Book Review: Adrift In Starlight by Mindi Briar

Posted on January 1, 2024 by C.A. Jacobs

One of my favorite holiday traditions is to buy two copies of a book and keep one while I send the other to a friend so we can both read the same book at the same time. The first book of my winter holiday book exchange was Adrift In Starlight by Mindi Briar (science fiction romance, 269 pages).

THIS IS NOT A SPOILER-FREE REVIEW.

“Titan Valentino has been offered a job they can’t refuse. Tai, a gender-neutral courtesan, receives a scandalous proposition: seduce an actor’s virgin fiancee. The money is enough to pay off Tai’s crushing medical debt, a tantalizing prospect. Too bad Aisha Malik isn’t the easy target they expect. A standoffish historian who hates to be touched, she’s laser-focused on her career, and completely unaware that her marriage has been arranged behind her back. This could be the one instance where Tai’s charm and charisma fail them. Then an accidental heist throws them together as partners in crime. Fleeing from the Authorities, they’re dragged into one adventure after another: alien planets, pirate duels, and narrow escapes from the law. As Tai and Aisha open up to each other, deeper feelings kindle between them. But that reward money still hangs over Tai’s head. Telling Aisha the truth could ruin everything … Their freedom, their career, and their blossoming love all hang in the balance. To save one might mean sacrificing the rest.”

I needed a book for the holiday book exchange and found this book mentioned on a booklist with asexual main characters. I read the poster’s bulleted lists about Adrift In Starlight and decided to give it a chance. The cover art was very gripping and the premise looked interesting. But because I don’t order books online, I went to Barnes and Noble and had them order it and send it directly to my house, which actually worked out quite well. The book arrived within a couple of days and I was able to ship it in time for it to be received before the winter holidays. Then life happened for a little bit and we didn’t wind up starting it until close to the end of the winter holidays.

We both finished reading it the same day we started, which is mildly unheard of for this particular friend. Usually, it’s a struggle to get them to read anything, but this book was instantly addictive and they started it at work and then finished it over breakfast immediately after leaving their shift. I started Adrift In Starlight as a way to pre-warm my bed and then wound up getting about halfway through before I finally needed to actually go to sleep, and then I finished it easily as soon as I woke up.

One of the best parts about this book is how it reads exactly like fanfiction. There’s a warning on the very first page, which is extremely helpful for anticipating potentially problematic content, which is something ao3 tags provide when reading fanfiction, and is very helpful in curating my reading experience.

I also very much enjoyed the black and white artwork throughout the book. I miss seeing paintings and drawings in fiction and it was quite refreshing to see that here.

SPOILERS START HERE.

I found the characters interesting and the world/universe-building fascinating. One of my very favorite parts of this book was when I found about the telepathic, teleporting SPACE DRAGONS! That’s right, you see my words correctly. This science fiction, QUILTBAG-content, space book ALSO HAS DRAGONS!

It’s like a running joke with everyone that the only things I get really distracted by are books, LEGO, and DRAGONS. I also like space a lot so combining space and dragons was pretty awesome. I’m greatly intrigued by the dragons and their relationship to the “Restorers”. I also very much appreciated taking giant space insects, giving them anxiety over being alone, and making them the “good guys” of the galaxy.

One of the reasons I say this reads like fanfiction is because you pretty much know Tai and Aisha are going to find a way to work out their differences. Fanfiction is really good at allowing people to have their emotions and acknowledging those thoughts, feelings, and emotions are valid, but then treating their reactions like mature adults. Tai and Aisha communicate to each other when they are hurt by the other’s actions and they both allow themselves and each other time to process their mistakes and their situation.

Overall, I’d probably rate this book as a four on my individual rating scheme. I’m glad I bought it and I will likely read it again.

Briar, Mindi. Adrift In Starlight. City Owl Press, 2022.

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You Have To Start Somewhere

Posted on December 31, 2023 by C.A. Jacobs

I feel more and more as though every year gets to be a bigger and bigger dumpster fire. Life gets in the way a lot and life happens a lot, and most of it is completely outside any of our control. We all have all the anxiety of a starving, exposed mouse left alone in a frozen field, staring down an equally starving hawk. The rich keep getting richer (at the expense of all those who actually do the work), the poor keep getting poorer (and technology makes it harder for them to escape poverty), and whatever remains of the “middle class” is one catastrophe away from poverty themselves.

