Review: The Nemesis

The Nemesis by S.J. Kincaid
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This is the final book of the Diabolic trilogy, after a sizable gap between the second and third books (and the second book ending on a cliffhanger). It was long enough that I had to reread my reviews of books #1 and #2 to remind myself of the major plot points. This is a twisty, far-future tale of greed and deception and megalomania, in the setting of a galactic Empire run by a treacherous, murderous family. In this book's afterward, the author mentions that this was inspired by the book and miniseries I, Claudius. I can't comment on that as I've never read the book or watched the TV show, but I did note in my reviews of the previous Diabolic books that these are some of the most ruthless, unlikable, compelling characters you'll ever meet. 

However, I didn't like this book as much as the other two. The main reason for this is what seems to be plot twists just for the sake of plot twists, not because they make sense in the context of the overall story. I also think that because of the plot doubling and tripling back on itself, the characterization suffers as a result. Specifically, the title character and our protagonist and narrator, Nemesis, the genetically engineered killing machine and former Empress, has her motivations and emotions whipsaw back and forth like a teeter-totter, as she alternately hates and loves her husband, the tyrannical Emperor Tyrus Domitrian. Several times over the course of this book, she wavers between saving him and killing him. I also didn't care for the fact that Tyrus is revealed to have set in motion an exceptionally deep-layered plot of intrigue upon intrigue, designed to bring down the Empire from within--but said plot requires him to manipulate Nemesis into thinking he is her enemy, and he never tells her what he is doing. All because her public hatred of him, and her fight against him which will lead the subjects of the Empire to rise up and overthrow Tyrus as the last Emperor, wouldn't be believable if she knew the truth.

I'm sorry, but that is bullshit. It's the mark of an arrogant, manipulative asshole who doesn't trust the people who love him and won't allow them to make their own choices. Nemesis finally breaks through, discovers the full extent of Tyrus' plans and decides to throw in her lot with him, but that left a bit of a sour taste in my mouth. Tyrus' deep-laid plan works in the end, and he and Nemesis ride off into the galaxy together (2,500 years of time dilation later, after she rescues him from the black hole he has been cast into), but that's why I didn't like this book as well as the first two. The plot twists needed to be pared back and some honesty injected into the narrative. But if you like court intrigue and deliciously nasty characters, this is definitely your kind of book. 

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Review: Clarkesworld Magazine, Issue 168

Clarkesworld Magazine, Issue 168 by Neil Clarke
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This issue of Clarkesworld has a nice cover, although I'm not sure if that's a robot or someone in a superhero helmet.

"Blue and Blue and Blue and Pink," Lavie Tadhar

So far, I've been "meh" on what I've read of this author, but this story definitely falls on the thumbs-down end of the equation. It's a little bit science fiction and a little bit horror, and either way, I didn't like it.

Grade: D

"What Remains of Maya Sankovy," G.D. Angier

This is a rather complicated story of a generation ship gestating embryos on an alien planet, and said planet's coral attacking and mutating the colonizers. It's okay, but not outstanding.

Grade: C

"Lone Puppeteer of a Sleeping City," Arula Ratnakar

This tale of uploaded consciousness on a dying Earth becomes a story of an Eternal Cycle--GrandMother, Mother, Child--where each becomes the other in turn. The central idea is mildly interesting, but the characters didn't grab me.

Grade: C

"Certainty," Isabel Lee

Another overly complicated story of quantum theory and time travel that folds in on itself, over and over, and winds up making precious little sense. You can actually have a logical time travel story (the first Terminator movie is a prime example of that). This story doesn't rise to that level, alas.

Grade: D

"Ask the Fireflies," R.P. Sand

The highlight of this issue, a lovely story of an artificial intelligence, a psychological diagnostic routine, trying to save the little girl in its care from a rather sinister set of parents.

Grade: A

"Every Plumage, Every Beak," Nin Harris

This story has a very mythical feel to it, with its owl-women and different nonhuman races, and also a steampunk feel, with its floating cities and flying war kites. According to the endnotes, the author also writes poetry, and there is a very poetic feel to this story's prose.

Grade: B

"The Book Reader," Keishi Kajifune, translated by Toshiya Kamei

This is a rather bleak story of a world where nanobots try to control the population by taking away people's ability to read and imagine (and, I would think, create). It's very short, unsettling, and wicked sharp.

Grade: B+

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Review: Night of the Mannequins

Night of the Mannequins by Stephen Graham Jones
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

This is the second book from this author I've read. I liked this one even less than the first, so this author must not be for me. Regardless, I thought this book was stupid. It starts out as more-or-less classic horror, a mannequin that comes to life and then goes on a killing spree, but then swerves into psychological horror and the exploration of the mind of a serial killer (and did the mannequin actually get up and walk out of the movie theater? Who knows?). Those would be unpleasant subjects at the best of times, and I think we would agree that this year has not been the best. But I don't think I would have cared for this disturbing little book in any year. At any rate, I'm taking this back to the library and moving on to something else.

