The month's reviews have been archived and cross-linked on the Main Brightdreamer Books site.
Enjoy!
Wednesday, July 31, 2024
Thursday, July 25, 2024
The Expanse: Dragon Tooth, Volume 2 (Andy Diggle)
The Expanse: Dragon Tooth, Volume 2
The Expanse: Dragon Tooth series, Issues 5 - 8
Andy Diggle and James S. A. Corey (creators), illustrations by Francesco Pisa
BOOM! Studios
Fiction, Graphic Novel/Media Tie-In/Sci-Fi
****+ (Good/Great)
DESCRIPTION: Ten years ago, the crew of the Rocinante took down Sohiro and his crew of Martian defectors - violent loyalists to the rogue Duarte, long vanished beyond the Laconia gate - in a devastating firefight... or so they believe. The agent known as Sohiro and his core crew managed to slip away, still pursuing their ultimate goal of reuniting with their leader and helping bring the rest of humanity and the ring gates to their knees.
As things slowly settle down across settled space, James Holden and his crew have moved on to less dangerous assignments than tracking pirates and "dragon tooth" sleeper agents. Now, they're helping a science team led by Dr. Elvi Okoye, late of Ilus, as she studies the still-mysterious properties of the ring gates themselves. But what should be a fairly routine experiment, placing probes about an active gate, takes a deadly turn when one of the scientists is found murdered.
REVIEW: With another time jump, the Dragon Tooth graphic novels continue their impressive expansion of the Expanse universe, bringing another adventure to the doorstep of the Rocinante. This outing is less about adrenaline-rush space battles (though there are a few bullets and explosions) and more about the science and the murder mystery, as well as the continuing arc about sleeper agents "Sohiro" and "Mayes" as they steadfastly continue their agendas despite no concrete evidence that Duarte even remembers them. Some other threads and character developments from the previous volume are also followed up on here, weaving stories that, along with continued excellence in artwork, still make me feel like I've watched new episodes of a show that remains a favorite of mine and a book series that's in the top tier. I'm looking forward to seeing where this is all going.
You Might Also Enjoy:
The Expanse: Dragon Tooth, Volume 1 (Andy Diggle) - My Review
To Be Taught, If Fortunate (Becky Chambers) - My Review
Ocean/Orbiter Deluxe Edition (Warren Ellis) - My Review
The Expanse: Dragon Tooth series, Issues 5 - 8
Andy Diggle and James S. A. Corey (creators), illustrations by Francesco Pisa
BOOM! Studios
Fiction, Graphic Novel/Media Tie-In/Sci-Fi
****+ (Good/Great)
DESCRIPTION: Ten years ago, the crew of the Rocinante took down Sohiro and his crew of Martian defectors - violent loyalists to the rogue Duarte, long vanished beyond the Laconia gate - in a devastating firefight... or so they believe. The agent known as Sohiro and his core crew managed to slip away, still pursuing their ultimate goal of reuniting with their leader and helping bring the rest of humanity and the ring gates to their knees.
As things slowly settle down across settled space, James Holden and his crew have moved on to less dangerous assignments than tracking pirates and "dragon tooth" sleeper agents. Now, they're helping a science team led by Dr. Elvi Okoye, late of Ilus, as she studies the still-mysterious properties of the ring gates themselves. But what should be a fairly routine experiment, placing probes about an active gate, takes a deadly turn when one of the scientists is found murdered.
REVIEW: With another time jump, the Dragon Tooth graphic novels continue their impressive expansion of the Expanse universe, bringing another adventure to the doorstep of the Rocinante. This outing is less about adrenaline-rush space battles (though there are a few bullets and explosions) and more about the science and the murder mystery, as well as the continuing arc about sleeper agents "Sohiro" and "Mayes" as they steadfastly continue their agendas despite no concrete evidence that Duarte even remembers them. Some other threads and character developments from the previous volume are also followed up on here, weaving stories that, along with continued excellence in artwork, still make me feel like I've watched new episodes of a show that remains a favorite of mine and a book series that's in the top tier. I'm looking forward to seeing where this is all going.
You Might Also Enjoy:
The Expanse: Dragon Tooth, Volume 1 (Andy Diggle) - My Review
To Be Taught, If Fortunate (Becky Chambers) - My Review
Ocean/Orbiter Deluxe Edition (Warren Ellis) - My Review
Saturday, July 20, 2024
Nettle and Bone (T. Kingfisher)
Nettle and Bone
T. Kingfisher
Tor
Fiction, Fantasy
***** (Great)
DESCRIPTION: In fairy tales, the princess who marries a prince gets a happy ending... but not Marra's sisters. As the third daughter of a minor king and queen, she watched as Mother sent eldest Damia off to marry Prince Vorling of the Northern Kingdom, there to secure peace for their own small nation - only for her to return in a funeral shroud not long after, victim of an unfortunate accident. When Marra's second sister, Kania, is sent to marry Vorling in Damia's place, Marra is packed off to a convent to serve the Lady of Grackles (and be kept safely out of the way, against future political need). But when she visits Kania years later for the birth of her neice, Marra realizes something is very, very wrong in the Northern Kingdom. Damia died of no accident, but was killed by her husband, and Kania will only last until she's delivered the male heir he needs... if that long. And if she fails, Mother will not hesitate to sacrifice Marra for the safety of their realm in yet another doomed marriage to an abusive and murderous man.
Eventually, she comes to one conclusion: the only way to secure the safety of her sister and herself is for Prince Vorling to die.
Thus, Marra sets out in secret from the convent, to find a witch to help her do what she cannot do herself. Her journey will take her to cursed lands and goblin markets, facing impossible challenges and unexpected dangers at every turn. Along the way, she might find the hero she needs - or she might find nothing but her own grave.
REVIEW: It's been a bit since I read a story that earned that elusive full fifth star in the ratings, with that little extra inexplicable click or spark that kicks it over the top. Nettle and Bone managed that feat, somehow packing a full novel's worth of story and character and worldbuilding and depth into fewer than 250 pages.
At the start, Marra is an atypical heroine for a fantasy story, for all that the reader first meets her in a bone pit wiring together dog bones while hiding from cursed cannibals. She's not a slim, beautiful princess, but a bit short and a bit round and a bit plain, plus more than a little sheltered, without the sass or pluck or inherent cleverness that would mark her for great things in other tales. Her relationships are complicated things, especially with her close family, and she struggles sometimes to reconcile how, for instance, a mother who loves her and her sisters can also callously slide them about the political game board, the good of their little kingdom always winning out. Marra tries to tell herself she's exempt from these manipulations, especially during her years of peace and simplicity at the convent; even when the full truth finally settles on her, seeping through naivete and ignorance and willful blindness to cruelties and truth she just does not want to believe, she clings to her own insignificance as an unattractive third daughter as proof against misfortune... but, even if she is safe (which she knows, deep down, she is not), she finds she cannot live with Kania's suffering at Vorling's hand. Nor is it so simple to just strike down Vorling through poison or a hired sword; he and his entire line are protected by birth gifts from a poweful godmother, far stronger than the one that blessed Marra's line (a fairly feeble gift of health, which clearly didn't do Damia much good against Vorling's rage). Thus begins her quest to find a way to circumvent the magic, a journey that brings her to the doorstep of an irascible bone-witch tending a long-forgotten graveyard with a demon-souled chicken as a familiar. Under pressure, Marra finds strength and determination as she's faced with three impossible tasks before the bone-witch will deign to help her, but that's just the beginning of a truly arduous journey. Victories are not easily gained, and even most of the way through she has no idea just how she's going to save Kania without dooming her own kingdom to the wrath of a much larger nation, but she manages to keep going, mostly because she has no other choice. Along the way, she gathers more sidekicks, including Bonedog (the dog made of silver-bound bones, as loyal a mutt as ever lived... or died... or lived again) and a disgraced knight of a distant land. Nobody is flat or obvious, their interactions interesting and sometimes quite fun and lively, nor is anyone beyond mistakes. Around them, an interesting world unfolds, some bits familiar from old fairy tales and others being unique, or at least assembled into something new and intriguing. There are a few sparks of romance, but nothing that comes to dominate the plot, as they all have much bigger issues to cope with. The tale unfolds without many obvious twists, all building to a solid and satisfying climax and resolution.
Despite a little initial wariness about the protagonist Marra, I was won over quickly enough. I can't think of a single quibble worth noting here, so I went ahead and crowned this book with the top rating.
You Might Also Enjoy:
A Spindle Splintered (Alix E. Harrow) - My Review
Thornhedge (T. Kingfisher) - My Review
The Girl Who Fell Beneath the Sea (Axie Oh) - My Review
T. Kingfisher
Tor
Fiction, Fantasy
***** (Great)
DESCRIPTION: In fairy tales, the princess who marries a prince gets a happy ending... but not Marra's sisters. As the third daughter of a minor king and queen, she watched as Mother sent eldest Damia off to marry Prince Vorling of the Northern Kingdom, there to secure peace for their own small nation - only for her to return in a funeral shroud not long after, victim of an unfortunate accident. When Marra's second sister, Kania, is sent to marry Vorling in Damia's place, Marra is packed off to a convent to serve the Lady of Grackles (and be kept safely out of the way, against future political need). But when she visits Kania years later for the birth of her neice, Marra realizes something is very, very wrong in the Northern Kingdom. Damia died of no accident, but was killed by her husband, and Kania will only last until she's delivered the male heir he needs... if that long. And if she fails, Mother will not hesitate to sacrifice Marra for the safety of their realm in yet another doomed marriage to an abusive and murderous man.
