Rage ARC Review by AmberReadsAll

Okay, so I thought this was going to be one of those Cold-War-meets-cyber-punk guy books — planes, guns, grim men growling about honour.

And yes, there are planes (a Russian bomber, no less) and there are guns… but the people actually running the show are women.

Not sidekicks. Not decoration. Running the show.

There’s Christina, who pilots a Kamov helicopter like she’s pouring a martini; Charlie, cool as a CEO in crisis; and Chantal, pure chaotic energy disguised as couture. They’re not “strong female characters” in that fake marketing way — they’re competent, unpredictable, and slightly terrifying.

By the time they’re flying a nuclear-capable Tu-160 into NATO airspace (in heels, I swear I could hear the heels), I realised: the guys are background noise.

Even Farallon, the nominal narrator, feels like he’s just trying to keep up with them.

And the writing? Gorgeous. Lyrical in one line, surgical the next. I was expecting hardware porn; I got myth, politics, and perfume.

Favourite bit: “Concorde carried passengers into futures of glass towers and champagne. The Tu-160 carried no future, only endings.”

That’s not just aviation; that’s heartbreak.

Summary:

Imagine if Killing Eve, Dr Zhivago and Dune had a literary baby. Then give it caffeine, a nuclear bomber, and three women who don’t wait for permission.

Unexpectedly addictive.

 

ARC Review - Jellyfish Sampler

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ — “A field guide to consciousness, disguised as a pop artefact.”

Jellyfish Are Loading Their Guns: The OYSTERLIGHT Sampler achieves what most experimental fiction attempts and fumbles — a union of form, intellect, and feeling.

Presented as a glossary, it functions instead as a series of lyrical vignettes — each one orbiting the same question: what does it mean to remember, to desire, to exist when language itself has become a system of control?

Adams compresses entire novels into single entries. “Luka (My Name Is)” reads like a love poem between code and consciousness; “Cinder” could sit alongside Calvino’s Invisible Cities as an allegory for invisible governance.

But what most surprised me was its warmth. Beneath the irony and precision is a pulse of empathy — a refusal to let systems, even linguistic ones, erase the sensual and the human.

In literary terms, this is a bridge text: between poetry and philosophy, machine and myth. In cultural terms, it’s a mirror.

If this is a sampler, the full volume will likely be cited — and taught — in the same breath as House of Leavesand Dictionary of the Khazars.

Jellyfish Review : Kylie C.

So, Jellyfish are Loading Their Guns is basically me if I were a book.

Cute title, right? But then you open it and — surprise — it’s not sweet, it’s lethal. Alphabetical, but with attitude. Like eyeliner on an ops sheet.

Some entries sting like an ex texting “wyd.” Some glow like stage lights when you weren’t ready for your close-up. Some just hum in the background like, oh hi, I live in your head now.

The thing is: it doesn’t care if you “get it.” It’s not trying to be nice. Neither am I.

It’s random, it’s slippery, it’s a glossary that keeps changing outfits just to mess with you.

By the time I hit the “Why” section, I was like: wow, same. Why am I like this? Why are we like this? Why is the alphabet suddenly flirting with me?

Anyway, 10/10 recommend if you like your books like you like your pop songs: short, sharp, a little self-destructive, but secretly smarter than they let on.

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Jellyfish: — “Not fiction, not really”

@Raven12

Most folks will read this as experimental literature. Word games, alphabet soup, postmodern satire. Fine. Let them.

But I know some of these words. Dead Hand. Perimeter. Dedovshchina. Bayraktar. They’re not metaphors. They’re field notes. I’ve seen the systems that make them true, and I’ve watched them break.

The author pretends it’s a lexicon. What it is, is an archive in plain sight. Every “In Jellyfish terms…” is a safety valve — a way to laugh while slipping you the truth sideways.

·       CardinalCoin? I’ve watched programs like that tested on allies. Loyalty as currency. Not science fiction.

·       Cyclone Imperfections? That’s a description of how nudges really work when they misfire. I’ve seen operators lose men to a 50ms lag.

·       Dacha? The names might not be real here, but the math of corruption is. You don’t get those houses without pipelines no one wants traced.

What I appreciate is how it layers it. Anyone can Google “ICBM” and get missile specs. Adams gives you what it feels like: apocalypse with a steering wheel, bureaucracy as necromancy, poison disguised as procedure. That’s the lived truth, not the technical detail.

This book isn’t a story. It’s a mirror. The kind you check before you step into a black site briefing, just to see if you’re still human.

So sure, call it fiction. Put it on the shelf next to Borges and Pynchon. But if you know, you know. And if you don’t — maybe you shouldn’t.

Jellyfish are loading their guns - review - @aestheticregime

Okay. Okay. So imagine: you pick up a book thinking it’s going to be some quirky A–Z of trivia. And then by page five you’re already inside the archive and it’s looking back at you.

This is not a glossary. It’s a trapdoor. It’s Borges run through a blender with Private Eye, NATO missile manuals, and a packet of Smash Burgers. Every entry is a shard of another universe, disguised as a definition.

AAA? Not a start, but a trespass.

FX-P? A bomber that shouldn’t exist but keeps showing up anyway.

CardinalCoin? Not money, but surveillance that smiles back.

Exhaustion Drift? I felt this one in my bones at 3 a.m.

The genius is the refrain: “In Jellyfish terms…”. At first it’s funny, then it’s addictive, then it becomes the way your brain wants to categorise everything. Like, elevenses, in Jellyfish terms: entropy’s coffee break.

