Brasyl

Ian McDonald
Completed 12/14/2024, Reviewed 12/14/2024
2 stars

I have a mixed history with Ian McDonald.  I really liked his Luna: New Moon novella, but did not like another novella, Time Was.  This time, I did not like the book.  I felt it was overly complex and boring with way too many characters across three different timelines.  I felt it was a mess.  However, there are a lot of people who really like this book.  It won the 2007 British SF Award and was nominated for the Hugo, the Nebula, and a host of other awards. I will say that the book has good prose and seems well researched, but the convoluted plots never grabbed me.

There are three story-/timelines.  The first is the book’s present, 2006 Brazil.  Marcelina is a reality show creator on a channel that produces the bottom of the barrel exploitive trash TV.  She’s trying to come up with the next big thing.  Her current idea is to find the soccer player who lost the 1950 world cup for Brazil and confront him about it.  He’s of course been out of the limelight for over 50 years.  In the meantime, she sees a doppelganger who uses her identity.  

In 2032, Edson is a cross-dressing bisexual opportunist who does his best to hide from the surveillance drones all over the cities.  He finds his former girlfriend is alive again and she appears to be a quantum computer hacker now.

Lastly in the mid-18th century, an Irish Jesuit is sent to the Brazilian rain forest to find a renegade priest, a la Heart of Darkness/Apocalypse Now.  He himself goes renegade and creates his own City of God.  There appear to be angels in the forest who can shoot out fire.

In each of these storylines, there is something out of kilter in the world and the main characters are affected by it.  There being a quantum computer hacker, angels, and doppelgangers, it’s pretty evident there is something crossing universes.  The trouble is, will the characters, and the reader ever figure out what’s going on. I felt like this book was so convoluted and confusing that I didn’t care when it was all finally revealed. I was bored silly by the situations the characters were in.  Even when there was action, I didn’t care.  And there were so many other characters in each timeline, I couldn’t keep track of who was who.  As the plots became more complex, I became more lost.  

I give this book two stars out of five.  I found next to nothing about it compelling.  There were moments when the rain forest timeline reminded me of Apocalypse Now and The Mission.  That kept me going through parts of that story.  But each chapter was about 25 pages long.  So just when I felt like I was getting into it, it jumped to the next timeline.  By the time I got back to it fifty or so pages later, I didn’t remember enough of it to keep the story alive in my head.  Not my cup of tea.

Moon Called

Patricia Briggs
Completed 11/30/2024 Reviewed 11/30/24
3 Stars

This is the first book in the Mercy Thompson series.  Mercy is an auto mechanic in the Tri-Cities area of Washington.  She’s a rough and tumble woman.  She’s also a shapeshifter.  She can change her shape into a coyote.  She was raised by a werewolf clan, and not just any, but the clan whose alpha is the alpha of all North American clans.  She also knows a vampire and a gremlin.  This book is kind of standard fare supernatural mystery.  But it’s pretty fun.  There were times when the book dragged, but overall, it was a nice break from the some of the heavy works I’ve been reading.

Mercy has a good sense of smell.  One day, a young man named Mac approaches her for a job at her auto repair shop.  She can smell he’s a werewolf.  She’s also pretty sure he’s homeless and possibly in trouble.  She brings him the alpha of her area, Adam, who happens to be her neighbor.  It’s customary for new werewolves in an area to meet the alpha to become a member of the clan, or at least be acknowledged.  A day or two later, Mac’s body appears on her front stairs.  She runs to Adam’s place where she finds Adam near death, three or four dead werewolves, and Adam’s daughter Jesse missing.  Suddenly she’s on a desperate mission to save Adam and rescue Jesse.  Her journey has her cross paths with multiple werewolf clans, including the ones who raised her, the vampire mistress of the pacific northwest, and mysterious humans who use tranquilizer darts laced with silver.

I have to say, I liked all the characters.  Mercy is a good protagonist.  Briggs avoids the Mary Sue issues by making Mercy vulnerable and fallible.  Briggs does a good job of creating the rules for each supernatural being and sticking with them, including the rules for Mercy.  She has heightened sense of smell and can outrun a werewolf, but not outfight one.  I also liked her relationship with vampires.  She generally stays away from them, except for one with whom she trades the mob-like protection fee for free auto repair.  And I liked Zee, the gremlin from whom she bought the car shop.  As you would guess, gremlin’s like to see how mechanical things work by taking them apart, but not necessarily putting them back together.

The world building was good, as is evident by some of the supernatural rules and descriptions above.  There was a touch of romance in the story, but nothing obnoxious.  There was more about the claiming of mates and the submissive roles of females in the clan.  There was even one gay werewolf, which was done very well.  And all of this was explained quite well in the context of wolf-like behavior.  Fortunately, Mercy not being wolf-kind, gets to be more of a kick-ass and exert some influence over the werewolves.

I give this book three stars out of five.  I’ve heard that the later stories in the series are better.  This book spent a lot of time with character background and setting that kind of dragged.  And the politics within and without the clans was a little tedious.  Lastly, the ending was okay.  This was a book club read.  I probably won’t actively seek out more of her books, but I’d wouldn’t be against reading another one.

Skin Folk

Nalo Hopkinson

Completed 11/27/2024 Reviewed 11/27/24

4 Stars

I’ve read quite a bit by Hopkinson.  Sister Mine, The Salt Roads, and the amazing Brown Girl in the Ring are just a few of the books by her I’ve read.  Skin Folk is a collection of short fiction, all of which are based in Caribbean mythos, which is her specialty.  Specifically, these stories all have the similar theme of being able to change or remove one’s skin, literally or figuratively.  They vary greatly from story to story, some more magical realism, some fantasy, some fairy tale, some science fiction.  But they all deal with the concept of acceptance.  

Several of the stories were way over my head.  I felt like I completely missed their message or the point of the story.  However, the prose was always wonderful to read, even if I didn’t get the story.  I could also have been the fact that these are short stories based in unfamiliar mythology.  Even though I’ve read many of her novels, I still don’t know a lot about Caribbean mythology.  It could also be that I’m more used to getting the mythos with a longer narrative.  Whatever the case, reading Hopkinson is always an adventure, and usually an exciting one.  Here are several I found noteworthy:

Snake – A very disturbing story of a serial child molester and murderer who receives justice at the hands of old people and birds.

The Glass Bottle Trick – Sort of a Mr Fox/Bluebeard type tale.  A woman marries a man and finds out he murdered his previous wives for getting pregnant.

Slow Cold Chick – A woman cracks an egg that holds an odd baby bird.  She accidently gets hot sauce on it and it grows into a violent cockatrice.  With the help of magical neighbors, she tames the creature.

Fisherman – A woman dresses as a man and works as a fisherman, trying to gain acceptance from her coworkers.  So she goes to the local cathouse like them and has her first sexual encounter with a prostitute with a heart of gold.  

Greedy Choke Puppy – A tale about Caribbean werewolves and vampires.  Specifically, the soucouyant is a woman who can shed her skin and as a ball of energy, can suck the life force from babies.

Ganger (Ball Lightning) – A very strange tale about a couple who use special body suits to enhance their sense of touch during sex.  After an intense session, they leave the suits charged and at the foot of their bed, jumbled together.  The suits’ contact generates a Ganger, a being of energy that attacks the couple.

As you can see, the stories are quite strange and intense.  After about the first five, I started to really get the point of them and found them profound.  I give this book four stars out of five, missing five stars only because I didn’t get the first few, which could be me, a function of not really knowing Caribbean mythology, or simply the story not being long enough to get the point across to me.  Still it’s a great collection and I look forward to reading other short works of hers.

