Thursday, December 29, 2022

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Mechanique: A Tale of the Circus Tresaulti by Genevieve Valentine

 



Mechanique is a novel by Genevieve Valentine, an author more known for her work in comics than in novel-writing. I actually really liked Valentine's more recent (but still a few years back) duology, Persona/Icon, which did some really interesting things with a setting dealing with fame and papparazzi. Valentine hasn't written a novel since that duology (around 2016) but this earlier work came to my attention when NK Jemisin (one of my favorite authors) recommended it in a recent interview as a favorite of hers.

And Mechanique is a really fascinating, and perhaps phenomenal novel, which deserves greater attention. The novel takes place in a dystopian post-apocalyptic (perhaps?) world, in a land where there is constant conflict and upheaval, and follows a circus as it travels across this land trying to avoid conflict and just put on a show. But not just any circus, but a circus made up of people who are impossibly part mechanical, like a man crossed with a piano or a trapeeze, who live only through the work of the circus' magical boss. The story is told through a sort of third person omniscient viewpoint that jumps back and forth in terms of its perspective, and it works really well to tell a story of traumas, solitude, belonging, and more in a time where the only way back to normalcy may be the tragic governing of the monstrous.

TRIGGER WARNING: Suicide, Torture, Suicidal Ideation, and more. All topics are dealt with reasonably and are not gratuitous, but you should be warned this is a serious book dealing with some real tragedies.

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Tuesday, December 27, 2022

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Bloodmarked by Tracy Deonn



Bloodmarked is the second novel in Tracy Deonn's Legendborn Cycle, which began with 2020's Legendborn. Legendborn was one of my two favorite books of 2020, a phenomenal YA Urban Fantasy novel dealing with the mythology of King Arthur, the struggles of a black teenage girl against generational trauma and systematic racism, and a struggle in particular with personal grief of losing a loved one. It was a tremendous novel, with a tremendous heroine in its teen girl Bree, a student in an early high school program at UNC, and a tremendous setting that took, respected, and subverted all at once the Arthurian Mythos as it married it to the realities of today's world for Black Americans. So I have been looking forward to Bloodmarked for a long time.

And Bloodmarked continues the story in generally really strong fashion, continuing Bree's story now that she's recognized the historical sources of her own power and as she struggles to deal with others' expectations and wants of her now that that power is out in the open....expectations that are tempered by how Bree doesn't look like how those others were raised to believe such a power-wielder should be. The story again works really well as it deals with more struggles not only now with grief, but with the historical burdens of one's ancestors, especially the ancestors of black slaves in today's African Americans like Bree. Bree faces a struggle to control her power and an internal conflict due to these burdens, as well as the modern racism and prejudice Bree faces as the unwilling heir of a mostly White European power order, and it all comes together largely well. That said, the novel's love triangle romance is a bit frustrating and formulaic, it doesn't have enough time devoted to breathing and examining various status quos, and it again relies upon a cliffhanger setup that feels more added on last minute than a natural part of the book. So it's very good, even if not as good as Book 1, but an excellent bridge between that book and the eventual conclusion.

Trigger Warnings: Historical Rape of an Ancestor during Slavery as Backstory.

SPOILER WARNING: It is impossible to discuss this book further or in more detail without spoiling the ending of book 1. If you intend to read book 1 and haven't yet, stop here and do not go further.

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Thursday, December 22, 2022

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Neom by Lavie Tidhar

 


Full Disclosure:  This book was read as an e-ARC Audiobook (Advance Reader Copy) obtained via Netgalley from the publisher in advance of the book's release on November 9 2022 in exchange for a potential review.  I give my word that this did not affect my review in any way - if I felt conflicted in any way, I would simply have declined to review the book.
Neom is an odd book for me to read - it's a book set in the same world as Tidhar's acclaimed novel "Central Station", which featured humans, robots, cyber-beings, and other entities in a future Tel Aviv/near Tel Aviv city called Central Station, which connected Earth to various outposts in the stars. Tidhar's work has often interested me, especially his shorter fiction (and he has edited some really good anthologies of world science fiction), and yet I didn't particularly love Central Station, which was written essentially as a series of stories in the same setting and then combined through editing into a single novel....and I didn't find the combination really did anything for me. So there as a good chance that Neom, an explicit return to the Central Station world, although in Saudi Arabia (currently in real life the dream city of Saudi autocrats) rather than Central Station, would not work for me either.

