Review: Dead Silence

Dead Silence by S.A. Barnes
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The blurbs on this book's covers tout it as a "haunted house ghost story in space" and liken it to the classic sci-fi/horror movie Alien. Both those are true.....to an extent. The ultimate reveal of what is going on ends up not being either one, but for most of the way through, the spooky atmosphere, creeping sense of dread and rising tension definitely fits both categories.

What sets this book apart, I think, is the main character, Claire Kovalik. As the story starts, Claire and her four-person crew are in the midst of servicing the commweb, the network of beacons that boosts intrasystem communications. After two years of maintenance on the furthest-out commweb sector, Claire and her crew are coming to the end of their tour. But for Claire, it will be her final tour ever, as maintenance robots from her corporate employer, Verux, will now take over her position, and she will be confined to a desk-jockey job on Earth. It's a thought she can hardly stand, as she does not like being on a planet and around people. This is due to her complicated backstory: as a child, a plague ripped through the Mars hab where Claire and her mother were living and killed everyone except Claire. She had to spend a month alone with decaying bodies before she was rescued. This gave her severe PTSD and made her corporate employer distrust her, to the point where she had to fight to get any off-planet posting at all. She is frantic to remain in space, even to the point of considering suicide as the story opens rather than return to Earth.

But the crew of the LINA abruptly receives a distress call that Claire insists they check out, though a couple of the other crew members are against it. When they arrive at the signal's point of origin, they realize they have stumbled upon a fabulous find: the ship broadcasting the call is the luxury liner Aurora, which vanished with all hands and passengers twenty years before. Claire's crew wants to claim a finder's reward for the vessel, as the shares thereof, even split five ways, would make all of them independently wealthy. Claire agrees, and they park their small ship in the Aurora's cargo bay and board the seemingly lifeless ship, looking for something to bring back to prove that they have indeed found it.

The eerieness starts right away, as Claire sees the ghost of her dead mother in the cargo bay. As they work their way up to the bridge, they find signs that something terrible has happened here: the bottom cabins are barricaded shut, and there are various messages ("I see you," "Leave me alone") scrawled on the walls in what looks like blood. In a skin-crawling reveal about halfway through, the team discovers where the majority of the missing bodies ended up: floating in the ceiling of the ship's atrium, with signs of the passengers turning on and killing one another.

Meanwhile, Claire's crew is also starting to hear and see things that aren't there. This is nothing new for Claire: she has seen ghosts and visions ever since her childhood incident (and as we learn, even before; her mother took the job in the Mars hab because a five-year-old Claire kept saying she was seeing her dead father). The crew becomes increasingly unhinged, and in the last thing Claire remembers before apparently fleeing the ship in a lifepod, one of the crew tries to stop the voices in his head by piercing it with a plasma drill.

This is structured as a told tale for the first half of the book, with Claire recounting what happened to two investigators for the corporation in the Verux Peace and Rehabilitation Tower on Earth. She was brought there after being discovered in the lifepod by a ship seeking out why the LINA missed its scheduled rendezvous. The investigators are convinced Claire killed the other members of the crew, but they also want to use her to recover the Aurora. And so, over Claire's objections, a team is put together to return to the Aurora and bring it, or at least some of the bodies, home.

Things go even further to hell, of course. About two-thirds of the way through the book, we discover what is going on: what happened aboard the Aurora has neither a supernatural or an alien cause, but rather a technological one stemming from the eeeevvillll corporation. In fairness, this has been seeded throughout, with fair clues and red herrings. The last third of the book is a tense race against time for Claire and the final surviving member of her crew, Kane, to escape the Aurora before it is blown up to hide the evidence of the corporation's malfeasance. Claire and Kane manage to do so, and break the story wide open. At the end, Claire has enough money from her finder's fee to buy her own ship and start her own hauling business, and she invites Kane to join her.

Claire has a nice character arc throughout this book as she learns to stop isolating herself and to be vulnerable, to let go. Some readers might find the reveal of what's actually happening to be a bit disappointing. For my part, I was rather relieved to see there were no ghosts or alien monsters (even though there's at least a slight sideways glint towards the supernatural as Claire is still seeing ghosts of her new ship's crew at the end). Sometimes mundane things like greedy corporations are scary enough. But the first part of this book is dripping with atmosphere and rising dread, quite enough to merit the comparisons. The pacing is also very good. All in all, this is a satisfying story and worth the read.

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Review: Even Though I Knew the End

Even Though I Knew the End by C.L. Polk
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I read this book back to back with another religious/Christian fantasy. It was rather constructive to compare them, to see the different ways different authors can approach this genre. In this case, this book is the superior of the two, with better worldbuilding and characterization. It's just a better book all around.

Helen Brandt is a mystic and private investigator who is doing one last job before her soul is forfeit to Hell. She bargained her soul away ten years ago to save the life of one of her family members. She works for Marlowe, a woman who (Helen discovers during the course of the book) is actually a demon. There is someone who is harvesting the souls of people like Helen just before their IOUs come due, and Marlowe hires Helen to find out who is taking her souls before she can claim them.

