Number6's Journal

Oh, and...

2017-12-31T19:53:38Z

Happy birthday liabrown!!

Last Book Foo of 2017

2017-12-31T19:52:30Z

Okay, I really need to start doing these more often. Then again not many people read these.

Normally, I'd basically copy and paste my Goodreads reviews here, maybe with a couple additional comments, but... you know what, I'm exhausted today. I blame 2017. Anyway, instead, I'm just going to link directly to the Goodreads reviews of the books since last time, in case you're interested in checking them out, along with maybe a couple words.

Glass Houses by Laura J. Mixon - Okay
Roadside Picnic by Boris and Arkady Strugatsky - better in description than reality.
Borrowed Tides by Paul Levinson - Awful, complete garbage, more fun writing the review complaining about how stupid it was than reading it.
Bird Box by Josh Malerman - Really good concept, decent execution
Waking Hell by Al Robertson - Good sequel-not-really-but-set-in-the-same-world
Cyberabad Days by Ian McDonald - Interesting set of short stories
Limit of Vision by Linda Nagata (reread)
Every Heart a Doorway by Seanan McGuire - Really great concept, but really needed to be longer so there was time to breathe.
Altered Carbon by Richard K. Morgan (reread)
The Trader's War by Charles Stross
Broken Angels by Richard K. Morgan (reread)
All the Birds in the Sky by Charlie Jane Anders - very much Not My Thing
When Gravity Fails by George Alec Effinger (reread)
A Fire in the Sun by George Alec Effinger (reread)
Afterparty by Daryl Gregory (reread) - Liked it as much or more the second time
The Dream-Quest of Vellitt Boe by Kij Johnson
The Exile Kiss by George Alec Effinger (reread)
Impulse by Steven Gould (reread)
Woken Furies by Richard K. Morgan (reread)
Strangers Among Us: Tales of the Underdogs and Outcasts (short stories) - Like the concept of SF stories centered around mental illness, a few seemed to miss the point.
Last Year by Robert Charles Wilson - Not Wilson's best, but I always enjoy his work.
Uglies by Scott Westerfield - Good start to a YA series.
The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger - Pretty good.
Camouflage by Joe Haldeman (reread) - Much iffier than I remember.
The Revolution Trade by Charles Stross
Spin State by Chris Moriarty (reread)
The Weave by Nancy Jane Moore - Has some elements I don't particularly like in my SF so was only okay.
Pandemonium by Daryl Gregory - Pretty cool idea and well told story.
Spin Control by Chris Moriarty (reread) - not especially exciting but relentlessly interesting
Tech-Heaven by Linda Nagata - really disappointing book from an author I normally really enjoy.
Children of the Divide by Patrick S. Tomlinson
Ghost Spin by Chris Moriarty
Exo by Steven Gould (reread)
The Uploaded by Ferrett Steinmetz
Rewired: The Post-Cyberpunk Anthology (short stories) - Pretty good set of stories.
The Waking Engine by David Edison - Disappointing but the author's got potential.
Island in the Sea of Time by S.M. Stirling (reread)
Provenance by Ann Leckie - Loved the first 2/3, last 1/3 felt a bit disconnected. Still cool stuff.
Dawn by Octavia E. Butler - Classic SF for a reason, great alien-human interaction story.
The Girl With All the Gifts by M.R. Carey - Watched the movie first, book's very similar, still enjoyed it
Firestarter by Stephen King (reread)
Expendable by James Alan Gardner - liked the high concept behind the universe but the humor aspect wore thin as it went on.
Artemis by Andy Weir - Decent, but doesn't hold a candle to The Martian. And you shouldn't be lighting a candle anyway on the Moon or Mars unless you're very careful and have clearance.
Barbary Station by R.E. Stearns - Lesbian pirates of color vs a murderous AI? Some really good stuff but something about the writing style made it difficult for me.
Babylon's Ashes by James S.A Corey - Enjoyed it but the ending felt a bit too abrupt.
A Woman of the Iron People by Eleanor Arnason - Good anthropological SF, but dragged a bit.
The Wrong Stars by Tim Pratt - Disappointing, loads of stuff I normally love in SF but just couldn't take it seriously for the most part, felt like TV SF in book form.
Against the Tide of Years by S.M. Stirling (reread)
On the Oceans of Eternity by S.M. Stirling (reread)
Schismatrix Plus by Bruce Sterling - Okay, but not nearly as good as the short story that made me want to read all the stuff in the universe.
The Big Time by Fritz Leiber (reread) - Old fashioned, a bit awkward, but some mindblowing ideas about time-travel.

Now for my YEAR IN REVIEW!
So, in 2017, I read 75 books! Same as last year, that may be my limit. Goodreads counts that as 29,726 pages, or 3.393 pages every hour I was alive, or one page every 17.7 minutes. Again, mostly read while at work, walking to/from work, or doing laundry.

I do think I'm going to consciously try to read less next year. Just because I got the sense that I was rushing some of the books just to keep on track, rather than savoring them at their own pace, and having time where I'm not reading but just thinking of my own ideas can't hurt. Okay, that could hurt, but I don't expect it to hurt much. Don't have a number per se, but just to keep it in mind. But it's not a New Year's resolution because I don't make those.

01. ...?
02. The Prefect by Alastair Reynolds

03. Jumper by Steven Gould (reread)
04. The John Varley Reader by John Varley
05. Fire with Fire by Charles E. Gannon
06. Crisis in Urlia by Karl Schroeder
07. The Courier by Gerald Brandt
08. Ready Player One by Ernest Cline
09. Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky
10. Constellation Games by Leonard Richardson
11. The Operative by Gerald Brandt
12. Rise: A Newsflesh Collection by Mira Grant
13. The Stars Are Legion by Karmeon Hurley
14. The Bloodline Feud by Charles Stross
15. Nexus by Ramez Naam (reread)
16. A Fire Upon the Deep by Vernor Vinge (reread)
17. Hanzai Japan: Fantastical, Futuristic Stories of Crime From and About Japan (short stories)
18. Six Wakes by Mur Lafferty
19. The Wind Through The Keyhole by Stephen King
20. A Deepness in the Sky by Vernor Vinge (reread)
21. Lightless by C.A. Higgins
22. Toast and Other Stories by Charles Stross
23. The Last One by Alexandra Oliva
24. Year's Best SF 9 (short fiction) (reread)
25. Glass Houses by Laura J. Mixon
26. Roadside Picnic by Boris and Arkady Strugatsky
27. Borrowed Tides by Paul Levinson
28. Bird Box by Josh Malerman
29. Waking Hell by Al Robertson
30. Cyberabad Days by Ian McDonald
31. Limit of Vision by Linda Nagata (reread)
32. Every Heart a Doorway by Seanan McGuire
33. Altered Carbon by Richard K. Morgan (reread)
34. The Trader's War by Charles Stross
35. Broken Angels by Richard K. Morgan (reread)
36. All the Birds in the Sky by Charlie Jane Anders
37. When Gravity Fails by George Alec Effinger (reread)
38. A Fire in the Sun by George Alec Effinger (reread)
39. Afterparty by Daryl Gregory (reread)
40. The Dream-Quest of Vellitt Boe by Kij Johnson
41. The Exile Kiss by George Alec Effinger (reread)
42. Impulse by Steven Gould (reread)
43. Woken Furies by Richard K. Morgan (reread)
44. Strangers Among Us: Tales of the Underdogs and Outcasts (short stories)
45. Last Year by Robert Charles Wilson
46. Uglies by Scott Westerfield
47. The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
48. Camouflage by Joe Haldeman (reread)
49. The Revolution Trade by Charles Stross
50. Spin State by Chris Moriarty (reread)
51. The Weave by Nancy Jane Moore
52. Pandemonium by Daryl Gregory
53. Spin Control by Chris Moriarty (reread)
54. Tech-Heaven by Linda Nagata
55. Children of the Divide by Patrick S. Tomlinson
56. Ghost Spin by Chris Moriarty
57. Exo by Steven Gould (reread)
58. The Uploaded by Ferrett Steinmetz
59. Rewired: The Post-Cyberpunk Anthology (short stories)
60. The Waking Engine by David Edison
61. Island in the Sea of Time by S.M. Stirling (reread)
62. Provenance by Ann Leckie
63. Dawn by Octavia E. Butler
64. The Girl With All the Gifts by M.R. Carey
65. Firestarter by Stephen King (reread)
66. Expendable by James Alan Gardner
67. Artemis by Andy Weir
68. Barbary station by R.E. Stearns
69. Babylon's Ashes by James S.A Corey
70. A Woman of the Iron People by Eleanor Arnason
71. The Wrong Stars by Tim Pratt
72. Against the Tide of Years by S.M. Stirling (reread)
73. On the Oceans of Eternity by S.M. Stirling (reread)
74. Schismatrix Plus by Bruce Sterling

75. The Big Time by Fritz Leiber (reread)

... Okay, making this list (I did it from the bottom up), I just realized, that Goodreads counted Altered Carbon twice for some reason. But you know what, several of those Charles Stross books were actually two books combined into one. So I'm calling it 75 anyway, just pretending I split up one, because if I knew I was one behind, I'd have chosen a couple shorter books to make it up. So there, Goodreads. :P The total page read count is probably about 300-400 pages less, too. Oh well.

Anyway, trends: 23 rereads, which is almost 1/3. The rest were new books. 4 Multi-author short fiction collections, which means 71/70 single-author books. 19 books by women based on a quick count, so still want to get things more even there.

My favorite non-reread was probably Constellation Games by Leonard Richardson. The most-popular book I read was The Time Traveler's Wife.

Suddenly catless

2017-09-06T13:25:39Z

My cat died yesterday.

The last time I had a cat die (about 2 years ago), it was expected, he was gradually getting sicker and listless and then for a few days was having difficulty moving at all and we'd scheduled a vet appointment but prepared that we might have to put him to sleep (or surrender custody so he could get care we couldn't afford), and then he died before the appointment.

This time, he was doing mostly fine, he was still an older cat, but he was active and seemed happy and healthy (I had, earlier that morning, thought about how he was looking thinner than he should be considering how he eats regularly but I wasn't thinking of it as an immediate danger considering his otherwise good health), and even just hours before he was trying to hop up to beg for human food (I use the word 'trying' not because he had difficulties, but because it was too high for a simple hop and he knew he wasn't allowed anyway so he'd just raise his front paws as far as he could to beg and hope for a chance later to steal some off an unattended plate). Then, when it came time for his evening feeding of wet food, my brother found him lying dead on the kitchen floor. No idea what caused it. Probably never will. We were both stunned and wrecked... we were the first time, too, but, we could console ourselves with the fact that he was older and declining health and at least wasn't suffering any more. And we had another cat to take care of. This time there's none of that (except, possibly he's not suffering if there was an issue that we just weren't aware of) so there's just shock and wondering if we could have done something to accidentally cause it or didn't do something to prevent it. Slept like crap last night because of it, and woke up missing him more because I always fed him after waking up and he was always waiting for me to do so. Instead today have to go to deal with the body before work.

Goodbye Deacon, rest in peace.

2017 First Book Foo

2017-05-06T17:48:20Z

Wow, it's been a while. Nothing's really new, the world is still generally awful lately and my life's about the same but with a recent blast of extra blah. But let's do the book foo I've fallen way behind on, maybe if I don't preamble too much I can get it all to fit in one post.

Finished: The Prefect, by Alastair Reynolds
In The Prefect, cops who monitor the thousands of independent habitats around a distant planet investigate a pair of seemingly unrelated crimes... but they may be part of a larger pattern that would lead to the takeover of the entire Glitter Band.

While I do like some of Alastair Reynolds' work, his Revelation Space universe (of which this is a part) is somewhat hit or miss. Luckily, this is one of the hits... in fact, it may be my favorite of the novels in that universe.

It's not eye-bogglingly awesome, but it is overall well-paced and fun, and plenty of intriguing ideas about different ways of living, mediated by technology, and I was entertained all the way through.

There are a few flaws, but they're rather minor. There are times when characters act incredibly stupid just to push the plot along a little longer, and I feel like some of the connections to the rest of the universe, outside of the setting itself, seemed a little on the forced side, included more as fanservice than that they were really necessary.

Still, I was quite fond of it on the whole, and as I understand it one of Reynolds' upcoming projects is a sequel to this... I think I'd be looking forward to that.

Finished: Jumper, by Steven Gould

Multiple time reread and wrote about it multiple times here.

Finished: The John Varley Reader, by John Varley
As you might have gathered from the title, this is a collection of stories from author John Varley. I've only read a little of Varley, but I've always been a little intrigued, and a little intimidated by the prospect of reading his novels, the latter largely because they're mostly set in one universe and I'm not sure the best starting point. But I've heard interesting things, and have vaguely positive recollections of the few stories I remember reading in short story collections. So when I saw a collection of just his short stories in a used bookstore for cheap, I had to give it a chance.

And I'm quite glad I did, overall.

Normally, it stands to reason to talk about the stories first and foremost in a collection of short stories. But I want to talk about the introductions first. Each story in this collection comes with a fairly lengthy introduction, often not just briefly mentioning the idea behind the story, but also long rambling asides about his life at the time. This could easily get boring, but instead, it was fascinating, you get an interesting sense of the man, insight into what it's like starting out in SF (or at least, what it was like in the 70s), living in different places in the US, how Hollywood works, the writing process, and other details. While I won't say the introductions were the highlight of the book, they were an unexpectedly pleasant surprise, and I made sure to read them even for stories that I was already familiar enough with that I felt I could skip rereading.

As for the stories, they're somewhat of a mixed bag. Most, though not all of them, are set in one of two (similar in some ways but unrelated) ongoing universes of stories. One is Varley's "Eight Worlds" universe, the setting of many of his novels, in which Mankind has been kicked off Earth by powerful and inscrutable aliens but allowed the run of the rest of the solar system, and technology has significantly advanced enabling people to change gender on a whim and back themselves up in case of death. The other is a set of sci-fi procedurals focused on a police detective living on the moon (where body modifications, including gender alteration, are also relatively easy). Both are pretty interesting, although reading them all in a burst in one collection does become the biggest flaw... it can be a little repetitive.

Yet I still enjoyed most of them, and even the ones that I didn't I could usually find some nugget or image that I liked, and even when I felt certain ideas had been explored again and again, there were interesting takes on it.

In some way he was so ahead of his time that his social ideas still seem cutting edge (particularly with respect to gender). There's also a few eyebrow-raising moments caused by differences from today's values and the values of the past combined with Varley's science fiction author tendencies to explore societies with different moral values. Some of it is certainly shocking and perhaps offputting to certain readers, and maybe even outright offensive, but I never got the impression that his personal character was evil-hearted in the slightest... just that he may have innocently used words that are hurtful, or toyed with concepts that most people don't want explored under any circumstances. There were definite off-notes for me nonetheless. It's perhaps ironic that the last story in the book was one that was supposed to be in the long-delayed collection "The Last Dangerous Visions" (the never-materialized third installment of a series that boldly tried to tell stories that would be banned anywhere else)... and it's almost one of the most tame, by today's standards, a bit on the gruesome side but nothing compared to hit TV shows today.

On the whole, one of the better single-author collections I've read, and it does make me want to check out Varley's novels at some point... although I'm still not entirely sure where I should start.

I'm giving it four stars although I think it's rounded up from the high three-and-a-half-to-four-star range. May not be for everyone though, particularly for those who have trouble separating fiction in which certain acts are not portrayed negatively from active endorsement of those acts.

Finished: Fire With Fire, by Charles E. Gannon
A super-competent writer is put on ice for decades by a secret government agency, and, when he's revived, sent on a mission to investigate rumors of extraterrestrial contact on an alien world, an then a bunch of other stuff happens.

There is a style of book affectionately referred to as competency porn, which often involves a particularly intelligent and skilled main character doing some difficult tasks better than anyone else. It can be enjoyable, if done well and with a certain amount of restraint.

If you put competency porn books on a scale analogous to regular pornography this book would be, well, to even attempt to continue this metaphor with any specificity would turn this review incredibly vulgar. So I'll just say it'd be at the extreme end. I mean, the character is explicitly a genius, cool in a crisis, ladies man, develops a sixth-sense type instinct for trouble, and most of the time figures things out before anyone else in the room. They even have other characters comment on how his major flaw is that he's so good at everything that if he reaches a situation that he can't handle he might not be willing to give up or consider less-than-optimal solutions. Rest assured, this never happens, which makes that conversation the equivalent of a job interview where you say, "My biggest flaw? Well, I tend to put the company's interests ahead of my own." It's not only incredibly self-serving, it's also pretty obvious what you're doing and would make me think less of you for doing it.

Leaving that aside (although the problem attaches to and infects other flaws in the book like one of those sci-fi viruses that turns infectees into muscle-bound monsters), the book isn't too bad, but there still are some flaws. The sexual politics are pretty iffy, with most female characters fawning over the main character for one reason or another, and even when they're professionals with skills of their own, they're often secondary to the hero's super-competence. If they've got a specialty, they can provide a few insights but he has to match them at least, either from his own knowledge on the subject or general knowledge of history. Even the female bodyguard assigned to protect him, the few times they're together in a fight, he's in no real need of protection and if I recall correctly even saves her. I mean, it might have been interesting if he was incredibly smart but a little useless in a fight, but no, he's gotta be awesome at that too. The only reason he even needs a bodyguard, it seems, is for someone to flirt with and have a romance. Sure, there are in-story reasons, but they're not very compelling (nor is the reason he's continually in danger from assassins in the first place).

The book also doesn't seem to know what it wants to be. It starts out as a "investigate if there are primitive aliens being exploited," then turns for a while into "superspies dodging assassins", then suddenly morphs into a diplomatic first contact mission with a set of alien races (completely unrelated to the aliens in the first section). Why does he need to be in all of these stories? Because he's just that good at everything that everything would fall apart if he wasn't involved. Even the aliens appreciate his diplomatic instincts about when to raise issues and when to pretend nothing unusual happened. And none of the storylines are entirely satisfying, like they are being set up in advance for a long series. That's also the only thing I can think of to explain the utterly pointless scenes of the olive-eating villain. Seriously, there are like six scenes where a villain watches people while eating olives, or interacts with the waiter and asks for more olives and OH MY GOD I LIKE OLIVES AND FETA CHEESE TOO BUT GET TO THE DAMN POINT ALREADY. Nobody in the main cast even meets him in the first book (but he's given a name in the sections about him so you know he's due to be important).

But, again, other than all this, the book's okay. There are some fun moments, some interesting SF rationales for how the technology like FTL works, and several alien races which are okay. Too many feel like they're just discount versions of Trek or other classic SF aliens, but okay. It doesn't really do anything special, but it's not a chore to read, except for the exercise you occasionally get eyerolling. Several of the books in the series have wound up on the Nebula Award shortlist, and I can't for the life of me understand why, except perhaps that it might really appeal to a certain subset of fandom or people who really like golden age SF, but were craving new examples of it. Two stars is, under Goodreads system "it was okay," and so that's the score it gets. I do not expect to read any more in the series, unless I happen to also get them free (this book was offered as part of Baen's Free Library of ebooks).

Finished: Crisis in Urlia, by Karl Schroeder
In the near future, a Canadian humanitarian response team, part of our military, deals first with a drought-and-famine situation in a new African city-state called Urlia, then with a new, possibly bioengineered sickness, and an attempt by extremist groups to use that chaos to seize power.

This is a follow-up to Crisis in Zefra. Both were projects commissioned by the Canadian military as exercises in attempting to forsee the possible changing tools, strategies, and role of the military in the future (and are available free online). Although it is an interesting idea on its own, I read them mainly because one of my favorite SF authors did the writing portion. Zefra focused more on squad-level tactics, while Urlia is centered more on command-and-control and 'big-picture' thinking.

Although it is told in the format of a story (with regular breaks for discussion questions and copious footnotes linking to the scientific ideas explored in the text), it's still a little light in that respect. There are characters, certainly, but most don't get too much development other than to showcase some science fictional idea of where we may be heading as a society. Deep character studies aren't really the point of the exercise, and so most of the space is devoted to other matters. That's okay, understandable even, but since I am rating this as fiction it is one of the negatives. What it does well is showcase a number of cool ideas, some of which I've been exposed to before from reading the author's other works, but still interest me enough that I'm happy to see more incarnations. For instance, there's an area of land that has been given legal rights and its own 'desires' through a simple AI, and must be negotiated with for water rights. Or people who are citizens of 'virtual' nations that they is considered just as real as Canadian citizenship. And the idea of situations that are so complex that no person can truly understand it all, and yet through collaboration groups of people can understand a part of it enough that if they work together they can solve tricky problems.

Because the ideas were more interesting and explored well, I think I like it more than Zefra, slightly. It's still not the kind of book I'd recommend to people as fiction, unless they have a particular interest in this type of strategic foresight.

Finished: The Courier, by Gerald Brandt
Kris is a young courier delivering packages between corporations in San Angeles, a megacity that in addition to combining several present-day cities, is also several cities on top of each other, with lower levels never seeing a real sun. One of her deliveries soon has her running for her life.

It's a cyberpunk book, and cyberpunk can be really cool, but it can also be full of well-worn tropes without a whole lot distinctive about it that raises it above the crowd. This unfortunately is the problem with the Courier. It's not aggressively bad, it's just okay, and not especially impressive, particularly for my own personal tastes.

Let's start with the good... the action gets moving right away and doesn't let up. That's actually not necessarily a good in my book, but I recognize I'm a little odd in that respect, I like books more when there's quieter, slower moments, but I can see people really getting swept up in the book.

The characters are okay, although the main character has the tired old 'sexual abuse backstory' which doesn't bother me as much as it might some people, when it's a fact that informs the character's story, but I could have done without the scenes describing it in flashback. Also she's a little too passive in this book, which I assume is just setting her up to take more active roles in the future. The villains tend a little towards the cartoony end, too, like black ops assassins who apparently like to have fun torturing their targets instead of simply doing the damn job, and the only one who gets even mildly interesting (and is repeatedly described as one of the most competent) is killed off so swiftly that I thought it must have been some kind of clever deception.

Technology seems to mostly exist to service the particular story. People are constantly tracked in a way that's not-that-hard-to-defeat, but nobody seems to do anything like facial recognition at checkpoints. And honestly, I'm not entirely sure I buy into the basic premise of seven levels of city, only the top of which ever sees any real sun. Seems like an awful lot of building material.

But it's okay. Largely I was able to just go with it and enjoy it like a moderately entertaining action movie. I doubt I'll remember much about it in a year or two, but I didn't hate it.

I will be reading the sequel, but only because I won it in a giveaway (I thought the giveaway was for the first book, but when I won the second I figured I'd buy the first and read it to prepare). Otherwise I don't expect I'd bother.

Finished: Ready Player One, by Ernest Cline
In the near future, the world largely sucks, and that's why so many people play OASIS, an immersive virtual world that connects everyone. The creator of OASIS died ten years ago, without heirs, so he encoded a massive scavenger hunt into the system, based on the creator's love of pop culture (largely centered around the 1980s of his childhood), with the ultimate winner inheriting billions and control of the company. Even though there's been virtually no progress in a decade, many people still hunt for the clues, seeing it as their only escape... and so does an evil corporation that wants to control the system. But suddenly, one low-level hunter stumbles upon the first key and reignites a new phase of the game.

This is basically the book I've been hearing about for years, the one that virtually everyone I know who's a geek and reads SF has read and raved about. It's even being made into a movie by Spielberg.

And I liked it. Maybe I would even have loved it if I discovered it on my own or after a few recommendations, but after hearing so much hype, it's perhaps only natural that it couldn't live up. Still, I see what those who love it saw in it, it's certainly a lot of fun and hits nostalgia buttons pretty hard, contains tons of references to cool stuff, goes at a quick pace, and has more than a few cool moments.

It also has flaws, though, like being pretty predictable in many ways. Beyond that, though, I thought the romance subplot was somewhat mediocre, with no real meat beyond "she's a cool gamer girl into all the same stuff who also likes me for inexplicable reasons." And some of the challenges were hard to buy into... but then so was some of the setup of the world. Like, I could buy into a massively popular virtual world that the whole world uses, but the specifics of how it all worked sometimes strained credibility. I think the book didn't end as well as it started, with the feel that the author was losing steam and imagination and starting to repeat himself. And there's a disconnect between the stakes and emotional reaction. I don't mean "oh, it's just a game, why's everyone so worried," but rather just the opposite. Some stuff happens that should shake people up, unless they're sociopaths, and yet the main character just sort of reacts like "Oh, yeah, well, I guess that's one more reason I need to win and take these guys down," rather than actually feeling the weight of it... there's maybe a token paragraph where they're shook up or mourn and move past it awfully quick, which made it a little hard to root for him or his romance (since I get the feeling that if there was a sequel she might get fridged just to give him one more motivation to take down some bad guys and then equally roll off his back).

On the whole, though, these concerns were minor, and I had a lot of fun with the book. I think it just barely ranks into the 4 star range.

Finished: Children of Time, by Adrian Tchaikovsky
An attempt at terraforming a distant planet goes awry in the wake of a sudden collapse of human civilization. Instead of a set of monkeys, as planned, spiders grow quickly to sentience and start to develop an intricate society. Meanwhile, survivors of that collapse flee an Earth that can no longer sustain them, following old legends to a green, terraformed world. Their stories are due to collide, and based on humanity's history with disparate cultures interacting, it's a dangerous situation for both parties.

The book trades off between two stories (well, three, if you count the part-AI, part-human pod in orbit that occasionally gets POV sections), and the book is almost a masterpiece when it's exploring a truly alien world and society, built off of insect and arachnid life. It's vivid, compelling, fascinating, and not only do I get the feeling that the author understands insects and spiders to an incredible degree, but that he's created real, believable characters with a non-human point of view.

If only he could have accomplished the same with humans. That sounds harsh, but the truth is it is the book's biggest flaw. It's not horribly written, but there is a lot that feels not quite right about motivations and decisions of the human characters in the book. Sometimes it's people acting extremely irrational (but not in a relateable way), sometimes it's just that it feels a little off, a little cold. I'd almost say these sections of the book feel like they're translated from another language, although the author's lived in England his whole life. It could be from a deliberate effort to show drift and distance to humanity many centuries in the future, but still, it felt stilted at times and it was harder to form connections with some of these characters than the spiders (who often only got one or two sections before a time jump to a new generation).

Still, taken overall, the book is quite impressive, and the merits more than make up for the flaws, and had an ending I didn't see coming but appreciated nonetheless as something different. I'll probably read the sequel if there is one, and certainly will keep an eye on this author's other SF works. I'm torn between a three and a four, but I think it's closer to a four.

Finished: Constellation Games, by Leonard Richardson
An alliance of alien worlds contact Earth, promising much benefits for humanity, but also a danger of culture shock. When the general public is allowed to ask questions of them, one man dares to ask the most important questions everybody else has been ignoring: Hey, what are your retro video games like? And can I review some for my retro video game blog? What follows is an entertaining romp exploring alien cultures, human institutions, what video games say about us, and many more things.

I read this on the heels of (partly concurrent with) Ready Player One, and it might be interesting to compare them. Both, to me, fall into the category of books by geeks, written for geeks, and written about geeks, with doses of nostalgia. I think fans of one would probably like the other. But while RPO is probably better crafted as a novel, with a clear storyline that seems to know where it's going at all times, I think I had more fun and genuine delight with this one. I could easily see others disagreeing, and there are certainly some flaws, but I really liked this book.

Side note, this marks the first ebook I specifically bought as such. Normally I get ebooks from free giveaways, or for review purposes, and through other promotional efforts. If I'm going to pay money for a book, generally speaking, I'd like to have a physical copy. But copies of this, for an author I've never tried before, were more expensive than I was willing to take a risk for on a premise that could go either way, so I decided to just try the much-cheaper ebook. And I'm very glad I did, enough that I might consider eventually buying the physical book too.

There's a lot to love in this book. First, the alien races. There are several, of which we spend most of our time with two different races (and humans, of course), but hear of or have brief encounters with many more that seem both inventive, relatable, and alien. It's a tough balance, but mostly the book gets it done spectacularly, and I loved moments where the main character and an alien are just getting along like two gaming buddies and then suddenly there's something that brings home how alien the cultures are. Also fun is that most of the alien cultures are (in human tongues) named after the word for "alien" or "Outsider" in one language or another, and English isn't left out (it would be pretty unfairly Anglocentrist), so there's one race that's just called "Aliens."

The other highlight of the book was the vast numbers of invented games, not just the alien games (which are generally speaking incredibly impressive) but the human ones as well. Unlike RPO, this is not a book that name-checks pop-culture icons (although there are a few, like an alien swarm entity that's delightfully described as sounding like Sarah Vowell)... instead, it gives fictional equivalents that you know are supposed to stand-in for something, like when a show has "Uber-Dude" as the hero everyone knows because they can't actually use "Superman." But the alien games offer fascinating looks into their psychology and history that get expanded upon in the story. The book's also idea-heavy in terms of the technology we see used and explored and the impact of cultural contact, but it never overwhelms the story or characters, it's just enough to seem like a really cool universe to play around in.

Where the book falters, just a little bit (and mostly only occasionally), is integrating everything together into a whole.

The book's written as a collection of blog entries, reviews, IM conversations, interspersed with narrative elements telling parts of the story that weren't blogged about (or, occasionally, that flat-out contradict what was blogged about). It's an entertaining route, overall, although occasionally gets tiresome and there are moments where there's, for example, far too much narrative jammed into a section that doesn't really feel entirely natural. Similarly, the games occasionally stretch the realm of believability for what you would be able to do in a simple game (or even a complex one, there was one description of an Earth game in which getting into a space suit early on basically propelled you into an entirely different game path with different locations and objectives, which seemed like a company deciding to develop two games that they could only sell as one). These are the exception, rather than the rule, though, a case where if you create so many fictional games in one book, just by odds alone some of them are going to not ring entirely true.

I get the feeling the author himself was aware of his flaws, because this section sums up the biggest problem with the book almost like it was inserted as an apology:

"Do you remember my freshman sculpture project?" asked Jenny.

"You showed me at the time," I said. "I don't really remember it."

"Because it was awful," said Jenny. She gave me back my five-year-plan cards. "Crap, as it were. I had no artistic discipline. I tried to say three different things in one piece. Do you see where I'm going with this?"

If the book lacks anything, it's that artistic discipline, it tries to say too many things at once, and they're largely all fascinating things, and said entertainingly, but it doesn't cohere completely. As a result, plotlines seem to swing suddenly, or don't get the payoff they entirely need. The book sometimes meanders. Sometimes it just gets weird, too, and not in an entirely good way.

But, you know what, I loved it despite that, and I can't even point to what elements I'd suggest removing or streamlining, they're all intertwined and I like them all, they just don't fit together as well as other books. I'm still giving it four stars, but with the feeling that it could have been five if he'd just managed a trick I can't see how he'd do, and there's enough to love in this universe that I want more even if I knew it would suffer exactly the same flaws. Definitely want to see more of this author in general, and I'll probably be reading this again.

Finished: The Operative, by Gerald Brandt
Sequel to The Courier so I'll cut everything.After the events of The Courier, Kris is now in training for an anti-corporation group, but old enemies with a grudge still want her dead.

I received this book for free from a giveaway. It did not affect my review, except in that I would not have read this book if I had not. The first one wasn't my thing enough to want to follow it up.

I didn't hate that first book, but it wasn't great, and there were some big flaws. This book contains virtually all of those flaws, only it manages to be worse in other areas. But let's speak of the one flaw that didn't carry over... we didn't have any flashbacks to the main character's previous sexual abuse nor was that (mostly) used as a cheap threat. So, credit where credit is due (though there is a lot of scenes of torture, which might be too much for some people).

Unfortunately the book is now filled to the brim with unrealistic coincidences and characters so driven by revenge (over stupid things) that they lose all reason. The first is a phenomenon you often see in long-running series, like comics, where successive writers, starved for something interesting to do, posit that two characters from previous stories were secretly connected even though narratively they didn't need to be or it didn't make sense, minor characters from the first book suddenly being tied into the main character's backstory, or two seemingly unrelated groups being lead by the same people. It's a troubling flaw to see in the second book in a series. It also play off the second, with some of the coincidences making it even more bizarre that the bad guys didn't simply act the tiniest bit smarter so they could accomplish their goals with minimal difficulty.

Where the book wasn't pulling connections out of nowhere, it was largely predictable.

I guess if you're looking for fun action this series is decent enough, but it just strained plausibility too far without offering enough in return for me.

Finished: The Stars Are Legion, by Kameron Hurley
Around a distant (and possibly artificially) star, world-sized biological ships contain millions of women, some who know the nature of their universe, others who know only the small section of their world they live on. But the worlds are dying, and constantly at war with rival factions, and one world may hold the key to escape or salvation. Zan wakes without memory of who she is and is sent on a mission to capture this world, a mission she's supposedly failed at many times before. But there are deeper games afoot.

When I first heard of this book I saw it described as space opera, and although that label may very roughly fit, it doesn't entirely have a space opera feel. It's difficult for me to pin down what the feel was, but the closest I could come is mythological fantasy. Not because the science is wonky or anything like that, it's well within science fiction territory for that, but just because how the story plays out and how characters interact. The book felt to me like I was reading an ancient long mythological tale that happened to contain biological starships, space travel, heavy biological engineering, etc. Even the characters felt like they were supposed to be grand archetypes... mostly archetypes that I can't immediately point to other examples from history, it must be noted, which adds to a great otherworldly feel, like I'm reading the legends of an alien culture, but still legends all the same, where the heroes confront great trials and their conversations are scripted part of the myths, occasionally dreamlike. To use an example from Hurley's own writing, even though they're all equally fictional, Nyx and the other characters from God's War struck me as normal, relateable (though broken and occasionally unlikable) people in a wild setting, whereas Zan and the other characters felt like characters out of a myth. I might have strongly preferred a more naturalistic vibe myself, a tale of ordinary people in this setting, but there's power with this approach nonetheless, and I did appreciate it, it just wasn't quite what I hoped for. I can understand other people feeling exactly the opposite though.

As archetypes, for me, the characters felt less real and connected to me than I think they could be, but for the most part I found every main character interesting enough to want to see what happened next.

There are two notable 'gimmicks' (I mean the word here with no negative connotation and solely to describe the kind of thing people will instantly think is noteworthy) to this book that seem to always get brought up in reviews. So let's not rock the boat and do so as well. One is that every single character in this book is female. In this universe (or at least, this section of it), men simply don't exist or even seem to be known of. I don't have much to say about that, it's interesting in a "oh hey look at that, it's a space-based science fiction book with all female characters" sort of way, but it fits well within the story and I can't see any particular reason anyone would get offended by it (I mean, I'm sure plenty will, but it seems awfully silly) and except for how it relates to gimmick two, it would seem to be almost something you could ignore or pass by without noticing.

The second "gimmick" is that the book's been described as "wombpunk" in at least one place I read, which IMHO puts it perfectly... most of the technology is based on the womb, biological and grown within the bodies of women... not only other people are born this way, but parts for machines and the ship, monsters that perform maintenance or security tasks, even weapons. When something is needed, one of the women gets pregnant and 'grows' the required piece with no choice in the matter (save abortion). This is the far more interesting gimmick even though everyone always seems to focus on the "no men" part. It provides a good deal of the book's body horror elements, fascinating differences from our own world, and, in the tradition of the best science fiction is used to make a few points about our own society along the way. I wish this element was explored a little more, actually, and although this is supposedly a standalone novel, I'd be interested in more "wombpunk" with a similar setup, but completely different characters and plot.

It's not my favorite of Hurley's works so far, but I liked it. Which makes it hard to score, because for me it's firmly in the cursed Goodreads half-star zone... I want to give it almost exactly 3.5 stars, but I have to give it 3 or 4. I think I'll go with 4 just because I found some of the visuals really cool and the ideas played with are ones I'd like to see more of.

Finished: The Bloodline Feud, by Charles Stross (Merchant Princes 1 and 2)
A professional journalist recieves some belongings that supposedly belonged to her long-dead birth mother, and one of them includes a locket... that when she stares at it, it sends her to another Earth. She soon learns that she's a lost heir to a family of interdimensional traders with a decidedly medieval mindset and vicious internal politics. If she wants to survive, and better yet, survive with any sort of independence, she needs to think fast, make alliances, and use some 21st century knowledge.

I'm a big fan of Stross, but I've always been hesitant about trying this series, because it seemed like it might edge too much on the fantasy end of things. Luckily, this was offered as a free ebook by the publisher, so I could try it without any risk other than time. And while the "pattern that can send you to another world" might well be considered a fantasy element, everything else is treated more or less logically, no magicians or dragons or anything like that, just a straightforward set of alternate timelines with a means to move back and forth within them. Moreover, it has a science-fictional outlook, with the main character, at first, experimenting with the world-travelling ability in reasonable ways and coming up with interesting plans to make use of it.

In fact, at first, when it seemed like it was just a plot about a woman and her co-worker/friend exploring the ability and the other side with rational experimentation and planning ahead. Unfortunately, it quickly moved into the family politics plot which was okay but didn't quite capture my imagination the same way. The "using your brain to exploit this unique condition" aspect does come into full force later on in the book (or depending on how you view it, the second book, since what I read was a compilation of the first two books), and it does get very entertaining. You might not imagine it's that fun to read about someone using modern economic theories from a post-dot-com world to revolutionize a medieval mercentile business, but it is, at least for me.

In terms of weaknesses, as I said, the family-politics plot didn't engage me as much, and there was a sort of light briskness to all the character interactions that seemed to make them feel on the shallow end... like, that they're there mostly to explore the ideas rather than be compelling in their own right. Oddly enough, I felt much more depth from Stross in his harder SF stories. Another problem is that there's a lot of scenes where people are explaining either their plans or what they have found out about the various conspiracies to other people, sometimes the same thing gets explained several times. In addition to being somewhat redundant to the reader, it leads to this bizarre situation where it was hard to keep track of who knew what. There were several times I was certain someone already knew some aspect of the story, but apparently it was a surprise to them and they only were told some lesser part of the tale. It was also occasionally hard to keep track of all of the interconnected and overlapping schemes by various factions, and at least a few times where characters missed obvious hints towards something, with other characters telling the main character things in conversation that I'd think she would have pounced on and asked follow-up questions, but instead just seemed to ignore until they were later surprised to discover.

On the whole, I liked it, mildly. Enough that I might seek out the later books in the series, because I do want to see how things develop, but it's not enough that I'm rushing out to find them.
Finished: Nexus, by Ramez Naam (reread)

Finished: A Fire Upon the Deep, by Vernor Vinge (reread)

Both these rereads I've already talked about before so no need to repeat.

Finished: Hanzai Japan (short story collection)

This is another short story collection of science fiction and fantasy tales either written by Japanese authors or inspired by Japan and Japanese culture. Unlike the previous two collections, The Future is Japanese: Science Fiction Futures and Brand New Fantasies from and about Japan. and Phantasm Japan: Fantasies Light and Dark, From and About Japan, this one has a special subtheme, in that all of the stories are connected to crime in some way.

Unfortunately, it's the weakest of the three. Even leaving behind my usual complaints (too much fantasy, not enough science fiction, and that I would have liked the focus to be primarily be on stories written in Japanese and translated for a new audience), the stories just didn't seem to land for me. Some of them had intriguing premises but didn't know what to do with them (like, for example, the story of a gang who decides to stage a heist during a rampage of the creature known to American audiences as Godzilla). Others made very little impression on me at all, and too many just seemed to rely on "here's a serial killer that has a special supernatural quirk." To it's credit, I also think there were less BAD stories, stories that were a complete slog to get through, than the other, but... none of them really stands out in a positive way. I guess if I had to pick, "Vampiric Crime Investigative Unit: Metropolitan Police Department" by Jyouji Hayashi and "The Long-Rumored Food Crisis" by Setsuko Shinoda stand out most positively in my memory, though it should be noted that I only remembered the first at all when I was looking up the exact title of the second, and though, "Oh yeah, I vaguely remember being into that one," and then not really remembering how it ended. That's about par for this book, they slipped over my consciousness without getting very far into my memory at all.

Finished: Six Wakes, by Mur Lafferty
A generation ship is on a voyage to another star. The crew, clones, living serial lives with their memories downloaded to a new body every time they die. At least, that's how it's supposed to work. The six crew members awaken to discover their previous selves have been murdered, the ship isn't working, and they've been restored from a backup made decades earlier with no memory of what happened in-between. The group must try to figure out what went wrong and how to move forward.

So, yeah, it's a murder mystery involving clones on a starship. Quite a nifty premise, at least in my mind.

For the most part, I was enjoying the book until the end. The characters were interesting, and I liked the slow revelations of backstories. I did have one problem, in that while some of the worldbuilding was interesting, the precise rules for clones seemed irrationally convenient to the mystery. That is, they seemed too obviously set up to bring about the exact tensions the author wanted, and yet it was hard to buy that they'd choose those particular rules over other ones. For example, a rule that if two versions of the same clone exist, only the newest one has the right to continue. Not the one with the longest memories, or some trial being conducted to determine who has the right to the life, that's the rule and that's that. And perhaps worse, a few times the tensions that should have come up from those rules just seemed to be dropped.

It was an issue, but I was having fun with the book, so I was able to look past it.

Then we got to the end, with both the revelation of the mystery and the solution to various problems that just seemed ridiculous to my mind. It was a slow ramp-up for most of the second half of the book, but then in the climax it just went off the rails.

Unfortunately, these two problems, together, soured the book for me, even if neither alone was fatal. If the resolution to the mystery was handled superbly, ehh, so what if the worldbuilding is a bit wonky and convenient. If I totally bought into the world... ehh, so what if the revelation of the reason behind everything turned out to be over-the-top and hard to take seriously, I had a lot of fun along the way.

"I had fun along the way" still applies, which is why I give it three stars (I'd actually put it in the 2.5-3 range, but rounding brings us closer to three since half-stars aren't allowed), but I wanted to like it more than I did.

I might still read more SF from this author though.

Finished: The Wind Through The Keyhole, by Stephen King (Dark Tower "book 4.5")
During a huge sudden storm, Roland and his companions take shelter, and Roland tells a story from his youth, which contains another story his mother taught him.

This is listed as Dark Tower 4.5, supposedly taking place between Wizard and Glass and Wolves of the Calla, but it's something of an forced fit. If you were to read it in that sequence, I imagine it would feel even worse, because the story before that was also Roland telling of his youth, so you'd basically be getting two books in a row that are mostly made up of Roland telling stories about himself. It also commits the minor sin of trying to foreshadow elements in the next book, which doesn't work (why does nobody remember somebody the ferry master describes, when they finally meet him, for example?). It doesn't feel essential in any way, it just feels like King wanted to write (or to be less charitable, thought he could cash in by writing) one more story in the Dark Tower universe.

I have zero problem with that, either motivation. I'd happily read more random tales from Mid-world, or small little adventures of the ka-tet that formed. Even if, like this one, they feel like, fundamentally, they add nothing to the greater story. I just raise a bit of an eyebrow at the marketing, insisting that it takes place at this place between two books, or the notion that this was a story that grabbed him and inspired him to jump back into a world he thought he'd left behind. In the end, that's my biggest complaint, that it wasn't somehow more substantive, that if you're going to insert a book in the middle either find a great story worth telling, or just leave it outside the series entirely, or both.

It's really three tales, although in a way, it's really one tale. Not because the stories all meld together seamlessly, but because only one actually satisfies as a story, the innermost story, one which doesn't even involve Roland, it's merely a story he remembered from his youth. Surrounding that story is a story of that youth, just after he became an official Gunslinger, hunting a monster. This almost satisfies, except for the way that we take a huge break out of the action to tell a separate story and then come back to wrap everything up quickly and not that interestingly. And surrounding all that, is a frame story involving Roland, Eddie, Susannah, Jake, and Oy, which feels like it was only there to give Roland an excuse to tell the other two stories, and so that they could call this "Book 4.5." It's good to see the characters again, but while Roland telling an old story to pass time during a storm makes some amount of sense, why it's this one feels arbitrary.

Still, I enjoyed the book, mostly due to the central story, although the second layer had its charms and the outer shell appealed to my fannish desire to see these characters again. I still would read a book of random tales from Roland's life, or even tales of Gilead that had nothing to do with him, tales of other Gunslingers before him. Or tales of Roland's ka-tet, without any attempt to fit them into continuity, like how a comic series based on a movie or TV show will tell stories that can't really work their way in if you think about it too hard, so they don't try too hard. The structure of the Dark Tower world itself in fact makes it particularly easy to do these stories without worrying about continuity.

Finished: A Deepness in the Sky, by Vernor Vinge (reread)
Another well-loved reread.

Finished: Lightless, by C.A. Higgins
Two criminals board a secret military vessel and are caught by the crew. One escapes, while the other is interrogated because he may have ties to a terrorist group and also have tampered with the ship's computer in a way that could be dangerous.

I had somewhat mixed reactions to this book. Part of it was setup, it's set in a world where (and I don't think it's too much of a spoiler), the protagonist is working for a government that is totalitarian. And those opposing it aren't portrayed all that sympathetically either. The main character's not really strongly on either side, feeling mild sympathies for both but mostly just trying to keep her head down and do her job. That left me with few people to root for. I found the main character mildly interesting (particularly because she read, to me, as not entirely neurotypical).

Some of the prose also read weird to me. It's hard to put my finger on it, but one line stood out: "It was standard to interrogate a prisoner until a satisfactory explanation of the reason for his presence was obtained." Like, it just reads very stilted for me. There's also a lot of seemingly needless repetition in sentence structure. As I was reading it a part of me though this was deliberate as a way of echoing the society's awkward over-rigid tendencies. Whether it was or not, it was another factor that made it hard for me to get into.

Finally, I'm not sure it even entirely counts as a problem, but the plot felt particularly small. Like, I feel in most books criminals boarding a ship, getting captured and interrogated to find their real plan would take up maybe the first quarter of a book, here it's stretched out over the whole thing, and while there are other big events taking place in the background, I still feel like it wasn't much of a story. At the same time, I think if everything else worked for me, I'd have had zero problems with it.

Mostly, I sailed along through the book thinking it was okay but never particularly engaging. There's a point towards the end that it changes and I did started to get excited about where it was going, but, it never quite delivers, instead the book ends and some of what I liked just seemed to be dropped and some of it intended to explore in the next book in the trilogy.

I'm not ruling out reading that next book at this point, but right now I'm not feeling it enough to rush out and seek it out. I think I'll give it 2 stars because while there were times it rose to the level of a definitive "I liked it", for the most part it never did and "It was okay" feels more accurate overall.

Finished: Toast, and other stories, by Charles Stross
A collection of short stories by Charles Stross, mostly his early work.

This was a fun discovery for me... I vaguely knew the book existed, and that the author made it available to download free on his website, but somehow I had convinced myself I'd already read most of his short stories in another short story collection of his (or spread out among other multi-author anthologies)... but recently somebody mentioned reading a story I'd never heard of, and got me to take a second look. To my pleasant surprise, most were unfamiliar to me, so I downloaded it and started reading immediately.

As usual with this author, I liked it an awful lot. Not everything worked for me, and there were some repeating themes that might irritate some readers (not me!), and yeah, there were a few I was well-familiar with, but for the most part, I enjoyed it (and even some of the rereads I enjoyed going back to).

The stories that I responded to most (rereads aside) were complete surprises, not just ones I had no memory of ever hearing of, but also ones I'd have expected to not like at all. Those are "Big Brother Iron" and "Yellow Snow." The former, in particular, as someone who loves Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, it was a revelation to discover one of my favorite authors wrote a story that extends that universe, believably, into the information age... even just making a plausible extension in short story form would have been novel enough, but also that he's able to use that to say interesting things about the nature of such societies and how human nature both works for and against them.

I don't know how these would read to people not already fans of Stross... it's just as likely to blow their minds (in a good way) as it is to turn them off him forever (which would be a shame because he writes in many different styles, not entirely showcased in this collection, albeit often with a similar voice). But to fans like me who happened to skip out on this... don't keep making that mistake.

Finished: The Last One, by Alexandra Oliva
It was supposed to be a survival reality show in the Alaskan wilderness, contestants were warned that they might be left alone for long periods with only hidden cameras watching them, that clues might be cryptic... and, of course, every reality show has its twists. So when Zoo, one of the contestants, finds herself alone, wandering, and seeing nothing but signs of a devastating calamity, she assumes that all of it, the abandoned homes, the dead bodies, are just particularly gruesome props. And she's determined not to quit.

I'm not a huge fan of reality shows, nor am I conspicuously against them... I've wasted more time with them than I feel entirely comfortable admitting, but I also haven't really followed any in the last couple years, either. Yet, this premise instantly intrigued me, and I decided to give it a shot.

The book dragged me in right away and held my attention throughout.At times the main character's denial strains credibility, but for me, keeping in mind the sleep and nutrition-deprivation at play was enough to keep it just on the side of convincing, and a later revelation made it even moreso.

The narrative jumps back and forth between Zoo alone, after the plague which is ravaging the country (this isn't really a spoiler as it's revealed in the first few pages, rather being left a mystery, about whether the tragedy is real or a horrific twist thought up by producers), and the early part of the game, which more or less follows how a normal reality show works. There are stylistic differences between them (for example, everybody is referred to not by name, as they are in Zoo's sections, but by what stereotype viewers will associate them with). It's a means to make snarky but incisive comments about how reality television works and what they show and hide from the viewer, and for the most part it works, although it's less compelling than the main story, and a few elements (like a character who believed himself an exorcist) went too far over-the-top without enough payoff later to justify it.

I think that lack-of-payoff problem is at once one of my biggest complaints and yet possibly one of the best moves the author made, because, on the one hand, there was tons of stuff I thought for sure had to happen in this story, and when they didn't, it was a nice surprise, a subversion of my expectations and a refusal to go for the obvious path, that gave me respect for the author... and yet, at the same time, the lack of direct connections between the two narratives made the past story sometimes seem like wasted time.. why were we learning so much about events that don't significantly come up later? I'm honestly not sure which feeling predominates.

I'm similarly mixed on the ending. At one point it pulls away from Zoo and we get some details we didn't know about and one part of me liked what we found out (and what it meant for the characters after the book), another part wanted to be left with the ambiguity or even the more solid certainty of an earlier moment to break on. On a meta-level it does sort of feel a bit manipulative of our expectations, much like a reality show itself.

It's not normally the type of book I go for, so considering how much I enjoyed it despite that (even factoring in my half-complaints above), I think I'm going to give it a four stars. Worth checking out.
Finished: The Year's Best SF 9, (short stories, reread)
It's a reread but I didn't write a Goodreads review for it, so I'll post my thoughts anyway:
As a collection of short stories, it's always a mixed bag, but I tend to like this series in general more than some others, and this in particular was a reread (which doesn't necessarily say anything for the quality of this particular volume because I can't keep track of what stories are in what book).

Still, even as a reread there was plenty to enjoy. I particularly liked Octavia E. Butler's "Amnesty" a tale with a particularly unusual alien race and humanity's relationship after a war that involved atrocities, and "The Hydrogen Wall" by Gregory Benford in which alien contact is done by sending alien artificial intelligences, and one particularly hard-to-relate to is needed to help solve a major problem facing Earth. Most of the others were okay, some I've read a few too many times (having been collected in other places) to really be objective about them anymore. Only a couple stinkers. My guess is you'll probably feel the same way, except choosing different stories for standouts and stinkers (and depending on your own habits may not have the already-read-this-story-too-recently problem), so, worth a look.

Started (or done but not fully reviewed): Roadside Picnic, by Boris and Arkady Stugatsky, Bird Box by Josh Malerman, Waking Hell by Al Robertson, Glass Houses by Laura J. Mixon, Borrowed Tides by Paul Levinson, Cyberabad Days by Ian McDonald

Oh and I may at somepoint ditch LJ for dreamwidth fully due to the new rules, but I'm lazy and slow-moving so it'd probably take me a while to get everything done.

Last Book Foo of 2016...

2016-12-31T18:22:25Z

So yes, it's the end of another year. One widely considered to be one of the worst in recent memory at least, and I can't say I disagree. I can, however, offer advice. If, after midnight, you happen to come across a discarded calendar of 2016... don't get complacent. Stab, stomp, or burn the thing immediately. We all know how it works in the movies, the monster always SEEMS dead but then it somehow lurches back for one final attack when people leave the body behind.

In other news, one last book foo of the year!

Finished: Red Rising, by Pierce Brown

Darrow is a Red, the lowest of the low in a rigid (and color-coded) hierarchy of society working on Mars. He believes he's laboring to make it habitable, but it's already habitable... the Golds at the top just keep the Reds in utter subjugation for convenience. But after Darrow loses everything he cares about, he's given a chance to strike back, to turn into a Gold and work to infiltrate their society and, perhaps, one day, strike back at them.

Typical YA scenario. Dystopia run on pure evil. Teen hero with improbably impressive abilities fighting against it. Competition, a little romance. There's nothing exceptionally novel about it, and it's even gimmicky in a few ways... but at the same time it has a pretty good fun factor. The main character also seems a little older than many YA protagonists, even seeming a full adult at many points despite being clearly a teenager.

Like many YAs, the promotional material on the covers compares it to other, more famous ones, like Ender's Game and The Hunger Games. I still think I like both of those books more. But it's not bad, either, it's fun like an exciting TV show where you're always curious about what they'll do next.

