Critic Badge - a Book, part 3

 "Hello, Hello" by Seanan McGuire

Finally!  A fabulous story that even the robotic voiced narrator couldn't screw up.  Deaf woman is supported by her techy sister who has wired up her house with cutting edge tech that helps her to speak to people around the world with an Avatar, meaning she doesn't require interpreters.

The techy sister, her wife and children can all sign with the Deaf lady, but they use the "neural net" to help the system learn.  Talking and signing at the same time.  The family starts getting random calls from a mystery woman at the Deaf sister's house.

TENSION!

Well, the Deaf lady rehabilitates birds. Probably should've mentioned that earlier.  Me, I mean, not the book, the book talks about it at length.  At this point I felt that it was possibly one of the birds that was accessing the neural net.  Finding out that I was correct didn't take away from the story.

The Crow (or a member of the Corvid family) had tapped into the system and the system was attempting to translate the bird squawks into human and the human speech into bird.  What else could use this system? What other animal languages could we learn? Time to go Vegan!

🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟

"Folding Beijing" by Hao Jingfang (translated by Ken Liu, again!)

I quite enjoyed this one as it was reasonably easy to follow on Audible.  There are so many people in China that Beijing has to be shared.  The higher-class citizens have the best part of the day in First Space.  When their time of days ends, they secure all their belongings (and themselves) and the city folds up.

The Second Space unfolds.  High rise buildings and neon lights.  All the middle strata of society.  When they've had their share of the day, they secure their property and the city folds away again.

 The worst part of the day and the most run-down part of Beijing unfolds into Third Space, and this is where our protagonist (Lao Dao) lives.  He's a waste processing worker.  We learn that he has found a message in a bottle from Second Space.  He needs to travel into Second Space and find the person who sent the message.

Lao Dao remains awake during the change and makes it into Second Space.  The man who put the message into the bottle wants Lao Dao to take a message to the woman he loves in First Space along with, I think, a piece of jewelry.  He makes it into First Space and finds the woman. To be honest, although this is an easy-to-follow story, everything that happens does so very easily and there's never any true tension.

The woman Lao Dao has tracked down is already married, so she writes a note of explanation to the Second Spacer, and gives Lao Dao enough money to send his daughter to school.  Once again Lao Dao is off to Second Space.  On the way he is captured and rescued so promptly that I had to rewind and see if that had happened!

The rescuer was born in Third Space and worked his way out, he asks Lao Dao to deliver some supplies to his parents who still live in Third Space.  Before he leaves, Lao Dao is taken to a banquet where he learns that the First Spacers want to replace the waste management workers with robots.

He travels home via Second Space, gives the lovelorn gentleman the message, gives the supplies to First Spacers parents and that's that.

This story would've worked better as a novella or full-length novel as the end cuts off too quickly and there isn't enough time for world building.  Nor is there any real tension to keep you gripped on the plot, there's no doubt that Lao Dao will complete his message mission.  I was just happy that this story worked despite the narrator.

🌟🌟🌟.5