Helen is involved with Edith, a sound engineer for a local radio station who gets an offer for her dream job in San Francisco. Helen would love to go with Edith, but her time is running out in three days--that is, until the demon Marlowe offers to return Helen's soul if she tracks down the White City Vampire (not an actual vampire; that's about the only supernatural creature missing in this story), the being who is stealing Marlowe's souls.

That's the bare bones of the plot, but there is a lot of layers to this story: family, love, and an exploration of the power of the Brotherhood of the Compass, the society of mystics that kicked Helen out of their ranks after her "damnation," as they put it. Helen is reunited with her estranged brother, the person she bargained her soul away for all those years ago. In another plot twist, she meets up with a fallen angel, Haraniel, who is also trying to track down the White City Vampire. Helen, Edith, Haraniel, Marlowe and Helen's brother Teddy all come together in the action-packed climax, which sees Helen regaining her soul and sacrificing it again to save Edith's life.

The worldbuilding is well thought out in this book, and the characterization is lovely. Helen and Edith's relationship is believable and mature. The ending is bittersweet: would you condemn yourself to Hell in ten years to save your true love? Readers may answer the question differently, but I was so invested in Helen and Edith by the end that I couldn't argue with Helen's decision.

This is a novella, and while it is short (133 pages), the pacing is excellent and it packs quite a punch. It's a quick read, but it will linger in your mind.

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Review: Tread of Angels

Tread of Angels by Rebecca Roanhorse
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

This book falls into the esoteric category of "religious fantasy." This particular religious fantasy is of the Christian variety, with fallen angels, regular angels, and demons fighting a war on Earth. One fallen angel is killed, and his body (which apparently turned to stone afterwards) provides the miraculous "divinity" mineral that powers a great deal of this alt-history steampunk America.

This sounds interesting, and would have been if the world had been a little better explored. Unfortunately, even at 200 pages, I felt like we were just scratching the surface. The tight focus on the protagonist Celeste didn't help this, as of course she already knew exactly what Elects and Virtues were, and didn't feel the need to stop and explain them. I as a reader however was a bit lost. I wish a few pages out of the 200 had been used to better flesh out the world.

The other problem is with Celeste. For someone who is supposed to be a card dealer/sharp, she was pretty naive and slow on the uptake, especially when it came to her sister. Now, I can understand clinging to her sister as her last surviving relative, and not wanting to believe bad things about her, but as the book went along, everything in the plot pointed to the sister actually being the one to commit the murder. But Celeste refused to even entertain the thought, and did some pretty bad things as a result--including attempting to frame an innocent woman for the murder, which would have led to said woman's death. Celeste also roped her former lover, the demon Abraxas, into this scheme, which resulted in Abraxas' turning away from her completely at the end.

I suppose if the author's intent was for her main character to hit rock bottom, she succeeded. However, the book stops at that point, and we never get to see her start putting her life together again. Since this story is lacking in both worldbuilding and characterization, I wonder if it should have been a longer length. As it is, it ends on a frustrating and unsatisfying note. I generally like Rebecca Roanhorse's books, but this one is not one of her better efforts.



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Review: Winter in America

Winter in America by Ta-Nehisi Coates
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Ta-Nehisi Coates started writing Captain America after finishing up his run on Black Panther, and I can see the improvement. The first few issues of Black Panther were pretty shaky, as the author was still finding his voice and rhythm. In this story, he has a better grasp of the medium and the characters.

This story takes place after the Secret Empire run where Hydra used a fake Steve Rogers to conquer America. I haven't read it, but Coates makes enough references to it for the reader to understand what took place. Though some things are set up for future storylines, this volume is mainly dealing with the ramifications and consequences of what came before. As a result, there is a lot of interior monologue and reflection from Steve. He is full of doubt here, both of himself and the American dream, and wrestles with it throughout. If you prefer your comics action-heavy, you should skip over this, because you really don't get that here. But if you prefer a slower pace and some good character moments, this should be right up your alley.

The art, lettering and colors really takes this up a notch. This story may be partly setup, but it's interesting enough to continue.

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Review: Sword-Bearer

Sword-Bearer by Jennifer Roberson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The first book in this series came out (checks calendar; mouth falls open) 36 years ago. Book #7 came out in 2014. I'm sure the series has some dedicated fans, and I am one of them.

This is mainly for the characters. Tiger and Del, our titular sword-bearers, are two of the richest, most well-developed characters in fantasy. In the first book, Sword-Dancer, Tiger was frankly a sexist pig, and Del was so set on gaining revenge for her murdered family (and also for her own rape; the first book unfortunately dips into the rape/revenge trope that was popular back then) that she was quite ruthless and cruel. Both have grown considerably since the first book, separately and together.

I can't say the same for the plot. This book's plot meanders quite a bit, and seems to be there mainly for setting up the next book. In the last book, to save Del and his daughter Sula, Tiger reactivated his magic sword Samiel and ended up swallowing several pages of a magical grimoire. Those have combined (rather uncomfortably) with his own inborn magic, and the underling of the wizard dispatched in the previous book now wants them back. This problem is taken care of about two-thirds of the way through the book, and another problem, dealing with Del's murdered family and her former training facility in the North, is introduced. It's nice that Tiger and Del both get their own storylines, but they aren't terribly well meshed. The ending also fizzles out a bit, with several unresolved threads.

