Review: Loka

Loka by S.B. Divya
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is the second book in the Alloy Era series, the first of which, Meru, I read and reviewed here. This story takes a time jump of seventeen years, and focuses on Akshaya, the daughter of the first book's protagonists, the human Jayanthi and the genetically engineered post-human (and 120-meter-long star-traveling space mermaid) Vaha. Akshaya is coming of age and starting to break away from her parents. She has been raised on the construct Chedi, a sort of independent AI generation ship that travels a regular route between outlying star systems and Earth. Akshaya wants to visit Earth, the home of one of her parents and a place she has never seen, before their exile--as told in the first book--ends and they can return to Meru, a habitable planet two hundred light years away. Akshaya has been genetically engineered to live on Meru, but she is not sure she wants to do so. She wishes to visit Earth and complete the Anthro Challenge, a circumnavigation of the planet within a specified time period, utilizing present human technology and not relying on the alloys.

This is kind of a stand-alone story, as enough background information is provided (without being overwhelming) that you can follow it without having read the first book. However, I would recommend doing so, as reading the first book will make your experience of this story that much richer.

In this story, Akshaya uses her time on Earth to figure out who she is and what she wants. The Anthro Challenge is more difficult than she anticipated, as she soon discovers that her health really does not permit her to thrive on Earth, and there are other setbacks, mainly with the weather. The Challenge is also being recorded as a kind of far-future reality show, turning Akshaya and her parents into something of a political cudgel to relax some of the restrictions on alloys in the Compact (the document governing Earth in this future, as there aren't any countries or governments as we know them today, and this is a post-capitalist society). Unfortunately, along the way the fact that Akshaya has some alloy genes leaks out and turns many humans against her. She manages to finish the Challenge, but she realize that the life she wants to live can only be found on Meru.

We don't have a story of high stakes here. Oh, the stakes are important enough, but they aren't of the planet-busting or universe-ending variety. They are deeply personal to Akshaya and her family. That doesn't lessen the suspense one bit. There is also a great deal of philosophy and ethic conundrums built into this story, as there was in Meru. As with the first book, this is a thoughtful, deliberately paced tale that is not to be rushed through. Take your time with it and savor the ideas and nuances. You will be rewarded.

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Review: The Relentless Legion

The Relentless Legion by J.S. Dewes
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I was disappointed by another space opera series I finished this year (the Devoured Worlds trilogy) but this series did not disappoint. In fact, it stuck the landing with a bang.

Unfortunately, this book won't make much sense unless you've read the other two, as it picks right up after the ending of the second book, The Exiled Fleet, without so much as a "the story so far" recap. (I can imagine the trilogy being re-released in a giant omnibus edition in a few years, but it would be about six inches thick.) However, the first two books are absolutely worth your time. This one, in addition to tying up all the outstanding plot and character threads, expands our POV characters--Adequin Rake and Cavalon Mercer, up to this point--to include a crucial third: Jackin North. Jackin traded himself to the series' villain, Augustus Mercer, at the end of the last book to enable Adequin's and Cavalon's escape, and this book shows us the full ramifications of that. Jackin is tortured and eventually broken, and is used as a Trojan horse to foil Adequin's and Cavalon's revolution.

All this is in addition to the overarching storyling of the universe collapsing, and Adequin and her Sentinels working with the alien Viators to halt the oncoming collapse at the borders of our galaxy. Cavalon is also attempting to undo the effects of the Viator mutagen of five hundred years before that threatens to make humanity extinct. This particular plot thread culminates in a trip to a parallel universe (which is mercifully a brief part of the story as a whole, as a multiverse setting is getting a bit overused by this point). At the climax, Adequin, Jackin and Cavalon team up to take Augustus down. The series ends with Cavalon taking up Augustus' rulership of the Mercer family in the Core worlds, and Adequin and Jackin returning to their Sentinel duties at the galactic border--with a new understanding and a new relationship unfolding between them.

As in the previous two books, the sometimes breakneck pacing is leavened by slower and deeper character moments, particularly for Jackin and Cavalon. The reason I appreciated this series more than the other one I mentioned (despite the first two books of the Devoured Worlds trilogy being excellent) is that this book does not introduce another high-level threat out of basically nowhere. The deadly and extinction-level obstacles were laid out in the first book and followed all the way through to the end, with no unlikely and unnecessary surprises.