Service Model

Adrien Tchaikovsky
Completed 11/24/2024 Reviewed 11/24/24
5 Stars

I was completely blown away by this novel.  It’s only my second Tchaikovsky read.  The first was novella, Made Things, which I really liked, but this book was amazing.  It’s quite apropos of the current debates over AI.  Here, robots take over the world and humankind falls.  It has great world building, prose and character development.  Most of all, I felt fully immersed in the world and empathized with not only the main character, but also a secondary character.  And the ending blew me away.  This book was published this year, so it’s up for awards next year.  I hope it gets nominated for at least a few.

The book begins with Charles, a valet robot for his human master.  He finds himself performing his normal routine despite nothing around him changing.  Eventually, he figures out that the master is dead.  However, he has trouble getting out of his routine because of how he’s programmed.  He calls the police and paramedics, but they are also bound by their logic.  Or more accurately, stuck.  It is revealed that Charles murdered his master, but he has no memory of it.  So he takes himself to get repaired.  The repair station is also stuck within its logic and no robots are getting repaired.  However, he meets up with another robot, the Wonk, and begins a journey of finding another master to serve.  

The book is written in third person, but from the point of view of Charles (who becomes known as unCharles).  In addition to hearing his thoughts, the narration reads like it has a robotic perspective as well.  It completely immerses you in the world of robots.  It is some of the most amazing writing I’ve ever read in science fiction.  I knew Tchaikovsky wrote beautifully, but I was not prepared for how well this was written.  

I also like the premise of the book.  The Wonk believes that unCharles has a virus that makes him sentient.  However, unCharles does not believe it.  The Wonk tries to get unCharles to think for himself outside his logistic programming, but he refuses.  Instead, he believes all will be well if he can just find a human master to serve.  So they travel the countryside looking for a human in need of a valet.  Unfortunately, he mostly finds degraded humans and robots in various levels of chaotic logic, from other valets to warrior soldiers who can’t stop fighting.

UnCharles is a terrific character.  Just when you think that he’s on the verge of acting with free will, he sticks to his programming.  It’s fun and frustrating, as it is for the Wonk.  The Wonk is pretty awesome as well, being a cheerleader for unCharles figuring himself out.  But she pops in and out for various reasons.  

I give this book five stars out of five.  It’s the first five star I’ve given in a while.  I still have yet to read Children of Time series, the first of which is supposed to be amazing.  As I mentioned in my previous review of Made Things, I don’t know why I’m not reading more of this amazing writer.  

Redemptor

Jordan Ifueko
Completed 11/15/2024, Reviewed 11/15/2024
4 stars

The second book in the Raybearer duology was just as good as the first book, if not a little better.  The real standout was the world building, specifically, the really interesting and creative Underworld.  It made the ending very powerful.  I was further impressed when I read the Afterword from the author.  Raybearer took fifteen years to create.  Then having published the first book, she had to crank out the second book in less than a year.  And it was all done during the time of the pandemic and the biggest black movement in the US since the ‘60s.  Somehow, Ifueko produced a nearly flawless conclusion.  This book was nominated for several awards, including the Andre Norton Award for YA genre literature. 

The book picks up where the first left off.  Tari has claimed the title of Empress, which has been suppressed since the founding of the empire.  She has offered herself in lieu of children as a sacrifice to the Underworld to rescind the treaty with the demons of the Underworld.  She has two years to win over and anoint her chosen eleven as Daro did.  However, she is haunted by the souls of the hundreds of thousands of children who have been sacrificed over the centuries, demanding she pay for the sins of the empire.  And she must do all this without dying in the Underworld herself.

The journey for Tari is to learn to be an empress and balance it with doing the best possible things for her people.  Her goal is to provide peace, justice, and unity.  However, she is hampered by her quest to anoint her chosen eleven.  The stipulation put on it by the demons of the underworld is that the eleven must be the eleven rulers of the nations making up the empire.  So Tari has a long lesson in politics and how to use honesty in the best possible way to win over the rulers.  As you would guess, one of the eleven plays games with her, preventing her from completing the quest.  And this one is somewhere between debonair and smarmy.

The good thing about the Tari, though is that while she is occasionally distracted by men, she does not give herself over to them, holding her own moral ground, and working for what’s best for the empire.  That’s not to say she isn’t tempted.  She is, but continues to grow through each experience.  I think she makes for a terrific role model as a strong, black teen girl.  

I give this book four stars out of five.  It’s a little stronger than the first book, getting to the point much more directly.  The climax is terrific.  The prose is good, the character development of Tari is excellent, and the world building, as I said above, is awesome. I still feel that this duology is more for older teens than young teens, but that’s just me.  I’ll probably read more of Ifueko in the future.

By the Sword

Mercedes Lackey
Completed 11/9/2024, Reviewed 11/9/2024
3 stars

I have a mixed history with Mercedes Lackey.  I really enjoyed the Magic’s Pawn trilogy from the massive Valdemar series.  I had mixed feelings about the Oathbound trilogy.  Overall, I like many aspects of Lackey’s books, but sometimes, they just don’t come together for me as a whole.  That happened with this book as well.  It’s a standalone in the Valdemar series, although it relies on information from the previous eight books in the series, six of which are the two trilogies I mentioned above.  So I had some background for this book.  However, it just felt rather dull.

The story begins as a sumptuous feast with Kerowyn, aka Kero, and her father, brother, and brother’s fiancé, as well as many others.  The feast is attacked by the forces of an evil mage, killing her father, wounding her brother, and kidnapping the fiancé.  Most of the men are slaughtered.  Kero picks up her sword and tries to find the fiancé.  She comes across her grandmother Kethry and her partner Tarma who give her the sword named Need, a magic sword that helps woman in danger.  Kero rescues the fiancé, but realizes she is meant to be a warrior, not simply a wife, and leaves her brother to study under Kethry and Tarma.  After a while she joins a mercenary company fighting as needed, culminating in major campaign to keep Valdemar from being invaded.

Like the previous six books of Lackey’s that I read, this one has amazing world building.  Even though it’s been two years since the last Oathbound series, her storytelling style had me right back in their world.  Reading a Lackey novel is sumptuous for its prose, creating vivid descriptions of the characters and the world they are living in.  

The characters are also very well drawn.  Not only do we get a great sense of who Kero is, but other characters as well.  Daren, the third son of a king with whom Kero trains, is a perfect spoiled royal who seems to grow up but still doesn’t understand how Kero wants to be a soldier but not someone’s wife, namely, his.  Fortunately, he grows up and returns later in the book as a much more mature prince.  I also liked Eldan, a Herald from Valdemar, from whom Kero learns about the peace-loving people, and with whom she falls in love.  The conflict between her love for him and desire to continue to be a mercenary is well played out.  

While this book has all these positive things going for it, I found reading it to be a chore.  I liked the beginning, but the subsequent parts felt directionless.  This book is kind of a third-person diary, describing the life of Kero.  There is no real overriding arc.  It’s like several different stories about her bound in one book.  And the stories take a long time to play out.  This e-copy of the book didn’t have page numbers, and I was constantly wondering if this book was really five hundred pages, or much longer.  

I give this book three stars out of five.  It was one of those situations where the sum of the parts did not equal the whole.  I guess I never really cared about Kero, even though she was a kick-ass soldier and leader, in whose head we spend a lot of time.  I still think Lackey is a terrific writer, with great prose, world building, and character development.  This book just didn’t do it for me.

Raybearer

Jordan Ifueko
Completed 10/30/2024, Reviewed 11/5/2024
4 stars

I was pleasantly surprised by this book.  It is listed as a YA novel, nominated for multiple awards including the Andre Norton award for YA Sci Fi and Fantasy.  It turned out to be one of those books that’s classified as YA because the protagonist is young.  I think the plot is pretty mature and seems to be written for teens at the youngest.  Well, that’s my opinion anyway.  But it takes a rather standard plot and turns it on its head a bit.  So even though it seemed like it was going in one direction, it went in several others.  I liked that.