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Review: Anthropocene Rag

Anthropocene Rag by Alexander C. Irvine
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

This is one weird little book. It takes place about the end of this century, I believe, and has a post climate change setting of an America turned upside down by invasive nanotech. This is the "grey goo" variety that can deconstruct DNA and organic bodies down in an instant and remake it. The "replicators," plicks for short, have formed a hive-mind sentience. We gradually learn over the course of this book that the seemingly omniscient narrator is in fact this sentience, known as the Boom. The Boom has an uneasy coexistence with humans (although the US government is no more and the country is broken down into independent little fiefdoms), and in this story it is trying to bring together six chosen people to a semi-mythical town known as Monument City.

This is all okay, and most of the story recounts the journey of these six people to Monument City. The characters are adequately drawn, although as the book progresses it becomes evident that the central "we," the voice of the Boom, is the most important. It's the point the book is building towards that is lacking, to me. As far as I can tell, the entire basis for this story is that the Boom is having an existential crisis.

We did not bring you here to give you a gift but to take from you what we needed. But even now, with our being infused by quanta of your selves, we do not have it. We are afraid that we were wrong and we have come too far to begin anew.

Don't you see you are not here for answers, but to ask the question we cannot? Ask. One of you knows. One of you must.

Please ask.

Which is fine if you want to debate meaning, purpose and value with billions of intelligent self-replicating machines. As a story, not so much.

I suppose in this case, the journey itself would be the story. There's probably something to that too, for those who enjoy it. I grew more dissatisfied the further I read, and while the world is interesting--and horrifying--the payoff simply isn't worth it.

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Review: Phoenix Extravagant

Phoenix Extravagant by Yoon Ha Lee
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I am a great fan of Yoon Ha Lee. The Machineries of Empire trilogy (Ninefox Gambit, Raven Stratagem, and Revenant Gun) are three of my favorite SF books of the past several years. They are hard to get into (especially the first book, which dumps the reader into the middle of the action and the world without a shred of explanation), but the payoff is tremendous.

This is a very different sort of book. We are eased into this world more slowly, and the worldbuilding is measured and deliberate. It helps that the protagonist, Gyen Jebi, is something of an outsider to the world they are thrust into, so we learn about it along with them. The pacing is more restrained in this book, and the characters a tad better developed, I think (as much as I love the trilogy's Shuos Jedao and Kel Cheris). This secondary world is drawn from Korean mythology, although in some respects it seems a thinly disguised Earth. In fact, the worldbuilding is one of the few quibbles I have about this book, which I will get to.

Our protagonist, Gyen Jebi, is an artist, and the first chapter opens on them taking the examination for the Ministry of Art. They are in hopes they will win a state-sanctioned government artist job, working for the conquering Empire of Razan. Their homeland, Hwaguk, was taken over six years ago by the Razanei, who are well on their way to exploiting and erasing the native people. Indeed, the themes of colonialism, cultural appropriation, and empire loom large throughout this book, along with how one can become an unwitting collaborator in one's own occupation. In some respects, Jebi is on the road to doing just that. They try to shrink back from the fight, saying they are not political--until they learn exactly what is going on, and realize they have to take a stand.

Jebi fails the exam, which puts them in an ever tightening bind, as they borrowed a great deal of money to get a Razanei name certificate for the test. Money they now cannot pay back. Because of this, they are coerced into serving the Razanei empire in a underground lair, wherein lies the secret weapon the Razanei hope will defend the country against the threat of the ever-encroaching Westerners--Arazi, the sentient mecha dragon.

In this world, magic is created through artist-painted glyphs powered by magical ink. The glyphs are used to write magical grammar that give the various automata in the story their life and commands, and the grammar has to be individually thought out and exact. Too much leeway and/or imprecision in the commands, and the automata can make their own choices and ultimately rebel. The artist to have held Jebi's position previously was killed because she imbued Arazi with the incorrect grammar, and they are tasked with correcting this situation. But once they discover how the inks are produced--from the ashes of ancient, priceless Hwagugin artworks, ripped up and ground into magical pigments--they know they cannot continue to cooperate. They begin to make plans to escape, and take Arazi with them.

Jebi is a nice protagonist, neither a soldier nor a badass (one of the best moments in the book is when their lover comes to rescue them from capture, and Jebi charges out of their cell and falls flat on their face). They aren't passive--especially in the latter half of the book--but they recognize their limitations. There is a bit of unduly fast attraction in their relationship with their lover, the duelist prime (and their guard and watchdog) Dzuge Vei, but the relationship itself ends up depicted well, and Vei's character adequately fleshed out. Another well-thought-out character is Jebi's sister Bongsunga, who becomes a rebel after the death of her wife, and ends up leading the main rebel faction. And of course we have Arazi the mecha dragon, pictured on the cover, who develops a nice relationship with Jebi.

What quibbles I have with this book are with the worldbuilding. On its face, this is a fantasy world, but it also has elements of steampunk, particularly in the ubiquitous automata. There's an almost-World War I level of technology, as the Razanei have electricity, automobiles, tanks, and infantry. In my mind, this doesn't mesh very well with the magic and fox spirits (and especially the celestial court on the moon, where Arazi, Jebi and Vei flee at book's end). For me, the book would have been better if it had been straight fantasy. I think your enjoyment will depend on how you can reconcile these two conflicting elements. But the characters are well drawn, and these were mostly enough to carry the day. I'll certainly buy the sequel, if there is one.

