November 28, 2024

Review: A Fire in the Sky

A Fire in the Sky A Fire in the Sky by Sophie Jordan
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

The recent "romantasy" craze is a mixed bag, for me. The eight-hundred-pound elephant in that room is of course Rebecca Yarros, author of Fourth Wing and Iron Flame . Her 600-page bricks books combine explicit sex scenes with some fairly inventive worldbuilding, although by the time of the second book the relationship between the two leads is beginning to drag the story down (I mean, when you've read one "thrusting cock" and "wet sex" you've read them all, really).

(And who the heck decided that the silly, incongruous descriptor "sex" is a suitable synonym for the vagina and/or pubic mound, anyway? "Clit" has a much snappier ring to it, but it's not quite the portion of the female anatomy these writers are usually going for. Not to mention that in this book, unwilling virgin bride Tamsyn had no idea such an organ existed, since she apparently didn't play with herself before her marriage.)

Unfortunately, there are a lot of fantasy romances (w/dragons) following in Yarros' wake, which means you will get generally pale, less interesting imitations. Like this one. This book tends toward the shallow and frothy side, with inadequate worldbuilding and characterization. The difference in this book is that instead of bonding with a dragon, Tamsyn is one: a human/dragon shapeshifter. She didn't know this until one of her new warlord husband's warriors, disapproving of their marriage, tries to kill her, and she shifts into her dragon form and roasts him.

(This is a misstep in the worldbuilding that knocked me out of the story, by the way. Jordan's dragons are the usual winged, four-legged and serpentine-tailed type, and immediately after Tamsyn shifts she is able to fly? In a new larger body with three extra limbs that she should have no idea how to maneuver? She should be tangling up in her wings and falling out of the sky, and no, "instinct" isn't going to cut it to help her stay aloft. It should take a great deal of time and practice to be able to do anything in her dragon form, and yet there she is swooping and diving through the air, dodging other dragons and even bearing her husband on her back, as if interspecies flight is just another day in the medieval castle. And of course her husband Fell turns out to be another dragon shifter...sigh.)

This book is half the size of the Empyrean books, but in this case, less is not more. It's the first book in a series, but I'm not inclined to continue it.

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November 25, 2024

Review: Red in Tooth and Claw

Red in Tooth and Claw Red in Tooth and Claw by Lish McBride
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This young-adult weird Western has two parallel slow-burn threads: one of setting, and the fact that for all its boots/hats/horses/chaps y'all-come-back-saloon patter that sounds like a direct descendant of the American West, this story is taking place on a secondary world with magic that is not Earth. (Which is just as well, as that avoids the Native genocide issue.) The second thread is one of characterization, as our protagonist Faolan Kelly slowly learns to open up, trust other people, make friends, and even snag a young man, a Rover (this world's wandering clans) named Tallis. Both these threads are subtle and absorbing, and expertly paced.

We also have a horror element that slowly reveals itself to be a sort-of portal fantasy, with a demon cave cat that really isn't a demon, but a live creature unwillingly snatched from another world. (The way this cave cat is described, it kind of sounds like a white sabertoothed tiger with rosette-marked fur instead of stripes. Which made me wish an artist's representation could have been on the cover, but that would have definitely been a spoiler.) This cave cat is controlled with magic and turned into a monster by the book's villain, the cult leader His Benevolence Gideon Dillard, who runs the Settlement the underage Faolan is sent to after her grandfather dies.

I really enjoyed the characterizations in this book--Faolan has a fascinating arc, and the secondary characters are all well-drawn and believable people. Faolan is a practical, stubborn, taciturn protagonist, a young woman who has been pretending to be a boy for years so she won't get married off, and who painstakingly constructs a new found family through the course of this book. Part of her arc is that Tallis' clan of Rovers accept her for who she is and don't look askance at her short hair and chest binder.

This is an interesting blending of several different genres, and one of the more unique books I've read this year.

