Monday, October 30, 2017

SciFi/Fantasy Novella Review: The Murders of Molly Southbourne by Tade Thompson



The Murders of Molly Southbourne by Tade Thompson

The Murders of Molly Southbourne has a pretty intriguing premise:  Since she was young, Molly Southbourne has been told she must desperately avoid bleeding.  If she bleeds, her parents inform her she must cleanse the blood with bleach and then burn it.  For if she doesn't, a clone of Molly, a "molly" (all lowercase) will be born from her blood and these mollys all tend to eventually try to kill Molly, or so it would seem.  If a molly is born, Molly has to kill her duplicate before it does something dangerous.

The story follows Molly from early childhood to young adulthood as she attempts to figure out who and what she is and what she can really be as a person with her "condition."  What kind of person can one be when one can't even bleed, and when one has killed hundreds of....herself before she's even 18? 

In essence, the story is kind of an example of psychological horror/weird SciFi that also typified to a lesser extent in Thompson's Rosewater (one of my favorite books from last year) or Jeff Vandermeer's work.  The story is certainly interesting and different, but I don't know, I never really found myself that interested in Molly as a character, and as this is HER story, it didn't overall work for me as there's really nothing else here.  The framing device used to start and end the story is pretty predictable and doesn't really add anything.  Again, it's not a bad story, and the premise is interesting....but it relies entirely on being interested in Molly as a character, and there just wasn't enough substance in her for me. 
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Sunday, October 29, 2017

What does the fate of Griffin Reinhart teach us? An understanding that projection requires us to think in terms of Probability


Griffin Reinhart was waived today by the Vegas Golden Knights.  This signals probably the end of Griffin's NHL chances - maybe not for good (as Vegas should cool down real fast as their underlying numbers are bad and they're bound to regress at some point, leading them to possibly recall Griff in desperation), but it is at the very least near the end of the line for Griffin Reinhart.  Reinhart was of course drafted by the Isles with the number four pick.  He then was traded to the Oilers for the picks that eventually became Matt Barzal and Mitchell Stephens.  Reinhart then bounced between the Oilers and their farm club for a while before becoming a member of Vegas in the expansion draft this year.


I want to use Reinhart's seeming end as an opportunity to look back quickly at a debate regarding him and how we should talk about prospects in general:

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Saturday, October 28, 2017

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: In Other Lands by Sarah Rees Brennan



  In Other Lands is one of the best books I've read this year.  It's a Young Adult/Portal Fantasy/Coming of Age/Romance novel and it is totally and utterly amazing.  If you read my reviews, you know I place a strong emphasis on books having good, strong or interesting characters.  This goes double for books where romance or even just relationships are major plot elements - if a book can't make you care about what happens to the characters, you're certainly not going to care about a romance plot.  But when you do have strong characters who a reader can actually grow to care about, romance and relationship plots can be incredibly powerful.

  In Other Lands has three amazing main characters, who I found it impossible not to fall in love with.  It's a book with humans/elves/mermaids/trolls etc., but the central part of this book is the relationships and romances of these characters.  And with romance being a central part of this book, it became the type of book that made me incredibly conflicted in a good way - on one hand, I found it hard to keep reading because I didn't want to see anything bad happen to our characters' hearts, but on the other hand I couldn't stop reading because I wanted to find out what would happen next to them and I hoped so much for the best of them.

More after the jump and I promise I'll try to be more coherent about exactly why this book grabbed me so well.


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Friday, October 27, 2017

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Pride's Spell (Sin Du Jour #3) by Matt Wallace

Pride's Spell is the third short novel/novella (I'm treating these like Novels, but they're on the borderline) in Matt Wallace's Sin Du Jour series.  Sin Du Jour is a series following a catering company - the titular Sin Du Jour - that caters on behalf of a secret governmental agency for supernatural beings that live amongst us.  In Book 1 (Envy of Angels), they were tasked with serving an Angel for a banquet of demons; In Book 2 (Lustlocked), they were tasked with serving a wedding between a Goblin Prince and his human bride.  In Pride's Spell, their job is to serve something more horrifying:  a Hollywood Movie Release Party.

But well, it wouldn't be this series if things go according to plan, and as usual this is a book of crazy hijinks and utter absurdities, resulting in some pretty fun moments.  That said, the ending of this book really fell flat - the middle part of this book is an absolute delight, but the ending and resolution of the main plot didn't really work either plotwise or fun-wise.

One note before the jump: You cannot start the series with this book.  A commenter on my review of Lustlocked (Book 2) suggested that jumping in with book 2 didn't work for him, but that is definitely true of this book, which references heavily the events of the prior events int he series, and will fall even further flat if you don't have that backstory.  Start the series with Envy of Angels, don't jump in here.