A sense of deep hopelessness invades a lot of my conversations with many of my friends. Even though we all come from vastly different backgrounds and are spread out across the country, and even the world, with vastly different situations, we’re all struggling in many of the same ways. Companies and corporations continue to force workers to give up more of their bodies, lives, friends, and families for soul-sucking work that won’t even advance the worker’s careers or do anything other than support corporate waste and the greed of the small few. Affordable housing and the American Dream get farther and farther away from each subsequent generation. And those in power really like being in power so they buy lobbyists and politicians to create laws to benefit those greedy few instead of taking care of the actual populace.

With all that in mind, You Have To Start Somewhere.

You can’t go back in time and make minor changes in order to make things easier for yourself now.

You can only start where you are, in this exact situation, at this exact time.

What does that even mean?

Let’s say Life Happened and your physical health deteriorated more than you are comfortable with, but now you want your wardrobe back, or you want to be able to pick up your adorable puppy as they get older, or you want to be healthier in case this truly is the end of the world as we know it. But the issue with getting healthier (so you don’t get out of breath just walking up a flight of stairs or walking to the bus or whatever) is the length of time and the effort required before you start seeing tangible results. When I talk about starting somewhere, all you need to do is a little at a time. Maybe you could find someone whose company you enjoy and you could start by going on a walk around the neighborhood together. If you don’t have anyone local, maybe find someone you could call and both of you can walk around your own areas wherever it’s safe for you to be a pedestrian. This gives you social time while also getting you out of the house and outside.

Getting started is always the hardest part, at least it is for me. But once I’m moving, the laws of physics seem to apply really well, specifically the part about how an object in motion will remain in motion unless acted upon by an outside force. Once I’ve actually started doing something, it tends to be easier for me to maintain it than it does to just sit around and have anxiety about how much things have changed or how hard things are now.

You have to start somewhere, and that somewhere is wherever you are right now.

This applies to everything, even with everything going on in the world right now (and there’s certainly a LOT of things going on in the world right now).

Dissatisfied with the current political climate? Make sure you vote in your primaries and local elections, or even run for office yourself! Attend school board meetings, local community meetings, question and answer sessions with local representatives, email or write letters to your elected officials, and understand that you have a responsibility to make the world a better place for the generations after us, even if all you have the energy for is to vote. Your vote matters and can do more than you think, especially at the local level and in the early parts of major elections.

Feeling lonely all the time? Go to your library and find just one in-person thing that sounds like fun. Look up local craft guilds, hobbies, clubs, or activities you’ve always wanted to learn about, find out where they’re meeting, then go there. Participate in your community. Meet your neighbors. Send physical cards and letters to people you haven’t heard from. Visit assisted living facilities to play board games with people who may not have visitors. Even stacked with disabilities, there’s almost always a way to connect with other humans. And just using the internet won’t cut it, especially not these days.

Find yourself getting stuck all the time and not making progress on that Huge Thing you want to do? Like writing a book or doing a research project? Write 100 words a day, read one research section a day, or break it down into smaller, more manageable chunks.

There will never be a perfect time to do That Thing. You will never just magically wake up with the drive, motivation, time, and planning to fulfill your life of “if/then” statements.

But you can start somewhere. You can start here. You can start now. You can start with even the smallest thing, because those small things add up to be much bigger things. Every small thing is progress and is good. There will be days in the future where you might feel like you’re taking two steps backward for every one step forward but there really isn’t a better time to take those tiny small steps.

Don’t give up.
Don’t quit.
Take a tiny step.
I believe in you.
Start somewhere.
Start here.
Start now.

And I’ll be there with you, cheering you on, and taking my own small steps 🙂

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Book Review: The Daughters of Izdihar by Hadeer Elsbai

Posted on October 17, 2023 by C.A. Jacobs

Earlier this week, I read The Daughters of Izdihar by Hadeer Elsbai (fantasy, 368 pages).

