July 2017 – That's What She Read

Review: The Punch Escrow by Tal M. Klein

July 25, 2017October 12, 2020 E.F. Sunland

The Punch Escrow by Tal M. Klein is another fun discovery via NetGalley. Summary from Goodreads:

It’s the year 2147. Advancements in nanotechnology have enabled us to control aging. We’ve genetically engineered mosquitoes to feast on carbon fumes instead of blood, ending air pollution. And teleportation has become the ideal mode of transportation, offered exclusively by International Transport—a secretive firm headquartered in New York City. Their slogan: Departure… Arrival… Delight!

Joel Byram, our smartass protagonist, is an everyday twenty-fifth century [sic] guy. He spends his days training artificial intelligence engines to act more human, jamming out to 1980s new wave—an extremely obscure genre[—]and trying to salvage his deteriorating marriage. Joel is pretty much an everyday guy with everyday problems—until he’s accidentally duplicated while teleporting.

Now Joel must outsmart the shadowy organization that controls teleportation, outrun the religious sect out to destroy it, and find a way to get back to the woman he loves in a world that now has two of him.

Review: The Intuitionist by Colson Whitehead

July 24, 2017April 24, 2023 E.F. Sunland

20 Books of Summer: Book 6

The winner in the Most Unique Book of the Summer (so far) category is Colson Whitehead’s The Intuitionist. (There’s no prize, of course, unless you count this review.) I’d be lying if I said I understood every word/reference/theme of this book. The Intuitionist is deeply strange with glimmers of Pynchon, but Whitehead is cleverer and more entertaining. I’ve borrowed the Goodreads blurb because it’s hard to summarize a book that’s [mystery] + [philosophical treatise on elevator maintenance] + [noir thriller] +[social commentary] + [???]. read more

Review: The Stargazer’s Embassy by Eleanor Lerman

July 9, 2017October 13, 2020 E.F. Sunland

Parts of this review sound a little harsh, but overall I liked the vibe and conclusion of Eleanor Lerman’s The Stargazer’s Embassy.

The Stargazer’s Embassy explores the frightening phenomenon of alien abduction from a different point of view: in this story, it is the aliens who seem fearful of Julia Glazer, the woman they are desperately trying to make contact with. Violent and despairing after the murder of the one person she loved, a psychiatrist who was studying abductees, Julia continues to rebuff the aliens until her relationships with others who have met “the things,” as she calls them, including a tattoo artist, a strange man who can take photographs with the power of his mind, and an abductee locked up in a mental hospital, force her deeper into direct alien contact and a confrontation about what death means to humans and aliens alike. (blurb from Goodreads)

Review: Dead Wake – The Last Crossing of the Lusitania by Erik Larson

July 5, 2017October 13, 2020 E.F. Sunland

20 Books of Summer 2017: Book 5

I’ve started Erik Larson’s The Devil in the White City twice and have yet to finish it. Devil in the White City tackles two stories simultaneously: the 1893 World’s Fair and the grisly murders of Dr. H.H. Holmes. The World’s Fair story is far more interesting than the other (surprisingly) so the back-and-forth is tedious. In Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania, Larson is focused—all tangents, overviews, and factoids lead back to the Lusitania. read more