Bimonthly Book Foo! + some other stuff
Aug. 11th, 2015 08:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
newnumber6TV's been pretty slow lately, however, there have been a few things of interest:
Wayward Pines: Surprisingly watchable, and surprisingly SF. I mean, a bit silly at times, but I enjoyed it and I appreciated them not dangling out the mystery, they actually solved it about halfway in and the rest was dealing with other issues. THAT is how you do it. I kind of want to see a season 2.
Dark Matter: One of two new space opera shows on the channel formerly known as the Sci-Fi channel. At least it's getting back to its roots a little, I just wish they'd go back to their old name. As for their new show... it's watchable, mildly enjoyable, but... it doesn't really reach very far. It's done a few cool things, but pretty soon the gimmick that started it (mercenaries with really bad pasts who get a chance to reform when their memories are all wiped) will not just lose it's novelty, but also it's relevance, and it's going to have to keep audience excitement up or it's going to turn into a bog-standard space opera with nothing particular to recommend it. But, as I said, I am enjoying it, especially the overly earnest and endearing android character who I just want to tell that she's doing a great job. David Hewlett (aka Rodney McKay) has appeared a few times as the mercenary's agent/fixer and hopefully will appear again.
Killjoys: The other space opera show on the channel formerly known as the Sci-Fi channel. Now, this is more like it. It's got energy, there's a sense that some serious worldbuilding time went into the setting (I don't know if it has, but the feeling that it has is enough), the interactions between the characters (including minor ones) often sparkle, and there's overall a feel that the people involved, actors, writers, even set designers, love what they're doing (the soldier guy is maybe a little flatter than the others, but that's okay). It's not quite up to the level of Firefly, but it's possibly the space opera show that's gotten me most excited since then. It doesn't hurt that the studios they filmed at is right near my work, so I theoretically might have the chance to run into the actors (but probably not). If it gets renewed, and I hope it does.
Under the Dome: Almost hilariously awful. I've seen some sites suggesting it's improvement, people are lying. It's gone from being awful at doing a plot that's at least novel, to being awful at doing the oldest, hoariest plots in SF TV. And I say almost hilariously awful because it's at least in previous years the awfulness was somehow funny, this time, it's more often just dumb and badly acted. Why do I still watch? Masochism, obviously.
What's coming? I still need to finish watching Sense8... I saw the first ep and liked it but I keep putting off watching the rest.
Pretty soon the Walking Dead spinoff (set in LA and at the start of the outbreak) will be starting, and I look forward to that. And then the fall season begins not long after that, which includes Doctor Who.
So, books! As usual, these reviews are mostly copied from my Goodreads feed.
Finished: Love in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, by Judd Trichter
At some unspecified point in the future, human-looking androids live side-by-side with humans, albeit with virtually no rights, and there are strict laws against robot/human affairs. Eliot Lazar is a businessman working in robot sales, but he's in love with a free-roaming robot girl and plans to run away with her. But when she's taken and her parts sold off, he has to go on a quest to recover her... all of her.
This one's a tough one for me. I wanted to like it much more than I did. And I do believe the author has a certain degree of talent, some of the prose is lyrical, and he clearly put a fair bit of effort into it. I could easily see him having a good career in the field.
But it's not really my kind of story. It's the kind of story I'd describe as a "Sci-Fi Fable" - There are certain emotional beats the author wants to get to, certain tropes he wants to deal with, and evoking the right feel is more important than creating a world that's a believable extrapolation of science.
There's nothing fundamentally wrong with this approach... it's done in dystopian fiction all the time, for example. However, it's an approach that doesn't work for me, because the little details don't work. It's a world that feels like today (or even a few decades ago... there's a strong noir vibe), with a few technological doodads like the robots added in and other things like exploration of other planets mostly in the background. Characters seem to exhibit certain types of casual racist or sexist comments that I'd hope we're about ready to move past, or at least show a greater variety. (I should note that I don't believe that this is because the author is racist or sexist, or anything, just that I think he's trying to evoke the feel of this kind of world where casual racism/sexism still goes on... maybe he feels this tendency to casually devalue is even a necessary precondition for or consequence of the utter lack of civil rights the robots experience).
In general, though, the details don't work for me, and sometimes I get what the author was going for, but it didn't ring true. For example, because the droids have spinning engines in their chest, they're referred to in casual conversation as spinners... I totally buy this. The problem begins is that he goes one step further: actual humans are likewise known as heartbeats, in casual conversation people refer to heartbeats all the time. Not just robots (which would make a certain amount of sense), humans refer to themselves as heartbeats as well. But to me, if your society believes that humans are the only ones of value, you give the Other a derogatory name, and just call yourself "people" or "humans" because you don't feel the need to change to admit somebody else into your status. Another example of "sci-fi change" that didn't quite work is that all currency is in "ingots", except even if we did adopt a universal currency, I don't buy that as a name we'd ever use.
Those are rather niggling details though, because the big one is how the robots work. And again, this is a valid approach, I suppose, it's just one I can't get behind. The story is about Eliot attempting to reconstruct his girlfriend, piece by piece. That's where the idea started. Except, in order to do the story the way he wants to, he has to make this ridiculous (to me) condition: that if even one piece of the robot is replaced with a different piece, the entire personality is different. You can't just rescue the robot's head, or the memory unit, because unless the body's attached, it's somebody else, and she doesn't even have the slightest memory of you. This makes no sense, especially in a world where robots get damaged all the time. And it doesn't really seem to apply to anybot BUT Iris, Eliot's love. The reason for this doesn't seem to be anything other than that the story the author wants to tell would be hard to tell without this rule: he'd just have to find Iris' memory core and can then reproduce the body.
Except, you COULD tell that story. In fact, from the (still awesome, btw) title, I thought that was part of where it was going, examining a person's quest to recreate his love in a world where that exact person could be reproduced, even mass-produced, because she's an AI and her memories are copyable. Maybe explore it as a personal, obsessive love, where HE feels that unless he rescues every piece, he hasn't really saved HER (and giving her some agency too, if she's not entirely on board on this). Or, alternatively, even have something similar to the macguffin, where her memory is divided among different parts of her body, and if you don't get all of them, her memory's not complete, but she's still fundamentally the same person (and again, it allows Iris herself to be more of a character rather than a prize to be won, as more of her memories are restored). To me, that is a much more interesting story. I had a similar, although lesser, problem with the notion of infected/corrupted metal being a major problem, and the notion that there a laws against human/bot romances... they don't make sense to me, as described, but they're necessary to the plot, so, there they are.
There are a few other issues that are either minor off notes (there's an attempt to make a muddled mythological analogy that I don't think quite lands), or could go either way, depending on your tastes... the character's largely unlikeable, but I actually think that works well for the story, as his love for Iris contrasts with his occasional blindness towards the plight of other androids, particularly in cases where, to get what he wants, he literally has to take them from another bot. And there are times where the quest seems too easy and things fall into Eliot's lap... though there are a few where the choices he has to make are legitimately heart-wrenching, the author too often saves him from having to deal with them.
I'm going to give this three stars, which, considering my problems and my general distaste for this TYPE of story, is actually quite high, because I do think there's some quality here, and, in the end, I did like it... I just wanted it to be another type of story that I would have liked so much more. I'll keep an eye out for the author's future efforts, maybe going in more informed about the kinds of style the author has will make me appreciate it more (or, depending on the particular plots, pass on by).
Finished: The Blondes, by Emily Schultz
Disclaimer: I received this book free through a giveaway (although not through Goodreads). I don't think it affected my review.
Hazel Hayes is pregnant, from an affair with her professor... and although the news rocks her world, the world in general is being rocked by something else... a disease that turns ordinary people into vicious killers... but which only seems to affect blonde women.
The premise sounds a lot more dramatically cool than the book actually is. Which isn't to say it's a bad book. It's just the horror element is somewhat understated. The book actually, on my Advanced Review Copy at least, isn't actually labelled "Horror", it's labelled "Fiction/Satire", but lest you get the wrong idea, it's not a comedic book either, although it does gently poke fun at parts of our society like our standards of beauty and how women relate to one another, through the observations of the narrator. The story more or less takes itself seriously as a personal tale happening in this world where blondes have more fun...damental tendency towards going murderous. There are moments where this violence outbreaks occur as part of the story, but they're few and far between, and mostly the protagonist is at a slight distance and dealing with her own issues, or the suspicion of others that she might be one of the Blondes.
And there's a lot about the main character's life and the affair with her professor, how it started, and the situation (where we start the book, before going into flashbacks) where she has been holed up in a cabin with the wife of that professor. I almost think the author just wanted to write that story, a story of a young woman who had an affair and got pregnant and then was forced to deal with his wife, but that story was too conventional, so she thought up the idea of needing to rely on her and the Blondes scenario was just a creative way to get it to happen.
Still, for all that, the story is pretty compelling, holding my attention throughout, sometimes making me smile with her observations on society. I might have given it a four instead of a three, except the ending doesn't really work for me, it's not bad, it just sort of falls tremendously flat.
My other issue was with the plague itself, which was an interesting gimmick but the way it worked both lacked some believability and seemed to miss opportunities. It's not really much of a spoiler, because this is introduced early on, to say that the virus affects people with blonde hair: however, it does not discriminate... if you have naturally dark hair but dye it, you're susceptible. If you have naturally blonde hair and dye it black or shave it off, you're mostly safe (although you have to shave EVERYWHERE). I could have bought into the idea of a virus that has a genetic component and only affects natural blondes... not only would it have made more sense, but it could also be used to provoke a new sort of racism, with the world panicking and discriminating against blonde women even though a relatively small number of them go mad. There's some of this, but the fact that it's easy to rid yourself of the potential blunts the impact, and although a tentative explanation for how it all works is offered, it really doesn't make a whole lot of sense. It's not a fatal flaw of the book, but I think it could have been done better, particularly when it's such a striking idea and the idea that book is built and marketed around.
This was the kind of book I probably never would have bought except for the fact that I got it free, but I did wind up enjoying it. I could also see it making a cool movie.
Finished: The Three-Body Problem, by Cixin Liu
In the Three Body Problem, China is experiencing a problem with it's scientists... some are being murdered, others are experiencing strange phenomenon or giving up, or entering into secretive organizations. It's all connected to an online game called The Three-Body Problem, and a scientist during the Cultural Revolution who has made contact with an alien race.
This is a translation of a science fiction novel that is apparently incredibly popular in China, and has been hyped here as well (the Goodreads review says it has the scope of Dune and commercial action of Independence Day, which I think is overselling on both fronts!) It's also one of this year's Hugo Nominees, the primary reason I'm reading it (at least, reading it now... the subject was interesting enough that I'd planned to get it eventually, but having it appear in the Hugo voter's packet made the decision easier).
After reading it, I have to say, I'm a little disappointed. It's not a bad book... I liked it, and will probably even check out the sequel, it's just not as impressive as I'd been lead to believe.
The first thing I should point out is that it's a translation, and that may bias things a little. I've read a number of books in translation... I even consider one among my favorites that I reread regularly. But, usually, there's a certain... stiltedness to it that does impact the enjoyment. It's just because ideas and cultural baggage that are easily, sometimes even subliminally expressed in one culture, are hard to get across in another language without translating, not just the text, but also much of the structure and feeling. It's a balancing act, because if you translate sentences literally you're going to miss so much out of it, but if you make the translation smooth and accessible, you're altering the pace and pattern and feel of the original author's words so much that you almost should be calling it an adaptation rather than a translation. It seems like in a translation, there's either going to be an artificial distance created between the author and the text, or between the text and the reader, usually the latter. And this is true in this book as well. There is definitely that feeling of stiltedness. In fact, it's hard to judge just how many of my problems with the book might solely come down to this fact, that it's a translation. For example, a lot of characters feel two-dimensional, but maybe I'm missing cues to their deeper emotions that are expressed in subtle differences in the way they talk, because that was lost in the translation. I've heard that there are certain structural elements which are echoes of famous Chinese epics... I have none of that background, so all of that is lost on me, and what to somebody is a clever callback to a classic part of their heritage is, to me, a bit of unfortunate pacing. I'm almost certainly missing some social commentary just because I don't understand Chinese culture enough to know what they're commenting on.