The flaws are in some ways the strengths, magnified. The book is fun, but... more than a little over-the-top. Characters spend nights buried in mud with no complaints, rip into wolves with their bare hands, engage in brutal war games, they face a government that is evil to the point of stupid (I mean, even if you're going to go all out evil and make a color coded society based on your unquestioned rule over everybody and use things like genetic engineering... at least use it to make your selves superior or your lowest classes notably inferior so that even with a face-lift and crash education course they can't realistically compete). It's fun but at times it feels like a kid's adventure cartoon, only with gory fight scenes and swearing (much of it made up curse words, but I believe a few real ones made it in) and rape (which, yeah, even though it's not sure it's fair to say that it's trivialized, it's thrown around too casually for my comfort). The book's supposedly going to be made into a movie, but I find it hard to picture it being much like the book without being more than a little ridiculous.

I've heard the series does improve greatly after the first book (and some say it even grows to be more proper science fiction), and despite my reservations with Red Rising, I did like this one enough that I'm willing to follow along and see if that's true.

Finished: The Noise Within, by Ian Whates

A pirate ship's been prowling the spacelanes, and special forces troops are trying to track it down. So is a businessman, who believes the ship is actually a lost prototype his company put out.. and designed to be the first ship piloted by an AI.

There is an idea that is central to this book. I get the feeling the genesis for the book came with that idea, and the rest of the story was built around it. I could be wrong, but that's the feeling I get. But it's an idea that's pretty nifty and well-articulated.

Unfortunately, it's the rest of the book that's the problem.

It's not awful, for the most part. It's competent in terms of prose, but... there just doesn't seem to be a whole lot of good, here. The characters aren't very interesting and often do things for bizarre reasons. Minor characters are set up with a lot of importance and disposed of in weird ways that make you wonder what the point of focusing on them was, and major characters were given long chapters where they basically go on vacation, which might be worth it with a more interesting protagonist, but not here. I can't for the life of me figure out why we needed the deep peek into the life of a teenager who was hired to tell one of the main characters if certain people he was looking for showed up, nor why we needed to see a scene from the perspective of both of them. Or learn about a rich businessman's adventures with recreational drugs and meaningless flings for pages on end. Some plotlines I can only assume are due to be resolved in future books, but in this book, that doesn't feel right. And the narrative jumps around with weird pacing, where I swear some major events were handled completely between chapters. There were some cool ideas, particularly the central one, but overall I was left with a feeling of "what's the point?"

And then there were the eyerollers, like a (pretty much unnecessary) main character who was introduced essentially as the pilot of a space luxury liner flirting/sexually harassing one of the stewardesses (I suppose it was intended to be flirting, since she seemed to enjoy it). Like, what is this, the 60s? Or other characters being described as the most beautiful woman so-and-so had ever seen. Or the overlong depiction of hacking which (one of my pet peeves in the genre) seems to think of another system as a place your mind GOES and if it gets hurt there it might not be able to COME BACK, or at the very least while you're leaving a system you have to find your way home through digital back alleys, rather than, you know, pulling the plug and disconnecting immediately. In a generally better book, I might have looked past these groaners, but here, they're about the only thing that stuck with me.

Finished: Phantasm Japan (short stories)

This is a collection of fantasy stories, about half written by Japanese authors and translated, and about half written in English that just happen to involve some aspect of Japanese culture or mythology.

This is the same deal as The Future is Japanese: Science Fiction Futures and Brand New Fantasies from and about Japan., but at least this time, I'm not expecting more from it, so it's not as disappointing. I still wish it was mostly a collection of stories in translation, but I had to make my peace with it. And, besides, this is a fantasy collection, so my expectations are lowered anyway. Not that there's anything wrong with fantasy (it's certainly far better than a book that's completely mundane), it's just that I personally don't respond as well to it as science fiction. And while there's frustratingly almost always outright fantasy stories in what are supposedly science fiction collections (at least, when there isn't a defined theme around it being hard SF), rarely in my experience is the reverse true.

Luckily, this is one of the rare cases, as there are several that at least dance on the line between the two genres, if not crossing entirely.

For that reason, I think I may even like it more than TFIJ. But like all short story collections, it's a mixed bag. Some I liked, some I didn't care for at all. And maybe more often than not, the ones I didn't care for were slogs or felt utterly pointless rather than simply being not my thing. But I was pleasantly surprised by how many I genuinely liked.

The standouts, for me, were:

"Scissors or Claws, and Holes" by Yusaku Kitano (a weird tale of microscopic organisms that try to colonize and can let you see the future, but you must be very careful how you act).
"Girl, I Love You" by Nadia Bulkin (set in a world where curses have begun to work, and following the friend of a girl who paid the ultimate sacrifice to stop a bully)
"From the Nothing, With Love" by Project Itoh (a weird tale of an immortal but very familiar spy).
"Those Who Hunt Monster Hunters" by Tim Pratt (a bit unsubtle but still enjoyable tale of someone seeking revenge on a self-styled monster hunter).
"The Street of Fruiting Bodys" by Sayuri Ueda (about a fungal plague that, possibly, causes those it kills to become ghosts)

I still think I'd give it only 3 stars, like the other anthology, but it's a much higher 3 stars.

Finished: Worlds That Weren't (short stories) (reread)

This is a collection of alternate history tales, and as there's only four of them, they're of novella length. In one, Socrates goes to war with an old friend and ends up changing his mind. In another, over a century after a major meteor shower in 1878 radically realigns the world and puts the brakes on progress, an aristocrat from India (now the center of what was once the British Empire) goes hunting in the wilds of Texas. In another, a group of mercenaries get into conflict with a religious order over their demand to bury a woman fighting with them. And in the last, German Philosopher Frederich Nietzsche moves to the U.S. for his health and eventually winds up in the middle of the gunfight at the O.K. Corral.

I love alternate history. In theory. I mean, the idea of changing one detail and seeing what might have happened from there is really cool. In practice, when it's JUST alternate history and no other element (like parallel world travel between various alternate histories), it tends to leave me a little cold, feeling a bit too much like actual historical fiction. And while I'm not entirely ignorant of history, my knowledge usually isn't in-depth enough that I can fully appreciate AH tales... sometimes I may be completely ignorant on what actually was supposed to have changed, or what elements were designed to deliberately echo or comment on the original history given the change.

In this case, there's a little help with that, in that the stories each contain an afterword that spells out a bit more of the details. The first of these is the most helpful, in that although I knew about Socrates and that he probably didn't go to war as described in the story, I didn't know what the effects were. In most cases, I suspected it would have helped a great deal if I read the afterword first, to prepare myself.

The stories are generally all right, but still it never really rises above the stated problems I have with AH... it felt too much like reading historical fiction and in many cases bored me. I think my favorite was probably the first, just because watching Socrates question people's assumptions an infuriate them with inconvenient questions about their worldview never seems to get old for me. But, in the end, most of the stories were forgettable (in fact, I've read this before years ago and had only the faintest recollection of any of them), even where the major changes to history were not.

Two stars.

Finished: A Closed and Common Orbit, by Becky Chambers
Because even reading the simple summary spoils some aspects of the ending of "The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet," hiding behind a cut.

An AI is installed in a human-looking body and tries to adapt, helped by her friend Pepper, who was raised by an AI on another planet.

This is a loose sequel to The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet. Loose because it directly follows the book and a couple characters, but none of the rest appear. It could almost be read stand-alone (although, it would spoil the first book which is also worth reading, so I'd recommend against it and just reading in order). Now, I liked the previous book quite a bit when I read it.

This one, I think, I like even better. In fact, it may be my favorite book released in 2016.

The weird thing is, it's not especially mind-blowing or innovative. Like its predecessor, it's rather light reading for a SF book (unlike some books which go heavy into jargon and esoteric ideas, I think this series could easily be picked up by someone who's a fan of SF concepts but isn't a huge reader). There aren't even any very big surprises. But it's done very well throughout.

One of the reasons I like it better than the first book is, oddly, that it doesn't have one of the aspects that I found refreshing the first time. In The Long Way, it didn't read like a cohesive novel, but rather a set of short slice-of-life style adventures of a crew. This book, though, is definitely a traditional novel, telling two alternating stories, but coming together in the end and feeling cohesive. This also means it's of smaller scale, which is why I think I liked it. See, the previous book had so many space opera style tropes, filling out the universe, that some of them wound up feeling a bit cliche, and because you're skipping almost immediately to another idea, the cliches were sometimes what stuck with me most. Here, the universe may still contain all those idea, but this particular book only deals with a couple SF concepts, and the added depth makes even the cliche parts fun to read about.

Of the two storylines, I actually found Pepper's most engaging, contrary to my expectations, and as the end was approaching I was emotionally invested and wanting things to work out.

And, like the first book, even though there are sad moments, there's an uplifting feel to the whole thing, that even when the universe seems to suck, it's also full of wonder and good people and if you keep going, maybe you can find ways to get along and make it better. That's something that is sometimes really needed, and I think especially now.

I liked the first book, a lot, but I thought I might like it as an exception, as a novelty. This one is less a novelty, but I liked it even more, which means the author is definitely one to keep watching.

Finished: Golden Son, by Pierce Brown

(description behind cut for possible Red Rising spoilers) Although Darrow's schemes to take down the color-coded caste system from within are progressing after the next book, a sudden setback throws everything into jeopardy... and he must enact daring plans to get himself into position. But while he's made friends, some of them may not be as true as he might like.

Honestly, I still don't get the hype. I mean, yeah, it's fun enough, and I guess it does get a bit more space-opera-y than the first one (where it might has well have been fantasy in many parts), but... it's still just way too over-the-top for my tastes. I don't feel like I'm reading a novel about a real society, I think I'm watching some mix between a cartoon and a summer blockbuster... only including some of the worst of each. I still can't, for example, picture the books as a movie series without changing a whole lot or looking ridiculous like a Zack Snyder movie. Which, I guess is a better description than a cartoon/blockbuster. The book reads like a Zack Snyder space opera movie in book form. And sure, in between all of the eye-rolling grittiness and attempts to be profound, Zack Snyder movies can be fun, but it's hard to take their story seriously or remain invested in the characters.

It looks like I'm hating on the book a lot more than I am, but I think more than anything I'm just disappointed by the hype. It's fine. I don't think I wasted my time on it. I'll probably read the third book (my level of enjoyment and curiosity about how they'll move on from where they did are just enough to make that decision) but I'll set my expectations a lot more realistically. Dumb fun is still fun.

Finished: Spin, by Robert Charles Wilson (reread)
Normally I don't review rereads, but since I had to write a Goodreads review for it the first time I might not have my official one posted here, so, here goes:

One night, three kids are outside as the stars disappear. Soon, they, and the rest of the world, come to learn the shocking truth... the entire Earth has been wrapped in some kind of bubble, and for every year that passes on Earth, millions upon millions of years pass in the rest of the universe. If it keeps up, within decades, the sun will die. But life goes on, or at least it tries to, and people deal with the upcoming apocalypse in their own ways.

I've read this book several times already, so I think it's safe to say I really like it, it might even be one of my favorite books. It's just brilliant, both the way the author plays with big science fictional ideas and yet always keeps it grounded in character and never lets them get lost in the big ideas.

The author's master stroke, on the science fiction end, is the way the concept ties the lifeline of the world's habitability in our solar system to the rough equivalent of a human lifespan, allowing us to experience the sense of wonder of grand time scales with a realistic, grounded perspective, and the clever ways used to exploit or get around the problem of the Spin Membrane are imaginative and keep my attention even on rereads. Yet it remains a highly personal story, full of realistic characters relating to each other in complicated ways, people who care about each other but can't make it work, people who have different reactions to big events, people who seem like villains at first but show themselves to just be human.

Overall it's just a fantastic book that I'd recommend to everyone, even if you're not a hard-core SF fan.

Finished: The End of All Things, by John Scalzi

Part of a long-running series, so plot description might be spoilery.
Earth's Colonial Union, Earth itself, and the alliance of alien worlds known as the Conclave are not at war, yet... but the three powers aren't exactly friends, either. It's a situation that could boil over into outright conflict at any moment... and there's a secretive group out there trying to take advantage of the existing tensions and provoke a conflict that might well eliminate one or all of the players.

This is another book in the Old Man's War universe, and moreover, another in the mold of The Human Division... rather than a single novel story following one character or group of characters through the whole book, it's a set of loosely-linked shorter stories involving different groups that, overall, advance the plot.

And it's Scalzi, so if you're a regular reader, you probably know generally what you're in for, for good or ill, there's a particular type of humor, a mix of cynicism and optimism, some entertaining action... it's fun. But it's not great. It lacks the energy of the previous books in the series, and there's the sense that Scalzi's continuing to write them not because he feels there's stories that need to be told, but that he's getting paid enough to find stories.

But, again, it's fun, just not as fun. And the chosen format of the series does tend a lot more towards politics and scheming, and occasionally attempting to get us to sympathize with people who brutally suppress attempts to assert independence from a government that they have no faith in (which, particularly in today's climate, does not sit well with me).

The most entertaining of the stories was the first, "The Life of the Mind," which approaches the spirit and tone of the first couple books the closest. The climax of the book also wraps things up in a more-or-less satisfying way. In between, it's more in the "okay" range.

I like the author, but I want to read stories that I feel excite him, and I don't get that feel from this book, by and large. I'm not entirely ready to give up on the universe, but I think he needs to find a new focus to build stories around, and let the political shenanigans and authoritarian dirty tricks move more into the background, rather than center stage.

Finished: The City and the City, by China Mieville (reread)

Finished: The Last Policeman, by Ben H. Winters (reread)

Finished: Countdown City, by Ben H. Winters (reread)

Finished: Infomocracy, by Malka Ann Older

In the future, the world's political systems have changed dramatically, now (aside from a few holdout countries) everyone is divided into groups of their 100,000 nearest neighbors, and vote every ten years on which government will rule them. Within their 'centenals', the laws of their governments hold, even if another government is just across the street. It's election time again, and everybody's scrambling for control of more and more areas, and a few might be scheming to tamper with the vote.

It's one of those books where you can feel it started with a basic idea, in this case of how elections might be run differently. Unfortunately, it completely handwaves how it got there. Handwaving how you got to whatever setup you're exploring isn't a fatal flaw in a sci-fi story, but here it seemed hard to buy into the premise because I can't picture us ever getting to a point like this, without a drastic shift in technology that would change the world even more. I also would have liked to see more about how it worked in practice having so many mini-states. If one area changes government, how does the transfer of power go? If one's more authoritarian and they don't want to give up power, what happens?

Still, it's interesting enough that I kept reading and wasn't bored, just that I was left with enough unanswered questions that I wasn't fully satisfied. I did enjoy the looks at different philosophies of governance and exploring how things like celebrity and subtle signalling can influence public opinion to an uncomfortable degree.

The characters, while I wouldn't describe them as flat, mostly have similar goals and interests, and passion... they're all people who actively work for the election system (and one who works against it, but has that same kind of righteous idealistic passion for why he's on the outside), so it does render them all somewhat 'samey' especially since they're all involved in a crisis where the very thing that they have in common is what needs to be at the forefront of everybody's mind. I'd have liked to see more 'average people' woven into the narrative, perhaps family members or love interests who are doing other things, to get a richer view of the world and the characters in it. What we have as is, isn't bad, particularly for a first novel, but as someone who doesn't get that into the political end beyond what's necessary to know who to support, I didn't feel especially close to anyone. The book also seemed to take a omniscient third person viewpoint, which meant headhopping occasionally became a problem as we jumped back and forth between the opinions of two characters rather than settling into one viewpoint.

Overall, I'd say I like it more than many of the actual elections that were going on this year that I was aware of. Which is a low bar to beat, admittedly, but still the novel's in a mild 'like' category, so, three stars. I'm not sure I'd read a sequel, but only because I think as a series this may be geared more to the type of people who really are into this stuff. But I might be willing to give it a try, if a sequel expanded on the world more and got more deeply into the character's other traits than being electoral geeks, or try other works by the author.

Finished: World of Trouble, by Ben H. Winters (reread)

I'm not sure what it says that I closed out the year with a reread of a trilogy set in the months before a civilization-ending asteroid hits the Earth. Maybe that it's preferable to how the rest of 2016's gone.

Anyway, my end of the year wrapup!

My complete 2016 reading list was:

1. Planetfall, by Emma Newman

2. Stars: Original Stories Based on the Songs of Janis Ian (short stories)
3. Aliens: Recent Encounters (short stories)
4. City, by Clifford D. Simak
5. Vast, by Linda Nagata
6. Central Station, by Lavie Tidhar*
7. Tomorrow and Tomorrow, by Charles Sheffield
8. The Gone-Away World, by Nick Harkaway
9. Murasaki (shared world anthology)
10. Trident's Forge, by Patrick S. Tomlinson*
11. The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet, by Becky Chambers
12. Crisis in Zefra, by Karl Schroeder
13. Nekropolis, by Maureen F. McHugh
14. Faith, by John Love
15. Engineering Infinity (short stories)
16. Starfarers, by Vonda N. McIntyre
17. Against a Dark Background, by Iain M. Banks (reread)
18. Future Visions: Original Science Fiction Inspired by Microsoft (short stories)
19. Marooned in Realtime, by Vernor Vinge (reread)
20. The Fortunate Fall, by Raphael Carter
21. The Harvest, by Robert Charles Wilson
22. Sleeping Giants, by Sylvain Neuvel*
23. A Darkling Sea, by James L. Cambias
24. Edge of Dark, by Brenda Cooper
25. The Diving Bundle, by Kristin Kathryn Rusch
26. The Diamond Age, by Neal Stephenson (reread)
27. Vicious, by V.E. Schwab
28. Ninefox Gambit, by Yoon Ha Lee*
29. Glasshouse, by Charles Stross (reread)
30. Permanence, by Karl Schroeder (reread)
31. A World Out of Time, by Larry Niven
32. Nemesis Games, by James S.A. Corey
33. Packing Fraction and Other Tales (short stories)
34. Echopraxia, by Peter Watts (reread)
35. Too Like The Lightning, by Ada Palmer
36. Sun of Suns, by Karl Schroeder (reread)
37. The Passage, by Justin Cronin
38. Queen of Candesce, by Karl Schroeder (reread)
39. Scratch Monkey, by Charles Stross
40. Company Town, by Madeline Ashby
41. Battle Royale Slam Book: Essays on the Cult Classic
42. Battle Royale Remastered (reread)
43. Waypoint Kangaroo, by Curtis C. Chen*
44. The Future is Japanese (short stories)
45. The Forbidden Library, by Django Wexler*
46. The Mad Apprentice, by Django Wexler*
47. The Sudden Appearance of Hope, by Claire North
48. Palace of Glass, by Django Wexler*
49. The Just City, by Jo Walton
50. Metrophage, by Richard Kadrey
51. The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August, by Claire North (reread)
52. City of Pearl, by Karen Traviss
53. Blindsight, by Peter Watts (reread)
54. A Hidden Place, by Robert Charles Wilson
55. Slum Online, by Hiroshi Sakurazaka
56. Necrotech, by K.C. Alexander*
57. Legend of the Galactic Heroes Vol 1: Dawn, by Yoshiki Tanaka
58. The Promise of the Child, by Tom Toner
59. The Scar, by China Mieville
60. Feedback, by Mira Grant
61. On Basilisk Station, by David Weber
62. Warchild, by Karin Lowachee
63. Red Rising, by Pierce Brown
64. The Noise Within, by Ian Whates
65. Phantasm Japan (short stories)
66. Worlds that Weren't (short stories) (reread)
67. A Closed and Common Orbit, by Becky Chambers
68. Golden Son, by Pierce Brown
69. Spin, by Robert Charles Wilson (reread)
70. The End of All Things, by John Scalzi
71. The City and the City, by China Mieville (reread)
72. The Last Policeman, by Ben H. Winters (reread)
73. Countdown City, by Ben H. Winters (reread)
74. Infomocracy, by Makla Ann Older

75. World of Trouble, by Ben H. Winters (reread)

75 is a new record for me, for yearly books read. Average length was 376 pages, 27,061 pages overall. That's 3.08 pages every hour of the year. Or one page every 19.5 minutes of my life.

10 multi-author short story collections this year (1 was a reread... technically one was a collection of essays, but we'll count it here)

That leaves us with 65. Breaking it down by gender, I did not do so well as last year, 19 books by women. (In addition, one trans male who is counted on the male side, and one author who I understand identified as androgynous, so I haven't counted in either category)

Now, last year I had accidental gender equality, but one key factor was in play last year... last year I had a secondary goal of no rereads. This year, I've been rereading some books. I had 17 rereads, one of which was a short story collection, one was by a female author, and 15 by males. Obviously, there's a historical imbalance, since before I was consciously trying to 'read more women authors', a large majority of my reading was by males, and so a large majority of my favorites have been as well (and that's likely to persist for quite a while).

If we remove rereads from the equation and focus on new books, there'd be 49 single-author books in total. 48 by people who identify either as male or female. Of that, 18 by women authors is still lower than I'd like, but a bit more respectable at least. Still, clearly there are unintentional biases that push my reading taste more towards male writers.

I'll continue trying in the future, to try and read more diverse voices in general.

I got 5 physical books for free as part of promotional 'contest' style giveaways, as well as 4 others that were pre-release electronic book giveaways for review purposes for a total of 9 (these are the ones with asterisks beside them). Another 6 I got for free either because that's how the publishers or authors generally offer them, or as special post-release promotions where they offered them free to everyone for a limited time.

Going into 2017, I'm reading:
The John Varley Reader, by John Varley (short stories), The Prefect, by Alastair Reynolds and Fire with Fire, by Charles Gannon

So yeah, that happened.

2016-11-11T22:01:15Z

As pretty much everyone in the world knows, apparently our neighbors to the self voted to %$@! themselves up for the next few years. To be fair, not all of them did, not even most of them (unfortunately electoral college rules makes the actual votes not matter), but a horrifying amount of people chose to vote for racism, sexism, and homophobia. This is not to say that all of them are themselves racist, sexist, and homophobic... but apparently they're comfortable enough with it that they'd vote somebody who spent the last few months fanning those flames if it came along with the promise of changes they also wanted, and that does not speak well of them. If this is you, sorry, but you should own it, you chose to make a deal that included such obvious bigotry, to embolden the people that are even now harassing minorities more openly. And you almost certainly won't get the changes you wanted either.

I'm in Canada, and beyond that, I'm sadly in the demographic of people who voted most overwhelmingly for this, so chances are I'm not going to suffer much from this directly (except in the event of a random 3am nuclear strike because somebody felt Trudeau insulted him). To those I know who *will* directly suffer from this, well, I don't know that there's anything I can say that will help. But I believe in you, and I'm hoping for the best for you, and for your country to see sense the next time it comes time to vote.

November Book Foo 2/2

2016-11-05T20:41:39Z

Finished: Slum Online by Hiroshi Sakurazaka
A college student has a secret double life, playing in a multiplayer fighting game online. He wants to become the very best, and sometimes that quest means that school, his new girlfriend, and other concerns must fall by the wayside. Also catching his interest is the growing legend of a mysterious character challenging, and winning against, the best players in the game, in the unranked matches outside of the arena.

I'm not sure I'd consider this a science fiction novel. Yes, it deals with technology and how it impacts the world and people in it, but none of the technology is noticeably beyond anything we have now... or, for that matter, anything we've had for the past fifteen years, before the book was published. There's no outlandish hooks like "die in the game and you die for real!" it's just a game like any other. The particular game they focus on may be invented, but it's thoroughly mundane and easily plausible as something that could have existed at some point. If somebody told me it was based on a real game I'd simply never heard of, I'd have no reason to doubt them. Therefore, if this is science fiction, we'd have to call the romantic comedy "You've Got Mail" a science fiction movie, and I'm not prepared to do that.

That said, it does have a certain charm. It's another type of book that shouldn't work... fundamentally it's about a kid playing video games, trying to be the best at something that doesn't really matter. It doesn't really feel like there are any stakes... why should I as a reader care if he wins the championship? Even the main character doesn't seem to care if he flunks out of school because of this quest, so why should that matter to me either? And yet, I did want to see how it would turn out, and the journey did wind up going in some different directions than I expected.

The technology, as I said, is thoroughly mundane, but at least it's also treated more or less realistically. It's not like a typical TV treatment of video games where they talk about things like "points" in a game that doesn't have points, or "getting to the next level" while an open world game, with no set levels, is on screen. In this book things sometimes hinge on details like the exact placement of pixels, and it's somehow neither boring nor fake. The seemingly pointless endeavors like finding secret ways to jump impassable walls or practicing endlessly to use an obscure glitch to get an edge ring true. I've done similar things myself in some games. Occasionally the amount of control of the character offered by a simple gamepad might stretch the bounds of credibility, but not by much, and you can often even write it off as the character reading things into the game that aren't there.

And, beyond the game itself, the character interactions and the rest of the story held my interest very well... the plot sometimes seems to wander and not know exactly where it's going, but in this way it feels like it echoes the adolescent life style deliberately rather than merely being a writer with no plan. And the book makes a few interesting observations on why people behave the way they do. Probably the thing I'm iffiest on is how the main character related too many mundane things to the game (like referring to sounds in his class as 'FX'), which at times came off a little gimmicky, but not enough to really annoy me.

The story's didn't blow me away or anything, and I'm not sure I'll even remember much about it in a year's time, but it was fun enough reading and better than I was expecting.

Finished: Necrotech by K.C. Alexander

A cybernetics-enhanced mercenary wakes up with no memory of the past few months, in an unknown facility, and as a dangerous situation is about to erupt that costs the
life of her girlfriend. While trying to piece things together, she finds that her own reputation is in the toilet and has to do her best to uncover what happened.

Disclaimer: I received this book for free through a giveaway on Goodreads. I don't think it affected my review.

Okay, this is a book in the subgenre of cyberpunk. And I should probably state up front that I have a bit of a love-hate relationship with Cyberpunk. I love the technological milieu, the general idea of it, but a few of the tropes I really don't care for at all. Some merely need to be done well, others I outright dislike.

It's also a genre that's well past its prime. But that actually gives me hope, because, my reasoning goes, a new book might avoid some of the pitfalls and overdone aspects of the genre. So, when I first heard about this book, I was excited to try it.

Unfortunately, it still hit a few too many of my cyberpunk "hates."

But let's start with the good. I think that author handles action pretty well (although high-action pieces typically aren't things I look for... I often glaze over in fight scenes). The worldbuilding (with a couple exceptions below) also felt pretty interesting, instead of relying on the typical Cyberpunk "like urban sprawl, only worse", there actually is a more significant difference to the "world" everyone lives in, and I appreciated that novelty. Also I have to give some respect to writing an unlikable protagonist.

Of course, the last is also a problem. Unlikable protagonists are one of those cyberpunk things that have to be done very well for them to not count as a negative for me. Because, while they may be disagreeable, if I don't find something to care about, why do I care what happens to them? In this case, I never really found it. Yes, her dead-girlfriend opening was somewhat sympathetic, but undercut by the fact that the relationship didn't seem to be much more than a pleasant diversion rather than a true-love. Often she seems more broken up over the fact that her reputation was ruined than that someone she cared about was one. She's also violent and crude, with again, somewhat par for the course in a cyberpunk book, and sometimes entertaining, but in this book she kills someone in the first few pages without even really understanding what's going on... that they turned out to be into something nefarious seems to be almost an accident, and it made it hard for me to root for them. Again, in other hands, an unlikeable protagonist can be fascinating (for example, Kameron Hurley's Nyx), but here it just fell flat for me.

Another big annoyance was some of the worldbuilding elements. To illustrate, I'm going to talk about a plot element that is NOT in any way in this book, but is a little easier to explain. In many stories (and especially TV shows) involving virtual reality, there's often this twist... "If you die in VR, you die FOR REAL!" I hate that twist, because it makes no sense to me. Maybe in a certain rare set of circumstances, custom equipment designed for that purpose by a psychopath, that can be justified, but if you use it as a natural condition of really, really good VR, the kind of VR that's used by most of society... you've lost me. I understand why they do it, to give stakes to a scene that would otherwise be a "game" but it comes off so false that it's actually counterproductive.

In this book, they didn't have that, but they had an element I hate almost as much, the concept that there's a magical "limit" of technology you can have implanted in you. Everyone's limit is different, but if you go over this limit... you turn into a rampaging zombie. You can also go into this limit if you don't get enough power to the cybernetic systems you do have, including stuff that's in every single human being alive. I mean, seriously? Doesn't that seem like a design flaw to be removed in beta-testing? Not to mention this bizarre idea that if you remove your leg and get a replacement somehow your brain is less human.

I've seen this concept used often in RPGs, where it has an obvious purpose... to keep players from loading up on Cybernetics and becoming unstoppable killing machines. I understand it. I loathe it, and that loathing affected my opinion of the rest of the book. (Incidentally, this element, combined with the treatment of "rep" as a score that goes up or down for the streets as a whole, makes me suspect that the author played similar Cyberpunk-themed RPGs as I did).

Unfortunately, this plot element is so deeply embedded in the world that it's existence tainted my whole reading experience (and yet, oddly enough, it could have fairly easily been removed or mitigated without affecting the plot overly much... but the fact that they didn't meant I was reminded of it almost everywhere). Maybe without it, I might have warmed more to the character. Or maybe if I liked the character more, I might have just rolled my eyes and gone with the silly concept of there being a "threshold" of technology you can get implanted in you before you start chewing on faces. But both of them together made me just not care for the book or the world very much.

I'd almost give it a one star, but I think everything else is just good enough that I'd push it up to two. I won't hold it against the author for future books, but I probably won't read any more in this series either (which is a bit of a shame because it did leave in a place that I kinda wanted to see where it would go from there).

Finished: Dawn (Legends of the Galactic Heroes #1) by Yoshiki Tanaka

Mankind has spread out through space, but there's still war, conflicts involving thousands of ships and millions of lives. On one side is the Galactic Empire, an oppressive
regime that is milding in its old age. On the other, is the Free Planets Alliance, which has good intentions but often hampered by bureaucracy and the political machinations of those elected to power. Each side has one genius general, but they must work with what they're given.

This is apparently a rather famous Japanese SF military SF series, in no small part due to the fact that there's an anime adaptation. However, I should point out that I've never seen that adaptation, and it plays no role in my own perceptions.

It starts off a little rough, with a long exposition section detailing the history of the Empire and the forces that rose to oppose it. So long that for a while I thought the whole book was going to be like that, just a bizarre recounting of how things developed with little actual character interaction. Thankfully, after that it settles down and starts jumping back and forth between characters on the two sides (and more, who aren't direct allied with either). It's still not great at this point... many of the characters feel flat or are written as one of the few people with any intelligence at all, but it's okay, and I could get into the storyline. It does tend to focus a little too much on the specific battles and the strategic decisions that led up to and eventually win or lose the battle. The bad decisions usually caused by other people who don't listen to the advice of the geniuses until too late. Still, it was entertaining enough that I didn't feel bored.

However, it's not as good as I wanted, and there are a number of reasons for this. One is that this is apparently an attempt to "retell" the Prussian Wars in a SF setting. Now, I know little about those wars, but the very idea of trying to cast land or sea-based combat into space leads to some complications. Like, for example, forcing the audiece to accept that there's a very narrow region of space, one that can be easily defended, that ships have to pass through in order to get from one Empire to the other. Maybe with certain types space travel (like like if all travel is done through wormhole nexuses) that idea can be made to work, but here it just felt handwaved and forced. Also, the books don't really have a lot of roles for female characters... this may also be a function of when and where the books were written, but it just seems singularly bizarre to me when I read a book set in the future and the most significant female character in the progress, pro-freedom side's military's sole job seems to be preparing tea for the general. There are a few other characters outside of the military, but most of them have uninspiring roles like a politician who presses for a foolish military advance out of a desire to win an election, or a woman who's taken to be the Emperor's wife which motivates some of the other men who know her to advance until they can eventually do something.

Those blind spot aside, it does have a few interesting things to say about the political side of conflict, and some of the comments feel startlingly relevant to today's conflicts (like leaders blithely assuming that when they take over a planet run by the Empire they will be greeted as liberators even if their takeover destroys the infrastructure already keeping them safe and more or less healthy and fed).

All in all, I didn't hate it, I didn't particularly like it, it was just okay. It doesn't end with much of a conclusion, because it's only volume 1 in a long series, but I doubt I'll continue with any more of it unless I happened to get it in a bundle of ebooks, like I got this one.

Finished: The Promise of the Child by Tom Toner

It's the 147th century and mankind has divided, or prismed, into many different subspecies, with radically different looks and cultures and, in many cases, in conflict with one another. At the top of the heap are the Aramanthine, near-immortals with almost unimaginable levels of technology that they use to rule over many of the others, although when a new challenger to their throne appears, they're thrown into conflict. Meanwhile an average citizen living his life gets into a situation where he may need to leave it behind and live as a fugitive. There's also a mysterious device that may change everything. Other stuff also happens.

This is an incredibly ambitious book, particularly for an author's first novel. And I really, really wanted to like it.

I did, sometimes. There parts where I was enjoying it, and a few moments of greatness, but the flaws, although perhaps small at first, by the end of the book wound up snowballing and making the book as a whole faltering significantly.

Maybe the problem was that in some ways it was too ambitious

Let's start with the basics of the setting. Attempting to portray something as far ahead in the future as the 147th Century is a tall order for any SF author. Less than a century back in time on our own world and how we live and interact is practically unrecognizeable. One of the most common ways to deal with the problem is to make the future like the past, and indeed, that seems to be the approach Toner's generally taken here. Not everything mind you, there are obvious pieces of high technology, but many of the plotlines seem to take place in pastoral, somewhat socially regressive societies, ones that still have things like sexism and other bigotries I'd hope we could move past permanently. Made even worse because the Prism races are often very different from baseline humanity. Hold that thought, because we're going to get back to them, but my main point is that the society didn't seem as ambitious as the timeframe. The book has tons of wildly imaginitive differences from our world, and small details of everyday life sometimes crept up in cool way that hit home with the idea that they were in the future, it felt rather boring to me. There was still bigotry. Family dynamics seemed more or less the same. There were still noblemen who lorded their power over commoners. Leaders who get chosen by some arcane set of rules rather than any particular competance. People even still fought with swords!

But where that was boring to me, where the novel differed from things I'd read a thousand times before, the novel suffers from an overdose of complexity, exacerbated by the author not handholding at all. Terms are thrown around and often you don't get explicit explanations for what's going on for a hundred pages or so. Some people like that... and indeed, I sometimes like that. But there's always a balance, and, at least for me, this time, the balance went too far on the side of impenetrability. Take, for example, the Prism races. We don't know exactly what they are for a while. That's actually okay in my book. But the author keeps tossing off names of these various races and factions and it was just far too hard to keep straight who was who and what each race looked like. I completed the book and I still could not tell you which race was the closest to recognizable 21st Century Humans, or any feature of a race's appearance save for one or two. The author may have mentioned it, but there was so much being thrown at me none of the information stuck. And it's not just the people, it's the places. I had no idea where much of the action was happening at any given time, nor how the locations related to each other. I didn't know if different plotlines were on the same planet, the same solar system, or the same galaxy. Sometimes I'm not even sure it's the same time. Eventually we get some answer about the type of environments people sometimes live on, but... I still don't really have a good sense for it all in my head, and locations named fall flat. I remember at one point they ended a chapter with the revelation of the location/destination of a trip traveling in space. It seemed obvious that it was supposed to mean something to me, and I recognized the name being spoken before, but I had no idea what it signified. Now that I've completed the book and remember that moment... I still don't. They probably explained it, but it just didn't stick in my head because there was too much going on.

Too much going on in terms of the details and factions and arrangements, but the same can also be said for the plot. There were, I think, three or four main plots, different viewpoints that the author jumped back and forth between (and occasionally straying to others for a short scene or two). Only one stuck in my head to a significant degree (and it spent most of the book with a rather weak, not-especially-sympathetic character, though at least interesting and mildly relatable). One other one I remember somewhat, but it was hampered by not really being clear what was going on or what the stakes were. And the rest, I remember the occasional scene from. I remember reading the official synopsis of the book to remind myself of things to talk about and one of the intertwining stories I thought, "Wait, who was that? Was he even in this book?" before I finally remembered that he was, though he seemed to be an exceedingly minor character. Maybe I just forgot.

Or maybe he's more important in the next book. Because that is another factor in my lack of enthusiasm, after going through all that, the book doesn't complete the story. That's not a dealbreaker on its own... earlier this year I read Too Like the Lightning that similarly read as one half of a longer work, but in that book it didn't bother me as much. I think one of the reasons is that, in this book, even if I decided to read it, there's no way I'm going to remember even the barest parts of the continuing story when the next book comes out, without rereading it, whereas in other books, it's simple enough that I won't need an extensive reminder. If I read the sequel, I said, at this point, I don't think I will.

Again, it's not that it's fundamentally bad... there is a lot to like, some really cool ideas, and the prose seems to be pretty good from a line-to-line, paragraph-to-paragraph level, and some moments where I genuinely felt emotional investment in some scene or character, even scenes of brutality that give me chills... it just seems the author overdid things, I think, and as a whole it didn't work for me. I really wanted to like it, to love it, but while I was willing to go along with the complexity at first, the more the book went on and on and I couldn't keep track of what everyone was doing or why I should care, I cared less and less. And, there was one other thing, an explanation long in waiting that hit on a personal pet peeve, that made me angry and ruined what little lingering interest I had in the plotline, that pushed it firmly into science-fantasy (which it was already trending towards) when it didn't need to be, when an actual science-fictional explanation would have not only sufficed, but been much better. When they revealed that, I knew I would not be reading the sequel. Maybe I'll change my mind in months to come as some of the ideas settle and stick and stay interesting, but right now, nope, I feel completely done with this universe.

But since, as I said, this book doesn't actually complete any of the stories, I have to rate it on the merits of what I've read so far, an unfinished, unsatisfying story. And, as half a story, it doesn't really measure up to any more than two stars. I doubt I'll be reading the sequel. But what the author did well impressed me enough that I am willing to try him again if he writes something unrelated. There's a lot of talent here, I think it just needs to be channeled a little better.

Finished: The Scar by China Mieville

Fleeing from political dangers in her home of New Crobuzon, Bellis Coldwine embarks on an ocean voyage... and her ship is soon taken by pirates, the passengers forced to join a floating pirate city with a daring agenda. For some of those aboard, it means freedom, for others it means exploring the frontiers of magic and science, but Bellis wants to go home, eventually, and that's the one thing denied to her.

This isn't quite a sequel to Perdido Street Station, although it takes place a few months after and the events in the book are mentioned briefly. The main character, Bellis, doesn't even rightly appear in the first book (although she is mentioned once as some backstory of one of the main characters is explored, and that connection is part of the reason for her journey). It's merely another book in the world.

And what a world. As I said in my review to the first book, I'm generally not a fantasy reader, or someone who enjoys steampunk, so to be so taken by a world that is a combination of elements of both is really surprising. The author spreads tantalizing hints of a sweepingly long history of magical and inhuman creatures, of invasions from other realities, of things that blur the line between technology and magic, and holds back enough that you want to know more, even while knowing they're not a huge part of this particular story. It set my mind imagining and wishing for more books in the world. Luckily, there's one left (at least, as of this writing, but without having read the last book, I already hope that will change).

The story was pretty good overall, I'm not sure if I liked it more than the first book on its own merits, or if the setting had just had time to steep in me and so I felt more connected right out of the gate. It drifts and meanders a bit, as is kind of appropriate for one set on the sea, but there's a lot of scenery to enjoy along the way so I didn't mind. The main characters weren't quite as interesting either, I think, although close enough that it's not worth worrying about, and everyone has different tastes in that respect. There were quite a few "oh, wow, what a neat idea" moments showcasing Mieville's rich imagination, although there were still a few elements I missed from the first book and wished would make a return appearance, even though, again, not really part of the story.

The ending was really an interesting bit. Without spoiling it, as we got to the climax, I was kind of disappointed, I felt like certain things we were building towards fizzled out undramatically, even though there was a lot of drama and action, it wasn't in the right places, and aspects of it felt gimmicky. And yet, towards the very end, the author... he didn't exactly turn it around, I still have exactly the same complaints, but he did something ELSE that I wasn't expecting, yet that makes perfect sense in retrospect, that tied the story together in a neat way ("neat" both in the sense of "cool" and "orderly"), and left me with a smile on my face.

I think that's a big part of why I'll give it four stars, even though there are some significant things I enjoyed more in the first book. I think Bas-Lag may actually be my favorite fantasy world (at least, leaving out things like superhero universes and sci-fi-where-the-science-is-pretty-unbelieveable-but-it's-fun-anyway).

Finished: Feedback by Mira Grant

Decades after zombies began rising from the dead and changing everything, there's a Presidential election, and one of the candidates hires a blog team to follow them, only they uncover a conspiracy involving zombies. No, not the Masons, that's Feed. This is another team, following another candidate, at the same time.

Sometimes when an author realizes they've got a world people enjoy, they'll do this thing, where they don't quite have it in them to do a sequel (which might involve answering questions about the fates of characters they don't want to commit to), but instead decide that some minor character or group in the first book (or occasionally just similar to the first book) has had their own amazing adventure, parallel to the original one.

It rarely works out, in my opinion. Or, at least, it's rarely really, entirely worthwhile. Sometimes it's still awfully fun, and worth reading, for fans at least, on those merits alone, but even when that happens, it often comes off a little artificial, like an author's doing it for the guaranteed sales, and it sometimes adds its own complications and contradictions to the universe.

Unfortunately, this book does not feel like an exception to that rule. Make no mistake, it IS fun. It's the same kind of zombie-adventure-fun-with-journalists that the first book was, and you can enjoy it on that level. I certainly did. But it also felt superfluous in many ways, and severely annoyed me on other levels.

Firstly, it reminds me of a movie sequel where for whatever reason the original cast can't return. That is, the book feels at times like it was just ticking off boxes, replicating things that the focus-groups liked from the first rather than trying to go into any dramatically new territory. The main characters, well, they aren't exactly the same as the bloggers from Feed, but they're close enough in many ways, just not quite as engaging, even if they are likeable. There's the same kind of political-trail scenes mixed with sudden zombies, and peeks at a world where blood tests are frighteningly common to test whether you're turning into a killer zombie. This isn't entirely a bad thing... the reason I was interested in picking up another book in this world is obviously that I LIKED all those things, but when you put them all together in a package that's so close... it doesn't feel like it's everything it could have been from an author as talented as this one.

It does take a weird turn in the last section or two where it almost felt like the author needed to fill more pages (or fill in more time to fulfill her high concept that the story begins and ends on the same days as Feed), but this section, while not startlingly original as zombie stories go, at least didn't feel like a retread of the original book so was to me, highly welcome.

The more significant problem is that the book's premise comes up against a fundamental issue with these kinds of side-stories, one that's especially bad with this one. If we we want to consider both books canon, then virtually nothing in this book could be dramatic enough that it would merit a mention in the original. Except that's not the case. The first book doesn't (to my knowledge) mention attacks on other candidates... in fact, it barely mentions them at all most of the time (and these are journalists, remember). Which is fair enough if nothing particularly noteworthy happens with the other candidates. Yet, in this book, plenty of candidates have huge zombie attacks that certainly should have been at least mentioned in passing by the Masons. One of these zombie attacks is known about by a character who later goes on to work for the Masons, but apparently he didn't feel it worth mentioning to them. So if we take this book as canon, we're left with a situation where the star journalists we loved from the first trilogy wind up being spectacularly uninformed about things that are going on outside their little bubble, even about things that are widely known among the news community. Some news organization they run, I guess?

Worse, the book itself is partially built on a contradiction. Feed follows the Republican candidate. They mention the name of the Democratic candidate briefly, and in the third book they mention her again, but with a completely different (though similar) name. I hadn't even noticed this issue myself, UNTIL this book came out and I went looking at the original trilogy to see how well it matched up. The author said that one of the reasons for this book was to resolve that contradiction. Now, to me, the best way to handle this is to say, "Oops, yes, we'll quietly be correcting one of those in future printings." Instead, in this book, she takes the name from the LATTER book (meaning the book Feed is now directly contradicted by the book Feedback which it is supposed to be parallel to... future printings may well correct this, but still, why not choose the earlier name and fix the later book?) but also, takes the name from the FORMER book and make her a second candidate for the Democratic ticket leading to a weird situation where two characters with similar names are in the race. It's like covering a tiny tear in the wallpaper with a square of a completely different but similar pattern instead of just painting a bit of correction directly onto the tear. The flaw stands out more, not less.

It also rather severely spoils elements, not just the first book, but some of the explanations that don't get uncovered until later books in the original trilogy, but that's less an issue for fans (of which I am one) as it is for new readers. But yeah, you may not want to read Feedback unless you've read the WHOLE trilogy, not just Feed.

It is more than a little frustrating because it all seems so... unnecessary. Not so much the book itself, but all the contradictions that came along with it. This is a book that I think should have been set at the NEXT Presidential election, with another group of bloggers. Or don't follow the candidates and tell an adventure in the same time frame that involves people the Masons wouldn't be expected to know about. In either case, most of the problems would have gone away (the sequel option would still be a little too close to the original, but that's the least important), and it would, in my view, have done less damage to the franchise. I'm sure there are plenty who care much less about the integrity of fictional worlds that don't mind, though.

And, again, I did like it, just not nearly as much as the other books. And maybe part of it's the times, which is hard to mark against the author. I mean, when the author was writing this, she almost certainly couldn't have anticipated that a story where zombies might attack at any moment and any drop of blood could be a sentence to a fate worse than death would somehow manage to be far less horrifying than the actual US Presidential election going on right now. In some ways reading this book's actually a relief in comparison.

So, yeah, enjoyed, just not super impressed. But my issues with the book are not nearly big enough to make me less interested in more stories set in this world (unless of course, the next book is called "Deadline Crunch!" and followed by "Blackout Drunk" each cynically following unnecessary side-stories that took place during the other novels in the original Newsflesh trilogy that we never heard about).

Finished: On Basilisk Station by David Weber

Honor Harrington is a competent new commanding officer... but sometimes that can work against you. When her performance in a training exercise embarrasses the brass, she's sent to Basilisk Station, the dumping ground for the officers the Navy wants to punish or needs out of sight. Worse, her commanding officer there leaves the entire system in her care. Understaffed for a job nobody else seems to care about, and with a crew that resents her for getting into this situation, not to mention plots by a neighboring civilization she's not even aware of, the odds are stacked against her, but Honor still must do her duty to the best of her ability.

This is fairly standard military SF, with a world tuned to make space battles more like naval battles were in the old days. In fact, I've heard this series described as Horatio Hornblower in Space. I've never actually experienced any Horatio Hornblower (aside from reading, and enjoying, another completely separate SF series that was ALSO described as Horatio Hornblower in Space), so I can't evaluate that, but it might give you an idea of what to expect. Still, for me, the "space ships as naval allegory" relies on worldbuilding, which sometimes means techbuilding, explaining the propulsion and weapons technology to justify why space is like water, only emptier. Here, it mostly works for me. Getting there does take a fair bit of exposition, some of which comes in dumps that could perhaps have been done more elegantly, but at least it was interesting and sold the concepts enough that I didn't roll my eyes like I have in other books.

It also veers pretty heavily into competence porn... that is, we're following the adventures of a skilled naval officer finding solutions to problems and generally being better than everyone else, not exclusively because of any genius intelligence, but because of willingness to do her best no matter what. She wins people over along the way, and makes plenty of enemies, but the enemies are generally despicable or lazy people and many of them come to respect her despite themselves anyway. There's something bizarrely appealing about reading all that, even as your brain reminds you that the only reason this character's succeeding so well is because the author's writing it that way. It's not to say her adventures are entirely easy, or without cost, either, but the difficulties just make you appreciate the successes even more. I'd say probably 75% of why I like this book was because of the competence porn aspect.

So what else is there to say? The characters are mostly flat, but there are a few exceptions... often because the characters are meant to be disliked, but there are a few where you get to enjoy the building trust in the relationship. The action seems relatively fine, not my thing though and often when they got to the big battle scenes (especially the final battle) I just stopped being invested in the action and began skimming to see the results. That's a personal quirk though.

One of the more irritating things is that the book does a lot of headhopping... not only do they jump around to different perspectives, including the villains and people back at the Royal Navy Headquarters (many of such scenes could have been eliminated without negatively impacting the plot), but also within scenes, sometimes it seems like we're following Honor and her thoughts, and then suddenly it starts telling us what her first officer is thinking about all of this, without a noticeable break.

Also, I know this is probably sacrilege to the fans, but I hated that damn cat. The main character has a bond with an empathic cat that often sits on her shoulders and reacts to people she interacts with and would probably kill people threatening her. I don't know why I reacted so negatively to it, I actually like cats, it just seemed too much like the author was trying to build in some commercial gimmick that would appeal to cat lovers. Honor's reasonably bland herself, but, hey, she's got an intelligent cat with empathic abilities who does cute things that humanize her! Isn't that awesome? And judging by the longevity of the series, it seems to have worked, but for me, I'd have been more happy if it was just a regular cat that lived in her quarters.

But, overall, I liked it. Wasn't blown away, but I had some fun with it. The fact that I read it from the Baen Free Library (where Baen offers free ebook versions of many of the first installments of its titles, to try to attract new readers) made that even easier. I'm not rushing out to grab the next book in the series, but I might it check out at some point (especially since it, like this one, is also free on Baen's website).

Finished: Warchild by Karin Lowachee

After his parents are killed and he's taken by pirates, a young boy eventually manages to escape... right into the hands of sympathizers to the aliens at war with his people, who take him to the alien homeworld, where he grows up learning their culture. But once he's a teenager, he's sent on a spy mission to infiltrate a military ship from Earth, and finds that neither side might have the monopoly on truth and decency.

I've heard this novel described as being a bit in the mold of Ender's Game, and that's certainly accurate to a point, although the child in question is less super-genius and more average but put in situations he shouldn't be in. It's arguably YA, but it goes surprisingly dark at times , dealing with issues like child sexual abuse and slavery. It doesn't explicitly portray many scenes of such (though there is some towards the end where a character is in their teens, and, the detail level was such that, were it a movie, you could probably say they didn't show anything but it still left you with little doubt about what was occurring), but a significant amount of time is spent on some of the results and consequences are given a lot of focus. I'd say it's done relatively well, too, but I'm no expert.

It's mostly well-done in general, actually. The look into an alien culture, while nothing especially groundbreaking in the field, is interesting enough, and I especially liked that they made a point of saying the alien culture wasn't uniform, that a particular belief being described was just a belief of one of the major cultures on that world. The characters are for the most part distinctive enough that I didn't have much trouble remembering who anybody was and I liked seeing what happened to people, and the central dilemma and the complexity of war exceeded my expectations.

The book also does a good job with pacing, particularly because the story proceeds in several sections where the character is in different situations, and jumping between them could, in less talented hands, feel rushed and disjointed. Here, well, maybe there was still a slight sense of it being quick to move to a new phase, but it was done in a way that it just felt like the book contained a lot more story than another book of its size might.

My biggest complaints were that the first section was told in the second person (a style I loathe), but luckily it didn't last long, and that some of the scenes involving future-hacking pushed on a few of my personal annoyance-buttons. And, perhaps, the end wrapping up a bit too neatly too fast, for the kind of story it was.

The book was a first novel, and for that it is quite impressive. I'd put this in the high 3-stars category already, but I do tend to be a bit more generous to first novels so I'll bump it up to a four. I'd read more of Lowachee's work.

Currently reading (or finished and haven't quite done a review yet): Red Rising by Pierce Brown, The Noise Within by Ian Whates, and Phantasm Japan (short stories). And, it's in transit but when it shows up, A Closed and Common Orbit by Becky Chambers.

November Book Foo 1/2

2016-11-05T20:40:51Z

Bit in a rush, so no other comments, still alive, that's about all that matters.

On to Book Foo... had to divide it into two posts, sorry, blame LJ:

Finished: Waypoint Kangaroo by Curtis C. Chen

Disclaimer: I received this book free through a giveaway (although, not through Goodreads itself). I don't think it affects my review.

A secret agent, code-named Kangaroo, has the apparently unique ability to open a portal to an empty universe and store stuff there. This makes him extremely valuable and makes up for the other areas where he may lack some of the qualities ideal in a secret agent. But when he's on vacation, none of that should matter. Except on his vacation cruise between Earth and Mars he stumbles upon a plot that could lead to interplanetary war.

I find I don't really have a lot to say about this book. It's fun, but it doesn't blow me away. I did find exploring the various uses of the main character's "super power" was pretty neat, and interested me more than the plot itself. It does kind of strike me a bit like the author had nurtured an idea for a cool super power he'd like to have (and come on, don't we all at least have a couple?), and then wrote it into a novel so he could have it vicariously. I don't think that's a positive or a negative (good books have origins in all sorts of places), it's just a feeling I got.

I think on the face of it, a spy adventure novel, even one set in space with high tech implants, is not completely in my wheelhouse as a reader. It's not completely out of it, either, but it's the kind of thing that I'll likely read and not get too attached to unless it really does something cool. This book... I read and enjoyed, I can't point to any particular flaws, but I didn't get too attached to. I suspect it's intended to be the first part of a series, and though if I magically had a copy of the next book I would read it and probably enjoy it again, I don't see myself going to any effort to seek it out. But again, that's more about the subgenre than the specifics of this book. People who are more into spy tales may well find this the start to a fun new series.

Finished: The Future is Japanese (short stories)

What I thought this book was: A book of science fiction stories mostly by Japanese authors, many of which translated into English for the first time.
What this book actually was: A book of mostly science fiction stories, about half written by Japanese authors (and may well have been translated for the first time), the other half written by Western authors (many of whom have a particular connection to Japan) in English but set in Japan or using Japanese characters.

The difference between what I thought this book was and what it actually was, was a big disappointment. It's not that I've got anything against the Western authors, just... I don't know, the reason I was excited about the book wasn't because I wanted to read stories set in Japan, or using Japanese mythology, although that's a nice bonus, it's to discover authors I may never have encountered if they hadn't been translated, to experience different points of view from wholly different upbringings.