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Review: Magnificent Ms. Marvel, Vol. 2: Stormranger

Magnificent Ms. Marvel, Vol. 2: Stormranger by Saladin Ahmed
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This is the second collected volume of Ms. Marvel, now titled Magnificent Ms. Marvel, after Saladin Ahmed took over from G. Willow Wilson as head writer. Back on Earth after the events of the first collection, "Destined," which had both Kamala and her parents spending time offworld, Kamala's story settles into more comfortable territory. The major exception is the continued mysterious illness of her father, which is dealt with in the second half of this volume (by Doctor Strange, in a rather odd cameo).

I did like this--in particular, the advancement of Kamala's burgeoning relationship with Bruno, as he admits he loves her--but at the same time, it feels a bit like a retread of stuff that's been done before. I keep thinking back to Buffy the Vampire Slayer--as good as the stories set in high school were, Buffy and the Scooby Gang had to graduate eventually. Kamala's been talking about applying to colleges etc. for some time, and the fact of her hiding her superhero life from her family is wearing really thin. Perhaps it's time that she leaves both high school and her hidden life behind.

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Magazine Roundup: Clarkesworld Magazine #167, August 2020

Clarkesworld Magazine #167, August 2020 by Neil Clarke
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This issue of Clarkesworld had a really odd cover. I gather that's supposed to be a monk? I kind of wish this illustration had inspired a story inside the magazine. That might have been better than some of the stories we got.

"The Lori," Fiona Moore

This story can be summed up in its first sentence: "The problem with sentient battle tanks are their drivers." Unfortunately, the battle tank in question, Kursk, didn't seem all that sentient to me. Another sentence further along in the story: "The tank stopped, like a dog scenting the wind," was pretty accurate in terms of its purported intelligence. It would have been nice if Kursk had been better developed as a character, but considering the ending, I guess that wouldn't have worked.

Grade: C

"Drawing Lines Between the Stars," Frank Smith

Bex, engineer of the transport hauler Bakunawa, helps answer a distress call from the solar glider Aldebaran and brings it on board for repairs. Unfortunately, his unintentional negligence leads to the death of the pilot, Adena, and very nearly his own, and he's fired....err, "prematurely retired" from his job. This is a neat little story of change, responsibility, and making the best of what life hands you.

Grade: B

"The Plague," Yan Leisheng, translated by Andy Dudak

(According to the endnotes, this was originally written and published in 2002, so long before our current Plague Year. Still, it's damn eerie.)

This plague virus is silicon-based, rather than carbon, and turns people to living statues. The narrator, a "Crow," a person who gathers up the infected and incinerates them, comes to realize they're not dead at all--they're just another form of life. At the end, the story takes a time jump of six thousand years, and ends on a bit of a horrific note.

Grade: B

"An Important Failure," Rebecca Campbell

This story tackles climate change through the lens of a violin maker, hunting for the wood to make his final instrument. Wood that won't be available any longer, now that the world has reached five hundred ppm. It's about finding meaning and beauty in a dying, changing world, and though the general tone is sad and bittersweet, it does end on a hopeful note.

Grade: B+

"The Immolation of Kev Magee," L.X. Beckett

Another climate change story, near-future verging on cyberpunk, with a lot of incorporated internet lingo (which grew tiresome after a while). Breeze and Keisha, freelance videographers, are trying to find a home for Alice, the baby they were stuck with in the wreckage of Detroit. This story didn't impress me very much.

Grade: C-

"Nameless He," Robert Reed

I've tried to read Robert Reed's stories before and never really clicked with them. This is another: a far-future hard SF tale of a galaxy-wandering, planet-sized Great Ship and the artificial intelligence tasked to study it. The ending doesn't make any sense at all, as far as I was concerned.

Grade: D

Honorable Mention: "Boxtops, Secret Rings, and Space Helmets: Those Brave Spacemen of the Videowaves," Mark Cole

A fascinating study of the very first television space opera serials, done live at the dawning of the TV age, 1949-1955.

Grade: A

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Review: The Only Good Indians

The Only Good Indians by Stephen Graham Jones
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

This book....did not impress me very much. It seemed like it wanted to be a supernatural horror story on the one hand, and a literary tale on the other, and for my money (or not, since I got it from the library) it didn't succeed at either. I didn't care for the author's prose style--it's a long-sentence, comma-heavy, run-on stream-of-consciousness that I guess was meant to be profound and simply didn't work. The "horror" part of the story was sporadic. (Although it was breathtakingly intense and nasty when it did arrive; when I reached page 115, my first thought was HOLY SHIT WHAT DID I JUST READ. Let's just say the horror scenes are not for the squeamish.) The pacing seemed off as well. In particular the final confrontation between Denorah and Elk Head Woman was way too long and drawn out. (Even if I enjoyed basketball, that endless, excruciating, painstakingly described one-on-one scrimmage would have gotten to me.) 

The more successful parts of the book were the depictions of the rez and contemporary Native American life. Denorah was a better protagonist than any of the others; I would have enjoyed an entire story (and not necessarily a horror story) about her. Unfortunately, in this book, she's part of a series of elements that just don't mesh. It's too bad.