That's a lot to get over. The translator includes footnotes, although really, most of them are not all that helpful or, for that matter, necessary. Sometimes they'll point out a play-on-words that doesn't translate, which is actually quite helpful, but a lot of times they're just things like pointing out something is a rank or common type of food, and that's the kind of thing I'm used to being able to figure out on my own - I generally don't need to know the specifics of the military structure. Historical notes (uncommented on in the original because local readers would be assumed to just know) run somewhere in the middle.
The historical context is actually one of the more interesting aspects of the book, and, moreover, that the book appears, on the surface, to be at least mildly critical of the communist revolution, which I at least found surprising, as one generally associates governments like China as not being tolerant of open criticism, even of its past. And it was also interesting learning about some of the intricacies of living during such a time, although I was left wanting more of that than we wound up getting.
The science fictional elements? They're actually fairly average, although there are a couple of really cool big ideas in here, particularly a sequence towards the end where the author reveals how an alien technology was constructed, that's up there with some of the best for evoking a sense of wonder in a concept that's PROBABLY fantasy but dressing it up so that it feels like it could be done. And there was one really cool idea brought up that I thought was going to be the focus of the book but then seemingly got dropped (although there was some thematic connection to other major parts of the story). I was a little less enthused with the titular game, which didn't seem to work like a real game could and so hurt my suspension of disbelief. The alien race was interesting but didn't wow me, but it'll be interesting to see them get more development in the next book. Despite my somewhat mild response, I do think it's worth a read, if only because, it we're not willing to step outside our own comfort zone to experience another worldview now and then, why are we reading SF in the first place?
As it stands now, even with all my problems with it, this is my #2 vote of those novels nominated for the Hugo, which just goes to show how weak a slate it is this year. Overall, I still feel that the best novels were kept off the list entirely.
Finished: Shelter, by Susan Palwick
Shelter tells the near future story set in San Francisco, during a major storm that costs many lives, and two old acquaintances, one who has inadvertently harmed the other, meet and explain how their lives lead them to that point. One, Roberta, is poor and on probation, diagnosed with a mental illness of "excessive altruism" because of a series of events the other woman, Meredith, put into motion in an attempt to protect her son. Meredith is rich, privileged, and has some mental illness issues of her own, and a complicated family life that includes her father as the first ever human consciousness translated into a digital form.
The book is not the usual type of thing I read... one decent way to describe it is as a near future family drama, but wow, it really does turn out to be pretty impressive. There's a lot going on, and it has a lot to say about mental illness, how you can harm people even with the best of intentions, forgiveness, AI rights, and a number of other issues, with a host of well-drawn and interesting characters and a mostly convincing and plausible extrapolation of our world.
There's a wide variety of characters, mostly human and a few AI, and a few who arguably could be either (one major underlying issue is Meredith's refusal to accept that her father actually is her father, and is instead just a clever machine, and different people will see different answers to that question), and mostly they're compelling and vivid and feel real, and their interactions kept me invested even when it became fairly clear generally where the plot was going... I knew more or less what was going to happen, but I still wanted to know exactly how, and how everyone would deal when they found out.
The setting does one of the things I like best in SF, really selling a near future world with dozens of tiny details. About the only major slipup is that phones and TV habits seem a bit too conventional, and there seems to be widespread acceptance of a non-Judeo-Christian religion (although, I was never clear if it was supposed to be the dominant one, or if it just happened to be influential to many of the main characters and some of the underlying philosophies were embraced by the world). Still, it's easy to ignore those minor issues and focus on the good. I particularly liked how plausible the "excessive altruism," something we'd consider laudable today, turning into being considered a mental illness was. It's not a blatant "selfishness is best" philosophy pervading the world, but more subtle. And the genius of it being shorthanded as "exalted" was a really nice touch. I kind of wish we got more on that topic, actually, maybe another story set in the universe.
Shelter doesn't hit you over the head with its messages, but it does give you a lot to think of, and I found myself very impressed with it. My biggest complaint is the ending seemed a little too... pat, with a few things working out just too conveniently good, when reality it should have been a little messier. Also, at times it does run a little slow and repetitive. Still, this is a book that I think can be read even by non-SF readers, and is something of an undiscovered gem, having received little mainstream acknowledgement.
Highly recommended.
Finished: River of Gods, by Ian McDonald
In 2047 India, while internal tensions and possible civil war looms, a cop hunts down illegal artificial intelligence while his marriage is in danger, a stand-up comic is called home to take over his father's business, a reporter gets the scoop of a lifetime, a high level politician pursues a taboo relationship that could ruin his career, and an American scholar seeks another regarding an impossible artifact in space. These stories, and others, all contribute to a change that will ring out throughout history.
I really enjoyed this book, although it had a bit of a slow start. There are many different story lines, and at first the book visits all of them in turn, and so none of them advance much (most aren't connected at all at first, and even at the end, some are connected in ways that only the reader is aware of, not the characters). So it takes a while to really get invested, but once you do, things carry on and the plots start intertwining and a big mystery is set up and I liked the characters, and it all carried me through waiting to see what would happen next.
Although there are a few Americans, and some who come from other countries, most of the characters in this book are Indian, and the book does not shy away from that fact. To someone like me, someone who doesn't have too much in-depth knowledge of Indian culture, beyond what I've gotten from the media and a life growing up in a fairly multicultural Canadian city, it presents a little bit of a challenge to get in to. It doesn't hold back or explain very much, it throws in terms from that culture and the Hindi language (and possibly other regional languages) as though it's part of the background, because, for most of the characters, it is. Although I was interested in the characters and the story from the outset, this made it a bit difficult to get into at first, at least until I picked up enough from context that I could get what was going on in some of the plotlines. At it turns out, I was reading this at the same time as The Three-Body Problem (set in China, and original written there), and I could not help thinking that it is THIS book that really needs footnotes, not TBP. There is a glossary for River of Gods at the back, which would certainly help, but I only became aware of it after I read the novel in full. Still, even with full immersion, it's not THAT difficult, it's just a bit of a challenge, and one worth taking on if you like good SF with strong characters. And I feel it's a good idea to stretch your horizons now and then and read books focusing on characters who aren't a part of your culture, or are written by those of differing perspectives. This book seems to be more the former than the latter, of course, as the author is British. As an outsider, I can't accurately judge how well the author captured the culture, but he at least seemed to give it a serious effort and without any obvious (to me) problems... and, at the very least, the Indian characters are mostly the protagonists in their own stories rather than just being background color for somebody else.
Capturing the world of another culture is one challenge, building a future world is a whole different matter, and here, too, he mostly succeeds. Although only a few ideas are really focused on, there are more going on in the background that add up to a rich and convincing future world. He's apparently set a book of short stories in that world, Cyberabad Days, and I am going to be keeping an eye out for it. I do admit to one small, personal issue with the book. I would barely even call it a gripe, it was more just a stumbling block that affected me and might impact others. One of the plotlines is told from the perspective of a "neut", a member of a new subculture of people who have undergone a procedure that removes their gender. I have no problem with this idea, but neuts use the pronoun "yt" to replace "he", "she", "him", and "her" (and "yt's" for "his" and "her" possessively). And sometimes, this just made those sections difficult for me to read smoothly, particularly when you got sentences like "Yt told yt yt had to go." My brain just often stopped and said "what?" and I had to take time parsing it, which threw me out of the narrative. I might have preferred they use, if not "they", some other pronoun that felt more natural. In the end, though, it's a fairly minor gripe, if it is one at all.
Highly recommended... my first experience with McDonald, but I don't think it'll be my last.
Finished: Terms of Enlistment, by Marko Kloos
A hundred years from now, Andrew Grayson signs up to join the armed forces. It's not patriotism or duty that drives him, he simply views it as his only chance to escape the life he was born into, a crime-ridden and economically broken city in which most of the population lives in government assisted housing with a small food ration. Moreover, it's his only real shot at getting off Earth and to live in a colony, which is about the closest thing he has to a dream. We follow him through his training and his first few assignments, where he learns that the universe is more dangerous than he first thought.
This is unapologetic military SF. It doesn't really do anything daring or especially novel, but then, it doesn't have to... it's more about doing the things the readers expect from the subgenre with skill and providing a diverting adventure for however it long it takes to read. On that level, it's fairly successful. The author makes the main character competent and skilled, but not such an awesome soldier that it's worthy of an eyeroll. He experiences spectacularly lucky breaks a few times, but that's something you tend to expect from fiction anyway. The book's consistently readable and entertaining, albeit, for me, at a relatively low level on that last part. I'm not really the best judge of the parts that are heavily action-oriented... I admit my eyes tend to glaze over if there's not something more interesting going on than firing weapons and the occasional explosion, but they seemed about up to par.
It did have a bit of an awkward pacing, where he goes from adventures in basic, to his first deployment, has an adventure there, goes on to a second place, trains, has an adventure... this I think is something in the nature of the subgenre (and indeed, probably reflects certain aspects of the military life), but narratively, it feels a little more like a serial that was collected into a novel than a single cohesive story. But other than that, the pace is pretty good, the prose is easy to get through. The characters are a bit dry or only sketched in at times, and again, part of this is the nature of the story: often his squadmates are only around for a short time before either they die or he's moved to a completely new set of co-workers. There are a few that stand out, but most of them I couldn't remember. The plot didn't really thrill me, either... it was diverting and interesting, I was never bored, but there wasn't a moment where I was excited about what was happening, either, at least until the last section, where my interest began to perk up with some of the more SF elements.
Grayson himself is a bit too blase and cold for my tastes, particularly with respect to civilian casualties and also his own family. I can understand the problems he had with his father, but he seemed to have a relatively good relationship with his mother, and then moments after he leaves for training he reflects that if the whole city got destroyed that second, he wouldn't miss anything about it. That's pretty cold. Nor does he ever seem to think positively about anybody in his past ever again, and yet other than that he seems a fairly well-adjusted and friendly person. These kind of contradictions might work well if explored, but they don't seem to be in this book. It's not a fatal flaw, particularly for MilSF, but I'd wished I had more to hang onto. Maybe he improves in the sequel.
I actually picked this up because the sequel, Lines of Departure, was nominated for a Hugo, as part of a directed attempt to take over the Hugo nominees via slate voting. Kloos himself was not part of this effort, and he had the grace to withdraw his name from contention because of it, which earned him some respect, especially because other people who weren't part of the slate voting suggested that it might actually be worth the nom on its own merits. I can't speak for that book, but this one was just good enough that I'll probably check out that sequel as well, at some point, and hopefully they're right. After all, Terms of Enlistment is a first novel, which are usually a little rougher than an author's later books.
I was probably hovering about a 2 for the first half of the book, okay but didn't really grab me. Personal taste plays a huge role here: This is in part because of the subgenre itself... MilSF is something I can enjoy from time to time, but (particularly with my already stated reactions to heavy action scenes) it's mostly not my cup of tea and even when it's done slightly above average it doesn't impress me as much, just by default. The events in the second half bumped up my interest, although, if half-stars were allowable, it might not have made the full three. It's somewhere on the edge. But since I can't mark the edge itself, and I usually give a bit more leeway to first novels anyway, I'll give it a three.
Finished: The Goblin Emperor, by Katherine Addison
Maia, the half-goblin son of an elven emperor is suddenly thrust into a position he never expected or wanted. His father had other heirs and seemed to regret having him in the first place, but, when his father and everyone else in line before him all died in the same accident, Maia was the only choice. He learns to deal with his new role, those who don't feel he belongs there, those who try to manipulate him, and those who are actively plotting against him, while trying to his best to be a good leader and improve his empire.
I should state right up front that I'm largely not a fantasy reader. I'm reading this because it made the short list of nominees for the Hugo award, and probably would entirely skip it otherwise. It's not only not-my-thing because it's fantasy, it's not-my-thing because it's fantasy focusing on royalty. Personally, we've got enough people who hold power over large numbers of people and didn't actually do anything to deserve it that I feel like it's a bit disgusting to fetishize the concept in fantasy literature as well. Now, granted, if we have to, I'd rather read a story like this about a genuinely good person thrust into the position and trying their best, but, even with good kings, when we focus on them I usually can't help hoping that the plot involves the citizens deposing the king and installing some kind of democracy. This is possibly why I'm not a fantasy reader in the first place. So there's two strikes against it, right off the bat.
