Inside Job by Connie Willis

A novella about an editor of a skeptical magazine who tries to catch a scammer called  Ariaura, who pretends to “channel” channels the spirit called “Isus”. During the séance Ariara starts to speak with a different voice and appears to channel a known skeptic, H.L. Mencken. Ariana herself appears confused and surprised by the “intruder”. Could this be a real thing - could channeling spirits really work? That's something the editor and his extremely beautiful, clearly out of his league, assistant must find out. It's a humorous and light tale. Perhaps it's not worthy of the Hugo award it received, but is a good story nevertheless.  

99 pp. 

Terminal Uprising (Janitors of the Post-Apocalypse #2) by Jim C. Hines

The next part in the series is where most of humanity has turned into zombie-like creatures due to an alien plague which was released accidentally by visiting alien emissaries. There are a few people who are partly healed and have gotten back at least most of their intelligence while still having a zombie-like endurance for trauma. They are used as soldiers in alien warfare against a species who has a biological imperative to destroy all other intelligent life. After the events of the former book, the cleaning crew, who survived an attack against the ship they were working on by accident, have learned a lot. Apparently, the aliens have not been entirely honest. Who could have thought! Now, the brave cleaning crew returns to Earth to find new evidence of what has really been going on. And the non-zombified humans might not be extinct, as was assumed. And there might be larger threats around than zombified humans, as a ruthless alien scientist has not stopped with only human zombies. 

As it had been almost two years since I read the first part, it took a little time for me to get to know the book -- I had forgotten many of the characters and some of the plot, and there was only a minimal amount of backstory. After getting into the book and remembering most (some) of what had happened, I found that the book moved smoothly and that it was exciting and fun at the same time. I was looking forward to reading the next (and the last?) part of the series, but apparently it doesn’t come out until fall 2022, so there will be some waiting involved before I can get it. Hopefully, I won’t forget too much of the content this time. 

336 pp.