Alien Clay, Adrian Tchaikovsky

 

Alien Clay by Adrian Tchaikovsky

Started: February 7, 2024

Completed: May 27, 2025

Recommendation: Highly recommended

Recommended By: Nobody

Review:

Tchaikovsky has developed a whole other way for intelligent life to form.  Saying anything so easily gives things away.  The stressed characters have to deal with extreme circumstances and that stress changes how they interact with each other and how they view themselves.  There are some big changes.  Meanwhile, the world building is awesome and the ideas put forward are truly mind bending.

I truly enjoyed the interview at the end of the audio book.

Hey, Zoey, Sarah Crossan

 

Hey, Zoey by Sarah Crossan is a book I stumbled upon when looking up information about Irish authors.  I think that there was just the blurb from the back of the book and the premise felt like it could be fun.

Started: May 26, 2025
Completed: May 27, 2025
Recommendation: Mild recommendation
Recommended By: Nobody

Review:

So, not fun.  This was weird.  So, it is odd that some dude wants to have sex with a doll.  It is also weird that a woman becomes obsessed with the doll in the role of a companion.  This book is weird.  It isn't bad, but it is weird.

Blood Over Bright Haven, M. L. Wang

 

Blood Over Bright Haven by M. L. Wang  I cannot remember how I came across this book.  The author is more of a YA author and generally self published, so I'm not really clear in my own head how I came across it.

Started: May 22, 2025
Completed: May 25, 2025
Recommendation: Highly recommended
Recommended By: Nobody

Review:

What a wonderful book!  The creation of the world is detailed.  The characters are rich.  The plot and sub-plots are complicated, consistent, and believable (within context).  It is very important that this book is not a feel good book.  It is much more a realistic book.  It is not a story of a super hero coming of age.  In a way it is a book about holding true to your principals.  It also feels like this book is an exploration of philosophy and, perhaps, ethics.  I just cannot recommend it highly enough.

Patriot, Alexei Navalny

 

Patriot: A memoir by Alexei Navalny

Started: May 16, 2025
Completed: May 22, 2025
Recommendation: Recommended
Recommended By: Presidents, etc.

Review:

This is a brutally sad book.  Of course, you know before starting that Navalny died in prison and was almost certainly poisoned (a 45 year old who survived and recovered from a hunger strike as well as prior poisonings does not die easily).  You know that he was a person who dedicated his life to Russia and struggled to bring to the light the corrupt practices of the members of Putin's entourage.  You probably assumed, but didn't have hard proof that he was a loving husband and father.  You likely didn't know that he was a Christian.  Odds are good that you didn't know anything about his "prison Zen."  What an incredible man and what a horrible loss to the Russian people.  Recommended, but know that this is a very sad book.

All These Worlds, Dennis E. Taylor

 

All These Worlds by Dennis E. Taylor is the next book in the Bobiverse

Started:  March 14, 2025
Completed: May 17, 2025
Recommendation: Highly Recommended
Recommended By: Nobody

Review:

I just love this series.  The basic concept (a mind is uploaded to a computer) is interesting, but combining it with a von Neuman machine is brilliant.  Add in alien contact on many different levels and it is hard not to love this book.

The Witchwood Crown, Tad Williams

 

The Witchwood Crown by Tad Williams is the first book  in the Last King of Osten Ard

Started: November 23, 2024
Completed: May 16, 2025
Recommendation: Highly recommended
Recommended By: Nobody, but I did read the first set of books in this series quite some time ago.  I have met the author at a book signing and brought all my copies of his books when I did meet him.  He was kind enough to sign them all and I really enjoyed talking with him.

Review:

It is with relief and a sense of homecoming that I have rejoined Osten Ard, once more in trouble and struggling to resolve issues likely beyond simple understanding.  As this book ended, I felt I was immediately ready to dive into the next!  It took me so long to read, however, as I had to take it out of the library several times in order to finish it and there were frequently long delays between holds.  It seems likely that I will need to purchase the next one.  I enjoy the richness of the races, the detail of this other world, and the growth and development of the characters.

Abundance, Klein and Thompson

 

Abundance:  How we build a better future by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson

Started: May 9, 2025
Completed: May 12, 2025
Recommendation: Mild Recommendation
Recommended by: Nobody, I seem to be on an Ezra Klein kick

Review:

So, the thesis of this book seems to be:  create abundance and then we will live in abundance.  That is true.  The obstacles to abundance are, well, OK.  If regulations are relaxed, then it will be easier and faster to build, well, everything.  So, why not ease the regulations?  After all, some of them don't make sense, like, well, zoning.  Oh, and, also make it easier to get research grants and make those grants on high risk projects.  After all, nobody is going to abuse that funding.  So, this is the liberal agenda without any safe guards.  Or is it?  Is this the conservative agenda?

Experience has shown that easing regulations leads to abuse.  Now, taking bigger risk on research grants and making it easier to comply with the paperwork for a research grant makes some sense.  The problem is that whenever regulations are eased, there are abuses and the those abuses (for, say, construction or even research) have been seriously egregious.  There is a case to be made that private money can get this stuff done faster.  When it happens that way, though, we end up fires that take out Chicago or San Francisco.  We end up with sinking buildings in Florida and buildings/roadways that cannot survive an earthquake in LA.  We end up with mining tailings in the water and air so thick it cannot be breathed.  But just the relax the regulations.  Maybe the onerous ones that prevent industrial sites near schools (Love Canal anyone)?  Or the ones that govern how mines are managed (Centralia Pennsylvania)?

I get that there is a real problem with NIMBYism and I can see how regulations (particularly zoning laws) facilitate that.  This book, however, simply says that those regulations which make it hard to build stuff (like environmental impact studies) should just be removed.  So, yes, the building would move forward faster and cheaper, but the world would not be better for the effort.  Why not look at how to make environmental impact studies for efficient and faster?  Maybe more people working on the impact study would help?  Maybe there is a way to consider cascading impacts that could be handled by integrated assessment teams?  Maybe NIMBY can be solved by reducing the impact of the rich on government (hold meetings when everyone can attend like 2:00 on the weekend), require petitions with signatures to halt things (instead of some wealthy guy hitting up his friend on council), and require quality of life impacts that match the quality of life impact of completing the project (so reduced value of the neighborhood housing is not used to weigh against providing housing for more people).  I don't know, but it feels to me like the authors cherry picked some regulations that they don't like and decided that no regulations are good if they impact PROGRESS.