But to my pleasant surprise, Neom works really well, despite sharing a lot of similarities with Central Station: once again this is a story with no overarching conflict, no real antagonist, and no major plot momentum or tension that relies instead on characters' stories and interactions coming together to showcase character development in very very different peoples. In Neom, this is mainly an old Robot, a veteran of wars on Earth and in Space who is trying to resurrect a lost part of his past that he mourns tragically for, a middle aged woman working multiple jobs in a class-stratified city of Neom, and a boy whose family was lost trying to scavenge in the deadly remains of a terror artist who is trying to escape the world which holds only tragedy for him and to find a way into space. The characters here are really well done, the vignettes are strong, and the stories of people trying to survive, to love, to find their ways past their pasts and into new futures come together really nicely - and the story is highly entertaining at times too in how it's told. All in all, I really liked Neom, despite it not really fitting into my normal reading.

Note: I read half of this in audiobook and the reader is very very good. Recommended as a book in that format, and it's only 5.5 hours at normal speed there to boot.

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Wednesday, December 21, 2022

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: The World We Make by NK Jemisin

 



The World We Make is the conclusion to NK Jemisin's Great Cities Duology*, which began two years ago with her "The City We Became" (itself an expansion of her short story, The City Born Great). Jemisin is one of my favorite writers, with more perfect score books from me (The Stone Sky, The Broken Kingdoms, and The Kingdom of Gods) than any other writer. Add in the fact that The City We Became and this series eschewed the normal secondary worlds Jemisin has thrived in for a magic filled and Lovecraftian-assaulted version of New York City, and well - this New York native could not be more primed to enjoy this series. And The City We Became was very good as it showcased the personifications of the various boroughs of New York City fighting against a Lovecraftian other - a "Woman in White" - who is trying to get them to conform and standardize (from the perspective of a White person of course) before their originality can emerge as one power, even if it didn't quite hit the marks of Jemisin's earlier works for me.

*This was originally marketed as a trilogy but was condensed for reasons I might discuss later into a duology*

The World We Make continues the story of the boroughs, now aided by the general avatar of the City (named Neek), as it faces new threats - such as a mayor who preaches the return to a time that never was when the city was "Great" or foreign forces who want to change the conception of the City to what they see in their own fears - as well as new plots by the Lovecraftian Woman in White. Once again the story is hardly subtle, but it works real well, even as it weaves in more concepts, more things ripped straight from our own lives, and the reactions of other personified Cities around the globe who should band together with New York but often refuse to admit the danger. Jemisin again ends this on a hopeful note, one that is very satisfying, even as she portrays a ton of evils that you'll recognize in our own world, and makes clear how difficult fighting this enemy can be (although perhaps the conclusion and things are a bit too rushed for this to be as good as it might otherwise be).

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Tuesday, December 20, 2022

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Exin Ex Machina by G.S. Jennsen

 



Exin Ex Machina is the first in a self-published Sci-Fi trilogy (but one of many in a similar setting) written by author G.S. Jennsen. It's a novel that was submitted for consideration to my Judging Team for the Self-Published Science Fiction Competition (SPSFC), and two of my co-Judges liked it enough to make it a Quarterfinalist. As such, it was up to me and the team's other remaining Judge to pick this up and evaluate it to see if it would go forward, and I was excited to see what had appealed to my co-judges in this book which takes far future science fiction and cyberpunk as the backbone of its setting.

And I liked Exin Ex Machina a good bit, and definitely will consider it highly for the semifinals. The novel reads really well as it tells the story in a far future society, where the population consists of beings called Asterions who can update their own programming to try to make themselves better in ways they so choose, and who can back up their minds for reuploading into new bodies if things happen to them. Here we have an Amnesiac Heroine in Nika, a woman whose memories/psyche was seemingly wiped and then her body left in an alley, who finds herself leading a rebellion against a government led by Guides that seems to be tolerating an ever growing number of disappearances and who enforce justice in harsh obtuse ways through their underlings, the Advisors. Nika's story, and the story of those around her is told really well, and while the story rarely touches on themes deeply as it might, it is always engrossing and entertaining in at least a popcorny way, which makes this a very satisfying first novel in a trilogy that I'll definitely consider continuing.

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Monday, December 12, 2022

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: The Fortunes of Jaded Women by Carolyn Huynh

 


The Fortunes of Jaded Women is a story dealing with a family/generations of Vietnamese and Vietnamese-American women who were cursed generations ago to never find love or happiness and to only give birth to daughters, not sons. It's a book that apparently has gotten a bit of mainstream press (the book is listed as a "Good Morning America Book Pick") and is genre in the same sense as Magical Realism (although as a non-LatAm book, it doesn't fit that classification), with the magic being largely in the background and things really proceed much as they would in our own non-magical world. The book thus wanders from character to character, showing their lives as they struggle to try and find meaning and happiness in family and relationships, to finally break the curse once and for all.

