SciFi Novella Review: In the Shadow of the Ship by Aliette de Bodard

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 September 30, 2024 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.

In the Shadow of the Ship is the latest Xuya novella (a short one, it's almost novelette sized) by Aliette de Bodard. Like her other Xuya novellas, this is a stand alone tale in her distant future universe settled by Vietnamese and occasionally Chinese peoples, featuring humans living along mindships (human minds in ships), an Empire that may or may not be failing (here just surviving after a major war) and tales shaped by Vietnamese culture. It's a fascinating universe, and in this case, de Bodard tells a tale of a woman who escaped from the mindship that was her childhood hope before it ate her up (literally) and comes back upon the death of her grandmother and has to weigh the past, the future, her obligations, and more.

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: And The Mighty Will Fall by KB Wagers

 

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 19, 2024 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.

And the Mighty Will Fall is the fourth book in KB Wagers' NeoG series of novels, a series which follows a 25th interstellar coast guard-esque military force, the NeoG, as they attempt to protect human space. I really loved A Pale Light in the Black, the first book in this series, and even did a weekly reread series on this blog about it (see here) as Wagers' prose and gifts for Sci-Fi action, dialogue and characters often really works for me and the first book featured a really great found family setup in an optimistically much better human future (that occurred after a societal collapse mind you). Notably, each of the books in this series features kind of a different vibe, if not subgenre, and time passes enough between each book that while some of the main characters remain the same (Max, Jenks, Nika, Sapphi, and Tamago are in every book), the characters' jobs and locations change between books and other major characters in the main crew come and go between books.

And the Mighty Will Fall is no different and it uses its new setup to tell a story that Wagers themselves describes as a take on "Die Hard", as Max gets caught on a space station orbiting Mars when terrorists take over the station and hold everyone hostage for mysterious and deadly purposes and must wage a one woman war to try to gain back control while the rest of the NeoG works to find some way to get up there to help her. And as an action novel, the novel is really well done so if you're looking for a die-hard esque book, you'll find that here for sure, but this book does quite a bit more than that. Indeed, the book deals with the traumas of a long running and seemingly now ending war, as well as even the trauma of necessary violence, in effective ways, and as such is well worth your time, even if you haven't quite yet been reading the NeoG.

Note: Each NeoG book is stand alone, so you can read this novel first, but I would recommend reading book 1 in the series first anyway for context about the characters and setting. Books 2-3 are also worth your time, but you don't really need them for this book as much as I think you'll benefit from reading A Pale Light in the Black first.

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Time of the Cat by Tansy Raynor Roberts

 

Time of the Cat is another entry in this year's Self Published Science Fiction Competition (#SPSFC4), in which I am a Judge for the second time. The novel is a more humorous/comedic take on SciFi, featuring a version of time travel that is reliant upon talking cats in the 24th century and a bunch of time travelers who range from serious to utterly selfish...and nearly all of whom are obsessed with their favorite tv show. Add in an opposing group of time travelers who are obsessed with partying and messing up the timeline with anachronisms and endnotes/footnotes that try to pile on additional absurdities, and well you can see how this could be a fun lighthearted jaunt.

And Time of the Cat is exactly that, which makes it a very easy book to read and enjoy - whether that be in print or in audio. The story didn't make me laugh exactly, but it kept me entertained with its light humorous tone and most of the characters were pretty enjoyable, even if the character development of some of them was rather shallow. And the ending involves a resolution of a major plot twist basically occurring completely off page, which was kind of annoying, but really it didn't matter too much with the tone of it all. I wouldn't mind this book making it to the next round of the SPSFCs, even if I'm not sure it's much better than that.

NOTE: I read this half in print and half in audiobook. The audio reader is excellent and the book weaves its endnotes into the audiobook pretty excellently so you don't miss much: some end-notes are inserted directly into the narrative, others are put at the end of each chapter and given a few extra words to explain what the notes were referring to in the text. This works impressively well to keep the humorous asides of the notes intact.

