Review: The Death I Gave Him by Em X. Liu

The author describes this book as "realistic science fiction." I think that's fair, as its just too slowly paced to be a technothriller. In another author's hands, this probably would fall into that category; there's certainly enough tension.

Liu, though, tends towards giving the story and characters a bit more time to breathe, making it not quite that. Call it techno-thriller adjacent.

The premise definitely falls under mundane SF. The science fictional elements are an AGI named Horatio and a healing serum that can briefly bring back the dead.

And the format...is interesting. The novel is told in extracts supposedly from a character's autobiography, traditional novel chapters, texts, even descriptions of what security cameras see. If it wasn't for certain elements, I'd say this would film well. The author mostly pulls this off, although the repeated typos of "operating system" as "operation system" made me wonder if Liu was commenting on Ai or if it was just a mistake.

Overall, its a good read, but one thing stands out.

This is the only book I have ever read that contains a sex scene between a living human and a disembodied AI. I won't say how its done, only to be impressed and slightly surprised nobody else has ever done this.

This is a fine work of...let's go with what Liu says and make it "realistic science fiction," albeit a tiny bit rough in places.

Recommended for STEM types who like reading stories about science.

Review: Law Links by Dusk Peterson

So, this is an overall well written book. It's low fantasy - there is almost no magic in it, and what there is is shamanic magic. Nobody is casting any spells.

I did have two problems. First, the handling of skin color and race came over as a bit colonialist. I've tried to establish the author's ethnicity, but am unable to do so...and this is one of those cases where this is important.

Second, he does all of this wonderful worldbuilding...and then uses the western month names. It's not that hard to come up with your own, and I found it tossed me out of the story...and as this is a novel in diary form, it comes up a lot. I understand why he did it, but it didn't quite work.

He also calls this work noblebright, which, unfortunately, sours me due to the fact that the person who introduced me to the term was rather homophobic. Peterson is apparently queer, and this story centers around an actual romantic friendship. You don't see those often in modern fiction, so I hope nobody mistakes it for queerbaiting. Not the same thing!

So, with all of that out of the way, this is a story about religion and dogma. It is a story about why dogma is bad that might immediately come across as anti-religion, but its clearly not.

Peterson also does a pretty good job on the military fantasy elements - he's no Elizabeth Moon, but nothing stuck out as no except for some of the ages...unfortunately, he does fall into the fantasy trap of marrying women off at 12 (and presenting that mostly uncritically) and having teenagers do really important stuff...the MC is 16, but feels as if he's 25.

Despite that, I really enjoyed this book. (Note that it's not YA, although it's YA friendly, there's a little bit of gore, but nothing I wouldn't give to a 15-year-old). The worldbuilding is solid, the characters are interesting, and its nice to see somebody writing a romantic friendship between two men in 2025.