It's the last day of the month, the halfway point of the year, and July's reviews have been archived and cross-linked on the main Brightdreamer Books website.
Enjoy!
Monday, July 31, 2023
Sunday, July 30, 2023
Lonesome Dove (Larry McMurtry)
Lonesome Dove
The Lonesome Dove series, Book 1
Larry McMurtry
Simon and Schuster
Fiction, Western
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: Once, the American West was a vast, unbroken wilderness, full of buffalo and natives and not a trace of so-called "civilization". For a time after, it was a place of savagery, awash in criminals and butchery and warring cultures. As the nineteenth century nears its end, the wild days are also waning... and, for men like Augustus McCrae and Captain Woodrow Call, so is their sense of duty and purpose. As Texas Rangers, they hunted down countless horsethieves and murderers and rapists, putting down rebel Indians like putting down rabid dogs, and helped open up the land to white settlers, but now they struggle to know what to do with themselves. They run a small livery out of the flyspeck of a Texas border town called Lonesome Dove, but the old restlessness is always in them, an urge toward one last grand adventure before time and old age overtake them. When a former friend of theirs, Jake Spoon, turns up, he spins wonderful tales of the Montana wilderness - perfect cattle country, should anyone be audacious enough to go. Though Jake isn't above embroidering the truth and hiding ulterior motives, Gus and Call figure this may be their last real chance to be the men they were in their youth, setting forth into the unspoiled wilds and making names for themselves... but it's a long, long way from Lonesome Dove to the Yellowstone River and beyond, and the lands they're crossing - and the men they're crossing it with - are still harsh, unpredictable, and full of frontier spirit that defies taming.
REVIEW: There's some confusion on the timeline of the Lonesome Dove series, as McMurtry wrote one sequel and two prequels, but this was the first book written and the one whose name is practically synonymous with epic Westerns. Though it inevitably shows its age around the edges, the tale remains a classic, an epic story of lives made and broken (mostly broken) on an unforgiving landscape.
From the start, there's an air of restless desperation about the aging Rangers Gus and Call, for all that the story takes its time getting off the ground. Lonesome Dove seems less a home of settlers dreaming of a better life and more a bend in the road where broken people wash up and get stuck. Most notable among them, aside from the handful of ex-Rangers working for Call and Gus at the Hat Creek Cattle Company and Livery Emporium, are the local working girl Lorena and the teenaged Newt, offspring of a previous saloon girl and one of the Hat Creek Livery men. Lorena never set out to be a saloon girl, but managed to hold on to her independent spirit and her dreams, with more agency than one might expect... at least, at first. Newt idolizes the ex-Rangers, particularly the stoic Captain Call, and despairs of ever living up to their impossible standards, even as he secretly wonders which one of the men might be his father and why they never acknowledged him. As for the Rangers, Gus is a talkative, argumentative sort, a frontier philosopher and ideal partner for the reserved Call. Their old companion Jake is trouble from the moment he arrives, as ever he was in their previous acquaintances; this time, even as he tries selling them on another dream that he's likely to walk away from the moment it requires work, he has a lawman on his tail for an accidental shooting in Arkansas. The lawman, his distant wife, and his deputy also come to have storylines, as do several other characters they encounter, all stories that are in some way braided around the men of the Hat Creek outfit and the cattle drive from Lonesome Dove to Yellowstone, a journey in itself fraught with perils and death and conflicts. Even as they travel, Gus and Call see how the West has changed in their lifetimes, and how their own reputations, once the brightest stars in the Texas skies, have dimmed or been extinguished outright by a generation of settlers who have already forgotten who opened the way for them, taking for granted what others bled and died for. Nobody is unchanged by their journeys, not even the hard-edged Call, and many lives are ended. Through it all, the grandeur and forbidding nature of the land itself endures, defying the wills of all humans who dare to call it home.
For all that I enjoyed about the story and the scope, there were some parts that I found less satisfactory. Lorena, who starts out with a surprising level of guts and agency, ends up broken and needy and utterly powerless over her own fate. (Granted, her experiences are traumatic, but it undercut what could have been a remarkable character.) Some of the deaths felt almost like an author disposing of characters he wasn't quite sure what to do with after establishing them, while a few others were done away with in a couple lines that could've used more detail or development. There is, of course, expected sexism and racism throughout, in keeping with the era and the characters' worldviews, and this was written (of course) from a white settler perspective, though some mention is given of the incalculable tragedies preceding the "opening" of the West, the decimation of natives and almost complete eradication of the buffalo. It's a brutal, bloody, often amoral business, spreading "civilization", and the sort of people attracted to the frontier are often the most brutal, bloodiest, and most amoral of the lot. The ending also felt a little unfinished, particularly the arcs of a few characters. And, this being a 25th Anniversay Edition I read, it starts with an author preface that spoils some plot ploints. (Seriously, is it that hard to either avoid spoilers or move such extra matter to the end of the book, where new readers won't be spoiled and old readers will appreciate it more for having their memory of the story refreshed by reading?)
All things considered, I wound up landing on a solid four-star Good rating. I'm not sure if I'm interested enough in the characters' fates to read on in the series, though.
You Might Also Enjoy:
True Grit (Charles Portis) - My Review
Red Mars (Kim Stanley Robinson) - My Review
The Virginian (Owen Wister) - My Review
The Lonesome Dove series, Book 1
Larry McMurtry
Simon and Schuster
Fiction, Western
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: Once, the American West was a vast, unbroken wilderness, full of buffalo and natives and not a trace of so-called "civilization". For a time after, it was a place of savagery, awash in criminals and butchery and warring cultures. As the nineteenth century nears its end, the wild days are also waning... and, for men like Augustus McCrae and Captain Woodrow Call, so is their sense of duty and purpose. As Texas Rangers, they hunted down countless horsethieves and murderers and rapists, putting down rebel Indians like putting down rabid dogs, and helped open up the land to white settlers, but now they struggle to know what to do with themselves. They run a small livery out of the flyspeck of a Texas border town called Lonesome Dove, but the old restlessness is always in them, an urge toward one last grand adventure before time and old age overtake them. When a former friend of theirs, Jake Spoon, turns up, he spins wonderful tales of the Montana wilderness - perfect cattle country, should anyone be audacious enough to go. Though Jake isn't above embroidering the truth and hiding ulterior motives, Gus and Call figure this may be their last real chance to be the men they were in their youth, setting forth into the unspoiled wilds and making names for themselves... but it's a long, long way from Lonesome Dove to the Yellowstone River and beyond, and the lands they're crossing - and the men they're crossing it with - are still harsh, unpredictable, and full of frontier spirit that defies taming.
REVIEW: There's some confusion on the timeline of the Lonesome Dove series, as McMurtry wrote one sequel and two prequels, but this was the first book written and the one whose name is practically synonymous with epic Westerns. Though it inevitably shows its age around the edges, the tale remains a classic, an epic story of lives made and broken (mostly broken) on an unforgiving landscape.
From the start, there's an air of restless desperation about the aging Rangers Gus and Call, for all that the story takes its time getting off the ground. Lonesome Dove seems less a home of settlers dreaming of a better life and more a bend in the road where broken people wash up and get stuck. Most notable among them, aside from the handful of ex-Rangers working for Call and Gus at the Hat Creek Cattle Company and Livery Emporium, are the local working girl Lorena and the teenaged Newt, offspring of a previous saloon girl and one of the Hat Creek Livery men. Lorena never set out to be a saloon girl, but managed to hold on to her independent spirit and her dreams, with more agency than one might expect... at least, at first. Newt idolizes the ex-Rangers, particularly the stoic Captain Call, and despairs of ever living up to their impossible standards, even as he secretly wonders which one of the men might be his father and why they never acknowledged him. As for the Rangers, Gus is a talkative, argumentative sort, a frontier philosopher and ideal partner for the reserved Call. Their old companion Jake is trouble from the moment he arrives, as ever he was in their previous acquaintances; this time, even as he tries selling them on another dream that he's likely to walk away from the moment it requires work, he has a lawman on his tail for an accidental shooting in Arkansas. The lawman, his distant wife, and his deputy also come to have storylines, as do several other characters they encounter, all stories that are in some way braided around the men of the Hat Creek outfit and the cattle drive from Lonesome Dove to Yellowstone, a journey in itself fraught with perils and death and conflicts. Even as they travel, Gus and Call see how the West has changed in their lifetimes, and how their own reputations, once the brightest stars in the Texas skies, have dimmed or been extinguished outright by a generation of settlers who have already forgotten who opened the way for them, taking for granted what others bled and died for. Nobody is unchanged by their journeys, not even the hard-edged Call, and many lives are ended. Through it all, the grandeur and forbidding nature of the land itself endures, defying the wills of all humans who dare to call it home.
For all that I enjoyed about the story and the scope, there were some parts that I found less satisfactory. Lorena, who starts out with a surprising level of guts and agency, ends up broken and needy and utterly powerless over her own fate. (Granted, her experiences are traumatic, but it undercut what could have been a remarkable character.) Some of the deaths felt almost like an author disposing of characters he wasn't quite sure what to do with after establishing them, while a few others were done away with in a couple lines that could've used more detail or development. There is, of course, expected sexism and racism throughout, in keeping with the era and the characters' worldviews, and this was written (of course) from a white settler perspective, though some mention is given of the incalculable tragedies preceding the "opening" of the West, the decimation of natives and almost complete eradication of the buffalo. It's a brutal, bloody, often amoral business, spreading "civilization", and the sort of people attracted to the frontier are often the most brutal, bloodiest, and most amoral of the lot. The ending also felt a little unfinished, particularly the arcs of a few characters. And, this being a 25th Anniversay Edition I read, it starts with an author preface that spoils some plot ploints. (Seriously, is it that hard to either avoid spoilers or move such extra matter to the end of the book, where new readers won't be spoiled and old readers will appreciate it more for having their memory of the story refreshed by reading?)
All things considered, I wound up landing on a solid four-star Good rating. I'm not sure if I'm interested enough in the characters' fates to read on in the series, though.
You Might Also Enjoy:
True Grit (Charles Portis) - My Review
Red Mars (Kim Stanley Robinson) - My Review
The Virginian (Owen Wister) - My Review
Saturday, July 22, 2023
The Kaiju Preservation Society (John Scalzi)
The Kaiju Preservation Society
John Scalzi
Tor
Fiction, Humor/Sci-Fi
***+ (Okay/Good)
DESCRIPTION: Jamie knew it was a risk when he left his doctorate unfinished, but he saw a great opportunity with a new company. Six months later, as COVID-19 was shutting down America, his billionaire boss fired him (but not before stealing his ideas)... just when his roommates are about to leave him high and dry. Things couldn't be going much worse for him, until a chance meeting with an old acquaintance leads to a peculiar job offer. Jamie doesn't even know what the job is, only that it involves remote field work helping "large animals", but he's not in a position to argue. It's just as well he didn't know, because he wouldn't have believed it, not until he sees it with his own eyes - the alternate Earth, a lush oxygen-rich jungle full of impossible creatures, and the "large animals" themselves: kaiju, almost straight from an old movie.
The nuclear tests of the 1960's apparently thinned the barrier between Earth and other alternate worlds, including the one where the immense monsters (more accurately considered mobile ecosystems, for their size and the multitude of parasites and symbiotic animals that enable their survival) roamed. Since then, a top-secret global group known as the Kaiju Preservation Society has been traveling to their world to study them and ensure their safety, keeping them from straying through any fissures to our own Earth. As the lone non-scientist at Tanaka Base Camp, Jamie is the designated grunt worker, lifting and carrying and offering a hand wherever it's needed. He doesn't exactly understand just what a creature as immense as a kaiju needs protecting from... until he has to escort his first visitors, investors in the KPS, and remembers the question asked in so many films: who is the more dangerous monster, the kaiju or the humans?