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Review: The Once and Future Witches

The Once and Future Witches by Alix E. Harrow
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I loved the author's first book, The Ten Thousand Doors of January. I thought it was beautifully written portal fantasy, and a lovely testament to the power of stories; themes that seem to run through her work. Certainly it's found in this book. The titular witches, fighting to bring back the power men have stripped from them, find their stories in scraps. Poems, songs, sayings, vignettes, small spells recited by young girls and boys alike, all collected over centuries by the first Three Witches and placed in a magical library. That library is briefly brought back by the three Sisters Eastwood, the protagonists of this story, and the way it's described (wonderfully so; Harrow's prose is just gorgeous), I could happily burrow in there and be lost for the rest of my life. When the magical library is burned by the men of New Salem, I felt its loss in my gut as if it were a tangible thing, as if the library had come to rest in my own town square and set aflame.

That's the power Alix E. Harrow brings to this book, which just might be my favorite book of 2020 (something I'd never thought I'd say in a year when N.K. Jemisin also has a book out, and Martha Wells released Murderbot's first full-length novel). In comparing this book with her first, I see the maturation of a writer who has an assured command of this story. She has three primary characters, the Sisters Eastwood who all find their true selves and forgive one another for past misunderstandings and sins. The power of sisterhood and celebrating the strength of women is also a strong theme in this book. This is an alternate America of 1893, where magic exists and the witches burned in Salem were the real thing, combined with the politics of suffragists campaigning for womens' rights and the vote. In the first few chapters, the estranged Eastwood sisters accidentally bring the long-hidden Library of Avalon back into the world, and the rest of the book is their fight to restore the full strength of magic to a world with fanatical men trying to stamp it out. They are also fighting to become a family again, to overcome the misunderstandings and betrayals that drove them apart.

There are so many good things about this book, but I think the characterizations stand out the most. The Eastwood sisters, Beatrice Belladonna, Agnes Amaranth and James Juniper, are sharply drawn and each goes on a personal journey that is tied to plot points and twists. Each faces a turning point inextricably tied to their individual characters. Beatrice, for instance, is a librarian, in love with words and stories, so of course her "dark night of the soul" is when the Library of Avalon burns. (Her growth is also shown by the change of name; she starts out timid and retiring and known as Beatrice, but as she accepts herself and comes into her strength, she is called Bella.) Agnes Amaranth becomes pregnant and gives birth over the course of the story, and her attempt to withdraw from her sisters and hide, keeping her head down to protect her child, doesn't work. She realizes that even though she wants to retreat from the world, the world won't leave her alone, and for the sake of her child, her sisters, and other women, she must stand and fight. And the youngest sister, James Juniper the ferocious, the firebrand who wants to watch the world burn, comes to the conclusion that the price for her rage may be too high after all....but at the book's climax, she is the one who steps up and pays it.

Because the characters and plot are so well integrated, the story is excellently paced. It's over five hundred pages, and I didn't think it lagged at all. The prose is beautiful, which is why it took me a little longer to finish this; I was taking my time to savor it. I expect this book to be nominated for this year's major awards--I sure as heck am going to talk it up. Do yourself a favor: get thee hence and snag a copy.

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Review: Monstress, Vol. 5: Warchild

Monstress, Vol. 5: Warchild by Marjorie M. Liu
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I still like this series and will continue with it, but it's getting to the point where we really need a list of Dramatis Personae and a concordance to explain the various factions. We finally get the backstory of what happened at Constantine six years ago and why Maika Halfwolf lost her arm (and exactly who Zinn is) but it's getting hard to tell the difference between the (Human?) Federation and everyone else running around trying to kill one another.

And make no mistake, this is the bloodiest of the collections so far. This series has been grimdark from the beginning, but when I finished this one, I thought I might need to wipe up the blood dripping from the pages. Even my favorite character, Kippa the fox girl, gets drawn into doing, as she puts it, "terrible things" (and I mourned the loss of the last shreds of her innocence). In that sense Maika is the perfect protagonist, as she is an unrepentant killer (even the Old God inside her, Zinn, occasionally shows remnants of a conscience and has regrets).

One note regarding the art. Sana Takeda's art is intricate and gorgeous as usual, but this time around there's even less color. It's muted browns, blacks and grays, and a lot of twilight and night panels, which befits the bleak subject matter, I suppose. Nevertheless, that kind of background sometimes makes it hard to tell individual characters apart. In particular it was difficult for me to distinguish Tuya and Maika, at least until the last scene of Chapter Twenty-Nine when I realized just which two-tailed (or rather one-tailed, since he left one tail with Kippa) cat was talking to Tuya. Again, this is why we need a Dramatis Personae list, because this cast is only getting bigger and the relationships more complicated.

Still, this is a complex, intricate world, and if you can stand the blood and gore in this one, it's a worthy continuation to the story.

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Review: Wonder Woman: Tempest Tossed

Wonder Woman: Tempest Tossed by Laurie Halse Anderson
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I did like this, but I didn't think it was outstanding.

This is a young, inexperienced Wonder Woman reimagined for our era. Diana of Themyscira is celebrating her 16th "born day" when word comes that people have broken through the magical shield barrier separating the island from the outside world. (There are sometimes "holes" in the barrier that have to be fixed, and when outsiders come through them and see the Amazons, they are given a "tea of forgetting" and sent on their way.) This time, there is a storm outside, and refugees caught in it crying for help, and Diana cannot stand by and let them drown. She dives into the ocean to save them, and while she is trying to pull the rafts full of people to safety the barrier is fixed and the island removed from the spot where it met our world--and Diana is left behind. (And neither General Antiope or her mother come after her? This seems a bit...unlikely, although Diana explains later that the island and its surrounding waters, due to the magical barrier, floats interdimensionally from place to place.)

