Review: This Cruel Design

This Cruel Design by Emily Suvada
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

There aren't many authors who can level up the second book in a trilogy and make it better than the first. Emily Suvada is one of them. This second book in the Mortal Coil series has smoothed out the bumps from the first: strengthening the characterizations, de-emphasizing the romance (it's still there, but there simply isn't time to dwell on it for very long), deepening the worldbuilding (I appreciate that the author has a degree in mathematics and has worked as a data scientist; this makes her world feel that much more grounded), upping the stakes and keeping the breakneck pacing. There are twists galore in this book, but they fit into the context of the series as a whole. (In fact, that's the only quibble I have--this book won't make sense if you haven't read the first, as it takes up the story only days later.)

I particularly enjoyed the characterizations. All the characters are given fascinating shades of gray, and even those who might be classified as villains have believable backstories and motivations. That doesn't make what they're doing right, which is also addressed, and the protagonist struggles with her situation and what she needs to do to protect others. No one's hands are clean in this. This book is naturally doing double duty in setting up the story for the final volume, and the last chapter ends with a twist guaranteed to set the reader's teeth on edge for the next book.

As far as I'm concerned, this is one of the best YA series out there, and you're missing out if you don't read it.

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Review: Hullmetal Girls

Hullmetal Girls by Emily Skrutskie
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I was originally going to give this three stars, but the more I thought about it the more I realized a particular aspect of the worldbuilding really bugged me. And since the thing that bothered me is integral to the entire novel, I couldn't justify saying I liked it anymore.

There are good things about this book, especially the character of Aisha. Honestly, I think the book would have been better had it been told from her POV alone, cutting out Key Tanaka entirely. Aisha was the more interesting character, had the most development and the deeper journey. None of this applies to Key Tanaka, and it seems to me her character would have worked best viewed from the outside, rather than alternating first-person POV chapters. (Specifically, the one chapter written from the POV of her earlier persona, the Archangel, felt shallow and rushed and unnecessary. If the author didn't have the time or space to fully explore what that previous personality experienced and meant to the overall story, it would have been best to leave it out.)

All of this could have been fixed, though, with another draft and better editing. The thing that really bugged me, and ultimately turned me off to the book, cannot.

That's the entire concept of the Scela.

We're talking here about humans transformed into human/AI/metal hybrids. Cyborgs. A human body cut apart and rebuilt, with a second spine, extra supports driven into the flesh and fused to the bones (because the original skeleton sure as heck can't support the stress of being a Scela), and the body sawn apart and lengthened one to two feet beyond its original height. (Both Aisha and Key repeatedly say they're now seven feet tall, and that's even before they strap into their full cyborg exorigs.) It's described like this. [Content warning for body horror.]

When the surgeons come in, when the steady hands start the work of my unmaking, I let that hope curdle inside my chest, let it distance me from the sight of my body being flayed and broken and reshaped. My flesh peels back. My bones are sawed and spaced and lengthened. Endoscopes burrow through me, paving metal highways along my skeleton, weaving matrices of nanofibers through my muscles, sewing new circuitry into my nerves. Ports blossom from my skin, promising a place in my anatomy for the metal rig that will make me nigh unstoppable. The surgeons work with careful precision, all too aware of what they're crafting, leaning over me with something like holy reverence in their eyes.

Another brief description:

And that just reminds me of all the other metal laced through my biology, of the exorig clamped onto my spine, of the way a wicked ridge now rises out of my split, shaved skull--

And I'm thinking (not then, but later): Oh hell no, this absolutely cannot work. These people may be living aboard spaceships, but they still have freaking germs, and the Scela, with their open, metal-laced wounds, would all die of massive bacterial infections before they even learned how to operate their exorigs.

(Yeah, I'm sure all this futuristic stuff is coated with antibacterial solutions. The thing is, though, that bacteria evolve. They spawn a new generation every 20 minutes, sometimes. Bacterial resistance to antibiotics is an ongoing problem in our world, and for the life of me I can't figure out why the author didn't take this into consideration or even mention it.)

Needless to say, this thoroughly wrecked my suspension of disbelief. If you can get past that, more power to you. Like I said, there are good things about this book. But this threw me completely out of the story, and I was never really able to get back into it.



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Review: Sanctuary

Sanctuary by Caryn Lix
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

There was a moment right at the beginning of this book when I had to stop and think whether or not I wanted to go on, when the protagonist did something that struck me as veering perilously close to Too Stupid To Live territory. Granted, this incident did set the plot in motion, and since we're dealing with teenagers here, the reader must remember that they are (usually) impulsive and rebellious. And in fact the main character did grow on me, making mistakes (including some really big ones) and learning from them. This book did become better as it went along, but just be aware that the first few chapters are a little rough.

If we're summing up this book as a Hollywood pitch, it would have to be: the Xenomorphs from Alien meet the X-Men (or maybe the Young Avengers). The titular setting, the space station/prison Sanctuary, is the destination of last resort for teenage (and younger) metahumans, who started being born after the arrival of alien probes on Earth fifty years previously. Our protagonist and narrator Kenzie Cord is the daughter of parents who live and work on Sanctuary--and in the case of her mother, act as its commanding officer--running the station for their corporate overlords, Omnistellar. The first chapters of this book are deliberate and slow, establishing the characters and setting. Then, after Kenzie is taken hostage by rioting prisoners in Sector Five, the story takes off, with nearly the entire book taking place within a span of around thirty-six hours.

Needless to say, with such a compressed time frame there are a lot of action-heavy set pieces, but there are also genuine moments of character development, especially for Kenzie. She moves from being a semi-brainwashed corporate shill to questioning her entire worldview, and eventually, as secrets from her past come to light, throwing in her lot with the prisoners. There is a bit of romance (but no love triangle, thank heavens), but the main emphasis is on friendship and the family you make, rather than the one you are born into. The concept, in this future, of corporate versus government citizenship also brings in elements of classism and elitism, although these themes aren't explored as deeply as I might have liked. Maybe that will be expanded upon in the sequel.

Regardless, though this is a flawed story (especially in the beginning) it is, in the end, a solid one and worth your time. The author shows promise and hopefully the next book will bring this story home.

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Review: Defy the Worlds

Defy the Worlds by Claudia Gray
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is the sequel to last year's Defy the Stars, which was one of my favorite young-adult books of 2017. In this second installment of what is apparently now a trilogy, Noemi and Abel are apart and living their own separate lives, hers on Genesis and his on the independent freighter Persephone, plying his trade between Earth and its colony worlds.

But Earth, still intent on conquering Genesis, launches a new attack--the plague Cobweb, which Noemi contracted and survived in the previous book. Since she is now immune, the Genesis government sends her through their wormhole Gate to surrender the planet to Earth, in exchange for antiviral drugs. Upon her arrival on the other side of the Gate, she is captured by Burton Mansfield, the dying creator of Abel. He did not send the plague, but he did take advantage of it, surmising that an immune Noemi would be sent to summon help. He intends to use her to blackmail Abel into returning to him and surrendering his mech (Gray's term for "cyborg") body to ensure Mansfield's survival (the reason Abel was created to begin with). When Abel speaks to Noemi after her capture, she tells him what is happening to Genesis and begs him to help her planet. He reaches out to his contacts (again from the previous book)--people he met on the various colony worlds, including members of Remedy, a terroristic organization bent on breaking free from Earth. Both Abel and Noemi surmise, rightly, that the news of what Earth is doing to the people of Genesis will be the last straw, inspiring an makeshift army to rise up and defend the planet.

In the meantime, Burton Mansfield and his daughter Gillian abruptly have to change their own plans regarding Abel and Noemi. They're part of a group of rich, elite Earthers boarding a colony ship called the Osiris, whose launch time has just been moved up. Mansfield and his daughter board the ship, forcing Noemi to accompany them, and the Osiris launches--going through a hidden Gate to a hitherto unknown planet called Haven. Whereupon it promptly crashes, due to some rich elite idiot not realizing a planet with fifteen moons might require some expert piloting. I'm not going to recap the plot anymore, because the middle of this book has several plot holes and drags quite a bit. But suffice to say that Abel follows the Osiris through the Gate, and he and Noemi reunite.

