Thursday, August 13, 2020

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Atlas Alone by Emma Newman


Atlas Alone is the fourth and so far final book in Emma Newman's Planetfall series of scifi novels, which began of course with Planetfall.  Through three books, the series has consisted of a series of stand-alone novels set in the same universe, a not too far off dystopian SciFi world under corporate control changed when a woman discovered a way to set off to the Stars to find "god", with each novel featuring a protagonist with deep mental trauma and/or illness, often stemming from tragedies in their past.  Newman's prose is really excellent at making the novels read fairly quickly, and she does a phenomenal job putting the reader in the heads of her mentally ill protagonists as they try to deal with new and old discoveries about their worlds.  At the same time, the tone is at best bittersweet through it all, and I haven't quite always loved how the novels' plots developed.

Atlas Alone is both a continuation of that trend and a departure - it once again deals with a new protagonist dealing with substantial mental trauma relating to her past, but it for the first time is basically a direct sequel to a prior novel, in this case the 2nd book in the series, After Atlas.  It's easily the shortest novel in the series, and is just as readable and enjoyable as ever, but at the same time again has plot developments that, when not predictable, I'm still not quite sure I find that interesting in the end, with this novel almost verging into horror.  It's a hard thing to explain, but I'll try after the jump.

Spoilers I guess for Book 2 (After Atlas) of the series below, but the spoiler isn't really a big deal for reading that novel so not much to worry about in my opinion:


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SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Before Mars by Emma Newman


Before Mars is the third novel in Emma Newman's Planetfall series, which was nominated for this year's Hugo Award for Best Series.  I've had kind of mixed feelings about the series (my review of book 1 is HERE and book 2 is HERE), which has featured a dystopian scifi universe and a couple of main characters dealing with deep mental trauma stemming in part from tragedies in their pasts, which come to light over the course of their plots.  On one hand, both main characters in the first two books have been very strong, and have carried fascinating scifi plots - the first the tale of a colony on an alien planet with a secret past, the second a noir mystery in a dystopian Earth run by corporates and featuring powerful cults - so as to make the books incredibly readable.  On the other hand, both books kind of ended on serious downer notes and left me very ambivalent about the point of it all, especially the second book After Atlas.

Before Mars is unfortunately more of the latter and very little of the former - to the point where I'm not sure why it exists at all, except maybe if the characters involved are to pop up later in the series.  Taking place at around the same time as book 2 in the series, After Atlas, it shifts the setting to Mars and its main character to a new woman who has her own mental trauma from a tragic past and a life that she just can't seem to live the way others expect.  But while the book's prose remains very readable, allowing for me to read through it rather quickly, the plot revolves around mysteries and questions about the main character's possible madness that are way too predictable in the end....and feel very redundant after similar mysteries showed up in the last book - with the 2nd book's ending forming a climatic event here.  As such, it almost feels like this could have been written as an alternate 2nd novel in the series, but with the actual 2nd novel existing separately, it's hard to tell what purpose this book serves.

Note:  Each novel in the series features plot points related to the others, but has not - three books in - relied upon the reader having any foreknowledge of the prior ones.  That's still the case here, so this book can be read as a stand alone if you want, skipping the other two novels.

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Wednesday, August 12, 2020

SciFi Novella Review: Seven of Infinities 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 October 31, 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.


Seven of Infinities by Aliette de Bodard

Seven of Infinities is the latest novella in Aliette de Bodard's Xuya Universe, her distant sci-fi setting for a large amount of short fiction (ranging from short stories to novellas), in which the universe is largely built around the idea that Chinese and Vietnamese got to the stars first (at least in the areas in which the setting largely takes place) and their culture thus laid the foundation for the resultant society.  It's a fascinating setting that de Bodard uses in many many different ways - for example her last notable novella in this world (the Nebula winning "The Tea Master and the Detective") was a take on a Sherlock Holmes story....in which the Watson character was a mindship who'd suffered trauma from a disaster in deep spaces (think hyperspace).  Each of her stories in this universe is stand alone and no prior knowledge is required to enjoy them, allowing de Bodard to hit a wide range of themes and ideas.

Seven of Infinities is maybe her most ambitious mishmash of story archetypes, being part scifi murder mystery, part F-F romance (between a mindship and a human mind you), and part heist novel all in one.  Like Tea Master, the story features a pair of main characters, drawn together by a case, and coming together - unlike that novel however, the story is told from both of their perspectives and their relationship becomes more than platonic (hence the romance).  And it for the most part works really well, thanks to the two lead characters' personalities being real winners, as they struggle with conflicts of truth vs. duty, the value of one's heritage, and most of all the difficulty of balancing trust with the need to protect those one might care about or feel duty bound to.


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SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: A Song Below Water by Bethany C Morrow


A Song Below Water is the second novel from author Bethany C Morrow and her Young Adult Debut.  Morrow's debut novel, 2018's "Mem" (which I reviewed here), was a short but fascinating look at personhood and memory, and so I would've been interested to see her next novel no matter the context.  That her next novel would be a book featuring a pair of black teens dealing with discrimination, police and other violence going unpunished, and protests about the value of their identities simply only made it more impossible for me NOT to pick up this book.

And A Song Below Water does not disappoint - it's a YA novel featuring a pair of high school age black teens, each with fantastical connections (one is a Siren, the other is....something), trying to find a way to be themselves....despite the world seeming to want to crush them for their very own identities.  It's a world which is very much like ours despite the existence of fantastical creatures - some hated, some tolerated, and some liked (gee, what does that sound like) - and it makes the book's events, which include protests over identity, police cruelty, and more, feel incredibly real, especially in today's world.  Add in the tremendous pair of main characters and their sisterly bond, and it's not just a YA book for the moment, but one that is great for any moment.  Yeah I liked this one.