“As a waterweaver, Nehal can move and shape any water to her will, but she’s limited by her lack of formal education. She desires nothing more than to attend the newly opened Weaving Academy, take complete control of her powers, and pursue a glorious future on the battlefield with the first all-female military regiment. But her family cannot afford to let her go – crushed under her father’s gambling debt, Nehal is forcibly married into a wealthy merchant family. Her new spouse, Nico, is indifferent and distant and in love with another woman, a bookseller named Giorgina. Giorgina has her own secret, however: she is an earthweaver with dangerously uncontrollable powers. She has no money and no prospects. her only solace comes from her activities with the Daughters of Izdihar, a radical women’s rights group at the forefront of a movement with a simple goal: for women to have a say in their own lives. They live very different lives and come from very different means, yet Nehal and Giorgina have more in common than they think. The cause – and Nico – brings them into each other’s orbit, drawn in by the group’s enigmatic leader, Malak Mamdouh, and the urge to do what is right. But their problems may seem small in the broader context of their world, as tensions are rising with a neighboring nation that desires an end to weaving and weavers. As Nehal and Giorgiana fight for their rights, the threat of war looms in the background, and the two women find themselves struggling to earn – and keep – a lasting freedom.”

This books was absolutely fantastic and I enjoyed it thoroughly! This book was recommended to me by my local librarian, who knows I particularly enjoy books with women protagonists without the mandatory cishet romance plot. While there is a male/female relationship in the story, none of the relationships follow traditional western narratives.

I’ve actually discussed this book at length with several of my friends as I recommended it to them. I think one of the most interesting parts of this story is the difference from modern western-style fantasy stories. The main cultures here are strongly based on middle eastern societies and there’s so many cultural differences between my own life and the world-building in this story that I was extremely tempted to do more research, especially in regards to women’s rights. There certainly are a number of cultures in our modern society where women are still seen as only wives, mothers, and caretakers and aren’t allowed their own individual freedom. While this is a fantasy story, I feel as though women’s rights around the world are still mostly seen as an afterthought, even here in the United States.

The main point of discussion for me with this story was how this book clearly shows how difficult living under societally enforced gender standards is for everyone involved. In world of The Daughters of Izdihar, women aren’t allowed to do anything without the permission of their husbands, or if they’re not yet married, their parents. Women are seen as inferior to men and not able to hold their own finances, vote, or have any say in their own lives. Only the approval of the man in your life can grant you the ability to work and women are expected to be slaves to the whims of men.

But one of the most heart-wrenching parts of this book for me was when you have a woman, Giorgina, who has worked so hard to maintain the best reputation and to do all the things she’s supposed to and it still doesn’t protect her from being prodded by a stranger. There were so many other instances of women’s lack of agency but to show how even when you do everything “right”, you can still suffer was a pretty powerful point. I think it’s a little more poignant because there are so many people all over the world who either still view women only as breeders and homemakers and many more in western society who want to return to a world where women have no rights of their own. It’s a dangerous time to be a woman, both in this book and in the real world.

Overall, I very much enjoyed this book. I’m happy I read it, I will definitely read it again, and I look forward to reading the sequel when it comes out.

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Book Review: A Spindle Splintered and A Mirror Mended by Alix E. Harrow

Posted on October 13, 2023 by C.A. Jacobs

Yesterday, I read A Spindle Splintered and A Mirror Mended by Alix E. Harrow (fantasy, 119 pages and 128 pages).

A Spindle Splintered: “It’s Zinnia Gray’s twenty-first birthday, which is extra special because it’s the last birthday she’ll ever have. When she was young, an industrial accident left Zinnia with a rare condition. Not much is known about her illness, just that no one has lived past twenty-one. Her best friend, Charm, is intent on making Zinnia’s last birthday special with a full sleeping-beauty experience, complete with a tower and a spinning wheel. But when Zinnia pricks her finger, something strange and unexpected happens, and she finds herself falling through worlds with another sleeping beauty just as desperate to escape her fate.”

