Bookquarium

      After having two co-workers finish this book and rave about it, I finally sat down to read my copy, which I got for free from the library. I think it was a freebie at a bookish event that another librarian went to, Thanks to Anita, Lynn, or whoever brought this book into my line of sight. I knew this book was ocean-related, so I was already on-board. A gay female author writing about female pirates fighting the good fight? Yes please! Here's the blurb from Goodreads: After her family is killed by corrupt warlord Aric Athair and his bloodthirsty army of Bullets, Caledonia Styx is left to chart her own course on the dangerous and deadly seas. She captains her ship, the  Mors Navis , with a crew of girls and women just like her, who have lost their families and homes because of Aric and his men. The crew has one mission: stay alive, and take down Aric's armed and armored fleet. But when Caledonia's best friend and second-in-command barely survives...

Mira Grant  is well known for her science-y horror novels. The Parasites trilogy, the Newsflesh trilogy (hellooooo, zombies + journalists), and probably my favorite, Into the Drowning Deep, which is about killer mermaids. Anything by Grant is basically an insta-click for me, and when I was learned she was writing a ghost story, I nearly peed myself in the excitement. And friends, it's worth the hype. Let's break it down, shall we? The Cover: Can we take a moment to admire that cover? One, it's an incredibly detailed and intricate drawing, which is being used less and less by publishers these days, but I'm glad they went with that direction in this cover. A woman, half floating in the sea, gazing at a creepy old house while tentacles begin to twine around her ankles. Had I known nothing about Mira Grant, I would have read this book based on the cover alone. The Plot: A group of four paranormal investigators, who happened to get famous solving crimes, accepts a co...

When Andy Weir's first novel, The Martian,  came out, I devoured it like a heaping piece of cake. Weir has an excellent sense of voice, good pacing and drama, but most importantly, he gets the SCIENCE behind science fiction without it getting too bogged down or boring. My brain is not made to understand complex science things. I wish it were. I find science fascinating! But man, it's hard for me to understand. Weir makes it easy for me to understand the science in his books. But we aren't here to talk about The Martian . (Although if you haven't read it, go read it right now. It's great.) We are here to talk about his second novel, Artemis. The Recap:   Jazz Bashara is a criminal. Well, sort of. Life on Artemis, the first and only city on the moon, is tough if you're not a rich tourist or an eccentric billionaire. So smuggling in the occasional harmless bit of contraband barely counts, right? Not when you've got debts to pay and your job as a port...