REVIEW: The Kaiju Preservation Society has an inherently humorous premise, a conservation society dedicated to mountain-sized monsters. It was written by Scalzi in direct response to the COVID lockdowns and other unsettling developments of 2020, and even with the froth and silliness it addresses some of those issues on the sly, but much of the story is more about that froth and lightness, with frequent banter and one-liners and callbacks to books, movies, and video games. The whole, of course, is an homage to kaiju movies. He even offers speculation on how a creature as big as a kaiju could even survive when, by our world's physics and biological rules, they should collapse under their own weight before taking a single step toward Tokyo... speculation that does come into play in the plot eventually, but which also eats a lot of page time (as well as providing a lot of dialog into which to inject more humorous banter and references). It was fun, true, with a bit of sense of wonder about it, but after a while I started hoping for a little more actual plot or something like character development. It's past the halfway point before the story, such as it is, begins to kick into an actual gear, though even in the buildup to the climax the characters just can't stop with the page-padding banter. I also could've used a little more description of the kaiju themselves; part of what makes those movies fun is the weird creature designs, and I wanted to "see" the monsters here, too, but they're mostly considered too immense and alien for more than the broadest of descriptors. I almost forgave it those minor frustrations, but ultimately felt the froth-to-substance ratio skewed a little too far to the former, like Scalzi was strutting and mugging and grinning at his own clever lines. Clever as those lines were, I still found myself wanting more actual story by the end, enough to ultimately shave that half-star from the rating.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Beauty Queens (Libba Bray) - My Review
The Android's Dream (John Scalzi) - My Review
How to Survive a Sharknado and Other Unnatural Disasters (Andrew Shaffer) - My Review
John Scalzi
Tor
Fiction, Humor/Sci-Fi
***+ (Okay/Good)
DESCRIPTION: Jamie knew it was a risk when he left his doctorate unfinished, but he saw a great opportunity with a new company. Six months later, as COVID-19 was shutting down America, his billionaire boss fired him (but not before stealing his ideas)... just when his roommates are about to leave him high and dry. Things couldn't be going much worse for him, until a chance meeting with an old acquaintance leads to a peculiar job offer. Jamie doesn't even know what the job is, only that it involves remote field work helping "large animals", but he's not in a position to argue. It's just as well he didn't know, because he wouldn't have believed it, not until he sees it with his own eyes - the alternate Earth, a lush oxygen-rich jungle full of impossible creatures, and the "large animals" themselves: kaiju, almost straight from an old movie.
The nuclear tests of the 1960's apparently thinned the barrier between Earth and other alternate worlds, including the one where the immense monsters (more accurately considered mobile ecosystems, for their size and the multitude of parasites and symbiotic animals that enable their survival) roamed. Since then, a top-secret global group known as the Kaiju Preservation Society has been traveling to their world to study them and ensure their safety, keeping them from straying through any fissures to our own Earth. As the lone non-scientist at Tanaka Base Camp, Jamie is the designated grunt worker, lifting and carrying and offering a hand wherever it's needed. He doesn't exactly understand just what a creature as immense as a kaiju needs protecting from... until he has to escort his first visitors, investors in the KPS, and remembers the question asked in so many films: who is the more dangerous monster, the kaiju or the humans?
REVIEW: The Kaiju Preservation Society has an inherently humorous premise, a conservation society dedicated to mountain-sized monsters. It was written by Scalzi in direct response to the COVID lockdowns and other unsettling developments of 2020, and even with the froth and silliness it addresses some of those issues on the sly, but much of the story is more about that froth and lightness, with frequent banter and one-liners and callbacks to books, movies, and video games. The whole, of course, is an homage to kaiju movies. He even offers speculation on how a creature as big as a kaiju could even survive when, by our world's physics and biological rules, they should collapse under their own weight before taking a single step toward Tokyo... speculation that does come into play in the plot eventually, but which also eats a lot of page time (as well as providing a lot of dialog into which to inject more humorous banter and references). It was fun, true, with a bit of sense of wonder about it, but after a while I started hoping for a little more actual plot or something like character development. It's past the halfway point before the story, such as it is, begins to kick into an actual gear, though even in the buildup to the climax the characters just can't stop with the page-padding banter. I also could've used a little more description of the kaiju themselves; part of what makes those movies fun is the weird creature designs, and I wanted to "see" the monsters here, too, but they're mostly considered too immense and alien for more than the broadest of descriptors. I almost forgave it those minor frustrations, but ultimately felt the froth-to-substance ratio skewed a little too far to the former, like Scalzi was strutting and mugging and grinning at his own clever lines. Clever as those lines were, I still found myself wanting more actual story by the end, enough to ultimately shave that half-star from the rating.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Beauty Queens (Libba Bray) - My Review
The Android's Dream (John Scalzi) - My Review
How to Survive a Sharknado and Other Unnatural Disasters (Andrew Shaffer) - My Review
Friday, July 21, 2023
The Nickel Boys (Colson Whitehead)
The Nickel Boys
Colson Whitehead
Doubleday
Fiction, Historical Fiction
****+ (Good/Great)
DESCRIPTION: When archaeology students unearth the unmarked graves on the site of the old Nickel Academy in Florida, once a "reform school" for boys, they unearth a dark secret that lingered for decades in plain sight. Among the survivors, a man named Elwood watches the renewed interest in the school with trepidation. To say it unearths memories implies he ever forgot his days in Nickel...
In 1960's Tallahassee, young Elwood has grown up in a Jim Crow world, but has hopes for a better future thanks to leaders like Martin Luther King Jr and court rulings ending school segregation. He's even on track to start college early, thanks to an inspiring teacher. But bad luck and circumstance land him unwittingly in the passenger seat of a stolen car, where he's sentenced to time at Nickel Academy. His first impression is that it's not going to be so bad. The grounds look neat enough, there are kids playing ball, and he doesn't even see a fence. He learns the truth soon enough. This isn't a place boys go to learn to be better citizens, or be reformed (whatever that actually means). It's a place boys are sent to be broken - especially Black boys who don't know their place in a white world.
REVIEW: This is an author I've been meaning to get to for a while, and so far I can say I'm quite favorably impressed. Inspired by real-life "reform" schools that were all too common, it also tells the story of a young Black boy's optimism and resolve being tested in the worst possible ways, a harsh coming of age as ideals are stomped down by deep-rooted traditions and a system designed to encourage cruelty. Elwood already had a small taste of how the world uses up his kind and spits them out, how his notion that hard work will always get him ahead can and is turned against him (and not just by white folks), but at Nickel he gets a true trial by fire in The Way Things Are, especially in the Deep South. He makes a friend of sorts in the jaded boy Tucker, who helps him navigate life in Nickel but cannot understand Elwood sometimes. Despite Tucker's help, Elwood ends up on the wrong side of the staff almost from the start, and soon gets the scars to prove it. Now and again, the story follows the grown Elwood after his time at the academy, inevitably as scarred as his physical body was left but with which he strives to build a better life. That the man's life is better than the boy's is without question, a sign that hope is sometimes rewarded, but there is still a long way to go to be anywhere near the world young Elwood thought he'd be living in by now. (Even as I write this review, in late July 2023, the state of Florida has released new school curriculum wherein slavery would be taught as having been "beneficial" to Blacks.) The story weaves past and present into a rich, often brutal tale of systemic racism and institutionalized cruelty where the abuse and exploitation of minors is not only excused, but essentially encouraged. It's naive to think one person can change the world, especially for the better (changes for the worse seem far easier to instigate, unfortunately, just as falling down a cliff is easier than climbing up one), but one can decide how to live the life one has, and - if no other options are feasible - at least choose to bear witness to the evil in the hopes that, in time, that will matter.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass (Frederick Douglass) - My Review
I'm Not Dying With You Tonight (Kimberly Jones and Gilly Segal) - My Review
The Ballad of Black Tom (Victor LaValle) - My Review
Colson Whitehead
Doubleday
Fiction, Historical Fiction
****+ (Good/Great)
DESCRIPTION: When archaeology students unearth the unmarked graves on the site of the old Nickel Academy in Florida, once a "reform school" for boys, they unearth a dark secret that lingered for decades in plain sight. Among the survivors, a man named Elwood watches the renewed interest in the school with trepidation. To say it unearths memories implies he ever forgot his days in Nickel...
In 1960's Tallahassee, young Elwood has grown up in a Jim Crow world, but has hopes for a better future thanks to leaders like Martin Luther King Jr and court rulings ending school segregation. He's even on track to start college early, thanks to an inspiring teacher. But bad luck and circumstance land him unwittingly in the passenger seat of a stolen car, where he's sentenced to time at Nickel Academy. His first impression is that it's not going to be so bad. The grounds look neat enough, there are kids playing ball, and he doesn't even see a fence. He learns the truth soon enough. This isn't a place boys go to learn to be better citizens, or be reformed (whatever that actually means). It's a place boys are sent to be broken - especially Black boys who don't know their place in a white world.
REVIEW: This is an author I've been meaning to get to for a while, and so far I can say I'm quite favorably impressed. Inspired by real-life "reform" schools that were all too common, it also tells the story of a young Black boy's optimism and resolve being tested in the worst possible ways, a harsh coming of age as ideals are stomped down by deep-rooted traditions and a system designed to encourage cruelty. Elwood already had a small taste of how the world uses up his kind and spits them out, how his notion that hard work will always get him ahead can and is turned against him (and not just by white folks), but at Nickel he gets a true trial by fire in The Way Things Are, especially in the Deep South. He makes a friend of sorts in the jaded boy Tucker, who helps him navigate life in Nickel but cannot understand Elwood sometimes. Despite Tucker's help, Elwood ends up on the wrong side of the staff almost from the start, and soon gets the scars to prove it. Now and again, the story follows the grown Elwood after his time at the academy, inevitably as scarred as his physical body was left but with which he strives to build a better life. That the man's life is better than the boy's is without question, a sign that hope is sometimes rewarded, but there is still a long way to go to be anywhere near the world young Elwood thought he'd be living in by now. (Even as I write this review, in late July 2023, the state of Florida has released new school curriculum wherein slavery would be taught as having been "beneficial" to Blacks.) The story weaves past and present into a rich, often brutal tale of systemic racism and institutionalized cruelty where the abuse and exploitation of minors is not only excused, but essentially encouraged. It's naive to think one person can change the world, especially for the better (changes for the worse seem far easier to instigate, unfortunately, just as falling down a cliff is easier than climbing up one), but one can decide how to live the life one has, and - if no other options are feasible - at least choose to bear witness to the evil in the hopes that, in time, that will matter.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass (Frederick Douglass) - My Review
I'm Not Dying With You Tonight (Kimberly Jones and Gilly Segal) - My Review
The Ballad of Black Tom (Victor LaValle) - My Review
Thursday, July 20, 2023
Fourth Wing (Rebecca Yarros)
Fourth Wing
The Empyrean series, Book 1
Rebecca Yarros
Entangled
Fiction, Fantasy/Romance
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: Violet Sorrengail never wanted to be a dragon rider. Her mother, sister, and brother all bonded with great beasts and developed powerful sigils - unique abilities sparked from the melding of human mind and dragon magic - but Violet was always more at home in the libraries with her father, the scribe... or, at least, she was until he died, not long after an army of traitors killed her brother and nearly tore the empire apart. Even then, Violet wanted nothing more than to join the scribes. It's not like she's up to the challenges of riding anyway, with her frail constitution and weak joints. But her mother has decided that Sorrengails are dragon riders, and demands she enroll in Navarre's dragon corps in her twentieth year.
Just getting to Basgaith, training academy for aspiring riders, is a deadly test. The physical conditioning alone might kill her. If not, the other students might finish the job; there are far fewer dragons willing to bond a rider than there are cadets, and culling the weak links from the ranks is as much a part of training as their lessons. Bearing the name of the great General Sorrengail will only put a larger target on her back, particularly when her weak physical condition becomes all too apparent. But the greatest danger of all may come from an unexpected place: Xaran Riorson, a third-year wingleader of the Fourth Wing. Tall, lean, impossibly handsome, and impossibly dangerous, he has every reason to hate Violet and the Sorrengail name; his father was the leader of the failed rebellion, and was said to have killed Violet's beloved brother in the final battle - after which Violet's own mother executed the man. From the moment they lay eyes on each other, sparks fly... but are they sparks of hatred, or something else? Even as she struggles to untangle that knot, Violet starts seeing hints that all is not as it seems, in Basgaith or the greater nation of Navarre.
REVIEW: I've been hearing a lot of decent buzz about this book, and was somewhat surprised to actually find it available via Libby and my library. It promises a melding of fantasy, action, danger, and romance (plus dragons), and delivers on pretty much all accounts.
