Tag: genre: science fiction

Review – Translation State

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The Presger Translators of Ann Leckie’s Radchverse are somewhat alien and very strange; they’re humans who have been modified by the Presger to interact with humans. In Translation State, we get to see more about them. This story is a standalone novel and the most recent entry in the Radchverse, and it is delightful.

What this story is really about is family and growing up, and what each of these mean. There are three main characters, with the chapters rotating between them as viewpoint characters. Two of them are adults according to human definitions, but all three of them are going through an experience that maps onto the “becoming an adult” experience. Enae is in eir fifties, but is only now making eir own choices about eir life; e has spent eir entire life until now caring for eir, now deceased, controlling grandmother. Reet is in his thirties but, due to circumstances that are discovered through the novel, is going through a different type of maturity. Qven, a Presger Translator, is actually about to become an Adult. Leckie takes us through each of their experiences, with all of the turmoil and difficulties that that process entails.

The story is also about family, what defines a family, and how important the genetic relationship is to that process. Each of the main characters have difficult relationships with their genetic family, and all of them are trying to figure out who their real family is.

As with the other stories in the Radchverse, gender is both important and unimportant. There are at least five different genders (he, she, it, they, e), and multiple types of relationships. Leckie navigates these ably, while keeping it simple to keep track of everyone.

All in all, this is an enjoyable novel that I recommend to anyone who enjoys science fiction with real aliens and real heart at the center of the story.

Leckie, Ann. Translation State. New York, New York: Orbit, 2023. 100,658 words. 5 stars.

Review – Harrow the Ninth

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The second book in a series, especially a short series (three or four books), has a tough job to do. The first book ropes in the viewer, so it’s generally enjoyed. The last book wraps everything up, so it’s generally enjoyed. The second, or middle, books have to get you from the beginning to the end, so it’s generally not as well liked. This is very true of Harrow the Ninth.

In addition, I had a very difficult time with this book. The first issue is one that I had with Gideon the Ninth, and I suspect I will have with the latter two books. I don’t like horror, I don’t like psychological horror, and I don’t really like books that are gory, and Harrow the Ninth has all three in spades. In addition, it has been described as gaslighting the reader, as it describes the events of the first book as happening very differently–in one case, with a completely different character in an important position, as Harrow’s cavalier. Finally, Ortus (Harrow’s cavalier according to this book) is the name for two important characters, which is just confusing. It turns out, in the end, to have happened that way for a reason, but I found it confusing.

Confusing, and frequently disgusting, are the two best descriptions I have for this book. Until the last act, I was thinking I’d rate it two stars. In the end, I gave it three. It would probably benefit greatly from a reread, but I’m not sure I can stomach that. Maybe after the last two books.

Muir, Tamsyn. Harrow the Ninth. New York, New York: Tordotcom Books, 2020. 178,196 words. 3 stars.

Review – The Road to Roswell

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Frothy, screwball, science fiction romances is a type of book that Connie Willis has mastered. Like Bellwether, To Say Nothing of the Dog, All Seated on the Ground, and Crosstalk, The Road to Roswell belongs to this category. I read this book for precisely this reason: I adore Willis’s romances.

The science fiction is an important descriptor of these stories. Although they aren’t, quite, “hard” science fiction, they are clearly science fiction. In The Road to Roswell, this is the facts behind alien conspiracies, and some of the theories around alien visitation, both pro and con. As the title suggests, some of the theories center around Roswell, New Mexico, and the incident that happened in 1947. The story also leans into the alien abduction and first contact tropes, and mines both suspense and humor from them.

Once you understand the type of novel this is, spoilers aren’t really an issue, so I won’t try to avoid them. Yes, the girl gets the boy in the end, although I think he deserves to get a little more roughed up before he gets his happy ending. As well, Willis has a delightful way with zany side characters, some of whom aren’t quite what they appear to be. The alien is actually alien, communication is difficult through most of the story, and their motives are clear as mud through almost all of it.

A delightful romp, as I expected and hoped for from Willis.

Willis, Connie. The Road to Roswell. New York, New York: Del Rey Books, 2023. 127,103 words. 5 stars.

