Their Fractured Light (Amie Kaufman and Meagan Spooner)

Their Fractured Light
The Starbound trilogy, Book 3
Amie Kaufman and Meagan Spooner
Little, Brown Books
Fiction, YA Romance/Sci-Fi
*** (Okay)

DESCRIPTION: A year ago, the infamous Avon Broadcast broke the news that galactic megacorporation LaRoux Industries was conducting monstrous, inhumane experiments through the enslavement of hyperspace alien entities known as the "whispers", not just on the backwater planet Avon but everywhere. With them, Roderick LaRoux can turn any human into a mindless slave, making average people into cold-blooded mass murderers. Yet nobody listens - well, almost nobody...
Sophia grew up on Avon, one of the oppressed colonist natives who witness firsthand the horrors of LaRoux's meddling: in the blink of an eye, it turned her loving father into a mindless suicide bomber. Thus began a single-minded pursuit, through a series of petty cons and stolen identities, all to make the man responsible, tycoon Roderick LaRoux, pay. She might have succeeded by now had she not somehow picked up a shadow, the notorious hacker known as the Knave of Hearts, who seems to have made it a personal project to chase her out of every haven she finds.
Gideon has his own bone to pick with the LaRoux family: his brother, Simon, was a childhood playmate of Roderick's pampered daughter Lilac - only to be sent off on a suicide mission when he developed feelings for her. He developed his online persona, the Knave of Hearts, to uncover the truth behind LaRoux Industries and expose Roderick and Lilac for the heartless monsters they are. When the Avon Broadcast went out, he listened - and now, he's hunting down a rogue commander who enabled Roderick's atrocities on that world.
When Sofia and Gideon meet at a LaRoux gala, they find themselves thrown together when their covers are about to be blown... and witness a horror beyond either of their reckoning. For Roderick LaRoux is on the verge of literal galactic conquest - and only one con girl and one hacker stand in his way.

REVIEW: I didn't expect to enjoy the first book in the series, but it won me over. Likewise, the second book, while composed of some rather familiar parts (and set in a future that still felt a little too contemporary in many ways), was decent. So I came to this volume with high hopes - hopes, unfortunately, that were dashed by the end.
At first, Their Fractured Light starts off on the right note. Taking up about a year after the end of the previous volume, it doesn't spend too much time rehashing as it plunges into the story. Being a romance, of course, there are sparks from the start, and the only real question is when, not if, they recognize their mutual attraction. (Being a young adult romance, there's also an extra dollop of angst surrounding their feelings, exacerbated by both being so enmeshed in their own lies that true feelings hardly stand a chance of taking root.) There's action, there's tension, there's back-and-forth banter, there's betrayal, while over it all looms the specter of Roderick LaRoux as the untouchable supervillain. So far, so good. But then the story brings back the couples from the previous books, and Gideon and Sofia's tale gets overwhelmed. Tarver and Lilac in particular come to dominate the story, especially when Lilac's previous encounters with the whispers makes her central to the unfolding plot - a plot which may have gone beyond even Roderick's ability to control. And here is where the book really starts nose-diving, as it becomes a jumble of too many characters and too much action, in which the ostensible stars are just two more game pieces on the board. The angst ramps up to 11, and the plot goes from interesting to contrived. (I can't get into specifics without spoilers, but I'll just say that the retroactive revelation that some "choices" weren't conscious choices at all... it really robbed the story and the characters.) Then the final stretch decides to turn the entire arc into a Lesson about faith.
Yes, faith.
The whole Starbound trilogy, the galaxy-spanning struggle of six young adults against the machinations of one monstrous man, the astonishing revelation that humanity is not alone... all of it was just a framework for a lesson about faith. I honestly just stared at the pages when I realized this, completely kicked out of the story as my jaw dropped. And then it ends, in a way that feels especially contrived and (skirting spoilers) pulled its punch when it came to one of the key elements driving the entire plot. It also somehow avoided directly confronting how so much of this misery was created by one man's determination that he owned his little girl, like a doll to be played with and kept on the shelf.
Ultimately, what had been an unexpectedly intersting melding of young adult romance, science fiction, and action utterly disintegrates by the final chapters, drowned in a treacle-soaked Lesson.

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These Broken Stars (Amie Kaufman and Meagan Spooner) - My Review
Starflight (Melissa Landers) - My Review
ExtraNormal (Suze Reese) - My Review

Growing Gills (Jessica Abel)

Growing Gills: How to Find Your Creative Focus When You're Drowning in Your Daily Life
Jessica Abel
Independently published
Nonfiction, Creativity/Self-Help

DESCRIPTION: Many people have creative goals: becoming a published author, showing paintings in an art gallery, producing a screenplay, even just making a little extra time for that woodworking hobby. But real life always gets in the way; unless you live in a hut in the desert with a donkey, there's always someone demanding your time, or a job that sucks all your energy, or other complications. Maybe you'll get to it next month, or two years from now, or after the kids get out of high school, or when your wife retires... yet it doesn't happen, and it's making you miserable. Creativity is a vital part of living, but too many people push it aside for other concerns that always seem more pressing. Like every working creator, Jessica Abel knows all too well how easy it is to fall into the traps set by life, and by ourselves. In this book, she explains why we so often give up on our creative goals and what we can do about it - all without having to buy a donkey.