From the first pages, Violet's rocky relationship with her successful dragon rider mother is abundantly clear, as is her own thwarted desire to become a scribe like her father. Her sister offers what help she can, but can't arrange what she most wants, a way out; even if she sneaks away to the scribes, she'd be found and drug back, plus she'd have added yet another black mark to the family name (after being born "fragile", prone to pulled muscles and popped joints and broken bones). Having resigned herself to go, and probably die for her efforts (the mortality rate even for more fit cadets is high, so her expecting to die in Basgaith isn't an exaggeration), she finds something she never expected, a fighting spirit in her own sheltered heart. When a longtime family friend steps up to help protect her in her first year, even trying to arrange a way for her to get back to the libraries and scribes, her appreciation of his efforts starts turning to frustration, as she starts learning what she is capable of when push comes to shove. And pushed and shoved she is, indeed; she makes her first enemy before setting foot in Basgaith proper, and faces setbacks and dangers aplenty. Every step forward, she has to earn with her own blood, sweat, and tears (but especially blood). Xaran and the other children of executed rebels - all of whom were marked when their parents were killed, all of whom were forced to come to Basgaith in the not-so-secret hope that the dragons would do them in (hopes thwarted when, despite what Navarre's leaders anticipated, the dragons instead bonded with some of them, but then humans consistently overestimate their understanding and "control" of the beasts) - add more complications, particularly when Violet's heart (and other regions) keep fighting with her brain over how to react to the brooding, enigmatic man. She never is a victim in this or other relationships, though, and actively rejects efforts to coddle, manipulate, or pigeonhole her. Even at her weakest points, she owns her actions and decisions.
All of this may seem familiar as far as it goes, and if I'm being fully honest it is, but it still plays out decently. A familiar story can still be enjoyable, after all, and I cared enough about the characters and their situation to enjoy it. Several of the supporting cast members also embody familiar roles and tropes, doing their jobs in the plot competently enough to get a pass and not tip over into cliche territory (though sometimes they were barely a step away from the edge).
It's worth pausing here briefly to talk about Navarre's dragons. Rather than "scaly puppies" or "horses with wings", the dragons of this world are well and truly dragons, great scaled firebreathers with their own enigmatic minds, keeping their own counsels, and only allowing humans limited glimpses into their world. Still, they are loyal to their riders, needing humans as much as humans need them to survive in this world of magic and danger, for all that they sometimes don't quite seem to understand people or their limitations.
Getting back to the story itself, as Violet and her fellow cadets earn their proverbial stripes at Basgaith, they explain the world of Navarre and the dragons and the ongoing battles with the enemy nation of griffin riders to the reader, showing that the harshness of their training isn't just for show; as riders, they can look forward to battles and violence and a high probability of an early grave. The high death toll of the academy is almost negligible compared to what full-fledged riders deal with on a daily basis. Along the way, hints crop up here and there that the official party line may not be the entire truth, though it takes a while for Violet to connect the dots. (In her defense, being targeted for murder by her classmates does make a somewhat valid reason for distraction.) There's also the expected thawing of relations with Xaran, though there are still secrets in his past that he carefully conceals with deflections and nonanswers... secrets that may bite them both as the story moves toward the climax.
Here is where Fourth Wing almost lost a half star, with a few surprise revelations right at the end that, rather than baiting the hook for the next installment, instead put a foot over that line it kept walking, the one between trope and cliche. I decided to forgive it those late stumbles, though, and a few other quibbles (and the odd eye-roll) throughout. While it may not be stunningly original, Fourth Wing did its job in entertaining me, and there were some pretty decent dragons.
You Might Also Enjoy:
House of Dragons (Jessica Cluess) - My Review
Fireborne (Rosaria Munda) - My Review
Windsworn (Derek Alan Siddoway) - My Review
Wednesday, July 19, 2023
Mickey7 (Edward Ashton)
Mickey7
The Mickey7 series, Book 1
Edward Ashton
St. Martin's Press
Fiction, Humor/Sci-Fi
** (Bad)
DESCRIPTION: When Mickey signed on to the colony ship Drakkar, he knew he was going to die. He just didn't expect to die so many times before even making landfall on Niflheim. As the ship's Expendable, he is sent to do jobs that ordinary machines (and more valued crewmembers) can't... jobs where death is either a high probability or absolute certainty. Thanks to memory backups and regenerated bodies, his deaths are temporary, but still unnerving, as his current, seventh incarnation can heartily attest. Still, he needed to get off the world of Midgard in a hurry, and only the best and brightest got proper berths on the colony ship, so life (and death) as an Expendable was really his only option.
Back when he signed up, though, there were many things he didn't understand. Such as what it was like to be a veritable pariah among the colonists, seen as an abomination by fundamentalist Natalists (including, of course, the mission commander Marshall) or a kinky potential conquest by "ghost chasers" or simply an uncomfortable reminder of their own mortality. Or how it would actually feel to remember his own deaths in a new body... or, perhaps worse, witness videos of the deaths that previous iterations chose not to upload due to their horrific natures. Or even how inhospitable, borderline uninhabitable, the Drakkar's target planet Niflheim would turn out to be when they got there, a ball of ice and rock with an oxygen-poor atmosphere and some unknown contagion crippling their efforts to establish agriculture. But the one possibility he never would've considered in a million years would be returning from a mission to the icy frontier to discover another Mickey in his berth.
Turns out his so-called best friend, pilot Berto, logged him as deceased after Mickey7 fell down a chasm without bothering to confirm. But neither Berto nor Mickey7 counted on a "creeper", a native tunneling animal considered little more than a big dumb bug, helping him find his way to the surface... a development that could change the entire nature of the fledgling colony - unless they're killed for illegal duplication before they can tell anyone.
REVIEW: I was told, by the cover hype and numerous online reviews, that Mickey7 would be a fun and thought-provoking and fast-reading romp of a story. And I wanted to enjoy it. I wanted to laugh and (within my admittedly-limited capacity) think. I wanted to be entertained. But the only point on which this book succeeded, of all that hype, was that it read fast... and part of the reason it red fast was because it failed to engage me on most any level.
From the start, the premise is on shaky ground. The reader is told how only the best of the best of the absolute best have a chance to get on board the Drakkar, the boldest and most intelligent of all the colony world from which the ship originated... but, even excusing that Mickey is only an Expendable and therefore exempt from the presumably high bar of admission, every single person in the entire colony acts like an utter moron with the emotional maturity of a child, or at most a college frat boy (in the worst possible, most stereotypical Hollywood movie way). And I'm including the women in that assessment, here. These characters are supposed to be in their thirties at least, not young twenty-somethings fumbling their way from teenage years into adulthood. Not a one rises above expectations or shows much in the way of character dimension. The plot itself is thin, for all that it tries to flesh itself out (thanks to Mickey's interest in history, despite his inability to actually learn much from it, evidently) with backstory of humanity's failure-riddled efforts at interplanetary colonization that do little but show that we are the ultimate irredeemably invasive species and should have died off before sullying the galaxy with our toxic presence, along with the story of Mickey's journey of death and rebirth from 1 - the original - to 7 (and 8). While trying to conceal his unintentional duplication (and his discovery in the tunnels after he "died", which he is reluctant to share for vague reasons), both Mickeys show less sense than the average sitcom character... but, then, the rest of the colony is little more clever or the ruse would've been up inside of fifty pages. Things stumble and bumble along as I struggled to care about anyone, even a side character, before reaching a climax and a sort of conclusion. At no point along the way was I awed by insights into the nature and/or philosophy of cloning or immortality or alien worlds or the struggles of diaspora with humanity's inherently flawed and self-destructive nature, because I'd already read and watched far more interesting takes on those topics elsewhere... and far more amusing ones, despite the attempts at humor that failed to come within a light year of my funny bone. (At one point, the author basically quotes The Princess Bride, apparently on the theory that lines funny in one context will automatically be funny in another, and not simply remind me that far more enjoyable media exists and I could have spent my time on that instead.)
Theoretically, this is the first of a series of stories about the many-lived Mickey and the colony of Niflheim. Needless to say, I don't anticipate reading on. The title character may have multiple lifetimes to fritter away, but I only have the one.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Kiln People (David Brin) - My Review
Day Zero (C. Robert Cargill) - My Review
All Systems Red (Martha Wells) - My Review
The Mickey7 series, Book 1
Edward Ashton
St. Martin's Press
Fiction, Humor/Sci-Fi
** (Bad)
DESCRIPTION: When Mickey signed on to the colony ship Drakkar, he knew he was going to die. He just didn't expect to die so many times before even making landfall on Niflheim. As the ship's Expendable, he is sent to do jobs that ordinary machines (and more valued crewmembers) can't... jobs where death is either a high probability or absolute certainty. Thanks to memory backups and regenerated bodies, his deaths are temporary, but still unnerving, as his current, seventh incarnation can heartily attest. Still, he needed to get off the world of Midgard in a hurry, and only the best and brightest got proper berths on the colony ship, so life (and death) as an Expendable was really his only option.
Back when he signed up, though, there were many things he didn't understand. Such as what it was like to be a veritable pariah among the colonists, seen as an abomination by fundamentalist Natalists (including, of course, the mission commander Marshall) or a kinky potential conquest by "ghost chasers" or simply an uncomfortable reminder of their own mortality. Or how it would actually feel to remember his own deaths in a new body... or, perhaps worse, witness videos of the deaths that previous iterations chose not to upload due to their horrific natures. Or even how inhospitable, borderline uninhabitable, the Drakkar's target planet Niflheim would turn out to be when they got there, a ball of ice and rock with an oxygen-poor atmosphere and some unknown contagion crippling their efforts to establish agriculture. But the one possibility he never would've considered in a million years would be returning from a mission to the icy frontier to discover another Mickey in his berth.
Turns out his so-called best friend, pilot Berto, logged him as deceased after Mickey7 fell down a chasm without bothering to confirm. But neither Berto nor Mickey7 counted on a "creeper", a native tunneling animal considered little more than a big dumb bug, helping him find his way to the surface... a development that could change the entire nature of the fledgling colony - unless they're killed for illegal duplication before they can tell anyone.
REVIEW: I was told, by the cover hype and numerous online reviews, that Mickey7 would be a fun and thought-provoking and fast-reading romp of a story. And I wanted to enjoy it. I wanted to laugh and (within my admittedly-limited capacity) think. I wanted to be entertained. But the only point on which this book succeeded, of all that hype, was that it read fast... and part of the reason it red fast was because it failed to engage me on most any level.
From the start, the premise is on shaky ground. The reader is told how only the best of the best of the absolute best have a chance to get on board the Drakkar, the boldest and most intelligent of all the colony world from which the ship originated... but, even excusing that Mickey is only an Expendable and therefore exempt from the presumably high bar of admission, every single person in the entire colony acts like an utter moron with the emotional maturity of a child, or at most a college frat boy (in the worst possible, most stereotypical Hollywood movie way). And I'm including the women in that assessment, here. These characters are supposed to be in their thirties at least, not young twenty-somethings fumbling their way from teenage years into adulthood. Not a one rises above expectations or shows much in the way of character dimension. The plot itself is thin, for all that it tries to flesh itself out (thanks to Mickey's interest in history, despite his inability to actually learn much from it, evidently) with backstory of humanity's failure-riddled efforts at interplanetary colonization that do little but show that we are the ultimate irredeemably invasive species and should have died off before sullying the galaxy with our toxic presence, along with the story of Mickey's journey of death and rebirth from 1 - the original - to 7 (and 8). While trying to conceal his unintentional duplication (and his discovery in the tunnels after he "died", which he is reluctant to share for vague reasons), both Mickeys show less sense than the average sitcom character... but, then, the rest of the colony is little more clever or the ruse would've been up inside of fifty pages. Things stumble and bumble along as I struggled to care about anyone, even a side character, before reaching a climax and a sort of conclusion. At no point along the way was I awed by insights into the nature and/or philosophy of cloning or immortality or alien worlds or the struggles of diaspora with humanity's inherently flawed and self-destructive nature, because I'd already read and watched far more interesting takes on those topics elsewhere... and far more amusing ones, despite the attempts at humor that failed to come within a light year of my funny bone. (At one point, the author basically quotes The Princess Bride, apparently on the theory that lines funny in one context will automatically be funny in another, and not simply remind me that far more enjoyable media exists and I could have spent my time on that instead.)
