Reentry by Eric Berger (2024)

I read Eric's articles and weekly column in Ars Technica. So I had low expectations that much new material would be in his book.  I was therefore thrilled that everything in the book was never published before.  The details of the people and events at SpaceX (not Elon), at Nasa, Spaceforce, and US regulatory bureaucracies are exciting and enlightening.  There are many deep biographical sketches of the real heroes behind the company and their successes. The book is gripping, well-written, extremely interesting for any space nerd, and highly recommended. 5/5 Stars.

Out of the Dark by David Weber (2010)

The story starts out as a standard alien invasion archetypal structure with the usual tropes of the scrappy preppers, the hero's journey, and interesting space aliens. The magic system is a typical David Weber galactic space travel until the end that I did not enjoy.  The ending and abrupt change to the magic system ruins the world building. 2/5 Stars.

Live Suit by James S.A. Corey (Ty Franck & Daniel Abraham) (2024)

I enjoy when successful authors publish  the writing exercises and cutting-room scraps that were left behind when publishing a series of books.  I remember trying to write in the early 1980s and going through an exercise to figure out how one of my characters should react to some event in my story; I wrote a short vignette about her from 10 years in her past to flesh out her personality and sensibilities so that I could understand her well enough to write the section of the story I was working on.  The expanse authors have published some of their writing that was cut from the expanse series and this short novella appears to be another writing exercise or snippet that was cut from their new series.  It's a great stand-alone story. 5/5 Stars.