Red Team Blues, by Cory Doctorow

I liked reading this book. Fast paced action, an appealing if imperfect hero, at the cutting edge of computers, society, and security. A quick read that kept me turning pages.

I am still disappointed. Where is the Cory Doctorow of "Walkaway"? Or "Radicalized"? The protagonist in this story seems to be a guy who is feeling his age and still has sympathies for progressive ideas but has (sort of) made peace with things as they are. Though I think the ending is worth reading a couple of times. At first it sounds a bit obvious and some have thought it tone-deaf, but I think it is self-consciously so.

Cory Doctorow intends his speculative fiction to be "at the very edge of the present". This one feels less at the edge. More like a modern thriller than speculative fiction, he's just slotted there.

Maybe he will stretch Martin Hench in future books. But it kind of doesn't look that way.

David (Spring, TX)’s review of Red Team Blues | Goodreads

Furious Heaven, by Kate Elliot

I persevered all the way to the end of this very, very long book. Not just physically long, it felt long. There's a lot of landmarks and players, but the plot in the end is pretty ordinary galactic fantasy. It is modernized with sapphic romance, but we've had that around long enough for it not to be an automatic qualifier. Space in this series is a very pure metaphor for the ocean--the battles give the book a lift but not really enough. Elliot has fallen in love with Sun, I think--the book tends toward hagiography for Sun, especially toward the end. Lots of hyperbolic descriptions of royal responsibility and honor. If you're pushing the boundaries in speculative fiction now, you're pushing back on the very colonial ideas of empire and royalty that Elliot uncritically embraces. Having the conquerors have an Asian, as opposed to European/Celtic origins, does not let this off the hook. The length just isn't justified--it's mostly a chronicle of Sun's conquests, with some clever interludes from her companions. I kept on, looking for a story, and I'm not sure that really ever happened--just a collection of incidents with Sun at the center.

My Goodreads Review