A Mirror Mended: “Zinnia Gray, professional fairy-tale fixer and lapsed Sleeping Beauty, is over rescuing snoring princesses. Once you’ve saved a dozen damsels and burned fifty spindles, once you’ve gotten drunk with twenty good fairies and made out with one too many members of the royal family, you start to wish some of these girls would just get a grip and try solving their own narrative issues. Just when Zinnia’s beginning to think she can’t handle one more princess, she glances into a mirror and sees another face looking back at her: the shockingly gorgeous face of evil, asking for her help. Because there’s more than one person trapped in a story they didn’t choose. Snow White’s evil queen has found out how her story ends and she’s desperate for a better ending. She needs Zinnia to help her before it’s too late for everyone. Will Zinnia accept the queen’s poisonous request and save them both from the hot iron shoes that wait for them, or will she try another path?”

I enjoyed both of these books very, very much. The stories were both very well-written with a relatable voice. Zinnia provides a very interesting look at the way western society views childhood terminal illnesses and I enjoyed her attitude throughout both books.

One of the interesting parts of the books for me was the use of modern technology infused with fairy tales. I very much enjoyed how Zinnia’s cell phone still worked when she found herself in the fairy tale worlds and how her friends and family reacted to her sudden disappearance.

I also enjoyed the extra fairy tale knowledge and the continuous references to the non-Disney version of fairy tales and folklore that are often very dark and borderline horrific. The Snow White stories in A Mirror Mended definitely don’t include happy songs or helpful animals.

Overall, I’d say both books are about a three to a three and a half on my rating scale. I’m happy I read them and even though I read them from the library, I intend to purchase them for myself at some point in the future.

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Book Review: Renegades Trilogy by Marissa Meyer

Posted on July 19, 2023 by C.A. Jacobs

Last week, I read Marissa Meyer’s Renegades series, consisting of Renegades, Arch-Enemies, and Supernova (Young Adult Science Fiction, I guess? With a cumulative word count of 1572 pages).

“The Renegades are a syndicate of prodigies – humans with extraordinary abilities – who emerged from the ruins of a crumbled society and established peace and order where chaos reigned. As champions of justice, they remain a symbol of hope and courage to everyone … except the villains they once overthrew. Nova has a reason to hate the Renegades, and she is on a mission for vengeance. As she gets closer to her target, she meets Adrian, a Renegade boy who believes in justice – and Nova. But Nova’s allegiance is to a villain who has the power to end them both.”

This is a VERY SPOILER HEAVY REVIEW! So. You know. If you don’t want the spoilers, you might want to read someone else’s review. But if you want to join me in my deeper thoughts about these books, then please, read on 🙂

These books were clearly written by someone with a love of superheroes and Marissa Meyer talks at length in the Questions and Answers section at the back of the Renegades book that the X-Men were a strong influence into her younger years, as they were in mine. Those were my main comic books when I was growing up and I still have my entire comic book collection, which I do reread from time to time. The X-Men were the first stories I remember reading which dealt heavily with topics about discrimination and persecution, especially when dealing with extreme physical differences, so I definitely understood the premise of Renegades, with the prodigies being hated and feared throughout time for being different or special.

Renegades begins with trauma and violence – the brutal murder of a young girl’s family while she hid helplessly in a closet. She uses her prodigy power to put the assailant to sleep and then stands over him with a loaded gun, attempting to convince herself to kill him, as he killed her family. She is eventually saved by her uncle, who we later learn is “the villain” of the story, Ace Anarchy, and she spend the entire series torn in both loyalty and actions between morality and revenge. And while she *asks* the questions about equality and justice repeatedly, I feel as though this series falls a little short in demonstrating any true sense of justice.

What do I mean?

Let’s look at how “the heroes” and “the villains” both look at their world of Gatlon City. The Anarchists (“the villains”) see how prodigies are murdered, abused, or left as slaves to their world. Their solution is to destroy all the governments, banks, law enforcers, and people with power in order to give everyone equality. The Renegades (“the heroes”) decided a dog-eat-dog world absolutely sucked so they started banding together in costumes and telling normal people to stay inside and they would fight the monsters.

