Under the Whispering Door
TJ Klune
Tor
Fiction, Fantasy
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: By the measures of his profession, lawyer William Price is an unqualified success. Sure, he sacrificed his marriage, his friends, and any frivolities like joy or leisure, but he built his own law firm from the ground up, and nobody in his office fails to fear his gaze. It takes dying for him to realize that, while he may have succeeded at law, he failed at truly living. Collected from his funeral by the eccentric Reaper woman Mei, William is brought to a small mountain village and a tea shop called Charon's Crossing to meet his ferryman, the mortal charged with helping him make the transition to the other side: the handsome Hugo Freeman. Here, away from his job and the city and the cold existence he built for himself, the former lawyer finally learns what it means to live... and to love. But he cannot linger forever; there is a door on the fourth floor of the tea shop that whispers to him of what is to come - a passage he cannot avoid forever, even when he finally discovers a reason to stay on Earth.
REVIEW: First off, the official description for this book is way off. It mentions plot points that don't come up until the final fourth or so of the tale, and set up false expectations for the story as a whole. Secondly, this is the second book by Klune I've read... and I can't help but think I would've enjoyed it more had it been first. Like The House in the Cerulean Sea, it starts with a man firmly entrenched in an inherently heartless bureaucracy, one who doesn't think to question the emptiness of his life or the machinery he perpetuates, until he travels to a remote location where a kindly, handsome eccentric and other colorful locals teach him the true meaning of life and love. William, however, is initially a far less likable main character, a man who hasn't been so much numbed to his heart as one who willfully sliced it out as a potential impediment to his career and doesn't think to question his choice until it's literally too late. He overreacts to his situation terribly, far past the point of caricature, and stays in surly denial far too long, making his transition a little hard to swallow. Side characters could be irritating on occasion, too, as could the repetitious Lessons about the meaning of life and the afterlife and what makes living worthwhile, which make the story itself feel overlong and slow as it wends slowly between plot points on its way to the stuff teased by the official description and cover blurb. It does ultimately come together, with some sweet and sobering moments along the way, and barely pulled out of its drifting freefall enough to avoid losing another half-star, but I must say I expected a little more after the high bar set by The House in the Cerulean Sea.
You Might Also Enjoy:
The Halloween Tree (Ray Bradbury) - My Review
A Christmas Carol (Charles Dickens) - My Review
The House in the Cerulean Sea (TJ Klune) - My Review
Sunday, November 14, 2021
Wednesday, November 10, 2021
In the Red (Christopher Swiedler)
In the Red
Christopher Swiedler
HarperCollins
Fiction, MG Action/Sci-Fi
***+ (Okay/Good)
DESCRIPTION: Someday, Michael Prasad can visit his father at the north pole of Mars, working on the quantum magnetic system responsible for the colony world's protective magnetosphere. Someday, his mother will stop hovering over him. Someday, when he no longer has his "condition", the panic attacks that seize him whenever he dons a suit to step outside the colony domes onto the Martian surface. Someday, he'll be normal.
Someday is never going to happen, and even at twelve, Michael knows it.
Sick of waiting for "someday", and being the only kid in the sixth grade without his basic rating for venturing beyond the airlocks, Michael sneaks out to try the test once more... and, again, is seized by crippling anxiety. It doesn't matter that he can do math in his head that most adults need computers (or at least pens and paper) to work out. It doesn't matter that he's read the field manuals backwards and forwards. If he can't conquer his panic attacks, he'll forever be stuck in the safety of the colony, cut off from countless career paths through the solar system - not to mention forever being the butt of his classmates' jokes. With the help of a rebellious friend, Earthborn girl Lilith, he sets off on an impetuous and ill-advised night trip to his father's polar station... just as a deadly solar flare strikes the red planet and something goes catastrophically wrong with the artificial magnetosphere, frying communications satellites and turning the daylight deadly with lethal doses of radiation. Stranded in the hostile wilds with dwindling supplies and limited air, Michael and Lilith must find a way to signal for help - or find a way to get back home.
