Category Archives: Adventure

Review: Heaven’s River by Dennis E. Taylor

Adventure, Alien, Artificial Intelligence, Deep Space, Megastructure, Regular Guy Book Reviews, Series

Heaven’s River is the fourth book of the excellent Bobiverse series, and instead of cruising along well-worn narrative paths, author Dennis E. Taylor expands his universe and characters in unexpected and interesting ways.

The book clocks in at 600 pages, but it maintains a fast, page-turning pace the whole way through.

Bob-1 attempts to rescue a lost friend while exploring a mysterious alien megastructure and interacting with aliens, but also has to contend with the growing possibility of civil war within the Bobiverse itself.

If you don’t know what the Bobiverse is, I recommend reading the first book of the series, We Are Legion (We Are Bob). It’s fantastic.

Recommendation: Read it! I had a great time with this book. However, newcomers to the series might want to start with the first book.

Review: The Kaiju Preservation Society by John Scalzi

Adventure, Alien, Funny, Regular Guy Book Reviews, Stand-alone

The Kaiju Preservation Society is ridiculously fun. It’s easy to imagine author John Scalzi grinning like a maniac as he was writing this. It’s short, breezy, interesting, and hilarious.

A miserable young man is stuck schlepping around New York City, working for food delivery apps, so when he’s given the opportunity to work for an “animal rights organization” he jumps at the chance, despite the number of strange hoops he must jump through.

There are kaiju (godzilla-sized monsters), and of course, things end up going very wrong.

Recommendation: Read it! Read it now! There’s a lot of heavy stuff out there, and it’s nice to have a relaxing palate cleanser like this book.

Review: Upgrade by Blake Crouch

Adventure, Genetic Engineering, Near Future, Regular Guy Book Reviews, Stand-alone

Upgrade is a fun, fast-paced near-future adventure by Blake Crouch, whose past two books I really enjoyed. In Upgrade, a man gets a highly experimental and unasked-for upgrade to his genetic code, giving him near-superhero intelligence and strength. Immediately, the government and some shadow organization are intensely interested in him, and he must escape all manner of grasping clutches to protect himself and his family.

This is a highly entertaining read, one that kept me up much later than I intended at night. However, its premise isn’t wildly original, and I didn’t think he took it far enough. Given the abilities of some of the characters, I expected to be more blown away by their exploits.

Recommendation: Read it if you’re in the mood for some light, entertaining fare.

Review: Strata by Terry Pratchett

Adventure, Alien, Funny, Regular Guy Book Reviews, Spunky Heroine, Stand-alone

Fantasy author Terry Pratchett is famous for his Discworld series, comprised of over forty books taking place on a round, flat world perched on the back of four giant elephants who stand on the shell of a enormous space-faring sea turtle.

But before fantasy-trope-skewering Discworld, Pratchett wrote Strata, a science fiction book that explored the idea of how a flat, round world would actually work. Many of the ideas in Strata appear in the Discworld books.

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