STG's

Gray Justice - by Alan McDermott - is a very clever techno thriller. An ex-soldier loses his wife and child because of the actions of a thief - which is soon back on the street. And then decides to abduct him and a few criminals to make a show out of it where the country votes if they should live or die - while making the authorities let him do it because he placed a device that can kill thousands somewhere... Not only isn't everything what it seems, but also at the same time a terrorist group takes an interest in the situation. Very good, and I kind of liked some of the measures that are suggested to make the justice system more effective.

Hunters of the Dead is a Tower Defense (kind of) and strategic game where you fight several monsters while trying to kill Dracula. You start with a single building and defender, and you can at each day (turn) try to clear another building. There is a chance of a battle, and if you survive it you get the benefits of the screen below - such as a new defender, faster healing, new guns, etc. Except for the battles, you might have seen this as a flash game (using a zombie wasteland) before. Battle takes place with a grid where you put your defenders - which might remind you of Plants vs Zombies, except that you can actually move your defenders a few times. Every defender has experience that rises when it kills an enemy, and can receive guns you collect at guns stores. They also need to heal and to rest every few rounds, which can be very bad (i.e.: at starting levels it is very easy to have all your defenders resting). The game grid is random, and the game itself is very hard...

The Martian, by Andy Weir, is a SF novel - a very popular one, which appeared the New York Times best seller list and the top of Amazon's SF section. Even with those credentials, I didn't really have high expectations for it. I was quite wrong - it is very, very good. The story covers an astronaut that is left for dead by his team on Mars, and has to use his wits to survive. However, the obvious care for the research of reasonable tech, problems and solutions is what makes the novel really shine. Very, very good and strongly recommended.

The Peripheral, by William Gibson, is a SF novel that takes place mostly in the near future - where drones and 3D printing are very common. I say mostly because it has an interesting little time travel component, in which paradoxes are nicely avoided. The peripherals are telepresence machines that you can use the experience other places, instantly, in a human-like package or various other similar forms. I thought the beginning was a bit slow, but overall a pretty good read. The near tech in particular is very convincing.

For no good reason, I keep posting these early on every year. So I am doing it again. This year, almost every stat went down (counting my professional blog, restaurant blog and microsites): Posts: 81 (last year 152) Fiction Book Reviews: 34 (last year 39) Technical Book Reviews: 7 (last year 13 - this year had some 1000+ page books on, though) Game Reviews: 27 (last year 53) Visitors:  18030 (last year  24712 ) This year I am not happy with my posting habits. I am also fairly sure I completely skipped reviewing some books I read, and reviewed some so many months after reading that the review was more of a blurb. M y newest microsite,  Directory Printer  , had 4 times as much traffic! (all of the microsites did very well, but I neglected posting on my main professional blog and that had an effect) Nice, specially considering they had no  new posts last year... Thanks for reading!