REVIEW: Another quick audiobook "read", In the Red is a middle-grade survival thriller set on the surface of a futuristic Mars, where colonies may thrive but where the planet itself is still every bit as hostile to life as it is today, with dust storms and a toxic atmosphere and deadly solar radiation only barely held at bay by human ingenuity - ingenuity which can, as demonstrated in devastating detail, fail at any time. Even as a middle-grade title, the stakes are grim and not danced around; at more than one point, the characters openly acknowledge the dangerous nature of Martian existence and the many ways one can die, and when threatened by the possibility of a drawn-out death by solar radiation they readily accept the need for a "cleaner" and quicker way out by way of a lethal pill. Within this setting, Michael's book skills and prodigal grasp of science and mathematics, which should take him to the stars (literally and figuratively), never seem enough unless he can also spend five minutes in a suit without vomiting and passing out from panic; he considers himself a fraud and a failure, convinced his own father is ashamed of him, and thus behaves rather recklessly to prove to himself and others that he can be more than his "condition". This starts to get a bit over the top, when even in fraught survival conditions Michael keeps haring off on his own to do risky things (and fail as often as not) just to punch back against the inherently unpunchable reality of his panic attacks, endangering himself and his companions in the process. This is where the book first started losing its full fourth star, for all that the story moves fast and the characters are generally not stupid. The rest of that full fourth star was lost by the ending, which draws itself out a touch too long, particularly the bits after the climax. For the most part, though, In the Red is a fairly smart and science-based thrill ride of survival against overwhelming odds, on the surface of a world inherently inhospitable to human life.
You Might Also Enjoy:
The Canyon's Edge (Dusti Bowling) - My Review
Vacation Guide to the Solar System (Olivia Koski and Jana Grcevich) - My Review
The Martian (Andy Weir) - My Review
Christopher Swiedler
HarperCollins
Fiction, MG Action/Sci-Fi
***+ (Okay/Good)
DESCRIPTION: Someday, Michael Prasad can visit his father at the north pole of Mars, working on the quantum magnetic system responsible for the colony world's protective magnetosphere. Someday, his mother will stop hovering over him. Someday, when he no longer has his "condition", the panic attacks that seize him whenever he dons a suit to step outside the colony domes onto the Martian surface. Someday, he'll be normal.
Someday is never going to happen, and even at twelve, Michael knows it.
Sick of waiting for "someday", and being the only kid in the sixth grade without his basic rating for venturing beyond the airlocks, Michael sneaks out to try the test once more... and, again, is seized by crippling anxiety. It doesn't matter that he can do math in his head that most adults need computers (or at least pens and paper) to work out. It doesn't matter that he's read the field manuals backwards and forwards. If he can't conquer his panic attacks, he'll forever be stuck in the safety of the colony, cut off from countless career paths through the solar system - not to mention forever being the butt of his classmates' jokes. With the help of a rebellious friend, Earthborn girl Lilith, he sets off on an impetuous and ill-advised night trip to his father's polar station... just as a deadly solar flare strikes the red planet and something goes catastrophically wrong with the artificial magnetosphere, frying communications satellites and turning the daylight deadly with lethal doses of radiation. Stranded in the hostile wilds with dwindling supplies and limited air, Michael and Lilith must find a way to signal for help - or find a way to get back home.
REVIEW: Another quick audiobook "read", In the Red is a middle-grade survival thriller set on the surface of a futuristic Mars, where colonies may thrive but where the planet itself is still every bit as hostile to life as it is today, with dust storms and a toxic atmosphere and deadly solar radiation only barely held at bay by human ingenuity - ingenuity which can, as demonstrated in devastating detail, fail at any time. Even as a middle-grade title, the stakes are grim and not danced around; at more than one point, the characters openly acknowledge the dangerous nature of Martian existence and the many ways one can die, and when threatened by the possibility of a drawn-out death by solar radiation they readily accept the need for a "cleaner" and quicker way out by way of a lethal pill. Within this setting, Michael's book skills and prodigal grasp of science and mathematics, which should take him to the stars (literally and figuratively), never seem enough unless he can also spend five minutes in a suit without vomiting and passing out from panic; he considers himself a fraud and a failure, convinced his own father is ashamed of him, and thus behaves rather recklessly to prove to himself and others that he can be more than his "condition". This starts to get a bit over the top, when even in fraught survival conditions Michael keeps haring off on his own to do risky things (and fail as often as not) just to punch back against the inherently unpunchable reality of his panic attacks, endangering himself and his companions in the process. This is where the book first started losing its full fourth star, for all that the story moves fast and the characters are generally not stupid. The rest of that full fourth star was lost by the ending, which draws itself out a touch too long, particularly the bits after the climax. For the most part, though, In the Red is a fairly smart and science-based thrill ride of survival against overwhelming odds, on the surface of a world inherently inhospitable to human life.