Theoretically, this is the first of a series of stories about the many-lived Mickey and the colony of Niflheim. Needless to say, I don't anticipate reading on. The title character may have multiple lifetimes to fritter away, but I only have the one.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Kiln People (David Brin) - My Review
Day Zero (C. Robert Cargill) - My Review
All Systems Red (Martha Wells) - My Review
Sunday, July 16, 2023
Into the Windwracked Wilds (A. Deborah Baker)
Into the Windwracked Wilds
The Up-and-Under series, Book 3
A. Deborah Baker
Tordotcom
Fiction, MG Fantasy
****+ (Good/Great)
DESCRIPTION: Straight-laced Avery and free-spirited Zib have come a long way, literally and figuratively, since they climbed the wall from their ordinary neighborhood into the Up-and-Under, a land of strangeness and wonder and danger aplenty. With them now travel Niamh, the drowned girl, and the Crow Girl who once traded her heart and name to become a murder of crows, which only occasionally comes together to be a person. Once more, they've found the improbable road, which will lead them to the Impossible City (and, if they can find the lost Queen of Wands and restore her to the throne, eventually back to the world they came from)... but the road proves as capricious as ever when it drops them into the Saltwise Sea without so much as a by-your-leave.
When they finally end up on land again (courtesy of a kindly mosasaur), it's in the domain of the Queen of Swords, monarch of Air and creator of monsters. If Zib and Avery have learned nothing else in the Up-and-Under, it's that royalty are best avoided at all costs, and the Queen of Swords may be one of the most dangerous of the lot... yet the improbable road leads straight through her castle. They'll need all their wits about them to escape her clutches, but even then the passage will require sacrifice, for nothing - not even safety - comes without a cost in this land. Something else they have learned, unfortunately, is that costs are almost always much, much higher than they realize, and bargaining with the Queen of Swords may cost them more than they can afford to lose if they ever mean to return home.
REVIEW: The third book in the Up-and-Under series maintains the quick pace, wild whimsy, and sometimes surreal aesthetic of the previous volumes, with some deeper, occasionally cutting undertones and passages. Once again, Zib and Avery find their friendship tested, as Zib's long-ago trading away of something precious to Avery comes back to haunt them both. Neither are the same children they were at the start of their adventures, having learned and seen and done much together, but even though they've grown closer, there's still some inherent friction due to their opposing natures. Their companions also have parts to play and stories to tell, particularly the Crow Girl, who was long ago turned into what she is by the Queen of Swords. The journey takes several twists and turns, as they pick up a new ally and make a new enemy (or, rather, deepen an old enemy's ire). Here and there I noted more echoes of the story Middlegame in offhand passages and comments; the Up-and-Under series started as a spinoff of that book, an in-world beloved children's adventure secretly written by a dark alchemist encoding secrets of the craft, even though it stands alone fine (and is geared at a significantly younger audience than Middlegame). These echoes have been present throughout the series, but I noticed them more in this volume for some reason. There were a few points where things felt just a little too jumbled and convoluted even for the inherently nonsensical adventure, but in general it's in keeping with the previous two installments, setting up the fourth and (presumably) final volume, due out in October 2023. It made for a nice change of pace.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Over the Woodward Wall (A. Deborah Baker) - My Review
Middlegame (Seanan McGuire) - My Review
Osmo Unknown and the Eightpenny Woods (Catherynne M. Valente) - My Review
The Up-and-Under series, Book 3
A. Deborah Baker
Tordotcom
Fiction, MG Fantasy
****+ (Good/Great)
DESCRIPTION: Straight-laced Avery and free-spirited Zib have come a long way, literally and figuratively, since they climbed the wall from their ordinary neighborhood into the Up-and-Under, a land of strangeness and wonder and danger aplenty. With them now travel Niamh, the drowned girl, and the Crow Girl who once traded her heart and name to become a murder of crows, which only occasionally comes together to be a person. Once more, they've found the improbable road, which will lead them to the Impossible City (and, if they can find the lost Queen of Wands and restore her to the throne, eventually back to the world they came from)... but the road proves as capricious as ever when it drops them into the Saltwise Sea without so much as a by-your-leave.
When they finally end up on land again (courtesy of a kindly mosasaur), it's in the domain of the Queen of Swords, monarch of Air and creator of monsters. If Zib and Avery have learned nothing else in the Up-and-Under, it's that royalty are best avoided at all costs, and the Queen of Swords may be one of the most dangerous of the lot... yet the improbable road leads straight through her castle. They'll need all their wits about them to escape her clutches, but even then the passage will require sacrifice, for nothing - not even safety - comes without a cost in this land. Something else they have learned, unfortunately, is that costs are almost always much, much higher than they realize, and bargaining with the Queen of Swords may cost them more than they can afford to lose if they ever mean to return home.
REVIEW: The third book in the Up-and-Under series maintains the quick pace, wild whimsy, and sometimes surreal aesthetic of the previous volumes, with some deeper, occasionally cutting undertones and passages. Once again, Zib and Avery find their friendship tested, as Zib's long-ago trading away of something precious to Avery comes back to haunt them both. Neither are the same children they were at the start of their adventures, having learned and seen and done much together, but even though they've grown closer, there's still some inherent friction due to their opposing natures. Their companions also have parts to play and stories to tell, particularly the Crow Girl, who was long ago turned into what she is by the Queen of Swords. The journey takes several twists and turns, as they pick up a new ally and make a new enemy (or, rather, deepen an old enemy's ire). Here and there I noted more echoes of the story Middlegame in offhand passages and comments; the Up-and-Under series started as a spinoff of that book, an in-world beloved children's adventure secretly written by a dark alchemist encoding secrets of the craft, even though it stands alone fine (and is geared at a significantly younger audience than Middlegame). These echoes have been present throughout the series, but I noticed them more in this volume for some reason. There were a few points where things felt just a little too jumbled and convoluted even for the inherently nonsensical adventure, but in general it's in keeping with the previous two installments, setting up the fourth and (presumably) final volume, due out in October 2023. It made for a nice change of pace.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Over the Woodward Wall (A. Deborah Baker) - My Review
Middlegame (Seanan McGuire) - My Review
Osmo Unknown and the Eightpenny Woods (Catherynne M. Valente) - My Review
Friday, July 14, 2023
Dread Nation (Justina Ireland)
Dread Nation
The Dread Nation series, Book 1
Justina Ireland
Balzer + Bray
Fiction, YA Fantasy/Historical Fiction
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: When Jane McKeene was born, America was at war with itself, North fighting South... until the bodies of the dead rose on the battlefields and began feeding on the living, friend and foe alike. With the coming of the shamblers, as the undead came to be known, the War Between the States effectively ended in a draw, as the fight for survival became top priority. But while the matter of slavery was left undecided, some things never change, such as the tendency to expect colored people to fight and die in defense of the moneyed White elite and their comforts. Laws like the Native and Negro Education Act required all nonwhite children of a certain age to learn the art of combat, the better to defend against the shamblers who have taken over the countryside and completely swamped the Lost States of the Deep South... not to defend their own families or communities, but rather the cities and the families of the powerful.
As the daughter of a wealthy plantation mistress, Jane might have been able to avoid conscription (despite her dark skin, her mother's light as a lily and sharp as a rose thorn), but she longed to see the world beyond the fortified Rose Hill plantation, and would not shirk her patriotic duties. Thus she found herself enrolled at Miss Preston's School for Combat in Baltimore, among the top of her class. A certificate from Miss Preston's will enable her to find comfortable employment as an attendant for wealthy White women needing protection from shamblers (and predators of the living sort), far better prospects than many of her color could expect, though mostly she just wants to go back to her mother and help defend Rose Hill. But Jane soon learns that something's rotten in the city, a conspiracy that could doom Baltimore and the still-standing cities of the East... and what she learns might get her and her few friends killed.
REVIEW: Zombies meet the American Civil War (and the Old West) in Dread Nation, pitting a headstrong young woman against not only the hungry undead but the cultural and systemic corruption at the heart of even the "free" North, corruption that keeps spending the lives of the many (especially the nonwhite many) to preserve the illusion of normalcy, prosperity, and comfort for the few. Jane is born into a world remade by the rise of zombies, the start of a slow collapse that will inevitably claim the remaining enclaves of the East unless people adapt or manage to find a cure, yet still - as now - too much time and energy is diverted to clinging to old ways and old ideas and pretending the problem can be "managed" without significantly disrupting the lives of the most powerful (and the ones in the position to actually effect the changes society needs), choosing ignorance over a future where change and integration may threaten their stranglehold on civilization. This adds new dimensions to the sexism and racism that Jane and her fellow schoolmates have been coping with all their lives, and new urgency to the need to fight a system that would rather die and take humanity down with it than admit it's obsolete. By comparison, the zombies are almost innocuous as enemies go, refreshingly straightforward and far easier to behead. The other threats she discovers aren't nearly so clear-cut or easy to identify, so it's much easier for people to pretend they're not there at all.
Jane starts out a somewhat typical, if not unlikable, heroine, if one with a past complicated by mixed race ancestry in a world that can't even accept that all humans are the same species (arguments that reflect real-world twistings of science and religion that were particularly prominent historically among those seeking justification for their racism, and rationalizations to convince the powerless to stay on their knees before their "betters"). Even being the first, and potentially only, line of defense against undead monsters isn't enough for many White people to see her as a person. Still, she's determined to make her own way and be her own boss, as her mother was before her - plans that get derailed when she gets pulled into an investigation by an old acquaintance/ex-boyfriend, the petty criminal "Red Jack". If she thought she had things rough in Baltimore, what she finds after her investigations get her (and Jack and Katy, another Preston's student) exiled to a frontier town is ten times worse in every conceivable way. It's here that Judy finally learns the true depth of the corruption and the threat posed by her enemies, the world they intend to make, and it's here that she must determine whether to play along with the role laid out for her or fight back with everything she has. Fighting back, though, can lead to unintended consequences for her and those around her.
This is not a story prone to lulls or dragging, and though Judy and her friends aren't flawless, they're always pressing forward and don't linger on mistakes. Judy meets several other characters, most of them foes but a few potential friends, and navigates numerous complications. Some elements of the climax feel unsatisfactory, loose threads that were either forgotten or deliberately left dangling in the reader's face as enticement for a sequel that may or may not resolve them. On the whole, Dread Nation is an enjoyable, if occasionally dark, story.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Wake of Vultures (Lila Bowen) - My Review
Ring Shout (P. Djèlà Clark) - My Review
The Conductors (Nicole Glover) - My Review
The Dread Nation series, Book 1
Justina Ireland
Balzer + Bray
Fiction, YA Fantasy/Historical Fiction
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: When Jane McKeene was born, America was at war with itself, North fighting South... until the bodies of the dead rose on the battlefields and began feeding on the living, friend and foe alike. With the coming of the shamblers, as the undead came to be known, the War Between the States effectively ended in a draw, as the fight for survival became top priority. But while the matter of slavery was left undecided, some things never change, such as the tendency to expect colored people to fight and die in defense of the moneyed White elite and their comforts. Laws like the Native and Negro Education Act required all nonwhite children of a certain age to learn the art of combat, the better to defend against the shamblers who have taken over the countryside and completely swamped the Lost States of the Deep South... not to defend their own families or communities, but rather the cities and the families of the powerful.
As the daughter of a wealthy plantation mistress, Jane might have been able to avoid conscription (despite her dark skin, her mother's light as a lily and sharp as a rose thorn), but she longed to see the world beyond the fortified Rose Hill plantation, and would not shirk her patriotic duties. Thus she found herself enrolled at Miss Preston's School for Combat in Baltimore, among the top of her class. A certificate from Miss Preston's will enable her to find comfortable employment as an attendant for wealthy White women needing protection from shamblers (and predators of the living sort), far better prospects than many of her color could expect, though mostly she just wants to go back to her mother and help defend Rose Hill. But Jane soon learns that something's rotten in the city, a conspiracy that could doom Baltimore and the still-standing cities of the East... and what she learns might get her and her few friends killed.
