Niche > Recent Status Updates

The crowd I hear from that gushed over Martian and Hail Mary were pretty down on this. I heard a lot of "he can't write women"... and it seems true. It kind of gives me Heinlen vibes: not a great voice that talks at the reader with some explainers thrown in. It even had some incest adjacent apologetics.

Beautiful secret magical princess with her guard up meets the handsome angsty Emperor who's secretly angsty wanting revenge for his dead mom. This is going to be tedious.

Seems like a decent intro to pharma. Mostly picked it up to brush back up on GMP validation in a pharma setting since it's been a while.

Oh, it's a romance. *removes cozy tag*

A scientific history misusing the term "dark ages" is like an English book misusing "ironic."

I get that it's a product of its time and gender politics, but it's still hard to get past the bisexual egalitarian man of 80 worlds can't get past "they look like men but think like women, how horrible" and the lack of gender roles. I can't help feeling giving the protagonist such a cosmopolitan background makes his perspective seem silly.

Book 1 done, a rather abrupt ending, too. Framed as Gene Wolfe translating the journal of a protagonist from the future (described as a posthistoric from a world surviving many centuries of futurity). He mixes in archaic terminology in lieu of the made-up words fantasy authors resort to.

I like the writing and the setting, but the dream-like narrator digressions and characters were detractions.

The humor in this one isn't for me which makes it drag a fair bit. I think part of the issue was I came in expecting it to be more about different ways of conceiving math. It touches on it being a means of logical expression at the start and I like discussions of probability, but it mostly focused on "math is useful" not how calc or trig can be both rate balances and object geometry.

A collection of cases/anecdotes driven by various fields, concepts, or mistakes connected with math. Organized into subjects by chapter, it covers different topics like design flaws, counting errors, and data storage/programming.

I love the info, but dang the font's tiny in the digital edition.

The palindrome mononym author, NisiOisiN's first book I've read with a female protagonist POV. I like to compare how authors approach writing differently (or not) for the sexes. It still has the sharp-tongued banter and idiosyncratic characters, but it doesn't feel like much of a departure from the usual voice. Less thirsty than Araragi, though.

From what my 5 year old memories recalled, I thought I was getting "British Batman in France" so having it on my TBR for a while, I was surprised when it came up in conversation as a "great romance" and I thought "surely, you mean 'romance' in the original context of spirited adventure or imaginative fantasy?" I was wrong.

We have nonstop romantic obsession, swooning, and literally kissing the ground she walked on.

A quarter of the way in and I can barely contain the groans from the pop culture references. I'll probably have to switch to speed reading mode and plow through the annoyance.

Partway in and weight is already misused as density. Will see how the reversed Brayton cycle goes.