You Might Also Enjoy:
The Canyon's Edge (Dusti Bowling) - My Review
Vacation Guide to the Solar System (Olivia Koski and Jana Grcevich) - My Review
The Martian (Andy Weir) - My Review
Monday, November 8, 2021
In the Labyrinth of Drakes (Marie Brennan)
In the Labyrinth of Drakes: A Memoir by Lady Trent
A Natural History of Dragons series, Book 4
Marie Brennan
Tor
Fiction, Fantasy
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: As a girl in her native Scirland, Isabella could never have imagined that her "unladylike" interest in the natural sciences and dragons would take her so far, figuratively or literally, but it has not been a journey without costs or setbacks, even disregarding the scientific community's ongoing reluctance to accept her as a member, let alone an equal. Already, she has lost a husband, been abducted, and suffered innumerable hostilities and slanderous rumors, but nothing that has shaken her resolve or her faith that what she is doing matters, not just to science but to the survival of her world's dragon species. That work becomes even more vital now that the secret of preserving dragon bone as an ultralight building material - ideal for military airships - has been stolen by her nation's enemies. Long skeptical of her work and her person, now the military enlists her aid in a grand project, in partner with desert-dwelling allies: learning to breed dragons in captivity, an endeavor that has eluded every civilization save possibly the long-lost Draconeans. Little as she likes the idea of raising magnificent beasts for slaughter like pigs or cattle, Isabella cannot resist the challenge, nor the opportunity to explore the habits of the desert-dwelling drakes. But, as always, with new dragons come new complications, and new dangers.
REVIEW: The fourth installment of Lady Trent's memoirs maintains the same adventurous air of exploration and wonder and excitement as the previous volumes, even as the world grows bigger and more politically complex. Isabella remains a clever, if occasionally impetuous, character, one who still sometimes struggles with social niceties and resents the encroachment of politics and archaic ideas of propriety and "a woman's place" upon her work, but she is maturing and learning through the series. An unexpected reunion with Suhail, the stranger who helped and tantalized her in the previous volume before vanishing under mysterious circumstances, adds fresh complications both personal and political, when he turns out to be the brother of the sheik whose somewhat reluctant help is vital to the success of the dragon breeding pilot program. Needless to say, innumerable adventures await the lady scientist in the deserts, and more discoveries about both dragons and the long-lost Draconeans, whose ruins have long mystified experts; understanding the ancient worldwide civilization may be the ultimate key to understanding dragons, and she comes several steps closer in this volume. The title, though, feels like a bit of a misnomer, as the Labyrinth is only mentioned until very close to the end of the book, and then the final scenes feel a trifle rushed. Some of the world's place names, the political alliances and rivalries, can still feel a bit like name soup, too. Still, I'm enjoying the series and its world, and intend to finish at least the original five-volume memoirs.
You Might Also Enjoy:
A Natural History of Dragons (Marie Brennan) - My Review
His Majesty's Dragon (Naomi Novik) - My Review
The Waking Fire (Anthony Ryan) - My Review
A Natural History of Dragons series, Book 4
Marie Brennan
Tor
Fiction, Fantasy
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: As a girl in her native Scirland, Isabella could never have imagined that her "unladylike" interest in the natural sciences and dragons would take her so far, figuratively or literally, but it has not been a journey without costs or setbacks, even disregarding the scientific community's ongoing reluctance to accept her as a member, let alone an equal. Already, she has lost a husband, been abducted, and suffered innumerable hostilities and slanderous rumors, but nothing that has shaken her resolve or her faith that what she is doing matters, not just to science but to the survival of her world's dragon species. That work becomes even more vital now that the secret of preserving dragon bone as an ultralight building material - ideal for military airships - has been stolen by her nation's enemies. Long skeptical of her work and her person, now the military enlists her aid in a grand project, in partner with desert-dwelling allies: learning to breed dragons in captivity, an endeavor that has eluded every civilization save possibly the long-lost Draconeans. Little as she likes the idea of raising magnificent beasts for slaughter like pigs or cattle, Isabella cannot resist the challenge, nor the opportunity to explore the habits of the desert-dwelling drakes. But, as always, with new dragons come new complications, and new dangers.