The Anarchists believed in a world where everyone had all the same obstacles and potential as everyone else, which made everyone equal in their eyes. When the Anarchists were overthrown by the Renegades, the ruling council of the five most powerful of the costumed vigilantes (Renegades) decided they would make all the rules and disallow any disagreement. This provided rules but not growth for their civilization. The “average citizen” wound up trading a world of no rules for a world of too many rules, and rules they had no say in and no ability to challenge. Oh, and then their ruling council decides it’s okay to neutralize people’s prodigy powers without their knowledge or consent, after their witch hunts to hold people accountable for crimes supposedly committed years ago when times were hard and families were starving? THEN they’re okay with public neutralization AND execution in the SAME entertainment show of force at the arena?

The Renegades certainly weren’t very heroic.

Nothing about either system did anything to help the “average citizen”. The Renegades didn’t do anything to finish providing true public infrastructure to Gatlon City. Their whole purpose enabled violence as the only acceptable way to be a hero, which was shown at the very beginning with the recruitment trials in the arena. The only thing being tested in the arena is combat skills and combat capabilities. I would think the Renegades would heavily appreciate and recruit prodigies with less combat skills. I also would have liked to see more “normal” prodigies, like maybe someone who can remove all mold spores who worked as a janitor in a school. Or someone who had the ability to magically clean any reflective surface they touched working as a window washer. Or even prodigies who have the ability to make delicious food, no matter what ingredients are available to them. I would have liked to see a lot more prodigies using skills effectively in their world and I would have liked the Renegades to understand that people are more valuable than just as cannon fodder for violence.

I guess that’s the whole point of this series, yes?

I think the books didn’t go far enough to show ways of taking care of everyone. The ruling hero council conducted their trials so they could have flashy shows for combat patrols. And I don’t think it occurred to them to have anything in place for those denied a place on a combat patrol unit. What about a power like those who sense the history of artifacts? Why not “hire” them for the artifacts department? And why not hire those with flame or food related gifts into the cafeteria. You can’t tell me there aren’t prodigies out there with food related abilities. Or even encouraging prodigies with data skills or pattern analysis skills to look into histories and archives because you could take a lot of that trauma so many of the pre-supernova prodigies have and actually solve their issues. You’ve got a landlord who finds an 11 month old screaming baby and turns her into the orphanage on the same night her sister goes missing and her parents are murdered and that also happens to be the same night and location a major superhero is murdered? And you don’t have anyone going through records to find those orphans and help them get back to their families? But the end of the book didn’t really make the case that there’s a place for everyone – it just showed that things will also devolve into violence and hierarchies. The Supernova at the end didn’t actually solve anything. It probably actually made everything much, much worse. And it strikes me repeatedly how every piece of media believes mass violence is the only way to make positive, lasting change.

Now everyone has powers and there aren’t anymore “heroes” or “villains”. I mean. It was a good story. But. It stopped short. And there were no negative repercussions for the ruling hero council for not actually taking care of *everyone* in the first place. And while Narcissa and the Rejects were a necessary plot device to show “average citizens” in the city, I don’t think it went far enough. I didn’t really feel the “average citizen” struggle in this series.

Now that I’ve gone on at length about ethical considerations in superhero societies, I’m going to rant just a little bit about teenage characters and romantic plots.

I am absolutely exhausted of teenage saviors and their hormone-driven angst. The main characters in this series are all teenagers and honestly, teenagers maybe shouldn’t be the ones out on combat patrols, making judgments about who should have powers and who shouldn’t. Frostbite’s team proved that. And I think I would have been forcing everyone I know to read this story if Adrian had been Adrienne, instead. Like, if this was the exact same story but Adrian’s character had been female instead, I think that would have been amazing and I’m hoping someone does a gender-bender fanfiction of this series so I can save it and read it for forever. Either that, or I’d have to write it myself and that’s just not something I’m good at :/

Overall, I’m glad I read this series and I’m pretty sure I would read it again, but I’m also happy I checked it out from the library, as it’s way too het for me. And, yes, I know Adrian has two dads, but I would have preferred the main pairing in the story to be women. So overall, probably a 3 on my rating scale.

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Book Review: Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr

Posted on July 9, 2023 by C.A. Jacobs

Last month’s fantasy/science fiction book club was a short Young Adult book and therefore we were encouraged to read a second, much longer, adult fantasy novel, Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr.

