Ancestral Night

Elizabeth Bear
Completed 8/28/2022, Reviewed 8/28/2022
2 stars

I have been hit or miss with Elizabeth Bear.  This is the sixth book I’ve read of hers for various reasons.  This time it was because it was my book club’s selection.  Upon reading this book, my opinion of Bear hasn’t changed.  In fact, it went down a little bit.  This book was sooooo boring.  It has so much prosy description and self-reflection that after a hundred pages, I didn’t think there was going to be a plot.  Then when it was introduced, it had hardly any forward movement, playing second fiddle to the mounds and mounds of mental masturbation by the main character.  The only reason I finished the book was because it was for book club.  And it took me so long to read this 550 page monstrosity that when I did finish it, it was a relief, but not satisfying.

Haimey Dz is an engineer on a tug ship.  She runs salvage missions of abandoned spacecraft with her ship AI, Singer, and Connla Kurucz, who I think was the pilot of the tug.  They go after a ship and find it has the rendered remains of the whale/dragon-like race whose sentience is contested.  There could only be one culprit, pirates.  This leads them on a big chase with a particularly nasty pirate.  At one point, she disables Haimey’s brain chip and she finds that her real memories are very different from her own.  In other words, she has no idea who she really is.  But the question is, will Haimey bring the pirate to justice or will the pirate bring Haimey to a life on the outer edge of society.

This book is filled with politics and philosophy.  The government, the Synarche, keeps everyone productive via a brain chip of sorts that helps them deal with reality.  The pirates are FreeThinkers and want to overthrow the Synarche and give people freedom and choice.  But are the guerilla tactics, assassinations,  and enslavement the right way to go about it.  These are just some of the things Haimey considers in long discussions with the pirate, as well as in long thoughts with herself.  Haimey also goes off on love and relationships, including the great love of her life, which she may or may not be accurately recalling. The premises of many of Haimey’s ideas and discussions were often interesting, but it always ended up sounding like a term paper.

The characterization wasn’t bad.  I felt like I really knew Haimey, the pirate, and Singer the AI.  I liked some of the other characters as well.  I just couldn’t suffer the lengths of these term paper descriptions and discussions.  This book could easily have been cut nearly in half and still retained sufficient plot and character development to feel completed.  

There is a sequel to this book.  I have no intention of reading it.  I already feel like I’ve read too much Elizabeth Bear, most recently Carnival and Ink and Steel.  I think I’ve given most of her books three stars.  Ink and Steel got four stars.  This book gets two stars (out of five).  It simply did not feel like it had any forward momentum.  Whenever it did move forward, it was derailed by long bouts of tedious prose.  I basically hated reading it from about the fiftieth page to the end.  And life’s too short to read tedious books.  I’m hoping the next few book club books aren’t nearly so bad. 

Melee Mage

Michael Taggart
Completed 8/19/2022, Reviewed 8/20/2022
3 stars

This is the second book in the Fledgling God series which began with Misfit Mage.  Like the first book, this is very enjoyable.  It’s a gay urban fantasy with an extremely detailed magic system.  It took me nearly two weeks to read it because I was on a long driving and hiking vacation and only got about twenty pages read on some nights.  But once I got back I zoomed through the rest of it.  The book is really fluff, but good fluff, with much more meaty action and situations promised in the next installment.

It had been over a year since I read the first book, so it was great that the author included a synopsis to get the reader up to speed for this book.  It picks up right after the events of the first book.  Jason is still healing from the showdown with Isobel and her golem.  Sandy is unconscious with very little magic left.  John the half troll seems to have turned to stone and become unresponsive.  Annabeth is in decent shape but tired.  And Tyler the incubus pops in and out of the house to take care of issues as assigned by the house, which is also magic.  Tyler begins a regimen for Jason and Annabeth to learn how to fight with their bodies, not just with magic.  Jason and Annabeth watch over the other two in the house, trying to find ways to bring them back from their unconscious states.  There is a lull in the bad activity of the bad mages until John and Annabeth find a mage who tells them about how the bad mages are consolidating their magic in an effort to take out Sandy’s house once and for all.  And it’s up to Jason to figure out a way to fight this growing enemy.

The plot is pretty basic.  Our hero must find a way to fight the bad guys and trains to do so.  The fun is in the journey.  A large chunk of the book is about Jason and Annabeth learning to fight with their fists rather than rely completely on magic.  It’s sort of like a long “Rocky” montage.  But just as Taggart deftly and thoroughly explains the magic system, he deftly and thoroughly explains the fight training.  What could be boring was pretty exciting.  I enjoyed watching Jason and Annabeth develop their fighting skills under Tyler’s tutelage.  What could have boring fighting exercises turns out to be really engrossing reading.

