December and January
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Recent Reads
Author: Scott
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Alien Echoes and Neuromancer
Alien Echoes by Mira Grant was an interesting take on the alien universe. The first half of the book was an excellent and gritty story about the struggles of colonies, with fascinating extrapolated biological issues.
When the aliens come crashing down, it’s clear that they’re trouble of a wildly different scope — too perfect to be accidental. Olivia offers fascinating viewpoints — she explains what’s expected and what’s really unusual (from an amateur Xenobiologist’s POV), which proves to be a fascinating breakdown of plausibility for the various alien traits.
Neuromancer by William Gibson is a classic; I think I’ve read other Gibson novels, but this was unfamiliar enough that I think it’s a first encounter. Case is our sole POV, but his interactions with Armitage and Molly, and the interestingly textured characters that they run into at each stop, really lend the gritty feel of a complex world that’s ground on with interlocked histories, at national and personal levels.
It gets very ambitious, with a lot of travel to different interesting places, including orbit by the end.
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Recent Books 11/19
Some Desperate Glory by Emily Tesh was excellent, and very subtle in a few ways. Our POV character, Kyr, is a young woman from a defeated humanity, raised to gain glory for her fallen people. The society that’s she’s raised in has added some blinders – as has Kyr’s self image. As the book continues, and the way the universe expands, Kyr finds herself reevaluating what she has always known… it’s a rough road.
The book features quite alien societies – definitely more than humans in funny suits – and weird universe changing technologies that are hard to understand for everyone. There’s interesting simulations and temporal variations… Kyr doesn’t get a smooth path, but it’s a fascinating read, and the Kyr who emerges is so different but still grounded in the girl we first encountered.
Spear by Nicola Griffith is a powerfully Welsh retelling around the edges of the round table. Celtic myth and gods patrol the edges, but it’s a very human scale. Some of it was familiar, or familiar at a slant from Hawk of May, but Peretur comes from a very different, not nobly raised background that renders the political largely invisible to her.
The world isn’t particularly rough or cruel, though it’s a lot closer to the bone, and the nobility’s share is a sizable bite. The story as a whole feels very concise – it doesn’t mess about with multiple viewpoints, or try to handle multiple big events. It’s not the end of Caer Leon – it still feels like summer, and Medraut isn’t in the picture yet. This tale comes to a firm ending about Pereteur’s storyline – if not that of the companions that Peretur is joining.
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Recent Reads
(As of 9/21/2023)
Light from Uncommon Stars by Ryka Aoki. Set in the world of today, it’s mostly an excellent story; the primary POV was Katrina Nguyen, a young violin prodigy on the run. She’s very much a modern youth, who interacts oddly with Shizuka Satomi, a violin teacher with a dark past. In parallel, Lan Tran, a starship captain in disguise runs a donut shop. I had to push past the “you’re putting peanut butter in my chocolate” for the melding of modern, fantasy, and space opera; fortunately, the strong characters keep you riveted and moving through.
The River Road by Karen Osborn. Another book set in the world of today, without any fantasy to relieve it. It’s mostly about how two families deal (and fail to deal) with tragedy. There’s a lot of confused memory, glorious flashbacks and unbridled youth. It’s a very nicely textured deep look at a rural near town friendship, and the slices we each see of each other.
Crip Up the Kitchen is a book filled with excellent advice about how to work around disabilities and conserve spoons, with careful and detailed explanations for the various tools and their uses. The recipes are similarly carefully detailed and thoroughly explained — even new cooks, and cooks exploring new tools are setup for success. The stories of adaptation and perseverance are excellent and inspiring; the gatekeeping lectures preceding each recipe that the author has a personal cultural connection to were wearying and repetitious.
Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2018, N. K. Jemsin Editor. A very broad mix of short stories, most relatively short and well crafted. I’d come across a few stories in other collections, and they run the gamut from quite familiar to entirely unique. Not every story was a great match for my taste – but the majority were, and craft was evident in them all.
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Recent Reads
(August 25, 2023)
It’s been a while since it visited the library, so I’ve been rereading several novels. (I have added many more books to my library queue and requested several, so I’ll soon be back to new books.)
World War Z by Max Brooks was a fast reread; the various little tales are all quick, and when you start to encounter characters again in the second half of the book, there’s a warm burst of familiarity. A minor flaw is that the lack of continuous storyline meant that it didn’t embed in my mind, preventing it from being as useful when trying to sleep.
Halfway Human by Carolyn Ives Gilman was a fascinating flash back to the world of 25 years ago, where a story centered on an asexual aromantic lead character was played up as genuinely alien to standard galactic society. Tedla, blands, and the whole society of Gammadis are a fascinating look at where desires for service and gender interact – and don’t.
The Dispatcher by John Scalzi is a fun thought experiment, looking at a world where most murder victims pop back to life immediately after dying. It’s fleshed out to tackle some quick exploits – like integrating Dispatchers, basically licensed assassins, into high risk surgeries, or the adaptation of society to mercy killings basically as a “do over” for nasty accidents, etc. It feels like a long short story – one big concept well explored, rather than the complex storylines of most novels.
Vatta’s War is a five book series by Elizabeth Moon. We follow a few POV characters, but the anchor is Ky Vatta. The series kicks off with Trading in Danger, where Ky begins the story by getting kicked out of the academy for “helping” in a way that backfires with terrible publicity. She’s a great character, who is put through a lot of misery but comes through it surprisingly well. There are a number of parallels to Moon’s Deed of Paksenarrion books, but Ky manages to stand apart – in part because the universe is facing a different threat than Pak’s tale.
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The Lies of the Ajungo
Moses Ose Utomi’s debut novella, The Lies of the Ajungo, was a fascinating read. It feels much like a good Leguin novel, with a carefully selected words and a very deliberate pace and feel.
