tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-273233172024-03-15T18:11:44.556-07:00Red Headed FemmeBonnie McDanielhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03844134292228113704noreply@blogger.comBlogger1408125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27323317.post-31361192511978052262024-03-12T15:04:00.000-07:002024-03-12T15:04:37.916-07:00More Stories I Have Read (And You Should Too!)<p style="text-align: center;"> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfXu54ye0ZhkdZ-SIHhdqtxGOLcGZG8ZpJ5J6vDVwCJ8mpTrR1L2D30eY_UDwUpkLwd6vZmZ3yk7VkXrgGUzdeTBnA6mpqc5dQ6XuD1DGqaGTDA80xtxFy-QELKqF9CL1jfAz240MRRDDaKZ8vwQDTKxpJbiz7b7WEaFUCXvM0WJ9YWk7gS3lL/s873/Screenshot%20Apparition%20Lit.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="873" data-original-width="792" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfXu54ye0ZhkdZ-SIHhdqtxGOLcGZG8ZpJ5J6vDVwCJ8mpTrR1L2D30eY_UDwUpkLwd6vZmZ3yk7VkXrgGUzdeTBnA6mpqc5dQ6XuD1DGqaGTDA80xtxFy-QELKqF9CL1jfAz240MRRDDaKZ8vwQDTKxpJbiz7b7WEaFUCXvM0WJ9YWk7gS3lL/s320/Screenshot%20Apparition%20Lit.png" width="290" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><i style="text-align: left;"><br /></i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><i>Apparition Lit </i>is a literary speculative fiction magazine that I did not know existed until a little while ago. Out of curiosity, I became one of their patrons to check them out. This is the first issue I received, guest edited by Brendan O'Brien, and I have to say I was rather impressed. The magazine features speculative fiction, poetry and non-fiction articles. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">In particular, the story <a href="https://apparitionlit.com/the-plague-collector/" target="_blank">"The Plague Collector"</a> by Tom Okafor caught my attention. This story has an edge of horror, but it is beautifully written:</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><i>In that moment, the sky wears dusk. The garden freezes, unhearing the buzzes of wild insects with which it is swathed. You look into the garden, chills carve crisscrosses into your skin, and your eyes glint with a salient light as they behold Oke Ala standing fifteen meters away from you in the center of the garden. Your fingers clutch the stalk. She is mighty, tall, and thick; her skin is the black of rich loam; her hair is full, darker than the silence of the night, braided at both sides of her head; innumerable golden rings occupy her earlobes, gleaming with hues alien to your eyes; and her lips shine red like a bleeding dream.</i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">It's also done in second person present tense POV, which is not easy to pull off (although I've been seeing that point of view more and more lately). </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><a href="https://apparitionlit.com/everything-nothing-at-all-and-all-thats-in-between/" target="_blank">"Everything, Nothing At All, and All That's In Between,"</a> by Rebecca E. Treasure, is another story hovering at the junction of fantasy and horror. I don't want to spoil it too much, but the further you get into it the more horrific it gets. But for all that, at the end the protagonist manages to break free from her jailers, and help her friends as well:</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><i>She gasps, hesitant, not quite believing. The fingertip of her pinky splits, a little black hair poking out. Fear comes into her eyes and I’m sorry for that, but now they won’t want her--she’s free to want for herself. Up and down the rows, we who would run are freeing the rest.</i></div><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><i>“You cursed me,” she whispers, but her hand comes up to meet mine.</i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><i><br /></i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><i>I nod, helping her from her holes. “Pass it on,” I say.</i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><i><br /></i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><i>We are unrooted, cursed, the ruination of their plans. We need only ourselves.</i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><i><a href="https://apparitionlit.com/bringing-down-the-neighborhood/" target="_blank"><br /></a></i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://apparitionlit.com/bringing-down-the-neighborhood/" target="_blank">"Bringing Down the Neighborhood,"</a> by Bernard McGhee, is more of an SF horror story, about a son returning to his childhood home to see a father who has fallen under the sway of a alien plant, woven with the background of a gentrified neighborhood where the people who have been there for years can't afford it any longer: </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><i>“You haven’t been around much these last 15 years, so you don’t know what it’s been like,” James said. “They all say they want to make the neighborhood better. But they never seem to notice all the people they’re pushing out while they do it. Calling us a ‘blighted neighborhood’ as if that’s something that just happens and now we’re all a disease. Like the people who lived here chose to have the funding cut to the school and the police station; chose to have BunleeCorp close down the warehouse and move all those jobs to Wyoming. But it’s ok. It’s ok.” He pointed to the gray pyramid. “Our friend here came all the way from the Helix Nebula to help us turn it all around. Watch now. You’ll like this part.”</i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">"This part" being at the end of the story, the neighborhood is "de-gentrified," all the other houses old and broken-down (a bit of delicious reversal of fortune, that) and the protagonist's house suddenly new and restored along with the protagonist now having enough money to help all the old neighbors rebuild. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">The final story in the issue, <a href="https://apparitionlit.com/the-city-and-the-styrofoam-sea/" target="_blank">"The City and the Styrofoam Sea,"</a> by Mar Vincent, is a post-apocalyptic tale of a rather creepy future Earth:</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><i>The city had started it all.</i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><i><br /></i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><i>She was hardly old enough to recall the world a different way. Blue sky had been commonplace then,</i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><i>rather than the rarity it was now. If there weren’t others in the Bunker old enough to confirm this memory, she’d almost believe it a fancy of her own imagination. </i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><i><br /></i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><i>A time before black plumes spewed relentlessly into the sky, and with them the metastatic material—no longer organic or synthetic but a messy mix of the two—which infected the landscape in all directions, devouring what existed, natural and man-made, and repurposing everything into new and illogical growths. Fungal lampposts. Fields of waving copper-wire weeds. Once-suburban neighborhoods gnawed down to slumping cave mouths in a shingle-shale wasteland.</i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">This story definitely has a <i>Last of Us</i> vibe to it, if a slightly happier ending. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">There's also four poems in this issue. I usually find SF poetry to be very hit-and-miss, but these poems weren't too bad. Finally, there is a non-fiction article, <a href="https://apparitionlit.com/let-there-be-blight/" target="_blank">"Let There Be Blight,"</a> by A.J. Van Belle. In keeping with the issue's theme, this article talks about fungi--in particular "terrestrial decomposer fungi"--and makes what seems like a yucky topic pretty interesting. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">This is a pretty interesting little magazine, as well. You can subscribe <a href="https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_s-xclick&hosted_button_id=C2S855VKRXGCN" target="_blank">here </a>, join their <a href="https://www.patreon.com/join/ApparitionLit?redirect_uri=https%3A%2F%2Fapparitionlit.com%2Fissues%2F&utm_medium=widget" target="_blank">Patreon</a>, or buy the issue at <a href="https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1507456" target="_blank">Smashwords</a>. (Just to be clear, nobody from the magazine contacted me and asked or paid me to sing their praises. I just enjoyed their magazine and think they deserve to be more widely known.)</div></div></div></div><p style="text-align: center;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><p></p>Bonnie McDanielhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03844134292228113704noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27323317.post-9513817444082958172024-03-08T15:28:00.001-07:002024-03-08T15:28:35.681-07:00Review: Clarkesworld Magazine Issue 209
<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/206483319" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px"><img src="https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1706749169l/206483319._SX98_.jpg" border="0" alt="Clarkesworld Magazine Issue 209" /></a>
<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/206483319">Clarkesworld Magazine Issue 209</a> by <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/4005010">Neil Clarke</a><br/>
My rating: <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/6327502317">3 of 5 stars</a>
<br /><br />
This issue isn't quite as good as the previous one, but it has a barn-burner of a story called <a href="https://clarkesworldmagazine.com/kim_02_24/" rel="nofollow noopener">"Why Don't We Just Kill the Kid In the Omelas Hole,"</a> by Isabel J. Kim. She has written very good stories in the past, some of them within the pages of this very magazine, but I think this is the best one I've seen from her yet. <br /><br />It's an answer to Ursula K. Le Guin's famous story <a href="https://shsdavisapes.pbworks.com/f/Omelas.pdf" rel="nofollow noopener">"The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas,"</a> which is less of a story and more of a thought experiment. The thought, in this case, is a variation on Spock's pronouncement from <i>Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan</i>--"The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one." <br /><br />Because Omelas as a city, culture and civilization, you see, depends entirely on the misery of one small child locked away in a room at its base. Everyone in Omelas knows this and either makes an uneasy peace with it or, as the title refers to, "walks away." There have been many replies to/engagements with this story over the years (including an episode of <i>
<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt14426244/" rel="nofollow noopener">Star Trek: Strange New Worlds</a>
</i>), but I don't think I've ever seen one like this. Kim's story pulsates with rage, as she takes Le Guin's original premise and turns it inside out, applying it to today's world and all the things governments, rich people and capitalism enable or overlook to ensure their systems remain running. <br /><br /><i>The kid was the drop of blood in the bowl of milk whose slight bitterness would make the sweetness of the rest of Omelas richer. Without the kid in the hole, Omelas was just paradise. With the load-bearing, suffering child, Omelas meant something.<br /><br />And of course, it was true that the whole city literally ran on the load-bearing suffering child in a very real physical way that was not a metaphor. And everyone really liked having running power and no blackouts and good schools and low crime and community-oriented government and safe sidewalks and public transit that worked.</i><br /><br />This story hits you like a gut punch. So far, it's the best story I've read this year. <br /><br />There are two other excellent stories in this issue. <a href="https://clarkesworldmagazine.com/goodman_02_24/" rel="nofollow noopener">"Kardashev's Palimpsest,"</a> by David Goodman, is a tragedy/love story that spans literally billions of years in the narrative of Dee and Vee, who were once human and now are "computational matter, wrapped in the hardest, densest materials any species ever created." We follow these two as humans evolve past their biological bodies and are uploaded into a virtual universe, and graduate to self-contained mindships exploring the galaxy. Earth is destroyed and Dee thinks they lose Vee in its destruction; but eons later, the two find each other again, just in time to see the universe winding down...or perhaps being reborn. It's a timeless love story, and proof that for a narrative to succeed, you need <i>characters,</i> not just high-concept ideas. <br /><br />Finally, we have <a href="https://clarkesworldmagazine.com/feldman_02_24/" rel="nofollow noopener">"Lonely Ghosts,"</a> by Meghan Feldman, which tackles the need for companionship and connection, even between machines. Sini is an exploration android apparently abandoned on an alien planet--its last contact with its human minders was thousands of years before. Now, the only being it can reach is CRABB, a megacity construction droid on one of the planet's moons. But Sini has been seeing the ghosts of its previous handlers for centuries and is basically afraid that it is going insane. So it reaches out to CRABB for reassurance, and the construction droid ends up using its last long-range warp packet to bring Sini to its moon, where it has been building a city all by itself for eons. This is a fairly short story, but it has some lovely characters. <br /><br />On Bluesky, the editor Neil Clarke has this to say about the state of his magazine:<br /><br />"Round two of the Amazon magazine subscriptions nightmare is shaping up to be far worse than round one. I'll have more to say when I've finished reviewing my math (and maybe looking at Feb. data), but it's not good. <a href="https://clarkesworldmagazine.com/subscribe/" rel="nofollow noopener">Always a good time to subscribe.</a>"<br /><br />Please, think about subscribing to this excellent magazine. I would hate to lose it.
