STG's

The Warship, by Neal Asher, is the second novel in the Rise of the Jain series. On the end of the last book, Orlandine had just dropped a black hole on the accretion disk full of Jain tech. Unfortunately, that is exactly what they wanted... Great battles, great expansion of the tech and the storyline. Very much recommended, if you read the previous book, of course.

Sniper Elite V2 Remastered is a new release of V2 with improved lighting and effects. Is it worth the price? No. Wait for a sale. However, I had V2 (never played it, but loved Sniper Elite 4 and 3), so I got a great upgrade price (US$5 after currency conversion). That seems more than fair. For those unaware of the series, you are a sniper fighting nazis. Most of the time you will want to use either stealth or at least shoot from cover at a distance - you are definitely not a bullet sponge. I hear V1 was a lot less forgiving, but V2 is OK at the normal difficulty. You will die a bit, but load times are very fast. A lot of stuff from 3 and 4 are absent here. The UI is much worse (small details like no mini-map, objective pointers only appear if you are looking in their direction, etc). No gun changes (although this is rather poor in the whole series). No shooting lights for more stealth. I've also heard complaints about super-vision by the enemies - viewing places that they...

The Bohr Maker, by Linda Nagata, is an SF novel with lots of nanotech, which just so happens to be called maker all the time. Funnily enough, I read the sequels way back in the 90s, before I bought books off the internet. Even after all these years, I remembered as particularly good. This book has aged very well, and the tech is very believable. In the world, makers are everywhere - keeping people young (or not, as they please), making the equivalent of brain implants (here called atriums), and allowing for mind uploads, as well as sending your mind to visit someone, enter specially developed animals or even take control (voluntary or not) over people. For obvious reasons, this very well regulated by the police - although a little too much for Nicco, who is a special human adapted to vacuum who only exists by special license. That license is expiring, and so is he. He is desperate for a nanotech super weapon, a full AI (which is also illegal) which can make any nanotech. There is...

The Year's Best Science Fiction: Thirty-Fifth Annual Collection had pretty great stories, as usual. Unfortunately for me, I already read the anthology for fantasy and SF, so there was quite a few stories I already read. Even so, it was totally worth the money and time.