Science Fiction

Baked beans, bog mutants and interdimensional travel are the ingredients in this hilarious middle grade debut novel by John Cusik. 

I listened to the audio version of the book, which I highly recommend.  The narrator, Gary Furlong, does a remarkable job of giving life to the full cast of strange and quirky characters with the added bonus of doing so with a British RP accent. 

The story begins in the 21st century.  Lola Ray, a typical, responsible older sister, is looking forward to a vacation away from the annoyances and hassles of her everyday life.  However, at the airport something

Mara is one of the last countries in the world that has not been conquered by the Karensa Federation. As Karensa grows ever stronger, Mara is left relying on the Strikers, a group of elite warriors who would die to protect their country, as its last line of defense. Talin, a refugee who fled to Mara after Federation soldiers destroyed her home in the country of Basea, is one of these Strikers. One day, a mysterious prisoner is dragged back to Mara from the front lines, but no information can be extracted from him and an execution is planned. Talin, however, senses that this prisoner is no

I was so into this book I wanted more after I finished it. All of the plot twists and thickenings kept me intrigued and enveloped thought the novel. I really love all of the character development in the book as well, it added so much more depth than I realized looking back.

War Girls is about 2 sisters living in a war-torn world. Their lives have been affected by violence and all they want to do is find a peaceful future together.

I couldn't finish the book because the writing style didn't engage me as much, but I would still recommend the book. 

It was a very thrilling book and it had an ever-changing plot. The mystery of the book kept on changing and it was very interesting to see how the story would pan out.  

The best way I can describe this book is as sci-fi Les Misérables. Chantine, a thief and con-woman best compared to Éponine, lives in the Frets (slums) of Lattere, but wants nothing more than to leave. To everyone but her family she is known as Théo. Marcellus (most like Marius) is the grandson of General Bonnefaçon, the most powerful man on the planet. His father was a traitor and member of the Vangarde, a rebel group thought to be resurfacing. And Alouette, comparable to Cosette, lives in a refuge with the 10 ‘“sisters” and her secretive father who protect the planet's only books.

Fair

Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury is a wonderful futuristic sci-fi story about a fascist world full of censorship and where happiness is valued over thinking and free will. The book offers an insight on what our world might become, and even though the book was published in 1953, the problems that it presents are even more present today.

The story follows Guy Montag, a firefighter, in the year 1999. However, he is less of a firefighter and more of a fire starter. Guy’s job is to set houses on fire that are believed to contain books, which are now banned. Books began to change as people began to

Miles Morales Spider-Man by Jason Reynolds is a fiction novel with a boy named Miles who is Spider-Man. He mourns over the recent death of his uncle, but when he goes to school, he feels his spidey senses go off. He doesn’t know why, but something is off in his very normal school. He has a crush on a girl named Alicia, but he is always distracted or can’t talk to her because he is awkward. As he deals with his love quarrel, he needs to figure out why he is feeling so off in school and who blamed him for stealing out of a store he worked in.

I really enjoyed the book, but I feel like it

Oryx and Crake ​is a dystopian novel written by Margaret Atwood, the writer of ​The Handmaid’s Tale. ​Set in the post-apocalyptic future, this book follows Snowman, the last remaining human, as he navigates surviving in a world with few supplies and genetically mutated animals trying to kill him. The only ones to keep him company are a new breed of people called the Crakers, who are the creation of Snowman’s old friend Crake. The story constantly flips perspective between Snowman surviving in the wild and his former self, once known as Jimmy, as he grows up alongside Crake and meets a mutual

The Last Girlfriend on Earth: And Other Love Stories ​by Simon Rich is a collection of eclectic and often surreal short stories centering around love and romance. For the most part, I very much enjoyed this book. It was an incredibly fast read, but I thought that it ultimately matched the book’s funny and slapdash style.  Typically I wouldn’t consider a book’s being “slapdash” to be a good thing, but with ​The Last Girlfriend on Earth ​I didn’t really have a problem with it. In fact, I think the book’s thrown together nature adds to its predominantly light and breezy feeling. ​The Last

Scythe​ is the first book in ​Neal Shusterman’s Arc of a Scythe series. It is young adult dystopian fiction and the story follows Citra and Rowan, two teenagers living in a futuristic world in which humanity has conquered death. Citra and Rowan’s Earth is ruled by the benevolent Thunderhead, an evolved form of the Internet that has eradicated all of the problems that once tormented humanity (war, sickness, hunger, etc.). Even death is impossible thanks to revival centers that cover the planet. Humanity has answered every question and solved every problem, now only one vital task remains