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November 16, 2024

Review: The Last Gifts of the Universe

The Last Gifts of the Universe The Last Gifts of the Universe by Riley August
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

This book was self-published before it was picked up by a traditional publisher, and I almost wish they had left well enough alone. Apparently it has its fans, but I wasn't overly impressed with it. It falls into the recent "cozy" trend, in this case science fiction/space opera that's very inward-looking and personal, with a focus more on emotional stakes rather than physical ones. There is an extinction-level threat to humanity in this book, but by the end the problem remains unsolved and the threat remains. The protagonist comes to terms with grief and loss, specifically the death of their mother. Obviously this is a legitimate storyline, but I wish the author had just made her book a contemporary tale and left the SF out of it.

That's because the worldbuilding, one of the main reasons I read science fiction, is sorely lacking in this book, and what little there is feels shallow and not well thought out. The sibling protagonists, Kieran and Scout, are planet-hopping archaeologists and archivists, investigating the dead civilizations and planets found in abundance in this corner of the galaxy, bringing back artifacts and searching for information about the enemy that destroyed said civilizations. They go up agains the requisite cliched eeeevilllll corporation in the hunt for the caches of information left by those vanished peoples (Verity Co). Sometimes those dead planets are inhabited by Remnants of whatever did the original deed, which are so scantily described I couldn't get a clear picture in my head of what they even were. Are they eldritch Lovecraftian interdimensional horrors that hate life? Couldn't prove it by me, which grew more irritating as the book went on. And in the end, not only are they not defeated, there is not even a plan to defeat them. Scout just makes up their mind to honor the memories of both the billions who died and their mother by carrying on the work, and Kieran decides this isn't the life for him--he wants to stay planetside from now on. Again, these sentiments are just fine, but as part of a science fiction story, they feel like a cheat.

(There's also a cat, an orange tom named Pumpkin who has his own little spacesuit and booties, and who can apparently pick up scents through his helmet. No, the science in this book isn't great either.)

Unfortunately, I've read far better space operas than this. But if you like your stories low-key and on the cozy side, this might suit you, I guess.

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November 11, 2024

Review: The Bound Worlds

The Bound Worlds The Bound Worlds by Megan E. O'Keefe
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This is the final book in the Devoured Worlds trilogy, and unfortunately, I was a bit disappointed in it. Not because of the worldbuilding and characters. Those two aspects are still there and good, especially the latter. No, my dissatisfaction with this book is due to a somewhat out of left field plot twist that amped up the stakes and raised the suspense.

I suppose this would be a good thing normally, and it's obvious that the author thought it through. This plot turn is based on the worldbuilding and events in the previous two books, so it makes sense in that respect--although as written, it is more than a bit handwavey to me, and stretched my suspension of disbelief nearly to its breaking point. But what bugs me most about the turn this story took is that, as far as I am concerned, it was unnecessary. Yes, the stakes were raised, to the point that not only are humans threatened by the sentient fungus canus, but the entire universe is threatened as well (and not entirely by canus, but also the previously established technologies of neural maps and reprinting). (Trying to write it out just makes me see how clumsy and absurd it really is.) I just felt that the conflicts and threats established in the first two books, namely canus, the five ruling families oppressing the masses, and the general system that needs to be torn down, were more than enough to carry the way to the end of the trilogy. The books did not need this additional tacked-on threat.

Having said all this, the characters salvaged what could be salvaged. The author's touch with characterization came through in this story, as Naira and Tarquin are put through the wringer, even more so than the previous book. Fletcher Demarco, a right bastard up to this point, is not quite redeemed--he's done far too much for that--but we understand him better, and he steps up to save both Tarquin and Naira at the end. And Tarquin and Naira's refreshingly mature romantic relationship proves you do not need excessive long-drawn-out sex scenes (looking at you, Rebecca Yarros) to create an emotional bond with the reader.

I liked the first two books enough that I'll give a grudging pass to this one, and it does tie up all the plot threads. But I really wish the author had not taken this final sudden turn. This trilogy could have been an SF/space opera classic, and unfortunately now it's just...not.