REVIEW: Zombies meet the American Civil War (and the Old West) in Dread Nation, pitting a headstrong young woman against not only the hungry undead but the cultural and systemic corruption at the heart of even the "free" North, corruption that keeps spending the lives of the many (especially the nonwhite many) to preserve the illusion of normalcy, prosperity, and comfort for the few. Jane is born into a world remade by the rise of zombies, the start of a slow collapse that will inevitably claim the remaining enclaves of the East unless people adapt or manage to find a cure, yet still - as now - too much time and energy is diverted to clinging to old ways and old ideas and pretending the problem can be "managed" without significantly disrupting the lives of the most powerful (and the ones in the position to actually effect the changes society needs), choosing ignorance over a future where change and integration may threaten their stranglehold on civilization. This adds new dimensions to the sexism and racism that Jane and her fellow schoolmates have been coping with all their lives, and new urgency to the need to fight a system that would rather die and take humanity down with it than admit it's obsolete. By comparison, the zombies are almost innocuous as enemies go, refreshingly straightforward and far easier to behead. The other threats she discovers aren't nearly so clear-cut or easy to identify, so it's much easier for people to pretend they're not there at all.
Jane starts out a somewhat typical, if not unlikable, heroine, if one with a past complicated by mixed race ancestry in a world that can't even accept that all humans are the same species (arguments that reflect real-world twistings of science and religion that were particularly prominent historically among those seeking justification for their racism, and rationalizations to convince the powerless to stay on their knees before their "betters"). Even being the first, and potentially only, line of defense against undead monsters isn't enough for many White people to see her as a person. Still, she's determined to make her own way and be her own boss, as her mother was before her - plans that get derailed when she gets pulled into an investigation by an old acquaintance/ex-boyfriend, the petty criminal "Red Jack". If she thought she had things rough in Baltimore, what she finds after her investigations get her (and Jack and Katy, another Preston's student) exiled to a frontier town is ten times worse in every conceivable way. It's here that Judy finally learns the true depth of the corruption and the threat posed by her enemies, the world they intend to make, and it's here that she must determine whether to play along with the role laid out for her or fight back with everything she has. Fighting back, though, can lead to unintended consequences for her and those around her.
This is not a story prone to lulls or dragging, and though Judy and her friends aren't flawless, they're always pressing forward and don't linger on mistakes. Judy meets several other characters, most of them foes but a few potential friends, and navigates numerous complications. Some elements of the climax feel unsatisfactory, loose threads that were either forgotten or deliberately left dangling in the reader's face as enticement for a sequel that may or may not resolve them. On the whole, Dread Nation is an enjoyable, if occasionally dark, story.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Wake of Vultures (Lila Bowen) - My Review
Ring Shout (P. Djèlà Clark) - My Review
The Conductors (Nicole Glover) - My Review
Wednesday, July 12, 2023
Dracopedia Field Guilde (William O'Connor)
Dracopedia Field Guide: Dragons of the World from Amphipteridae to Wyverne
The Dracopedia series
William O'Connor
Impact
Fiction, Art/Fantasy
****+ (Good/Great)
DESCRIPTION: The world is full of dragons, from the legless wyrms and multiheaded hydras of ancient legends to the hovering garden feydraons and domestic dragonette breeds. This field guide compiles numerous species of dragons and relatives, with notes on behavior and conservation status.
REVIEW: This field guide was intended to be part of author/artist William O'Connor's series of Dracopedia art books, blending art instruction and technique with invented field notes on "living" dragon species studied in the wild. Unfortunately, shortly after this project was started in 2018, O'Connor unexpectedly passed away, leaving this book to be finished by a collection of friends and collaborators for one last outing of his remarkable beasts. The "guide" rehashes some dragons from previous books (such as the Great Dragons, the largest species of "living" dragons) along with newer inventions of his artistic muse. Unlike previous volumes, there is nothing about how to draw or compose art in this volume; the art must speak for itself as inpsiration, along with the text, which frankly invites skimming (and seems like it could've used some stronger editing, as some passages felt clunky or repetitious). I almost clipped it the extra half-star for this, but O'Connor's dragons are so detailed and memorable that they ultimately earned it back, even if relies a bit much on recycled material. I sadly couldn't help wondering what the original plans for this field guide were, especially if they were to contain as much in the way of art notes as previous Dracopedia installments...
You Might Also Enjoy:
An Illustrated Guide to Welsh Monsters and Mythical Beasts (C C J Ellis) - My Review
Dracopedia (William O'Connor) - My Review
DragonArt (J. "NeonDragon" Peffer) - My Review
The Dracopedia series
William O'Connor
Impact
Fiction, Art/Fantasy
****+ (Good/Great)
DESCRIPTION: The world is full of dragons, from the legless wyrms and multiheaded hydras of ancient legends to the hovering garden feydraons and domestic dragonette breeds. This field guide compiles numerous species of dragons and relatives, with notes on behavior and conservation status.
REVIEW: This field guide was intended to be part of author/artist William O'Connor's series of Dracopedia art books, blending art instruction and technique with invented field notes on "living" dragon species studied in the wild. Unfortunately, shortly after this project was started in 2018, O'Connor unexpectedly passed away, leaving this book to be finished by a collection of friends and collaborators for one last outing of his remarkable beasts. The "guide" rehashes some dragons from previous books (such as the Great Dragons, the largest species of "living" dragons) along with newer inventions of his artistic muse. Unlike previous volumes, there is nothing about how to draw or compose art in this volume; the art must speak for itself as inpsiration, along with the text, which frankly invites skimming (and seems like it could've used some stronger editing, as some passages felt clunky or repetitious). I almost clipped it the extra half-star for this, but O'Connor's dragons are so detailed and memorable that they ultimately earned it back, even if relies a bit much on recycled material. I sadly couldn't help wondering what the original plans for this field guide were, especially if they were to contain as much in the way of art notes as previous Dracopedia installments...
You Might Also Enjoy:
An Illustrated Guide to Welsh Monsters and Mythical Beasts (C C J Ellis) - My Review
Dracopedia (William O'Connor) - My Review
DragonArt (J. "NeonDragon" Peffer) - My Review
The Girl and the Ghost (Hanna Alkaf)
The Girl and the Ghost
Hanna Alkaf
HarperCollins
Fiction, MG Fantasy
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: When the old witch died, her servant, the ghostly pelesit, must find another of her blood to stay in the world of the living... and, when the adult daughter proves too weak in magic, it gravitates to the five-year-old granddaughter Suraya. Rather than recoil in terror from the scaly, hulking shadow, the little girl names it Pink (her favorite color) and decides it's her new best friend. Pelesits are made to spread trouble and tricks and darkness wherever they go, not be a lonely girl's companion, but "Pink" also has to obey its master - and, as time passes, it grows to like being a friend, until it can't imagine doing anything else. Until the day she starts at a new school in the distant city and makes her first living human friend, threatening everything.
Suraya can hardly remember a time before Pink was in her life. With her mother wrapped up in work and her own private griefs and the other kids in the village school treating her strangely for being "weird" (and what's so weird about wanting to sit alone and read, or drawing dragons and mermaids in her notebook?), the ghost has long been her best, and only, friend. It's the one who gives her the courage to try the new school Mom wants her to go to, which at first is even worse than the village. But when she makes a new friend, Jing, another outsider (if one with a strange Star Wars obsession), Pink starts acting out... and when a ghost made for darkness acts out, the results can be downright dangerous.
REVIEW: Set in modern Malaysia, The Girl and the Ghost draws on local folk tales and traditions for a story about friendship, family, and the difficulties both can entail. With chapters that switch between the viewpoints of Pink and Suraya, the reader is quickly immersed in the strange friendship that develops between a former witch's familiar and a lonely girl who only wants someone to see her and love her as she feels her overwhelmed single mother does not. Pink technically has no heart and is not supposed to feel things like joy, but becomes quite fond of the little girl whose blood it needs to drink every full moon to stay "alive", and she accepts its inhuman nature as one would any peculiar quirk of a beloved friend. (She even, despite ordering him not to unleash his mischief on others, is notably silent when Pink inflicts little torments on the bullies who make her school life miserable.) Not being used to having a friend at all, Pink can't help lashing out when it seems Suraya prefers the living girl Jing to the ghost who has always been there for her... and Suraya doesn't understand why the ghost can't be happy that she's happy and accept her new friend into their circle. Their feud leads to dire consequences for them both - and worse, when Suraya's mother calls in a priestly "wise man" to deal with the haunting, one who may have ulterior motives. There are some setbacks and struggles, but Suraya manages to find a way to deal with the problems before her, even as they magnify to literal life-and-death stakes. The whole tale is made all the richer by its setting. I liked it.
You Might Also Enjoy:
The In-Between (Rebecca K. S. Ansari) - My Review
The Graveyard Book (Neil Gaiman) - My Review
Elatsoe (Darcie Little Badger) - My Review
Hanna Alkaf
HarperCollins
Fiction, MG Fantasy
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: When the old witch died, her servant, the ghostly pelesit, must find another of her blood to stay in the world of the living... and, when the adult daughter proves too weak in magic, it gravitates to the five-year-old granddaughter Suraya. Rather than recoil in terror from the scaly, hulking shadow, the little girl names it Pink (her favorite color) and decides it's her new best friend. Pelesits are made to spread trouble and tricks and darkness wherever they go, not be a lonely girl's companion, but "Pink" also has to obey its master - and, as time passes, it grows to like being a friend, until it can't imagine doing anything else. Until the day she starts at a new school in the distant city and makes her first living human friend, threatening everything.
Suraya can hardly remember a time before Pink was in her life. With her mother wrapped up in work and her own private griefs and the other kids in the village school treating her strangely for being "weird" (and what's so weird about wanting to sit alone and read, or drawing dragons and mermaids in her notebook?), the ghost has long been her best, and only, friend. It's the one who gives her the courage to try the new school Mom wants her to go to, which at first is even worse than the village. But when she makes a new friend, Jing, another outsider (if one with a strange Star Wars obsession), Pink starts acting out... and when a ghost made for darkness acts out, the results can be downright dangerous.
REVIEW: Set in modern Malaysia, The Girl and the Ghost draws on local folk tales and traditions for a story about friendship, family, and the difficulties both can entail. With chapters that switch between the viewpoints of Pink and Suraya, the reader is quickly immersed in the strange friendship that develops between a former witch's familiar and a lonely girl who only wants someone to see her and love her as she feels her overwhelmed single mother does not. Pink technically has no heart and is not supposed to feel things like joy, but becomes quite fond of the little girl whose blood it needs to drink every full moon to stay "alive", and she accepts its inhuman nature as one would any peculiar quirk of a beloved friend. (She even, despite ordering him not to unleash his mischief on others, is notably silent when Pink inflicts little torments on the bullies who make her school life miserable.) Not being used to having a friend at all, Pink can't help lashing out when it seems Suraya prefers the living girl Jing to the ghost who has always been there for her... and Suraya doesn't understand why the ghost can't be happy that she's happy and accept her new friend into their circle. Their feud leads to dire consequences for them both - and worse, when Suraya's mother calls in a priestly "wise man" to deal with the haunting, one who may have ulterior motives. There are some setbacks and struggles, but Suraya manages to find a way to deal with the problems before her, even as they magnify to literal life-and-death stakes. The whole tale is made all the richer by its setting. I liked it.
You Might Also Enjoy:
The In-Between (Rebecca K. S. Ansari) - My Review
The Graveyard Book (Neil Gaiman) - My Review
Elatsoe (Darcie Little Badger) - My Review
The Builders (Daniel Polansky)
The Builders
Daniel Polansky
Tordotcom
Fiction, Fantasy/Humor
***+ (Okay/Good)
DESCRIPTION: Five years ago, the land was torn apart when the toad brothers, heirs to the throne, clashed. Eventually, one arose the victor, the other fled to exile, and things settled down to an uneasy peace again... only some have not forgotten the injustices and betrayals at the peak of the war, and have waited patiently for a chance at revenge. Thus the one-eyed mouse travels the length and breadth of the land, gathering up his most trusted crew for one more - one last - fight. Only, last time they were together, one of their number turned traitor. Can the Captain succeed this time, or will he once again find a knife in his back?