I really liked all three of these books, and recommend them highly. If you are a space opera fan, I think you will enjoy them as well.



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Review: Clarkesworld Magazine, Issue 216, September 2024

Clarkesworld Magazine, Issue 216, September 2024 by Neil Clarke
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This issue is a bit below Clarkesworld's usual quality, but there are two outstanding stories here. The first, "Broken," by Laura Williams McCaffrey, is a creepy and uniquely structured tale of Flyer 247-3, who we gradually realize is a human so caught up in her virtual-reality universe that she refers to it as the "real world" and other people as "shadows." After her helmet breaks, she must journey across a flooded and climate-change-ravaged city to get it repaired, and we see in this future, robots are running what remains of the world. The different structure of the story is that it is actually reading backwards, ending at the moment of her helmet failing. I had to read it twice to get the full impact, but it was worth going through again.

The second story, "A World of Milk and Promises" by R H Wesley, tells us the tale of a pregnant woman stranded on an alien planet after her space station breaks up and all her crewmates die, who then has to survive and raise her daughter alone. She gradually realizes this planet's ecosystem is based on cooperation and symbiosis instead of prey and predation, with the planet's organisms feeding each other. She and her daughter are gradually adopted into the alien ecosystem, until her daughter abruptly dies--but the child's bones keep on growing, creating a giant skull and ribcage that shelters her mother. The nameless woman also dies at the end, waiting to fully merge with the planet and perhaps meet her daughter again. This story is dense and layered in its exploration of a mother's love, and is amazingly Wesley's first published story, according to the author notes.

I didn't particularly care for the other stories in the issue, but these two are worth your time.

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Review: A Haunted Girl

A Haunted Girl by Ethan Sacks
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This slender graphic novel packs a lot of elements into a surprising and very effective story. The author's afterward reveals it was co-written by his daughter, who at one time suffered a major depressive episode that led to her being hospitalized. This story obviously incorporates that real-life experience, opening with the protagonist, Japanese-American Cleo Newman, at the end of her own two-month hospitalization. She is released into the custody of her father, but not before seeing a horrific visage in her hospital room that she thinks she imagined.

Turns out she didn't. Cleo can see ghosts, in particular a Japanese death goddess named Izanami who is trying to tear down the barrier between the living and the dead, and loose vengeful ghosts to eradicate human life on Earth. Cleo is the last of the bloodline who can see and fight those ghosts and save humanity. This is the story of her efforts to get past her own disbelief and her depression, and find the strength to save those she loves.

The aspects of depression and suicidal ideation are dealt with realistically and sensitively, and it's apparent that the author's daughter has contributed greatly to this, making the story more grounded. Cleo doesn't defeat the death goddess alone--her best friend Flor, her father Gus, and even Cleo's therapist Marcy come to her aid in the end (as well as the ghost of her elder brother Hiro, who was taken by Izanami fifteen years before). Hiro was originally sent to fool Cleo and lead her into the death goddess's clutches, and Cleo nearly succumbs. But at the end, in a glorious three-page spread showing Cleo's life and loved ones, she declares, "I want to LIVE! I am going to LIVE! I'm done being made to feel powerless. I will not be beaten. Not by you, not by principal jerkface, not by stuck-up bullies. And not by my damn depression."

It's enough to make you stand up and cheer.

The story features a near-perfect balance between the horror aspects and the mental-health aspects, and also emphasizes the power of friendship and people working together to triumph. It's a striking example of how a graphic novel can be far more than just a "comic book."

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Review: A Fire in the Sky

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Review: Red in Tooth and Claw

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

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

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

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

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

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Review: The Last Gifts of the Universe

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

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

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

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

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

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Review: The Bound Worlds

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

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

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

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

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

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Review: Alien Clay

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

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

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

Most importantly, how would humans fit into it?

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

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

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

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

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

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Review: She Who Knows

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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Review: The Dead Cat Tail Assassins

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Review: A Sorceress Comes to Call

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Review: Silver in the Bone

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Review: Eden

Eden by Christopher Sebela
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Review: Compound Fracture

Compound Fracture by Andrew Joseph White
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Andrew Joseph White has made something of a name for himself these past few years (at least as far as this reader is concerned) writing stories about trans teenagers. This book strikes a whole lot closer to home than his previous two, as it is set in West Virginia in 2017, and name-checks Donald Trump and US politics. In fact, this book is far more political than the author's first two ( Hell Followed With Us and The Spirit Bares Its Teeth ) combined, so if you object to in-your-face progressive politics (the protagonist calls himself a socialist) you should think about skipping this. If you are a conservative, and especially a MAGA conservative, you will likely be enraged by many of the things contained therein.

