Granite Au > Recent Status Updates

For the first third I was hooked. I cared about fishing. The horror filled me with fear and gave me actual literal nightmares. Not the eldritch horror, to be clear, it was the cancer and becoming a widower that were scary.

Then a new book started: a story, in a story, in a story, in a story (narrator>barman>priest>old woman). None of the characters were the same. The setting was different. I no longer cared.

"readiness drills weren't even part of the regimen anymore."

I'm outraged. I understand the concept of suspension of disbelief. I'm not complaining about the FTL am I? I also understand subverting genre expectations. Many interesting things could be done with military sf where the military can't even. BUT I refuse to believe in a ship without drills or a military without exercises? What do they do with their time?

I'm so irritated right now. Here we are, Chapter 16, and the protagonist is revealing he's never worn a spacesuit before, a reveal which played out far less dramatically around Chapter 4 when he went on his first space walk.

ALSO, how is the other protagonist an elite infantry soldier, a fighter pilot, assigned to duty as a naval captain (what are lanes) but somehow useless in a crisis???

WTF is this nonsense?

Very much not the target demographic for this. It's not uninteresting, but extremely long-winded.

Pro: Cherryh does an incredible job at capturing the feeling of being a foreigner, alone, without agency, surrounded by an incomprehensible and unfriendly culture you have to make nice with.

Con: the reader is stuck alongside the one human character who is a foreigner without agency and nobody to talk to.

An interesting world and premise, it's just a shame nobody's doing anything in it.

As with Windup Girl, Bacigalupi captured a vivid and believable apocalypse with a clarity that's way too scary for me. I'll try again later in the year if my city doesn't run out of drinking water.