I see from various ratings that a lot of people genuinely seem to enjoy the book a lot. And it got not only a Hugo nom (and, unlike a number of other nominees this year, as far as I can tell seems to have earned it fairly), but also a Nebula nom as well. And to an extent I can see why people enjoy it, there's a sort of overall pleasantness to it. It's got a brisk pace, the lead's appealing (again, assuming that we're stuck reading the adventurers of an Emperor in the first place). It's got a certain "readability", with a few exceptions. I've heard a couple of people make comments along the lines of "there were a lot of meetings and nothing much happened but I was entertained all the way through" and I think it's a fair assessment, although in my case the entertainment was much more subdued. I can see the appeal.
It just didn't do much for me, personally. Not because nothing much happened (I've enjoyed SF books by that description... heck, fellow Hugo-nominee Ancillary Sword kind of fits that description, and is in fact has a very similar feel, and I enjoyed that quite a bit), but because of my previously stated problems, along with a few others.
One is that, despite the name of the book being The Goblin Emperor, and the Emperor being half-Elven, half-Goblin... I never got a sense of these MATTERing, at all, of what it means to be Elven or Goblin or anything like that, except that this is a fantasy world and so elves and goblins exist. Aside from a few mentions of ears flattening or making other movements in response to emotions, if they didn't specify they were Elven, I would have assumed they were human (for that matter, I don't even know if humans exist in this world). I can think of literally nothing else that felt distinctively non-human. You could have replaced the different races with different ethnicities or cultures of medieval (or slightly steampunky) human and had the exact same story. Maybe that's the point, that having races with distinct attributes is itself a racist idea, and it would be a fair point, but, to me, it never felt that that point was pursued with intention and gusto, and instead it feels more like the author was just lazy on their worldbuilding. If you're going to use elves and dwarves and goblins, either stick to established archetypes (like Elves living in cities built in harmony with nature, which doesn't seem to be a trope used here... I was never even sure if they live longer than humans), or vividly create new archetypes and set about teaching your audience what it means in your world, or actively challenge your reader on why you're not doing either. Don't reduce the terms "Elf" and "Goblin" to bland labels you apply to different groups and give you a catchy title.
The other problem was the names. There are so many long and complicated names in this book, and long and complicated names that are incredibly similar to other long and complicated names. In addition to long and complicated new terms for titles like "Sir" and "Lady" and stuff new to the world. This made it incredibly difficult to get into, and I admit, that with maybe 5 exceptions, every time a character was brought up, I literally had to figure out who they were by the context, not the name: if they talked about clerical matters and investigating the crash by using religious powers, it was the priest guy. I remembered people by their roles, which made it especially difficult with female characters, because, being a traditional medieval society where women were all but property and rarely had careers of their own, their interactions seemed similar. I never could keep straight whether the woman who sang in the opera was his future empress or a woman who he thought was trying to manipulate him for her sister or his half-sister or just a woman he had a crush on or if all three of them were actually separate people at all. Maybe if I had a clear idea at all times who everyone was (and simpler names would have helped a lot... one more reason to not bother with including fantasy races and just make them humans) I would have become more invested and liked it more.
As it stands, I rate it a two. I can see why others liked it more, but my personal rating was just a two. It was okay. I don't feel like I totally wasted my time, but I don't feel I would have missed anything important if I had never read it at all. If there's a sequel, I probably won't read it (unless it, too, gets nominated and I get it for free). Currently on my Hugo vote ranking it stands at #3, just barely above No Award. And, when they eventually showed up in the book, I never got over my urge to root for the group who wanted to tear down the monarchy. I don't think that was intended, but, it is what it is.
Finished: Fluency, by Jennifer Foehner Wells
The government has known about an alien space ship in the solar system for decades, and they're finally ready to launch a mission. They believe the ship is abandoned, but, just in case, they include Dr. Jane Holloway, an expert linguist, on the mission. But the ship isn't abandoned, and what they find there may force Dr. Holloway to choose whether to trust an unknown alien, or her own crew.
I've heard some good things about this book, and there is a lot to like, but I have some mixed feelings that prevented me from giving it a higher score. It started quite well, a good sense of adventure and spookiness, but once she came in contact with the alien my problems began. I say problems but that might not be the best word, because, largely it's a question of personal tastes. There are different styles of SF, and of course, various definitions of 'hard' vs 'soft', and tying in to both of these and yet somewhat separate as well, there's another quality that, for the purposes of this review, I'll call "weight". 'Heavyness' can be granted by being harder SF, or more rigorous exploration of the completely made up elements. It can be granted by tackling serious issues in a serious way. 'Lightness' can be taken away by a sense of fun and adventure. It's a very fuzzy metric. What's more, "Heavy" and "Light" isn't a judgement of quality on it's own. Sometimes you want something light more than anything else, and sometimes a book can be too heavy. book that is described as "very readable" is often on the lighter end. On the other hand, the type of SF that you'd see on TV is often much lighter (the fact that it's usually not as hard is a big factor there). And while I've loved books that I'd call very light, and ones that I'd call heavy, generally, I lean towards heavier ones. This book is, for my tastes, a little too on the light end of the scale, and I was hoping it would be just a bit heavier.
I probably only have myself to blame for not reading the description more carefully (not to mention not considering the title), but let's start with the biggest disappointment: The main character is a linguist, but it plays virtually no role in the plot, as she is pretty well magically given the ability to communicate with the alien without much effort. One of my pet peeves in SF is telepathic abilities... unless it's a story specifically about people with powers, or it's explained with actual technology, I don't want telepathy in my SF, it feels like magic to me which pushes it into Space Fantasy. I don't want a space opera where the telepathy is a thing and some aliens have it. And yet, that's the type of book this is. Yes, it's easier to tell a story when you can skip all the "learning a common language" part, but one of the benefits of books is the author doesn't have to choose the easy route. There are other conceptual elements too, worldbuilding elements that not just put the book in "light" SF territory, but specifically call to mind TV/movie sci-fi, because it's the kind of stuff that I accept from them, but don't like when it's in a book, because in a book we can do better than TV-level SF tropes. Now, granted, this would be the kind of show that I'd watch the heck out of, but still, it's not really what I, personally, want from my books. It's not a dealbreaker, but it makes it a tougher sell for me.
Is it good enough in other areas to overcome this? Well, this review would be a lot easier to write if I could just dismiss this as "not my kind of book" and be done with it. Because there's also a lot of good going on, the characters are mostly believable, some exciting action, and I was kept guessing about the alien, and there was some genuinely interesting things done in the contact scenario (especially with the main character being, in some ways, violated, not maliciously, but because of a difference in cultural mores). And the book sets up an interesting situation for book 2. So although I didn't love the book, I'd rate it 3 stars because I liked it, I just wanted more from it. That said, I'll probably continue on to the second (although, maybe not rush out and buy it).
As I said, this is mostly a taste matter. The only other thing I'd bring up is that there's a significant romantic subplot running through the book, and I didn't mind it but I thought it was a little too unsubtle, I can buy the characters and their feelings, but the beats of it all seemed a shade on the overdramatic side. Of course, compared to the history of badly-written romances in SF, it barely even registers, but it was something I felt could have been more skillfully handled. But, it is a first novel, and I suspect this is easily the kind of thing that can be improved on.
Finished: Afterparty, by Daryl Gregory
There's a new drug on the street... those who take it not only start to believe in God, but often believe God is right there, talking to them... at least until it's out of their system, and then it's like being abandoned. Lyda has experienced a drug like this before... she was on a team that invented it, before they were dosed with a massive quantity of it that left one person dead and the rest with permanent side-effects. Lyda's is a persistent hallucination of an angel. She knows it's not real, but it guides her nonethelss. She also knows that this new drug is probably the one she helped to invent, and she breaks her parole and goes on a quest to find the source and put it out of business.
Wow. This book impressed me so much than I thought it would. The premise was interesting at first, although it made me leery... books that are heavily about drugs and drug culture can sometimes turn me off. Here though, this wasn't a problem for me, it wasn't a "drug" book, it was a book where drugs just happen to be part of the context and the world these character's quest involves.
I never felt alienated, and in fact I was drawn in right away, fascinated by some of these characters and there was good action and worldbuilding and scientific speculation (albeit relatively near future stuff) and left wanting to go back and read more every time I put it down.
Everything just clicked with me in a way it hasn't in a while, and in fact, it reminded me of one of my favorite books for this... Blindsight, by Peter Watts. Now, granted, perhaps the reason it impressed me so much was because a lot of the buttons it pushed on me were the same. There was a focus on the mind and how it can go wrong and lead you astray. The main characters were messed up, but in inventive ways, and incredibly compelling and likeable all the same, from the main character and her angel, to Ollie who has to choose between being unable to distinguish objects while on meds, or paranoia while off them, to a mute little girl with a deck of cards as her best friends. Also, like Blindsight, there were even some of the very same philosophical points raised (although not all, and this book is significantly less dark) about free will and brain chemistry and religion. I'm not claiming it as copying those or anything like that, it was just the same things I liked and couldn't get enough of. In fact, I've struggled for a while for something to recommend to people who loved Blindsight- this now may be my default answer to that question, at least, if you're not bored of those particular themes and tropes. It's like when you watch a Hollywood sequel, you don't usually do it so you can get something new, but rather so you can get that same hit of enjoyment that worked for you last time. Except these similarities happened (presumably) by accident, in a completely different story, so you get the best of both worlds... novelty with a rush of a lot of the same things you loved.
It's not a perfect book, and much of the issues are around the ending. It's not a singular flaw (although there was a moment I thought there might be a personal dealbreaker, it was handled with enough ambiguity that I could enjoy it), it just didn't all come together, some things were too predictable, others seemed to build up to something and disappeared too quickly, and I was left feeling some significant threads didn't get the closure they deserved. If the author intended to leave it open for a sequel, I might not have a problem with it (and I would absolutely read it, I particularly want to see more of Ollie), but it doesn't feel like that, it feels like it was intended to be mostly the end of the story, it just didn't quite come together as well as it could. Still enjoyed the ending, just it was a bit of a stumble for what was, up until that point, such a great book.
Finished: Infidel, by Kameron Hurley
Since this is book two, I'm cutting the summary which spoils elements of God's War
Nyxnissa so Dasheem, a mercenary and former Bel Dame assassin, has a new team... since her last one either got killer, abandoned her, or she pushed them away six years ago. The survivors of her former team are mostly doing well, living new lives away from the centuries-long holy war and starting families. Nyx herself, she's getting by, mostly working as a bodyguard, but suffers from mysterious unexplained health problems she's trying to hide. But when she uncovers evidence that a faction of the Bel Dames are plotting against their Queen, Nyx is once against caught up in something that's probably too big for her to handle. But she doesn't have much choice, and she may need to track down her old team to complete the job.
I really enjoyed the first book in this series, God's War, despite it interjecting a little too much in the way of fantasy elements to my science fiction. It had a rich setting, compelling though occasionally unlikeable characters, and a strong emotional kick that complimented the grittiness rather than being outweighed by it. I was eager to move on to the second one, and, I'm happy to say, much of the same kind of thing is here too. I don't think I liked it quite as much as the first one, but that's usually the case in second-books in a series, because some of the enjoyment in the first was down strictly to novelty, which obviously can't be as much of a factor in a sequel. But on the whole, I think it holds up well. Nyx was perhaps more unlikeable and judgmental, it worked for the character. There may have been a bit too much in the way of tragedy piled on top of tragedy, but that's the kind of book this is, the kind of world it's set in, where happy endings are difficult to come by, and, at best, you can get endings you might someday, if everything works out, forge new beginnings from. This is true in the larger plot sense and in the more personal, relationship sense.
