Reviews for September 2025
By Alan Dove
I didn’t quite keep up with my book-a-week average in September, but made up for it with some good games. Meanwhile, our latest foster kitten got adopted, so this month the regular cats sat in on my reading. Suki, who normally takes feline aloofness to new heights, seemed especially interested in one of the books.
Scalzi, J., Starter Villain: Sophie got me this book for my birthday. It was a great pick. I’ve enjoyed Scalzi’s space operas before, but this is something else altogether. Set in the here and now, we follow Charlie, a divorced former business reporter laid off from the Chicago Tribune, now living precariously in the town where he grew up. Then an uncle he barely knew dies, leaving Charlie his supervillain business - complete with volcanic island lair and a long list of enemies. A lesser writer would’ve had plenty of fun with that premise alone, but Scalzi blends in layers of delicious satire. Startup bro culture, venture capitalists, tech company business models, and the general stupidity of our current moment all get richly deserved sendups, sometimes literally. And the cats are in charge.
Wells, M., Network Effect: Having enjoyed the first four novellas of the Murderbot Diaries, I was looking forward to the only full-length novel of the series. It was a fun ride, and Murderbot himself is still as engaging a companion as ever as he navigates the whole pretending-to-be-human thing. Overall, though, I think the story suffered a bit from the longer format. Wells’s habit of enclosing her parenthetical clauses in literal parentheses (which she does on nearly every page, (sometimes even nesting them)), wore thin. The book also had a surprising number of fundamental editing blunders, including misused words and inconsistent verb tenses, especially in the later chapters. It was still an enjoyable experience, but I hope the folks at Tor put a little more effort into editing future volumes.
Pretty sure Suki took notes on this one.
Miéville, C., The City & The City: It took a few chapters for me to get into this strange mashup of Raymond Chandler and Philip K. Dick, but once I did it was worth it. The book opens with a seemingly standard genre trope: a hardboiled detective working the case of a woman murdered and dumped in a vacant lot. But it quickly becomes clear that there’s something very odd about the story world. The whodunit plays out across two parallel, superimposed cities and the liminal spaces between them. Miéville plays with but doesn’t belabor themes of perception and socially constructed reality, as we watch the detective solve both the murder case and the mystery of how this bizarre split city works. It’s the kind of book that takes awhile to figure out, but sticks with you after you finish it.
Rusty Lake Games, The Mr. Rabbit Magic Show, Underground Blossom, and The Past Within: Fresh off my sojourn in Besźel and Ul Qoma, Laura informed me that one of our favorite game studios had released some new iPad games, so I traded one surreal environment for another. For over a decade, the folks at Rusty Lake have been creating elegant, eerie puzzle games that embed clever challenges in macabre stories. Mr. Rabbit and Underground Blossom are typical of the studio’s usual work, each offering a few hours of fun problem solving. The Past Within takes that same formula but turns it into a very clever two-player experience. The games are available from the Apple and Google app stores for portable devices, and also on Steam for those who prefer to play on desktop. Even if you don’t consider yourself a gamer, these are well worth checking out.