Having said all this, I didn't like this as much as the first two, and not because of the politics. The author seems to have a fairly accurate depiction of the people of West Virginia, their poverty, hopelessness and pride, why they distrust coastal "elites" and many of them refuse to leave, even those who, like our trans protagonist Miles, face fear and oppression just for existing. I enjoyed the part of the storyline that refers to a century-old coal-miner's strike, led by Miles' great-great-grandfather Saint Abernathy (who also turns out to be trans) and how that conflict has echoed down to the present day, affecting everyone in Twist Creek County. Miles' family, the Abernathys, are feared and distrusted by nearly everyone, and are persecuted by Sheriff Davies and his ilk. The sheriff is the primary antagonist, a strutting little tyrant who manipulates and rules over everyone in Miles' small town, to the point of trying to murder Miles' father for simply attempting to run for office.

No, what put me off this book a bit is the fact that Miles and his best friend/possible boyfriend Cooper exhibit some...sociopathic murderous tendencies? Although I do understand it to a point: at the story's beginning, Miles is nearly beaten to death by the sheriff's son Noah and a couple of his buddies, and Miles knows there will be no justice; in fact, Sheriff Davies threatens him into saying he did not see who attacked him. So I can understand why he would feel that his back is against the wall, and the only way out is to kill his tormentors. At the same time, he also starts seeing the ghost of Saint Abernathy and realizes that he is autistic. This last character beat in particular rings true, especially Miles' habit of chewing on a shoelace to calm himself down and keep from chewing on his hair.

Nevertheless, Cooper and Miles are participants in three murders (the first was an accident, but they hid the body afterwards by throwing it down a mine shaft) and Miles doesn't really feel remorse for any of it? At the same time, this is a very complicated and nuanced situation, and I imagine many people will disagree with my assessment of it. I'm sure the school of thought that Miles and the people of Twist Creek had no other choice than to rise up against their tormenters will carry the day for many readers.

(Content warning: There is a dog on the cover, Miles' dog Lady. Not only does the dog not die, but she saves Miles and saves the day at the climax, albeit in a rather grisly fashion.)

In the end, I think this is a timely, thought-provoking book, even if I wish I liked it more than I did. Nevertheless, I think it will enhance the author's already burgeoning reputation.

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Review: Unexploded Remnants

Unexploded Remnants by Elaine Gallagher
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

This 109-page novella is stuffed full of enough ideas for a full-length novel. The author has published non-fiction reviews and articles and even wrote and produced a short film, but this is apparently their first professional fiction publication. As such, I can certainly understand the impulse to throw out nearly every idea they've ever had, as they are probably worried about whether the book will sell enough for them to be able to publish again.

I understand it, but as a reader I felt a bit cheated. There is so much going on here, and because of the novella length restraints, we have no time to sit and absorb what we're being told. The characters also have neither space or time to react to what is happening to them--they must run at breakneck speed to the next plot point. The worldbuilding particularly suffers in this: there are many questions that could be asked about the wormhole gate network that provides travel throughout the galaxy. Particularly the basic questions of who, how and why? As well as when, considering there is a secret wormhole gate hidden in a Stonehenge-like structure (which has somewhat unpleasant callbacks to that hoary old bestseller of the 70's, Chariots of the Gods?)? These wormhole gates take our protagonist Alice on a rapid-fire planet-hopping journey that shows us many different living and dead civilizations, laying down what could have been a fascinating tapestry of a galaxy that has had countless sapient beings and many star-spanning civilizations rise and fall over the years. Many interesting worlds are whisked by in rapid succession as Alice jumps from planet to planet to evade her pursuers, and several times I wished for a plot-relevant reason to slow the pace of travel down, so we the reader could have a chance to really see some of the alien weirdness Alice is passing through.