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November 5, 2024

Review: Alien Clay

Alien Clay Alien Clay by Adrian Tchaikovsky
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Adrian Tchaikovsky is incredibly prolific; this is his second book released this year (the other I've read is Service Model ) and there's one more I have to track down. He has written some of my favorite science fiction of the past few years, including the excellent Final Architecture trilogy.

This book, following the whimsy and small-scale stakes (but still quite good) of Service Model, returns to his usual modus operandi of big stakes and world-altering ideas. If that's the kind of SF you go for, this book should be right up your alley. It's also stuffed full of fascinating alien biology, and the author's version of the so-called "Gaia hypothesis"--what if there was a world-mind (an alien one in this case, not Earth)? What would that look like, how would it have evolved, and how would it behave?

Most importantly, how would humans fit into it?

It's just how ants make decisions. Or how our brains do, on a deep neuron-to-neuron level. These are shunted up to the conscious level of our minds to become attached to justifications and rationales. It's not a hive mind, in the popular conception, because that implies some top-down direction controlling all its component parts. Ants and neurons are democracies, that old political saw the Mandate works so hard to discredit.

There's a great deal of philosophy in this book along with the science. The Mandate, mentioned above, is the political entity seemingly controlling all of Earth in this future, and the Mandate is the one who sends its rebels and revolutionaries, including the protagonist Professor Arton Daghdev, to Kiln as a one-way trip. The prisoners will explore the planet and the long-lost (or so they think) alien civilization found there, and they will never return.

"They call it Scientific Philanthropy," I say, naming the doctrinal elephant in the room, "which is nothing to do with giving to the needy and everything to do with being given to by creation. Orthodoxy says we're here to observe the universe, because the fine tuning of the universe is such that it's a perfect incubator for a human-style intellect. For humans in general. The laws of nature and the cosmos encourage conditions that give rise to life as we know it, and that life was always going to become us. Hence, we were meant. It's manifest destiny all the way down."

But on Kiln, life developed in an entirely different way: based on cooperation and symbiosis instead of competition and specialization. Life there swaps out its parts the way humans change clothes, and the various parts recombine to make all new organisms and species. And when humans join the mix, Kiln works to make them part of its web too. Not to assimilate them, like Star Trek's Borg, but to incorporate them into the whole so the whole can survive--and, as we find out, use humans' differently evolved brains like routers, to awaken the biology and ecosphere of Kiln to sentience once again.

This is not a book to rush through. It has more ideas in a few pages than most SF books have in their entirety. The characters do suffer a bit because of this, as it's obvious where the author's focus lies in this story. But if you want your science fiction to have that old-fashioned "sensawunda," I haven't read a better book for that this year.

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Review: She Who Knows

She Who Knows She Who Knows by Nnedi Okorafor
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

In 2011, Nnedi Okorafor's Who Fears Death won the World Fantasy Award. This novella, the first in a series, is the story of Onyesonwu's mother, the sorceress Najeeba.

This book takes place in a far-future, post-apocalyptic (and presumably post-climate-change) Africa, where magic and technology co-exist. The author doesn't go into how or why that happened; it just exists, and the characters accept it and live with it. There are witches, spirits, and the astral projection (or equivalent) that Najeeba discovers she can do, juxtaposed with solar/wireless technology and "portables" (tablets, as far as I can tell).

What hasn't changed is the oppression of one people by another. In this future, the Nuru (people of Arab descent, per the author's forward) oppress the Okeke (people of African descent). Najeeba and her family are a subset of Okeke, the outcast and lowest caste Osu-nu:

To your clan, even though we look just like you, we are to be avoided. It's forbidden to befriend or marry us. Osu-nu people are untouchable Okeke people; we are the slaves who chose to be slaves to the goddess Adoro so that we could be free.

There's a lot of far-future history here, barely touched on because a novella leaves no room for it. Some of it is told in the form of stories, such as how two Osu-nu women found the dead lake with its extensive salt deposits, and founded a business later generations came to depend on to support themselves and thrive. The journeys down the salt roads, and what happens to Najeeba there, form a major part of the plot. Najeeba is the first girl in her village to accompany her father and brothers on the salt roads, and everything changes for her afterward.

