Tuesday, June 30, 2020

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Automatic Reload by Ferrett Steinmetz

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 28, 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.



Automatic Reload is the latest novel by author Ferrett Steinmetz and what appears to be his 6th novel overall.  Steinmetz is actually one of the first authors I read when I came back to the genre, with his "mancer" series, which came recommended by an author I really enjoyed at the time.  I enjoyed the first of that trilogy (Flex), but at the same time just found myself uninterested in continuing with the 2nd book when I tried it (The Flux) so I wound up DNFing it.  But as I'd heard good things about one of his later novels, I was happy to give this novel a try when I saw in on NetGalley.

And I'm glad I did, Automatic Reload is a really interesting and pretty fun SF thriller.  And I mean thriller - the basic plot features a protagonist narrator facing off and on the run from an implacable enemy through the use of lots and lots of military ordinance/firepower.  It deals heavily with the theme of automaton and what becomes of a future in which automaton starts to replace human workers (the book very much follows an Andrew Yang-esque argument of future events), and not just in how the protagonist has literally automated his own arms and legs.  It has a few of the tics that kind of turned me off from Steinmetz' first trilogy - a habit of trying to too hard to be clever with its narration to the audience - but those mainly go away after the first act and the result is a very solid scifi thriller.


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Monday, June 29, 2020

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Chaos Reigning by Jessie Mihalik


Chaos Reigning is the final book in Jessie Mihalik's "The Consortium Rebellion" trilogy, a space opera romance series that began with Polaris Rising (Reviewed Here) and continued with Aurora Blazing (Reviewed Here).  I've really enjoyed this series - it might be what some could consider "trashy" - but it's very good at what it is, with aspects of space opera, spy novels, and oh so much romance, lust, and sexy moments.  Add in a bunch of strong heroines - a different one for each novel - and you get a really fun series that I have gladly read at a time when everything around us is so damn depressing.  So I was praying this book would come off my library hold as soon as possible, and when it did I read it immediately, within 24 hours.

And I think honestly Chaos Reigning is my favorite of the trilogy.  Book 1 featured a lust filled romance with a heroine who couldn't admit - to herself and others - that her feelings were more than lust; whereas Book 2 was more of a slow burn romance between people who wouldn't admit their mutual attraction until a final act explosion.  This book switches it up by being somewhere in the middle - plenty of lust, admitted mutual attraction not too late, but things get in the way repeatedly.  Oh and you once again have a kick ass heroine constantly underestimated by her enemies with a secret to hide as she tries to protect all she cares about - which was awesome in previous books - but here you honestly get my favorite supporting cast (and love interest) in the series.  This is not a serious series for the most part - again, I don't think trying to think about the implications of the setup of this series works very well - but it is oh so much fun.


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Saturday, June 27, 2020

A Pale Light In The Black (by KB Wagers) Reread - Chapters 32-34 (Really Chapters 26-28)



Welcome back to my reread of K.B. Wagers' "A Pale Light in the Black!"  You can find the other posts in this reread here.  For those somehow seeing this post first instead of the others, A Pale Light in the Black is a space opera featuring a SF space version of the Coast Guard in an optimistic future universe.

When we left off, we were in the middle of this book's second act - the team has gotten together in tight, won the Boarding Game prelims, and is now investigating just what exactly the System Jumper smuggling was about and how it connects to LifeEx.  Unfortunately, while the NeoG's boarding operation of a new smuggling freighter went off more or less without a hitch, a parallel NeoG operation on Trappist-1 to hit the smuggling facility the freighter came from resulted in an explosion that gravely injured Nika.

Now, Jenks, Ma, and Max are onboard a Navy ship carrying Nika - who's being tended to by Max's asshole father - as they attempt to figure out what to do next......


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Friday, June 26, 2020

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: A Bond Undone by Jin Yong (Translated by Gigi Chang)


A Bond Undone is the second part of Jin Yong's "Legend of the Condor Heroes", the classic Wuxia (Chinese Kung Fu) story that is finally receiving an official English translation in the US.  I went into the first part - A Hero Born (review here) - not expecting much because while I've enjoyed the few Wuxia movies I've seen in the theaters, action sequences in novels are not my thing.  But instead I found a book that I enjoyed immensely, filled to the brim with outrageous Kung Fu feats and combat in a way that doesn't resemble the action sequences I expected, with a propulsive plot whose response to any change in situation is: Let's start a new fight!  It was so much damn fun, and I could see why and how it has inspired other works over the past 60-70 years - and it ended on a bit of a cliffhanger so I was eager to pick up the second novel fairly quickly.

A Bond Undone is more of the same - actually, it's emphasis on creating more and more ridiculous fighting situations is even more extreme....and that's a good thing!  This is not a novel where you expect some logical character development - the main romance/attraction sort of springs up out of nowhere - or a deep story: but it is one where kung fu is used in a million ways in fascinating, fun and often hilarious manners from start to finish, before (sigh) ending on another cliffhanger.  It does have some gender issues, but honestly not as bad ones as I expected from a 70 year old Chinese novel, and it's just so much fun, that I can't wait to pick up the third one.


