Jason Paterson

From the outset (and without giving anything away) it was apparent in the first few chapters that the central conceit of Nemesis Games would be that each member of the Rocinante's crew would have their own fairly isolated storylines. Because of this, I was looking forward to learning something about each of their back stories. While all these seemingly disparate journey's end up being interesting and significant to the overall story, and while there are some truly big, dramatic moments in the plot - they are flanked by a fair number of passages that seem to drag. I'm leaning toward giving this one a 5 star rating, especially because of the final chapter, which was eloquent and poetic... but I feel like Nemesis Games is just a very strong 4, and is set to introduce a (possibly) great 6th book. Let's find out!

Seveneves took me a long time to complete, and only after two false starts. I'm glad I endured though, because for as long as the ride was, the destination was worth it. It's a tantalizing, thought provoking, harrowing story of the end of civilization as we know it, and it's beautifully executed.

I do with Neal was better at writing character. I feel like his characters are not as fully illustrated as I wish they were, and I have a hard time relating to them. As a result, I often don't care for the characters as much as I probably should, or as much as Neal probably hopes I would. Despite this, the world building and storytelling is so perfectly done, I can excuse a lack of dimensionality in our characters.

I feel like Seveneves would make a terrific limited series on some streaming service - or a film series. It's split up nicely into three sizable acts already. Act 1: Day Zero until the Hard Rain. Act 2: Hard Rain until the Council of the Seven Eves. Act 3: 5,000 years later.

In a lot of ways, I feel like this novel harkens back to the classic sci-fi of the 50's and 60's. Isaac Asimov. Frank Herbert. Arthur C. Clarke. There's a real sense of the core idea here, and Stephenson explores it thoroughly.

Incredible the amount of detail author David McCullough is able to muster to flesh out this very compelling story of the struggle of 1776. I learned a lot, and developed a much deeper appreciation for some of the key battles and skirmishes of the American Revolution. From a literary perspective, the story wanes between pages of slightly too much detail to moments of sheer tension and enlightenment. McCullough tells a very human story, focusing on the known facts surrounding key characters, like Nathanael Greene, Charles Lee, Henry Clinton, Charles Cornwallis, William Howe, and George Washington. Highly recommend it for anyone interested in the period.

Fantastic glimpse into a what-if scenario about an alien pandemic that threatens to wipe out civilization if a small team of scientists don't stop it first. Well written examination of the scientific process. How it works, and where it breaks down. It's impressive to imagine that this book was written in the 1960's, but still feels so current. This was a timely read, considering the circumstances in the world (COVID-19), and while I suspect that helped engross me in the story - Crichton does a wonderful job all on his own illustrating an impending sense of urgency and dread.

It's tough to write a review of a classic like The Fellowship of the Ring. Who am I to opine about such a revered novel? This was the first time I've read it (having not been as much a Fantasy fan in my youth as a Sci-Fi fan), and I wasn't sure what to expect. My appreciation for The Lord Of The Rings was originally shaped by the 1978 Bakshi animated film, and then by the Peter Jackson movies, but I was amazed at how much deeper an experience it was to read this first novel, despite the faithful depiction of many aspects of the book in those films. Tolkien's opening to his opus is a treasure, rich with detail. The first 1/4 of the book, in the Shire, is a delightful, whimsical tale. The mines of Moria are even more darkly vivid than I expected. The forest of Lorien is invoked like a gentle breeze, rustling through the golden leaves of an autumn tree. The language is sometimes dated, and the pacing stumbles from time to time, but there is an authentic passion to every passage that makes up for any technical shortcomings. I'm very glad I decided to finally jump in and read this book... and am looking forward to continuing the journey through The Two Towers.

This story is a cute reimagining of the Christian story of Jesus, using a seagull who aspires to an existence beyond the simple gathering of food. It was published in the 1970's - a leftover artifact of the hippy free love revolution the late 60's, and while there's a nice story about morality and the value of perseverance, it's fairly shallow. Still, for what amounts to an elaborate short story, I found it entertaining and engaging and something worth reading.

I became familiar with Bernard Cornwell through his Sharpe TV series, with Sean Bean. His passion for Napoleonic subject matter is clear, so getting a chance to read his non-fictional account of the battle of Waterloo is a treat.