Tarisai has been growing up with tutors and servants.  Her mother, known only as The Lady, visits every now and then.  Tarisai is lonely with an intense desire to belong.  At about age 9, she sort of gets her wish, and is sent to the capital to compete with others her age to be chosen as one of the eleven of the council of the heir to the throne.  Reluctant at first, she finds she bonds with many of the other children.  However, she has a gift that doesn’t allow her to touch other people, lest she share minds with them.  That gift however, just might elevate her above the other children to be one of the selected.  There is a catch though.  The Lady commanded Tarisai to kill the prince once she is selected and becomes close to him.  This leaves Tarisai with an existential dissonance:  remain a part of the next ruling body of the kingdom, or overthrow the monarchy to fulfill her mother’s revenge plot.

The thing I liked most about this book was that Tarisai did not fall in love with the prince whom she is obligated to assassinate.  She does become very close to him, along with two others selected for the council.  But Ifueko very nicely sidesteps the falling in love with the target trope.  Instead, the book focuses on Tarisai’s relationships with the prince, others on the council, her guardians, her vindictive mother, and her magical father.  At the same time, the plot moves fairly quickly and keeps the action going at a decent pace.  I liked the world building.  Like the plot, it’s recognizable, but with twists.  The twelve realms are like the various parts of our world, with a few extras added in, plus some things based on African folklore.  

I give this book four stars out of five.  I really liked it and empathized pretty well with the main character.  My biggest gripe was that it didn’t feel like a YA novel.  Yeah, I know that the classification is a publishing marketing thing, but I think it’s still misleading.  I thought this book was quite adult in its content.  I’m looking forward to the sequel of this duology.  Hopefully, I’ll be reading it in a few weeks.

An Orc on the Wild Side

Tom Holt
Completed 10/24/2024, Reviewed 10/24/2024
3 stars

This was a decent send up of fantasy, specifically poking fun at Tolkien.  It made me smile a lot, but was not the rip-roaring laugh fest I thought it would be.  However, the puns are great, the jabs at LOTR are amusing, the satire of the whole was well thought out.  It made fun of race, gender, retirement, gentrification, middle class, and corporate greed.  And it’s all played out in a basically plotless tale with elves, dwarves, wizards, goblins, wraiths, and humans.  I enjoyed the book and will read more by Holt in the future.  If you like authors like Terry Pratchett, Douglas Adams, and Christopher Moore, you’ll enjoy this one too.

The first half of the book begins with lots of disparate threads that take a while to come together.  There’s the new Dark Lord who is trying to usher in a new Evil with better health care, fewer wars, and female goblins.  There’s the king of the Dwarves who has a human cook.  She’s secretly from another dimension here to try to pawn off cheap Chinese-made utensils and gadgets.  There’s the human lawyer just fired from his Elven law firm for not having enough billable hours.  He gets contacted by the great eye to buy up all the lands of the Realm and displace the inhabitants.  And of course, there are the people from England who have come through a portal to buy (cheap) property homesteading the Realm in the parallel dimension.

There’s a lot going on.  It is remarkable that there is no real plot, just lots of little scenarios.  I guess it all eventually comes together as everyone tries to figure out who the great eye is and why is he trying to take over the Realm.  And I must say, the author does a pretty good job of involving everyone.  There are a lot of threads and they all somehow come together in the end.  

The fun of the book is all the references to Tolkien works and general high fantasy novels.  Holt keeps the humor at a pretty good level through most of the book.  I smiled through almost the whole thing.  I do have to say that the ending caught me off guard.  The book was listed at 393 pages, but it ended at about 359.  (the rest being promos of other books).  So I was expecting a lot more elaborate of a conclusion.  It wasn’t bad, just abrupt.

The characters were at about the right level of development for the type of comedy that is this book.  Nothing too in depth, but enough that every character had a personality.  It wasn’t Monty Python caricatures, but lots of all round silliness mixed in with some bright moments.  I give the book three out of five stars because it’s good.  I’m just a little disappointed it wasn’t funnier.  Once again, this review is rather quick and short as I’ll be in a sling for my dominant shoulder for another 6 weeks.  

A Prayer for the Crown-Shy

Becky Chambers
Completed 10/21/2024, Reviewed 10/23/2024
4 stars

This is the second novella in the Monk and Robot series, which so far is the last.   Like the first, this book is like a big hug and a warm quilt.  Sibling Dex and Mosscap are back, still roaming the countryside, but this time, on their way to Dex’s home.  The book continues to ask the existential questions about life, want, need, humanity, etc, through dialogues between Dex and Mosscap.  There is a lot less tea serving as Dex questions his purpose in life.  But like Psalm for the Wild-Built, it is still a cozy book that is a joy to read.  

I’m keeping this review very short as the book is so similar to Psalm, and because typing is still slow after my shoulder surgery.  I give this book four stars out of five.  It is very close to a five star book for me, because of the way it left me feeling.  It would have been an interesting experience if this were a single volume.  It makes me wonder if I would have given it five stars if I could have sat with it longer.  Anyway, it’s a wonderful read, so warm, gentle, and comforting in the way it leaves me feeling.  I look forward to any other sequels Chambers produces.  

Sister Mine

Nalo Hopkinson
Completed 10/18/2024, Reviewed 10/18/2024
4 stars

My reviews are going to be a little shorter for a few installments.  I have had another surgery on my shoulder and typing is one handed and slow going.  I really enjoy Nalo Hopkinson’s books, even when they’re a little uneven.  This is one such book.  I really enjoyed it, but I felt there were a few two many plot threads and jumping between them was unnerving and sometimes hard to follow.  Hopkinson infuses modern stories with Caribbean mythology and magic.  This time, the main character was a recently separated conjoined twin whose sister received all the family mojo while she received none.  It made growing up in a family of demigods difficult to say the least.  This book won the 2014 Norton Award for YA Sci Fi and Fantasy.  

Makeda is the human twin, Abby is the twin with all the mojo.  The book begins with Makeda moving to a place of her own among the humans.  She’s decided she has to learn how to live without relying on her sister.  Amidst this process, their father dies.  He was condemned to a human existence for falling in love with a human and fathering the two girls.  However, he still is a demigod and should be okay once having shirked his human body.  However, his father was suffering from dementia and part of his existence is in the invasive kudzu plant which seems to want to destroy Makeda.  She is also being chased by a haint, aka haunt or evil spirit.  So Makeda still has to rely on Abby for help in all these things.  She also has a few other people helping her, including her new landlord who seems to have some mojo of his own, and a lover of Abby’s who is in reality a guitar once owned by Jimi Hendrix.  

As you can see by the plot summary, there are a lot of strange things going on.  And the story telling jumps around among all these things.  And for there being so much Caribbean mojo, it actually takes place in Canada.  I occasionally got lost when Makeda did a lot of running from her haint, the kudzu, and other negative energy and entities.  I thought the subplots ad world building all got a little confusing.

However, I thought the characters were really strong.  Makeda is a terrific main character just trying to find her own as an ordinary human.  However, she does seem to occasionally sense mojo around her in others.  She’s convinced she’s heard messages from sea shells and trees, although she gets no support from her family on this.  Abby is a lot harder to like since she is gifted sister.  I also liked Brie, Makeda’s new landlord, who’s also a musician for a band whose music has some mojo-like effect on its listeners.  

Despite having too many plot threads and confusing world building, I enjoyed reading the book.  I was pretty gripped in the search for Makeda’s father, and what form outside the kudzu he would take, if that was even a thing.  I thought the premise was well conceived.  I give this book four stars out of five.  I have another book by Hopkinson, a collection of stories, which I’m interested in.  I might be reading that in a month or so.  