Eventually, she comes to one conclusion: the only way to secure the safety of her sister and herself is for Prince Vorling to die.
Thus, Marra sets out in secret from the convent, to find a witch to help her do what she cannot do herself. Her journey will take her to cursed lands and goblin markets, facing impossible challenges and unexpected dangers at every turn. Along the way, she might find the hero she needs - or she might find nothing but her own grave.
REVIEW: It's been a bit since I read a story that earned that elusive full fifth star in the ratings, with that little extra inexplicable click or spark that kicks it over the top. Nettle and Bone managed that feat, somehow packing a full novel's worth of story and character and worldbuilding and depth into fewer than 250 pages.
At the start, Marra is an atypical heroine for a fantasy story, for all that the reader first meets her in a bone pit wiring together dog bones while hiding from cursed cannibals. She's not a slim, beautiful princess, but a bit short and a bit round and a bit plain, plus more than a little sheltered, without the sass or pluck or inherent cleverness that would mark her for great things in other tales. Her relationships are complicated things, especially with her close family, and she struggles sometimes to reconcile how, for instance, a mother who loves her and her sisters can also callously slide them about the political game board, the good of their little kingdom always winning out. Marra tries to tell herself she's exempt from these manipulations, especially during her years of peace and simplicity at the convent; even when the full truth finally settles on her, seeping through naivete and ignorance and willful blindness to cruelties and truth she just does not want to believe, she clings to her own insignificance as an unattractive third daughter as proof against misfortune... but, even if she is safe (which she knows, deep down, she is not), she finds she cannot live with Kania's suffering at Vorling's hand. Nor is it so simple to just strike down Vorling through poison or a hired sword; he and his entire line are protected by birth gifts from a poweful godmother, far stronger than the one that blessed Marra's line (a fairly feeble gift of health, which clearly didn't do Damia much good against Vorling's rage). Thus begins her quest to find a way to circumvent the magic, a journey that brings her to the doorstep of an irascible bone-witch tending a long-forgotten graveyard with a demon-souled chicken as a familiar. Under pressure, Marra finds strength and determination as she's faced with three impossible tasks before the bone-witch will deign to help her, but that's just the beginning of a truly arduous journey. Victories are not easily gained, and even most of the way through she has no idea just how she's going to save Kania without dooming her own kingdom to the wrath of a much larger nation, but she manages to keep going, mostly because she has no other choice. Along the way, she gathers more sidekicks, including Bonedog (the dog made of silver-bound bones, as loyal a mutt as ever lived... or died... or lived again) and a disgraced knight of a distant land. Nobody is flat or obvious, their interactions interesting and sometimes quite fun and lively, nor is anyone beyond mistakes. Around them, an interesting world unfolds, some bits familiar from old fairy tales and others being unique, or at least assembled into something new and intriguing. There are a few sparks of romance, but nothing that comes to dominate the plot, as they all have much bigger issues to cope with. The tale unfolds without many obvious twists, all building to a solid and satisfying climax and resolution.
Despite a little initial wariness about the protagonist Marra, I was won over quickly enough. I can't think of a single quibble worth noting here, so I went ahead and crowned this book with the top rating.
You Might Also Enjoy:
A Spindle Splintered (Alix E. Harrow) - My Review
Thornhedge (T. Kingfisher) - My Review
The Girl Who Fell Beneath the Sea (Axie Oh) - My Review
Friday, July 19, 2024
Horizon (Scott Westerfield)
Horizon
The Horizon series, Book 1
Scott Westerfield
Scholastic
Fiction, MG Adventure/Horror/Sci-Fi
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: Boston middle-schoolers Molly, Javi, Anna, and Oliver are excited to travel to Japan to compete in the robot soccer world championships. Yoshi dreads reuniting with his stern father in Tokyo after a falling-out with his American mother. Twins Kira and Akiko are going home from a European boarding school. Caleb has his own reasons for being on the jet.
None of them make it to Japan.
As they are passing through the Arctic circle, something terrible and inexplicable happens to their plane, a bolt of energy that tears through the cockpit and cabin and rips the jetliner apart like so much cardboard in the sky. Only the eight kids are left by the time the battered wreck lands... not on Arctic ice, but in a tropical jungle that's like nothing they've ever heard of. The plants are more red than green, the wildlife's peculiar, and there's a bizarre artifact with strange properties among the wreckage. Where are they? What happened to their plane? And how are these eight kids, few of whom have any practical wilderness survival skills, ever going to get back home?
REVIEW: Yet another impulse borrow from Libby, Horizon promises adventure and danger and strange wonders, and delivers in full.
The core characters are part of a middle-school robotics team, turning their engineer mindsets to the bizarre landscape and its weird wonders and dangers, finding good use for their knowledge of physics, but there are some situations where the scientific method isn't practical. Yoshi's background has a few more practicalities, though it's his love of anime and manga that leads him to step up to the challenge, realizing that the first thing that you do when you find yourself in a strange world is secure your survival basics: food, shelter, and water. Caleb is clearly used to being a leader through physical presence alone, being the oldest and biggest of the survivors/castaways, though while he initially comes across as a "dumb jock" type of limited usefulness, he turns out to have needed skills, as do they all (well, almost all - Oliver, the youngest of the group, doesn't really have a particular talent, though his inclusion in the flight and ensuing disaster give his older robotics teammates something else to feel guilty about, as they're the ones who talked his protective parents into letting him come on the trip). The setup and the setting offer a nice, interesting, and dangerous challenge for the kids, an impossible tropical jungle that may not even be on Earth for all they can initially tell (the mystery of where they are is resolved in this book, though of course a lot more questions remain). Everywhere they turn they find new dangers and new strangeness, all of which sometimes feels like an intentional puzzle or test and sometimes feels like the evolutionary indifference to human survival that makes deep wilderness so inherently dangerous for the unprepared - such as kids who literally fell out of the sky into a jungle with little more than the clothes on their backs. Naturally, despite some friction and different ideas of how to proceed, everyone must come together to survive... and not all of them make it to the end of the book.
From a fairly quick start, the action and intrigue keep up to the very last page... a last page that promotes the associated Horizon app game. (I admit to smirking a bit as the audiobook faithfully read aloud the instructions for downloading and activating the game, including the copying of symbols in a particular sequence as seen on the printed page. C'mon, audiobook producers - did nobody honestly stop and think that maybe you could cut that useless bit out?) I came very close to adding an extra half-star, but there were a few places where Westerfield played coy with information and reveals that barely held it back (though the Good rating obviously means I still enjoyed it, of course). I expect I'll track down the next book in the series at some point, as I'm definitely curious about where things are going.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Alone (Megan E. Freeman) - My Review
Run (Patti Larsen) - My Review
The Transall Saga (Gary Paulsen) - My Review
Thursday, July 18, 2024
The Last Murder at the End of the World (Stuart Turton)
The Last Murder at the End of the World
Stuart Turton
Sourcebooks Landmark
Fiction, Literary/Mystery/Sci-Fi
*** (Okay)
DESCRIPTION: The world ended in an unstoppable mist that spread around the globe, full of glowing insects that devoured every living thing they touched. Now, only one island remains, a former military base turned elite science lab called Blackheath, protected by an energy barrier. A village of one hundred and twenty-two people manages to survive under the guidance of the last scientists, the "Elders", and the omnipresent artificial intelligence known as Abi, which sees into the villagers' thoughts and can even guide their actions or alter memories as needed. It is a peaceful life, without the conflicts and prejudices that so poisoned the old world.
Until the murder.
One morning, the villagers wake to find a fire in their village - and among the bodies is that of Neima, the oldest and most beloved of the Elders. Worse, none can remember what happened, though chaos throughout the village hints that something terrible indeed took place. At first glance, it looks like a tragic accident - but one villager, Emory, has spent her whole life asking questions, and she has questions aplenty about Neima's death. When the villagers learn that the barrier that held back the deadly mist has fallen with the scientist, the quest to find the killer and unravel the truth becomes even more urgent.
REVIEW: Another impulse borrow from Libby, the concept intrigued me, a post-apocalyptic sci-fi with a mystery plot. The execution, however, can waver, and it starts to lose its way toward the end.
Told from the omniscient viewpoint of Abi, the tale starts with a countdown to the potential extinction of the last humans, from those living on the island of Blackheath to the ones in stasis in the old bunkers underground. Despite being on a clock, though, the tale takes its time setting itself up, drifting through various characters as it shows the reader the world of the last living sanctuary on Earth. Just who or what created the deadly mist is never revealed, though there's a strong spiritual/religious vibe underneath things, a suggestion that the mist acted as a punishment against a world lost to madness and sin (and sucks to be any other animal on God's green earth). In the village, Neima has worked hard for over ninety years to create a little utopia for the villagers, who may not be entirely what they appear to be, though the other two scientists seem indifferent at best to the people, each with their own agendas that sometimes clash with Neima's visions. With her death, the island is thrown into chaos even before the villagers realize that the mist is slowly encroaching on their sanctuary.
