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This is the first book that John Scalzi wrote, mostly because he wanted to see if he was capable of writing a book. Good news: he is, and it's an entertaining read.

In some ways, the best part of this book isn't what it is, but what it isn't. It's not a war story. It's not a serious edgy cyberpunk thriller. It's not a tormented amnesiac killer. It's a story about someone who does his job well while dealing with difficult people and situations.

It's not a deep read by any stretch of the imagination -- there are some obvious jokes and plot twists you can see coming from a mile off -- but it's funny, it's light, and an excellent read for someone who wants to know what an agent does on a daily basis.

It's a good solid book that goes over the different kinds of REST in order, and explains why it is that HATEOAS and MIME types are really the most extensible form of REST that you can use.

I would have appreciated more discussion of HATEOAS edge case such as batching and partial updates, and a more in-depth explanation of what a resource is and how to cut down on network round trips (this was a concern when writing an API that had to interact with a flash client, as starting a flash client and doing several HTTP round trips is not all that cheap). Still, for what it provides, it is far better than most of the other books out there, particularly the O'Reilly option.

It's not a bad science fiction novel, but it's nothing you haven't seen before. The language is there to service the plot. The characters are there to service the plot. It's not a bad plot. It's the future. There's lots of technology, most of which you've seen before in other science fiction novels, apart from the biology based science which isn't really relevant. There's two groups of people that don't like each other. There's some politicians that try to work a deal, and some people who aren't politicians who get played. Eventually some bad things happen and they all run around and either shoot at each other or run away from the shooting. You can guess the rest.

There's a wide array of styles and directions here; the first stories especially pack a punch as you realize that every sentence and every phrase means something. The first story in the book took several readings for me to be sure I'd really got it.

Some of the ideas in the story have been done elsewhere, and I was (interestingly) surprised when reading first person accounts, because I kept getting the sex of the character wrong. I'd hear a man's voice in my head, and the character would be a woman, or vice versa. Bear doesn't see characters as subject to sex based tropes, and it shows in the actions of her characters as well, giving me some pleasant surprises along the way.

It's clearly a book written by someone who's used to writing articles. It tries to be funny and talk about experiences, but then interjects it with helpful little factoids in balloon quotes. And he gets really annoying when he talks about politics and Fox News... I get it, I can't take it seriously either. That doesn't mean it's funny.

And don't get me started on including recipes in the book. That's transparently obvious padding, and helps to further trivialize what's supposedly his life's work.

It's a novelization of a computer game, but it puts the fear of god into you in any case: Peter Watts has a talent for telling you exactly what you don't want to hear in ways that you can't help hearing.

Although I haven't played the game yet, I'm actually glad I read this first; this gives me far more of an idea of what it's supposed to look like from the perspective of someone jammed into a supersuit and told to be an unstoppable killing machine. Interesting way to point out that he doesn't really have a choice about it...