SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Azura Ghost by Essa Hansen

 

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Azura Ghost by Essa Hansen: https://t.co/fRok1QkjhU

Short Review: 9 out of 10
1/3

— Josh (garik16) (@garik16) February 1, 2022

Short Review(cont):The sequel to Nophek Gloss finds Caiden returning to the multiverse to rescue his lost sister figure Leta. But Leta is her own person now, working for one whose supernatural charm makes all those love her, with her own plans for Caiden
A very good 2nd book
2/3

— Josh (garik16) (@garik16) February 1, 2022

Full Disclosure:  This book was read as an e-ARC (Advance Reader Copy) obtained from the publisher in advance of the book's release on February 1, 2022 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.      


Azura Ghost is the second book in Essa Hansen's "Graven" trilogy, which began in 2020 with her "Nophek Gloss" (reviewed on this blog here).  Nophek Gloss was a pretty interesting trilogy starter, featuring as its setting a "multiverse" of different worlds and species - where the worlds "multiverse" and "universe" aren't really used to describe whole fully scoped out universes, but different worlds and even smaller sized spaces featuring different physics and other rules that make certain universes better or worse for certain beings, depending on their physical traits.   The story also dealt with not just a space opera found family situation, as protagonist Caiden finds himself rescued from a massacre by an oddball crew of explorers, but also heavily with the ideas of consent and supernatural persuasion, as various characters, including the leaders of two factions and the protagonist, find themselves with nearly uncontrollable abilities of persuasion, which make it impossible for them to stop others from loving them and wanting to follow their every desire.  In this world, Caiden had to figure out who he was as he grew up, sought out his revenge, and had to deal with the fear that his friends' support was only due to this power, and not their own free wills. 

It was a really interesting story, although it didn't quite fully work due to not having enough time to really spend developing the character relationships, and left off with an intriguing cliffhanger, promising a dangerous reunion between Caiden and the childhood sister figure, Leta, now in the hands of one of the most dangerous persons in the multiverse.  

The result is a story that is at times really fascinating, especially when it comes from the struggles of Caiden and Leta to deal with who they each have grown up to be, and what remains of their relationship.  The story contrasts that with the relationship between the sibling antagonists, and this works really well.  The story's dealing with the Graven (charming) power and its implications, doesn't always get the focus it should, with Caiden's ability to control it making him a little less interesting, but it still largely works and keeps this story feeling fairly fresh as events go further and further out of control.  And then there's the further exploration of the multiverse, which works as well.  All in all, Azura Ghost is a very enjoyable second installment, leaving me eager to see how this trilogy concludes.  

Spoilers for Book 1 below.  Note that I wound up doing a full reread of book 1 prior to reading this book, and I probably recommend that for any readers here - as this book annoyingly does not contain a summary or any in-text recaps of what happened previously for readers to catch up:

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: The Actual Star by Monica Byrne

 

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: The Actual Star by Monica Byrne: https://t.co/1gTa9CqrCF

Short Review: 4 out of 10
1/3

— Josh (garik16) (@garik16) January 29, 2022

Short Review: A story taking place in 3 generations each a millennium apart, dealing with Ancient Maya Civilization & a future created by a wandering society, has a lot of ideas that it just didn't seem to know what to do with, coming together in a muddling/uninteresting way
2/3

— Josh (garik16) (@garik16) January 29, 2022

The Actual Star is a novel by Monica Byrne, which I've seen show up on a few "best SF/F books of the year" lists.  It's a story based in three time periods - each a thousand years apart, with the first being set in Ancient Maya Civilization cerca 1012, the second being set around the modern day in 2012, and third being set in a distant future in 3012, with the story rotating between the three timelines every chapter.  The book is clearly the result of a lot of research into Ancient Maya Civilization and other topics and languages, as made clear by the very impressive author's note prior to the beginning of the story, and it does show, with the author not only featuring the Ancient Civilization as a setting, but also incorporates various languages as best as she can, ranging from recognizable Spanish to various creoles.  

Unfortunately, The Actual Star very much did not work for me, with its three timelines not really going anywhere that interested me, the story's messages seeming often muddled and then not really working in the ending.  The three storylines do coalesce in the end - more literally than I expected - but the way they do didn't really work, with several of those storylines featuring late act twists that seemed counterproductive to the messages/stories being told.  There are some interesting ideas here about progress, utopia, and the risk in trying to better the world by breaking the rules without moving backwards to the worse times that required those rules to begin with, as well as about families found and blood, but they really are not served by the ending, which just sort of gives up on it all.  