Noemi and Abel are the stars of this series, and the author's superb characterization of both, as well as the side characters, continues. This book is not as long as the first, and unfortunately it's not as tightly written as Defy the Stars. A lot of the Osiris subplot could have been chopped out, I think. However, it's still worth reading, and ends on a cliffhanger expertly designed to whet the reader's appetite for the third book.

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Review: Unearthed

Unearthed by Amie Kaufman
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I bought this book sight unseen, because of the authors' previous work in the Starbound trilogy. Due to those excellent books, I have certain expectations of Spooner and Kaufman, and I'm glad to say these expectations were met. This is a damn fine story, and I stayed up way later than I should have to finish it.

This book is set a little closer to our time than the Starbound books (one of the protagonists still carries a cell phone, for example), in a future where humanity is on the far side of climate change. It's implied Earth's fossil fuel reserves have been used up and strict population controls have been enacted, but despite all this the planet is becoming uninhabitable. Then an alien broadcast from another region of the galaxy is discovered and the information therein used to build a "portal" (which sounds like a wormhole) opening to another star system with a nearly lifeless planet called Gaia. The race that sent the broadcast, called the Undying, are--supposedly?--extinct, but Gaia is rich in abandoned fifty-thousand-year-old temples and alien tech. Tech the International Alliance, which apparently rules Earth now, hopes can be brought back to stave off our own planet's decline.

Of course, it's not as simple as this. The scientist who translated the alien broadcast, Elliott Addison, becomes convinced that it was a warning to humanity, and when his pleas to slow down the exploration of Gaia go unheeded, he releases classified information about the portal. Which naturally causes a stampede of scavengers, all on the hunt for alien tech. Included are his own son, Jules, determined to unlock the mystery of Gaia and clear his father's name, and Amelia (Mia) Radcliffe, a scavenger from Chicago who is trying to buy back her sister Evie from indentured servitude.

Jules and Mia are our viewpoint characters, and they're very well done. This is a trademark of the authors, the alternating first-person viewpoints, and they succeed again here. The action begins with both Jules and Mia already on Gaia, in the middle of their respective quests, and the above backstories are revealed as well-placed nuggets set into this mostly fast-paced story. Jules is the naive, well-educated, genius nerd out of his depth, and Mia is the scrappy, hardscrabble math whiz who reluctantly teams up with Jules to attain her own goal. Neither one is telling the other the complete truth, and they have to learn to work together and work through their lies to become a team and survive the ever escalating stakes.

Because there's a lot more to Gaia, and the Undying, than anyone expected. This book ends on a most frustrating cliffhanger, one that made me click right over to Amazon and pre-order the next book. (Which means that it did its job, of course.) In the meantime, there's so much to like about this book--the depth of the character arcs, the fascinating series of puzzles Jules and Mia have to solve as they work their way through Gaia's underground temples, and the understated but effective romance. Judging from the ending, there is a great underlying mystery here, and the next book should upend everything we think we know about this world. Bring it on, please.

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Review: The Consuming Fire

The Consuming Fire by John Scalzi
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is the second book in the Interdependency Sequence, and it has all the John Scalzi trademarks: a fast-moving plot, snarky dialogue, skimpy description, and solid worldbuilding. This last in particular is a high point of the book for me, as there were several revelations about the history of the Interdependency that I hope will be expanded upon in the final book. Presumably they will, as things are clearly pointing in that direction.

The only thing I didn't care for--and to be clear, this is just my personal preference, and not the author's problem--is the multiple points of view. I would rather the book focused on the original three characters: Cardenia Wu-Patrick (now Emperox Grayland II), Kiva Lagos, and Marce Claremont. I can see why the narrative included Nadashe Nohamapetan and Archbishop Gunda Korbijn, but neither they or their chapters were especially interesting. Cardenia Wu-Patrick was the real revelation in this book: her character developed nicely, into a quiet but shrewd and devastating badass. (She's also the source of the book's title, which I had been wondering about; it's drawn from her climactic speech, where she shuts down the treasonous conspiracy to oust her and drops the mic.)

There's a lot more court politics in this book: coups, attempted coups, conspiracies, and all kinds of maneuvering, double-crossing, and backstabbing. The reader's appreciation of the story will to a large extent depend on one's tolerance for this. I found it interesting, and more so as the book went along. This, combined with the revelations about the world, has me looking forward to the final book.

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Review: Mage Against the Machine

Mage Against the Machine by Shaun Barger
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

This book is trying to be too many things at once, and not succeeding particularly well at any of them.

If this was being pitched to Hollywood (and it may have been--certainly the last quarter of the story, which is a madcap running battle, reads as something just waiting to be CGI'd into a third act) it would take up exactly five words (as noted in the synopsis): Harry Potter versus the Terminator. Magic versus science, mages versus battle robots. Some people could do a lot with this idea. Shaun Barger, unfortunately, doesn't seem to be one of them.

The first thing wrong is the characterization: one of our two protagonists, Nikolai Strauss, is, to be frank, a whiny-ass, bad-tempered, entitled prick. Yes, his mother magically beat him to toughen him up, and his father did nothing to stop it. This kind of forced family dysfunction, with the dead mother being the bad person, is a maddening, unnecessary cliche. Nik is only twenty years old and an overpowered danger to himself and others throughout, and he needed to be sat down and given a great deal of therapy before the story even started. The one saving grace, character-wise, is the other protagonist (the two alternate POV chapters), Jemma Burton. Jemma's storyline is the SF one; her post-apocalyptic society has virtual reality, wetware mods in people's brains, artificial intelligence, robots (here called Synths), and a fertility plague that has doomed the human race, and is just more interesting. In fact, Jemma should have been the protagonist throughout.

The second thing is the worldbuilding, which is almost as clunky as the characterization. The SF world is, again, superior. The mages have a history that reads very Erich von Daniken "Chariots of the Gods" to me, and I wouldn't be surprised if their "discs," which power their pocket dimensions, turn out to be alien artifacts. (If I even pick up the second book, which right now I'm not going to do.) Of course, the mages' meddling is what brought on the humans' nuclear apocalypse in the first place, and they sealed themselves away from humankind because they're Too Powerful To Mix, instead of owning up to what they did and trying to fix it. (Naturally, if they had, the artificial intelligences would likely never have arisen, at least in the form postulated here, and we wouldn't have a story.)

(But hey, if I can suggest a more interesting story in just two sentences...well, your book is just not up to snuff.)

The pacing is also off, as the book (with the partial exception of the Jemma chapters) doesn't really get going until Nik and Jemma meet up. After that it's a frantic over-the-top race to the ending. Which, by the way, is another problem, because the ending is written from the POV of one of the AI Overminds, Armitage, whose head we have never been in until now. This is simply a poor choice, as Armitage is referring to stuff the reader knows nothing about, and as a result the book sputters to a sudden, confusing halt.

The whole thing badly needs tightening up and another draft. The bones of what could be a good story are here, and it's sad and frustrating that the author apparently can't do anything with it.

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Review: Head On

Head On by John Scalzi
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is the sequel to Lock In, a book I gave four stars to a few years back. This book is just as good, I think, in a different way: the plot and action is much tighter, and this is far more of a near-future police (or FBI) procedural than the first book was. That only makes sense: the world has been established (there is a rather clever prologue disguised as an online article, explaining the Hadens and their sport, Hilketa, that serves as a massive infodump without feeling like one) and now Scalzi gets to (pardon the pun) play in it.

(Also, this book's cover is fun. I didn't think much of it at first--a bland stick figure with an apparently decapitated head? But that's exactly what happens, and is what sets the plot in motion.)

