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Just finished Mur Lafferty's latest, 'Chaos Terminal (Midsolar Murders, book 2)'. I've read/listened to a lot of Mur Lafferty's work. I'm not sure why, exactly; she's not my favoritest writer, and she doesn't write about SF concepts that make me get super excited about the future. I guess I am a fan of her, as a person, so I like to check out what she's done lately. If you like Mur's writing, this story won't disappoint. If you've never read her writing, this story won't disappoint either. If you like murder mysteries in space, you'll probably like this one. It's book 2 in a series of at-least-2-but-probably-not-much-more (for further info, refer to the support her publisher gave her 'Shambling Guide' series), but it catches you up if you haven't read book 1. My biggest gripe is that I didn't like the person that Mur chose as the murderer. It's not that I didn't like the character, it's more that I felt it was a bit of a reach that that person was the murderer, in my opinion. My 2nd-biggest gripe has nothing to do with Mur and everything to do with how later books in a generic book series have to be written: Since time immemorial, later books in a series were required to sort of 'sum up' what had happened so far. This was done because of how bookstores worked: Most bookstores did not have infinite space [citation needed], so there was a very real chance that a customer that was looking at book 3 in a book store might not have access to books 1 and 2 at that same store. The store (if it had sold any at all) had long since sold out of books 1 and 2! So the publisher (and therefore the author) had to go into the deal expecting that the reader wasn't caught up on the lore. I don't much care for this, because it creates a need for clumsy exposition, where the character(s) just kind of pause while the author has to face the audience and explain what happened in the last episode. But anyway, I would say that overall I liked it. Not 'loved' it, but I didn't have to force my way through it either, which is nice. It's a good read when you are looking for something that's not overly challenging but not patronizing either. Mur's 'author voice' hasn't changed a whole lot, as far as I've noticed. Her first novel, 'Playing For Keeps', sounds like it was written as recently as 'Chaos Terminal', which is nice. | ||