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Oath of Fire by K. Arsenault Rivera

 

Oath of Fire is the latest novel from K Arsenault Rivera, who previously wrote the epic fantasy/sapphic romance trilogy that began with The Tiger's Daughter. The Tiger's Daughter is honestly one of my favorite books ever, with its F-F romance being just incredible and the writing of the story bringing joy/tears to my eyes. So yeah, I had high hopes for Oath of Fire, even if I basically knew nothing of the story's inspiration: the tale of Psyche and Eros.

And Oath of Fire is an excellent queer and sapphic romance that does some really interesting things. The story makes Psyche a social worker/therapist who is well meaning but struggles with knowing the right thing to do and with being brave in talking to people, and who finds bits of relief through MMORPG playing and occasional instagram posts. When all seems to go wrong for her professionally, Psyche is sent an invitation to the Fae-like (and Greek god filled) wine-dark courts, where she becomes involved with and oathsworn to the mysterious masked Eros, whom she is drawn tremendously too despite her danger. There are parts here of this story that are predictable (as you'd expect from the story's origins) but Arsenault Rivera still manages to weave a tremendous romance with modern fantasy elements as Psyche gets more and more involved in this dangerous (and often sexy) romance, where one wrong word or move could get her killed. More specifics after the jump:

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: What Swims on Uncharted World 550 by R.B. Lovitt

 

What Swims on Uncharted World 550 is a short novel that is part of this year's Self Published Science Fiction Competition (SPSFC4). The novel is essentially a murder mystery on an alien planet with the story told from the perspective of a new scientist who arrives at an existing scientific expedition just in time to be there when members of the expedition start mysteriously dying off.

It's a book that's easy to read, with a twist near the end (I mean it is a mystery of course) that is decently set up, and yet I still wound up thinking just "huh" at the end of it. Basically it seems to be using the story for an idea and payoff that the story doesn't really earn, which makes it read well but not actually manage to be satisfying or super successful. Some better explanations, with some spoilers in ROT13, after the jump:

Fantasy Novella Review: Demon Daughter by Lois McMaster Bujold

 

Demon Daughter is the twelfth story in Lois McMaster Bujold's fantasy "Penric & Desdemona" series. As I've said before, I've enjoyed the series - which focuses upon the unexpected combination of the inquisitive Penric & the ten-lived demon Desdemona in Bujold's World of the Five Gods - but have found the later installments hit or miss. Pen & Des's interactions through their mind and verbal talk are always fun/interesting, but at this point Bujold seems to alternate between stories that are interesting through new character developments and ones that are just more of the same and don't offer anything new.

Demon Daughter does offer some new character developments, although it does feel a little bit like a not fully fleshed out idea. The story focuses upon Pen & Des, along with Nikys, as they encounter a 7 year old girl - around the age of their own daughter - who was thrown overboard from a ship when she contracted a demon. Even more notably, the demon inside her is essentially a child itself, having existed only within a rat before her for the barest of moments, and as such is so pure that Des takes a maternal instinct towards her...which leads to internal conflict with Pen. As a story it's a bit heartwarming at times and the character relationships all work...but it also feels like a story on rails to a predestined end from early on, which takes some of the intrigue off of it.

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Moon of the Turning Leaves by Waubgeshig Rice

 

Moon of the Turning Leaves is the stand alone sequel to Moon of the Crusted Snow, an earlier short novel by Waubgeshig Rice. That novel featured a post-apocalypse world where all electricity and communications devices went out and focused upon an Anishinaabe community who had to come together to survive in a dangerous winter, utilizing their old almost forgotten customs and facing hostilities from white interlopers who have their own more greedy ideas about how to survive. It was a really effective short novel.

Moon of the Turning Leaves is stand alone and takes place years later, when the community has been settled for a generation but is now suddenly realizing that the natural food supplies of fish and game in the area are running low. And so we have the story of a scouting party led by prior book protagonist Evan and his teenage daughter Nangohns, who is the village's best hunter and has known almost nothing but the Anishinaabe way of life that their village has promoted, as they search to see what else is out there and if their people's old homeland might still be suitable for them to relocate. None of the story that results will be that surprising to readers or feels that original and yet it is very well told and infused with the Anishanabe culture of the author and the characters, so it's well worth reading.