Of my minor pet peeves, I did think that the fantasy elements that bothered me before rankled just a touch more this time, partly because the SF elements seemed less developed. That is, the biological insect organisms that handle much of the technology... in the first book, I remember the author being a bit more specific about HOW swarms of bugs could work as, say, a long-distance telephone, whereas in this one, too often it was just taken for granted, "bugs did it."
Still, I really want to see how Nyx's story ends, and I'm absolutely going to read the third part of the trilogy.
Oh, and since this is my personal journal, a little side story. I do most of my reading while walking to or from work, and of course, this was the case here. While I was reading this, I heard somebody walking behind me, maybe 5-6 sidewalk slabs behind me, speaking loudly, apparently to himself, saying, "If you kill one Infidel, it's like killing all Infidels, I'm going to kill all Infidels!" or something like that. Possibly mentally ill person with a hate-on for Infidels, however he might define them... normally, as long as it's just talk, well, I'm not going to pay it much attention. Except, of course, that I happened to be reading a book called Infidel, and I was worried that if he passed me and happend to spot it, he'd either attack me or want to start a conversation, and neither seemed particularly appealing. So I tried to non-obviously pick up my pace and get as much distance between us as I could. Luckily, though, at the next intersection I kept walking straight, and he turned down the other street.
Finished: Bless Your Mechanical Heart (short story collection)
This book is one of those themed anthologies of short stories. In this case, the theme is robots/AI/cyborgs, and more specifically, the application of the phrase "Bless Your Heart"/"Bless His/Her Heart" to them, implying that perhaps they're a little naive or don't quite get it... but there's a lot of variation within, in some cases the robot's not naive, but the humans are by thinking it is, for example, in other the robot's got some wonky programming or incomplete emotions, and in others it just lacks some important piece of knowledge but reasons as well as any of us. There are robots in love, robot murderers, robot guardians, robots all alone, and even a few who are arguably not even robots. It's a good mix, if you like AI themes.
Of course, these collections are always hard to give a review to, because some stories will connect with me, some won't, and likely the same will be true of you, but they won't be the same ones. All in all, it's a decent mix, I enjoyed it, no outright stinkers, but not many that blew me away, either. I will say sometimes the knowledge of the theme may have been detrimental to the enjoyment of some of the stories... for example, if it's a mystery story and there's only one robot, it's not a big leap to assume they're a key part of it, whereas in a book of more assorted science fiction stories, the robot could just be a part of the worldbuilding background. In most cases, though, this really isn't an issue.
My favorites were "The Lambs," by Seanan McGuire (which tells of robotic children meant to record and discourage bullying in school), and "Just Another Day in the Butterfly War," by M. Todd Gallowglas (which involves a cyborg servant to a commander in a war involving constant alterations to history).
I actually received this book for free as part of the Hugo voters packet (the editor was up for an award and this was provided as a sample of her work). I don't think it affected my review, but I'm glad I got it because I likely wouldn't have encountered it otherwise, although I do think it's worth buying if you like SF short stories and the theme appeals to you.
Finished: Dark Orbit, by Carolyn Ives Gilman
Dark Orbit tells the story of two women who arrive on a strange crystalline world... one, on her last assignment, is believed to have suffered some psychotic break and took on the role of a goddess. The other is a wanderer with little respect for authority, but who has been assigned to keep an eye on the first. But their discoveries on this new world challenge much what both of them thought they knew about the universe.
Disclaimer: I got this book free through a Tor giveaway (not through Goodreads though). I don't think it affected my review.
This book is a difficult one for me to rate. Part of it is because it treads into one of my pet peeves for SF... it's a bit spoilery, so I won't get into it, but suffice it to say, it's one of those things that, when I know it's a part of the plot, makes me a good deal less likely to pick it up at all, and when I discover it mid-read, I'm almost always disappointed, and wind up feeling that the book could have been so much better if they hadn't gone that way.
To it's credit, in this book, it's not a case where it's just tacked on for color, or a cool worldbuilding element to make the author's setting stand out among the crowd, or to make the plot run more easily. It's tied into the theme enough that it's hard to remove it without changing the book entirely, and in fact you could even say the very message of the book argues against not just my objections, but the mindset behind them. I don't care, it's still something I don't like in my SF, but I can at least acknowledge the point and that these elements weren't added carelessly. Nor do they ruin the book, they just make me less enthusiastic.
So let's move past it. Up until I discovered the element in question, I was quite enjoying that book. The universe had an appealing setup, and need for space travelers to lose decades of rel time to transit that takes an instant for them seemed like a particularly appealing setup and for the most part was explored well. The characters, even if they seemed to fall a little broadly towards exaggerations of personality types, were interesting. Particularly Thora, who I somehow found pretentious and a little annoying and yet appealing and raising good points even when I disagreed with her. And I should note that the author does pull off a masterful trick with reader's expectations and perceptions of the characters that works well with the themes and potentially makes the limited-dimensionality of some of the characters intentional and to a good purpose. In general the prose and pacing seemed fine, maybe a little bit off in parts but nothing serious, and the depictions of what the weird alien planet looked like, even though it was hard to visualize, did still manage to succeed at evoking some of the classic sense of wonder.
Where the novel really shines is with the perception of a society without sight, and in particular, the depiction of a being who has the biological ability to see but grew up without every using it, and having to learn how it works. It's a masterful bit of SF speculation, putting the reader in an alien mindset and challenging our views on what we think is obvious. I only wish it took up more of the book, because it was my favorite part by far.
The only other criticism I'll make is that the parts from the perspective of Thora were told first person, supposedly as her own recordings of her observations while she's in the situation, and... it just didn't feel natural to imagine it as intended. She repeats conversations too well, word for word, long after the fact (when it would have often made more sense to just record the conversations themselves), broken into just the kind of chunks that fit with the novel's pace and there are none of the usual human breaks that somebody telling their story would give. To me it would make more sense if it was a memoir compiled after the fact, or simply a first person narrative without any explanation for how it fits, rather than to give it that specific justification, as a recording, and not do it believably. A small issue, but it did break me out of my suspension of disbelief.
I enjoyed the book for what it was, over all, and though I think it was close to being much much better, it's so deliberately crafted that it's quite possible that almost any element changed to bring it towards that much better novel would make the whole thing fall apart.
Currently Reading (or finished but haven't written reviews for): The Red by Linda Nagata, Cinder by Marissa Meyer, Anathem by Neil Stephenson, The Deaths of Tao by Wesley Chu, Up Against It by M.J. Locke, Linesman by S.K. Dunstall, The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August by Claire North
You may have noticed a pattern in these... or maybe not. But 11 of the 19 books listed above were written by women (and one was a short story collection). Some of this is circumstance (I've gotten several free, either from giveaways or as part of the Hugo voters packet), but also, I've been trying to make a conscious effort to read more female SF authors. It is still a field that is dominated by men, and my philosophy has always been that if there's an obvious disparity in something like this, there are only a few explanations: either one group just isn't as good, they, by some natural tendency, just don't have the interest, or there is some systemic bias that skews the numbers (which can occur by pushing them away from trying or lack of promotion), and that can be combated by adding a bit of bias in the other direction. I believe the last one and am trying to take steps to correct it. The positive bias I'm applying isn't dramatic, I'm just trying to be aware of what's happening, and be more open to trying things... books that I might have been on the fence on, where I'd think "Maybe I'll get it if I hear good reviews", I've been just getting, and keeping an eye out for recommendations of others in this area. It also dovetails nicely with another goal I've had for 2015, that started several months in when I realized I'd accidentally been holding to it: no rereads. I love rereading my old favorites, but since I'm more than halfway through the year and haven't yet read anything I've read before, why not make it a goal? And it means I need to be exposed to more books anyway, so why not try more female SF authors?
In any event, I'm still not at parity for the year, but with just that small level of bias I've gotten closer than I expected. And I've got plenty of more on the queue or in my sights for later. In fact, I just bought the Women in SF ebook bundle (pay what you want for 5 works, or get 10 for $15 or more)... since one of my three books I read at any given time is on my phone. If you read ebooks, it might be worth checking out the bundle, which runs for about another two weeks.
Also I mentioned last time that I was thinking of converting my own personal domain, which had, for a time, run as a comic review site, into a written-SF news-and-review site, and I'm leaning towards making that happen when I stop being so lazy.
Speaking of leaning towards, right now I'm leaning towards skipping Fan Expo Canada this year. The guests are cool but none are the kind I can't miss, and also my Mom's coming into town that weekend. But I'll keep an eye on the guest list for any last minute changes.
Wayward Pines: Surprisingly watchable, and surprisingly SF. I mean, a bit silly at times, but I enjoyed it and I appreciated them not dangling out the mystery, they actually solved it about halfway in and the rest was dealing with other issues. THAT is how you do it. I kind of want to see a season 2.
Dark Matter: One of two new space opera shows on the channel formerly known as the Sci-Fi channel. At least it's getting back to its roots a little, I just wish they'd go back to their old name. As for their new show... it's watchable, mildly enjoyable, but... it doesn't really reach very far. It's done a few cool things, but pretty soon the gimmick that started it (mercenaries with really bad pasts who get a chance to reform when their memories are all wiped) will not just lose it's novelty, but also it's relevance, and it's going to have to keep audience excitement up or it's going to turn into a bog-standard space opera with nothing particular to recommend it. But, as I said, I am enjoying it, especially the overly earnest and endearing android character who I just want to tell that she's doing a great job. David Hewlett (aka Rodney McKay) has appeared a few times as the mercenary's agent/fixer and hopefully will appear again.
Killjoys: The other space opera show on the channel formerly known as the Sci-Fi channel. Now, this is more like it. It's got energy, there's a sense that some serious worldbuilding time went into the setting (I don't know if it has, but the feeling that it has is enough), the interactions between the characters (including minor ones) often sparkle, and there's overall a feel that the people involved, actors, writers, even set designers, love what they're doing (the soldier guy is maybe a little flatter than the others, but that's okay). It's not quite up to the level of Firefly, but it's possibly the space opera show that's gotten me most excited since then. It doesn't hurt that the studios they filmed at is right near my work, so I theoretically might have the chance to run into the actors (but probably not). If it gets renewed, and I hope it does.
Under the Dome: Almost hilariously awful. I've seen some sites suggesting it's improvement, people are lying. It's gone from being awful at doing a plot that's at least novel, to being awful at doing the oldest, hoariest plots in SF TV. And I say almost hilariously awful because it's at least in previous years the awfulness was somehow funny, this time, it's more often just dumb and badly acted. Why do I still watch? Masochism, obviously.
What's coming? I still need to finish watching Sense8... I saw the first ep and liked it but I keep putting off watching the rest.
Pretty soon the Walking Dead spinoff (set in LA and at the start of the outbreak) will be starting, and I look forward to that. And then the fall season begins not long after that, which includes Doctor Who.
So, books! As usual, these reviews are mostly copied from my Goodreads feed.
Finished: Love in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, by Judd Trichter
At some unspecified point in the future, human-looking androids live side-by-side with humans, albeit with virtually no rights, and there are strict laws against robot/human affairs. Eliot Lazar is a businessman working in robot sales, but he's in love with a free-roaming robot girl and plans to run away with her. But when she's taken and her parts sold off, he has to go on a quest to recover her... all of her.
This one's a tough one for me. I wanted to like it much more than I did. And I do believe the author has a certain degree of talent, some of the prose is lyrical, and he clearly put a fair bit of effort into it. I could easily see him having a good career in the field.
But it's not really my kind of story. It's the kind of story I'd describe as a "Sci-Fi Fable" - There are certain emotional beats the author wants to get to, certain tropes he wants to deal with, and evoking the right feel is more important than creating a world that's a believable extrapolation of science.
There's nothing fundamentally wrong with this approach... it's done in dystopian fiction all the time, for example. However, it's an approach that doesn't work for me, because the little details don't work. It's a world that feels like today (or even a few decades ago... there's a strong noir vibe), with a few technological doodads like the robots added in and other things like exploration of other planets mostly in the background. Characters seem to exhibit certain types of casual racist or sexist comments that I'd hope we're about ready to move past, or at least show a greater variety. (I should note that I don't believe that this is because the author is racist or sexist, or anything, just that I think he's trying to evoke the feel of this kind of world where casual racism/sexism still goes on... maybe he feels this tendency to casually devalue is even a necessary precondition for or consequence of the utter lack of civil rights the robots experience).