<br/><br/>
<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/6327502317">View all my reviews</a>
Bonnie McDanielhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03844134292228113704noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27323317.post-68657857736154237872024-03-06T15:57:00.003-07:002024-03-06T18:40:28.971-07:00Stories I Have Read (And You Should Too!)<p> Now that we're in a new year and things have settled down a bit in my life (if not the wider world, lolsob), I thought I would start a new series consisting of just what the title says: Stories I have enjoyed that deserve a wider audience. I subscribe and/or am a patron to several genre SFF magazines, and also find links to other stories in my internet travels, so I thought I would lump several of them together every so often and recommend to my readers (*waves*). </p><p>With that in mind, let's look at the January/February issue of <i>Uncanny </i>Magazine.</p><p style="text-align: center;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7sNbJSA8-ZocMEnS0itw_Fwf1hahXuYiSCBAzo24o7wGrBzMVHtdaipzVvgQwI32acvEA6uR62xSNC05qPSCNoyrlGEzXrUuzwQclKMrzXSL-6CW62z4ExgAlafVE88sDK-TbMHxEpap93qlRg7U34VNdkY4HjFxm4yzLd-3vkI2l5RWrgJNR/s562/Screenshot%202024-03-06%20141747.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="562" data-original-width="375" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7sNbJSA8-ZocMEnS0itw_Fwf1hahXuYiSCBAzo24o7wGrBzMVHtdaipzVvgQwI32acvEA6uR62xSNC05qPSCNoyrlGEzXrUuzwQclKMrzXSL-6CW62z4ExgAlafVE88sDK-TbMHxEpap93qlRg7U34VNdkY4HjFxm4yzLd-3vkI2l5RWrgJNR/s320/Screenshot%202024-03-06%20141747.png" width="214" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">There are three stories in this issue I really enjoyed. The first, <a href="https://www.uncannymagazine.com/article/do-houses-dream-of-scraping-the-sky/" target="_blank">"Do Houses Dream of Scraping the Sky?"</a> by Jana Bianchi, deals with a subject I have had to wrestle with of late in my own life: grief. The protagonist is cleaning out her grandmother's house after her grandmother's death, and both she and the house are struggling:</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i>I put the plastic bags on the sideboard before opening my arms and resting my face against her feverish wall, and House blew her nose by flushing the toilet of the hallway bathroom.</i></div></div></div><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><div style="text-align: left;"><div><i>“Hush, now. I’m here. I’m so sorry,” I remember saying, caressing her. The tap started dripping faster, and I strove to keep my own tears at bay. “Yeah, I know, I know. I’ll miss her too.”</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div>As the protagonist goes through the minutiae of her grandmother's life, discarding and sorting and fighting with House over what to keep and what to give away, both of them slowly work through the stages of grief and come to an acceptance, and a remembrance of love for the person who has left them. </div><div><br /></div><div>At the end of the story, House--who is a well-drawn and layered character--seems to vanish. But the protagonist picks up one of her grandmother's plants to take with her:</div><div><br /></div><div><div><i>“Goodbye, House,” I said, and closed my eyes. “I love you.”</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>That night, when I arrived here, I put the snake plant vase in the balcony. I took a shower, I ate something, I played some video game. Then I decided I’d go to bed earlier, and as I soon as I got my head in the pillow—</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Precisely. I hear the noise in the balcony, and when I arrived there the snake plant was somehow planted amongst my herbs. When I came back to this very same room, I felt my bed hugging me back for the very first time. </i></div></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div>This is a gentle little story of love, loss, and recovery. It hit home for me due to my own life circumstances, but I know others will appreciate it also. </div><div><br /></div><div><a href="https://www.uncannymagazine.com/article/a-recipe-for-hope-and-honeycake/" target="_blank">"A Recipe for Hope and Honeycake,"</a> by Jordan Taylor, takes a different emotional tack: this is the story of Bramblewilde, an outcast fairy who has adopted a human village and is trying their best to fit in with the people around them. But the villagers are uneasy around her, and she is not really trusted:</div><div><br /></div><div><div><i>The villagers heard Bramblewilde’s cart before they saw it. Bramblewilde’s husky voice and the chiming of the cart’s fairy bells wove between the market stalls, which were set up in one of Squire Rothchild’s empty fields. The scent of lavender, likewise, drifted in on the cool spring breeze, twining among the scents of freshly baked bread, livestock and beer, cured meat. </i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>The villagers turned their </i><i>heads at Bramblewilde’s approach, and Bramblewilde’s voice dimmed under their stares.</i></div></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div>As a harsh winter sets in, and various catastrophes including a fever overtake the village, Bramblewilde struggles with how to help them, since she knows the people would likely not extend their hand in return:</div><div><br /></div><div><div><i>They regretted offering no help to their neighbor with a sickly cow.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>They regretted not feeding the children at the gate from their meagre stores.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>And yet, had the shoe been on the other foot, what would the villagers have done? No one, they thought, would have helped Bramblewilde.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Surely the villagers deserved whatever hardships they got.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Or did they?</i></div></div><div><br /></div><div>So Bramblewilde consults the sentient bees of her hive (this story, like the last, has great non-human characters) and receives an answer. They whip up the titular honeycake, infused with the magical hope of Faerieland, and start taking slices of it to the villagers. At the end, they visit the nearby Wood, on the border of their outcast Faerie, and discover the god Pan, who gets the last slice of their cake. </div><div><br /></div><div><div><i>“But look!” Bramblewilde gazed up at the sky. “The sun is shining. And I have brought you something, my lord.” They folded back the green cloth covering the last slice of honeycake. “Perhaps you would like to try a bite?”</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>“What is it, little one?” Pan asked.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>“Hope,” said Bramblewilde.</i></div></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div>This is a story of pulling together in the face of adversity and helping one another. I'm sure it was written as a post-pandemic story, as so many are nowadays. It's definitely a comfort read. </div><div><a href="https://www.uncannymagazine.com/article/a-contract-of-ink-and-skin/" target="_blank"><br /></a></div><div><a href="https://www.uncannymagazine.com/article/a-contract-of-ink-and-skin/" target="_blank">"A Contract of Ink and Skin,"</a> by Angela Liu, is the polar opposite of these: it's a short, eerie horror story of death, tattoos, and ghosts, and packs quite a punch. It's also told in second person present tense, which is usually a dicey POV, but this one works:</div><div><br /></div><div><div><i>The earliest versions included uglier things: ground up insect eggs and corroded bronze, but the ink you receive is pure, made only from blood of the Cursed.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>They inject it into your eyes first because that’s the easiest way to tell you’re different. The black ink mixed with blue and red, a purplish nebula pooling into the whites of your eyes.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>It takes three months for your body to fully heal, but you’ll be able to see the dark patterns within just a few days. The ink aches in their presence, sweating through the pores in your skin, but that ink is your shield, your bridge, your right to a Contract.</i></div></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div>As the protagonist is injected more and more with the magical ink, the blood of the Cursed, she begins to separate from the people around her, and see and experience more magical things. The imagery in this story is fantastic and haunting:</div><div><div><br /></div><div><i>The warm threads of ink envelope your throat, tracing the soft line of your shoulders and hips. The black globes of your eyes see them before you feel them. A hurricane of dark light. A taste like cinnamon and electricity fills your mouth. </i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>No one tells you that the longest night is the night when you are finally offered your Contract.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>It’s been three months, and your body has healed, but it no longer belongs to you. The Inked are here to serve, and you will, just like all those before you. This is the Contract of your ancestors, the way they chose to survive the hunger, the love of the Cursed. The cost of peace paid by the ink on the skin.</i></div></div><div><br /></div><div>This story is just under 1500 words, but wow. It's worth the price of admission all by itself. </div><div><br /></div><div>Finally, from the Sunday Morning Transport, comes <a href="https://www.sundaymorningtransport.com/p/rude-litterbox-space?r=1il6o1&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email&triedRedirect=true" target="_blank">"Rude Litterbox Space,"</a> by Mary Robinette Kowal, an SF tale of an intelligent physics-teaching cat who talks via a communications mat. Elsie is aboard a ship approaching an FTL jump gate when she realizes things are going wrong:</div><div><br /></div><div><i>Elsie pushed off from the window and went to her communication board, which was laid out on the floor. It was a flexible mat with touch sensors mapped to different words and phrases. Yucky. How could she explain to her valet that the approach to the jumpsite was all wrong? She toggled the board to her science words and phrases, hoping the predictive text could follow this higher level of thought. She pressed: Velocity. Angle. No. Gravity. Strain. Ship. Litterbox.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div>We follow Elsie's attempts to save the ship and her battles with a ship's captain who views her just as an upstart pet:</div><div><br /></div><div><div><i>“For crying out loud . . . You’re one of them.” The captain’s voice dripped with condescension. “There’s nothing an animal can do better than a person.”</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>“With all due respect, sir.” Her valet’s voice was chilly with the script she’d had to deploy multiple times. “The Confederation of United Planets recognizes that personhood is not limited to humans. Elsie is a person.”</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>“It’s a cat.”</i></div></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div>But the bridge crew recognizes that Elsie just saved their lives, and bring her tidbits at the end. </div><div><br /></div><div>This sounds pretty fantastical, to be sure, but it's based on the real-life exploits of the author's communication-mat-using cat. At Kowal's Instagram, there are regular video snippets of Elsie talking by pressing buttons on her mat. Apparently <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/C4JjXbbLKmI/" target="_blank">she has a vocabulary of around 120 words</a>. </div><div><br /></div><div>So that's it for this installment. Others will be forthcoming, as I read stories I think should be shared. Thanks! </div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><i><br /></i></div></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div></div><br /><br /></div><p style="text-align: center;"><br /><br /></p>Bonnie McDanielhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03844134292228113704noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27323317.post-80178925973746921082024-03-05T14:05:00.003-07:002024-03-06T16:00:18.044-07:00Review: Sky's End
<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/60770260" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px;"><img alt="Sky's End" border="0" src="https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1685542272l/60770260._SX98_.jpg" /></a>
<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/60770260">Sky's End</a> by <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/22343971">Marc J. Gregson</a><br />
My rating: 3<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/6300205009"> of 5 stars</a>
<br /><br />