More detailed review after the jump:

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Wednesday, October 25, 2017

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Victory of Eagles (Temeraire #5) by Naomi Novik



As I've stated before, I have a hard time explaining my likes and dislikes of the Temeraire series.  No other series I've been this committed to has had me spend large segments of multiple books glossing over parts to get through it, yet had me invested in the plots and characters overall enough that I always felt I wanted to read the next book.  It's a strange combination - I loved the first book and have been ambivalent enough about books 2-4 to wonder if I should stop reading forward, but still I've felt myself saying "Just one more book" to see if I should give the series another chance.

Victory of Eagles seems to justify my faith in the series - it's EASILY the best book in the series since the first book (and maybe the best book in the series).  A large part of that is that it spends a lot of time dealing with dragon-dragon communications, with us dealing with a larger variety of dragon characters since the very first book - Novik's writing of the personalities and behaviors of dragons in this series is IMO the best part of the series, and this book easily has the most such interactions since His Majesty's Dragon.  Still, the actual plot of this book is more tight than in the last three books, dealing with a single major threat (the invasion of England) and the shifts in character/plotlines work extremely well.

More after the jump:


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Tuesday, October 24, 2017

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Noumenon by Marina J. Lostetter


Noumenon is a story built around a classic SciFi trope - that of a Generation Ship.  For those unfamiliar with the trope, a Generation Ship is a spaceship that solves the problem of the incredibly far distances between objects in space by being entirely self sustaining, such that a colony of individuals crewing said ship could survive indefinitely, with the original crew's distant descendants being the ones to finally reach their destination.  Noumenon follows a fleet of such ships - although in this case, the book is staffed by clones, not by naturally-born descendants - over a large number of generations as they journey to a mysterious star and back.

Fair warning for those reading this review- I have not had a great experiences reading Generation Ship and similar concepts in books, and Noumenon also didn't quite work for me, for reasons I'll point out after the Jump.  Unlike some of those other books (Aurora, Seveneves (sort-of)), I didn't think Noumenon was bad - it definitely had some moments, and the first half was certainly interesting.  But the whole concept of following generations on a ship results in the ideas in the plot becoming even more important than usual, as plot weaknesses can't be covered up by great characters - and there are points where the plot just didn't work for me on this one.

Noumenon is trying in large part to examine how a society would handle the conditions on this voyage, and the psychologies of the people and their descendants under such stress.  But as I've said, and I'll explain further below, it becomes a bit hit or miss, especially near the end.

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Saturday, October 21, 2017

SciFi/Fantasy Novella Reviews: The Tensorate Novellas: The Black Tides of Heaven and The Red Threads of Fortune by JY Yang

The Tensorate Series is a new series of Novellas by JY Yang featuring a silkpunk (think Asian inspired steampunk) fantasy world.  The first two novellas, "The Black Tides of Heaven" and "The Red Threads of Fortune," feature a pair of twins, who were given away by their Tyrant mother to the monastic order, only to take them back when one of the twins shows the gift of prophecy.  The two novellas are each meant to serve as stand-alones, with each Novella following a different twin:  The Black Tides follows Akeha as she struggles to find his place as the seemingly spare twin and The Red Threads follows Mokoya, the prophet, as she struggles to find a reason for living. 

Again, these are meant to be stand alone novellas, but the two kind of complement each other and The Red Threads takes place after The Black Tides; as such, while Red Threads isn't dependent upon you reading Black Tides, it will spoil some plot points of the other novella if you read it first and I do think Red Threads works better after having read Black Tides first.  In Sum however, both novellas are well worth reading - individual thoughts on each after the jump - though I do think Red Threads is the significantly better of the two.

Individual Novella reviews after the Jump:

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Friday, October 20, 2017

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Discount Armageddon (InCryptid) by Seanan McGuire


Discount Armageddon is the first novel in Seanan McGuire's second Urban Fantasy series, InCryptid.  I have a mixed track record with McGuire's work - I greatly enjoy (if not love) her October Daye Urban Fantasy series, but have not been a fan of her two Wayward Children novellas.  That said, I've actually read some of the InCryptid series before - earlier this month I read through most of the prequel short stories that are on McGuire's website, and I enjoyed them a lot.  So I had good expectations going in.

For the most part, those expectations were met.  The InCryptid universe is similar to the October Daye universe in that it very much has an "all myths are true" attitude, except in this case it's with mythological creatures, not faeries and magic.  It also features some fun unique characters and a decent first person narrator.  That said, the book isn't quite as solid as the typical October Daye novel, but well, it's the first in the series, so that's kind of unsurprising.