REVIEW: The plot and world have the guts of a classic Western, with traces of Redwall or The Wind in the Willows in the anthropomorphized animal characters. There's a dark and troubled history between the characters, a history hinted it in their conversations and often tense interactions, but the Captain manages to bind them together through sheer force of will. After years of bitter fighting in the civil war that rocked the land, does it do any good to rebel against one bloated (literal) toad on the throne in order to enable another, likely equally bloated toad to rule? From the start, the matter isn't remotely about justice and who "deserves" the crown, but righting the wrong of the betrayal that led to their downfall and evening the score. The body count hits double digits early on, and keeps ratcheting up as the Captain and his crew carve a bloody path toward their ultimate goal, each facing their own moments of truth along the way. Nobody is particularly likeable, though they are at least distinctive, and there's a certain pall of futility over the whole affair that sapped meaning from the plot and whatever personal victories are accomplished. Despite being an intriguing mixture of ideas, I found myself not liking it as much as I'd hoped.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Watership Down (Richard Adams) - My Review
Redwall (Brian Jacques) - My Review
Mouse Guard: Fall 1152 (David Petersen) - My Review
Daniel Polansky
Tordotcom
Fiction, Fantasy/Humor
***+ (Okay/Good)
DESCRIPTION: Five years ago, the land was torn apart when the toad brothers, heirs to the throne, clashed. Eventually, one arose the victor, the other fled to exile, and things settled down to an uneasy peace again... only some have not forgotten the injustices and betrayals at the peak of the war, and have waited patiently for a chance at revenge. Thus the one-eyed mouse travels the length and breadth of the land, gathering up his most trusted crew for one more - one last - fight. Only, last time they were together, one of their number turned traitor. Can the Captain succeed this time, or will he once again find a knife in his back?
REVIEW: The plot and world have the guts of a classic Western, with traces of Redwall or The Wind in the Willows in the anthropomorphized animal characters. There's a dark and troubled history between the characters, a history hinted it in their conversations and often tense interactions, but the Captain manages to bind them together through sheer force of will. After years of bitter fighting in the civil war that rocked the land, does it do any good to rebel against one bloated (literal) toad on the throne in order to enable another, likely equally bloated toad to rule? From the start, the matter isn't remotely about justice and who "deserves" the crown, but righting the wrong of the betrayal that led to their downfall and evening the score. The body count hits double digits early on, and keeps ratcheting up as the Captain and his crew carve a bloody path toward their ultimate goal, each facing their own moments of truth along the way. Nobody is particularly likeable, though they are at least distinctive, and there's a certain pall of futility over the whole affair that sapped meaning from the plot and whatever personal victories are accomplished. Despite being an intriguing mixture of ideas, I found myself not liking it as much as I'd hoped.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Watership Down (Richard Adams) - My Review
Redwall (Brian Jacques) - My Review
Mouse Guard: Fall 1152 (David Petersen) - My Review
Saturday, July 8, 2023
Lost in the Moment and Found (Seanan McGuire)
Lost in the Moment and Found
The Wayward Children series, Book 8
Seanan McGuire
Tordotcom
Fiction, YA? Fantasy
****+ (Good/Great)
DESCRIPTION: Her parents called her "Antsy", both because she was too small for her given name of Antoinette and because she could never keep still. For five years, the little redheaded girl had a perfect, protected childhood with a father and a mother who both loved her very much... until the day in Target when her daddy fell down and didn't get back up. Then, several months later, her mother has a new friend, a man named Tyler. Mother thinks Antsy should be nice to Tyler, as well; he will never replace her real father, but he's a good man, Mommy insists. Only he's not a good man, and Antsy doesn't know quite why - and the night she finally knows why is the night she runs away, far away, to get lost somewhere he can never find her.
Antsy was only looking for a place to call her grandmother, to take her away from Mommy and the lying, bad Tyler. But the door she opened turned out to be a Door, a passage to somewhere else. A talking magpie and an old woman tell her she has found the Shop Where Lost Things Go, an impossibly vast place chock full of all manner of things from all manner of worlds, lost by all manner of people. Here, Antsy finds other Doors, other places to explore with her new companions and guardians. Any child would be filled with wonder at the sight, and Antsy is no exception. But she should, perhaps, have paid more attention to fairy tales when she was younger. If she had, she might have known that nothing comes without a price - and she might have understood what the Shop and the Doors were costing her much sooner...
REVIEW: This is another "origin" entry in McGuire's poetic, haunting portal fantasy series, this one with a dark enough opening that the author includes a brief warning and a reassurance that, this time, the child runs. Antsy starts as an innocent child, full of life and love and laughter - full of so much to lose, something she only learns when her father collapses and, one by one, things she'd taken for granted fail her. When Tyler turns up, she loses even more as he drives a wedge between her and her mother through subtle manipulation and lies... the first ominous sign of what he intends for the girl should she stay. Running seems to be Antsy's only choice, and by the time she has any second thoughts it's too late to turn back; the Doors have noticed and claimed her for the Shop, a nexus of innumerable worlds and of particular importance to the Doors themselves. Here, the magpie Hudson and the old woman Vineta take her in and help her learn the ways of the Shop and the Doors and the wayward items on the shelves... but there is more to this place than they let her in on, more to the travels between worlds and the Doors that appear every day. The story reads fast, as Antsy moves from fear to wonder to acceptance to fear (and anger) again once she begins to suspect the truth, and more information about the Doors that are so integral to the whole series is trickled in. In some ways, though, it feels a bit like ground McGuire previously covered in Lundy's tale, In an Absent Dream. I'm also a bit wary of the building of a larger arc behind the Doors, the worlds, and Eleanor West's school; this is the kind of development that could kick the story up to a whole new epic level, or could turn into something too weighty and convoluted that ends up bringing the thing crashing down. So far, I don't have reason to doubt McGuire, but I'm keeping a careful eye on the altimeter of my suspension of disbelief all the same. At this point, at least, the Wayward Children series remains interesting and enjoyable.
You Might Also Enjoy:
In an Absent Dream (Seanan McGuire) - My Review
The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of her Own Making (Catherynne M. Valente) - My Review
The Thickety (J. A. White) - My Review
The Wayward Children series, Book 8
Seanan McGuire
Tordotcom
Fiction, YA? Fantasy
****+ (Good/Great)
DESCRIPTION: Her parents called her "Antsy", both because she was too small for her given name of Antoinette and because she could never keep still. For five years, the little redheaded girl had a perfect, protected childhood with a father and a mother who both loved her very much... until the day in Target when her daddy fell down and didn't get back up. Then, several months later, her mother has a new friend, a man named Tyler. Mother thinks Antsy should be nice to Tyler, as well; he will never replace her real father, but he's a good man, Mommy insists. Only he's not a good man, and Antsy doesn't know quite why - and the night she finally knows why is the night she runs away, far away, to get lost somewhere he can never find her.
Antsy was only looking for a place to call her grandmother, to take her away from Mommy and the lying, bad Tyler. But the door she opened turned out to be a Door, a passage to somewhere else. A talking magpie and an old woman tell her she has found the Shop Where Lost Things Go, an impossibly vast place chock full of all manner of things from all manner of worlds, lost by all manner of people. Here, Antsy finds other Doors, other places to explore with her new companions and guardians. Any child would be filled with wonder at the sight, and Antsy is no exception. But she should, perhaps, have paid more attention to fairy tales when she was younger. If she had, she might have known that nothing comes without a price - and she might have understood what the Shop and the Doors were costing her much sooner...
REVIEW: This is another "origin" entry in McGuire's poetic, haunting portal fantasy series, this one with a dark enough opening that the author includes a brief warning and a reassurance that, this time, the child runs. Antsy starts as an innocent child, full of life and love and laughter - full of so much to lose, something she only learns when her father collapses and, one by one, things she'd taken for granted fail her. When Tyler turns up, she loses even more as he drives a wedge between her and her mother through subtle manipulation and lies... the first ominous sign of what he intends for the girl should she stay. Running seems to be Antsy's only choice, and by the time she has any second thoughts it's too late to turn back; the Doors have noticed and claimed her for the Shop, a nexus of innumerable worlds and of particular importance to the Doors themselves. Here, the magpie Hudson and the old woman Vineta take her in and help her learn the ways of the Shop and the Doors and the wayward items on the shelves... but there is more to this place than they let her in on, more to the travels between worlds and the Doors that appear every day. The story reads fast, as Antsy moves from fear to wonder to acceptance to fear (and anger) again once she begins to suspect the truth, and more information about the Doors that are so integral to the whole series is trickled in. In some ways, though, it feels a bit like ground McGuire previously covered in Lundy's tale, In an Absent Dream. I'm also a bit wary of the building of a larger arc behind the Doors, the worlds, and Eleanor West's school; this is the kind of development that could kick the story up to a whole new epic level, or could turn into something too weighty and convoluted that ends up bringing the thing crashing down. So far, I don't have reason to doubt McGuire, but I'm keeping a careful eye on the altimeter of my suspension of disbelief all the same. At this point, at least, the Wayward Children series remains interesting and enjoyable.
You Might Also Enjoy:
In an Absent Dream (Seanan McGuire) - My Review
The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of her Own Making (Catherynne M. Valente) - My Review
The Thickety (J. A. White) - My Review
Friday, July 7, 2023
The Body (Stephen King)
The Body
Stephen King
Penguin Random House Audio Publishing
Fiction, Thriller
****+ (Good/Great)
DESCRIPTION: A successful author with a happy family and fulfilling life, Gordie Lachance reflects upon the experience that both defined his childhood and, in a way, ended it. The year was 1960, the place a small Maine town called Castle Rock, and a young teen Gordie was hanging out with his friends Chris and Teddy one summer day when Vern showed up and told them he knows where they can see a dead body. Everyone knew about the boy Ray Brower who disappeared several days ago while out picking berries; surely this was the same kid. Vern claimed the body was in the woods off the railroad tracks, and they could probably get there in a day and a half following the rails. Partly from summer boredom, partly from a macabre childish fascination with death, the foursome decided to make the journey... not knowing how it would change them, and their relationship, for the rest of their lives.
REVIEW: This novella formed the basis of the classic 1986 movie "Stand By Me", which changed some details but kept the heart of the tale, a coming-of-age journey where the true natures of the four friends are laid bare and their childhood innocence is forever lost, in tact. As in other King works, the characters become real people, flawed and complex and often living under dark clouds that they may never escape. Also as in other King works, childhood is remembered not as a golden, happy time of love and safety and whimsy (as some adults like to remember it), but as a violent struggle that leaves scars, sometimes literal, that one rarely outgrows. The half-feral childhood in a 1960's small town, long before kids were boxed in by schedules and leashed by cell phones, comes through clearly, even as the adult Gordie can pause to reflect on events and memories, even interspersing excerpts from his own stories. King paints a vivid, if sometimes brutal, picture of the friends, the town, and the transformative journey whose implications Gordie wouldn't fully understand until later; even the grown and married Gordie is still processing everything that happened, everything that he learned, all the ways that one fateful decision to go look at a dead body set the stage for the lives that would unfold after. Even as the journey transforms from impulsive adventure to something darker and more serious, there are moments of profound meaning and beauty. Much like the movie, there's a lot to examine and process in this work, more to it than initially meets the eye (or ear, as this is yet another audiobook I checked out from Libby).
You Might Also Enjoy:
On My Honor (Marion Dane Bauer) - My Review
The Ocean at the End of the Lane (Neil Gaiman) - My Review
It (Stephen King) - My Review
Stephen King
Penguin Random House Audio Publishing
Fiction, Thriller
****+ (Good/Great)
DESCRIPTION: A successful author with a happy family and fulfilling life, Gordie Lachance reflects upon the experience that both defined his childhood and, in a way, ended it. The year was 1960, the place a small Maine town called Castle Rock, and a young teen Gordie was hanging out with his friends Chris and Teddy one summer day when Vern showed up and told them he knows where they can see a dead body. Everyone knew about the boy Ray Brower who disappeared several days ago while out picking berries; surely this was the same kid. Vern claimed the body was in the woods off the railroad tracks, and they could probably get there in a day and a half following the rails. Partly from summer boredom, partly from a macabre childish fascination with death, the foursome decided to make the journey... not knowing how it would change them, and their relationship, for the rest of their lives.
REVIEW: This novella formed the basis of the classic 1986 movie "Stand By Me", which changed some details but kept the heart of the tale, a coming-of-age journey where the true natures of the four friends are laid bare and their childhood innocence is forever lost, in tact. As in other King works, the characters become real people, flawed and complex and often living under dark clouds that they may never escape. Also as in other King works, childhood is remembered not as a golden, happy time of love and safety and whimsy (as some adults like to remember it), but as a violent struggle that leaves scars, sometimes literal, that one rarely outgrows. The half-feral childhood in a 1960's small town, long before kids were boxed in by schedules and leashed by cell phones, comes through clearly, even as the adult Gordie can pause to reflect on events and memories, even interspersing excerpts from his own stories. King paints a vivid, if sometimes brutal, picture of the friends, the town, and the transformative journey whose implications Gordie wouldn't fully understand until later; even the grown and married Gordie is still processing everything that happened, everything that he learned, all the ways that one fateful decision to go look at a dead body set the stage for the lives that would unfold after. Even as the journey transforms from impulsive adventure to something darker and more serious, there are moments of profound meaning and beauty. Much like the movie, there's a lot to examine and process in this work, more to it than initially meets the eye (or ear, as this is yet another audiobook I checked out from Libby).
