The Turkish Gambit by Boris Akunin (1998)

I am enjoying the adventures of Erast Fandorin enormously. With each book, the mysteries become more intricate, and the historical backdrop becomes a larger part of the appeal. In this installment, Fandorin finds himself amid the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–1878, where espionage, military maneuvering, and political intrigue intertwine with the central mystery.

One of the series' greatest strengths is Akunin's ability to weave fiction into real history. The military campaigns, personalities, and political tensions feel grounded in the historical record without slowing the story. As a result, the novel works both as a mystery and as an engaging introduction to a conflict that receives little attention in most Western histories.

My only reservation concerns the antagonist. Much like the villain in the second Fandorin novel, the mastermind occasionally stretches my suspension of disbelief. The character's capabilities sometimes seem too convenient for the plot.

Even so, the story is entertaining from beginning to end. The cast is colorful, the mystery is clever, and the historical setting is fascinating. I finished the book feeling as though I had enjoyed both a mystery novel and a history lesson. 5/5 stars.

The Magician of Lublin by Isaac Bashevis Singer (1961)

This novel echoes many of Singer's familiar themes: temptation, faith, guilt, desire, and the tension between religious obligation and worldly ambition. The story follows Yasha Mazur, a traveling magician whose charm, talent, and appetite for risk gradually draw him into moral and personal crisis. The resulting arc has more than a hint of Crime and Punishment, and that aspect of the novel is compelling.

As in much of Singer's work, the greatest strength is the immersive slice-of-life portrait of Jewish life in nineteenth-century Poland. The setting feels authentic and lived-in. What distinguishes this novel from some of his others is the treatment of the non-Jewish characters. They feel more fully realized and three-dimensional, which broadens the world and makes the social interactions more interesting.

I admired the writing more than I cared about the characters. The emotional struggles and personal dramas never gripped me as strongly as those in more contemporary fiction. Even so, Singer's prose, insight, and historical atmosphere kept me engaged throughout.

I enjoyed the novel, but I admired it more than I loved it. 3/5 stars.

All that we see or seem by Ken Liu (2025)

This book is fantastic. Ken Liu combines believable near-future technology with a thriller that never loses sight of its characters. The novel explores advanced AI, synthetic media, identity, and the evolution of the criminal scam-compound industry that has already emerged in parts of Southeast Asia. Unlike many AI novels, the technology feels grounded in current trends rather than speculative magic.

The setting is vivid. The characters are beautifully crafted. The plot moves quickly without sacrificing emotional depth. Liu captures both the promise and the danger of increasingly capable AI systems while keeping the focus on the human consequences of those technologies.

I was particularly impressed by the treatment of modern AI and the plausible extension of today's scam-farm operations (that already use over 100,000 slaves to fake product reviews, scam people, etc.) into the near future. Those elements felt uncomfortably realistic. The central dream-related premise is more speculative, but it never undermined my enjoyment.

I was also happy that Liu largely avoided the fantasy elements that sometimes appear in his fiction. The result is a focused science-fiction thriller with strong technical foundations, memorable characters, and relentless momentum.

This novel is a genuine page-turner. I was engrossed from beginning to end. 5/5 stars.

The Bing U by Neal Stephenson (2001)

This is one of the rare Stephenson novels that has not aged well. The book remains funny, energetic, and inventive. The characters are fantastic; the satire is sharp and many of the themes that would later appear in Stephenson's mature work are already visible.

The story takes place in a sprawling university that has become a self-contained society, complete with factions, bureaucracies, eccentric subcultures, and escalating absurdity. The novel skewers academia, intellectual fashions, student life, and institutional dysfunction with relentless enthusiasm. I particularly enjoyed the old computer technology, the role-playing game references, the mass driver, and the bursts of goofy science fiction.

The problem is not the craftsmanship but the tone. Much of the novel treats violence, wild sex, alcoholism, and other typical campus behaviors as funny. Today, many scenes land differently. I found it difficult to detach from the story and laugh at events involving murders, gun violence, gang rape, and other common activities of that era. 