“The heroes of Cloud Cuckoo Land are trying to figure out their worlds: Anna and Omeir, on opposite sides of the city walls during the 1453 siege of Constantinople; teenage idealist Seymour and octogenarian Zeno in an attack on a public library in present-day Idaho; and Konstance, traveling toward a new world, decades from now. An ancient story provides solace to these unforgettable characters.”

This is not a spoiler-free review!

I did actually start reading this book about four days before the book club met and we needed to turn our copies of the book back in and I was reading a variety of other books at the time so I didn’t finish the book before book club met. Only about two people in the group actually did read the book, though, so I was not alone in not having read/finished it.

The book starts out with a variety of characters, seemingly unconnected across vastly different worlds and places in history. One of the things we discussed during book club focused on how this book is fully intended as an ode to all books and book lovers out there, reading all the different stories. It’s a book about books and about the way stories impact us, even when we don’t understand that impact until much, much later in our lives. While it required a few mental gymnastics for me to keep track of the different characters and the different locations of each story, about halfway through the book, things definitely clear up considerably and you can see how the stories are starting to bleed into each other and the impact each person’s story has on the story itself and also even on the other characters.

One of the things that struck me most with the other members of the book club is that we talked about how all the characters showed that they were going to be who they were no matter what. Anna consistently had problems sitting still and was very unsuited for life as a seamstress, but was very well suited for a life of adventure, stories, and closer to the earth. Seymour was always passionate and the world was always too harsh for him. Zeno was always quiet and patient. Konstance would never have been able to accept her situation – she would always have questioned everything. I think this is one of those topics where you see that your environment absolutely has an impact on who you become but that the seeds of who you are always exist.

The book really got hard for me to read just after the halfway point, especially where things started to get really hopeless for all the characters. When Konstance gets moved into the Vault with Sybil and then when Omeir gets beaten for telling the quartermaster the animals need rest, it was kind of a turning point in my enjoyment of the book. I do know that stories can’t just be happiness and everything work out well for everyone in the end, but I feel as though the world is kind of not in a great place right now in general, so why would I want to voluntarily spend my free time reading about situations where things don’t work out?

I think one of the things that really, really bothered me about the ending of this book was how all the women in the story had their stories end with having a bunch of kids and a family, as though that is the only story a woman’s life can have, as though all women are just there to breed. This bothers me for a lot of different reasons. I do understand that this is a generational story where centuries need to be connected and the only way to do that is for the women to have children, but I guess it just doesn’t sit very well with me that none of the women really had /good/ stories. They were stories of heartache and hardship that ended with having children or extreme disappointment.

Meanwhile, there was also only one queer main character in the entire novel and he spent the entire book by himself. He led an entire life of just survival and then found his purpose in translating the book with the kids from the library, but not until he was in his 80s. I guess that’s a good motivation for the people who just keep going, wondering if there’s really any point in anything, and you can see that sometimes, you won’t understand the joys of life until later. I’m not actually sure if that would have helped me at all in my younger days, just thinking about how my life might not be anything of value until I was like 80? Yeah. Probably not.

I dunno. I think I found this book more depressing than it was probably intended? While it clearly showed the very real horrors of war, the only real hope was in the stories we tell as humans and how one story can get passed down over time to be a part of people you would never imagine. So maybe the stuff you do now won’t matter to you, but it could easily make a difference to someone in the future. And that kind of mentality may or may not help you in your own quest of life 🙂

Overall, I think I am going to rate this book as a two on my scale. I guess I’m okay with the fact that I read it, but I don’t know that I would ever read it again and I’m thankful I borrowed it from the library instead of buying it myself.

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Movie Review: the Glass Onion

Posted on January 7, 2023 by C.A. Jacobs

This week, I watched the Glass Onion. I’ve been seeing a lot of screenshots, thoughts, gifs, and other media concerning this movie since it came out and I was curious to watch it.