REVIEW: The fourth installment of Lady Trent's memoirs maintains the same adventurous air of exploration and wonder and excitement as the previous volumes, even as the world grows bigger and more politically complex. Isabella remains a clever, if occasionally impetuous, character, one who still sometimes struggles with social niceties and resents the encroachment of politics and archaic ideas of propriety and "a woman's place" upon her work, but she is maturing and learning through the series. An unexpected reunion with Suhail, the stranger who helped and tantalized her in the previous volume before vanishing under mysterious circumstances, adds fresh complications both personal and political, when he turns out to be the brother of the sheik whose somewhat reluctant help is vital to the success of the dragon breeding pilot program. Needless to say, innumerable adventures await the lady scientist in the deserts, and more discoveries about both dragons and the long-lost Draconeans, whose ruins have long mystified experts; understanding the ancient worldwide civilization may be the ultimate key to understanding dragons, and she comes several steps closer in this volume. The title, though, feels like a bit of a misnomer, as the Labyrinth is only mentioned until very close to the end of the book, and then the final scenes feel a trifle rushed. Some of the world's place names, the political alliances and rivalries, can still feel a bit like name soup, too. Still, I'm enjoying the series and its world, and intend to finish at least the original five-volume memoirs.
You Might Also Enjoy:
A Natural History of Dragons (Marie Brennan) - My Review
His Majesty's Dragon (Naomi Novik) - My Review
The Waking Fire (Anthony Ryan) - My Review
Saturday, November 6, 2021
The Body Scout (Lincoln Michel)
The Body Scout
Lincoln Michel
Orbit
Fiction, Sci-Fi
****+ (Good/Great)
DESCRIPTION: In a future where body upgrades, cybernetics, and other enhancements are commonplace (if expensive), scouting for major league baseball takes on whole new dimensions. The corporations treat their players as experiments, and it's all about who can collect the best scientists with the weakest morals, a job that requires some flexible morality itself. Kobo may not necessarily like who he's become, but it keeps the creditors off his back (more or less), and after decades of cyber enhancements and upgrades, he's in debt deeper than the lowest subterranean apartments of New York City. Besides, he still loves the game. When a pair of cloned Neanderthals working for the Monsanto Mets poach a scientist Kobo has been courting for his clients, the Yankees, he thinks it's just business as usual in his cutthroat line of work... but when his old friend and current Mets star J. J. Zunz calls him late at night out of the blue, sounding confused, he starts to realize something bigger's afoot - especially when Zunz collapses at his next game, blood streaming from every orifice. He and J. J. grew up together, two poor New York boys dreaming of baseball superstardom under smog-choked skies; they became brothers after Kobo's family died in an apartment collapse. Now, as Kobo sets out to investigate his death, he learns just how far apart the two grew over the years... and how twisted and amoral the great American pastime and modern life have become.
REVIEW: There's a reason dystopian sci-fi is so common these days; their futures, unfortunately, seem far more plausible than not. Here, Michel explores a gritty, violent, depressingly recognizable near future where corruption at all levels consistently wins out over morality and integrity, at least at the macro level. At the micro level, there's still a little (very little) wiggle room for even a jaded man like Kobo to attempt to pursue the truth and some form of justice... but what truth or justice could possibly exist in a dying world where every (patented and expensive) hope or breakthrough or cure comes saddled with at least a dozen negating drawbacks and costs for some future generation to reckon with? It's a well-realized world of complex and ever-shifting morality and points of contention, much like our own, and Kobo finds himself forced to ask uncomfortable questions about his life, his city, his friends and enemies, and even the sport that carried him out of one poverty only to land him neck-deep in another. For all the bleakness, though, the characters and setting are compelling and relatable, and while the ending (skirting spoilers) isn't the resounding, edifice-toppling revolution one might hope for given the rotten power structures driving everyone's lives and choices, it fits the tale and offers a slim possibility of a slightly better, if no less complicated, future. (I probably would've gotten more out of it if I were a baseball fan.)