REVIEW: This self-help book blends elements of Julia Cameron's creative advice books with concepts of scheduling and time management to create a realistic, practical, and ultimately flexible method for reclaiming one's time and one's life. She speaks as one who has "been there, done that" on being artistically stuck and confused. Key elements involve paying attention to what one is actually doing with one's time (to see where creativity could fit into one's schedule; most of us have filler habits, like mindless social media scrolling, that could be greatly condensed or even eliminated to free up space) and focusing on one goal at a time - clear goals, with definable finish lines, not nebulous notes to "write more" or "do something arty." The book includes access to a free digital workbook to download and print out; I'll confess I did not finish that, in part because my printer is being obnoxious about working with my new computer (and also admittedly in part because of a bad procrastination habit.) Overall, though, Abel's approach and advice are sound and easily customizable to most living situations.

You Might Also Enjoy:
The Artist's Way Starter Kit (Julia Cameron) - My Review
The Myth of Multitasking (Dave Crenshaw) - My Review
Finishing School (Cary Tennis and Danelle Morton) - My Review

Pulp (Ed Brubaker)

Pulp
Ed Brubaker, illustrations by Sean Phillips and Jacob Phillips
Image Comics
Fiction, Action/Graphic Novel/Historical Fiction/Western
**** (Good)

DESCRIPTION: In 1930's New York City, aging Max Winters scrapes a living by churning out pulp western adventures - adventures loosely inspired by his own youth as a wild and wanted man. But time moves on, and even that meager source of income dries up, just as his heart starts to give out. On the verge of a desperate act, he runs into another relic from the past, a retired Pinkerton agent with an audacious plan. Does Max still have a little gunslinger left in him, or are those days well and truly dead?

REVIEW: This is a dark little story, a noir-tinged look at a man taking one last desperate grab at balancing the scales and leaving a worthwhile legacy in a world where the bad guys all too often win. Setting the tale in 1930's New York City, as too many Americans think of Hitler's rise as just a problem "over there" while Nazis proudly march in city streets and spread regime propaganda, has eerie resonance today. There's really only one way a story like this can end, but Max at least makes the most of it. A decent, if sad, graphic novel.

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The Discovery of Dragons (Graeme Base)

The Discovery of Dragons: New Research Revealed
Graeme Base (a.k.a Rowland W. Greasebeam, B.Sc.)
Harry N. Abrams
Fiction, CH Fantasy/Humor/Picture Book
**** (Good)

DESCRIPTION: In this eleventh-anniversary edition (because only sad, money-grubbing fools push a tenth-anniversary edition), noted and dubious Professor Greasebeam presents the written accounts of four (yes, four) pioneers of serpentology, whose often-accidental discoveries contributed so much to the field. From the Viking sailor Bjorn of Bromme to failed conquistador Francisco de Nuevo, from remote Asia to the Canadian woods, travel the world and witness the wonders of dragons.

REVIEW: I was doing some shelf-tidying and realized I had never gotten around to reviewing this book, so I'm rectifying that oversight now. From the first page, Base establishes a firmly tongue-in-cheek overtone, a tone reinforced not only by the whimsical main illustrations, but by running illustrated journals at the bottom of each page, following the (mis)adventures of the entirely fictitious explorers. One might be tempted to see this as a knockoff of the wildly popular Dragonology books (by "Dr. Ernest Drake", or rather Dugald A. Steer), but those were actually released in 2006, ten years after the original edition of The Discovery of Dragons; this version, with an added section on New World dragons, was released in 2007. In truth, they're a bit apples-and-oranges. The Dragonology books draw on real-world mythology and have an overall more serious, if still child-friendly, tone, while Base has no such pretensions; even his fictitious persona Greasebeam is basically admitting the whole thing is a joke, with very little resemblance to actual dragon lore in the dubious written accounts. There are some unfortunate stereotypes repeated, if intentionally exaggerated for humorous effect, but overall it's clearly meant to be taken lightly. It makes a fun counterpoint to the mythical field guide genre that has become so popular and which can sometimes take itself a bit too seriously.

You Might Also Enjoy:
Dr. Ernest Drake's Dragonology ("Dr. Ernest Drake") - My Review
Dragons: Truth, Myth and Legend (David Passes) - My Review
How to Raise and Keep a Dragon ("John Topsell") - My Review

August Site Update

The previous five reviews have been archived and cross-linked on the main Brightdreamer Books site.

Enjoy!