The most pivotal character, Emory, is a villager who has never really fit in with her peers. Unlike the others, who are happy to follow orders and sacrifice themselves for the good of the many, Emory always asks questions, to the point where she's never found an occupation she can stick with longer than a few months. Even her apprenticeship to Elder Thea, who explores the wilderness beyond the boundaries of the village (boundaries that Abi enforces by literally taking control of the villagers and turning them around if they try to cross without an Elder's permission) for old relics and technology, where her questioning mind might have been put to decent use, ended in disappointment when she wouldn't blindly follow any instruction the Elder gave her and always had to know why. Neima, however, indulges her curiosities, and even lets her read from the handful of surviving fiction books, particularly mysteries (the other villagers have little interest in old-world stories, considering them too violent and "unbelievable" with how people treated each other). Thus, when a detective is finally needed at the end of the world, Emory is there to step up... not without significant resistance, though. It's only Abi's demand that Neima's murder be solved and the culprit named - the artificial intelligence's demand before overriding the scientist's "dead man's switch" that deactivated the barrier upon her death - that allows the village of born-and-bred sheep to tolerate her investigation. Of course, the investigation would not be necessary if Abi were a little more cooperative, but it has its own secret agenda that it alludes to frequently, constantly reminding the reader that it has a Big Plan and everything it's doing (or not doing), no matter how contradictory and how it seems suspiciously like actions meant to draw out a storyline, is in service to that Plan. It gets more than a touch irritating, like the guy sitting next to you as you read a book he's already read, smirking and winking and asking if you've figured out the twist or gotten to "that part - no hints, you'll know it" yet. In any event, Emory's investigation leads to many revelations about the nature of Blackheath, the villagers, and the scientists. It also leads to many meandering tangents and red herrings, several of which seem to emphasize just how superior to modern humanity this last tiny remnant of civilization has become, how all the horrors and tragedy of the mist must've been a fair price to pay for this little flock of holy sheep to find a new Eden. (Early on, Emory's father even carves a statue of the girl reaching for an apple off a tree, because apparently the reader had to be bludgeoned over the head with the Biblical symbolism.) I found myself not really liking the vast majority of the characters after a while, which was the point for a few of them but was probably not intended for so many of them... including Abi.
Anyway, things move along, sometimes at a decent pace with some solid investigation and interesting worldbuilding, sometimes less so as it starts to feel like everyone's running in circles and talking past each other (all with the big extinction clock ticking away in the background, which one would think would spark some slight urgency and compulsion to cooperate in even the most recalcitrant person, but apparently not), all of which feels unnecessarily complicated by Abi pulling everyone's strings (because of course the entity knows full well everything that's happened). The climax of the mystery and the encroachment of the fog coincide to a manufactured degree, and even then revelations are drawn out. The results of at least one of those incidents almost had me rolling my eyes at work. Afterwards, things trundle along toward a foregone conclusion of an epilogue that could've been worse.
The Last Murder at the End of the World has several points in its favor, with some nice ideas and some solid sleuthing (when it lets itself sleuth properly), but it also has some unfortunate word flab and unnecessarily heavy-handed Themes that held it down.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Arkhangelsk (Elizabeth Bonesteel) - My Review
Titanium Noir (Nick Harkaway) - My Review
Dreamsnake (Vonda N. McIntyre) - My Review
Stuart Turton
Sourcebooks Landmark
Fiction, Literary/Mystery/Sci-Fi
*** (Okay)
DESCRIPTION: The world ended in an unstoppable mist that spread around the globe, full of glowing insects that devoured every living thing they touched. Now, only one island remains, a former military base turned elite science lab called Blackheath, protected by an energy barrier. A village of one hundred and twenty-two people manages to survive under the guidance of the last scientists, the "Elders", and the omnipresent artificial intelligence known as Abi, which sees into the villagers' thoughts and can even guide their actions or alter memories as needed. It is a peaceful life, without the conflicts and prejudices that so poisoned the old world.
Until the murder.
One morning, the villagers wake to find a fire in their village - and among the bodies is that of Neima, the oldest and most beloved of the Elders. Worse, none can remember what happened, though chaos throughout the village hints that something terrible indeed took place. At first glance, it looks like a tragic accident - but one villager, Emory, has spent her whole life asking questions, and she has questions aplenty about Neima's death. When the villagers learn that the barrier that held back the deadly mist has fallen with the scientist, the quest to find the killer and unravel the truth becomes even more urgent.
REVIEW: Another impulse borrow from Libby, the concept intrigued me, a post-apocalyptic sci-fi with a mystery plot. The execution, however, can waver, and it starts to lose its way toward the end.
Told from the omniscient viewpoint of Abi, the tale starts with a countdown to the potential extinction of the last humans, from those living on the island of Blackheath to the ones in stasis in the old bunkers underground. Despite being on a clock, though, the tale takes its time setting itself up, drifting through various characters as it shows the reader the world of the last living sanctuary on Earth. Just who or what created the deadly mist is never revealed, though there's a strong spiritual/religious vibe underneath things, a suggestion that the mist acted as a punishment against a world lost to madness and sin (and sucks to be any other animal on God's green earth). In the village, Neima has worked hard for over ninety years to create a little utopia for the villagers, who may not be entirely what they appear to be, though the other two scientists seem indifferent at best to the people, each with their own agendas that sometimes clash with Neima's visions. With her death, the island is thrown into chaos even before the villagers realize that the mist is slowly encroaching on their sanctuary.
The most pivotal character, Emory, is a villager who has never really fit in with her peers. Unlike the others, who are happy to follow orders and sacrifice themselves for the good of the many, Emory always asks questions, to the point where she's never found an occupation she can stick with longer than a few months. Even her apprenticeship to Elder Thea, who explores the wilderness beyond the boundaries of the village (boundaries that Abi enforces by literally taking control of the villagers and turning them around if they try to cross without an Elder's permission) for old relics and technology, where her questioning mind might have been put to decent use, ended in disappointment when she wouldn't blindly follow any instruction the Elder gave her and always had to know why. Neima, however, indulges her curiosities, and even lets her read from the handful of surviving fiction books, particularly mysteries (the other villagers have little interest in old-world stories, considering them too violent and "unbelievable" with how people treated each other). Thus, when a detective is finally needed at the end of the world, Emory is there to step up... not without significant resistance, though. It's only Abi's demand that Neima's murder be solved and the culprit named - the artificial intelligence's demand before overriding the scientist's "dead man's switch" that deactivated the barrier upon her death - that allows the village of born-and-bred sheep to tolerate her investigation. Of course, the investigation would not be necessary if Abi were a little more cooperative, but it has its own secret agenda that it alludes to frequently, constantly reminding the reader that it has a Big Plan and everything it's doing (or not doing), no matter how contradictory and how it seems suspiciously like actions meant to draw out a storyline, is in service to that Plan. It gets more than a touch irritating, like the guy sitting next to you as you read a book he's already read, smirking and winking and asking if you've figured out the twist or gotten to "that part - no hints, you'll know it" yet. In any event, Emory's investigation leads to many revelations about the nature of Blackheath, the villagers, and the scientists. It also leads to many meandering tangents and red herrings, several of which seem to emphasize just how superior to modern humanity this last tiny remnant of civilization has become, how all the horrors and tragedy of the mist must've been a fair price to pay for this little flock of holy sheep to find a new Eden. (Early on, Emory's father even carves a statue of the girl reaching for an apple off a tree, because apparently the reader had to be bludgeoned over the head with the Biblical symbolism.) I found myself not really liking the vast majority of the characters after a while, which was the point for a few of them but was probably not intended for so many of them... including Abi.
Anyway, things move along, sometimes at a decent pace with some solid investigation and interesting worldbuilding, sometimes less so as it starts to feel like everyone's running in circles and talking past each other (all with the big extinction clock ticking away in the background, which one would think would spark some slight urgency and compulsion to cooperate in even the most recalcitrant person, but apparently not), all of which feels unnecessarily complicated by Abi pulling everyone's strings (because of course the entity knows full well everything that's happened). The climax of the mystery and the encroachment of the fog coincide to a manufactured degree, and even then revelations are drawn out. The results of at least one of those incidents almost had me rolling my eyes at work. Afterwards, things trundle along toward a foregone conclusion of an epilogue that could've been worse.
The Last Murder at the End of the World has several points in its favor, with some nice ideas and some solid sleuthing (when it lets itself sleuth properly), but it also has some unfortunate word flab and unnecessarily heavy-handed Themes that held it down.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Arkhangelsk (Elizabeth Bonesteel) - My Review
Titanium Noir (Nick Harkaway) - My Review
Dreamsnake (Vonda N. McIntyre) - My Review
Sunday, July 14, 2024
The Blighted Stars (Megan E. O'Keefe)
The Blighted Stars
The Devoured Worlds series, Book 1
Megan E. O'Keefe
Orbit
Fiction, Sci-Fi
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: The discovery of relkatite and its many properties - containing warp cores for interstellar starships, embedding enhancements in human bodies, even the ability to transfer the human mind into new "prints" - opened up the stars and potential immortality... and also created a new system of power with the MERIT clans at the top. As son and potential heir to clan leader Acaelus Mercator, Tarquin never felt at ease in the board room, preferring to hide away at universities studying geology. But then a former employee, Naira Sharp, leveled accusations at the Mercators about their fungal-based relkatite mining processes; she insisted that their proprietary fungus led directly to the spread of the shroud, a lichen that has devoured whole worlds and their ecosystems and leaves nothing behind. It's the sort of accusation that radicals known as Conservators have been bleating since the shroud first appeared, but never has anyone done as much damage or gone to such lengths as Sharp to prove it. Even though Sharp's case went nowhere and she herself was "iced", her neural map locked away, questions linger about what she said. Thus, Tarquin finds himself standing on the bridge of the Mercator mining vessel Amaranth as it approaches Sixth Cradle, the latest target for colonization and mining. As far as anyone knows, no human has set foot on this world, and it is here that the Mercators will prove once and for all that there is no connection between their canus fungus and shroud infestation. But things go wrong from the moment they drop into orbit. The shipboard AI malfunctions, their sister vessel Einkhorn fires upon them with no warning, then the body printers go rogue and spit out mindless, monstrous misprints that attack anything that moves. While Acaelus casts himself back to civilized space, sacrificing his current print body and a few recent memories, Tarquin is trapped and forced to flee planetside with a handful of survivors, including his father's chief bodyguard, Exemplar Lockhart... flee to a planet that, to Tarquin's horror, is already lost to the shroud.
