Tuesday, January 31, 2023

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Heart of the Sun Warrior by Sue Lynn Tan

 
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/heart-of-the-sun-warrior-sue-lynn-tan/1141000039




Heart of the Sun Warrior is the follow up to January's young adult fantasy novel, Daughter of the Moon Goddess by Sue Lynn Tan.  That first novel featured a world inspired by Chinese mythology, with its protagonist being Xingyin, the daughter of Chang'e the Moon Goddess and Hou Yi the Archer.  I loved that novel, as Xingyin's coming of age-sorta journey to find a way to free her mother from a decree by the Celestial Emperor results in her discovering the rest of the Celestial Kingdom and its neighbors, becoming a fierce warrior, finding the interest in a Crown Prince, and being the only one between the Immortal World and dangerous foes and the greed of the Celestial Emperor himself.  The world and setting was terrific, the main character was tremendous, and the story worked really well.  So I was really excited to get a chance to read the sequel.  

Heart of the Sun Warrior is a mixed bag of a follow-up, not quite working as well as its predecessor at times...and yet its highs are REALLY high, especially its final few chapters, which work tremendously well and tugged incredibly hard on my heartstrings.  The story's revisiting of old parts of the setting doesn't quite work as well the second time around, and the major conflict between Xingyin and the new antagonist is kind of rote, even with the theme of the importance of love working well with everything else.  But the new parts of the setting we see work really well and Xingyin remains an excellent heroine through it all.  And while I largely don't love love triangles like this...the way this novel concludes it is excellently done.  The result is a novel that I wound up really liking even if it's a bit uneven, and I would definitely recommend both it and its predecessor to readers looking for good new YA.  

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Wednesday, January 25, 2023

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: White Horse by Erika T Wurth

 


White Horse is a horror novel by author Erika T. Wurth, an author of Apache, Chickasaw, and Cherokee descent. The story features a protagonist in Kari, an Urban Native* of similar descent as she begins to have visions of a monster the moment she touches a bracelet with Indigneous* symbols that belonged to her long disappeared mom and follows her as she finds herself forced to investigate (and have visions of) what happened to her mom and what happened in Kari's own tragic past. It's also a story dealing with how the men in Kari's life and the lives of Kari's friends refuse to let women like Kari and her family/friends have their own autonomy and Kari's struggle against that. It's a novel that wasn't on my radar until it was reviewed on the Tor.com blog (horror is something I dabble in but don't love), but intrigued me enough to give it a shot.

*The story uses the word "Indian" in the narrative, which I usually don't use in these reviews (as a White reviewer, unlike the author).*

And White Horse is very very good, even as it gets very dark due to its strong protagonist in Kari, a woman with a ton of baggage who is forced to deal with it all by the visions brought on by a bracelet she didn't even want. Its a story that blends supernatural with real life horrors of abuse, drug, and trauma passed on by it all from generation to generation and it works really well due to how strong the narrative is from the perspective of Kari: a woman whose mother disappeared and whose father is basically comatose and whose best friend overdosed and her next best friend and relative deals with a controlling/emotionally abusive husband who doesn't like Kari. I don't think that the story ever gets kind of scary so if you're looking to be terrified you're not quite in the right place, and it kind of resolves itself a bit too easily in the end, but this is a really well done tale that should very much interest other fantasy/horror fans, especially those looking for ones from a non-white male perspective.

TRIGGER WARNING: Drug Use/Overdosing, Suicidal Ideation/Suicide Attempts, Spousal Abuse/Child Abuse. Nothing gratuitous and well done as part of the narrative, but this book is dealing with serious stuff and it may be very difficult for some readers to read.  

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Tuesday, January 24, 2023

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Strike the Zither by Joan He

 



Strike the Zither is the third novel by Joan He, a writer of largely young adult novels who has really impressed me with her two prior Young Adult works, Descendant of the Crane and The Ones We're Meant to Find. This book is the first half of a young adult fantasy duology* which adapts the Chinese classic Romance of the Three Kingdoms (ROTTK). I have only passing familiarity with ROTTK, mainly from other adaptations, but I really loved He's other YA works because He managed to fill those works with really interesting deep characters, especially in her protagonists, and in how she subverts your expectations a great deal in the process and rarely takes the obvious route with the plot. So I was very excited for this book.

*He's first YA novel Descendant of the Crane might've also been meant as the first book in a series, but that was abandoned seemingly for financial reasons as best as I can tell. That said, this novel does appear to have a follow up scheduled for next year, so it's not in danger of suffering a similar fate.*

And Strike the Zither isn't quite as interesting as the other two prior He works, due perhaps to how the story is bootstrapped to the setup of the original work, but it's still a very solid first half of a duology that makes me want to read the conclusion. The story begins as a genderflipped version of ROTTK, but as you should expect from this review and from He's other works, takes a turn after the first act to branch off from the original and to subvert expectations. Its main protagonist, a strategist teenage girl named Zephyr, is really well done as she tries to support her chosen righteous leader with strategies that isolate her and suggest she's changed sides...or worse, and struggles with her allegiances (and other things) in the process. And the story deals well with questions of fate and destiny that come up along the way, as the characters struggle with prophecies and declarations in the process. It isn't quite as unique or special as He's other works just yet, but there's still time in the second half for this story to hit that mark....