This book is about a society with stark class divides (the Highs and Middles are the rulers and elite respectively, and the Lows are the serfs) on an environmentally ravaged planet with floating sky cities and islands above a surface hidden by black acid clouds, with survivors Below who construct cyborg monsters and dream of getting their revenge on those Above. <br /><br />It's a first novel, and as a consequence the opening chapters are a bit rough. The protagonist, Conrad, was born Conrad Urwin and is trying to get revenge on his uncle for casting him and his mother out to the Lows. After he joins the Selection and is picked to join the Hunter Trade--the elite sky-faring monster-hunters--and finishes his training and starts serving on a skyship, the narrative smooths out a bit. <br /><br />Unfortunately, the worldbuilding is just as rough: it makes superficial sense as you're reading, but you can't think about it too much. (For example: if the people Below can't really grow crops, why haven't they starved to death long before now? And how can they have enough of an industrial society to create the massive metallic/organic Gorgantuan skyserpents and other cyborg critters that bedevil the Skylands? Furthermore, how can a sky serpent hundreds of feet along--and at the climax, one called a Gigataun appears that is a <i>mile long</i>--even move, much less function? And how can floating sky islands have rivers and waterfalls on them? Wouldn't the water just gush over the edge and run dry?)<br /><br />Ultimately, what saves this story is the characters. Conrad is a sullen sixteen-year-old grieving the loss of his mother, nurturing hate for his uncle, and trying to rescue his younger sister Ella from his uncle's clutches. He is obsessed with "rising," the process of working through one's selected Trade to a higher position in society. He has an absorbing inner conflict--the contrast between his frankly right bastard of a father, who whipped this kid repeatedly in an attempt to show him he has to be selfish and ruthless, and his mother, who tried to teach him caring and compassion. Over the course of the book, he learns to trust in and work with others, and gradually discovers a new family in the crew of his skyship, the <i>Gladian.</i> Another character, Conrad's nemesis Pound, changes from a bully who hates Conrad's family and all they stand for, to a more humble crewmember who knows his limits and is willing to serve on the <i>Gladian</i> alongside his former mortal enemy. The entire crew of the <i>Gladian</i> consists of well-drawn, fleshed-out characters who each have their own journeys, and the characters carry the book through its rough spots. <br /><br />Along the way, Conrad, Pound and crew discover the existence of those Below, and realize the Skylands are in mortal danger (their capitol, the sky island of Ironside, is destroyed by the aforementioned Gigataun by ripping out its "heart," the apparent anti-grav mechanism that keeps the islands afloat). This portion of the storyline is wrapped up fairly well, but obviously there's a lot more to come. <br /><br />This book needs better, more thought-out worldbuilding, but it wasn't a deal-breaker, at least for me. I can usually forgive a lot of first novels. Hopefully the next two books in the trilogy will straighten out these issues, as this world has a lot of potential here.
<br /><br />
<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/6300205009">View all my reviews</a>
Bonnie McDanielhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03844134292228113704noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27323317.post-25821688709094162292024-02-29T19:30:00.000-07:002024-02-29T19:30:13.638-07:00Review: Clarkesworld Magazine January 2024<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgPTMELqg3dBUPj9nCmOk9AfwVFigADP1oySJpveS-SWtj8xi7y_Xmd-Wpuaf-nHFHHLf6Hgzv2QDFo_tElpQ8y7vpV6KwqvUCXKKQuAh78hRI-OSKNCKECxfyblmR5cV9Awlru22B_lyaZWVNenSRSE4iCbE4lpOUMfPEWOJRmUz8gKYNdE9YJ" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="475" data-original-width="308" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgPTMELqg3dBUPj9nCmOk9AfwVFigADP1oySJpveS-SWtj8xi7y_Xmd-Wpuaf-nHFHHLf6Hgzv2QDFo_tElpQ8y7vpV6KwqvUCXKKQuAh78hRI-OSKNCKECxfyblmR5cV9Awlru22B_lyaZWVNenSRSE4iCbE4lpOUMfPEWOJRmUz8gKYNdE9YJ" width="156" /></a></div><br /> The January issue of <i>Clarkesworld</i> Magazine is excellent, with five outstanding stories. (It also has a cute, warm and fuzzy cover, with the robot holding the little girl's hand. Suitable for Christmas.)<p></p><p><a href="https://clarkesworldmagazine.com/ogden_01_24/" target="_blank">"Nothing of Value"</a> by Aimee Ogden starts us out, a short and creepy little story about a future version of space travel, Skip2, that copies a person's DNA and memories and sends their information to other planets to be reprinted into a fresh new body. This story confronts the fact that such technology murders the traveler each time they step through it:</p><p><i>A version of me would die, I argued. But then a version would live, too, and nothing of value was actually lost. An exact copy with the same feelings and memories, the same bad habits, and the same favorite coffee cup. Everyone was doing it--they wouldn't be, if it wasn't totally fine. The corporations would have shut it down so they wouldn't get sued. The International Supervisory Board review had said that there was nothing unsafe or unreasonable about Skip2 travel.</i></p><p>Our protagonist is attempting to meet up with their old lover on Mars and rekindle their relationship, ten years after they broke apart. They don't get back together, as the core disagreement between them is over the narrator's usage of the Skip2 technology. But the further you get into this story, the more sinister the subtext becomes. I didn't realize this until the second time I read it through, but this story is really about the horrifying implications of its central concept. When an individual's information is sent ahead to print into a new body, the previous one is destroyed:</p><p><i>Your smile retracts. "You mean because of the lockdown? I saw it on the 'scape."</i></p><p><i>"They caught the shell pretty fast--only twenty minutes or so before they could get it back into the recycler. 'Lockdown' is a strong word for twenty minutes." I snort. </i>"<i>That's barely enough time for a post-print stretch to make sure all my parts came through right."</i></p><p>So the "shell" is the previous person, murdered to make room for the new one. This technological shift contributes to the dehumanization of people in this future, and creates a cultural schism between the people who use Skip2 and those who don't, as reflected in the conflict between the narrator and their lover. </p><p>This story is unsettling as all get-out, and packs a terrifying punch for its short length. You won't soon forget it. </p><p><a href="https://clarkesworldmagazine.com/cristofari_01_24/" target="_blank">"Down the Waterfall,"</a> by Cecile Cristofari, is a time travel story that doesn't fall into the usual time-travel tropes. The protagonist doesn't want to change the past--she just wants to briefly travel down "the road not taken," and visit a person who died all too soon. </p><p><i>Her smile wavers. As much as she enjoys these meetings, she finds herself unnerved, at times, when strands of her mind wander in directions she doesn't mean to explore--another life, another rivulet of time, where this friendship of theirs would have taken a different form. She thinks of her husband and takes another sip of her coffee.</i></p><p>This is a quiet, lovely, bittersweet little story.</p><p><a href="https://clarkesworldmagazine.com/chi_01_24/" target="_blank">"Stars Don't Dream,"</a> by Chi Hui, translated by John Chu, was published in a Chinese SF magazine in 2022 and translated into English for this issue. The Chinese authors I've read in the past are often pretty thin on characterization, but thankfully that isn't the case with this story. This tells of a future where space exploration has been abandoned, and everyone on Earth spends their time in a virtual reality "dream tower" while their physical bodies are being cared for and carted around in robots. In this future, even babies are conceived in artificial wombs and cared for by robots. One of the characters is the one human who has contact with these babies:</p><p><i>These infants will eventually grow up. They will be sent to live by the side of every parent who ordered them. By then, they will no longer cry and scream. They will have been weaned, raised to be obedient, clever, and to satisfy others. What some parents order for their baby is the whole growth period service. For their entire lives, these babies never live by their parents’ side. They are weaned at the nursery, then are sent to youth camps all across the United States. There, robot instructors keep them company. The instructors have built-in expert knowledge of one hundred fifty kinds of child-rearing actions. This is sufficient to raise the babies to adulthood.</i></p><p>This future is kind of horrifying as well, even if it turns out hopeful at the end. This story's characters mount an expedition to Venus that ends up introducing life into the planet's poisonous atmosphere, which gives rise to intelligent life thousands of years later. (This story's timeline spans three hundred million years.) The entire theme of the story is while the universe and stars are cold and uncaring and don't dream, the life that arises does; and as that intelligent life states:</p><p><i>"Let's toast to possibilities," he says. "A toast to the universe that does not dream."</i></p><p><i>They all raise their glasses. Starlight ripples through each glass.</i></p><p><i>"To possibilities!"</i></p><p>This story, like a lot of Chinese fiction I've read, has an old-fashioned retro feel to it, with a great deal of classic "sensawunda." </p><p><a href="https://clarkesworldmagazine.com/vibbert_01_24/" target="_blank">"Rail Meat,"</a> by Marie Vibbert, is a yacht race with a twist--the yachts are skimming the stratosphere. Our protagonist, Ernestine, a thief, grifter and con artist, signs on to the races as "living ballast." This is another short, action-packed story, where the other main character, Rico, who joins the yacht races to win the heart of a millionaire yacht owner, discovers attaining his heart's desire may not be such a good thing after all. </p><p>Finally, we have <a href="https://clarkesworldmagazine.com/fields_01_24" target="_blank">"You Dream of the Hive,"</a> by C.M. Fields, another story that is not long but packs a helluva punch. This story uses the uncommon and tricky second-person narration in its depiction of a person trapped by an interdimensional hive mind, just rescued--and who wants to go back. For <i>Star Trek</i> fans, it's comparable to a drone wishing to return to the Borg:</p><p><i>Entering the Hive was like slipping into a warm bath, like listening to a church organ the size of a moon, like watching a starburst in a trillion colors, all at once. It was the embrace of ten thousand arms enfolding you into a community knit like the neurons in your brain. You did not understand the language of the Hive at first, but it gave you all you needed.</i></p><p>Like the best of the other stories in this issue, this story also has an edge of horror: more subtle than "Nothing of Value," to be sure, but just as unsettling in its final lines. </p><p>All in all, an outstanding issue of <i>Clarkesworld.</i> Issues like these are why I've been a subscriber for years now. </p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p>Bonnie McDanielhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03844134292228113704noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27323317.post-21658663865402060662024-02-23T09:23:00.001-07:002024-02-23T09:23:03.025-07:00Review: Tyranny of the Minority: Why American Democracy Reached the Breaking Point
<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/122769171" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px"><img src="https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1688418207l/122769171._SX98_.jpg" border="0" alt="Tyranny of the Minority: Why American Democracy Reached the Breaking Point" /></a>
<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/122769171">Tyranny of the Minority: Why American Democracy Reached the Breaking Point</a> by <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/597491">Steven Levitsky</a><br/>
My rating: <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/6279032541">4 of 5 stars</a>
<br /><br />
I only read non-fiction sporadically, but I think this is an important read for any American (and anyone in other countries who want a cautionary example about maintaining democracy). The authors drill down into the reasons democracies falter and authoritarian movements take hold, and highlight the peculiar and unique elements of the American system, constitution and people that make the titular "tyranny of the minority" possible. <br /><br />I want to highlight one paragraph that sums things up:<br /><br /><i>American democracy can only survive with a Republican Party that is capable of winning national majorities--one that can compete for votes in the cities and among younger and nonwhite citizens. Only when Republicans can legitimately win national elections again will their leaders' fears of multiracial democracy subside. Only then can we expect the party to abandon violent extremism and play by democratic rules, win or lose. For those things to happen, the Republicans must become a truly multiethnic party. Our institutions have weakened the GOP's incentive to change course in this way. And that's a serious problem. As long as the Republican Party can hold on to power without broadening beyond its radicalized core white Christian base, it will remain prone to the kind of extremism that imperils our democracy today.</i><br /><br />I remain pessimistic, given the current Trump-hijacked state of the Republican Party, that this will happen any time soon. But this book lays out a solid roadmap for the country's future, if the GOP can bring themselves to pay attention to it.