Rebel​ is the fourth science fiction novel in Marie Lu's Legend series. It takes place a decade after ​Champion​ and illustrates Daniel and Eden Wings’ new lives in the supposed-utopia of Antarctica. Daniel learns to navigate his relationship with his now-grown brother as Eden tries to escape from his older brother's shadow. The two brothers must take on the notorious criminal Dominic Hann while challenging their government's beliefs and facing their pasts. In my opinion, this book was okay, but it wasn't up to my expectations. I liked Eden's prominence and his newly-found character depth, but

     Steve Epting's art in comics and graphic novels is fantastic.  Eptig is able to give Batwoman: The Many Arms of Death a classic feel with modern sensibilities, as he has with other superhero comics.  

     We are introduced to Kate (Batwoman) and her lost year where she spent time on an island full of degenerates, with her lover keeping the peace.  Now she returns while tracking down some arms dealers who are selling the biological weapon the monster man serum.  My biggest complaint is that we do not really get enough backstory to care about or know who some of these characters are

I watched the first episode of Star Trek: Discovery when it premiered and...it just didn't feel like Star Trek to me. The Klingons looked like orcs from Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings movies. The overall feel was too flashy while also being too cynical--and my favorite Star Trek series is Deep Space Nine, which is overall the darkest series in the franchise. Then the rest of the series was locked behind the paywall of the CBS All Access channel and I didn't want to pay to watch a series that turned me off with its first episode, so I gave up on it. (Picture me stomping off in a huff and

One of my personal reading goals I set when Covid-19 first started turning things upside down was to read more of the books on my own personal shelves, things I'd bought but not read yet. I wasn't counting on my reading mojo plummeting, and truthfully, as far as timing went, I might have chosen a bit more wisely than to read a book that begins with a cataclysmic event that will likely be a human extinction event in time. So while I was fairly certain I would ultimately enjoy Mary Robinette Kowal’s The Calculating Stars, first book in her Lady Astronaut series, it took a bit for me to fully

Shortly before the library closed due to the novel coronavirus, my co-worker, Adam, loaned me a set with all five of the original Planet of the Apes films - three of which are currently in the Johnson County Library collection, and two of which are available to stream from home on IndieFlix. This pentalogy (five!) of films includes Planet of the Apes (1968), Beneath the Planet of the Apes (1970), Escape from the Planet of the Apes (1971), Conquest of the Planet of the Apes (1972), and Battle for the Planet of the Apes (1973). I really only had plans to watch the first film, and maybe try out

Ah, the one and only Brandon Sanderson. If you are a fan of high fantasy you are probably familiar with his works and can reminisce on the first Sanderson book you experienced. I say experienced- not read- because working the way through a Sanderson novel alongside his characters is an adventure. I started digging into Sanderson’s works with the Mistborn trilogy, which I highly recommend. The trilogy is a great introduction to Brandon Sanderson’s works as it is shorter, but still provides that intricate worldbuilding and thought provoking storytelling for which he is so well known. Since

You’ve heard of Dungeons and Dragons.  Right?
It’s been around for 45 year and been in everything from Simpsons to Stranger things. 
What is it? 
It’s a pen and paper Roleplaying game.  A set of rules to tell a shared story with friends and family with a backdrop of classic sword and sorcery in the vein of The Lord of the Rings.

Pretty simple right?  Well that’s what Tales from the Loop is.  A very rules-simple pen and paper Roleplaying Game!  Only it ditches the old tropes of Dwarves, Elves, Dragons, and Goblins for a more contemporary setting.

You and your friends play

This is top-notch science fiction--it takes today's scientific advancements and speculates how they might play out in the future, considering legal, ethical, and practical ramifications along the way. The book does this over the course of six lightly connected stories, each progressively further in the future. The topic is gene editing and body modification.

The first story starts simply enough with improved organ transplants from one dying twin to another and ends with a distant reality in which the handful or pure, unmodified humans are kept safe on a reservation as a sort of archival

Recursion occurs when a thing is defined in terms of itself or of its type.  --Wikipedia

I first heard about this book on NPR and was intrigued enough to immediately put it on my holds list.  You can find out more about how to make your own holds list here. Let me just say that this book did not disappoint!

Memory makes reality.  That's the tag line of the latest thriller by Blake Crouch.  Memory also makes you who you are.  Remembering what you learned in school, a moment from childhood, your favorite Christmas, your first kiss; but what if what you remember isn't real? 