No matter. The characters and worldbuilding pretty well make up for the other lacks, at least in my mind. I wish we could still get these books in mass market paperback like we used to (DAW was about the last publisher around to do those, and even they are succumbing to the trade paperback scam), but hey, as long as the series continues, I'll take what's there.

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Review: The Last Hero

The Last Hero by Linden A. Lewis
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is the final book in the First Sister trilogy, and the first thing I noticed about it is how much the writer has improved from the first book to this. This book is far more complicated, both plot and character-wise, than either of the two books preceding it. There are a great deal of plot threads to wrap up, and new viewpoint characters to explore. Frankly, I don't think the author who wrote the first book could have managed it all. But they pull off this book with aplomb, and bring the series to a satisfying conclusion.

This series reminds me of James S.A. Corey's The Expanse, with its competing warring factions: the gene-modded Asters in the Belt, the technology-leaning Icarii of Mercury and Venus, the religious Geans of Earth and Mars, and the cyborg Synthetics, who have established their civilization from Jupiter through the rest of the solar system and beyond. All of these sides meet in a titanic clash that threatens to result in human annihilation, until our main characters manage to avert it.

All of the characters have good character development, in particular Astrid, the former First Sister (an euphemism for a space comfort woman forced into the life from an early age) who turns into an effective leader and the driver of nearly the entire plot. Astrid discovers who she is and where she came from, and makes up her mind that though she has been abandoned and betrayed by many people, she is going to reclaim her life going forward. (In fact, Astrid becomes quite the badass throughout this book.) One character who died in the last book is resurrected as a Synthetic and reunited with his lover, and all the characters (well, except for the villain, who definitely gets his deserved comeuppance) end up in a good place.

This last book was over 600 pages, but due to the twisty plot, I think it earned the added length. If you like complex space opera, I think you will enjoy this.

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Review: Bloodmarked

Bloodmarked by Tracy Deonn
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This second volume of the Legendborn Cycle deepens both the worldbuilding and characterization, and gives the protagonist a satisfying arc. Bree starts the book an immature 16-year-old who has just been handed a great deal of power she has no idea what to do with, and ends as a young woman who has reclaimed both herself and her power and charted a new path.

This is a sort of Buffy the Vampire Slayer-esque retelling of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table, with thousand-year-old demons breaking through to our world and the Legendborn there to repel them. Only in this case, Buffy--or Bree--is a young African-American girl who was not supposed to inherit the spirit of Arthur, and only did so because two hundred years ago a white man who held that spirit raped and impregnated his slave, and Bree is their descendant.

This book fully explores the ramifications of this plot twist, including the Regents of the Round Table rejecting and imprisoning Bree because of who she is. She manages to escape, but they keep pursuing her, and she knows they will never accept her. At the end, when she breaks free of everyone who has been trying to control her, she makes a bargain with an ancient demon called the Hunter to teach her to use her power.

"I am asking you this for me!" I say. "And I will not escape you to return here." My laugh is sour, sad, both. "Because nothing I do will ever be enough for them. The Regents made sure of that when they put me on display in Arthur's possession, dangerously out of control and powerless at once. I used to think I shouldn't be here, but now I know I can't. And maybe I don't have to be. This world wants my suffering, and I cannot keep giving it to them."

The book ends with Bree going off with the Hunter, to both learn her power and help him regain his demon throne. She is hoping this bargain will also save Selwyn Kane, the Merlin who has been trying to protect her throughout the book and in doing so has nearly succumbed to his own demon. (There is a love triangle in this book, unfortunately, but it's better written then most.) It's a very fat book at 550 pages, but with the plot twists and character growth contained therein, I think it's earned its thickness. It's also an excellent example of how a writer other than a white man can take a classic idea and really deepen it with contemporary social justice themes. Personally, I have discovered many treasures by taking chances on writers such as these, and this book now joins them.

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Review: The Law

The Law by Jim Butcher
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This novella takes place after the last book in the Dresden Files, Battle Ground, where a supernatural being called a Titan apparently nearly stomped Chicago into the ground. I haven't read it yet, and one of the reasons for that is the [massive spoiler] that occurred therein. Generally I don't mind spoilers, but this one put me off enough that I don't know if I will ever read Battle Ground. (I have it, but I bought it at the ongoing library used-book sale, so I suppose it's a good thing I didn't pay full price for it.)

This is a short, blessedly lower-stakes story that returns Harry to his private-investigator roots. A woman comes to Harry for help: Maya, a former sex worker who left the life and started a successful tutoring business. Now her pimp is out of prison and leaning on her. Harry needs to restart his life again after the events of the last book, so he takes the case.

There is not very much fighting in this one. Harry tries to intimidate the pimp into dropping the case, but that doesn't work and he has to solve it more the old-fashioned way by hiring a lawyer. Said lawyer, Maximillian Valerious, is an interesting new character and wins Maya's case for her. There are a few more complications, like the pimp being an all-around idiot and trying to kill Harry with a car bomb, but this story is fairly straightforward.

It's also fairly slight and predictable. This series started in the 2000's, one of the first of the urban fantasy boom, and it shows. It's beginning to feel like the author is spinning his wheels. I know there's still supposed to be a few more books before the series wraps up, but I'm not sure I'll be reading them.

