books!

 * Ode to the Half-Broken by Suzanne Palmer: One of the Horserobots of the Apocalypse and a dog-robot go on a hero's journey in a purple VW bus. There are a lot of recent stories which present artificial intelligences as benevolent towards humans (this one, Murderbot, CatNet); is that our wishful thinking or our self-centeredness?

* The Mountain in the Sea by Ray Nayler and Devil of the Deep by Falencia Jean-Francois both use mysteries in the ocean to explore humans' relationship with nature, colonialism, and climate change. I recommend the first on paper because it includes visuals of the octopus language, and the second on audio because the narrator does a good job.

* And I coincidentally listened to two books taking place on islands near Seattle. Folly by Laurie King was marketed as a thriller but it's really about strategies for surviving grief and PTSD. Whidbey by T. Kira Madden is about the fallout after a pedophile dies, told from the perspectives of his mother and two of his victims. I found both of them moving, and the authors did a good job of getting inside the heads of the (sometimes unreliable) characters. Both also however failed to stick the landing. The last 10% of Folly turned into the thriller that was promised but it felt tacked on out of now. The last quarter of Whidbey introduced new first person perspectives and a detailed explanation of the death, which would have been more powerful if left open-ended.