SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: A Pale Light in the Black by K.B. Wagers

SciFi/Fantasy Advance Book Review: A Pale Light in the Black by KB Wagers: https://t.co/K3CTOz8HHs Initial Thoughts: 9 out of 10 (1/3)

— Josh (garik16) (@garik16) January 31, 2020

Short Review (Cont): Featuring a SF version of the Coast Guard, A Pale Light in the Black features a great crew safeguarding the Sol system, dealing with interservice rivalries & major conspiracies. Tremendously positive family & romantic relationships make this book shine (2/3)

— Josh (garik16) (@garik16) January 31, 2020

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 3, 2020 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.


A Pale Light in the Black is the first book in a new series by author KB Wagers, known for their prior Indranan and Farian War space opera trilogies (featuring their gunrunner empress lead, Hail Bristol).  But in contrast to those novels, A Pale Light in the Black is set in a much nearer future, featuring at its heart a sometimes friendly sometimes not conflict between SF versions of modern military services, with a space version of the Coast Guard - the NeoG - at its center.  As a big fan of the Hail Bristol novels, I was excited to read Wagers' next work, so I was excited to get an advance copy of this book to review.

And I really loved A Pale Light in the Black, a story that is so positive in its depiction of camaraderie, love, and family that I fell near instantly in love with the characters.  It is still a story with conflict mind you - both in friendly (interservice) and not-so-friendly (in an antagonist conspiracy) - so it's not quite channeling Becky Chambers' Wayfarer works, but the way the book portrays its main cast gelling together, and how they each deal with their various loves and families, is just terrific.  Oh and the cast includes plenty of wiseass protagonists, bar fighting, and space adventures as the central NeoG team does their job to safeguard human space.

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Girls of Storm and Shadow by Natasha Ngan

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Girls of Storm and Shadow by Natasha Ngan: https://t.co/SMW92n6V81 Short Review: 7 out of 10 (1/3)

— Josh (garik16) (@garik16) January 29, 2020

Short Review (cont): The sequel to Girls of Paper and Fire follows Lei as she joins Wren in attempting to muster support for revolution against the demon king, while Lei struggles with her trauma from the king's abuse. Solid themes, but suffers from 2nd book syndrome badly (2/3)

— Josh (garik16) (@garik16) January 29, 2020

Girls of Storm and Shadow is the sequel to 2018's Young Adult Fantasy Girls of Paper and Fire (Review Here).  Girls was a tough book to read, featuring a world in which humans are the lowest of castes (the Paper Caste) in a world ruled by Demons, and in which the horrible demon king takes human girls to be his concubine "Paper Girls", whether they want to be there or not.  Needless to say, as our protagonist is one of those Paper Girls for that first book, it was not an easy book to read at times, and yet through it all the story managed to feature a really well done fantasy (F-F) romance with some solid characters through it all, although its cliffhanger ending was a bit of a bummer.

Girls of Storm and Shadow continues the story, expanding the world as our characters focus on the next step of their quest for freedom.  The result is markedly mixed: where the story is best, is when it deals with the protagonist's struggle with coping with trauma or where it deals with introducing other characters who have similar views towards freedom and justice but different ideas about them.  Where its weaker is in an underlying theme of the question of whether an end goal can make certain means to achieve them ever justified, and, more disappointingly, in how it deals with the next stage of the central romance.

Trigger Warning:  Grief/Self-Harm/Trauma - our protagonist and others in this trilogy suffered horrible sexual and physical abuse in the last book and are trying to recover in this one.  It's not an easy read as a result, although it's easier than the last book.

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: The House of Sundering Flames by Aliette de Bodard

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: The House of Sundering Flames by Aliette de Bodard: https://t.co/bWsTmmKRYN Short Review: 10 out of 10 (1/3)

— Josh (garik16) (@garik16) January 28, 2020

Short Review (cont): The Dominion of the Fallen trilogy comes to an incredible end as House Harrier explodes, and the rest of Paris - humans, dragons, & Fallen (angels) try desperately to survive. An amazing tale of power, imperialism/colonization, and fantastic characters (2/3)

— Josh (garik16) (@garik16) January 28, 2020

The House of Sundering Flames is the third book in Aliette de Bodard's Dominion of the Fallen trilogy, which began with The House of Shattered Wings and continued with The House of Binding Thorns (reviewed here).  The series is set in a fascinating world - an early 1900s fantasy version of Paris recovering from devastation caused by a war between "Houses" ruled and powered by Fallen Angels (known just as "Fallen") and those able to manipulate their power.  But the Fallen are not the only beings in this world, nor even the only beings of power - Vietnamese Dragons mainain their own kingdom in the Senne, and elsewhere, beings related to other divinities also exist.  And just as important to the series are the lives of the Houseless, the ordinary humans without the protection of Fallen masters, and the peoples whose cultures the Houses run ramshod over.

As you can imagine, themes of power, of family and protection, and colonization/imperialism are strong undercurrents of this series, to sometimes mixed results: The House of Shattering Wings kind of disappointed me, whereas The House of Binding Thorns was pretty close to a masterpiece in the end.  Both of those novels were focused upon a single House of Fallen in sort of self-contained stories, even if characters and some themes recurred from book 1 to book 2.

But the House of Sundering Flames changes that up, with the story following more directly from the prior novels and taking the themes underlying the prior works and pushing them to the forefront.  Oh there are new characters and parts of the setting introduced, but this is truly the ending to the trilogy, tying up the threads and themes left behind.  And it is utterly fantastic.