The contrast between the first book and this one is that there's a lot more social commentary in Lock In. There are a few issues raised here, issues of ableism and marginalization, but they're not explored in the depth of the previous book. I wish Scalzi had been able to do that, but the minutiae of solving the case didn't leave as much room for side trips. Other readers' mileage may vary, of course, and in any case the two books complement each other very well. The characters, especially Leslie Vann (who emerges as a cranky but brilliant crime-solving asshole), and the narrator Chris Shane's friend Tony, are given more of a spotlight. (In fact, some of the most enjoyable scenes were the ones involving Chris's flatmates, and the ones showing Haden society.)
Chris has settled into the role of earnest, dogged rookie FBI agent very well, and has a droll sense of humor that keeps the narration crackling.

(And I've now changed my mind regarding Chris's gender. This is a notable plot point, as the author works hard never to say whether Chris is male or female, and it certainly doesn't matter to the story. Which is a deft commentary about gender all on its own, of course. But there's a scene where Chris's mother is shown trimming her hair--yes, I've now decided Chris is female--and the narration avoids any mention of shaving as well, which you'd think would be done at the same time.)

Altogether, this is a solid and quite enjoyable book. Maybe next time, if there is a third book, and given the plot developments in this one, we'll be able to have a bit more commentary on the social aspects of this world.

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Review: Iron and Magic

Iron and Magic by Ilona Andrews
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This book surprised me. It's a spin-off of the Kate Daniels urban fantasy series, and features as its protagonists Hugh d'Ambray, one of the foremost bad guys from those books. To make Hugh the star of this book, and make him sympathetic enough to find readers (he's definitely not a classical hero; he's more of an anti-hero here, and his assholish side still exists) takes writers of some skill. The Andrews husband-and-wife writing team pulls this off, and gives us a lean, mean, fast-moving machine of story to boot.

(As a matter of fact, I liked this story better than the final book in the Kate Daniels series, Magic Triumphs. That book felt a bit bloated and overstuffed when I was reading it--which, in fairness, it could hardly escape being, since it was winding up the series--and now it seems even more so compared to this.)

The characterizations are first-rate, especially Hugh's and Elara Harper, the woman he enters into a marriage of convenience with to provide a home for his soldiers, the Iron Dogs. We find out a lot about Hugh's past, and how he was abused and manipulated by Roland (AKA the wizard Nimrod, the Big Bad of the Kate Daniels universe) for decades. He undergoes a nice character arc in this book, punishing himself for and coming to terms with his past, and makes a final break with Roland at the end. This isn't to say he is transformed into a Good Guy. Far from it. Hugh d'Ambray is a complex character with many shades of gray. But at the end of this book he stands on his own, and the choices he makes going forward will be his, for good or bad.

Elara Harper, the witch/White Lady/something else ancient and powerful and a bit Lovecraftian, is just as well drawn, if more mysterious. Presumably we will find out more about her in subsequent books. Regardless, she is a fine match for Hugh, taking none of his or anyone else's shit. Their relationship changes from hate to not-quite-love but moving in that direction, and their dialogue and banter is funny, snarky, and delicious. The POVs in this book are split between Hugh and Elara, and the division of scenes is excellent and well-balanced, moving the story along and revealing plot and character quite nicely.

The worldbuilding casts an interesting new light on this universe, in that this setting is more on the magic side of the magic/tech struggle. A slowly eroding modern civilization with monsters, and what it takes to stand against them. In this case, it takes Hugh d'Ambray, Preceptor of the Iron Dogs, and I can't wait for his further adventures.

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Review: Contagion

Contagion by Erin Bowman
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

This was okay, if more than a little derivative. It reads as a mashup of Alien and The Walking Dead, with a side dish of Nasty Uncaring Corporation thrown in. The reason I'm not rating it any higher is because the worldbuilding is fairly shallow, and so are the characters. If the pilot Nova and the intern Thea are supposed to be our protagonists, then the author really needs to get into their heads, and she did not do so. There were several other POVs, and all of them were unnecessary and threw off the flow of the story. The author did write some good action scenes, but in the end, even though this book ends on a cliffhanger, I don't care enough about the characters to pick up the next book.

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Review: Temper

Temper by Nicky Drayden
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

I don't often run up against a book I can't finish, but this was one of them. I tried, I really did. But when I hit page 75 and realized I still didn't care what happened to these people, I decided to give it up. The viewpoint character, Auben, was a royal ass (although as the bearer of six vices and only one virtue, he was supposed to be), and his supposedly "good" brother, Kasim, wasn't much better. I didn't even care when (view spoiler)[the blue demon crawled down Auben's throat, because being demon-possessed didn't seem like it would be that much of a change for him. (hide spoiler)]

Bah. I have an entire stack of books more interesting than this. Onward.

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Review: Tomorrow Factory: Collected Fiction

Tomorrow Factory: Collected Fiction by Rich Larson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I don't read that many short story collections, but I will freely admit the terrific cover art on this book is what first made me pick it up at the library. Then, upon viewing the author's photo, and seeing this
kidyoung man with enough published stories to put out a collection (and apparently many more besides that)...I thought, well, I'll take a chance on it.

I'm very glad I did.

I don't know if you could call Rich Larson a once-in-a-generation talent, but he's damned good. This is evident from the very first story in this collection, "All That Robot Shit," which flips the tale of Robinson Crusoe on its ear. In this version, the castaway, or the Man, is washed up on an island with a thriving culture of sentient robots that have developed their own religion...and their own punishment for blasphemers who claim humans made them.

(In a small, sneaky detail, the kind that doesn't dawn on the reader until the story is finished, the Man is referred to as "it" throughout, and the robots are given gender. It's just one of the ways Larson subverts the usual tropes.)

Other standouts in this collection include "Extraction Request," which marries primeval Alien-inspired horror with the SF conceit of a predatory fungus, to bleak, memorable effect; "The Ghost Ship Anastasia," one of the longer stories, about a crew sent to check out a mining bioship that has ceased transmitting (this one has callbacks to both Alien and Lovecraft); "Your Own Way Back," about a grandfather who uploads himself to a chip in an attempt to cheat death, and ends up being carried around in his grandson's head for a while, until he realizes he can't impose the burden of his quasi-existence on his daughter's struggling family any longer; "Circuits," probably my favorite story here, the post-apocalyptic tale of a sentient train riding its lonely track, long after the abandonment of the planet and the death of humans; and "Innumerable Glimmering Lights," the showstopping closing story, about a intelligent aquatic species--maybe an octopus, maybe a squid--drilling through the roof of their ice-covered ocean world, and triggering a clash between science and faith.

The only reason I gave this book four stars instead of five is because the author is obviously a fan of cyberpunk, and I'm not, particularly. Uploading a human mind and consciousness, according to everything I've read, is about as scientifically possible as faster-than-light and time travel...which is to say, not at all. Still, it's an accepted trope nowadays, and of course it's not so much the basic idea as what the writer does with it. On that basis, Rich Larson is an outstanding young writer, and definitely one to keep an eye on.

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Review: Foundryside

Foundryside by Robert Jackson Bennett
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I am a huge fan of Robert Jackson Bennett's Divine Cities trilogy, so needless to say I preordered this book as soon as I heard of it. My faith was definitely rewarded.

Bennett's strengths are characterization and worldbuilding, and these are my two absolute must-haves in a great read. This book passes that test with flying colors. The magic system of "scriving," using a special, complex language to change the nature of reality itself, is well-thought-out and comes with a double-edged sword, which is made apparent as the book progresses. I know some people have compared this to computer programming, and I can see that. For me, it's fantasy with an undercurrent of physics and quantum mechanics, and a bit of artificial intelligence thrown in--since the "scriving" awakens the objects it is used upon, and our protagonist, Sancia Grado, can communicate with scrived objects.