The reversals and subtle revelations are well paced and great to experience.
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Rule 34 and Imago
Rule 34 is an interesting Charles Stross book set in a downward sliding Scotland, and a whole host of disinvestment and rot in public institutions after the great recession.
We’re guided though the worlds (physical and internet) with a few viewpoint characters. Liz is a cop, who mostly reviews the net side of crimes… with a slowly revealed backstory explaining how she got derailed from promotions and into her current role. The other half is anchored by Anwar, a scammer out on parole, trying to make some money and support his family in a very challenging world.
There are some interesting detours into pseudo-states and international crime, some characters from the main characters’ pasts come back to complicate their lives, and AI runs amuck. Solid, but not my favorite of his.
Imago was a good conclusion to the Xenogenesis trilogy. It doesn’t include the rough toddler POV that made the middle book harder to love. Jodhas is a very interesting adaptation to Earth; very human looking and male to begin, but with a fascinating development path.
We get to see the threads begun by Akin in the previous book flourish, though it’s not directly addressed or a main focus. The huge slide of the human settlements that we saw last book has slowed, but there are new settlements to find.
All in all, a satisfying conclusion to the trilogy… though Dawn is enough stronger than the other two that I’d recommend it as a stand alone to most… and just let them know that the other books exist if they want to see the whole sequence together.
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Adulthood Rites and Picnic on Paradise
Octavia Butler’s Adulthood Rites is a sequel to Dawn. It’s a rough start, following a super baby – it definitely sets Akin apart from the children of our world, though it’s all weirdly plausible and consistent.
After the time jump forward, into adolescence, Akin feels less weird (though still intentionally very weird). There are interesting meditations and debates about what is inherent, genetically preloaded, and what things can and should be changed and cherished. The slow slide of Phoenix is fascinating and sad.
Adulthood Rites was a reread – probably my second read, and a couple of decades apart.
Picnic on Paradise was new to me. It’s a weird, stylish future, quickly reduced to a lengthy trek and squabbling through hardship. A few quirky and interesting characters, several that never really develop depth.
It’s well written, but not one I’m likely to read again.
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Softwire and Dawn
The Softwire: Virus on Orbis 1 by P. J. Haarsma was hanging out in our library; I don’t think I’ve ever read it, so it likely came from Jax’s library. It’s compellingly written, and moves at a quick pace. It’s a well written exploration of a truly alien environment – without the separation and control that adults visiting in a ship would have.
It feels like good YA, but is willing to include a lot of subtler elements in the world building that don’t make it feel so straightforward that it’s just for kids. By the end, there was a foe and a straightforward conflict – but it took an intriguing path to get there. I started looking for the next book, but since it was published in 2006, it’s not actively stocked. I’ll have to keep it in mind when combing bookshops.
Dawn by Octavia Butler was a reread. It’s a fascinating study – the Oankali feel intriguingly different and alien, and the initial setup of Lilith as a rat in a maze, being examined and tested, is hard to take… it’s a rough setup, which primes her for the role that she’s reviled for.
The Oankali concept of trade being off kilter, and the anxieties of humans at being pieced together from isolation and forged into small bands feel all too authentic. We’re all mutts that would bite the hand that feeds us, if that hand was so alien.
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Recent Reads
The Cold Between and Remnants of Trust by Elizabeth Bonesteel
An interesting deep future, divided into three significant factions, and a number of colony worlds that think they’re more independent and self-sustaining than they really are.
It’s a tale of humanity divided – no on screen aliens, but some alien ruins do play a part. The three major factions are Central, PSI, and the syndicates.
We follow Commander Elena Shaw in both books; while we get other POV chapters and they’re often significant, they mostly round out Elena’s story. She serves aboard a Central Gov ship, which means that we’re mostly experiencing the universe from a Central POV.
PSI serves a big role in both books; local politics tangles the two groups together, and working their way through the accusations keeps Trey (our ex-PSI love interest) and Elena running together and sorting through decades of rumor and distance.
Central and PSI are both written as organizations of people as people, with factions and cross cutting interests, popular kids and those passed over and seething, keeping them from being one dimensional. [The third faction is mostly off screen and more inscrutable – the Syndicate – though they are foregrounded more in Remnants of Trust.]
The universe feels authentic, with lots of human touches — like all three factions existing largely to prop up colonies that constantly skate closer to collapse than their citizens can bear to understand; lots of wishful thinking and willful ignorance fills the colonies – but they’re not one-dimensional people sitting around waiting to be rescued either.
There’s also some love scenes; they begin early in The Cold Between, so you’ll quickly know if they’re to your taste, or more involved than you’re used to.
Becky Chambers is probably my favorite author, certainly my favorite that I’ve discovered within the last decade. A Prayer for the Crown-Shy is the sequel to A Psalm for the Wild Built, and continues to inspire. Both books were “delicious” in a way that made me pick it up and start reading it again the night after I finished my first read through.
Prayer is very much a book about friendship and obligation; the interaction between Dex and Mosscap is rich and layered and a beautiful way to muse about what we want out of life and our relationships.
If you want action and adventure, this is not the series for you. This is a world descended from an era that faced tremendous challenges, accepted them, and realigned their life to live sustainably and harmoniously. Even their sharpest edges and gravest worries feel like small beer in the 21st century… but what a beautiful approach to utopia they’ve created.
Dead Space by Kari Wallace is set a few centuries from now, in a more plausible and certainly more selfish future – one that’s easy to imagine that modern corporations have set us on the path to build.
Hester is a wage-slave police investigator for a corporation that she’s indebted to. She winds up elbowing her way into investigating the murder of a friend… who has their own secrets and discoveries that come to light as the investigation progresses. There are lots of twists and revelations that keep revealing new layers of the onion…