She ends up in a refugee camp on a Greek island. A couple of United Nations aid workers notice her incredible facility with languages, and before long she's on her way to New York on a student visa, where she's placed with a Polish family (in the borough of Queens, which name Diana approves of). The family's daughter's name is Raissa, and Raissa works with other neighborhood groups to feed the local schoolchildren lunch during the summer. Raissa recruits Diana to help her, and gradually the two become friends. 

This is the story of Diana Prince finding her way and her place in a strange world. Along the way, the author deals with the plight of refugees and gentrification, and creates a rather unpleasant subplot of child sex trafficking. At first Diana, thinking she must leave the past behind, puts aside her Lasso of Truth and her gold bracelets, but later on, as she comes to understand the good she can do here as an Amazon, she takes them up again. The book ends with Diana still vowing to find Themyscira again, but until then, she has a home in "the Outside."

This presents a fresh view of Wonder Woman, awkward and unsure of herself and struggling to find her place in the world. The only reason I'm not rating it higher is because the art is just so-so. In particular, the artist doesn't seem to be very good with faces. But this graphic novel has a nice storyline, and its target audience should love it. 

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Review: A Killing Frost

A Killing Frost by Seanan McGuire
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This fourteenth book in the October Daye series has the author's trademark layering of plot--in this case, a (seemingly) throwaway character from a couple of books ago is suddenly brought to the forefront and shown to be something that will shake the world to its core, going forward. I'm getting used to Seanan McGuire pulling an apparent unrelated rabbit out of a hat only to remember that it was in fact seeded into the story some time ago, but this plot twist was still genuinely surprising. Because of it, the series is reinvented yet again, and it's going to be interesting to see what the author makes of it in the next book.

Toby has to go on an unexpected, unwanted quest, to find her estranged and bespelled Faerie father, Simon Torquill. Due to an obscure Faerie rule she was never told about, she has to invite Simon to her wedding, or he can claim insult on her later. In addition, the daughter of one of her friends, who has precognitive dreams, tells her she has to find Simon or people will die. So Toby sets off, on a journey where she sheds blood and slices away even more of her humanity, where she rescues Simon and drags the Luidaeg (the best character in the series) into her troubles, and somehow manages to stumble onto the solution that will save the day for her and Simon...but will create all sorts of complications for everyone else.

This layered worldbuilding and characterization is a large part of why this series still feels fresh, fourteen books and eleven years on. I believe I saw a tweet from the author that there are at least two more books to come. I will be happy to read them.

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Magazine Roundup: Clarkesworld Magazine Issue 165, June 2020

Clarkesworld Magazine Issue 165 by Neil Clarke
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

There's only five stories in this issue, and with one kinda-sorta exception, they didn't impress me very much. Now I have great respect for Neil Clarke as an editor; most of the time, there's at least one story in every issue that I think is knocked out of the park. This issue....ehhhhh.

"The Iridescent Lake," D.A. Xiaolin Spires

This is a mystery set on as asteroid with a skating rink of "iridescent" intelligent living ice. The protagonist came to live here after the death of their son, whose face and DNA was harvested for false IDs. This story didn't draw me in, and I couldn't really relate to the protagonist.

Grade: C

"How Long the Shadows Cast," Kenji Yanagawa

This had a fairly good setup, with the protagonist Shunzo a linguist who finally returns to Earth (after several decades of time dilation) following his working to decipher an alien language. He is haunted by his lost love, and meets a woman, Chiaki, who is studying "unique electromagnetic patterns associated with individual personalities and how they persist over time." This is a fancy handwaving way of providing a semi-scientific explanation for reincarnation. This story is okay, but the ending is very unsatisfying, at least to me.

Grade: C-

"Nine Words for Loneliness In the Language of the Uma'u," M.L. Clark

This story takes a deep dive into the mind and culture of an alien being, an intelligent feline named Awenato. In fact, there are quite a number of finely drawn aliens in this story. Awenato is telling this story to his dead mate and queen, Wene'ss. Unfortunately, this is another story where the ending betrays the setup, as the conclusion sort of dribbles to a vague unsatisfying halt, not sticking the landing at all.

Grade: C-

"Optimizing the Path To Enlightenment," Priya Chand

This is a bit of a horror story, with what seem to me to be echoes of 1984, telling the tale of a future world with an all-knowing AI dedicated to "preserving this perfect society, free of possession and pollution and violence, by whatever means necessary." It doesn't have quite the knockout closing line as "He loved Big Brother," but it has that sort of feel.

Grade: B

"Own Goal," Dennard Dayle

This is my tepid favorite of this issue's stories. Leon lives on an orbiting Earth colony, working on advertising pitches to sell war between the various colonies. It's told in a journal format, with each entry headed by the name of an album and group. Pay attention to those names--they're tipoffs to characterization and plot points.