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Review: Thunder In Her Veins

Thunder In Her Veins by Jason Aaron
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is the first collection of the comics run that the 2022 Marvel movie, Thor: Love and Thunder is based on. The basic concept is that Thor's ex-girlfriend, Dr. Jane Foster, is found worthy to hold Mjolnir and becomes the Mighty Thor....but the hammer's magic cannot stop the cancer that is slowly killing her human form.

This is a dark, complex story, which includes Jane Foster as the Mighty Thor facing down, among other things, a war in Asgardia between the Dark and Light Elves, Loki, and Odin himself. The art (by Russell Daughterman) is very good, and I like the different fonts and colors the letterer, Joe Sabino, uses for various characters.

Even in this first volume, however, this is a far richer story than Taika Waititi presented in his movie. Of course, he really couldn't let Natalie Portman take the lead in a film ostensibly starring Chris Hemsworth, which I think worked to the detriment of the movie overall. Still, that's what the original source material is for: no matter what happens in the movie, this will always be there. In this case, you're better off reading the comic.

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Review: The World We Make

The World We Make by N.K. Jemisin
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is the second book in the Great Cities series, which was originally supposed to be a trilogy (as explained in the first book, The City We Became). Unfortunately, life, Trump and the pandemic caught up with the author during the writing of this book, and the series shrunk to a duology. I certainly can't blame the author, and don't mean to condemn her--but her decision does show. This book seems quite compressed, and the seams of what has been excised don't fit together in places.

That's not to say what we get isn't very good. Each character is given one or two chapters for an in-depth exploration, and there is even a chapter from the point of view of the antagonist, the Woman in White, otherwise known as the Lovecraftian city of R'lyeh. We also find out the origins of the multiverse, why it has been rebooted so many times, and why cities coming to life and manifesting avatars constitutes such a threat. This actually casts the series in more of a science-fictional, quantum-physics direction, notwithstanding the characters' proclamations of "city magic."

This book is also more overtly political than the first. Given the times in which it was written and where it is set, I don't know how it could be otherwise. The author calls out the less savory aspects of New York in myriad ways, as this excerpt from the climactic battle shows:

In anticipatory delight, she manifests her own battle configuration. The circular disk of her now spreads out like a Monstera leaf, streets splitting and walls folding back. From the splits emerge extra heads on long, armored necks. Each has its own eyes, mismatched and in clusters, some with slitted pupils and some with horselike bars and a few with wavy cuttlefish eye-smiles. Beyond this, R'lyeh has allowed them limited individuality: one has a chainsaw tongue, another a vacuum nose, while another is covered in mouths all singing an atonal, screeching battle hymn. They are more than they seem, these appendages: not just physical threats, but conceptual weapons. The mouthed head is formed from concentrated Staten Islander hatred of paying city taxes, for example. With it, R'lyeh means to rip out New York's civil service--all the bridge painters and street-sweeper drivers and even the people who work at the DMV, who are as vital to a city's life as any living thing's intestines. The chainsaw tentacle is powered by NIMBYism, meant to chop up chunks of affordable housing and public transportation expansions. And there's more, more, so much more. R'lyeh has spent these past few months learning all her prey's weaknesses, and--with the help of its most reluctant borough--designing a weapon to target each and every one.

This is clearly written by someone who lives in New York, who both loves and hates it, but more importantly knows it, from the inside out. This essence of New York carries through to the somewhat unexpected climax, which involves not a frantic battle but a not-quite-deus ex machina wherein the avatars of New York face down and call out the Ur-gods behind the multiverse, and stop them from killing off universes because of their fear of anything that is different. Which solves the ethical problem from the first book, and also fits in with the series' broader themes of social justice.

I could see the ghost of what would have been the third book in the final chapters and coda, and am a little sad that we won't be getting it. Still, even a rushed and truncated Jemisin novel is better than 90% of anything else out there.

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Review: The Spare Man

The Spare Man by Mary Robinette Kowal
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

This is basically "The Thin Man" in space, as the title would indicate: a locked-room-spaceship murder mystery, with updated versions of Nick and Nora Charles for a new century. In this case, Nick is Shalmaneser Steward, newlywed spouse and recently retired private detective/reality show TV host who becomes embroiled in the murders. Nora is Tesla Crane, billionaire heiress to the Crane fortune who is attempting to travel anonymously on the ISS Lindgren, an interplanetary cruise ship, and who ends up having to keep her spouse out of the brig and solve the murder herself.

There's a third character who is a near-protagonist in her own right: Gimlet, Tesla's West Highland White terrier and service/support dog. Several years previously, Tesla was in an accident that nearly killed her and left her with a spine full of titanium screws, chronic pain, and PTSD. She has panic attacks and flashbacks that Gimlet's presence and training help mitigate. Gimlet is an adorable little dog that (almost) everybody loves, and this plays a part in the climax.