Review – Gideon the Ninth

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Lesbian necromancers IN SPACE!!! This is one of the descriptions of Gideon the Ninth, and it’s accurate if a little misleading. This is difficult book for me to describe, or even state if I enjoyed. I generally don’t like stories in which necromancy is a key factor, and I don’t like horror, which most stories about necromancy have as a factor. I’m not sure I can say that I enjoyed the book, but it’s a good one, once it gets started. For me, this was a slow start.

The book follows Gideon Nav, a young woman of the Ninth House (Keepers of the Locked Tomb) who hates her house and wants to escape; however, she is blocked by the head of the house, Reverend Daughter Harrowhark Nongesimus. During the current attempt, Harrow receives a summons from their Emperor, that she and her cavalier are to report to Canaan House to (try to) become a Lyctor. Since her cavalier has successfully left, Harrow convinces Gideon to pretend to be her cavalier and go with her.

Yes, the names are something else. Most of the last names have to do with the number of the house. And the events at Canaan House are intense. Without spoiling the plot, it’s hard to discuss what happens there, but a lot is going on, and things we are told in the beginning turn out to be either wrong or not quite what was first assumed.

This book was nominated for the Hugo and Nebula awards for its year, among others. It won the Locus Award for first novel and the William L. Crawford award for first fantasy novel. It is also the first book of The Locked Tomb series; the most recent of which was published last year and the last is to be published next year.

Muir, Tamsyn. Gideon the Ninth. New York, New York: Tordotcom Books, 2019. 141,992 words. 4 stars.

Review – The Spare Man

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The Spare Man is the last of the stand-alone novels that has been nominated for the Hugo Award for Best Novel for 2023. For me, it is actually a reread, since I read it initially when it first came out; I enjoy Kowal’s work. This is a delightful novel, which I enjoyed rereading.

This is a murder mystery set on a cruise (space)ship during the main character’s honeymoon. Although I’ve never read or watched the Nick and Nora mysteries, the descriptions of them are similar, in type if not in the specifics, of that type of mystery.

Although I suspect Kowal is being incredibly optimistic in the acceptance of diversity (pronouns are expected to be announced on introductions, LGBTQ+ characters of all kinds abound, the one character who is less than accepting is called out as such), it is encouraging to see it play out in fiction. The main character is cisgender and in a heterosexual relationship, but she is severely, mostly invisibly, disabled. Her issues are important to the plot, but the only people who treat her as less because of them are called out on it.

I’ve never been any good at solving the mysteries of a mystery novel; I no longer even try. I read mysteries to enjoy the intricacy of the plot and the clues. For those of you who enjoy trying to solve the mystery, I can’t really say how “honest” the book is in it. I can say that it is complicated and twisty and I found the denouement satisfying.

Of the nominees that I have read to date (all of them but Nona the Ninth), this is my favorite to win. It has more “weight” than the two that I rated higher (The Kaiju Preservation Society and Legends & Lattes). I don’t expect it to win the award, but it’s a worthy entry.

Kowal, Mary Robinette. The Spare Man. New York, New York: Tor Books, 2022. 108,377 words. 4 stars.

Review – The Good, the Bad, and the History

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The Good, the Bad, and the History is the fourteenth book of the Chronicles of St. Mary’s series; it may also be the last book, although it isn’t advertised as such. It’s a solid and enjoyable entry to the series and for the first time in quite a few books, most of the loose ends have been tied up. They aren’t neatly tied up, because St. Mary’s isn’t neat.

The first thing to understand about the St. Mary’s series is that it is about time travel. The standard discussions about time travel are addressed as appropriate throughout the series, and are specifically discussed in this book. St. Mary’s is an organization tied to a greater and lesser extent to the University of Thirsk that investigates major historical events in contemporary time.

The second thing to understand about the St. Mary’s series, and the author, Jodi Taylor, is that they are funny. Full of suspense and tragedy, but Taylor injects a lot of humor, sometimes silly, sometimes slapstick, sometimes heart-breaking.