More after the jump:

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Wednesday, October 18, 2017

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Autonomous by Annalee Newitz


Autonomous is the debut novel from io9 co-founder Annalee Newitz, coming just a year after fellow co-founder Charlie Jane Anders published her SFF debut novel, which won the Nebula Award last year.  So there were big expectations for this book from the start, which is truly unfair because this is a very different book than Anders' All the Birds in the Sky.  Unlike that book, which was a light and charming story of two friends, Autonomous is a serious thriller dealing with issues of patent abuse/piracy and well, the autonomy of both human beings and robots.

It should be noted, as I'll go into further detail below, that despite using a corrupt future involving the evils of Big Pharma and Patents as a basis for the plot, the book really isn't that interested in dealing seriously with questions about big pharma and patents and where things should go - the book has an obvious answer to this question from the start, and it shows no interest in grappling further.  What this book IS really interested in however, is questions about Autonomy, and what it means for individuals (whether biological or not) to have it.  Hence the title, really.

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Saturday, October 14, 2017

SciFi/Fantasy Novel Review: Brothers in Arms (Vorkosigan Saga) by Lois McMaster Bujold


Brothers in Arms is the 7th (chronologically, not counting the distant prequel Falling Free) book in Lois McMaster Bujold's Vorkosigan Saga, and the fourth book to feature Miles Vorkosigan as its central character.  It should be noted this is one of the early published Vorkosigan Novels (#5) and is thus from a period before my two favorite in the series so far (Barrayar & The Vor Game).  That said, while it doesn't live up to those two novels, the book is yet again another fun story with Bujold's great internal and external dialogue, so it's definitely a worthwhile read.

A note: while this is not a direct sequel to one of the prior books in the series (although it is kind of a sequel to the novella "Borders of Infinity"), this is not a book you will probably enjoy as a starting point in the series - you will want to have read The Warrior's Apprentice and The Vor Game prior to this book to get full enjoyment (I'd also recommend reading Ethan of Athos beforehand, as that really reintroduces Elli Quinn.)

And as with the rest of this series (with the exception of Gentleman Jole), I read this book as an audiobook from the library.  The audiobook reader for the whole series remains excellent

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Friday, October 13, 2017

SciFi/Fantasy Novella Review: The Strange Bird by Jeff Vandermeer


The Strange Bird by Jeff Vandermeer

 The Strange Bird is a novella from Jeff Vandermeer, set in the same universe as his most recent Weird (as in the genre) Science Fiction Novel, Borne.  The story takes place largely at the same time as Borne, beginning probably prior to Borne and ending a little afterwards, so in theory you could read this without having read Borne, but I would not advise it - you'll probably be a bit lost (and Borne is pretty good, so go read that). 

The Strange Bird follows the eponymous Bird, really a created being (made of bird, other animal, and human parts) of a laboratory similar to that of the Company's seen in Borne.   The Bird doesn't know its purpose but is haunted both by strange dreams of a woman from the lab and an internal compass pressing her to go to a certain place for some strange unknown reason.  Unfortunately, the Bird will run into complications on her journey - namely, humans, who do not have her best intentions at heart. 

The story naturally winds up with the Bird spending a good amount of time in the territory we saw in Borne, with four of that book's main characters showing up (everyone except for Borne himself).  As usual, Vandermeer writes excellent descriptions and excels at describing the weird being that the Bird truly is.  However, the Bird is a very inactive protagonist - most of the events in the middle of the book are of things happening to HER, not of her doing things in and of herself, and there's a decent segment where she's literally just being there during the plot of Borne.  Vandermeer's writing is excellent enough to avoid this dragging, but it does mean that if you have no investment in this world (not having read Borne, mainly), you might not really enjoy this one. 

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Thursday, October 12, 2017

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: The Epic Crush of Genie Lo by F.C. Yee


The Epic Crush of Genie Lo is a Young Adult Urban Fantasy book, where the "Fantasy" elements come from classic Chinese folk stories (Journey to the West being the source for most, if not all of it, but I'm not knowledgeable enough about the background material to know if bits and parts are pulled from elsewhere).  It also features an Asian-American high school girl as its protagonist, trying to live high school life in a competitive largely Asian High School.

Oh and it's also very very fun.  I don't dip into books that are blatantly young adult very often (you'll notice a lot of the time I describe books as "young adult" on this blog or on twitter, I often am not sure about whether the tag should apply), but this one is excellent.  Sometimes you just want books that are just about a heroine trying to balance high school life with duties of having discovered special powers, and not anything totally serious or dark.  If so, this is definitely a good place to look..

