Mike Finn > Recent Status Updates

A fairly conventional set up of a man who is a little off by community standards having been convicted of a murder and then becoming the prime suspect for a similar murder when he gets out of prison and comes home. Nicely paced and clearly written. Now all I need is a main character to care about.

This is good. Three groups of people, all somehow linked to whatever The Retreat is. All in a snow storm. All with people dead or missing or both. One point of view per group. One narrator per group. Slowly gaining details on the disaster they're all living through. I'm hooked.

I'm setting this aside. The humour isn't working for me and neither is Easterbrook,

The opening scene with Diamond and the wall planner fell flat. I'm interested in the runner though, so I'll keep going.

Not a promising start. The bit with Ariadne Oliver is amusing but pure padding. Easterbrook has little to recommend him. The coffee bar descriptions don' ring true - more like a Daily Mail complaint. The plot plods.

That was wonderful. It had edge-of-the-seat moments of tension, well-founded speculations on the us of AI in the near future and a deeply emphathetic understanding of grief and loss.

I've already bought the next book, "Leave No Trace".

This would be an engaging police procedural without the AI content. Adding the AI keeps it fresh and gives it an edge. Oddly, it also makes the investigation feel more human rather than more routine or mechanical.

This works because it isn't mainly about the AI. It's about the people and the things that happen to them. It's about hew we see each other and how much of what we see isn't consciously based on data that can be calibrated, quantified, compared, replicated or even tested and yet we know that what we see is no less real because it can't be turned into binary code.

This doesn't feel dry any more. The dialogue with one of the missing person's mother felt real and was quite affecting. The setting works. The AI is plausible and mostly irrritating (which seems about right to me) and Kat is just the right balance of attributes and history to provide the empathy, emtion and social context needed to move the story forward.

I'm immersed in this now.

It would be great TV.

A slightly dry start but it doesn't drag. I'm pleased to see that the AI concepts stand up as near-future possiblities. I'm looking forward to seeing where this goes.

This isn't the story I thought it would be. It's a very plausible thriller that's winding up to be action-oriented for the last quarter of the book.

We've hit the 20th Century now and the stories seem to be getting sadder - a sister killed by the Spanish Flu and her dog refusing to leave her grave for the rest of its life. A outsider sent during the Depression to document local stories who may (or may not) have met a woman who isn't really human. Little gems, like ornaments on a Christmas tree, but no overall story. Just life, happening, until death turns up.

This is a fun romp. It's a classic quest with a ragtag cast of (mostly) well-meaning eccentrics evading MIB style FEDs while helping an alien who looks like a tumbleweed find something that it's unablet to explain to them. It's packed with references to just about every Western or Alien contact movie I've ever seen. It takes all the tropes and makes them sparkle, mostly with humour AND the narrator is wonderful.

I?m intrigued. I want to know what's really going on on the island and I want to know how Emily will be rolled into the action when she's hundreds of miles away.

Great storytelling. The opening is almost gothic, laced with unexplained menace. Then a flip back a month to something more mundane but necessary to ground the story. Then back and forth between the two in a way that kept me interested in both timelines.

The best chapter yet and the one in which our narrator (aged 10 in this chapter) finally makes an appearance. Maybe there will be a story arc after all.

Q-BE is the fourth story in the collection and the first one that's worked for me. I don't understand why the collection didn't lead with this, especially as it was the author's first traditionally published short story.

I've read the first four stories. So far, they're not landing for me. They're slightly whimsical 'what if?' stories with a subtext on the importance of empathy. I'll read a few more and then decide if this collection is for me.

This is a one chapter a day book. Each chapter is powerful enough to make me mourn or cheer for the people in the story BUT each chapter is like a whirlwind visit to a year in the history of the town. It's like being a time traveller who gets to stay just long enough to care about the people before being whisked away further along the timeline, never to see them again. It's an illustrated history not a story.

I'm setting this aside. It's well written, well researched, atmospheric and original AND YET I've been reluctant to pick it up for days.

The world being described - London - the ship - is unpleasant and oppressive. The bad guy has no redeeming attributes. The dead sister was fundamentally selfish. The live sister is about to turn to the dark side to get her revenge.

It's too much. I don't want it in my head.

I'm enjoying the slowish pace of the story. I hate being pushed into laugh-track-plays-now comedic setups. This humour is amusing rather than hilarious, building as the situation becomes increasingly bizarre.

I love how alien the alien is - not at all humanoid. I like that our abducted-by-aliens-she-doesn't believe in, heroine stays calm(ish). Which makes it funnier when herl 911 call is treated as a prank.