The other thing going on is Jason’s attempts at reviving Sandy and John.  He uses his magic to make little creatures that pull neutral magic and infuse it into Sandy to get her personal magic level up.  And he makes other little creatures to chip away at the rock that is encasing John.  How he does that is simply fascinating.  

The character development continues where it left off.  The relationship between Jason and the others in the House continue to grow as they become their own family.  His relationship with Tyler goes in positive directions, bringing him a joy he never had in his more mortal previous life.  Jason is simply lovable.  At times, it seems too good to be true, with all the hugging and crying and mutual support.  But on the other hand, it is nice to read an urban fantasy which does not rely on angsty moping mages waiting for the next negative experience.

I give this book three stars out of five.  It reads very much like the first.  The biggest problem with it is that the fight training scenes did run on a bit long and there were so many of them.  In fact, the author notes in the afterward that this book had to be broken into two books because it went on so long.  I bet with judicious editing, he could have gotten this and the next book hammered into a singe volume.  But it is what it is and as it stands, this second book is solid fun.  The next installment promises to be more action with the big confrontation with the bad guys.

Oathbreakers

Mercedes Lackey
Completed 8/6/2022, Reviewed 8/6/2022
3 stars

For the second book in the Vows and Honor trilogy, I again had mixed feelings.  Like in The Oathbound,  I liked a lot of things about the book, but it just didn’t really engage me.  One of these “the whole is less than the sum of its parts” type reactions.  I really like her prose, the plot, the world building, and I thought the characters were well developed.  But overall, I just couldn’t get into the book.  

This volume has only one story arc, as opposed to the previous book which was a collection of shorter works fused together into one.  Tarma and Kethry spend time with the Sunhawks, a mercenary group.  Their leader is Idra, a strong woman and their founder.  She gets word that her father has died, leaving the throne vacant.  She must go back and cast her vote toward one of her two brothers to reign, since she renounced her inheritance.  After several months, she disappears and Tarma and Kethry go to find out what happened to her.  

Tarma and Kethry are great.  I really like them.  They basically share equal billing, but it feels like Kethry gets a little more growth.  We’re introduced to a new character Jadrek, a royal archivist who seems to have insight into the kingdom, the new king, and the whereabouts of Idra.  At first he’s not very likable, but I warmed up to him as time went on.  He’s the one character I actually empathized with.  I like the main characters, but didn’t find myself engaged with them until they develop a friendship with Jadrek.  He's an intellectual, awkward, and has a bit of a chip on his shoulder.  But as the plot develops, he gets thrown in with Tarma and Kethry and soon they begin to trust each other and actually care for one another.

The world building continues to grow, particularly in the relationship Tarma has to the Goddess.  It doesn’t feel haphazard or superfluous.  It’s detailed and intriguing.  And the prose is wonderful as well.  I like the way Lackey describes the action without the mechanical details while still making you feel part of the action.  There’s some pretty rough violence in this book, but it’s never too gory or over the top.  In fact, I felt the same amount of revulsion that the main characters did when confronted with it themselves.  

I give this book three stars out of five.  It’s good, but it just didn’t come together for me.  In the end, I felt a little ambivalent about reading the third book.  However, I think I’m going to read it because it’s a collection of short stories and a short novel of our heroes.  I’m actually looking forward to the change in form to see how I like that as opposed to a full-length novel.

Radicalized

Cory Doctorow
Completed 7/30/2022, Reviewed 7/30/2022
4 stars

Four novellas elaborating on the fears and horrors of today and the near future.  Each story takes a contemporary topic, gives it a personal perspective, and draws it out to a scary yet realistic conclusion.  I saw Doctorow on a tour of libraries he did five or so years ago.  He’s an excellent speaker and has his finger on the pulse on the problems of modern society like social injustice, insurance, and the fear of the apocalypse.  It’s an excellent collection, told in a sort of journalistic style, and his extrapolations are horrifying in their realism. 

“Unauthorized Toast” is a brilliant depiction of the future of the treatment of immigrants and the poor.  Cheap products are made, like toaster ovens and dishwashers, that only allow you to use certain brands of bread, frozen meals, dishes, detergent, etc.  One immigrant woman finds on the dark web a way to circumvent the controlling software.  It puts herself and everyone she’s helped in jeopardy of punishable copyright violation.  This story was the best of the bunch.

“Model Minority” was an okay take on the Superman/Batman fantasy.  A superhero called the American Eagle tries to fight for the rights of a black man who has been wrongfully beaten and incarcerated by white, racist, corrupt cops.  He finds that he must face his own hypocrisy for not helping blacks during the Jim Crow era.  

“Radicalized” is the scariest of the stories.  It’s about a man who encounters a terrorist organization on the dark web, consisting of the men who’ve lost their wives or children to cancer because insurance companies wouldn’t pay for treatment, while he himself is dealing with his wife’s stage 4 breast cancer.  