A Psalm for the Wild-Built

Becky Chambers
Completed 10/9/2024, Reviewed 10/9/2024
4 stars

This was a wonderful novella by the author of the Wayfarers series, the first of which is The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet.  I loved that and the other three novels in that series.  I was a little hesitant about this one; I’m not sure why.  I think because I thought she couldn’t top the Wayfarers.  But she at least equaled it with this book.  It’s about life after the Factory Age, when the Robots became aware and left.  Humans recreated their industry without them, and focused on sustainable technology after returning from the brink of self-destruction.  The book is so heartwarming and life-affirming that I had a warm glow about me all the way to the end.  I’m hoping the second book in this series is equally wonderful.  The series was nominated for a 2024 Mythopoeic Award.

Dex is a monk.  They crave the sound of crickets, becoming obsessed with it.  They decide they need a change and become a Tea Monk, bringing hand-prepared teas specifically made for each customer.  They’re sort of a Tea therapist, traveling the land, setting up a booth, and preparing teas based on what each customer tells them is going on with them.  After two years as a Tea Monk, they get the itch again to hear crickets, becoming an obsession.  They decide to cancel their next city visit and go into the mountains in search of them.  On the way in, they come across a robot.  Robots haven’t been seen in about two hundred years.  Mosscap, the robot, tells Dex it is on a journey to meet and learn about humans, and what’s happened to them since they walked away, and what do they need.  Dex however wants to be alone on his own journey, begrudgingly taking Mosscap along.

There are really only two characters in this story, Dex and Mosscap.  Dex is searching for themselves and their purpose.  So when Mosscap appears and asks what does Dex need, they can’t answer because even they don’t know.  They don’t know why their on the journey, only that they’ve become obsessed with the crickets.  Dex is kind of an every person who just wants to find meaning in life.  Mosscap is kind of the opposite.  It is out exploring and researching, but doesn’t need meaning in life.  Life is its own meaning.  Needless to say, they get in some heated discussions.

I give this book four stars out of five.  It’s like a warm hug, or should I say, a cup of tea designed especially for my needs.  While I’m not a tea drinker, I can relate to the feeling of having something so delicious, made for my palate, that I am sated with life.  That’s what this book was like for me.  It being a novella, I don’t want to go into more detail than I already have, hoping I haven’t given away any spoilers.  I just really look forward to the second novella.  

An Unkindness of Ghosts

Rivers Solomon
Completed 10/7/2024, Reviewed 10/7/2024
3 stars

This is the author’s first novel, published by a small publishing house.  I think both facts are evident in that the book tries to do too much.  I think it could have used a better editor.  However, Solomon is an important queer, black author with a lot to say.  Her second work, The Deep, was a brilliant collaboration with other writers and poets and walked away with the 2020 Lambda Literary Award.  This book just needed some help making sure the flow was better and some extraneous things were excised.

Aster is a black woman on the autism spectrum.  She lives on a colony ship called the Matilda.  The upper decks are for the white privileged people and the lower decks are for the poor, black abused workers.  Basically, they are slaves.  The separation is maintained by an adherence to a weird religious dogma that has evolved over the hundreds of years the ship has been travelling to the “Promised Land.”  Aster is the assistant to the gentle Theo, the Surgeon General who is also the nephew of the power-crazed second in command on the ship, Lieutenant.  The supreme ruler of the ship is dying of something that Aster’s mother may have died from.  Thus begins an investigation into her mother’s cryptic journals and the possibility of a ship-wide civil war against the abusive system that the Lieutenant has been upholding.

Yeah, there’s a lot in this book.  I had a lot of trouble getting through the first half of it.  It took me about that long to get that Aster was on the spectrum and experiencing things differently than the people around her.  Her relationships are quite confusing.  Theo has a deep fondness for her though she doesn’t see it.  She just tries to determine if they are friends.  Giselle, with whom she grew up, appears to have ADHD, which make their interactions very confusing in the beginning.  After a while, though, I started to get it and picked up on Aster interactions with Theo, Giselle, and others.  This is especially true of her interactions with guards, who clearly have no tolerance for someone who doesn’t communicate in a usual way.  Clearly, a lot of thought went into creation of Aster.  The characters were very well developed.  

I thought the world building was really good too.  But I had a hard time believing the ship was created as, or devolved into an antebellum South.  It came across a little too much like a parable to make a point than a futurist vision.  Perhaps I’ve read too many books that imply racial equality in the future.  This was just a little tough to suspend disbelief.  

I give this book three stars out of five, mainly because it’s a difficult read and I didn’t completely buy into the premise.  I’d like to read Solomon’s newer works to see what they are like, if she has evolved as a writer and if the editing of her books are better.  

Shorefall

Robert Jackson Bennett
Completed 9/29/2024, Reviewed 9/29/2024
3 stars

This is the second book in the Foundryside series.  It picks up 3 years after the events of the first book.  I read it for book club, only 3 months after the first book.  I remembered quite a bit, but I had trouble getting into it anyway.  It felt like it suffered from second book syndrome.  That is, the first book feels very tight, but the second book spends more time setting up the scenario for the third book.  The book is taut and fast-paced like the first one, but it just felt like it was missing something.  Perhaps it was the novelty of the magic system that was missing, or the familiarity with the characters.  It just never completely grabbed me.

The book picks up with the return of the first hierophant, Crasedes.  He’s been resurrected and he wants to control the world to stop humans from using their technology and magic for power over others.  He wants to become the supreme dictator that forces people to remain peaceful.  Sancia and her gang have allied with another immortal, Valeria, who wants to destroy Crasedes.  However, Sancia, Berenice, Orso, and Gregor have mixed feelings about Valeria.  Though she saved them in the first book, they’re uncertain about what she’s up to.  However, allying with Valeria seems to be the only way to destroy Crasedes and save humanity.

I thought the best part of the book was the relationship between Sancia and Berenice.  They twin with each other.  Twinning is not permitted with people.  It is usually saved for connecting magical devices together.  They do this on Valeria’s advice.  Once successful, they share everything, thoughts, memories, and so on, all the while being able to communicate with each other without anyone else hearing them.  Needless to say, it also enhances their romantic relationship.  However, that is put aside as the roller coaster plot keeps the danger ever-present.  

Like the first book, this one is quite grisly.  Perhaps a little more so, as the body count becomes astronomical.  There are pools of blood everywhere, and Sancia and Orso constantly seem to be spattered with it.  For Crasedes to manifest and work his magic, he needs sacrifices, and he gets lots of them.  But ultimately, it’s all a question of morality, and he wants to impose his on humanity.  He and Valeria seem to be set up as sort of god and devil, but it’s hard to tell who is really good.  Everyone seems basically evil, like there is no good or god.  And Sancia and crew must choose between the lesser of evils.

I give this book three stars out of five.  It’s a little less than the first book because I never felt completely sucked into it.  Yeah, parts were exciting, but overall, the sum was less than the parts.  If book club doesn’t pick the third book, I don’t know if I’ll read it on my own.  

Bookshops and Bonedust

Travis Baldree
Completed 9/18/2024, Reviewed 9/18/2024
4 stars

This is the second book in the Legends and Lattes series.  It is actually a prequel, taking place a while before Viv, the lesbian orc retires to open a coffee shop.  This book retains all the charm of the first, with wonderful characters, world building, and prose.  Its only fault is that the plot is not as much of a surprise as the first book.  Still, I thoroughly enjoyed reading it and was glad to spend a little more time in Viv’s world.  And it was great to have another cover by the same artist, who so captures the essence of Viv and her friends.  This book was nominated for a 2024 Mythopoeic Award.  