Instead I got a bunch of stories from authors I already knew (even many of the Japanese authors were ones who I've read novels translated into English already), and many of whom felt like, even if the stories were often very well done, were participating in a writing prompt game where the challenge was "include Japanese culture in some way!" And of course, the usual annoyance that at least one of the stories had no science fiction content whatsoever, but was instead a simple fantasy/ghost story.

That's not to say the collection's bad, but collections are always a mixed bag, where some stories connect and others don't, and a little thing like feeling misled about the theme (even if not deliberate... a close reading of the description reveals they were fairly open about it) can sour your experience some.

The stories I most enjoyed, regardless of origin of the author: "Mono no aware" by Ken Liu, "Autogenic Dreaming" by TOBI Hirotaka, "Golden Bread" by Issui Ogawa

For rating? I don't know. I think on quality of stories, compared to other short stories collection, it rates a low 3. But my disappointment really makes me want to rate it 2 stars, "it was okay." I think I'll resist my disappointment and score it as a 3.

Finished: The Forbidden Library by Django Wexler

After the ship her father is traveling on is lost at sea, twelve-year-old Alice goes to lie with an uncle she never knew she had, who has a mysterious and impossible Library. There she soon comes to discover that she is a Reader, with abilities that include traveling through magic books and controlling creatures imprisoned within. And there may be much more to her father's disappearance that she needs to uncover.

Disclaimer: I won the first three books in this series through a giveaway. I don't think it affected my review.

Obviously, this is a book intended for an audience much younger than me... the back of the book reads ages ten and up. But it doesn't specify a maximum age either, and there's nothing wrong with enjoying something targeted young. And although I might not have purchased it for myself, if I got it free, why not?

There's a totally unfair thing that often happens in reviews, especially in kids books, where the reviewer feels the need to compare it to some blockbuster in the category. But let's do it anyway, and compare it to the Harry Potter. Obviously, it's only fair to compare the first books, in terms of setting up an interesting world and characters.

I think this book is less immediately accessible than the first Potter book, at least for the majority of people. Though it does sweep you up into a universe of potential wonder, it's also got a few elements that might distance people... it's set in the early 19th century, for example. The setting isn't something easy to relate to like a school. And, unlike Harry Potter, there's not an instant group of friends formed where even if you don't like the main character, you can latch onto one of the others, though we do eventually meet someone near to Alice's age. For that matter, it seemed like there was less characters overall, and yet I didn't feel like I knew most of them at all by the time the book was completed. It seemed like a lot more time was needed setting up the rules of the world and introducing Alice to her abilities. I can see people enjoying the series, but I doubt it would catch on as widely.

Those abilities themselves did interest me more than the Potter books, although I do worry about power-creep in the books going forward. For now, though, they're cool and the kind of thing I find myself imagining having and far more interesting to me than simply "magic."

As for the plot, it serves well enough as an introduction, and I particularly like the sense that Readers aren't really, in general, good people and that there's some unexamined darkness behind their abilities that the main character will (hopefully) choose to find another, more noble path once she begins to question.

Although the book is targeted towards ages 10 and up, I was surprised at the level of vocabulary in them... the prose wasn't all that complex overall, but interspersed, there were a fair number of words used rather casually that I'd expect maybe even the average high schooler to have to look up. Perhaps that's intentional, though, and someone who already reads and is particularly attracted to a book about readers with magic abilities, unfamiliar words wouldn't be a barrier, but rather something new to discover.

Another thing I do with books that are targetted towards younger readers is that I try to both evaluate how I enjoyed it now, but also project my mind back and attempt to imagine what I would have thought of the book had I read it when I was of the recommended age. Right now, it's enjoyable in the same way I might enjoy a kids cartoon. I can have fun with it as a diversion, but I'm not likely to get too invested in it. But I think if it hit me at the right time, I'd have really gotten into this series since it hits on a number of themes I've always like. I probably would have preferred it to Harry Potter, even, despite what I said above (I was always a bit weird as a kid).

Rating-wise, I'll put it at three stars, while acknowledging I'd probably have given it four were I the proper age. Since I won all three currently-published books of the series, and I did enjoy it, I'll be continuing on with the others before probably passing the books on to someone who could appreciate them more.

Finished: The Mad Apprentice by Django Wexler

(description cut due to possible spoilers)

Alice is an apprentice Reader, learning magical abilities and binding supernatural creatures, that are contained in books, to her will. But she's also trying to figure out exactly what happened to her father. But her master has informed her that another apprentice has killed his Master, an Alice must join with the apprentices of other readers to capture him and bring him to justice. The dead master is one who she believes has some connection to her father's disappearance, so Alice sees it as an opportunity to do some investigation on her own. But the mission is much more dangerous than it seems at first glance, and just surviving may turn out to be the difficult part.

Disclaimer: I won the first three books in this series through a giveaway. I don't think it affected my review.

Having established the setting and the rules for how Readers operate, the book can now get onto the business of elaborating and building story and characters. And that's much what this book is about, building a supporting cast and potential friends and rivals for Alice, and characters the reader (that is, the ones reading this series) can root for or bond to. As that was one of that things missing from the first installment, I was quite pleased, and I enjoyed seeing how thy developed, as well as the clever ways Alice deals with problems, and the continuation of the ongoing thread about the fundamental cruelty underlying the abilities Alice is being trained for (at least, if she uses them in the same way the other Readers do).

So, I think I liked this book more than the first one. It's still a book that's targeted to much younger readers than I, but it was more entertaining, and I think that a young-version-of-me would also have liked it much more, so I'll give it a star beyond what I gave the first.

Finished: The Sudden Appearance of Hope by Claire North

For some mysterious reason, nobody can remember Hope Arden. After you stop interacting with her for more than about a minute, you completely and permanently forget she'd ever existed. Naturally, this makes a few things difficult. She lives as a thief, at first for survival and then for the thrill, but when somebody she's interacted with commits suicide, and it seems to be connected with a phone app that is becoming ubiquitous, she gets involve for personal reasons, and is caught up in events that might change the world... even if no one will remember her part in it.

First, a little personal info. Long ago, on an online text-based roleplaying game themed around the X-Men, I played a character with a power/curse very much like this (if you've played on any of those and you don't remember me, maybe I was just really really good). I even for a while considered writing up a novel based on the premise. I try not to come at such books with an eye towards "what I would have done," but it's probably inevitable on some level, and likewise my affection for the basic idea is clear and nostalgia may taint my reactions in the other direction. I can't honestly evaluate which, if any, of those played a role in my reaction, so I'll just be honest that the biases are there.

Now, overall, I quite liked both the novel and how the author treated the premise, as well as the character herself. It can be hard to give a character life when they can't repeatably interact with people... at least, if you don't want them to be perpertually mopey about their condition. But I think the author succeeds admirably, imbuing the character with a sort of resigned acceptance, a good amount of self-deception, and a few peculiar quirks. I should speak on those, because, as the novel's written in first person, sometimes those quirks get a little annoying. The text has a tendency to break into random factoids or dictionary definitions based on something the character encountered. I can totally get behind the reasoning behind this (that, without a social life, she's not only become fairly weird, but also filled in a lot of quiet hours with memorizing facts), but it still does get annoying and, at times, seem to unnecessarily pad out the story.

Speaking of quirks, there are also a few stylistic quirks that people who've read other Claire North novels would be familiar with. There's the occasional "relating conversations without using quotation marks" quirk (although, it seemed less of an annoyance here), and the "wow this book jumps back and forth in time a lot" quirk. You may like them, you may not, I lean a little towards not, but not enough that it seriously affects my reading enjoyment.

There's also a fair bit of repetitiveness, which you'd have to expect... the character sometimes has to introduce themselves and explain why they're there to the same person several times, because they've forgotten her already.

The overall plot is also pretty good... when I heard the story would involve a phone app that had a nefarious agenda, I was actually pretty worried that it was a somewhat goofy element that would detract from the coolness of the main character's curse. For the most part, though, I thought it integrated quite well and was, with a bit of stretching of the suspension of disbelief, surprisingly believable. It helped the book raise a number of interesting issues for contemplation, a few more than the character's ability would have alone, and I think overall made it a richer work.

The book kept me reading, excited about where it was going, and more than a few "oh man," moments where I realized something was happening and had been for a while. I do think that the ending faltered somewhat, the book seemed to stumble to a close without feeling like there was much of a conclusion. Maybe the author means this to be part of a series where there's potentially more of a payoff down the line... if so, I'd certainly read more, but as a stand-alone book, it left me a little unsatisfied at the end, even if I greatly enjoyed the journey.

A few of the nitty-gritty details of the character's "curse" also did occasionally annoy. Either cases where it seemed like somebody would clearly have looked away long enough to forget (or taken a bathroom break!) and didn't because the plot required a continued conversation, and it wasn't entirely clear what did and didn't get forgotten in some of the edge cases. Did voices on the phone get forgotten? I think so, but why would that be? It's a bit weird especially since a fair bit on the book deals with specifics about how the brain works that the power is essentially a fantasy element. And I don't mind that, but I would have preferred a more rigorous fantasy element with rules that could be explained. For example, if you could imagine her ability as being a telepath who automatically wiped everyone's memory of her after she left, then a phone conversation or a photograph could be remembered... until she met them again, and wiped their mind again.

And, there was one big omission... although the Internet plays a big role, there doesn't seem to be an thought given to Hope having friends through the Internet. The specifics of her ability don't seem like they'd preclude that at all (although they'd preclude a face-to-face meeting), but it's notable by the absence. As someone who doesn't have a lot of social interaction that is not through the Internet, it seems like a big hole in the premise. Online friendships might not be as satisfying as having real life friends that you can go and hang out with, but sometimes, it's the best you can do, and it's better than the complete isolation Hope seems to suffer from. It feels like one of those things where the only reason it isn't a factor in Hope's life is because the author didn't want her to have any social support, and that's not a good enough reason for me, so it does count as something that detracts from the quality of the work.

Still, the book's overall quality and enjoyment is high enough that it's not a big hit, and it probably doesn't even affect the star-rating, which I comfortably put at a 4.

So far Claire North's books under this pseudonym have been extremely enjoyable and I look forward to what comes next.

Finished: The Palace of Glass by Django Wexler
(plot synopsis behind cut because of potential spoilers for previous books)
Alice is planning revenge on her master Geryon, but has to bide her time because he's far more powerful than she. But when he goes on an unexpected long trip, she has a chance to act. Her ally ending knows of a magical book in another world under Geryon's domain, a world Alice can reach if she's quick, and with that book, she can trap even a master Reader. But the way is dangerous, and she may need to find some allies.

Obviously this continues the Forbidden Library series, and I won all three of the currently published books in a giveaway (so, usual disclaimer, I don't think it affected my review but keep it in mind).

This one, I think I liked less than the second, but a little bit more than the first, and although most of the actual adventure in the novel didn't particularly wow me (it wasn't bad, either, it was just just felt a little on the 'filler' side), I really liked how it ended with things poised to take an interesting shift for the next set of books.

Which leads to an interesting problem. The main reason I read these books was because I got it free. I figured I'd read them once and pass them along to someone who might appreciate them more. I still plan to do that. But, do I stop my own personal journey here, or do I consider continuing with the next books, just to see how it ends.

I can't answer that yet, but I will say I am interested. More interested than I was in continuing the Harry Potter books after the first couple where largely, the only reason I kept reading them was because they were a huge cultural milestone that a lot of people, at least in geek circles, read, and I wanted to be able to know what they were talking about if the topic came up).

I don't think I'm going to be one of those people that buy the snap up the next book when it comes out... my reading list is already much too big. But, I might like to see what happens, and so if one day I happen to see the next book in a discount bin or something, I might grab it. Or a few years down the line if I'm gripped by nostalgia and a burning curiosity, maybe I'll try to find the series. Or, maybe I'll just look up summaries on Wikipedia. Too soon to say. But I was more into the series than I expected to be, which says something, at least.

Finished: The Just City by Jo Walton

The goddess Athena gathers people from all over time for a bold experiment... to recreate the "ideal society" proposed in Plato's Republic. In addition to admirers of Plato from across time, she also helps them recruit slave children to be the free citizens of the Republic, and robots to do the work. While the society is very different from ours, it seems im many ways to be working... at least until Socrates shows up and starts asking questions.

I read this because Tor's been giving away an ebook free at the beginning of every month (for a limited time, so alas this one is no longer available). I'd heard about it before, and the concept was interesting, but I wasn't sure I wanted to dive in, but if it was free, why not? Having read the first book, I think I will be buying the second and third.

I'm no expert in Plato's Republic... pretty much I just remember the basics from a philosophy class in high school. It was interesting but didn't strike me as realistic. But coming alive in fiction it really gives you an appreciation for what he was going for, even though there were obvious flaws. The book explores these, as well as issues of consent and justice, and makes for a really interesting read. In fact, I think this book might also make an excellent companion if students today were studying the Republic, since it's one thing to read translations of his proposals, another to follow characters who are trying to put it into action.

It does advance in time rather quickly which does distance from the characters a little. There's some development that you think will alter how people behave around each other, and it does, but you rejoin them months or years later. And the pacing also seems a little stop-start, rather than building to a big climax. There is a climax, but it doesn't feel so much like an ending as a way to get you to move onto the next book, a stunning development that happened because this book was out of pages. Still, since I am eager to read the next book, I guess it did its job. In any event, both the pacing and the time progression seem to be similar to other Jo Walton books I've read, so if you like those, you might well like this one. Personally, I think it's my favorite of her works (which, admittedly, I've only read two of).

Finished: Metrophage by Richard Kadrey

A young punk tries to stay alive in a near future torn between gangs and corporate-controlled governments with sinister agendas. There's also a plague.

Okay, so it's cyberpunk, that classic 80s subgenre of SF filled with street level characters, cyber-enhancement and drugs, morally grey protagonists and cynical plotlines.

It could be done well, but there was a reason it mostly burnt out, even when the plots were wildly different, there was a certain sameness to them, and with so many of them out in a short period of time, it couldn't last forever.

But out of all of the cyberpunk novels were put out while the field was burning brightly in the 80s, I can say without a doubt that this was one of them.

I struggle to think of what to say beyond that, though. I mean, there were a few interesting bits, like the plotline involving aliens living on the moon, and sometimes it made a few interesting points about society, but otherwise, it seemed fairly forgettable cyberpunk. Not bad, per se, and apparently it was a cult classic in the field, but it didn't particularly stand out to me among the rest of the Cyberpunk stories I've read. I'll probably forget it almost entirely within a few years, as there's very little sticking in my memory right now. Maybe someone less familiar with the tropes of the subgenre would get more out of it, and maybe in historical context it was published right at the perfect time to stick in the minds of the readers, but for me, it was only okay.

Finished: The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August by Claire North (reread)

Finished: City of Pearl by Karen Traviss

A long mission has been sent to a colony on a distant planet that had been thought gone. Leading it is an environmental protection officer who isn't even entirely aware of her mission, just that it's locked away in some corner of her mind. On the planet, she finds that the colony is safe and under the protection of another alien race, seemingly far more advanced than humanity, and must strike a balance between keeping good relations and discovering all she can... a task which gets complicated with many different competing interests.

I can't really find a lot to say about this book. I liked it, but it didn't blow me away. It was interesting to see a scenario where space faring humans had to confront a race with superior power and, although potentially a threat, not evil... with their own morality which is more strict in many ways. Because of this, the book does sometimes veer into the preachy territory, since I did get the impression the aliens were used to point out certain values we should be embracing more.

While there are a number of characters in the book, it really seems like only 2 or 3 get a super amount of depth (although a few of the side characters have interesting quirks and I wanted to explore them more). And 2 of the main characters... well, you can sort of see where it's going right from the beginning, it's just a matter of watching it develop.

Part of the problem is that this is the first book in a series, and as such it doesn't entirely hang together as a whole by itself. There's conflicts set up, but we only get skirmishes around them and no real resolution. Mysteries are advanced and solved, things change, but we often don't see the long term results, and it's hard to identify the central "story" that I can say satisfied, it just explored some ideas and characters and morals. Many of the individual bits I liked, but it didn't come together. Maybe it would in subsequent books in the series.

I enjoyed it well enough, though, and found one of the central sci-fi-y concepts interesting enough, that I might move on to the rest of the series in time.

Finished: Blindsight by Peter Watts (reread, as I always tend to do when going to cons)

Finished: A Hidden Place by Robert Charles Wilson

During the Depression, a young man goes to live with his aunt and uncle. A mysterious girl lives upstairs that isn't quite normal. And meanwhile, a lonely drifter wanders the roads, drawn by some impulse towards another part of the country.

Robert Charles Wilson is one of my favorite authors. But it took him a while to get there. Some of his earlier work I've read, I liked, but not as much as his more recent offerings. This book is his first novel.... so I approached it with both curiosity and a little trepidation. First novels are often a little rough.

This one? It's a mix. I think technically it's fairly well done, the prose is good, at least the main characters seemingly well-drawn (if they sometimes change their opinion suddenly).

And yet... it just didn't really do anything for me. I didn't connect to the characters as I usually do, and the storyline just didn't thrill me. Part of it was the setting... I'm not generally a fan of period pieces. But the plot just seemed to drag on in kind of an expected direction... it seemed like a story better suited for a short story, to be honest, and even at that length it wouldn't have been one that impressed me much.

So two stars, only okay. But if this is your first experience with the author, check out some of his later work.

Fan Expo 2016 Con Report

2016-09-04T17:02:06Z

Okay, so I did wind up going to Fan Expo, but, to my surprise, I went on Friday rather than Saturday. Right up until the day before I wasn't sure which way I'd go, but ultimately I think I made the right decision. No photos, today, I actually didn't take many (or at least, my camera didn't, I thought I took at least a few more than it turns out I did). Maybe I'll add some in on a second post.

But I did accomplish my major mission. But, before I go into detail, I need to do a brief pre-con report.

Okay, so, I didn't wind up bringing homemade Fruity Oaty Bars as snacks. I almost did. I made a test batch about a week ago, which were a little more like fruit squares than what I pictured Fruity Oaty Bars as (which is something sort of like a Nutrigrain bar at least in shape, and thus more conveniently snackable on the go than a desert square). I was planning on spending the day before making a second batch which, if it turned out like I'd hope, I'd bring with me.

Except, Wonderland got in the way. Not Alice's, Canada's. See, my brother and I have Season Passes (it was sort of a birthday gift), and we hadn't found time to go. After Labour Day, Canada's Wonderland is only open weekends which isn't as convenient, and this week we planned on Tuesday, but turned out my brother had to work and could only do Thursday or Friday. So, Thursday it turned out to be. We went on a few rides, got some thrills, yadda yadda yadda although mostly waited in line honestly, though still fun. I thought maybe I'd still have time to do the squares, but... traffic on the way home was really bad, and I wound up with an hour less than I'd planned and there were dishes to do and I was already tired and wanted to relax before Friday hit so I cancelled the baking plan. Maybe next year (and maybe by this time, I'll have time to craft a box for them that matches the show packaging, so I could say I'm cosplaying as a free sample offerer in the Firefly verse).

For the record, my plan to do a Blueberry-Starfruit filing (Blue-Star aka Blue Sun which is the evil corporation in Firely that Fruity Oaty Bars is a subsidiary of) fell through because Starfruits never appeared in any stores... Wikipedia said the season starts in August, but I guess it takes a while to show up. As a backup, for my test batch, I went with Blueberry Raisin (Raisin pronounced Ray-Sun can still lead to a mashup name of "Blue-Sun Flavor"). Worked well enough, I think, you couldn't really taste the raisin anyway (it was more in the batter part than the filling). Taste was pretty good, only problem was it was too crumbly and a bit sticky, so I wanted to up the batter/filling ratio (or lower it, IDK, whichever means more batter and less filling).

So, onto Fan Expo itself!

The reason I finally went with Friday was that I had to work on Saturday... granted, after I normally got home from these cons, but it'd have left me pretty wiped doing both in one day, and I'd be extremely frustrated if for whatever reason I couldn't get Jewel Staite's autograph until late and had to choose between potentially outright skipping work to wait or going through all this for nothing (I'd have chosen to go to work). But since Jewel (alone of all the Firefly guests) was there Friday too, and I heard Friday was generally less crowded, I figured I'd take a chance (it was a chance because even though it was less crowded, instead of all the Firefly fans seeking autographs being divided among 3 different stars, they'd only get Jewel there, and also she might not show up until late in the day the first day, depending on where she was coming from). But I had a feeling Jewel would be polite and show up earlyish in the day. She's Canadian, and she's also Kaylee. ;)

So, I got up around 5:30am, showered and such and left at 6ish, then took the subway down. Now, in previous years, the timing's been roughly the same, and usually showed up with maybe a half-dozen to a dozen people in front of me. This year, I was literally the second person. A few more quickly showed up. I didn't talk much at first beyond sharing details of how it went in previous years. But yes, it soon became obvious that the line was much much less than it was in previous years, or at least, previous years on Saturday. Maybe all Friday lines were like this. This was good, for the most part, but there was one negative sideeffects... fewer cosplayers. My whole time in that line, I think I saw one person who could be described as cosplaying (He had some kind of red mask I didn't recognize... no, not Deadpool).

But, after a slow start, I did manage to get in at least a bit of conversation with some of the people around me. Nothing intense or prolonged (often they went into digressions about things like Pokemon which I know nothing about except that Pikachu is one of them). And they let us in a bit early... they both let the first people in line pre-buy their tickets/wristbands early so when it was time to go in we could go through the door immediately, and I think they also opened the doors slightly earlier than they were supposed to. But I was probably within the first dozen or so people who bought tickets on-site to go through the doors. I quickly found may way over to the other building where the celebrity autographs were, with plan in hand... wander there in circles until I could secure either a spot in the line or a number to come back later. At first they weren't letting people line up for the people who weren't there, so I wandered, looked at the costumes, etc.

Let's talk about them here, even though I saw them over the course of the whole con and talking about them out of order: There were a lot of Harley Quinns as you would expect (the vast majority of them wearing the Suicide Squad outfit with the "Daddy's Little Monster" shirt). A lot of Reys (including a whole bunch of kid-Reys, at least one who must have been like 4 and had a plush BB-8). Plenty of Doctors and other Superheroes as usual. Not as many Deadpools as I'd have expected (though they were still well represented). A number of various Teen Titans. Not many Arrowverse characters, I think just one Arrow stood out to me and I think there were more comic/animated versions of various characters than TV-DC ones (like a comic/animated Vixen). I did see a zombie Liv Moore from iZombie that was great, looked just like the character and posed with a "hot and spicy" ramen bowl in her hand and eating a chunk of brain with her chopsticks. Excellent. Unfortunately I once again failed in my long-term goal of finding a Runaways cosplayer (maybe once the TV series starts, but they probably won't be right anyway).

Anyway, I did look at many of the booths and sometimes I did consider buying stuff but either the price was too high (I mean, a carton of eggs that inside were Facehugger eggs from aliens is cool in theory, but not for $40) or not QUITE what I wanted. And far too many "mystery boxes" (I don't care if there may be $50 of merchandise inside for $35, if it's not something I'm actually INTO then it's worthless!). And also far to many Funko Pop dolls. I seriously don't get them, I don't even particularly like the look of them, which is fine, not everything has to be to my tastes but it's like everywhere and so many stores were just walls of those stupid figures).

But eventually I saw there was a small line forming in front of Jewel Staite's sign, even though she wasn't there yet. I overheard one of the helpers say they were hoping she'd be there within about an hour, but they hadn't actually heard anything and guests generally show up when they want. But as I said before, I had faith in Canadian politeness so I figured I'd get in line. I did wind up waiting about an hour there, but honestly I didn't mind. The person immediately behind me was a nice woman (I think she said she was from London but I might have misheard) and we started talking initially because I had to relay the "we're hoping about an hour but we're taking it on faith" message, but we kept up a pretty decent conversation about various other Firefly actors, other con guests, our different vision issues, the Princess Bride, and a bunch of other things. I even mentioned how I almost baked Fruity Oaty Bars, so I suspect that, if I actually HAD some, I would have had the social fortitude to offer some to her and others in the line. She seemed a real Kaylee type (and also identified with her and said she'd thought of cosplaying as her). My only regret (save for not having Oaty Bars) was that in the final movement to go see Jewel Staite, I didn't get a chance to say "It was nice talking with you" or the like, and since it would have felt creepy to wait around, I wandered off and never saw her in the crowd again.

Jewel herself was friendly enough, talked about how many signatures were on my DVD set and called it a labor of love. Also her first silver pen was really faint, so she signed over it in black. So technically, I got TWO Jewel Staite signatures for the price of one! Albeit, both on the same place on the same item. The price, for anyone wondering what the current state of these things, was $50. She also (or at least, her handler expressed on her behalf) no close up pictures because she was also there with her husband and baby and I guess she either didn't want them on picture or maybe distracted by errant flashes, which I was disappointed by but could respect. I later got a couple very blurry distance shots just to remind myself I'd been there.

Speaking of photos, as I said, I didn't get many. Part was because of my camera (I think there's some really stupid where if you press the "take picture" button on the side, but don't press it LONG ENOUGH, the camera thinks you didn't really mean to take a picture... IDK, but apparently my default press isn't long enough), but a lot of it was my social contact issues. As I may have mentioned before, a lot of time I don't really understand what's going on up there until I try to do something and find I can or can't do it that day, like there's an autopilot that kicks in and steers me away or makes me mumble or blanks my mind. It's not usually fear at least on a conscious visceral level. There is some anxiety involved in upcoming social interactions but honestly that's mostly the fear of not knowing what I will and won't be able to do on a given occasion where conversation might be advisable but I find I am only able to communicate in monosyllables. And on that particular Friday, I seemed to be almost completely lacking in the ability to ask people to take their picture, except in cases where I piggybacked off of somebody else. Which was a bit surprising because I thought I'd handled myself relatively well in conversations, carried my weight and didn't seem too awkward, I thought that I was having a remarkably Good Day, except, suddenly, couldn't initiate conversations. Maybe I burned off all my social energy managing that that for the rest of the con I was as timid as a mouse. I don't know. My brain is a dark forest full of tangled branches that really should be torn down for everyone's safety.

Anyway, most of the rest of the con was wandering, looking at various costumes and shops. I picked up free miniposters from The Expanse and Killjoys at the Space booth. Apparently there was some contest to meet the Doctor and his new companion when they come to Toronto in October, but I didn't fully realize it until I got home (the sign sort of implied that I would have had to ask someone at the booth for details, and that apparently wasn't going to happen that day). Travelled between the two buildings for a time, saw John Barrowman and Alex Kingston from afar. Barrowman, oddly, seemed to sign from the Fan's side of the table, at least while I was there, and often took casual photos with fans instead of dedicated photo ops, which seems to be out of fashion from the celebs... but good for him if that was indeed what was happening.

Aside from some water once I finally found a water fountain, a free sample of energy drink at one point, and a single Reese Cup (for which I paid $1 because I thought they were handing them out free but after they gave me one they revealed it was "give what you can to support local young athletes" and I was too embarrassed to just give it back... now, if it was to support young readers I'd have given money happily! ;)), I didn't eat or drink until I got home. Was too tired to cook anything or go out to get something, so ordered out. I was going to order a gyro but apparently they were backed up on delivery and not accepting new orders so I ordered Chinese food instead, which was almost as good.

Anyway, on balance I guess I'm glad I went, even though it was exhausting and I'm going through various "what I should have said/done" scenarios in my head now that it's far too late. And now I only have to meet two more members of the cast of Firefly in order to complete my signature collection (Adam Baldwin and Ron Glass... three if you count Joss Whedon for creating the series, which I would).

Batman Alternate Universe Dream

2016-08-20T15:31:19Z

So I had this weird dream that was kinda a What If/Elseworlds Batman and I kinda want to get it down.

I guess the premise is sort of "What if, instead of being a respectable psychologist who got unhealthily attached to the Joker and turned into a supervillain, Harley Quinn was a street kid who was made Robin instead of Dick Grayson"

Most of this came directly from the dream itself, a few details were come up with after the fact.

Basically as I remember it starting out, this girl, who was Harley Quinn as a teenager, was leaving for school (I think she was a HS senior) and was worried because it was supposed to rain later and walking from the bus stop to home would be a long walk, which normally wasn't a problem, unless it rained. Then it got revealed that she took the bus because she didn't want people to know she lived in Bruce Wayne's mansion and treat her differently. She also had a really little sister (who I think was actually her daughter, and Batman took her in when she was a pregnant girl on the street, while trying to track down (and arrest) the father, who was an adult Biker who would eventually turn into the Joker, but he hadn't yet... it's an alternate universe, and a dream, I didn't say anything it made sense... but anyway, they called her the sister just so people at school wouldn't know). Because it was probably raining and nobody would be around to pick them up, she wanted the right to use the spaceship parked in orbit which could remotely beam them from school to home (I don't know where that came from, but the ship did have a lifesigns detector that could ensure they weren't spotted beaming in or out, so Batman's objection was more 'you shouldn't be using it for such trivial things'!).

Anyway, in this world she was just called Quinn for short instead of Harley. There was also Freida who was a genderswapped version of Alfred (I don't know why, dream!).

For some reason (dream!) Batman had access to classified reports from the Stargate program that Quinn liked to hear but it was like a reward for good behavior, particularly Rodney McKay's reports from Atlantis.

Unfortunately although I knew in a dream sense that she was also Batman's sidekick, I never got to see her as Robin (if indeed she did take that as a name, since in this scenario she was the first, it could easily be that she didn't like the name and there was no precedent for a Robin).

I'm just writing this down because there's a part of me that kinda wants to see an Elseworlds like this.

Book and assorted Foo

2016-08-02T14:29:45Z

Let's see, what of note is there to say? Fan Expo's in about a month, and I'm tentatively planning on going right now (to get Jewel Staite's autograph for my Firefly collection). I might even bring baked goods for in-line snacking and (if I work up the nerve) offering to others. I've got a plan to make "Fruity Oaty Bars" from Firefly/Serenity (well, I think they were only in Serenity), and since Blue Sun is the corporation behind the bars, I may try to do a blueberry-starfruity filling (Blue-Star is as close as I can get to Blue Sun). Yay, for obscure geekiness that only I will get. But, it depends on it being in season and in a store that I can get it (in previous years I've seen starfruits in my grocery store but I don't know when they start showing up). Also, I still haven't done a test batch and time's running out. So we'll see.

TV? It's been a long time since I've talked about TV that almost everything I have to say is old news. But let's see... Stranger Things is on Netflix (or you could get it magically another way)... and I quite liked it, it's like 80s Stephen King and 80s Steven Spielberg teamed up to make a movie set in the 80s but using today's effects. Not perfect, and I had an unreasonable amount of nerd rage at them getting D&D wrong (ask me in comments if you're curious), but overall quite well done, even if it is a bit nostalgia-baity.

Killing Joke cartoon came out and, just, ugh. I mean, the original story was iffy enough, but I sort of forgive it because Oracle came out of it (even if it was indirectly). But they added a 30 minute prologue focusing on Batgirl and... I WANTED a prologue focusing on Batgirl, but what they actually gave me was just awful, stupid ideas that if possible made the iffier elements of Killing Joke even WORSE. Why, DC, why?

I've been kind of on a rewatch binge lately, rewatched all of Stargate SG1 and Atlantis, and now moving on to Sliders. The Stargates were more or less as good as I remember it, Sliders... well, I knew it turned to suck eventually, but I'd forgotten how much wasn't that great even in the "good" seasons. Not all-around awful, and I'm still enjoying watching it, but just full of random cringey moments where I viscerally notice bad writing or acting (or the results of executive tampering). It was always a show that I loved more for potential than for what they did with it, and I still want to see a reboot done well. Oh, and it's fun spotting people in it. I was watching an episode and I thought, "Wait, is that Jeffrey Dean Morgan?" (the brother's father in Supernatural, Negan in The Walking Dead, Comedian in Watchmen), and... yup, it was! It took to the opening credits to be sure because he looked so young. He played a tough guy from a "civilization-has-collapsed" world who, chasing after his girlfriend, follows the Sliders to a world where SanFran is a penal colony.

I think that's all I remember for TV, so we'll move onto the bimonthly book roundup. As usual, Goodreads reviews copy-pasted here.

Finished: A World Out of Time by Larry Niven

A man with a terminal illness in the modern day has himself frozen as a last-ditch attempt to survive. He awakens hundreds of years in the future, in a completely new body and told that he must be in service to the State... or else. Soon, though, he gets a chance to escape and flee into Earth's far far future where many things have changed and survival is even more complicated.

This is 70s-era science fiction, and it shows. The science, while treated with a fair amount of rigor, doesn't really seem realistic anymore as it relies too much on ideas that are no longer en vogue, and much of the rest is handwaved to the point where mind-boggling feats like moving planets is done fairly easily. And as for the social exploration? Well, aside from the results of a few different types of eternal youth, about the most imaginitive the story gets in terms of social development is a loosening of sexual mores and a return to a more primitive lifestyle. There's no wow factor of humans who have become alien in a myriad of different ways. Even gender politics either stay more or less the same or are exaggerated to ridiculous degrees.

The book started fairly well, actually, but before too long the book became a slog for me, and I found I wasn't really even following the more scientific parts of the plot, not because it was above my head but just because I wasn't invested enough in anything happening. There's an extended sequence where the main character runs from an old woman in the ruins of the Earth hundreds of thousands of years in the future that just seemed to drag on endlessly, and although it got briefly better around that, it circled back to that plot in a particularly annoying way. All in all, I've seen much better "trips into the far far future" tales than this.

About the only thing I took away from this book was the description of a far distant genetically altered version of a cat that looked pretty much just a head and tail with no limbs, which proved to me that I would still "awww" at a kitty even if you made it into something like a snake.

Finished: Nemesis Games by James S.A. Corey (Expanse #5)

The Rocinante is undergoing a refit after the events of the last book. With some downtime, and personal issues cropping up, the crew goes their separate ways for a bit... but it's possibly the most dangerous time for that to happen, as a radical terrorist faction of the OPA is gearing up for a major offensive that may change the game and put everyone in danger.

Okay, it's the Expanse series, and by now, you pretty much know what you're getting. A popcorny action-adventure that's still somewhat smarter than you'd give it credit for, with characters that are appealing but stock, and alternating viewpoints.

And this book is more of the same. And yet not. Firstly, because with the other books, mostly, the crew of the Roci's story was told through the eyes of Holden, and the other viewpoint characters were outsiders or engaged in secondary plots that related to the main one. In this one, most of the secondary viewpoints are different members of the core crew. This makes the book instantly more engaging and interesting than the others... you're no longer meeting a bunch of new characters, you're getting deeper into characters you already enjoy (at least, presumably, if you've stuck it through five books). Sometimes we learn their secrets, sometimes we seem them put through the wringer, and sometimes we just get a good adventure with them. Either way, unlike most of the other books, I was never bored and struggling to connect with one of the storylines.

The book's generally a lot bigger, especially for a book where the major ongoing threat of the previous books is mostly on the sidelines (or at least the background), and everything else is going to hell. It feels natural although sometimes hard to relate to some of the big events which for me provoked something of a feeling of numbness rather than loss (although, that might be a somewhat realistic reaction). Still, on the whole the book kept me turning pages and looking forward to see what happened next, even when some of it was predictable.

I think this may either be the best of the series so far, or a close second, which is an impressive feat for a book five (of a proposed 9!). The biggest failing I found was that, unlike the other books, I never really felt like it told a complete story. Sure, in the others there was always the sense of "there's still dangling plots that are going to lead to major things later," but I always felt like a story was setup, reacted to, then responded to and resolved. Instead, here it felt like we just got the "reacted to" part. The book felt like a couple of smaller stories that were going on in the first half of a bigger story, where everyone was just trying to survive the situations set up in Act 1, and the book ends when they're just about in position to move on and either deal with the root cause or at least settle into their new status quo. On the one hand, it means it's just slightly unsatisfying... on the other, it makes me eager to read the next book right now, which is always a good way to finish an installment in an ongoing series.

In a series like this, you're not really advising people who aren't already invested in the books, so really reviews tend to boil down to "How does this compare to the rest of the series? Is it getting better? Is it getting worse? Is it still worth reading?" And so really all I probably needed to say is that this is one of the better books in the series and I'll absolutely be reading the next.

Finished: Packing Fraction and Other Stories of Science and Imagination (short stories)

A short book of even shorter short stories. This one I believe is targetted towards teens, with the goal of getting them into science fiction. The stories are interesting enough and deal with a few real issues alongside cool SF ideas, but both are made somewhat milder... not so much to match the sensibilities of teens, but so that parents might not complain.

There are also short interviews with the author and directions for where to go for more of their work or what stories they like, which adds to the sense of an earnest attempt to interest the younger generation in not just reading science fiction but writing it as well.

Of the stories, most of them fell into the category of "mildly enjoyable but left no lasting impression." The one that I'd single out as a little more interesting than the rest, to my tastes, at least, is Robert J. Sawyer's "Stream of Consciousness."

I got this for about a buck at an online store. I'm not sure it'd be worth paying much more than that (more because of the short page count than quality reasons). But at that price, I'm not disappointed at least.

Finished: Echopraxia by Peter Watts (reread)

Reread, so I'll just say I think I liked it more the second time around, not as much effort needed to understand what's happening so the subtler charms are easier to enjoy.

Finished: Too Like The Lightning by Ada Palmer

Mycroft is a convicted criminal, sentenced to be a Servicer... forbidden to own property, and in exchange for food and shelter must work for whoever requires his services. Because he has a particular set of skills, this often means working for the upper echelon of 25th century society. And in the course of his work, Mycroft has encountered what seems like a miracle, a young boy who can bring art to life... literally.

This is a particularly hard book for me to review. There's so much going on here, and while much of it is good, and some I'd call very good, some of it rubs me the wrong way in terms of personal tastes. And, complicating things, this is in no way a complete story. It's half of a longer work, with the sequel coming out next year, and it's one of those ones where the individual book doesn't feel like it tells a stand-alone story, you have to read both or be content with an unfinished tale.

It's also a bit gimmicky in ways. The book is told in somewhat of an 18th century style (and deals with SF extrapolations of ideas of that period as well). This means that the narrator, Mycroft, frequently talks directly to the reader, anticipating their objections and answering them. Of course, he's talking directly to the reader of an age even father in our future than he is, so sometimes he explains why he uses antiquated things like gendered pronouns or commits the sin of talking about religious matters. I don't think the gimmick is itself a good or bad thing, but you as a reader may have definite opinions on it. I found it a generally interesting approach, but it wore thin over time.

For my own purposes, I think one of the things it does best is worldbuilding. In many ways it could be considered one of those books which is mainly designed to show off an incredibly different society, where countries are obsolete, discussing religion in large groups are outlawed, and there are many other changes. It's this part that, for me, worked best. It was genuinely interesting learning new details about the world and how it worked and why it gradually developed in this way.

I also, mostly, liked the revelation of Mycroft's personal story, how he came to be in the position he was in and what's still going on in his life. Many of the other characters were difficult to get a handle on for one reason or another, and Mycroft should have been the same way, but he kept my attention.

As for the things I didn't like as much? Well, one is an element that I knew going in I would have trouble with. The character of Bridger who has abilities that can only be described, at present, as magic. He can bring toys or pictures to life, not merely animating them but providing them with properties. He could take a drawing of a healing potion and have it really heal, and his constant companions are a set of army men that now act like tiny real soldiers. I'm a SF reader, as opposed to a fantasy reader, and usually intrusions of outright fantasy rankle. I was hoping for some plausible SF explanation for the whole phenomenon, but none was coming (I suppose there's still an outside chance there'll be one in the sequel, although based on how it's been written so far, I'm not convinced... it's slightly more possible that the whole event could be explained as an unreliable narrator). All that said, though, it worked a little better than I thought, mainly because the characters who were exposed to the mystery asked reasonable questions, tried to approach it in something of a systematic way, even while knowing that it should have been impossible. Unfortunately this aspect dropped off as the book went on, but as a way to make it more palatable to me, it was a good way to start.

Now my biggest problem with the work. The book spends a lot of time with internal politics of the aristocracy, the highest class of society. As is usually the case in stories that focused on them... I don't give a damn about their stories. You can tell interesting stories with these types of people, but it's a much harder sell. They've already got privileged lives and pretty much everything they've ever wanted so I'm not really invested when some of that is threatened. And although it was interesting for maybe ten pages, the constant obsessing over the various lists ranking the top most influential people in society (of which the top seven have been the same people on virtually everyone's list for decades). To me it's like reading about people worrying about their placement on People's Sexiest Celebrities Alive list. There is a little more than that, concern about the world as a whole, and it builds interestingly towards this, but... there are long stretches that I just didn't care about anything happening except insofar as it sometimes revealed interesting worldbuilding details.

So although I can certainly see talent here, and understand why this book is being highly praised in many circles, it's proving not so much tuned to my personal tastes. I'd probably rate it a 2, albeit a high one, but since it's a first novel where I'm traditionally more forgiving, and because it was on the high end of 2 anyway, I'll make it a three. I might still like to explore more of Ada Palmer's work in the future... but, at this point, I'm not sure I want to continue reading the rest of this story. I might, but it may be the sort of thing where, a few years down the line I may spontaneously decide that I wonder how it turned out, rather than buying it when it comes out. Or, perhaps, if I hear a lot of reviews where they talk about having addressed some of my personal difficulties with the book.

Finished: Sun of Suns by Karl Schroeder (reread)

I've already read this several times and talked about it here even before I started doing Goodreads reviews.

Finished: The Passage by Justin Cronin

The US government, after obtaining samples of a virus that resembles classical vampirism, begins an ultra-secret project to refine and weaponize this discovery, by injecting variations on the virus into test subjects recruited from Death Row, and also a little girl who's not in the system. Naturally, everything goes according to plan and nothing goes wrong at all with this totally reasonable idea, but you might want to avoid the planet Earth for the next few centuries as it may be overrun with monsters.

This book's gotten a lot of hype... the author got apparently a huge advance for it, it was on the NYT bestseller list for a while, and there's talk of a movie adaptation, it's one of those books I've heard about for years since it came out.

And I wanted to like it so much. But I really didn't, at least not in total. (Warning, I will be a little bit more spoilery than usual...)

To be fair, there are some things really well done. Some of the early character work, for example, is vivid and instantly engaging, even if some of it might have been on the cliche side or involve plot elements that were a little too overdramatic, I was there, invested, enjoying the little stories and digressions. And, also to be fair, there is a really neat conception to the monsters that takes a while to really be fully explained, but I liked it and was almost enough to paper over some of the problems I had with the book. Unfortunately, it wound up working a little like, "I'd really like to explore a book with this type of monster concept (or vampires based on this idea), but not this book."

Here's the big thing, and I guess it's kind of a spoiler but it's mostly about how the story's structured... if you read the plot description, you already know much of what I'm going to say aside from exactly how it's presented.

The book takes place in two "parts" (it's actually divided into something like 10 explicitly divided sections, each with multiple chapters, but the first couple section comprise one "part" of the story as I define it and tell mostly one story, and the rest comprise the other and tell another, linked story). The first part tells of the government project in the early days and how it came to be and got out of control. The second part jumps 100 years later, where monsters have virtually overrun the Earth and only a few small settlements survive using discipline and constant lights to keep the monsters out.

Leaving aside the issue that, in my mind, they skipped the most exciting part of the story, part one and part two have in many ways opposite problems, although a couple in common too. In part one, as I said, I got really into the characters. I mostly bought into the world (save for some overdramatically stupid actions to cover up the project), the monsters were a creepy looming threat, and I wanted to know what happened next. As it went on, I did have one major problem, which I'll get to in a bit, but on the whole, I liked it.

Then we jumped to the second section. Where most of the previous characters that were lovingly set up are dead or gone (some still maintain a presence in the book either because of circumstances they set up or because they're actually still around... this shouldn't be a spoiler as the plot involves vampires... but the focus has shifted.) Where we get a new bunch of leads and... they're much, much blander. Some of this is unavoidable, they've been raised in a small community under strict guidelines and siege conditions. So you might have people who are more or less courageous than others, or have special talents others don't, but there's not much divergence of experience. They use the same kind of slang, have the same kinds of concerns, have a shared backstory. But I've seen books where all the characters come from small isolated communities like this where they made it work for me. And honestly, in this section I didn't care much what happened to any particular person. It was like the rich character building in the first book exhausted the writer and he coasted the rest of it... while I was reading the thirtieth chapter of these new characters I was still wishing I could find out what happened to one of the characters in the first bit.

What made it worse was the author's seeming reluctance to kill off members of his new group of pet characters. Sure, there are deaths, and sometimes important ones, but... people keep showing up improbably alive, and there are plenty of fakeouts where you think somebody's died, or turned, only to later find out, nope. It's almost like the author was traumatized by killing off the whole world that he was afraid to kill off anyone else that he'd put time into. By the end of it I wasn't believing any death involving a small core group, and the adventure felt shallow because of it. It's like what goes on in the Walking Dead with Rick's core group, only worse (and you don't get the excuse that the audience might stop watching if their favorite actor is killed off, we've already bought the whole book). And because the monsters are so powerful at this point, the constant survival verges on the ridiculous or requires constant deus ex machina (more on this very soon).

The second part of the book is so much longer too, so I kept wishing that we'd get back to the book we started with.

Now the biggest problem for me. So many of the characters in this book are puppets at various points. By which I mean their actions and motivations are directed by some outside agency. In some cases this is because of the monsters telepathically influencing people. In others, it's because of what isn't explicitly confirmed but I could only interpret as "divine intervention."

I'll get back to the monsters in a bit, because I want to focus on that one. Now, leaving aside what may or may not be true about the reality we live in, in narrative terms, having God pop in to direct your characters usually makes for a horribly unsatisfying story, for me. Because unless you do it very carefully, it sort of means that He's the real protagonist of the story and, being presumably omnipotent and omniscient, he doesn't face significant challenges. We're just reading his plan unfold. A book where God intervenes to drive plot developments is like a book about a writer writing a book. He writes about coming up with the characters, he writes about coming up with the idea for the twist ending and how he drove certain characters to make certain decisions to get there. Maybe it can be done well, but most of the time I want to read the actual story, not read how the story was set up. To be sure, there are only a few cases where this feeling really comes to the fore, and there are valid alternate readings where it's coincidence or some other unexplained factor involving vampires, but to me, they're egregious enough that it soured the book for me. I mean, it's a book about vampires taking over the world! You had me at the premise! But you had to screw it up by adding characters who cross the country and stumble upon secret locations because God told them to because they needed to be at the right place and time to do something. Having a character who seems supernatural even before they're put into the project. Having all of nature go crazy trying to protect her. Just tell a story about humans making choices while surrounded by monsters and it'd be much more entertaining because now, every time it gets dangerous, I'm half expecting God to step in and tell everyone exactly what to do. Deus Ex Machina is considered a flaw enough when it's the ending, but when it's used all along the way, it's usually a dealbreaker.

Let's move on to the other set of puppeteers. The monsters have some telepathic hold over people over long distances, sometimes without even meeting them. Now, in theory, this can be cool, creepy, a looming threat and sense of paranoia... and there's a fundamentally cool idea lurking at the core of the monsters that, as I said earlier, I'd love to see explored by someone else. But in this book, what it felt like was that sometimes people would just do crazy $@!$ because the plot couldn't move on if they didn't. There was so much potential for actual interpersonal conflicts in the situation, but instead people just do random self-destructive or murderous things at random convenient-for-the-plot times. A better writer could have made it work, pressed on the hopelessness, the dread that anyone could be controlled, made it make the characters take actions that drive the plot forward, but it didn't work here. Here, far, far too often, it didn't seem like the characters drove the plot forward, we just had to wait till various people were puppeteered to do so. Unless maybe you count the puppeteers as the characters, but they weren't the ones I wanted to read about (at least, not in this story).

Now, of the two, I had a lesser problem with the monsters controlling people. And, in fairness, the explicit divine intervention tapered off significantly in the second part (there was still unlikely survivals, as well as supernatural things happening that aided the main characters, but it could be explained within the context of the other supernatural plot elements). So we had a first part where I was into the characters and what was happening but people and events were driven too much by deus ex machina. Then we moved into a much longer second part, where the deus ex machina wasn't really as big a factor, but... I didn't much care about the characters or what happened. Of the two, I much preferred the first part.

So yeah, I ranted a lot about the book, and probably made it seem like I enjoyed it less than I did. I gave it two stars. I enjoyed it mildly, but... too much annoyed me, and I wanted it to be so much better, to even a little bit live up to the hype. Instead, it disappointed me. There are two other books in the series for those who don't have my issues with it... maybe they get better, maybe they even specifically address some of my problems in ways that would make me retract my position on the first book. But I don't think I'm ever going to find out.

Finished: Queen of Candesce by Karl Schroeder (reread)

Another multiple-time reread, nothing more to say.

Finished: Scratch Monkey by Charles Stross

Oshi Adjani works for an inconceivably advanced artificial intelligence, doing various jobs like taking out planetary dictatorships and mass-murderers. She believes what she's doing, even though it may require some despicable actions of her own, is for the good of humanity as a whole. And it may well be, but when Oshi discovers a secret about her boss, she can't let it lie. In punishment for questioning, she's given one last dangerous assignment, one that, if she completes it, she can go free. But it's an assignment so dangerous that the odds of surviving it are slim. The boss needs a scratch monkey, an agent that is fundamentally disposable. And that agent is Oshi.

Charles Stross has written some of my favorite books, books that spew novelty from every page and leave readers reeling with the feeling that they've really seen a potential future, past the Singularity where it's impossible to predict or even understand... and maybe you still don't entirely understand it, but you feel as close as someone's liable to come. Unfortunately, a lot of his recent output has been decidedly more grounded, as he's simply not interested in some of the same themes that he used to be. There's nothing wrong with this, but I am still interested, and I was craving something more like the old Stross. Then I discovered Scratch Monkey, an unpublished (but nearly published) novel that he posted for free on his website. I'd heard the name before but somehow I thought it was simply a short story that I may or may not have already read... when I realized my mistake, I was excited. An early Stross novel sounded like it might be right up my alley!

It was almost just what I wanted. I mean, to be fair, it's not as polished as some of his other works. And there are a few of the other hallmarks of earlier Stross, where the novel doesn't seem to flow as one continuous story, but rather it seems like a few shorter tales jammed together. But it does have a lot of the magic from my early days of discovering a favorite new author.

The book starts out almost reading like Stross was attempting to write a pastiche of the Iain M. Banks' Culture stories. As though he really wanted to write a Culture story, but of course writing directly in another author's universe isn't always looked upon favorably, so he reworked some of the underpinnings of the universe, changed a few of the names, but kept it similar enough that everyone would know what he's going for. Considering Stross has done acknowledged pastiches in the past (or, rather, since writing this), it's possible this was exactly what happened, although from a bit of quick googling I can't find any actual evidence, and it is indeed possible it was merely accidental similarity. Suffice it to say though, he did a good enough job that, in the unlikely event someone were to open up the Culture to other writers (somewhat like the book He Is Legend: An Anthology Celebrating Richard Matheson, where other writers wrote sequels to Matheson short stories), Stross would be one of the ones I would be most excited to see.

But it doesn't stay as a near-Banks pastiche, that's just the starting point. Stross' own cynicism on superadvanced AI soon comes to the fore, and from then on it takes off in a different direction and becomes more distinctly Strossian, exploring many of the same themes I've read from him in his later works, but with a different story behind it, becoming an exciting grim action-spy adventure in a post-singularity environment, with a good dose of body-horror (and perhaps soul-horror).

In addition to the "multiple short stories" effect (which actually wasn't too much a detriment to me... I almost wish it went even more in that direction, I'd have enjoyed a book that was just a series of independent missions by Oshi), I don't think the book ends quite as satisfying as I'd hoped, and there are a few blips along the way where I lost track of how certain significant characters related to each other, to the point that I was surprised when suddenly that relationship became a bigger deal.

It might be my least favorite of the type of book that I envision when I say "early Stross" (I phrase it like that because Stross is a diverse writer and also has some early works that are completely different and unfair to compare to, including some I simply haven't read just because the premises weren't something I was especially interested in... but when I say "early Stross" I mean far-future SF with singularity-type themes). Then again, I might rank it slightly higher than his first published novel, but it's been quite a while so I'm not sure. Still, if you're like me and hoping for something to scratch a similar itch as Accelerando, and have read all his published work, this might be the thing for you. If Goodreads allowed finer-grain ratings, I'd probably put it somewhere in the high three stars, but since it doesn't, I'll round it up to four.

Finished: Company Town by Madeline Ashby
Hwa is a bodyguard working for a town built around an oil rig, off the coast of Newfoundland. Unlike virtually everyone else in town, she has no cybernetic attachments. She's hired to be the bodyguard to the son of the billionaire who just bought the whole town, who has been receiving very specific unusual death threats. Meanwhile, Hwa's old clients and friends are being targetted by a serial killer.

There's a lot of good in this book, and a few off-notes that don't entirely dampen my enthusiasm for it, but just keep it from being that much better.

Let's start with the good. I enjoyed the characters, for the most part, even when they were unlikeable, and particularly the complicated relationship between Hwa an her mother.

Hwa herself is the standout, of course, and as a lead character she is particularly interesting... in addition to being a Canadian (Which automatically makes a character 10% cooler), she also suffers from a disease which gives some interesting challenges as well as a notable physical difference, a "stain" of red birthmarks on one side of her body. Although one of the minor things that bugged me was that the author introduced a conceit where the stain functions as a natural dazzle pattern rendering her somewhat invisible to computers. I just couldn't buy into that, maybe on certain rare occasions it might glitch but it seems like the kind of thing where, I could buy it now, but that far into the future? If having some kind of a design on part of your face still messes up cameras, innovation has failed to the point that there shouldn't have the kind of AI helpers they do. Moreover, there's plenty of references to other characters looking at her and deliberately editing out the stain so as not to be put off, which kind of suggests that a face was recognized by their systems. Luckily, the story doesn't really hinge on this idea and it only crops up a few times, so it winds up looking more like a thing where the author got attached to a cool idea but didn't entirely think through some of the implications. Sorry, that went on a bit of a tangent, because really, what I wanted to say for this paragraph was that I did really like the main character. Even when dipping into a maritime accent.