“Masque of the Red Death” is a modern treatment of the Poe classic.  A rich despotic high financier gathers around thirty people into an enclave when the end of civilization as we know it approaches.  They hide out, refusing others refuge.  When things seem to return to normal, a few venture out to trade for some supplies, and of course, they bring back a pandemic.

I really enjoyed these stories, though they are not fun.  Some are even cringeworthy in their portrayal of realistic scenarios.  This was especially true of “Model Minority”, with the washed-up Eagle being less than loved as he was in the early part of the last century.  

Doctorow does an excellent job of bringing his characters to life, making you feel empathy for them, except for the rich despot in “Masque”.  Instead, you just hate him.  But whether you love or hate the characters, you feel something for each of them.  There isn’t much humor in the stories.  It’s mostly irony.  But it really works.  I give this book four stars out of five.  I think it’s a must read for anyone who has an ounce of social justice awareness in their bones, and probably for those that don’t have any, to see what could be played out if we continue on the path we’re heading.

The Oathbound

Mercedes Lackey
Completed 7/24/2022, Reviewed 7/24/2022
3 stars

I had a mixed reaction to this book.  I enjoyed having two kick-ass women fighting injustice, but there was something off about the composition.  It felt like it was a collection of short stories woven together after the fact and made into a novel.  While that’s not always bad, it didn’t feel seamless.  I have to give props to Lackey though, she wrote a bold feminist fantasy novel in the 80’s.  I read this book because I’m doing a Grand Master challenge based around Lackey.  She won the honor last year, and on World Without End’s site, it’s become a tradition to have a challenge based on the honoree from the previous year.

This book begins with a disclaimer that the characters were introduced in a story that was part of an anthology.  However, it picks up without feeling like you missed much.  Tarma and Kethry are on the road.  Tarma’s clan was annihilated.  The is a master warrior, training at night with the spirits of past master warriors of her clan.  Kethry is on the run from being sold into wedlock by her own brother to a sleaze with a penchant for little girls.  After running away, she trains in magic at special school.  Now adults, the two have met up and are traveling together, righting the wrongs done to women.  They journey begins with traveling to Kethry’s home where she confronts her brother and husband.  Then travel to Tarma’s home where she tries to claim her clan’s inheritance.  Eventually they’re led to a demon who rapes, tortures, and sacrifices young women in an effort to make himself a god.

The main characters are both pretty well done.  Tarma is asexual, consecrated to her clan’s goddess.  She has become bonded with Kethry, even though she is not of the same clan or country.  This bond is so intense, they are psychically linked.  Both women are very strong and very powerful, one as warrior, one as mage.  But they still have doubts and arguments and very human emotions.  Many of the other characters are also well done, coming across as human and not just cardboard side characters.  Even the demon at the end is a little more complex than your average bad guy.  

I really like Lackey’s prose.  It reads very well, although it can get a little overly flowery at times.  Her world building is also good.  This takes place in the Valdemar universe, the same one as the Last Herald-Mage series, featuring Magic’s Pawn, Magic’s Promise, and Magic’s Price, which I read a few years back.  The magic is consistent, yet surprising.  I particularly liked the sword called Need that couldn’t be used against women but gave the female wielder superpowers.  It gets them into a crazy situation when a bad man is turned into a woman.  

I also liked that Lackey regularly slips healthy queer relationships into the story.  And having an asexual main character is also quite innovative, especially for nearly forty years ago.  I was pretty disturbed by how badly the bad guy who is turned into a woman reacts to his transformation.  But I think that was the point, showing the misogynistic battle against which Tarma and Kethry must fight.

Despite the positives, I give this book three stars out of five.  It just felt like a series of stories woven together.  It was hard to continue after finishing one story line because it felt very final.  I think I would have enjoyed it more if it simply was a collection of novellas with well defined beginnings and ends.  I’m still going to read the next two in the series, having developed an appreciation of the two main characters.  I’m just hoping they are a little more cohesive within themselves.

No Gods, No Monsters

Cadwell Turnbull
Completed 7/18/2022, Reviewed 7/18/2022
4 stars

I had a tougher time getting into this novel than Turnbull’s first, The Lesson.  It’s another sprawling novel with many characters and shifting points of view.  After reading the book, I found an entry the author made in Goodreads that offers things to realize while reading.  I wish I had found it earlier as it might have helped a bit.  Having finished it and seeing where the book is going (it’s the first of a proposed trilogy), I get it, but the journey there was a little frustrating.  This book won the 2022 Lambda Literary Award.  It is chock full of diverse characters:  trans, queer, asexual, non-binary, straight.  There are people of color.  None of the diversity is a major feature of the book, simply a part of the characters.  The main character is the community of inclusion.  