The story begins when Viv gets injured in a battle with her mercenary compatriots while searching for a terrible necromancer.  They take her to recover in an inn in the sleepy coastal town of Murck.  One day while hobbling along on her injured leg, she happens upon an old bookshop run by Fern, a cat-like creature with a pet gryphet.  Fern gives Viv a book to read and a new friendship begins.  Viv takes an interest in the shop, helping Fern infuse it with life and a few cans of paint.  She also meets the proprietor of a bakery with whom Viv begins to tentatively date.  This peaceful tableau is soon interrupted by a strange hooded figure who has some connection with the necromancer she was hunting initially.  Soon Viv and her new friends find themselves in the midst of a mystery with wights and a homunculus skeleton worthy of a story in the Fern’s bookshop.

What I liked most about this book is the same thing I liked about Lattes.  It’s a story of getting a business going with a mystery to accompany it.  In this case, the business is an existing but floundering bookshop that needs an infusion of life.  It illustrates different strategies for bringing in customers into a town whose inhabitants haven’t been reading for a while.  Being a guy who loves books, and having spent many hours in book stores of many different kinds, it was very fun reading about all the tricks proprietors use to bring in customers.  

I just love Viv.  Yes, she’s a badass mercenary orc, but she also loves the things in life that are magical, like books, coffee, and pastries.  And the way she stumbles over her summer romance with the bakery shop owner is just adorable.  She’s the kind of orc who is a true and lovable friend.  The tie-in back to Lattes in the epilogue will just melt your heart.  

It will be interesting to see what else Baldree can do.  Will he pull another winner out of this universe he’s created, or will he move on to something else?  I’d love to spend more time with Viv, but don’t want the world to get tired.  These books are some kind of special and I want them to live on as wonderful pieces of imagination.  I give this book four stars, just missing five stars because the formula was new and exciting in the first book, and in this one, it was more familiar.  It is still tremendous, and my only regret is that I waiting so long in reading it.  

Translation State

Ann Leckie
Completed 9/10/2024, Reviewed 9/11/2024
4 stars

This book wasn’t as bad as it started out to be.  Honestly, I was predisposed to not liking this book.  I really disliked Ancillary Justice and hadn’t read anything else by Leckie since.  This book started out tough, with three points of view alternating every three chapters.  It was hard keeping up with who was who and what the point of their existences were.  I kept one foot out of the water as I was expecting this supposedly standalone book to require a lot of background from the original trilogy.  To my surprise It came together after about a hundred pages or so.  And by the end, I actually cared what would happen to the main characters.  This book was nominated for the 2023 Nebula and the 2024 Hugo and Locus SF Awards.  I dare say that maybe it deserved these noms.  

The book begins with Enae, whose grandmaman has just died.  Instead of money or property She lives hir the task to find fugitive whose been missing for over 200 years.  When she arrives at her destination, she meets Reet, a liaison/body guard with his own mystery.  He’s searching for birth parents to explain a genetic anomaly.  Finally, there’s Qven, a Presger translator.  As a translator, they will merge with a human to create a link between the humans and the very dangerous Presgers, a relationship defined by an all encompassing but fragile treaty.  These three come together in their quests and to find their true selves while keeping the treaty from exploding into all out war.

All three characters are pretty interesting.  While I didn’t like any of them in the beginning, they each grew on me.  But the real star of this story is Qven.  They want to rebel against the expectations their society has for them.  As they get to know Enae and Reet, they desire to be human, not the cannibalistic, merging creature that’s expected of them.  As Qven navigates the journey to declare themselves human, they have a lot of awkward, dare say humorous, moments.  But it is also very serious as the integrity of the treaty must hold.

In the over ten years since the first novel, the multi-gendered characters with their myriad of pronouns has become a lot less shocking.  In fact, I took it in stride and was not flustered at all by the relationships that developed between the all the non-binary genders.  I was able to focus more on the story, which initially was difficult to keep up with.  It was not easy reading about Qven before they meet Reet.  The otherness of his character was an irritating unanswered question.  But stick with it, as it comes together eventually.

I give this book four stars.  I was going to give it three, but it really is pretty well done how Qven, Enae, and Reet come together and interact.  I definitely changed my mind about Leckie, although I don’t think I’ll go back and read the other two of the initial trilogy.  Suffice it to say that this book is very good and I am now interested in reading her foray into fantasy, The Raven Tower, which I picked up on sale several years ago.  

Shigidi and the Brass Head of Obalufon

Wole Talabi
Completed 8/31/2024, Reviewed 9/1/2024
4 stars

This was an interesting book.  It is based in Nigerian mythology as well as a sprinkling of other myths and religions.  The story is basically a heist tale, but with lots of world building around the mythology.  It made for generally fun book, although, the jumping around of the timelines was a little confusing.  And, as usual, it is always fun to get out of Euro-based fantasy.  Overall, I really liked the book.  It was nominated for 2023 Nebula and British Science Fiction Awards and won the Nommo Award, which is for African Science Fiction and Fantasy.  

The story is about Shigidi, a nightmare orisha who works for the Orisha Spirit company.  He meets a succubus named Nneoma on one particular assignment.  She convinces him to leave the company and join her in eating souls outside of its soul feed distribution.    However, the elder gods will have none of that and pursue the two renegades.  Then, a high god asks the two of them to steal a Nigerian artifact from the British Museum, via both the natural world and the spirit world. 

The plot is pretty simple.  What makes the book complex and interesting is becoming familiar with the Orisha pantheon.  Some of the gods overlapped form me.  Many of them began with the letter O.  But their interactions with the main characters were fascinating.  The book also jumps around in its timeline.  From the activities of the heist, to the making of Shigidi, to the development of the relationship between he and Nneoma, and even a meeting between Alastair Crowley and Nneoma back at the turn of the 20th century.  It’s a little confusing at times, but all works together to get you to understand the reason for the heist and what transpires afterwards.  

I really liked Shigidi, for the most part.  I wasn’t always immersed in his character, empathizing with his situation.  I think part of it was the jumping around of the timeline.  The POV also changes a lot, between him and Nneoma, as well as the high god who runs a board meeting of the Orisha company.  But overall, I found him fascinating, especially when Nneoma teaches him to manipulate the clay from which he’s made.  I also like Nneoma.  Despite the misogynistic connotations of the succubus motif, she was a very well-developed character that had purpose and self-respect.  

I can see why this book was nominated for awards.  The prose was terrific and the world building phenomenal for a mythology that’s not very well known.  I give this book four stars out of five.  I also give props to the author for being able to describe a massively supernatural ending well enough that I followed the wonder of the scene easily despite the noise of reading in airports and on airplanes.  It kept me engaged and intrigued.

The Children of Gods and Fighting Men

Shauna Lawless
Completed 8/24/2024 Reviewed 8/24/24
3 Stars

I haven’t read any of the Game of Thrones books, but I have a feeling that I got a mild taste of what it would be like.  This book is a mix of Irish mythology and historical facts, creating an epic tale of the power struggle between the Kings of the different parts of Ireland for the title of High King.  When we were voting for this book in online book club, I was hoping for a little more god-human interaction.  Instead, the mythology is about two races of immortals playing politics with the crown.  It wasn’t exactly my cup of tea.  I found it rather tedious at times, though I did pretty good remembering who was who amongst the myriad of characters.  

Gormflaith is the widow of the Viking King of Dublin.  She is trying to position her son Sitric as the next king as well as the High King of Ireland.  She marries off her stepdaughter to the future King of Norway for ally support.  She also belongs to a race of immortals called Fomorians who have fire magic. There is a race of indigenous immortals called the Tuatha De Dannan who are sworn enemies of the Fomorians and are tasked with killing them, although they don’t live among the humans.  One such immortal, Fodla, is released to live with the humans as a spy on King Brian.  Disguised as a disfigured healer, she finds King Brian and his family to be less warmongering than she was led to believe.  Between these two camps is another king and the rise of Christianity to complicate matters.  

