Pick a pronoun and stick with it, dammit! I understood what it was going for the first few times, and after that it got real annoying real fast. I-he groped back and up for the scaffolding bar”. One thing that bugged me, though, was the writing style used when Ruby was piloting Golem. I liked Ruby’s character, her struggle with her own moral weakness and ultimate determination to make things right. Ruby finds herself fighting to survive and struggling to do the right thing. Initially planning on selfishly keeping them in order to solve her financial woes, she unwittingly finds herself drawn into a deadly dispute with the man’s relatives, who have forged his will and see Ruby as a loose end that could unravel their scheme. On one particularly dangerous job, however, she runs into a dying man who passes her an envelope full of diamonds. It’s generally poor work which barely pays enough for her to cover the rent – something her emotionally manipulative roommate doesn’t help with. Glass Houses follows Ruby, a woman who makes a living as a salvager using a robot called Golem which she remote-controls through brain implants. Well, upon learning this, there was nothing for me to do but to check out the two books I’d missed. It seems books have been ambushing me with “secretly a sequel” status for even longer than I’ve known.

To my surprise, however, when I looked it up on Goodreads, I discovered that it was listed as part 3 of a series. In this case, I planned to take another look at Burning the Ice, which I had some vague recollections of. In addition to reviewing new books that I read, I also sometimes write reviews of books I read before starting this blog: either because they were particularly good or bad and I want to share my thoughts about why, or there was something about them that I found particularly noteworthy or memorable, or just because I want to refresh my memory of them and think I might as well write up a review as long as I’m re-reading the book anyways. When Ruby, the proprietor of an android business, and Golem, her favorite android, attempt to save a rich Egyptian from a collapsing skyscraper, they instead become deeply involved in an adventure that could take Ruby to the despised Outside.

Let’s throw stones at Glass Houses, by Laura J. Dance, this is the way they’d love if they knew how misery loved me. Dance, dance, and these are the lives you love to lead.

Dance, dance, we’re falling apart to half-time.

Glass Houses by Laura J. Mixon