Friday, November 30, 2018

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: After the Crown by K.B. Wagers




After the Crown is the second book in K.B. Wagers' Indranan War trilogy, which began with "Behind the Throne" (which I reviewed HERE).   I'd said in my review of that book that I couldn't quite describe well why I enjoyed that book so much, because the book never really fit into a clear genre mold (political scifi was kind of the best fit, but even then it wasn't the greatest).  That book's tag-line boasted that its heroine was like a mixture of Han Solo and Princess Leia, but the comparison didn't quite fit, even though I really enjoyed the book.

In this book, the second book in the trilogy, that comparison actually works a lot better, as the book definitely takes on Star Wars vibes as our Heroine is forced to work with criminals and smugglers to fight against those who would try to destroy her people.  We're very much into space opera mode here, and the transformation of genre works beautifully.  The result is an expansion of the universe the story takes place in that feels natural, with more excellent characters introduced and old ones developed, and a really fun plot that surprises on a few occasions.


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Thursday, November 29, 2018

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Mage Against the Machine by Shaun Barger




Mage Against the Machine is one of the science fiction/fantasy books with an obvious selling hook: it's a hybrid of The Terminator and Harry Potter!  Marriage of SciFi and Fantasy concepts into a single book is hardly that unusual in the genre - 2016's "All the Birds in the Sky" by Charlie Jane Anders is an example of it done wonderfully for example.  Still, Mage Against the Machine wears its influences, particularly that of The Terminator, on its sleeve.

It's not wholly successful unfortunately, as the book takes way too long a time to merge its two elements and features one main character who is kind of a jerk and hard to like.  It's also a very very dark book with few moments of lightness whatsoever - if this book isn't quite "grimdark," it's really close.  The result is a book that shows elements of promise, but never quite fulfills them and as a result I can't really recommend it too highly.


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Wednesday, November 28, 2018

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: The Book of Joan by Lidia Yuknavitch




The Book of Joan is a hell of a book, that packs a LOT into its short length (it's under 300 pages, and the audiobook is under 8 hours).  A SciFi story that takes the story of Joan of Arc, as well as several other real life people (Christine Pizan and Jean du Meun) into a post-apocalyptic SF world, the Book of Joan tells a story of the importance of control over one's own body, reproduction, and of life in general.  Note that you don't need to have a familiarity with any of the real life people transplanted through time in this story in order to read this book (I didn't really with most of them).

The result is a fascinating book that has a ton of ideas that it is not afraid to put front and center.  If you're looking for a good "story" or an interesting plot, The Book of Joan is probably not for you - Yuknavitch's characters and story move in ways that are clearly meant to get her ideas across (complete with character dialogue that often sounds like it was taken from essays) rather than in ways that are meant to form a cohesive plot without holes.  But somehow, it works, and the characters themselves work, so it's definitely worth a look for anyone willing to read this type of work.

Note:  This was another book I read as an audiobook, and the reader is very good, so it's worth your time if you're looking for a book in that format.

Trigger Warning:  There's no rape in this book but violence toward bodies is a major act of the antagonist, so if that's an issue, it might be a concern for some readers.


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Tuesday, November 27, 2018

Some Suggestions for SciFi/Fantasy Books for People to Read For Some of My Followers on Twitter (Part 2):

Last year on twitter, I was asked by a hockey follower about suggestions for books for people new to the Science Fiction and Fantasy genre and I wrote up a quick post with some suggestions based upon my dive into the genre over the past three years (that post can be found here).   This year I wanted to do another such post, but I wanted to do something a little more specific: offering suggestions based upon what my followers on twitter might be looking for.

So I asked on twitter for what people were looking for in Science Fiction and Fantasy Books they seek to read.  This is my second column (the first can be found here) where I offer suggestions in response to some of the answers you gave me on twitter.  Today's post will deal with two answers that are pretty much exact opposites, so the book suggestions are going to be very different:


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Monday, November 26, 2018

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Terra Nullius by Claire G Coleman




Terra Nullius is a speculative fiction novel published in 2017 in Australia that was brought this year to the US by Small Beer Press.  Small Beer Press is a small mostly SF/F publisher that publishes what is usually less typical and sometimes more "literary" SF/F works, and I've yet to find a book (this is the 5th book I've theirs I've read) published by SBP that isn't at least rather interesting (and usually tough to review).  In fact "interesting" underrates my opinion of these books, which I've generally reviewed as being either "worth a read" or "must read."  And Terra Nullius is an example of the latter category - this is a must read book.