One of the things I both liked and didn’t like about the book was that there are no clear good guys and bad guys.  While one might say the Vikings are the bad guys, the indigenous Irish Kings are generally no better.  All have strange views of what peace is and of course they require power to secure it.  What I like about this is that the tale is told from both the Fomorian and the Tuatha De Dannan POV.  This gives you a taste of the morality of both sides with less judgement than a straightforward good vs. evil story.  The downside for me is that I feel rather ambiguous about both sides as well.  I don’t feel like I have anyone to cheer for.  However, towards the end, I was starting to like King Brian’s clan better.  But who knows if this is a ruse that will be revealed in the next book.

I do have to say Gormflaith is kind of a baddie, mostly because all her frustrations and tragedy in life is now vented toward getting Sitric on the High Throne.  But she is not just an evil Borg Queen of a baddie.  With the book being half told from her POV, it’s easier to empathize with her.  Fodla comes off as less of a baddie, mostly because of her realizations that all human men aren’t warmongering imbeciles.  Her task to spy is interesting because she is a healer posing as a human healer.  She is not supposed to use her supernatural powers to heal anyone.  However, this becomes more and more of a struggle as she becomes closer to the clan she was sent to spy on.  

I give this book three stars out of five.  While it is well constructed and well researched, I felt it dragged often.  I found it tough to get into in the first third, and then once I got into the book, I found it tough to stay in it.  I just didn’t find it all that interesting.  I got more engrossed in the last third, wanting to see which king was going to take a leading role.  But knowing this is a trilogy, I was prepared to be only partly satisfied.  I don’t think I’ll read more of this trilogy unless book club votes for the rest of the series.  It’s just a little too much fantasy politics for me.  

The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi

Shannon Chakraborty
Completed 8/16/2024, Reviewed 8/17/2024
4 stars

This book was a terrific read, especially after the disastrous last book I read.  I loved the main character, the prose, the world building; everything just tickled my fancy.  Except for it slowing down a little before the big climax, it was fast-paced and interesting.  I generally like fantasy from the Middle East, with golems and djinns and the myriads of magical beings dreamt out of the sea and the desert.  This book was nominated for a 2024 Hugo.  It didn’t win, but would have been very high on my list.  

Amina is a retired pirate.  She was one of the greatest, most notorious pirates in the Indian Ocean.  Now she lives at home with her daughter and mother.  One day the mother of one of her former crew shows up and offers Amina a fortune to find the woman’s granddaughter.  The woman basically extorts her into the search, threatening the lives of Amina’s daughter and mother.  Amina takes the job but slowly finds out that there is more to this than just a missing granddaughter.  The kidnapper is a Frank from the crusades who was searching for one of the greatest magical objects ever.  So Amina reassembles some of the main members of her old crew to help her on this quest, with magical islands, bird-men, cthulu-reminiscent sea creatures, and an old husband who turned out to be a demon.

Even though it took me a while to read this book, I found it engrossing right from the start.  The story of Amina’s retired life was actually interesting, probably because it is based in an Arab/African setting rather than European-style fantasy.  And when you read as much as I do, different is good. 😊  The process of assembling her crew was as thrilling as some of the faster paced sections of the book.  And each old member she found added insight into Amina’s life as pirate and a person.  I’ve already forgotten the names of the major characters from her crew, but each personality was interesting.

Of course, the best character was Amina, a complex person trying to juggle her return to the seas with her responsibility to her family.  As this is the first of a series with “Adventures” in the title, we can expect that the conflict will continue into the next books.  But it is done well, with her longing for her daughter and constantly second-guessing her decisions.

Her old demon husband, whose name I think was Raksh, was fun.  He was ultimately a selfish, self-seeking coward, but colorful nonetheless.  I liked how he tried to manipulate her into doing things his way to save his own skin and Amina being able to see through it, mostly.  I also liked the granddaughter.  She was scholar and a self-made magician who had her own reasons for letting the Frank take advantage of her powers.    

I give this book four stars out of five.  I thoroughly enjoyed it, but found it dragged towards the end.  The climax itself was tremendous, but the build up to it was slow at times.  However, I’d still be interested in the sequels as they come out.  I really enjoyed the prose, good descriptions without taking away from the action.  And the different creatures and monsters were fun.  This recently came up as a book club nominee and I’ll probably work on getting it nominated a few more times.  I think it would be a good discussion book.

Isolate

L. E. Modesitt
DNF 8/4/2024, Reviewed 8/6/2024
1 star

Trying to read this book was a miserable experience.  I got to about page 100 after ten days and decided I couldn’t do it anymore.  Nothing happened in this book.  I’m not even sure what this book was about.  I can tell you a little about the main characters and what they wore and what they ate and what their jobs were.  As for a plot, I got nothing.

If you look at the cover of the book, you see a man and a woman standing in front of a car like they are body guards.  That’s the book in a nutshell.  Dekkard and Ysella are body guards.  Ysella is an empath.  She can read people.  Dekkard is an isolate.  Empaths can’t read him.  They protect a councilor, which to us would be a congressman.  Dekkard likes quince jam on croissants.  They kind of like each other.  They both mostly wear grey.  Another councilor dies under mysterious circumstances, but the news reports it as a heart attack.  The councilor Dekkard and Ysella protect gets shot at occasionally and the two have to rush him to safety.  

The world is a sort of steampunk near future.  I couldn’t tell if the government was supposed to be fascist or communist or late-stage capitalism, or some combination, but it was pretty corrupt.  There were people demonstrating demanding the councilors reveal how they voted.  

One hundred pages and there was no semblance of a plot.  It was mostly the day to day activities of two body guards.  This was a book club selection.  There are bets as to how many people will finish the book.  One friend who finished it sent me a scathing synopsis of the rest of the book, where nothing else happens.  I may publish it in my blog, but I won’t include it public site reviews where she will publish herself.  

This is a 1 star book.  Bleah.

My friend’s eloquent response to this book:

If you don’t like it at page 100, nothing changes. I soldiered along because sometimes there’s a payoff when Stuff Finally Happens…. But this is the whole book. Bureaucracy. Lists of people introduced who don’t show up again. Minutae of what the main characters are wearing (spoiler: uniforms). Not what anyone else is wearing… just him and her. Slowburn attraction. Beginnings of snatches of what might be mysteries. More bureaucracy. Laborious detail over ever meal including what everyone ordered, what the first bites were like, whether they were pressed for time while eating. Quince paste shows up 55 times in 100 chapters, and is referenced more than that when he mourns over his tomato jelly and guava jam.

There are more assassination attempts, which always occur when the pair are on duty, and are always easily thwarted with no damage or danger to anyone but the assailants— who die, easily and conveniently. There are potential plots— who is trying to kill Dekkard notCain? Or his boss? Or his girlfriend’s sister’s husband? But 50 pages from the end we’ve forgotten about resolving any of that in favor of detailed exposition on his boss’ stump speeches while he campaigns for office. Lower tariffs are promised. I mean, that’s a whole-ass chapter 60 pages from the end.

Sorry higher tariffs are promised. And regulations for the manufacture and distribution of the not-cars and not-trains.

The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories

Ken Liu
Completed 7/25/2024, Reviewed 7/25/2024
4 stars

My introduction to Ken Liu was in the Nebula Awards Showcase 2013.  It featured the title story from this collection.  I absolutely loved it then and I loved it reading it again for this online book club selection.  In fact, I loved almost all the stories in this collection.  A few were boring, but still had beautiful prose.  The prose was a feature in every story.  It set the mood and enhanced the world-building.  Almost all the stories featured Asian characters struggling with identity.  Several of them were indictments of the treatment of the Chinese people by other peoples and countries.    In my usual manner with collections, I’ll mention a few of the stories here that I thought stood out from the others.