<br/><br/>
<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/6279032541">View all my reviews</a>
Bonnie McDanielhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03844134292228113704noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27323317.post-71283111327089537732024-02-20T10:34:00.001-07:002024-02-20T10:34:36.429-07:00Review: What Feasts at Night
<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/127306440" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px"><img src="https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1683668946l/127306440._SX98_.jpg" border="0" alt="What Feasts at Night" /></a>
<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/127306440">What Feasts at Night</a> by <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/7367300">T. Kingfisher</a><br/>
My rating: <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/6270335757">4 of 5 stars</a>
<br /><br />
This is the second novella in the Sworn Soldier series, following the adventures of Alex Easton, a retired soldier of the fictional country of Gallacia in the late 19th century. The previous book, <i>
<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/4629568135" rel="nofollow noopener">What Moves the Dead,</a>
</i> was one of the best books I read a couple of years ago, a takeoff of Poe's "The Fall of the House of Usher." This story features the return of Alex Easton, their traveling companion Angus and the fungal expert/Angus's girlfriend Eugenia Potter, and introduces some delightful new characters, including the grumpy Widow Botezatu and her grandson Bors. <br /><br />This story is a little longer than the previous one, and veers more towards the supernatural instead of the previous story's SF bent. In this case, the monster is the "moroi," a ghost that comes in the night, sits on your chest, and sucks your breath. The moroi killed the caretaker of Alex's Gallacian lodgehouse, Codrin, and threatens Alex and their friends. Alex throws down against the moroi at the climax, in an extended dream sequence that also weaves in the primary theme of the story: Alex's PTSD (here called "soldier's heart") and how they deal with it. <br /><br />This backstory of Alex's war experiences was mentioned in the first book, but really brought to the fore here. The characters and their relationships also are more of a driver in this book than the plot. Since we're visiting Alex's home country for the first time, the author provides plenty of vivid descriptions throughout:<br /><br /><i>Autumn was nearly spent, which meant that many of the trees had lost their leaves. You might think that would mean that the woods had opened up, but if you think that, you have likely never been to Gallacia. Serrated ranks of pine lined the road, with the bare branches of oaks thrusting out between them like arthritic fingers. The sky was the color of a lead slug and seemed barely higher than the trees themselves. Combined with the wagon ruts that left a ridge down the center of the road, I had the unpleasant feeling that I was riding straight down a giant throat.</i><br /><br />Alex Easton's droll, relatable voice definitely carries the reader along in this book, along with a wry, matter-of-fact sense of humor that had me laughing out loud at several points:<br /><br /><i>it probably helped that Miss Potter did not demand English cooking and ate heartily of all the Widow's dishes, passing praise via Angus or myself. The quality of our food improved markedly. It hadn't been bad before, but it had been fairly monotonous. Now we only had paprika sausage for every</i> third <i> meal. (We stole that from the Hungarians, bask when we tried to fight them and they beat us sensless. This is how Gallacia acquired most of its cuisine. The Widow made excellent paprika sausage, but one's bowels do require a few hours to recover now and again.)</i><br /><br />We find out a good deal more about Gallacia and its culture along the way. I don't think this book is quite as good, or as frightening, as <i>What Moves the Dead</i> (that book was enough to give anyone nightmares and look askance at mushrooms for a good long while). But the characters are appealing enough to make up for it. <br /><br /><br />
<br/><br/>
<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/6270335757">View all my reviews</a>
Bonnie McDanielhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03844134292228113704noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27323317.post-83796871166713792782024-02-15T12:01:00.001-07:002024-02-15T12:06:12.397-07:00Review: Exordia
<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/65213781" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px"><img src="https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1675695169l/65213781._SX98_.jpg" border="0" alt="Exordia" /></a>
<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/65213781">Exordia</a> by <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/5760737">Seth Dickinson</a><br/>
My rating: <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/6265338541">1 of 5 stars</a>
<br /><br />
I gave this book fifty pages before I gave up on it. It's supposed to be a multiverse-crossing, alien invasion story that also discusses philosophical concepts like free will and souls being the products of a physical brain's weaving together stories. This might have been interesting if the two main characters (a Kurdish refugee and an eight-headed snake-woman) weren't such unlikable monsters--I can stomach monsters in my books to an extent, but not these two. When I realized I didn't care in the least if the main characters murdered each other, that was it. I just received a brand-new novella by T. Kingfisher, and that sounds a helluva lot better than this.
<br/><br/>
<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/6265338541">View all my reviews</a>
Bonnie McDanielhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03844134292228113704noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27323317.post-56761581733406657262024-02-13T12:48:00.001-07:002024-02-13T12:49:20.672-07:00Review: The Tainted Cup
<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/150247395" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px"><img src="https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1689268335l/150247395._SX98_.jpg" border="0" alt="The Tainted Cup" /></a>
<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/150247395">The Tainted Cup</a> by <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/2916869">Robert Jackson Bennett</a><br/>
My rating: <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/6248862280">5 of 5 stars</a>
<br /><br />
Robert Jackson Bennett is pretty much an insta-buy for me, and this book ups his considerable game. This is a fascinating world set against a well-constructed puzzle box of a mystery that reveals some unpleasant cracks in this world's Empire, and a conspiracy that leads all the way to the Empire's equivalent of our 1%, the tremendously wealthy and influential clan Hazas. <br /><br />Our protagonist is Dinios Kol, an "engraver" who has been genetically engineered to have a perfect memory and total recall, working as an apprentice investigator to Anagosa Dolabra. The first chapter opens with him being called to an estate where a man has been killed, by the novel method of a plant erupting from his body and literally eating him up. This is our introduction to this world, with its extensive genetic engineering:<br /><br /><i>Which wasn't to say it was not opulent. Miniature mai-trees had been altered to grow down from the ceiling, acting as chandeliers--something I'd never seen before--their fruits full to bursting with the glowing little mai-worms, which cast a flickering blue light about us. I wondered if even the air was expensive in here, then saw it was: a massive kirpis mushroom had been built into the corner of every main room--a tall, black fungus built to suck in air, clean it, and exhale it out at a cooler temperature.</i><br /><br />This is made possible through the industry of "reagents" and "suffusions," substances grown and built to be ingested and change DNA in specific ways. This takes up tremendous amounts of land in the inner Rings of this Empire, but this entire process is based on the blood and bodies of the "leviathans," the monstrous kaiju of this world who emerge from the seas every year in the "wet season" and rampage through the Empire--or at least they did, until the massive seawalls were built to keep them out. <br /><br />This backstory and worldbuilding could have taken up literal chapters, but it is doled out in the precise fractions we need to serve the story. I am in awe of the author's economy in doing this, and at the same time making this complex and fascinating world understandable. As a reader I never felt lost, never had any WTF or head-scratching moments. Our focus is on the unfolding murder mystery and the gradual, inexorable raising of stakes, until the final confrontation when Ana reveals all--which takes place as another leviathan is coming ashore and triggering mass panic. This juxtaposition of the investigator Dolabra revealing who committed the murders and why, and the leviathan drawing ever closer, creates some almost unbearable suspense in the final chapters. <br /><br />Ana and Din are also well-drawn characters. Obviously they're based on Holmes and Watson, but Ana is a good deal more ruthless and predatory than Sherlock: she has incredible investigative abilities and also comes across as somewhere on the autism spectrum, since she wears blindfolds in public to avoid too much stimulation and is inclined to hide away in her house or room to stay away from people. Din, on the other hand, with his reading and writing difficulties, is meant to be dyslexic, I think. But his determination to pass his exams to become an Iudex apprentice, and his willingness to bend the rules to do so, marks him as the exact sort of assistant Ana needs. <br /><br />The mystery involves the Hazas clan and its hubris and greed, and the unthinking consequences it doles out to people considered beneath it in its pursuit of what it wants. This includes the province of Oypat, destroyed years ago by an experimental, fast-growing reagent called "dappleglass" that got away from the Engineers of Oypat, threatening to eat the entire province and its inhabitants, until Oypat had to be burned to the ground and locked away. The echoes of this crime and those who enabled it, and the revenge plot formulated by the survivors, is the focus of this story. There was apparently a neutralizing reagent created for dappleglass, but bureaucratic inertia (later discovered to be deliberate) doomed the entire province:<br /><br /><i>"And....what did the Preservation Boards do regarding Oypat?"<br /><br />"They moved quickly. Or....they tried to. But the cantons that would have to grow the reagents for the cure...Well, they brought many concerns. They protested how creating these new reagents could lead to environmental issues with all their other reagents and agriculture. They demanded tests and studies, wanting to ensure that there was no commingling or mutagenic possibilities."<br /><br />"I see," said Ana softly. "Then what happened?"<br /><br />"The process simply took too long. The dappleglass reached a critical point. It had devoured too much land. Too long a border for it to ever be properly neutralized. Like a tumor infecting the bone, or the tissue of the heart, it was too late. So we evacuated the canton, and then....then we applied a phalm oil burn."</i><br /><br />This book touches on current fears of genetic engineering run amuck and what might happen if it gets out of control, and the greed of anyone who thinks themselves better than others just because they are rich. It's a complex, absorbing story with a fascinating, horrifying world I would love to revisit again and again. <br />
<br/><br/>
<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/6248862280">View all my reviews</a>
