The Rosewater Redemption, by Tade Thompson

This series is definitely not perfect. You have to adjust your expectations as you go along. Overall I'd say it's loosely written and feels kind of out of control in places. But if you can just kind of roll with it and enjoy the point of view, it ends up working pretty well.

The final installment begins with Oyin Da, aka Bicycle Girl, and through the book we get more of her story. She is definitely the most confusing character in the bunch, doing some kind of low tech time travel for her part of the story, phasing in and out of people's lives through the xenosphere, the aliens' pervasive communication scheme. But the rest of the bunch--Femi the operative, Aminat the heroic agent, Jacque Jacques the highly complex politician, and Kaaro the sensitive sensitive--really grew on me with this last installment. There are several other characters I didn't name that get their own line and personality, so in that sense the work is very well balanced.

There's a whole lot of action throughout, which really kept me reading. I thought several times during my reading that there is a movie script here--the characters are described as very attractive and it seems like the visuals would be interesting. But capturing the plot would be kind of hard, since there's so much going on.

Some reviewers were pretty bothered by the plot inconsistencies, and it made the ending less satisfying for them. But I have to say I liked how he wrapped things up. Yes it is consciously done, in a chapter called "Reprise", but that doesn't mean it's too simple.

Overall I'm glad I chose to persist and finish this series. There's a lot of fun to be had reading it, and some interesting ideas there as well.

My Goodreads Review

The Galactic Tourist Industrial Complex, by Tobias S. Bucknell

This is a fun short read--about Earth being discovered by alien species, most of whom are more advanced than we are, so Earth becomes mainly useful as a tourist attraction.  The major cities are mostly geared around providing habitats and merchandise for curious aliens.  It would be bad if something happened to disrupt that...

Bucknell's description of future cities as tourist attractions rings true now--worldwide, the major cities for tourism are starting to resemble each other pretty closely, with large areas given over to tourist management, and even managed experiences for people who want to have "more authentic" experiences.  Good stuff.

Late Returns, by Joe Hill

Late Returns is part of Hill's Full Throttle collection, and was nominated for a Locus award for 2020.  It's a time travel story--an old bookmobile seems to have the ability to go back in time and give books from the future to readers that need one last read.  It's a sweet story, not dwelling much on paradox.  Joe Hill even name checks himself (in a Joan Baez song) in the story.  It's a nice way to spend an evening with people that want the best for each other, and find an interesting way to do it.  And of course books about books are always tempting to write.

The Rosewater Insurrection, by Tade Thompson

The first book in the Wormwood Trilogy was a fascinatingly weird setup--there was a lot of ground to cover, and Thompson managed to do it without large blocks of characters lecturing each other or "historical" chapter introductions. The second story is more action-oriented as we see the continuing development of the alien invasion of Earth. The characters are incredibly engaging and complex--there's no one lead, and all of them have their own distinct role and voice in the story. There's plenty of great action to carry it along--I think it's got potential as a movie, if it could avoid getting kitschy over weird alien life.

A very interesting aspect of this is its African setting, in a world where American has gone completely dark and has no present influence. Colonial organization structure lives on, but much more Africanized. This fresh perspective and great action writing are keeping me hooked.

My Goodreads Review

Thoughts and Prayers, by Ken Liu

This story was commissioned for Slate Magazine's Future Tense project.  It's a pretty straight-line projection of how intense trolling is going to get in the future, focusing on a mass shooting victim's family where the mother decides to go public and try to change things.  Seems like a much more intense version of what we do today, and much more intensely ignored.  

I don't think we're going to go in a straight line.  We are going to adjust to how social media works and put it in its place--I think ordinary people are already moving in this direction.  The terminally outraged will become more so, though and that is going to lead to more trouble and pain.  

The Girl Who Did Not Know Fear, by Kelly Link

The Girl Who Did Not Know Fear is very much a literary story, only speculative in a bit of an out-of-body sequence.  The premise is a kind of Groundhog Day In An Airport thing, where a professor coming back from a conference is stranded in Detroit for 5 days waiting for a flight.  She's not much of a traveler so it's that much worse, though she seems mentally prepared.  It feels weirdly off center, since the title character is actually kind of a side story in a tale of intensely difficult and deeply felt coincidence.  The flight in the story is as horrible as one I took on my one and only overseas trip, to London, which was in the end quite worthwhile even though both ends of the trip competed with each other for worst flight ever.  The story will find a lot of sympathetic ears.

I (28M) created a deepfake girlfriend and now my parents think we’re getting married, by Fonda Lee

I am not sure what the (28m) parenthetic piece is in the title of this story, but it seems to have become kind of a meme.  Lots of riffs on the title out there.  The story itself is pretty darned good--seems to be from tomorrow's newspaper, so to speak.  A social media company lets you create a virtual significant other.  It kind of works like a Tamagotchi, you interact with it and it gets happier and better at being your partner.  In this case, the girlfriend of a guy who is not trying to hook up that much but his parents are after him.  It all sounds so very real that I think in 6 months it will be.  Very well executed by Fonda Lee as well.  Definitely go read it.