Note that I said "must read" and not "enjoyable" - Terra Nullius is not a book to be enjoyed and it doesn't want to be.  Coleman is a Wirloman Noongar (Indigenous Australian) woman and it is the experiences of the Indigenous Australian peoples that forms the background for this novel - and as you would imagine if you know what happened to the Native peoples around the world when Europeans came to colonize, the result is incredibly brutal.  But all of this brutality serves a purpose, and when the book pulls the rug out from under the reader with its twist halfway through, it creates a truly shocking and powerful book that really should be read by everyone.

Trigger Warning:  This is a rough book, with physical abuse of both children and adults being present, as one might imagine from the subject matter.  Sexual abuse and rape in its usual form is not present, although forced reproduction is a plot point.  None of this content however is gratuitous (and mostly occurs off screen) and it is all justified by the story.

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Friday, November 23, 2018

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Ignite the Stars by Maura Milan




Ignite the Stars is a Young Adult Science Fiction book that I assume is the start of a series by debut author Maura Milan.  I can't actually recall how I heard of the book (I tend to bookmark books that I see mentioned or recommended around the internet by sources/authors I trust and often don't get to those books till months afterwards, well after I'd forgotten about the initial rec in the first place).

But I'm glad I did, as I enjoyed Ignite the Stars a bit for its three main characters, who all wind up being really well done, even if they begin perhaps as some standard archetypes.  The plot is moderately predictable - I predicted one twist rather early although a second "twist" I expected to happen never occurred, and yet again its very well done and made me want to read more in this universe.  And that's a pretty big complement right there.


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Wednesday, November 21, 2018

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Song of Blood and Stone by L Penelope




Song of Blood and Stone is a book, the first in a series, that was originally a self published book a few years back, before a re-release this year by an actual publisher (there was a self-published sequel as well, but I'm not sure if that's also being rereleased).  The first in a fantasy romance series, it features a world in which a country filled with magic and a country that has gotten by solely with technology, each divided by a magical barrier that has been the only thing preventing all out wars that have broken out in the past.

But more specifically, this is a fantasy romance, featuring, as these stories tend to do, two people from very different backgrounds, whose duties find themselves on opposite sides, falling in love.  Or at least that's the tagline of this book.  To me unfortunately, the conflict between love and duty felt like no conflict at all given how stark the characters' choices were, and the story's lack of descriptions at times made the book feel a little more bare-boned than I'd like.  A very functional fantasy romance here, but not quite much more than that.


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Tuesday, November 20, 2018

Some Suggestions for SciFi/Fantasy Books for People to Read For Some of My Followers on Twitter (Part 1):




Last year on twitter, I was asked by a hockey follower about suggestions for books for people new to the Science Fiction and Fantasy genre and I wrote up a quick post with some suggestions based upon my dive into the genre over the past three years (that post can be found here).   This year I wanted to do another such post, but I wanted to do something a little more specific: offering suggestions based upon what my followers on twitter might be looking for.

So I asked on twitter for what people were looking for in Science Fiction and Fantasy Books they seek to read. In this post, and in some future posts, I'm going to take a look at some of those answers and offer some suggestions in response.

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Monday, November 19, 2018

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: The Book of Hidden Things by Francesco Dimitri




The Book of Hidden Things is an example of a SF/F subgenre that's always hard to define: the story that offers the possibility of fantastical elements but never makes it clear whether or not those elements are real.  What it most definitely is is a story about friendship between a bunch of middle-age men whose lives have not gone in directions they really anticipated, and what that friendship still means.  Which is not to say that this is a sober book at all, as events spiral out of control fairly quickly.

And the result is a pretty impressive novel, that frequently takes turns that surprised me in where the plot was going.  Note that this is not a "light" novel (as the trigger warning below should make clear) - events get pretty damn dark as the story progresses.  But the character work of the main characters (and one side character) is really well done and the setting is incredibly well done as well, resulting in a book that is well worth your time.

Minor Trigger Warning: Animal Cruelty, both off-page and on-page.

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Friday, November 16, 2018

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Spectacle by Rachel Vincent


Spectacle is the sequel to Rachel Vincent's Menagerie (Review Here), and the second book in a trilogy.  Menagerie set up an interesting dark fantasy setting, where a tragedy in the past caused by mysterious creatures has caused the United States to pass laws in fear removing all rights from Cryptids - creatures out of myth like Minotaurs, Succubi, etc - which had previously lived alongside humanity in peace.  Menagerie was a bit brutal, but had a satisfying ending that left a number of aspects of the setting untouched, making me interested in seeing where Vincent would go in the sequels.

