“Thrill Switch” is equal parts “Ready Player One” and “Silence of the Lambs” with a sprinkling of “Altered Carbon” for good measure. You have detective Ada Byron who has become an expert on Jazlin Switch, a notorious serial killer who managed to murder people in the real world by destroying their avatar in the virtual space known as the Holos. Ada has dedicated her life to studying Switch and becoming a cop all because Switch killed her father seven years ago. Now there’s a new killer out there copying Switch’s style, but are they really? Ada has to face her fears and stop more people from dying, but in order to do that she needs to team up with Holo “native” and FBI agent, Joon, and venture back into the Holos, a place she hasn’t been to since her father died. Worse yet, she may need Switch’s help in order to unravel the conspiracy this new killer is at the center of. Hawkin does an excellent job blending a virtual MMO style world with a real, vaguely dystopian Las Vegas in order to craft a violent and thrilling (heh) cat and mouse murder mystery. This was a fast-paced futuristic crime and mystery story, but was light on the procedural investigation aspect, so take that as you will.

I’m keeping this review short because there’s really not much to say beyond: I highly recommend all the Murderbot Diaries books. Read them, read them now. And 2. For these bots not being “alive” they sure do have a lot of feelings and I love that for them! The way they hate feeling things and get absolutely panicked whenever someone says the “relationship” word in any context I absolutely live for.

I loved the first book in the Skysail Saga, “The Apotheosis Break”. But I read the first book in 2017, not terribly long after it first came out, and the sequel, “The Gestalt Job” was published at the end of 2019. So, to say there has been a lapse where I had a hard time remembering important details would be an understatement.  Which wasn’t helped by the fact that this book starts with our main character, Vasili, having forgotten big chunks of what occurred in the previous adventure as well. It’s part of the mystery woven throughout the whole story, so it is by design, but even so. Vasili remembers bits and pieces of his past adventure, the theft of the shard at a nobles party, the betrayal, a lost friend, and his own harrowing escape, but what he doesn’t remember is how he got from that escape to being back on the airship with the same crew who might have been the cause of that betrayal. The same crew who still don’t seem to want to, or are able to, tell Vasili about the one thing he craves above all else: stories of the father he never knew. A lot of the themes in this book are the same as its predecessor: innocent, naïve little Vasili fumbling in a world he doesn’t understand but is determined to be Vasili the Brave all the same. So, what I wanted were the answers Vasili has been on a quest for over the course of this series. Instead, the mystery only got deeper.

I am a huge Locked Tomb fan, just ask the tattoo of Gideon the Ninth I got on my shoulder. So to say my expectations for Nona the Ninth were high would be putting it mildly. I love the voices and characters and the gothic sci-fi fantasy that Muir has created. Her ability to create such distinct voices for each and everyone of her main cast, even outside of Harrow and Gideon is, to me, masterful. But I was worried when this planned trilogy suddenly became a quadruple series. I was curious why Nona was so interesting or unique that she required, suddenly, her own book. Unfortunately, this story was the weakest to me in the series, especially when put up against Gideon and Harrow’s title books.

“The Fair” is book two (of 5) in the Time Box series and, yes, you do need to read them in order and no, they are not stand-alone stories. In this second book, the Lanes are hiding from the billionaire trying to kill them for stealing two of his time machines, theoretically stopping the him from going back in time and changing outcomes of wars in favor of the losing party. Except Robert Devereux COULD still do that, he has his own Time Box, which is what his assassin uses when chasing the Lanes, but it's about the principle of the thing now—you do not steal from the boss and get to live after. So, the Lanes decide to hide in 1893 in Chicago. Chicago, during that time, was the place to be with their World’s Fair (the Columbian Exposition) in full swing giving the Lanes a huge crowd to lose themselves in, and if you know your history as the Lanes’ seem to, you know that this was also the exact place and time where the serial killer H.H. Holmes was operating his Murder Hotel. Between the excitement of the fair, and the danger from the assassin and a notorious serial killer, this book should have been brimming with tension and excitement, but its focus was on more gentler aspects instead.