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All Systems Red (The Murderbot Diaries, Book 1)

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All Systems Red (The Murderbot Diaries, Book 1) Martha Wells, 2017 Premise: All Murderbot wants is to be left alone to watch tv. Unfortunately, if it doesn't want its free will to be discovered, it still has a job to do, and someone's trying to kill the people it's supposed to protect. This was an absolute delight. Going in, I thought was that this was a novella from the point of view of a killbot. What I found was a snarky sci-fi adventure with a protagonist whose general misanthropy is not entirely genuine, but this never falters into pathos. The humans call it Security Unit, or SecUnit, but a murderbot is what it calls itself. The reason why is a mix of black humor and cynicism. Murderbot is not only hiding its sense of humor but also its free will from both the humans it's assigned to and the shadowy Company that owns it and financed the scientific mission they're on. A SecUnit has consciousness, but it isn't supposed to be able to choose for ...
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Follow Friday April 8

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This is Follow Friday, hosted by  Parajunkee's View Today's Question is: Do You Judge a Book by its Cover? Yes, much of the time. I mean, a poorly done cover isn't a guarantee I won't read the book, but if I'm in a store or the library, it means I probably won't pick it up. Online or on the Kindle Store, I more use cover art as a quick judge of genre if I'm not sorting by genre. For example, when I'm clicking through cheap or free books, I won't click on any romance or lit-fic looking covers.  For ebooks I'm more likely to buy/read based on the description than the cover, but I'll still judge the cover. If it looks like complete crap, that could be an indication of the quality of the writing, so it has to be a consideration.
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The Last Ringbearer

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The Last Ringbearer Kirill Eskov, 1999, English Translation by Yisroel Markov, 2010 This review will have to be a bit different, since this isn't technically a book. Well, it's a book in Russia, but it can't be legally published here. The Last Ringbearer is an elaborate fan work based on Lord of the Rings . You might have heard about this last winter, it was in the news for a while. For example, here's Laura Miller's article on Salon . The premise is actually pretty brilliant. First, it takes LOTR as a historical narrative, but not necessarily true. Second, considering how history on Earth is written by the victors, what might the actual events have looked like which inspired the story. To sum up: there was a war, and like most wars, it was mostly about resources and power, while superficially being about ideology. There are some flaws in either the writing or the translation. These include some awkward early expository infodumps, some poorly executed...
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