In general, though, the details don't work for me, and sometimes I get what the author was going for, but it didn't ring true. For example, because the droids have spinning engines in their chest, they're referred to in casual conversation as spinners... I totally buy this. The problem begins is that he goes one step further: actual humans are likewise known as heartbeats, in casual conversation people refer to heartbeats all the time. Not just robots (which would make a certain amount of sense), humans refer to themselves as heartbeats as well. But to me, if your society believes that humans are the only ones of value, you give the Other a derogatory name, and just call yourself "people" or "humans" because you don't feel the need to change to admit somebody else into your status. Another example of "sci-fi change" that didn't quite work is that all currency is in "ingots", except even if we did adopt a universal currency, I don't buy that as a name we'd ever use.
Those are rather niggling details though, because the big one is how the robots work. And again, this is a valid approach, I suppose, it's just one I can't get behind. The story is about Eliot attempting to reconstruct his girlfriend, piece by piece. That's where the idea started. Except, in order to do the story the way he wants to, he has to make this ridiculous (to me) condition: that if even one piece of the robot is replaced with a different piece, the entire personality is different. You can't just rescue the robot's head, or the memory unit, because unless the body's attached, it's somebody else, and she doesn't even have the slightest memory of you. This makes no sense, especially in a world where robots get damaged all the time. And it doesn't really seem to apply to anybot BUT Iris, Eliot's love. The reason for this doesn't seem to be anything other than that the story the author wants to tell would be hard to tell without this rule: he'd just have to find Iris' memory core and can then reproduce the body.
Except, you COULD tell that story. In fact, from the (still awesome, btw) title, I thought that was part of where it was going, examining a person's quest to recreate his love in a world where that exact person could be reproduced, even mass-produced, because she's an AI and her memories are copyable. Maybe explore it as a personal, obsessive love, where HE feels that unless he rescues every piece, he hasn't really saved HER (and giving her some agency too, if she's not entirely on board on this). Or, alternatively, even have something similar to the macguffin, where her memory is divided among different parts of her body, and if you don't get all of them, her memory's not complete, but she's still fundamentally the same person (and again, it allows Iris herself to be more of a character rather than a prize to be won, as more of her memories are restored). To me, that is a much more interesting story. I had a similar, although lesser, problem with the notion of infected/corrupted metal being a major problem, and the notion that there a laws against human/bot romances... they don't make sense to me, as described, but they're necessary to the plot, so, there they are.
There are a few other issues that are either minor off notes (there's an attempt to make a muddled mythological analogy that I don't think quite lands), or could go either way, depending on your tastes... the character's largely unlikeable, but I actually think that works well for the story, as his love for Iris contrasts with his occasional blindness towards the plight of other androids, particularly in cases where, to get what he wants, he literally has to take them from another bot. And there are times where the quest seems too easy and things fall into Eliot's lap... though there are a few where the choices he has to make are legitimately heart-wrenching, the author too often saves him from having to deal with them.
I'm going to give this three stars, which, considering my problems and my general distaste for this TYPE of story, is actually quite high, because I do think there's some quality here, and, in the end, I did like it... I just wanted it to be another type of story that I would have liked so much more. I'll keep an eye out for the author's future efforts, maybe going in more informed about the kinds of style the author has will make me appreciate it more (or, depending on the particular plots, pass on by).
Finished: The Blondes, by Emily Schultz
Disclaimer: I received this book free through a giveaway (although not through Goodreads). I don't think it affected my review.
Hazel Hayes is pregnant, from an affair with her professor... and although the news rocks her world, the world in general is being rocked by something else... a disease that turns ordinary people into vicious killers... but which only seems to affect blonde women.
The premise sounds a lot more dramatically cool than the book actually is. Which isn't to say it's a bad book. It's just the horror element is somewhat understated. The book actually, on my Advanced Review Copy at least, isn't actually labelled "Horror", it's labelled "Fiction/Satire", but lest you get the wrong idea, it's not a comedic book either, although it does gently poke fun at parts of our society like our standards of beauty and how women relate to one another, through the observations of the narrator. The story more or less takes itself seriously as a personal tale happening in this world where blondes have more fun...damental tendency towards going murderous. There are moments where this violence outbreaks occur as part of the story, but they're few and far between, and mostly the protagonist is at a slight distance and dealing with her own issues, or the suspicion of others that she might be one of the Blondes.
And there's a lot about the main character's life and the affair with her professor, how it started, and the situation (where we start the book, before going into flashbacks) where she has been holed up in a cabin with the wife of that professor. I almost think the author just wanted to write that story, a story of a young woman who had an affair and got pregnant and then was forced to deal with his wife, but that story was too conventional, so she thought up the idea of needing to rely on her and the Blondes scenario was just a creative way to get it to happen.
Still, for all that, the story is pretty compelling, holding my attention throughout, sometimes making me smile with her observations on society. I might have given it a four instead of a three, except the ending doesn't really work for me, it's not bad, it just sort of falls tremendously flat.
My other issue was with the plague itself, which was an interesting gimmick but the way it worked both lacked some believability and seemed to miss opportunities. It's not really much of a spoiler, because this is introduced early on, to say that the virus affects people with blonde hair: however, it does not discriminate... if you have naturally dark hair but dye it, you're susceptible. If you have naturally blonde hair and dye it black or shave it off, you're mostly safe (although you have to shave EVERYWHERE). I could have bought into the idea of a virus that has a genetic component and only affects natural blondes... not only would it have made more sense, but it could also be used to provoke a new sort of racism, with the world panicking and discriminating against blonde women even though a relatively small number of them go mad. There's some of this, but the fact that it's easy to rid yourself of the potential blunts the impact, and although a tentative explanation for how it all works is offered, it really doesn't make a whole lot of sense. It's not a fatal flaw of the book, but I think it could have been done better, particularly when it's such a striking idea and the idea that book is built and marketed around.
This was the kind of book I probably never would have bought except for the fact that I got it free, but I did wind up enjoying it. I could also see it making a cool movie.
Finished: The Three-Body Problem, by Cixin Liu
In the Three Body Problem, China is experiencing a problem with it's scientists... some are being murdered, others are experiencing strange phenomenon or giving up, or entering into secretive organizations. It's all connected to an online game called The Three-Body Problem, and a scientist during the Cultural Revolution who has made contact with an alien race.
This is a translation of a science fiction novel that is apparently incredibly popular in China, and has been hyped here as well (the Goodreads review says it has the scope of Dune and commercial action of Independence Day, which I think is overselling on both fronts!) It's also one of this year's Hugo Nominees, the primary reason I'm reading it (at least, reading it now... the subject was interesting enough that I'd planned to get it eventually, but having it appear in the Hugo voter's packet made the decision easier).
After reading it, I have to say, I'm a little disappointed. It's not a bad book... I liked it, and will probably even check out the sequel, it's just not as impressive as I'd been lead to believe.
The first thing I should point out is that it's a translation, and that may bias things a little. I've read a number of books in translation... I even consider one among my favorites that I reread regularly. But, usually, there's a certain... stiltedness to it that does impact the enjoyment. It's just because ideas and cultural baggage that are easily, sometimes even subliminally expressed in one culture, are hard to get across in another language without translating, not just the text, but also much of the structure and feeling. It's a balancing act, because if you translate sentences literally you're going to miss so much out of it, but if you make the translation smooth and accessible, you're altering the pace and pattern and feel of the original author's words so much that you almost should be calling it an adaptation rather than a translation. It seems like in a translation, there's either going to be an artificial distance created between the author and the text, or between the text and the reader, usually the latter. And this is true in this book as well. There is definitely that feeling of stiltedness. In fact, it's hard to judge just how many of my problems with the book might solely come down to this fact, that it's a translation. For example, a lot of characters feel two-dimensional, but maybe I'm missing cues to their deeper emotions that are expressed in subtle differences in the way they talk, because that was lost in the translation. I've heard that there are certain structural elements which are echoes of famous Chinese epics... I have none of that background, so all of that is lost on me, and what to somebody is a clever callback to a classic part of their heritage is, to me, a bit of unfortunate pacing. I'm almost certainly missing some social commentary just because I don't understand Chinese culture enough to know what they're commenting on.
That's a lot to get over. The translator includes footnotes, although really, most of them are not all that helpful or, for that matter, necessary. Sometimes they'll point out a play-on-words that doesn't translate, which is actually quite helpful, but a lot of times they're just things like pointing out something is a rank or common type of food, and that's the kind of thing I'm used to being able to figure out on my own - I generally don't need to know the specifics of the military structure. Historical notes (uncommented on in the original because local readers would be assumed to just know) run somewhere in the middle.
The historical context is actually one of the more interesting aspects of the book, and, moreover, that the book appears, on the surface, to be at least mildly critical of the communist revolution, which I at least found surprising, as one generally associates governments like China as not being tolerant of open criticism, even of its past. And it was also interesting learning about some of the intricacies of living during such a time, although I was left wanting more of that than we wound up getting.
The science fictional elements? They're actually fairly average, although there are a couple of really cool big ideas in here, particularly a sequence towards the end where the author reveals how an alien technology was constructed, that's up there with some of the best for evoking a sense of wonder in a concept that's PROBABLY fantasy but dressing it up so that it feels like it could be done. And there was one really cool idea brought up that I thought was going to be the focus of the book but then seemingly got dropped (although there was some thematic connection to other major parts of the story). I was a little less enthused with the titular game, which didn't seem to work like a real game could and so hurt my suspension of disbelief. The alien race was interesting but didn't wow me, but it'll be interesting to see them get more development in the next book. Despite my somewhat mild response, I do think it's worth a read, if only because, it we're not willing to step outside our own comfort zone to experience another worldview now and then, why are we reading SF in the first place?
As it stands now, even with all my problems with it, this is my #2 vote of those novels nominated for the Hugo, which just goes to show how weak a slate it is this year. Overall, I still feel that the best novels were kept off the list entirely.
Finished: Shelter, by Susan Palwick
Shelter tells the near future story set in San Francisco, during a major storm that costs many lives, and two old acquaintances, one who has inadvertently harmed the other, meet and explain how their lives lead them to that point. One, Roberta, is poor and on probation, diagnosed with a mental illness of "excessive altruism" because of a series of events the other woman, Meredith, put into motion in an attempt to protect her son. Meredith is rich, privileged, and has some mental illness issues of her own, and a complicated family life that includes her father as the first ever human consciousness translated into a digital form.
The book is not the usual type of thing I read... one decent way to describe it is as a near future family drama, but wow, it really does turn out to be pretty impressive. There's a lot going on, and it has a lot to say about mental illness, how you can harm people even with the best of intentions, forgiveness, AI rights, and a number of other issues, with a host of well-drawn and interesting characters and a mostly convincing and plausible extrapolation of our world.
There's a wide variety of characters, mostly human and a few AI, and a few who arguably could be either (one major underlying issue is Meredith's refusal to accept that her father actually is her father, and is instead just a clever machine, and different people will see different answers to that question), and mostly they're compelling and vivid and feel real, and their interactions kept me invested even when it became fairly clear generally where the plot was going... I knew more or less what was going to happen, but I still wanted to know exactly how, and how everyone would deal when they found out.
The setting does one of the things I like best in SF, really selling a near future world with dozens of tiny details. About the only major slipup is that phones and TV habits seem a bit too conventional, and there seems to be widespread acceptance of a non-Judeo-Christian religion (although, I was never clear if it was supposed to be the dominant one, or if it just happened to be influential to many of the main characters and some of the underlying philosophies were embraced by the world). Still, it's easy to ignore those minor issues and focus on the good. I particularly liked how plausible the "excessive altruism," something we'd consider laudable today, turning into being considered a mental illness was. It's not a blatant "selfishness is best" philosophy pervading the world, but more subtle. And the genius of it being shorthanded as "exalted" was a really nice touch. I kind of wish we got more on that topic, actually, maybe another story set in the universe.