The setting is also quite interesting, both the physical setting of an oil rig city and the near-future extrapolations of technology and society. There's nothing groundbreaking, but it's entertaining and mostly believable (and again, Canada makes everything 10% cooler).

The plot was also mostly engaging, until the end, although there were a few times when I thought the implications of something were unclear because people didn't react like I expected.

On the whole I was pretty impressed with it. It is one of those books, however, that somewhat falls apart at the end. Some of the interpersonal relationships are resolved in what feels like an overly schmaltzy way (albeit, given what the character's life's been like that, I found myself somewhat wanting it to be schmaltzy, I just felt like it was too much too fast). And when one of the big mysteries was resolved, I found myself not really remembering who the person involved was at all, they simply hadn't made enough of an impression beyond the name feeling somewhat familiar. And the motives behind everything seemed to take a big step outside the fairly believable and grounded tone the rest of the story had set.

I think part of the problem was that it was a fairly short novel, it could have been filled out in ways where some of these swings didn't seem so dramatic. I liked it though, and I'd read more with these characters if the author chose to write more in this universe. I think it's another book that I might only give a 3.5 if I could give half stars, but if I have to choose, I think I'd round upward in this case.

Finished: Battle Royale Slam Book (Essays on the Cult Classic) (essay collection

That's right, I read a book of essays.

The Battle Royale Slam Book is a book of essays on the book, movie, and manga versions of Battle Royale.

Honestly, I'm not really sure why it needs a special book of essays. I mean, I love the book, but it's not the deepest work in the world. I wouldn't have read this at all, except that it happened to be part of a bundle of ebooks I bought, and I happened to already be rereading Battle Royale. So, I figured I'd keep an ereader open on my computer and read an essay now and then when I had some free time, maybe learn some additional context that I'd missed in the original.

And there is certainly some of that, information on certain trends in Japanese society when the book was written, about certain in-jokes that would go over a reader's head without knowledge of the local pop culture, and about how the book was first received by the judges in the competition which "discovered" it. These tidbits are mildly interesting, although all in all, they're the sort of thing that could all fit into a short preface of a new edition of the book or something.

Unfortunately, a lot of the other essays seem, to me, to fall in the category of 'trying too hard', searching for deep meaning in the text of a cult movie/book/manga, or trying to use it to make some grand point about humanity, or comparing and contrasting with other movies... the kind of stuff that you had to do for school even while you were pretty sure the author never actually intended the symbolism the teacher insisted was there. In this case you sometimes get writers talking about how, say, since a certain character got killed than it was an indictment on that type of person, a theory which might have held more water if it wasn't a book who's premise required most of the characters to die.

Moreover, as I said, Battle Royale may have started as a book, but it's been adapted into a movie and a manga, and all three are talked about in the book. Oddly enough, there isn't really an essay that takes a look at the differences between the media and what drove those choices and what they wind up changing about the story, which might have been interesting to me, but instead, you get a few which draw from all three, and a bunch of essays that are clearly only discussing the movie (and considering I thought most of the changes from the book made it inferior, the fact that I noticed which one they were talking about meant they were usually talking about bad decisions as though they were elements worthy of deep analysis).

So I guess this is a book for superfans, but for a particular kind of superfans that not only may like the movie version more than the book, but also really likes literary analysis. That is not me on two fronts.

About the most interesting part of the book was, at the end of one essay which compared Battle Royale to various 80s Hollywood teen movies, the author went on tangent discussing how the stars of those movies would fare if they were put into Battle Royale together. Although the tale was too flippant and rushed to really enjoy, at least it was trying something a little bit fun.

That section also reminded me of what I'd hoped this book would be. When I first heard the title, and realized it was from multiple authors, but before I read the description, I had an instant of hope that this would be a book full of short tales, by a variety of authors, set in other instances of The Program. Either they could choose a single Program that happened on another year and each writer choose one story to tell within that, or each writer could tell their own take on it, with maybe some telling individual short tales of winners or losers, some exploring life outside the game, others transposing the setting to another part of the world, and maybe a few where they take a gimmick like putting (probably thinly disguised versions of) the teen cast of Archie comics or Hogwarts students or something in a Battle Royale situation.

Now, maybe Battle Royale's author wouldn't want to invite others into their world like that, or maybe simply nobody thought of that idea, but, far more than a book of essays, that's a book I'd not only want to read, but I'd pay money for.

This one? I'm glad I got it for free (or rather as part of a bundle which already contained other books that were worth the full price I paid for said bundle), since I wouldn't have bought it alone, but I didn't hate it, I just mostly found it unnecessary. I guess two stars seems appropriate.

Finished: Battle Royale Remastered by Koushun Takami

42 students (average age roughly 15) are gassed on a school field trip and awaken on an island, where they're told they've been chosen for this year's Program. Everyone knows what that means... one class is chosen every year, and they will have to kill each other until only one survives. Some will team up, some will try to escape, and some are willing to kill people they've grown up with.

Battle Royale Remastered is a new translation of Koushun Takami's cult classic Battle Royale. I've already read the previous translation, and even reviewed it. The fact that I'm reading a retranslation should tell you already that I like the story a lot. So, although my rating is going to be the same (because I'm rating the book itself), in this review I will be talking specifically about the translation.

I think it's fair to say that the prose portions, generally speaking, flow more smoothly in this edition. It still has some of the more unfamiliar stylistic elements of the previous work and, I assume, from the original Japanese (where it suddenly to ramble off into an irrelevant observation or imagined line of dialogue somebody observing it might say), but on a line by line basis the prose seems, not necessarily clearer, as the original was usually pretty clear as well, but more natural.

And yet, the dialogue doesn't seem to have changed much at all. There's a certain rhythm to the way things are said that may be natural in Japanese dialogue but seem just slightly off when translated literally, and it seems an effort was made to leave that rhythm intact through the translation. However, the contrast with the much smoother prose seems to make it stand out more... when the prose is also, a little bit, 'off', I feel like I can adapt to it much more easily. Sometimes when I read I feel like I do an extra layer of translation in my head, and when I have to do it for some parts but not for others I have to be more conscious of it.

There are a few other changes that stood out. One, there was a line early-on that made clear that a name was "probably a joke" because it was a play on a famous TV character (whereas in the old translation, it just said that it must be a joke or pseudonym, but didn't explain why, leaving me wondering why that was). Thumbs up for that one. The other one was that a few of the names of institutions changed. The Army is now referred to as the "Nonaggressive Forces." The first time I read this, I loved it, echoing back to Japanese's real Self-Defense Forces. Every subsequent time I liked it less and less, because there were times where it really seemed to be less awkward to say "Army" (even if Army was shorthand for Nonaggressive Ground Forces, as they referred to Nonaggressive Naval Forces). Similarly, what was "Charity House" in the original is now "House of Love and Mercy" and... I really preferred the original, which made it immediately clear what it was. Maybe if they'd used the full name sparingly and referred to it informally the rest of the time, it would have worked better for me. Otherwise, there may have been a few other things I noticed, but none stood out (and I'm sure some I was simply wrong about because I remembered the original incorrectly).

I think it's probably a good translation, but having read the original so many times, I'm used to it and even when something is an improvement a part of my brain identifies it as "subtly wrong."

As I write this, I now have two copies of the book, and I'll probably give one away. And, I think the one I give away will be Battle Royale Remastered, the new translation. For all the reasons above (which likely won't bother a new reader nearly so much), and, for one more. The cover. While I try not to judge a book by the cover too much, I will judge the covers and, where there are choices... I want the best cover. And honestly, I don't know what they were thinking with this cover. Gaudy and cartoonish images of a bloody fight between students, Remastered's cover is not nearly as appealing as the simple minimalist silhouette of two students (with the space between the students forming the shape of a gun). That was brilliant, subtle, and one of the things that convinced me to give it a try (so I guess I was judging a book on its cover, a little). I am so, so disappointed that they changed it.

There is an interview with the author that adds some extra value to those who've read another version, but it's not enough for me to change my mind.

Started (or finished but haven't yet reviewed): Waypoint Kangaroo by Curtis C. Chen (received for free from a giveaway), The Future Is Japanese (short story collection), The Sudden Appearance of Hope by Claire North, The Forbidden Library by Django Wexler (received for free from a giveaway)

June Book Foo!

2016-06-01T20:14:21Z

Don't really have time for a TV wrapup this time, maybe I'll do a separate one later.

But here are the last batch of books read:

Finished: Against A Dark Background by Iain M. Banks (reread)

As the year 10000 approaches, the Lady Sharrow is marked for assassination by religious extremists, who believe her death, for the actions of her ancestors, will allow a religious prophecy to be fulfilled. Only two things, besides her death, will alter things. If she can stay alive until the decamillenia, or if she can return the priceless artifact that sparked the feud... an impossible weapon that has long been lost. Sharrow assembles her old team from when she was a soldier, and sets out to find the last Lazy Gun, a weapon that kills with a sense of humor, even though the clues to its location are tied to other, also lost, artifacts. Unfortunately, others want the gun.

In fantasy, it's common to create another world that is familiar to use in many touchstones, like the existence of recognizable humans, but also contains different elements (like dragons, or what not), and, more importantly, has a completely different history. In science fiction, they usually go for a slightly different approach... even when telling stories that don't take place on Earth, there's usually some connection... Earth is part of their ancient history, or it's another planet that the action just doesn't happen to be focused on, or, occasionally, it's an alien world but the aliens are totally alien. Banks often, and in this book in particular, takes an approach somewhat more like the fantasy mold... it's the year 10000, but it's not Earth, and there's no indication there ever was an Earth, even if the characters may as well be humans. It's a science fiction world (solar system, really) with its own history that echoes our world in many ways, but slightly different. Imagine if, say, Westeros, lasted not only past the Industrial age, but thousands of years past it, and you'd get sort of the same feel as the setting of this book (only instead of seasons lasting many years, the chief difference from our world is the lack of other stars that are near enough to see).

It allows him to showcase his creative talents, wild ideas that are both a lot of fun to explore and also compelling and familiar. There are several religious orders, political institutions, different types of animals, ages upon ages of history, and artifacts from that history.

But all that is just color, really. To be a great book, it has to hang a good story and characters off it.

Luckily, Banks mostly succeeds at this, too. The characters aren't always likeable (and in fact, although they don't seek to kill or screw people over, they're occasionally awfully blase about deaths, even innocent deaths, they happen to be responsible for), but they're entertaining, particularly the main ones (there are a lot of team members and side characters who unfortunately fade into the background, but it's a pretty big cast). They're the type you tend to root for mostly because they're going up against even worse people. And the story? Well, it's well-paced, exciting, jumping from place to place and caper to caper, largely an excuse to show off cool ideas Banks had for the world, but it's a good excuse and the journey is a lot of fun. So many times I found myself shaking my head and smiling at some particularly cool part of their society (even in the reread, which this was). There's a greater plot that may have been somewhat predictable, but still managed to carry emotional weight.

The weak points? Well, as I said earlier, the characters aren't always likeable and not always well-developed, and they're a little too grim-and-gritty for my tastes. And, towards the end (not quite at the end, the climax works pretty well, but just before that) it starts to drag significantly for me, with long stretches where I found myself skimming because I just wasn't that interested in what was going on and wanted them to get to the next cool part. But on the whole, I really liked that book, even the second time around.

Finished: Future Visions: Original Science Fiction Inspired By Microsoft (short story collection)
As the title suggests, this is a set of stories that were inspired by Microsoft... as I understand it, several authors were invited to tour the facilities and see stuff the company was developing, and write stories if they were inspired.

Now, "inspired" covers a lot of ground. Some of the stories involve ideas that you could see happening even relatively soon... others are stuff you could probably never expect to happen (even if they're based around tech that's reasonably plausible). But, even so, the stories to often seem to tread on each other's toes a little bit, like many of them took the same technology-in-development as a starting point. They still wrote very different stories, but it wasn't as different as you might get in an average anthology.

I mostly read this because it was free and an easy way to read more Hugo-eligible stories this year (since all of the stories were first published in this book, in 2015). None of them absolutely blew me away, but none of them completely stunk either. I think my favorites were Ann Leckie's "Another Word for World" and, to my surprise (because I didn't expect to like it from the first couple pages... I'm not even sure if it's objectively one of the ones I thought was better or if the fact that it became much better than I expected just made me like it more), Jack McDevitt's "Riding with the Duke".

Worth a look, at least.

Finished: Marooned in Realtime by Vernor Vinge (reread)
Wil Brierson is a detective, maybe the last one. Sometime in the twenty-second century, every human on Earth disappeared. The only ones left are those who were, at the time, encased in "bobbles", spheres of absolute stasis that many used to jump ahead through the years... and there are only a few hundred people left, trying to build what society they can by jumping further and further ahead to collect more stragglers. Nobody knows what happened to the rest. But that's not Wil's case. Nor is it his case to find the person who bobbled him for over a hundred years without his consent and separated him from his family forever... although he'd really like to do that, too. No, his case is to solve a murder of one of the few survivors left, who was murdered by being left outside of the bobbles, marooned in realtime, when everyone else jumped a century into the future. Murder by old age. But since the victim is one of the key people trying to keep the human race viable, it's a crime that everyone's got a stake in.

This is technically a sequel the The Peace War, but I feel like it stands alone. So much so that for this reread, I didn't bother to read the first book, which does introduce the bobbling technology, certain elements of the backstory, and one main character (who is changed almost to unrecognizeability by a long time gap), but is a completely different type of book, and, in my opinion, a far less interesting and lower quality one. Vernor Vinge is one of the greats of SF, and the line between where he was worthy of that title and where he was an okay author with a some really cool ideas is right between the The Peace War and Marooned in Realtime. Even to completeists I'd hesitate to recommend the other book, just because they might not think it's worth moving on to the second... and it is, it's a great book that deserves to be read, even standalone. Of course, it should be noted that the book DOES spoil the Peace War, so if you do think you might read both, you probably should do it in order, but if you read only one, read this one. It's not one of Vinge's best, perhaps, but it's still damn good, and it has its own story to tell that doesn't require reading The Peace War, which is good but may appeal more to dedicated SF readers.

There's so much to love in this book... there is of course, the three mysteries being balanced, and they're all handled quite well. There are some twists that are cool, but the story doesn't depend on them, it's built on the characters and, to a degree, the worldbuilding. Worldbuilding is a big factor here, but the world in question is Earth... one of the best things about this book is the view of the types of plants and animals that could exist on Earth millions of years from now. It was vivid, believable, and compelling. And more, the long diary of the victim, telling as she tries to survive and reach help while everyone she knows is bobbled up and completely unaware of her plight, is riveting. Reading about a person reading someone else's story should not be this good.

The book does have flaws, and there were times as they were approaching the climax that I felt it started to lose stream in trying to get across a lot of complicated action and motivations, but what it does well, it does so well that I'm happy to forgive it.

This was my first reread of the book, and I already know I want to reread it again somewhere down the line.

Finished: The Fortunate Fall by Raphael Carter

A reporter in a Russian of the future does more than tell a tale... she sees it, feels it, and the audience is wired into her brain to feel it through her, almost live, ideally with some of the personal or embarrassing bits edited out by a screener. Maya is one such reporter, and she's doing a story about the anniversary of a set of atrocities in a prior war, and working with a new, untested screener. But as she follows the story, she uncovers a lot more than she expected about both the world, and herself.

Wow. This is one of those books I'd only heard of through the occasional, but usually high, recommendation. But it wasn't in print, and I couldn't find a copy in any of the used bookstores I frequent. Eventually, I had to order a copy online from a used bookseller. And I'm glad I did.

The book is about twenty years old now, but it hardly feels dated at all. Sure, some of the tech seems to be based on some older ideas and may not ring completely true to more current readers (and cyberpunk as a genre as a whole may have passed its expiration date according to some), but it's only a small problem... and the many of the ideas and issues it explores are shockingly current.

The universe is full of exciting concepts, and it's set in a world that feels lived in, with history that mattered and affected the world, even though it's all still the future to us. What's more, the book does a really cool twist where a lot of things that seem innocuous at first about the world as it is in the "present" of the book turn out to be a lot more involved and scarier when more is revealed. Similarly with the characters, where you think you've got a handle on them but then gradually come to learn why they are the way they are.

The characters are engaging, even if they occasionally make choices that seem bizarre, but I wanted to follow them all the same, even through scenes where not much was actually happening, where they just seemed to be chasing a story.

Towards the ending, the book does lose me a little... I still enjoyed it (given an definition of "enjoyed" that includes suffering emotional gut punches at certain developments), but it became too much revelation and the author made a few literary allusions, some of which admittedly went over my head. And the ending itself involves certain characters making decisions where, well, I can totally understand the emotion behind them, the actual one makes no sense to me... that may well be part of the point, but still, it hampered my enjoyment slightly.

Even so, I'd rank this as a high four stars... if the ending worked for me a little better, I could guess it might well have been five.

This is Raphael Carter's first and only novel, which is a huge shame. They seem to have disappeared from the SF scene, but after reading this, I hope they're still out there and may one day make a return, I think they'd fit in well with some of my favorites of today. Also a huge shame is how this book seems to be one of those ones that made a small splash but then disappeared. It really should be remembered.

Finished: The Harvest by Robert Charles Wilson

Aliens visit the Earth, but at first they're silent, visible in the sky but not engaging. Until finally, in mass dream, they speak to everybody at once with an incredible offer. They will give functional immortality to everyone who wants it. As well as other benefits. The only catch is... once death is no longer a concern to you, or anyone else, you can't help but change your outlook, your priorities... you, in essence. And maybe that means you're no longer going to be what you presently consider human. Still, most people accept the offer. The novel follows a few of the small minority that refuse it, who are left unaffected, except that they're in a world full of people who said "yes." Could this all be a sinister ploy by the aliens and those who accepted the offer are enslaved and need rescuing? And, even if it's not... is it that much better?

This type of book is pretty much Robert Charles Wilson's specialty. A big event that can't help but change the world, and yet the focus is on the personal, how individual, rather normal people react to it, often helpless to change the course of events. In this case, it's also somewhat reminiscent of Childhood's End, although different enough that I wouldn't even call it a homage much less a ripoff (although I also wouldn't be terribly surprised if someone told me the author was inspired by the classic work to try this). It's just that a few similar ideas are explored, but with a more modern perspective. Modern to us, but for Wilson, it's one of his older, earlier pieces... and to an extent, it shows. Not that it's bad, but it's less... deft. The characters don't ring quite as true as some of his later work, some lean a little towards stock (but with interesting twists), and the plotting has a few more rough spots.

Two issues in particular stood out to me for the negative. One, there was a fairly obvious question that never seemed to be brought up, or even occur to any of the characters. It does eventually get answered, but it's far too late and feels contrived to provide a surprise to the reader, but not a fair one. I kept waiting and waiting for somebody to bring it up because it would have been one of my first questions and I can't believe it took that long to find out. The other problem is that there seemed to be too much uniformity in how the people who accepted the offer of immortality act. There is some mention of people taking slightly different paths, but just considering the natural variation of human personality, you'd think, given the abilities they have, there would be many more approaches taken. Maybe most people acting similarly allows for a certain creepiness to set into the story, but given the premises it didn't ring true. Even the basic count of how many people refused seemed unlikely to me... I could certainly believe a large majority, but I could see a significant minority refusing for some of the many reasons given by others.

Still, on the whole, I enjoyed the book. Wilson may not have shown himself as capable as he has in other works, but it was still interesting and worth a read. And he avoided several pitfalls that I think others might have fallen into and created a story that was far more conventional and much less interesting. The biggest sin is that I think that if he wrote from the same premise today, I think it might be a great book instead of merely good.

Finished: Sleeping Giants by Sylvain Neuvel

A giant metal hand is found under the ground, one that defies known science and anthropology. At first dismissed, years later it becomes the focus of intense investigation and top-secret efforts to find more of these artifacts and perhaps lay claim to the power behind them.

Full disclosure: I received a copy of this book free through a Goodreads giveaway. I don't think it affected my review.

In fairness, I should probably state up front that I'm probably the wrong audience for this book. While the description in the blurb was interesting enough, a mystery that was potentially cool and engaging, eventually it became clear that the direction the book was taken moved towards a SF trope that I've never been able to buy into, for whatever reason, one that typically makes me lose interest unless it's done really really well. Unfortunately, to say exactly what it is would be spoilery, but I'll say at least that it's not out of the blue, many aspects of the blurb description imply it could go that way, I was just hoping it was going to go in another.

In fact, most of my hopes for the book wound up being frustrated. The official synopsis also makes a big deal about the girl who discovered the hand also, later, getting involved in the effort to study it. So, I had envisioned a story where she was the main character, but she's not, and it's not the story of a person who's whole life was affected by an association with an impossible artifact and a maybe unsolvable mystery. She's a character, but she's not what the book is about... you may even call her an important side character.

The main character, if there is one, would have to be the mysterious "interviewer." The book is told mostly in that format, a series of conversations and interviews with an unnamed person who has connections and influence at the highest levels of government (along with a few other reports and diary entries that it's clear are provided to the interviewer). It's a tricky format, and has mixed results, because when it works it works well. It's a good way to get expository information out of the way without seeming awkward, and I do like the idea that the interviewer's personality is slowly being revealed while you think we're supposed to be learning about the "main characters" that he's interviewing. But it also requires a lot of cheats that pull me right out of the story, where characters describe the actions they're doing, or have recently done, in a detail that you need for a novel but seems out of place in an interview. Or, of course, where you suddenly get detailed descriptions of how characters look, from other characters, which seems especially cringe-worthy when a woman is described (because heaven forbid we don't find out how hot she is!). In the end, though, I found the interviewer not nearly as interesting as the author seemed to. I'd have been much more engaged if the story followed the perspective of some of the other characters more directly.

From a plot perspective, it moved reasonably well, but there were a few rough patches. Even leaving aside the disinterest that came when I realized what SF trope the story was going to be going with, I had trouble with it at several times. I couldn't buy into some of the global reactions, and there were a few too many times when I felt like certain things happened not because they were believable outgrowths of the premise and characters, but merely because they had to happen to solve the problem the author had set up. It led an air of inauthenticity to it, and considering one of the benefits of the epistolary novel format is that it adds a sense of realism even to outlandish premises, these seemed especially counterproductive. And when you add in the premise (again, which is somewhat of a personal peeve of mine) I found myself lightly rolling my eyes on too many occasions, especially when a proposed origin of the artifact was advanced. They were all light eye-rolls though... not enough to seriously hate the book, just that I felt I had to say, on a few too many occasions, "Really? That's what we're going with? Fine, let's just roll with it." With that attitude in place, it was mildly fun from time to time, but it just didn't connect with me as a whole. I'm sure others would have better results.

The book's part of a series, but I'm not interested in continuing and seeing how it wraps up, I think I'd rather be reading other books. This one, it's just not my thing.

Finished: A Darkling Sea by James L. Cambias

The distant planet Ilmatar is a single ocean with a roof of ice, and almost all of that ocean is without light. But it is the home to intelligent life, and humans have been secretly studying the crab-like beings, following the rules of the Sholen, another alien race, who dictate that there be no contact. When poor judgement causes the death of one of the science team, at the hands of an Ilmatarian, the Sholen come to assess the situation and decide whether the human expedition needs to be shut down... but they might not be willing to go along with the Sholen's rules if it means shutting down research rather than merely inconveniencing it.

This book is a lot of fun and will stick with me for a while, and I'm sure I'll reread it, because while it does have its flaws, it succeeds very well at one of of my favorite things in the genre. Cambias has not only created one alien race that was believable, interesting, compelling, and different than us in many fundamental ways (a difficult task)... he's created two. That alone made the book a joy to read, to get into that alien mindset and see how their biology affects their culture and outlook, to see how they might interact with humans, potentially in peace. In one book, the Sholen and Ilmatarians have both made it into my (admittedly rather large) list of favorite alien species.

So there's not a whole lot else to say beyond that I really enjoyed it and want more. The weaknesses it has aren't even that bad. Many of the human characters didn't connect to me as well as the story as a whole, and there were times when I thought the environment people (of all species) were living and working in could have used some more attention, to really sell what it's like from both our perspective and those of other forms. And the prose itself was clear enough but didn't particularly stand out for good or ill. But hey, it's a first novel and a really good one at that. I can't wait to see more.

Finished: Edge of Dark by Brenda Cooper
Long ago, an offshoot of humanity that had embraced technological advancement, transplanting themselves into robot bodies or computer systems, was expelled from the rest of the system. Since then, they've lurked in the dark fringes, occasionally raiding or trading with the stations. But suddenly they launch an attack to show their power and make their demands... they want to be let back in, on their own terms.

This book explores a number of themes that I really like, but it didn't work for me quite as much as I'd hoped. I still enjoyed it, but I certainly liked some storylines much more than others, and there were a few off notes that prevented me from really getting into it.

Starting with the good, I really particularly enjoyed Chrystal's storyline, which tells of an ordinary human who, after an attack by the Next, is converted against her will into a robot body, or, by some people's interpretation, murdered while a robotic copy was made. Cooper does a good job with her ambivalence and confusion, hating what was done to her and yet coming to love the new opportunities and experiences it provides her.

The other stories weren't as compelling, but they were relatively solid, after something of a slower start. Which applies to the book in general... it took a while to really start to get into it. I believe the book is set in the same universe as some prior works that I haven't read, and although I don't think it's required reading, it might have helped... those first few pages where I was busy soaking up what the status quo was, how different factions related, might have been easier if I simply knew all that from prior books. But, of course, I can't say for sure.

As for the things that turned me off? I think Cooper was trying to be fair but came down a little too hard against the Next, portraying most of them, aside from recent converts, as a little one-note and even unfeeling. That may be simply a factor of having most of the viewpoint characters from the rest of humanity, that have preconceived notions and prejudices (the extent of which I also found annoying at times), but still, I'd have liked to see a more balanced portrayal. The pacing also seemed a little off, particularly with the ending, which, granted, isn't the ending at all (because there's a sequel), but it's a sort of strange kind of book where the entire book seems to lead to making a decision. Which can be fine, but seemed a little anticlimactic in this case.

There was also one particularly weird thing about how the robot bodies worked, and more specifically generated power, where... I don't know if it just wasn't explained well, or I missed something vital, but it really didn't really make any scientific sense and what's more seemed to render the basis for any conflict between the two groups obsolete. I could see some possible explanations for how it might sense (and certainly, the character we learn about it from might simply have been ignorant of what was going on, so it's easy to let that explanation stand in the back of my head), but as I read it, it didn't work. And, worse... it didn't even seem to be that vital to the story. If you took out those sections entirely, nothing about this book would have changed much. If this power-generation aspect was intended to function in the way that it came across, it's a huge flaw. If it was merely poorly described, it's still a flaw, just a less severe one.

Overall, I liked it, but not as much as I'd hoped to. Still, I might read the sequel, see how it all turns out.

Finished: The Diving Bundle: Six Diving Universe Novellas by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

Space is really big, and really dangerous. That means there are a lot of wrecks, damaged ships, abandoned stations, and more. Some people, for money, knowledge, or glory, like to explore these wrecks, much like people in bygone eras would put on a diving suit to explore a sunken ship. But in space, it's a lot more dangerous, as the wrecks mght contain technologies that are lost or poorly understood, and still active, or worse, malfunctioning. And sometimes, even weirder things can be found...

This is a set of novellas, loosely connected, set in the same universe. Many of them are also parts of longer novels. This makes a decent way to sample the universe, but at the same time makes it a little trickier to go further, since chances are you're going to have to commit to rereading something in order to get a fuller story that a novel provides, or risk missing out on something by reading something out of order.

On the whole, though, I liked it. The central diving motif works extremely well, and something I'm surprised isn't hit a lot more in space-based stories (after all, astronauts often train for some of the weirdness of microgravity inside massive water tanks). And a few of the stories genuinely had me swept up and excited to see what happened next... although, at the same time, some of them dragged on a little bit. I don't begrudge this, because it's one of those things where characters have to operate out of an abundance of caution because that makes sense... that discoveries move slowly because the investigators aren't idiots rushing to look at things (mostly) but instead take a slow methodical approach, is actually refreshing, even if it's not always as exciting. And although the novellas are linked, they did offer more variety than I expected. Just when I was beginning to think, "Okay, this is interesting, but I don't know if I can take another few novellas all following the same pattern" the collection switches it up and gives a completely different kind of story.

They do tend to revolve around a single technological thread, in many forms, and it was interesting enough but by the end of the collection, it did start to wear a little thin. I might have liked to see a few stories that involved completely different types of wrecks, maybe even some that are completely conventional but there's a mystery involved. But it's clear the universe and major stories and character arcs are built around this single mostly-lost technology that crops up again and again, and, as I said, it started to wear thin. It's not that I'm not interested in continuing, it's just that I would need a break from it before reading more in this universe. If not for that feeling (and the previously mentioned difficulty of deciding where to go next), I might have gone out and purchased a novel in this universe right away. Instead, I'll merely mark it down as a universe and writer I'm interested in checking out again somewhere down the line.

Finished: The Diamond Age: or, a Young Lady's Illustrated Primer by Neal Stephenson (reread)

In the future, most basic needs are taken care of, with nanotechnology producing food, clothing, and furniture... but that doesn't mean there aren't the rich and the poor, or conflicts. One rich man commissions an intelligent book for his daughter, to educate her and give her the mindset needed to challenge ideas and become a leader. However, an illegal copy of the book also falls into the hands of Nell, a poor girl in an unstable family situation, and her stories may also change the world.

I read this once, long long ago, probably around the time it first came out (about twenty years ago). I remembered liking the central plot, but finding many of the other storylines confusing or tiresome. This time around, I certainly have much more appreciation for everything else surrounding it, although in some ways my opinion hasn't changed much... loved the main story, and everything else didn't quite engage me as much, although it was certainly full of interesting ideas sprinkled throughout.

In particular, while I get what the author was going for, the whole Neo-Victorian aspect didn't really feel real to me (which, considering the steampunk subculture, may be a failure of imagination on my part), nor did some of the other phyles (self-chosen social groupings) which seemed based on aping historical eras. And some of it feels especially dated... not the technology, but the sort of attitude and approach to depicting some of the other cultures. I wouldn't say it was racist exactly, but it had the vibe of someone using pieces of another culture as a cool prop (albeit, a very well-detailed one), rather than really portraying them. Again, I don't think it was too bad, particularly for the time (and in many ways it's probably better to have done it this way than to just tell a story that completely dismisses and discounts the parts of the world not part of mostly-English-speaking culture), but it did feel like something that, were it written today, you'd hope was done better.

My other major problem was with the ending, which seems to be a tendency Stephenson has. The story was great and engaging, but, towards the end, it became a little of a mess and it didn't feel like it resolved in a satisfying way. It was like a series that didn't know it was going to be cancelled until the last episode was filming and they tried to wrap years of plotlines up but it just didn't hang together.

Still the book is awash with cool ideas, many of which are still mind-blowing and relevant (maybe even more relevant) today, and an appealing tale of both the power and risks of technology, without losing sight of the human element. Even in the storylines I wasn't quite feeling as much, I found myself stopping and thinking, "Wow, that's so neat," many times.

And I wish I had a Primer of my own.

Finished: Vicious by V.E. Schwab

Two college students discover how to give people super powers, and try it on themselves. Ten years later, one finally breaks out of prison, bent on revenge against the other. Each finds allies with unique powers of their own. But in this story, the heroes and villains aren't as easy to pick out as they are in the comics.

I'm going to do something a bit unusual and start by talking about the score. Or should I say scores. Because generally speaking, I'd rate this book three stars on here. But... when I pick up a superhero book (or one involving super-powers at least), it's because I'm looking for something that's a bit simpler, lighter, more fun than what I'm usually into. Since, unlike other types of books, I'm not likely to pick it up when I'm not specifically in the mood for that sort of thing, it's more fair to score it based on that, compared to other superhero tales. And for this, I'd rate it four stars.

It does a good job... not very much that's extremely novel for the superhero genre, but there are a few things, and everything else is handled pretty well. I should also say that it's not really a "superhero" book, more of a "people with super-powers" but for the sake of ease I'll use "superhero" to be interchangeable with that. I feel like I need to make that distinction because it is in fact, one of the more interesting things about it, although some characters may be better than others, there really aren't heroes, and one of the few relatively new things it does with the genre is raise the possibility that this is in fact part of the nature of EOs (their name for people with powers). You find people to root for, but sometimes those people change and even many of the people doing heroic things are sometimes surprisingly cold.

The book's a more grounded take on the genre than most comics, something like Heroes, where people don't really wear flashy costumes or take on code names, but just have powers and exist in the world. That's generally my favorite type of superhero story though, so that's a benefit in my book.

The powers aren't really anything a fan of the superhero genre hasn't experienced before (Victor's is at least a bit more creative than most), but they're fun to read about, and at least on a few fronts things didn't develop how I assumed it was going to, based on the people and powers involved. Which made for a nice surprise while reading.

It's not really ground-breaking, but it does what it does quite well, the story's engaging and kept me turning pages, wanting to follow flashbacks, and there were only a few stumbles (including, I think, choosing EOs as the umbrella term for people with powers... but it's understandable, most of the best ones have already been taken). While mostly the tropes of the superhero genre are used well, occasionally subverted, sometimes things fall flat and people do things that are driven more by the need to follow through with the story rather than because that's what they'd actually do.

Overall I really liked it... I liked the characters, the world is interesting, and I could easily see myself reading this again when I'm in the mood for superhero stories, and I do want to see a sequel at some point.

I'd recommend the book to people who like superhero comics or shows or movies, even if they're not huge novel readers in general. The book's enough of a page-turner that if you think you might enjoy a novel but are just not sure where to start, and are afraid of being bogged down in something huge and dense, and the subject matter seems to your liking, this is a pretty good choice, maybe better than any other superhero novel that immediately comes to mind (with the possible exception of the Jumper books).

Finished: Ninefox Gambit by Yoon Ha Lee

Disclaimer: I recieved an electronic ARC from Netgalley for free. I don't think it affected my review.

In the far future, as part of a ploy to retake control of a space station that has fallen to heresy, a brilliant but disgraced, mass-murdering and long-dead general is bonded to a loyal soldier with a mathematical gift and given command of a group of ships.

I've had a somewhat of a mixed relationship with Yoon Ha Lee's short fiction. A few I've really enjoyed, while some of what he's written has done nothing for me. Still, the ones I liked I liked enough that I was really interested to see what he'd write at novel length.

Unfortunately, the results are also somewhat mixed, for me, at least, although some of that is because of personal distaste for some of the approach and worldbuilding. In fact, for the first third or so, I was convinced I was going to give it two stars at best.

Let's start with the big conceit, I guess. I don't feel it's tremendously spoilery because it's mentioned almost right off the bat (although it may take a little while before you understand that that's really what they're saying). This is a universe in which the calendar you follow determines how science and physics work, as does, to a smaller degree, what formations you put your soldiers or ships in during an attack. If enough people follow a different calendar, then your exotic weapons might not work. If you're in an area where most people celebrate slightly different holidays, they might be able to do wild and crazy things you've never seen before. Now, you can write about how mathematics governs the relationships all you want, but to me, that's effectively magic, as are most of the technologies itself (as does having a ghost that you bind to a person and manifests as a shadow), which puts this firmly in the category of fantasy, albeit science fantasy. Not my tastes, even if some of the magical weaponry have some pretty cool effects, that's not enough for me. But, even so, I could have gotten behind the idea a lot more, if the author gave me more to hang onto, set up the rules clearly in advance, maybe explained a little how this weird phenomenon came to be discovered, do something to support my suspension of disbelief. Instead, it's simply a given and we're expected to accept it as a fact.

And even that, I might have rolled with, if the characters and societies were easier to latch onto. But instead, the society they exist in is highly regimented (which you might expect, I suppose, if people following a different calendar might make your defenses not work), caste-like society, pretty much unlike anything I'm familiar with, and the main character we meet first is of the militaristic, ultra-loyal branch, known for being relatively humorless. So, it's hard to get behind the character (who seemed extremely bland, as did many of the temporary viewpoint characters who appeared for scenes from the front), the world, or, for that matter, the plot, because, for me, I couldn't really root for them to win. Any time in a novel people fight against "heretics", I'm instantly predisposed to rooting for the heretics, even if they're just as totalitarian in viewpoint, because at least they haven't fossilized and are potentially more open for change. I didn't really feel like there was anything in the book to latch onto and focus my enjoyment... the SF elements were fantasy and effectively made up as they went along, the characters were generally rigid, and the I wasn't especially caring about whether anyone accomplished their goals. All of that together made it hard to care about anything that happened, frankly, even the smaller character interactions.

Yet I did, eventually. Once Jedeo entered the story, it began picking up, although it still took a while before the interactions between him and Cheris were anything but more pages to get through in a book I wasn't really digging. But as it progressed, I found myself enjoying those exchanges, and wanting to know what happened. And, towards the end, and especially as we got some significant backstory of one of the characters, I started to get really interested... unfortunately, I got the feeling that THIS was where the book should have STARTED. Maybe the author felt he needed that long setup of the status quo in order to subvert some expectations, and there's probably some merit to that, but from my reading perspective, I felt like I had to wade through a lot of stuff I wasn't interested in to reach anything I really liked.

I think in total, I'd give it three stars, but it's on the lower end of three stars. And yet, the ending does interest me enough that I might want to continue. I don't know for sure yet, honestly... it might be the kind of situation where I probably wouldn't buy it for myself unless I heard from people I trust that it did indeed get much better, but I'd probably jump at the chance to read it for free to see for myself. And even though my rating is only three stars, I can see certain types of SF readers really liking this first book as it is, craving the complete dislocation that was a bit much for me.

Finished: Glasshouse by Charles Stross (reread)
It's the far future. Earth is a distant memory... most people don't even live on planets anymore, but rather small habitats linked by wormhole gates. And death's difficult to come by, because you can back yourself up as easily as taking a shower. If you want, you can change your body-plan or gender while you're at it. But there are still wars, and in the wake of one, many people have chosen to wipe their memories and start fresh. Some of these people, including Robin, an ex-spy who may have a mission so secret even he isn't aware of it, are recruited into what seems like an innocent three-year experiment, to examine how the society of the 20th century worked, by establishing a community following similar rules as they had to live under. No choosing your body. No instant repair. No ability to leave early if you don't like it. And a lot of expectations for how you behave. And Robin's worried the experiment may be run by war criminals with a nefarious agenda.

I've read this book at least four times now. That alone should tell you that I really enjoy it. In fact, it may be my favorite of Stross' novels that I've read (unfortunately, I believe it was also one of his lowest selling, which derailed chances of a follow-up or something in the same universe).

It's got a nice mix of different things I love in SF, things that don't always go together... wildly imaginative (but still somehow feeling plausible) speculation about the future and what kinds of technologies we'll have and how they'll shape our lives, as well as an engaging, easily relatable story. It's at time funny, fascinating, chilling, and making important points in a rather subtle way.

Of particular note is the look at how things we consider natural are often mostly matters of social comformity that can be manipulated from the top down, and how hard it is to fight it from the bottom when everyone else has bought in. I also really loved the brief glimpses we get at the censorship wars and wanted more about that, somehow, though I suppose it's hard to tell a satisfying complete story about a war where the people fighting it aren't allowed to remember why.

The book does have a few bumps, moments where either something felt obvious to me, the reader (even on the first read) but characters remained ignorant, or where interactions just felt slightly off... and, for that matter, there were times where the author handwaves reasons for the enemies to be defeatable. At least several times in the book, I was thinking, "Okay, but, really, if they wanted to, they could monitor that," and the reason given for why they wouldn't I just had to accept even though I didn't entirely buy into it.

There's also some treatment of gender that sometimes felt, at first glance, a little broad, even near the point of stereotypical. I do think it's a lot more nuanced than it looks, but the fact that it's a society where gender roles are being deliberately enforced and also that characters are sometimes in bodies specifically what they wouldn't choose (and so, the more unpleasant aspects would certainly weigh more heavily on their minds), but the first few reads I counted it as more of a (very slight) negative than I do now.

Still, I enjoy rereading this book every once in a while. I also think it could make a great TV or Netflix series. That's not to say books need that to be considered good, but part of the fun I get out of rereading in general is, since I don't have to spend as much effort undertanding what's going on, I can use some of the spare thinkspace to imagine how it might be adapted, if it were going to happen. I enjoy it. But I reread a lot of books, and while I might play this game with many of them, I think this could be one of the easier ones to do that way. Even though it's got big, complex SF ideas in there, most of it could be done on a budget of any non-genre show. That seems like a recipe for success (although, ignorant people would probably call it a Wayward Pines knock off or something. :P).

Finished: Permanence by Karl Schroeder (reread)

Rue Cassels steals her inheritance, which includes part-ownership of a ship, in order to escape her older half-brother and forge a new life for herself outside of his control. While in transit, she stumbles upon on unregistered comet, and stakes a claim, making her wealthy... but things only get more complicated when the comet turns out to be a cycler, a starship that runs on a cycle around the dim, chilly worlds that have been colonized between stars, like Rue's. Cyclers haven't been coming by as often as they used to, since the development of FTL that only works near stars, and Rue's society is slowly withering. A single cycler would help, but she soon learns that there's a lot more going on, and the stakes are a lot bigger than one person, one world, or even one species.

I read this book once before, and although it wasn't my favorite of Schroeder's, by far, I still quite enjoyed it. There's a lot packed into this book, ideas about the destiny of intelligent life, inventive and bizarre alien races, speculation on how people might live, a new, non-mystical religion for humanity, a new form of capitalism based on microtransactions, and plenty more. There's also a lot of plot. It's not a simple "get to the space ship and explore" book, even though that could easily have filled a whole novel... but there's a lot more plot than that.

Maybe, unfortunately, a little too much. Because with all the ideas Schroeder likes to explore, and all the plot he has to get through, a book only has so many pages and unless you do it very very well, things will fall by the wayside. In this case, the pacing feels off, as characters jump from situation to situation constantly, sometimes with rather convenient plot railroading to make it possible, and without much chance to explore any of them in particular, except in some cases where there's long digressions to explore some neat idea about how to build a livable world under a particular set of harsh conditions. And, also, unfortunately, character development suffers a little. I wouldn't call the characters two-dimensional, but there is still the sense that they're a lot more vivid in the author's head than comes across. There's obviously potential for in-depth, compelling characters... one struggles with something like bipolar disorder, others have lost their faith, and others with their own goals and motivations, but we don't spend enough time digging in to really make them come alive. Similarly, the romantic interactions that eventually develop lack a little depth. with characters falling for each other because they're the designated interest rather than because a connection was felt. The author has done better in other books, and again, it's not terrible, and I've seen much worse in this regard from books considered classics of the SF field... but it does make it a little harder to get into unless you're in it strictly for the cool ideas (in which case, this may well be right up your alley).

Despite this, I had a lot of fun revisiting the story and ideas, and thinking about some of the issues it brought up. Schroeder remains one of my favorite authors, this simply isn't one of his best works.

Currently reading: Nemesis Games, by James S.A Corey (Expanse #5), Echopraxia by Peter Watts (reread), and A World Out of Time by Larry Niven (honestly I don't even know if it's a reread or not, I found it on my shelf but it inspires no memory in me, not even of when I acquired it).

Another Year Older, a few more books read...

2016-03-26T00:26:19Z

My birthday yesterday (I was also born on Good Friday, so I'm still accepting birthday greetings today before calling you late). Meh, too old to really get worked up about it.

So let's move on to Book Foo!

Finished: The Gone-Away World by Nick Harkaway

Most of the world is gone, the results of a war with a terrible weapon that effectively erases targets from existence... but there is fallout, monsters and nightmares and stranger things that form out of the stuff left behind. One man tells his memories leading up to and including the war, and an effort to save what's left from the forces that came after.

This is a rather strange book. It's a mix of memoir, speculative fiction adventure tale, and satire, at times deeply silly and campy and at others deep. I've heard several times it being described as "Catch-22 meets..." with the other party, or parties, being a variety of things. And it's a bit unfair to do that to a book, or a writer, describe it in terms of other books or writers. But I'm going to do it anyway. Because it really does seem to be a good description. To me, this book is like a mix between Catch-22 and a Neil Gaiman novel, or maybe a Neil Gaiman and Iain M. Banks novel. With doses of a kung fu movie as well. Which isn't to say it's completely like any of them, but there are echoes that pleasantly gave me that vibe.

It's not, usually, laugh out loud funny, but there is a lot of humor that made me smile, and even when it got silly, something that normally turns me off a book, I still enjoyed it. That's another thing worthy of note, it's a book that contains a lot of elements that usually turn me off, but... it didn't, here. There was the silliness. There was the feeling that it was trying a little self-consciously to be "literary." There were mimes.

But I enjoyed it consistently, and I even think it has some worthy things to say about the tendency for systems to grow out of control and for people to commit atrocities in the name of "this is what I have to do."

The book did occasionally meander a bit, while at the same time the plot jumps between various different types of stories leaving a feeling that the author just got bored and wanted to write in a slightly different genre. And there was a stretch where after a significant revelation, the main character is ignorant of it for far too long after it was mostly clear what had happened to the audience.

Still, these are quibbles, the book was a lot of fun, something I expect I may read again, and definitely put this author on my radar.

Finished: Murasaki (shared world anthology)

Around a nearby star, a pair of twin planets orbit a point in space, as though each are the moon of the other. And because both planets support life, it's only natural for Humanity to send expeditions. This is the case of the star christened Murasaki, and the planets Genji and Chujo, and Murasaki tells a series of stories about humanity's explorations of these planets and what they learn about the inhabitants, and themselves.

Take two classic SF authors known for hard science fiction. Tell them to design a planet, or in this case, two, following science as much as possible, and create alien races for that planet. Then, open the world up to other authors, specifically, authors who have won the Nebula award (given by other SF writers and editors). Each writer reads the stories that came before them, then writes their own in that same, shared universe. It's a daring experiment... not the first of its kind, but worthy of attention nonetheless. If nothing else, it can be a fascinating look at elements of the process of writing science fiction that can often be behind the scenes.

The book ends with appendixes... these are essentially the outline of the world and aliens that the authors all worked from, as they originally saw it. You could either read them at the end, or skip ahead and read them first... I decided to go with option B, which will necessarily effect how I related to the rest of the stories but I'm not entirely sure I can evaluate how. Still, the appendixes were dry but interesting at the same time, and you can see the fun authors have in creating details. They may have made too many, though... although certainly the other writers added their own ideas, they may have felt somewhat constrained by the extensive details set out in advance. It's a mixed blessing, at the very least.

The alien races were fascinatingly designed and with a keen awareness that aliens aren't created in isolation but rather are part of an ecology, with animals and plants that don't seem out of place with each other (at least, no more than Earth creatures, and when you have platypuses and oak trees sharing the same planet, there's room for a lot of variation). There are also (at appropriate times in the stories themselves, rather than the appendices) actually drawings of many of these creatures, which shouldn't be necessary in a SF novel but is a really cool treat nonetheless, and helped the world come alive.

But enough about the skeleton of the book, what's important is the story... and, unfortunately, here's where it didn't entirely connect for me. The stories were, for the most part, okay. Some were dated in a few aspects, or the relationships between people didn't ring true, but they were okay... yet, they didn't draw me in. Any number of factors could have gone into this... and again, I read the appendices first, so it's possible that I was simply a little bored by the stories gradually setting up details that I was already well aware of. Or it could be something as simple as me being more distracted by outside concerns than I usually am, while I was reading it. I can't say for sure. All I can say is, most of the stories didn't entirely connect, and I sometimes found myself skimming through one story or another, picking out cool bits rather than being immersed.

The last two stories got me more involved, and I can't say whether it's because they're better story or because, by then, I'd bought into the world, but I felt more in those two stories than in the rest of the book, even if some of the plot elements weren't what I like in science fiction. The last, "Birthing Pool" by Nancy Kress exemplfies this, when I read it I thought, "Oh, I wish the 'mystery' didn't go in THAT direction, but, well, I enjoyed that story enough regardless." Even the last two stories, though, while they were good, they weren't among the greater short stories I've read.

In the end, it's an interesting experiment, and may well be worth reading for that alone, and as a textbook example of worldbuilding in action. But for sheer enjoyment? I'd put it between two and three stars, probably settling more towards the "okay" end rather than "I liked it." I liked it a little, and I'm glad I read it, but I wanted to like it much more than I did.

Finished: Trident's Forge by Patrick S. Tomlinson

Full disclosure: I was able to read an electronic advance reader's copy of this through Netgalley. I don't think it affected my review. Sequel to last year's "The Ark", so synopsis is behind cut.

Humanity has finally arrived at its new home... for more than two centuries, after Earth was destroyed by a black hole, all of humanity was aboard a generation ship that managed to escape. Now that they've arrived, they can start rebuilding and some of the old rules fall away... but humanity isn't alone on this world, it's also inhabited by the G'Tel, a humanoid race at a more limited stage of technological development. When a diplomatic meeting goes tragically wrong, Bryan Benson teams up with a truthseeker of the G'Tel to find out what exactly happened.

This is a sequel to last year's The Ark, which was the author's first published novel, and it's intended to be part of an ongoing series. These days both situations (an author's second book, and the second book in a series) carry almost of an expectation of disappointment, the so-called sophomore slump. There are many reasons for this... one simple one is that an author typically has years to work on their first book, but has to, comparatively, rush out the second so they can capitalize on their brand-new name recognition or avoid keeping fans waiting.

So does this book suffer from a sophomore slump? Unfortunately, yes, but not to a fatal degree. It's still largely enjoyable, does a few things better and is more ambitious in a couple ways, but it just wasn't as good as the first.

The ambitiousness, while not a flaw, may be part of the reason it wasn't quite as impressive. When you do something really well, and then try something quite a bit harder, even if you don't outright stumble it can come off looking a little rougher of a performance. That's the case with the worldbuilding. In the first book, the author really sold the setting, a generation starship. It felt authentic, that anything unusual about the way people behaved or what was possible flowed naturally from that premise.

In this book, Tomlinson tackles the much harder task of creating a planet and an alien race. And it's broadly done well... or at least the aliens are done well. The planet, I'm afraid... I got very little sense of it being all that much different than Earth with a few different species on it. While there might have been occasional references to differences in say, gravity or the composition of atmosphere, I never really FELT them. Plants were edible (although occasionally not quite as edible), there were no unusual pests I could recall, and weather never felt like much of an issue.

The aliens, though, a lot of thought did go into them, and there were a few nice moments where their alien biology and culture intersected in ways that could make them horrifying or incomprehensible to most people, which is a great trick when you can pull it off. But on the whole the aliens weren't all that different from types aliens I've read in SF before, maybe some details were interesting but they fell into some standard tropes. They aren't going to make it in any of my lists of favorite alien races. And there were a few times where some of the behind-the-scenes craft of writing was more obvious, where it seemed like the reason that the aliens had certain physiological or behavioral differences was because it drove the plot in a specific way. This is of course to be expected, but ideally the reader doesn't notice that it's being structured. And there were a few times where something just felt off, like when an alien, who largely use their bioluminescent skin to indicate emotions, "smirked."

The first book mostly (possibly exclusively, I can't remember) followed the perspective of Detective Bryan Benson. In this book, the author again goes the more ambitious route and has three major viewpoints, Benson, his wife (and also police chief), and one of the G'Tel. Largely this is a good move, a crash course in the alien culture from the inside, and a good way to break away from the action in one scene and jump somewhere else. I actually found Esa's investigation back home more interesting a lot of the time (although sometimes I felt the author was succumbing to the urge to tell the reader how awesome Bryan Benson is by having his wife think he's just the best except for a few heroic flaws). The other two characters spent a good deal of their time in the same place, so it lead to the occasional feeling that the perspective was shifting for no other reason than that it was the other character's "turn," which again is one of those little things that pulled me out of experiencing the story by reminding me that it was, in fact, structured and written by a person.

Other than these authorial "stretch-marks", the book's characterization, plotting, pace, and other such basic requirements fit into the same "pretty good" quality of the first one. I think it might have been a little lighter on the humor, which might be a plus or a minus to different people... for me, it was a small disappointment, but I'd much rather it be not quite as funny than being too played for laughs. But, most importantly, the book was fun and I was interested in what was happening all the way through. Although I only rated it three stars, it's on the high end of three stars, and I liked it enough that not only do I see myself continuing on to the third book when it comes out, but also going one better... I read this book for free, and electronically, but I'm a physical book man, so I think I'm going to buy a copy of it to keep with the first. Granted, the fact that it's released in paperback form first rather than starting with hardcover makes this decision a lot easier, but still, I think it's going to be one of those series I reread again when I want something that's readable, fun and yet still at it's core good science fiction.

Finished: The Long Way To A Small, Angry Planet by Becky Chambers

The mixed-species crew of the Wayfarer, including their newest hire, Rosemary, take on a year-long job that involves building a wormhole tunnel to a distant planet controlled by a group who has decided to join the Galactic Commons... even though the rest of their species has not. Along the way, there's friendships, family, romance, secrets, adventure, food, and stops at various trading posts.

