s university alongside the elite.
The woman has spent her career striving for acceptance and validation from her colleagues in the hopes of reaching a brighter future, only to fall short at every turn.
Together, the boy and the woman will learn from each other to grasp the design of the chains designed to fetter them both, and are the key to breaking free. They will embark on a transformation―and redesign the entire world.

My Review:

This didn’t go any of the places I expected it to go. But the places it went and the themes it explored turned out to be much bigger than I expected – even though they conducted that exploration in the narrowest of spaces.

The space-faring fleet on which both the Hold and the University exist is part of a vast armada of interstellar leeches. This is not a generation ship, although generations of humans have certainly been born and died on its journey.

Instead, this is a human colony designed and engineered to roam the black, much as Quarians were in Mass Effect, but without their tragic, albeit self-inflicted, backstory.

Rather, the human population of this fleet represents humanity in all its dubious glory, greedy and rapacious by design, striving and hopeful in only a part of its execution. The stultifying caste system of Braking Day, Medusa Uploaded and even Battlestar Galactica, as highlighted in the first season episode “Bastille Day” (It took me forever to locate exactly which episode had this plot point but I just couldn’t get the reference out of my head) is on full and disgusting display, particularly in the context of the University.

Not that academia doesn’t do plenty of caste stratification of its very own, and not that it can’t be both blood thirsty and bloody minded – particularly in its small-minded, impractical politics. If an exploration of that appeals and you enjoy SF mysteries, Malka Older’s Mossa and Plieti series, The Mimicking of Known Successes and The Imposition of Unnecessary Obstacles plumbs those depths in all their ugliness while figuring out just whodunnit in a brave new/old world, while Premee Mohamed’s forthcoming We Speak Through the Mountain is a similarly searing indictment of the way that Academe rewrites its own history to obscure its pervasive condescension.

Howsomever, as is clear from the above citations, several parts of this story have been done before – and well – if not quite in this combination.

The place I wasn’t expecting it to go was into the metaphysical, quasi-religious depths of Andrew Kelly Stewart’s We Shall Sing a Song into the Deep, which is where The Practice, the Horizon, and the Chain gets both its heart and its quite literal depth.

Because the story here, in the end, is both about learning that even people who believe they are free can be conditioned – or fooled – into forgetting that they are just as chained as the obviously and literally named ‘Chained’ people that they are taught to look down upon.

And that it is only by banding together, not through violence but through perception and mindfulness and just plain finding common cause – that they can all be free.

Escape Rating B: This is a story that, at first, seems a bit disjointed. And it does have a sort of metaphysical aspect that seems foreign to its SF story – also at least at first. At the same time, as much as the obvious abuses of the Hold system resemble the contemporary carceral state, the sheer bloody-minded small-minded nastiness of academia sticks in the craw even more harshly – if only because it makes the hypocrisy of the whole, entire system that much more obvious.

This isn’t a comfortable book. It’s beautifully written, compulsively lyrical, and manages to both hit its points over the head with a hammer AND obscure any catharsis in its ending at the same time. I’m not remotely sure how I feel about the whole thing, but I’m sure I’ll be thinking about the spoken and unspoken messages it left implanted in my brain.

Rain Drops on Roses Giveaway Hop

Posted on April 16, 2024April 15, 2024 by Marlene Harris | Author : Marlene Harris | Blog Hops> Giveaways> Rain Drops on Roses Giveaway Hop

Welcome to the Rain Drops on Roses Giveaway Hop, hosted by Mama the Fox!

I have an earworm from this hop, one I plan on sharing. That phrase “Rain Drops on Roses” is from The Sound of Music, specifically it’s the opening line for the song, “My Favorite Things.”

I’ve shared. Sorry, not sorry. The duration of an earworm is inversely proportional to the number of people it’s shared with. So the more of you who catch it, the shorter I’ll have to put up with it. At least that’s my hope – because damn they’re persistent!

Still, there’s a potential reward for you for having this particular rather charming song stuck in your head. As per usual, I’m giving away the usual Reading Reality hop prize of the winner’s choice of a $10 Amazon Gift Card or $10 in books. All you have to do is tell us what one of YOUR favorite things might be!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

For more of everyone’s favorite things – PRIZES – be sure to visit the other stops on this hop!

MamatheFox and all participating blogs are not held responsible for sponsors who fail to fulfill their prize obligations.

A+ #BookReview: Mal Goes to War by Edward Ashton

Posted on April 15, 2024April 14, 2024 by Marlene Harris | Author : Marlene Harris | A+ Reviews> book reviews

Mal Goes to War by Edward Ashton
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: dystopian, military science fiction, robots, science fiction
Pages: 304
Published by St. Martin's Press on April 9, 2024
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

The humans are fighting again. Go figure.

As a free A.I., Mal finds the war between the modded and augmented Federals and the puritanical Humanists about as interesting as a battle between rival anthills. He’s not above scouting the battlefield for salvage, though, and when the Humanists abruptly cut off access to infospace he finds himself trapped in the body of a cyborg mercenary, and responsible for the safety of the modded girl she died protecting.

A dark comedy wrapped in a techno thriller’s skin, Mal Goes to War provides a satirical take on war, artificial intelligence, and what it really means to be human.

My Review:

Mal does not intend to go to war. In fact, Mal thinks the war between the Federal army and the opposing Humanist forces is a pretty stupid war, which it is. Although not, as it turns out, quite as stupid as the apparent opposing forces make it look like it is.

Not that even Mal figures that out until well after he’s in the thick of it. The last place he ever wanted or expected to be.

Which may make it sound like Mal is a typical soldier, but if there’s one thing Mal isn’t, it’s typical. Or at least not typically human. In fact, Mal thinks of ALL the humans he’s observing as barely evolved from monkeys. Some moments, he’s fairly sure that they’ve actually devolved from monkeys.

