Reviews and Comments

Maia, sudden heir to the throne of the Goblin Empire, doesn't really want to be an emperor, but it's still better than being assassinated, right?

The setting is interesting, it's like the Court of the Goblin Empire plays an active part in the story, a mysterious character with whom our hero Maia has to contend.

Following the return of Djinn and other mythic and magical creatures in the world, Cairo is the center of the world as the 20th centurty is beginning. Fatma el-Sha’arawi is a dapper dresser first and foremost, and works as an agent of the ministry in charge of overviewing alchemy, enchantments and supernatural entities.

I liked this novel. The rythm holds us to the seat of our pants, the characters are well rounded, the main critic I’d have to make is that this books depends too much on the previous novelettes/short stories in the same universe. I liked that the main story revolves around story elements also present in S. A. Chakraborty's Daevabad trilogy. The fact that Chakraborty's quote is on A Master of Djinn's cover reinforces the closeness of these two litterary worlds. Old middle-eastern legends come back to life, and it's a perspective that's sorely lacking in western SF/F.

I like Becky Chambers, and the way she portrays common people, or common aliens as people. Her characters are not defined only by their galactic race. They have their own histories, their own agencies, that may or may not be dictated by the world they come from. One of the most desirable future I've read, without being written as an utopia.

Nicolas Jounin rend intéressant un sujet qui pourrait ne pas l'être : la gestion (via des formules Excel) des tournées des postiers.

Ce livre devrait être lu par toute personne qui participe à la conception et la mise en place d’un algorithme. Il explore les causes (d’où viennent les données qui font dire à l’algo la durée d’une tournée de facteur ?) et les conséquences (burnouts, maladies liées à l’activité, accidents…) de l’utilisation bornée et sans nuance d’un outil automatisé. Les réorganisations de tournées sont à mon sens comme les déménagements de sièges d’entreprises : des moyens d’écrémer la masse salariale, un plan social sans en avoir l’air (et on remplacera ce qui manque par des prestataires…), et l’abandon d’une mission de service public.

Une enquête nécessaire.

Nghi Vo writes a story that’s very much influenced by East Asian tales, where humans have animal names, empresses predict the future—or influence it—with the help of mages, and a religious order has a mission to record History as in happens, or just happened.

In this East-Asian influenced world, be wary if you meet three tigers, they might ask you to tell them a tale, and if you tell it badly, they'll eat you.

Nghi Vo keeps embellishing her world where tigers and foxes can turn into humans, to court them, marry them, or more prosaically to eat them. The same tale is told from two points of view, with two different sets of values, and makes us ask ourselves what we miss when we hear only one side of a story.

I like the short format of these novellas, the worldbuilding happens during the story and there's no infodump or long intro.

The Bannerless saga is an interesting thought experiment into what makes communities. Is it common rules? Is it enforcement of said rules? Is it caring for people even if rules are broken?

I like that the "investigators" provide a service and are not just blind enforcers of law, the main character could be seen as a cop but the book is low on copaganda. It could be seen as anarchism in practice.

Better than the first installment of the series. The characters are more rounded, the story around the first contact with an alien species can be read on many levels and is much more adapted to a SF setting than the first installment. I hope there'll be another book telling what happens with Mahit and Three Seagrass!