This won't be a review, exactly, but rather a note on books' titles and openings and how those affect expectations.

I just finished the Star Trek (TOS) novel Uhura's Song. The first chapter throws us right into a tense situation: a horrible plague is decimating a planet, and Uhura is especially affected because one of her friends is among those ( Read more... )

And some of the books were good! See, I promised!

( Roadside Picnic / Arkady and Boris Strugatsky )

Inevitably, whenever someone expresses discontent about how a movie/book/TV show had plot holes you could drive a semi truck through, or characters so shallow they evaporated before your eyes, or big ugly smears of sexism/racism/homophobia/the rest of the vile package, someone will pop up and say, “But it’s just a fluffy movie/book/TV show and isn’ ( Read more... )