Shelter doesn't hit you over the head with its messages, but it does give you a lot to think of, and I found myself very impressed with it. My biggest complaint is the ending seemed a little too... pat, with a few things working out just too conveniently good, when reality it should have been a little messier. Also, at times it does run a little slow and repetitive. Still, this is a book that I think can be read even by non-SF readers, and is something of an undiscovered gem, having received little mainstream acknowledgement.
Highly recommended.
Finished: River of Gods, by Ian McDonald
In 2047 India, while internal tensions and possible civil war looms, a cop hunts down illegal artificial intelligence while his marriage is in danger, a stand-up comic is called home to take over his father's business, a reporter gets the scoop of a lifetime, a high level politician pursues a taboo relationship that could ruin his career, and an American scholar seeks another regarding an impossible artifact in space. These stories, and others, all contribute to a change that will ring out throughout history.
I really enjoyed this book, although it had a bit of a slow start. There are many different story lines, and at first the book visits all of them in turn, and so none of them advance much (most aren't connected at all at first, and even at the end, some are connected in ways that only the reader is aware of, not the characters). So it takes a while to really get invested, but once you do, things carry on and the plots start intertwining and a big mystery is set up and I liked the characters, and it all carried me through waiting to see what would happen next.
Although there are a few Americans, and some who come from other countries, most of the characters in this book are Indian, and the book does not shy away from that fact. To someone like me, someone who doesn't have too much in-depth knowledge of Indian culture, beyond what I've gotten from the media and a life growing up in a fairly multicultural Canadian city, it presents a little bit of a challenge to get in to. It doesn't hold back or explain very much, it throws in terms from that culture and the Hindi language (and possibly other regional languages) as though it's part of the background, because, for most of the characters, it is. Although I was interested in the characters and the story from the outset, this made it a bit difficult to get into at first, at least until I picked up enough from context that I could get what was going on in some of the plotlines. At it turns out, I was reading this at the same time as The Three-Body Problem (set in China, and original written there), and I could not help thinking that it is THIS book that really needs footnotes, not TBP. There is a glossary for River of Gods at the back, which would certainly help, but I only became aware of it after I read the novel in full. Still, even with full immersion, it's not THAT difficult, it's just a bit of a challenge, and one worth taking on if you like good SF with strong characters. And I feel it's a good idea to stretch your horizons now and then and read books focusing on characters who aren't a part of your culture, or are written by those of differing perspectives. This book seems to be more the former than the latter, of course, as the author is British. As an outsider, I can't accurately judge how well the author captured the culture, but he at least seemed to give it a serious effort and without any obvious (to me) problems... and, at the very least, the Indian characters are mostly the protagonists in their own stories rather than just being background color for somebody else.
Capturing the world of another culture is one challenge, building a future world is a whole different matter, and here, too, he mostly succeeds. Although only a few ideas are really focused on, there are more going on in the background that add up to a rich and convincing future world. He's apparently set a book of short stories in that world, Cyberabad Days, and I am going to be keeping an eye out for it. I do admit to one small, personal issue with the book. I would barely even call it a gripe, it was more just a stumbling block that affected me and might impact others. One of the plotlines is told from the perspective of a "neut", a member of a new subculture of people who have undergone a procedure that removes their gender. I have no problem with this idea, but neuts use the pronoun "yt" to replace "he", "she", "him", and "her" (and "yt's" for "his" and "her" possessively). And sometimes, this just made those sections difficult for me to read smoothly, particularly when you got sentences like "Yt told yt yt had to go." My brain just often stopped and said "what?" and I had to take time parsing it, which threw me out of the narrative. I might have preferred they use, if not "they", some other pronoun that felt more natural. In the end, though, it's a fairly minor gripe, if it is one at all.
Highly recommended... my first experience with McDonald, but I don't think it'll be my last.
Finished: Terms of Enlistment, by Marko Kloos
A hundred years from now, Andrew Grayson signs up to join the armed forces. It's not patriotism or duty that drives him, he simply views it as his only chance to escape the life he was born into, a crime-ridden and economically broken city in which most of the population lives in government assisted housing with a small food ration. Moreover, it's his only real shot at getting off Earth and to live in a colony, which is about the closest thing he has to a dream. We follow him through his training and his first few assignments, where he learns that the universe is more dangerous than he first thought.
This is unapologetic military SF. It doesn't really do anything daring or especially novel, but then, it doesn't have to... it's more about doing the things the readers expect from the subgenre with skill and providing a diverting adventure for however it long it takes to read. On that level, it's fairly successful. The author makes the main character competent and skilled, but not such an awesome soldier that it's worthy of an eyeroll. He experiences spectacularly lucky breaks a few times, but that's something you tend to expect from fiction anyway. The book's consistently readable and entertaining, albeit, for me, at a relatively low level on that last part. I'm not really the best judge of the parts that are heavily action-oriented... I admit my eyes tend to glaze over if there's not something more interesting going on than firing weapons and the occasional explosion, but they seemed about up to par.
It did have a bit of an awkward pacing, where he goes from adventures in basic, to his first deployment, has an adventure there, goes on to a second place, trains, has an adventure... this I think is something in the nature of the subgenre (and indeed, probably reflects certain aspects of the military life), but narratively, it feels a little more like a serial that was collected into a novel than a single cohesive story. But other than that, the pace is pretty good, the prose is easy to get through. The characters are a bit dry or only sketched in at times, and again, part of this is the nature of the story: often his squadmates are only around for a short time before either they die or he's moved to a completely new set of co-workers. There are a few that stand out, but most of them I couldn't remember. The plot didn't really thrill me, either... it was diverting and interesting, I was never bored, but there wasn't a moment where I was excited about what was happening, either, at least until the last section, where my interest began to perk up with some of the more SF elements.
Grayson himself is a bit too blase and cold for my tastes, particularly with respect to civilian casualties and also his own family. I can understand the problems he had with his father, but he seemed to have a relatively good relationship with his mother, and then moments after he leaves for training he reflects that if the whole city got destroyed that second, he wouldn't miss anything about it. That's pretty cold. Nor does he ever seem to think positively about anybody in his past ever again, and yet other than that he seems a fairly well-adjusted and friendly person. These kind of contradictions might work well if explored, but they don't seem to be in this book. It's not a fatal flaw, particularly for MilSF, but I'd wished I had more to hang onto. Maybe he improves in the sequel.
I actually picked this up because the sequel, Lines of Departure, was nominated for a Hugo, as part of a directed attempt to take over the Hugo nominees via slate voting. Kloos himself was not part of this effort, and he had the grace to withdraw his name from contention because of it, which earned him some respect, especially because other people who weren't part of the slate voting suggested that it might actually be worth the nom on its own merits. I can't speak for that book, but this one was just good enough that I'll probably check out that sequel as well, at some point, and hopefully they're right. After all, Terms of Enlistment is a first novel, which are usually a little rougher than an author's later books.
I was probably hovering about a 2 for the first half of the book, okay but didn't really grab me. Personal taste plays a huge role here: This is in part because of the subgenre itself... MilSF is something I can enjoy from time to time, but (particularly with my already stated reactions to heavy action scenes) it's mostly not my cup of tea and even when it's done slightly above average it doesn't impress me as much, just by default. The events in the second half bumped up my interest, although, if half-stars were allowable, it might not have made the full three. It's somewhere on the edge. But since I can't mark the edge itself, and I usually give a bit more leeway to first novels anyway, I'll give it a three.
Finished: The Goblin Emperor, by Katherine Addison
Maia, the half-goblin son of an elven emperor is suddenly thrust into a position he never expected or wanted. His father had other heirs and seemed to regret having him in the first place, but, when his father and everyone else in line before him all died in the same accident, Maia was the only choice. He learns to deal with his new role, those who don't feel he belongs there, those who try to manipulate him, and those who are actively plotting against him, while trying to his best to be a good leader and improve his empire.
I should state right up front that I'm largely not a fantasy reader. I'm reading this because it made the short list of nominees for the Hugo award, and probably would entirely skip it otherwise. It's not only not-my-thing because it's fantasy, it's not-my-thing because it's fantasy focusing on royalty. Personally, we've got enough people who hold power over large numbers of people and didn't actually do anything to deserve it that I feel like it's a bit disgusting to fetishize the concept in fantasy literature as well. Now, granted, if we have to, I'd rather read a story like this about a genuinely good person thrust into the position and trying their best, but, even with good kings, when we focus on them I usually can't help hoping that the plot involves the citizens deposing the king and installing some kind of democracy. This is possibly why I'm not a fantasy reader in the first place. So there's two strikes against it, right off the bat.
I see from various ratings that a lot of people genuinely seem to enjoy the book a lot. And it got not only a Hugo nom (and, unlike a number of other nominees this year, as far as I can tell seems to have earned it fairly), but also a Nebula nom as well. And to an extent I can see why people enjoy it, there's a sort of overall pleasantness to it. It's got a brisk pace, the lead's appealing (again, assuming that we're stuck reading the adventurers of an Emperor in the first place). It's got a certain "readability", with a few exceptions. I've heard a couple of people make comments along the lines of "there were a lot of meetings and nothing much happened but I was entertained all the way through" and I think it's a fair assessment, although in my case the entertainment was much more subdued. I can see the appeal.
It just didn't do much for me, personally. Not because nothing much happened (I've enjoyed SF books by that description... heck, fellow Hugo-nominee Ancillary Sword kind of fits that description, and is in fact has a very similar feel, and I enjoyed that quite a bit), but because of my previously stated problems, along with a few others.
One is that, despite the name of the book being The Goblin Emperor, and the Emperor being half-Elven, half-Goblin... I never got a sense of these MATTERing, at all, of what it means to be Elven or Goblin or anything like that, except that this is a fantasy world and so elves and goblins exist. Aside from a few mentions of ears flattening or making other movements in response to emotions, if they didn't specify they were Elven, I would have assumed they were human (for that matter, I don't even know if humans exist in this world). I can think of literally nothing else that felt distinctively non-human. You could have replaced the different races with different ethnicities or cultures of medieval (or slightly steampunky) human and had the exact same story. Maybe that's the point, that having races with distinct attributes is itself a racist idea, and it would be a fair point, but, to me, it never felt that that point was pursued with intention and gusto, and instead it feels more like the author was just lazy on their worldbuilding. If you're going to use elves and dwarves and goblins, either stick to established archetypes (like Elves living in cities built in harmony with nature, which doesn't seem to be a trope used here... I was never even sure if they live longer than humans), or vividly create new archetypes and set about teaching your audience what it means in your world, or actively challenge your reader on why you're not doing either. Don't reduce the terms "Elf" and "Goblin" to bland labels you apply to different groups and give you a catchy title.
The other problem was the names. There are so many long and complicated names in this book, and long and complicated names that are incredibly similar to other long and complicated names. In addition to long and complicated new terms for titles like "Sir" and "Lady" and stuff new to the world. This made it incredibly difficult to get into, and I admit, that with maybe 5 exceptions, every time a character was brought up, I literally had to figure out who they were by the context, not the name: if they talked about clerical matters and investigating the crash by using religious powers, it was the priest guy. I remembered people by their roles, which made it especially difficult with female characters, because, being a traditional medieval society where women were all but property and rarely had careers of their own, their interactions seemed similar. I never could keep straight whether the woman who sang in the opera was his future empress or a woman who he thought was trying to manipulate him for her sister or his half-sister or just a woman he had a crush on or if all three of them were actually separate people at all. Maybe if I had a clear idea at all times who everyone was (and simpler names would have helped a lot... one more reason to not bother with including fantasy races and just make them humans) I would have become more invested and liked it more.
As it stands, I rate it a two. I can see why others liked it more, but my personal rating was just a two. It was okay. I don't feel like I totally wasted my time, but I don't feel I would have missed anything important if I had never read it at all. If there's a sequel, I probably won't read it (unless it, too, gets nominated and I get it for free). Currently on my Hugo vote ranking it stands at #3, just barely above No Award. And, when they eventually showed up in the book, I never got over my urge to root for the group who wanted to tear down the monarchy. I don't think that was intended, but, it is what it is.