And well, I can see why this book was recommended, because the writing and characters - although somewhat shallow due to how little time the book has to spend on the lot of them - are really done well, with the book often being highly amusing and enjoyable in how things play out with its squabbling Vietnamese family of multiple generations. There isn't really much depth here - there's little great revelations, and characters largely figure things out, or don't, on their own, and the coincidences that lead to conflict when characters come together and discover them are very unlikely...but those moments when these coincidences are discovered lead to some of the funniest and most enjoyable parts of the book, even if this is not a comedy (although it's not really a drama either). It's a book that works as a story about a family dealing with generational traumas just well enough to succeed, with a lightish touch that will make it appeal to many, even if it isn't really saying all that much when it comes down to it.

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Thursday, December 8, 2022

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Station Eternity by Mur Lafferty

 




Full Disclosure:  This book was read as an e-ARC (Advance Reader Copy) obtained via Netgalley from the publisher in advance of the book's release on October 4, 2022 in exchange for a potential review.  I give my word that this did not affect my review in any way - if I felt conflicted in any way, I would simply have declined to review the book.


Station Eternity is the latest novel by Hugo Winner (for her podcast) and nominee (for Best Novel) Mur Lafferty, whose Six Wakes was a really tremendous cyberpunk-y/space opera/locked generation ship murder mystery, and earned her the aforementioned nomination for Best Novel. Lafferty's works sometimes touch serious themes, but often also are light and fun - like her Shambling Guide series which detailed a human working for a travel guide for monsters in New York and New Orleans. Her writing is very enjoyable and she often has protagonists who are very easy to root for, even in Six Wakes which again was dealing with a lot more serious stuff amidst its incredibly creative murder mystery setup. So I was super excited to see this book show up on NetGalley, which was basically her first new novel since Six Wakes, even more so after one of my friends loved it.

Unfortunately, I'm a bit more ambivalent about Station Eternity, due to really the book trying to do in my mind too much at the same time. As the series title (the Midsolar Murders) suggests, the novel is in some ways a SciFi take on the British Murder Mystery genre (or the Murder She Wrote version we had in the US for sometime), but the twist is that the protagonist is haunted by the fact that she is somehow always right around a murder that only she can solve, and has come to the conclusion that she is somehow causing the murders to happen, causing her to run away into space to stop it from continuing. This is a very clever idea (a twist on the Jessica Fletcher is the real murderer theory) but Lafferty combines it with an alien space station where every alien is bizarre and works in symbiosis with another alien species, with a human government conspiracy plotline, and a potential conflict between humanity and aliens to go along with some inter-alien conflict over freedom and lifestyle choices (kinda). And it's a lot all at once, and while the book starts on a really strong note up through its first third, the second third features a mass introduction of characters through flashbacks that really lost the momentum and made it harder for me to care, and I didn't feel the conclusion really worked to make all that sudden setup payoff in the end.

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Wednesday, December 7, 2022

Fantasy Novella Review: The Jade Setter of Janloon by Fonda Lee

 
Full Disclosure:  This book was read as an e-ARC (Advance Reader Copy) obtained via Netgalley from the publisher in advance of the book's release on November 30, 2022 in exchange for a potential review.  I give my word that this did not affect my review in any way - if I felt conflicted in any way, I would simply have declined to review the book.

The Jade Setter of Janloon by Fonda Lee:

The Jade Setter of Janloon is a prequel novella to Fonda Lee's Green Bone Saga (Jade City, Jade War, and Jade Legacy), her fantasy trilogy that was self-described essentially as a mash-up of Hong Kong, Kung Fu and Wuxia with the Mafia Genre/The Godfather. It was a trilogy I had a lot of mixed feelings about, with me liking book 1, really disliking book 2, and then loving how Lee concluded the trilogy, as she dealt with not only gangster and kung fu tropes, but also ideas of legacies of old families moving into a more modernized and more globalized world. The trilogy also dealt with issues of empire, colonization, and racial discrimination (among indigenous peoples as well), even as it centered around a powerful mafia-esque (or Triad-esque) family who was trying to stay in power as one of the two great families in the old status quo after the island achieved its independence. It turned out really good in the end, even if I didn't always love every plot turn. So I was really interested in seeing this prequel when I heard it announced.