In the case of Spectacle, the answer to where Vincent is taking this world is "nowhere new."  Rather than exploring a new corner of this world, the plot takes us into an area of this world that is just alluded to in Menagerie, but is still very damn similar to the conflicts at heart in the first book - just much more extreme.  This book sets up a change in the characters' situations that should result in a new plotline for the third book which just came out....but there was no reason why the first book's ending couldn't have done something similar.  Essentially Spectacle fails to justify its own existence, which is a major failure of any book.

TRIGGER WARNING:  I mentioned in my review of Menagerie that while occasions of physical abuse occurred on-page in the story and rape in the past was alluded to, no rape was present in the book.  That is NOT the case with Spectacle - while no rape is shown on-page, there is a LOT of it alluded to in this book, as well as other non-consensual activity.  If Menagerie hadn't existed already, I'd have said this book barely manages to walk the line as to justify the inclusions of these horrors, but the presence of the prior book makes me think otherwise here.  Read with caution.

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Wednesday, November 14, 2018

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: The Sisters of the Winter Wood by Rena Rossner




Sisters of the Winter Wood is......interesting.  On the surface its a fantasy book that seems designed to appeal to me - it's a story of two Jewish sisters in circa 1900 Eastern Europe, combining events that actually happened in this location with fairy tale and fantasy stories.  And its certainly not a hard book to read quickly - the book contains 91 "chapters" but I managed to read through them dozens at a time (it helps that some of them are as short as a single page).

But the execution of its ideas - well I don't really think it works.  The book tries an interesting formatting gimmick with half of its chapters without ever explaining why it does so, and while I can guess the reasoning, the result is a bit of dissonance from the other half of the book. The book's story conclusion also I'm not really sure works in a satisfying fashion.  In short Sisters of the Winter Wood might be worth a try, but I wouldn't recommend it that highly.

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Tuesday, November 13, 2018

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: The Element of Fire by Martha Wells




Readers of this blog will know of my love for Martha Wells, who's my fourth most read author over the past three years.  The Element of Fire is where it all began as her first published novel (from 1993) as well as being the first book in her Ile-Rien setting.  I've read every other Ile-Rien book, some of which referenced the events in this book (so I was very mildly spoiled), and loved them all, so I was really excited to read where it all began.

As expected, The Element of Fire is very good, with its world filled with quite a few interesting characters in a really well done fantasy setting featuring Fae, Sorcerers, and Sword Fighting.  It's probably my least favorite of the Ile-Rien books because its main protagonist is the least interesting of the three such protagonists, but it is still incredibly absorbing and the secondary protagonist, heroine Kade Carrion, is up there with the best of them.

More after the jump:


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Monday, November 12, 2018

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: A Conspiracy of Truths by Alexandra Rowland




A Conspiracy of Truths is an odd kind of book.  Based on its description on Amazon, it might seem like a new sort of new version of the Scheherazade-type story -  where our hero is imprisoned and threatened with death but tries to get out of the situation by telling stories to his captors.  But this book is not simply a collection of stories with a framing device, but rather a political satire in a fantasy world.

Is it a good satire?  Harder to say, as the book doesn't just pick one target to satirize, but through its five rulers and their affiliated forces and bureaucracies, it mocks quite a lot, some more effectively than others.  Still, it's a book that is easily to get into, with some pretty funny moments along the way, and is thus worth a try.

More after the Jump:

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Friday, November 9, 2018

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Behind the Throne by K.B. Wagers




Behind the Thrones is the first book in K.B. Wagers' "The Indranan War" trilogy.  I came to this book backwards - having read the first book (There Before the Chaos) in the sequel trilogy to this one first, I then saw my local library carried this book, so I took it out.  As a result of reading the most recent book first, I did have some foreknowledge of what is going to happen in this book, but it wasn't enough to really affect my enjoyment of the story at all.

And I enjoyed Behind the Throne a decent bit.  It's a SciFI Political Thriller with the potential to turn into Space Opera (just like There Before the Chaos), but it doesn't quite turn into such here, with the action being confined essentially to a single planet after the beginning.  Still the characters are well done and the plotting is solid, and the writing is such that I basically couldn't put this down till I finished it in one day.


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Thursday, November 8, 2018

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Ruin of Stars by Linsey Miller




Ruin of Stars is the second half to the duology begun with Linsey Miller's 2017 dark YA fantasy book, Mask of Shadows, which I reviewed a little while back.  Readers of that review may remember that I really really enjoyed Mask of Shadows due to its lead character, Sal/23/Opal being utterly tremendous.  It didn't matter that the plot was merely ordinary - Sal made the story well worth reading, as a non-binary hero with PTSD bent on vengeance....who also finds it in themselves to learn to love as well, between her plots in a competition of assassins.