I wanted to like this movie. I enjoyed Knives Out very much and this was set in the same world with the same main detective, Benoit Blanc (played by Daniel Craig). The stories are not connected and the events of Knives Out are not mentioned, so they can both easily be stand alone movies. And I really, really wanted to like this movie. Janelle Monae’s character was absolutely fantastic and I enjoyed finding out more about her as the movie progressed.

But I didn’t love this movie as I was hoping I would.

Why?

I think most of my dissatisfaction with this movie is that the main villain, billionaire Miles Bron (played by Edward Norton) murdered two women with his own two hands and basically nothing would happen to him. He didn’t contract the deaths. He didn’t order someone else to do it. He did it himself. But those murders aren’t going to have any negative consequences for him at all. In fact, justice isn’t really served to him by the end of the movie. Unlike the end of Knives Out where you see the family moving out of the house, there is no final satisfaction for the Glass Onion. There’s no scene showing Bron going to jail or the entire “Disruptor” crew back in the courthouse. As a viewer, I know the “Disruptors” won’t actually have the internal fortitude to go back on the stand and admit they perjured themselves.

Sure, Bron incurred massive financial damage to an island he owns, and his reputation might take a hit for the destruction of important, loaned out/rented art work, but he’s a billionaire with all the lawyers a billionaire can buy. He’ll buy off whoever he needs to and his life won’t actually change in any drastic way.

He is never really brought to justice and as much as this movie intended to show idiot billionaires getting their comeuppance in the end, I live in the real world where that’s just a fantasy. In the real world, the rich control all the resources and there really aren’t any serious consequences when the excessively rich destroy other people’s lives or even the entire planet. They are allowed to just keep buying laws and doing whatever they want.

So the fact that Bron is never actually shown having real consequences at the end of the movie made me not nearly as happy with this movie as I would have liked. I would have liked to actually see Bron and the “Disruptors” losing in court or even going to jail. But instead, we just got some implied potential justice and pretty fireworks.

Overall, I would rate this movie as a two on my scale. If someone else was watching it, I would watch it with them, but I wouldn’t go out of my way to watch it again.

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Book Review: Piranesi by Susanna Clarke

Posted on January 6, 2023 by C.A. Jacobs

Several months ago, my once-local library started a Fantasy / Science Fiction book club. Piranesi by Susanna Clarke was the fantasy book chosen for December 2022.

I don’t have the book anymore, as the book club books are checked out and returned to the library after the book is discussed, so I don’t have the ability to copy the back of the book blurb like I normally do.

This book took me a little bit longer than some books for me to get into the flow caused by several different things.

The first of which centers around the main character/narrator’s method of journal headings. As the book is designed entirely by journal entries, having odd headings definitely changes the perspective. The headings were very long and referenced a time flow unfamiliar to the reader. These headings are explained at a later time but they are very lengthy, wordy, and I definitely stopped reading them after the second one when I realized the headers were just going to stay like that.

Another difficulty I had with the flow of the story was the concept of the layout for the House. Several members of the book club mentioned wanting to attempt to draw maps of the House to help them understand the the setting better. I think most of them gave up, as the references for a map didn’t make as much sense to the reader as they did to the narrator.

I think the hardest part about getting into the story was that most of the narrator’s references made zero sense to me at first but things definitely became clearer as the book progressed. But because of these narrator differences, this honestly became a book my brain sometimes goes back to chew on the ideas for every now and then.

Overall, I’m glad I read it but I’m more glad I read it as a library book. While some ideas are fascinating and this book makes for wonderful discussion material, I think knowing what’s going on might actually spoil any future readings for me. I think I would rate it a two on my rating scale, which means I would read it again if I didn’t pay for it and if it was something someone else wanted to read and discuss.

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Book Review: All Systems Red by Martha Wells

Posted on December 1, 2022 by C.A. Jacobs

It’s been a long, long time since I’ve posted anything, let alone a book review. It’s not that I haven’t been reading. It’s more that I just haven’t taken the time to learn the new formatting options here. About two weeks ago, I finally picked up All Systems Red by Martha Wells (science fiction, 149 pages).