Former Exemplar Naira Sharp gave up everything to try to get the truth out about Mercator and their dangerous mining techniques, and how they're literally killing entire worlds, including Earth. When Acaelus Mercator, her former employer, last put her under, he made unpleasant promises about her future, and she's worked for him long enough to know the man's brutal techniques, brutality that regularly breaks minds so traumatically that they can never be reprinted. Now, though, her friends in the Conservators must have managed to crack the company systems to get her neural map out, for she finds herself printed in the body of Exemplar Lockhart, Acaelus's current bodyguard... printed into a ship gone mad. She should be doing everything in her power to destroy the Amaranth, but in the chaos she ends up with Tarquin and a few others aboard a shuttle fleeing a vessel that is already doomed - and landing on a world where the shroud lichen has already devoured everything, though Mercator has only just arrived and not deployed its devouring fungal mining process yet.
They should be deadly enemies: the heir to the Mercator mining empire and the revolutionary who wants nothing more than to bring it all down. But on Sixth Cradle, they must work together to survive and begin to unravel truths that neither one suspected, truths that point to a danger so insidious that none suspected its presence - and it might already be too late to stop it.
REVIEW: I was intrigued by the concept, and I previously enjoyed O'Keefe's Protectorate trilogy, so I figured this one was worth a shot. While it did explore some interesting ideas and it never lacked for action, with things happening from the first page to the very last, it took quite a long time for the story to really grow on me, to the point where only the strong ending saved it from a lower rating.
From the start, of course, the reader is predisposed to suspect that there's more to the fungal mining and deadly lichen connection than the wealthy and powerful Mercator clan will admit. Family black sheep Tarquin is so convinced of Mercator's innocence that he comes back into the fold to prove it; it was his testimony that ultimately sealed rebel Naira Sharp's fate, though even he was a little unsettled by how sure she was in her claims, how much she'd sacrificed by turning against her former employer Acaelus to join the Conservators. He needs to prove to himself as much as the rest of humanity that the canus mining process is not at all linked to the unstoppable shroud lichen, a need strong enough that he came to Sixth Cradle with his father to oversee the start of a new mining venture... and when everything goes haywire, he defies his own father by staying behind to try rescuing the crew, Mercator employees and lower-ranked HCA members (who are paid less and who only rarely can afford the "phoenix fees" for reprinting if they die) alike - only to discover that the planet they flee to is essentially a dead world. But what should be a moment of vindication for him, seeming proof that the shroud was here before the canus fungus was deployed - soon becomes much more complicated, as he finds evidence of a greater puzzle and conspiracy at play. Through all this, he counts himself fortunate to have his father's steadfast bodyguard Exemplar Lockhart at his side - but there's something different about this print of Lockhart, and he starts developing feelings he knows he shouldn't have.
Naira, meanwhile, finds herself unexpectedly resurrected, presumably through the intervention of her rebel compatriots, and printed in a new body and identity, flung into a danger and a mystery that challenges everything she thought she knew about the blight that destroyed her world and countless others... and stuck with the very man whose courtroom testimony landed her in the cruel clutches of Acaelus Mercator, who was ruthless enough as an employer and absolutely brutal as a captor. She, too, finds her feelings toward Tarquin shifting in ways she didn't expect, a chemistry sparking between the two under extraordinary circumstances... and here I struggled to buy the budding romance. Too often, I wanted to shake them to get them back to matter of survival and the problem of the shroud and an invisible enemy that seems to be actively trying to kill them on a supposedly uninhabited planet. Their flirtations and feelings could shift back and forth at a moment's notice, to a distracting degree. It was only much, much later on, toward the end, that I started believing the attraction... when they'd actually invested enough time and energy into figuring out the bigger problems.
Back at Mercator Station, Acaelus Mercator is dealing with the mess that Sixth Cradle has become. Sacrificing the print aboard the doomed Amaranth means he lost memories - there are ties between printed bodies and memories that are not completely understood even by the originators of the tech, particularly how exceptionally traumatic deaths can permanently "crack" a neural map, but are occasionally exploited in the plot in interesting ways - but he knows something isn't right, even beyond the bizarre behavior of the Amaranth's sister ship Einkhorn. He is not the flat rich and powerful villain that one might expect, but has his own suspicions about what's going on, and his own incentive to figure things out; he just goes about his own investigations in a brutal and ruthless way, in keeping with his personality.
Eventually, the various threads come together in a decently powerful climax that resolves many mysteries, unmasks the real danger behind the threat, and sets up the next book in the series with some nice new twists. It was the strength of the final chapters that ultimately lifted the rating back up to four stars; the earlier parts, while never lacking in danger and twists and turns, sometimes felt like they were running frenetically in circles to give the impression of forward motion rather than actually moving anything ahead.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Velocity Weapon (Megan E. O'Keefe) - My Review
Shards of Earth (Adrian Tchaikovsky) - My Review
A Fire Upon the Deep (Vernor Vinge) - My Review
The Devoured Worlds series, Book 1
Megan E. O'Keefe
Orbit
Fiction, Sci-Fi
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: The discovery of relkatite and its many properties - containing warp cores for interstellar starships, embedding enhancements in human bodies, even the ability to transfer the human mind into new "prints" - opened up the stars and potential immortality... and also created a new system of power with the MERIT clans at the top. As son and potential heir to clan leader Acaelus Mercator, Tarquin never felt at ease in the board room, preferring to hide away at universities studying geology. But then a former employee, Naira Sharp, leveled accusations at the Mercators about their fungal-based relkatite mining processes; she insisted that their proprietary fungus led directly to the spread of the shroud, a lichen that has devoured whole worlds and their ecosystems and leaves nothing behind. It's the sort of accusation that radicals known as Conservators have been bleating since the shroud first appeared, but never has anyone done as much damage or gone to such lengths as Sharp to prove it. Even though Sharp's case went nowhere and she herself was "iced", her neural map locked away, questions linger about what she said. Thus, Tarquin finds himself standing on the bridge of the Mercator mining vessel Amaranth as it approaches Sixth Cradle, the latest target for colonization and mining. As far as anyone knows, no human has set foot on this world, and it is here that the Mercators will prove once and for all that there is no connection between their canus fungus and shroud infestation. But things go wrong from the moment they drop into orbit. The shipboard AI malfunctions, their sister vessel Einkhorn fires upon them with no warning, then the body printers go rogue and spit out mindless, monstrous misprints that attack anything that moves. While Acaelus casts himself back to civilized space, sacrificing his current print body and a few recent memories, Tarquin is trapped and forced to flee planetside with a handful of survivors, including his father's chief bodyguard, Exemplar Lockhart... flee to a planet that, to Tarquin's horror, is already lost to the shroud.
Former Exemplar Naira Sharp gave up everything to try to get the truth out about Mercator and their dangerous mining techniques, and how they're literally killing entire worlds, including Earth. When Acaelus Mercator, her former employer, last put her under, he made unpleasant promises about her future, and she's worked for him long enough to know the man's brutal techniques, brutality that regularly breaks minds so traumatically that they can never be reprinted. Now, though, her friends in the Conservators must have managed to crack the company systems to get her neural map out, for she finds herself printed in the body of Exemplar Lockhart, Acaelus's current bodyguard... printed into a ship gone mad. She should be doing everything in her power to destroy the Amaranth, but in the chaos she ends up with Tarquin and a few others aboard a shuttle fleeing a vessel that is already doomed - and landing on a world where the shroud lichen has already devoured everything, though Mercator has only just arrived and not deployed its devouring fungal mining process yet.
They should be deadly enemies: the heir to the Mercator mining empire and the revolutionary who wants nothing more than to bring it all down. But on Sixth Cradle, they must work together to survive and begin to unravel truths that neither one suspected, truths that point to a danger so insidious that none suspected its presence - and it might already be too late to stop it.
REVIEW: I was intrigued by the concept, and I previously enjoyed O'Keefe's Protectorate trilogy, so I figured this one was worth a shot. While it did explore some interesting ideas and it never lacked for action, with things happening from the first page to the very last, it took quite a long time for the story to really grow on me, to the point where only the strong ending saved it from a lower rating.
