Joe Kessler > Recent Status Updates

And now there's time travel? For some reason?

That's the second time the protagonist has estimated it took 10,000 loops to accomplish something. So these teens have spent a minimum of 25 years in the day at this point.

Wait, if your estimate is correct that it took them 10,000 time loops to get this right, and each loop is 11 hours, you've all been stuck in that day for over 12 years. I don't know if that tracks with the emotional development / lack thereof we're seeing.

Boy, this just took a sudden genre turn. (As often happens, I forgot what the book was supposed to be about between adding it to my library wishlist and finally starting to read it. I trust my past self that it sounded interesting, but I have no clue what to actually expect.)

This is so long for what's essentially just a Scooby-Doo mystery.

Not terribly interesting so far... and certainly no Evelyn Hardcastle.

This book is so much less tense than the first one.

That kiss! I called it and I love it.

It's definitely no Spinning Silver, but this may have just crossed over into five stars for me. We'll see.

This is so much exposition, NN.

That twist... oy vey.

Really not liking this love interest.

The white savior stuff has always been present in this book, but we're really leaning into it now, huh?

2% in and already getting eugenics and incest.

"Here we were in the year 2011 — men had walked on Mars, microwave stations were being built to transmit solar power, [and] marijuana and car racing were so important they were subsidized by the government." Sure, okay. (This short story was written in 1977.)

This seems a bit late to be revealing such obvious backstory, but okay.

I'm totally here for Parker's redemption arc, but I really hope it isn't foreshadowing him as a future love interest.

How is there this much of the book left?

Rabbis debating the rules for observing Shabbat in space, on the other hand, is *VERY* Jewish.

"Rosh Hashanah is a time of forgiveness and atonement." Normally Mary Robinette Kowal gets the Jewish representation in these novels just right, but this feels off to me.

This book is everything I wanted from it so far.

The only downside to listening to this as an audiobook (after reading the first three volumes as ebooks) is that I keep mistaking "SecSystem" as "sex system" as I never have before.

This is the dumbest twist.

"‘I don’t remember you, Brian. And I’ve not been this way before, so either you’re lying, or you’re from my future and don’t know me because I’ve changed …’ The Doctor spat out the word. ‘Well, that’s me. That’s the Doctor. Ever-changing. Always going on.’

‘Yes, you are, rather,’ Brian muttered."

"‘These are the dead,’ the AI said gravely. ‘The truth that this pandemic is real is hard for us to comprehend, let alone cope with." Timely!

I don't think The Tyrant Baru Cormorant is going to seize my heart as much as the original Traitor did, but it's a big step back up from Monster.

I wish this "science" wasn't so self-contradictory.