The Paper Menagerie was my favorite.  It’s so poignant.  It shows how a kid who is different, in this case, Chinese, tries to eschew everything about himself that is different in an effort to be like everyone else. This includes his mother, who used to make magical origami animals for him when he was very young.

The Literomancer – the daughter of an American operative in Taiwan befriends an old man and his sort of grandson.  The old man tells the future by analyzing the pictures of Chinese words.  The girl unknowingly tells her father about something the old man says which is sympathetic to the Communists which gets him in trouble. This one was very hard to read, but one of the indicting stories.

All the Flavors – Mixing history with myth, this story tells about the Chinese immigrants from the railroad days who settled in Idaho Territory.  Some of the whites are welcoming, most are not. However, one girl befriends several of them and begins to learn about their culture through stories and food.  

The stories in general are a little fantasy-ish or a little sci fi-ish, just enough to give them some flavor so that it’s not like a history lesson, but many of the stories are.  They give voices to a people who have been shut down for a long time.  It’s like Liu said, “I got a few awards for some of my stories.  Well here they are, plus a bunch that tell some uncomfortable truths about the recent history of the Chinese people.”  They may be uncomfortable, a few downright horrifying, but they are very well written and draw into the way they are told.

I give this book four stars out of five.  I didn’t care for the first and the last stories.  The first was hard to follow and the last was way too long.  I didn’t like the conceit of the last: a man figures out time travel and finds out the truth about Japanese torture of Chinese people pre WWII.   The story is told in a documentary format, which felt repetitive.  One of the stories completely eluded me.  Except for these three, the collection is marvelous.

Some Desperate Glory

Emily Tesh
Completed 7/14/2024, Reviewed 7/15/2024
5 stars

I hadn’t realized I had read this author before until I read the pages at the end of the book.  She previously wrote Silver in the Wood and Drowned Country, award winning novellas I loved.  Now she is nominated for several awards, including the 2024 Hugo for this her first novel, and I loved it.  It’s a queer space opera with an unreliable, unlikable main character.  It plays with parallel universes and trying to make the future turn out the way you want it to.  At times it was a little tough to follow the universe jumping, but once I got used to it, it was breathtaking.  The prose is as intense as the main character.  Even though it took me a week to read this, I read the majority of it on just a few nights, going to bed early on the others to catch up from reading so late LOL.  

Kyr, as in Valkyr, is a young warrior woman on Gaea, the last outpost of rebellious humans, a space station built from several war vessels on a planetoid.  She is ready to go claim vengeance on the aliens who destroyed the Earth.  When she doesn’t get the appointment she was expecting, she goes to look for her twin brother who supposedly betrayed the rebels.  Her journey takes her to a planet where a large group of humans live in peace with each other and the aliens.  There she learns the truth about her brother, Gaea, and the aliens.

Kyr is quite the intense character.  She, like almost everyone else on Gaea, lives for revenge on the aliens for destroying Earth.  She is the top female cadet, the darling of Gaea’s commander, her Uncle Jole.  He’s not really her uncle, but he adopted her and her twin brother Magnus after their mother died and their older sister betrayed Gaea.  Despite all the accolades, her “sisters” from the same age group don’t like her.  But she ignores that, living for the glory of humanity.  Even when she goes searching for Magnus, she is still intense, despite all the revelations she encounters.

The other characters are quite believable as well.  They are all pretty intense; that is how they are raised.  I liked that there were multiple queer characters, but no real romance going on.  Romance is basically eschewed for the greater glory of humanity.  And they weren’t all good.  Magnus’ seditious gay friend is bitchy and as unlikable as Kyr initially is.  Ironically, the only character in the first half or so of the book who acts human is an alien.  

The tough part about this book is that there are a lot of trigger topics.  They include, suicide, rape, forced birth, and almost every ism and phobia you can think of.  The society on Gaea exists as a militaristic installation with the sole purpose of the remnants of humanity taking revenge on the aliens.  Swept aside are things that make us human.  This is all represented in the character of Kyr.  Fortunately, she does go on a journey of revelation and change.  But it takes time for her to get there, and that may be problematic for some readers.  

I give this book five stars out of five.  I found it intense.  Kyr has completely bought into the cruel dystopia she was raised in.  When she does begin to transform, it is not sudden, and she learns the hard way what her belief system has done to those around her.  Eventually, you do come to like her, but just like for Kyr, the journey for the reader is not easy.  

Witch King

Martha Wells
Completed 7/7/2024, Reviewed 7/7/2024
3 stars

This book wasn’t my cup of tea.  It was told in two timelines, and despite being clearly delineated by chapter titles, I found it confusing.  I had trouble getting into the initial timeline, the “present,” and when the “past” began, I lost track of the objective of the present.  Then I lost track of the objective of the past.  When it all came together in the end, I was non-plussed.  I have a mixed history with Wells.  I mostly enjoyed her Murderbot series, culminating in the award-winning Network Effect (although several more Murderbot books have been released since).  I didn’t care for her fantasy novel we read for book club, The Cloud Roads.  But this was nominated for several awards, so I wanted to see what all the fuss was about.   It won the 2024 Locus Award for Fantasy and was nominated for Hugo and Nebula Awards.  It lost the Nebula; the Hugo will be announced in August.  

The book opens with Kai being revived from being dead for a year, his consciousness being suspended while his body lay trapped in an elaborate water tomb.  He awakens and escapes, capturing a new body from a group of marauders at his tomb.  He also finds and rescues Ziede, a witch who was one of his companions and was also entombed nearby.  Kai himself is a demon with a human body and is known as the Witch King.  He takes the gender of the body he inhabits.  The two begin a quest to find out who was responsible for their situation.  They also search for Ziede’s wife Tahren and Tahren’s brother Dahin.  The book then goes back to explain how Kai was captured when the Hierarchs took over, was rescued, and then with Ziede, Tahren, Dahin, and others try to overthrow the Hierarchs.  

Despite never feeling like I got into the book, I did like Kai’s powers as a demon as well as the magic of the others in the story.  There were magical people as well as mortals.  And the magic system seemed different depending on whether you were a demon, a witch, a Blessed Immortal, or a Hierarch.  It was always an interesting scene when they were using their powers for battle.  

I didn’t care for the world building.  I never quite got the scenario of Kai, Ziede, and their cohorts riding on a boat, and then later a raft through rivers, canals, and bays.  Water played a huge part in the story, but I had a tough time understanding how it all was laid out.  I thought the prose, while extensive, focused on the wrong things at crucial times, like clothing.  Or maybe I just was not getting it as I was reading it.

I give this book a tentative three stars out of five.  A part of me recognizes that a lot of effort went into organizing and executing the production of this novel, keeping the past and the present exciting and the plots moving forward.  I just didn’t get into it enough right from the beginning to understand, appreciate, and care about what was going on.  

The Thick and the Lean

Chana Porter
Completed 6/25/2024, Reviewed 6/25/2024
5 stars

This is the last remaining book nominated for a 2024 Speculative Fiction Lammy.  The winner was I Keep My Exoskeletons to Myself.  I think it deserved to win.  However, this would have been a very strong runner up.  I was floored by the power of this novel.  It’s about a dystopian planet with capitalism run amok, where fat shaming has become engrained in the government and religion.  Corporations and ministers convince people that to eat is to sin.  The poor live on the ground, vulnerable to the rising seas while the super-rich live in towers.  At first, I was rather put off by the book, but after about one hundred pages, I had bought into the premise.  I was hooked.  