Not the least of this book's many revelations is the fact that Alice is the last surviving human: her story begins in Oxford in 1967, when Alice, a trans person then going by the name of Andrew, falls down the rabbit hole of the ancient wormhole network and is transported to the Archive, the galaxy's central repository for archaeogical and cultural artifacts. She is made an Archive agent and sent back to Earth to attempt to save humanity from their self-destructive streak. but humans succeeded in destroying themselves anyway. Alice was evacuated before the final war and has spent the hundreds of years since (this world's clone and transplant technology means she is functionally immortal) traveling the galaxy and bringing her finds to the Archive.

The "unexploded remnant" of this story is an ancient war machine, a person downloaded into a cylinder and made into a weapon. Gunn, as Alice names him, is hunted by many different parties who want to exploit him for their own purposes. Alice is looking for his home base to possibly extract him from the weapon and give him a body again. The pursuit of Alice and Gunn takes up the entire story, although the climax involves Gunn, grief-stricken by the loss of his family centuries earlier (the time dilation effects of gate travel mean it's only been sixteen days for him) and trying to restart the war he fought so long ago. At the story's climax, Alice manages to talk him into standing down.

Unfortunately, this book really needed a greater length to explore everything the author threw out there, and since it didn't get it, the story feels somewhat shallow as a result. For instance, we never know how Alice feels about being the last surviving human being in the galaxy, and what she does to cope with the loss of her planet and her entire people. She's probably deeply traumatized, and you'd think something like that would be a major plot point, wouldn't you? Like so many other things in this book, it's glossed over. The depiction of the wider galaxy with its many aliens and alien civilizations is also barely touched upon. Again, I realize you didn't have any time for that within the constraints of the novella format. Which is why this book needed to be longer.

As it is, it's more than a little frustrating to read. Hopefully, if the author gets another crack at publication, they will slow down and pick out just a few ideas to explore rather than hauling out the kitchen sink. I think we could have gotten a more interesting story as a result.

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Review: Winter Lost

Winter Lost by Patricia Briggs
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This fourteenth book in the Mercy Thompson urban fantasy series (and one of the few remaining since the urban fantasy boom is all but dead) is one of the better entries in the series, I think. Of course, if you haven't read at least the previous book, Soul Taken, and preferably two or three books further back than that, you will be a bit confused as to what is happening here. Especially since this book deals directly with the consequences of Mercy's battle with the Soul Taker artifact, which has ripped open her soul and damaged her magic. While I still wish the author would include a brief "the story so far" recap at the beginning of her books, at least for this book there is a prologue that, while not exactly an overall recap, does set the stage for this book's storyline.

One thing I do appreciate for this book is additional POV characters, particularly Mercy's husband, the werewolf and pack Alpha Adam Hauptman. Mercy is still our main protagonist, but in this book we into the heads of some of the other characters. There are a great many secondary characters that have built up over the course of the series, and it's nice to spend a little bit of time with some of them.

In this story we meet a couple of frost giants, one of which is working to bring about Ragnarok, the end of the world, by preventing a wedding that has to take place in order to reinforce the so-called Great Spell that prevents the apocalypse from dawning. Mercy's father, the trickster Coyote, sees an opportunity to cure her magical damage, and sets up an elaborate scheme that not only snares Mercy and Adam, but Mercy's half-brother Gary, another of Coyote's children--as well as Baba Yaga and Grandmother Spider, or Asibikaashi. (I must admit I'm a little leery of a white woman writing a Native deity, so I will insert a caveat that I have no idea if Grandmother Spider's depiction here is accurate.) Mercy and Adam end up trapped in a Montana hot springs lodge in the middle of a magic-inspired "storm of the century," and must find a magical lyre belonging to the frost giant Hrimnir. If they succeed, the wedding will proceed and the end of the world will be averted.

The highlight of this book is the relationship between Mercy and Adam. They are loving and supportive of each other, and have some delightful banter. (I also appreciate that Briggs, at least for this series, doesn't do long-drawn-out explicit sex scenes.) The dominant Alpha werewolf Adam is willing to be vulnerable for Mercy, his coyote shifter mate who is almost as easy to kill as a regular human, and has to survive by her speed and her wits.

The only knock I have against this book is that it is a bit slow to get going, and a couple of chapters are taken up by a long conversation between Mercy and another member of the werewolf pack, Mary Jo, about her relationship troubles. I suppose this is meant to tie into Mercy and Adam's situation, but it doesn't really seem to. In fact, the pacing of this entire book is more restrained and deliberate. This doesn't take away all that much from the overall effect in my estimation, but just be aware of it. This is a series where the cumulative effect is perhaps more than the worth of any individual book, but at any rate, I'm glad it's still around.

