And now for a break in the routine....

 By reading some straight SF, not space opera!  Mal Goes to War by Edward Ashton takes place in the United States of America in 2065, as a genocidal war breaks out between Humanists and the Federals.  

Humanists are ordinary people who are violently opposed to the existence of cyborgs:  humans with  neurological implants, embedded enhancements to their musculature, live contact with infospace, nanobots running through their bloodstreams to repair physical damage, etc. etc.  The Federals are the same-old, same-old folks who may or may not be enhanced (depending on their personal financial circumstances or their military enlistment status), who live in or run everyday society of 2065.  

Our hero Mal is an independent AI who inadvertently wanders into the conflict between the two types of monkey when he downloads himself into the neurological implant of a recently deceased Federal soldier to see what it's like to live in meatspace -- and gets trapped when his link to infospace goes down.

The cover calls this book "darkly comic", which pretty much covers Mal's adventures incompetently pretending to be human as he first collects a posse of misfits, and then tries to escape with them across Humanist lines back to Federal infospace while Bad Things happen all around.  Well-written, funny, gripping and thought-provoking, even if I refuse to believe that a game of Guess the Cube Root of the Square of the Output of the Random Number Generator would be any more fun than the base game of Guess the Output of the Random Number Generator for a bored AI trapped in the head of a sleeping host human.

What I've been reading: Space Opera Edition II

As I continue to read modern space operas, I'm noticing (perhaps belatedly) some strong general themes:

• Written by women
• Usually include banter/smartasses/clever dialog
• Strong female leads
• Lots of queer characters and queer relationships
• Romance is common, as are found families, scrappy space rebels (think Harrison Ford), and AIs

Now on to more detail about my most two latest reads: Full Speed to a Crash Landing and The Floating Hotel.  Firstly, I'd have to say that these two are among the best of my most recent batch (which includes Calamity, Cascade Failure, Barbary Station, Finder, and Under Fortunate Stars from Space Opera I).  

Neither of these two books has any obvious "writerly" flaw, both were engaging, and neither was too long.  

Quick competent fun = +++

Full Speed to a Crash Landing by Beth Revis (published 2024)

This one had intrigue, banter/smart ass comments, and a hint of romance (or at least passing lust).  So, in some ways it's a mirror of Calamity by Constance Fey.  But Calamity is a romance and Full Speed is a sexy space heist.  Full Speed is told in the first person, by an unreliable narrator, and is about a galactic salvager/scavenger who is rescued as she's running out of air by an official government salvage crew who's come to investigate the wreck that she's plundering.  

Parallels with my work:  banter, spaceships

The Floating Hotel by Grace Curtis (published 2024)

Can I complain that a book isn't what I expected if it delivers exactly what's on the tin?  I ordered this after reading its Amazon preview pages, and thought that it was going to be about Carl, the abused orphan from a terrible mining planet who is kindly taken in by the staff of a luxury hotel spaceship (the Grand Abeona). Instead, the book is fundamentally about....drumrollllll....the hotel itself.  

Each chapter follows a different character (although Carl, who becomes manager, does get a few), and together the characters' stories tell us about the Galactic Empire that the hotel traverses and gradually, all about the hotel itself.   At the heart of the book is a mystery, which creates an overarching plot that emerges from the individual character's stories.

I thought the book was very well done.  It was engaging, had well-developed and believable characters, and the overall conceit was well-executed in that the many threads came together to build to a "surprising but inevitable" conclusion (which is the goal of a mystery plot!)

This is advertised as a cozy and I can see why:  Carl (and the culture of the ship) is kind, you can describe the collection of characters as a found family, and the premise of a luxury interstellar floating hotel staffed by waifs who love their work is fundamentally sweet.   But there is a dark heart here: an oppressive Galactic Empire with a sadistic agent who uses torture as a tool.  I find it hard to categorize any book that includes torture as cozy, even if the perpetrator eventually faces consequences (albeit for murdering a colleague, not for the torture itself).

Parallels with my work: oppressive Galactic Empire, spaceships, most characters are decent and doing their best