Reading Roundup: The 8th week of 2025
This week was a reading dud; all three books fell flat despite intriguing premises.
This was a poor reading week for me. I spent most of the week on a long harry Potter fanfiction where, after the events of book 5, Harry accidentally ends up 60 years back in time rather than the 6 hours he was aiming for. Consequently the only characters we spend time with for most of the story are of Harry's grandparents era. It wasn't a bad book, but it didn't stir me like others have.
the other 2 this week were science fiction, but as you'll see they didn't grip me, either.
Some weeks I guess just aren't book weeks.
3 stars to Mechanical Failure (Epic Failure, #1), by Joe Zieja
Book Description:
"A smooth-talking ex-sergeant, accustomed to an easygoing peacetime military, unexpectedly re-joins the fleet and finds soldiers preparing for the strangest thing—war.
The two hundred years’ (and counting) peace is a time of tranquility that hasn’t been seen since...well, never. Mankind in the Galactic Age had finally conquered war, so what was left for the military to do but drink and barbecue? That’s the kind of military that Sergeant R. Wilson Rogers lived in before he left the fleet to become a smuggler.
But it turns out that smuggling is hard. Like getting-arrested-for-dealing-with-pirates-and-forced-back-into-service kind of hard. It doesn’t seem so bad—the military was a perpetual tiki party anyway—but when Roger returns after only a year away, something has changed. These are soldiers— actual soldiers doing actual soldier things like preparing for a war that Rogers is sure doesn’t exist. Rogers vows to put a stop to all this nonsense—even if it means doing actual work.
With an experienced ear for military double-speak, Zieja has created a remarkable and sarcastic adventure."
My Thoughts:
" The humour just didn't land, so rather than being funny, it was just a so-so story of military stupidity."
This Book: has 352 pages, a community rating of 3.77 and was first published in 2016.
3 stars to All Systems Red (The Murderbot Diaries, #1), by Martha Wells
Book Description:
" "As a heartless killing machine, I was a complete failure." In a corporate-dominated space-faring future, planetary missions must be approved and supplied by the Company. For their own safety, exploratory teams are accompanied by Company-supplied security androids. But in a society where contracts are awarded to the lowest bidder, safety isn’t a primary concern. On a distant planet, a team of scientists is conducting surface tests, shadowed by their Company-supplied ‘droid--a self-aware SecUnit that has hacked its own governor module and refers to itself (though never out loud) as “Murderbot.” Scornful of humans, Murderbot wants is to be left alone long enough to figure out who it is, but when a neighboring mission goes dark, it's up to the scientists and Murderbot to get to the truth."
My Thoughts:
" I didn't connect with Murderbot as a narrator so this was pretty humdrum. As a novella it's quite short, of course, so perhaps more in the world will widen my opinion."
This Book: has 144 pages, a community rating of 4.11 and was first published in 2017.
3 stars to When the Roses Bloom Again, by TheBlack'sResurgence
My Thoughts:
"I did enjoy seeing this through to completion, although it never quite hit the spot in terms of quality I've seen from other authors. There was an inevitability to the whole thing somehow, which failed to get my blood pumping.
The niggles jiggled, to. over 80 times someone "knew not", the same issue I had with the other of TBR's books according to my review. And whilst I'd like to believe that the subtle changes, like the misspelling of Abraxas or the constant inaccuracy of calling the ICW the International Confederation of warlocks rather than wizards are a gentle nod to us actually being in a parallel universe, it feels more likely they were just changed on a whim.
For all it's a war fic, it lacks pace or even serious constraint because it's a time travel story, too. I liked seeing the Minerva pairing, although she is a surprisingly minor character. neither of the dark lords show any serious surprises, and Dumbledore is sidelined to little impact.
not a bad story, but it's taken me a week to get through it at an average of about 3 and a half hours a day, which is a lot of investment for something I liked but probably won't want to read again."
This Book: has a community rating of 4.42.