There are two main characters told in alternating chapters.  Beatrice is a teen living in a corporate owned community called Seagate.  Everyone there has bought into the societal and religious doctrine to eat as little as possible, as chewing, digesting, and defecating has become taboo, worthy only of animals.  Beatrice believes in the doctrine, but also believes food can taste good.  She wants to be a chef, but of course will have to leave home to live that dream.

Reiko has graduated high school with a scholarship to an expensive technical university where she can develop her amazing programming skills and have a chance at a good job.  She is of the lower class, the indigenous people who don’t cover their mouths when chewing and don’t starve themselves on nutrition pills, but are also not considered citizens of their own land.  When her funding is cut, she takes to a life of hi tech grifting to make her way to the top of society.

I think my initial hesitation with the book was that I didn’t like the circumstances of the main characters.  It was too bleak.  Sometimes a good book is too bleak to appreciate because you don’t want to enter that world.  However, I soon found myself very much inside Beatrice and Reiko’s heads.  They are both wonderful characters with fascinating arcs.  They start as naïve teens but grow into self-empowered women.  Neither is perfect, but they are both strong.  I enjoyed reading about them even when they were making bad decisions.  

One interesting thing about this society that Porter created is that the substitute for eating is sex.  Besides controlling hunger, society, particularly religion, has normalized sexual promiscuity as a form of worship.  Eventually, the reader realizes is that it has become the substitute for eating.  The book is not one big orgy, but sex plays a major role in how people interact with each other.  For people who are monogamous, it is almost as culturally difficult as wanting to chew food.  

The world building of this book is tremendous.  I was amazed at the imagination that went into extrapolating fat-shaming into a cultural, religious, and corporate norm.  When we finally get to parts where food is savored by the eaters, it is a splendid visceral experience.  

I give this book five stars out of five.  Reading it was profound, with the experiences of both Beatrice and Reiko, regarding food, sex, and simple control over their own bodies.  It’s a dark book and may be too much of a downer for some.  But I found it to be a worthwhile experience, provoking my own hangups around food and sex.  It’s well written and beautifully imagined.  Porter hasn’t written a lot yet, but I would definitely be open to more of her work in the future.

Foundryside

Robert Jackson Bennett
Completed 6/20/2024, Reviewed 6/21/2024
4 stars

I was surprised by how much I liked this book.  I hadn’t read Bennett since City of Stairs in 2018 and loved that book.  However, I didn’t remember I had even read it until a friend found it in my blog and pointed it out to me.  It was one of those really good books that just kind of slips out of mind considering the number of books I read a year.  I’m hoping this one sticks in my head a little better.  It’s a book club read and the first in a trilogy.  It features a kind of industrialized magic in a place so entrenched in capitalism, government no longer exists and the ruling merchant houses abuse their power over the people.  I found it a gripping statement on late-stage capitalism and the pursuit of the ultimate weapon to wipe out all the competition and remake the world.  This book was nominated for a 2019 British Fantasy Award and a 2023 Best Series Hugo.

Sancia is an orphaned thief.  She’s so good, she scores a lucrative deal to steal a powerful magical artifact from one of the merchant houses.  Curiosity gets the best of her and she opens the plain box holding it.  She finds an ornate key.  When she touches it, it speaks to her.  After forming a strange bond with it, she does not hand it over to her employer and she finds herself at the center of a grand chase by unknown assailants.  Soon, she is in race to keep the key out of the hands of those who would use it to remake the world.

The book begins a little mundanely.  It feels like standard fantasy fare with a thief and a treasure.  It’s not until the key begins communicating with Sancia that the feel of the book takes a turn and it becomes completely engrossing.  I found myself wanting to understand Sancia and Clef, the key, about her horrific past, and what that means for her relationship with the Clef.  Then all the intrigue between the merchant houses and the system of magic all make sense and gives everyone their motivation.  

The little group of people Sancia ends up working with consists of dicey characters.  She has no reason to trust them except for the fact that there is no one else to trust.  They are all generally likable, although they are all very flawed.  The one character who seemed the most trustworthy was Berenice, with whom, Sancia has a little spark of a burgeoning romance.  However, not much happens in this book.  I assume their relationship takes off further in the series.  Her two other companions, Gregor and Orso, I didn’t trust until the end of the book. 

The book is very well written, with multi-dimensional characters and an unbelievably complex magic system and society.  I was constantly amazed by unfolding description of the society, including its founding by a king who tried to tap into the power of the gods, that is, the making of everything.  It kept me intrigued right up to the end, which of course leaves you hanging and wanting more.  I don’t know if I’ll actually follow through on this trilogy, but I wouldn’t be averse to it.

I give this book four stars out of five.  It’s exciting, fast paced, and one of the best world-building books I’ve read in a while.  It felt very original and well thought out.  I liked the main characters and eventually loved Sancia and was pained by her backstory.  And I was pleasantly surprised by the little romance between her and Berenice.  But the star of the book is Clef, the key.  He ties everything together and makes what could have been just another thief fantasy something extraordinary.

The Road to Roswell

Connie Willis
Completed 6/7/2024, Reviewed 6/7/2024
2 stars

I was sadly disappointed with this novel.  It’s supposed to be fun fluff.  For the most part, it was cute.  Unfortunately, it suffered from the same tired formula Willis has used in most of her books.  People don’t listen to the protagonist, they talk over him/her, the protagonist gets into some kind of trouble, someone saves them.  My disappointment was compounded by a tediously trite ending.  I’ve really liked some of Willis’ other books, including Blackout and Passage.  While they had the Willis formula, the circumstances and specifics were enough to make them terrific books.  Roswell simply didn’t have enough interesting circumstances or specifics, despite it being about UFOs and aliens.  The one thing it had going for it: it was a very fast read. 

Francie goes to Roswell to be the maid of honor at her college roommate’s wedding.  Shortly after she arrives, she’s kidnapped by an alien and forced to drive it into the New Mexico desert to some unknown destination.  Along the way, they pick up others:  Wade, an alien abduction insurance salesman; a sweet little old lady casino aficionado; a UFO conspiracy theorist; and a western movies fan in an RV.  But there’s more to these characters than meets the eye.  Everyone is hiding secrets.  As they travel together, they figure out how to communicate with the alien and Francie and Wade figure out that it needs their help to find another alien out in the desert, and it’s of utmost importance.  

As far as characters go, I actually liked them.  I thought they were a well-rounded collection of pushy people.  You may ask about Francie, the protagonist.  Was she pushy?  Actually, she had a pretty strong self-editing brain.  She didn’t need the people around her to prevent her from talking.  She prevented herself just as much.  But she was nice.  Wade clearly has massive secrets.  The hints in the text are pretty obvious, but I kind of liked him anyway.  And just when the jokes seemed to run out with a character, Willis introduces a new one.  

I’m not sure whether I liked the alien, who Wade and Francie nicknamed Indy because of the way he whipped around his tentacles.  Indy reminded me a lot of the character named Cheese from Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends.  He’s comical, but if used too much, is just plain annoying.  I did like the process of Indy learning to “speak” in English, learning jargon from all the Westerns’ DVDs on the RV.  However, Indy’s mode of communication, letters or characters scrolling across their tentacles, was bizarre and a little tough to accept.  I like the concept of imagining different communication modalities, but couldn’t totally buy into this one.  

I know quite a few people who really liked this book.  I give it two stars out of five.  It would have been three stars, but the end killed it for me.  It was just too trite and formulaic.  If I’m going to read any more Willis, I think I’m going to stick with rereading the Oxford Time Travel series.  I’d recommend them to people new to the author.  To Say Nothing of the Dog particularly is much better at being a fun book than this one was.