Trigger Warning: Self-Harm (Cutting).  Also Incest.  Euthanasia of a Dying individual.  

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Cyber Mage by Saad Z Hossain

 

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Cyber Mage by Saad Z Hossain: https://t.co/pq3ZEBeIqZ

Short Review: 8 out of 10
1/3

— Josh (garik16) (@garik16) January 28, 2022

Short Review (cont): A combination of cyberpunk with Islamic myth features a young hacker in a future Dhaka, Bangladesh, a djinn enhanced warrior cutting off heads, and a strange impossible AI. Cringey at times early, but otherwise highly entertaining.
2/3

— Josh (garik16) (@garik16) January 28, 2022

Cyber Mage is a cyberpunk novel by Bangladeshi author Saad Z Hossain.  The book features a combination of classic cyberpunk themes - a world where corporations have taken over, the poor are exploited for the sake of the rich shareholders and seemingly anything goes among the slums, hackers are a major big deal as are AIs and nanotech etc. - with Muslim/Bangladeshi myth, most notably that of Djinn.  It's also a book, that uses its 2089 setting to make a ton of references, some of which will make you laugh or smile and others of which will make you groan.  

Overall I liked Cyber Mage more than I expected from the start, as the book's narrative features as one of its protagonists the eponymous Cyber Mage, a teenage boy hacker named Murzak, whose initial plot of going to high school solely to woo a pretty girl and getting bullied as a result is cringey at best, and made me very much want to stop reading.  But the rest of the book, featuring the unstoppable Djinn-armed and sword-wielding Djibrel (who has a tendency to cut off heads), massively powerful AI, and a massive conspiracy works really well and is highly entertaining, getting me really into seeing how it all finished.  More specifics after the jump:

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: The Untold Story by Genevieve Cogman

 

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: The Untold Story (The Invisible Library #8) by Genevieve Cogman: https://t.co/aSREaaDINr

Short Review: 9 out of 10
1/3

— Josh (garik16) (@garik16) January 27, 2022

Short Review (cont): The final book in the series' main plot arc finds Irene and her friends being ordered to kill Alberich, only to be forced to discover the truth behind the Library, as worlds throughout the multiverse begin to go missing....

A really fun conclusion.
2/3

— Josh (garik16) (@garik16) January 27, 2022

The Untold Story is the eighth book in Genevieve Cogman's "Invisible Library" series. one of the most fun and enjoyable scifi/fantasy (sort of a hybrid) series to come out over the past couple of years.  The series, which features an interdimensional library that steals unique books from various worlds, worlds caught up in the conflict between chaos (fae) and order (dragons), is a blast to read, and I've basically read each book in a single day because I've been unable to put each installment down.  It helps that protagonist Irene is an inventive, fun and easy to root for and care about character, as she tries to deal with Fae, Dragons, Rogue Librarians, and anyone else who gets in her way as she tries at first to track down unique copies of books in the multiverse and then - as the series develops - to help keep the balance of power between the Fae, Dragons, and the Library.  

The Untold Story is book 8 of this series, so unsurprisingly it's not a place to start this series, as this story follows up on major plot developments at the end of the last book, The Dark Archive.  It's also - to my surprise - the end of the series' major story arcs, although the author makes it clear in the acknowledgements that she hopes to one day return to the series for further stories in this multiverse.  

And more importantly, the Untold Story is still tremendous fun, with great dialogue, a still terrific set of main characters, and a plot that once again kept me riveted and forced me to keep reading until I finished the book in a single day (on my morning commute, my lunch break, and my commute home).  So yeah, still highly recommend this series if you want some fun SF/F and look forward to what Cogman puts forward next.  

Spoilers for the rest of the series below (although the major spoiler is one you could've guessed after book 1):

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: You Sexy Thing by Cat Rambo

 

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: You Sexy Thing by Cat Rambo: https://t.co/oVBIeR4A8G

Short Review: 8 out of 10
1/3

— Josh (garik16) (@garik16) January 26, 2022

Short Review (cont): A oft-humorous space opera following a group of former soldiers turned master chefs who wind up caught up in the schemes of pirates, princesses and more and a bio-engineered space ship that is like nothing else. Very fun if somewhat dark at times.