There are a few different points of view, but we're mainly in Sancia's head, an ex-slave turned petty thief who is looking for one last chance to make the big money. This is a well-worn cliche, of course, but Bennett takes it and turns it inside out. Her "final job" is the MacGuffin that starts the ball rolling, but there is so much more here than a heist gone wrong. There are themes of colonialism and classism, and Bennett returns to ideas he also explored in the Divine Cities--power and the use and misuse thereof, and a past that is not dead but is roaring to life to bite the present in the ass. It's all wrapped up in an intricate, fast-moving plot with an explosive climax and an epilogue that sets the stage for the next book. Even so, this book is fairly self-contained; the epilogue isn't really a cliffhanger. But I can hardly wait for the next volume.

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Review: Rage Becomes Her: The Power of Women's Anger

Rage Becomes Her: The Power of Women's Anger by Soraya Chemaly
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

In many ways, this is the perfect book for 2018. I finished reading it on the eve of the US midterm elections, and the results of those elections--so many women, particularly women of color, winning their races--makes this book timely and indispensable and you should read it right now.

There are many reasons women in the US and around the world are angry, and Soraya Chemaly enumerates those reasons in exhausting, well-researched detail. I'm sure some readers (particularly those of the male persuasion) may consider this wealth of detail going overboard, but given many societies' general tendency to minimize and dismiss women's concerns, I would say this is necessary. However, the overall thrust of this book is not that women have reason to be good and mad; it is that, as women, we need to own our anger, not repress it, and learn to channel it in constructive ways, in the interests of generating true change.

(Which, again, is why this book is so timely. What is a better path to change than women protesting, marching, voting, urging others to vote, registering new voters and working to battle voter suppression, and running for office?)

Besides her copious data, Chemaly weaves personal anecdotes from her own family, in particular her mother and grandmother, into her story, which makes her book very readable. The final chapter, "A Rage of Your Own," lays out a ten-point plan for channeling and using your anger, and the conclusion sums up the entire book thusly:

Anger is an assertion of rights and worth. It is communication, equality, and knowledge. It is intimacy, acceptance, fearlessness, embodiment, revolt, and reconciliation. Anger is memory and rage. It is rational thought and irrational pain. Anger is freedom, independence, expansiveness, and entitlement. It is justice, passion, clarity, and motivation. Anger is instrumental, thoughtful, complicated, and resolved. In anger, whether you like it or not, there is truth.

There is also a great deal of truth in this book, especially for women. As the author says, "Angry women burn brighter than the sun." This is a damned good and important book, and I'm glad I found it.

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Review: Women After All: Sex, Evolution, and the End of Male Supremacy

Women After All: Sex, Evolution, and the End of Male Supremacy by Melvin Konner
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

This book was okay, but I've read better (particularly Cordelia Fine's Delusions of Gender). The author is at his best when discussing various animal mating strategies, and not so good when trying to apply this to the human species. I think there's an interesting question at the heart of this book: now that modern life is emphasizing technology instead of brute physical strength, which has propelled male dominance over the centuries, how will society and relations between the genders change? That would be an intriguing book, I think, but it isn't this book.

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Review: The Electric State

The Electric State by Simon Stålenhag
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I don't think I've ever read a graphic novel like this. It's almost a picture book, with the gorgeous art telling as much of the story as the text. This is a cyberpunk alternate history set in the alt-90's of a decaying America that has splintered into several smaller states: the protagonist is on her way to "Pacifica," for instance. We are plunked abruptly down in the aftermath of a drone war, in the midst of a sort of virtual reality zombie apocalypse. This stems from the "neurocasters," VR helmets with long snouts that most people in the country (at least the people who remain) now wear. The consequences of this are depicted on the very first page: a somber desert landscape, blowing layers of dust over half-buried, decaying skeletons, their bare skulls still adorned with their neurocasters.

Our protagonist is Michelle, a teenager with a congenital neurological condition who can't wear a neurocaster. She is going to the coastal town of Point Linden, accompanied by Skip, a small yellow robot who is actually being remotely controlled (through the neurocaster network) by her younger brother Christopher, who has been separated from Michelle for eight years.

This book's art is incredible: every page finely detailed and worthy of further study. When Michelle and Skip reach Point Linden, the illustrations take a creepy, surreal turn. It becomes obvious that a new world, populated by alien hybrid beings, is being created: mismatched drones welded together into towering new mechanical beings dripping with wires, and followed by their acolytes, groups of neurocaster-wearing humans. As near as I could follow from the story, they are animated by a networked group consciousness, symbolized by the huge red-lighted towers in the backgrounds of many of the pages. Michelle doesn't try to communicate with them--she's only after her brother. She finds him, still wearing his neurocaster, and Michelle, her brother, and the little yellow robot continue on their way to the sea.

The book's ending is abrupt and ambiguous, deliberately so, with no text, only four pages of haunting illustrations. I hope the author continues the story, because I definitely want to know what happened. Still, this is a beautiful and unique graphic novel, and it's one of the best things I've read this year.

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Review: Magic Triumphs

Magic Triumphs by Ilona Andrews
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Kate Daniels is one of the longest running urban fantasy series around, and Magic Triumphs is the final book in Kate Daniels' and Curran Lennart's story. Needless to say, the authors throw in everything but the kitchen sink in this book, and then turn around and add that too in the explosive climax. This book is not especially fat, but feels overstuffed because so much is going on. Not only is Kate dealing with being a mother and having a child who is a shapeshifter and also a magic wielder (her son Conlan is adorable, but he is way too powerful; I hope the temptation is not succumbed to to give him a book of his own, because said story would have no suspense), but she is heading towards the final showdown with her father Roland, also known as Nimrod of Babylonian myth. On top of all this, a new monster--a god--is thrown into the mix, who wants to exterminate most of humanity and enslave the rest. To counter this new threat, Kate will have to ally with her hated and loved father, with the expectation that Roland will betray her in the end, and she will likely have to kill herself to stop him.

None of this will make any sense if you haven't read the previous books. I've read six of the previous nine, enough to kinda-sorta follow what's going on, but just be aware that the author provides no backstory or explanations, and precious little even in the way of descriptions--too much is happening, and the breakneck pace hardly allows the reader to take a deep breath. I wish this book had been longer, to allow for a few pauses and introspective moments. As it is, most of the characterizations feel rushed, as there are too many characters for much individual development. I'm sure since this is the final book, the authors didn't think this was necessary, and after all Kate has changed a great deal from the first book to this. Still, a little breathing room could have given some focus on the secondary characters, in particular Julie and Erra (although those two do get this book's epilogue, which is a simultaneous closure and springboard to other possible stories).

Nevertheless, this is a fine ending to the series. Kate and Curran get their happily-ever-after, and nearly all of the myriad other characters are accounted for. Since urban fantasy has bottomed out from what it once was, we probably won't get a series like this again. Whatever my minor reservations, this is a very good way to go out.

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Review: After Atlas

After Atlas by Emma Newman
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is the second book in the Planetfall series. I've now read all three, and with the way I disliked (extremely) the ending of the first, Planetfall, I'm happy to say this and the third book in the sequence, Before Mars, don't have much to do with the first other than existing in the same timeline. (Although if the series keeps going the disparate plots will inevitably mesh. We'll cross that bridge when we come to it.) This book is more of a straightfoward mystery and police procedural (at least for the first three-quarters of the narrative) with a pointed commentary on a horrifying dystopian future where democratic governments have fallen, swallowed up by corporations whose only motivation is profit.

Our protagonist this time around is Carlos Moreno, an investigator for the former UK's Ministry of Justice. He is pulled into a suspected murder investigation, after the death of one Alejandro Casales, the leader of an American religious cult called the Circle. Carlos and Casales have considerable history, as Carlos spent eight years of his life in the Circle and his father is still a member. But he has no choice about taking the case, as he is in indentured servitude (read: contracted slavery) to the MoJ. His investigation pulls him deep into his own past, both of his relationship with Casales and the Circle, as well as the history of the Atlas expedition, the ship that left Earth forty years before. All this comes together in a smart, well-executed thriller with a shocking ending.