You Might Also Enjoy:
The Warehouse (Rob Hart) - My Review
The Fifth Season (N. K. Jemisin) - My Review
Altered Carbon (Richard K. Morgan) - My Review
Lincoln Michel
Orbit
Fiction, Sci-Fi
****+ (Good/Great)
DESCRIPTION: In a future where body upgrades, cybernetics, and other enhancements are commonplace (if expensive), scouting for major league baseball takes on whole new dimensions. The corporations treat their players as experiments, and it's all about who can collect the best scientists with the weakest morals, a job that requires some flexible morality itself. Kobo may not necessarily like who he's become, but it keeps the creditors off his back (more or less), and after decades of cyber enhancements and upgrades, he's in debt deeper than the lowest subterranean apartments of New York City. Besides, he still loves the game. When a pair of cloned Neanderthals working for the Monsanto Mets poach a scientist Kobo has been courting for his clients, the Yankees, he thinks it's just business as usual in his cutthroat line of work... but when his old friend and current Mets star J. J. Zunz calls him late at night out of the blue, sounding confused, he starts to realize something bigger's afoot - especially when Zunz collapses at his next game, blood streaming from every orifice. He and J. J. grew up together, two poor New York boys dreaming of baseball superstardom under smog-choked skies; they became brothers after Kobo's family died in an apartment collapse. Now, as Kobo sets out to investigate his death, he learns just how far apart the two grew over the years... and how twisted and amoral the great American pastime and modern life have become.
REVIEW: There's a reason dystopian sci-fi is so common these days; their futures, unfortunately, seem far more plausible than not. Here, Michel explores a gritty, violent, depressingly recognizable near future where corruption at all levels consistently wins out over morality and integrity, at least at the macro level. At the micro level, there's still a little (very little) wiggle room for even a jaded man like Kobo to attempt to pursue the truth and some form of justice... but what truth or justice could possibly exist in a dying world where every (patented and expensive) hope or breakthrough or cure comes saddled with at least a dozen negating drawbacks and costs for some future generation to reckon with? It's a well-realized world of complex and ever-shifting morality and points of contention, much like our own, and Kobo finds himself forced to ask uncomfortable questions about his life, his city, his friends and enemies, and even the sport that carried him out of one poverty only to land him neck-deep in another. For all the bleakness, though, the characters and setting are compelling and relatable, and while the ending (skirting spoilers) isn't the resounding, edifice-toppling revolution one might hope for given the rotten power structures driving everyone's lives and choices, it fits the tale and offers a slim possibility of a slightly better, if no less complicated, future. (I probably would've gotten more out of it if I were a baseball fan.)
You Might Also Enjoy:
The Warehouse (Rob Hart) - My Review
The Fifth Season (N. K. Jemisin) - My Review
Altered Carbon (Richard K. Morgan) - My Review
Thursday, November 4, 2021
NOS4A2 (Joe Hill)
NOS4A2
Joe Hill
William Morrow
Fiction, Horror
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: Victoria McQueen, better known as Vic (or "the brat"), had one escape from her rough childhood and unhappy parents, on the wheels of her bicycle through the woods and down to the old covered bridge... a bridge that has a way of taking her where she needs to be to find things that have been lost. As she grows up, she tries to dismiss the bridge as a childhood fantasy - until she runs out of her home as a teen and straight across the bridge to the lair of serial child killer Charlie Manx.
Manx is no ordinary killer. With his classic Rolls Royce Wraith, one of only a handful in America, he prowls the country in search of children to "rescue" from unhappy homes. Like Vic, he can navigate roads that don't exist in normal space and time, through the "inscapes" of imagination - but his lead somewhere far less wholesome than a covered bridge. His lead to Christmasland, a throwback amusement park inside his own imagination, where his victims live on as monstrous wraiths stripped of their humanity. When he meets Vic, he recognizes another "creative", one who can change reality with the force of their imaginaton and will... but Vic is a mentally fragile girl, growing into a damaged woman, while Manx is an old pro. When she escapes and Manx is finally arrested, his reign of terror should be over. Instead, it's just beginning - and only Vic can stop him.
REVIEW: Having enjoyed Heart-Shaped Box, I thought I'd give another Joe Hill book a try. He presents some interesting and inherently chilling concepts in the "inscapes" and Christmasland, though they ultimately would be cheap cardboard props without the characters who bring them to life. Everyone in the story is damaged in some way, physically or mentally or emotionally (or multiple choice), and most are trying - if often failing - to do best with the imperfect tools and worldview they have. Even Manx has rationalized his monstrous predation on children, and his henchman and protege, a child-minded serial rapist named Bing, was broken long before he got in touch with the man behind the wheel of the Wraith. Vic is particularly shattered, first by being the product of a dysfunctional marriage and later by her own choices and struggles over the existence of the bridge. She often seemed undercut as a heroine, though, repeatedly dismissing her own experiences as delusions only to repeatedly be devastated to discover that the covered bridge is real - as is the danger of Charlie Manx. When Vic has a child of her own, she learns some of what her own parents went through, and even as she tries to keep her son from feeling as lost and often rejected as she herself felt, she seems doomed to fail. The horror elements build nicely throughout the tale, with several scary and gruesome moments (and more than one Easter egg nod to his own works and his father Stephen King's creations), though once in a while it feels a slight bit drawn out, like it could've lost a few chapters in revision. For the most part, though, I enjoyed it, and expect I'll be reading (or listening, rather, as this was another audiobook) to more of Hill's works in the future.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Heart-Shaped Box (Joe Hill) - My Review
It (Stephen King) - My Review
Sparrow Hill Road (Seanan McGuire) - My Review
Joe Hill
William Morrow
Fiction, Horror
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: Victoria McQueen, better known as Vic (or "the brat"), had one escape from her rough childhood and unhappy parents, on the wheels of her bicycle through the woods and down to the old covered bridge... a bridge that has a way of taking her where she needs to be to find things that have been lost. As she grows up, she tries to dismiss the bridge as a childhood fantasy - until she runs out of her home as a teen and straight across the bridge to the lair of serial child killer Charlie Manx.
Manx is no ordinary killer. With his classic Rolls Royce Wraith, one of only a handful in America, he prowls the country in search of children to "rescue" from unhappy homes. Like Vic, he can navigate roads that don't exist in normal space and time, through the "inscapes" of imagination - but his lead somewhere far less wholesome than a covered bridge. His lead to Christmasland, a throwback amusement park inside his own imagination, where his victims live on as monstrous wraiths stripped of their humanity. When he meets Vic, he recognizes another "creative", one who can change reality with the force of their imaginaton and will... but Vic is a mentally fragile girl, growing into a damaged woman, while Manx is an old pro. When she escapes and Manx is finally arrested, his reign of terror should be over. Instead, it's just beginning - and only Vic can stop him.
REVIEW: Having enjoyed Heart-Shaped Box, I thought I'd give another Joe Hill book a try. He presents some interesting and inherently chilling concepts in the "inscapes" and Christmasland, though they ultimately would be cheap cardboard props without the characters who bring them to life. Everyone in the story is damaged in some way, physically or mentally or emotionally (or multiple choice), and most are trying - if often failing - to do best with the imperfect tools and worldview they have. Even Manx has rationalized his monstrous predation on children, and his henchman and protege, a child-minded serial rapist named Bing, was broken long before he got in touch with the man behind the wheel of the Wraith. Vic is particularly shattered, first by being the product of a dysfunctional marriage and later by her own choices and struggles over the existence of the bridge. She often seemed undercut as a heroine, though, repeatedly dismissing her own experiences as delusions only to repeatedly be devastated to discover that the covered bridge is real - as is the danger of Charlie Manx. When Vic has a child of her own, she learns some of what her own parents went through, and even as she tries to keep her son from feeling as lost and often rejected as she herself felt, she seems doomed to fail. The horror elements build nicely throughout the tale, with several scary and gruesome moments (and more than one Easter egg nod to his own works and his father Stephen King's creations), though once in a while it feels a slight bit drawn out, like it could've lost a few chapters in revision. For the most part, though, I enjoyed it, and expect I'll be reading (or listening, rather, as this was another audiobook) to more of Hill's works in the future.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Heart-Shaped Box (Joe Hill) - My Review
It (Stephen King) - My Review
Sparrow Hill Road (Seanan McGuire) - My Review
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