Grade: B+

Honorable Mention: "Isolation in Fiction and Reality," Carrie Sessarego. This interesting non-fiction article uses three examples--Mark Watney from The Martian, Colonel Christina Eliopolis from World War Z, and Offred from The Handmaid's Tale to discuss how people are coping with the current pandemic and quarantine measures. It's a nice roundup of coping strategies, and reminds us that we're all in this together: "our mission is to protect each other from illness." Timely and pointed.

Grade: A

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Review: The Midnight Bargain

The Midnight Bargain by C.L. Polk
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is a wonderful book. I'll admit I was a bit skeptical when I first started reading it--I've never been into Regencies (I've never read any Georgette Heyer), and I wasn't sure I was in the mood for a lighthearted fantasy romance. Thankfully, that wasn't what this is. It is a fantasy romance, but it has a well-thought-out magic system, and it tackles some serious themes. The two protagonists are women searching for a way out of their suffocating patriarchal system, and this is a story of women who will do anything for the right of choice and to seek their destiny as they see fit.

Beatrice Clayborn is eighteen, and she and her family have come to the capital of Chasland for the "bargaining season"--a few weeks where daughters with sorcerous powers are offered up like broodmares at an auction. She has been studying magic in secret for years, and she is searching for a grimoire which will allow her to make the "great bargain," binding herself to a greater spirit that will free her from the necessity of marriage. In this world's magic system, magic is performed by mages uniting with lesser or greater spirits. Spirits are eager to inhabit human bodies and experience the delights of human senses, and nothing draws them more than slipping into and taking over an unborn child. Because of this, in Chasland, a more repressive country than most, at marriage girls are locked into "warding collars," which block the use of their magic and force spirits away from them. In Chasland, where evidently they have no effective methods of birth control (unlike some other countries) women are forced into these collars from marriage until menopause (and if a girl gets pregnant outside of marriage and births a spiritborn, both she and the child are burned at the stake). Beatrice wants to become a mage, and is desperate to find a way to escape the trap of the "bargaining season."

She finds her grimoire in the very first chapter, but it's taken from her by Ysbeta Lavan, a young woman of a richer family and higher class. (The society is obviously based on England, and the ugliness of its class system is on full display.) Ysbeta is also searching for a way out, and her goal is even more radical than Beatrice's. Ysbeta Lavan, the daughter of one of the richest, most powerful families in the neighboring country of Llanandras, wants to neither marry nor have children. She wishes to make the Great Bargain and spend her life seeking out hidden and forgotten magical knowledge and giving it to the world.

Ysbeta also has a brother, Ianthe, who meets Beatrice that fateful day in the bookshop. That meeting, with Ysbeta and Beatrice both drawn to the grimoire that will prove to be the key to their freedom, will upend both their lives and their world.

The fourth main character of our story is the spirit Nadi, the "lesser spirit" Beatrice summons to help get her grimoire back. The relationships between these four characters, and to a lesser extent Beatrice's younger sister Harriet--who proves to be a master at navigating the complex and rigid rules of the bargaining season; I would love to have a book telling Harriet's story--make up the heart of this story, and they are given some satisfying character arcs. Of course, Beatrice and Ianthe fall in love, and we get the heartbreaking dichtotomy that is the core of this book, as expressed when she turns down his marriage proposal:

The ship rose and fell with the ocean's breath, and Beatrice used it to breathe calm, to focus on getting the words out without breaking further. "I can't let magic go and still be happy. Not even for you."

"You can still do magic," Ianthe said. "If we know you're not pregnant, then we can--"

"You can take the collar off," Beatrice said. "If I can only use my magic when you deem it safe, does that magic belong to me, or to you?"

"It would only be for safety," Ianthe said. "I don't presume to own your magic."

"But I would only be freed because you released me," Beatrice said. "This isn't a tightly laced set of stays or shoes that pinch my toes for the sake of turning up in fashion. It's my freedom! And even if that thing was not around my neck one day, it would be--as soon as you decided you wanted another child, or thought there might be one, or my courses were late by a day. If you marry me, you will own my magic, no matter how hard we pretend. And I will hate you if you do that to me. I will hate you, and it will tear me apart."

This book is the story of Beatrice and Ysbeta's fight for freedom--both from their fathers, who are trying to marry them to men they do not want, and the larger system of the chapterhouses, who teach the magically gifted men and bind the women. In the end, they do triumph: in fact, several years later Beatrice returns to Chasland, eight months pregnant and bringing the Clayborn Method of Fetal Protection, the ritual to enable an unwarded sorceress to carry a child to term with no spirit possession. When she presents this to all the master mages, we see just how desperate they are to hold on to their privilege.

"Ianthe can still perform minor charms," Beatrice said, "but you are correct. My husband and I cannot use higher magic until our child is safely born, its soul developed and fully resident within its body. But once that's done, he's capable of working with Fandariathras once more."

Every man in the ten-sided chamber looked on, appalled.

"We can't do that," one of them declared. "Give up magic while my wife does her duty? It's unacceptable. It's outrageous."

"This information must be suppressed," another man spoke up. "We cannot be expected to make such sacrifices. And this woman must go into a warding collar immediately. To think that a master-mage has been reduced to children's rhymes for months? It's horrible."