Each of the Planetfall books have been mysteries to one degree or another. This is more on the police procedural side, and Newman excels at it. She lays out her clues fairly and doesn't cheat the audience, and the procedural itself, in this cyberpunk future with (almost) everyone sporting implanted digital assistants and ubiquitous cameras recording the entire human population's every move, is fascinating. But there are also other ominous themes at work: the loss of privacy, the death of democracy, and the self-destructive bent of a society that would allow both to happen.

(view spoiler)[(In fact, one could argue that with the way the world is set up, after the Atlas 2 leaves Earth to follow the first Atlas's path, the climatic nuclear destruction of the world, ordered by the American gov-corp, is inevitable.) (hide spoiler)]

Carlos Moreno is a well-written character with depth, a dogged investigator who overcomes his personal demons in the end. Emma Newman has done a very good job of resurrecting my interest in the series, after the disastrous (in my opinion) ending of the first novel. Now I'm invested, and am looking forward to further books in the series.

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Review: Only Human

Only Human by Sylvain Neuvel
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This is the third book in the Themis Files. I really liked the first two; Sleeping Giants set up a fascinating concept, and Waking Gods carried through with slam-bang giant robot vs. giant robot action.

Only Human does neither of those things. The story kind of drizzles to a halt, with none of the action and worldbuilding of the previous two books. I think a large part of this is because the series' most interesting character, Kara Resnik, is dead, and her daughter Eva just isn't....up to snuff as a protagonist, let's say. She spends a lot of time after her forcible return to Earth whining and crying to get back to the aliens' planet and fighting (both with words and with robots) with her father. (And she doesn't even get to go back in the end. Rose Franklin brokers the truce between the fighting human factions, and sends the remaining robots back to the aliens' planet because the human race isn't mature enough to play with alien toys, and Eva doesn't insist on returning as well? That's kind of a letdown, and points out that the characterization in this book is simply lacking.)

Another not-so-good aspect to this volume is the heavy-handed social commentary. Now, every book ever written has a political viewpoint of some kind, especially in the SFF realm. Science fiction and fantasy writers use their imaginary worlds to comment on the human world they are living in. In this case, Earth after the alien-robot invasion is pretty much America after 9/11, on steroids. To put it bluntly, the entire human race has lost their effing minds, and has taken out their fear and trauma over being attacked on the people who least deserve it and have nothing to do with it: humans with certain percentages of alien DNA. I think there are some very valuable things to say along this line, and I commend the author for developing these parallels to the current state of American society. I just wish he had been a little more subtle about it.

Also, the ending is not terribly plausible. (view spoiler)[Rose Franklin summons the aliens to Earth one last time via a leftover device, the same one that copied her mind and body and brought her back to life. She uses the presence of thousands of robots to basically force the United States and Russia to stand down, by stating that the Ekt will be watching Earth from now on, and if we don't stop hating and killing each other, they will step in with unspecified but presumably horrifying consequences. Except that it's all a bluff, due to the aliens' strict non-interference policy (think Star Trek's Prime Directive, even more rigid and cruel, as the Ekt let one of Rose's friends die of cancer on their planet rather than cure him). In reality, the Ekt are never coming back, so this bit of theater is useless. Sooner or later some nation on Earth will break the truce, nothing will happen, and humans will be worse off than before. (hide spoiler)] It felt like the author wrote himself into a corner, and this is his not very good way of trying to wriggle out of it.

There's a lot to like about this series, especially in the first two books. I just wish the author had taken a deep breath and followed through on the ending. That would have made for a more unsettling, but more interesting book.

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Review: Inferno

Inferno by Julie Kagawa
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The final volume of the Talon Saga is utterly dependent on your having read the previous four books. There's no attempt at a recap or a prologue bringing the reader up to speed--Kagawa dives right in, and it's either sink or swim. That said, this book ties up all the loose threads and brings the storyline home, in a spectacular and satisfying fashion.

This series did get better as it went along. The first book, Talon, relied a little too heavily on the starcrossed, Romeo-and-Juliet style teen romance. Admittedly, the fact of a dragon slayer's falling in love with the dragon he was sent to kill kickstarted the entire plot, but I could have done with a little less angst and a little more worldbuilding. Thankfully, this problem subsided in subsequent books (although we missed a chance for a polyamorous triad with the introduction of Riley, the protagonist Ember Hill's "fated dragon mate." That would have been....interesting, but in the end she chose her "soldier boy," Garret), and the plot focused on the threat the dragon organization, Talon, posed to the entire world. The final battle here gives us the death of the Elder Wyrm, the destruction of the hideous dragon-clone army, and Ember's ascension to the head and CEO of Talon. (The organization itself has to remain, as dragons are not ready to come out of the shadows. However, Ember is not going to be the murderous, sociopathic CEO her mother was.)

(This final battle, however, does illustrate one persistent sticking point in my suspension of disbelief--the existence of eighty- and one-hundred-foot dragons has never been revealed to humans? Satellites are a thing, and so is cell-phone video and Google Maps.)

All the characters here are well-drawn, and the entire series is expertly paced. If you like YA, as I do, I think you will enjoy this.

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Review: Exit Strategy

Exit Strategy by Martha Wells
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is the final novella in the four-volume sequence of the Murderbot Diaries. The first volume, All Systems Red, won the Hugo and Nebula awards for Best Novella, and those awards are well deserved. This novella wraps up the initial storyline (there is a full-length novel coming in 2020) and it is every bit as good as the first.

As always, Murderbot is a delight. In this book, it is crankier, snarkier and funnier than ever, wrestling with unwelcome emotions and finding it cannot run away from its--gasp--human friends, friends it never wanted to make but somehow ended up with anyway. This story comes full circle, bringing us back to characters from the first novella, particularly Dr. Mensah, Murderbot's initial "owner." (Along the way, we discover just why these "diaries" exist--there is a movement afoot in this universe to grant legal personhood to "constructs and high-level bots," and they want to publish Murderbot's story to bolster their case.) There are several laugh-out-loud moments, and the action scenes are tense and thrilling. It's just a very good story all the way around, and I'm down for more Murderbot as long as Martha Wells wants to write it.

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Review: Medusa Uploaded

Medusa Uploaded by Emily Devenport
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This book straddles, in some ways successfully and others not, several different sub-genres in the wide field of science fiction and space opera. It's a generation ship saga, set aboard the enormous Olympia, a ship several miles long and wide, holding over two hundred thousand people and spinning to create its own pseudo-gravity. It's a slice of cyberpunk, complete with a complex virtual reality and uploaded VR "ghosts" of deceased people (who end up not being what they seem). It's a first contact story, as the "Graveyard" towards which the Olympia is headed apparently holds thousands of self-aware alien ships. But mostly, it's the tale of a bitter and deadly class struggle, with the protagonist, the lower-class "worm" and Servant Oichi Angelis, out to take her revenge upon the ruling Executive clans who sabotaged and blew up the Olympia's sister ship, the Titania, with Oichi's parents on board.

There's a few more layers to the plot than that, but there's enough cold-blooded murder and sociopathic mayhem throughout to make me wonder if the author based this book on one of the periodic historical revolutions that sweep humanity. Oichi herself is an uneasy, not very likable protagonist, who freely admits to being a serial killer without regrets. She ends up powering a revolution that frees the Olympia from the tyranny of the Executive clans, but it's very much an end-justifies-the-means sort of thing, with plenty of bloodshed. Meanwhile, the mystery of the Olympia's origin (and the people on board her) is partly revealed, as well as why they're going to the Graveyard and what they expect to find there.

