Reviews and Comments

Listened to the audiobook, which worked well for me. It was very listenable while cooking, walking, etc. Since there will be no exam, I’m not worried about how many details I retain! I also cannot attest to the scholarship, since I’m not an expert in this field. The big takeaway for me was the depth and breadth of travel and exposure to many different cultures. This is not entirely new information to me, but reinforced again how mobile many Europeans and Middle Easterners were in the early Middle Ages. An interesting listen.

What even was this? A parable? A fairy tale? An allegory? Was it about religion? About artificial intelligence and how it can spawn its own superstition? This seemed to me a huge amount of world-building and excruciating detail just to say‚ what?

I wanted to read this because I had heard about this genre of “hope punk” or “cozy punk,” and I was curious. As I expected, there was no real conflict, or any jeopardy or much in the way of stakes. But this is what the genre is about, giving a break from the catastrophe that is our current world, so on that count, I would give it a high score, but I prefer novels with more at stake and more conflict. But I can see how many who are very stressed in everyday life and stressed about the planet and technology might take comfort in this sort of a book (not that I’m not stressed about these things, but I guess I’m used to higher level of stress). I don’t expect to continue with the series, but who knows?

A compact gem that says so much in so few pages. First published in 1981, it is still relevant in its portrayal of relations between races, the threat of race war, and the precariousness and duplicitousness of being a “liberal” in a changing society.