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I was in the middle of reading The Armageddon Protocol, the latest science fiction thriller from Dan Moren. He’s my favorite newish author, with six novels out now, each better than the last (and the first one was excellent). More people should know about his books.

Anyway, I set that aside to begin reading a 2017 book by Yale historian Timothy Snyder. It offers ““twenty lessons from the twentieth century, adapted to the circumstances of today” and is the source of many quotes and memes going around the last few days. It’s a quick easy read. If you voted for the guy and think the current panic is hyperbole, I recommend reading this book if only to reassure yourself that it is hyperbole and to see what to watch for to ensure you’re on the right side of history if the bottom ever were to fall out. And for the rest of us, this book offers practical lessons and advice drawn directly from times and places much like ours you can use to defend what you hold dear.

My previous exposure to urban fantasy has been mostly limited to Christopher Moore's "Death Merchant Chronicles" series, and this new offering from Dan Moren reminds me greatly of Moore's books. Luckily for Dan, the Death Merchant Chronicles are some of my favorite books ever.

The humor is more subdued than Moore's books, more like Dirk Gently than Hitchhiker's Guide on the Douglas Adams humor scale. The setting was compelling, feeling like the world we live in with additional layers just out of reach of most of us. The protagonist seems like someone I'd like to know and hang out with (carefully). The surrounding cast of characters was three dimensional, and the antagonists had believable motivations.

I saw the twist coming about two hundred pages before it hit and ... I did not care. It was still delightful, maybe even moreso because I'm immersed in the big tech world the plot intersects. The resolution was equally delightful, and I found my reading sessions grew longer as I approached the end of the book.

Moren wrote some of my favorite books I read last year -- I tore through his series of sci-fi spy thrillers -- and I enjoyed his style applied to a new genre. I hope there's more in this series!

This sequel could easily have gone sideways -- the first book came close to overstaying its welcome and more of the same would not have been welcome.

So, where the first one focused on Mickey finding his place in the world, the second was more about the world with Mickey in it. Mickey is still the main character, but we see more of the world and personalities around him. We learn a great deal more about the greater human society that created expendables, we learn more about the history of galactic colonization, and we learn bits about times humanity found other sentient life. None of this is dry world-building, as it's fed to us in bits as it relates directly to the events at hand.

I enjoyed reading this as much as I did the first, and it was in many ways more satisfying. There is still plenty of story that could be told in this setting, and I hope Edward writes more.

"The crew of the Rosebud are, currently, and by force of law, a balloon, a goth with a swagger stick, some sort of science aristocrat possibly, a ball of hands, and a swarm of insects."

This sentence got me to add this novella to my to-read pile. Nothing in the story is less weird than that, so buckle up!

There's a lot packed into this little story. Tiny spaceships, time travel, parallel universes, corporate overreach, and a fierce defense of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness -- even if the person pursuing their happiness happens to be trans.

It was a slow read for me, partly because it took my brain a while to process all the weirdness, and partly because I wanted to savor it. I've not read anything quite like it before, and I'm going to hold onto it and read it again. Maybe even soon.

If that sentence I quoted above has you intrigued, then by all means give it a go. I don't think you'd be disappointed.