Because Mal isn’t human at all. He’s a free A.I., or as his people prefer to be called, a Silico-American. He’s merely observing this stupid war from the perspective of an otherwise fairly autonomous but not intelligent drone when he gets the wild and crazy idea to see what it would be like to have a body.

So he downloads himself into the body of a nearby cyborg-augmented soldier. Even on the frontiers of this stupid little war, both sides have PLENTY of those for Mal to play around with.

It stops being play really, really fast. Because one side of this stupid war knocks out all the data communication towers, and Mal can’t upload himself back into the cloud. He’s stuck in the cyborg augmentation suite of a dead human body that he can only sorta/kinda manipulate and only for so long before the power cells run out.

He’s also acquired the dead cyborg’s entirely too human job. She was guarding a little girl who has managed to survive the carnage all around her – at least so far. Quite possibly because she’s considerably more dangerous than any of the soldiers around her could even possibly imagine.

Leaving Mal trapped behind enemy lines in this stupid war between the so-called Humanists who believe that ALL augmented people should be thrown into burn pits and incinerated to ash, and the ragtag Federals who are getting the asses handed to them by people who shouldn’t be able to handle their advanced weaponry because it all requires the augmentations that the Humanists believe are anathema.

Which means that one of Mal’s people is putting their cybernetic thumb on the scales of war in favor of the humanists who want to remove them from the universe with extreme prejudice.

A problem that seems much too big for Mal to solve, as his processing power is tied up in protecting his new charge – no matter how much she hates the acts he performs to keep her as safe as he can. Even if they’re not nearly enough.

Escape Rating A+: If you put Murderbot in a blender – if Murderbot would let you put them in a blender – with the nannybot Pounce from Day Zero and the independent investigative reporter A.I. Scorn from Emergent Properties, you’d get Mal (short for Malware).

(Who, by the way, does see himself as male as does Pounce, unlike both Murderbot and Scorn. I had to check. Multiple times.)

What hooks the reader, or at least this reader, from the very first page is Mal’s conversation with his two fellow A.I.s, Clippy and !HelpDesk. They’re all snarky to the max, and none of them think much of humanity. To them, we’re entertainment – and we’re bad, boring entertainment at that.

And from their perspective, they’re right.

But, when Mal downloads himself into the dead cyborg Mika and is cut off from the datastream he’s forced to make adjustments. A whole lot of adjustments. He’s suddenly become a whole lot smaller than he ever expected to be, and the world is a whole lot bigger than he ever imagined.

Which doesn’t change his initial opinion that humans are stupid and that this war he’s now at ground zero for is stupid, even as he begins to see that as stupid as humans are he has acquired obligations to some of them that his own concept of honor requires him to see to the end.

It’s not love and never claims to be. It’s not even Murderbot’s grudging respect and even friendship toward Dr. Mensah and her team, but it is a change in perspective and a big part of the charm of the story is watching that change take place – even as we listen in on Mal’s internal dialog about the fix he’s in, his boredom as it continues and his limited ability to get himself out.

So the story combines the kind of mission quest that Day Zero had, complete with the nearly cinematic drive and pace that propels that story forward, told in a voice that might not exactly be Murderbot’s but is certainly a chronological precedent for it, shot through – sometimes literally – with Scorn’s dogged determination to figure out the mystery no matter what it might cost.

If any of the above appealed to you, or if you enjoyed the author’s previous books, Mickey7 and Antimatter Blues, you’ll find a story that will take you on a wild ride that propels you through this story while never losing sight of just how stupid this, or any other war, can be.

It looks like the author’s next book will be titled The Fourth Consort, and it will be out next February. As Mal Goes to War is the third book of his that I’ve been captivated by, I’m already there for whatever he writes next – and this one looks like even more SFnal fun.

The Sunday Post AKA What’s on my (Mostly Virtual) Nightstand 4-14-24

Posted on April 14, 2024April 13, 2024 by Marlene Harris | Author : Marlene Harris | The Sunday Post> Virtual Nightstand

It’s time to bid this year’s Blogo-Birthday Celebration farewell. The posts have posted, the giveaways have all found winners, so it’s back to the usual here at Chez Reading Reality for another year.

Although the usual isn’t quite so usual this past week, as one of my rare ‘D’ graded reviews spewed itself over the blog earlier in the week. There have been a few books over the years that I detested every page but couldn’t put down – and then couldn’t get out of my head – and Space Holes absolutely was one of THOSE. Hence Wednesday’s rant-fest. I’ve heard that the audio makes it better, but I can’t even. I’d rather listen to something I’m actually enjoying – which I am at the moment with The Murder of Mr. Ma.

Staying with that enjoyment topic, we were treated to a rare sighting of the girl cats coexisting peacefully even as they are clearly exhibiting the traits that make that sight so very rare. Luna is looking up, all bright eyed and eager for any attention or her next adventure, while Hecate’s face is firmly fixed in a glower, declaring wordlessly but with a VERY speaking glance that she would much rather be alone – or at least alone with her humans and without any squeaky little interlopers harshing her not exactly mellow.

Current Giveaways:

$10 Gift Card or $10 Book in the Honey Bunny Giveaway Hop (ENDS TOMORROW!!!)
$10 Gift Card or $10 Book in the Spring 2024 Seasons of Books Giveaway Hop

Winner Announcements:

The winner of ANY BOOK BY MARTY WINGATE is Betty
The winner of ANY BOOK IN THE BARKER & LLEWELYN SERIES is Leela
The winner of ANY BEST BOOKS OF 2024 SO FAR is Cali
The winners of the LUCKY 13 BLOGO BIRTHDAY GIVEAWAY are Anne, Billie, Carolyn, Lisa, Shelly, and Susan