Even so, I enjoyed the story, 3/5 stars.

The Folded Sky by Elizabeth Bear (2025)

I am often baffled when authors interrupt strong stories with shrill moralizing about fashionable social themes. That problem appears here; it is frustrating because the underlying setting is excellent. Bear’s “White Space” universe remains imaginative and strange in the best way. Humans are projected star trek style into bizarre alien bodies, synthetic forms, and hybrid identities across a colorful interstellar civilization. The setting feels wondrous, immersive, and alive.

The strongest science-fiction elements work well. The aliens are memorable. The mystery holds together. The atmosphere of exploration and transformation gives the story momentum. The writing itself is strong.

Several elements weakened the experience for me. The obsession with gender identity, both human and alien, becomes distracting. The inter-species relationships and tentacle-sex themes often feel inserted for provocation rather than narrative necessity. Some parts of the quasi-magical technology system also strain disbelief because they are inconsistent.

The largest conceptual problem involves the pirates and their economics. Their politics resemble familiar warlord societies where we see mass murders, rapes, etc. such as the Democratic Republic of Congo, Nigeria, Mali, Burkina Faso, etc. So these political evils are believable enough; but their economic model makes no sense inside a post-scarcity civilization that can fabricate anything on demand. The setting’s material abundance undermines the plausibility of the pirate empire.

Despite these shortcomings, I enjoyed the book. The setting is imaginative, engrossing, and frequently awe-inspiring. The characters work. The mystery works. The story remains fun to read even when the thematic obsessions detract from the experience. 4/5 stars.

Zodiac by Neal Stephenson (1988)

Neal Stephenson is currently my favorite English-language author, and since he cannot write books as fast as I can read them, I have been working backward through older novels I missed. I found Zodiac on a shelf and remembered that someone else in my family had read it years ago and gushed about its portrait of the early environmental movement and the public pressure that eventually drove real progress through education and regulation.

The novel follows an environmental activist who doubles as an industrial troublemaker while he uncovers toxic dumping and corporate corruption in Boston Harbor. The story mixes ecological science, political conflict, and thriller pacing in a way that already shows many of Stephenson’s strengths.

I enjoyed the colorful characters, the melodrama, and the constant forward motion of the conflict. The science is excellent, as always with Stephenson. The historical setting is equally compelling. The novel captures 1985 Boston as a vivid slice of life, with enough texture and local detail to make the whole world feel immediate and lived-in.

The book lacks some of the scale and conceptual ambition of his later work, but the energy and intelligence are already there. It was a pleasure to see an early Stephenson novel working so well on its own terms. 5/5 stars.

The history of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire vol 1 by Edward Gibbon (1776)

I saw this blog post by Neal Stephenson and was sold on trying Gibbon’s immense seven-volume magnum opus on the long decline of the Roman Empire, beginning with imperial Rome at its height in Italy and Western Europe and tracing the political, military, and cultural decay that would eventually leave the surviving empire centered in Constantinople and Eastern Europe. I was curious whether a work with such a reputation could still command attention across nearly two and a half centuries. In some ways, it does.

I enjoyed Gibbon’s prose. The style often reminded me of Dickens, and at times even of Stephenson himself. Gibbon writes densely, with each sentence packed with meaning and attitude. The colorful anecdotes are entertaining, and his loaded language reveals the assumptions and prejudices of his eighteenth-century world in ways that are often fascinating. The writing itself is a pleasure to read.

The detailed history was too much for me. The book is a vast stream of names, dates, emperors, campaigns, anecdotes, and political details that arrive too quickly to absorb into any cohesive picture. The experience often felt like reading a phone book written by a brilliant stylist. I could admire the craft while failing to integrate the information. The experience reminded me why I was never a history major and why I prefer historical fiction to encyclopedic history or historiographic research.

The prose is excellent, just as Stephenson promised, but the density of information overwhelmed any larger narrative for me. I doubt I will continue through the remaining volumes. 2/5 stars.

The Shattering Peace by John Scalzi (2025)

I usually enjoy Scalzi’s books, and this light, escapist space opera was great fun. The novel continues the Interdependency universe with another fast-moving political and military crisis. The story balances interstellar diplomacy, shifting alliances, and looming conflict without losing momentum.

The heroine is plucky and imperfect, which makes her easy to follow. She is cunning, clever, and skilled in the arts of war, but what sets her apart is her empathy for wildly different alien cultures. That quality gives the political maneuvering real weight. The plotting feels sharp and believable. The competing interests and shifting loyalties never collapse into confusion.

I was less convinced by the Obin and their “consciousness prosthesis.” Even though I am inclined to think consciousness is largely an illusion, the concept felt muddled rather than provocative.

The Consu are a frustrating and humorous part of the setting. Their arrogance, secrecy, and habit of withholding every scrap of information make them both infuriating and fascinating. Their arrogance and technology makes them a great antagonist.

This book is a smart, entertaining continuation of Scalzi’s Interdependency universe. 5/5 stars.

Der Name der Rose von Umbero Echo (1982)

Das Buch lag schon ewig auf meinem Stapel. Ich hatte früher schon einmal angefangen, dann aber aus irgendeinem Grund wieder aufgehört. Diesmal hat es mich gepackt. Ich musste zwischendurch bewusst langsam lesen, um bei den ganzen Hintergründen, Verdächtigen, Entdeckungen im Kloster und natürlich den Morden den Überblick zu behalten. Die Mühe lohnt sich.

Auf den ersten Blick ist das ein grossartiger Krimi. In einem Benediktinerkloster im 14. Jahrhundert geschehen mehrere rätselhafte Todesfälle, und William von Baskerville beginnt zusammen mit seinem jungen Begleiter Adson zu ermitteln. Die Spur führt durch verborgene Bibliotheken, verbotene Bücher und gelehrte Streitigkeiten, die immer düsterer werden.

Was das Buch aber wirklich besonders macht, ist das historische Panorama. Eco zeigt das Klosterleben in allen Details, den Alltag, die Rituale, die Spannungen und Machtspiele. Gleichzeitig wird klar, wie sehr diese kleine Welt mit den großen Konflikten der Kirche verbunden ist. Armut, Macht, Dogma und politische Intrigen prallen ständig aufeinander. Das Ganze wirkt nie trocken, sondern lebendig und glaubwürdig.

Kein leichtes Buch, aber ein unglaublich lohnendes. Anspruchsvoll, packend und voller Atmosphäre. 5/5 Sterne.

When we were Real by Daryl Gregory (2026)

This Nebula Award nominee is another disappointment for me. I have always enjoyed stories about layers of simulation, where our universe runs inside another simulated universe, which itself may be running inside yet another. That idea goes back at least to fiction and non-fiction by Stanisław Lem, especially Non Serviam (1961), and for me the best treatment remains David Brin's Stones of Significance (2000). Daryl Gregory’s version feels as though he never read those stories or explored the idea very far. The science and software are so terrible that reading parts of the book hurt. The arbitrary supernatural events feel like obvious plot devices or symbols rather than consequences of the simulation premise.

That failure frustrated me because I have a soft spot for stories built on the pilgrimage structure of The Canterbury Tales. I loved Hyperion for exactly that reason. Gregory uses the same device well here. A bus full of colorful characters who don't know each other is stuck together and forced to interact. That setup creates friction, revelation, and momentum. Gregory writes rich characters with big-hearted character arcs. The twisting story holds the reader's interest. And the mysterious teleporting traveler adds genuine intrigue.

The whole book would have worked far better as high fantasy with an arbitrary magic system. At least then I would have known to avoid expecting coherent science fiction.

Entertaining in places, often warm and engaging, but conceptually hollow. 2/5 stars.