My tweets

• Wed, 18:08: Good on @chrislhayes for pushing back on Steve King's bullshit. #inners #UniteBlue
• Wed, 18:12: THIS. This includes the precepts of ANY holy book. https://t.co/cusnqt06bS
• Wed, 18:16: Aw geez. Steve King is quoting Alex Jones' nonsense and outright lies. I'm shocked {not}. #inners #UniteBlue
• Wed, 19:05: Well, there you go. A frightening number of American people think Donald Trump's Muslim proposal is A-OK. #maddow #UniteBlue
• Thu, 09:02: Removing all the ads and paid promos from my @Pinterest board again. Ugh. #fb
• Thu, 09:03: This is true, except for the fact that there are men AND WOMEN in those boots. Let's make it "people." https://t.co/hIrIOHwYL7
• Thu, 09:09: RT @kharyp: Vast majority of gun owners are law abiding who shouldn't be punished for a few massacres... But Muslims #GunSense https://t.…

Review: "The Mechanical," by Ian Tregillis

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

My definition of science fiction is "what if." What might happen in the future, as well as what could have happened in the past. The official term for the latter is "alternate history," and there are some very good books along these lines. It takes quite a bit of careful thought and detailed worldbuilding; mapping out exactly what happened from the point of divergence, and extrapolating the consequences of this divergence. Not only from the nuts-and-bolts point of view--the divergence itself--but more importantly, its effects on people. It's damned hard to do well.

This book does it very, very well.

( Here be spoilers )

And what a marvelous and fantastic story it is. This is one of the best books I've read this year, and I can't wait to get my hands on the sequel.
_____