The plot is a little crazy as there are so many characters followed.  But the gist of it is that a woman’s brother is killed by the police.  What at first appears to be a case of police brutality is really the beginning of global awareness of the existence of monsters.  The primary types represented are shifters, like werewolves.  But there are also people with various types of magical abilities.  There are two secret societies for the support of monsters.  The societies do not get along and one wants to start a war.  

Through most of the book, I was a little lost.  The sections follow many different characters, including a semi-omniscient voyeuristic first person narrator.  I liked all the characters.  They are well developed and realistic.  One of the major characters is Laina.  It is her brother who is killed by police.  She is in a sort of polyamorous relationship with a transgender asexual man and a monster woman.  Her brother Lincoln was a bisexual addict who only recently cleaned up and accepted his monster self.  There’s a boy known only as Dragon who can burn people and fly.  Sondra is a politician who can read magic from people.  She has an adopted sister who can remove her skin and travel invisibly.  All these plus other characters make up a community trying to respond to the sudden appearance of monsters who have remained hidden from society through the secret societies, family training, or by their own cunning.

The amazing thing about this book is the writing.  The characters are fully formed despite this being a relatively short book.  No one felt cardboard or stock.  The prose is marvelous.  It is just the right amount literary without being ostentatious.  It makes for a pleasant reading experience without feeling like you’re bogged down in descriptions.

If there’s anything that’s lacking, it’s the world building.  But I think that’s intentional.  The whole first book just gives us a taste of what’s going on, just as the world is slowly figuring it out.  When the police video of Lincoln’s shooting is released, everyone is shocked until it is edited down to hide his transition to and from werewolf.  Then people, longing for understanding, simply forget that part or decide not to believe that monsters are real.  The descriptions of this world where monsters are coming out of the closet is full of disbelief and ignorance.  So, the world building is only as good as the people who believe what’s going on.

I give this book four out of five stars.  I would have probably given it five stars if I could have gotten it all in the beginning. But this book takes work to get.  And it kept me at arms length from really empathizing with the characters.  But the work is worth it, with a powerful ending that leaves you open for the next installment.  

The Physiognomy

Jeffrey Ford
Completed 7/12/2022, Reviewed 7/13/2022
4 stars

I didn’t like this book for about the first half.  I was sure I was going to give it two stars.  Then something happened and I got completely caught up in it and couldn’t wait to see how it would end.  The main character is not likeable for a long time.  The prose is dense.  The world-building was bizarre.  But it all came together into a couldn’t-put-it-down experience.  This book is described as Kafkaesque, which often translates to depressing and not understandable, but here, it was more of the oppressive and nightmarish quality of a Kafka story.  This certainly isn’t a good time read.  But it has depth and weight.  This book won the World Fantasy Award for 1998.

Physiognomy is the divination of a person’s character through the measurement of their face and/or body.  Cley is a physiognomist.  He lives in a city that was built out of the powerful imagination of its ruler, Drachton Below.  Below uses Cley to measure people to figure out who committed a crime or perhaps is plotting against him.  The people hate Cley and Cley generally hates people.  He’s glad to see them executed by filling their heads with inert gas until it explodes.  Then Below sends him to the rural hinterlands on what seems a simple mission.  However, Cley falls for the charms of a woman who has perfect facial measurements and soon his whole sense of self, profession, and universe changes, leaving him at the mercy of the spiteful Below.

Cley is a misanthrope and oblivious to the suffering around him.  He believes so much in his profession that people with bad measurements deserve to die or be surgically made better proportioned.  It made the first half of the book nearly excruciating to read.  The only thing that kept me going was the promise of metanoia in the book’s blurb.  It does come and I was able to feel empathy for him.  But it’s not a fairy tale ending.  Despite his complete change of heart, he still has to suffer the consequences for his previous actions.  That made the character and the story very believable.

Drachton Below is maniacal genius.  He is not a likeable character and despite suffering from his actions, doesn’t repent.  He remains demonic.  Once Cley has his redemptive experience it’s easier to see Below as the bad guy.  There are also some secondary characters, like Arla with whom Cley falls in love.  She’s a good person, but remains cold and distant and suffers from the early actions of Cley.  Despite this, she’s the one spark of hope in the first half of the book.  

The world building is definitely bizarre.  The city is completely designed by Below in his genius imagination.  He builds it out of grit and manipulation.  It survives because of his oppressive control over the citizens by the use of physiognomy.    It doesn’t really make sense at first, but does come together as the story progresses.  I have to hand it to the author.  He really came up with a remarkable, imaginative world.  This story is unlike anything I’ve read in a long time.  

I give this book four stars out of five.  But it is not a pleasure read.  It’s a brilliantly envisioned world with unique characters and a surprising plot.  It just takes time to get into this dark, dark fantasy.  If you can get through the first half, the rest will be your reward.