One's enjoyment of this book will depend entirely on how well they like murder mysteries, as the SF setting and the science of an interplanetary cruise ship is dealt with in a pretty perfunctory manner. It's nothing like the hard science of the author's "Lady Astronaut" series, which among other things is a love letter to NASA and its checklists. I'm not very much of a mystery aficionado myself, and clues and red herrings tend to fly over my head. The mystery seemed to unspool very gradually and suddenly speed up at the end. I don't know if it's overly convoluted per se, but let's just say that the final reveal of the killer and his motivation felt a little underwhelming, at least to me.

More interesting are the two main characters and their relationship. The author writes long-term relationships and married couples very well, and that continues here. The only reservation I have is Tesla's being a billionaire heiress. She tries to be aware of her privilege and not stomp all over people, but the circumstances here are such that she can't help but do that to an extent, which Shalmaneser points out. That thread seems to be shoved under the rug a little, and I wish the author had spent more time on it.

This was okay, but I didn't like it as much as the "Lady Astronaut" books. If you want a great read, check out The Calculating Stars. It's an alternate history of the space race, something along the lines of Apple TV's "For All Mankind," and it's terrific.

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Review: Soul Taken

Soul Taken by Patricia Briggs
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is the thirteenth book in one of the few long-running urban fantasy series still standing. I like the world and the characters, but I think this one suffered a bit from "too much has happened to understand" syndrome. If you haven't read at least the few previous books (back to number #10, Silence Fallen) you will be hopelessly adrift. I think an "our story so far" prologue would help the reader.

Having said that, this is an entertaining entry in the series, fast-paced and suspenseful. Mercy, a coyote shapeshifter (and daughter of the actual trickster god Coyote) goes up against an ancient artifact that steals people's souls. She has a nice relationship with her mate, the werewolf and Alpha of the local pack Adam Hauptman, and the author makes good use of the side characters, in particular Zee, the grumpy and dangerous Fae who is Mercy's partner at her garage. Mercy is not superpowered and nearly indestructible like the werewolves (although she can see ghosts and has a few other tricks up her sleeve), which means she has to use her wits to survive. This makes her a more relatable character.

I don't think this entry in the series is quite as good as some, particularly Silence Fallen, but it held my attention well enough. However, I do wish the author would provide a brief recap at the beginning going forward.

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Review: Undiscovered Country, Vol. 3: Possibility

Undiscovered Country, Vol. 3: Possibility by Scott Snyder
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I've been continuing with this comic despite the batshit craziness of some (ok, a lot) of its worldbuilding. (Reviews of Volume 1 and Volume 2.) I guess that means the overall story is compelling enough to continue? That is probably true, but this is the first volume where I feel the writers deliberately pulled back from examining their story's premise in a way that would have added a lot more meaning and heft.

Nearly forty years in the future, when a group of people are trying to find their way out of a future America that has cut itself off from the rest of the world (never mind the global community/economy/information exchange is such that this couldn't happen; this is only one of the handwaves you have to look past to go with this), said group has reached the third of thirteen balkanized American zones: Possibility. As described in the comic:

Once populated by all the creatives responsible for the stories and myths and music and styles and culture that made America what it was to the world. The dream.

Out of all the zones, Possibility was tasked with making new creations that would redefine this land so that when the doors re-opened, the American dream would be renewed.

To pass through this zone, our group has to create a brand-new American masterpiece: a story, painting, sculpture, artwork--something that grapples with the myth/dream of America. Although one character immediately throws out a poem that works perfectly well for me:

Roses are red, violets are blue,
America's awful, and fuck you too.

I mean, this sums up the country in a lot of ways, past and present. But, y'know, if they had used that we wouldn't have a story.

The person who ends up being tasked to do this is one of the characters of color: Ace Zenyatta. He considers how to tell the American story and comes up with this:

Yes, I've been thinking about the quintessential American story. Immigration, assimilation, race, class...all part of it. But one story has captivated Americans since the beginning. Three words.

Rags to riches.

So many American stories follow that model. Someone comes from nothing and ends up on top of the world.

And I thought, really? The two white writers are having the black guy say this? Without mentioning America's history of slavery, genocide and Jim Crow, and how that plays into restricting who can actually achieve this rags-to-riches fantasy?

This would have been a very rich vein to tap if the writers had had the balls to really grapple with it. (Also, bringing in a writer of color might have helped.) As it is, they come close in a couple of places, but they end up pulling their punches and ducking away. This pretty much spoiled the impact of this volume for me.

Look, I'm sure many people read this comic just for its overall batshittery. It is pretty over-the-top compared to others. But it's disappointing that they come up with a storyline that is supposed to explore the mythology and dream of America--and they don't actually do it.

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Review: Ymir

Ymir by Rich Larson
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Cyberpunk is a relatively new genre of science fiction, generally agreed to have been started by William Gibson with his 1984 novel Neuromancer (with its classic opening line of "The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel"--although that's a bit dated now, I guess). Since then there have been many different twists on the genre. This one combines cyberpunk with space opera, to middling effect.

Not that Rich Larson isn't an exciting new author. He turns out short stories like most authors do paragraphs (more than two hundred according to this book's Author's Notes) and I've read quite a few of them. His collection, Tomorrow Factory, is excellent. This is a novel-length expansion of those themes, with the addition of a frozen planet, an exploitative corporation, and ancient tech from a vanished race that has reawakened to spread havoc.

