Wreck Jumpers 2 by Jason Anspach and Nick Cole (2025)

The second novel extends the arcs of the original rescue team as they confront the same shadowed adversaries—formidable in political reach, skill, and intrigue. The Warsh aliens dominate this installment, endowed with powers beyond even the Galaxy's Edge mythos, reshaping the scale of combat. The narrative broadens with sharper personalities, including robots that now carry voice, wit, and purpose absent in the first volume. Battles accelerate, characters evolve, and the stakes rise without dilution. The story probes how authority, whether political or military, mutates when opposed by loyalty forged under pressure. It also suggests that technology gains meaning only through the values projected onto it by those who wield it. A concise and vigorous continuation. 5/5 stars

Co-Intelligence by Ethan Mollick (2024)

My work centers on researching and building AI applications, and I manage a broad software team. Some of my colleagues dive headlong into "vibe coding" with generative AI assistants and agentic workflows, while others resist or adopt slowly. Outside of work, I experiment with chatbots and occasionally use them for personal coding, writing, and evaluation tasks. One of my team members recommended Co-Intelligence, so I began with the audiobook on a long flight. I retained little from that attempt. Reading the ebook with notes proved more effective, and I extracted the key insights.

I approach most AI commentary with skepticism. The hype bubble, inflated by the trillion-dollar "magnificent seven," resembles many earlier cycles. Still, just as calculators, GPS, and spell-checkers raised the floor of productivity, generative AI is now advancing the Gartner "plateau of productivity."

Mollick's enthusiasm is obvious, but his "four principles" are sound: (1) treat AI as a partner, not a tool; (2) use it often to learn its strengths and limits; (3) be transparent about when and how you employ it; and (4) expect disruption as norms shift. His prompt-design examples are pragmatic, too. Roughly one-third of the book delivers practical value; the rest dissolves into speculation and fanboy exuberance. Even so, the book is worth reading. 4/5 stars.

Wreck Jumpers by Nick Cole and Jason Anspach (2025)

Cole and Anspach launch another military space opera within their Wayward Galaxy universe, trading narrative depth for kinetic entertainment. The familiar setting and search-and-rescue framing provide novelty, while the characters bristle with energy and rapid-fire banter, echoing the spirit of their earlier work. The result is exuberant, chaotic action punctuated by audacious rescues, though the prose lacks the refinement and immersion achieved in their more polished novels. It succeeds as light diversion—spirited rather than resonant. 4/5 stars.

The Girl who kicked the hornets' nest by Stieg Larsson (2007)

The trilogy concludes with undiminished tension, its narrative charged by reversals, near-deaths, and brutal confrontations that sustain relentless momentum. The plotting is mechanical at times, yet its inexorability creates suspense that feels earned rather than contrived. Larsson turns his critique toward institutions, exposing systemic corruption, entrenched secrecy, and the costs of bureaucratic complicity. The recurring emphasis on institutional misogyny underscores the novels' political charge, though its repetition risks flattening nuance in an otherwise finely-woven narrative. Central characters achieve limited but meaningful development, gaining maturity without betrayal of their sharply defined identities. The finale delivers both continuity and resolution, securing closure while preserving the series' force. 5/5 stars.

Singularity (Star Carrier book 3) by Ian Douglas (2012)

Book 3 expands its political dimensions while deepening the enigma of alien civilizations whose motives remain provocatively opaque, even as they prosecute genocidal war against humanity. Douglas sustains the sense of awe with ancient extraterrestrial mysteries embedded in efficient space opera structuring, while fleet combat sequences deliver momentum and spectacle without excess. The introduction of time travel feels like a dilution of narrative rigor, a compromise to coherence, yet the planetary-moving and galactic-scale engineering technologies reaffirm the saga's conceptual grandeur. Compared with the prior volumes, this installment broadens the cosmological scale while maintaining continuity of military perspective, signaling a shift from near-term survival drama toward longer-arc speculation about humanity's place in a universe shaped by incomprehensible powers. The storyline advances with discipline and energy, balancing large-scale speculation with tight military plotting. 4/5 stars.

Stardust by Neil Gaiman (1999)

I rarely enjoy high fantasy, and I often find Gaiman's work uneven. Nevertheless, his mastery of prose and narrative drive is undeniable. Stardust succeeds because it embraces the fairy tale form without apology. The novel employs an arbitrary but internally consistent magic system and populates it with sharply drawn, memorable characters. The horrors remain true to the tradition of fairy tales—brutal yet restrained in presentation. The result is a work that feels both timeless and deliberate, balancing whimsy with menace. A flawless execution of modern mythmaking. 5/5 stars.