This book has been getting a lot of attention, and one of the reasons why is that it's a very different type of book from most space opera. It's quieter, more personal, and in many ways a series of short vignettes rather than a full-fledged story. The best way I can describe it as follows: Picture your favorite TV SF space show, focused on a single relatively small crew, something like Firefly or Farscape. One that you fall in love with the characters, and maybe even imagine yourself aboard, interacting with them. Now, instead of saving the galaxy or running from some elaborate galactic conspiracy, the show simply follows the daily life of the crew, like a family drama or sitcom. One episode might be a visit home for a holiday, another might be two characters hooking up, or getting in a fight. And yes, there might be an action-centered episode here or there, where they encounter pirates or a hostile alien, but that's an aberration. Most episodes are personal, lighthearted, friendly. And you enjoy it because you do love the characters, and so even just hanging out with them while they do fairly mundane things is entertaining enough for you.

That's the type of book this tries to be. And, for the most part, it succeeds at it. It's not hard SF by any means, in terms of the technology, but it's hard enough that you can appreciate elements of worldbuilding, and the aliens are fun to learn about, how they're alike and different from humans in many ways. It's also generally very optimistic, like Star Trek, of different species with radically different cultures getting along. And, for all that it's light-hearted, there are indeed moments of tragedy and heartbreak to keep the book from being too saccharine. The balance is almost perfect.

As for flaws? Well, it takes a while for a few of the characters to break out of two-dimensionality (and there are a few who still feel kind of one-note by the end), and the lack of action and direction might bother some. I'm not sure I agree with some of the views expressed by characters that go unchallenged enough that one wonders if it was something the author wanted to express as well, and (and somewhat related) sometimes a few of the aliens come across as too "our species all believe/act like X" rather than capturing a similar range of diversity as humans. And some of the conflicts generated tread on SF tropes that are almost cliche (although, one fairly well for all that). But these are quibbles, minor things I think could have been done a little better, or that I hope are done better in future books by the author. Overall, it's quite well done, although I can see it not being to everyone's tastes.

For that reason, it's a little hard to imagine this COULD be a TV show, at least without introducing some action in every episode, but... I'd kind of like to see someone try (again, without introducing action every ep). It's also not the kind of thing I want every story to be, but once in a while, this kind of thing can really hit the spot, especially when done well. Worth giving a look, if nothing else, and I'm pretty sure I'm going to pick up the sequel.

Finished: Crisis in Zefra by Karl Schroeder

In the near future, Canadian forces are on-hand in Zefra, a new and struggling African city-state, to peacekeep and prepare for their first democratic election, but when terrorists strike they must go into action to deal with the threat. The methods of warfare may have changed with new technology, but the dedication remains the same.

This isn't your usual story. It was specifically commissioned by the Canadian Armed Forces as a way to explore how emerging technologies may change the shape of war a couple decades down the line. I'm reading it mostly because the writer they chose for the project, Karl Schroeder, is one of my favorites (and also because it's available free online, just google the title). He's also not who I would have expected as a first choice to write a book like this, although with a little deeper consideration, it makes sense. Schroeder himself is not a soldier (although the credits indicate that a number of military personnel did advise on the project) and was raised Mennonite, and although I don't know if he holds to the strict pacifism of that faith, I do notice that his work often includes cases of people in conflict coming to resolution in non-violent ways. For a peacekeeping-centered force in an urban environment filled with non-combatants, this may actually be a nearly ideal outlook for a writer going in... dealing with the threats while minimizing collateral damage or actions that can be spun to the enemy's propaganda.

It does read like a traditional SF story, approximately of novella length, albeit with breaks for discussion questions for the target audience to consider. At the same time though, it is written to a purpose, and so while there are characters with realistic motivations, it's not a heavy focus and so they can come off a little flat.

As a showcase for technologies and tactics the military my have to deal with, it's pretty interesting. As a story... it didn't really work for me as well, but then, I'm really not the target audience. Still, I did find it worth reading for the speculative fiction elements (and there are extensive footnotes with links to web articles talking about the technologies in development, although I suspect some of those links themselves may have died, which itself shows something of a minor failure of foresight). Also of note is that there's an essay at the end detailing a history of the Canadian military using what's essentially science fiction to explore the future of warfare. To my surprise, there's a much more extensive history than I would have previous thought, although this was the first such effort in a while.

Even though I only rated it two stars, I remain quite impressed and proud that this exists at all, and that there's a sequel, Crisis in Urlia. Despite my somewhat lukewarm reaction, I do eventually plan to read it.

Finished: Nekropolis by Maureen F. McHugh

While the future may have brought many things, it hasn't brought to everyone equally. Poverty still exists and, in certain places, so do new kinds of slavery. Hariba is one such, a young woman who has undergone a procedure called "jessing" which makes her loyal to an employer, and unable to defy him without life-threatening consequences... in addition to legal ones. But at least it is a job, an opportunity, and her master treats her well. But then there is Akhmim, a harni, a created being who is owned outright, by the same master. At first Hariba despises Akhmim, but then starts to develop feelings for him that make her decide to take a huge risk for both of them.

I'm mixed on this book. It's not the type of thing I normally go in for, but it's interesting for the most part. As a science fiction novel, it's one of those where there is very little actual speculation on technologies and trends, but rather what is there is mostly to look at slavery and power dynamics. With very little changing, you could easily set this in the modern day world with one or two new advancements, rather than a hundred or so years in the future.

It also moves on surprisingly quickly from the initial premise. I had expected at least half the book would be the two lead characters coming together and deciding to risk fleeing, but instead it happens in the first chapter (which granted is a fairly long chapter), and the rest of the book deals with the consequences. It also shifts point of view with every chapter, often to people who aren't part of the main pair. It does flesh out characters pretty convincingly for these side characters, although I think the main characters suffered by comparison.

Throughout the middle two thirds or more of the book, I was interested in what would happen to the characters, and the world, but at a somewhat low level, and it felt like the middle part dragged on a little. Maybe that was because it was the part that fascinated the author most, but not me. For me it picked up again with the last chapter, which turned some of the previous book on it's head, and certainly had a lot more nuanced things to say, although at the same time, as a narrative it wasn't entirely satisfying.

Hard to score this one. I think it might appeal a lot more to someone other than me... it might even wow certain people. I didn't dislike it, I just found my reaction somewhat subdued, so much that I'm not even sure I'd call it a "like." So I think two stars it is, while recognizing there was a lot of craft, it just didn't fully connect and engage me.

Finished: Faith by John Love

Hundreds of years ago, an advanced alien ship attacked the Sakhran Empire and then disappeared. Shortly after that, the Empire collapsed. Now, hundreds of years later, the ship, dubbed Faith, has been sighted again, and the ship sent after it is the Charles Manson, a ship crewed by psychopaths and criminals who are willing to do whatever's necessary, that must confront and destroy Faith.

I wanted to like his book so much. The premise was pretty cool sounding, and I thought it might hit the spot towards my darker tastes in science fiction like Blindsight did... the plot, at it's core, even sounded similar... deeply damaged people confronting the alien.

Unfortunately, too much didn't work for me.

Let's start with the description, or rather, how it related to the rest of the book. I suppose it's a bit of a spoiler, but I feel it's a relatively mild one. In some stories, there's a description like this, and it just describes how the book opens, but as the story evolve, it moves far beyond that. In this one, the synopsis pretty well describes the whole book... it's one long engagement between the two ships, starting a bit before and occasionally flashing back to some part of a character's history to keep it from just being a huge fight scene. But for me, it meant I spent a large part of the book just hoping they'd move past the initial confrontation and get interesting.

The disappointment was exacerbated, somewhat, by the approach to science. This isn't hard SF, or even hard SF with a few impossible items... I'd describe it as "cinematic" SF. It's the kind of science fiction that not only has FTL, it invents weapons that do cool but implausible things, where asteroid belts are so full that you have to dodge and weave around rocks, where a pilot can be inexplicably better at piloting than computers centuries more advanced than ours. This is a valid approach to SF, I can enjoy that type, even if it's not my favorite, but in this case, where it's one long engagement between two ships, it just feels like a parade of different made-up tactics against each other, there's no consequences or sense of stakes because the rules aren't grounded in either believable science, or some kind of greater outside world that can make even nonsense believable. It's like an imaginary schoolyard fight where the kids are free to make up whatever powers they want... maybe it's a hell of a lot of fun to them, but to watch? What mysteries are revealed also didn't impress me because my suspension of disbelief was already too strained.

But both of them are potentially minor problems, and perhaps for some people, not even problems at all, especially if the character work is great. This is certainly where the plot of the book is most ambitious... when you design your crew around the concept of "everyone's a psychopath", you're setting yourself a pretty high bar. To succeed I think you either need to dig deep and force the audience to confront the core of humanity behind these outcasts, or make them so interesting and compelling despite being irredeemable monsters that the audience roots for them. The book succeeds at neither. The backstories are mostly trite and told coldly, and in the present day they're fairly bland, occasionally getting into amusing cynical conversations, but never really justifying the premise. That is, I never really got any sense for WHY the Galactic Commonwealth made a crew of criminals and psychopaths and gave them one of their most powerful ships. They don't seem exceptionally talented, with a few exceptions, most of which feel like authorial fiat, so it seems like there are far better hands to put your greatest starship in the care of. Aside from occasionally being rude to planetary authorities (which could just as easily be a matter of policy), they never step outside of a box of what conventional morality would allow. So it winds up feeling like a gimmick. You could replace the crew with Captain Kirk and the Enterprise and perhaps be even more effective because you don't have to worry as much about them maybe deciding to go rogue (well, then again, with Captain Kirk, maybe that's not the best example). Now, they do occasionally have flashes of insights that I suppose could be attributed to their "out of the box thinking", but really it's just over and over again the characters getting feelings that there's no evidence for that turn out to be right, which makes them feel more like puppets than characters. It's not just the crew, either, there's the alien race that "turned away from one another" because of the insight from the last encounter, just because. People, singly or collectively, don't seem to come to rational conclusions, they decide what the author wants them to decide. Made worse because the alien threat is the same way, it's defined as incomprehensible and super powerful and there's the constant feeling that it's just toying with them, stretching out the battle for no reason other than it wants to, which really means because the author wants to, he needs to fill pages.

What's most frustrating is that the book's not all bad. A few individual sections are genuinely interesting, particularly the beginning, and the alien race that faced Faith before was actually pretty well done, a good attempt at alien worldbuilding. Some of the conversations among the crew had me smiling along, too. And a few of the ideas, invented technologies or staging areas for battle, were really quite cool, taken in isolation, it's the collective effect of all of it put together that failed for me. I also think that I, personally, may have been more hostile to the ending than other people would be... it's very much the kind of thing I can see someone else finding an interesting, mind-blowing idea, but for me, it just made me roll my eyes and say, "Really?" and it tainted my enjoyment of ant tolerance for elements of the rest of the book. I didn't hate the book, but I'm so divided on it that I can't even say I "liked it", unreservedly, so I have to just say, "it's okay."

It is, however, the author's first novel, so I won't give up on him entirely, but I have to give it a two because I was so disappointed with how it turned out.

Finished: Engineering Infinity (short story collection)
Engineering Infinity is a collection of modern day hard science fiction stories, of a number of different styles and authors.

It's the usual mixed bag here, maybe a little better than just a random short story collection, or one of a single theme or author, but there were still some stories I didn't connect much to, and some I really liked. Unfortunately a number of the ones I really liked I'd already read, but that's hardly the fault of the collection, even if it does somewhat affect my personal enjoyment.

I was very slightly disappointed in a misapprehension I had going in, I thought with a title like "Engineering Infinity" there would be a running theme of some sort of large scale (either in size or time) projects, ancient technological civilizations and giant starships, and there is some of that sort of thing, but there are also some smaller stories where it's just, say, a conventional mystery set on an alien planet, or the development of a single new piece of technology. I guess they all (more-or-less) qualify under hard SF, but I was hoping for a little more sense of wonder, Big Dumb Objects in space, mega-engineering stories as well.

Still, it was pretty good. My favorite stories were probably, "Malak" by Peter Watts, "The Ki-Anna" by Gwyneth Jones, and "Mercies" by Gregory Benford. But even in some of the other stories there were a few things I really liked, and only a couple that left me almost completely cold.

Worth a look particularly if you're interested in modern hard SF, although if you've already read a lot of short story collections from this century you'll probably also see a lot of overlap. That may be the reason I'm only rating it 3 stars instead of 4... if they were new to me, I'd have enjoyed it a lot more (although even so it's probably closer to 3.5).

Finished: Starfarers by Vonda McIntyre
Mankind is finally preparing a mission to a different star, one they believe holds intelligent life. It's an international effort full of scientists, and after years of preparation, they're months away from launch... but political winds are starting to shift, and the US is interested in converting the ship towards more military purposes back home, purposes that would put the entire mission at risk.

This is a bit of a weird book, firstly because it's clearly the first part of a series. And, while I suppose it might count as a spoiler, I don't think it's too big of one to say that this novel focuses on the beginning of the mission rather than the full purpose of the mission. So, obviously, it feels somewhat incomplete on it's own, like a lot of buildup, but where only, at best, half the story is told (though from what I understand, it's a four book series). Some characters are introduced and given some depth, but then play very little role in the story (and much of that, isolated from the rest), because it's clear they're intended to play bigger roles in the next books. And some people might be disappointed by the lack of things that they're hoping for when they read a book about a mission to another star to meet aliens.

That said, the book was fairly enjoyable. It had a mix of interesting worldbuilding (with the world in question being a mostly plausible near future Earth), a set of appealing characters, and just was an overall pleasant read. Even when the characters were just discussing fairly dry planning details or dealing with mundane day to day life, I enjoyed reading it. A few of the antagonist characters seemed on the one-dimensional side and designed to elicit certain reactions, but even they got more sides to them as the story developed.

I wouldn't call the book one of my favorites overall, but it was one of my favorites of the ebook bundle I got it in (a Women in SF bundle), and I liked it enough that I probably will try to track down at least the next book in the series.

In Progress (or finished and haven't yet written reviews): Against A Dark Background by Iain M. Banks (reread), The Diving Bundle by Kristine Kathryn Rusch, The Fortunate Fall by Raphael Carter, Marooned In Realtime by Vernor Vinge (reread)

Oh, and for my birthday, I bought/ordered: The Edge of Dark by Brenda Cooper, Vicious by V.E. Schwab, A Darkling Sea by James Cambias, an anthology I can't remember the title of because it was in the bargain book list online, and, the day before I got at a used bookstore (so I'll count it as a B-Day purchase), The Harvest by Robert Charles Wilson and a new copy of Neal Stephensons The Diamond Age which I can't seem to find anywhere and feel like reading again since I don't think I've read it since the first time, around when it came out.

The Future of Doctor Who!

2016-02-23T22:23:54Z

At least, if my dreams are prophetic. Which, judging by the lack of superheroes in Toronto, they most certainly are not. But, regardless, I had a dream last night that was pretty much just entirely a preview for some future season of Doctor Who. Cut for those who don't have any interest.

Anyway, I can't really describe it as a story... maybe if I wrote this right as I woke up I could have, but I put it off too long and now I can only remember a few isolated elements:

1) The Doctor: It started with Capaldi, and he made some sort of reference to preferring to travel with young women, not for attractiveness reasons but just because he thought they tended to be more excited and passionate about things (which, my dream-self immediately thought "okay, he's just saying this to be proven wrong by the writers later"... which was correct, but we'll get to that). The next time I saw him, he was watching an episode of very obscure very short lived 80s or early 90s SF drama "Nightmare Cafe" and was trying to get the TARDIS to land there because he was convinced that the cafe was actually another TARDIS. But after that, something I can't remember happened, and he had to regenerate into a new Doctor...

A teenage Doctor. Younger than Smith. Probably about 15 or so.

Anyway, interspersed with all of this we'd cut to and revealed...

2) The Companion! Didn't have a name, but they called her "The Inspector", because she was a police inspector, in her 30s-40s... and from the 60s or 70s... She got involved because she kept seeing a police call box in odd locations (she knew where they were supposed to be and took an interest when she found one that wasn't), and especially noticed that they popped up in circumstances where Weird Stuff was about to or just had go down. She'd been shut down by her superiors (who perhaps knew of the Doctor from UNIT but it was a secret) but investigated on her own and saw some previous incarnations of the Doctor (which were inserted into the episode through digital trickery... we'd see her watching a police box and spotting Hartnell or Troughton walk out of it, for example). She was convinced there was some kind of network of spies using phony police boxes as message drops.

Anyway, at one point she encounters Teen Doctor (who is also on a life and death mission but because of his age nobody will take him seriously), and he enlists her help and introduces her to the mysteries of the TARDIS and that he's all the other people she's followed (and occasionally interacted with) before, and then takes her on adventures because he needs somebody around who knows that he's really very bright and everyone should listen to him and to knock a few heads together if people won't.

Also at one point she is convinced that her face is starting to peel off and she's a lizard person underneath. I don't know if she actually was a Silurian hybrid or something or if it was a hallucination.

Anyway, that's about all I can remember.

In conclusion... my subconscious should totally write for Doctor Who! (Okay, maybe the "teen Doctor" thing was pretty lame, but I could see it working for a very short term regeneration to teach him humility or something, and, hey, my brain was in sleep mode when it came up with this stuff, be impressed that it did anything coherent at all!)

First Book Foo of 2016! + A Few TV stuff

2016-02-10T17:55:58Z

Before we dip into the books, some TV stuff to talk about because I keep saying I might do it in another post and forgetting...
Superhero TV:
I'm enjoying Flash, Arrow, and Supergirl more or less. Not perfect, but solidly enjoyable. Legends of Tomorrow I'm more mixed on. I like the characters and their interactions but on a plot level it's just not working for me, time travel plots are hard to make work long term, and Vandal Savage is not enough of a "mission" especially when they keep making dumb mistakes (I remember recently reading someone say that it's a problem with chaining your ongoing TV show a movie-style single-mission plot... if you're not careful all your heroes have to fail every single week). And, fundamentally... I'd rather see certain characters like Captain Cold on the OTHER DC shows, even if only occasionally, rather than used here. Lucifer's not really a superhero show but it was based on a comic, but typically they ruined it by making it a procedural.

Upcoming:Daredevil season 2 starts soon.

Book-inspired TV:
The Expanse: Enjoyed it for the most part, although I'm a bit confused at where they stopped, cause I don't think there's enough story left in Book 1 to make a 13 ep second season, so are they going to wrap up book 1 in the first few episodes then jump to book 2? IDK. But I'm looking forward to it regardless.

The Magicians: Never read the books, but I tried the series on a whim, and am surprised at how much I'm enjoying it. For those who don't know, it's a bit of a cross between Harry Potter and Narnia for adults... college students learn they're magicians and go to a magical college (and one of them has a connection to another world). Not perfect and the characters are occasionally rather unlikable, but they're likably unlikable, if that makes sense. Mostly enjoying the story of Julia, who takes the entrance exam for the school and told that no, she's not magical enough.

The Man In The High Castle: Was actually quite impressed with this series overall, looking forward to next season.

The 100: Technically based on a book series but IIRC was created before the book even came out (which I've never read), but what the hell, I'll call it here. Still, for a show based on a YA series on the most "teen-centric" of the networks, it's remarkably deep and daring, and I look forward to it. Also, even though it took a while to make that clear, yay for having a bisexual lead protagonist.

Upcoming: 11/23/63, an adaptation of Stephen King's time travel "save Kennedy" story, starts on Hulu or something in a few days with James Franco as the lead. King's stories are usually ones where the journey is fun but the endings suck (although this novel wasn't TOO bad in that regard), so it works for a series. Probably a few others in the long term, but nothing particularly soon that I can remember.

Other Shows: Watching Colony, fairly basic "living under and occupation, only the occupiers are aliens!" type story, but I think it's well done so far. And I'm still annoyed that Doctor Who is taking a year off (except for the Christmas ep) for the stupid Olympics, but on the other hand pleased Moffat's going to be leaving after the next full season, but on the gripping hand, not all that impressed by Chris Chibnall so far. So, overall, meh on that.

Now, onto January (and early February) books!

Finished: Planetfall by Emma Newman

Renata maintains the 3D printers on a new colony on an alien world, one that was half-religious pilgrimage, lead by her ex-lover and settled at the edge of an alien city that is nearly incomprehensible. For decades the Pathfinder has been gone, and the colony believes she's communing with God inside the city, but there are dark secrets surrounding the Planetfall and when a newcomer arrives to the colony, they threaten to tear Renata apart.

I'd heard that the book involved a main character with a mental illness, and at first I found her to be one of the more relatable protagonists I'd read in a while... which might say some uncomfortable things about me. But I could relate to her anxiety issues and her being uncomfortable around people, particularly when it's a topic she's unprepared for. Eventually, though, the rug is pulled out from under you and you realize that she's a lot worse off than you thought, and some offhanded references were actually signs you missed. In that way, it seems like it's a particularly effective exploration of the phenomenon, how somebody can get so bad and go without help, without people even noticing. This part of the storyline does threaten to overwhelm the book at time and turn into a preachy "trying to help someone who won't accept it" story, but by the end it works together mostly well, save for one bit I'll discuss later.

Other than the mental illness content, there is of course the wider SF plot, and it works surprisingly well. The mysteries of the city are engaging, the author does one of the best jobs I've seen in a while of incorporating and extrapolating social media in a SF environment, and the 3D printing technology thread running through everything is really cool. I had some worries, what with the character who was said to be communing with God, and the fact that they were led to the planet by a revelation, that the science fictional aspect would give way to mysticism and psionic powers, two things that typically sour me on a SF novel, but, for the most part this was handled excellently... until the end, which again, we'll get to in a bit.

The characters? Well, aside from Renata, sometimes they were undeveloped or bordered on caricatures, but the handful of main characters were done well enough that I wasn't bothered.

All in all, I was ready to give it four stars... up until the ending. Without spoiling, it felt as though the author just dropped some of the plots in progress and abandoned everything they were building for, for a shock revelation and some kind of ending that seemed out of nowhere and to not really end things. Even the struggle for the main character to accept help felt like it was rendered irrelevant by what happened, both immediately before the ending, and the actual ending, which crossed over that line into mysticism. To be honest, I'm not even 100% sure I understand what the author was going for there, it felt like maybe I missed something, but if I did (and I'm not sure I did), I think it was done in such a way that I'm still willing to blame the author, not myself. I would have happily read a little bit longer of book that had an ending that actually felt connected to the rest of the story, but here, it came just too fast and too out of left field (and, still, too left the story I'd been engaged in completely unfinished in my mind) that I can only give it three stars. Still, what came before that was done well enough that the author's on my radar for the future.

Finished: Stars: Stories Inspired by the Songs of Janis Ian (short story collection)

As the title indicates, this is a set of stories inspired by the songs of singer-songwriter Janis Ian.

I'll be honest, I'm not really a big music guy, in that while I might enjoy individual songs when I hear them, I don't feel the need to seek it out or follow in detail the people who produce it. So, when I got this book (it was actually part of an ebook bundle), Janis Ian's name wasn't only not a draw, I had no idea who she was. I couldn't think of a single thing I'd heard her sing, but hey, I don't have to know the musical inspiration for a short stories to enjoy it, so I dug into it. In the introduction, I learned that she had indeed written, and sung, songs I'd heard of, even at least one I'd say I particularly like, I just hadn't known the artist. But, more importantly, I learned she was a lifelong science fiction fan. Not only is she a fan, but she was engaged enough in the fan community that this collection idea was sparked at a convention while talking to a writer/editor who was a fan of hers as well, and many authors she enjoyed were thrilled to participate. So I instantly like her more than I otherwise would, since she's just my kind of people.

That said, the anthology, well, it's a typical anthology, not every story is going to land, some are in subgenres I just don't care for, others with themes I don't connect with, and a few seemed to rely on too much resonance with a song I'd never heard. There was a secondary problem, in that my favorite stories in the collection... were ones I realized I had read before (and after the first couple, a dim recollection formed of a "Year's Best SF" collection that contained a number of stories that were mentioned written in tribute to somebody's songs, which was obviously her). So, although they were still good, they weren't as novel, and thus I didn't enjoy them as much as I would have when they were fresh.

Still, my favorites in the collection were probably "Ej-Es" by Nancy Kress, "In Fading Suns and Dying Moons" by John Varley, "Riding Janis" by David Gerrold, "All In A Blaze" by Stephen Baxter

Of the rest, there were decent ones but few really stood out. Although there were a variety of songs that served as inspiration, a few were used again and again, most notably "Society's Child", although I don't think any of them really did justice to the idea. One wrote a story that was barely science fiction at all (with just a mention of a technology lurking in the background) but had the concept of the two characters from the song meeting at a reunion decades later, and the others just literally reinterpreted the story in a science fictional context (one played for laughs). The only one to do it in a particularly interesting way was "An Indeterminate State" by Kay Kenyon.

Also of note, Janis Ian has a short story of her own in the collection, I believe it's her first (but not her last), called "Second Person Unmasked," and it's actually quite well-done. The only reason I didn't include it in my list of favorites above was because I wanted to talk about it separately. For a first story it did remarkably well and although it was probably lower on my list of favorites than the others, still managed to be one of the more memorable ones.

The collection might do particularly well with somebody who's a bigger fan of her than I am, but otherwise, it's solid.

Finished: Aliens: Recent Encounters (short story collection)
Recently, I read an anthology, Alien Contact, and found myself somewhat disappointed... while there were a couple good stories, not only were a lot of the contacts not first contacts, but also, many of the aliens seemed to either go to extremes of "even if ridiculous things happen that's just because aliens are completely incomprehensible, so why bother trying" to "humans in funny suits with a few cultural differences". I found it hard to understand how an anthology pulling the best first contact stories from all of SF history could wind up so uninspiring.

But I still had that itch that needed to be scratched, stories of the alien, but with a sense that there was a real something behind them, something that may be hard for the the human mind to grasp, but not impossible to at least approach. So I tried again, with Aliens: Recent Encounters. The Recent is because these stories were all pulled from the year 2000 or later, which should make it less likely to get great stories, but somehow the opposite happened.

I didn't like every story in it, of course (including, oddly enough, the one story that both anthologies shared). And a few stretched the definitions of "alien" and "encounter" (in one, the alien interaction seemed to consist solely of hypothetical aliens who might one day find a record left behind for them). But on the whole, I liked them a lot more, and even many of the ones I couldn't get into, I could easily see other enjoying a lot more than I.

My favorites of the collection were "Honey Bear" by Sofia Samatar, "The Bookmaking Habits of Select Species" by Ken Liu, "The Tetrahedron" by Vandana Singh, "The Beekeeper" by Jamie Barrass, "My Mother, Dancing," by Nancy Kress, and "The Godfall's Chemsong" by Jeremiah Tolbert, though many of the ones I didn't list also were quite enjoyable in one way or another, giving an intriguing look at an alien life cycle and culture, or telling an important emotional story, or both. Only a few were a chore to get through for me.

Most importantly, it successfully scratched that particular itch, for stories of the alien... for a while, at least.

Finished: City by Clifford D. Simak

Long after Mankind has left Earth behind, the planet has gone to the dogs... literally. They have risen to intelligence and created their own society, aided by robots, and been on their own so long that many have come to doubt the stories about Man were mere legends. But they study the stories anyway.

Sounds like Pixar's next great movie!

Of course, it's not quite so commercial. It's a set of short stories, ostensibly from different periods, including a few written by men themselves (although the scholarly dogs in the frame story believe that was an unlikely pawsability). It starts a little ruff, with a rather implausible seeming story of humanity abandoning cities. After that, the stories progress farther into the future and explore a variety of different ideas, most of them pretty well, although some have may seem to be well-worn because popular media has used them in the decades since this book.

Through the framing device, we're told these are stories that come across centuries from a variety of different writers, which is an interesting device, but I don't think Simak entirely pulls it off. The "voices" in the separate stories are too similar to each other, and the characters (or in some cases, families) too consistent that it's hard to buy it as anything other than a single writer. But that's a particularly hard trick, and in this case, made harder by the fact that this is a fix-up novel... the individual short stories came first, then they were given a new leash on life as a novel. So I don't really hold it against the author, except to say that it pulled me out of the immersion, just a little.

The stories don't all focus on dogs, either, there's a huge variety of concepts sharing space, from a race of supermen, to superintelligent ants, to Martians, to robots, to other dimensions. My favorite part of the book almost feels like it doesn't really belong with the rest of it, a short story of men transforming themselves to live on Jupiter. Although that one contains the presence of a dog, and the tail is tied back in with the rest of the dog stories, it could stand alone (and indeed, a story I've read before, in a multi-author collection).

This variety is one of the book's strengths, but it's also somewhat of a weakness. I can't help but feel like I might have enjoyed the book if it had a stronger central story that centered on the dogs and their society after Mankind had em-barked off to places unknown. Maybe what I wanted was the Pixar version after all.

That's not to say I didn't enjoy the book at all, just that I wanted something a little different than what it gave me. It still left me pondering plenty of ideas, which is part of what of science fiction is fur.

Note: All the cheap dog puns in this review are my own, not in the book itself.

Finished: Vast by Linda Nagata
Third book in a trilogy, so the synopsis is cut.
On the Null Boundary, a spaceship travelling across the vast universe, several people may be all that's left of humanity, albeit from different planets and through nano and bio-technology they may not be recognizeable to humans of today. But those differences, dramatic as they are, may not be enough... an incomprehensible alien race, the Chenzeme has mercilessly attacked humanity everywhere it's been found with possibly automated war machine. One of those machines is following the Null Boundary now and they expect to encounter more as they head into Chenzeme space searching for some kind of answers or meaning.

This is the third book of a series that began with The Bohr Maker (or arguably fourth, as there is a prequel as well). I've heard some places say that each of the books can be read independently, and while that's more or less true of the other books, this one's a little different. It follows characters from the previous book directly, and without the context of their earlier lives, a lot of this book might be difficult to follow.

Then again, this book is probably going to be difficult to follow anyway, for all but the most hardcore SF readers. There's wild, out there concepts, like communication via chemical signals, philosopher cells that render decision through argument, viruses that promote cult behavior, atrium organs that allow you to keep copies of other people in your head, and many more, and it's tough to keep all the rules for these in your head at once. So it might be true to say that this one can be read independently, but only because if you've already got it in you to tackle all these concepts, not having the complete backstory isn't that much of an additional barrier. Still, I think it helps a lot to know what's going on. This isn't the kind of book most people can just dive into... even with the context, it may be a difficult read.

Indeed, while I liked it, a lot of the time I admit I had only a limited idea of what was going on, and was reading mostly for tantalizing technological speculation of the far future. The characters didn't entirely connect, mostly because they were too different from what I can relate to, and when they weren't engaged in an urgent battle for survival, some of their motivations seemed a little obscure (as did, I'm afraid, any romantic pairings, although a large part of that may have been because I really couldn't remember the connections or arrangements they had from the last book).

This book in particular has been listed as an influence on Alastair Reynolds who read it and thought highly of it before writing his Revelation Space series, and you can see some of the legacy, a few similar ideas, not theft by any means, but playing with a few of the same concepts, and feel. That seems to have, unfortunately, been a running theme of Nagata's career... being right at the forefront of a new trend or idea in SF, relatively unnoticed by mainstream readers but quietly influential all the same, a strong voice of hard SF that doesn't seem to be listened to as much as she deserves. I enjoyed the book, maybe on the low end of the scale because I think the ideas may have ran away with her, a little, at the expense of compelling story and characters this time around, but it really makes me crave her return to more farther future speculation. If she could somehow blend this talent for far out SF ideas with the more personal character work she displayed in her Red trilogy, I think she'd easily generate a book I don't just enjoy, but consider a favorite.

Finished: Central Station by Lavie Tidhar

I recieved an electronic advance review copy from NetGalley. Since I technically said I'd only post my review on Goodreads until closer to the publication date, instead of copy/pasting it, I'll just link directly to that one for now. But in short, I quite liked it and would like to see more in that universe.

Finished: Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Charles Sheffield
Tomorrow and Tomorrow tells of Drake Merlin, a composer who discovers his wife, and love of his life, Ana, is dying of an incurable disease. Unwilling to lose her, he has her froze in the hopes that later there will be a cure... and then soon after, freezes himself, so that he can be around to take care of her and make sure she's brought back. But things may be more difficult than he anticipated, and he must go further and further into the future in the slim hope that he and Ana might be reunited.

This is my first experience with Sheffield, at least in novel form, but I don't think it'll be my last. It's not perfect, but there's some really cool stuff here, from the expansive view of the lifespan of the universe and interesting ideas on how humanity might develop (and indeed, what it might be once it's no longer anywhere remotely human at all), combined with a whole mess of traditional SF tropes like in-depth explorations of alien life cycles and consequences of new technologies.

There are flaws, but it's a collection of small things that could have been better rather than anything independently book-breaking. Some of the future speculation didn't ring entirely true (but that's to be expected). The characters, well, they're a bit on the weak end, but not dramatically so. At a certain point the single-mindedness of Drake's quest becomes a little ridiculous, as is the long timescales he occasionally lives through, but they're sort of part and parcel of the plot, so I can let it slide. My biggest complaint is that at time the book drags. That's right, I'm telling you a book that spans billions of years, jumping ahead long stretches of time on a regular basis, drags a little in the middle. What, you want to fight about it? Seriously though, there are times when not even a particular adventure, but a particular side exploration of an adventure seems to take a lot of pages to get through, and I found myself wishing those bits were more summarized to get to more interesting stuff. Even this never completely soured my enjoyment on those parts, I just wanted to move on.

All in all, I think it's a three, but a very high three, and enough tickled my sense of wonder that I'm interested in checking out what else the author's done.

Still Reading (or finished but haven't put up reviews: The Gone-Away World by Nick Harkaway, Murasaki (early 90s shared world project by 6 Nebula-winning authors), Trident's Forge by Patrick S. Tomlinson (eARC from Netgalley, sequel to The Ark), Faith by John Love

Only 4 days from the day that shall not be named and the associated rubbing-the-face-in-unhappiness. :P At least it's on a Sunday so I have to go to sleep early that day anyway.

Last Book Foo of 2015!

2015-12-31T17:14:38Z

Before I start, I would like to wish a Happy New Year to anyone reading this, and, in addition, a happy birthday to liabrown!

Since we've also got end-of-year-book-foo-wrapup to do, I won't waste time talking about TV/movies (maybe another post soon though) and just get right to the last of the reviews of the year:

Finished: The Shining Girls by Lauren Beukes

Kirby Mizrachi was attacked and left for dead by a vicious killer that had never been caught, a killer she thinks is may be a serial killer, and she gets an internship at a Chicago newspaper mostly so she can investigate on her own.

What she doesn't know is that she's right, the man who attacked her is a serial killer, responsible for murdering nearly a dozen other women... throughout the twentieth century, leaving strange and occasionally impossible artifacts on the bodies. For the killer, Harper Curtis, travels in time with the help of a house he stumbled upon in his ordinary life in the 1930s, a house that already has his victims listed.

Time-traveling Serial Killer sounds like a good pitch for a movie or a TV series, and it might well be one at some point. But once you get beyond the initial wow factor of the premise, you have to consider how difficult it would be to put an investigator in one time up against a time traveling serial killer, and have a compelling story. Beukes accomplishes this by, mostly, telling two alternating stories. One of these is the story of Kirby, which, for most of it, is less a tense investigation as it is a character study of somebody who went through a severe trauma and is trying to cope with it, not entirely successfully. Her investigation is real, but it doesn't, can't, really get anywhere. It gets frustratingly close a few times, but either bad luck or the natural tendency to dismiss things that don't fit as being "wrong" rather than "time travel" mean that she can't really make any headway until she stumbles upon that one clue that ties things together. The other story told is that of the killer himself... but, in many ways, it's also the stories of the victims, as they're the humanizing focus, their struggles and strength, what makes then "shine" to Harper before he snuffs them out are an important part of the story, and the murders are mostly told from their perspective (although we get plenty from Harper in the hunt and lead-up). It does have some of the same lurid fascination with violence that any serial killer media tends to have, but the personalities and historical context makes them stand out little more than a simple body count.

For me, Kirby's story connected more, but I wanted a bit more of the sense of wonder to be directly tied to it, with more of the book being about her knowing something of what was going on, or trying to directly cope. Still, the characters and prose are well-written enough that I could enjoy it a lot despite that.

On the whole I enjoyed the book, thought with a few complaints. Firstly, it does suffer from the big problem that claims all but the best time travel books... it doesn't really end well. At least, the getting to the ending is pretty compelling, but the final confrontation and immediate aftermath, which attempts to tie up the nature of the house and Kirby's reaction to finding it, and actions afterwards, they left me either wanting more, or outright cold. But, as I said, this is a common problem in time travel stories, and so I was prepared for it and it didn't hurt my enjoyment too much. The final confrontation did lack punch in another way, where I felt there was some kind of narrative need for a direct Kirby/Harper face-off, but instead other parties were heavily involved and blunted the impact.

Secondly, and I realize this is a crazy thing to ask for in a time travel book, but I do wish the story was told a little bit more linearly. I felt the Harper sections bounced around different parts of his... 'adventures', and there was one point where I legitimately thought I'd missed a few chapters because suddenly someone was in an unexpected situation without any lead-up that I felt was due.

Finally a complaint that really isn't about the book itself, but about a number of the descriptions I've read for it. Sometimes I've heard the Shining Girls of the title as women "destined to change history." And while it's true that the women are people who are poised to make changes, possible trailblazers, possible people who might devote their lives to helping people and have some cumulative impact they never realize... in terms of the story, we never actually see what the effects of any of them would have been. So it reads more like Harper is just crazy and sees these women as special and 'must-be-murdered,' when really their lives without him might have lead to great changes in history, or, more likely, might have amounted to just getting by and doing the best they can... like almost any of us. I was craving some element of directly seeing "what might have been," or at least a clear reason why someone or some supernatural force targeted these women, rather than just that they had 'potential.' But as I said, most of this is an issue with descriptions I read elsewhere, rather than the story itself, although I can at least pin my desire to have more concrete information on the 'why' on the actual text.

I liked it, and I think it's worth reading, but for my particular tastes, it doesn't land quite as well as I'd hoped.

Finished: The Phoenix Code by Catherine Asaro
Robotics expert Megan O'Flannery joins a project to produce artificial intelligence in an android body, and begins making quick strides in making the prototype more intelligent and emotive. Meanwhile, she also becomes close with another expert in the field, the strange but brilliant Raj. But then things start to go wrong as the android develops a fixation for Megan.

The book started okay, but my interested started to wane fast. It was at its best when it had the main character trying to train a clearly-not-that-intelligent android... unfortunately, that didn't last long before it became able to act more of less human, albeit one with some severe mental issues and a vastly different knowledge base. Then we moved around between rebellious adolescent and obsessed stalker and a few other personality changes along the way, which occasionally became interesting but with the unpredictability came a sense that the personality was being written to the needs of the plot. And that plot really didn't do much for me.

The words that come most to mind when I think back on the book are, "like an medium-quality Outer Limits episode." It would have made a decent episode of the 90s series... in fact, there are a few episodes that, plotwise, resemble this story a lot. I'm not trying to imply there was any swiping going on, just that many of the ideas feel well-worn and, while suitable for forty-five minutes of television, as a novel, it felt distinctly underwhelming.

In addition to being stale, the plot was full of things that didn't really feel right. Such as, when trying to create an android that can seem human, that they apparently started with robot bodies that looked identical to humans (and Terminator-style, had an outer layer of flesh which, the text made sure to point out, had working sex organs). Seriously? You go to the trouble to produce a sexually capable android body and you haven't even got the AI licked yet? You'd think it would make more sense to start with an obviously nonhuman robot body so that, if it all goes wrong, the thing can't just try to integrate into normal society. I understand that without that, the rest of the story wouldn't have worked, but the movie Short Circuit did better than that.

The book was also weirdly dated. I remember in particular one line where they mentioned all the amenities a particular tool or lab provided, and they mentioned fax. Twice. Now, I believe the second one was a simple accident, but the first was obviously intentional. This kind of thing is inevitable with SF, as it gets old there are going to be some things about the future that are hilariously wrong, and you normally give it a pass... but in this case, it's a little more egregious. The reason, and also why I say it's "weirdly" dated, is that I believe this was revised since it's original 2000 publication, only a couple years ago, and there are a few references to social media or other things that have been updated. That some of the book feels modern and other parts are not make it even worse than if the book was simply out-of-date.

The book's not completely horrible. I did like that there was a romance plot with a person who didn't seem like a typical romantic lead, full of strange habits and insecurities, and there are a few genuine surprises that I liked, but, on the whole, the book misses it's mark.

Finished: Lock In by John Scalzi

Chris Shane suffers from Haden's Syndrome, a disease that struck in our near future and left millions around the world "Locked In" to their bodies, unable to move or do much to interact. The crisis did however, spur some technological development to help those suffering... while they can't cure the disease, there are brain implants that let people telecommute into robot bodies, or even bodies of specially trained humans, and experience something close to a normal life, and also creating a new minority. Where there are new minorities, there is discrimination, and where there is new technology, there are new crimes, and Shane has to deal with both while working for the FBI, as a murder suspect is a human Integrator, who rents his body out to Hadens, and a wave of terrorism is about to break out.

The premise might be a little bit out there, but Scalzi instantly gets to work selling it to the reader as a believable development in human society. And it works, from believable sounding slang terms that have cropped up, to rules (like any crime involving a Haden is automatically considered to be an interstate crime until proven otherwise). Setting the story decades after the disease helps with this a lot, as it's just a fact of life for most of the characters, those who suffer from the condition and those who interact with them. Scalzi also does a neat trick that's been much-remarked... the main character's gender is never identified. The story is told in the first person, and the character, in this story anyway, doesn't seem to pay a lot of attention to sex or romantic matters. Yet, the character doesn't explicitly reject a conventional gender either (although that's also a possibility), it's just not mentioned... things are worded such that there's never a "he" or "she" said in reference to Shane, even from strangers who know about the character's history. This could result in some awkward dialogue, but Scalzi managed it seamlessly, I literally would not have noticed if I hadn't paid any attention. In any event, the reader can choose how to think of Shane... I personally saw her as a woman (albeit one interacting with the world with an android body).

Scalzi always scores high on the readability scale, and this is no exception. It's very breezy, consistently entertaining, and kept my imagination engaged... in fact, it's (unfortunately) very rare that I dream about a book I'm reading, but this one inspired that at least twice.
The plot does, however, feel somewhat light, with few surprises. Maybe it's because of all the heavy-lifting in worldbuilding required, but I was left thinking, "That's it?" at the end of it. If Lock-In was turned into a TV show (and supposedly, it's under consideration for such), the novel would maybe make a decent two-hour premiere. In many ways that makes it ideal for adaptation because it's the kind of blend of SF and procedural cop show that seems to be the only thing mainstream networks are willing to take a chance on.

I'm torn between 3 and 4 stars... but in thanks for the good dreams, I'll put it at the low end of the 4 side

Finished: Other Worlds Than These (short story collection)
"Go then, there are other worlds than these," is one of my favorite quotes from Stephen King's Dark Tower series, subtly evoking the sense of wonder inherent in the idea of a multiverse. So it's appropriate to draw from it for the title of this collection, themed around other worlds and people from worlds like ours who travel to them. It contains both stories that are both sci-fi takes (usually called parallel universe stories, drawing mostly on quantum physics theories), and fantasy (generally called "portal fantasies" because they typically involve some kind of a portal that takes a person from our world to another)

Of course, I tend to be more interested in the former than the latter. Still, portal fantasies are among the fantasy that does tend to interest me more than most. Unfortunately, in this one, few of the fantasies really engaged my imagination in a way I'd hoped. There were a few, like Seanan McGuire's "Crystal Holloway and the Forgotten Passage" and "The City of Blind Delight" by Catherine M. Valente, which, despite not being what I usually read, were enjoyable and affecting. Also of note, Yoon Ha Lee's "Flower, Mercy, Needle, Chain," which probably falls under science fiction, but Lee's work has usually left me a little cold in the past, and this one in particular sort of tread on the borders between the two genres. But it worked well for me anyway, short and sweet. I also highly enjoyed "[a ghost samba]" by Ian McDonald, and "Like Minds" by Robert Reed, except I think it failed the ending.

The rest didn't have as much as an impact on me, although some were good, and some I'd read before and enjoyed (like Stephen King's "Mrs. Todd's Shortcut") but didn't have the same impact or didn't enjoy and didn't bother to read again. Most just didn't do much for me. Short story collections always have this problem, though.

Knowing that I should probably give it a three, as I'm typically a bit more generous, but... I felt somewhat let down nonetheless, like I expected to be wowed more given the theme. So I'm giving it a two. That said, there are a few great stories in here, and if it's something that might interest you, certainly worth giving a try.

Finished: Touch by Claire North
There are ghosts in the world, but not like the ones most people think about. These people live in human bodies, swapping from one to the other with the touch of skin on skin, taking over another person's body completely and living in their life. When they leave, the former host remembers nothing since they were taken. The narrator of Touch is one of these ghosts, who has lived this way for 200 years, jumping from body to body, sometimes for seconds, sometimes for years. But when his most recent host is killed, he must use the killer to try and track down a group targeting his kind, and hopefully escape alive in the process.

One of my favorite books I read this year was North's The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August, which was well-reviewed and lived up to it... and although descriptions of this story didn't have as much attraction to me as the other, I decided to give it a try on the strength of my previous enjoyment.

There are some similarities of themes, style, approach in the two books. In many ways, both books are fantasy premises given a sci-fi approach... take this one thing as a granted, and explore it and the ramifications rigorously (but also with a strong eye towards character and storytelling). And in both they explore aspects of immortality and choice of identity. The characters have a similar detached view that borders a bit on amorality (from the "not my problem" side, rather than from deliberate maliciousness), and both are told in the same disjointed way, a main plot that proceeds somewhat linearly, with frequent asides back to other important moments, but not in any particular order. The characters are not the same, however, and this book has a stronger supporting cast (or at least, ones that seem more directly connected to the main plot), although the main villain is a little more cartoonish. The book also has a bit of a weird vibe considering the morality of the whole thing. We're presumably meant to mostly sympathize with the narrator, but when you step back you realize that how they live is really a gross violation of another person in the most intimate way. This isn't entirely glossed over, many characters point out how horrible it is, when you think about it, but at the same time enjoyment of the story sort of depends on you not dwelling on it most of the time. It may be an unsolvable problem given the structure (it'd be easier if it was the story of a group of people hunting these creatures, but that's obviously not the story), but I think the author does about as well as you could expect knowing that, and maybe even turns it into an advantage, because although you follow along, sometimes vicariously enjoying the main character's adventures, you can't quite shake that disturbing vibe, even though the narrator seems to genuinely care about not hurting his hosts more than he can help.

The plot moves along very well, exploring the life and consequences of this style of life while not losing sight of the story, although I do think the end does suffer a bit, with so much jumping around I found it hard to be sure of exactly what was going on. There were also a few annoying gaps in the asides and flashbacks, where they mention some big development, tell some long story about where and when the character was when it happened, but then skip past the actual event, having the thing itself happen off page and only referred to again. And in particular, there was one point of the "rules" of being a ghost that, although explored once or twice, never seemed to come up as an option in some circumstances where it seemed like it really should. I was also annoyed with a little stylistic quirk that also occurred with the August novel, that is, some conversations not being enclosed in quotation marks. It's a small thing to bother me, but it did.

On the whole? This wasn't as good as North's debut (which wasn't even her debut, of course, as she's a prolific author and this is just a new pen name), but it was still solidly enjoyable. I do wonder, especially looking ahead to North's next upcoming novel, if this pseudonym is either intended to or accidentally working towards a formula: stories of a main character who is one of a small group of people in the world with the same "super power", one that is part curse but also allows for some wondrous opportunities. If so, at the very least, it's a formula that I find I really enjoy, and I do want to read her next book, The Sudden Appearance of Hope already. More so because in that case the "power" is one I used to play with myself long ago, with a character on a superhero MUSH.

Finished: Cibola Burn by James S.A. Corey (Expanse #4)
Description cut because it's 4th book in a series and necessarily may be spoilery for previous books. The short version is, either my favorite of the series or second favorite, hard to say for sure.
Humanity has begun to colonize a new planet... and already there's a fight over it. When the people who took off early and landed there try to delay the landing of the corporation the government has allowed to settle the planet, there are deaths... which leads to a series of escalations on both sides that threatens to turn into full out war. James Holden and his crew are sent out to be mediators, but things start to go from bad to worse, because not only is there an alien ecology that nobody completely understands yet, there's also the relics of an alien race that seem to be waking up and putting everyone in danger.

The Expanse books have begun to have enough similarity to each other that it's really most effective to discuss them in terms of how they compare to the others. By now, the basics are pretty much the same, a crew of likable characters mostly seen through the eyes of Holden and a guest cast of new viewpoint characters, on some kind of adventure that may impact the future of all humanity. If you like them already, you'll probably be reading this, if not, you won't, so all that's left to say is if it's better or worse than the others.

Mostly, I think it's better. I still think that the second book might be the best of the lot, but if so, it's only by a narrow margin, because I liked this one a good deal more than the last or the first. The plot kept me guessing and impressively managed to raise the stakes as things kept going from bad to worse without seeming ridiculous about it. The viewpoint characters were mostly appealing (although a couple of times you wanted to smack some of them for following the instructions of mean-spirited short-sighted thugs instead of thinking for themselves), and there really is some cool sci-fi work being done about the potential clash of ecosystems and how people might be hurt by them even when traditional predator/prey relationships, or even viruses, aren't the issue. Some of the villains were just incomprehensibly villainous, but, although it's a fine line, I think they came down on the "love to hate" side rather than being ones that were too cartoonish to even take seriously (with the possible exception of one engineer). And the ending really put everything into a new perspective which I wasn't expecting and liked a lot.

So yes, there's no reason to stop reading here, even if it may be a bit formulaic (it is, after all, a series that seems designed to be a good TV series), it's thoroughly enjoyable and rises far above where you'd expect.

Still Reading: Stars: Stories Based on the Songs of Janis Ian (short story collection)
Tentatively about to start: Planetfall by Emma Newman, Aliens: Recent Encounters (short story collection)

That means my official count this year is.... 71 books! Wow, that's a record for me! According to Goodreads, that's 27937 pages, which makes the average book size 411 pages, and means that for every hour I was alive this year, I read 3 pages. That's one page every 20 minutes of I was breathing, awake or not.

The complete list (very roughly in order):
1. The Martian, by Andy Weir

2. Burning Paradise, by Robert Charles Wilson,
3. Un Lun Dun, by China Mieville
4. Ragamuffin, by Tobias S. Buckell
5. The Mount, by Carol Emshwiller
6. Some of the Best from Tor.Com 2014 (short stories)
7. The Mirrored Heavens by David J. Williams
8. God's War (Bel Dame Apocrypha #1) by Kameron Hurley
9. Wool Omnibus by Hugh Howey
10. Yesterday's Kin, by Nancy Kress (netgalley)
11. Behemoth by Peter Watts
12. Recursion, by Tony Ballantyne
13. Light, by M. John Harrison
14. The Hydrogen Sonata, by Iain M. Banks (RIP)
15. Hannu Rajaniemi: Collected Fiction, by Hannu Rajaniemi (netgalley)
16. Perdido Street Station, by China Mieville
17. Apex, by Ramez Naam (netgalley, later purchased)
18. A Song Called Youth, by John Shirley
19. The Lives of Tao, by Wesley Chu
20. Capacity, by Tony Ballantyne,
21. Untaken, by J.E. Anckorn (netgalley)
22. City of Savages, by Lee Kelly
23. Galactic North, by Alastair Reynolds
24. Love in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, by Judd Trichter
25. The Blondes, by Emily Schultz (free from giveaway)
26. The Three-Body Problem, by Cixin Liu
27. Shelter, by Susan Palwick
28. River of Gods, by Ian McDonald
29. Terms of Enlistment, by Marko Kloos
30. The Goblin Emperor, by Katherine Addison
31. Fluency, by Jennifer Foehner Wells
32. Afterparty, by Daryl Gregory
33. Infidel (Bel Dam Apocrypha #2), by Kameron Hurley
34. Bless Your Mechanical Heart (short stories)
35. Dark Orbit, by Caroline Ives Gilman (free from giveaway)
36. First Light (The Red #1), by Linda Nagata
37. Cinder, by Marissa Meyer
38. Anathem, by Neal Stephenson
39. Up Against It, by M.J. Locke
40. The Deaths of Tao, by Wesley Chu
41. The Starry Rift, by James Tiptree Jr.
42. Linesman, by S.K. Dunstall (netgalley)
43. Arslan, by M.J. Engh
44. The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August, by Claire North
45. Harmony, by Project Itoh
46. Near + Far, by Cat Rambo
47. Moxyland, by Lauren Beukes
48. Zeroboxer, by Fonda Lee (free from giveaway)
49. Caliban's War (Expanse #2) by James S.A. Corey
50. Crossfire, by Nancy Kress
51. Artemis Awakening, by Jane Lindskold
52. The Trials (The Red #2), by Linda Nagata
53. My Real Children, by Jo Walton
54. Rapture (Bel Dame Apocrypha #3), by Kameron Hurley
55. Alien Contact (short story collection)
56. Abaddon's Gate (Expanse #3), by James S.A. Corey
57. The Peripheral, by William Gibson
58. Ancillary Mercy, by Ann Leckie
59. Children of the Comet, by Donald Moffitt (free from giveaway)
60. Crashing Heaven, by Al Robertson
61. Hellspark, by Janet Kagen
62. Forgotten Suns, by Judith Tarr
63. The Ark, by Patrick S. Tomlinsen (free from giveaway)
64. Strong Arm Tactics, by Jody Lynn Nye
65. Going Dark (The Red #3), by Linda Nagata
66. The Shining Girls, by Lauren Beukes
67. The Phoenix Code, by Catherine Asaro
68. Lock In, by John Scalzi
69. Other Worlds Than These (Short story collection)
70. Touch, by Claire North

71. Cibola Burn by James S.A. Corey

Now, I had two additional goals for this year. One I made partway through the year when I realized I'd accidentally been holding to it. That was my "No Rereads" goal. And I accomplished it (not counting a few short stories I reread in a new collection)!