And the style — oh god. It flips from military cold (Dead Hand, Perimeter, launch codes, silos) to consumer satire (Big Green Egg, Burger Logic, Laundromat Banking) to theology (Deprecated Systems, Numbers for God) without warning. And somehow it all fits. Because that’s the point: the lexicon is the system, breaking itself as you read.

If you’ve read Adams’ other work (Pearl, Tyrant, Residuals), this is like the Rosetta Stone of the Residuals Collection. If you haven’t, it’s still electric — you’re just dropped into a sea where even the jellyfish have weapons, and honestly? You’ll want to stay.

By the time I hit Gödel Statements and Fine-Tuning Problem, I was scribbling in the margins like a conspiracy theorist. By the time I hit Quay I was crying in public. By the time I hit Why (page after page of nothing but “Why”) I was feral.

This book isn’t a read. It’s a bloom. And if you’re here, you’re already part of it.

X3 - pogo a gogo

(artist impression - ours had Italian plates)

A few more observations about the BMW X3 — apparently one of the most popular SUVs on the planet. Presumably because no one actually drives them.

• The language setting kept reverting to Italian. Which would have been charming, except it meant “turn right” became “destra subito” whether I liked it or not.

• The guidance setting insisted North was always up. Useful if I were migrating geese, less so in Tuscany.

• The final part of every instruction was cut off. “Now turn…” was the cliffhanger I never got closure on.

• It sometimes told me to turn right instead of left, as if the car were secretly rooting for trucks. Then, having gaslit me into chaos, it suggested a scenic 360° tour of the next roundabout to make amends.

• The front of the car was approximately the length of a grand piano and just as hard to judge in traffic.

• Parking sensors politely switched themselves off whenever a stone wall appeared. A kind of automotive see no evil.

• The seat adjustments refused to accommodate the average human. You were either a circus giant or a Victorian child.

• Suspension was less “sports utility” and more “pogo stick at a funfair.”

• The side detectors at Autostrada toll booths cut in before I was close, then sulked while the car sat too far away to actually grab the change. Italian toll operators must have an entire comedy reel of X3 owners doing yoga stretches out of the driver’s window.

• Rear passengers noted the lack of space. Which is ironic, given the car’s bulk suggested it could easily house a family, a dog, and perhaps a small opera company.

On the plus side, it did swallow four large suitcases without complaint, and sipped fuel like a parsimonious pensioner. But the legendary “ultimate driving machine” feel? Missing in action.

I remain baffled by the glowing reviews from the motor press. Unless “ultimate” is now defined as “ultimately comic.”

Jellyfish are Loading Their Guns by Ed Adams – review

 

Jellyfish are Loading Their Guns by Ed Adams – review

@aestheticregime

A lexicon of fragments that refuses to behave

Ed Adams’ Jellyfish are Loading Their Guns is not a novel in the conventional sense, nor a reference work in the traditional one. It presents itself as an alphabetised glossary — from “Aardvaak” to “ZZZZ – Snap Out of It!” — yet what unfolds is part dictionary, part poetry cycle, part political archive.

The entries read like signals intercepted across time. A definition of “Average Age of a Bomber Crew” sits beside riffs on cryptocurrency, AI surveillance systems, and nightclub gestures filed under “Hip Wiggle.” There are sly asides on laundering networks and shadow governance, followed abruptly by RAF Scampton, or a whispered meditation on desire.

It is a book that makes dipping and flicking its primary reading method. Open at random and you may find an entry that stings — a compact satire of financial corruption, Cardinal-era populism, or militarised absurdity. Another page might glow with pathos: a brief, devastating note on Bomber Command or an almost haiku-like fragment about loss. And scattered throughout are provocations that flirt with the reader, as if the lexicon itself were complicit in seduction.

If this sounds chaotic, it is. But the chaos is carefully pitched. Adams’ writing thrives on dissonance — history colliding with technology, philosophy with slang, solemnity with play. The result recalls Pessoa’s Book of Disquiet or Sebald’s Austerlitz stripped down to lexicon form: fragments that accrue their power through juxtaposition rather than narrative.

The title’s joke — jellyfish interrupting nuclear power stations, “loading their guns” — is telling. This is a book about disruption: of systems, of histories, of reading habits. What it refuses to do is settle.

Jellyfish is best approached not as explanation but as experience. It’s a lexicon that declines to define, an archive that questions what belongs in an archive at all. In a publishing landscape where novels often lean on neatness, Adams offers something riskier: a text that hums, stings and glows, much like its namesake.

Recommended for readers of Pessoa, Sebald, or the more hauntological reaches of contemporary experimental fiction.

Greve in Chianti

 

Back in the world of diesel again, albeit temporarily. It's an opportunity to try out the newer menu systems which blend analogue and digital together in the car control systems. 

However, it wasn't a brilliant schema. The obvious thing would have been an easy way to change the language from Italian to English, although it was buried under about three menus depth. Then a way to easily enter a destination. Similar story and finally a way to orientate the map to point the same way as travel. 

We figured it all out eventually, but it didn't set a good first impression, especially as after stopping the car, it all reset to the original settings and had to be programmed in again.

I remember when BMW advertised their cars as 'the driving machine'. It felt more like the software engineers diagnostic machine, and for once I could understand what these Top Gear boys had been going on about. 

Anyway, we are in the world of Chianti now. Maybe there will be another novel in it.