Without getting into potential spoilers, the book, and especially the end, does read as if Taylor is ending the series. The threads that have been left dangling over the course of the series have been tied up into bows–not always neat ones, but that’s St. Mary’s for you. The characters’ fates are settled, some well and some dead, but settled. Except, of course, for the one that is clearly a trigger for his own story. It’s a satisfying closure for the series, and if the author changes her mind and continues, that will be enjoyable as well.

An enjoyable, satisfying entry in the series. Now, I just have to finish off the short stories.

Review – The Kaiju Preservation Society

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The Kaiju Preservation Society is a stand-alone science fiction novel that is a Hugo finalist for 2023. This is not the “serious” novel in that list; Scalzi himself describes it as a “pop song” of a novel. Which it is, a delightful one, that has some serious things to say about capitalism and a look at how the COVID-19 pandemic had many of us feeling while we were under lockdown. The novel is set in 2020 into 2021.

The novel is science fiction in the loosest of terms: it uses science to “explain” how the biosystem on the alternate Earth they are on works, and the science is genuine, but I suspect that an actual biologist would disagree with the explanations given. It doesn’t actually matter; the science is there to explain how a kaiju, or Godzilla-like creature, would exist. The fun of the story is not the science, it’s the situation and the people.

As is typical for a Scalzi novel, the cast of characters is diverse: The characters come from all different backgrounds, multiple genders (yes, at least one is non-binary), and probably sexual orientation. As is not uncommon with a Scalzi novel, sex isn’t a high priority of the story, and I don’t remember any pairings being mentioned, so sexual orientation isn’t important. The main character, Jamie Gray, is probably male, but I don’t actually remember it ever being specifically mentioned; this is another common Scalzi feature. The villain of the story is at the apex of privilege: a rich, cis het WASP male dudebro, and every bit as unpleasant as that sounds.

This was likely nominated for the Hugo since it is a lot of fun and very much a pandemic novel; it isn’t a work of “artistic merit”. It has also been nominated for the Dragon Award for best SF novel and won the Locus Award for best SF novel. However, in looking over the nominees, most of the ones I’ve already read fit into this category, and most of the others likely do as well. This isn’t my top choice, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it won, and it wouldn’t bother me one bit. I highly recommend it.

Scalzi, John. The Kaiju Preservation Society. New York, New York: Tor Books, 2022. 79,821 words. 5 stars.

Review – Provenance

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Provenance is a stand-alone novel, set in the same universe as Leckie’s Imperial Radch trilogy. The first time I read it, I hadn’t read the original trilogy and I had no problem following the story. Reading it after reading the trilogy does give some richness to the interstellar politics.

The novel follows Ingray Aughskold’s (limited third-person) viewpoint as she works to advance her goals, the most important of which is gaining her mother’s approval and remaining within her family. The novel’s plot is fast-moving and keeps the pages turning; I never felt the need to put it down, although I didn’t read it in one sitting. The characters each have their own motives and frequently surprise while never becoming out of character.

Although the plot is of political intrigue, and there is a significant discussion of how politics can affect criminal justice, the novel isn’t really about politics. It is about a young person’s discovery and decision about who they are and how that affects who they are within their family. Throughout the book, there are multiple parent/child relationships with this dynamic playing out, to both positive and negative effects.

This was a reread for me; I read it the first time about five years ago, when it first came out. I didn’t remember much of the plot, although I did remember one of the main plot “twists”. What I did remember is that I enjoyed it the first time I read it, and I may have enjoyed it more the second time around. I highly recommend it.

Provenance was nominated for a Hugo award, a British SF Association award, and a Locus SF award, although it didn’t win any of them.

Leckie, Ann. Provenance. New York, New York: Orbit, 2017. 108,438 words. 5 stars.

Review: Give the Family My Love by A. T. Greenblatt

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I don’t usually review short stories because I don’t generally have much to say about them beyond, “I liked this!”, “Eh,” or “Yuck!” Which doesn’t tell you much about the story except whether or not I enjoyed it. However, I set myself the task this year of reviewing all award-winners (except those that I won’t read because they’re YA, or horror, or just “can’t push myself through it”.)

“Give the Family My Love” won the Nebula for Best Short Story of 2019 and it is a worthy example of a science fiction short story. Set in the not-too-distant future, the story is several letters written by Hazel to her brother Sam. The current ecological issues have escalated to actual disasters, but the alien race that has recently showed up have given us the ability to go through their archives to try to correct those issues. They will transport a representative, but that representative has to make it through a kilometer of unforgiving, unlivable landscape to get there.