Bonnie McDanielhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03844134292228113704noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27323317.post-53412250992456329102024-02-05T13:55:00.001-07:002024-02-05T13:55:41.355-07:00Review: The Tusks of Extinction
<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/146814600" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px"><img src="https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1683042962l/146814600._SX98_.jpg" border="0" alt="The Tusks of Extinction" /></a>
<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/146814600">The Tusks of Extinction</a> by <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/6447152">Ray Nayler</a><br/>
My rating: <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/6237877382">4 of 5 stars</a>
<br /><br />
This slender novella (112 pages) is full of ideas. Cloning mammoths (also woolly rhinos and other Ice Age animals); trying to re-create an extinct ecosystem in Siberia; mapping and downloading a person's consciousness and memories and uploading the record to an organic brain; widespread use of drones as pack animals/little spy machines; and even a mechanical device that straps to a sender's and receiver's temples that is basically a artificial telepathic/thought projector. <br /><br />It's a lot. This book, while absorbing, feels overstuffed. I don't say this often, but this story and ideas could have benefitted from expansion to a full length novel, to give the plot and characters some time to breathe. The ideas are certainly fascinating enough to support a book. <br /><br />The main theme of the story is the author's anger over the exploitation of the natural world, in this case the future extinction of elephants in the wild due to the ivory trade. There's no year given in the story, but it has to be several decades from now, perhaps as much as a century. One of the main characters, the elephant biologist Damira Khismatullina, is killed trying to defend her elephants; a year previously she had left a copy of her memories at the Mind Bank. Fifty years after her death, as cloned mammoths are struggling to survive in their Siberian preserve and wild elephants are extinct, she is resurrected and downloaded into a mammoth's body to serve as their matriarch and teach them to survive. <br /><br />There are two other main characters: Svyatoslav, a young boy participating in the killing of the mammoths with a group of poachers; and Vladimir, the husband of a "great white hunter" who has paid out an ungodly sum to hunt a male mammoth. This was deemed necessary by the preserve's director to support Moscow's "return on investment" (!) so the preserve and cloning of future inhabitants can continue. But Damira has other ideas about the whole thing, and when the poachers and hunters start shooting her mammoths, she leads them on a bloody revenge spree that ends up killing nearly all of the hunters. <br /><br />That's what I mean when I say this should have been a book. There's <i>so much</i> here, and by necessity we're focused on the tale of the mammoths in their preserve and those hunting them. There is no room for any wider look at this future world, the technology, politics, progression of climate change, etc. Even the characters, while fleshed out as much as the 112 pages allow, could have benefited from a longer story. The author's debut novel, <i>
<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/5085552240" rel="nofollow noopener">The Mountain in the Sea,</a>
</i> was a fascinating look at the discovery of intelligent octopuses and their culture, and this could have been equally interesting, delving into the culture of the mammoths and the ramifications of a former human leading them. <br /><br />That's not to say this book isn't worth reading, although the climax is a little rushed, and the ending is abrupt. But the future the author lays out here, and the ideas and concepts explored, are more than interesting enough to carry it.
<br/><br/>
<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/6237877382">View all my reviews</a>
Bonnie McDanielhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03844134292228113704noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27323317.post-36089889689028686192024-02-03T22:03:00.001-07:002024-02-03T22:05:11.127-07:00Review: The Reformatory
<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/62919847" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px"><img src="https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1686761184l/62919847._SX98_.jpg" border="0" alt="The Reformatory" /></a>
<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/62919847">The Reformatory</a> by <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/23417">Tananarive Due</a><br/>
My rating: <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/6232653633">5 of 5 stars</a>
<br /><br />
This book was difficult to read--but it is so, so good. It's the first time I've picked up a Tananarive Due novel, but it won't be the last. <br /><br />This is the story of Robert Stephens Jr., a twelve-year-old African American boy in the fictional Florida town of Gracetown in 1950, who defends his sister Gloria against a white boy making unwanted advances and as a result is sent to the Gracetown School for Boys, the titular Reformatory. The book goes into the horrors Robert suffers there and the background of the Reformatory is gradually revealed. There Robert sees the ghosts, or "haints," of boys who died thirty years ago as a result of a fire set by the sociopathic superintendent, Fenton Haddock. The horrors continue throughout the book: the dehumanization and persecution of African Americans in the Jim Crow South is accurately and fully depicted here, and the horrors inflicted on Robbie and the other boys by white people far outweigh the supernatural horrors. <br /><br />There are two storylines in this book: Robbie's ordeal at the Reformatory, and the parallel efforts of his sister Gloria to get him out. Gloria and Robbie's mother died before the story starts, and their union-organizing father was falsely accused of the rape of a white woman and had to flee to Chicago. Gloria is left to try to rescue her brother on her own, but she is aided by many other people: her godmother Miz Lottie and Lottie's adopted sons; Marian Hamilton, a volunteer at the Reformatory who meets Robbie and his doomed friend, Redbone, while volunteering to teach the Negro band at the school; John Dorsey, the lawyer based on the author's own father, a Civil Rights-era lawyer, and others. All these characters are fully drawn, complex people. Even the "haint," Blue, who manipulates Robbie into freeing the ghosts of the boys who died thirty years ago and luring Haddock to his death, has depth and nuance despite his alien, undead way of thinking. The pacing is expert and the final chapters, tracing Robbie's escape, his pursuit by Haddock and the Reformatory's dogs, and his final confrontation with Haddock, are almost unbearable in their tension and suspense. <br /><br />Apparently the Reformatory is based on the real-life Dozier School for Boys, where another Robert Stephens, the author's relative, was killed in the 1930's. Due has taken her family history and spun it into an at times incredibly hard to read but important novel. This book provides a stark lesson that as a country we haven't left Jim Crow as far behind us as we like to think. The scene where Gloria and Miz Lottie are pulled over by the sheriff, the questioning they have to endure and the suspicion immediately cast upon them by the white deputies for merely being black women driving a car, could be played out in any number of similar traffic stops today. <br /><br />This is a horror novel, yes, but it is also a thoroughly American novel, to our shame. Hopefully by casting some light on these terrible things of our past (and present), the author can nudge America, and particularly the white population of America, to acknowledge a past that is still not past, a past we must come to terms with. We owe it to the memory of the real-life Robert Stephens to try.
<br/><br/>
<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/6232653633">View all my reviews</a>
Bonnie McDanielhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03844134292228113704noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27323317.post-47212238491354281192024-01-29T14:05:00.001-07:002024-01-29T14:06:24.733-07:00Review: All the Hidden Paths
<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/65213171" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px"><img src="https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1671530058l/65213171._SX98_.jpg" border="0" alt="All the Hidden Paths" /></a>
<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/65213171">All the Hidden Paths</a> by <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/3299538">Foz Meadows</a><br/>
My rating: <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/6194964329">4 of 5 stars</a>
<br /><br />
This second book in the Tithenai Chronicles takes a slightly different tack than the first, concentrating more on the romance and court politics than the magical elements. Once more, the protagonist Velasin is in danger, threatened because of his marriage to a Tithena nobleman, Caethari. <br /><br />There is a lot of character work in this story, because Vel and Cae, despite being thrown together in a political marriage that neither of them wanted, find themselves falling in love. Velasin in particular, coming from a country where same-sex relationships/marriages are frowned upon and gay people are discriminated against, has to do a lot of growing to adjust to this new situation and his expanding feelings for Caethari. Throw in an assassin after the two of them and a separate person sent by the king of Ralia (Vel's former country) to break up his marriage, and he has a lot to deal with. <br /><br />But Vel is clever and politically savvy, and he is able to navigate the treacherous waters at the Tithenai Court and secure a place for himself and his husband. He also has to deal with his own feelings and the completely new situation he finds himself in: a secure relationship in a place accepting of gay people, where he can be open with his love for Cae. Caethari, on the other hand, has to cope with the trauma Velasin experienced in the previous book, as well as his own countrymen not accepting his marriage and working against it. Layer a murder mystery on top of all this and we have an intriguing and complicated stew with many different plot threads to deal with.<br /><br />The author does all this with aplomb. They also have a deft hand with character work (page 364, when Velasin realizes how he feels about Caethari):<br /><br /><i>Everything around me slowed and blurred, as if I were an insect incased in tree-sap. My heart wrenched erratically against my ribs, for all the world like a leashed dog straining to greet a friend, and I realized, in a bright and sudden unfurling of truth, that I loved him. Oh, I thought stupidly. The realization washed through me with all the sweet shivering shock of brandy drunk on an empty stomach. I stared at my husband, at the desperate worry in his face, and felt my blood beating within me like wings. I'd thought myself in love before, but in that moment, the strength of my feelings for Cae cast every prior romance in the retroactive light of infatuation. I had yearned for love, had hoped for, cherished and feared it in nearly equal measure, but all of that paled before my sudden certainty that, if my heart was a ship, Caethari had become its harbor.</i><br /><br />There's some lovely writing in this book, and a strong sense of pace and balance. The romance does not crowd out the political shenanigans and vice versa. The main characters have depth and nuance, and while I would love an entire book about Vel's servant/best friend Markel, he does make a good showing here. I don't know if this is the final book in the series, but if so, it wraps things up very nicely.