Mr. Cornwell's telling of the story of Quatre Bras is quite good, even if his telling of the battle of Ligny feels somewhat weaker. Still, he does a good job of explaining Napoleon's failures here in chasing down and destroying the Prussian army, which ultimately enabled his defeat at Waterloo.

This was my first major dive into the history of the Napoleonic era, but the intimacy and brutality of the fighting of this era is fascinating and captures my imagination. It's no surprise that so many soldiers (from each of the three armies) were left unaccounted for after the battle of Waterloo. It must have been simply terrifying.

I'm giving Ringworld a 3, but this is a conditional rating. I think Ringworld is both a book with a terrific story and convincing world-building, but it is unfortunately told through the eyes of flat, uninteresting characters utilizing dated, often chauvinistic dialogue. A lot of “golden age” sci-fi falls into this trap, having been written by middle-aged white men in an era when this sort of behaviour and attitude was left unchecked. I understand that, and can usually appreciate the work as a piece from its place and time. It feels jarring though when the only female character behaves ignorantly, acts clumsy, and is hyper sexualized by the writer - and the male characters around her treat her critically because of these things. However, if you can look past this (and there were a few moments where I really struggled) the concept of the Ringworld itself is good fun, especially when Niven manages to blow your mind with the scale of it. I do feel like I'm kind of done with the saga though and as interesting as the Ringworld is, I don't feel compelled enough to read the other four books in the series.

Dan Jones' “The Hollow Crown” is a terrifically written narrative of the Wars Of The Roses, starting with a brief accounting of Henry V and quickly jumping in to the bumbling years under Henry VI, setting the stage for the Yorkist revolt and usurpation of the throne by Edward IV. This began generations of battles features warring cousins, ultimately culminating in Henry VII and the rise of the Tudors, who managed to bring together the quarrelsome Yorks and Lancastrians under one banner. Lovingly written with a keen attention to detail and a thankfully limited amount of conjecture. This is the second of Dan Jones' books I've read (the first being The Plantagenets, which is a sort of prelude to this book), and I'll admit I didn't expect to enjoy it as much as I did.

Terrific book. It's a long one - the second longest in the series - but it's paced nicely. This is the one that takes what has, up until this point, been a kid's story and brings it kicking and screaming into a somewhat darker and slightly more menacing place. At this stage, it's decidedly a young-adult novel, with themes that are not insignificantly stepped up. The book opens with an exciting Quidditch World Cup event, which sets the stage for the tri-wizard tournament - a competition that provides the framework of this novel, and ultimately provides the impetus for the big closing moments. New characters, new spells, blooming romances, and plenty of good vs evil. We're excited to get into The Order Of The Phoenix!

I thoroughly enjoyed Cibola Burn. I think it may be my highest rated “Expanse” novel aside from Book #3, Abaddon's Gate. This might seem strange, since perusing some found reviews on the Internet seems to suggest that CB has an unfortunate reputation. Part of me wonders if this is due to the audiobook being read by a different narrator... and I know that changing voices halfway through a series could be admittedly jarring. Luckily, I came to the book just in time for the new recording by the narrator of the rest of the series (Jefferson Mays). The other part of me wonders if it's due to the change in setting - as this is the first novel not set (mostly) in space, but planetside. Honestly, I found this change refreshing, and almost necessary to keep my engagement. I like the gentle reintroduction of past characters, and the use of brand new ones. It feels like the story is progressing nicely from book to book, and suddenly I find myself wondering about the setting of Book #5.

A fascinating examination of gender, duality, and treason. The premise is that a far futured human, Genly Ai, is an “envoy”, a person sent to a planet to make first contact and recruit them into the “Ekumen” - a kind of federation of planets, mostly involved with trading ideas and information. Gethen, or “Winter” as it was named by the humans, is a cold planet - even in the summer, and covered with ice. Into this seemingly inhospitable landscape, Genly works with leaders and influencers to convince them to join the Ekumen. This is a feudalistic world that has not developed flight, or the concept of “war”, but they have other modern advances.

LeGuin uses an interesting language to tell the tale. Most of it is first person accounts, either from the main protagonist or his companion, Estraven. Alien terminology and wording is often employed, so the reader must learn some of this along the way to fully understand the story. This helps to enrich the already hauntingly convincing and wonderfully woven, subtle story.