The story isn’t really about the search for solutions, though. It’s about family, the decision and problems with deciding to become a parent, the relationship between siblings, and what people will do to support their families. The title is repeated throughout the story, meaning something a little different every time, but always centering around family and love.

Go read it. It’s delightful.

Greenblatt, A. T. “Give the Family My Love.” (Clarkesworld, February 2019.) 28 pages. 5 stars.

Review: Lent by Jo Walton

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For the first (almost) half of the book, this is a slightly fantastical biography of the Dominican monk Girolamo Savonarola from 1492 to 1498, including the Bonfire of Vanities. The first thing to address in discussing this book is Savonarola himself. Knowing about the man only from superficial study of the Italian Renaissance, and fictional portrayals of him as an antagonist in The Palace by Chelsea Quinn Yarbro and The Rule of Four by Ian Caldwell and Dustin Thomason, I had a very negative image of the man. In making him her main character, Walton makes him both much more sympathetic and more complex: arrogant but not narcissistic, devout but not rigid. I found myself surprised to be rooting for him to create his City of God, and to fall forward at his death.

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SPOILERS

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WARNING: From here on, there will be spoilers. I know no other way of discussing this wonderful, complicated book, and the best part starts in Part Two, about halfway through. However, please read the book before the spoilers, because it’s delightful and what Walton is doing is wonderful and you should experience it properly the first time through.

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Through Part One, this book reads like a fictional biography with fantastical elements. Savonarola performs multiple exorcisms throughout the book and we see the demons that he casts out, and he and other characters are able to prophesy about the future. In both cases, talent and training make a difference in the outcomes, but that they exist and are real are unquestioned. As Part Two begins, we discover that Savonarola, a demonstrably good man, at least as depicted by Walton, is actually a demon, one of God’s fallen angels, who now is in Hell. This, needless to say, was quite a shock, but Walton did a good job of explaining any apparent contradictions. At first, it seemed that the rest of the book would be set in Hell, with a quest toward God for Savonarola to undergo.

And then, Part Three begins, and Walton surprises the reader yet again. We discover that Savonarola is caught in a time loop. It’s alluded to in Part Two, but this is the real setting of the book: a time loop that runs from April 3, 1492 to May 23, 1498, over and over again. There is a green stone that Savonarola and his companions believe is the Holy Grail; after the first go-round, as soon as he touches it, he remembers everything. At this point, Savonarola understands that he’s stuck in a loop, he wants to break the loop, and he hopes to wind up in Purgatory or Heaven, but he has no idea how to break it. So, just as Phil Connors does in Groundhog Day, he tries different things on every loop. Unlike Connors, he rejects any option that is clearly evil or even overindulgent, but the second half of the book describes his attempts to break free, from living as a simple man, with a print shop and a wife and children, to becoming Pope. In some lives he travels, in others he stays in Florence, but after every death, he is slammed back into Hell.

He has friends who do their best to help him, but it is spiritually tiring for Girolamo to explain what happened every time to them. There is a mercenary captain, Crookback (probably Richard III of England), who Savonarola meets in the second loop and recognizes as another demon. Crookback also recognizes the stone and demands that Savonarola give it to him. Although Crookback takes it in one life, in most Savonarola resists giving it to him. At the end of the book, realizing that cooperating with each other is so impossible in Hell that it can’t even be discussed, he decides to take a chance and gives the stone to Crookback. That understanding, that we need others to harrow Hell and truly seek Heaven, appears to work. The book ends with Savonarola finally dying falling forward like a good person, not on his back like an evil one.

I decided to reread this book, and write this review, in Lent this year, largely because of the title, but also because of its themes of sin, reconciliation, and redemption, its insistence that we can’t succeed in being good people alone, but only in community. It speaks to me especially now, as I am beginning a journey of confirmation into a new church, and living in the current political environment. Truly, a wonderful book!

Walton, Jo. Lent. New York, New York: Tor Books, 2019 (May 28). 369 pages. 5 stars.