COME TO VENUS MELANCHOLY

I really really enjoyed reading COME TO VENUS MELANCHOLY.  Robots are a cool concept in scifi but often I don't connect to them especially if it's played really boring.  I often can't think of them as scary but honestly I'd like to be friends with a robot.  I really like the character in it, she is very understandable  and sympathetic. I wanted to help her out in the end but I thought the end was still super powerful.  

Opera and adventure in Space

I was surprised how much I liked The Martian. I thought it would be harder to follow. I read the novel Dune in middle school and I guess I thought it would be like that.  But I couldn't have been more wrong.  The Martian is super easy to follow and the character was really relatable.  It's a very different kind of scifi novel.  I wasn't surprised that it was compared to other land survive novels. It seems scifi has this thing with taking other genre and putting them in SPACE.  Space Opera, Space Adventure, Space western.  You can being a lot of neat things to an old genre by place in a new place..like Space.    

Contemporary Urban Fantasy and Gaiman

I've seen a lot of bits and piece of Gaiman's work,  most fully Coraline which I love. The concept of a urban fantasy in contemporary time is interesting.  There is something new and fun about add fantasy to a urban setting.  I really enjoyed reading the start of the Graveyard books. Gaiman does a great job of making his stories Contemporary while also being timeless. Coraline is modern but you could never tell 100% what year it is,  This makes the story seem timeless.  The Graveyard books seem similar, it's obviously not olden times, but it's seems like it takes place in a contemporary setting. I think this concept works well with fantasy and Gaiman is good at this.  Using fantasy and myth ideas and using them to built on a contemporary setting in a cool and new way.

Futility of trying to replace Harry Potter

Now I'm a fan of Harry Potter, it's hard to find someone who isn't.  I wasn't a crazy fan as child, I didn't read the first few books till middle school, and I didn't read the last few books till high school. So I was late to party as usual.  So I bonded with it in a strange way.

Now, trying to read another and new youth fantasy books I've always had a hard time getting into them.  I'm not sure why but I have not found a books series that captured that same light.  I often don't enjoy young adult book because they usually have too much "adult" for me.  I tend to like my fantasy to be more about fun then trying to get to that edge they think 13-17 will enjoy. Again this may be 100% on me. I've almost felt like everything is trying to recapture what happened with Harry Potter, which I think it's impossible. I think it'll only happen once and can't be replaced in the way people want it too. You can't recapture lighting in a bottle.