Of course, this doesn't happen, and Beatrice's final magnificent fuck-you is the fact that she has printed the ritual up in a pamphlet, and even as she has been standing there talking, this pamphlet has been mailed to every wife and daughter of a mage in Chasland. Afterwards, they plan to spread theis knowledge to other countries as well.

This is a lovely, fiercely feminist story that drew me in from the first page. The best fantasy stories, of course, are those who speak to the world we live in, and this book is for every young girl who wants to throw off the shackles of the culture she lives in and follow her heart, and every young boy who is not interested in displaying the kind of tough, stoic, twisted "masculinity" that is so often held up as what it means to be a man. (Ianthe is shown to be kind, gentle and nurturing, and most of all he listens to Beatrice. He realizes that true love never involves ownership, and he is willing to sacrifice for their future along with her.) I think this story is fantastic, and I hope others will as well.

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Review: Peace Talks

Peace Talks by Jim Butcher
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is the sixteenth book in the Dresden Files series, the tale of Harry Dresden, Chicago wizard. It's the first book to appear following a six-year gap, and the next book in the series, Battle Ground, was released just two months after this one. (Which is a good thing, as this book ends on a HUGE cliffhanger. If I hadn't known the next volume was already available, I would have cursed the author and slammed the book against the wall.)

The strength of the series has always been its worldbuilding, followed by its characters. The world Butcher has built is rich and deep, with characters and events from the earlier books echoing down the line. One thing I noticed about this book is that Harry is, for lack of a better word, growing up a bit--he's accepting the weighty responsibilities he carries, he's working out how to be a father to his newly-discovered daughter Maggie, and he's putting together an adult relationship with Karrin Murphy. He's always been loyal, almost to a fault, and that character trait is stretched to the limit here as he has to save his half-brother Thomas, who has inexplicably tried to assassinate the leader of the svartalves. Harry and crew manage to extricate Thomas from their clutches, but everything is abruptly upended as a new, more powerful threat reveals itself.

I'm actually glad this story was split between this book and Battle Ground. This book is a bit shorter than a typical Dresden Files entry, but I think it benefits. The book is tightly written, and the pacing flows well. One caveat: this is NOT the place to start with this series; unless you've read the past few books, you won't have any idea what's going on. This is one of the better (and one of the few remaining) urban fantasy series out there, and it's hard to go wrong with it.

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Review: In the Shadows of Men

In the Shadows of Men by Robert Jackson Bennett
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This book might be hard to find (at least in print) as it's a limited Subterranean Press edition, and they are not cheap. However, if you prefer e-books (I have some, but I like to hold the physical book in my hands) it is available at the usual digital suspects. I say that because I think it's flown under the radar a bit, and I want to give it a push.

On the surface, this is an American ghost story, taking place on the plains of west Texas. Bear Pugh and his unnamed brother come to Coahora, to renovate an old motel that once belonged to their great-uncle Corbin. Their goals are simple: Bear bought the property from a cousin for a pittance, and means to build it up, hold on to it long enough to make some money, and get out. He asks his brother, who is going through some domestic upheaval (his wife, tired of his emotional detachment, packed up their child and left) to come help him out. The two of them start tearing up and remodeling the hotel. They also start seeing a big man in a white tee shirt walking across the property at night, and hearing young women speaking with a Spanish accent from a basement where there is no basement, and hearing the wails of a crying baby drift across the grounds.....

Yes, there are ghosts here, and a horrible past that slowly comes to light, with a growing sense of creeping dread written in simple, straightforward prose. However, the monster is not the ghost of the Pugh brothers' great-uncle, nor the things he did. The monster is the theme of (white) male entitlement and toxic masculinity, and what it makes men do.

"The things you've done," I say. "The things you want. Listen to me. They're not things you really want. They're things he wants [Corbin's ghost]. Things he wants you to do, so he's using you."

"It wasn't supposed to be like this," he weeps. "A house. A wife. A job. A home."

"You can still have that," I say. "We both can."

"I can't," he says. "Not now. It's all changed so much. A man can't get what's owed to him. All that's left is for him to take it."

What's so frightening about this is that in real life the ghost, and the pull it has on the characters' minds, doesn't have to be there. Far too many men, falling under the illusion of what they think the world owes them, repeat these very words and live these twisted ideals, and they're not under any supernatural influence at all.

The best horror reflects back a razor-sharp mirror of our current life, held up for all to see. This book is all the more chilling because of its deceptively simple, dare I say blue-collar prose style. There are no fancy explanations or elevated academic lingo; there is just the two Pugh brothers, Bear and the unnamed narrator, slowly falling under the spell of their great-uncle's ghost and the horrid way he thinks the world should be. The narrator escapes this trap at the end, vowing to go back to Houston, to his wife and child, and learn how to give instead of take.

This is a scary, thoughtful book, and it's well worth seeking out.

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Review: Machine

Machine by Elizabeth Bear
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This second book in the White Space series shares a couple of characters with the first book, Ancestral Night, but the protagonist and setting is different. The setting is fascinating, and a character in its own right: Core General, a moon-sized multispecies hospital, and the artificial intelligence called Linden who runs the place. Its administrator--or Administree, as it's referred to--is a sentient tree named Starlight, and several of the important side characters are nonhuman sapients. Almost all of our time in this book is spent here, and there could easily be another book written with this setting and characters. Indeed, I wish there could be, as the minutiae and detail of what would make up a futuristic multispecies hospital interested me to no end.