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Tuesday, October 10, 2017

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Provenance by Ann Leckie


Provenance is the newest book by Ann Leckie, author of the Imperial Radch (Ancillary Justice, Ancillary Sword, and Ancillary Mercy) trilogy, which won the Hugo for best novel and was nominated two other times.  The book is stand alone, featuring none of the characters from that trilogy, but takes place in the same universe.

In this universe, the story takes place in a world where humanity has spread to varying worlds with various cultures.  Humanity has encountered various alien cultures, the most scary of which are the Presger, whose technology is leaps and bounds beyond humanity's.  However, the Presger have created a treaty between humanity and the various alien races, whereby each race agrees not to harm the other.  Violations of the treaty are scary to contemplate, because no one can stand up to Presger technology.

Despite sharing the space opera setup with the Radch trilogy, Provenance is a more intimate book, almost fitting more in the heist genre than space opera (except there's....no heist).  That said, Provenance also differs from the trilogy in that it lacks anywhere near as strong a central character, and as a result I found it rather hard to care about large parts of the plot.

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Sunday, October 8, 2017

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: The Clockwork Dynasty by Daniel H Wilson


Daniel H Wilson's The Clockwork Dynasty is a very entertaining novel.  It is not a SF/F work with a major focus on a message or issue (although, like EVERY book in existence, you can find a message in the book if you want), but is instead a pretty entertaining book focused upon a single idea:  What if our ancestors way way back built robots before forgetting how, and those robots have existed alongside humanity for millennia and are only now dying out from losing power?

Note: I read this as an audiobook, and the two audiobook readers are excellent.  So if you like to listen to the audiobook format, this is a solid choice.

More after the Jump

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Thursday, October 5, 2017

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: An Unkindness of Magicians by Kat Howard


An Unkindness of Magicians is Kat Howard's second novel, after last year's Roses and Rot.  I loved Roses and Rot (an Urban Fantasy Fae tale involving two sisters striving to reconnect with each other at a school for art) and was really excited for this novel as a result when it was announced.  That said, aside from both books falling within the large category of Urban Fantasy, the two books are very different.  That said, this book is still excellent, with a great world of magic and excellent characters who inhabit that world.

This is a book of magicians (think Wizards, despite them not using the name) engaging in magical (and political, yes) contests for the fate of the magical world.  It's also the story that involves lawyers working to keep the magical world in order, voluntary and involuntary sacrifices of human life and pain, a woman seeking to solve a magical murder, and a man of color trying to make a name for himself in the magical world while keeping his own good conscience.  And yet all of these very different things and people come together nicely to form a pretty excellent and recommended book.


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Monday, October 2, 2017

SciFi/Fantasy Novella Review: Binti: Home (Binti #2) by Nnedi Okorafor


Nnedi Okorafor's Binti was one of the standout pieces of short fiction two years ago and a pretty well deserving Nebula/Hugo Winner for Best Novella (even if its best Hugo win was influenced by backlash to the actions of the Rabid Puppies).  If you have a chance, and you haven't already, I still strongly recommend you read it - even the stuff I've liked least from Okorafor is certainly thought provoking, or at least different (I suppose this might be less true if you read a lot of African inspired SF/F, but I suspect that's not true of most of the readers of this blog).  But Binti was not only different, it was a terrific story.

Gonna admit I didn't reread Binti before starting Binti: Home, its sequel, and the second story in an anticipated trilogy (the finale comes out next year), so it took me a bit to re-remember what happened in the original.  That said, it didn't take too long to get caught up.  Binti:Home is nearly twice as long as the original story, and comes closer to being a short novel.  It also doesn't quite work as well as the original alas - the story is still solid, but a bit less memorable, and definitely feels like the 2nd story in a trilogy.


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Sunday, October 1, 2017

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Lustlocked (Sin Du Jour #2) by Matt Wallace




Lustlocked is the second book in the Sin Du Jour Novella/Short Novel series by Matt Wallace.  For those new to the series, Sin Du Jour follows a catering company employed by the government to cook food/cater events for the Supernatural.  The first book (Reviewed Here) featured new chefs Darren and Lena being hired by the company as temps just in time to see the crew be requested to cook an Angel for a party of Demons.  It was a pretty fun romp with a lot of humor and some fun if silly characters.

Lustlocked unsurprisingly follows in its predecessor's footsteps, featuring another adventure of the Sin Du Jour crew - this time tasked with catering the wedding of a Goblin Prince and his human fiance - partially through the eyes of newcomers Darren and Lena (although we spend less time seeing through their eyes this time, as we don't need their introductions).  Again, it's a pretty enjoyable fun romp, if short, and well worth your time if you want a lighthearted series that doesn't require too much investment.  You can in theory start the series with this book as it's a stand alone, but really, there's little point to starting here instead of with the first book as both books are equally solid and the first book will provide background for this one.

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