This is also supposed to be loosely based on Beowulf, but the only reference I can see is the name of the cyborg monster, called "grendel." Our protagonist Yorick is called back to the titular planet Ymir twenty years after he left to kill the grendel. Yorick carries all sorts of baggage with him, which is gradually revealed through the story. He is not a particularly likable character, although we come to understand him along the way. In the end, he does face up to the demons he left behind, and manages to sort of repair his relationship with his estranged brother.

This is okay, I suppose, but I didn't like it as well as other things I've read by the author. If you're just getting into Rich Larson, spring for the above-mentioned short story collection. That will give you a better idea of what he can do.

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Review: The Mountain in the Sea

The Mountain in the Sea by Ray Nayler
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The first challenge of writing "hard" science fiction is of course getting the science right. The second is turning out a story instead of an academic lecture, complete with characters and stakes. I've never read Isaac Asimov, but his characters are famously paper-thin and his ideas carry the day. This book is stuffed full of big ideas--cephalopod intelligence, android intelligence, the definition of consciousness, culture and language, and more.

But for all the top-heaviness of the ideas and the philosophical discussions, it doesn't fall short as an actual story. To be sure, it's a bit slower than some might like, as there are places where the science and ideas take center stage. That's why it's good that there are two side storylines adjacent to the main storyline, as those side storylines are where the action is. All three stories and characters are neatly woven together at the climax. Some of the blurbs for this book call it a "thriller," and while I'm sure that was a good marketing tool, it's not really a thriller, at least in my estimation. It is, however, a very good look at a possible near future where humanity makes its first contact with an alien intelligence that's been right here with us, in the depths of the sea, all this time.

Octopuses are, from what I've read, one of the prime contenders for the next sentience to evolve on our planet. But there are big obstacles to their doing so, and this book discusses them in detail. This long excerpt sums it up:

"Look," Ha continued, "there are limitations that would keep them from ever being able to form a conscious, communicative life or a culture."

"Life span," Evrim interjected.

"Life span is one, yes. Not the only one, but one of the largest. They only live two years, in the larger species, and far less time than that in smaller species. Some live only a season. Down in the deeper parts of the ocean, there are octopuses who live longer--ten years or more. But those are cold-water creatures. They wouldn't be among the most intelligent octopuses: In the deep their lives are simpler--they are creatures of routine. Everything is slowed down. The smart octopuses would be the ones nearer shore, in environments that provide them with diverse challenges, problems to solve."

"Okay, but if they could overcome life span--what else would stand in the way?"

"A hell of a lot. Their mating patterns, for one. The males turn senescent and wander after mating until they die. The females starve themselves to death tending their eggs. And even if the parents survive, once the eggs hatch, the young of most species float to the surface and drift in the plankton before settling to the bottom at another location. That kills any connection to place or kin. There are species that live on the bottom in juvenile form--but it doesn't much matter, if their parents are dead soon after they hatch. There's no way to pass on learned experience. No culture to be born into. And since they are solitary, there's no group knowledge either--so there is no way for them to pass any knowledge from one generation to another, and virtually no passing of knowledge from one octopus to another in the same generation. Imagine where we would be if humanity had to restart its cultural progress with every generation. As intelligent as they are, each individual octopus is a blank slate. The only thing passed down to them by their parents to help them survive is their physical form, and the instincts written into their genes. Everything else they have to learn on their own, wandering the ocean floor."

But in this book, there is a group of octopuses that has overcome those obstacles, and this story is about their discovery and the efforts of the main character Ha Nguyen to communicate with and understand them. It's also the story of Ha and her companion, the android Evrim, to preserve them and keep them free from harm, protecting them against the corporations wanting to exploit them.

In this near-future (no dates are given, but it's several decades from now, at least), the oceans have been overfished to near extinction, and artificial intelligence has progressed to the point where self-driving cars, self-flying airplanes and helicopters, and self-propelled ships are commonplace (indeed, one of the previously mentioned side storylines takes place aboard the Sea Wolf, an AI-controlled illegal fishing boat). Another of the main characters, Evrim, is the world's first artificial intelligence/android proven to be conscious and self-aware, and humanity's panicked reaction to that results in its being banished to the Con Dao Archipelago, where the octopuses are discovered. The archipelago is owned by the tech corporation Dianima, the same company that created Evrim. These two things are not coincidental, and this plays out throughout the story.

As you can probably tell, this is a dense, layered book, and not a light read by any means. I found it fascinating, and the characters are well-drawn enough to keep the attention of those who might tend to be bogged down by the science. But make no mistake, the science and philosophical ideas found here are the focus of the story. If you want a fast-paced book full of action, there's no use even starting this. But if you want an absorbing story of alien intelligence (the octopuses presented here are far more alien and potentially deadly than anything moviemakers can dream up) and the human reaction to revelations that will shake the foundations of our world, then pick this up.



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Review: Furysong

Furysong by Rosaria Munda
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I've had good luck with the series I've read so far this year, as in the final and/or latest book in the sequence has proven to be the best yet. That holds up with this book, which brings the Aurelian Cycle to an emotional, cathartic ending.