This book has a very mythic, fantasy feel, despite the subtext of technology and SF. The end reveals just who Najeeba is telling her story to, and what she will do next. That book, I think, will be explosive, but it needed the background and setup of this one. It may be a bit of an "author-completist" type of tale for fans in that I don't know how well it would land with those who have never read Okorafor before, but I think the story is strong enough to overcome that handicap. In any event, it will likely impel you to read more of her work. (Full disclosure: I have Who Fears Death but haven't read it. I need to remedy that soon.)


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October 22, 2024

Review: The Dead Cat Tail Assassins

The Dead Cat Tail Assassins The Dead Cat Tail Assassins by P. Djèlí Clark
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

While P. Djeli Clark writes fantasy, the other books of his I've read have all integrated fantasy into our world, sometimes with an alt-history angle (as in A Master of Djinn ). This is one of his first books to take place in a secondary fantasy world.

Hopefully, he will do this more often, as this setting--the port and trade city of Tal Abisi, as fully fleshed out as any of the human characters--is fascinating. The author is a historian in his day job, and that background shines through here. Tal Abisi has a rich history that plays an important part in the plot, specifically an event three hundred years ago when the Clockwork King tried to rescue a lover kidnapped by the Pirate Princess and cast an entire city district under a magical pall known as the Shimmer (definitely shades of Jeff Vandermeer's Annihilation ).

Our protagonist is Eveen, a not-quite-vampire and not-quite-zombie hired killer working for the Dead Cat Tail Assassins, one of several assassins' guilds in Tal Abisi. In this universe, an undead assassin has all their memories blanked upon signing the assassin contract, and they have no idea where they came from or who they were previously. As the story opens, she has just been hired to perform a "shipping" (her word for killing). She dutifully goes to her mark, only to discover a young woman named Sky who is apparently Eveen herself, at a younger age and (or so she thinks) pulled forward through time. Eveen is so stunned by this she does not carry out her contract, which is a huge no-no. This breach makes her a wanted woman, with both her fellow assassins and potentially the goddess and matron of assassins, Aeril, after her.

Our story, with Eveen's attempts to solve the mystery of who Sky really is and who hired Eveen to essentially kill herself, takes place over the course of one night (which is why it is perfect for the novella length). Along the way, Eveen discovers both secrets about herself and her world. Again, the depth of worldbuilding here is very good, particularly with the way oral histories of this world play into the plot. In fact, the difference between a story Sky tells and a story Eveen has always heard about the Clockwork King is crucial to unlocking the heart of the mystery.

(I would love to read a novel-length version of the tale of the Pirate Princess and the Clockwork King, however. If the author ever returns to this world, I hope that's the story we get.)

This story is a bit gory in parts, including the ending. Eveen is an assassin, unapologetically so, and takes pride in her work. The ending has more than a bit of a karma-comes-back-to-bite-you about it, but if you can't handle the mindset of someone who has no regrets about killing for a living, then this isn't the book for you. I thought the depth and breadth of the worldbuilding was enough to overcome that aspect. At any rate, this is a fascinating little book that I quite enjoyed.

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October 20, 2024

Review: A Sorceress Comes to Call

A Sorceress Comes to Call A Sorceress Comes to Call by T. Kingfisher
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I will read just about anything Kingfisher (also known as Ursula Vernon) writes, but I have to say this is one of her better efforts. I do wish a content warning had been placed at the beginning of the book, however, as she tackles some dark, heavy subjects (including parental physical/mental abuse and torture). This is an (apparently rather loose) adaptation of the Brothers Grimm fairy tale "The Goose Girl," but knowing this author, she has turned it inside out and made it her own. Including a real, honest-to-goodness sorceress: not the weak sort that cheats at cards, but the powerful sort that can take over people's bodies and manipulate them like puppets, and who can drag some skittering, eight-legged, many-eyed thing from some Lovecraftian hell-dimension and cloak it in the seeming of a horse.