As you can see, there's a lot going on here, and not all of it meshes successfully. I don't think the author has made up her mind what she wants this book to be, and the rather fragmented and jumpy writing style reflects that. There's a lot to like about the world, particularly the pairing of selected people on board Olympia with the Medusa AI units (which are self-aware, Lovecraftian, tentacled space suits) and the relationships developed. Hopefully in future installments, Emily Devenport picks one thing or the other, settles down, and writes a more straightforward narrative.

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"Life doesn't get easier, you just get stronger"

Screw Christopher Columbus. He brought nothing but death and destruction to this continent. Instead, let's celebrate the people who were wronged.

Review: The Ends of the World: Supervolcanoes, Lethal Oceans, and the Search for Past Apocalypses

The Ends of the World: Supervolcanoes, Lethal Oceans, and the Search for Past Apocalypses by Peter Brannen
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I've read some very good science books this year, and this is yet another. It discusses the six major mass extinctions in our planet's history (I always thought there were five, but Peter Brannen tosses in another one, the End-Pleistocene, which he pins on early humans). Of course, the granddaddy of mass extinctions is the End-Permian (252 million years ago), which is summed up in this cheerful paragraph:

To summarize: There was an ocean that was rapidly acidifying--one that, over huge swaths of the planet, was as hot as a Jacuzzi and completely bereft of oxygen. There were sickly tides suffused with so much carbon dioxide and hydrogen sulfide that either poison would have sufficed as a killer in its own right. There was a Russian landscape detonating and being smothered in lava several miles deep. There was a fog of neurotoxins and lethal smog streaming from these volcanoes and, high above, an ozone layer blasted apart by halocarbons, inviting a bath of lethal radiation at the planet's surface. There was forest-destroying acid rain and a landscape so barren that rivers had stopped winding. There were carbon dioxide levels so high, and global warming so intense, that much of the earth had become too hot even for insects. And now there were Kump's unearthly mega-hurricanes, made of poison swamp gas, that would have towered into the heavens and obliterated whole continents.

The Kump mentioned here then compares these conditions to the modern day:

"Well, at the rate at which we're injecting CO2 into the atmosphere today, according to our best estimates, is ten times faster than it was during the End-Permian."

Books like this are very important. They point out the brutal truth: If humans continue on our fossil-fuel-burning suicidal march, we will probably destroy ourselves and much of life on Earth as well. The planet itself will survive, and life will return, albeit in a radically new fashion, as has happened after each of the previous mass extinctions. But civilization will be gone, and so will Homo sapiens. All because of a few decades of deliberate blindness and unmatched greed, and for what?

This is an interesting, well-written book, but it is not a happy one. Too much here strikes way too close to home. I don't know if it's even possible, now, to stop what's coming, but I commend this author, and others, for writing books like this, which use the past to illuminate the present.

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Review: Beneath the Sugar Sky

Beneath the Sugar Sky by Seanan McGuire
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This is the third book in the Wayward Children series, and lighter in tone than the first two. It's more of a straightforward quest plot, with less emphasis on atmosphere, setting, and characterization. This doesn't necessarily make it a bad book--we learn more about the divisions and definitions of McGuire's series of Worlds, particularly Nonsense worlds--but it's not sticking with me as strongly as its excellent predecessor, Down Among the Sticks and Bones.

What this book does do is catch us up with some characters in the previous two books. I enjoyed seeing Nancy, and how she's flourishing since her return to the Halls of the Dead. It also introduces new characters that I would be interested in seeing in subsequent books, especially Layla, the Baker of Confection, the sugar-laden Nonsense world in which most of this installment takes place. I do hope Layla's story is told in another book. I also hope we get a book focusing on Kade and what happened to him.

Overall, this is a worthy addition to the series.













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Political Interlude

So this is what this country has been reduced to.

Even if Brett Kavanaugh we not creditably accused of sexual misconduct, his screaming, crying, out-of-control performance during the hearings disqualifies him in and of itself. (If he were a she, I daresay it would be called "hysterical.") He evidently believes that just because of his penis and melanin-free skin, he is entitled to sit on the Supreme Court, and woe to anyone who gets in his way.

If this were a movie, it might be called "The Last Stand of the Angry White Male." Because it is a last stand. Because young people were disgusted by the Republican Party's naked power grab this week, and hopefully they will rise up and vote. Looking back, I hope Christine Blasey Ford (and Julie Swetnick and the other women who have come forward), will be remembered as heroes. But I'm sad that revealing their pain, and dragging them through the mud, is the price that must be paid for excising the cancer that is spreading through this country.

Review: The Black God's Drums

The Black God's Drums by P. Djèlí Clark
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This little book packs quite a lot into 100 pages. African orisha magic, airships, a pair of nuns who dabble in chemical warfare, a white girl named Feral who was raised in the swamps around Lake Pontchartrain, and a supernatural weapon that freed the slaves in Haiti all take part in this alternate history where the Civil War was fought to a standstill and New Orleans is free and neutral territory. (This is also an alternate history where "General" Harriet Tubman is running a guerrilla war, smuggling slaves out of the Confederacy. That would be a fascinating tale. Hint hint.)

New Orleans is, in fact, the actual star of this story, even more than the nominal protagonist, Creeper (short for "little creeping vine"). The writing is lush and atmospheric, the setting expertly drawn. Creeper is a thirteen-year-old orphan, a scrappy street urchin who survives by her wits and carries around the African goddess Oya inside her. Having stumbled upon information concerning the stolen superweapon, the Black God's Drums, Creeper teams up with the aforementioned nuns, Feral the swamp girl, and Ann-Marie St. Augustine, captain of the airship Midnight Robber, to rescue the weapon and save New Orleans.

This is a fast-paced adventure story that works in an impressive amount of worldbuilding and characterization in its small space. It could easily be expanded into a full novel, and I hope the author will do so. Maybe not with this particular story, but I would love to read the further adventures of Creeper and the Midnight Robber (and General Tubman!). There are many possibilities here, and I hope we get to see them.

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Review: The Only Harmless Great Thing

The Only Harmless Great Thing by Brooke Bolander
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I've read several realllly long books recently, so I decided to take a break. I wanted something short and sweet, and simple (or at least simpler). Of course, in pursuit of this, I chose a novella with a multi-layered storyline, meditations on the sentience of elephants, beautiful and brutal language, and a gut-punch of an ending that left me muttering, "There's dust in your eyes. There isn't dust in my eyes."

The elephant Topsy really existed, and was really electrocuted for murdering her human tormentor. There were really Radium Girls, young women poisoned by an uncaring corporation, given cancer by their using radium paint for watch faces. Brooke Bolander combines both these historical facts into a unique narrative of fury and hope, pain and rage and triumph. In this three-pronged alternate history, elephants are sentient beings communicating with humans via sign language, with their own culture, history and oral traditions. The relating of one of the elephant Stories is one of the most interesting parts of the narrative, because it speaks to the stories humans tell ourselves, to understand the darkest parts of our nature.

(One hopes, in this alternate history, Topsy and Regan, the Radium Girl who accompanies her on her last walk, become one of the Stories told by future generations of elephants.)

This isn't a nice story, but even in its bleakness it is a triumphant one. The characters are saying, "If we have to die, you will know we were here, and you will by God [and Furmother, in the elephant's Story] remember us." As legacies go, that's not a bad one. And this is a damn good little book. Read it.

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Review: Semiosis

Semiosis by Sue Burke
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

This book is definitely a case of the concept being better than the execution. There are some chewy, crunchy hard SF ideas here--humans colonizing a planet with sentient plants! Plant and plant/human communication! Philosophical discussions about a society based on Pacifism and various betrayals of the colony's governing philosophy along the way!--but the whole is less than the sum of its parts.