The book's acknowledgments refer to this series as "Plato's republic with dragons," and while I haven't read Plato to understand that reference, there has been a lot of twisty-turny politics and revolutionary fervor in this story. It was a little bit overwhelming in the last volume, but this one clarifies where our characters' loyalties lie, and what they will do to free their island of Callipolis from the tyranny of the dragonborn.

Classism lies at the heart of this story, as the dragonborn--the families who tamed dragons and trained their children to ride them and rule--view the serfs, which one of our protagonists Antigone sur Aela is one, as subhuman and undeserving of basic rights. The dragonborn were overthrown in a bloody revolution ten years prior to the opening book in the series, Fireborne, but in the second book they returned to oust their own conquerers, with the help of Princess Freyda from the mainland and her enormous dragon, called a "goliathan."

(And just having seen the monstrous Vhagar depicted on HBO's House of the Dragon, I have a pretty good mind-picture of how big Freyda's dragon is.)

In this book our two main protagonists and viewpoint characters, Lee and Annie, return along with two others: Griff Gareson on the island of New Pythos and his lover, Delo Skyfish. These four intertwining storylines are adroitly juggled and all the characters are given satisfying arcs. Indeed, this is the most emotional of the three books, with more than one section where the room got quite dusty as I was reading. The characters have matured and step up to free Callipolis from its conquerers, as well as tearing down the system that allowed the dragonborn to dominate and rule. There is heartache and sacrifice along the way, but in the end their world is remade and they are looking forward to a better future.

The dragons also get more time in this book, although some of the creatures' worldbuilding was a bit hinky--they have retractable fangs? Really?--and the phenomenon of "sparking" and "dousing" individual dragons seems to be more in service of plot demands rather than make any actual biological sense. Still, it was gratifying to finally get to know Annie's dragon Aela and Lee's mount Pallor a little better, even if a tragedy lay in store for Lee and Pallor. Lee's and Annie's romance also intensifies in this book, and it's handled in a refreshingly adult manner, with almost no angst.

This book steps up its game and brings everything to a satisfying conclusion. I would definitely recommend this book, and the entire series, as one of the best things I've read this year.

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Review: The Sandman Vol. 4: Season of Mists

The Sandman Vol. 4: Season of Mists by Neil Gaiman
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

(Note: Just before I started this, word came down that Netflix has renewed its Sandman series for its second season, which will presumably tackle this volume. Talk about serendipity.)

Dream of the Endless, or Morpheus, is sometimes not the main character in this comic, but in this volume he takes center stage. This is the rematch between Dream and Lucifer Morningstar, but it turns out not to be a fight at all. When Dream shows up in Hell to rescue the past love he condemned there ten thousand years ago (Dream apparently has spells of being a dick, and this was one of them), he finds Lucifer is kicking all the demons and dead out and closing up the place. And because Dream is there at the very last, he ends up unwittingly getting the key to Hell as Lucifer leaves.

This may be devilishly underhanded on Lucifer's part (see what I did there), although the story seems to indicate he really wanted to leave it behind. Ten billion years of supervising Hell can wear on anybody, I suppose, even a fallen angel. At any rate, Dream is now stuck with Hell and has no idea what to do with it. Worse, gods and goddesses from all the other pantheons hear about this and show up at Dream's doors, determined to get the key by hook or by crook.

(This will be an interesting part of the adaptation, seeing as Thor and Loki figure prominently in the comic. We're so used to the Marvel versions of these characters, it will be fun to see how they are depicted here.)

The solution to Dream's dilemma is an unexpected twist, and an even more dickish move on the Creator's part. It also leads to a rather unsettling ending to the story, as the new overlords of Hell are going to be worse, in an entirely different way, than Lucifer ever was.

Dream is set back on his heels a bit, and has one of the few instances of remorse and regret I'm sure he's felt in his long life. We also see more of the Endless, with a focus on the youngest, Delirium. This is going to be a fascinating story to bring to the screen, and I'm really looking forward to it.

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Review: The Rise and Reign of the Mammals: A New History, from the Shadow of the Dinosaurs to Us

The Rise and Reign of the Mammals: A New History, from the Shadow of the Dinosaurs to Us by Stephen Brusatte
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I think Stephen Brusatte is one of the best science writers I've read recently. He has a great way of organizing information and writing about it in a manner that doesn't feel condescending to laypeople, all the while tackling some very knotty topics.

Those skills are on full display in this book. This is a good thing, as the history of mammals gets into deeper scientific weeds than his previous book, the excellent The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs, ever did. As he reveals, the evolution of mammals goes further back than most of us ever suspected, and took some surprising twists and turns along the way. I learned more than I ever thought could be said about teeth and dentition and ankle bones, along with the many different classifications of early mammals. It's pretty deep stuff, even as well as he writes it. You definitely have to be a science nerd to slog through some of this.

After we get past the death of the dinosaurs and into the Ice Age, and thus into the more familiar territory of mammoths and sabertooth tigers, the book becomes a bit easier to read. The final chapter deals with human evolution, and adds a sad postscript: many of the Ice Age megafauna would likely be alive today, if it weren't for us.

It comes down to this: if our human species had not spread around the world, then a lot of the megafauna would still be here. Maybe not all of them, but probably most. Dinosaurs like T. Rex and Triceratops were felled by an asteroid. For mammoths and sabertooths, we were the asteroid.

