October Book Competition - Sci Fi

October is one of the best months! Halloween approaches. The days get shorter. The weather gets cooler. We begin to hunker down for colder months, and we eat baked goods and make giant pots of soup. The feeling is otherworldly. To continue the otherworldly theme, this month’s book club competition is Sci-Fi.

The Ground Rules

To help keep things mostly apples-to-apples, I selected a theme each month. Then, Leslie and Noah each submit a book to me for reading. Neither knows what the other shared with me. Then, over the course of a month, I read the books and choose a winner for the best book that month.

October 2022: Sci-Fi

This month, Leslie submitted They Both Die at the End by Adam Silvera. Noah submitted We are Legion: We are Bob by Dennis Taylor as his selection.

They Both Die at the End by Adam Silvera

They Both Die at the End brings us to an alternate, yet contemporary, world where a company called Death-Cast will tell you you’ll die in the next 24 hours, and then via an app, you can connect with others who have the same death date as you. Mateo and Rufus match for their death date and spend the day together connecting and “living life to the fullest.” I thought the premise of the novel was brilliant. The characters were developed, but I question the alternate world in which Mateo and Rufus live. I did love the LGBTQ characters and the Latinx representation.

4/5 Stars

We are Legion: We are Bob by Dennis Taylor

We are Legion begins with Bob, our main character, celebrating the sale of his software company and signing up to become a corpsicle (yes, that’s a word used in the book) upon his death. When this comes to fruition, we learn the United States has descended into a psychotic theocracy, and certain organizations are looking to the now-state-owned corpsicles for AI control of deep space probes. Bob is one such candidate. As the story unfolds, you get lots of snarky humor and cheeky one-liners. At its heart, We are Legion: We are Bob is a space opera. Because of the nature of the story, there aren’t many characters to give the story diversity, but’s a fun book.

4/5 Stars

Two Will Enter, One Will Win

At four stars each, it was tough to decide on a winner. I liked both books, but ultimately, one was more sci-fi than the other. October goes to Noah!

Here’s a recap of point totals:

January: Noah | February: Tie | March: Leslie

April: Leslie | May: Leslie | June: Noah

July: Noah | August: Leslie | September: Noah

October: Noah

Noah pulls ahead! Noah stands at six points and Leslie remains at five points. There are two months left in 2022. November’s theme is Fiction - Winter holiday themed and December’s theme is Non-Fiction, Self-Improvement.