Who hasn't

What if a machine could tell you how to be happy?  What if your results could be manipulated?  What if you had to do something illegal, immoral, or unethical to achieve happiness?  These are a few of the questions posed in the speculative fiction novel Tell the Machine Goodnight, by Katie Williams.  Set in 2035, our protagonist Pearl works for a Facebook or Google-like tech organization, Apricity, whose name means "the warmth of the sun during winter".  Businesses include Apricty readings as a benefit. along with insurance and retirement packages.  Apricity is brought in to help victims of

If you don't know the basics of the British television series Doctor Who, here we go: a mysterious, eccentric, very long-lived, alien scientist known only as "the Doctor" travels through time and space in a ship that looks like a 1960s British police call box on the outside and is much, much bigger and more futuristic on the inside. The Doctor is accompanied by human traveling companions, fighting against tyranny, bigotry, and destruction in the past, present, and future, all across the universe. The show originally ran from 1963-1989 and was revived in 2005, continuing on today. It's my all

The action is intense and the storyline is fast-paced; there is always something going on. The setting in intergalactic space and the unforgettable characters make for a perfect storm of events that draws you in deeper the more you read. The writing style is beautiful and the slang feels so natural it's like the culmination of 7 people's autobiographies thrown backward in time.

The most compelling aspect of the book is the mystery behind Aurora's newfound powers, and the fact that even she doesn't know what is going on. I really fell in deep after they started planning to break into Bianchi

Whoa! Now here's an exercise in extended metaphor. Andrews has taken an idea that could have been a simple allegory and turned it into a fully developed novel. Imagine, if you will, an alternate reality in which physical size is literally determined by wealth. A standard person is middlescale. The middlerich are those larger than that up two doublescale and the middlepoor extend to halfscale. Smaller than that are the littlepoors: quarterscale, eighthscale, and tenthscale--about the size of a rat. The bigrich just get bigger and bigger to hundreds of feet tall. Buildings, roads, vehicles, and

There is a lot of music in the world. But have you ever thought about the music that is set in space? Here are a few space concept albums that fit perfectly into our summer reading theme, A Universe of Stories.

Arctic Monkeys, Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino

This space-inspired concept album features the Arctic Monkeys as the lounge band on the moon. It blew my mind to realize they are playing the Tranquility Base Hotel and Casino as the lounge band. Give this one a few listens to appreciate the nuance and lyrics. I especially enjoy the thought of putting a taqueria on the roof and

The sixth anthology of short graphic novels, Flight Vol. 6 was a beautiful read. I found out about the series from a coworker who is well-versed in the graphic novel genre. Since all the books are anthologies, I did not feel the need to read the series in order. Furthermore, the sixth book was the only one available at my location, so it made my choice easy! For someone that has trouble reading graphic novels, this collection of short stories was perfect. The art styles varied greatly between selections, which made for an engaging read. Some of the stories were wordless, focusing on detailed

The Illuminae Files Trilogy is like no trilogy you've experienced before. Stylistically it stands apart as the story unfolds via a dossier of compiled e-mails, video recordings, military documents, interviews, maps and medical reports that all combine to make for a heady mix of intrigue, political drama, romance, and space opera. In Illuminae, the first in the trilogy, Kady Grant's colony, Kerenza, is attacked by an unknown enemy. Kady manages to escape aboard one of the three remaining spaceships, but her problems have only just begun. The enemy is hot on their tail, a mysterious illness

Good Morning, Midnight is an atmospheric story told from the perspective of two flawed characters who have struggled with or avoided human connection most of their lives. From a remote arctic research station to the vast openness of space, the settings evoke a feeling of stillness and quiet that, as I sat reading, had the effect of blocking out the world around me.

Augustine and Sully are seemingly some of the last people left alive after an apocalyptic event. Sully is a mother and astronaut racing through space on her way back to earth after a two year mission aboard the Aether. The earth

Humanity is curious by nature. Ever since we first looked up at the sky, we have been fascinated with the possibility of reaching those distant lights. Lacking the ability, we wrote stories about what it would be like on that wild frontier. The what-ifs, the hows. But it wasn't until 1817 that these stories stopped being about gods and magic and delved into the concept of science. Man, not gods, were the source of power. Since then, science fiction stories have led the way to scientific advancement.

In 1914, H.G Wells described a future in which scientists had discovered the power of the

This book is a lovely, in depth look at Padmé's transition between Queen and Senator. It delves into the the inner workings of the galactic Senate and how Padmé finds her place there. I loved the cover! The art was gorgeous and it did a good job of conveying the theme of the book. I also loved how Padmé's handmaidens were their own characters, and how the author fleshes out characters that were only present for seconds in the movies. It's as compelling as some of the best fics I've read, which is truly the highest compliment I can give a novel.