System Collapse

Martha Wells

The Murderbot Diaries

SecUnit is on the surface of a planet, doing his SecUnit thing protecting his humans. On this planet, his humans are trying to negotiate with colonists to help them with planet ownership, trying to remove infected alien technology and not kill humans from the corporation trying to kidnap colonists and press them into slavery. All of this while trying to hold off a mental breakdown in his "squishy bits". This continues to be one of my favorite series of all time. 

4 stars (out of 4)

The Rage of Dragons

Evan Winter

Book 1 of The Burning Series

Fantasy novel where an entire people (The Omehi) have traveled across the sea to escape what I can only guess is some sort of magic induced plague. In their new land, they are not welcome and are immediately thrust into a 200 year war, where we pick up. The Omehi are a highly caste structured society, and our protagonist is Tau, a Lesser. Tau has noble friends, but has no real tolerance for caste castigation, which of course gets him into trouble. He joins the military and becomes a phenomenal fighter, taking advantage of the "magic source" in ways that others can't or won't.  In the end, Tau learns that he is not the only one who has concerns about caste, not the only one who questions the magic source, and not the only one fully gutted by the cost of war and violence. 

I'll definetly keep up with the series, but since Books 3 and 4 are not yet published, no hurry...

3 stars (out of 4)

Lotus and Thorn

Sara Wilson Etienne

Set on an expeditionary planet undergoing the woes of colonization, we are introduced to two populations. Those who live in the dome, protected from the elements and controlling all technology, and those living outside the dome, exposed to the elements. Sometime in the past a disease called Red Death decimated the population of the colony and now the outsiders scavenge old civilization for technology so they can trade the domers for food. Classic colonization power dynamics. And classic uprising/hero story. Etienne develops the characters well and gets buy in on the story. She has created a mystery (what is actually going on in the dome) that sustains the plot. While somewhat typical in the dystopian YA world, I found myself attached and read through pretty quickly. 

3 stars (out of 4)

The Invisible Man

H.G. Wells

A man has made himself invisible, thinking of all the benefits this would entail in his personal wealth and power. The story begins with the man experiencing all the detriments that were overlooked in his quest. Sort of a tragicomedy, I can imagine these themes being a modern telling of a Shakespeare story. As the story progresses, the protagonist becomes more and more convinced of his "right to power" which only makes things worse for him. Great short read - I'm surprised it took me this long...

3 stars (out of 4)

Lexicon

Max Barry

This is a sci-fi-ish book, if linguistics is considered science. Maybe just magical realism. The setting is a world where someone has figured out that the way sounds are processed in the brain (which neural pathways fire, which hormones are produced, etc.) can actually be weaponized and used to lower a persons defenses and become "extremely persuasive". This very much has Babel vibes in terms of how language is used. While Babel was primarily bringing a subtext of colonization, Lexicon is talking about personal power and corruption. It is into this world Emily is recruited off the Venice Beach hustle circuit and finds herself learning to be quite powerful, as well as to be wary of others in the organization. Ultimately, power and corruption are the guiding forces that drive this plot and Emily and her beau become pawns/catalysts at various points in the story. I actually appreciated the time jumps in the story telling, alternating between present and past to provide a backstory snippet just in time to understand what is next, without revealing the entire history. Engaging, with a fascinating interpretation of language processing. 

4 stars (out of 4) 

James

Percival Everett

A retelling of Huck Finn from the perspective of Jim. The fist half of this book is pretty parallel to the Huck Finn adventures (at least according to my memory of having read that book decades ago). The second half is new material based on when Huck and Jim are separated. I listened to the audio version of this book and I think that is probably the way to go. One of the most striking ideas was the amount of langauge based code-switching that Jim/James does as he interacts with whites and slaves. Striking largely based on the massive confusion expressed by the white characters when Jim didn't speak "slave". The reader was able to communicate these language switches in a way that I am pretty sure would have been lost to me were I reading the text. Although this is fiction, it felt remarkably biographical, and reminded me frequently of the Harriet Jacobs/Linda Brent autobiography Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. Highly recommend. 

4 stars (out of 4)

Brave New Words: How AI Will Revolutionize Education (and Why That's a Good Thing)

Sal Kahn

This is a review written by Kahn (of Kahn Academy) trying to 1) describe the current state of AI in education and 2) prognosticate about the future of AI in education. First and foremost, Kahn has a particular point of view - he is selling an AI product that has been developed by Kahn academy. The book has some useful nuggets and is pretty straight forward about how AI is affecting students right now. But even on reading it, I found it to be behind. The LLM world and educational culture is moving too fast. Or maybe more likely, the educational culture has been shifting since Covid, and we are only now, as educators, seeing the chasm between where we are and where students are (mostly I am talking about motivation and educational culture here, not student content acquisition). So Kahn's product is selling a particular point of view (highly regulated tools for motivated learners) that is simply not the reality of the current wild west of AI. 

2 stars (out of 4)