For me, the reason for this is that I simply couldn't relate to the characters. This doesn't feel like a true novel, but rather a strung-together series of stories, each with a different narrator, covering the first 107 years of the colony's history. There is minimal development to most of these people, the lone exception being Stevland, the intelligent bamboo who saves and eventually becomes a member of the colony. Stevland is more interesting than all the humans combined, because it is such a morally gray character. At first it seems selfish and manipulative, rescuing the humans strictly to further its own cognitive development (it has a creepy vampirish habit of dissolving humans' bodies and ingesting their blood and bacteria as nutrients after their deaths, which leads to it becoming smarter). But as time goes on, it learns more about the humans and their Pacifist philosophy. There are several interesting discussions between Stevland and various colony members along these lines. Unfortunately, this is abandoned in favor of a more straightforward thriller-ish plot involving the Glassmakers, another sentient race that once co-existed with Stevland and built an advanced city the human colony moves to.

With the introduction of the Glassmakers, the book kind of sputters to a halt. The battle scenes between the humans and Glassmakers simply aren't enough to hold my interest. I guess the best I can say about this book is that it is intermittently interesting hard SF, but it doesn't follow through, and it doesn't really have characters I could care about. So for this one, my socks will remain firmly rooted (heh) to my feet.

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Review: The Robots of Gotham

The Robots of Gotham by Todd McAulty
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I bought this book nearly sight unseen. The editor is John Joseph Adams, who I have found usually has impeccable taste. Also, the cover art is intriguing and cool. That said, I'm glad I did--this is a fantastic, smart science fiction thriller, and it's on my list of the best books of 2018.

This book takes place in 2083, when artificial intelligence is in full bloom, and the robot population is expanding so rapidly it is on track to surpass the human population. Many countries are now governed (or ruled) by robots. (There is a neat chart on the very first page, the "2083 Sovereignty Matrix," which lists many countries of the world and how they are ruled, whether by Machine Cabals, Elected/Appointed/Hereditary human rulers, or Elected/Hereditary machine government. It's a concise piece of setting and worldbuilding that lets us know right away what we're getting into.) Our protagonist is Barry Simcoe, a blogger/engineer/entrepreneur who, because of his desire to impress a woman and out of his own sense of compassion, gets dragged into a world-changing conspiracy.

The plotting, characterization and worldbuilding in this book is just stellar. The author is a software engineer, so needless to say the robot ecosystem/evolution is well thought out. There are periodic chapters from a robot blogger, "Paul the Pirate," whom Barry reads, that provide crucial background information without dragging down the story. This is not a Terminator/Skynet situation--far from it; the robots are just as individualized as the humans, with their own internal struggles and factions. The book is 675 pages, but doesn't feel like it due to its excellent pacing. I particularly appreciated the fact that the characters aren't stupid or do dumb things because The Plot Demands It. They share information and think and plan as their situation gets more precarious, and the final showdown is a nail-biting confrontation where the characters' loyalty and friendship come through.

This story is pretty self contained, but the world is so fascinating I would love to see the author return to it again, whether with these characters or others. Highly, highly recommended.





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Review: Children of Blood and Bone

Children of Blood and Bone by Tomi Adeyemi
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is a marvelous debut novel, steeped in Nigerian culture, gods and mythology. It's a story of structural oppression, and fear of those with supernatural powers, and a king who is determined to persecute and exterminate an entire group of people to (he thinks) keep his country safe. It's about the lies we tell each other as to whom is fully human and who is not, and what happens when those deemed "less than" have had quite enough, thank you, and are determined to seize the power that has been denied them.

This is also the author's first published novel, and it shows, especially in the characterizations. There are three viewpoint characters: Zelie, chosen by Sky Mother to reawaken magic in the children of the maji, who were cut off from it eleven years ago when all the magic-wielding adults were killed; Inan, the son of the king who did the killing, and who wavers between lusting after Zelie and planning to murder her (Inan frustrated me; his was the most unfocused character, and it seemed like the author couldn't quite get a grip on him); and Amari, my favorite character, the timid, mousy daughter of the king who flees in horror from what her father is doing, and who develops into a "lionaire" by book's end.

(Yeah, about this world: supposedly it's based on the country of Nigeria, but I doubt the Nigerian people ride, instead of horses, HORSE-SIZED FELINES WITH CURLING HORNS. I need fan art on this IMMEDIATELY.)

This is a very fast-paced book, with many small chapters and frequent viewpoint switches. For the most part the story held together, except for an ill-advised romance between Zelie and Inan. This upped the teenage angst quotient considerably, and was unnecessary, since the basic plot provided all the suspense one could want. And the ending is a cliffhanger to make the reader scream in frustration. Still, this is a very good debut, and it's wonderful to see a setting, world and characters that's not just more boring European white guys. Yes, Tolkien and his knockoffs changed the face of fantasy forever, but there's so much more out there than Middle-earth. I'm so glad this book exists in the world, to show the new, exciting directions fantasy can take.

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Review: Before Mars

Before Mars by Emma Newman
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I've read one of Emma Newman's books before, Planetfall, and I hated the ending. (Review here.) Because of this, I hesitated over bringing this book home from the library. I finally decided to take a chance on it, and I'm glad I did, as this is a stronger novel in every way.

These books (there is a second in the series, After Atlas, which I've yet to read) follow the same storyline but focus on different characters. The setting in this book is the Mars colony, Mars Principia (also the name of the colony's AI), and the characters are its inhabitants (five). Our main character is Anna Kubrin, the geologist/artist in residence, sent there by the corporation that owns and operates the colony. In this future, corporations have taken over the world's governments, and own (pretty much) the entire population of Earth. One's value as a human being depends on how high up one climbs in the gov-corp.

This story is a pretty neat little puzzle box of a mystery, with some very interesting things to say about motherhood, postpartum depression, and how society treats women who become mothers. Anna was basically tricked into having her one child (by her needy, egotistical little prick of a husband) and knows she does not love her daughter Mia as she thinks she should. It's a viewpoint I've rarely seen expressed in fiction, and a lot of it was apparently based on the author's real-life experience. Anna is a well-drawn character, with realistic flaws and depth. But there are also larger themes in this book, themes of privacy and human rights, and a chilling backstory where the gov-corps have destroyed democracy. All these things come to a climax in a stunning plot twist about three-fourths of the way through the book, and the aftermath deals with Anna and her fellow colonists picking up the pieces and going on.

This book is a little bit on the nose with the current world climate, and as such is not a comfortable read. But it ends with a tiny, fragile hope for the future. Highly recommended.

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Review: Space Opera

Space Opera by Catherynne M. Valente
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

And my run of good books comes to a screeching halt.

That isn't really fair, I guess. I'm sure a lot of people like this book. Unfortunately, this book isn't for me. I tried to read it, but I had to give up about halfway through. Valente is a good writer, especially at shorter lengths, and I've read and liked things of hers previously, in particular The Refrigerator Monologues. But this book is so over the top that I felt exhausted trying to read it. I call the writing style for this book thesaurus vomitus, and it's just not something I can read for very long.

(For example, the first sentence of the book:

Once upon a time on a small, watery, excitable planet called Earth, in a small, watery, excitable country called Italy, a soft-spoken, rather nice-looking gentleman by the name of Enrico Fermi was born into a family so overprotective that he felt compelled to invent the atomic bomb.

The entire book is like this.)

Which is sad, because I think there might be a good story here, if I could get into it. From what I've read about the book, it's basically Eurovision (the annual European singing contest, which I've also never watched) in space. Which is why I suppose it's over the top, but that doesn't make it any less exhausting. I've struggled with this book for about a month, and I finally had to give it up. So if you like absurdist humor, paragraph-length sentences, and a stream-of-consciousness narrative, give this a try. I'm moving on to to other things.


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Review: Spinning Silver

Spinning Silver by Naomi Novik
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Well, I've had a run of really good books lately, and this is yet another one.

I've followed Naomi Novik throughout her Temeraire alternate-history series (with dragons), and her Uprooted was one of my favorite books from a few years ago. Uprooted seemed to signal a new phase to her career, of expanding upon and retelling familiar (and not so familiar) fairy tales, and adding her own unique spin to them. Spinning Silver continues this tradition, as a very loose interpretation of Rumplestiltskin.

