Rob

I struggled a bit with this at times. My attention would drift. I'd go several days without picking it back up, often opting for a podcast instead. It got better as it went along and I already bought the final book in the series, so I will probably wrap it up later this year, but there are some other books I plan to listen to first.

Stephen Brand once again does an excellent job with the narration. This really helped me get through the slower parts when I was less interested.

Executive Summary: A fun present day sci-fi story that will cause you to never look at history the same way again.

Full Review
I had never heard of this series or Wesley Chu until Sword & Laser did an interview with him back in April. Not long after, the first two books of this series were on sale so I added them to the ever increasing pile. Recently, I was looking for something to read. A few people recommended this as a good light read and I'm happy to agree.

Aliens are among us. The conspiracy theorists are right. They've been inhabiting humans since the days of the neanderthal. Tao has inhabited some of the best leaders in history including Genghis Khan and Zhu Yuanzhang. His current host Edward is an elite field agent.

Then everything goes sideways and Tao ends up in an overweight 30-something computer programmer named Roen (hey that's me! well, not that overweight, but still!) whose life is going nowhere.

This is really more of a spy thriller with a sci-fi backdrop than it is your typical technology near-future sci-fi story. Roen doesn't obtain magic powers, highly advanced weapons or a jet pack.

What he does get is thousands of years of experience and expertise of the alien symbiote named Tao. Can Tao use his knowledge to turn Roen from overweight slob into something that can pass for a field agent? He had better because there is a civil war between the two factions of aliens that has been raging for hundreds of years, and Tao's side is losing.

The book is well written, with enjoyable characters. The is a decent amount of humor throughout keeping things pretty light. I really enjoyed the way Mr. Chu incorporates the Quasing into our history.

This book was a lot of fun and I'm looking forward to picking up the sequel just as soon as I have some more time. Highly recommended!

I have mixed feelings on this one. I struggled with the characters, including Mickey. His view on people doesn't vibe with my own. His choices that lead to him becoming an expendable are not ones I'd make, but I guess I understand. Most of the supporting characters are worse, except maybe Nasha.

For me the thing that kept me picking the book back up was the story itself. There is a bit of a mystery and I wanted to know what happened. Mickey did grow on me as the book went along. He had some interesting character growth. The book explores a lot of ideas about what is self.

I guess there is a sequel, but I'm not likely to pick it up. I am fine with this as a stand-alone.

I will continue the series, but every time I pick up a new book in this series I'm reminded how much I can struggle with the writing. I love the characters, the world building and the overall plot has me interested. That said there are just huge lulls of infodumps or overexplaining things and I just sort of tune out. I want to see where the story goes. This book finished much stronger than it started.

The narration is fantastic as always. I think it's a huge help to get through the slow parts of the series. I was annoyed when the book got delayed, but I'd rather it be delayed than have a different narrator.

For a while John Scalzi was one of my favorite sci-fi authors. Anytime a new book a pre-order was automatic. However I was mostly underwhelmed by his last two novels The Kaiju Preservation Society and Starter Villain. Both had fun sounding premises and both didn't end up being as fun as their premise.

So here comes this book about the moon turning to cheese. In the afterword Scalzi mentions how its the final book in what he sort of considers a loose trilogy of unrelated books. I was staring to think that maybe I'd be more selective of which novels by Mr. Scalzi I'd pre-order in the future.

Thankfully this was a book that ended up being as fun as the premise. If you're looking for a hard sci-fi novel, well you must not have read a John Scalzi novel before. The science is hand wavy at best. But that' not the point.

I'm not generally a fan of short stories. This book is almost that, but not quite. Some characters we meet once and never again. The book explores a lot of ideas, characters and parts of the US with the question of "how would they react if the moon turned to cheese?". It's a silly premise and question, but somehow it leads to some really interesting vignettes that worked well together into a novel length story.

Despite my somewhat low expectations and a style of story telling I generally don't enjoy, Mr. Scalzi somehow pulled it off.

Wil Wheaton does his usual good job with narrations. This book has far less snark than other books by Mr. Scalzi but I still think Wil is always a great fit for his novels.

Executive Summary: This was a fun novella, and I plan to continue with the rest of the series eventually.

Audiobook: Kevin R. Free did a good job. It isn't a must listen for me, but it's certainly a decent option if like me you do a lot of audiobooks.

Full Review

I've said this before in other reviews, but I'm not a huge fan of the Novella series trend that seems to be happening. I generally like longer stories. I often don't feel like they are priced the same as full novels where it seems like I'm not getting my money's worth, especially in audio.

I got the ebook of this for free, then promptly forgot I had it and bought the audio on a daily deal. I might not have read it otherwise. I really love the premise of this. I don't read a lot of sci-fi, but what I do tends to be very character-driven space opera. There don't tend to be a lot of robots/androids. This is still very character-driven. However it's much smaller in scope. Oh and the protagonist is some kind of cyborg who calls himself Murderbot.I liked the humor a lot. It's not so much laugh out loud funny as it is clever/wry. That suits me just fine.I also really like the humans in this book. The interaction between Murderbot and his humans was what really moved this story rather than the plot. I feel like the crisis could have almost been anything and it wouldn't have mattered.

I'm not rushing out to pick up Artificial Condition right away due to it being a novella instead of novel, but it's on my wish list and I'm sure I'll get around to it eventually.

It's been a while since I read the last book in this series. Apparently that one was set on the moon and featured Nicole instead of Elma and the book I loved the most.

This book returns to Elma and Mars. I'm not sure how much was the return to Elma and how much was just the plot not being as strong, but this one wasn't as good as the last.

Don't get me wrong I still enjoyed it, and would read another one if she writes one, but at points of the book Elma was getting on my nerves and the interactions with some of the other characters did as well.

Once again Mary Robinette Kowal does an excellent job narrating her own book. The audio is a great option for this series.

I rather enjoyed this one. Not a whole lot of plot, but fun characters that I just enjoyed spending time with. Very low stakes. I see a lot of people call this “cozy” I think of it more like a slice of life anime style story. I found myself making excuses to keep listening. That's always a sign of a good book.

I guess he's doing a prequel. I may pick it up eventually, but I don't feel like there is a need for that. Or a sequel really. I think this works really well as a stand alone. Maybe I'll change my mind later though.

The book also came with a second short story that was a bit of a prequel. It was fine, but not as enjoyable as the main story.

I knew Travis Baldree from his audio narration, that's what first put this book on my radar. Normally I'm not a big fan of authors narrating their own books (with a few exceptions). You can add him to the list. He's a great narrator and there was no way I'd do this in any other format.

Similar vibe to the original. I didn't enjoy this one quite as much as that one, but it was still a fun read. In general I don't tend to enjoy prequels, but I thought this one worked well enough. There was a good mix of characters and subplots to make this different enough from the first. Everything here feels pretty self-contained apart from maybe the epilogue that makes this feel mostly like a stand alone.

I guess there is now going to be a 3rd book, though I don't know where that falls in the chronology of the first 2. I will check it out at some point, but I won't necessarily rush to pick it up.

Travis Baldree does his usual excellent job at narration for this. Normally I'm not a huge fan when authors read their own works, but I enjoy Mr. Baldree's narration for a few other series so he's an excellent choice here.