And the Jade Settlor of Janloon may not be a must read, but it's a very enjoyable prequel that will be a winner for anyone who enjoyed the Green Bone Saga and wanted more (although if you aren't familiar with this series, I would probably suggest starting elsewhere). The story follows Pulo, an apprentice Jade setter of a neutral Green Bone clan who works for one of the most trusted setters of Jade, the source of magical kung fu powers and prestige, on the island and wants to break out possibly on his own and to expand...only to get wrapped up in a mystery when a major client's sword gets stolen and the store's indigneous Abukei worker Malla gets blamed for the threat. It's a story in which parts of the main cast of the series do get cameos, but is really about our neutral heroes attempt to set things right, his discovery of how unjust this world really is to those without power, especially the indigenous Abukei community, and what he actually wants out of life for himself. It's very enjoyable if unessential.

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Monday, December 5, 2022

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Backpacking Through Bedlam by Seanan McGuire

 



Full Disclosure:  This book was read as an e-ARC (Advance Reader Copy) obtained via Netgalley from the publisher in advance of the book's release on March 7, 2023 in exchange for a potential review.  I give my word that this did not affect my review in any way - if I felt conflicted in any way, I would simply have declined to review the book.

Backpacking Through Bedlam is the 12th main-series novel in Seanan McGuire's InCryptid series, her urban fantasy series following a family, the Price/Healy family who tries to protect cryptids - sentient and non-sentient species whose existence isn't believe by science and who are hunted by human-centric killers.  This is also the second novel to feature as its protagonist Alice Price-Healy, grandmother of some of the first few protagonists, after last year's Spelunking Through Hell.*  I'm a huge fan of this series, and am a big fan of Alice as a character from earlier short stories and features, so I basically read this book in one day the moment I got it through NetGalley, despite having older stuff on my TBR that I needed to read first.

*I'd noted in my review of that book that Alice's present-day story appeared to be a one-book arc - this was apparently incorrect, so here we are with book 2.*

And well Backpacking Through Bedlam is still enjoyable InCryptid, as it combines the fight against the Cryptid-hunting Covenant of St. George with Alice's difficulty reuniting with Thomas and figuring out how to act after 50 years apart.  The character beats between Alice, Thomas, and Sally are very good, and the bonus story at the end does the same with James Price as it deals with the impact of last book's epilogue.  Still, this doesn't quite reach the heights of the series as it trods some well-traveled ground in its plotting, as the book again features Alice joining Verity in New York City to hunt the Covenant, and while I enjoy the return of some of Verity's supporting cast, this series is always best when we meet new Cryptids and their communities, which isn't really the case here.  But that familiar setting works to ground the character development, which is topnotch, and Alice is delightfully violent and fun, and it all mainly works.  

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Thursday, December 1, 2022

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: The Book Eaters by Sunyi Dean

 



The Book Eaters is the debut novel from author Sunyi Dean, which takes place in Northern Britain (Dean is currently based in the UK, although she was born in Texas and grew up in Hong Kong per her bio).  The story features a novel take on vampire-like beings, families of Book Eaters who feed literally on books, learning from the content that they eat, but who are unable physiologically to write/type language on their own, even as they're fully functional in all other ways.  There are also a variant for of this race, the Mind Eaters, who can write but must consume the minds of other beings in order to survive, taking their personalities and memories into themselves...unless they subsist instead off a chemically created drug.  Like Vampires in other stories, the Book Eaters live in families that keep to themselves with their own practical rules, rules that are designed to ensure the continued health of the families and the further propagation of their species, something made more difficult by their species' low fertility and low rate of having females.  Dean uses this setup to create a story around a Book Eater mother and her Mind Eater son who are on the run, jumping back between the mother's past and her flight in the present, as she finds herself constantly trapped by Book Eater gender rules and discipline.  


The result is a story that's generally really well done, and is incredibly compelling as it slowly reveals itself in both timelines, featuring LGBTQ characters, themes of love and motherhood and family, and a really enjoyable interesting setup about what really makes someone a monster.  The story does have some issues with its ending, with the ending resolving everything really easily and abruptly after a long tense setup, but it works thanks to the story's really great lead character in Devon, who you will root for incredibly, and the story also hits some horror beats along the way as well, including in that ending, which stun in their own way.  It's a story that's well worth your time, and one that makes me excited to see more from Dean in the future, as she's created some really excellent characters and world here.


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