SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Wicked Problems by Max Gladstone

 

Wicked Problems is the second book in Max Gladstone's Craft Wars trilogy, a trilogy meant to conclude Gladstone's Craft Sequence (so really this is book 8). The first book in the trilogy - Dead Country - was a really quiet book for the series, featuring a Seven Samurai/Magnificient Seven-esque setup with a Western-esque town facing off against monstrous Craft-warped invaders and only suriving thanks to the help of series heroine Tara Abernathy, Craftswoman, and her newfound apprentice Dawn....before things go awry between them (spoilers after the jump). It was a very emotion and character driven book, limited to this single setting.

Wicked Problems is still character driven at its best, but the book has expanded to focus on the entire Craft Sequence world and is basically a Superhero/Supervillain team-up (think: the Avengers) for the entire series. Tara and Dawn - now on seemingly opposite sides - are joined by almost every major named characters from the original six books, and honestly, the result is kind of a mess, with so many character motivations and developments that it and any themes involved getting far more muddled than they ever have before in the prior seven books. Gladstone makes it work as well as he could, and his writing remains propulsive and highly enjoyable especially in its quirks and dialogue, but this is a surprising miss, and not the greatest sign for a second book in a concluding trilogy.

Fantasy Novella Review: In the Shadow of the Fall by Tobi Ogundiran

 

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 July 23, 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 Fall is the first half of a West African myth inspired fantasy duology by author Tobi Ogundiran. The story follows (a few interludes aside) the 22 year old Ashâke, who has lived seemingly her whole life in a Temple to the Orisha...Orishas she is distressed to be unable to hear, which causes her to take desperate measures that reveal the world isn't what she knows...and into conflict with an enemy who seeks to destroy the very gods she was raised to follow.

It's an intriguing setup and told very well, although it does very much seem like the first half of the story....so it might not be satisfying enough on its own for some readers (I'm kind of torn on this myself). But I enjoyed it enough that I'll probably be back for the conclusion next year.

More specifics after the jump:

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.