You Might Also Enjoy:
On My Honor (Marion Dane Bauer) - My Review
The Ocean at the End of the Lane (Neil Gaiman) - My Review
It (Stephen King) - My Review
Thursday, July 6, 2023
How It Unfolds (James S. A. Corey)
How It Unfolds
The Far Reaches series, Book 1
James S. A. Corey
Amazon Original Stories
Fiction, Sci-Fi
****+ (Good/Great)
DESCRIPTION: The biggest problem with interstellar colonization has always been how to cross the vast distances of space to reach habitable worlds, but the discovery of "slow light" solved that issue in a unique way. With it, information could be transmitted far more economically than a large ship could travel, information that could "unfold" at the other end, basically faxing colonists and a starter habitat to the stars. Further, the same core information, including copies of the same two hundred crewmembers selected as foundation colonists, could be replicated on various target worlds... plus the originals would never have to leave Earth.
Roy Cort, one of the chosen, looks forward to the journey in more ways than the mission supervisors know. His ex-wife is one of the other colonists, the woman he had slowly reconnected with after their relationship and marriage fell apart years ago. Perhaps, in one of the innumerable unfoldings on innumerable worlds, he will have a second chance at the future he let slip through his grasp... but can even the vast distances of time and space across the stars be far enough to escape from a broken past?
REVIEW: Part of a new collection of Kindle novellas (despite being called a "series", the tales, by different authors, seem to be standalones), How It Unfolds takes an interesting idea and explores its implications, not just for humanity's future but for the humans who take the trip. Roy's optimism already seems a touch desperate and fragile before he is replicated for slow light transmission, and can't help colliding with reality at some point, no matter what world he wakes on. But it's not just a story of one man pining for the one who got away, where the woman is an object to pursue or a prize to regain; she's her own person, as is he, and though their fates are inextricably entwined by their history and their mission, that doesn't necessarily mean their hearts must be, as well. They aren't the only ones on the mission, for one thing, and other people always have their own secrets and fates. The lives of the Roys, on Earth and beyond, contribute to a larger picture of humanity's attempt at galactic immortality through colonization, a high-risk venture that may or may not pay off. The whole manages to evoke some of the old-school sense of wonder without the old-school flatness of characters.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Leviathan Wakes (James S. A. Corey) - My Review
We Are Legion (We Are Bob) (Dennis E. Taylor) - My Review
Children of Time (Adrian Tchaikovsky) - My Review
The Far Reaches series, Book 1
James S. A. Corey
Amazon Original Stories
Fiction, Sci-Fi
****+ (Good/Great)
DESCRIPTION: The biggest problem with interstellar colonization has always been how to cross the vast distances of space to reach habitable worlds, but the discovery of "slow light" solved that issue in a unique way. With it, information could be transmitted far more economically than a large ship could travel, information that could "unfold" at the other end, basically faxing colonists and a starter habitat to the stars. Further, the same core information, including copies of the same two hundred crewmembers selected as foundation colonists, could be replicated on various target worlds... plus the originals would never have to leave Earth.
Roy Cort, one of the chosen, looks forward to the journey in more ways than the mission supervisors know. His ex-wife is one of the other colonists, the woman he had slowly reconnected with after their relationship and marriage fell apart years ago. Perhaps, in one of the innumerable unfoldings on innumerable worlds, he will have a second chance at the future he let slip through his grasp... but can even the vast distances of time and space across the stars be far enough to escape from a broken past?
REVIEW: Part of a new collection of Kindle novellas (despite being called a "series", the tales, by different authors, seem to be standalones), How It Unfolds takes an interesting idea and explores its implications, not just for humanity's future but for the humans who take the trip. Roy's optimism already seems a touch desperate and fragile before he is replicated for slow light transmission, and can't help colliding with reality at some point, no matter what world he wakes on. But it's not just a story of one man pining for the one who got away, where the woman is an object to pursue or a prize to regain; she's her own person, as is he, and though their fates are inextricably entwined by their history and their mission, that doesn't necessarily mean their hearts must be, as well. They aren't the only ones on the mission, for one thing, and other people always have their own secrets and fates. The lives of the Roys, on Earth and beyond, contribute to a larger picture of humanity's attempt at galactic immortality through colonization, a high-risk venture that may or may not pay off. The whole manages to evoke some of the old-school sense of wonder without the old-school flatness of characters.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Leviathan Wakes (James S. A. Corey) - My Review
We Are Legion (We Are Bob) (Dennis E. Taylor) - My Review
Children of Time (Adrian Tchaikovsky) - My Review
Dogs of War (Adrian Tchaikovsky)
Dogs of War
The Dogs of War series, Book 1
Adrian Tchaikovsky
Head of Zeus
Fiction, Sci-Fi
***+ (Okay/Good)
DESCRIPTION: Rex runs. Rex hunts. Rex kills. Rex is a Good Dog. A canine Bioform, he is the leader of a mixed group of elite Bioform soldiers in the employ of the mercenary group Redmark, currently deployed in war-ravaged Mexico. With the bear-formed Honey, the lizard Dragon, and the many-bodied Bees, all linked through headware, he does everything his Master, a man named Murray, tells him to do. Honey sometimes voices doubts about their missions, but a Good Dog does not doubt, let alone disobey, his Master.
Then something goes terribly wrong, and he and his unit are alone in the countryside... where it becomes apparent that Murray may not be a Good Man.
What happens next, the choices Rex makes now and in the future, may determine the fates of not only his pack, but the rest of the world's many Bioforms, military or otherwise. But how is Rex supposed to know what the right thing to do is anymore, if he doesn't have a Master to tell him if he's being a Good Dog?
REVIEW: Dogs of War is a dark tale of a future where humans, having failed to properly control artificial intelligence in war robots, "uplift" animals in the form of altered Bioforms to do all the dangerous, inhumane tasks the robots used to do, particularly on the battlefield - providing one more layer of plausible deniability between commanders and war crimes. Rather than create a better world for all beings or even all people, everything just gets worse for everyone (except those at the top of the pyramid, as usual). Rotating points of view give the perspectives of humans and Rex, a dog who is trying very hard to be Good and struggles with the idea that a Master might be Bad. His growth is uneven and filled with setbacks, goaded on one end by the bear Honey, who understands far more than she lets on to anyone and tries to help him see the truth, and Murray, the Master he is intrinsically programmed to trust and obey. Meanwhile, the human world is its usual fickle, often short-sighted self, all too willing to see the worst in everything, even their own creations, and resent being forced to see just what they have done. Through this maze of ever-shifting public and political opinion, Rex must wend his way if he's to help secure a future for his kind.
While the ideas were interesting, and the plot not too predictable, sometimes Dogs of War felt a little long, like it was padded out to book length from a stronger, shorter work. There was also a plot twist that could've been set up a little more. On the whole, though, it's a decent, if sometimes bleak, story of war and how hope is too often throttled by baser elements of human nature.
You Might Also Enjoy:
WE3 (Grant Morrison) - My Review
War Girls (Tochi Onyebuchi) - My Review
Mort(e) (Robert Repino) - My Review
The Dogs of War series, Book 1
Adrian Tchaikovsky
Head of Zeus
Fiction, Sci-Fi
***+ (Okay/Good)
DESCRIPTION: Rex runs. Rex hunts. Rex kills. Rex is a Good Dog. A canine Bioform, he is the leader of a mixed group of elite Bioform soldiers in the employ of the mercenary group Redmark, currently deployed in war-ravaged Mexico. With the bear-formed Honey, the lizard Dragon, and the many-bodied Bees, all linked through headware, he does everything his Master, a man named Murray, tells him to do. Honey sometimes voices doubts about their missions, but a Good Dog does not doubt, let alone disobey, his Master.
Then something goes terribly wrong, and he and his unit are alone in the countryside... where it becomes apparent that Murray may not be a Good Man.
What happens next, the choices Rex makes now and in the future, may determine the fates of not only his pack, but the rest of the world's many Bioforms, military or otherwise. But how is Rex supposed to know what the right thing to do is anymore, if he doesn't have a Master to tell him if he's being a Good Dog?
REVIEW: Dogs of War is a dark tale of a future where humans, having failed to properly control artificial intelligence in war robots, "uplift" animals in the form of altered Bioforms to do all the dangerous, inhumane tasks the robots used to do, particularly on the battlefield - providing one more layer of plausible deniability between commanders and war crimes. Rather than create a better world for all beings or even all people, everything just gets worse for everyone (except those at the top of the pyramid, as usual). Rotating points of view give the perspectives of humans and Rex, a dog who is trying very hard to be Good and struggles with the idea that a Master might be Bad. His growth is uneven and filled with setbacks, goaded on one end by the bear Honey, who understands far more than she lets on to anyone and tries to help him see the truth, and Murray, the Master he is intrinsically programmed to trust and obey. Meanwhile, the human world is its usual fickle, often short-sighted self, all too willing to see the worst in everything, even their own creations, and resent being forced to see just what they have done. Through this maze of ever-shifting public and political opinion, Rex must wend his way if he's to help secure a future for his kind.
While the ideas were interesting, and the plot not too predictable, sometimes Dogs of War felt a little long, like it was padded out to book length from a stronger, shorter work. There was also a plot twist that could've been set up a little more. On the whole, though, it's a decent, if sometimes bleak, story of war and how hope is too often throttled by baser elements of human nature.
You Might Also Enjoy:
WE3 (Grant Morrison) - My Review
War Girls (Tochi Onyebuchi) - My Review
Mort(e) (Robert Repino) - My Review
The Smart Neanderthal (Clive Finlayson)
The Smart Neanderthal: Cave Art, Bird Catching, and the Cognitive Revolution
Clive Finlayson
Oxford University Press
Nonfiction, Anthropology/Archaeology/Nature
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: Popular culture has long relegated Neanderthals to the roles of dumb brutes who were outsmarted by the genetically and cognitively superior humans, leading to their extinction. Over the years, various criteria have been put forth to define the so-called "cognitive revolution", the traits that allowed our branch of the family tree to succeed where lesser hominins failed - traits that were generally considered beyond the supposedly slow, shambling Neanderthals. But more recent studies have turned these notions on their ear. For one thing, genetic evidence shows that there was significant interbreeding during the times when the theorized eradication was supposed to occur. For another, far from being our inferiors, the Neanderthals seem to have been our equals, perhaps our superiors, in some important ways. Author Clive Finlayson, an evolutionary biologist, draws on decades of research, both in the caves of Gibraltar and elsewhere where generations of the ancient human relatives lived and beyond in the natural world, to debunk a few particular common myths, with a special interest what the many bird bones found in the dwelling areas can tell us about the life and times of the Neanderthals.
