Reading Update

Last one's a doozy.

The Ten Thousand Doors of January by Alix E. Harrow

A fun enough book. January made a couple of truly dense decisions towards the end, and I found it difficult to care much about her feelings for Samuel or vice versa. On the flip side, I really liked Ade and Yule Ian and their story, and the world of the Written. I felt bad for Jane. Wish there was more of her and that January had kept her door more in mind.

The Fire Never Goes Out by Noelle Stevenson

Memoir in the form of short comics that sketch out Stevenson's life and feelings at the time. Super quick read, finished it < 30 min. Would recommend.

The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet by Becky Chambers

Gah, I got so annoyed while reading this! It's like someone saw how bored I was of the tone and content of the tea plantation bits of Imperial Radch, and decided to replicate tiny versions of it to scatter throughout an entire book.

I've played all the Mass Effect games, I've listened to Starship Iris, I've read the Axiom series and I adore all three canons. A fun (not-completely-straight!) crew on a spaceship and alien world-building should be entirely up my alley. Instead I found the crew alternately cloying and incompetent, with the bonus of a super essentialist take on aliens and humans.

( let me say one thing I liked about the book before I go full nitpicky rant )