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Review: Army of One Vol. 1

Army of One Vol. 1 by Tony Lee
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

My library doesn't have the greatest selection of graphic novels, so when I see something that looks interesting, I tend to snatch it up. This fit the bill, and was pleasantly surprising.

This reminded me a bit of Paper Girls, although we haven't (or haven't yet) starting moving between times--we're moving between universes. Also, instead of four main characters there is one: Carrie Taylor. (Although since there are several multiversal variants of Carrie Taylor, we do still have a Paper Girls-like central group.)

This rather frantically paced story takes place over twenty-four hours (or less) and thoroughly upends Carrie's life: instead of a misfit high school girl worried over her best-friend-sans-crush, and glum over the anniversary of her parents' deaths, she is thrust into a horrifying new reality of ancient sorcerers, alternate universes, several different versions of herself, and being pursued by bald shambling zombie-like creatures. She finds out she is a "shard"--one of several reborn remnants of a sorceress that died centuries ago--or is she? And her beloved grandmother is not really her grandmother, but is perhaps another grown-up "shard" set to watch over her. And Carrie sees the ancient sorceress she supposedly splintered from as a blue ghost following her, and meets the sorceress's brother, who may or may not be her mortal enemy. Also, she gets killed at the end, shot in the head, and is reborn into the brain-dead body of one of her fellow "shards."

This is quite the interesting setup, frankly. The art is bright and vibrant and easy to follow (although the one drawback is that the sorceress Sister Fortune's word balloons are red on black, making them incredibly hard to read). I hadn't heard of this series before, but I'm definitely going to follow it now.

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Review: The Stardust Grail

The Stardust Grail by Yume Kitasei
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I know a lot of people hate the star rating system, but I find it useful. My definitions of my "stars" run the gamut from 1 (hated and likely did not finish) to 5 (loved, amazing, shout the book's virtues from the rooftops; which has happened this year only twice so far, with Robert Jackson Bennett's The Tainted Cup and Samantha Mills' The Wings Upon Her Back ).

A 3, to me, is middling. It was readable and I liked it, but it has significant flaws. That is very much the case with this book, an archaeological space opera that is trying to be an Indiana Jones-style romp but gets bogged down in plot issues.

Here, our protagonist Maya Hoshimoto is, or was for ten years, a thief: returning stolen alien artifacts to their rightful owners, and also looking for the titular "stardust grail," a possibly mythical item that would save her dear friend Auncle, an octopus-jellyfish alien. After she and Auncle unwittingly transmitted a virus that caused the deaths of an entire clan of aliens on one of their jobs, Maya breaks with Auncle and returns to Earth, trying to resume her education and live a somewhat more normal life. But the lure of traveling the galaxy still beckons, and Auncle comes after her, insisting xe has found a path to the grail, and asking her to do one last job.

Of course we know the "one last job" trope invariably leads to disaster, and so it is in this case. In this future, Maya's friend Auncle is a Frenro, and ancient species that created the Interstellar Web, the network of wormholes that makes space travel possible. There is considerable weight of history to this settling; whole civilizations have risen and fallen before humans ever got to space, and there is a region in the Interstellar Web called the "Dead Sea," consisting of many systems and planets scoured clean of life. (It's definitely a takeoff of Andre Norton's Forerunners.) The setting is one of the most interesting parts of the book, and I wish the author had devoted more time to it.

But as the title indicates, we must have our pursuit of the grail (to be fair, it seems to be the only thing that allows Frenro to reproduce, so the survival of a species is at stake). It is in this pursuit that the aforementioned plot holes start popping up. For instance, in this world there is an alien virus that has infected many species, including humans, and because of it Maya and Auncle can communicate telepathically. This information is casually dropped about a quarter of the way in with no exploration of the ramifications of a psychic link between a human and an alien. Considering that as the story goes on, the Frenro are revealed to have done many reprehensible things, including possibly committing genocide--and Auncle was able to hide that from Maya, even though they have a telepathic link? I don't think so. (Especially since as a character, Auncle seems to have few, if any filters, just spitting out whatever crosses xyr mind.)