(Which makes for some extremely unsettling, nightmarish images when the "horse" Falada is finally revealed, let me tell you.)

The sorceress in question is Evangeline, who in this secondary-world version of English 19th-century society (where women's only prospects were to marry, serve as governesses, or prostitute themselves) has been supporting herself and her daughter Cordelia by being a rich man's mistress for many years. Only thing is, her "benefactor" has abruptly cut Evangeline loose, and after extracting her revenge by taking him over and forcing him to chop up nearly his entire family with an axe, Evangeline sets her sights on Squire Samuel Chatham. She uses a ruse to ingratiate herself and Cordelia into the Squire's household, and sets about slowly spinning her deadly web.

This is the story of Cordelia and the squire's sister Hester (a delightful co-protagonist: Hester is fifty-one and has a bad knee, and is the epitome of the ordinary, sensible, pragmatic characters Kingfisher likes to write), working to stop Evangeline and Falada. At the beginning, Cordelia is such a frightened, beaten down character you wonder if she will ever be able to come out of it, but she slowly starts to break free from her mother's abuse and stand up for herself. She has considerable help along the way, from Hester, as well as Hester's friends Imogene and Penelope and Hester's ex-lover Richard. All three are fellow older protagonists, and it's great to see. What is marvelous about these characters is that they know virtually nothing about sorcery: to stop Evangeline, they have to research and experiment and muddle through and make mistakes that almost result in disaster, but they keep plugging away and helping one another until they triumph.

The only (slight) knock I have on this story is that Evangeline is more or less One-Note Evil. There is some handwaving about Cordelia's father abandoning Evangeline when she was pregnant, and setting her on the path to using her sorcerous powers to ensnare and manipulate men, but there's not enough of a backstory to really make much difference. I did wish Evangeline could have been as rounded a character as everyone else (even the pseudo-"horse" Falada has a bit more nuance than his master), but I guess the author felt that with Evangeline blithely torturing her daughter, there was no chance at redemption.

At any rate, this is a fast, disturbing read that will make you side-eye white horses for some time to come. It's not as creepy as some of the author's previous books (especially The Twisted Ones ), but it's a fine, horrific spin on a gothic and/or Regency romance.

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October 13, 2024

Review: Silver in the Bone

Silver in the Bone Silver in the Bone by Alexandra Bracken
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I almost gave up on this book around a hundred pages in. This is a young adult retelling of King Arthur and the magical country of Avalon, which is well-worn if not cliched territory at the very least, and I was concerned about the author's doing something new and interesting with it. But the characters started to grow on me. Then I hit the point where the protagonist Tamsin Lark and her "frenemy" Emrys Dye actually make the journey through a magical Veil to Avalon, to search for a ring that will lift the dangerous curse of her brother Cabell.

Only Avalon is not the beautiful green place of legend, but rather a post-apocalyptic hellhole inhabited by deadly human-spider creatures called Children of the Night. Dark magic is slowly sapping the land and destroying its protective wards, and threatening to overwhelm its last bastion of safety, a tower where the priestesses of Avalon have gathered for a final stand against the darkness.

At that point I realized I was all in on this story, despite its slow beginning. I'm not sure Bracken is doing anything radically different with the bones of Arthurian legend, but her characters are making up for it. Not only with the protagonist Tamsin, her brother Cabell, and their adoptive father Nash, but the secondary characters as well. They are all well-drawn, especially those who become the core members of Tamsin's group at the end: the High Priestess of Avalon, Caitriona; Neve Goode, a self-taught sorceress who accompanies Tamsin, Cabell and Emrys on their journey; and Olwen, a half-naiad Healer of Avalon. Emrys Dye, an arrogant, rich little snot who is after the same magical ring as Tamsin and becomes her love interest, is also revealed to have more depths than meets the eye. And Tamsin herself, utterly lacking in magic, grows from a pessimistic, paranoid cynic who pushes people away to someone who is willing to be vulnerable and let people in, and who is fiercely loyal and caring to those new friends she picks up along the way.

