User Profile

Sean Randall

seanrandall@ramblingreaders.org

Joined 1 year, 9 months ago

I was born blind, so books became my movies. Fantasy and Science fiction, thrillers and spies, and the occasional goodfeel novel or fanfiction from my youth round out my reading record. I don't do nonfiction: I read enough technical stuff at work!

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Christopher Priest: Expect Me Tomorrow (2022, Orion Publishing Group, Limited) 4 stars

A petty thief who called himself John Smith was arrested in 1877, for theft through …

Review of 'Expect Me Tomorrow' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

Naturally without the aliens, this nonetheless had a feeling of Eifelheim about it and I soaked up every page and nuance. it felt more alive and vivid the further back in time you went, and I suppose that's partly intentional with the future so bleak and miserable.
Totally enjoyed start to finish, very much my sort of thing.

A. G. Riddle: Lost in Time (2022, Head of Zeus) 4 stars

Review of 'Lost in Time' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

I found the opening of the book a little confusing, we were thrown at Absolom without much explanation. Despite that, or perhaps because I wasn’t quite clicked, the revelations hit me without me having guessed what was happening. Sam’s prehistoric time didn’t work as I thought it would and much of the “Try but the universe is helping you” motif annoyed me some. Still, from the beginning of part 3 onward, I was intensely hooked, determined to read and keep reading until the mysteries and all around them had been resolved. So in that aspect, the book was excellent, because if you’d suggested doing anything else, I’d have said no thanks!

Schapiro, Meyer: Masters of Art (Hardcover, 1983, Harry N. Abrams) 5 stars

Review of 'Masters of Art' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

The second of Doug’s recent novels to be written with first person narration, Portals opens with a much more actiony feel than Unidentified. I didn’t particularly click with Noah to start with, but he grew on me, and his logical deductions and inferences were dazzling and exciting to read about.

The portals themselves were cleverly done, and the intricacy of the connections and AI-monitored travel rules leave a lot of room for more novels set in this universe. I really hope Doug can fly with this, he’s done a few series before and, to my mind, Portals is ripe for future exploits someday. Yet again, Doug excels at manipulating the reader and characters both (although any time I see that someone died in a Doug Richards novel I now disbelieve it until there’s a genuine body). As this story progressed, I was engaged and excited. I read the first 2 …

Greg Cox: The Q Continuum (Paperback, 2003, Star Trek) 4 stars

The unpredictable cosmic entity known only as Q has plagued Captain Jean-Luc Picard and the …

Review of 'The Q Continuum' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

I almost heard Peter David in these pages, Greg does seem to have been able to stamp Q in a similar way. It's a little sad that this is quite an old miniseries now; for many years, anything that happened beyond the enterprise D was new and futuristic feeling. Time catches us all, I suppose.

This was a little fun, light reading, good to pop into old friends. I felt sorry for poor Leyoro, and enjoyed very much hearing the tones of the familiar actor's voices as I read this one.

Review of 'No Time Like the Past' on 'Goodreads'

3 stars

Despite feeling a little fanfic-like and the death count of redshirts seeming a little worrying, I still enjoyed this. Despite Kirk and 7 obviously being very different and there really being no rationale for them put together, it managed to keep my interest. Thinking on it at a day remove it feels a bit of a contrivance: some of 7's way of speaking didn't ring very true, and Greg always shows off his grasp of temporally accurate vernacular by contrasting landing party with away team in his crossovers. Still, a few hundred pages is not too hefty.

Dan Brown, Eduardo G. Murillo: La Fortaleza Digital / Digital Fortress (Paperback, Spanish language, 2006, Ediciones Urano, S.A.) 3 stars

Susan Fletcher, la criptógrafa estrella de la ultrasecreta Agencia de Seguridad Nacional (NSA) no puede …

Review of 'La Fortaleza Digital / Digital Fortress' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

I've never read a Brown: I got pushed abridged audio of the Da Vinci Code on its release, and the furore around it failed to attract at the time.

It feels like this one was written earlier - cellphones are very new tech and even floppy disks get an honourable mention. The crypto side of things was pretty interesting and of course the trope of teacher turned superhero is widespread. Some of the language stuff felt a little OTT at times too, and of course the last-minute array of firewalls was pure visual cinema.

all that said, I still enjoyed it, even if, quite Ironically, the book comes across as quite dated - unusual when you consider Brown's plaudits as a new voice of his generation.

Nikki Erlick: The Measure (2022, HarperCollins Publishers) 4 stars

Eight ordinary people. One extraordinary choice.

It seems like any other day. You wake up, …

Review of 'Measure' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

Some books just grab you. This one was hugely thought-provoking, from the synopsis alone I knew it'd be interesting but of course the devil is in the detail: the execution was flawless, and the impact and motivations of the characters was brilliantly realised. There are a number of books and authors which have a lasting, resonant impact on me, and this is joining them.

Review of 'Planet B (Architects of the Apocalypse, Book 1)' on 'Goodreads'

3 stars

Passable entertainment, but when almost every solution to a problem is set a dinosaur on it I do begin to drift, mentally.
Also, one of my pet peeves is books that use time or dates to no obvious result, which happens here when people cross over, and also when the author clearly hasn't even read their dates back by writing something like 25nd or 22th which happened once here too. Not sure I have much interest in book 2.

Blake Crouch: Upgrade (Hardcover, 2022, Ballantine Books) 3 stars

“You are the next step in human evolution.”

At first, Logan Ramsay isn’t sure if …

Review of 'Upgrade' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

I quite got into this, and as it turned into an arms race of mental and physical excellence, I found myself even more absorbed. The ending did seem to appear a little rapidly, and as with some of these ubermensch stories, the thought processes of the enhanced all seem to asymptotically converge to a degree. In that regard it was refreshing to have a difference of view between two characters. Up there with Suarez’s Change Agent for pushing the boundaries of genetic resequencing and the GPA having the feel of Marcus Sakey’s Federal Brilliance agency, Crouch has shown that once again he can tell a superbly compelling story with bold extrapolation.

Review of 'Unidentified' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

Well now, it turns out that my review of this one vanished into the ether. naturally, it being a Doug book, it was not only pre-ordered, but I was up for the release at midnight too.

This is, on the face of it at least, something of a departure for Doug - both aliens based on real evidence and a first person narrative are unusual things.
Nonetheless, it does seem to have made for a fascinating story, and I found myself as gripped on this reread as I was the first time through. Even now recognising many of the twists and turns before their reveals, I still truly enjoyed myself.
I can't imagine the mental gymnastics needed to keep rescuing heroes from the jaws of death as Doug manages in every single novel, and really hope that, even though he mentions finding new ideas hard to find sometimes, we keep …