The other goal was just to try to read more women authors. My methodology was simple, to introduce a very small positive bias, a slight inkling towards "what the hell let's give it a try", whereas normally, (male or female) when I read a book's description, either the premise wows me and I have to get it immediately, or I think, "That sounds kind of interesting... well, let's see if it gets really well-reviewed maybe or I find it in a used bookstore for cheap". Or it's an author I already love. But those conditions can already be skewed against women, so a positive "what the hell let's try it" bias helps counter that. And look at the results. Leaving out the multiple-author short story books (but including single-author ones), I read 68 books, of those, I read 34 by female authors, which works out to exactly half. Just from one tiny bias. I wasn't even GOING for "half", I was going for more, it just happened to be a happy accident. I think that serves, for me, as a good concrete object lesson about something I'd already suspected... how tiny unintentional biases can magnify each other and add up to a dramatically big effect. Last year, only a handful of novels written by women were on my reading list. This year, one tiny bias, and it's almost even. That's just for me. When you get into society at large, well, it's easy to see how things can snowball even with people who genuinely and earnestly believe they're treating everyone equally.

Next year, I think I'll be keeping that goal, and that bias, but unfortunately I suspect I won't be near parity, because I won't be doing the "no rereads" rule, and a lot of my favorites, the regular rereads, are still stacked heavily on the male side. I found one that I suspect might make it into this category (The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August) and a few others that I might reread once or twice, but, well, that is the other problem with a "what the hell" bias, you read plenty of books that just a little less likely to be your thing. But I feel better for trying it nonetheless, and want to keep trying.

Other statistics of note, I got 5 physical books free, 5 from netgalley, and a handful from paying for membership in a group that gives out awards and gives free ebook copies of the nominees to voters, which really isn't free but really isn't buying. ANd a few that were in bundles of course. But still, free books rock, yo.

Early December 2015 Book Foo!

2015-12-05T18:46:13Z

Probably the second last of the year.
But first, just a couple brief TV thoughts:

Doctor Who: Last week's episode (with the Veil) was one of the best in recent memory, marred only by tying it to the annoying Hybrid plot, which, well, it depends on how it turns out but I'm not optimistic about it being anything other than a clumsy and not very good retcon. But we'll see.

Jessica Jones: Really enjoyed it. I do have some thoughts on some things I might like to see in future seasons, but I don't really want to get into them right now. Maybe I'll do a separate TV post.

The Expanse: Haven't watched the first ep yet, even though it's been streaming all over, but I'm enjoying the books and looking forward to it.

The Man In The High Castle: Just started watching this one (Though I saw the pilot months ago), still not sure about it but on a production-values/acting/etc standpoint it looks really good.

Flash/Arrow: Still enjoy it, but the season so far have been hampered by how hard they're pushing towards the Legends of Tomorrow spinoff. So much doesn't feel natural but rather driven because they need to introduce/reintroduce characters and get them into position. Hopefully once it's gone they'll settle down a little. Flash is better off on that front because at least it has the Zoom plotline.

Walking Dead: I can't believe they ended the midseason on that point and not a point what would be, in the comic, a few pages later.

Anyway, now to books!

Finished: Ancillary Mercy by Ann Leckie

Breq, still in command of the ship given to her by one faction of the Raddch emperor, awaits the coming fleet of the other faction of the same person, who hates Breq with a passion. Breq actually wants to take down all versions of the Emperor if she can, but mostly, she just wants to protect the people she's responsible for.

I was quite impressed with the first book in the series, and clearly I wasn't alone, as it won many of the major SF awards. It had some great SF ideas, asked us to question a number of our assumptions, and a driven character on a clear mission that, even if it was hopeless, was easy to root for. The second book was a quieter book that seemed to be more about trying to fight against systemic unfairness and inequality, the kind of oppression where often those in power don't realize there's anything wrong. I still enjoyed it, but not as much. The third book is somewhat of a blend, starting much closer to the second book, although the second half picks up, and while I'm not sure I'm quite as impressed as I was with the first book, it does manage something none of the previous two did. Ancillary Mercy does have a satisfying ending. Even taking into account that they were part of a trilogy, the other two didn't seem to, the first was too messy, and the second was left too open and dangling. In this one, things wrap up in a way that not only makes perfect sense, but also keeps in the spirit of the series so far in a way I didn't entirely see coming. It still leaves the universe open for future tales, and things aren't completely settled, but when I closed it I felt like it was an ending.

Otherwise, the book was fun, actually more fun than, although perhaps not as inventive as, the first book. A good deal of this increase in fun was because of the antics of the Translator Zieat. I've seen others saying they'd like to see a novel focusing on her, and I'm not sure I agree. It could get tiresome at that length... but I'd love to see a short story or novella. But there was also more of a sense of humor, like the author was more comfortable balancing it with more dramatic moments and risking making the readers take things less seriously. The personal storylines of many of the characters also progressed well, although some of them felt too easy, like they were directed towards their path... but then, that's a risk when your viewpoint is one character who has something approaching an omniscient viewpoint of many of the people she deals with. And, even a few of the arguments made on the social front, while perhaps not something I was inclined towards disagreeing with anyway, made their points particularly well, brilliantly turning around a situation in which someone, say, demanded consideration for their feelings without offering any in return.

I recommend the series as whole and can't wait to see more from this author.

Finished: Forgotten Suns by Judith Tarr

On a distant planet, a young girl in a family of archaeologists accidentally releases a man who looks human, but is an alien king with psionic powers, left behind in stasis by his people because he was too much of a threat... but now, he may be the only one who can save them.

I did not care for this book at all. It was a slog to get through.

Before I go into why, I should perhaps explain something about my life and reading history that might help you understand where I'm coming from.

I used to love psionic powers. Some of my favorite comics focused on characters with them, I imagined myself with them, I wrote stories about them, I ate up SF that had them in it. The Force in Star Wars was this cool thing I loved watching and wished I had, more than lightsabers. I loved the Vulcans in Star Trek because they were ultra logical and yet had these powerful telepathic abilities. I even enjoyed the Betazoid episodes. But at some point, I just got... tired of them. It wasn't that I read a particularly bad example that turned me off, I guess I just burned out... one day I read something I should have liked and realized that I just didn't care anymore, and it never seemed to lift on that topic, unless they were doing something particularly novel with them. I had a similar experience with vampires, incidentally, but I only mention that to point out that with psionics, it wasn't quite so absolute... I still liked them in, say, superhero stories, or if psionic powers were the one unusual element in an otherwise normal setting. But when I encountered space operas with Psi-Corps or aliens who were telepathic, by an large, it just didn't work for me anymore. It wasn't quite dislike, it was like they radiated fundamental particles of anti-interest that, once it got in contact with particles of genuine interest I had, annihilated both in a rain of 'meh' radiation. Sometimes, if the psionic element was small, there was enough interest left over to enjoy, but having it in a book was usually a bad sign for my enjoyment.

I heard a few descriptions that implied there was a psionics element to this book, but I was willing to give it a try (I probably wouldn't have purchased it on it's own, but it was part of an ebook bundle so it was effectively free at that point), there was an intriguing technological-looking artifact on the cover, so I had hopes that it was a grand SF story that had psi as a minor element. And it started okay, I guess. But the psi element grew quickly to be the driving force in the whole book to the point where by the end it was the only thing that mattered. And I couldn't bring myself to care, because (and the awareness of this fact might have been one of the reasons I burned out on this trope) everything worked under whatever rules the author needed at any given time. If she needed psi to overcome overwhelming force, it could do that. If the main characters needed a clue as to where to go next, psi could provide that. If it needed to be blocked by something, something could be produced or a stronger psi or will would just prevail. In general, psi doesn't feel, to me, like something that has independent rules and limitations beyond how the author wants it to work at a given moment, one of the essences of good SF. A FTL drive might be as imaginary as telepathy, but at least it has a limited context of usefulness and the rules are set up in advance. You don't set up a drive that takes a month to travel between stars, and then in the climax reveal it that just by adding a little more power and disabling some safeties, it can make the same trip in an hour, and incidentally can also heal the deadly wounds the protagonist suffered, because it would break that context we have accepted it within. But psi is potentially a swiss army knife of universal applicability, subject to change at any moment. Used judiciously it might be okay, but it's far too easy to go overboard.

And in this book, the situation is only made worse because the character of Rama is such an extremely powerful psi, more powerful than anyone in the other character's society has ever seen before. So whatever the writer wants him to be capable of, he is.

The more I got into this book, the less I cared about anything that happened. The ironic thing is that a few of the characters I actually enjoy. The two women who are arguably the main characters (Rama being less a character as a massive gravity source they orbit around) were fairly interesting and appealing (even though they had unappealing characteristics), and I connected with their personal stories to a degree. Even where their stories involved psi powers, there were some dynamics that I could have gotten into... the young girl who fears being dragged off by the Psi-Corps, the aunt who's own latent abilities were removed when she was rejected, but which seem to be coming back. Both were potentially good building blocks for a story. But then they were dragged along in Rama's orbit, an epic quest where only godlike psi could save everything, and their own stories didn't seem to matter, because it was all about this glorious warrior king with unimaginable psi power, and I just could not be bothered. By the end, they changed the galaxy, but I didn't care about the galaxy anymore because it failed as a story.

In the end, I just didn't give a damn about what happened. It felt more like a fantasy novel with a light papering over of sci-fi tropes, and worse, not even a particularly interesting fantasy novel, where characters make clever or difficult decisions in high-stakes situations, but rather one where characters are dragged along by destiny and prophecy.

Finished: Children of the Comet by Donald Moffitt (recieved for free)

Six billion years in the future, Earth is uninhabitable, beneath the surface of the red giant sun. But life persists, in the outer reaches of the solar system, huge trees grow from comets, and people live there too, keeping air in hand-made suits. But things threaten to change when a ship arrives, a ship full of humans returning to see what home is like after a long, time-dilated trip to another galaxy.

I received this book for free through a giveaway (although not through Goodreads).

The book is one of those built around a compelling out-there idea, this one a suggestion by Freeman Dyson (best known for the Dyson Sphere), which seems pretty crazy at first glance, of trees growing on comets. I can't judge the scientific merit, but the author here does manage to successfully sell the idea that with enough bioengineering, these comet ecosystems could exist and that humans, even ones who are primitive by our standards, could live there. It's an incredible exploration of the idea that could be the setup for a fabulous story.

Unfortunately, that is not this story.

It's not the plot itself, but rather much of the writing. The comet-bound sections are actually fairly well-done, actually, maybe a little cliche in some areas, but an enjoyable story. Unfortunately, everything else is much weaker, the secondary plot with the recognizable-as-human humans is where the author seems to get too wrapped up in his ideas to put together a well-crafted story. Exposition is particularly bad early on, where we get a lot of clumsy dumps of the basic ideas the author's playing around with, of the worst, "As you know, Bob," variety, and it continues throughout the book, although it gets slightly more deftly handled. To inject tension and conflict, internal strife that I never really bought into... or, at least, I could buy into the different points of view, but how everybody went about it didn't ring true.

Characterwise, too many of people seemed flat, or basic tropes, or occasionally, caricatures.

The pace was also a little weird... again, it started okay on the comet, but many of the troubles wrapped up quickly and then we had suddenly everybody getting along and new people arrive, and have a negotiation about where everyone will live. It's almost comical that the book advances, straight-faced, visions of completely peaceful cooperation over centuries between vastly different people who are limited by the same pool of resources, taken as a given, when it started with immature power struggles approaching civil wars over what to do with a single spaceship. It started to feel like the author spent too much time setting up his incredibly vivid setting and show the readers all the ideas that went into it, more than actually telling a story.

The book would almost have been better if it focused entirely on the comet-bound primitive population, which, I expected when I started, to be the part of the book that I'd like least. But at least there, there's the core of a really cool classic-style SF story, done well. If it were a shorter story focused on the good parts, I might have given it a 3 or possibly even a 4. Everything else... well, it certainly could have been done well, but in this case, it wasn't, and the entire book suffered for it.

Finished: Crashing Heaven by Al Robertson
Jack Forster has returned to his home after a war. Home is a giant space station, run by the Pantheon, artificially intelligent corporations that, to the human population, fill the role of gods, in the Ancient Greek mold. Jack's not welcome at home, because during the war he surrendered to the other side, but the terms of the peace allow him home, and he wants to wrap up loose ends before his looming death... for Jack has an AI war machine named Hugo Fist, in his head, and once the license expires in a few more months, Hugo will overwrite him. He came to peace with that with the help of an old flame, and wants to see in her last days... only he discovers she's already dead, and it's connected to an old case that may involve the Pantheon.

For a first novel, this is quite impressive and right up my alley. It's somewhat a blend of Post-Singularity fiction and Cyberpunk, which might make it Singularitypunk I guess. In any event, there are a lot of cool ideas here, and a setting which has a lot of flaws but a strange appeal at the same time, and richly conceived. It might be a bit challenging to people who haven't already been exposed to some of these concepts, but I don't think it's too bad, and if you like these sort of books, it's absolutely worth checking out. In some ways it works as a counterpoint to books like the Culture, showing ways that friendly, helpful AIs that manage everything can still be pretty awful.

Speaking of AIs, one of them is a main character, or at least, part of the main character. While I'm probably not as impressed with Hugo Fist, the bloody-minded AI in Jack's head, who takes the form of a wooden puppet, as the author was, he did grow on me, and following the two of them made for quite a fun ride, and he's certainly be one of the more memorable AI characters I've encountered in a while.

The book does fall apart a little towards the end... it's not so much the plot being bad or incomprehensible or anything like that, but earlier in the book the way things worked seemed to be weird but believable on their own as how a far future society might function. Towards the end though, it seemed more and more like any new development worked the way it did not because that's the natural outgrowth of everything else we know, or even that it was a reasonable way it could work, but rather because that's the way it needed to work for the story to go exactly the way the author wanted. To use the appropriate puppet metaphor, the strings started to become visible, towards the end.

Still, it was only a minor disappointment, and I otherwise had a lot of fun with the book, and it would probably make my personal shortlist for the Hugo nominations of this year. I'm definitely going to have to look out for whatever Robertson does next.

Finished: Strong-Arm Tactics by Jody Lynn Nye
Lt. Wolfe has just taken command of the Cockroaches, a platoon full of some of the most highly skilled--yet least regarded--soldiers in the Galactic Defense Force. They don't always follow the rules, but in a pinch, they'll get things done, and they're a good squad to lead... if you can earn their respect.

This is a light comedic military SF story, first in a series, apparently, although there don't seem to be any sequels in the ten years since it was first published, so perhaps that plan fell through. In any event, it's something of a mix between traditional military SF, with pitched battles and (at least in the first books) various training sequences, but with a vibe something like McHale's Navy added on top of it. These are the types of soldiers who have prank wars and rivalries with other groups, who in their off hours might make some extra money by running an illegal still, or creatively using official equipment.. but when lives are on the line, they're among the best there is. Of course, some of the battles themselves get to be humorous as well, but the characters take it seriously like the professionals they are.

Honestly, it didn't leave a huge impression on me... it was mildly diverting, I cracked a smile now and then, but it wasn't especially my kind of book and nothing novel enough that convinced me to jump past it. And there were a few irritations, like it being set something like 5000 years in the future but, aside from it being a galactic community, seemingly very little change in society or how people live. The villains, also, were rather cartoonish, which I guess fits into the spirit of the book, but I didn't see the need to read a decent chunk of the book from their perspective.

It was an easy read, never a slog, and I don't regret the time I spent on it, but I don't think I'd go out of my way to read more if there were sequels available.

Finished: Hellspark by Janet Kagan

A multi-cultural science team is studying a newly-discovered planet teem with life... some of which, they think might be intelligent. But they're not sure, because they've been unable to establish any meaningful communication. After one of the survey team is killed, possibly by the natives, the team's leader is ready to declare them non-sentient and the planet ripe for exploration. But other members of the team disagree, and a human trader, a Hellspark, is called upon to investigate the issue and perhaps decide the fate of a whole world.

On the face of it, this feels like a fairly standard pulp SF novel of the era. But the author does wind up having some really interesting points on communication and how culturally-instilled concepts and taboos that we're not even aware of can affect relationships between people and cultures. It's especially worthy of reading the book for the acknowledgement and examples of how important things like body language and positioning can be in how you relate to people. I can't even count how many different cultures the author creates in the book, each with their own set of biases and rituals, some which seem doomed to come into conflict, but also seems to show the idea that with a little work and a bit more understanding, these can be gotten around.

This strength is perhaps also one of the flaws. In order to have so many different cultures, there have to be a lot of characters, and not all of them are distinctive except as exemplars of their unique culture. Also, a lot of them come off in a way where it's too easy to dismiss the differences as primitive superstitions that somehow persisted into a spacefaring race. Perhaps that is some of the point (that these world views are just as valid), but I think it would have sold that idea much more effectively if the author had also included, and skewered as completely irrational, some universal human taboos (or, at least, near-universal among the Western audience she was writing to) as well, as something that no other race thinks is necessary or good, to show how some of the reader's more sacred views could likewise be dismissed as primitive superstitions by an outsider.

Those characters who do stand out of the crowd, though, are generally appealing. The main character does sometimes seem a bit too much of a know-it-all with understanding all the cultural traditions, but it's not so much it's annoying, and her AI companion is, for the most part, appealing, whoever they're interacting with. There's also a character who has a rather creative and interesting illness that I still think fondly on.

As for the big mystery of the book... well, it turns out to be a little obvious, and the characters take too long to figure it out, but makes for a readable adventure regardless.

The biggest problem of the book is that the ending drags on way too long after that big issue is resolved. There were certainly a few loose ends at that point that needed to be tied up, but the author took too long to do it, with long conversations involving the AI not understanding jokes and asking for clarification (and they weren't terribly good jokes) or other territory that was already well-trod. The last fifty pages could probably have been condensed into ten, and it would have made for a much better book. It felt like the author just enjoyed her characters too much and wanted to continue with them for a while, at the expense of the story, or perhaps that she needed to pad things out to meet a word quota. Either way, it's not a huge flaw, but it did blunt the book's impact. Instead of putting it away satisfied, my final impression was of getting to the end of the STORY and then having to read on, somewhat impatiently until I reached the end of the BOOK.

But on the whole, I enjoyed it.

Finished: The Ark by Patrick S. Tomlinson

When the people of Earth discovered a rogue black hole that would destroy the planet, they spent their last years trying to save some shred of humanity, building the Ark, a massive generation starship bound for a new world. That was two hundred years ago, and they're now nearing the other side of the journey. But when somebody goes missing, Detective Brian Benson must investigate. He soon finds it's murder, and it could mean very bad things for the human race.

Full disclosure: I received this book for free through a giveaway (though not through Goodreads). I don't think it affected my review.

"Murder Mystery on a generation starship" is one of those quintessential SF premises, which makes it all the more surprising that I can't think of very many examples. A few, sure, but it's not a concept that has been done to death in recent years, which means it's one that feels, potentially, fresh and exciting.

In addition to things like basic writing skill and characters you enjoy, there are two big things in this kind of story that should, ideally, be done well. First, the generation starship, and second, the mystery.

The author succeeds admirably on the first one. The setting is well-realized and feels both reasonably plausible and lived-in, with a myriad of little details on how life is different. The author really sells the setting, and that's a large part of the enjoyment of the book. Sure, I could quibble about a few of the details (particularly, with such a relatively small population and after two hundred years, ethnic and cultural groupings still seem to be rather distinct, which seems a bit odd considering reproduction has to be authorized and presumably genetic diversity is considered), but they're just the kind of thing you think about rather than interferes with the story, and there was plenty I didn't consider that made it in. It's pretty clear a significant amount of thought did go into things. The author also succeeds in making these details not too intimidating... while someone who isn't interested in SF at all might still avoid this, the technological context is, I think, pretty easy to grasp for people who aren't steeped in SF tropes and want to read something that's not too intimidating.

The second big aspect, the mystery itself... well, it's nothing to complain about, but didn't really wow me either. It was the kind of thing where the journey was more interesting than the destination, and that's okay. Some characters motivations, once revealed, weren't entirely satisfying... but by that time, I'd just gone through, and enjoyed, the adventure where the main character goes through all the steps of finding out, and said adventure is on a generation starship (starships make everything better), so, in the end, I didn't really care. The mystery does hang together well, at least, on the first read, anyway.

As for the everything else, the characterization, writing, they seemed to also be in the 'pretty good' territory. While Benson won't be, probably, one of my favorite SF characters, he's consistently likable, despite being a fairly standard type of detective character, and a few of the side characters were also entertaining. There's a good dose of humor in the book as well, but it's fairly subtle, which is a good thing. I'd heard the author is also a comedian, so I feared he might go too jokey, but, with the possible exception of a few things like tinfoil hats having a legitimate purpose, the humor comes from believable human interactions and everyday funny situations rather than things obviously set up to garner a laugh.

This is a first novel, and typically I give a little bit of a bump in scores, but this one didn't really need it... it probably would have scored near enough to a 4 star rating as it was. It's also the first book of a series, and I liked it enough that I'm pretty sure I'm going to try the second as well, so that also says something.

Finished: Going Dark by Linda Nagata

Description cut because it was the third book in the series...
James Shelley has been presumed dead, but he's still on duty... just not for the government. Instead, he works directly for the Red, a non-human AI that seems to be seeking out and nullifying potential threats to humanity as a whole, keeping weapons of mass destruction out of the wrong hands and deescalating conflicts. At least, that's the goal... but the last few missions have gone badly, and things are getting more precarious. And there's a possibility that some people are finding out ways to hide from the Red's ever-present gaze... and others may be positioning themselves to take control of it.

I've been enjoying this series quite a bit so far, which is a bit unusual for me as Military SF isn't really the kind of thing I get excited about. Mostly, it's the kind of thing that once in a while I'll read just for a change. With this series, typically, the books have followed a certain pattern in my enjoyment... it starts off with fairly conventional military missions, which are interesting but to my tastes not why I'm there. Then, as things go on, they delve more into the nature of the AI and some tantalizing implications are made that start to ignite my imagination and I get into the story, even when it's still largely mission-oriented. This final book in the trilogy also follows that pattern, more or less, but the highs are a little shallower and I was, a little, disappointed in the final outcome.

As a conclusion to the series, well, it works on a character level, as a wrap-up for the story of some of the main characters, but I was hoping for more about the world as a whole. Perhaps Nagata deliberately left it open so that she could write other books in the same universe, or maybe she just decided it was too big to get that kind of easy wrap-up, from the perspective of the main character anyway. Either way, it was what I was hoping for and didn't feel I got, so although I enjoyed it, I enjoyed it less than the others in the series.

If Nagata writes more in the universe... I'm not sure, really, it depends on what the plot looks like. I'm not sure if I'd have the enthusiasm for another tale of a soldier under the Red's guidance, especially if I thought that the greater plot would get no more resolution than this one. Still, I really enjoy Nagata's writing and if she tried another type of SF I'd be much more interested.

(If you noticed and were amused that those last three titles rhymed, congratulations and/or condolences, you're like me!)

Still Reading (or finished but haven't done my review): The Shining Girls by Lauren Beukes, Lock-In by John Scalzi, The Phoenix Code by Catherine Asaro, Other Worlds Than These (short story collection).

I probably will next post around the very end of the year, so, I hope everyone has a happy holiday season of whatever type they prefer to enjoy.

Unscheduled Excursion

2015-11-21T15:39:12Z

Well, I suppose it was scheduled in some ways, but I only decided on it in the last 48 hours before, which pretty much counts as unscheduled to me!

Anyway, last Thursday there was an author reading at the library, featuring Saladin Ahmed (who wrote Hugo-nominated Throne of the Crescent Moon, which I haven't read) and Peter Watts (who wrote also Hugo-nominated Blindsight, among several others). Now I'm a big fan of Watts, Blindsight is one of my favorite books, and he's the only author I regularly follow their blog (though there are a few others that I check in on now and again) and comment there. So I'd wanted to meet him for a while, and get a signature (I wasn't sure at the time whether that was done at these readings, but I brought the book just in case), but there was also a special reason. And for that we need to go to Russia... or, actually, more pointedly, not.

Funny story, that Watts also related in the Q&A portion. The people who published Blindsight in Russia essentially did it on the word of the translator that it was a good book. They only read it after they'd bought the rights and he translated it (which was paid work, of course). After which, they promptly fired him, thinking that it was going to be a book nobody would want to read, dark and cynical with vampires and aliens and a lot of technical jargon. But of course, since most of the costs were already sunk in, they published it in the hopes of recouping some of it. Turns out, five months later they hired the translator back because it was doing very well. (It should be noted, and this may now say as much about Russians as it does about the author, my favorite quote about Watt's work: "When I feel my will to live becoming too strong, I read Peter Watts.") In any event, he's popular in Russia (and a few other countries as well he seems to be more popular than in English), enough that apparently they're releasing a special "commemorative edition" of Blindsight, that contains extra material... a short story that connects the book to the sequel/sidequel Echopraxia that was already published, and something new they commissioned which, at present, has no plans to be published in NA (he didn't actually say, and I didn't think to ask, but typically such deals have a window of exclusivity where only after say six months after it gets released in Russia he'd be allowed to sell it elsewhere)... that was what he was reading at the library, and it'd be the first time anyone other than his close family/friends had heard the entire story (although fragments of it were published on his blog). So, yeah, I wanted to check that out, and overcame my hermit tendencies.

Anyway, I showed up about an hour before they opened the section of the library where it was being held, and wandered around the library's normal circulating SF section just browsing, then when they opened the door, got a good seat. It was a fairly small gathering, maybe 40 people as an upper range, including a few other authors I recognize (Watts' S.O. is a dark fantasy author, and I believe A.M. Dellamonica was there as well). I actually think somebody I have on my LJ friends list was there but I wasn't confident enough to introduce myself just in case. And, one other weird maybe... a woman who looked an awful lot like the grad student who ran the "in-class discussion" segments of my Science Fiction humanities class a decade and a half ago (there were two parts, a weekly lecture with the professors with 300 people or so, and then another weekly or biweekly discussion group, divided into groups of 30 or so students, each led by a grad student, discussing the specific texts, so in a sense she was like my teacher in that). I wish I was bolder so I could have asked and settled it in my brain and said hello.

They begun at 7 (or a little after, there was a third guest scheduled but they got held up at the airport and they were waiting in case they were just caught in transit... turns out they were still at the airport when the other readings were done. I didn't really care though because it was a musical guest, a filk singer), Saladin Ahmed went first, reading a short fantasy story ("Without Faith, Without Law, Without Joy"), about a man trapped in a poem (specifically, Spenser's The Faerie Queen) where he and his brothers are cast as the villain the saintly hero defeats. It was well told, and well read, just not my thing. Then came Watts SF tale investigating various types of group minds and what they may mean for the world which held me with the same power as his novels did. Then there was a short Q&A, which I won't try to sum up, except that I couldn't manage to ask any questions, but it was thoroughly entertaining and occasionally quite funny (and it, combined with the stories themselves, have no set any previous record I've had for "Most F-Bombs heard in a library"). Both speakers did a good job (and they bounced off each other quite well).

After that they did say that anyone who had books could come up and get them signed, and I waited in a short line, then introduced myself as one of the commenters from his blog (he seemed to recognize me, although largely because he initially thought, when I was commenting on the blog, I was somebody else he knew with the same first name and last name initial), and he signed my book and answered another brief question, but then I ducked out rather than eavesdropping in on the conversations of others getting signed.

Still, it was an excursion, and now I can briefly consider myself one of the, at most, 50 or so people who've read/heard the entire canon of that universe that's been released to date!

October Book Foo (this time stuff actually read in October)

2015-11-01T16:11:45Z

Trying to do these more often so I don't have as huge a backlog as last time.

But before we start, Halloween! My schedule changed this year, and this year I actually worked on Halloween night. I was kind to looking forward to seeing Trick or Treaters on the walk to work, but I think I was maybe half an hour too early for that... I saw a few, but not many. A few more on the way home, although that was later so it was mostly older teens and adults. The highlight was a fairly well done Beetlejuice costume, striped suit, hair, face paint... couldn't tell his age because of the makeup, but he was at least with some people in their late teens/early twenties, which was impressive for a costume of a movie that old. Also a few zombies. I actually did dress up, but in my lazy post-apocalyptic drifter costume. I have a decades-old military gas mask (my parents were both in the military) and basically just put that over whatever I wear when I need a really quick costume and call myself a post-apocalyptic drifter. So I brought it with me to work and did manage to wear it for at least a little bit on the walk there and the walk home, although it got a bit awkward to wear it the whole time and my breath started fogging up the glasses after a while. Still, it was incredibly impressive... not the costume itself, but rather that I was able to wear it in public. For those who know me you'll know that dressing up really treads on my irrrational fears. Even wearing a geeky t-shirt in public gives me stupid amounts of anxiety, so wearing an attention-getting costume... well, honestly, when I brought it I gave it 50/50 chance that I'd have the nerve to put it on, even taking into account that it's Halloween and expected. But, maybe partly because it was a costume that hid my face, I did okay with it. Maybe just the fact that it was a costume at all helped too (I mean, not completely, I still felt the internal tremors, but it wasn't as bad)... maybe some kind of convention cosplay, if I can think of a good one, isn't 100% out of the question, because the "stepping outside of myself" aspect might be good for me.

Anyway, on to books!

Finished: Artemis Awakening by Jane Lindskold

The planet Artemis was designed by advanced science to be a perfect, primitive escape for the ultra rich and powerful. Included in that fantasy was the population, who were mostly human but engineered to fulfill a role and not expand outside of that role. So while the masters have been gone for centuries, and Artemis has been lost to the rest of the galaxy, their society still resembles a fantasy kingdom with quaint villages and hunters who share connections with beasts. One such huntress is Adara, and her genetically uplifted puma Sand Shadow, who rescue a man who's crashed from the sky, a scholar from the rest of the galaxy who has been searching for Artemis... and is now stranded there.

I don't really have a lot to say about this book, except that it's mostly in the category of "Not My Thing." It's one of those books that's, in some ways, a fantasy story wrapped in a sci-fi explanation. Sometimes, this can work well, but for my personal tastes, as someone who generally prefers the SF side of the equation and isn't that into straight fantasy anymore, it's a tricky balance. This book, although it has moments that catch my interest, feels a bit too much like a fantasy book with a few SF elements. Granted, there's not explicit magic, but rather psionic powers (some of which might even, reasonably, be explained technologically, but when you throw in the occasional person who seems to have oracle-like precognition, that goes too far and is itself one of my hate-buttons).

The characters are mildly interesting, especially in that there's sort of a completely civil love triangle, where everyone knows everyone else's interest and yet act mature about it and the woman in the middle isn't entirely sure she wants either of them as anything more than friends. It's kind of refreshing.

There are some elements that had my attention, like remnants of AI defense systems coming to life and playing a role, but they didn't spend as much time on them as I'd like, and, in particular, too much of the scenes where we were able to explore that aspect was written as fragments of poetry that I found tiresome (this is not a knock on Lindskold's ability specifically: I find almost all poetry in fiction tiresome... if I want poetry, I'll read a poem, not a novel. I almost never want poetry.).

It's okay. There were some decent elements that kept me interested throughout, but even though the story isn't really complete in the one volume, I don't feel any pressing need to move onto the sequel. I'm sure there are a good number of people who will like it, but for me, meh.

Finished: The Trials by Linda Nagata (The Red #2)
Sequel, so description cut for minor spoilers of the first book inherent...
Picking up after the events of First Light, The Trials has near future soldier James Shelley facing a court martial for the mission he went on at the end of the last book. All they want is to get their side of the story out, which is the last thing everyone else in the traditional chain of command wants. But they're in a difficult spot, as Shelley and his team are considered heroes by a large percentage of the population. A deal might be reached, but that won't be the end of Shelley's fight, or his trials... for there are still major threats out there, and although the Artificial Intelligence known as the Red may not be his personal guardian angel anymore, it doesn't mean it's done with them.

A middle book in a trilogy often has an uphill road to climb. It can't bring things to an entirely satisfying conclusion, and it doesn't get the benefit of novelty that the first book did. And, of course, that's even leaving aside the possibility that the author herself might get into a slump, unsure exactly where to go. It almost goes without saying that a middle book isn't as good. And, in all honesty, I did get that feeling from this book pretty strongly at first. I was still interested in the plot and what would happen, but I wasn't digging it quite as much. Yet, as the story went on, the feeling lessened and I was looking more and more forward to where it would go.

For me, the book's biggest strength is the continued detailing of an artificial intelligence that is not good or evil as we understand it, or even human, but something alien and yet mostly believable. That's a tricky but impressive feat, as is telling the story of how people deal with the situation, trying to destroy it, control it for their own ends, or just live with it. On the last point, Nagata also manages to navigate another potentially difficult scenario, a lead character who may well merely be a puppet for that entity. We see his thoughts and his decisions but are aware that he's manipulated and so any any time, he may simply be a tool. Yet I rooted for him all the same.

The book does have a little bit of a feel about being a series of missions rather than a coherent single story. They go from the trial, to another mission, to another one, with a story connecting them but not seeming to be the point. It's also a pretty action-heavy book, which normally is a negative in my book, but here it works for me.

I think, all in all, although it got better the more I read, I still liked it slightly less than the first book, maybe putting it somewhere in the 3.5-4 star range, but since I'm feeling generous today, I'll round it up to a 4. I'm really looking forward to the third book in the series and I am really glad Nagata's writing science fiction novels again, she's proving once again to be a strong voice in the field.

Finished: My Real Children by Jo Walton
Patricia is in a nursing home, suffering from age-related dementia. She's lived a long life... the only problem is, she remembers two of them. In each, she had different loves, different challenges, different children, and the course of history went a different way. She looks back on both of them.

Let's get it out of the way. I guess it's something of a spoiler, but it's the kind of spoiler I wished somebody would have explained to me in advance, attached to the blurb with an asterisk. The premise described above... as interesting as it might sound, is really more of an almost meaningless framing story. The book itself is simply alternating tales from each version of Patricia's life, a split originating when she either accepted or turned down a marriage proposal. It is only the first chapter and the last (and the last takes place when the flashbacks that make up the rest of the book end, and follows directly off the first), where either version of Patricia has even the slightest awareness of her "other life," and at that point in the story, there's only one of them, the question is which world she's in. The book is, then, in effect, simply two fairly conventional life stories, albeit each in a reality different from our own: in one, Kennedy was killed by a bomb. In another, he survives, but there's a limited nuclear exchange between the US and Russia. There is also, by the way, no real indication of how Patricia's life choices lead to either outcome in the world at large (though you could speculate a butterfly-effect-style chain of events that lead from some low-level political activism).

As for the stories themselves? They're done fairly well, but they're very "slice of life" style stories. Walton is skilled at this, and if you liked Among Others but were disappointed that it only took place over the course of a year or so, rather than following the character for their whole life, than this may be the story for you... you not only get another story of a not-terribly exciting but nonetheless likable and compelling character dealing mostly with normal issues in a world that just has a hint of difference from our own... you get two such stories. But for me, I mostly liked Among Others for the character's love of classic science fiction reading, and that's absent here (a fascination with Italy replaces it, in one story, but that does nothing for me), and so this is very much a book that's "not my thing." I'd have been more interested if the gimmick, the alternate worlds, meant more, if I felt it actually mattered to the plot. Because I read SF for the fantastic. I have an ordinary life of my own to not be terribly interested in, when I'm following somebody else's, I'd like there to be a little bit more of a sense of wonder. Yes, there is some enjoyment to be had in the "compare and contrast the ways these two lives have gone," where people from one life show up briefly in another context or one life is getting better while another is getting worse, but... it wasn't enough for me.

I can see how somebody would enjoy this, and it is filled with believable, flawed characters, but for me, it's not why I read, so although I can recognize the skill, as far as my personal enjoyment goes... meh. It's just okay. I never felt like it was a chore to read, but I never felt particularly excited, either. Mostly, I felt like I was waiting for the good stuff, the stuff the synopsis sparked in my imagination, to kick in... I'm still waiting.

Finished: Rapture by Kameron Hurley (The Bel Dame Apocrypha #3)
(Last book in a trilogy, so entire description cut)
Seven years after her last mission, Nyxnissa so Dasheem has retired... or so she thinks. But her old employers, the Bel Dames, call her into service once again, and refusing them would mean putting everything she's built into jeopardy. Accepting the mission also means putting people in danger, but it's her best choice. But times have changed. The centuries-long war has ended, and droves of men are returning from the front lines. But there's always maneuverings, secretive agendas that may reignite the war, or make the world afterward a place possibly even worse for some. As Nyx attempts to sort things out, old enemies and old allies cross her path again and she must make decisions tougher than before.

It's the third book in a trilogy, so presumably most people aren't going to start here... you could, I guess, and get a gritty action-adventure starring a tough-as-nails mercenary in a fascinating world... but you miss out a lot of the context and the history between characters. So, mostly, if you're reading a review, you want to know whether the book keeps up the quality of the rest of the series, and whether it ties things up in a satisfying way.

Quality-wise, I think I enjoyed this one slightly more than the second book, but not quite as much as the first, which puts it about squarely in the middle of the usual pattern of trilogies. The plot does meander a bit, particularly with a long stretch where everyone's wandering the desert, but it's entertaining and engaging all the way, and although it's the same world as in the previous books, new areas are visited and enough has changed that there are some interesting new dynamics that are explore, but not to exhaustion... just enough to raise a few interesting points and give the sensation that it's a real living place. I also really enjoyed a couple of the newer characters too. Of course, that's a mixed blessing in a book like this, where anyone might suddenly die or turn out to be betraying everyone. On a science fictional level, I was actually pleasantly surprised... while the author didn't come out with a complete SF explanation for certain elements in the universe I would have described as more of a "fantasy" element (like the shifters), she did enough work to convince me that a good explanation was actually under there somewhere. Which is often the best path, really, just enough to let me not think of it as "magic" but not exposing it to super-close scrutiny.

As for a satisfying conclusion? For the most part it does, but you should temper your definition of "satisfying" with the general tone of the series, which has protagonists sacrifice other characters for their own ends, outright murder some people just to stop them from being a potential worry in the future, have unresolved love affairs that tend to go unhappily. It's the kind of ending that rips you up a little, wondering if that's it, but you're already torn up from the rest of the book so one more injury seems appropriate. The conclusion is more like the other books in the trilogy, there's a sense that nothing's completely over, but various people have gone different ways and the world has changed a little from the adventure.

I still quite enjoyed the book and the series, and the characters, especially because they're not the type I usually go for. Somehow it worked here, and I look forward to Kameron Hurley's next foray into SF.

Finished: Alien Contact (themed short story collection)

A collection of stories centering on, surprisingly enough, Alien Contact.

The usual mixed bag, although I will say I was somewhat disappointed on the whole. I was hoping to read interesting first contact tales, and there were a few of those, but also a few where aliens had been known about for some time and maybe it was one individual person's contact with aliens, but they were commonplace to the society as a whole. And, frankly, most of the aliens weren't especially inventive or, well... alien. Too many were Star Trek aliens: human looking with a few variations and a slightly different culture. I was hoping for inventive aliens with completely different life cycles and a society that springs from that. Sure, there were a couple in the book, but not enough. And, although this seems like the opposite complaint, too many stories relied on "oh, they're weird and incomprehensible, that's the point" as a gimmick. This is fine in small doses, but only when it doesn't feel like the author's just using it as an excuse to present a weird or quirky situation and say "aliens did it, who knows why?"

A few of the stories I'd read before, like Harry Turtledove's "The Road Not Taken", or Orson Scott Card's "The Gold Bug" (the former works well in the collection, the latter does not, reading as more of an ad for the Enderverse in general than a story of alien contact).

My favorites of the collection were probably "The 43 Antarean Dynasties" by Mike Resnick (despite not really falling into a First Contact situation), "Swarm" by Bruce Sterling (which is a story in his Schismatrix universe, and made me really interested in finally getting around to reading that). The rest? Not bad on the whole, but not many made me super excited, either. I think my main problem is that I know there are many better alien contact stories out there, and so, as an anthology focused on that theme, it's a bit of a disappointment.

Finished: Abaddon's Gate by James S.A. Corey
The third book in the Expanse series , this one picks up with the discovery of an alien gateway to some other part of space. Nobody knows exactly where it leads, or even if it's safe, but a conspiracy against him forces Holden through the gate to escape... and, not wanting him to be the first contact with aliens, the military of the other political factions in the solar system soon follow...

I liked the first book, but thought it was overhyped. I really liked the second. The third? It's a step down, closer to the first one... better in some ways, worse in others.

The basics of the plot are pretty good, but on some levels feel like a smaller scale, which sounds weird but it's true. Sure, it's one of the biggest events in human history. But at the same time, the first two books I could see as a TV series, with several sprawling plots that don't even seem to directly connect, this one feels more like a movie, everybody's more or less in the same place and dealing with the same issues. There are still multiple viewpoints, sometimes on different ships, but they're all pretty clearly focused on the same big thing.

Those viewpoints are also not as engaging as the second book. There was one I found unsympathetic and something of a waste... I can understand why they focused on her, but I'd rather see her actions as they affected other people, rather than the authors seemingly trying to make me empathize with her stupid, petty quest by putting her front and center to one of the plots. Again, I can see why, and by the end... well, it sort of works, I guess, but not as well as I think the authors were hoping. If the status quo at the end of the book continues into the next (although it shouldn't without some fancy footwork), it might be somewhat interesting to explore, but taken as a single unit, it reads somewhat sappy. The others new viewpoints, well, one is mildly interesting, but, in retrospect, feels mostly constructed to arrange that particular ending. The second was better, still not quite as engaging as Prax or the UN SecGen in the second book, who do not make any appearances, but better than Miller. The characters who do return and play a front-and-center role in every book so far, Holden and his crew, remain likable and interesting, but they're at the stage where they're essentially the protagonists of a long-term series, that's expected, and it's also expected that they don't go through too dramatic of an arc.

There is still some really nice sense-of-wonder moments, and good action, although some of the villains are well-worn tropes and things wrap up too neatly. It's good, but it's just not as exciting. After the last book, I rushed to order the third. After this one... I'm still absolutely going to read the next book, but I can wait a while.

Finished: The Peripheral by William Gibson
In the near future, Flynne is filling in for her brother, working for home at his job, which they both think is testing a new product from a video game company,. It seems like a boring game... she controls a drone pilot and is supposed to keep other drones away from a building in a futuristic city. But she does her job... until she witnesses what looks like a murder inside the building, and soon finds out that she wasn't playing a game, but rather that she's stumbled upon a much bigger game, where her old world could be merely a minor game-piece. Luckily, she does have allies of a sort... not only her own friends and family, but also her employers, who live in that futuristic world she saw in the game, and want her to identify the murderer.

This is one of those books that I'm probably going to have to read a few times just to grasp fully. When it started, I didn't really know what was going on in much of one of the two alternating plot threads. And to be perfectly honest, after reading the entire book, I really don't know what the plot was about: that is, the specific motives for the murder and how the various plans came together and things got resolved. Something got lost along the way, maybe because I skimmed at the wrong place or forgot some key details between reading days. But, about a fifth of the way in, I did start to get at least a clue about what was going on, and started to quite enjoy the reading of it. The in-a-nutshell premise of the world (worlds?) turned out to be fascinating, and watching the interactions, and learning about the different situations each was in... that started to really draw me in. Sometimes, such a thing can be enough to make me like a book even if everything else doesn't entirely measure up.

That's almost the situation here, although with the disclaimer that on a second or third reread I might not find the problems so bad. But the characters were rather flat, sometimes even blase and emotionless in the face of huge developments. I didn't particularly like most of them, although there were a few. And the prose had a clipped quality, often starting sentences with words like "The" cut out, sometimes also skipping the noun entirely and starting directly with the verb. This stylistic quirk may well have contributed to my difficulty understanding what was going on... not that each individual sentence was hard to understand, but rather that the rhythm of everything was off and made it harder to absorb the relevant details. Of course, sometimes sentences also WERE hard to understand, just because, like happens in a lot of science fiction, they used terms that don't exist in our world and didn't define them. It's also one of those kinds of books, where you have to absorb a lot of the details through context, at least at first. Later, things start to get explained more explicitly. These things are pretty common in other works by Gibson that I've read which is probably why I haven't read more of his. And yet, I loved the ideas so much that somehow, I liked the book despite all these issues.

It's not a high like, maybe just barely at three stars. Possibly on the reread I'll like it more. Or maybe the novelty will wear off some and I'll just think the book was okay. But for now, three stars.

Still Reading (or finished but haven't done my review): Ancillary Mercy by Ann Leckie (Raddch series #3), Forgotten Suns by Judith Tarr, Crashing Heaven by Al Robertson, Children of the Comet by Donald Moffitt (received for free from a giveaway)

October Book Foo! 2/2

2015-10-06T20:15:11Z

I guess I'm going to have to start doing this more often so I don't have to make such huge megaposts of already read books.

Finished: Up Against It by M.J. Locke
On the edges of the solar system is a thriving asteroid colony... thriving, that is, until a disaster, which was possibly sabotage, threatens their regular ice shipment. After that, there's just barely enough resources to survive if everybody pulls together and they manage to make a deal for a new shipment... although, the only source close enough has ties to organized crime and might have been responsible for the initial disaster. Also, there may be a feral AI loose in the system which only adds to the chaos.

There are two main protagonists and point of view characters in this book. One is a traditional SF teenage male hero who's smart and resourceful. The other is a middle-aged woman who's the resource manager... administration, more or less. What's somewhat fascinating is that although the teenage hero gets the most exciting stuff to do, the far more interesting story is the resource manager, who has to make tough decisions and deals and investigate people, as well as deal with the needs of her family. I almost get the feeling that the writer wanted to tell her story, and the teenage hero plotline was added for marketability and to add a few action scenes, fighting pirates. The mix of the two isn't bad, but it is a little awkward.

A little awkward might be my major complaint about the book as a whole, although in a way it's hard to put your finger on, and maybe it's just a collection of tiny off notes that leave me with a slightly less enthusiastic about the book as a whole. I'll get to those in a moment, but first, let's talk about the things I really liked. First, this is hard SF (which I define as "science fiction that tries it's best to authentically play with science or technology and doesn't contain in anything that I personally can call out as impossible."), and more, it's not one of those that explores one idea... there's a huge array of neat stuff here, from playing with gravity and orbital mechanics (not subverting them with a made up technology), to exploring nanotechnology, to considering ubiquitous observation (part of how the colony is self-sufficient is that people on Earth can watch almost everything they do, like a reality show), and there's also AI and transhuman groups who use genetic engineering to change themselves. As mentioned before, I like the resource manager main character plot a lot more, it's something that sounds boring but worked out well (the teenage guy is okay, just a little more bland). Mostly the characters are believable and trying to do their best in a tricky situation, along with a few people trying to take advantage for their own ends, and there's also a good amount of diversity in the types of people you see. The story moves along at a brisk pace and there's always something going on so I never felt bored.

The slightly off notes? Well, although the pace is generally good, it might be a little too fast... the book practically starts with the disaster, and most of the rest of the book is solely consumed with dealing with it, which obviously constrains some of the possible interactions. I would have liked to see more about how the society functions when it wasn't under threat. Also, the crisis goes from all-consuming to "well, we'll probably go all right if things don't suddenly get worse" rather suddenly, not quite at the end, and then they focus on a few dangling plots and threats that just feels like too big a change. The big developments that change things in the actual ending also felt a little too convenient, and, for that matter, the "accident" that kicked everything else. Rather, the event itself seemed a kind of plausible SF coolness that could happen, but in a way where you'd think that it could all have been prevented with a few simple safety protocols (like painting the OUTSIDE of a tank with the material that's resistant to the stuff being kept inside). I liked the AI plot as a whole, but the author created a language for communicating with them that, although certainly more plausible than an English conversation, did not make for easy reading, and it made some of the climax of that plot into something like a chore. And, some of the interactions on the teenage hero plot didn't ring true to me, but rather like what a stereotypical teenager in TV might be like.

I still enjoyed the book, and I'll probably check out more by the author, I just thought that it was dancing on the edge of being really really good, but because of a few stumbles, it landed on the wrong side.

Finished: Linesman by S.K. Dunstall
I got an eARC of this free through Netgalley. I don't think it affected my review.

Spaceships travel through the galaxy using the Lines, mysterious things that some people have a psychic attunement to and ability to repair and influence. These are called Linesmen, ranked in ability from one (lowest) to ten (highest). Ean Lambert is level ten, the only level ten left who hasn't been sent to the Confluence, an alien collection of lines. Which has made him in demand, and particularly valuable, particularly to a new mission to try to seize an abandoned alien ship located in deep space. Of course, Ean's connection to the lines isn't quite the same as other Linesmen, and his unique point of view may lead to a new understanding of the lines.

Linesman has a certain amount of old-school feel to it, like a pulp adventure but brought to the modern age with a decent smattering of political intrigue. The central character plot is a familiar one, but also a classic in it's way... the character with special abilities, not the only one, but who has been self-taught, relying more on feel and instinct than formal training, and disdained for it... and yet might be better than anyone because of it. Ean's particular quirk is that he sings to get the lines repaired, rather than using a mental pushing or pulling, which is a fairly effective decision, since it not only makes him being faintly ridiculous in the eyes of the other Linesman believable, but also gives constraints to his abilities that others lack (since his voice can give out). And largely, his adventures are appealing to read about, as are those of the other characters he works with.

It doesn't blow me away, but there's not a lot to complain about, either... except for one thing that winds up being fairly significant to me, hampering my enjoyment more than anything else.

The book's premise centers around the existence of things called Lines, something every ship has ten different ones of, even though they only know what a few of them do. Why are they called Lines? Aside from some vague language of them being needed to be 'straightened' when they're not working right (but it's not a physical straightening), I can't really see a reason. There's very little sense of what they actually are, either in the grander scientific sense (which is forgivable for something that enables FTL travel) or in the gross mechanical sense (which is less forgivable). We're told there are ten of them, they're produced in factories, I don't recall ever seeing what the physical components look like being described, or mattering, and their construction and initial handling is more or less handwaved away. They might as well be called Flurbs. Except Flurbsman isn't as appealing a title, I'd imagine.

I'm willing to give them the name, of course, but the obscurity surrounding how it all works, as well as the things that didn't seem to make sense from what we did know, began to rankle the deeper I got in the book. Lines controlling FTL travel, great, I'm with the author there. That lines control communication... okay, so how does that work, and more importantly, why does it work? They say on occasion that if the line involving communications is broken, then communications don't work, but they can still go FTL because THAT line is operational. In that case, why use one of these lines for communications at all? Or especially life support, what another line controls, when the lines can go out of whack for no reason and need one of the special few with the magical ability to influence lines to come in and fix it. Taken as a granted that you need all ten lines installed in a ship (and presumably hooked up to key systems) in order for it to start work, something I only recall being mentioned towards the end of the book, why not, for safety's sake, break the Life Support line and install an independent life support system? Because as we've seen, a broken line doesn't stop the rest of the ship from working. And if the lines somehow control these systems without being connected to them, how can anyone in that society make the repeated claim that they're just tools with no intelligence? Actually, considering one of the lines interacts with the crew directly and is good if they're all working smoothly together, and out of tune if they're not... how can they believe it's just a dumb mindless tool? For that matter, how is life support, or security, or some of the other lines, fundamentally speaking, different from communications anyway? From a human perspective, sure, it makes sense to make distinctions, but humans aren't the ones making the distinctions, they just installed the lines as is, and some of them turned out to control life support and others they don't know what they do. And from an objective perspective, for example, security in particular is mostly a matter of communicating information (like, "Intruder in Sector 7-G") to somebody who can do something about it. This complaint may seem unnecessarily picky, but to certain types of minds, like mine, this will literally annoy, that the fundamental science behind the world doesn't feel terribly thought out, or at least explained to the reader (maybe the authors do indeed have a sense in which it all works)... I don't feel immersed in a story, I feel like I'm being handed a mess of mutually inconsistent rules so that the authors can make exactly the plot they wanted, with the character having the abilities to do what they wanted.

While I think my complaint is a valid one... I'm almost making it sound worse than it is. Is the book ruined because of it? No. I think it's a solid effort, on the whole, and the characters and the rest of the worldbuilding is interesting enough that I can look past it, it's just a flaw.

There are other minor complaints... one of the POV characters, another linesman... I never felt like his chapters added much to the story. Usually he just seemed to be there to insult the main character's abilities and make us feel more sympathetic towards him, a trick that works great when used judiciously, but he took it too far. And regularly referring to people as "sweetheart" was pretty annoying too. And there were a few times when I thought the pacing felt a little off in a way I couldn't put my finger on (although one thing is, when I was about halfway through the book, I thought we were nearing the end until I activated the page number display), but none of them are all that serious.

I didn't love it. Allowing for a bit of a bump for a first time novel (it's a rare novelist who turns out something great their first time), I'll give it a three. I personally probably wouldn't read another book in the setting, just because the things that annoyed me are unlikely to change, but I might read something else by these authors, and I can see how others might like the universe enough to continue.

Finished: The Starry Rift by James Tiptree Jr.
After the extinction of humanity, aliens visiting a galactic library study three tales from humanity's history.

This is a fix-up novel, that is, short stories wrapped up by a framing device to turn it into a novel.The stories are all set in the same universe, and sometimes reference the same locations and aliens, but the time is different enough that the same technological rules don't apply (although they're always at a spacefaring level).