Ruin of Stars is even better than Mask of Shadows.  Again it's due to the characters, not the plot - the plot IS better this time around, but still isn't the greatest.  But Sal remains tremendous, and some of the side characters - both old and new - take steps up to truly shine as well.  And while the plot isn't the greatest, it manages to be far more powerful in its darkness, to result in a book that I could not finish fast enough.

Note:  Again, like its predecessor, this book was read as an audiobook, so apologies if I misspell some names/concepts.  The audiobook reader is excellent for what it's worth, although it's sometimes tricky to tell what dialogue of Sal is being said aloud and what is merely being thought in their head.  
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Wednesday, November 7, 2018

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: There Before the Chaos by K.B. Wagers



There Before the Chaos is the start of a new SciFi trilogy by K.B. Wagers.  That said, its universe is not entirely new - the story takes place with the same characters as in K.B. Wagers' first SF trilogy - The Indranan War Trilogy - only a few months later.  I haven't read the Indranan War books, but I was able to pick up this book perfectly well without the foreknowledge.  Readers with prior knowledge of this universe will probably get extra enjoyment out of this book however.

Still, I enjoyed There Before the Chaos, despite the book being rather hard to classify.  It's essentially a scifi political thriller, as our heroine Hail Bristol, former gunrunner and now Empress of the Indranan Empire, tries to prevent a war between alien forces which has been threatening to envelop the worlds of humanity.  On the other hand, the book is also a major character story, with most of its drama coming from its interactions between characters (this is where foreknowledge would be most helpful) and then becomes a space opera thriller in its last moments.  Whatever it is, it was enjoyable and I'm looking into reading the prior trilogy as a result.


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Tuesday, November 6, 2018

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Forest of a Thousand Lanterns by Julie C Dao



Forest of a Thousand Lanterns is the first in a fantasy duology (the second book has just come out today) which takes aspects of the Snow White story and marries them to an East-Asian fantasy world.  But while it clearly takes inspiration from the story, it mostly (with few exceptions) tells its own story of a young woman torn between what she's been told is her grand destiny and her knowledge of the dark acts that would be required in obtaining that destiny.  This is its own story, not simply a retelling.

And it's a very good story in the dark fantasy genre, with a protagonist who is very well - not necessarily easy to root for, but sympathetic and understandable at the very least.  The story isn't particularly subtle about where it's going in the end, but it is excellently done to make the reader want to keep reading to see how it will get to its inevitable destination in the end.  The result is a book that's definitely worth your time if you're interested in a dark fantasy story that's not built off a Western background.

More after the Jump:


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Monday, November 5, 2018

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Zero Sum Game by SL Huang



Zero Sum Game is a thriller that was first self-published in 2014 and was just re-released in an edited-version by Tor Books (which is also planning on releasing at least the first three books in the series).  Given the amount of my favorite authors recommending the book - the book contains blurbs by Ken Liu, Kate Elliott, Yoon Ha Lee, and Chuck Wendig, among others - I reserved it as a physical book from my local library as soon as I saw it was available.*

*Note: My Local e-Library had available for permanent loan - as it was published under a Creative Commons license - the old 2014 version of this book.  I haven't checked the differences between them, but I know one review noted the older version was less polished, so this review applies entirely to the updated release.  

And it did not disappoint. Zero Sum Games is a hell of a scifi thriller, featuring a heroine who is pretty damn awesome and whose superpower is being insanely good at using math, not just on paper but in real time, allowing her to instantly essentially calculate the best way out/forward in any situation.  Of course, it helps that this power only complements her ability to be a fascinating action hero, and that the villain she faces in this book is a great antagonist for her abilities, creating an incredibly fast-paced plot that is highly unpredictable and incredibly fun.


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Thursday, November 1, 2018

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Lockstep by Karl Schroeder




Lockstep is a SciFi novel by Karl Schroeder which was first released in 2014.  It came to my attention recently when I picked up Schroeder's 2018 novella, "The Million" (Review Here), which I liked a good bit and takes place in the same universe (obviously, since the Novel came first, no knowledge of the novella is needed to enjoy this book).  So I'd had Lockstep requested from intra-library loan for a while.

And it's an enjoyable thriller, using an interesting SciFi plot concept (which is shared by The Million to a certain extent) to create a really interesting thriller based upon the mechanics of that world.  None of the characters are amazing, but they work well enough within this world to make everything work well, and the plot is resolved in a rather interesting way at the end.  I didn't enjoy it as much as The Million (which has stronger characters honestly and is tighter in execution), but it's still a fairly solid thriller for anyone who's looking for a SF thriller to pick up.

 
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