Center of Gravity (star carrier book 2) by Ian Douglas (2011)

Douglas's Center of Gravity extends the Star Carrier saga with all the hallmarks of classic space opera: high-stakes political intrigue on Earth, massive fleet engagements, relativistic combat rendered with cinematic flair, enigmatic alien species, and technologies designed to evoke awe. The narrative momentum is strong, the characters remain engaging, and the escalating conflicts have a satisfying dramatic rhythm.

Still, the physics in the story often falters. Singularity encounters omit any serious consideration of tidal forces. The treatment of relativistic energies—whether in blue-shifted particle beams or exotic "relativistic sand" munitions—lacks rigor. The frequency of collisions among vessels in interstellar space pushes credibility as well. These flaws undermine some of the scientific verisimilitude, though they never entirely fracture the operatic sweep of the story.

Despite the lapses in astrophysical modeling, the novel succeeds as exhilarating spectacle and remains deeply enjoyable. 4/5

How to Dodge a Cannonball by Dennard Dayle (2025)

Dennard Dayel's How to Dodge a Cannonball reads like a satirical fever dream of the American Civil War, written in a cadence that recalls Neil Gaiman's gothic whimsy but channeled through battlefield smoke and absurdist humor. The novel brims with clever aphorisms and meticulously crafted ironies, some of which prompted genuine laughter. Yet the eccentric characters, designed more as allegorical figures than as psychologically convincing agents, never acquire sufficient depth to sustain real attachment. Their stories, while inventive, feel ornamental rather than compelling. The brilliance lies in the tonal play—where tragedy keeps colliding with farce—yet the narrative lacks the gravitational pull of characters worth following. For all its wit and audacity, the book remains more a satirical spectacle than a work of lasting emotional force. 3/5

Earth Strike (star carrier 1) by Ian Douglas (2010)

Ian Douglas launches the Star Carrier saga with a narrative that fuses interstellar mystery, relentless fleet combat, and the precarious role of humanity in a universe populated by civilizations far older and more advanced. The novel's central tension emerges from first contact with an enigmatic species whose capabilities far exceed human understanding. That asymmetry drives the suspense: survival hinges on improvisation, cultural resilience, and the capacity for tactical surprise.

The physics that underpin the technology function as both strength and weakness. When Douglas stretches plausibility—gravity fields near singularities, or selective hand-waving around faster-than-light transitions—the cracks show. Yet these gaps are overshadowed by kinetic depictions of carrier operations and fleet engagements that pulse with authenticity, clearly informed by present-day doctrine. The heavy emphasis on crewed spacecraft, though questionable in an era where autonomous systems dominate speculation, reinforces the drama of command decisions under extreme uncertainty.

What keeps the novel engrossing is not just the scale of the threat but the tight focus on individuals who must navigate enormous strategic stakes. The convergence of personal loyalties, institutional rivalries, and the dizzying possibility of extinction yields a story that entertains as much as it provokes reflection. Earth Strike succeeds as a first movement in a longer symphony—high velocity, flawed at the margins, but gripping throughout. 4/5.

The Hidden Girl and other stories by Ken Liu (2020)

I first encountered Ken Liu's work through the television series Pantheon and sought out this collection because several episodes draw on stories from it. A handful of the science fiction pieces form a shared universe that underpins the series. The adaptations depart from their source material in substantial ways—at times the dramatizations convey more emotional force, while in other respects the original stories possess greater intellectual rigor and narrative control.

Outside the science fiction core, most of the remaining works fall into sword-and-sorcery fantasy. These rely heavily on mythic tropes that I found less compelling and, in some cases, distracting. Liu's strengths lie elsewhere: his speculative futures are constructed with unusual clarity and depth, and his prose in English is fluid, precise, and engaging. His world-building is particularly notable, sustained by an evident mastery of technical and cultural detail.

Liu is already recognized by a wide array of major awards, and his polymathic career—lawyer, technologist, and translator in addition to author—underscores the breadth of his intellectual reach. For readers seeking carefully imagined technology-driven futures, the strongest science fiction stories in this volume are absorbing and rewarding. The weaker fantasy entries, however, dilute the collection. 3/5 Stars.