From the start, of course, the reader is predisposed to suspect that there's more to the fungal mining and deadly lichen connection than the wealthy and powerful Mercator clan will admit. Family black sheep Tarquin is so convinced of Mercator's innocence that he comes back into the fold to prove it; it was his testimony that ultimately sealed rebel Naira Sharp's fate, though even he was a little unsettled by how sure she was in her claims, how much she'd sacrificed by turning against her former employer Acaelus to join the Conservators. He needs to prove to himself as much as the rest of humanity that the canus mining process is not at all linked to the unstoppable shroud lichen, a need strong enough that he came to Sixth Cradle with his father to oversee the start of a new mining venture... and when everything goes haywire, he defies his own father by staying behind to try rescuing the crew, Mercator employees and lower-ranked HCA members (who are paid less and who only rarely can afford the "phoenix fees" for reprinting if they die) alike - only to discover that the planet they flee to is essentially a dead world. But what should be a moment of vindication for him, seeming proof that the shroud was here before the canus fungus was deployed - soon becomes much more complicated, as he finds evidence of a greater puzzle and conspiracy at play. Through all this, he counts himself fortunate to have his father's steadfast bodyguard Exemplar Lockhart at his side - but there's something different about this print of Lockhart, and he starts developing feelings he knows he shouldn't have.
Naira, meanwhile, finds herself unexpectedly resurrected, presumably through the intervention of her rebel compatriots, and printed in a new body and identity, flung into a danger and a mystery that challenges everything she thought she knew about the blight that destroyed her world and countless others... and stuck with the very man whose courtroom testimony landed her in the cruel clutches of Acaelus Mercator, who was ruthless enough as an employer and absolutely brutal as a captor. She, too, finds her feelings toward Tarquin shifting in ways she didn't expect, a chemistry sparking between the two under extraordinary circumstances... and here I struggled to buy the budding romance. Too often, I wanted to shake them to get them back to matter of survival and the problem of the shroud and an invisible enemy that seems to be actively trying to kill them on a supposedly uninhabited planet. Their flirtations and feelings could shift back and forth at a moment's notice, to a distracting degree. It was only much, much later on, toward the end, that I started believing the attraction... when they'd actually invested enough time and energy into figuring out the bigger problems.
Back at Mercator Station, Acaelus Mercator is dealing with the mess that Sixth Cradle has become. Sacrificing the print aboard the doomed Amaranth means he lost memories - there are ties between printed bodies and memories that are not completely understood even by the originators of the tech, particularly how exceptionally traumatic deaths can permanently "crack" a neural map, but are occasionally exploited in the plot in interesting ways - but he knows something isn't right, even beyond the bizarre behavior of the Amaranth's sister ship Einkhorn. He is not the flat rich and powerful villain that one might expect, but has his own suspicions about what's going on, and his own incentive to figure things out; he just goes about his own investigations in a brutal and ruthless way, in keeping with his personality.
Eventually, the various threads come together in a decently powerful climax that resolves many mysteries, unmasks the real danger behind the threat, and sets up the next book in the series with some nice new twists. It was the strength of the final chapters that ultimately lifted the rating back up to four stars; the earlier parts, while never lacking in danger and twists and turns, sometimes felt like they were running frenetically in circles to give the impression of forward motion rather than actually moving anything ahead.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Velocity Weapon (Megan E. O'Keefe) - My Review
Shards of Earth (Adrian Tchaikovsky) - My Review
A Fire Upon the Deep (Vernor Vinge) - My Review
Friday, July 12, 2024
An Elderly Lady Is Up to No Good (Helene Tursten)
An Elderly Lady Is Up to No Good
The Elderly Lady series, Book 1
Helene Tursten, translated by Marlaine Delargy
Soho Crime
Fiction, Collection/Humor/Mystery
*** (Okay)
DESCRIPTION: Maud may be nearing her ninth decade, and her hair may have long ago gone snow white, but she's still spry enough to travel, sharp enough to live alone, and clever enough to handle her own problems... even if solving them requires an inconvenient murder now and again. In this collection of short stories, Maud deals with a pushy neighbor, a greedy antiques dealer, and other difficulties.
REVIEW: The description sounded light and darkly amusing, a woman with serial killer tendencies who gets away with crime because nobody suspects the little old lady (a little old lady who can fake feeble-minded dithering and elderly infirmity well enough to fool trained detectives). The stories themselves, however, never really clicked for me, often feeling long and meandering and overstuffed with backstory, plus there's a certain sameness that settles in early on: Maud is quietly going about her own life when some irritation crops up, she decides murder is the easiest solution, she does the murder, and goes on with her life. (I don't consider it a spoiler when that's pretty much the description of the whole collection, any more than it's a spoiler in a Columbo episode who the murderer is.) The victims, of course, generally deserve punishment (even if murder is a bit intentionally extreme), so she's more or less doing Sweden a favor by dealing with them, but she doesn't feel a shred of remorse, or really much of anything beyond her own wants or needs. There's also a weird and unpleasant vibe to a couple of stories here that blunted the humor of the overall premise for me. The collection is exactly what it promises, but it just wasn't my cup of cocoa and I mostly just wanted it to end so I could get on to some other audiobook.
You Might Also Enjoy:
My Sister, the Serial Killer (Oyinkan Braithwaite) - My Review
Billy Summers (Stephen King) - My Review
Remarkably Bright Creatures (Shelby Van Pelt) - My Review
The Elderly Lady series, Book 1
Helene Tursten, translated by Marlaine Delargy
Soho Crime
Fiction, Collection/Humor/Mystery
*** (Okay)
DESCRIPTION: Maud may be nearing her ninth decade, and her hair may have long ago gone snow white, but she's still spry enough to travel, sharp enough to live alone, and clever enough to handle her own problems... even if solving them requires an inconvenient murder now and again. In this collection of short stories, Maud deals with a pushy neighbor, a greedy antiques dealer, and other difficulties.
REVIEW: The description sounded light and darkly amusing, a woman with serial killer tendencies who gets away with crime because nobody suspects the little old lady (a little old lady who can fake feeble-minded dithering and elderly infirmity well enough to fool trained detectives). The stories themselves, however, never really clicked for me, often feeling long and meandering and overstuffed with backstory, plus there's a certain sameness that settles in early on: Maud is quietly going about her own life when some irritation crops up, she decides murder is the easiest solution, she does the murder, and goes on with her life. (I don't consider it a spoiler when that's pretty much the description of the whole collection, any more than it's a spoiler in a Columbo episode who the murderer is.) The victims, of course, generally deserve punishment (even if murder is a bit intentionally extreme), so she's more or less doing Sweden a favor by dealing with them, but she doesn't feel a shred of remorse, or really much of anything beyond her own wants or needs. There's also a weird and unpleasant vibe to a couple of stories here that blunted the humor of the overall premise for me. The collection is exactly what it promises, but it just wasn't my cup of cocoa and I mostly just wanted it to end so I could get on to some other audiobook.
You Might Also Enjoy:
My Sister, the Serial Killer (Oyinkan Braithwaite) - My Review
Billy Summers (Stephen King) - My Review
Remarkably Bright Creatures (Shelby Van Pelt) - My Review
Thursday, July 11, 2024
Same as Ever (Morgan Housel)
Same as Ever: A Guide to What Never Changes
Morgan Housel
Portfolio
Nonfiction, Business/History/Human Psychology
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: It's not hard to find evidence that the world is going crazy lately. Political strife, income disparity, pandemics, floods of lies drowning truth and facts... the list goes on an on. While these are doubtless perilous times, they are far from entirely unprecedented. Business writer Morgan Housel digs into the past to put the present in perspective, finding a surprising number of basic ideas and truths that never seem to change.
REVIEW: With so much bombarding us with fear and gloom, this book seemed like a possible antidote for, or at least partial check on, the downward spiral. By looking back on other "unprecedented" times, Housel does indeed offer a bit of comfort (if mildly cold comfort; as much as pure pessimism is unwarranted, pure optimism's at least as self-deceptive) that what we're going through now isn't completely dissimilar to what humanity has gone through before. As the saying goes (often attributed to Samuel "Mark Twain" Clemens), history doesn't repeat itself, but it often rhymes. While the details and specifics vary, society's reactions and human psychology remain the same. Greed and innovation, ambition and caution, selflessness and selfishness, the attractiveness of a compelling but potentially misleading story over solid but uninteresting or intimidating truths, all these and more have followed our species since long before prehistory, and will almost certainly continue with us as long as our species persists; indeed, the author uses evolution to demonstrate several concepts he presents in this book, such as how generalism often beats out specialization and how niches are constantly in flux, no life form guaranteed a perpetual pass from needing to adapt or die.
Housel does not offer specific predictions, as there are too many variables and too many times major events have hinged on the unanticipated and unquantifiable, but offers ways to reframe one's viewpoint to a more rational and less reactionary stance. Yes, there are plenty of things to worry about, but there is also some valid cause for cautious optimism. The focus tends to be on the business and financial side of things, which does lend itself to a few potential blind spots (in particular, I think he glossed over the potential problems of environmental and climate shifts, not to mention future competition for fresh water on a scale I don't think our species has faced), plus he has a way of glossing over the very real pitfalls and long-term costs of poverty. Overall, though, Housel presents an interesting and well-researched call for, if not complete calm, at least some hesitation before chalking our world and civilization up as a lost cause.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Scatter, Adapt, and Remember (Annalee Newitz) - My Review
Cities (Monica L. Smith) - My Review
Soonish (Kelly and Zach Weinersmith) - My Review
Morgan Housel
Portfolio
Nonfiction, Business/History/Human Psychology
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: It's not hard to find evidence that the world is going crazy lately. Political strife, income disparity, pandemics, floods of lies drowning truth and facts... the list goes on an on. While these are doubtless perilous times, they are far from entirely unprecedented. Business writer Morgan Housel digs into the past to put the present in perspective, finding a surprising number of basic ideas and truths that never seem to change.