There are many illustrations to accompany the eras and fossils being discussed, and endnotes that are almost as interesting as the main text. I don't think this book is quite as accessible as his first, but that's due to the complexity of the topic. If you like chewing over some meaty scientific concepts, this book is very tasty indeed.

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Review: Only Bad Options

Only Bad Options by Jennifer Estep
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I wasn't sure about this book when I started it. It's a space opera that didn't seem to be breaking any new ground, and in the beginning the protagonist veered perilously close to being Too Stupid To Live:

I knew I should keep quiet, but the smart show-off and smug know-it-all inside me just couldn't stop the words from pouring out of my mouth. "Actually, the ship crashed because of an error in the navigation system. One of the sensors below the observation deck windows is unusually sensitive to laser scans, blaster and cannon fire, and other similar bright pulses of light, heat, and power."

Rowena gave me an encouraging nod. "And?"

Once again, I couldn't stop talking. "And whenever light, heat, or power hits this particular sensor, the navigation system wrongly interprets it as a solar flare and reacts accordingly."

I thought, Really? and nearly threw the book against the wall. But I stuck with it, and gradually the characters started to grow on me. This quote is from one of the Vesper Quill chapters, the first of two primary and POV characters. The other is Kyrion Caldaren, her antagonist/enemy/turned possible boyfriend, the Arrow or war leader and assassin of the galactic Emperor, Callus Holloway.

Still, this book and series didn't and won't break any new ground. It feels like a space opera from decades ago, cribbing an awful lot from Star Wars (I mean, the "stormswords" that bond to psions are just a fancy-shmancy version of lightsabers and Jedi) and dealing in concepts--people with psi powers: telepathy, telekinesis, precognition and the like, which are a vital part of the plot--that have fallen out of favor in the genre. Maybe this is the author's "book of the heart," according to the acknowledgments, but perhaps she should have read a little more in the field to see what space opera is today. For example, any of the works of Adrian Tchaikovsky, especially the Final Architecture series, blows this out of the water.

Having said all that, I finished it and didn't dislike it. As I indicated, the characters grew on me, particularly after Vesper's first few (very rough) chapters as her backstory came to light and she started acting a little bit smarter. When Kyrion started narrating his chapters, that smoothed the story out more. These are two damaged people who are unwittingly yoked together through a psychic "truebond." Vesper is attempting to bring to light a conspiracy surrounding the crash of the spaceship Velorum, and Kyrion is trying to stay alive in the cutthroat court of the Emperor. The unexpected and unwelcome forming of the truebond means they are forced to work together, and Vesper is dragged into the world of the tyrannical Emperor Holloway and his backstabbing Regals.

Again, this is well-worn and familiar territory, but the characters are engaging and the plot is entertaining enough to keep you occupied for a while. This won't win any awards, but at the end I didn't feel like throwing it against the wall any longer. I suppose that is a triumph in itself.

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Review: Rust in the Root

Rust in the Root by Justina Ireland
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I am a great fan of the author's alternate-history Civil War-era zombie series (although the second book, Deathless Divide, is not as good as the first, Dread Nation). The themes of that book are also on prominent display in this one: racism, colonialism, white supremacy. This book is more of a fantasy, with a rather complicated world and magic system. Sometimes overly so--it's pretty fat at 439 pages, but it could have easily gone all the way up to 500 and beyond to better flesh out its alternate history and world.

This story is set in 1937, and our protagonist, Laura Ann Langston, is a young mage who has come to New York to escape her stifling small town in Pennsylvania, with dreams of doing magical baking for Hollywood stars. She is a Floramancer, a magic wielder who can sense and use the magical "potential" in plants and seeds. (Although she does have other Mancer-talents as well, the full list of which she discovers along the way.) She gets dragged into a secret mission of the Bureau of the Arcane's Conservation Corps, and she and her team have to go into the Ohio Deep Blight and try to right the magical wrongness there.

All of which is a vast oversimplification of the plot. I'm not describing it any more than that not so much from a desire to avoid spoilers but because there is a lot going on here. This is actually handled fairly well as the story unfolds, with minimal infodumping. Because Laura has never been fully trained in the use of her various gifts, she finds out these things about herself along with the reader. This is part of her character arc, as she has to let go of her dream of being a baker and accept the destiny that is revealed for her, and take up responsibilities she never dreamed of.

Generally I adore deep and layered worldbuilding....but this almost feels too overstuffed. That it's an alternate history adds a bit of clumsiness to the whole thing, as one would think the existence of all the different types of magic described here would have turned Earth's and America's timelines inside out. But aside from some tweaks around the edges, this history progressed pretty close to what actually happened, particularly as regards the Transatlantic slave trade. Now I realize the author is using her fantastical world to make a comment on the real history, and the systems of oppression and generational trauma, that still exist today. But the whole thing just seems a bit bloated and not as sharply focused as, for instance, Dread Nation.

It's still worth reading, and the magic system is quite interesting. Laura ends up in a very different place than when she started, and although there could be a sequel, this feels more like a standalone. I just wish the worldbuilding could have been a bit leaner and sharper.

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