“In a corporate-dominated spacefaring future, planetary missions must be approved and supplied by the Company. Exploratory teams are accompanied by Company-supplied security androids, for their own safety. But in a society where contracts are awarded to the lowest bidder, safety isn’t a primary concern. On a distant planet, a team of scientists are conducting surface tests, shadowed by their Company-supplied ‘droid – a self-aware SecUnit that has hacked its own governor module, and refers to itself (though never out loud) as ‘Murderbot’. Scornful of humans, all it really wants is to be left alone long enough to figure out who it is. But when a neighboring mission goes dark, it’s up to the scientists and their Muderbot to get to the truth.”

I bought and read this book, as well as the five follow-on books, in one day and then proceeded to binge the entire series in about two-three days. This book is such an easy, enjoyable read that I’ve actually read it several more times since I binged it just over a week ago. I also found the book to be hilarious and Murderbot is one of the single most relatable characters I’ve read in a long, long time. What’s really interesting to me, though, is how much anxiety Murderbot has and how the back of the book blurb makes this seem like such a serious book about an android finding itself when really it’s about an android who could easily go around killing everyone and everything but instead is annoyed because it wants to just watch its serials and not have to deal with people.

It’s actually pretty hard for me to write up a review for this because I have so many positive things to say about it but I don’t want to ruin the book/series for anyone who hasn’t read it yet. So I will say that this book is easily a five (out of five) on my rating scale. I am extremely glad I own a copy of this book and will likely buy it and send it to everyone I know to inflict it on them, as well 🙂

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Another day

Posted on May 9, 2022 by C.A. Jacobs

The results have come back from two of the three poetry contests I submitted to at the end of 2021 and I have so far not even been a finalist, which is mildly depressing. So I am editing again with the hopes of resubmitting to one of the contests that closes at midnight on 15 May 2022. I am actually happier with the work I’ve done more and more with every time I edit it. I find and fix quite a few mistakes and the story/content gets stronger. I would like very much for this next submission to be the one that actually goes through.

I’ve got a number of ideas for the future, if this is the one that actually succeeds. I’m going to attend the World Fantasy Convention 2023 in Kansas City, Missouri in the fall of 2023. If I actually have books in print by then, I think it would be really great to work with the publisher and maybe donate 25-50 books for the famous free book bags. I also think it would be great to have physical copies of the book in circulation at a huge convention like WFC. I could get a table or something and participate in the mass signing. I might even be able to convince the person I commissioned artwork from to attend, and then they could sign as the cover artist and I could sign as the author. But that assumes 1) I win the contest or otherwise get accepted for publication 2) the physical books will be available for me prior to summer 2023 3) my desired/commissioned cover art is allowed to be used as the actual cover art 4) the publisher agrees to allow me to either purchase or donate my books to WFC 2023.

That’s a significant number of “if/then” statements but I think it’s good to have goals and to keep working towards them, no matter how many rejections come in. I think it would be great visibility for the book to be included in the free book bags. A lot of the authors I read and purchase these days started from free books I picked up at the World Fantasy Conventions I’ve attended over the years.

Meanwhile, I’ve started the long, time-consuming process of disassembling and packing up my Legos, which is always hard. There are so many things I want to build and so many things I wish I could build but I just don’t have the space or time. And it seriously becomes a matter of maybe regret? For all the things I kept putting off until tomorrow and now “tomorrow” has become a looming threat. I have to move soon. And start a new life and a new job and that’s already intimidating enough but now there’s this sense of nostalgic disappointment that even with my current, nice place to live and stable income, I still didn’t get enough time to do enough of the things that make me happy.

I finally found and am an active participant in a local Adult Fan of Lego (AFOL) group and they are fantastic and I’m learning so much from them but this, too, is only temporary, as I really will be moving soon.

Starting over is hard.

I don’t have a place to live and that housing market is extra stupid right now.

I don’t know what I’m going to do for work. I don’t think I have it in me to work for company/corporate selfish greed. I don’t think I have the financial backing to start my own business and I worry doing something like opening my own used Lego store will just drain away my love of building. Teaching won’t pay the bills, as much as I really do enjoy teaching.

Being a part of a community takes time and effort and just when I started to get to know people, I’ll be moving again.

So there’s a lot going on but I’m going to keep doing the best I can, I guess.

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