Review

Nothing todo About Nothing I’m comfortable with ambiguity, and enjoy it as a closer lens to reality than most literature dares provide. But rarely do I get through a book and feel… nothing. Like passing a rock on the highway. Sometimes I dream that I am walking down a street in Beirut, somewhere unfamiliar, maybe in the southern suburbs. Not especially beautiful, but not ugly either. Just there. Maybe this is a reflection of the ambivalence I have towards the Israeli-Arab conflict. But that is the rhythm this book left me with: walking around, no answers, and no motivation to go looking for them. ...

Not Ready to Leave the Tea Table It is a shame this is where the audiobooks end. Nineteen books in, this series has managed a rare shift. At the start, I suspect many readers were hanging on to see what would happen with the kyo. By the time we return fully to atevi politics, that thread matters less. The court, the family ties, the rituals, and the slow movements around the throne have become the real draw. ...

Grind, Ship, Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. This is a book of narrative, not of analysis. Diablo, Destiny, orcs, trolls, studios, founders, launches. A studio has an idea. Nobody believes in it. The team works absurdly hard, burns cash, gets the software into shape, nearly runs out of money, then ships and succeeds. 10 games, 10 arcs, no conclusions. That arc is not false. It is just overused. Essentially each chapter is the hero’s journey of video games, told in such a way as to be consumable to those of us more used to playing games from the lens of a consumer. The result is readable, but narrow. He gives the stories their drama, yet the harder and more revealing questions often sit off to the side. He treats the structural hardship of running a studio almost as an afterthought. That leaves the book tilted toward survival stories and away from the graveyard that gives those stories meaning. ...

Don’t spill your Tea over the Action If it took a whole book for Bren to descend from the space station to the planet, I expected a whole book for the return journey. And I wasn’t disappointed. Tracker, the sixteenth book in C. J. Cherryh’s Foreigner sequence, continues the series’ unusual sense of pacing: logistics, deliberation, and court politics that stretches across volumes the way other series compress them into chapters. ...

** No Cake, Still Interesting ** I remember my birthday upon turning felicitous 9, and I can tell you it was a big deal. Protector spends much of its time orbiting a similar milestone, with less of a payoff. The book is almost a day-in-the-life entry: one Atevi, a few human youngsters, conversations, errands, and politics branching into more obscure and ancient obligations. Cherryh’s Atevi plots and manchi break down fractally into endless subplots of protocol and maneuver. That’s what we need to support the thousands of pages of prose! ...

Re-org-er Want to see how al-Sharaa drove to Damascus in victory, or how Satya Nadella reclaimed a stalled culture transformation? Skip the nonfiction. Read Pretender! (But certainly don’t read this if you haven’t read the proceeding 7 novels) This is the second valume of Bren Cameron’s long logistics return sub-arc. Destroyer was apex tech: shuttles, starships, and Skyfall. This one drops to trains, buses, biplanes. 1917. The theme of Pretender is that arrival is legitimacy. Once you enter the capital, the right deputies stand beside you. The security apparatus doesn’t object. Optics become fact. ...

Layover-er Destroyer is almost all plot, if logistics count as plot. Here they do. The novel reads like deployment orders disguised as fiction: departures, handoffs, waiting rooms, vehicles, briefings. Forward motion as structure. It took me back to my first trip into Baghdad: DC to Amman, then a C-130 into BIAP. A day in purgatory waiting. The briefing. The Rhino itself, an armored monstrosity to take to the embassy. The book moves with that same staged progression, that same sense that transit is the action. Little politics intrudes, largely because there’s no time for it. The story spans about forty-eight hours. It’s 24 dropped into the Foreigner universe, with a touch of Skyfall in its clean set pieces and relentless pace. The ending is nothing but transfer: shuttle to the main island, ferry across, on foot to horses, then a first night brawl at the mansion. And then: stop. These installments are less novels than episodes. But like the Atevi candies offered to make friends in space, they’re small, sweet, and easy to consume. It disrupted my day. Four stars.

** Diplomancer ** Explorer feels like a season finale: five books of setup suddenly widen into nested multilateral diplomacy, delivering the reward of a new species and a first contact that, remarkably, works. Cherryh rarely hands out unqualified success, but this win feels earned. Exploration quickly becomes diplomacy under pressure, and that diplomicy quickly continues by other means. Like Cibola Burn, the frontier doesn’t escape institutional folly, it amplifies it. ...

Tea Drinker Reading Inheritor three years after the first two books, I had to reassemble Cherry’s political map from fragments. Like Bren, I often didn’t understand what was happening. What holds the book together is the widening field of conflict. On the human side, factions maneuver against each other. On the Atevi side, rival interests circle the center. The multilateral tension gives the novel its energy. No single antagonist dominates. Instead, power shifts through conversation, protocol, and small missteps. ...

What a phrase! But upon purchasing the book i realize it’s awfully short. Then i discover the title’s provenance: not the author. The writing style is awfully hurried. Listicles and factoids later, this pattern matches to the disappointing genre of: (i was bad at this then got therapy which helped so now im writing a book about it) Christian anecdotes don’t help. By chapter two i’m out. Let’s try the teacher dallas willard rather than his acolyte.