This is a mystery, and a medical thriller; not a murder mystery (although there are some deaths). The point of the mystery is who is sabotaging the hospital and why? Our protagonist, Brookllyn Jens, is a trauma surgeon and rescue specialist at Core General, sent out with her ambulance (another sentient AI ship intelligence, this one called Sally) to investigate a newly discovered generation ship from centuries past. This ship, the Big Rock Candy Mountain, should not be in this section of space so far from Earth. What Brookllyn and her crew find there will upend her world, and threaten the Synarche, the galaxy-spanning civilization humans are now a part of.

This is a book of ethical dilemmas, and faith, and belief. Specifically, Brookllyn's faith in Core General, where she has worked for years, devoting her life to what she thinks it represents, and how she loses that faith and finds it again. As Brookllyn says when she faces down the artificial intelligence who, unknown to almost everyone, has run a secret, technically not illegal but highly unethical cloning experiment inside the hospital:

The most important thing in the universe is not, it turns out, a single, objective truth. It's not a hospital whose ideals you love, that treats all comers. It's not a lover; it's not a job. It's not friends and teammates.

It's not even a child that rarely writes me back, and to be honest I probably earned that. I could have been there for her. I didn't know how to be there for anybody, though. Not even for me.

The most important thing in the universe, it turns out, is a complex of subjective and individual approximations. Of tries and fails. Of ideals, and things we do to try to get close to those ideals.

It's who we are when nobody is looking.

This book has some action sequences, but for the most part it deals with its mystery, those ethical dilemmas, and its characters. Brookllyn, in particular, is stripped down to the core and has to face some unpleasant truths. Her friendships are shaken, and her assumptions and beliefs about her world are turned inside out. This focus on character might make the book seem slow to some, but the setting and the mystery more than made up for it, for me. I hope there's a sequel someday, as I'd love to see what happens to these characters going forward.

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Review: Harrow the Ninth

Harrow the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Gawdalmighty, I finally finished this book.

I had a helluva time with it. I'd take it to work for a few days, plow through some pages on my breaks and lunch, then bring it home and pick up something else. I started and finished three other books while I was slogging through this one. I almost threw it against the wall a couple of times, but I had just enough appreciation for what the author was doing with the narrative and structure that I kept on in spite of myself--and, to be honest, in spite of the book. This appreciation was intellectual, a reluctant admiration for the author's skill with her twisty, gonzo mess of a book. It wasn't any particular affection for the main character or the story being told. That didn't kick in until three-quarters of the way through, when the first-person voice of a character from the previous book emerged, and damned if the story didn't take off. Sort of.

However, one-quarter of a book does not a good situation make. I was let down enough by this book to re-evaluate the first book of the series, Gideon the Ninth. I'd said in the review of that book that I didn't want to be in the titular Gideon Nav's head--I wanted to be in the POV of her Ninth House necromancer, Harrowhark Nonagesimus. Well...sometimes you should be careful what you wish for. I got my wish in this book, and it didn't take but a few chapters before I started backpedaling.

The blame for this can be laid squarely at the feet of this book's cockamamie structure. Harrowhark's story (her present story, that is, the telling of events taking place after the events of the first book) is told in second person, past tense. Now I don't have any particular bias against second person; at least not if it's done well, which this admittedly is. It becomes obvious that this is not second person POV simply for the sake of being artsy-fartsy (which would also fit into this story's crazy bananapants worldbuilding); there is a purpose and a personality behind it. I'm sure many readers figured out who this person was before I did, but two heavy hints at the end of different chapters make the narrator's identity clear. Unfortunately, this is intercut with a clunky attempt to basically rewrite the first book, while leaving out some important events and a pivotal character, all because Harrowhark couldn't cope with said character's death.

This unusual structure does take tremendous skill on the part of the author. I don't deny that. That doesn't mean I liked it. It seems to me the author was being too clever by half, and I wish she had chopped the half that involved rewriting the first book right on out. Also, the PTSD Harrowhark carried over from the events of the first book, and the fact that she is one of the most passive "protagonists" I've ever read--she is carried hither and thither by everyone around her, lied to and manipulated, and she doesn't do shit about any of it until we're almost to the end--makes for a slog of a read. It certainly doesn't come anywhere near "couldn't put down" territory. The sudden re-emergence of Gideon's voice is what saves the whole thing (to the extent that it could be saved), and it made me wish that the first book had been told in her first-person voice. I will admit this is the exact opposite of what I said in my review of the first book, but Harrow's chapters in this one just soured me on her completely.

There were other problems with the plot as well. After all the buildup around the fearsome Resurrection Beasts (the ghosts/revenants of slain sentient planets--see, I told you the worldbuilding was gonzo), they were dispatched...offstage? In a couple of paragraphs? Really? To be replaced by what basically turns into a Ninth House necromantic soap opera, complete with revelations about Gideon's parentage? Really? If these final chapters hadn't been written from Gideon's POV, the book probably would have met the wall.

So yeah, I was disappointed. Enough so that I'm not going to touch the third book with a ten-foot pole. Which is sad, because Gideon Nav is clearly the star of this show, and I wish she had been given more of a chance to shine.

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