REVIEW: With so much bombarding us with fear and gloom, this book seemed like a possible antidote for, or at least partial check on, the downward spiral. By looking back on other "unprecedented" times, Housel does indeed offer a bit of comfort (if mildly cold comfort; as much as pure pessimism is unwarranted, pure optimism's at least as self-deceptive) that what we're going through now isn't completely dissimilar to what humanity has gone through before. As the saying goes (often attributed to Samuel "Mark Twain" Clemens), history doesn't repeat itself, but it often rhymes. While the details and specifics vary, society's reactions and human psychology remain the same. Greed and innovation, ambition and caution, selflessness and selfishness, the attractiveness of a compelling but potentially misleading story over solid but uninteresting or intimidating truths, all these and more have followed our species since long before prehistory, and will almost certainly continue with us as long as our species persists; indeed, the author uses evolution to demonstrate several concepts he presents in this book, such as how generalism often beats out specialization and how niches are constantly in flux, no life form guaranteed a perpetual pass from needing to adapt or die.
Housel does not offer specific predictions, as there are too many variables and too many times major events have hinged on the unanticipated and unquantifiable, but offers ways to reframe one's viewpoint to a more rational and less reactionary stance. Yes, there are plenty of things to worry about, but there is also some valid cause for cautious optimism. The focus tends to be on the business and financial side of things, which does lend itself to a few potential blind spots (in particular, I think he glossed over the potential problems of environmental and climate shifts, not to mention future competition for fresh water on a scale I don't think our species has faced), plus he has a way of glossing over the very real pitfalls and long-term costs of poverty. Overall, though, Housel presents an interesting and well-researched call for, if not complete calm, at least some hesitation before chalking our world and civilization up as a lost cause.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Scatter, Adapt, and Remember (Annalee Newitz) - My Review
Cities (Monica L. Smith) - My Review
Soonish (Kelly and Zach Weinersmith) - My Review
Wednesday, July 10, 2024
The Assassination of Brangwain Spurge (M. T. Anderson and Eugene Yelchin)
The Assassination of Brangwain Spurge
M. T. Anderson and Eugene Yelchin, illustratons by Eugene Yelchin
Candlewick
Fiction, YA? Fantasy/Humor
***+ (Okay/Good)
DESCRIPTION: The elf Brangwain Spurge was named for a weed, and his schoolmates and colleagues have never let him forget it. Like the weed, they consider him useless at best and a target at worst... until the Elf King needs an "ambassador" to take a special gift to the goblin kingdom, an overture of peace after their most recent war (and, not incidentally, do some light spying on the side), and historian Spurge's name comes up. This, at last, is his opportunity to prove himself, and become the first elf to set foot in the goblin capital city in ages. Unfortunately for him, his mission is really a ruse: the gift he's bringing has been bespelled, turning it into a bomb meant to assassinate King Ghohg the "Evil One" (and take out a good chunk of the capital city of Tenebrion, beyond the Bonecruel Mountains)... hopefully eliminating the expendable historian in the blast. All Spurge is told is that he's supposed to report back to the royal elfin secret police in the Order of the Clean Hand via magical messages, especially if he gets a chance to study the inner workings of the goblins' mysterious Well of Lightning that powers their magic.
In Tenebrion, the goblin archivist Werfel is beside himself with excitement. He, of all people, has been chosen to host and escort an elfin historian! This will surely be a landmark visit, a chance to establish true diplomatic ties and show the elves that, contrary to what they think, goblins have a rich and complex culture. Surely an educated man like this fellow Brangwain Spurge will be above the prejudices that have driven so much hatred and bloodshed, and together they can begin clearing away the centuries of lies and misunderstandings between their kingdoms. But the visit gets off on the wrong foot from the moment of the ambassador's disastrous arrival, and Spurge proves singularly uninterested in everything Werfel tries to share: the cuisine, the theater, the music, the art, not even the city's excellent history museums with the shed skins of goblin luminaries of ages past. (The elf even seems repulsed by how goblins save and treasure their old skins, the essence of a goblin's history. And he claims to be a historian!) If he messes up this most important mission, the goblin secret police will have him imprisoned, and King Ghohg will no doubt order his execution.
Little do either man know just what their seemingly ill-fated meeting will lead to, a snowballing cascade of mishaps and misunderstandings and betrayals that may end with both of their nations toppled and themselves killed very, very dead.
REVIEW: A humorous skewering of an age-old fantasy trope that asks pointed questions about where history ends and propaganda begins and whether truth can ever really be known once everyone has put their own spin on facts, this seemed like a fun, short story, if one clearly skewed heavily toward the silly end of the scale. Unfortunately, like Werfel's first encounter with Spurge, my encounter with The Assassination of Brangwain Spurge got off on the wrong foot when I chose the wrong medium - an audiobook - to explore what is actually a heavily illustrated short novel... one where entire illustrated chapters tell at least half of the story (a half that, focusing on Spurge's experiences and perceptions, conflicts greatly with the text, which is largely from Werfel's vantage point), and where the promised "bonus" PDF link with said illustrations was nowhere to be found until I did some serious digging around online for other sources.
Since my experience was mostly via Werfel's tale, with a few missives from an elf in the Order of the Clean Hand (who was a former school bully of unpopular Spurge), I came into the story predisposed to side with the goblins. The archivist's excitement at meeting an elfin colleague and hopes for world-changing success are almost immediately dashed as Spurge turns out to be a singularly unlikable and utterly undiplomatic jerk who is determined to offend and belittle and reject everyone and everything Werfel introduces him to. He never even tries being neutral or even simply polite. The image-based messages Spurge sends back to the Order of the Clean Hand reflect his perceptions of the goblins and their city as grotesquely monstrous entities, which doesn't exactly help present him as remotely sympathetic (even though I didn't actually see said images or messages until long after I'd listened to the audiobook at work). I got very annoyed by how Werfel kept going out of his way to extend the elf credit where none was due, risking his own reputation and honor and even life to defend a man determined to ruin his life and any proper chance for peaceful, diplomatic ties... except when he didn't and was merely in over his head, whiplash moments that never really tracked even in a plot as inherently silly as this. Further and further Werfel and his beloved bat-winged and betentacled pet get pulled into deeper and deeper trouble while Spurge cluelessly (or maliciously? It's hard to believe even the silliest elf can't recognize some of the lines he's deliberately stepping over... I was half-expecting him to wipe his rear with his host's old skins, and he wouldn't have even pretended it was a faux pas) makes everything worse for the both of them. It's only much, much later that things get so intolerably bad for them that Spurge finally, belatedly begins to get the slenderest microfiber of a clue and return some of the loyalty Werfel has been demonstrating all along, eventually stepping up to the challenges of the problems he helped create (and/or was too dumbly blinded by his own race's propaganda-littered idea of history to begin to see as it developed). Along the way, the authors work in some sharp observations and commentary on how prejudices and injustices are intentionally perpetuated by a handful of power holders, which the majority pay for in their own blood and lives whenever things boil over. Things eventually come to a reasonably satisfactory ending.
While there are many points to appreciate in this tale, and elements that came close to raising the rating, ultimately my too-long frustration with Spurge (and also with Werfel for bending himself into a goblin pretzel trying to excuse the elf's rude and moronic misbehavior and deliberate disparaging of all things goblin - and I'm well aware that's a goodly portion of the point of the book, though there comes a time when a point becomes less a point and more a skull-crushing sledgehammer) held things down.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Nobody Likes a Goblin (Ben Hatke) - My Review
Goblin Quest (Jim C. Hines) - My Review
The Color of Magic (Terry Pratchett) - My Review
M. T. Anderson and Eugene Yelchin, illustratons by Eugene Yelchin
Candlewick
Fiction, YA? Fantasy/Humor
***+ (Okay/Good)
DESCRIPTION: The elf Brangwain Spurge was named for a weed, and his schoolmates and colleagues have never let him forget it. Like the weed, they consider him useless at best and a target at worst... until the Elf King needs an "ambassador" to take a special gift to the goblin kingdom, an overture of peace after their most recent war (and, not incidentally, do some light spying on the side), and historian Spurge's name comes up. This, at last, is his opportunity to prove himself, and become the first elf to set foot in the goblin capital city in ages. Unfortunately for him, his mission is really a ruse: the gift he's bringing has been bespelled, turning it into a bomb meant to assassinate King Ghohg the "Evil One" (and take out a good chunk of the capital city of Tenebrion, beyond the Bonecruel Mountains)... hopefully eliminating the expendable historian in the blast. All Spurge is told is that he's supposed to report back to the royal elfin secret police in the Order of the Clean Hand via magical messages, especially if he gets a chance to study the inner workings of the goblins' mysterious Well of Lightning that powers their magic.
In Tenebrion, the goblin archivist Werfel is beside himself with excitement. He, of all people, has been chosen to host and escort an elfin historian! This will surely be a landmark visit, a chance to establish true diplomatic ties and show the elves that, contrary to what they think, goblins have a rich and complex culture. Surely an educated man like this fellow Brangwain Spurge will be above the prejudices that have driven so much hatred and bloodshed, and together they can begin clearing away the centuries of lies and misunderstandings between their kingdoms. But the visit gets off on the wrong foot from the moment of the ambassador's disastrous arrival, and Spurge proves singularly uninterested in everything Werfel tries to share: the cuisine, the theater, the music, the art, not even the city's excellent history museums with the shed skins of goblin luminaries of ages past. (The elf even seems repulsed by how goblins save and treasure their old skins, the essence of a goblin's history. And he claims to be a historian!) If he messes up this most important mission, the goblin secret police will have him imprisoned, and King Ghohg will no doubt order his execution.