2/3

— Josh (garik16) (@garik16) January 26, 2022

You Sexy Thing is a space opera novel - and presumably the opener in a series - by well known SF/F author  (although usually for short fiction) Cat Rambo.  The novel features a crappy world - a galaxy filled with empires with wishes on expansion, war and control, as well as pirates, rich assholes, and more - and a cast of people who escaped from the militaries of one of those empires by becoming restaurantors.  The result is a space opera in the vein of Tim Pratt's The Axiom or Valerie Valdes' Chilling Effect (Both of which were really good), although it's a bit darker than either of those series.  

Still, even with it not quite being as humorous as those two series, I liked You Sexy Thing a good bit.  The story takes place from a Third Person omniscient point of view (as pointed out by the dedication), and uses that perspective to give us a cast that is very very likable, and who you will easily start to care about as they face rough situations.  Those situations wind up in some dark places, and not every character survives, but the wit of some aspects of the situation and the likability of the cast, and the very solid enjoyable prose and dialogue makes it easy to keep reading.  This appears to be the start of a new series, with several sequel hooks, and I'll be very interested to see those followed up upon.  

Trigger Warning: Torture.  

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: The Violence by Delilah S. Dawson

 

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: The Violence by Delilah S. Dawson: https://t.co/o4Id0wRTSR

Short Review: 8 out of 10
1/3

— Josh (garik16) (@garik16) January 25, 2022

Short Review (cont): Three generations of women in a family deal with abusive spouses, boyfriends, and family members as the world becomes hit by a disease that makes the infected black out into an unstoppable violent rage. Strong tale dealing with the impact of abuse.
2/3

— Josh (garik16) (@garik16) January 25, 2022

Full Disclosure:  This book was read as an e-ARC (Advance Reader Copy) obtained from the publisher in advance of the book's release on February 1, 2022 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 Violence is the latest novel from author Delilah S. Dawson, who has written a ton of works under at least three different names - although I honestly haven't read too much of her long fiction.  As explained by the author's note that opens the novel, it's also a very personal novel, because it uses its science fiction concept - a new pandemic that makes people go into mindless violent rages with superhuman strength, pummeling and usually killing those in their way - to deal with the subject of spousal and domestic abuse, and how it perpetuates and how the victims are changed and react to the abuse.  

And the result is often hard to read, but is still very powerful and very good in the end.  The story follows three generations of women in a family: mother Chelsea, spouse to an abusive husband who belittles and physically abuses her along with his friends; daughter Ella, scared of her father and stuck in a relationship with the boy at school everyone loves, who tries to make her do things she's uncomfortable with; and grandma Patricia, who escaped an abusive mother and has camouflaged herself as a trophy wife for a series of rich husbands and pushed away her blood family as an inconvenience for her security.  The characters (especially Patricia) aren't always likable, and the story sometimes gets almost a bit too ridiculous for believability, but it really works at showing the horror of abuse even in a world with truly random violence, and ends thankfully on a happy note.  Mainly.  

Trigger Warnings: Domestic Violence, Physical and Emotional Abuse and how it affects people and how tough it is to get through it are the central theme of this book.  The book also features animal and pet death, brutally so in at least one case.  As noted above and below, this is a very strong book for its themes, but how it gets there will not be for everyone.

SciFi Novella Review: Sisters of the Forsaken Stars by Lina Rather

 


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 February 15, 2022 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.  


Sisters of the Forsaken Stars by Lina Rather

Sisters of the Forsaken Stars is the sequel to 2019's Sisters of the Vast Black (Reviewed Here), scifi novella featuring a convent of very different nuns traveling the outskirts of human space on a living ship, who found themselves struggling with their pasts, their faiths, and their duties towards religion and to helping other most of all when they find themselves in the middle of a conflict between a corrupt Earth government and a distant colony world.  It was a solid story with some very nice themes and pretty good characters...but it was also so short that it didn't really make as much of an impact as it might have otherwise.  

Sisters of the Forsaken Stars follows up on that first novella (don't read this one first) with a story that feels more like the middle of a trilogy, and again feels awfully short.  Still it's again a solid story, of a group of women now seemingly adrift on the run, unsure what to do now that their circumstances have changed, with their faith challenged, and with their life on the run hindering them from the one thing that kept them together - helping people, especially with the galaxy on the verge of war due to their actions and the actions of the tyrant Earth government.  It's again very solid, but again feels almost too short for what it's trying to do, in addition to feeling like a middle chapter in a longer story.