[Book] Binti Trilogy by Nnedi Okorafor

Book cover This short book (novella) is the first in the trilogy.  Binti is the name of the main character.  This book starts on a distant future (unspecified timeline) Earth where humans are now space-faring, and alien races are known. There is a lot to unpack in the world-building and the world is built along with the story.  Each chapter is unusually episodic, in that some small part of the last scene of a previous chapter will be often be repeated at the beginning of the next....

10 Jul 2019 · 4 min · Gary Allen Vollink

[Book] Defy The Worlds by Claudia Gray

Book cover This is book 2 of the Defy the Stars trilogy.  I recommend first reading my review of Defy the Stars before diving headlong into this review.  Also, there may be mild spoilers of the first book in this review.  I'm not sure that can be helped. I recommend not reading Defy The Worlds until Defy The Stars has already been read.  Like most sequels, this book could stand-alone, but there is not as much exposition and recap as I'm used to reading in sequels....

26 Jun 2019 · 2 min · Gary Allen Vollink

[Book] Defy The Stars by Claudia Gray

This is book one of a three book series (the third book came out earlier this month), and since I've already had good reviews of two other books by this author, I decided to pick up this series as well to see what she had done outside of the Star Wars universe. Book cover Through a ring of stabilized wormholes, large enough for whole ships to pass through, Earth expanded to five other planets....

29 May 2019 · 2 min · Gary Allen Vollink

[Book] Predators Gold by Philip Reeve

Book cover This is book 2 of the Mortal Engines Quartet.  For convenience, here is a link to my review of book 1, Mortal Engines, which I posted a month ago. I'm going to start this review with a note about a changed name.  The books were originally released in the UK with a character named Shrike.  For the initial US release of the books, that character was renamed to Grike....

17 Apr 2019 · 3 min · Gary Allen Vollink