Tiptree herself (James Tiptree Jr. being a pseudonym for Alice Sheldon) has been an author I've enjoyed several short stories of in the past, but at the same time, I felt like I haven't read enough. Moreover, she had quite a fascinating life. And, since we were coming up on what would have been her 100th birthday, when I saw this collection in a used book bin, I figured I'd give it a try.

It's not her best work, unfortunately. It showcases some of the same characteristics she's known for, explorations of gender and sexuality, power, and death, but none have the power of the few classic works, and, to a degree, they seem more like average pulp stories with, occasionally, a little extra.

Since there's only three, it's easy enough to discuss them individually, and then I'll discuss some of the things that apply to all of them.

In "The Only Neat Thing To Do" a teenage girl who wants nothing more to explore space is given a spacecraft by her parents, for local use, and promptly runs away to uncharted territories. There she encounters an alien being unknown to her and uncovers a potential threat to local humanity. This was the best story of the bunch, all told. The alien, although maybe requiring a bit of suspension of disbelief, was a lot of fun to imagine, and the growing horror of what might potentially happen was well-played, as well as the tragedy surrounding the whole situation, that it's not because of any particular maliciousness, but that like physics, biology can also be unforgiving.

"Good Night, Sweet Hearts," tells the story of a man who is out of time due to a large amount of traveling under cryogenic suspension. As part of a series of coincidences, he encounters the great lost love of his college years, now much older and changed in many ways beyond that... and later, encounters the descendant of a clone of hers that's the age that he knew her. Also, there are space pirates. The weakest of the bunch, I get the idea that the author was playing with (a choice between a second chance with a person you have history with that you still hold a torch for, but isn't how you remember her, or one who looks virtually the same but doesn't remember you), and I like how it was eventually dealt with, but too much about it seemed like a false choice and, perhaps oddly, it didn't seem to give enough agency or respect to the women themselves. The fact that the clone was rescued from being a slave (and endured some horrific things) kind of makes her not much like the woman he left behind, except in looks, which makes him shallow for even considering it. And, all in all, the story just didn't have a lot of what I was interested in, it ran more along the lines of a pulp style adventure.

The third story, "Collision", ranks somewhere in between. The alien race was actually quite well-conceived, with an interesting life cycle involving three genders, and the conflict between them and the humans made sense and was resolved more or less in a satisfying way... but there was just a bizarre subplot (involving people of any race, in certain regions of space, thinking that they should look like the primary inhabitants of that area) that was just... frankly, too silly for me. The worst part was, it had only the smallest consequences on the plot and could easily have been removed. It felt like an interesting idea the author wanted to explore, but didn't have a proper story, so she just shoved it into this one, and made it much worse in the process. But, I still have to give her credit for the alien race itself.

As for the framing story, it's not substantial enough to really enjoy, but there is one quality that takes it from being a neutral factor in the book to being a minor negative: too often, the author uses the alien's reactions to comment on her own writing, in a way that feels smarmy (even were she criticizing them, but there's some praise too).

Overall, there are some trends, mostly, unfortunately, to the negative. Not in a "I hate this book" sense, but simply that I might have enjoyed it more if they were improved. Some, you can't really blame Tiptree for... that is, the technology in these seems very dated. Particularly, storage capacities and the fact that tapes are regularly referred to, not as archaic language but as physical things that need to get respooled, threaded, and such, giving the impression that in the far future humanity has spread throughout the galaxy and discovered faster-than-light travel but still uses magnetic tape based cassettes. Of course, any fiction of a certain time period is going to have big gaps like this, and you sort of have to forgive them, but they can still have their effect on your enjoyment. Somewhat more distancing is some occasional language abnormalities. I'm not sure if these are meant to indicate linguistic drift, were particular dialogue quirks of the era or location Tiptree wrote, or some combination (her use of the word "minim" to denote a specific but undefined time period certainly seems to be some element of world-building, but it felt out of place), but it often felt not quite right, not quite natural. Some of the dialogue had the clipped rhythm you sometimes hear in military or pilot speak, where words that are not strictly necessary, but make your sentences feel more natural, get omitted. It's not a huge problem, but it made it harder to get into than I'd hoped.

I didn't dislike it, I just thought it was okay. Despite the weak review, it's not turning me off Alice Sheldon's work in general, it just might not be the best place for someone to get a deeper exposure to her.

Finished: The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August by Claire North
Harry August leads a relatively normal life in the 20th Century. And when it ends, he's reborn, as a child, in his own past, with full memory of all that's about to happen. After a few lifetimes, he learns that he's part of a small minority, throughout history, who exist like this, living life over again. But in one life, on his deathbed, he receives a visit from a little girl who gives him a warning to send back through time... the end of the world is coming... and in each cycle, it's happening earlier and earlier.

The concept of a person living their life over again, even several times, is not a terribly new one. But it's not yet been so used that a good example of it doesn't feel fresh and original. And this is a very good example of it. It has a perfect mix of historical speculation, alternate history (for, after all, sometimes things change in these lives), crazy sci-fi ideas, and that slight flavoring of wish fulfillment for those who wish they could get a do-over of their own lives (although the book also makes it clear the drawbacks to this).

While it might also not also be unique in the field, the biggest thing that makes it stand out is that Harry isn't the only one like him, that there are others before and after him, and they interact. Usually in a book where time travel is involved, the only "worldbuilding" is history and alternate history, but in this one, there's a whole other layer, of how timelines interact when there's not just one person, there's potentially hundreds, and they can pass messages back and forth through time (although it's a long process, requiring several lives). And, because it involves time travel, it's mind-bending and dizzying and you can't shake the sense that it might not really stand up to logical scrutiny... and yet, it's good enough that you go along for the ride nonetheless. And even if there are errors, it's like seeing a bear playing Mozart on the piano... you're so wowed that the feat was achieved at all, that you can forgive the occasional off-note. And as for the regular time-travel worldbuilding? That's also done very well, both convincingly taking us into a 20th century life, but also the changes that start to develop as books go on are, perhaps not extraordinary, at least very well done.

The story takes a little while to get going, and part of that is because the narrator jumps around in time, telling stories from one life or another, that all build towards the greater tale, but it's enjoyable getting to know his world, and, there's a certain point where the book takes on a different dimension and new elements appear and it starts moving from solidly enjoyable to really exciting.

I'd love to read other books set in this universe, different people, different eras, different stories. We could explore what it's like for one of these to live through a shift in history that's come from up from the actions of a past (perhaps even some of the ones in the book itself), and deal with having to live life over against when you DON'T know what's going to happen (and maybe it's only their second time through). This is, by the way, one of the few technical issues I had with the worldbuilding surrounding the ourobourans and how everything works. I'm not sure I'd even call it a glitch, but considering all the ourobourans of the past, even not trying to cause a change, it makes sense that a few changes would propagate up anyway just from them living different lives than they did the first time, and that we should have seen some evidence of this, some of Harry's first few lives. Yet, once again, I was so enjoying the bear playing, and it was only after being wowed that I stop to notice that this particular note was off.

The only other minor issues is that the pace, although I enjoyed it all the way through, feels a little uneven (in particular, it seems very slow at first and then the end seems to get resolved rather suddenly) and that might bother some people, and one minor stylistic thing that bothered me. Sometimes, not always, but sometimes, when Harry relates a conversation, he leaves out the quotation marks for his side of the conversation. Sort of giving the impression, I suppose, that the conversation exists within the context of Harry telling the story of it to someone else, and at these points he's more illustrating his thought process rather than trying to repeat his exact words. Regardless of the reason, I found it distracting and annoying when it happened, but only to a tiny degree... if I had more significant flaws with the book, it probably wouldn't be worth mentioning, but as it is, it was the thing that bothered me the most.

I really enjoyed this book and highly recommend it, even to people who aren't big SF readers, and I'm sure I'm going to read it again. If I'd read it in time, it probably would have made my list of Hugo nominees (not that it would have affected the final ballot any, but just to give you an idea of how much I enjoyed it).

Finished: Arslan by M.J. Engh
Warning, there are a few significant spoilers about the book behind the cut, I just couldn't talk about some of my problems without discussing parts of the ending. Also, there's a plot involving sexual abuse of children in the book that is discussed and some people might want to avoid it.

Somehow, a dictator from a small middle eastern country has taken over the world. And, while traveling through America, he decides to make a small town in Illinois his base of operations. There, he makes his first introduction with shocking, abhorrent acts, but over the course of the years and decades, many sides of Arslan are seen.

This is a strange book, and difficult to review. On the whole, it's not especially believable... but there are parts that ring incredibly true, and the majority of the rest of it are told in a matter-of-fact way that lets you suspend your disbelief, mostly. It's not an especially enjoyable read, considering some of what happens, but it's strangely compelling. I'm not sure I liked it, and at times I violently disagreed with it, but I think it was worth reading.

Let's move on to the premise. I mentioned that the book's not especially believable, and this is part of the why. When they finally get around to explaining how Arslan took power, it sounds almost silly. But I think the author realizes that, and that's why she keeps it off-screen and only mentioned by second- or third-hand stories which might be wrong. It matters less about how Arslan did it than that his control is almost total. This isn't a story in which a town resists a Dictator until they're rescued, although to be sure, there are some efforts at resistance. Moreover, though, it's of a town conquered, and doing it's best to survive while conquered, because to resist too much means certain death. And moreover, it's an examination of power, the types of people who can command respect even without being entirely worthy of it, and how power can warp the victims it is used against into strange, sometimes co-dependent relationships.

Before I go any further, I think it should be point out that this book deals fairly extensively with ongoing and repeated sexual assault, often against children. In fact, one of the first acts in the book, after Arslan secures the school, is to rape two students, a boy and a girl... the boy is one of the two viewpoint characters (the girl is, as far as I could tell, never mentioned again, which seemed a somewhat bizarre omission). And it doesn't end there. The event is not told in lurid detail, but it doesn't shy away and be cagey about what is happening, either.

And moreover, part of the story involves one of the characters coming to feel love for his rapist. Either of these might cause people not to want to touch this book, and I won't argue with that reaction, although I should point out that I think it's pretty clear that the "love" was not a romantic ending the author was building towards, but rather treated as an additional horror, that a character has become so completely reshaped by such a violation, not just by the act but by society's reactions, that their feelings turn this way is a tragedy. In some ways this is the most powerful part of the book.

Less successful is the transformation of the rest of the town, although the early parts of that were much more interesting to read.

The story is told from two major points of view. There is Franklin Bond, the principal of the school who is forced to share his house with Arslan, and becomes something of the local leader of government... not quite a collaborator, because everybody must collaborate, but over the years seems to do more to protect Arslan than he needs to, for reasons even he doesn't seem to be entirely sure of. The other POV is Hunt Morgan, the young boy Arslan raped the first day, who Arslan keeps with him and trains and educates. I have to give the author credit here, both POVs read very differently, they have completely different styles of expressing themselves, with Bond being more matter-of-fact and Morgan using a lot more literary references and poetic language, as well as drifting back and forth in time. However, Bond's POV was more interesting.

As for Arslan himself? He's a strange character, with the megalomaniac goals of a supervillain, the willingness to be cruel but at the same time a bizarre sense of honor, and a strange charisma despite knowing what he's done. The boldest thing Engh does is attempt to make you sympathize with him, at times, not so much to make him a hero but to raise the question of whether a monster might, in certain circumstances, become redeemable, or at least make us to acknowledge that there is honor and humanity in monsters, and perhaps aspects of monsters in the most honorable among us. I think she goes too far with this, myself, but until she does it's interesting to walk that tightrope.

The book begins to fail towards the end when the book has Arslan return to town, much diminished in power, but, now reasonably free of the fear of retribution, the town doesn't take revenge on him, because... I don't know. One character advances the bizarre argument that everything he did to the town qualifies as War Crimes, for which they don't have the authority to try him, and he hasn't committed any crimes they can. But that doesn't ring true because with crimes against humanity, any community could declare itself with the authority. I can understand a few individual characters, like Bond, being unwilling to kill a man, even a monster, or turn him over to a group that would, but it goes way beyond that apparently because the author wants to give Arslan another heroic turn.

Still, even then, taking it as some weird given like you might allow some other book the appearance of a talking dog, you can enjoy the conclusion to a degree, the continuation of the themes and revelation of character motivations started earlier... it's just not as effective as the rest of the book.

As I said, it's hard to rate. Three stars is usually "liked", but I can't say I liked it. Yet I think it's a little better than "okay." So I'll stick with three stars.

Finished: Harmony by Project Itoh
In the future, life is precious. Maybe too precious. Virtually everyone has medical nanotechnology that monitors their status, and anything that is potentially harmful is banned or at least heavily socially discouraged. Privacy is a word from the past, your medical records are open. The dominant philosophy is that your life does not belong to you, it belongs to society. Three teenage girls, still too young to get the nanotech, and social misfits, form a bond and as an act of rebellion, a suicide pact. Years later, Tuan Kirie, one of the survivors of that pact, has fit herself back with society, although somewhat uneasily, even working for the World Health Organization. But a shocking new crisis develops that she must investigate, and she believes that it may have some ties back to her own past, and her decisions may shape the future of humanity.

This is a novel written in Japanese and translated into English. I've read a number of these put out by the Haikasoru imprint of Viz Media, and while this isn't my favorite, it's right up there at the top of them.

Harmony is obviously in the classic mold of the ambiguous, perhaps even horrific from a certain perspective, utopia, like Brave New World, used to warn against certain trends that presumably the author worried about going too far. But it also goes beyond that, too, and tackles questions like the nature of consciousness and arguably morphs from "warning social commentary" to "full on science fiction" by the end.

It may be tempting to look at this as a book warning of the dangers of political correctness. Indeed, the words "publicly correct" appear quite a few times to refer to the sort of capitulation to the groupthink that is required, by the society. Usually, when somebody attacks political correctness, I'm not all that sympathetic, as I find it a desire to want to keep not caring about whether they're hurting other people. In this case, I think it's not so much against political correctness (and in fact virtually every time "publicly correct" is invoked, it has nothing to do with racist or sexist jokes or even actions towards others, and everything to do with keeping yourself healthy and at a minimum of risk), but rather against the tools being used to extend too far. It is, it seems, more of a reminder of the virtue of moderation than anything else. After all, the main character get into a suicide pact early on, and some of her friends fantasize about murder and terrorism... it's hard to imagine that the author is wholly endorsing their worldview, but rather painting them as an opposite extreme, an over-reaction to the over-reaction the rest of the world has imposed, and the ideal truth being somewhere in the middle. So at times you root for the main characters even when they're advocating extreme actions, and other times you hate them, and really, it's a nice balancing act that may go a bit too far in one direction or another, but keeps you questioning things, which is good. Still, the overall message isn't about the right to hurt other people, but rather the right to choose things for yourself that may not be the best for you.

And, as I said, it's more than just a book to promote a social message, it gets genuinely exciting when the plot kicks off, with moments of extreme creepiness and dramatic choices foisted upon the world, all leading to a conclusion that doesn't look like it was made to fit a message, but rather because the author thought it was a really cool idea. And in a way, it is. It's not necessarily an upbeat ending, either, but I really enjoyed it nonetheless (and, in these kind of books, endings that are too upbeat often feel like cheats anyway).

The book's very good, but it's not perfect. One of the conceits of the novel is that certain parts of it are highlighted in an "emotion-markup language" that looks like HTML, where certain passages might be enclosed in tags, like, say, "I'm fine." The idea of it, at least once the book gets to the ending and the point of them is revealed, might be interesting enough to keep, but in execution in fails, particularly because most of the time it's used to make lists of statements, lists that don't actually really have emotional content, just look ugly. And it's used just frequently enough to be annoying, and yet not frequently that you think it's legitimately used to tag all the emotional text. It's more like the author occasionally remembered to use it, and uses it then, but doesn't go back to make it a completely consistent motif.

There's also a little bit of unfortunate skeeviness, where teenage girls wax nostalgically about the past where men would pay to have sex with teenage girls, and seem to complain that the option is no longer open to them. And when, early on, they make a declaration of their own bodily independence but refer mostly to their sexual characteristics as they do so (when the society controls far more than that, and there's not even that much evidence that sexual freedoms themselves are particularly restricted). I can see valid arguments for these choices that make sense within the plot, and I think trying to read into it any particular opinions on the part of the author would be a mistake, but it is somewhat off-putting. It's actually not a lot, it's not a huge part of the book, but it happens early on and may turn people off, which is a shame. There is something of a revelation towards the end that both potentially explains some of this earlier part, and yet is also potentially a problematic trope of it's own, but on the whole I think it's small enough that the book might have been better off without it.

The only other negative thing I have to say is that sometimes character motivations seem to change abruptly and I'm not entirely sure if I missed some subtle clues or if they just changed their mind, but particularly towards the conclusion it made for a minor off-note.

Still, the book kept me both entertained and thinking all the way through, which is what I want out of books like this.

Finished: Near + Far by Cat Rambo
This is a collection of short fiction by Cat Rambo. The stories are divided into two categories, the "Near" ones are set, as you might expect, in the Near Future, on Earth. The "Far" ones are set either in the more distant future or on other planets. In paperback, from what I understand, this is done in a novel way, where the book has a front cover on each side, and you turn the book over and turn it upside down to read the other story's collection, and either one could legitimately be considered the "first" batch. Unfortunately, I read it in ebook form, where it's merely one collection followed by another.

I've read a few Cat Rambo stories in the past and enjoyed them, and one of hers, I believe made my personal Hugo nomination ballot last year (or, if not, it was very close, I can't remember for sure). I also had the mistaken impression she'd been writing a lot longer than is apparently the case... perhaps because of the resonance of her last name in the public consciousness, I thought she'd been a staple of SF for decades. And while she's had a few pieces of fiction published dating back to the 90s, she actually seems to have burst onto the SF scene in full around 2004-5, and most, if not all of the stories in this book are from the last ten years, which means none of them feels dated.

I was prepared for the usual mixed bag in a short story collection, but, when I started on the "Near" half, I found myself enjoying most of the stories in them. Firstly, almost all of the stories are SF, as opposed to Fantasy, which is not as much to my tastes. There are a few where the science is somewhat soft, or there are some more magical elements, but only one that I'd describe as outright fantasy (set in the modern day, though, it should be noted), and even that wasn't bad, just not my thing. The rest gave me a great variety, some small character pieces, some built off an interesting idea, a superhero tale, a cyberpunk tale, and a few takes on typical SF themes, but not really a disappointment. I'd thought, then, if it kept up that quality, I might consider it one of the best single-author anthologies I'd yet read.

Unfortunately, it didn't quite keep up. The "Far" stories, while not bad, and, indeed, still containing a few excellent examples, didn't seem to quite match, for me, the enjoyment I had for the first. Party of this was perhaps high expectations from the variety of the first... I was expecting, hoping, to see dozens of different futures or alien worlds that were as believable as her near future stories, but far more divergent, as, the farther you go in the future, the more you can speculate about what might be out there. Unfortunately, several of the "Far" stories seemed to take place in the SAME future, with, occasionally, the same setting and a few shared characters, a rather conventional space opera dynamic, and although they explored different themes and some of the aliens were quite interesting, the overall effect was narrow... for every story set in that typical space opera setting, I lamented about how there could have been one set in a completely different universe with no aliens at all, or where humanity met only one alien race and had a unique relationship with them, or maybe a mind-bending post-singularity tale. There were a few exceptions (or, perhaps, the space opera setting had a lot of varied elements added to it, and all of them were actually intended to take place within it), but on the whole the stories felt like different looks at a single future. There was some experimentalism, but much of it seemed to be of the more style experimentalism or deliberately modeling works of classic literature, techniques that leave me somewhat cold.

Still, even though it didn't quite live up to my highest hopes, it's quite good, and moreover, they tread a nice line where they can be enjoyable both to a long-time SF reader and someone who's a bit newer, because the science and speculation usually play second fiddle to character and clarity. My favorite stories of the collection, I think, were "The Mermaids Singing, Each to Each", "Peaches of Immortality" (the two stories that opened the "Near" batch), "Ms. Liberty Gets a Haircut", "Memories of Moments, Bright as Falling Stars", and from the "Far" section, "Amid the Words of War", "Five Ways to Fall in Love on Planet Porcelain" (which was a surprise as when I started I felt like it was going to be the kind of thing I disliked). Those are just the ones I really enjoyed. There are others that I liked, just, somewhat mildly, and only a few I didn't like at all (and only one that was a struggle to get through without just skipping ahead to the next story).

Rating-wise... I'll give it 4, which I might have given it anyway if I had liked the second batch as much as the first, but it would be a much higher four. This is a four just on the edge, but still worth the score. A very good collection, worth a look.

Finished: Moxyland by Lauren Beukes
In near future Cape Town, South Africa, smartphones are more in our lives than ever. They're used to pay for everything, they work as keys, and they can even be used as a police to remotely administer an electrical shock if you're getting out of hand. Moreover, disconnection is a legal punishment to be feared, for it often means you can't get work or participate in many other parts of life. Meanwhile, corporations continue to do what they can to control the lives of their employees and customers. But for most people, life is just life, some people trying to rebel, some trying to get ahead, and some just trying to get by. We follow the stories of several people as their lives and stories intertwine and sometimes they end up in situations they never planned on.

Moxyland is the debut author of South African writer Lauren Beukes, and set in her native city, which lends it a certain authenticity (even though I have no personal experience to verify how well she captured the spirit and details). From an outsider (that is, North American) perspective such as my own, though, the setting is perhaps a little peculiar at times, but the country has enough European influence in its history that it doesn't feel particularly alien, either, a little like being set in England or Australia, there's an accent on everything, and a few things seem out of place, but it's easy enough to adapt. You could even read it without paying much attention to or being especially aware of the setting at all, although you'd obviously miss some of the texture. In fact it may be the science fictional elements that contribute to most of the feeling of dislocation that the book engenders (although certain elements, like slang, it's hard for me to be sure which category it belongs in). It's also set in the very near future, published in 2008 and only looking about ten years ahead then, it's nearly obsolete now. Still, it's one of those books that I think will be worth reading even after our date passes theirs.

The book is firmly in the subgenre of cyberpunk (although some might quibble and call it post-cyberpunk or some other term based on believing that we are in an era where the influences that gave birth to real cyberpunk are different and so this book must be categorized differently even if the tropes are the same, but to me, it's all the same beast), characterized by techological enhancement of people, corporate overreach, a gritty, pessimistic tone, and often street-level characters trying, in small ways, to rebel. High Tech and Low Lives, as some have described it, and that describes the type of book it is. One of the reasons that the genre isn't common anymore is that it can too easily fall into cliche, another is that it's easy to get sick of. Still, I think that this is a worthy piece of the genre, with well-developed characters, a good writing style, and some interesting ideas. Of course, in cyberpunk, those ideas are often about ways that those in power may find to screw the common people over in novel ways, and this is, I think, part of it's importance, an early-warning system of things to be watchful for before they enslave us. And in this respect, the novel also does a very good job, as I can see many of these ideas actually being tried in the near future. The ability to turn people's own phones into tasers is perhaps the least believable element, but as a reader you can still have fun with it.

The characters are strong, vivid, believable, and the book bounces between several of them as viewpoint characters, and I didn't find, as I often do, that one or multiple storylines were a drag that I was wading through to get to the ones I enjoyed. Sure, there were ones that I liked more than others, but I was interested in all of them. It is important to note though that the characters are interesting... but not particularly likable. Of them, there was maybe one that I genuinely liked. Others I thought were jerks, or the type of people I would be annoyed at having to associate with. It's a tricky thing, making unlikeable characters compelling, but I think the author mostly succeeds, at least for me. Your mileage may vary.

The prose is strong in a way it's hard to describe. Except, occasionally, with the slang, it was an easy read, but and it felt like it had depth where even when I was reading a fairly average description without much consequence, I was enjoying it more than I should have been... even though I can't later remember why.

If there's a weakness, it's in plot and pacing. It's not a huge negative, but I found myself more interested in the characters and the world than in what specifically they were doing, and what storylines I did find seemed to not get as successful a payoff as I'd hoped for. The overall effect was just of following certain characters through a particularly turbulent time period, but little to no sense of closure, why the events happened, or of why any of it mattered. Perhaps that was part of the point, but I wanted it to feel a little more like a story.

Still, as a first outing, it's quite well done, and as my first experience with this author, it's a very good one. I'd put it at a high three, it was very close to a four, and I think if it had just hung together a little better, it would have gotten it easily. But I was impressed in the quality of the writing enough that I'm going to make it a point to try another of the author's work.
Finished: Zeroboxer by Fonda Lee
Disclaimer: I received this book for free through a giveaway on Twitter. I don't think it affected my review.

Zeroboxer tells the tale of Carr Luka, an eager young athlete in the new sport of Zeroboxing... a kind of mixed martial arts match in the zero-gravity environment of a space station. He works his way up the ranks and becomes a rising star, but it's not just his opponents he has to worry about. He's got secrets, some that happened years ago and he didn't even know about, but which might threaten his career... or even his life.

Obviously this is a mix between a "boxer seeking the championship belt" type story, and a science fiction. I should point out up front that I may be predisposed against this type of book. I generally don't watch sports at all, and, in particular, I have, if possible, even less interest in the sports that involve two people fighting. So in particular I'm not the best person to judge the sports-side of things.

I will note that there are a lot of familiar tropes that even someone like me who doesn't have a particular interest in the genre can pick out. The friend turned rival, the crusty mentor/coach who is hard on the fighter but deep down cares, the inspiring love interest, the eager young fan who never gives up hope, the point where the character has to make a choice between doing something unethical or having some kind of negative consequence. You might call them cliches but I think that would be a little unfair, particularly when it's a hybrid story like this one, the familiar tropes help anchor the "sports" part of the plot and let you add the sci-fi elements.

The sci-fi elements are, honestly, decent, but nothing that really blew me away. I might have raised an eyebrow at the apparent casualness of a trip to Mars, but otherwise the science seemed solid, serving the story and adding some texture to the world, and raising a few questions. I was certainly more interested in this part of things than the sports side, and it had a it more depth than I was expecting.

The intersection of the two sides comes most strongly in the sport of Zeroboxing itself, and here I think the book shines most. The sport is believable and told in an engaging way, probably even exciting to the type of person who's excited about sports. The author did seem to have put a good deal of thought into how it worked at least, and the terminology surrounding it (even when adapted from boxing lingo) sounded believable.

I've seen the book marketed as YA, and although I think it's suitable to that audience, I also feel the label does a bit of a disservice to the book by suggesting that it's the type of thing that's mostly of interest to teens. Aside from the main character starting at a typical-YA age of seventeen, it doesn't tackle teen issues or harp on melodramatic love triangles, it's just a fairly straightforward rising star sports story with some reasonably well-done SF elements, and anyone who particularly likes both sports and SF, regardless of age, could probably get a lot out of the book. If you only really like one, it depends a lot more on how much enthusiasm you can drum up for the other part.

The story's a fairly brisk read, and the plot does what it needs to do but on many levels, just by the nature of the genre, it's predictable: if the main character has to win a fight to move on to the next stage, he obviously wins. The ending also fell a little flatter than I'd hoped, not the fight intself but more particularly with the protagonist's non-fight problem, which seemed to sort of fizzle. Still, overall, I think it's a decent book, and probably to people who's tastes run more towards boxing in general, it might even be a very good book. For me, I'd put it in the low three range, I enjoyed it, wasn't ever bored even in the action-heavy parts, but I doubt I'd read it again or follow on to a potential sequel, though I might give the author a try on another work.

Finished: Caliban's War by James S.A. Corey (Expanse #2)
(Since it's the second book in a series, synopsis behind the cut to avoid potentially spoiling anyone who hasn't read the first)Jim Holden and his crew now work for the Outer Planets Alliance, capturing pirates prowling the outer solar system and occasionally going on intelligence missions, and they're about to get a doozy. Because war has broken out between the UN and Mars on Ganymede, threatening untold lives. But the spark point is a genetically engineered super-soldier built using alien technology Earth can barely understand, much less control, the same technology that is currently doing inexplicable things to Venus. And while all of this is going on, a scientist searches for his kidnapped daughter, and Holden and his crew may be the only ones who can help...

I liked the first book in the series, Leviathan's Wake, but I was a little bit let down. Part of this was because I'd heard so many good things about the series, and although it was good, the hype was naturally hard to live up to.

This one, though, I enjoyed a lot more. It's still a sort of a highbrow version of big-budget movie or TV series SF (which is appropriate, considering it's being adapted), action heavy and fun but not particularly deep... but it's a very GOOD example of that kind of book. And this one, everything seemed a step above. The characters we knew about before gelled together more and felt more real, lived in, and the newer viewpoint characters were a lot more compelling. To be honest, there was something a little bit creepy about Miller's obsession with a teenage girl he'd never met, but Prax's quest for his daughter is a lot more relateable, as is the Martian Marine's struggle to cope with being the lone survivor of her squad, and the UN functionary was so fun to read it's easy to understand why she's apparently part of the cast of the TV series from the beginning, rather than the second season. And jumping back to the returning characters, in many ways they're stock archetypes, the tight-knit crew, but in other ways, they're refreshingly novel. It just feels so satisfying to find a character in a book who's first instinct when uncovering a massive conspiracy is "Okay I'm just going to tell everybody." Even if the book tries to point out that's not necessarily the right move at all times, it feels so rare in genre fiction that I root for him nonetheless.

The plot moves at a good pace, never dragging, and always promising a little more to come in the future. It may be a bit predictable or cliche at times, but the sheer enjoyment more than makes up for it.

When I read the first book, it took me months to get around to buying the second. When I finished this one, I ordered the third immediately. That alone should say something.
Finished: Crossfire by Nancy Kress

A privately held spaceship leaves Earth, full of thousands of rich eccentrics, scientists, members of religious and ethnic groups and others who have all paid for a chance to start again on another planet. But just as they're setting up, they find a complication... there are aliens already on the planet. And soon they discover they've stumbled upon a war between two races and forced to make moral choices that no one should be forced to make.

This book left me with mixed feelings, because there were some things that I really liked, some that left me somewhat cold, and some that I thought were below par.

Let's start with what the book did right. Firstly, it created some particularly cool aliens. Well, one of them was about average, but I really liked what Kress did with the second one, a different mindset and biology that I was really interested by, and it led smoothly into the moral dilemmas faced by the protagonists without feeling artificial. Sometimes the science veered into the science-magic type, but mostly I really enjoyed this side of things.

This is a science fiction novel, and for some fans, a good SFnal concept, or a familiar one handled well with a few twists, can excuse a lot of other flaws. This is mostly true for me, and why I'd say I didn't feel like the book was a waste of time. But that doesn't mean we don't notice the other flaws.

I normally like Kress' character work, but here not many spoke to me. The only character I consistently liked was the New Quaker doctor. His daughter came close but was too erratic, to the point that it felt like not a nuanced character, but rather an almost cartoonishly irrational one. The rest? A few I got invested in for brief periods, but mainly they just slid off me. The novel did have a built-in excuse for why a bunch of characters who probably aren't well-suited to this type of operation are there, and it serves well for that, but it feels too transparently an excuse.

Slightly related to the character work was some of the plot developments that just rubbed me as poorly handled or not well-thought out. For example, two characters dislike each other, and then realize they're attracted to each other. This is a classic trope, and it in itself isn't a bad thing, but to read these characters who were mildly in conflict through the rest of the book suddenly look into each other's eyes and, essentially, hold hands and agree that they're dating did not ring true to me. Similarly, one of the characters had a backstory where he committed a crime on Earth. This is revealed right at the beginning, but the nature of the crime is only hinted at until finally they reveal the truth... and it just lost all it's power for me because I could not believe the world worked in such a way that that particular crime would have been possible (at least, that he would have gotten away with it). As such, instead of working as part of a satisfying character arc, it made me roll my eyes. There are a few other times where characters seemed to make decisions because that was what the plot required, rather than it being what a real person would do in that situation.

The tone seemed to jump around a little, and it took a while before I had a good idea what kind of story the book was going to be, not in terms of plot, but in terms of feel. But it didn't take too long, so it's one of the more minor problems.

All in all, the book was okay. But it could have been much better.

Still Reading (or finished but haven't done my review): Artemis Awakening by Jane Lindskold, The Trials, by Linda Nagata (The Red #2), Alien Contact (themed short story collection), My Real Children, by Jo Walton, Rapture, by Kameron Hurley (The Bel Dame Apocrypha #3)

October Book Foo! + General Stuff 1/2

2015-10-06T20:13:52Z

So, let's see, what else is new?
Let's start with TV.

Fear The Walking Dead's over for the year and.. well, it's not great, there were plenty of stupid things, plotwise, and stupid people, but on the whole I'm still enjoying it, I just question some of the decisions. It's not as good as the Walking Dead, but if it comes back, I'll still watch it. And I'll say something that's probably controversial, at least among reactions I've read elsewhere on the net: I actually like most of the main cast, even the teens. Well, the youngest one's kind of an annoying snot at times, and they all have their stupid moments, but I think the family has good chemistry.

Doctor Who's back. So far it's... well, it's Doctor Who. I still would like to see Moffat go and be replaced with somebody who know how to craft a compelling coherent story rather than stringing together good moments that don't make any sense when you think about it (and often relying on the same old tropes over and over again). But it's enjoyable enough that I'll keep watching, and there's the sense of wonder that'll never completely go away.

Heroes Reborn? Meh. I watched the premiere. I have the third ep (1st ep after the 2 hours), but I haven't watched it yet. That says something, doesn't it? I was kind of hoping they'd go all out reboot with an explicit alternate universe. Instead, they seem to have just continued, and worse, they've not learned the lessons from last time, throwing too much stuff in it and not really considering how it all fits together or how consequences of what you include might mean down the road. And the video game nonsense just makes me want to shut it off.

That's alot of mixed reactions. Is there anything good?

Well, it's not quite TV, but I've gotten quite fond of Critical Role over the last several weeks, on Geek & Sundry. It might be the closest thing to a new TV-ish obsession. It's a bunch of somewhat famous voice actors from cartoons and video games playing a tabletop campaign of Dungeons and Dragons. It's actually a continuation of a campaign they did privately for fun for something like 2 years before, and they just decided to put it online, so if you start on the first ep you're actually starting in the middle of the adventure (which also means that you can pretty much start anywhere). It's turned out to be a big hit and is probably the biggest thing on G&S's twitch channel, live every Thursday night for something like 3 hours (occasionally more). It's just fun seeing a bunch of friends enjoying the game and, since they're all actors, they use voices and such for their characters (and the DM has a big assortment of voices himself), making me nostalgic for my own days of gaming and almost wanting to try and pick it up again, and sometimes they have fun guest stars (Wil Wheaton and Felicia Day have both guested for two weeks, but not at the same time... also, although it wasn't officially Critical Role, Vin Diesel just played a game with the DM and some of the members and really enjoyed it and supposedly there's talk of him playing a guest role too). I don't know how well it would translate to people unfamiliar with D&D tabletop, but it's a bit like a radio play with a lot of dice rolls determining things. So I'll recommend it anyway.

As for other new or returning shows, nothing's really started yet that I've gotten into. I checked out Blindspot because one of the secondary-character regulars is actually one of the players on Critical Role (she had to leave as a regular when she started working on the series, but she's open to returning for guest spots or hiatuses), but really, it doesn't do much for me. Castle, meh, the relationship tension/conspiracy of this year's just not working for me... the only thing that is, is Castle and his daughter's kind of doing a Veronica Mars vibe - but they need to at least acknowledge that with some kind of reference! Flash and Arrow restart this week, as does iZombie and Agents of SHIELD returned last week, which is solid but not exciting.

Speaking of Marvel, I finally watched Avengers: Age of Ultron. It wasn't as good as the first movie, but it was fun. I do have some complaints, which are a bit spoilery if I'm not the only one who hadn't seen it until recently. Okay, well, first, Black Widow and Hulk. I don't mind the relationship in theory, but I don't think it was executed well and I kind of agree with those who say there were some problematic messages what with the team's only woman being the one who's duty is to "sooth the savage beast" and her big sacrifice being that she can't ever have kids. And I mean, come on, how funny would it have been to have Steve Rogers giving the lullaby? Missed opportunity. But the fan in me is most annoyed at Quicksilver's death... yes, it made a great moment but a good deal of the fun of Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch is that they're sibling heroes. It's like adding Black Knight to the team and have him lose his sword and armor in the first movie and then he's just a guy with guns. Actually, Wanda annoyed me too.. not the actress, I think both of them did well, but making her a mind-reader missed the point and was too convenient. She does hex bolts, not mind reading. So now of a famous iconic character duo lost one member and the other has abilities the other one never had (and that make things difficult going forward... now any time they need to get information from someone the plot won't allow, they either need her out of the picture or an excuse it doesn't work). Also, while Vision looked cool and was well played, I don't think he really added much to the team dynamic, and his "lift Thor's hammer" moment was cheap and unearned. I suppose in an Ultron movie you need to include him, but if someone had to die I'd have rather it was him. Or Hawkeye, who, seriously, who needs him? So I guess you could say all the new Avengers were poorly handled.

Anyway, on to the Book Foo. Blah blah blah copied from my Goodreads blah blah blah mostly non-spoilery beyond back-of-the-book type stuff unless I warn.

Finished: The Red/First Light by Linda Nagata
In "The Red: First Light" (variously called solely by the part either before or after the colon, depending on edition and publisher... mine is simply The Red) tells of Lieutenant James Shelly, who leads a squadron of soldiers on a near future mission that he cynically believes is more about making money for defense contractors than it is about any actual purpose. But while he scoffs at the leadership decisions, he believes in the people and the brotherhood, even while knowing that some of that is manipulated by hi-tech equipment. Still, he does his best to keep his people alive using his skills and wits... and one thing extra. Somebody has been giving him warning when things aren't quite right, warnings that have saved the lives of his squad several times, warnings his leadership can't seem to stop. And it may be that an emergent, globe-spanning artificial intelligence exists, and has taken an interest in Shelly... but probably just as a tool to its own ends, to be discarded at its whim.

This may be my favorite Earthbound military SF ever.That sounds like higher praise than it is, at least slightly, since, mostly, I skip military SF entirely unless space travel or aliens are involved (and even then, it's a genre I dabble in when the mood strikes me). But I've really enjoyed several of Nagata's works in the past (she may even tentatively qualify as my favorite female SF author). She writes hard SF that raises big issues and is often ahead of the curve tackling SF concepts before they've gathered mainstream currency, so when I heard she did a military SF, I was intrigued. I was more intrigued when I found that she was nominated for the Nebula award (given by fellow SF writers and editors), the first time someone has ever been nominated for a self-published work. The buzz made a traditional publisher pick up her series, and so I finally decided to snap it up. And I'm glad I did. Because it's not just my favorite earthbound military SF novel, which, as I've mentioned, is a pretty narrow category, it's also one of my favorite military SFs period, although probably not the tops.

Often, the leads in a military SF tend to be a little flat and standardized... they're competent, maybe a bit sarcastic, but not especially deep. This isn't, I think, meant to imply anything about soldiers or anything, I suspect it's simply that it makes the main character a vehicle for audience identification... they can picture themselves going through basic training and becoming this skilled super-soldier and making the right call and defending humanity, and too much personality risks some segment of the audience being able to not see themselves there. Shelly follows this trend as well, but he does feel a little more on the vivid side, what with his military service being somewhat forced and his open cynicism about the powers that be. He's also got a love plot that's more nuanced than I was expecting, a girlfriend who clearly loves him but isn't sure she wants to be with someone in the military life. And there's a compelling underlying plot on the way his own beliefs have changed out from under him, which has a double resonance with some of the technology involved.

Speaking of the technology, the science fictional aspects seem fairly subdued, but pretty impressive for what's there. Soldiers wear skullcaps that track and subtly (but not secretly) alter their brain chemistry, making them, for example, less prone to panic in a crisis and also damping down sexual attraction to their fellow soldiers while making them literally feel like family. There's cybernetic limbs and implanted internet links, but they're all fairly subdued and remain fairly believable. The only off-note is that, while there are autonomous drones, they seem to be used far less than I would expect for this period of time. On a more social level, the transformation of the team's recorded mission reports into a reality show for public consumption and propaganda purposes, even mere days after a mission completed, rang chillingly plausible.

As for the big SF element, the AI they call the Red? Well, the story isn't done yet, and not everything is revealed, but from the behavior and what's speculated I think it's handled extremely well. It doesn't interact in too obviously human ways, but rather by making small changes and a few suggestions, in such a way that it's possibly not even aware of humanity as individual people with lives, but simply tweaking variables... and yet, at the same time, it's not portrayed as outright evil, but rather a program that may be helping humanity because helping us is the pragmatic way to fulfill it's core programming, whatever that may be. Which sounds great, but there's no guarantee that the equation might not change, nor that any individual person is going to find that being randomly screwed over isn't the best way to improve the outcomes for everyone else. Similarly even those who know it exists are hesitant to take action against it, both because it may be virtually impossible to eliminate without tearing down a lot of the internet infrastructure, but also because it is helping them and, if they could control it, could become a useful tool for their own interests, which might be even less benign than an unfathomable AI. All put together, it makes the AI a creepy but compelling background threat. And it is a background threat... it drives the actions of some of the major players, and intervenes directly to help out Shelly once in a while, but most of the action is thoroughly in the human sphere of events. If the author's made a misstep on this angle, I think it's possibly on the side of potentially being too godlike, intervening in too many areas at once - but, at this point, that may just be paranoia on the part of people who are afraid of it.

If you've read some of my previous reviews, you may know that my eyes tend to glaze over a bit on heavy action scenes (it's a factor in why the subgenre of milSF is, for me, more of a sometimes-food), so I'm obviously not the best judge of that, but they seemed fairly standard and I didn't get bored. Shelly's tendency to get 'alerts' about danger coming did defuse the tension a bit, but the author defused and occasionally inverted that with him being very aware that he might be the sacrificial lamb at any given moment, even maneuvered into a trap in order to advance some goal. The overall pace of the book was very good, and it kept my interest up throughout.

My major complaint was that one of the villains of the book seemed too almost cartoonishly evil or crazy at times. Still, if you insulate somebody from any potential for negative consequences, that's very likely what might become of them, and that whole thing, in its way led to a great final act where characters are motivated by a desire to see her finally pay.

Overall, I really enjoyed this and will definitely be picking up the sequels. One final note that has nothing to do with the story, but I loved nonetheless. The publisher is releasing these books simultaneously, not just in hardcover and ebook form, but also in paperback (and not even the oversized trade paperback format, but the mass market kind that can fit into a large pocket). I love paperbacks, and having this choice right from the publication date, instead of having to wait six months to a year, makes me so happy that I just had to mention it. I've always wanted books to go this way, only to be told by those I trust to be more knowledgeable, that this wasn't feasible or profitable. I don't know if the people telling me these things were wrong, or things changed, or this publisher's making a crazy gamble that will lead them to ruin, but I love them for it all the same and it's making me more eager to get the second and third book.

Finished: Cinder by Marissa Meyer
A SF take on Cinderella, in which Linh Cinder is a cyborg living in New Beijing, and because cyborgs have limited rights, is technically the property of her stepmother. But she's also an extremely skilled mechanic, and in this capacity she meets the prince, who doesn't realize she's a cyborg and takes a liking to her. But there are bigger problems threatening the kingdom, such as an unstoppable plague that is striking close to home, and threats of war from an offshoot of humanity that has colonized the moon and have the ability to sway minds. Cinder, of course, gets caught in the middle of all of this, and learns some surprising things about her own history.

Those first words are liable to be make-or-break for most people... "A SF take on Cinderella" is the kind of thing that's likely to particularly intrigue some, and make others go "NOPE" and dismiss it as something they're not interested in. That it's somewhat targetted towards the YA bracket probably intensifies this reaction. Me, I was somewhere in the middle, but leaning towards not being interested... and yet, I kept hearing good things, even in groups that are usually interested in more hardcore SF, and so I decided to take a chance and check it out.

I'm glad I did because it's a lot more fun, and a lot better, than I'd have expected given that short high concept description.

Let's start with the Cinderella-ness of the book. It's there, it's obvious, and yet, it's not obsessive. There are certain touchstones: stepmother and stepsisters, a prince, a ball, a pumpkin-colored coach, somebody who could be described as a fairy godmother type, but the author doesn't feel the need to hammer everything into the mold, and she deliberately subverts some elements. And of course, I don't remember a fatal plague being a part of Cinderella (the original versions of these tales were often a lot grimmer than we remember, but, even so...). I think this works well, as the story doesn't wind up being entirely predictable, but occasionally you'll spot something and realize what it's supposed to echo from the original tale, and you can nod and appreciate the cleverness.

From the perspective of a mostly-SF reader... well, there's no getting around that it's YA, and so there are some tropes that grate on me, like where society has been restructured by vague and not-very-important centuries of backstory so that it conveniently resembles the kind of society the author wants: a society with technology much like ours, and a little advanced, but that runs something like a fairy tale kingdom, and, moreover, in which cyborgs for some reason are a persecuted minority. This was perhaps the biggest problem I had with the book, that it never made sense to me that people would persecute them to that degree... be a little weirded out, sure, but when it gets to the point where they can be volunteered for fatal medical experiments it feels like something decreed by the author for the sake of the drama rather than it making any particular sense. That said, while I wouldn't call it hard SF, it's actually far harder than I would have expected... there actually is an attempt to cast certain things that might be described as 'magical powers' in a scientific context that is plausible enough that readers who aren't fond of mixing magic in their SF may be satisfied. It's a little like TV SF, but the kind that does it well... like Stargate, where you know they really just wanted an episode where, say, they accidentally wind up in the 60s or they get a black hole effect through the Stargate without killing everyone, and you know that that the science of it is kind of iffy and it probably shouldn't work like that, but you appreciate that they made the effort to at least sound good (I use Stargate instead of Star Trek because they were usually better at it, and they kept fairly consistent in subsequent uses... although it remains to be seen if this series will do that). The fact that in one major case the author did this, attempting to use a veneer of real world science, to justify what, effectively, are telepathic powers, something that even harder adult SF sometimes just allows as a given, without any explanation, particularly impressed me.

The plot tends a little towards the predictable, which of course you'd expect being a Cinderella take, but at the same time, there was a good deal of unexpected happenings, including a surprising emotional weight in some scenes, where things went far worse than I was expecting, leaving a hefty emotional punch and a few pages of me reeling and expecting some last minute miracle save. The characters, likewise, occasionally tended towards fairy tale stereotypes, but there was a little bit of depth to characters like the stepmother and sisters that I appreciated... I just would have appreciated a little more.

It's not the kind of book that I'd make a regular habit of reading, but for once-in-a-while it does hit the spot, and it was skilled enough with its particular approach that I was impressed enough that I'm probably going to check out the rest of the series (where the author recasts other fairy tales in the same SF universe). I'd say it's almost certainly worth checking out if this is the kind of thing that already interests you, and if you're iffy on it... it still might be worth a try.

Finished: Anathem by Neal Stephenson
Erasmus lives a simple existence, owning few possessions by vow, and living in a monastic environment which only opens its doors to the outside world every ten years (other orders only open on longer periods). Inside, in addition to the usual interpersonal dramas with the rest of his order, he gets involved in logical debates and philosophical discussions. But there are things going on in the outside world, and member of his order are getting called by the government outside, a government his order is separate from but beholden too. For this is not a religious order (although individual members may believe in God), this is how scientists live, on a world that is not Earth.

Science Fiction, in addition to things like telling a good story, does many things distinct from other types of fiction. It can attempt to predict the future of our technology, it can comment on the trends of today by extrapolating, it can evoke a sense of wonder in what might be out there. Different types of science fiction focus on different elements, but one of the hardest tasks SF authors sometimes set themselves is to produce a whole other world, one that feels vivid and real not just on a surface level, enough to tell the story, but that you almost feel that it could exist out there, somewhere. Sometimes it's our society future, sometimes it's an alien planet, and sometimes it's a little ambiguous how the setting relates to our world. Anathem is one of those kind of books, possibly starting from a simple premise (what if scientists lived by the same types of rules as religious groups, with things like excommunication and sacred rituals and vows of poverty), but developed with the kind of dedication that is hard to imagine. This is a book that is filled with new words for concepts close to those we understand, and a few that are completely out there, not to mention a complex society.

And yet the author does it almost effortlessly. It can be a bit tricky in the early parts, but once you get a sense of how things work, after that, the new information you need to know is introduced fairly gradually and unobtrusively, easy to assimilate and occasionally seeming obvious in retrospect.

The easiest trap to fall into in one of these worldbuilding efforts is to make the world too utopian or dystopian, rather than a living world that has problems and good aspects and it's own bizarre little quirks... like our world, merely very different, and Stephenson avoids that trap and completely succeeds in creating something believable.

It is a doorstopper of a book, though, at something like 900 pages, and moreover, it's a very slow burn for much of it, and it often breaks any raising momentum with a long digression about some finer point in philosophy or mathematics, expressed by analogy... I almost suspect that the author wanted the chance to teach people these points and so came up with novel, simplified examples. In any event, these sound like flaws, and, to some people they probably would be, but to me it works, because it feels like an immersion in this other world, where sometimes everything comes to a halt so people can argue about how to cut a cake.

That doesn't mean it's perfect, though... there's a big chunk of the middle that I thought was somewhat of a waste of time, like the author had already done a lot more worldbuilding that didn't easily fit into the narrative, and he didn't want to waste it, so the main character took an extended side trip in the outside world. And, to be honest, the ending didn't entirely satisfy either (although, I do note that it had elements that, had the author not put all the work he had into it, I probably would have been much more annoyed by, but since he'd done such fabulous worldbuilding I had to grant him the surprises he decided to underpin it with).

With the exception of that part in the middle (and even then, it never became an outright slog, I just wanted him to jump ahead to the more exciting parts that were inevitably coming) I was almost always engaged and excited about what would happen next, despite the fact that not a lot was happening at any given part. Truly this is one of those books where the journey is more important than the destination, and, as stated before, a master class in building an alternate world.

Finished: The Deaths of Tao by Wesley Chu
(synopsis behind cut because it's the second book in a series)Roen Tan is still the host to the alien Tao, one of a race of beings that have lived inside certain members of humanity and guided our history and development. That race is still at war, with one faction, Tao's, trying to help humanity, and the other subjugating them and only interested in their own goals. Unfortunately, Tao's side has been losing, badly, and Roen's own life has suffered... he's had to go on rogue operations, his wife (also an agent and host to another of Tao's side) has left him, and his child is being raised by grandparents. But the fate of the world is at stake.

So, second book, sequel to the Lives of Tao, which I liked, but wasn't blown away by. Second books in a series tend to get a lower score... the novelty's worn off some, the things you liked in the first book aren't always present, and the things that annoyed you stand out all the more. Is that the case here? Unfortunately, yes. Not dramatically so, but enough to be notable.

Some of this is personal preference, of course. For example, one big asset to the first book was that Roen was totally unsuited as a spy, and the plot of getting him into shape and training him had a certain charm to it. A man being completely unsuited to being a secret agent forced to get involved I can get behind. But once he's already a skilled secret agent, you either have to introduce some new elements to the story, or you're just telling a story of spies fighting spies, doing missions, getting in firefights, which may excite some, but to me, those elements tend to bore the heck out of me. Chu does seem to notice this, and attempts to bring some of the old magic with a training regimen and point of view chapters for Roen's girlfriend (who, although an agent, was a non-combat agent working in the political arena, but being exposed to more and more danger), and it helps... but it doesn't quite capture the magic. I liked the interpersonal character drama that was going on in some cases, and the Tao/Roen interactions were usually good, but I just thought the good guys were too competent, except when they have to screw up. Almost paradoxically, the fact that the bad guys were so clearly dominating in everything was another minor annoyance, because they're still pretty cartoonishly evil and even, in their own ways, incompetent.

The other issue, partially related to the last point, is that the eventual strategy the 'good guys' take, although it's meant to be a great surprise... is pretty much what I had been mentally yelling at them to do for the whole book, it was the only thing that made SENSE to do. And I'm certainly glad they did it rather than not to it (and in fact, the fact that they have done it, and that I want to see how it plays out, is perhaps the one thing that will make me continue to the third book in the trilogy), but it loses some of it's impact when nobody even brings up the possibility because that would tip the author's hand. If it was a more even fight then that could seem to be a surprise development (although I'd still have been advocating for it), but when they were so close to losing, and the bad guys were breaking all their protocols, it (or, at least, the threat of it being used to keep them abiding by the terms of the rules) seemed to be the only reasonable solution. Still, it ended more or less on a high note (quality wise, although not all of it was happy).

For all that it's spy vs spy with some unrealistic levels of action and fighting, the book still had a fun factor that doesn't make me feel like I wasted my time... I just wasn't as into it as I was the first one. And, it was enough that I felt good about Chu winning the Campbell Award at the most recent Worldcon, and I voted for him based on this book (I got an electronic version as part of my Hugo voters packet).

The last one I scored a three, and despite liking it less, numerically, this one I think I'd give the same... but it's a much lower three, possibly rounded up from a very high two. It does gets a bonus point for an obscure Alpha Flight reference, which would bring would theoretically bring it up to a four (see disclaimer).

Disclaimer: Said bonus point normally exists in a idyllic seeming alternate dimension and will only appear when the normal review is threatened... at all other times, the rating will be a plain unassuming-looking three.

Continued next post because apparently the post is too large for LJ.

Bimonthly Book Foo! + some other stuff

2015-08-12T00:48:23Z

TV's been pretty slow lately, however, there have been a few things of interest:

Wayward Pines: Surprisingly watchable, and surprisingly SF. I mean, a bit silly at times, but I enjoyed it and I appreciated them not dangling out the mystery, they actually solved it about halfway in and the rest was dealing with other issues. THAT is how you do it. I kind of want to see a season 2.