Highly recommended reading for lovers of science fiction, and beyond.

Absolutely gorgeous and thought provoking book about humanity's relationship with the only rock we eat. From the very first handful of paragraphs, it's obvious the author has a keen interest in the subject, and a sharp sense of humour. Every chapter is mind blowing. Ancient and far reaching, the story of this ubiquitous compound that has changed lives around the dinner table and altered the path of empires is truly enlightening. Highly recommend it.

Though I quite enjoyed the first book in the Southern Reach trilogy, this second one took the plot in a much different direction, choosing to focus on the office politics of the staff of the Southern Reach, instead of examining Area-X itself. The language was still dreamy and ethereal, but I wasn't nearly as engaged as I was in the first book. I'll need to drag myself into the third and final novel, hoping it makes this previous one pay off.

I wasn't sure if Andy Weir could capture my imagination again like he did with The Martian. It turned out that tis second book, Artemis, wasn't up to the task - but Project Hail Mary? That's a different story. From its amnesia infused beginnings and all along its two-timeline narrative that eventually dovetails together, the book works brilliantly at unravelling a mystery. Similar to The Martian, the plotline here is driven by one person (or in the case of the second timeline, a small team of people) overcoming massive technical and science problems. I feel like this is a signature of Weir's best work, though time will tell. Project Hail Mary simply proves that Andy Weir is not a one hit wonder and that, in fact, his best work may be yet to come.

I became acquainted with Kurlansky's writing when his book Salt was recommended to me. That novel was so expertly crafted, I found myself being amazed by interesting history just about every paragraph. It's the type of story you would want to return to several times. Milk! is written in much the same style, but isn't quite that engaging in practice. This may be because Kurlansky has peppered the book with a greater number of recipes, or it may just be that the history of Milk and dairy products isn't quite as sordid and dark as it is with Salt. That said, there's been a long journey between humanity and milk, whether that's cows milk, human milk, goats milk, or milk from some other animal... and I still had several of those “Oh Wow!” moments. While this might not be as epic scaled as Salt, it's still a strong labour of love, and worth reading.

This isn't my kind of book. It's an philosophical, absurdist journey through the eyes of someone who is lonely, alienated, and detached from society. While I enjoyed some moments in the first part of the book, it lost me in the second half.

I have worked in and around the IT industry for over 15 years and grew up, similarly to Snowden, enamored with technology. I got my first PC, a XT clone, at around age 10 and started running my own BBS shortly after. I remember those first days of the internet, my first website, and the days before social media. None of what he exposed in 2013 really surprised me or people like me - at least not from a technological perspective. It was always an assumption that this stuff could happen. Taking over cameras, stepping through backdoors in routers, listening in on microphones, browsing private social media pages. Of course that's possible. What we didn't fully appreciate was the scope. The story Edward Snowden has to tell is an important one... and the book covers his life and the events surrounding his whistleblowing with great detail and emotion. It not only explains what he did, but he tries to tell the story of why he did it. It's a wonderfully crafted book that should be standard reading for any technologist.

That the US government is collecting data on such an enormous scale, passively, and storing it in perpetuity... that should frighten everyone, and it's enough to start making you paranoid of the things you do online. Of course, I'm just a middle aged white guy in Canada who lives a fairly standard, boring life. I'm not a juicy surveillance target. Or am I?

Hello?

...are you reading this?

Hello?

By now the folks who follow me here likely know that I have a love for Mark Kurlansky's approach to writing about history - tracing a single object's impact on the world - as he did with “Salt” and “Milk”. In this book, the author turns his attention away from edibles and toward a seemingly more mundane subject - the history of paper! I suspected there would be some interesting historical tidbits about this fibrous stuff, but in this work Kurlansky explains that it's not the paper itself that is the focus of the examination, but the various methods of communication that humanity has employed through the use of the stuff. From writing on hides, to parchment and velum, to handcrafted art paper, to more modern printing, and even Japanese nori (seaweed paper)... Kurlansky weaves a story. I particularly liked the argument that he repeatedly makes about technology not changing society - but that technology is developed in response to changing societies. “Paper” is another fascinating trip through time, and while it may not be quite as engaging as the aforementioned books on Salt or Milk, it still holds a lot of interesting moments.