<br/><br/>
<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/6194964329">View all my reviews</a>
Bonnie McDanielhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03844134292228113704noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27323317.post-17115042569350838322024-01-22T14:17:00.003-07:002024-01-22T14:34:59.825-07:00Review: Iron Flame
<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/90202302" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px;"><img alt="Iron Flame" border="0" src="https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1687463048l/90202302._SX98_.jpg" /></a>
<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/90202302">Iron Flame</a> by <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/7539785">Rebecca Yarros</a><br />
My rating: <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/5709430739">3 of 5 stars</a>
<br /><br />
As far as I can tell, the first book of the Empyrean series, <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/5630203603" rel="nofollow noopener">Fourth Wing,</a> started the whole "romantasy" craze (in fact, Goodreads invented a whole new "romantasy" category for the Goodreads Choice Awards last year, which <i>Fourth Wing</i> of course won). This book is the second in the series--of a projected five books, according to what I've read--and it is a honking doorstopper of a volume at over 600 pages.<br /><br />This is the story of Navarre and their dragon riders, and their war with both gryphon riders and evil mages who drain magic from the land (and people, killing them). This war was first fought over 600 years ago, and afterwards Navarre retreated behind its borders, sealing them with magic to protect both its people and its dragons. They also set up a brutal war college, Basgiath, to train (and weed out) potential dragon riders to continue the fight. The protagonist, the general's daugter Violet Sorrengail, is sent against her will to Basgiath and becomes a rider, in the process falling in love with the ruthless wingleader Xaden Riorsen and discovering the truth behind the war. <br /><br />To be honest, I didn't like this book as well as the first. There are good things about it--the action scenes are suspenseful and well written as usual, and I appreciated the deepening of the worldbuilding and history, and the central mystery of exactly what happened during the first war with the evil "venin" centuries ago. The dragons, especially Violet's two, grumpy Tairn and moody adolescent Andarna, are well drawn. However, this story began to drag. The series is much better when it focuses on the world of Navarre and the war plot, and the romance between Xaden and Violet just drags it down. I mean, Yarros writes explicit sex scenes tolerably well, but I don't need more than one or two to get the point across, you know? And their ongoing trust/relationship drama (she doesn't trust him because he won't reveal his secrets etc) got tiresome after a while. <br /><br />Also, in this book Violet begins to feel a little....over the top. Part of that may be because the series is written from her first-person point of view. But after a while, it seems like she is the only one who can come up with the near-miraculous solutions to solve their problems, even though she is a second-year cadet and is surrounded by all sort of military people and strategists who would presumably have ideas of their own. Also, the book's climax--where Violet realizes her second dragon Andarna is the "seventh" breed of dragon that can restart Basgiath's wardstone and save the day, and she herself is some special super-strong Chosen One Andarna has been waiting for--had me rolling my eyes a bit. "Chosen one" tropes are also getting tiresome. <br /><br />All this made this 600-page doorstop a bit of a slog, despite the fast, almost frantic pacing. I think future books would do better to be about half its length, or many readers (including this one) might drop out.
<br /><br />
<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/5709430739">View all my reviews</a>
Bonnie McDanielhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03844134292228113704noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27323317.post-2890127795324025572024-01-16T12:27:00.001-07:002024-01-16T12:28:11.625-07:00Review: Generation Ship
<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/63876699" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px"><img src="https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1675640149l/63876699._SX98_.jpg" border="0" alt="Generation Ship" /></a>
<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/63876699">Generation Ship</a> by <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/17022421">Michael Mammay</a><br/>
My rating: <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/6141179669">3 of 5 stars</a>
<br /><br />
I ended up liking this book, but my approval is a bit...tepid. That's because despite its being nominally "science fiction," it is rather light on the science. Especially with the setting of a 250-year-old generation ship, which is a dicey proposition at best, and there is precious little info given as to how this ship actually works. The author is far more concerned with shipboard politics, factions and revolutions. This overriding theme runs through the first three-quarters of the book, and the sudden turn in the last chapters to a tale of first contact is somewhat disconcerting. Not that the aliens found on the planet aren't interesting, but it feels like we should have spent a lot more time with them instead of all the political machinations. <br /><br />The characters are also not delved into in any great depth. For example, one of several viewpoint characters, scientist Sheila Jackson, is written as if she is somewhere on the autism spectrum, but that's not explored in any detail. That aspect of her personality would be important to the plot, and it feels strange that it's not addressed. The characters are also not differentiated enough to make a lasting impression and became hard to tell apart after a while, even with chapter headings stating which character is taking center stage for the chapter. <br /><br />Bottom line: this book was pleasant enough for what it is, but it is also eminently forgettable. I really like my generation ship space operas to have better characters and science. <br /><br />
<br/><br/>
<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/6141179669">View all my reviews</a>
Bonnie McDanielhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03844134292228113704noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27323317.post-6367822165527189652024-01-06T20:32:00.001-07:002024-01-06T20:35:18.813-07:00Review: After World
<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/176443640" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px"><img src="https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1686503301l/176443640._SX98_.jpg" border="0" alt="After World" /></a>
<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/176443640">After World</a> by <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/7082295">Debbie Urbanski</a><br/>
My rating: <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/6128567137">2 of 5 stars</a>
<br /><br />
This is one weird book. I'd almost classify it as a literary writer's idea of what a dystopian science fiction future should look like, except the writer's bio says she's published SF stories before (in <i>The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy,</i> no less). It's definitely experimental: it has almost no plot and a non-linear narrative, and more than one page is taken up with seemingly random dribbles and drabs. (See: page 317, where the artificial intelligence that has named itself Ennis, and who the reader gradually realizes is the book's narrator, says "I erase Sen's source documents from the DHAP servers, as they are no longer necessary to her or to me--" and then proceeds to list <i>all</i> of said files, for the next two pages.)<br /><br />It's also a depressing book, as Ennis the "storyworker" is chronicling the last days of Sen Anon, the last human alive on earth after a deliberately induced sterilization virus that causes the extinction of humans and the collapse of civilization. It takes place at the end of this century, when climate change is wreaking havoc, species are going extinct at the rate of a dozen per day, and the only solution, according to the artificial intelligence behind Jenninet, is for humans to take themselves out of the ecosystem. Most of the 12 billion people alive are digitally mapped and uploaded to the virtual reality known as the titular "After World," and following Sen's death from starvation, the Digital Human Archive Project is completed and Afterworld is begun. <br /><br />Only thing is, as the reader gradually realizes, this "solution" is forced on the human race as the ultimate genocide. We never find out who engineered the sterilization virus, but the uncomfortable implication is that it is the artificial intelligences running Afterworld. This huge issue is never explored and barely mentioned, as the author's focus is on how people (primarily Sen and her two mothers) are reacting to the end of the world, as well as the gradual awakening to sentience of the storyworker Ennis, who falls into a somewhat creepy love/obsession with Sen. The book hops, skips and jumps around in time and place, as it talks about humanity dying and uploading, and also discusses previous speculative fiction works dealing with this same subject and how they did not at all predict what actually happened. This is all extremely meta, even navel-gazing (at one point there is a reference to a presumably real-life article written by the book's author, under her real name). <br /><br />If you don't like experimental fiction, you won't like this. I barely finished it, and indeed read the last half in a train-wreck state of mind, shaking my head at what I was encountering. The book I started after finishing this is a plain old-fashioned space opera with an actual <i>plot</i> and <i>story,</i> something I badly needed following this book.
<br/><br/>
<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/6128567137">View all my reviews</a>
Bonnie McDanielhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03844134292228113704noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27323317.post-2706133068003589622024-01-04T13:06:00.001-07:002024-01-04T13:07:43.343-07:00Review: Clarkesworld Magazine Issue 207
<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/203054749" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px"><img src="https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1701457380l/203054749._SX98_.jpg" border="0" alt="Clarkesworld Magazine Issue 207" /></a>
<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/203054749">Clarkesworld Magazine Issue 207</a> by <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/4005010">Neil Clarke</a><br/>
My rating: <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/6126837713">4 of 5 stars</a>
<br /><br />
Another stellar issue of <i>Clarkesworld.</i> Notable stories in this issue:<br /><br />"Thireen Ways of Looking at a Cyborg," Samara Auman, written in the first-person POV of an intelligent crow and its murder mourning the person who rescued them from a lab. This is a beautiful, sad story about grief, loss, and moving on. <br /><br />"In Memories We Drown," Kelsea Yu, a post-apocalyptic story about a team of researchers trapped in a habitat on the ocean bottom after an apparent surface apocalyptic event. This is another sad story of loss (which is a bit of a theme in this issue) but it's lovely. <br /><br />"Kill That Groundhog," Fu Quiang, translated by Andy Dudak, is a hard-SF story by a Chinese writer dealing with a group of people trapped in a time loop and their efforts to break free. The ending is not at all what you would expect. <br /><br />"Eight or Die," Thoraiya Dyer, is the second part of a serial that began in the last issue. You really need to have read Part 1 to make any sense of it, but it's an absorbing story of an alien species and culture and the human who is tasked with helping to hunt down a rogue alien. <br /><br />If you like these stories, please consider subscribing. Go <a href="https://clarkesworldmagazine.com/subscribe/" rel="nofollow noopener">here.</a> The magazine was hit hard by Amazon's recent boneheaded decison to discontinue direct Kindle subscriptions, and they could use the help.
