Christian’s Subsection of the Internet

I enjoy these Slough House short stories. The Drop was not particularly action filled, not particularly thrilling, but it serves as a nice little interlude between the novels. And through the event, we get to see how an incidental character in this story, who popped up as the new character in the previous Slow Horses, ended up being sent to Slough House. As this point I would say that anyone who’s reading the Slow Horses books should be reading these short stories as well - but I’m sure they already are.

I came back to this book after taking a bit of a book-reading-break where much of my reading time has been consumed by news and magazines. So what better way to return than to dive into the familiar world of the Frontiers Saga? “Who Takes no Risk” takes, or rather continues to take, a turn toward the futile and sad. There’s a darker, more desperate, atmosphere hanging over this book than what has been the norm so far, and even though we still get a fair share of plot-powered improbable successes, the feeling of “this is a series where things will generally go well” is being gradually dismantled. Which is a good thing. There’s also a couple of really great sub-plots in this book, and it’s almost a bit of a pity that they’re bundled in with such a substantive main plot. They don’t exactly serve to add much levity, but I found the sub-plots more emotionally engaging than the main plot. They gave me time to digest what was happening, rather than being a full-on series of events that were thrown at me. This book has flaws. Some, if not all, of the main set pieces feel a bit dragged out, and once it’s obvious what is going to happen, it takes too long for it to actually happen. But while this series took the leap from being a joyously superficial, feel-good space opera to a more emotionally absorbing story many, many, books ago - this book definitely serves to affirm that fact.

When I started reading the Slough House series, I assumed that it would be different stories based around the same template. Nothing wrong with that: I’m perfectly happy to read books which are built using the same formula, as long as that formula works. After London Rules I’ve stopped thinking that the author is trying to find a formula, and have started thinking that these books will just continue being fresh and new every time. This book is very different from the preceding ones, and it’s my favourite one yet. It’s not that it doesn’t start with action - it does - but we don’t really partake in it. The story takes place without (anti-)heroes trying to track down an apparent group of terrorists, and trying to stop them committing further acts of terrorism. It’s very, very, light on action compared to the previous books - with the majority of the focus being on the processes behind the scenes in trying to find them. Despite the lack of shooty shooty stuff, I was gripped. This book also got the humour just right - it’s still a book with a joke dropped into every other sentence, but in an improvement from parts of the previous books, this time it felt completely effortless, and I didn’t get the feeling that the humour was being shoehorned into a serious story. The story kept all of it’s gravity, while also keeping me smiling. Hopefully the series will keep me smiling for many books to come.

Network Effect is another instalment of the Murderbot series, and this time we get a full length novel! It’s different from the novellas, but for me, it wasn’t quiiiite different enough. Given that I want to keep things spoiler-free even if someone were to happen upon this review before reading the first book, I don’t want to say anything specific about what happens, but our friend, Murderbot, finds themselves in what starts out being a sticky and unfortunate situation and just keeps on getting worse. The strongest part of this book is the relationship between the non-humans - the discovery (and the unavoidable exploration of) the feelings that come with those relationships. We also get an interesting play on where a personality fits in relative to a person (or, say, a robot). The plot that surrounded these interesting ideas, and the action involved in the story getting from point A to B, didn’t quite do it for me. Perhaps the emotional distance Murderbot had to these events also translated to them not feeling real to me, but with a few glorious exceptions Network Effect was never quite a page-turner for me. Though, the exceptions were glorious: the… the 2.0 section of the story was a great sequence. Overall, and I’m being harsh just because of how high my expectations of this series are at this point, the book felt a bit like a novella and a half that was extended to make a novel. That might be a me-problem rather than a problem with the book: perhaps I got too used to the bite-sized instalments of Murderbot. I still love, and would highly recommend, this series. And whether the next books are novellas or novels (I haven’t checked yet), I look forward to the continuation!

Another solid Slough House instalment! Spook Street is very different from Real Tigers, but what it doesn’t have in the form of real-time action is more than makes up for in gradual reveals of history and information from the past. There’s much less double-crossing going on in this book, but there are several twists - most of which I genuinely did not see coming. It’s also obvious that there aren’t any sacred cows in this series, which is promising given how long I want it to go on for. I need to catch up so that I can start eagerly awaiting the release of the next book.