The Literate Kitty

There comes a time when things must end. It’s one of those inescapable truths and, as humans—keenly aware of our own mortality—we get this. But carbon life forms don’t hold a monopoly on the concept; eventually, everything hits a point of being past its prime. Most of us hope to reach a place of some decrepitude before it’s time to stop walking this mortal coil. (Being “old” is sorta the goal, for most humans.) Big-ticket items such as computers, phones, and cars are all designed with an expected obsolescence built in (which typically has more to do with corporations making money than with a sudden lack of functionality or usefulness, but I digress…). When it comes to series, though—whether books, movie franchises, or TV shows—the object is definitely to go out on a high note… before whatever-it-is seems tired and long-in-the-tooth. And that notion is what kept popping into my mind when reading Night and Silence , the latest in Seanan McGuire’s ever-engrossing (and lo

What do you get when you throw a tough fighter pilot (with her own sporty little starship); a wunderkind (who can manipulate some Seriously Big Stuff with her mind); a would-be space pirate (with a distinctly romantic side); a robot preacher (as in, clergywoman made of metal); an older, wiser space spy (somehow everything just sounds cooler when you put “space” in front of it, doesn’t it?); and a sentient spaceship (a female ship with Artificial Intelligence, who is as persnickety about keeping her surfaces spiffy-clean as she is about trying to keep her captain alive) together… then toss ‘em smack-dab in the middle of an about-to-erupt, epic space battle (see? totally cooler than just “a battle”), against a hodgepodge horde of the galaxy’s meanest hombres, who’re hellbent on destroying your worlds and adding you to their vast number, if possible (or killing you dead, if not)?  Pure. Unadulterated. Awesomeness . ( Well, duh, right? )  Or, to put another way, you get Drew Wil