What the Frenro are revealed to have done is the bigger and more important plot hole, however. It's not dealt with in this story (although I supposed it could be in the sequel, if there is one). To put it bluntly, the Frenro are....not a nice species, and Auncle knew about most of it. They have a kind of hive mind, called the Whole, and during the course of the chase for the grail Auncle takes Maya and their crew to the Frenro's hidden home world, and there reunites with the Whole. But the Frenro, whose perception of time allows them to see possible futures, have seen that humans are coming to destroy them--and in a Terminator-style loop, bring about the very circumstances of the humans' retaliation.

This is all dumped into the story at the climax, and it's very disappointing. There are some major ethics issues here, and they are not dealt with at all. Maya also forgives her friend far too easily. The Maya-Auncle relationship is well written up to that point, but it seems to me the revelations of the climax should inspire her to take a big step back and perform a major re-evaluation of her friend...and she doesn't do it.

Maybe you can overlook these plot holes and contradictions. I could, sort of. But they did impart a shallowness to the story, to its detriment. So while I liked this in the end, it's certainly not making my list of the best books of the year.

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Review: Moonstorm

Moonstorm by Yoon Ha Lee
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I first became aware of Yoon Ha Lee eight years ago, with the release of the first book in the Machineries of Empire trilogy, Ninefox Gambit. (And said trilogy is excellent and you should be reading it already.) This is his first young adult book, but this story has similar themes to Machineries. Mainly the conceit of an important part of the story's setting being maintained by the actions of the people in the universe: in the previous trilogy, the "high calendar" dictated the laws of physics in a given sector, and "calendrical rot" signaled the bending/warping of those laws. Here, gravity is generated by the faith of the people on a given planet, and the fervency with which they perform the specific rituals to create the gravity they need.

Hwajin, the young girl who is our narrator and protagonist, lives on Carnelian and is a Clanner. Carnelian is a moon in the Moonstorm, a section of space outside the boundaries of the New Joseon Empire, and wanders in an erratic orbit. The Imperials and the clanners have been fighting over the Moonstorm for hundreds of years:

According to her family, the Imperials worshipped their Empress and carried out strange, twisted rituals--too strange and twisted to be described in detail to a ten-year-old, which of course made them much more interesting. The Imperials' rituals summoned gravity, just like theirs did, but their gravity and the clanners' couldn't coexist, like oil refusing to mix with water. The Imperials had been fighting for generations to replace the clanners' rituals with their own, so they could take control of the entire Moonstorm.

In the very first chapter, Carnelian is destroyed, Hwajin's entire family is killed (or so she thinks) and she is rescued by a "lancer," one of the giant mecha robots that fight for the Empire against the clanners. The story picks up six years later, with Hwajin, now known as Hwa Young, attempting to be chosen as a lancer pilot. No one knows she is a clanner; outwardly she is a loyal subject of the Empire. Normally she would have two more years to wait before she could apply to be a pilot, but the war has not been going well for the Empire of late, and Hwa Young and her classmates are submitted to the lancers early. She ends up bonding with Winter's Axiom, a lancer with rare talents, and is drafted into the war against her former people.

This ethical conundrum--Hwa Young is working for the Empire, but cannot forget that she was once a clanner--is the heart of the story, along with themes of colonialism, the exploitation of child soldiers, and the terrible decisions that must be made in war. This universe is a bit simpler than the often mystifying Machineries of Empire, and the story is easier to follow. No doubt this is intentional, given the intended audience, but I appreciated it. (Although Machineries is more rewarding, once you finally figure out what's going on.) The point of gravity supported by human-performed rituals becomes incredibly important as the story progresses, as the Empress and her scientists have twisted it into a weapon: a particularly pious population of one planet is so fervent their worship is able to generate enough gravity to form a black hole, which the Empress is intending to use to eradicate the clanners. At the story's climax, Hwa Young and her lancer troupe destroy a colony ship full of people performing the ritual to generate the black hole, sacrificing a few thousand to save millions more.

The story ends with Hwa Young and her friends leaving the Empire behind, and taking their lancers and joining the rebel clanners. This being the first of a trilogy, obviously there is a lot more action to come. The book is well paced and the battle scenes in particular are excellent. I appreciated that there was no romance involving Hwa Young or any of the other characters (other than vague hints): not only wasn't there time for it, but it would have distracted from the story's progression. I don't think this is quite as good as Machineries of Empire, but it's well worth reading in its own right.

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