Throne of Glass, Sarah J. Maas

 

Throne of Glass by Sarah J. Maas

Started: August 21, 2025
Completed: August 26, 2025
Recommendation: Recommended for Young Adults
Recommended by: My niece who insists this is not smut and she really enjoyed the story.

Review:

I am not particularly a fan of anti-heroes (one big exception is Covenant in The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant by Stephen Donaldson) and the protagonist, Celaena Sardothien, in this book is such an anti-hero.  She is untrustworthy, abusive of relationships (both romantic and non-romantic), quick to insult (she would see it as being snappy, I guess), and quick to be insulted (she wears her feelings on her sleeve).  The context does matter.  Celaena is 17 and somehow renowned throughout the world as a first class assassin.  How this happens in the age of the horse is not described and she somehow has years of experience becoming an assassin and even more years to become famous.  So, OK, grant all of this.  Her inner dialog has her as a virtually unstoppable force, yet when it comes down to it, she is not quite all of that.  She, also, somehow has survived a year in a brutal mine known to be a death sentence, so she does have something.

Meanwhile, the captain of the guard and the crown prince are both hot for her.  In fairness, it seems like everyone who can get close enough to look her up and down is hot for her.  So, OK, grant all of this.  She had a secret boyfriend who died and that's about all you know.  She is also a piano virtuoso in case you thought she was one-sided.

The plot is not challenging and the characters are all flat.  For a young person, however, who is looking to model after a brash person who unexpectedly finds herself at the center of many levels of power, well this is your thing.

My niece is very up on this series, so I am likely to continue reading and the rest of the series.

1491, Charles Mann

 

1491:  New Revelations of the Americas before Columbus by Charles C. Mann

Started: July 22, 2025
Completed: August 21, 2025
Recommendation: Recommended
Recommended By: Nobody

Review:

The titular date is more of a lodestone then an actual constraint on the book.  Mann moves forward and backward of this date with lots of breathing room and this is welcome.  Instead of being the story of a year (or even being the story of the Americas before Columbus as the subtitle says) this is a broader story which focuses on the state of the native American before Columbus while leaving room to examine how things changed not simply with Columbus, but with all the Europeans.  This is a broad expanse to cover in one book (a couple of continents for thousands of years) and, as such, it examines more the tip of the iceberg.  As a reader, the tromp through the cultures of the Americas with constant name dropping (the name dropping is surely important to researchers in each culture, but amounts to a constant rumble of single or infrequent mentions that drown out the larger story in some areas) is exhausting.  There are few touchstones to other histories, so almost all of the information provided is new and is, thus, overwhelming.

In studies of European history, one might start with the Greeks, then learn of how the Romans overtook the Greeks and learn of how that went.  It is rare, in my experience to consider the Greeks, then look at how the Greeks interacted with, say, the Egyptians or Persians and the myriad of other city states (with the possible exceptions of Sparta and Troy)--much less the many societies impacted by Alexander the Great, yet this is the approach taken by Mann.  Surely he is glossing over the history of say, the Maya, but yet the number of cities he describes and various rulers of each become a froth of names that are hardly related to one another and only have minimal carry-over when he is talking about other nearby cultures (in time or space) much less distant cultures.  It is just too much information to take in properly (compounded by the nature of the names being both distinct from European names with which I am familiar and being overlapping such as name changes upon coronation).  I find it hard to say that this is a good introduction, but, yet, the high pace of archaeology which has put this book out of date on more than one occasion makes it difficult to find a coherent history of any one of these groups in some other independent book or set of books.  As such, this becomes an introduction which stitches together so many societies over such a breadth of time that it can be a reference of sorts for a more detailed study of any one to understand the greater context (sort of looking at a Celtic history within a broader sense of European history in general).  It feels like much ground was covered, but from such a height as to artificially blur details (to stretch a metaphor:  the forest has oaks, maples, and pines and some of the characteristics of each are described to include some of their interactions, but the details get reduced to "forest" in order to look at the plains nearby by this reader.)

All-in-all, I'm glad to have read it, but unlikely to remember the details (say, comparable to parts of the Two Towers in The Fellowship of the Ring; I'll never remember the lines of various dwarves, but it is good to know for the story that there were distinct Dwarven clans).

Solaris, Stanislaw Lem

Solaris by Stanislaw Lem is classic Sci-Fi and I cannot remember why I wanted to pick it up.

Started: July 30, 2025
Completed: August 19, 2025
Recommendation: Not Recommended
Recommended By: I cannot remember

Review:

This is a truly weird book.  I honestly do not know what to make of it.  Of course, it seems to me that the author and characters don't really know what to do with it either.  I cannot really recommend it on any grounds.  Perhaps someone who is really into weird stuff that truly goes nowhere.  I don't know anyone like that.

Endurance, Alfred Lansing

 

Endurance:  Shakelton's Incredible Voyage by Alfred Lansing

Started: August 11, 2025
Completed: August 17, 2025
Recommendation: Recommended
Recommended By: My son, N; It is worth noting that several people (Brian D'Amato, Ann, and Jan) recommended that I read South which is Shakelton's own recounting, but I have removed that book from the list (and donated my copy to a local book sale) given this one.

Review:

Most of these shipwreck style tales are horrifying.  Well, this one is also.  On the bright side nobody dies (it is history, unlikely to ruin someone's day with that).  I think that this is likely to be my last shipwreck story.  I started around 12 reading the original Robinson Caruso (not the kid versions I'd been reading up until then) and though that was a novel, it was one in a series of shipwreck stories that hopefully culminates with this one.  Ending on an "up" note.

Orbiting Fortunes, A.L. MacDonald

 

Orbiting Fortunes by A.L. MacDonald

Started: April 26, 2025
Completed: August 11, 2025
Recommendation: Recommended
Recommended By: The author

Review:

This is a fun read.  The writing style is casual and I got the feeling that the protagonist was a "regular guy" in unusual circumstances.  The story is believable on several levels which is always fun for sci-fi.  The details were not perfect, but the story was fun, approachable, and kept me engaged.  It also was an interesting look at how a space cowboy might go around trying to make a living--that part was a little hard to believe, but having accepted the rest of the premises, it wasn't a stretch.  This is not hard scifi that will grab you with the harshness of space and you won't be constantly reminded of the bitter tang of outer space each time you turn a chapter.  The fight scenes are a little stretched, but they are fun and they get the job done--this isn't a science manual.  Think MacGyver not Carl Sagan.  I enjoyed it for what it was and find it a bargain on Kobo! 

You Are Not American, Amanda Frost

 

You Are Not American:  Citizen stripping from Dred Scott to the Dreamers by Amanda Frost

Started: August 3, 2025
Completed: August 11, 2025
Recommendation: Recommended
Recommended By: A local book club

Review:

I was aware that people could lose their citizenship.  I was absolutely aware that slaves were not considered citizens as a result of Dred Scott.  I was not aware of how recently this citizenship stripping had been happening and it was shocking.

Who Is Government?, Michael Lewis

 

Who Is Government?:  The untold story of public service by Michael Lewis

Started: July 31, 2025
Completed: August 3, 2025
Recommendation: Recommended
Recommended By: Nobody

Review:

This is a good collection of stories that helps put a face on government workers.  Not only is it a look at the "common" worker, but there are several stories of extraordinary workers.  My experience with government workers is that are service oriented hoping to make the United States a better place.