<br/><br/>
<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/6126837713">View all my reviews</a>
Bonnie McDanielhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03844134292228113704noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27323317.post-29039869680479266572024-01-01T14:20:00.001-07:002024-01-01T14:30:16.271-07:00Review: Clarkesworld Magazine, Issue 206, November 2023
<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/201294901" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px"><img src="https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1698888485l/201294901._SX98_.jpg" border="0" alt="Clarkesworld Magazine, Issue 206, November 2023" /></a>
<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/201294901">Clarkesworld Magazine, Issue 206, November 2023</a> by <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/4005010">Neil Clarke</a><br/>
My rating: <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/6109037465">4 of 5 stars</a>
<br /><br />
This was definitely one of the better issues of <i>Clarkesworld</i> this year. The highlights:<br /><br />"To Carry You Inside You," Tia Tashiro, is incredibly the author's first published story. This is the tale of a former child actor who ages out of her former profession and becomes a surrogate for dead people (via memories uploaded into a port in her neck, allowing the dead person's digital ghost to take possession of her body and visit former families). Of course, one of her dead "clients" figures out how to take over her body, and a titanic struggle follows. This story is told in second person present tense, which is a damn difficult thing to pull off. That this is Tashiro's first story augers well for her future. <br /><br />"The Parts That Make Me," Louise Hughes, is only three pages, 1120 words, but this short-short story packs quite the punch. It's a "ship of Theseus" tale, of a freebot who loses pieces of itself and the engineer on board its current ship who brings one important part back. The themes of identity and memory, what makes up the most important parts of our lives and what we wish to hang on to, are all touched on in this thought-provoking story. <br /><br />"Eddies Are the Worst," Bo Balder, is the somewhat grim tale of a future of plummeting birthrates and labor shortages, and a brother and sister who are trying to save up enough money to pay for a clone baby. <br /><br />"Bird-Girl Builds a Machine," Hannah Yang, is a closed-loop time travel story about a mother and daughter, and the machine the mother is building. <br /><br />"Thin Ice," Kemi Ashing-Giwa, is to me an hard science fiction retelling of <i>The Thousand and One Nights,</i> with its narrator (and this is another second person viewpoint story) the last survivor of their clan, on a dying planet with a cyborg invader who steals their clan's culture and stories to transmit to its superiors. <br /><br />As always, please go to <i>Clarkesworld's</i> <a href="https://clarkesworldmagazine.com/" rel="nofollow noopener">website</a> and <a href="https://clarkesworldmagazine.com/subscribe/" rel="nofollow noopener">subscribe</a> if you can. I subscribe to the print edition. This magazine, like many others, has been hit hard by Amazon's idiotic decision to end its Kindle subscription program, and they could use the help. <br /><br />
<br/><br/>
<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/6109037465">View all my reviews</a>
Bonnie McDanielhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03844134292228113704noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27323317.post-79762754661911406912023-12-30T20:09:00.001-07:002023-12-30T20:11:44.521-07:00Review: Only Good Enemies
<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/128517528" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px"><img src="https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1681226885l/128517528._SX98_.jpg" border="0" alt="Only Good Enemies" /></a>
<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/128517528">Only Good Enemies</a> by <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/580315">Jennifer Estep</a><br/>
My rating: <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/6074074977">2 of 5 stars</a>
<br /><br />
Jennifer Estep usually writes urban and epic fantasy, so this pulp science fiction space opera romance series is something of a departure for her. She called the first book, <i>
<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/5055082542" rel="nofollow noopener">Only Bad Options,</a>
</i> the "book of her heart," and while I can't deny the sentiment if that's what she feels, the fact remains that this series is simply not as good as the Gin Blanco urban fantasy books. <br /><br />That is mostly due to the fact that it feels like a quaint throwback, promoting concepts (mainly telepathy/telekinesis/and such, and the protagonist Vesper Quill referring to her own powers as "seer magic") that have fallen out of favor in the genre. The "stormswords" are also thinly disguised lightsabers, and the FTL travel is referred to as "pinpoint travel." After a while I started rolling my eyes and muttering, "oh fer frak's sake, just call it hyperspace and be done with it." Also, all those Magma/Temperate/etc planets seem to be awfully close together--the sense that <i>The Expanse</i> series did so well, of space being <i>really big,</i> is nonexistent in this book.<br /><br />In the end, what makes this book readable is the characters: Vesper Quill, Kyrion Caldaren and Zane Zimmer, and the first two's gradually deepening relationship. The romance takes far more of a center stage here than the first book, with Vesper and Kyrion's "truebond," or psychic link, and what that really means. Vesper also has a satisfying showdown with the mother who abandoned her, and the very last line of the book gives some unexpected insight into the character of Zane Zimmer. <br /><br />I'll be frank: the worldbuilding here is marginal at best, and could have been done much better. I am a sucker for complicated worldbuilding, and unfortunately that is absent in this book. But it's a good enough diversion for a few days.
<br/><br/>
<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/6074074977">View all my reviews</a>
Bonnie McDanielhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03844134292228113704noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27323317.post-2641088729205735412023-12-30T11:06:00.001-07:002023-12-30T11:16:39.734-07:00Review: Luna Station Quarterly Issue 056
<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/202412432" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px"><img src="https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1700440683l/202412432._SX98_.jpg" border="0" alt="Luna Station Quarterly Issue 056" /></a>
<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/202412432">Luna Station Quarterly Issue 056</a> by <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/6160810">Jennifer Lyn Parsons</a><br/>
My rating: <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/6097998559">3 of 5 stars</a>
<br /><br />
I subscribe to the print issue of this magazine (yay publishers/editors who still provide print issues!) and while I enjoyed reading it, I don't think this issue was up to the standards of those I have read in the past. The theme of this issue is "horses," with a few unicorns sneaking in. There's nothing wrong with the theme, but I've just read better horse/unicorn stories.<br /><br />The exceptions are "Horse Girls Til the End," by SK Marre, a horse/kelpie/horror story told entirely through phone text boxes (which must have been a challenge to format); "High To Kolob On a Cosmic Clydesdale," by Katrina Carruth, about a young woman rejecting her mother's religious cult and getting to confront not only her dead mother but her mother's God; and my favorite story in the issue, "Rain Town," by Mary J. Daley. This story contained some interesting worldbuilding that I would love to see expanded further, possibly to book length. <br /><br />Of the stories I wasn't as fond of, they seemed to have one main problem: the endings. Their endings seemed to fade away without any sense of resolution or coming to a firm stopping place. Also--and this is more of a personal quirk--the formatting took some getting used to. It's set along the lines of online magazines, block paragraphs separated by white space. I would have preferred the traditional print-book indented paragraphs look (seeing that this was an actual print issue). <br /><br />This isn't a dealbreaker, however. Jennifer Lyn Parsons, the editor, has been publishing this women-identified-authors only magazine for quite a few years, and I am glad it exists. The physical print issue is a lovely thing, and the magazine as a whole is worth supporting.
<br/><br/>
<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/6097998559">View all my reviews</a>
Bonnie McDanielhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03844134292228113704noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27323317.post-92218084883131861892023-12-22T12:21:00.001-07:002023-12-22T12:22:20.871-07:00Review: A City on Mars: Can We Settle Space, Should We Settle Space, and Have We Really Thought This Through?
<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/125084292" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px"><img src="https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1685367782l/125084292._SX98_.jpg" border="0" alt="A City on Mars: Can We Settle Space, Should We Settle Space, and Have We Really Thought This Through?" /></a>
<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/125084292">A City on Mars: Can We Settle Space, Should We Settle Space, and Have We Really Thought This Through?</a> by <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/16534466">Kelly Weinersmith</a><br/>
My rating: <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/6055547239">4 of 5 stars</a>
<br /><br />
This is a sobering, thoroughly researched tome that throws quite a bit of cold water on the notion that we will be settling the Moon or Mars anytime soon. Not that it can't eventually be done (the authors think) but the technology will have to advance leaps and bounds beyond what it is at present (with the question of reproduction in space being among the thorniest). It will also be hella expensive no matter the level of technology, and at the end of this book I found myself wondering if the trillions of dollars it would take would be better staying on this planet to deal with the crisis of climate change. <br /><br />This book tackles quite a few serious challenges to space settlement, with the longest and most unexpected section dealing with space law. This took me by surprise. I'd always thought the obstacles to overcome in terms of sheer survival would be the worst, but the laws and customs governing space settlement on other celestial bodies, and how they would need to be renegotiated as other countries on Earth get launch capability, are in some ways even more daunting. This gets more than a little into the weeds, but it was fascinating. <br /><br />All these issues are serious, so the authors do a fine job of lightening things up. This book is <i>funny</i> in many places, which is a welcome contrast to the sometimes depressing subject matter. For example, when discussing the requirements of space suits and the dangers of decompression:<br /><br /><i>So why don't astronauts get bendy, choky, staggery, and deathy when they don space suits? Because they prebreathe pure oxygen before space walks, removing most of the nitrogen from their blood. No nitrogen, no nitrogen bubbles. Movies may have led you to believe heroic astronauts can slip on a space suit and leap to the rescue, but under current designs this would result in Brad Pitt clutching his joints and shambling to a very painful (if handsome) death.</i><br /><br />And discussing the possible commercialization of space:<br /><br /><i>Our perspective in this book is that in the wildly alien environment of space, human nature will remain decidedly earthy. So while we don't know whether your grandchildren's grandchildren will inhabit underground Martian caves or floating cells of kombucha skin in the Venusian skies, we can be certain that wherever they are in the cosmos, Ronald McDonald will find them.</i><br /><br />And finally, talking about space food/drink:<br /><br /><i>And what of Earth's most beloved drinks--wine, beer and liquor? There has been at least one tipple on another world. It happened in 1969, when Buzz Aldrin took Communion in the</i> Eagle <i>lander. That's one small sip for a man, one giant leap for man wined.</i> <br /><br />The narrative is also leavened by many cute little cartoons from the co-author, Zach. (Although some of them are so tiny it almost takes a magnifying glass to read.) This is not a deeply scientific book but rather a pop-science book, but it is very entertaining and thought-provoking and is worth your time. <br /><br /><br /><br />
<br/><br/>
<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/6055547239">View all my reviews</a>
Bonnie McDanielhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03844134292228113704noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27323317.post-10175598983840791402023-12-15T09:21:00.001-07:002023-12-15T09:22:12.639-07:00Review: Magic Claims
<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/109554429" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px"><img src="https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1676060503l/109554429._SX98_.jpg" border="0" alt="Magic Claims" /></a>
<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/109554429">Magic Claims</a> by <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/21748">Ilona Andrews</a><br/>
My rating: <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/6045399641">3 of 5 stars</a>
<br /><br />
The long-running Kate Daniels urban fantasy series has shifted from traditional to indie publishing, as the author has enough fans to make it viable (me among them, as I bought this book from their website). I prefer my smaller mass-market paperbacks (a dying breed nowadays), but this book is attractive and well-designed, with an excellent cover. The story within is a bit shorter than some of the previous entries in the series, but it does what it was supposed to do: advance the stories of Kate, Curran and Conlan.<br /><br />Kate undergoes some nice character work in this story. She realizes she cannot keep turning away from the power in her blood, even though she is afraid she will turn out like her father Roland, the magical tyrant Nimrod of history. But though both she and Curran have fled Atlanta and the shapeshifter Pack, Kate knows they will never be left alone. They are too powerful and cannot live as normal people (or at least as "normal" as can be in this magic-infested, post-magical-apocalypse world) to raise their son. So, for Curran's and Conlan's sake, Kate accepts the inevitable: she must exercise her power and claim a territory. To do that she needs allies, which she begins gathering in this book. <br /><br />This character epiphany dovetails neatly with the plot: the denizens of a neighboring town, Penderton, seek out Kate and Curran for help. Some evil in the nearby magical woods has been demanding human sacrifices from the town as a tribute. Kate and Curran are offered several thousand acres near the town they can develop as their own personal fortress if they take care of this problem, and they agree to do so. This involves a hella climactic fight with Kate going all-in on her powers. They are going up against a group of prehistoric shapeshifters and fae, which is an interesting new element to the worldbuilding. <br /><br />At the end of this story, Kate and Curran are in a new place and circumstances that should prove fertile ground for future stories, if the author(s) decide to continue. I hope they do.
