Genre: Cyberpunk

A futuristic scifi, techno hacker speculative fiction, and queer retelling of the Great Gatsby is a concept I never would’ve considered and one that made me do a double take, but in Jay Gatsby’s own words per K.M. Fajardo’s author’s note, “why not”? Fajardo’s debut novel Local Heavens is a brilliantly crafted book that not only is wildly creative but is also a faithfully adapted love letter to F. Scott Fitzgerald’s original story. Modernized for the 21st century with a crazy genre-shift, this interpretation smartly capitalizes on all the best aspects of a retelling without being hindered by the typical drawbacks through careful artistic choices. Featuring beautifully poignant writing, excellent characterizations, and original storylines that work seamlessly with the original framework of events, Local Heavens is an amazing and unique read for both fans of the original book and new ones alike. “Though in this disquiet summer, a summer that pushed us forward into hedonistic apathy, Gatsby was the singular exception, flying over the dust and toils of our world on fire. Beyond that famous, corrupted name, he clung to a vestige of that old cosmic hope I’d readily believed did not exist anymore, his indestructible sincerity blossoming like an…

The fifth book in Pierce Brown’s Sci-fi epic, this review assumes you have read the previous four books in the series. Spoilers specific to Dark Age will be hidden with spoiler tags, but any content covered in the previous books will not be hidden. Besides, why in the world would you be reading a review for a book in the middle of a long-running series, go read Red Rising first, it’s really good. Now on to the actual review- The 2nd book in what’s considered the 2nd phase of Pierce Brown’s series, Dark Age needed to be solid to maintain the series’ momentum. Despite being an overall great book, I found the previous entry Iron Gold to easily be the weakest and most inconsistent book thus far. I acknowledge that a good portion of its length was required to both bridge the big time jump from Morning Star and to introduce what was perceived to be the new set of main characters. While Iron Gold accomplished what it needed to do, the reading experience for me felt disjointed with its jumping between three different plot threads and the overall direction felt lacking. Picking up after a short time jump, Dark…

Don’t let the page count and novella length fool you, Martha Wells is a literary wizard for packing so much action and content into All Systems Red’s 150 pages. I kept seeing The Murderbot Diaries popping up in book lists and booktuber recommendations, and winning a Hugo Award certainly helps give it some critical street cred. Despite its short length, I thoroughly enjoyed this and breezed right through in one day. This is a pretty short read so I’ll try and keep this review appropriate short. While many sci-fi works get bogged down with heavy exposition and detailed world-building, All Systems Red doesn’t have the luxury of length and immediately takes off running from the get-go. This novella is pure plot, though surprisingly a bit light in terms of fighting/gunfire action. Despite being called Murderbot, Murderbot isn’t a killing machine (at least on paper) and acts as a defensive security unit for hire. And they’re a weaponized tool that could care less about what happens to their human clients, at least initially. The premise of an indifferent narrator is clever in concept, allowing the book to get away with skirting heavy world-building with an effective mechanism of “I never bothered…

I wrote in my review of Morning Star that Pierce Brown had a monumental task then to conclude the staggering uprising premise introduced in his original trilogy in a decisive and satisfying manner. Perhaps an even bigger challenge is to build on the original trilogy’s work and segue the series into its next arc; rebuilding and running a society after it was torn down. As such, Iron Gold had dual purposes to transition the series to a new direction as well as recapture the page-turning intensity that made the first three novels impossible to put down. I consider Iron Gold a resounding success at the former by somehow expanding the solar system society further and using many clever strategies to jumpstart new plot threads. When it comes to the latter however, I found Iron Gold to be competently solid but a bit touch and go with its pacing and reader interest. I was initially hesitant when I started reading Iron Gold, expecting an extended lull and flood of information dumping to bridge the ten years that pass between Morning Star and Iron Gold. I also expected Darrow to experience a shift in priorities or mindset, similar to the beginning of…

Much like Darrow facing impossible odds against the forces of the Sovereign, Morning Star had the daunting task of concluding an epic that is monstrous in scale. Breaking the chains and political hierarchy introduced in Red Rising then replacing it with a fair society in a 500+ page book is a tall order but Pierce Brown’s decision to extend the originally announced trilogy to a saga (albeit announced after Morning Star was published) smartly avoids a rushed or worse, contrived conclusion. Disclosure upfront, Darrow does not fix the political system in place (that is continued over the next four books) but does attempt to overthrow the powers that be within Morning Star. As a side note, this review will be spoiler free but I will lightly detail a few specific plot arcs that do not take away anything from the read. If you want to go in completely blind I would recommend not reading my review past this paragraph. Summarizing the rest of the review, t I thought the 2nd half of the novel was great and very much a continuation of the general feel and action of Golden Son. The 1st half is an entirely different being that’s introspective,…