By far the strength of this book is the characters, with the lovely, evocative writing and the well-drawn setting close behind. There are three main viewpoint characters. The first, and the nominal protagonist, is Miryem, the moneylender's daughter who takes over the family business from her ineffectual father and whose real-world skill in turning a profit attracts the attention of the king of the Staryk, Novik's version of the Fae. Wanda is the poor daughter of a drunken father who just wants herself and her brothers to survive, and is drawn into Miryem's orbit in trying to pay off her father's debt. Finally, there is Irina, the daughter of a duke who is also a descendant, through her mother, of one of the Staryk, and who is a pawn in her father's attempts to ingratiate himself with the tsar of their country, Lithvas. Irina ends up unwillingly married to the same tsar, who (view spoiler)[unbeknownst to everyone is possessed by a fire demon. (hide spoiler)]

(There are also a few other viewpoint characters. This book is told in its entirety in first person, and there are no notations of POV switches, just line breaks. However, within a paragraph or two I knew who was narrating and where we were. This speaks highly to Naomi Novik's skill in characterization and plotting, to handle these POV changes so seamlessly.)

As you can see, each of these young women is being held down and oppressed, to one degree or another, by the men in her life, and all their arcs involve trying to free themselves. This book's other themes include duty and sacrifice, stepping up and taking responsibility, and the love of a found family as well as a born one. The pacing is measured and deliberate, especially in the beginning, but everything that might be construed as making the book "slow" becomes important in the end. And the prose is just so beautiful: you can feel the icy puffs of the Winter King's breath, and the silver coins slipping through Miryem's hands as she changes them to gold.

The only character I gave a bit of side-eye to is the king of the Staryk, who was a stubborn, prideful, arrogant ass, at least in the beginning. But that same stubborn pride, and his insistence on bargaining to get what he wants, is the thing that helps Miryem to grow and gives her the strength to defeat the enemy of the Staryk in the end. Even the designated "bad guy" (the tsar) has a revealed backstory that caused a few second thoughts, at least in this reader. This is just a lovely, magical book all the way around, and I highly recommend it.


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Review: The Fated Sky

The Fated Sky by Mary Robinette Kowal
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is the sequel to The Calculating Stars. I've read that the story was originally supposed to be all one book, but the author asked that it be split in two. This was an inspired decision, as I can't imagine trying to cram both stories into one book. Even the covers reflect the difference: blue for the first book and the launch to the moon, and red for this one and the First Mars Expedition.

Our core characters, the married couple Nathaniel and Elma York, engineer and human computer/astronaut respectively, return. Set in 1961, a decade after the first book, there is a thriving colony on the moon and training has begun for the mission to Mars. Elma is a self-described "glorified bus driver," shuttling people around on the moon. But there are rumblings on Earth, people denying the coming catastrophe of climate change after this alternate history's meteor strike (shades of today, minus the meteor), and to ward off the defunding of the space program, Elma York, the famous Lady Astronaut, is added to the Mars mission.

The First Mars Expedition is the focus of this book, spelled out in gritty, obviously highly-researched detail. If you've never thought through the nasty ramifications of an E. coli infection in space...let's just say this book will teach you many things. Mary Robinette Kowal captures perfectly the beauty and horror of space travel, the fragility of little tin boxes traveling 34 million miles to Mars, and the audacity of the human race to think they could even pull off such a thing.

One of the themes of the first book was 1950's sexism, and Elma's struggle to have herself and other women added to the astronaut program. Since this book is set in the early 60's, with this alternate history's Civil Rights Movement in full bloom, the focus here shifts to racism. Elma may be sensitive to double standards and sexist slights, but she's still a clueless white woman in terms of race, as the book aptly points out. There's some nice growth for Elma as well as the other characters, including Stetson Parker, a carryover from the first book. Stetson in particular is shown to be far more complex than he was given credit for, even though he's still quite the ass. And of course the heart of the series remains the mature, supportive relationship between Elma and Nathaniel, as the two of them decide not to have children so Elma can join the First Mars Expedition.

I just love both these books to pieces, and wholeheartedly recommend them. I've heard the author plans to write more in this series, and I can only say, Please! I will read them as fast as she puts them out.



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Review: We Were Eight Years in Power: An American Tragedy

We Were Eight Years in Power: An American Tragedy by Ta-Nehisi Coates
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I liked this book, but it was really hard to read. This is a collection of Ta-Nehisi Coates' previous essays written for The Atlantic. I had read them on his blog, but here they are expanded with new introductions to each article. These introductions, detailing Coates' state of mind while writing them, are invaluable. The essays form a picture of the meaning of Barack Obama's presidency, coming from the mind and pen of a gifted African-American man who has become one of this country's foremost writers on race.

That being the case, the epilogue of this book, a new essay titled "The First White President," was the equivalent of a body blow. Coates lays bear the election of the current horrid occupant of the White House as belonging both to the backlash against President Obama and a last-gasp effort to maintain white supremacy in this country. (And, as we've found out since, prodded along by Russian hackers, and the insane Republican obsession with Hillary Clinton and her husband.) This final essay is a downer, buoyed (if one can call it that) by the author's trademark pessimism. But that makes this book even more important, and I hope it will find its way into school classrooms as required reading on race in America.

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Review: Arabella The Traitor of Mars

Arabella The Traitor of Mars by David D. Levine
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This is the third volume in the Adventures of Arabella Ashby, a steampunk, alternate history, Jules Verne-esque pulp Regency adventure. Following the defeat of Napoleon Bonaparte in the previous book, Arabella Ashby and her now husband, Captain Pradash Singh of the Honorable Mars Company airship Diana, return to Earth to find that England, as the solar system's only remaining superpower, has set its sights on Mars.

I'll be honest: I didn't like this volume quite as well as the first two. The "science," of course, is completely unbelievable: Mars inhabited, with its own native species! Venus the same! A solar system filled with air--the "interplanetary atmosphere"--that airships can navigate! But this has been baked into the books from the start, so the reader must grant this suspension of disbelief and move on. If a particular reader can do so, of course. I could. The reason I didn't like this book as much is the frenetic, tightly stuffed plot that seemed to come at the expense of character development.

This book covers a twelve-year time span, and A LOT happens: the Mars Rebellion, the overthrowing of English rule, and Arabella's life on Mars afterwards. This is not to say that the rebellion tale isn't good in and of itself--the fight scenes, especially, carry on the excellent tradition of the previous books. One can smell the smoke of the cannon balls and feel the heat of the burning sails, and the splinters of the broken masts. But I would have preferred a little less action and a little more about the characters, especially the natives of Mars who seem to be given pretty short shrift in favor of our human heroine.

It's just a bit of a letdown, especially compared to the previous book, Arabella and the Battle of Venus. But it's still a solid story.

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Your Irregular Political Interlude

Never piss off a writer.

Review: The Water Will Come: Rising Seas, Sinking Cities, and the Remaking of the Civilized World

The Water Will Come: Rising Seas, Sinking Cities, and the Remaking of the Civilized World by Jeff Goodell
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is another good, if really depressing, science book. I didn't feel at all hopeful after reading it, and the reason why is summed up by the cover image: the water is coming, and we in the US (and in many places around the world) aren't doing nearly enough to prepare for it.

Of course (to get political for a moment) the current idiot-child in the White House is denying that climate change is even happening, and his rabid followers eat that shit up, so it's not surprising. It's enough to make me hope that Mar-a-Lago is one of the first places to go under. At any rate, read this book. It's impeccably researched, accessible, and written in layperson-understandable language, laying out in blunt detail the threat we are facing. The dream is over, folks. Climate change is real and it is happening now. I'm afraid the time is past for doing much about it, but if civilization and humanity wants to survive, we have to try.

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