Persepolis Rising, by James S. A. Corey

I'm coming back to this series after a long hiatus, and this one's been out for seven years. Spoiler - the Laconian empire falls! Not yet though, in this novel it's just getting wound up. I would have to say, maybe with the hindsight of knowing how the series continues, that Corey kind of telegraphs that ending. Here you see the hubris of Duarte rising, right through to the end where his powers increase even as the empire has fallen somewhat short of its goals.

I am reading more for the fun of the story and the characters at this point. And they have had so much run time together that they are family, like Proust novels or something. Holden has evolved in these books, because he had to--from a "man with no inner life" to a man still driven by honor but with everyone around him pretty much convinced that it's quirky. I saw a blurb for the next book refer to Holden as "Mephistophelian", which is a long trip from where he started.

The social setting of the book might be more like the Roman Empire than current times, but really the series is Space Opera all the way, and does not try for deep philosophy. It just keeps you reading. Am going to do my best to catch the series all the way up.

My Goodreads Review

Plague Birds, by Jason Sanford

This is a very classic YA novel. The dialog and the very light touch with the sex scenes take me back to when I was 14. At that time I tended to avoid them, I wanted the more ambiguous material, and really I still feel the same way. It's well plotted, Sanford doesn't give his direction away much, so very good on suspense. But the characters are in the end pretty simple people, with very definite roles to play, so they kind of run on rails--a very YA thing. And while the plot is good and complex, it doesn't seem to bear much relationship to today. CRISPR gene editing is indeed a thing, and might be the next advance leading to social breakdown, but it really doesn't look like we'll need that. Since overly gene-edited creatures and humans are the driver of the plot, and supposedly at least 10,000 years have gone by since the major collapse occurred, I just couldn't connect with these folks much. I wish them luck, I guess.

My Goodreads Review