Review: For We Are Many

For We Are Many by Dennis E. Taylor
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

It’s Bobs, Bobs, and more Bobs in this second part of the Bobiverse, which, though not entirely doing away with the monumentally screwed up apocalyptic politics that got humankind in its current mess, nevertheless shifts its focus to learning more about the indigenous peoples of various worlds which humankind now wants to potentially colonize. That is, if the voluntary extinctionist group VEHEMENT doesn’t have their way. Though not quite as laugh out loud funny as its predecessor, this book still carries a certain sharp wit and nerdy way about it, enough to give me reason to generously raise it from 2.5 to 3 stars. Still hasn’t lost me like Dungeon Crawler Carl, so at least there’s that too.

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Review: Out Law

Out Law by Jim Butcher
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

It's nice to see Butcher give us a little treat of a novella to tide us fans over a bit after Twelve Months and its depiction of the aftermath of the Battle of Chicago. As a magical novella in Chicago, it also feels like Butcher's version of the style that Veronica Roth was going for in When Among Crows, just not Polish in flavor. While Goodreads still thinks we're getting the next full length Dresden novel next year, knowing how Butcher's pace has significantly slowed these last few years, I find that quite unlikely. But in the meantime, there's this little book and its whip-fast action and bloody good fun.

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Review: There Is No Antimemetics Division

There Is No Antimemetics Division by qntm
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I can see why this one had a long waitlist at the library: it’s a little mind bender worthy of Christopher Nolan, particularly Inception, but antimatterized. The idea of antimemes, in universe, began with the noble purpose of experimentally eradicating Nazi thought, but like many other fictional AI’s or similar experiments, it quickly proved to be far more difficult to control, and now there is no Antimemetics Division except that which this book follows, along a wild and unpredictable path. It’s ultra relevant now, and way too much so, in a world perfectly content to hide in bubbles of lies for comfort, or just to think it’s right. And it’s as good an explanation as any for the mindlessness that surrounds us too closely.

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Review: Divine Ruin

Divine Ruin by Margot Douaihy
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The book that got me to notice the Sister Holiday series to begin with, being on the New Book shelf at Beaverton Library, and with that I’m now caught up on her New Orleans nunnery mysteries. Though each book has had personal stakes for Sister Holiday, threatening her place of unlikely peace and much-deserved redemption, this one feels extra devilishly personal as a sneaky drug dealer targets the schoolchildren she cares for with fentanyl. And it’s not just the children either: Sister Holiday might just lose someone with whom her connection has always been complicated. Though not as tightly paced as its immediate predecessor, this book keeps all the unique style of the series intact, and while I won’t be living in Beaverton anymore when the fourth book drops, I’ll still be ready to pick it up from the library all the same.

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Review: Blessed Water

Blessed Water by Margot Douaihy
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The second Sister Holiday mystery benefits from a tighter pace and its Easter weekend setting - covering all three days from Good Friday to Easter itself - all in a package of less than 300 pages. And it ain’t no bunny hop of fun, not when we’ve got one priest dead, one missing (and being made to reenact stations of the cross out of order for maximum humiliation), and a mother of a rainstorm befalling New Orleans outside of hurricane season. Though the first book was good in its own right, this sequel is an improvement in almost every metric.

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Review: House of Margins

House of Margins by Tlotlo Tsamaase
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This book is an unforgettable masterpiece. A gripping gothic tale of colonization and cultural appropriation, set against the backdrop of an African writing fellowship that’s run by white people still hoping to capitalize on Black trauma, in a Huis that’s haunted beyond belief with the spirits slain in centuries of genocide, and presented in the style of a true crime podcast hosted by the one white Afrikaner selected for this fellowship, while also exploring the traumas within the indigenous communities of the nations of Southern Africa…this is a novel anyone who reads it won’t soon forget, and for good goddamn reason.

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Review: Scorched Grace

Scorched Grace by Margot Douaihy
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The first in this series introduces a singular new protagonist to the world of the mystery genre: Sister Holiday, a rough and tumble New Orleans nun with a dark and troubled past, and still prone to various vices and sins - hell, she’s smoking right there on the beautiful cover art, an early indication of this book’s massively blasphemous style. It’s a mystery, to be sure, but it’s much less about the arson plot and more about the tension between each and every character, especially as Sister Holiday has to reckon with her past. I’ll be reading the next two books very soon, that’s for sure.

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