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Monday, January 23, 2023

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Things They Buried by Amanda K. King and Michael R. Swanson

 


Things They Buried is a 2019 self-published "science fantasy"* novel written by dual authors Amanda K. King and Michael R. Swanson.  Though self-published and part of the Self Published Science Fiction Competition ((SPSFC2 - my reviews of these books can be found here)) novel seems online to have garnered some reviews from reputed sources like Kirkus and has far more copies in libraries I access - including an audiobook - than many of the other books I've read in this competition.  As such, one might suspect this is a bit of a ringer, and that it might have a higher quality than some of the other works I've judged - a feeling that was intensified when it made the quarterfinals off the recommendations of one of my colleagues.  

*The Novel is described as "Science Fantasy" on its publishing pages and is entered in the SPSFC, yet there is some dispute among my team whether this really fits the Science Fiction part of "Science Fantasy" or whether this is just better defined as Dark Fantasy or Horror Fantasy.  If you're looking for strictly SciFi, this novel probably isn't going to do it for you.*

Unfortunately, despite this pedigree, Things They Buried really didn't work for me, to the point where I very much disliked the book.  The book has elements of dark fantasy and horror, with a bunch of jump scares in the second act, and follows two major protagonists and two side protagonists...except I really didn't like the two major protagonists thanks to them acting like assholes for large segments of the book (they do get a little better near the end).  Things aren't helped by the story's attempt at dealing with protagonists struggling with trauma and abuse feeling more like trauma porn than an actual attempt at showing the struggles of trauma and recovery therefrom, or by a lot of really minor elements that bugged me, chief of which was a fantasy world obsessed with various species having specific mental traits with little flexibility - a rather bad trope.  All in all, this one is not one I can recommend to others.  

TRIGGER WARNING:  Rape as backstory, Physical Abuse of children, sometimes shown on page in flashbacks, Child Slavery, Severe Post Trauma struggles.  As you might extrapolate from the above, I did not think this book handled these issues well.  

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Thursday, January 19, 2023

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: The Genesis of Misery by Neon Yang

 



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 September 27, 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 Genesis of Misery is the first full length novel from author Neon Yang, who previously wrote the Tensorate Novellas - which began with the acclaimed The Black Tides of Heaven. Those novellas were fantastic stories dealing with queer East-Asian (silkpunk) inspired settings and fascinating and often morally questionable characters and I was really excited to get an early copy of The Genesis of Misery to read as a result.

And The Genesis of Misery is a fascinating science fantasy space opera-y novel, although it kind of feels a little incomplete as the first novel in a trilogy. The story follows the origins of Misery Nomaki (She/They), who believes herself to be infected with a deadly void disease causing delusions but has made others believe they are a prophecized messiah, one who will break the stalemate in a fight betweeen faithful believers and heretics. Along the way we have love, sex, mecha fights, magic-like use of "holy" materials, giant space battles and more as Misery begins to believe in her own divinity...before things obviously go very wrong. The story works thanks to how entertaining its main character is, the irreverent, cynical, and fly-by-the-seat-of-their pants character of Misery. It's also really interesting as it deals with ideas about truths, beliefs, and faith, and how even one who doesn't believe can blind themselves by tricking themselves into it. However, the book ends its run just as revelations were finally being made about what was really happening, which left me not quite fully satisfied, although I desperately want for more.

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Tuesday, January 17, 2023

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: The Sphere: A Journey in Time by Michelle McBeth

 

The Sphere is a self-published time travel based science fiction novel written by Michelle McBeth. The novel is a short novel and was part of my group of judges for this year's Self Published Science Fiction Competition (SPSFC2 - my reviews of these books can be found here) - and in fact made our list of quarterfinalists. As such I was intrigued by this novel, especially as the two other judges who had read it previously both found its setup intriguing although they disagreed as to whether the book's ending and payoff managed to satisfy.


I find my own verdict on the Sphere to be similarly mixed. The book's time travel setup does work well and its prose and lead character Addy - a woman who works for a mysterious organization that sends people back in time to discover lost historical truths like who was the inspiration for one of Shakespeare's sonnets - really carries the book well and makes this short book go by quite quickly. And the book's plot does work somewhat from that character's perspective, as she tries to figure out how to act and what to do when things go wrong with a fellow time traveler's mission and things begin to be revealed about the organization for whom she works. At the same time, the book tries to throw in teases to other mysteries which are not paid off here (and which are then setup for a sequel) which prevents this from being fully satisfying and there isn't quite enough meat on the bone of this story to really impress or make this book stand out too much.

Some more specifics after the jump:

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Monday, January 16, 2023

SciFi Mini Book Review: The View from Infinity Beach by R.P.L. Johnson

 



The View from Infinity Beach is a SciFi Young Adult novel that was self-published by author R.P.L. Johnson in 2021.  It was also a part of my group of books for the Self-Published Science Fiction Competition (SPSFC2 - my reviews of these books can be found here) and was a favorite of one of my co-Judges.  So after it made the Quarterfinals, I was excited to give it a try.  

Unfortunately, The View from Infinity Beach didn't quite live up to my expectations.  It's a fine science fiction YA novel of the kind that I think was pretty common back in the 90s - featuring a bunch of teens on a space station find themselves leading a rebellion against an occupying military greedy force from Earth.  However, while the physics of the setting (a space station rotating to create gravity) are used pretty well, the characters other than the lead character are paper thin, and there just isn't anything special here....it's just very much a generic YA SciFi book full of teens leading a fight against adults in space, and there's a lot better out there.  


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