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Thursday, June 25, 2020

Reviewing the 2020 Hugo Nominees: The Hugo Award for Best Novella

Hugo Award voting should open soon and will continue through the July 15.  For those of you new to the Science Fiction/Fantasy genre, the Hugo Award is one of the most prominent awards for works in the genre, with the Award being given based upon voting by those who have paid for at least a Supporting Membership in this year's WorldCon.  As I did the last three years, I'm going to be posting reviews/my-picks for the award in the various categories I feel qualified in, but feel free to chime in with your own thoughts in the comments.

This is the 4th part of this series.  I have previously reviewed the nominees for:
Best Young Adult SF/F (The Lodestar Award), Best SF/F Short Story, and Best SF/F Novelette.

You can find all the parts of this series, going over each category of the Hugo Awards HERE.

This time around we're getting to one of the more popular awards, the Hugo Award for Best Novella.  Novellas are defined as being between 17,500 and 40,000 words long, which tends to roughly come out to about 90-200 pages on average (although a lot of novellas don't count as such by the Hugo definition leading to some books missing out).  The result is that Novellas are a type of work that fast readers (like myself) might finish in one day, but others will take a few days to get through them, and they have a lot more substance for characters, story, and ideas.

This has also meant that my feelings on the quality of these works is a lot more varied than for the shorter fiction, with some works I just plain didn't like having been nominated in the last few years (same is true of Best Novel for the same reason).  And yet this year, despite the works being perhaps the most varied in origin in a number of years (there are only two Tor.com novellas, which used to dominate this category), I like pretty much every novella on the ballot - I scored each one with a rating out of 10 when I posted my initial review, and all of them rated an 8 out of 10 or above.

And yet, there's a clear winner for me here, and an easy favorite......which I'll get to after the jump.

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Wednesday, June 24, 2020

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: ReV: The Third Machine Dynasty by Madeline Ashby


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 14, 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.



ReV is the third and final book in Madeline Ashby's "Machine Dynasty" trilogy, which began with 2012's "vN".  The trilogy features a world in which a genius con man created AI robots, VonNeumanns (aka vNs), which can self replicate with enough food and serve as servants, sexbots, companions and more for humanity, all of which have a "failsafe" which prevents them from tolerating any sort of harm to humans.  Or well, they're supposed to, hence the series.  The trilogy's first two novels came out in 2012 and 2013 and were among the first two books I read when I began reading SF/F again, with this trilogy ender being listed on Amazon as coming shortly thereafter.  I really enjoyed the first novel in the trilogy, and though I didn't love the 2nd one, I was excited to see where it would all end up.

Only Rev didn't come, and after a year of occasionally checking for a release date (and the book's listing seemingly being dropped) I gave up on ever expecting it to (Ashby would release a different novel in the meantime).  So I was surprised to see Rev pop up for a review copy on Netgalley, and requested it out of sheer curiosity.  Of course, that meant that when I was accepted for it, I suddenly had an issue in how little I remembered from the original two books, which could've been a problem.  I managed to skim the first few chapters of book 2 and the final 2 chapters to refresh my recollection, and hoped that would be fine.

I needn't have worried too much - ReV is a really enjoyable and interesting trilogy ender, and one that works if you only have the barest of refreshers of what happened in the first two novels (going in blind is not fully advisable, but you can probably pull it off based upon your years old recollection).  The story switches its perspective to the trilogy's prior main antagonist, which really alters the tone to a far more humorous one, while still also keeping alive some of its themes.  It also ends on a note that is full of far more righteous fury than I remember in the other two novels, but it also absolutely works.  It has some content that I don't exactly love - but less than its predecessors mind you - but it's still a really interesting short novel.

Trigger Warning:  Sexual/Physical Abuse: There is no explicit rape in this novel but a major theme of this series has always been an inability to give consent and while that's largely not an issue for the main characters in this book for once, some side characters suffer abuse in some small scenes at times.  If you enjoyed the first two books enough to want to read this though, you've already been through worse.


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Tuesday, June 23, 2020

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Trouble the Saints by Alaya Dawn Johnson


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 21, 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.


Trouble the Saints is the latest novel from Nebula Award winner Alaya Dawn Johnson, and her first in a few years (as well as her first non YA novel in a lot of years).  I loved her last two books, the Norton (Nebula Award for YA) nominated "The Summer Prince" and the Norton-winning "Love is the Drug."  Both featured stories of love and family, but also dealt tremendously with themes of privilege, class and race - The Summer Prince through its post apocalyptic supposedly-utopian setting while Love is the Drug through its near future story of a well off Black teen in DC - and featured characters who you couldn't help grow in love with as they dealt with those problems.  So yeah, when I noticed (late) that Johnson had a new novel coming out this year, I was so happy to get it early via Netgalley and read it less than a week later despite having a whole bunch of other books on my backlist.

And Trouble the Saints is a tremendous novel, diving even more openly into themes of race and oppression than the prior two Johnson works I've read, through an alternate history novel set around 1941 in mob-riddled New York.  The book's a bit of a mess honestly, especially in the beginning, but its three main characters are tremendous, as they try and deal with being people of color in a racist New York, and the obligations that come upon them from having "the hands", a juju-esque magic found only in non-whites which seems to demand them act in some way.  Make no mistake: this is not a fun book, it's a bloody one with a lot of pain and agony, as our protagonists - not good people themselves - struggle with a system that both then and now spits out people of color and chews them out in favor of those less deserving.  But it's a damn powerful one, and if not a tour-de-force, it's close.


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