Little do either man know just what their seemingly ill-fated meeting will lead to, a snowballing cascade of mishaps and misunderstandings and betrayals that may end with both of their nations toppled and themselves killed very, very dead.
REVIEW: A humorous skewering of an age-old fantasy trope that asks pointed questions about where history ends and propaganda begins and whether truth can ever really be known once everyone has put their own spin on facts, this seemed like a fun, short story, if one clearly skewed heavily toward the silly end of the scale. Unfortunately, like Werfel's first encounter with Spurge, my encounter with The Assassination of Brangwain Spurge got off on the wrong foot when I chose the wrong medium - an audiobook - to explore what is actually a heavily illustrated short novel... one where entire illustrated chapters tell at least half of the story (a half that, focusing on Spurge's experiences and perceptions, conflicts greatly with the text, which is largely from Werfel's vantage point), and where the promised "bonus" PDF link with said illustrations was nowhere to be found until I did some serious digging around online for other sources.
Since my experience was mostly via Werfel's tale, with a few missives from an elf in the Order of the Clean Hand (who was a former school bully of unpopular Spurge), I came into the story predisposed to side with the goblins. The archivist's excitement at meeting an elfin colleague and hopes for world-changing success are almost immediately dashed as Spurge turns out to be a singularly unlikable and utterly undiplomatic jerk who is determined to offend and belittle and reject everyone and everything Werfel introduces him to. He never even tries being neutral or even simply polite. The image-based messages Spurge sends back to the Order of the Clean Hand reflect his perceptions of the goblins and their city as grotesquely monstrous entities, which doesn't exactly help present him as remotely sympathetic (even though I didn't actually see said images or messages until long after I'd listened to the audiobook at work). I got very annoyed by how Werfel kept going out of his way to extend the elf credit where none was due, risking his own reputation and honor and even life to defend a man determined to ruin his life and any proper chance for peaceful, diplomatic ties... except when he didn't and was merely in over his head, whiplash moments that never really tracked even in a plot as inherently silly as this. Further and further Werfel and his beloved bat-winged and betentacled pet get pulled into deeper and deeper trouble while Spurge cluelessly (or maliciously? It's hard to believe even the silliest elf can't recognize some of the lines he's deliberately stepping over... I was half-expecting him to wipe his rear with his host's old skins, and he wouldn't have even pretended it was a faux pas) makes everything worse for the both of them. It's only much, much later that things get so intolerably bad for them that Spurge finally, belatedly begins to get the slenderest microfiber of a clue and return some of the loyalty Werfel has been demonstrating all along, eventually stepping up to the challenges of the problems he helped create (and/or was too dumbly blinded by his own race's propaganda-littered idea of history to begin to see as it developed). Along the way, the authors work in some sharp observations and commentary on how prejudices and injustices are intentionally perpetuated by a handful of power holders, which the majority pay for in their own blood and lives whenever things boil over. Things eventually come to a reasonably satisfactory ending.
While there are many points to appreciate in this tale, and elements that came close to raising the rating, ultimately my too-long frustration with Spurge (and also with Werfel for bending himself into a goblin pretzel trying to excuse the elf's rude and moronic misbehavior and deliberate disparaging of all things goblin - and I'm well aware that's a goodly portion of the point of the book, though there comes a time when a point becomes less a point and more a skull-crushing sledgehammer) held things down.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Nobody Likes a Goblin (Ben Hatke) - My Review
Goblin Quest (Jim C. Hines) - My Review
The Color of Magic (Terry Pratchett) - My Review
Friday, July 5, 2024
The Survivors of the Chancellor (Jules Verne)
The Survivors of the Chancellor: Diary of J. R. Kazallon, Passenger
Jules Verne
Tantor Audio
Fiction, Adventure/Thriller
***+ (Okay/Good)
DESCRIPTION: In late September of 1869, Mr. Kazallon sought passage from South Carolina across the Atlantic to Liverpool - and, on a whim, decided to forego the newer steam liners in favor of an older sailing ship. He had a favorable impression of the vessel Chancellor in the harbor, and though Captain Huntly might not have been the most inspiring leader, First Mate Curtis seemed more than capable. Thus, on the 27th, Kazallon and seven other passengers, as well as a crew of twenty, set forth to cross the ocean.
They would not see land again for over seventy days... and some would never see land at all.
From the start, a dark star seems to hang over the voyage when Huntly inexplicably steers the Chancellor south, toward the Caribbean, rather than northeast toward England. From there, troubles compound through fire, storm, mutiny, and worse, until Kazallon's whim in the harbor seems more like a curse, or even a death wish.
REVIEW: It's been a bit since I tried a classic, and I do try to vary my reading diet (audiobooks count as reading), so I figured I'd try this title. Jules Verne is known more for his classic titles that are considered foundational science fiction, but this has little of the fantastical about it, being a straight-up, if harrowing, tale of a disaster at sea.
It starts a trifle slow (not unusual for its era) as the narrator Kazallon describes the ship and names his fellow passengers and some of the more notable crewmen. From the start, it forebodes trouble with his less than favorable impression of Captain Huntly, a man who seems listless or perhaps on the verge of some mental collapse; his decision to sail a ship bound for England south from South Carolina is but the first in a string of questionable decisions, though First Mate Curtis refuses to step in unless the vessel is actually endangered by the captain. At first, it seems like Huntly's unusual navigational choices aren't enough to do lasting harm, or might actually be part of some real agenda by the man; they're almost to a port in the Caribbean when the first disaster - a fire in the cotton bales that form the bulk of the cargo - flares up, quickly followed by a storm, and things only get worse from there. Throughout the disasters, Kazallon records the events and how the various people - crew and passenger alike - either rise to the occasion or sink into their own despair. The pacing is, as mentioned, of its era, and between bursts of high drama and action things slow down somewhat as everyone is forced to deal with the aftermath and brace for whatever is to come next... and there is indeed always something else coming next, either from the world at large or from fractures forming among themselves.
For all that things move reasonably well, Verne's prose bringing to life in fine detail the terror and the misery of the ill-fated voyage, it can't help being of its era. There are a total of two women on board, a wealthy oil magnate's wife and a young attendant, who embody the too-common ways women in older fiction are so often reduced to caricatures or icons - the petty, spoiled and shrewish "demon" versus the young and comely and endlessly faithful and patient "angel" - rather than actual people, to the point where I wonder if Verne or other authors actually conversed much with those beyond their own gender or saw them as some vaguely related other species whose ways and minds were unknowable. A few other unfortunate stereotypes permeate the cast, too. Toward the end, Verne seems to be mostly twisting the knife as the situation becomes more and more dire among the dwindling number of survivors, and a few elements had a touch of illogic or plot convenience about them (which I won't venture into because they might constitute spoilers). I also found the very ending and wrap-up a touch rushed, all negatives enough to shave a half-point off the rating.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Adrift (Paul Griffin) - My Review
Lifeboat 12 (Susan Hood) - My Review
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (Jules Verne) - My Review
Jules Verne
Tantor Audio
Fiction, Adventure/Thriller
***+ (Okay/Good)
DESCRIPTION: In late September of 1869, Mr. Kazallon sought passage from South Carolina across the Atlantic to Liverpool - and, on a whim, decided to forego the newer steam liners in favor of an older sailing ship. He had a favorable impression of the vessel Chancellor in the harbor, and though Captain Huntly might not have been the most inspiring leader, First Mate Curtis seemed more than capable. Thus, on the 27th, Kazallon and seven other passengers, as well as a crew of twenty, set forth to cross the ocean.
They would not see land again for over seventy days... and some would never see land at all.
From the start, a dark star seems to hang over the voyage when Huntly inexplicably steers the Chancellor south, toward the Caribbean, rather than northeast toward England. From there, troubles compound through fire, storm, mutiny, and worse, until Kazallon's whim in the harbor seems more like a curse, or even a death wish.
REVIEW: It's been a bit since I tried a classic, and I do try to vary my reading diet (audiobooks count as reading), so I figured I'd try this title. Jules Verne is known more for his classic titles that are considered foundational science fiction, but this has little of the fantastical about it, being a straight-up, if harrowing, tale of a disaster at sea.
It starts a trifle slow (not unusual for its era) as the narrator Kazallon describes the ship and names his fellow passengers and some of the more notable crewmen. From the start, it forebodes trouble with his less than favorable impression of Captain Huntly, a man who seems listless or perhaps on the verge of some mental collapse; his decision to sail a ship bound for England south from South Carolina is but the first in a string of questionable decisions, though First Mate Curtis refuses to step in unless the vessel is actually endangered by the captain. At first, it seems like Huntly's unusual navigational choices aren't enough to do lasting harm, or might actually be part of some real agenda by the man; they're almost to a port in the Caribbean when the first disaster - a fire in the cotton bales that form the bulk of the cargo - flares up, quickly followed by a storm, and things only get worse from there. Throughout the disasters, Kazallon records the events and how the various people - crew and passenger alike - either rise to the occasion or sink into their own despair. The pacing is, as mentioned, of its era, and between bursts of high drama and action things slow down somewhat as everyone is forced to deal with the aftermath and brace for whatever is to come next... and there is indeed always something else coming next, either from the world at large or from fractures forming among themselves.
For all that things move reasonably well, Verne's prose bringing to life in fine detail the terror and the misery of the ill-fated voyage, it can't help being of its era. There are a total of two women on board, a wealthy oil magnate's wife and a young attendant, who embody the too-common ways women in older fiction are so often reduced to caricatures or icons - the petty, spoiled and shrewish "demon" versus the young and comely and endlessly faithful and patient "angel" - rather than actual people, to the point where I wonder if Verne or other authors actually conversed much with those beyond their own gender or saw them as some vaguely related other species whose ways and minds were unknowable. A few other unfortunate stereotypes permeate the cast, too. Toward the end, Verne seems to be mostly twisting the knife as the situation becomes more and more dire among the dwindling number of survivors, and a few elements had a touch of illogic or plot convenience about them (which I won't venture into because they might constitute spoilers). I also found the very ending and wrap-up a touch rushed, all negatives enough to shave a half-point off the rating.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Adrift (Paul Griffin) - My Review
Lifeboat 12 (Susan Hood) - My Review
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (Jules Verne) - My Review
Wednesday, July 3, 2024
Inkling (Kenneth Oppel)
Inkling
Kenneth Oppel
HarperCollins
Fiction, MG Fantasy/Humor
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: Ethan Rylance's mother passed away two years go, and nothing has gone right since. His father used to be one of the most sought-after comic book creators in the industry, but he hasn't touched his pens since Mom died, and some days can't be bothered to climb out of bed, let alone deal with his children. Ethan's kid sister Sarah, who has Down syndrome, struggles to process her grief and needs more care than a sixth-grade boy can provide. Now, his English class is doing graphic novels as a group project and everyone expects him to do the artwork; given how great his dad is (or was), surely Ethan must be kidding when he insists that he can barely draw a stick figure, though Dad barely had time to try teaching his son art before Mom's death and certainly doesn't have the time or patience now. The Rylances are stuck in a downward spiral of grief and anger... until something strange happens.
One night, the ink from Mr. Rylance's sketchbook comes to life and escapes the pages that trapped it. It feeds on ink and can draw just about anything, and it quickly becomes young Ethan's lifeline when he realizes that it can help him ink a graphic novel that will knock the socks off his entire class. But when other people learn of Inkling and its amazing abilities, Ethan will learn the hard way just how much responsibility comes with a special friend like the living blob of ink... and how much damage it can do if it falls into the wrong hands.
REVIEW: Starring a boy mired in grief and anger and worry over a father who seems to have given up on life and a lively little sapient blob of ink, Inkling uses art and humor to explore grief, hope, and creativity, as well as the dangers of artificial "creativity" that isn't really creative (read: the current flood of theft-based AI). From the moment Inkling escapes the sketchbook, it knows deep down it has a purpose, a reason it leapt to life, though it's very easily distracted by all the wonderful, tasty ink in the Rylance household, learning to "speak" by devouring books and learning art by absorbing (and erasing) illustrations and comic books and any other printed matter it encounters. When Ethan discovers it, and realizes that it can generate art and not just absorb it, he considers it an answer to his prayers: his teammates in English class have been pestering him for his art contributions to their graphic novel project, refusing to believe him when he says that stick figures are the best he can manage (his father was not the most patient teacher even before Mom's death, and since then can barely muster the energy to get through a day out of bed, if that much), and he's been putting them off as long as possible. True, he's supposed to be doing the art himself and Inkling is basing itself heavily on his father's style, but it's not really cheating, is it? He did do the storyboarding with his stick figures for layouts, so Inkling is just sort of helping him out, right? It's not until a friend asks to use Inkling to help him on a history test - absorb his notes and regurgitate answers onto the test page - that Ethan realizes the risks in relying on Inkling so heavily. But by then Sarah has discovered the living ink blob - calling "her" Lucy and insisting it's the pet dog their father has never let them get - and soon Ethan's own father learns what Inkling can do. It feels like the little blob is getting the whole family unstuck from where it's been after Ethan's Mom died, but instead it becomes another crutch... and when someone outside the family and Ethan's friend discovers the little blob, the stakes get a lot higher a lot quicker. The classmate involved isn't a bully or evil, though; she's the daughter of Ethan's dad's publisher, whose business is struggling as their lead creator hasn't produced new works in two years, to the point where she fears they'll lose their home. After all, if Ethan can cheat by having Inkling do all his work for him, why can't her dad use Inkling to do the work that Ethan's dad won't do and save the publishing company? As Ethan works to reclaim his friend, his family must finally confront the grief that has been slowly smothering the life out of them all.
The story moves briskly and is fun, with some deep and emotional moments along with the humor and lightness, as well as a clear appreciation for comic books and human creativity. It also serves as a warning about soulless, derivative AI works pumped out for profit that short-circuit the whole process and completely misunderstand what it is that people enjoy about art and stories, and why people feel the inherent need to create at all. I thought a couple subplots needed a little more fleshing out or resolution, and part of it feels like it wanted to be part one of a longer series, but on the whole it was quite satisfying.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Wolfwood (Marianna Baer) - My Review
Jeremy Thatcher, Dragon Hatcher (Bruce Coville) - My Review
Behind the Canvas (Alexander Vance) - My Review
Kenneth Oppel
HarperCollins
Fiction, MG Fantasy/Humor
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: Ethan Rylance's mother passed away two years go, and nothing has gone right since. His father used to be one of the most sought-after comic book creators in the industry, but he hasn't touched his pens since Mom died, and some days can't be bothered to climb out of bed, let alone deal with his children. Ethan's kid sister Sarah, who has Down syndrome, struggles to process her grief and needs more care than a sixth-grade boy can provide. Now, his English class is doing graphic novels as a group project and everyone expects him to do the artwork; given how great his dad is (or was), surely Ethan must be kidding when he insists that he can barely draw a stick figure, though Dad barely had time to try teaching his son art before Mom's death and certainly doesn't have the time or patience now. The Rylances are stuck in a downward spiral of grief and anger... until something strange happens.
One night, the ink from Mr. Rylance's sketchbook comes to life and escapes the pages that trapped it. It feeds on ink and can draw just about anything, and it quickly becomes young Ethan's lifeline when he realizes that it can help him ink a graphic novel that will knock the socks off his entire class. But when other people learn of Inkling and its amazing abilities, Ethan will learn the hard way just how much responsibility comes with a special friend like the living blob of ink... and how much damage it can do if it falls into the wrong hands.
REVIEW: Starring a boy mired in grief and anger and worry over a father who seems to have given up on life and a lively little sapient blob of ink, Inkling uses art and humor to explore grief, hope, and creativity, as well as the dangers of artificial "creativity" that isn't really creative (read: the current flood of theft-based AI). From the moment Inkling escapes the sketchbook, it knows deep down it has a purpose, a reason it leapt to life, though it's very easily distracted by all the wonderful, tasty ink in the Rylance household, learning to "speak" by devouring books and learning art by absorbing (and erasing) illustrations and comic books and any other printed matter it encounters. When Ethan discovers it, and realizes that it can generate art and not just absorb it, he considers it an answer to his prayers: his teammates in English class have been pestering him for his art contributions to their graphic novel project, refusing to believe him when he says that stick figures are the best he can manage (his father was not the most patient teacher even before Mom's death, and since then can barely muster the energy to get through a day out of bed, if that much), and he's been putting them off as long as possible. True, he's supposed to be doing the art himself and Inkling is basing itself heavily on his father's style, but it's not really cheating, is it? He did do the storyboarding with his stick figures for layouts, so Inkling is just sort of helping him out, right? It's not until a friend asks to use Inkling to help him on a history test - absorb his notes and regurgitate answers onto the test page - that Ethan realizes the risks in relying on Inkling so heavily. But by then Sarah has discovered the living ink blob - calling "her" Lucy and insisting it's the pet dog their father has never let them get - and soon Ethan's own father learns what Inkling can do. It feels like the little blob is getting the whole family unstuck from where it's been after Ethan's Mom died, but instead it becomes another crutch... and when someone outside the family and Ethan's friend discovers the little blob, the stakes get a lot higher a lot quicker. The classmate involved isn't a bully or evil, though; she's the daughter of Ethan's dad's publisher, whose business is struggling as their lead creator hasn't produced new works in two years, to the point where she fears they'll lose their home. After all, if Ethan can cheat by having Inkling do all his work for him, why can't her dad use Inkling to do the work that Ethan's dad won't do and save the publishing company? As Ethan works to reclaim his friend, his family must finally confront the grief that has been slowly smothering the life out of them all.
The story moves briskly and is fun, with some deep and emotional moments along with the humor and lightness, as well as a clear appreciation for comic books and human creativity. It also serves as a warning about soulless, derivative AI works pumped out for profit that short-circuit the whole process and completely misunderstand what it is that people enjoy about art and stories, and why people feel the inherent need to create at all. I thought a couple subplots needed a little more fleshing out or resolution, and part of it feels like it wanted to be part one of a longer series, but on the whole it was quite satisfying.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Wolfwood (Marianna Baer) - My Review
Jeremy Thatcher, Dragon Hatcher (Bruce Coville) - My Review
Behind the Canvas (Alexander Vance) - My Review
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