Dark Matter: One of two new space opera shows on the channel formerly known as the Sci-Fi channel. At least it's getting back to its roots a little, I just wish they'd go back to their old name. As for their new show... it's watchable, mildly enjoyable, but... it doesn't really reach very far. It's done a few cool things, but pretty soon the gimmick that started it (mercenaries with really bad pasts who get a chance to reform when their memories are all wiped) will not just lose it's novelty, but also it's relevance, and it's going to have to keep audience excitement up or it's going to turn into a bog-standard space opera with nothing particular to recommend it. But, as I said, I am enjoying it, especially the overly earnest and endearing android character who I just want to tell that she's doing a great job. David Hewlett (aka Rodney McKay) has appeared a few times as the mercenary's agent/fixer and hopefully will appear again.

Killjoys: The other space opera show on the channel formerly known as the Sci-Fi channel. Now, this is more like it. It's got energy, there's a sense that some serious worldbuilding time went into the setting (I don't know if it has, but the feeling that it has is enough), the interactions between the characters (including minor ones) often sparkle, and there's overall a feel that the people involved, actors, writers, even set designers, love what they're doing (the soldier guy is maybe a little flatter than the others, but that's okay). It's not quite up to the level of Firefly, but it's possibly the space opera show that's gotten me most excited since then. It doesn't hurt that the studios they filmed at is right near my work, so I theoretically might have the chance to run into the actors (but probably not). If it gets renewed, and I hope it does.

Under the Dome: Almost hilariously awful. I've seen some sites suggesting it's improvement, people are lying. It's gone from being awful at doing a plot that's at least novel, to being awful at doing the oldest, hoariest plots in SF TV. And I say almost hilariously awful because it's at least in previous years the awfulness was somehow funny, this time, it's more often just dumb and badly acted. Why do I still watch? Masochism, obviously.

What's coming? I still need to finish watching Sense8... I saw the first ep and liked it but I keep putting off watching the rest.

Pretty soon the Walking Dead spinoff (set in LA and at the start of the outbreak) will be starting, and I look forward to that. And then the fall season begins not long after that, which includes Doctor Who.

So, books! As usual, these reviews are mostly copied from my Goodreads feed.

Finished: Love in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, by Judd Trichter

At some unspecified point in the future, human-looking androids live side-by-side with humans, albeit with virtually no rights, and there are strict laws against robot/human affairs. Eliot Lazar is a businessman working in robot sales, but he's in love with a free-roaming robot girl and plans to run away with her. But when she's taken and her parts sold off, he has to go on a quest to recover her... all of her.

This one's a tough one for me. I wanted to like it much more than I did. And I do believe the author has a certain degree of talent, some of the prose is lyrical, and he clearly put a fair bit of effort into it. I could easily see him having a good career in the field.

But it's not really my kind of story. It's the kind of story I'd describe as a "Sci-Fi Fable" - There are certain emotional beats the author wants to get to, certain tropes he wants to deal with, and evoking the right feel is more important than creating a world that's a believable extrapolation of science.

There's nothing fundamentally wrong with this approach... it's done in dystopian fiction all the time, for example. However, it's an approach that doesn't work for me, because the little details don't work. It's a world that feels like today (or even a few decades ago... there's a strong noir vibe), with a few technological doodads like the robots added in and other things like exploration of other planets mostly in the background. Characters seem to exhibit certain types of casual racist or sexist comments that I'd hope we're about ready to move past, or at least show a greater variety. (I should note that I don't believe that this is because the author is racist or sexist, or anything, just that I think he's trying to evoke the feel of this kind of world where casual racism/sexism still goes on... maybe he feels this tendency to casually devalue is even a necessary precondition for or consequence of the utter lack of civil rights the robots experience).

In general, though, the details don't work for me, and sometimes I get what the author was going for, but it didn't ring true. For example, because the droids have spinning engines in their chest, they're referred to in casual conversation as spinners... I totally buy this. The problem begins is that he goes one step further: actual humans are likewise known as heartbeats, in casual conversation people refer to heartbeats all the time. Not just robots (which would make a certain amount of sense), humans refer to themselves as heartbeats as well. But to me, if your society believes that humans are the only ones of value, you give the Other a derogatory name, and just call yourself "people" or "humans" because you don't feel the need to change to admit somebody else into your status. Another example of "sci-fi change" that didn't quite work is that all currency is in "ingots", except even if we did adopt a universal currency, I don't buy that as a name we'd ever use.

Those are rather niggling details though, because the big one is how the robots work. And again, this is a valid approach, I suppose, it's just one I can't get behind. The story is about Eliot attempting to reconstruct his girlfriend, piece by piece. That's where the idea started. Except, in order to do the story the way he wants to, he has to make this ridiculous (to me) condition: that if even one piece of the robot is replaced with a different piece, the entire personality is different. You can't just rescue the robot's head, or the memory unit, because unless the body's attached, it's somebody else, and she doesn't even have the slightest memory of you. This makes no sense, especially in a world where robots get damaged all the time. And it doesn't really seem to apply to anybot BUT Iris, Eliot's love. The reason for this doesn't seem to be anything other than that the story the author wants to tell would be hard to tell without this rule: he'd just have to find Iris' memory core and can then reproduce the body.

Except, you COULD tell that story. In fact, from the (still awesome, btw) title, I thought that was part of where it was going, examining a person's quest to recreate his love in a world where that exact person could be reproduced, even mass-produced, because she's an AI and her memories are copyable. Maybe explore it as a personal, obsessive love, where HE feels that unless he rescues every piece, he hasn't really saved HER (and giving her some agency too, if she's not entirely on board on this). Or, alternatively, even have something similar to the macguffin, where her memory is divided among different parts of her body, and if you don't get all of them, her memory's not complete, but she's still fundamentally the same person (and again, it allows Iris herself to be more of a character rather than a prize to be won, as more of her memories are restored). To me, that is a much more interesting story. I had a similar, although lesser, problem with the notion of infected/corrupted metal being a major problem, and the notion that there a laws against human/bot romances... they don't make sense to me, as described, but they're necessary to the plot, so, there they are.

There are a few other issues that are either minor off notes (there's an attempt to make a muddled mythological analogy that I don't think quite lands), or could go either way, depending on your tastes... the character's largely unlikeable, but I actually think that works well for the story, as his love for Iris contrasts with his occasional blindness towards the plight of other androids, particularly in cases where, to get what he wants, he literally has to take them from another bot. And there are times where the quest seems too easy and things fall into Eliot's lap... though there are a few where the choices he has to make are legitimately heart-wrenching, the author too often saves him from having to deal with them.

I'm going to give this three stars, which, considering my problems and my general distaste for this TYPE of story, is actually quite high, because I do think there's some quality here, and, in the end, I did like it... I just wanted it to be another type of story that I would have liked so much more. I'll keep an eye out for the author's future efforts, maybe going in more informed about the kinds of style the author has will make me appreciate it more (or, depending on the particular plots, pass on by).

Finished: The Blondes, by Emily Schultz

Disclaimer: I received this book free through a giveaway (although not through Goodreads). I don't think it affected my review.

Hazel Hayes is pregnant, from an affair with her professor... and although the news rocks her world, the world in general is being rocked by something else... a disease that turns ordinary people into vicious killers... but which only seems to affect blonde women.

The premise sounds a lot more dramatically cool than the book actually is. Which isn't to say it's a bad book. It's just the horror element is somewhat understated. The book actually, on my Advanced Review Copy at least, isn't actually labelled "Horror", it's labelled "Fiction/Satire", but lest you get the wrong idea, it's not a comedic book either, although it does gently poke fun at parts of our society like our standards of beauty and how women relate to one another, through the observations of the narrator. The story more or less takes itself seriously as a personal tale happening in this world where blondes have more fun...damental tendency towards going murderous. There are moments where this violence outbreaks occur as part of the story, but they're few and far between, and mostly the protagonist is at a slight distance and dealing with her own issues, or the suspicion of others that she might be one of the Blondes.

And there's a lot about the main character's life and the affair with her professor, how it started, and the situation (where we start the book, before going into flashbacks) where she has been holed up in a cabin with the wife of that professor. I almost think the author just wanted to write that story, a story of a young woman who had an affair and got pregnant and then was forced to deal with his wife, but that story was too conventional, so she thought up the idea of needing to rely on her and the Blondes scenario was just a creative way to get it to happen.

Still, for all that, the story is pretty compelling, holding my attention throughout, sometimes making me smile with her observations on society. I might have given it a four instead of a three, except the ending doesn't really work for me, it's not bad, it just sort of falls tremendously flat.

My other issue was with the plague itself, which was an interesting gimmick but the way it worked both lacked some believability and seemed to miss opportunities. It's not really much of a spoiler, because this is introduced early on, to say that the virus affects people with blonde hair: however, it does not discriminate... if you have naturally dark hair but dye it, you're susceptible. If you have naturally blonde hair and dye it black or shave it off, you're mostly safe (although you have to shave EVERYWHERE). I could have bought into the idea of a virus that has a genetic component and only affects natural blondes... not only would it have made more sense, but it could also be used to provoke a new sort of racism, with the world panicking and discriminating against blonde women even though a relatively small number of them go mad. There's some of this, but the fact that it's easy to rid yourself of the potential blunts the impact, and although a tentative explanation for how it all works is offered, it really doesn't make a whole lot of sense. It's not a fatal flaw of the book, but I think it could have been done better, particularly when it's such a striking idea and the idea that book is built and marketed around.

This was the kind of book I probably never would have bought except for the fact that I got it free, but I did wind up enjoying it. I could also see it making a cool movie.

Finished: The Three-Body Problem, by Cixin Liu

In the Three Body Problem, China is experiencing a problem with it's scientists... some are being murdered, others are experiencing strange phenomenon or giving up, or entering into secretive organizations. It's all connected to an online game called The Three-Body Problem, and a scientist during the Cultural Revolution who has made contact with an alien race.

This is a translation of a science fiction novel that is apparently incredibly popular in China, and has been hyped here as well (the Goodreads review says it has the scope of Dune and commercial action of Independence Day, which I think is overselling on both fronts!) It's also one of this year's Hugo Nominees, the primary reason I'm reading it (at least, reading it now... the subject was interesting enough that I'd planned to get it eventually, but having it appear in the Hugo voter's packet made the decision easier).

After reading it, I have to say, I'm a little disappointed. It's not a bad book... I liked it, and will probably even check out the sequel, it's just not as impressive as I'd been lead to believe.

The first thing I should point out is that it's a translation, and that may bias things a little. I've read a number of books in translation... I even consider one among my favorites that I reread regularly. But, usually, there's a certain... stiltedness to it that does impact the enjoyment. It's just because ideas and cultural baggage that are easily, sometimes even subliminally expressed in one culture, are hard to get across in another language without translating, not just the text, but also much of the structure and feeling. It's a balancing act, because if you translate sentences literally you're going to miss so much out of it, but if you make the translation smooth and accessible, you're altering the pace and pattern and feel of the original author's words so much that you almost should be calling it an adaptation rather than a translation. It seems like in a translation, there's either going to be an artificial distance created between the author and the text, or between the text and the reader, usually the latter. And this is true in this book as well. There is definitely that feeling of stiltedness. In fact, it's hard to judge just how many of my problems with the book might solely come down to this fact, that it's a translation. For example, a lot of characters feel two-dimensional, but maybe I'm missing cues to their deeper emotions that are expressed in subtle differences in the way they talk, because that was lost in the translation. I've heard that there are certain structural elements which are echoes of famous Chinese epics... I have none of that background, so all of that is lost on me, and what to somebody is a clever callback to a classic part of their heritage is, to me, a bit of unfortunate pacing. I'm almost certainly missing some social commentary just because I don't understand Chinese culture enough to know what they're commenting on.

That's a lot to get over. The translator includes footnotes, although really, most of them are not all that helpful or, for that matter, necessary. Sometimes they'll point out a play-on-words that doesn't translate, which is actually quite helpful, but a lot of times they're just things like pointing out something is a rank or common type of food, and that's the kind of thing I'm used to being able to figure out on my own - I generally don't need to know the specifics of the military structure. Historical notes (uncommented on in the original because local readers would be assumed to just know) run somewhere in the middle.

The historical context is actually one of the more interesting aspects of the book, and, moreover, that the book appears, on the surface, to be at least mildly critical of the communist revolution, which I at least found surprising, as one generally associates governments like China as not being tolerant of open criticism, even of its past. And it was also interesting learning about some of the intricacies of living during such a time, although I was left wanting more of that than we wound up getting.

The science fictional elements? They're actually fairly average, although there are a couple of really cool big ideas in here, particularly a sequence towards the end where the author reveals how an alien technology was constructed, that's up there with some of the best for evoking a sense of wonder in a concept that's PROBABLY fantasy but dressing it up so that it feels like it could be done. And there was one really cool idea brought up that I thought was going to be the focus of the book but then seemingly got dropped (although there was some thematic connection to other major parts of the story). I was a little less enthused with the titular game, which didn't seem to work like a real game could and so hurt my suspension of disbelief. The alien race was interesting but didn't wow me, but it'll be interesting to see them get more development in the next book. Despite my somewhat mild response, I do think it's worth a read, if only because, it we're not willing to step outside our own comfort zone to experience another worldview now and then, why are we reading SF in the first place?

As it stands now, even with all my problems with it, this is my #2 vote of those novels nominated for the Hugo, which just goes to show how weak a slate it is this year. Overall, I still feel that the best novels were kept off the list entirely.

Finished: Shelter, by Susan Palwick

Shelter tells the near future story set in San Francisco, during a major storm that costs many lives, and two old acquaintances, one who has inadvertently harmed the other, meet and explain how their lives lead them to that point. One, Roberta, is poor and on probation, diagnosed with a mental illness of "excessive altruism" because of a series of events the other woman, Meredith, put into motion in an attempt to protect her son. Meredith is rich, privileged, and has some mental illness issues of her own, and a complicated family life that includes her father as the first ever human consciousness translated into a digital form.

The book is not the usual type of thing I read... one decent way to describe it is as a near future family drama, but wow, it really does turn out to be pretty impressive. There's a lot going on, and it has a lot to say about mental illness, how you can harm people even with the best of intentions, forgiveness, AI rights, and a number of other issues, with a host of well-drawn and interesting characters and a mostly convincing and plausible extrapolation of our world.

There's a wide variety of characters, mostly human and a few AI, and a few who arguably could be either (one major underlying issue is Meredith's refusal to accept that her father actually is her father, and is instead just a clever machine, and different people will see different answers to that question), and mostly they're compelling and vivid and feel real, and their interactions kept me invested even when it became fairly clear generally where the plot was going... I knew more or less what was going to happen, but I still wanted to know exactly how, and how everyone would deal when they found out.

The setting does one of the things I like best in SF, really selling a near future world with dozens of tiny details. About the only major slipup is that phones and TV habits seem a bit too conventional, and there seems to be widespread acceptance of a non-Judeo-Christian religion (although, I was never clear if it was supposed to be the dominant one, or if it just happened to be influential to many of the main characters and some of the underlying philosophies were embraced by the world). Still, it's easy to ignore those minor issues and focus on the good. I particularly liked how plausible the "excessive altruism," something we'd consider laudable today, turning into being considered a mental illness was. It's not a blatant "selfishness is best" philosophy pervading the world, but more subtle. And the genius of it being shorthanded as "exalted" was a really nice touch. I kind of wish we got more on that topic, actually, maybe another story set in the universe.

Shelter doesn't hit you over the head with its messages, but it does give you a lot to think of, and I found myself very impressed with it. My biggest complaint is the ending seemed a little too... pat, with a few things working out just too conveniently good, when reality it should have been a little messier. Also, at times it does run a little slow and repetitive. Still, this is a book that I think can be read even by non-SF readers, and is something of an undiscovered gem, having received little mainstream acknowledgement.

Highly recommended.

Finished: River of Gods, by Ian McDonald
In 2047 India, while internal tensions and possible civil war looms, a cop hunts down illegal artificial intelligence while his marriage is in danger, a stand-up comic is called home to take over his father's business, a reporter gets the scoop of a lifetime, a high level politician pursues a taboo relationship that could ruin his career, and an American scholar seeks another regarding an impossible artifact in space. These stories, and others, all contribute to a change that will ring out throughout history.

I really enjoyed this book, although it had a bit of a slow start. There are many different story lines, and at first the book visits all of them in turn, and so none of them advance much (most aren't connected at all at first, and even at the end, some are connected in ways that only the reader is aware of, not the characters). So it takes a while to really get invested, but once you do, things carry on and the plots start intertwining and a big mystery is set up and I liked the characters, and it all carried me through waiting to see what would happen next.

Although there are a few Americans, and some who come from other countries, most of the characters in this book are Indian, and the book does not shy away from that fact. To someone like me, someone who doesn't have too much in-depth knowledge of Indian culture, beyond what I've gotten from the media and a life growing up in a fairly multicultural Canadian city, it presents a little bit of a challenge to get in to. It doesn't hold back or explain very much, it throws in terms from that culture and the Hindi language (and possibly other regional languages) as though it's part of the background, because, for most of the characters, it is. Although I was interested in the characters and the story from the outset, this made it a bit difficult to get into at first, at least until I picked up enough from context that I could get what was going on in some of the plotlines. At it turns out, I was reading this at the same time as The Three-Body Problem (set in China, and original written there), and I could not help thinking that it is THIS book that really needs footnotes, not TBP. There is a glossary for River of Gods at the back, which would certainly help, but I only became aware of it after I read the novel in full. Still, even with full immersion, it's not THAT difficult, it's just a bit of a challenge, and one worth taking on if you like good SF with strong characters. And I feel it's a good idea to stretch your horizons now and then and read books focusing on characters who aren't a part of your culture, or are written by those of differing perspectives. This book seems to be more the former than the latter, of course, as the author is British. As an outsider, I can't accurately judge how well the author captured the culture, but he at least seemed to give it a serious effort and without any obvious (to me) problems... and, at the very least, the Indian characters are mostly the protagonists in their own stories rather than just being background color for somebody else.

Capturing the world of another culture is one challenge, building a future world is a whole different matter, and here, too, he mostly succeeds. Although only a few ideas are really focused on, there are more going on in the background that add up to a rich and convincing future world. He's apparently set a book of short stories in that world, Cyberabad Days, and I am going to be keeping an eye out for it. I do admit to one small, personal issue with the book. I would barely even call it a gripe, it was more just a stumbling block that affected me and might impact others. One of the plotlines is told from the perspective of a "neut", a member of a new subculture of people who have undergone a procedure that removes their gender. I have no problem with this idea, but neuts use the pronoun "yt" to replace "he", "she", "him", and "her" (and "yt's" for "his" and "her" possessively). And sometimes, this just made those sections difficult for me to read smoothly, particularly when you got sentences like "Yt told yt yt had to go." My brain just often stopped and said "what?" and I had to take time parsing it, which threw me out of the narrative. I might have preferred they use, if not "they", some other pronoun that felt more natural. In the end, though, it's a fairly minor gripe, if it is one at all.

Highly recommended... my first experience with McDonald, but I don't think it'll be my last.

Finished: Terms of Enlistment, by Marko Kloos
A hundred years from now, Andrew Grayson signs up to join the armed forces. It's not patriotism or duty that drives him, he simply views it as his only chance to escape the life he was born into, a crime-ridden and economically broken city in which most of the population lives in government assisted housing with a small food ration. Moreover, it's his only real shot at getting off Earth and to live in a colony, which is about the closest thing he has to a dream. We follow him through his training and his first few assignments, where he learns that the universe is more dangerous than he first thought.

This is unapologetic military SF. It doesn't really do anything daring or especially novel, but then, it doesn't have to... it's more about doing the things the readers expect from the subgenre with skill and providing a diverting adventure for however it long it takes to read. On that level, it's fairly successful. The author makes the main character competent and skilled, but not such an awesome soldier that it's worthy of an eyeroll. He experiences spectacularly lucky breaks a few times, but that's something you tend to expect from fiction anyway. The book's consistently readable and entertaining, albeit, for me, at a relatively low level on that last part. I'm not really the best judge of the parts that are heavily action-oriented... I admit my eyes tend to glaze over if there's not something more interesting going on than firing weapons and the occasional explosion, but they seemed about up to par.

It did have a bit of an awkward pacing, where he goes from adventures in basic, to his first deployment, has an adventure there, goes on to a second place, trains, has an adventure... this I think is something in the nature of the subgenre (and indeed, probably reflects certain aspects of the military life), but narratively, it feels a little more like a serial that was collected into a novel than a single cohesive story. But other than that, the pace is pretty good, the prose is easy to get through. The characters are a bit dry or only sketched in at times, and again, part of this is the nature of the story: often his squadmates are only around for a short time before either they die or he's moved to a completely new set of co-workers. There are a few that stand out, but most of them I couldn't remember. The plot didn't really thrill me, either... it was diverting and interesting, I was never bored, but there wasn't a moment where I was excited about what was happening, either, at least until the last section, where my interest began to perk up with some of the more SF elements.

Grayson himself is a bit too blase and cold for my tastes, particularly with respect to civilian casualties and also his own family. I can understand the problems he had with his father, but he seemed to have a relatively good relationship with his mother, and then moments after he leaves for training he reflects that if the whole city got destroyed that second, he wouldn't miss anything about it. That's pretty cold. Nor does he ever seem to think positively about anybody in his past ever again, and yet other than that he seems a fairly well-adjusted and friendly person. These kind of contradictions might work well if explored, but they don't seem to be in this book. It's not a fatal flaw, particularly for MilSF, but I'd wished I had more to hang onto. Maybe he improves in the sequel.

I actually picked this up because the sequel, Lines of Departure, was nominated for a Hugo, as part of a directed attempt to take over the Hugo nominees via slate voting. Kloos himself was not part of this effort, and he had the grace to withdraw his name from contention because of it, which earned him some respect, especially because other people who weren't part of the slate voting suggested that it might actually be worth the nom on its own merits. I can't speak for that book, but this one was just good enough that I'll probably check out that sequel as well, at some point, and hopefully they're right. After all, Terms of Enlistment is a first novel, which are usually a little rougher than an author's later books.

I was probably hovering about a 2 for the first half of the book, okay but didn't really grab me. Personal taste plays a huge role here: This is in part because of the subgenre itself... MilSF is something I can enjoy from time to time, but (particularly with my already stated reactions to heavy action scenes) it's mostly not my cup of tea and even when it's done slightly above average it doesn't impress me as much, just by default. The events in the second half bumped up my interest, although, if half-stars were allowable, it might not have made the full three. It's somewhere on the edge. But since I can't mark the edge itself, and I usually give a bit more leeway to first novels anyway, I'll give it a three.

Finished: The Goblin Emperor, by Katherine Addison
Maia, the half-goblin son of an elven emperor is suddenly thrust into a position he never expected or wanted. His father had other heirs and seemed to regret having him in the first place, but, when his father and everyone else in line before him all died in the same accident, Maia was the only choice. He learns to deal with his new role, those who don't feel he belongs there, those who try to manipulate him, and those who are actively plotting against him, while trying to his best to be a good leader and improve his empire.

I should state right up front that I'm largely not a fantasy reader. I'm reading this because it made the short list of nominees for the Hugo award, and probably would entirely skip it otherwise. It's not only not-my-thing because it's fantasy, it's not-my-thing because it's fantasy focusing on royalty. Personally, we've got enough people who hold power over large numbers of people and didn't actually do anything to deserve it that I feel like it's a bit disgusting to fetishize the concept in fantasy literature as well. Now, granted, if we have to, I'd rather read a story like this about a genuinely good person thrust into the position and trying their best, but, even with good kings, when we focus on them I usually can't help hoping that the plot involves the citizens deposing the king and installing some kind of democracy. This is possibly why I'm not a fantasy reader in the first place. So there's two strikes against it, right off the bat.

I see from various ratings that a lot of people genuinely seem to enjoy the book a lot. And it got not only a Hugo nom (and, unlike a number of other nominees this year, as far as I can tell seems to have earned it fairly), but also a Nebula nom as well. And to an extent I can see why people enjoy it, there's a sort of overall pleasantness to it. It's got a brisk pace, the lead's appealing (again, assuming that we're stuck reading the adventurers of an Emperor in the first place). It's got a certain "readability", with a few exceptions. I've heard a couple of people make comments along the lines of "there were a lot of meetings and nothing much happened but I was entertained all the way through" and I think it's a fair assessment, although in my case the entertainment was much more subdued. I can see the appeal.

It just didn't do much for me, personally. Not because nothing much happened (I've enjoyed SF books by that description... heck, fellow Hugo-nominee Ancillary Sword kind of fits that description, and is in fact has a very similar feel, and I enjoyed that quite a bit), but because of my previously stated problems, along with a few others.

One is that, despite the name of the book being The Goblin Emperor, and the Emperor being half-Elven, half-Goblin... I never got a sense of these MATTERing, at all, of what it means to be Elven or Goblin or anything like that, except that this is a fantasy world and so elves and goblins exist. Aside from a few mentions of ears flattening or making other movements in response to emotions, if they didn't specify they were Elven, I would have assumed they were human (for that matter, I don't even know if humans exist in this world). I can think of literally nothing else that felt distinctively non-human. You could have replaced the different races with different ethnicities or cultures of medieval (or slightly steampunky) human and had the exact same story. Maybe that's the point, that having races with distinct attributes is itself a racist idea, and it would be a fair point, but, to me, it never felt that that point was pursued with intention and gusto, and instead it feels more like the author was just lazy on their worldbuilding. If you're going to use elves and dwarves and goblins, either stick to established archetypes (like Elves living in cities built in harmony with nature, which doesn't seem to be a trope used here... I was never even sure if they live longer than humans), or vividly create new archetypes and set about teaching your audience what it means in your world, or actively challenge your reader on why you're not doing either. Don't reduce the terms "Elf" and "Goblin" to bland labels you apply to different groups and give you a catchy title.

The other problem was the names. There are so many long and complicated names in this book, and long and complicated names that are incredibly similar to other long and complicated names. In addition to long and complicated new terms for titles like "Sir" and "Lady" and stuff new to the world. This made it incredibly difficult to get into, and I admit, that with maybe 5 exceptions, every time a character was brought up, I literally had to figure out who they were by the context, not the name: if they talked about clerical matters and investigating the crash by using religious powers, it was the priest guy. I remembered people by their roles, which made it especially difficult with female characters, because, being a traditional medieval society where women were all but property and rarely had careers of their own, their interactions seemed similar. I never could keep straight whether the woman who sang in the opera was his future empress or a woman who he thought was trying to manipulate him for her sister or his half-sister or just a woman he had a crush on or if all three of them were actually separate people at all. Maybe if I had a clear idea at all times who everyone was (and simpler names would have helped a lot... one more reason to not bother with including fantasy races and just make them humans) I would have become more invested and liked it more.

As it stands, I rate it a two. I can see why others liked it more, but my personal rating was just a two. It was okay. I don't feel like I totally wasted my time, but I don't feel I would have missed anything important if I had never read it at all. If there's a sequel, I probably won't read it (unless it, too, gets nominated and I get it for free). Currently on my Hugo vote ranking it stands at #3, just barely above No Award. And, when they eventually showed up in the book, I never got over my urge to root for the group who wanted to tear down the monarchy. I don't think that was intended, but, it is what it is.

Finished: Fluency, by Jennifer Foehner Wells
The government has known about an alien space ship in the solar system for decades, and they're finally ready to launch a mission. They believe the ship is abandoned, but, just in case, they include Dr. Jane Holloway, an expert linguist, on the mission. But the ship isn't abandoned, and what they find there may force Dr. Holloway to choose whether to trust an unknown alien, or her own crew.

I've heard some good things about this book, and there is a lot to like, but I have some mixed feelings that prevented me from giving it a higher score. It started quite well, a good sense of adventure and spookiness, but once she came in contact with the alien my problems began. I say problems but that might not be the best word, because, largely it's a question of personal tastes. There are different styles of SF, and of course, various definitions of 'hard' vs 'soft', and tying in to both of these and yet somewhat separate as well, there's another quality that, for the purposes of this review, I'll call "weight". 'Heavyness' can be granted by being harder SF, or more rigorous exploration of the completely made up elements. It can be granted by tackling serious issues in a serious way. 'Lightness' can be taken away by a sense of fun and adventure. It's a very fuzzy metric. What's more, "Heavy" and "Light" isn't a judgement of quality on it's own. Sometimes you want something light more than anything else, and sometimes a book can be too heavy. book that is described as "very readable" is often on the lighter end. On the other hand, the type of SF that you'd see on TV is often much lighter (the fact that it's usually not as hard is a big factor there). And while I've loved books that I'd call very light, and ones that I'd call heavy, generally, I lean towards heavier ones. This book is, for my tastes, a little too on the light end of the scale, and I was hoping it would be just a bit heavier.

I probably only have myself to blame for not reading the description more carefully (not to mention not considering the title), but let's start with the biggest disappointment: The main character is a linguist, but it plays virtually no role in the plot, as she is pretty well magically given the ability to communicate with the alien without much effort. One of my pet peeves in SF is telepathic abilities... unless it's a story specifically about people with powers, or it's explained with actual technology, I don't want telepathy in my SF, it feels like magic to me which pushes it into Space Fantasy. I don't want a space opera where the telepathy is a thing and some aliens have it. And yet, that's the type of book this is. Yes, it's easier to tell a story when you can skip all the "learning a common language" part, but one of the benefits of books is the author doesn't have to choose the easy route. There are other conceptual elements too, worldbuilding elements that not just put the book in "light" SF territory, but specifically call to mind TV/movie sci-fi, because it's the kind of stuff that I accept from them, but don't like when it's in a book, because in a book we can do better than TV-level SF tropes. Now, granted, this would be the kind of show that I'd watch the heck out of, but still, it's not really what I, personally, want from my books. It's not a dealbreaker, but it makes it a tougher sell for me.

Is it good enough in other areas to overcome this? Well, this review would be a lot easier to write if I could just dismiss this as "not my kind of book" and be done with it. Because there's also a lot of good going on, the characters are mostly believable, some exciting action, and I was kept guessing about the alien, and there was some genuinely interesting things done in the contact scenario (especially with the main character being, in some ways, violated, not maliciously, but because of a difference in cultural mores). And the book sets up an interesting situation for book 2. So although I didn't love the book, I'd rate it 3 stars because I liked it, I just wanted more from it. That said, I'll probably continue on to the second (although, maybe not rush out and buy it).

As I said, this is mostly a taste matter. The only other thing I'd bring up is that there's a significant romantic subplot running through the book, and I didn't mind it but I thought it was a little too unsubtle, I can buy the characters and their feelings, but the beats of it all seemed a shade on the overdramatic side. Of course, compared to the history of badly-written romances in SF, it barely even registers, but it was something I felt could have been more skillfully handled. But, it is a first novel, and I suspect this is easily the kind of thing that can be improved on.

Finished: Afterparty, by Daryl Gregory
There's a new drug on the street... those who take it not only start to believe in God, but often believe God is right there, talking to them... at least until it's out of their system, and then it's like being abandoned. Lyda has experienced a drug like this before... she was on a team that invented it, before they were dosed with a massive quantity of it that left one person dead and the rest with permanent side-effects. Lyda's is a persistent hallucination of an angel. She knows it's not real, but it guides her nonethelss. She also knows that this new drug is probably the one she helped to invent, and she breaks her parole and goes on a quest to find the source and put it out of business.

Wow. This book impressed me so much than I thought it would. The premise was interesting at first, although it made me leery... books that are heavily about drugs and drug culture can sometimes turn me off. Here though, this wasn't a problem for me, it wasn't a "drug" book, it was a book where drugs just happen to be part of the context and the world these character's quest involves.

I never felt alienated, and in fact I was drawn in right away, fascinated by some of these characters and there was good action and worldbuilding and scientific speculation (albeit relatively near future stuff) and left wanting to go back and read more every time I put it down.

Everything just clicked with me in a way it hasn't in a while, and in fact, it reminded me of one of my favorite books for this... Blindsight, by Peter Watts. Now, granted, perhaps the reason it impressed me so much was because a lot of the buttons it pushed on me were the same. There was a focus on the mind and how it can go wrong and lead you astray. The main characters were messed up, but in inventive ways, and incredibly compelling and likeable all the same, from the main character and her angel, to Ollie who has to choose between being unable to distinguish objects while on meds, or paranoia while off them, to a mute little girl with a deck of cards as her best friends. Also, like Blindsight, there were even some of the very same philosophical points raised (although not all, and this book is significantly less dark) about free will and brain chemistry and religion. I'm not claiming it as copying those or anything like that, it was just the same things I liked and couldn't get enough of. In fact, I've struggled for a while for something to recommend to people who loved Blindsight- this now may be my default answer to that question, at least, if you're not bored of those particular themes and tropes. It's like when you watch a Hollywood sequel, you don't usually do it so you can get something new, but rather so you can get that same hit of enjoyment that worked for you last time. Except these similarities happened (presumably) by accident, in a completely different story, so you get the best of both worlds... novelty with a rush of a lot of the same things you loved.

It's not a perfect book, and much of the issues are around the ending. It's not a singular flaw (although there was a moment I thought there might be a personal dealbreaker, it was handled with enough ambiguity that I could enjoy it), it just didn't all come together, some things were too predictable, others seemed to build up to something and disappeared too quickly, and I was left feeling some significant threads didn't get the closure they deserved. If the author intended to leave it open for a sequel, I might not have a problem with it (and I would absolutely read it, I particularly want to see more of Ollie), but it doesn't feel like that, it feels like it was intended to be mostly the end of the story, it just didn't quite come together as well as it could. Still enjoyed the ending, just it was a bit of a stumble for what was, up until that point, such a great book.

Finished: Infidel, by Kameron Hurley

Since this is book two, I'm cutting the summary which spoils elements of God's War

Nyxnissa so Dasheem, a mercenary and former Bel Dame assassin, has a new team... since her last one either got killer, abandoned her, or she pushed them away six years ago. The survivors of her former team are mostly doing well, living new lives away from the centuries-long holy war and starting families. Nyx herself, she's getting by, mostly working as a bodyguard, but suffers from mysterious unexplained health problems she's trying to hide. But when she uncovers evidence that a faction of the Bel Dames are plotting against their Queen, Nyx is once against caught up in something that's probably too big for her to handle. But she doesn't have much choice, and she may need to track down her old team to complete the job.

I really enjoyed the first book in this series, God's War, despite it interjecting a little too much in the way of fantasy elements to my science fiction. It had a rich setting, compelling though occasionally unlikeable characters, and a strong emotional kick that complimented the grittiness rather than being outweighed by it. I was eager to move on to the second one, and, I'm happy to say, much of the same kind of thing is here too. I don't think I liked it quite as much as the first one, but that's usually the case in second-books in a series, because some of the enjoyment in the first was down strictly to novelty, which obviously can't be as much of a factor in a sequel. But on the whole, I think it holds up well. Nyx was perhaps more unlikeable and judgmental, it worked for the character. There may have been a bit too much in the way of tragedy piled on top of tragedy, but that's the kind of book this is, the kind of world it's set in, where happy endings are difficult to come by, and, at best, you can get endings you might someday, if everything works out, forge new beginnings from. This is true in the larger plot sense and in the more personal, relationship sense.

Of my minor pet peeves, I did think that the fantasy elements that bothered me before rankled just a touch more this time, partly because the SF elements seemed less developed. That is, the biological insect organisms that handle much of the technology... in the first book, I remember the author being a bit more specific about HOW swarms of bugs could work as, say, a long-distance telephone, whereas in this one, too often it was just taken for granted, "bugs did it."

Still, I really want to see how Nyx's story ends, and I'm absolutely going to read the third part of the trilogy.

Oh, and since this is my personal journal, a little side story. I do most of my reading while walking to or from work, and of course, this was the case here. While I was reading this, I heard somebody walking behind me, maybe 5-6 sidewalk slabs behind me, speaking loudly, apparently to himself, saying, "If you kill one Infidel, it's like killing all Infidels, I'm going to kill all Infidels!" or something like that. Possibly mentally ill person with a hate-on for Infidels, however he might define them... normally, as long as it's just talk, well, I'm not going to pay it much attention. Except, of course, that I happened to be reading a book called Infidel, and I was worried that if he passed me and happend to spot it, he'd either attack me or want to start a conversation, and neither seemed particularly appealing. So I tried to non-obviously pick up my pace and get as much distance between us as I could. Luckily, though, at the next intersection I kept walking straight, and he turned down the other street.

Finished: Bless Your Mechanical Heart (short story collection)
This book is one of those themed anthologies of short stories. In this case, the theme is robots/AI/cyborgs, and more specifically, the application of the phrase "Bless Your Heart"/"Bless His/Her Heart" to them, implying that perhaps they're a little naive or don't quite get it... but there's a lot of variation within, in some cases the robot's not naive, but the humans are by thinking it is, for example, in other the robot's got some wonky programming or incomplete emotions, and in others it just lacks some important piece of knowledge but reasons as well as any of us. There are robots in love, robot murderers, robot guardians, robots all alone, and even a few who are arguably not even robots. It's a good mix, if you like AI themes.

Of course, these collections are always hard to give a review to, because some stories will connect with me, some won't, and likely the same will be true of you, but they won't be the same ones. All in all, it's a decent mix, I enjoyed it, no outright stinkers, but not many that blew me away, either. I will say sometimes the knowledge of the theme may have been detrimental to the enjoyment of some of the stories... for example, if it's a mystery story and there's only one robot, it's not a big leap to assume they're a key part of it, whereas in a book of more assorted science fiction stories, the robot could just be a part of the worldbuilding background. In most cases, though, this really isn't an issue.

My favorites were "The Lambs," by Seanan McGuire (which tells of robotic children meant to record and discourage bullying in school), and "Just Another Day in the Butterfly War," by M. Todd Gallowglas (which involves a cyborg servant to a commander in a war involving constant alterations to history).

I actually received this book for free as part of the Hugo voters packet (the editor was up for an award and this was provided as a sample of her work). I don't think it affected my review, but I'm glad I got it because I likely wouldn't have encountered it otherwise, although I do think it's worth buying if you like SF short stories and the theme appeals to you.

Finished: Dark Orbit, by Carolyn Ives Gilman
Dark Orbit tells the story of two women who arrive on a strange crystalline world... one, on her last assignment, is believed to have suffered some psychotic break and took on the role of a goddess. The other is a wanderer with little respect for authority, but who has been assigned to keep an eye on the first. But their discoveries on this new world challenge much what both of them thought they knew about the universe.

Disclaimer: I got this book free through a Tor giveaway (not through Goodreads though). I don't think it affected my review.

This book is a difficult one for me to rate. Part of it is because it treads into one of my pet peeves for SF... it's a bit spoilery, so I won't get into it, but suffice it to say, it's one of those things that, when I know it's a part of the plot, makes me a good deal less likely to pick it up at all, and when I discover it mid-read, I'm almost always disappointed, and wind up feeling that the book could have been so much better if they hadn't gone that way.

To it's credit, in this book, it's not a case where it's just tacked on for color, or a cool worldbuilding element to make the author's setting stand out among the crowd, or to make the plot run more easily. It's tied into the theme enough that it's hard to remove it without changing the book entirely, and in fact you could even say the very message of the book argues against not just my objections, but the mindset behind them. I don't care, it's still something I don't like in my SF, but I can at least acknowledge the point and that these elements weren't added carelessly. Nor do they ruin the book, they just make me less enthusiastic.

So let's move past it. Up until I discovered the element in question, I was quite enjoying that book. The universe had an appealing setup, and need for space travelers to lose decades of rel time to transit that takes an instant for them seemed like a particularly appealing setup and for the most part was explored well. The characters, even if they seemed to fall a little broadly towards exaggerations of personality types, were interesting. Particularly Thora, who I somehow found pretentious and a little annoying and yet appealing and raising good points even when I disagreed with her. And I should note that the author does pull off a masterful trick with reader's expectations and perceptions of the characters that works well with the themes and potentially makes the limited-dimensionality of some of the characters intentional and to a good purpose. In general the prose and pacing seemed fine, maybe a little bit off in parts but nothing serious, and the depictions of what the weird alien planet looked like, even though it was hard to visualize, did still manage to succeed at evoking some of the classic sense of wonder.

Where the novel really shines is with the perception of a society without sight, and in particular, the depiction of a being who has the biological ability to see but grew up without every using it, and having to learn how it works. It's a masterful bit of SF speculation, putting the reader in an alien mindset and challenging our views on what we think is obvious. I only wish it took up more of the book, because it was my favorite part by far.

The only other criticism I'll make is that the parts from the perspective of Thora were told first person, supposedly as her own recordings of her observations while she's in the situation, and... it just didn't feel natural to imagine it as intended. She repeats conversations too well, word for word, long after the fact (when it would have often made more sense to just record the conversations themselves), broken into just the kind of chunks that fit with the novel's pace and there are none of the usual human breaks that somebody telling their story would give. To me it would make more sense if it was a memoir compiled after the fact, or simply a first person narrative without any explanation for how it fits, rather than to give it that specific justification, as a recording, and not do it believably. A small issue, but it did break me out of my suspension of disbelief.

I enjoyed the book for what it was, over all, and though I think it was close to being much much better, it's so deliberately crafted that it's quite possible that almost any element changed to bring it towards that much better novel would make the whole thing fall apart.

Currently Reading (or finished but haven't written reviews for): The Red by Linda Nagata, Cinder by Marissa Meyer, Anathem by Neil Stephenson, The Deaths of Tao by Wesley Chu, Up Against It by M.J. Locke, Linesman by S.K. Dunstall, The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August by Claire North

You may have noticed a pattern in these... or maybe not. But 11 of the 19 books listed above were written by women (and one was a short story collection). Some of this is circumstance (I've gotten several free, either from giveaways or as part of the Hugo voters packet), but also, I've been trying to make a conscious effort to read more female SF authors. It is still a field that is dominated by men, and my philosophy has always been that if there's an obvious disparity in something like this, there are only a few explanations: either one group just isn't as good, they, by some natural tendency, just don't have the interest, or there is some systemic bias that skews the numbers (which can occur by pushing them away from trying or lack of promotion), and that can be combated by adding a bit of bias in the other direction. I believe the last one and am trying to take steps to correct it. The positive bias I'm applying isn't dramatic, I'm just trying to be aware of what's happening, and be more open to trying things... books that I might have been on the fence on, where I'd think "Maybe I'll get it if I hear good reviews", I've been just getting, and keeping an eye out for recommendations of others in this area. It also dovetails nicely with another goal I've had for 2015, that started several months in when I realized I'd accidentally been holding to it: no rereads. I love rereading my old favorites, but since I'm more than halfway through the year and haven't yet read anything I've read before, why not make it a goal? And it means I need to be exposed to more books anyway, so why not try more female SF authors?

In any event, I'm still not at parity for the year, but with just that small level of bias I've gotten closer than I expected. And I've got plenty of more on the queue or in my sights for later. In fact, I just bought the Women in SF ebook bundle (pay what you want for 5 works, or get 10 for $15 or more)... since one of my three books I read at any given time is on my phone. If you read ebooks, it might be worth checking out the bundle, which runs for about another two weeks.

Also I mentioned last time that I was thinking of converting my own personal domain, which had, for a time, run as a comic review site, into a written-SF news-and-review site, and I'm leaning towards making that happen when I stop being so lazy.

Speaking of leaning towards, right now I'm leaning towards skipping Fan Expo Canada this year. The guests are cool but none are the kind I can't miss, and also my Mom's coming into town that weekend. But I'll keep an eye on the guest list for any last minute changes.

Dream

2015-08-01T18:25:15Z

Last night I had a dream where I was travelling all over the world trying to organize a XET reunion. I don't know why I couldn't use the Internet to do it, which would make a lot more sense. Anyway at one point some gun-toting revolutionaries started chasing me (it was unconnected to the XET thing they were doing something in the house NEXT to where I was visiting somebody and they decided that I was a witness and had to be eliminated), and I discovered I had gravity powers and used them to help me get away.

Eulogy for a furrball...

2015-06-28T17:54:15Z

Thanks to those who expressed their sympathies about the passing of one of my cats.

I meant to post this earlier, but things kept getting in the way. Well, not really, but more time kept getting away from me. I've been in a bit of a funk lately, and I don't think it was JUST my cat's passing, but it certainly didn't help.

But I wanted to say something, because he was something of a member of my family. I don't expect anyone else to read this. And maybe writing something will help clear up the block in my other writing. I'll refer to the cats by their initials, I don't know why, but I'm just naturally averse to using real names in this journal.

Although it didn't start that way. For the longest time, I never referred to G as my cat, just a cat that lived with me, or my roommates' cat, because my brother and his girlfriend had him when we all started to share an apartment. But he remained their cat... I generally didn't feed him or otherwise take care of him except on special occasions where they wouldn't be around to or occasionally giving him a fresh bowl of water. We got along, which, for a cat, means that G generally tolerated me occasionally petting or scritching him but otherwise he barely acknowledged my existence. He didn't seek me out, and sometimes we got in each other's way, but I liked him.

I always thought of him as an old cat. Not unhealthy, just old. Like a fifty-year-old who still gets a lot of exercise. This was right from when we first met... although, I later learned that he was much younger than I thought, and in fact he was only about 3-4 human years when I first met him. I attributed his standoffishness to his age, that he'd lived a long life without me being in it and so he wouldn't really think of me as part of my family. In actual fact I guess it was a little more like a teenage "You're not my real dad!" type thing.

A few years later, after we moved into a slightly larger apartment, we got another cat, D, a kitten, because a friend of the roomies. Since D grew up with me, we were a lot closer... he'd actually come to me (or, more often, roll around in front of me when he saw me) to get scritches, and I played with him more. I never forgot G, but I probably paid him less attention, he was just a fixture, and sometimes he was a bully, attacking D to show his dominance (or maybe D was just annoying, we rarely actually saw the attacks happen, just heard them). As D grew, the balance of power changed, G was getting older and some health issues made him lose a bunch of weight quickly, and although they still scrapped now and then, G usually fared worse, at one point G loosing a huge chunk of hair over a wound to his side that freaked us all out (but it looked worse than it was and just required some antibiotics and a vet visit, both of which I voluntarily paid for). He got better, but he was still getting on the old side and never completely regained his old weight.

I guess I naturally started being more sympathetic to G after that, seeing as how he was the underdog (undercat?), but it was still a sort of mutual coexistence combined with occasional pettings, or trying to calm him down when they got into an altercation that left him hissing. I still gave D a lot of attention too.

Our relationship changed again the summer before last, I think. Just a little. I was in the kitchen, getting water, and I saw him looking up at me, like he wanted something. And he did. It was a hot day, and I was in a bit too much of a rush (I was getting water during a commercial break) to spend the time and completely change the water on his bowl, which was reasonably fresh but perhaps a little warm, so I dropped a few ice cubes in it so that it would at least be cool again. Apparently I guessed right, that was exactly what he wanted, and I marveled a bit as he licked the water around the ice.

The pattern continued over the next few days, and often, he'd come down from his perch on the windowsil when he saw me in the kitchen, because he had finally decided I was good for something: I gave him ice. And it was ice he wanted, a change of water was good, but unless there were ice cubes in it, G would look up at me and wait and sometimes meow. G had a face that was designed for begging. D has more of a coy "oh look at me, aren't I cute" look. D also never got into ice... when there was ice in the bowl he'd just stare at it. I joked a couple times that G would look at a bowl of water with no ice and react like, "What, you expect me to drink this without ice? What am I, a savage?" whereas Deacon would look at a bowl with ice and react like, "WITCH!!!!!!".

To my surprise, this new role as designated ice-bearer continued even after summer, throughout the whole year, even in the middle of winter, G would beg me for ice (although of course, it's not like he really felt the winter being indoors). But it was nice to be wanted, and my affection for G grew, often petting him right after dropping ice in his bowl, and I started calling him 'buddy' regularly (which I also did for D, it's my go-to name-of-affection for animals, even ones I encounter out walking to work).

The next big change was when my brother and his gf broke up at the end of last summer, and she moved out and to another part of the province. Both cats were probably technically hers, and she called them her babies on many occasions, but she left them behind with a vague "maybe when things settle down I'll arranged them have them shipped" idea. Maybe it's best she never had kids.

So my brother and I shared taking care of the cats, me probably doing more than my fair share because I had the extra time (and it's at this point I started thinking of him as my cat... well, 'our cat', but with 'my' being a subset), and G, well, G was on a slow decline, but he still seemed generally happy and was always begging or stuff (and now that I was a person who sometimes fed him soft food, he turned that up and pretty much every time I entered the kitchen he would come stare at me in the hopes he could get something, although mostly he just got ice... you could tell that wasn't what he was there for because he'd meow afterwards and stare some more before finally going to lick the ice). But he was slow, and a little wobbly. Occasionally he would have trouble making the jump between the windowsil and the couch, so I made a little bridge for him out of a panel from of an old computer case. Sometimes, he'd look a little dazed and tremble a bit.

And the big one, he wasn't grooming himself as well as he used to. We tried to make up for it, but he was the kind of cat who'd claw at you if you invaded his personal space too much, so maybe we didn't do as much as we could. There was another sign, in retrospect... I think he was peeing a lot more. This is a sign of a lot of negative things for cats, like kidney failure and diabetes. The thing was, since I'd only started handling his litter in the last year, and with two cats contributing, I really had no good basis of comparison. I only know now because amount of litter has gone down by far more than a half... maybe even 3/4.

But, you know, even when you see signs, you hope for the best of things, and he was an old cat (I thought he was older than he was, I thought he was something like 17 or 18), so I thought he was just starting to feel it, that there was really nothing that anyone could do. And maybe it was the case, part of it, or all of it. We still don't know exactly what it was he died from. I sometimes think we could have done more, been more diligent or willing to spend the huge vet bill for what might wind up being nothing, and maybe given him a few more years, and sometimes I think that maybe it was for the best that it didn't get prolonged any more than it needed to be.

The end, though, came both shockingly fast and with plenty of warning. One day, it was like he couldn't use his back legs. He'd still come for food, but it was dragging himself across the floor, and he wouldn't climb up onto the couch. Occasionally he would walk or stand a very little bit, but it was knuckle walking and uncomfortable looking.

It was awkward because it was just about the weekend, and the vet couldn't see him anyway (maybe if it was an emergency, but he was still able to eat and get around a little so it didn't seem to qualify) We had a discussion about the stark reality that while we could take him to the vet that if this was an ongoing thing or a really serious issue, we probably couldn't afford to take care of him and that if we did take him to the vet, we might have to consider the option of putting him to sleep. My brother looked into it and we found another option: we could 'surrender' him to the humane society, and they'd take ownership and do an assessment, and if they felt treating him was an option, they'd handle it, and we wouldn't see him again, but at least he'd be cared for, and if they felt he wasn't going to have any significant quality of life again even with proper care, he'd be put to sleep which we'd have to do anyway. We did our best to make him comfortable giving him a little bed with water and food within easy head reach, and made an appointment for Wednesday. He died on Monday.

The weird thing was he bounced back on Friday night. After we made the appointment. Suddenly, he was walking around, maybe a tiny bit wobbly, but normally, and even went to his litter box on his own. I began to wonder if maybe he just had arthritis, because the weather was supposedly bad arthritis weather, and if it was the case, it might be something we could live with, make him comfortable and take care of him more on his bad days... or, if nothing else, that it increased the chances that the humane society might be able to do so and not put him to sleep. But we were hopeful.

Then on Sunday, he seemed to lose his ability to walk again, and even getting to an upright lounging position seemed to be an issue. There was still a little hope (because that weekend was also said to be bad for arthritis, but it would clear in a day or so) We fed him, both treats and regular food (we had extras so we could spoil him in the last few days if we had to give him up) and he still ate, but often out the sides of his mouth and sometimes we had to hand feed him, or hold him up to get water.

On Monday, he mostly just lay in one position on the floor, and didn't even seem interested in food. He didn't seem to be in any outward pain, he wasn't yowling or anything. I know that's not always the case that they make noise, but I'm choosing to believe he wasn't in pain, he was just steadily getting weaker and weaker. And we checked on him regularly, stroking him, offering him food in the hopes that this time he'd be interested, but it wasn't looking good. We hoped he might recover spontaneously again, and make it to the Wednesday appointment for a fuller diagnosis, but I at least had a feeling that the end was close no matter what. And, just after I took dinner out of the oven I walked past him on my way back to my room, I noticed he was very still, and he wasn't breathing, and he wouldn't blink when I moved my fingers near his eyes, and I had to tell my brother the bad news.

Pretty soon the tears started flowing, and after that, well, there was just handling the body. Luckily there was a box that was the right size nearby. The next day, we took him to the humane society and surrendered his body instead of him... no appointment was necessary in that case. They said that his age (15) was right about the average time that happens.

Just like I believe G wasn't in pain, I'm choosing to believe that, although we didn't witness the moment, it happened when he was aware of me, in the room getting dinner out of the oven and inevitably about to once again stroke him and see how he was doing, or maybe that D was around for that final moment, and so he didn't feel alone. And if those are just comforting lies, if nothing else, that at least he got to end his life at home, lying on a floor like he often did on his best days, instead of after a scared trip to the vet where he was among strangers, and that we didn't have to make the decision to end his life before his time, and that, whatever the case, he's not in pain NOW. It's a small mercy, but sometimes that's all you can get in these situations.

Every time I do dishes or get myself water, I look over and half-expect to see him staring up. And although I don't really believe in spirits or afterlife type theories, several times I've found myself dropping ice in the water bowl, even though D doesn't care for ice, just as a tribute.

Goodbye G. You won't be forgotten. We may not have gotten off on the best of terms, but you were a good cat. By which I mean demanding and convinced of your superiority, but, you know, in a cute way. :)

Who will I give ice cubes now?

2015-06-15T23:29:36Z

One of my cats just died. I knew it was coming but it still happened too fast.

Crying for the first time I can remember in years.