<br/><br/>
<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/6045399641">View all my reviews</a>
Bonnie McDanielhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03844134292228113704noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27323317.post-13354497066087431752023-12-13T15:03:00.001-07:002023-12-13T15:03:37.868-07:00Review: The Lost Cause
<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/65213928" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px"><img src="https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1683246232l/65213928._SX98_.jpg" border="0" alt="The Lost Cause" /></a>
<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/65213928">The Lost Cause</a> by <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/12581">Cory Doctorow</a><br/>
My rating: <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/6034505484">4 of 5 stars</a>
<br /><br />
This book is very political and full of various environmental and anti-authoritarian messaging, so if that sort of thing turns you off, you should skip it altogether. I found it an interesting near-future look at what the world might turn into, if we ("we" being the people in the USA) can get rid of all the old white authoritarian dinosaurs who are holding back progress. <br /><br />By "getting rid of" I don't mean killing them, although a satisfying number of the antagonists in this story get their asses hauled off to jail at the end. Unfortunately, that ending is also bittersweet and more than a little depressing, even if it is a logical outgrowth of the story and the damage that has been done in-universe. <br /><br />This story takes place approximately 25-30 years in the future, after an alternate-history run of Democratic presidents that usher in a Green New Deal that is finally making some progress against climate change. Of course, the effects are settling in by then, as evidenced by all the ways the characters are building seawalls and moving coastal cities away from the rising waters. Our protagonist is Brooks Palazzo, a young man just graduating from high school who after the deaths of his parents has been living for the past ten years with his grandfather. Said grandfather is a racist, xenophobic member of a "Maga club," (the originator of this phrase is never mentioned, but the toxic beliefs and followers he spawned are very much a part of this story) and the plot details Brooks and his friends fighting against their attempts to start a civil war to bring down all the advances the country is making. <br /><br />The author does try to explore the worldview of the Maga clubs. They're still pretty much assholes, though:<br /><br /><i>The Maga Clubs were really feeling their oats. With Bennett in the White House, they were convinced their long nightmare was ending and with it, the obligation to look after one another and acknowledge that the world is a shared space full of living, breathing humans who deserved the same happiness and comfort that you did. They just hated that idea, as I well understood from endless nonconsensual conversations with Gramps and his pals.</i><br /><br />But nobody is completely good or bad in this story. Brooks' pals also have their flaws, including believing too much in cryptocurrency and libertarianism. There are all kinds of completing political views and philosophies shown here, and it's kind of fun digging into them. This is a sort of coming of age story, as by the end Brooks realizes what he wants to do with his life (joining the so-called Blue Helmet Corps, who work in various endangered coastal cities to help climate refugees). <br /><br />This is probably a bit of a marmite book; any reader who doesn't appreciate not-at-all-subtle political messaging won't like this much. I enjoyed it, but your mileage may vary.
<br/><br/>
<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/6034505484">View all my reviews</a>
Bonnie McDanielhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03844134292228113704noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27323317.post-53971705040479790442023-12-12T10:16:00.001-07:002023-12-12T10:17:59.222-07:00Review: Out There Screaming: An Anthology of New Black Horror
<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/142392376" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px"><img src="https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1689093687l/142392376._SX98_.jpg" border="0" alt="Out There Screaming: An Anthology of New Black Horror" /></a>
<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/142392376">Out There Screaming: An Anthology of New Black Horror</a> by <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/17491364">Jordan Peele</a><br/>
My rating: <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/6034510446">3 of 5 stars</a>
<br /><br />
I generally like John Joseph Adams' editing work (he's also listed as an editor for this book, in tiny print under Jordan Peele's name), but this anthology is rather uneven. I understand that the intent was not only to present horror stories, but as the title says: <i>Black</i> horror stories, which may focus on a version of horror (i.e. the fallout of slavery and this country's ongoing racism and white supremacy) that is different than the usual. I have no quibble with that, and indeed, that is a major reason I wanted to read this. Unfortunately, many of the stories with these themes are just so-so. A couple of them are downright depressing, ending with death, destruction, and no hope. Which is to be expected in a horror anthology, but it doesn't make those particular stories any more pleasant to read. <br /><br />However, there is one story--the very last one in the anthology--which is worth the price of admission all by itself. This is "Origin Story," by Tochi Onyebuchi. This story will hit you like a gut punch. It's written as a short play (and I would love to see it staged as such) with four speaking characters, White Boys #1-4, going through a whole litany of appalling white entitlement and the raw emotions accompanying it. It's scary and disgusting and so, so applicable to the USA, especially giving this country's growing racism and anti-semitism. This story will go on my list of the best stories of the year. <br /><br />Otherwise, I think this anthology is worth reading just to get the perspectives of many of today's Black speculative fiction writers. But do not miss "Origin Story."
<br/><br/>
<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/6034510446">View all my reviews</a>
Bonnie McDanielhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03844134292228113704noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27323317.post-41365993721840775452023-11-27T15:01:00.001-07:002023-11-27T15:01:48.334-07:00Review: A Stranger in the Citadel
<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/139595692" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px"><img src="https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1688422431l/139595692._SX98_.jpg" border="0" alt="A Stranger in the Citadel" /></a>
<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/139595692">A Stranger in the Citadel</a> by <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/107891">Tobias S. Buckell</a><br/>
My rating: <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/5995019387">2 of 5 stars</a>
<br /><br />
This book was a bit disappointing, and the reason for that is the sketchy worldbuilding. It's a takeoff of <i>Fahrenheit 451</i> set in the far future, and a very weird far future at that. It starts out with a fantasy feel, but clues are gradually dropped to make the reader realize that this is a story of humanity separated from its home planet, placed in some sort of dystopian "preserve" where all their needs are taken care of....as long as they give up literacy and reading. <br /><br />What bugs me about this setup is that it's never fully explained. The reader doesn't know who put humanity there, or what "there" even is....there's a scene where the two protagonists climb up to the "rim of the world," and look over the edge through the clouds at a fist-sized Earth far below. Which almost sounds like some sort of Dyson sphere encircling the planet? Except that would cut off sunlight from Earth, and it would be dead. <br /><br />I understand the background and worldbuilding is not the focus of this story. This is a tale of what happens to humanity when their stories and knowledge are taken away from them and they are given a life with no needs or struggles (except that humanity, being what it is, starts separating into the have, the have-nots, the privileged rulers and the downtrodden ruled anyway). The second main protagonist, Ishmael (I kept waiting for him to say, "Call me Ishmael," but the author showed a bit of restraint), is the titular "Stranger in the Citadel," the librarian and gatherer of old forgotten knowledge whose existence is forbidden. He is captured and brought to the city of Ninetha, and presented to its ruler, the Lord Musketer. His youngest daughter, Lilith, is the main protagonist and narrator, the person who at first believes wholeheartedly in the gods' orders of "You shall not suffer a librarian to live," but undergoes a painful awakening. <br /><br />Which is all well and good, and Lilith undergoes a nice character arc. The problem for me is without sufficient worldbuilding to provide context for the story, it kind of fell flat. The "archangel" the characters end up battling at the climax (which sounded like some sort of librarian-hunter android), who has pursued Ishmael and Lilith throughout the book, provides a few clues that only create more frustrating questions. The story is also extremely fast-paced, dialogue-heavy and description-light, which is appropriate for the Audible Original version it was first created as. But I wish that when it was made into a print version, the author had slowed down and expanded the background so the story would make more sense. <br /><br />As it is, there are glimmers of something interesting, but the story does not go into the depth necessary to bring it out. Which is too bad, as I think that could have made for a better book.
<br/><br/>
<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/5995019387">View all my reviews</a>
Bonnie McDanielhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03844134292228113704noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27323317.post-29794613751999503062023-11-21T12:18:00.001-07:002023-11-21T12:19:17.821-07:00Review: System Collapse
<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/65211701" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px"><img src="https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1674575978l/65211701._SX98_.jpg" border="0" alt="System Collapse" /></a>
<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/65211701">System Collapse</a> by <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/87305">Martha Wells</a><br/>
My rating: <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/5630209408">4 of 5 stars</a>
<br /><br />
This is the seventh book in an immensely popular series that basically resurrected the author's career. Her protagonist and narrator, the nonhuman cyborg and "security unit" who calls itself Murderbot, is a dream character: conflicted, anxious, cranky, unsure of how to relate to the humans around it, fighting with its unfortunate tendency to have emotions, and in this book, in the grips of PTSD from the previous novel, <i>
<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/3324276441" rel="nofollow noopener">Network Effect</a>
</i>. Murderbot, as it calls itself, basically wants to be left alone to watch its shows, which in this universe is never going to happen. <br /><br />This book is quite a bit shorter than <i>Network Effect,</i> and almost reads like a chopped-off section of the previous book. This is not necessarily a bad thing if you're caught up with the series, but this is <i>definitely</i> not an entry point for a new reader. If you haven't dipped into the Murderbot Diaries before, you would be best served by at least reading the previous book. Or ideally the entire series, as Murderbot is delightful. In this story, the aftereffects from the previous story are affecting it to the point of it having human-style flashbacks which shut it down entirely. But it has to push on and protect its humans, who are trying to save a planet and its colonists from corporate slavery (the Murderbot universe is a prime example of capitalism taken to extremes). They are clashing with the representatives of a rival corporation, Barish-Estranza, and also dealing with the previous book's alien infestation. It all makes for a fast-paced stew, with Murderbot's struggles and increased anxiousness the cherry on top.<br /><br />I don't think this book is as good as <i>Network Effect,</i> but Murderbot makes a few emotional breakthroughs along the way (small ones, as it still hates the idea of even having emotions, but hey, baby steps):<br /><br /><i>I know I needed trauma recovery, I just didn't want to help figure it out for anybody else when I was still figuring it out for myself. But at least I knew now that was what I needed. I wanted to send a message to Dr. Bharadwaj about it--I don't know why, but just telling her stuff made it easier for me to figure out what I wanted to do. I had asked ART for a detailed description of what its trauma recovery treatment entailed and it had sent me the file, I just hadn't been able to make myself open it yet.</i><br /><br />Presumably this trauma recovery will take up the next book, along with Murderbot's and ART's (which stands for Asshole Research Transport) further adventures. This isn't the best book of the series, but it's certainly worth reading.
<br/><br/>
<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/5630209408">View all my reviews</a>
Bonnie McDanielhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03844134292228113704noreply@blogger.com0