Finished: Fluency, by Jennifer Foehner Wells
The government has known about an alien space ship in the solar system for decades, and they're finally ready to launch a mission. They believe the ship is abandoned, but, just in case, they include Dr. Jane Holloway, an expert linguist, on the mission. But the ship isn't abandoned, and what they find there may force Dr. Holloway to choose whether to trust an unknown alien, or her own crew.
I've heard some good things about this book, and there is a lot to like, but I have some mixed feelings that prevented me from giving it a higher score. It started quite well, a good sense of adventure and spookiness, but once she came in contact with the alien my problems began. I say problems but that might not be the best word, because, largely it's a question of personal tastes. There are different styles of SF, and of course, various definitions of 'hard' vs 'soft', and tying in to both of these and yet somewhat separate as well, there's another quality that, for the purposes of this review, I'll call "weight". 'Heavyness' can be granted by being harder SF, or more rigorous exploration of the completely made up elements. It can be granted by tackling serious issues in a serious way. 'Lightness' can be taken away by a sense of fun and adventure. It's a very fuzzy metric. What's more, "Heavy" and "Light" isn't a judgement of quality on it's own. Sometimes you want something light more than anything else, and sometimes a book can be too heavy. book that is described as "very readable" is often on the lighter end. On the other hand, the type of SF that you'd see on TV is often much lighter (the fact that it's usually not as hard is a big factor there). And while I've loved books that I'd call very light, and ones that I'd call heavy, generally, I lean towards heavier ones. This book is, for my tastes, a little too on the light end of the scale, and I was hoping it would be just a bit heavier.
I probably only have myself to blame for not reading the description more carefully (not to mention not considering the title), but let's start with the biggest disappointment: The main character is a linguist, but it plays virtually no role in the plot, as she is pretty well magically given the ability to communicate with the alien without much effort. One of my pet peeves in SF is telepathic abilities... unless it's a story specifically about people with powers, or it's explained with actual technology, I don't want telepathy in my SF, it feels like magic to me which pushes it into Space Fantasy. I don't want a space opera where the telepathy is a thing and some aliens have it. And yet, that's the type of book this is. Yes, it's easier to tell a story when you can skip all the "learning a common language" part, but one of the benefits of books is the author doesn't have to choose the easy route. There are other conceptual elements too, worldbuilding elements that not just put the book in "light" SF territory, but specifically call to mind TV/movie sci-fi, because it's the kind of stuff that I accept from them, but don't like when it's in a book, because in a book we can do better than TV-level SF tropes. Now, granted, this would be the kind of show that I'd watch the heck out of, but still, it's not really what I, personally, want from my books. It's not a dealbreaker, but it makes it a tougher sell for me.
Is it good enough in other areas to overcome this? Well, this review would be a lot easier to write if I could just dismiss this as "not my kind of book" and be done with it. Because there's also a lot of good going on, the characters are mostly believable, some exciting action, and I was kept guessing about the alien, and there was some genuinely interesting things done in the contact scenario (especially with the main character being, in some ways, violated, not maliciously, but because of a difference in cultural mores). And the book sets up an interesting situation for book 2. So although I didn't love the book, I'd rate it 3 stars because I liked it, I just wanted more from it. That said, I'll probably continue on to the second (although, maybe not rush out and buy it).
As I said, this is mostly a taste matter. The only other thing I'd bring up is that there's a significant romantic subplot running through the book, and I didn't mind it but I thought it was a little too unsubtle, I can buy the characters and their feelings, but the beats of it all seemed a shade on the overdramatic side. Of course, compared to the history of badly-written romances in SF, it barely even registers, but it was something I felt could have been more skillfully handled. But, it is a first novel, and I suspect this is easily the kind of thing that can be improved on.
Finished: Afterparty, by Daryl Gregory
There's a new drug on the street... those who take it not only start to believe in God, but often believe God is right there, talking to them... at least until it's out of their system, and then it's like being abandoned. Lyda has experienced a drug like this before... she was on a team that invented it, before they were dosed with a massive quantity of it that left one person dead and the rest with permanent side-effects. Lyda's is a persistent hallucination of an angel. She knows it's not real, but it guides her nonethelss. She also knows that this new drug is probably the one she helped to invent, and she breaks her parole and goes on a quest to find the source and put it out of business.
Wow. This book impressed me so much than I thought it would. The premise was interesting at first, although it made me leery... books that are heavily about drugs and drug culture can sometimes turn me off. Here though, this wasn't a problem for me, it wasn't a "drug" book, it was a book where drugs just happen to be part of the context and the world these character's quest involves.
I never felt alienated, and in fact I was drawn in right away, fascinated by some of these characters and there was good action and worldbuilding and scientific speculation (albeit relatively near future stuff) and left wanting to go back and read more every time I put it down.
Everything just clicked with me in a way it hasn't in a while, and in fact, it reminded me of one of my favorite books for this... Blindsight, by Peter Watts. Now, granted, perhaps the reason it impressed me so much was because a lot of the buttons it pushed on me were the same. There was a focus on the mind and how it can go wrong and lead you astray. The main characters were messed up, but in inventive ways, and incredibly compelling and likeable all the same, from the main character and her angel, to Ollie who has to choose between being unable to distinguish objects while on meds, or paranoia while off them, to a mute little girl with a deck of cards as her best friends. Also, like Blindsight, there were even some of the very same philosophical points raised (although not all, and this book is significantly less dark) about free will and brain chemistry and religion. I'm not claiming it as copying those or anything like that, it was just the same things I liked and couldn't get enough of. In fact, I've struggled for a while for something to recommend to people who loved Blindsight- this now may be my default answer to that question, at least, if you're not bored of those particular themes and tropes. It's like when you watch a Hollywood sequel, you don't usually do it so you can get something new, but rather so you can get that same hit of enjoyment that worked for you last time. Except these similarities happened (presumably) by accident, in a completely different story, so you get the best of both worlds... novelty with a rush of a lot of the same things you loved.
It's not a perfect book, and much of the issues are around the ending. It's not a singular flaw (although there was a moment I thought there might be a personal dealbreaker, it was handled with enough ambiguity that I could enjoy it), it just didn't all come together, some things were too predictable, others seemed to build up to something and disappeared too quickly, and I was left feeling some significant threads didn't get the closure they deserved. If the author intended to leave it open for a sequel, I might not have a problem with it (and I would absolutely read it, I particularly want to see more of Ollie), but it doesn't feel like that, it feels like it was intended to be mostly the end of the story, it just didn't quite come together as well as it could. Still enjoyed the ending, just it was a bit of a stumble for what was, up until that point, such a great book.
Finished: Infidel, by Kameron Hurley
Since this is book two, I'm cutting the summary which spoils elements of God's War
Nyxnissa so Dasheem, a mercenary and former Bel Dame assassin, has a new team... since her last one either got killer, abandoned her, or she pushed them away six years ago. The survivors of her former team are mostly doing well, living new lives away from the centuries-long holy war and starting families. Nyx herself, she's getting by, mostly working as a bodyguard, but suffers from mysterious unexplained health problems she's trying to hide. But when she uncovers evidence that a faction of the Bel Dames are plotting against their Queen, Nyx is once against caught up in something that's probably too big for her to handle. But she doesn't have much choice, and she may need to track down her old team to complete the job.
I really enjoyed the first book in this series, God's War, despite it interjecting a little too much in the way of fantasy elements to my science fiction. It had a rich setting, compelling though occasionally unlikeable characters, and a strong emotional kick that complimented the grittiness rather than being outweighed by it. I was eager to move on to the second one, and, I'm happy to say, much of the same kind of thing is here too. I don't think I liked it quite as much as the first one, but that's usually the case in second-books in a series, because some of the enjoyment in the first was down strictly to novelty, which obviously can't be as much of a factor in a sequel. But on the whole, I think it holds up well. Nyx was perhaps more unlikeable and judgmental, it worked for the character. There may have been a bit too much in the way of tragedy piled on top of tragedy, but that's the kind of book this is, the kind of world it's set in, where happy endings are difficult to come by, and, at best, you can get endings you might someday, if everything works out, forge new beginnings from. This is true in the larger plot sense and in the more personal, relationship sense.
Of my minor pet peeves, I did think that the fantasy elements that bothered me before rankled just a touch more this time, partly because the SF elements seemed less developed. That is, the biological insect organisms that handle much of the technology... in the first book, I remember the author being a bit more specific about HOW swarms of bugs could work as, say, a long-distance telephone, whereas in this one, too often it was just taken for granted, "bugs did it."
Still, I really want to see how Nyx's story ends, and I'm absolutely going to read the third part of the trilogy.
Oh, and since this is my personal journal, a little side story. I do most of my reading while walking to or from work, and of course, this was the case here. While I was reading this, I heard somebody walking behind me, maybe 5-6 sidewalk slabs behind me, speaking loudly, apparently to himself, saying, "If you kill one Infidel, it's like killing all Infidels, I'm going to kill all Infidels!" or something like that. Possibly mentally ill person with a hate-on for Infidels, however he might define them... normally, as long as it's just talk, well, I'm not going to pay it much attention. Except, of course, that I happened to be reading a book called Infidel, and I was worried that if he passed me and happend to spot it, he'd either attack me or want to start a conversation, and neither seemed particularly appealing. So I tried to non-obviously pick up my pace and get as much distance between us as I could. Luckily, though, at the next intersection I kept walking straight, and he turned down the other street.
Finished: Bless Your Mechanical Heart (short story collection)
This book is one of those themed anthologies of short stories. In this case, the theme is robots/AI/cyborgs, and more specifically, the application of the phrase "Bless Your Heart"/"Bless His/Her Heart" to them, implying that perhaps they're a little naive or don't quite get it... but there's a lot of variation within, in some cases the robot's not naive, but the humans are by thinking it is, for example, in other the robot's got some wonky programming or incomplete emotions, and in others it just lacks some important piece of knowledge but reasons as well as any of us. There are robots in love, robot murderers, robot guardians, robots all alone, and even a few who are arguably not even robots. It's a good mix, if you like AI themes.
Of course, these collections are always hard to give a review to, because some stories will connect with me, some won't, and likely the same will be true of you, but they won't be the same ones. All in all, it's a decent mix, I enjoyed it, no outright stinkers, but not many that blew me away, either. I will say sometimes the knowledge of the theme may have been detrimental to the enjoyment of some of the stories... for example, if it's a mystery story and there's only one robot, it's not a big leap to assume they're a key part of it, whereas in a book of more assorted science fiction stories, the robot could just be a part of the worldbuilding background. In most cases, though, this really isn't an issue.
My favorites were "The Lambs," by Seanan McGuire (which tells of robotic children meant to record and discourage bullying in school), and "Just Another Day in the Butterfly War," by M. Todd Gallowglas (which involves a cyborg servant to a commander in a war involving constant alterations to history).
I actually received this book for free as part of the Hugo voters packet (the editor was up for an award and this was provided as a sample of her work). I don't think it affected my review, but I'm glad I got it because I likely wouldn't have encountered it otherwise, although I do think it's worth buying if you like SF short stories and the theme appeals to you.
Finished: Dark Orbit, by Carolyn Ives Gilman
Dark Orbit tells the story of two women who arrive on a strange crystalline world... one, on her last assignment, is believed to have suffered some psychotic break and took on the role of a goddess. The other is a wanderer with little respect for authority, but who has been assigned to keep an eye on the first. But their discoveries on this new world challenge much what both of them thought they knew about the universe.
Disclaimer: I got this book free through a Tor giveaway (not through Goodreads though). I don't think it affected my review.
This book is a difficult one for me to rate. Part of it is because it treads into one of my pet peeves for SF... it's a bit spoilery, so I won't get into it, but suffice it to say, it's one of those things that, when I know it's a part of the plot, makes me a good deal less likely to pick it up at all, and when I discover it mid-read, I'm almost always disappointed, and wind up feeling that the book could have been so much better if they hadn't gone that way.