After the first book, which was a proper cracker, the second book does a fair enough job moving the story along in interesting ways, but it maybe didn't shine quite as much as the first book. I liked the character of Gilderoy Lockhart, and the climactic battle with the Basilisk, but things seemed to otherwise progress somewhat slowly. Thankfully, the third book seems to have recovered the proper pacing.

This is (to date) my favourite of the Expanse novels. I felt a little unsure heading in, because while Holden and crew were around, the characters I had grown to love in Caliban's War were nowhere to be found. This seems to be the MO for author James Corey, though... and he introduces us to a new gang of misfits and miscreants who get thrust headlong into a situation that is both awe-inspiring and action filled. It's a wonderfully paced, evocative piece of writing.

If you woke up tomorrow and suddenly had a brain full of memories of a life you, until this moment, have no recollection of living — what would you do? When memories become so fragile and ephemeral, how do you know what is actually real? Blake Crouch examines a space-time crisis of human making with such a pure and focused vision. The story reminds me most of the movie Edge Of Tomorrow, which is based on concepts in the Japanese novel All You Need Is Kill by Hiroshi Sakurazaka. Only, in Crouch's book, the stakes feel more personal and thus, carry more emotional weight. It's a wonderful, if sometimes mind bending sci-if story.

Neil Gaiman delivers another magical tale of childhood, mixing together bits of his own youth with delightfully wicked fantasy elements to create an emotionally engaging, mature piece of fiction. This is a shorter novel, but it is precisely focused, as Neil has trimmed all the excess packaging off the story, leaving only the sweetest bites intact. The central characters were all fleshed out fully, without many side characters entering or exiting the story, and the arc was beautifully executed with a tumultuous ending. Love.

Kurt Vonnegut once said of Arthur C. Clarke's novel Childhood's End that it is one of the few masterpieces of the science fiction genre.

The plot starts as many sci-fi stories start. A fleet of alien UFOs descend from space and park themselves over the major cities on Earth. However, there is no attack. There are no lasers fired, nor any swathes of destruction. The aliens, it seems, are benevolent. They are here to help guide humanity through this stage of potential peril. Remember, Childhood's End was written in 1953, during the height of nuclear tension.

Nobody ever sees the aliens, however, except for one individual. Their plans are kept equally secret, but slowly and with deliberate guidance they build the trust of humankind. By the time they are physically revealed, around the halfway point of the book, it becomes apparent why they were so secretive. They are the very image of the devil - red skin, horns, a pointed tail, and leathery wings. However, since they had shown their goodwill through the years, little was made of their “coincidental” resemblance to an ancient symbol of evil.

The narrative was initially a bit difficult to follow, as it moved around through time, following a different cast of characters at each step (only occasionally revisiting previously introduced characters). The humans are drawn quite flat, but they serve mostly as two dimensional vehicles to tell the larger story... one that culminates in a series of heady revelations.

I particularly like the racial memory (or racial premonition) ideas and the ideas of collective consciousness, and how this might relate to our civilization's coping of life with the Internet - something Clarke certainly could not have imagined in the early 1950's. I enjoyed how he plays with time, whether it's through the narrative that spans about 150 years, or when he describes the effects of near light speed travel and time dilation. Every aspect of this novel is crafted masterfully, so it's easy to understand why many consider it a landmark of its genre... and why it may be one book I return to again in the future.

Horne's writing is delicate, elaborate, and sweeping. He lavishly paints a picture of the events leading up to Verdun and the battle itself, highlighting the major players in command and tracking the nightmare on the front lines. I always knew Verdun as a “meat grinder” and while that's true, there are distinct beats to this 10 month long battle and I came away with a more nuanced understanding of them.

The author depicts the flow of battle with expertise, and illustrates the effects it had on both sides. He dives into the nightmare of the new weaponry introduced at Verdun, like flamethrowers or phosgene gas - and you can almost feel the panic as your own heart starts racing imagining what it must have been like to confront these terrors.

I have only two criticisms of the book. Horne will sometimes reference a “well known” figure without giving any context. If you don't happen to know what person or their backstory, it's up to you to figure it out. He will also regularly cite quotes in French (less often German) without any translation, so you'll need to have at least a basic understanding of the language if you want to understand these, or run them through a translator.

Regardless, this stands as one of the best books I've read on WWI and I highly recommend it.