However, for a book ostensibly aimed at a young adult audience (not that that's ever stopped me reading YA) this story is very dark and bloody. Tamsin's general attitude of cynical pessimism is infectious, and by the end, I was wondering how the four survivors of Avalon could get their revenge on Lord Death, the king of Annwn (the country of the dead), for destroying their beautiful isle and slaughtering everyone in it. Then, in the last few pages, Tamsin reunites with Nash, the father figure who vanished seven years ago. He reappears out of the blue and says he needs to solve a curse: not Cabell's curse (Cabell transforms into a murderous black hound when strong emotion grips him), but rather Tamsin's own.

Well. As cliffhangers go, that is rather a gobsmacking one. So much so I immediately plucked the sequel out of my TBR pile and dived into it. If you finish this book, you had best be prepared to do the same. I had to know what happens next, and I expect you will too.

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October 3, 2024

Review: Eden

Eden Eden by Christopher Sebela
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

This graphic novel states it was "based on an original screenplay." An unproduced one, evidently? If so, I can see why it was unproduced, as the science is not great. (Although that's also true of most produced SFF screenplays.) At any rate, I think this works better as a comic, and is surely cheaper than the 9 figures it would have cost to film it.

This story takes place in the near future, when climate change has caused massive human displacement and there are refugee camps all over the world, as people are forced out of places that aren't habitable anymore. (So far, that isn't "science fiction" at all....) In the meantime, there is a supposedly habitable exoplanet discovered in another system, and ships departing on a regular basis to this "new Eden," taking millions of people who have won a lottery for the 15-month journey. (And that right there broke my suspension of disbelief, as a 15-month interstellar journey anywhere means ratcheting up to a significant percentage of lightspeed, which isn't possible now and likely won't be possible for decades to come, if ever. Anyway...) The comic opens with the story of the Tremaine family, who have won the lottery and are telling how they feel about making the trip.

Only, as we soon discover, they aren't the "Tremaine family" at all, but rather three imposters who broke into the Tremaine's apartment the night before they were due to leave, tied them up and stashed them in the closet, and took their place. Which....that was a bit of over-the-top implausibility that was necessary to the plot, and all the more grating because of it. The ship even beeps as they are being loaded into their cryogenic sleeping chambers, warning that the DNA doesn't match, and the Edencorp representative in charge says they're behind schedule and pushes the imposter family through anyway. (Which sounds like a corporate mentality for sure.) The fake family is on board when the ship launches, only to be abruptly woken up even before they have made it out of the solar system....because the ship loops around the far side of the moon and proceeds to dump millions of people out of their storage pods to die on the moon's surface where they cannot be seen.

(At that point I rolled my eyes and thought, "Really?" Even today there are satellites in orbit that monitor the far side of the moon. And no one ever thought to ask why the colony ships returned rather sooner than they were supposed to?)

(Actually, the more I'm breaking this down, the more I'm realizing I really didn't like it. I can also see why the film was never made.)

So now our fake Tremaine family has to fight their way to the ship's cockpit, take control, and attempt to save the rest of the passengers. There is, of course, a corporate conspiracy to mitigate climate change by reducing Earth's population tens of millions of people at a time (at least until the far side of the moon is full up, I suppose) that gets exposed. Our plucky fake family--complete with unnaturally precocious pre-teen daughter who solves every problem the adults can't manage--takes over the ship and ends up taking it on an interstellar journey for real, searching for a planet that might be an actual "new Eden." (Although I wonder why they would trust Edencorp to build technology that would actually keep people alive on such a journey, as they never intended it to leave the solar system at all.)

This was meant to be triumphant and uplifting, I'm sure, and our imposters are a rather appealing, if ruthless, family. The art does help to cover the plot holes, but only to a point. But if this screenplay had actually been made, it would have been a C-movie at best. Adjust your expectations accordingly.

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