To it's credit, in this book, it's not a case where it's just tacked on for color, or a cool worldbuilding element to make the author's setting stand out among the crowd, or to make the plot run more easily. It's tied into the theme enough that it's hard to remove it without changing the book entirely, and in fact you could even say the very message of the book argues against not just my objections, but the mindset behind them. I don't care, it's still something I don't like in my SF, but I can at least acknowledge the point and that these elements weren't added carelessly. Nor do they ruin the book, they just make me less enthusiastic.
So let's move past it. Up until I discovered the element in question, I was quite enjoying that book. The universe had an appealing setup, and need for space travelers to lose decades of rel time to transit that takes an instant for them seemed like a particularly appealing setup and for the most part was explored well. The characters, even if they seemed to fall a little broadly towards exaggerations of personality types, were interesting. Particularly Thora, who I somehow found pretentious and a little annoying and yet appealing and raising good points even when I disagreed with her. And I should note that the author does pull off a masterful trick with reader's expectations and perceptions of the characters that works well with the themes and potentially makes the limited-dimensionality of some of the characters intentional and to a good purpose. In general the prose and pacing seemed fine, maybe a little bit off in parts but nothing serious, and the depictions of what the weird alien planet looked like, even though it was hard to visualize, did still manage to succeed at evoking some of the classic sense of wonder.
Where the novel really shines is with the perception of a society without sight, and in particular, the depiction of a being who has the biological ability to see but grew up without every using it, and having to learn how it works. It's a masterful bit of SF speculation, putting the reader in an alien mindset and challenging our views on what we think is obvious. I only wish it took up more of the book, because it was my favorite part by far.
The only other criticism I'll make is that the parts from the perspective of Thora were told first person, supposedly as her own recordings of her observations while she's in the situation, and... it just didn't feel natural to imagine it as intended. She repeats conversations too well, word for word, long after the fact (when it would have often made more sense to just record the conversations themselves), broken into just the kind of chunks that fit with the novel's pace and there are none of the usual human breaks that somebody telling their story would give. To me it would make more sense if it was a memoir compiled after the fact, or simply a first person narrative without any explanation for how it fits, rather than to give it that specific justification, as a recording, and not do it believably. A small issue, but it did break me out of my suspension of disbelief.
I enjoyed the book for what it was, over all, and though I think it was close to being much much better, it's so deliberately crafted that it's quite possible that almost any element changed to bring it towards that much better novel would make the whole thing fall apart.
Currently Reading (or finished but haven't written reviews for): The Red by Linda Nagata, Cinder by Marissa Meyer, Anathem by Neil Stephenson, The Deaths of Tao by Wesley Chu, Up Against It by M.J. Locke, Linesman by S.K. Dunstall, The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August by Claire North
You may have noticed a pattern in these... or maybe not. But 11 of the 19 books listed above were written by women (and one was a short story collection). Some of this is circumstance (I've gotten several free, either from giveaways or as part of the Hugo voters packet), but also, I've been trying to make a conscious effort to read more female SF authors. It is still a field that is dominated by men, and my philosophy has always been that if there's an obvious disparity in something like this, there are only a few explanations: either one group just isn't as good, they, by some natural tendency, just don't have the interest, or there is some systemic bias that skews the numbers (which can occur by pushing them away from trying or lack of promotion), and that can be combated by adding a bit of bias in the other direction. I believe the last one and am trying to take steps to correct it. The positive bias I'm applying isn't dramatic, I'm just trying to be aware of what's happening, and be more open to trying things... books that I might have been on the fence on, where I'd think "Maybe I'll get it if I hear good reviews", I've been just getting, and keeping an eye out for recommendations of others in this area. It also dovetails nicely with another goal I've had for 2015, that started several months in when I realized I'd accidentally been holding to it: no rereads. I love rereading my old favorites, but since I'm more than halfway through the year and haven't yet read anything I've read before, why not make it a goal? And it means I need to be exposed to more books anyway, so why not try more female SF authors?
In any event, I'm still not at parity for the year, but with just that small level of bias I've gotten closer than I expected. And I've got plenty of more on the queue or in my sights for later. In fact, I just bought the Women in SF ebook bundle (pay what you want for 5 works, or get 10 for $15 or more)... since one of my three books I read at any given time is on my phone. If you read ebooks, it might be worth checking out the bundle, which runs for about another two weeks.
Also I mentioned last time that I was thinking of converting my own personal domain, which had, for a time, run as a comic review site, into a written-SF news-and-review site, and I'm leaning towards making that happen when I stop being so lazy.
Speaking of leaning towards, right now I'm leaning towards skipping Fan Expo Canada this year. The guests are cool but none are the kind I can't miss, and also my Mom's coming into town that weekend. But I'll keep an eye on the guest list for any last minute changes.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2015-08-12 09:55 pm (UTC)River of Gods is a book I really loved, and I would like to read more like it--again, SF set outside the US, and the only other SF book set in India I can even think of is Girl in the Road. I'm sure there must be others but they don't seem to be readily available in the US, in English.
I also like the Goblin Emperor more than you, in some ways as a breath of fresh air after so many Song of Ice and Fire-imitators wanting to be all violent and rapey to show how "realistic" they are. GE had people who were stubborn and short-sighted but did not default to being monstrous. Even when they were violent it was only as violent as necessary. Still, I agree that it was a little flat, and while I think it deserves positive attention (and I have some of the author's other works under a different name to read) it wouldn't be a major Hugo contender if other factors had not intruded.
On the other factors front: I did not like Terms of Enlistment . It is as you say just milSF but I don't feel like it is particularly good even at that. The main character is a completely flat idiot who somehow is unaware that the civilians of his world all hate the Terran Army, treats his job like a video game (which is then described like a video game) and totally gets the girl in an amazingly contrived way. If there's one thing that real world militaries love, it's fraternization. He also has no friends back home and never even gives a thought to contacting his mother, who is given even less characterization than his terrible father. Basically he's a cipher for the reader to insert into, but the cues he gives are not ones I empathize with. Nor does the book ever explore why the civilians he is making war on have chosen that path. They're just targets--the book flips from tacitly blaming the government for the immense poverty and decay to blaming the poor for resisting and fighting that government once the hero is on the winning side.
In the third act, with the aliens, they're just giant monsters who try to crush the humans by lumbering into them, no attempts at contact or even noticing. The book tries to explain this as 'humans don't try to talk with ants, either' and perhaps that's true, but once an ant managed to take down a full grown man with rocket launchers I think the other people nearby would pause and re-evaluate. They just seem like endboss enemies in, again, a video game.
I also bought the Women in SF bundle and I'm about 2/3rds through Forgotten Suns, which I'd seen a review of that made me want to read it. It's a fun space opera-adventure so far, I want to see where the central mystery leads. The Other Half of the Sky is an anthology of women in SF (with a couple male writers) that's really strong, I feel, and might give you some suggestions for later reading.
Fluency, Afterparty and Shelter are all also in my list of books to read so I'm glad to see they seem interesting as advertised.
no subject
Date: 2015-08-13 01:57 pm (UTC)Yeah, I was probably kinder to Terms of Enlistment than it probably deserved (particularly obvious after reading Linda Nagata's The Red, a milSF novel which I enjoyed so much more), although I should note that some of the recommendations were specifically that it really starts to get good in the second book (where IIRC he's got a role where he's more directly dealing with bureaucracy and logistics rather than combat), not that the first book was anything special beyond dumb MilSF fun or that it was deserving of an award on its own, and I sort of approached it on that basis: mindless popcorn action, not to think too deeply on. So although your points against it are fair, they just didn't bother me as much as they should have (although they did bother me), and maybe a few things you thought of as the book assigning blame I generously assumed was intentional, reflecting the character's lack of empathy, and not meant to be applauded. And of course, after The Forever War had forced promiscuity among the soldiers I can buy a military where fraternization is a little more tolerated. On the aliens, maybe it bothered me less because I wasn't taking it for granted that the motivations were what we saw, or even that the giants were necessarily the aliens themselves as opposed to tools, I sort of viewed it as a incomprehensible alien first contact and took it for granted, possibly incorrectly, that they'd become more interesting and nuanced in a sequel. Maybe I'm wrong on all of those, but the justifications are enough to get me to, potentially, try out the sequel and see, before dismissing it as not worthy of it's nom on its own merits (although I'll probably wait till I find it used).
no subject
Date: 2015-08-13 02:40 pm (UTC)But really I would give the book maybe a softer version of the same criticisms if it weren't being nommed as 'BEST OF THE YEAR' by certain parties--it just is not. 'needs a sequel to get better' isn't generally award-worthy IMO. I don't really plan to read the sequel given how much other stuff I have to read--I respect the author for pulling out of the rugby scrum when he realized he was one of the balls but his writing doesn't give me enough to really keep going on. Especially when The Red is also in my pile--I'm looking forward to that one.
Also, I've added Empire of Bones to my reading. I've read a couple of Liz Williams's books and she's alright, not my favorite but enjoyable, so I'll have to check that out. I tend to be kinda methodical in bookstore browsing too, though I start with the anthologies. >_>
no subject
Date: 2015-08-13 03:06 pm (UTC)Unless of course I'm reading you wrong and what you mean is you separately heard the "best of the year" buzz for the first one as well, and were commenting on that, which is quite possible... I personally wasn't even really aware of it when it was still new as I tend to ignore most milSF until after it's already gotten a fair bit of buzz.
no subject
Date: 2015-08-13 03:24 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-08-13 01:57 pm (UTC)I actually did wind up No Award-voting all the Puppy-related nominees. My standard was simple, I wasn't going to rule out reading (most of) them, because in many cases the writers themselves weren't involved in the slate voting, and, if I read a work and thought that it was better than one of MY five nominees in the category, I'd vote it above No Award. Otherwise, because of the unfairness, I'd vote it below, because if they weren't there it's possible something worthy would have made it. For the novels, this might have been a high bar to reach, since the Puppy nominees were things I had little interest in anyway, but I thought it was fairly doable for the short stories, where when I was making my noms I was limited by what I could find for free online in a short period. And I honestly did plan to try. Unfortunately, as it turns out, I ran out of time for the short stories... turns out being nominated by bigoted d-bags (not to mention, in at least one case, being one yourself) still makes me less interested in checking you out! I actually did TRY to read ones of the other novel nominees, the Kevin J. Anderson one... until I realized something. While I was making my noms, I read a novella by KJA. It was so mediocre that, even though I still had a slot left to nominate a novella, I left it off because I thought it wasn't even close to Hugo worthy. Now, I wasn't going to dismiss the whole book based on this, I was willing to consider that maybe he quickly cranked out a substandard novella to promote his novel... until I started reading and realized that the first chapter was part of the novella. And it looked like the whole novella was actually an excerpt from the book... and even that might not have been enough to make me drop it, but the fact that they swapped back and forth between the novella parts and another story, so I couldn't just skip ahead to where the novella ended and read on in the hopes it got better, without missing some of the other storylines... THAT made me Nope! right out of it and read something else instead.
Anyway, I haven't dipped into the Women in SF bundle (although I've already read Memory in paperback form), because I'm finishing up another novel on my phone, but it's probably going to be next up. I'm thinking of going with Near + Far by Cat Rambo first, since I'm feeling a bit in the mood for short stories. Forgotten Suns sounds interesting but I read a plot description that mentioned a Insititute for Psychic Research which is one of my pet peeves for SF... :P. But I'll grin and bear it.
no subject
Date: 2015-08-13 02:49 pm (UTC)I mean, I like milSF (or variants thereof) now and again, sometimes you just want to read the equivalent of a dumb action movie. I just don't particularly like neocon message fiction (which a lot of their stuff is) and I like at least a tiny bit of thoughtfulness in my power fantasy. I used to read Honor Harrington (and might catch up to it someday) but that is certainly not free of political soapboxing, and still read the 1632/Ring of Fire series which is politically more in line with my own values I guess though it is still very guns-solve-problems 'murica focused. Eric Flint had some interesting comments for the Puppies since he knows some of them personally and is a literal social justice warrior--a socialist union activist who has faced actual violence for his beliefs and actions.
no subject
Date: 2015-08-13 03:20 pm (UTC)