Trigger Warning for an Off Page Past Suicide Attempt.

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Tuesday, August 11, 2020

Fantasy Novella Review: The Empress of Salt and Fortune by Nghi Vo




The Empress of Salt and Fortune by Nghi Vo

The Empress of Salt and Fortune is a short novella - maybe even a novelette - written by author Nghi Vo, which has gotten a ton of praise from people I respect.  Unfortunately, it took forever for my libraries to get a non-physical copy (and well, libraries haven't been able for physical copies), but recently that changed and I finally got a chance to read it.

And it's a really nice story of memory and queerness and family, told by an old woman (identified only as "Rabbit") to a "Cleric" of an order of archivists, telling mainly the story of the just deceased Empress, from a time in her life when she was in exile.  It's a tale of memory, love, and family and what it all means, as we and the archivist find out about how one cast off woman managed to fight back against a man in power determined to keep her out of his way, and what it cost in the end.


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SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: The Memory of Souls by Jenn Lyons



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 August 25, 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.


The Memory of Souls is the third book of a planned five in Jenn Lyons' "A Chorus of Dragons" series of Epic Fantasy novels, which began with 2019's The Ruin of Kings (which I reviewed here) and continued that same year with the second book, The Name of All Things (which I reviewed here).  And when I say "Epic Fantasy", I mean "Epic", both of the first two novels were absolute doorstoppers of novels - well over 500 pages in small text print (I'm not kidding about the text size in the hardcover either) - that even I couldn't finish in a single day, featuring a lot of characters, mythological histories, gods, demons, and magic, to the point of being well...everything that a lot of people might love or hate about Epic Fantasy as a genre.  

And honestly, I didn't particularly love the first novel in this series - The Ruin of Kings (review linked above) - finding it too concerned at times with setting up its epic fantasy over-arching plot to really feel like a cohesive story and not having the time as a result to set up its characters in interesting ways.  But when I took a chance on the second novel in the series without bothering to reread the first (because that would take far too long), I discovered a much improved novel that I really greatly enjoyed, with its new two main characters both being fascinating, a setting that was suddenly much more interesting (and more explicitly queer incidentally), and a plot that combined both its long term myth-arc with its single book plot in a really effective way. 

So yeah, I was excited to read the third book in this series when it showed up on NetGalley, even if its length was intimidating and made me keep pushing it off.  But the results was very much what I wanted after book 2 - continuing a story filled with excellent characters, expanding on a number of plots, and keeping me constantly amused and entertained at the interactions and events throughout.  The book still have many of the same problems of the first two - the framing device and narrative structure just feels insanely clumsy, the rape issues (see below) prop up again early on before going away, and the book loves having a billion terms and historical characters who are hard to keep straight and adds even more here.  But even with those issues, I couldn't help but be exceedingly entertained the more I got into the book, binging through it in two days.  This is almost certainly the best of the series so far, and its a decent high note if you can get through it.

TRIGGER WARNING:  Rape.  The series includes mind control and charm magic as a magical ability in the setting, and in the past (off page), at least one character has used mind control to have sex with and impregnate an enslaved woman.  In this book, that turn is reversed, with the now formerly enslaved woman doing the mind controlling of the man for a similar purpose.  It doesn't last long in this plot and never happens again, but it's there and I should note it.   

Note:  Spoilers for Books 1-2 are discussed below; I don't think they'll reduce your enjoyment of anything, but they're impossible to avoid 3 books in.  Also, if you've read the first two books, you don't need to reread them to enjoy this, as like in the second book, the story essentially contains a summary of the major events of the last book in the foreword. 

EDIT:  This is a non-spoilery review of this book.  I enjoyed this book a lot, and actually wrote up a spoilery discussion of what happened in another post, which you can find HERE.  

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Monday, August 10, 2020

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: The Midnight Bargain by CL Polk


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 October 13, 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.
The Midnight Bargain is the latest novel from C.L. Polk, author of the Kingston Cycle of books which began with Witchmark a few years ago.  Those novels were queer romantic fantasies, with strong queer romance secondary plots to go along with solid fantasy main plots dealing with issues of oppression, privilege, and more.  By contrast, The Midnight Bargain is a fantasy romance* set in a regency-esque world (except magic is a very real part of this world), and as such, the romantic elements are the main attraction.

*I define Romantic SF/F is SF/F with romance as an important part of the plot, but not the main focus of the plot.  SF/F Romances may have other subplots besides the romance, but the romance is the central point of the work, to the point where the story can end satisfactorily with the other plots hanging as long as the romance plot IS resolved or furthered.  

 And I enjoyed The Midnight Bargain a good bit.  The story reminded me quite a bit of Stephanie Burgis' "The Harwood Spellbook" (which I also really enjoyed) in that it features a world in which women are essentially forced to choose between love/marriage and magic, with the implication for ladies of status that they must choose marriage in the end.  But the story takes things in different directions than Burgis' series, as it features two women desperate to become masters at magic despite two very different opinions about the idea of love and romance, as well as a male love interest who tries to be understanding but is hindered at such by his upbringing.  It takes some surprising turns through it all, and perhaps ties things up a bit too neatly, but I enjoyed this novel quite a bit and would recommend.


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