REVIEW: Storytelling is one of our our species' strengths, a way to pass down knowledge and culture, but it can also be one of our weaknesses if the stories we tell, particularly about ourselves, are built on distortions and lies... and once a story takes hold, it can be very, very difficult to get us to revise the narrative. The story of our own origins is perhaps the most entrenched in our cultural consciousness. For a long time, it had everything people love in a story: a hero (us) facing monsters (those lowly, lesser hominin species, who surely must've been little better than base animals) and proving our inherent, even divinely-gifted superiority with victory over all comers. Even those who determined the "other" was not monstrous tended to show their extinction as sadly inevitable due to inherent flaws in their intellects, their brain shapes, their simple lack of being us. This book is not only an interesting update to outdated notions about "inferior" human ancestors (ones which, as he notes, bear reflections of how different H. sapiens groups belittle and malign others of our own species when cultures collide), but an exploration at how limiting it is to look at any one species in isolation. By looking at the other animal remains, particularly the birds, Finlayson recreates the shifting climates that the Neanderthals would've experienced as global conditions shifted, plus some eye-opening insights into how they must've lived and hunted and viewed the world. The author and his son travel to various regions, observing living birds and their habitats and learning how a primitive hominin might have hunted them. Certain species seem to have been taken not to eat, but for their feathers and talons (as evidenced by tool marks on wing bones and signs of polishing and shaping on the claws), hinting at minds that, far from being animalistic and brutish, could conceive of aesthetic decoration, abstract thought, and perhaps even spiritual notions. That this activity predates the arrival of "modern" humans in their regions nixes the idea that these were just learned and imitated from our "superior" ancestors. Through it all, the author's love of both Neanderthals and the natural world (which really are one and the same, all things considered, as we and other hominins are ultimately animals of Earth) shines clearly, an infectious enthusiasm.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Unbound (Richard L. Currier) - My Review
Last Ape Standing (Chip Walter) - My Review
Paleofantasy (Marlene Zuk) - My Review
Clive Finlayson
Oxford University Press
Nonfiction, Anthropology/Archaeology/Nature
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: Popular culture has long relegated Neanderthals to the roles of dumb brutes who were outsmarted by the genetically and cognitively superior humans, leading to their extinction. Over the years, various criteria have been put forth to define the so-called "cognitive revolution", the traits that allowed our branch of the family tree to succeed where lesser hominins failed - traits that were generally considered beyond the supposedly slow, shambling Neanderthals. But more recent studies have turned these notions on their ear. For one thing, genetic evidence shows that there was significant interbreeding during the times when the theorized eradication was supposed to occur. For another, far from being our inferiors, the Neanderthals seem to have been our equals, perhaps our superiors, in some important ways. Author Clive Finlayson, an evolutionary biologist, draws on decades of research, both in the caves of Gibraltar and elsewhere where generations of the ancient human relatives lived and beyond in the natural world, to debunk a few particular common myths, with a special interest what the many bird bones found in the dwelling areas can tell us about the life and times of the Neanderthals.
REVIEW: Storytelling is one of our our species' strengths, a way to pass down knowledge and culture, but it can also be one of our weaknesses if the stories we tell, particularly about ourselves, are built on distortions and lies... and once a story takes hold, it can be very, very difficult to get us to revise the narrative. The story of our own origins is perhaps the most entrenched in our cultural consciousness. For a long time, it had everything people love in a story: a hero (us) facing monsters (those lowly, lesser hominin species, who surely must've been little better than base animals) and proving our inherent, even divinely-gifted superiority with victory over all comers. Even those who determined the "other" was not monstrous tended to show their extinction as sadly inevitable due to inherent flaws in their intellects, their brain shapes, their simple lack of being us. This book is not only an interesting update to outdated notions about "inferior" human ancestors (ones which, as he notes, bear reflections of how different H. sapiens groups belittle and malign others of our own species when cultures collide), but an exploration at how limiting it is to look at any one species in isolation. By looking at the other animal remains, particularly the birds, Finlayson recreates the shifting climates that the Neanderthals would've experienced as global conditions shifted, plus some eye-opening insights into how they must've lived and hunted and viewed the world. The author and his son travel to various regions, observing living birds and their habitats and learning how a primitive hominin might have hunted them. Certain species seem to have been taken not to eat, but for their feathers and talons (as evidenced by tool marks on wing bones and signs of polishing and shaping on the claws), hinting at minds that, far from being animalistic and brutish, could conceive of aesthetic decoration, abstract thought, and perhaps even spiritual notions. That this activity predates the arrival of "modern" humans in their regions nixes the idea that these were just learned and imitated from our "superior" ancestors. Through it all, the author's love of both Neanderthals and the natural world (which really are one and the same, all things considered, as we and other hominins are ultimately animals of Earth) shines clearly, an infectious enthusiasm.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Unbound (Richard L. Currier) - My Review
Last Ape Standing (Chip Walter) - My Review
Paleofantasy (Marlene Zuk) - My Review
Wednesday, July 5, 2023
This Book Is Not Yet Rated (Peter Bognanni)
This Book Is Not Yet Rated
Peter Bognanni
Dial Books
Fiction, YA General Fiction/Humor
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: Since before he can reliably remember, Ethan Ashby has loved movies, thanks to his film professor father and the local Green Street Cinema. From obscure foreign films to modern popcorn flicks, there's nothing he won't watch. But it wasn't until his dad's unexpected death three years ago that his love became an obsession.
Now the de-facto manager of the Green Street after the old manager walked away (even though Ethan's only seventeen), he tells himself he's too busy to study for a second crack at the SATs and work on college admissions or do any of the things his mother keeps pushing him to do to "get on with life"... and, in truth, there's a lot to do at the decrepit old cinema, what with the worn-out seats and aging equipment and the rat issue, none of which help with declining ticket sales. Then a man shows up with eviction papers: the university that owns the land plans to demolish the place, and with it Ethan's last physical tie to his late father's legacy. Just when he's reeling from that, an old friend returns to town unexpectedly: Raina Allen, the girl he used to have a crush on until she was "discovered" and moved to Los Angeles to kick off a film career. He'd thought their friendship was over when she didn't even text him after his father died, but now she's asking about him, like she wants to mend bridges... or maybe more.
In the movies, there would surely be a way for the underdog hero Ethan Ashby to both save the Green Street Cinema and get the girl... but life is not a movie, not even for a young man who lives and breathes films.
REVIEW: The aging old grand dame filmhouse, the evil developer, the misfit employees, the one-time friend turned rising Hollywood starlet seeming to materialize at the exact right place and exact right time to fix everything wrong in the young main character's life... This Book Is Not Yet Rated has all the ingredients for a solid rom-com, a coming-of-age drama, a rebellious last stand against the inevitable March of Progress, a love letter to movies and movie lovers, or a dozen other familiar stories. This could result in a tangled mess, a forgettable flop, or - as is the case here - a story with humor, sadness, hope, and pain built around a surprisingly solid heart.
Interspersing the narrative with notes on films and film making, Ethan tells a story of what turns out to be a pivotal time in his life. When his father died, he lost all interest in his real life; despite graduating early, he has no interest in pursuing the higher education he once wanted - not even to pursue, like his father, an academic career studying films. Instead, he hides in movies of all stripes, even ones he doesn't necessarily like. Ethan can drop quotes from hundreds of iconic films, and does whenever he can't think of what else to say, another way he uses movies to shield himself from a world he can't always make sense of, let alone find a place in. Meanwhile, he's been the acting manager of the Green Street Cinema, the staff of which form the closest things to friends he has. They call him "Wendy", after the girl who becomes the impromptu "mother" to the Lost Boys in Peter Pan, and a peculiar collection of wayward souls they are indeed, all of whom seem like they'd be lost without the Green Street. At home, Ethan struggles to cope with a mother who seems intent on moving on and seeming to forget about the husband she lost, who even suggests that his love of movies and his job at the cinema are holding him back from his own healing. How can she not understand how his world fell apart when his dad died, how movies are literally his lifeline? When the eviction notice is delivered, it feels like his world is falling apart all over again... but when Raina returns, he sees a glimmer of hope. At one time, they were best friends. She even talked him into joining a theater group, though he was never interested in acting. Their relationship frayed and apparently disintegrated after she left town and started appearing in her own movies, to the point where she never even texted him condolences for his father's passing. Now that she's back, he has understandably mixed feelings - and when he realizes why she returned, those feelings get even more complicated. As he's dealing with her, and the re-ignition of the torch he carried for her, he's trying to figure out how to save the Green Street, and why nobody but the Lost Boys seems to care about the destruction of a local cinematic icon. It could all easily fall into stilted cliches and obvious plot points, but Bognanni manages to add more nuance and character development, as Ethan finally learns to see the world and the people around them for who they are; even the "evil developer" has a backstory worth knowing, and isn't some plot-shaped villain existing solely to goad the protagonist to heroism. Along the way, Ethan comes to realize just what it is he's really resisting, and what about it is worth fighting for versus what needs to be released, unless he wants the movie of his own life to be a sad and drifting tragedy.
I enjoyed it more than I expected, though I think the ending could've been a little stronger.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Borderline (Mishell Baker) - My Review
When Lightning Strikes (Brenda Novak) - My Review
Fan Fiction: A Mem-Noir (Brent Spiner) - My Review
Peter Bognanni
Dial Books
Fiction, YA General Fiction/Humor
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: Since before he can reliably remember, Ethan Ashby has loved movies, thanks to his film professor father and the local Green Street Cinema. From obscure foreign films to modern popcorn flicks, there's nothing he won't watch. But it wasn't until his dad's unexpected death three years ago that his love became an obsession.
Now the de-facto manager of the Green Street after the old manager walked away (even though Ethan's only seventeen), he tells himself he's too busy to study for a second crack at the SATs and work on college admissions or do any of the things his mother keeps pushing him to do to "get on with life"... and, in truth, there's a lot to do at the decrepit old cinema, what with the worn-out seats and aging equipment and the rat issue, none of which help with declining ticket sales. Then a man shows up with eviction papers: the university that owns the land plans to demolish the place, and with it Ethan's last physical tie to his late father's legacy. Just when he's reeling from that, an old friend returns to town unexpectedly: Raina Allen, the girl he used to have a crush on until she was "discovered" and moved to Los Angeles to kick off a film career. He'd thought their friendship was over when she didn't even text him after his father died, but now she's asking about him, like she wants to mend bridges... or maybe more.
In the movies, there would surely be a way for the underdog hero Ethan Ashby to both save the Green Street Cinema and get the girl... but life is not a movie, not even for a young man who lives and breathes films.
REVIEW: The aging old grand dame filmhouse, the evil developer, the misfit employees, the one-time friend turned rising Hollywood starlet seeming to materialize at the exact right place and exact right time to fix everything wrong in the young main character's life... This Book Is Not Yet Rated has all the ingredients for a solid rom-com, a coming-of-age drama, a rebellious last stand against the inevitable March of Progress, a love letter to movies and movie lovers, or a dozen other familiar stories. This could result in a tangled mess, a forgettable flop, or - as is the case here - a story with humor, sadness, hope, and pain built around a surprisingly solid heart.
Interspersing the narrative with notes on films and film making, Ethan tells a story of what turns out to be a pivotal time in his life. When his father died, he lost all interest in his real life; despite graduating early, he has no interest in pursuing the higher education he once wanted - not even to pursue, like his father, an academic career studying films. Instead, he hides in movies of all stripes, even ones he doesn't necessarily like. Ethan can drop quotes from hundreds of iconic films, and does whenever he can't think of what else to say, another way he uses movies to shield himself from a world he can't always make sense of, let alone find a place in. Meanwhile, he's been the acting manager of the Green Street Cinema, the staff of which form the closest things to friends he has. They call him "Wendy", after the girl who becomes the impromptu "mother" to the Lost Boys in Peter Pan, and a peculiar collection of wayward souls they are indeed, all of whom seem like they'd be lost without the Green Street. At home, Ethan struggles to cope with a mother who seems intent on moving on and seeming to forget about the husband she lost, who even suggests that his love of movies and his job at the cinema are holding him back from his own healing. How can she not understand how his world fell apart when his dad died, how movies are literally his lifeline? When the eviction notice is delivered, it feels like his world is falling apart all over again... but when Raina returns, he sees a glimmer of hope. At one time, they were best friends. She even talked him into joining a theater group, though he was never interested in acting. Their relationship frayed and apparently disintegrated after she left town and started appearing in her own movies, to the point where she never even texted him condolences for his father's passing. Now that she's back, he has understandably mixed feelings - and when he realizes why she returned, those feelings get even more complicated. As he's dealing with her, and the re-ignition of the torch he carried for her, he's trying to figure out how to save the Green Street, and why nobody but the Lost Boys seems to care about the destruction of a local cinematic icon. It could all easily fall into stilted cliches and obvious plot points, but Bognanni manages to add more nuance and character development, as Ethan finally learns to see the world and the people around them for who they are; even the "evil developer" has a backstory worth knowing, and isn't some plot-shaped villain existing solely to goad the protagonist to heroism. Along the way, Ethan comes to realize just what it is he's really resisting, and what about it is worth fighting for versus what needs to be released, unless he wants the movie of his own life to be a sad and drifting tragedy.
I enjoyed it more than I expected, though I think the ending could've been a little stronger.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Borderline (Mishell Baker) - My Review
When Lightning Strikes (Brenda Novak) - My Review
Fan Fiction: A Mem-Noir (Brent Spiner) - My Review
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