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: The Secret Chapter by Genevieve Cogman

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: The Secret Chapter (The Invisible Library #6) by Genevieve Cogman: https://t.co/WF9Wchk0Tm Short Review: 8.5 out of 10 (1/3)

— Josh (garik16) (@garik16) January 24, 2020

Short Review (cont): When the world Irene grew up on is threatened with falling into Chaos, Irene and Kai are forced to work with Fae and a rogue Dragon on a heist scheme to obtain the rare book needed to save it. As usual for the series, this is so much damn fun. (2/3)

— Josh (garik16) (@garik16) January 24, 2020

The Secret Chapter is the sixth book in Genevieve Cogman's Invisible Library series.  For those who are not yet familiar with the series, it's a tremendously fun (and sometimes meta) series featuring a multiverse of worlds, with a mixture of magic and technology, and conflicts between dragons and fae....and a main character whose primary focus is (supposed to be) obtaining rare copies of books for is titular Library.  The series trades in tropes like no one's business (in fact, the Fae in story are required to follow tropes by their very nature), but makes them fresh and new and fun in ways that make this series one of the most enjoyable reads I've found around - and I've finished each of the prior five books in the series within a single day of reading.

The Secret Chapter is another great installment in the series, with the bulk of the novel devoted to that most classic of story tropes: the heist story.  The story also delves even further into the running plot threads throughout the series as well as introducing new ones, and all of the newer characters are pretty great.  And again, the book is really damn fun - I finished it in under 24 hours again, and have already reread parts a few times.  In short, if you're not reading this series already and like fun SF/F, that does creative things with the literary tropes you see elsewhere, you should be reading it.

Note:  It is not recommended to start the series with this book, as while the series is not heavy on continuity and each book is a self contained story, it relies on enough prior material that new readers will probably be a bit lost.  Start with Book 1.  

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern: https://t.co/bB5kdLe9qa Short Review: 7 out of 10 (1/3)

— Josh (garik16) (@garik16) January 23, 2020

Short Review (cont): A Meta Fantasy tale of stories, as a grad student finds himself within a book, leading him to a conflict over a library hidden in another dimension, is very readable and solid, but doesn't really lead to much like other books playing with similar tropes (2/3)

— Josh (garik16) (@garik16) January 23, 2020

The Starless Sea is Erin Morgenstern's second novel, after her hit novel The Night Circus (which I haven't read, mind you).  That book's success mean this book had a lot of hype behind it - to the point where the NY Public Library ordered 183 (!) copies of the ebook and there's still a waiting list to take it out.  So yeah, it's a pretty anticipated novel.  It's also, incidentally, yet another book featuring a plot about stories, as well as a library and books within a book....it's a pretty common trope that seems to be catnip for fiction writers and to be fair has resulted in some of my favorite novels.

The Starless Sea doesn't quite live up to those other novels for me.  Its narrative is captivating and the writing never drags or gets boring, but at the end of it all, it failed to really leave me with anything that lasted.  As with most books of this kind, it's very much a tale with a theme about the importance and powers of stories, but it doesn't do anything particularly interesting with that common theme.  The result is a novel that may read really well as you read it, but is pretty forgettable in the end.

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: The Water Dancer by Ta-Nehisi Coates

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: The Water Dancer by Ta-Nehisi Coates: https://t.co/FY9duCWSsV Short Review: 8.5 out of 10 (1/3)

— Josh (garik16) (@garik16) January 22, 2020

Short Review (Cont): A story in the antebellum USA as a mixed-race slave named Hi tries to find freedom through his special power, and his experiences with Whites and other Blacks in and against the cause of abolition. Strong imagery and ideas, but some pacing issues. (2/3)

— Josh (garik16) (@garik16) January 22, 2020

The Water Dancer is Ta-Nehisi Coates' fiction novel debut, and it's one that fits within the SF/F genre.  In case you've been living under a rock and don't follow politics and political scholarship, or are from a non-United States country, Coates is one of the most influential and interesting political writers in the past decade, particularly on racial history and racial issues today.  The Water Dancer is not Coates' first fictional output - he had a decently regarded comics run on Black Panther a few years ago - but it's his first fictional novel, and unsurprisingly, it deals very much with the same ideas in Coates' political writings, with a setting that begins on a failing plantation in the antebellum south and a cast of those involved in and opposed to the institution of slavery.

The result is a strong tale, with some clear themes, and many strong characters filled with deep backstories, that's very much what you might expect from Coates' work.  At the same time though, the story suffers from some pacing issues and if you're looking for something very fantastical, you won't find it here - the magic is there but very symbolic at its heart, and not something that is used as a major mechanic in this story in and of itself (descriptions of the book may give you the wrong impression of this).

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Zeroboxer by Fonda Lee

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Zeroboxer by Fonda Lee: https://t.co/z54yXbcbdP Short Review: 6 out of 10 (1/3)

— Josh (garik16) (@garik16) January 21, 2020

Short Review (cont): A YA SciFi story based around a zero gravity version of MMA features some potential with some interesting ideas but doesn't really explore any of the ideas, resulting in a solid but uninspiring story. (2/3)

— Josh (garik16) (@garik16) January 21, 2020

Zeroboxer is a YA science fiction novel from author Fonda Lee (known also for her Exo duology and Jade City trilogy).  It's also a novel featuring a setting based upon a future version of what we know today as Mixed Martial Arts (MMA).  I've enjoyed Lee's prior works and I'm a huge MMA fan, so Zeroboxer seemed like it should've been right up my alley.

And Zeroboxer is fine.  It features an interesting SciFi setting based upon pre and post-birth genetic engineering as well as a number of solidly described fight scenes, to go along with some solid if unexceptional characters.  Still, the book uses that setting to set up a really interesting situation which it basically never does anything with, and the book ends right before the shit hits the fan.  It'd make sense as the first half of a duology, but as a stand alone title (and there appears to be no plans for a sequel), it's kind of a disappointing way to end the story.  The result is a novel that's merely solid, but not nearly as good as its potential: