Category: A Reviews

Grade A #BookReview: Chasing New Suns by Lance Robinson

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A Reviews> book reviews
Grade A #BookReview: Chasing New Suns by Lance RobinsonChasing New Suns: Collected Stories by Lance Robinson
Format: ebook
Source: author
Formats available: paperback, ebook
Genres: science fiction, short stories
Pages: 202
Published by Lance Robinson on September 12, 2024
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

Seven tales of mind, heart, and spirit from award winning science fiction author Lance Robinson.
From Apartheid era South Africa to humanity's first foray beyond the solar system, from precarious ecosystems in northern Alberta to the shiny glam of time-adept neocolonialists between the stars, these are stories of possibility.
This thought-provoking collection includes: the Writers of the Future Award first place winning story "Five Days Until Sunset"; "Communion", a haunting story of guilt, empathy, and human connection; "Money, Wealth, and Soil", which explores the relationship between greed and nobler human motivations, as a collective humanity attempts to incentivize the restoration of the world's ecosystems; "Problem Solving", a witty satire on neocolonialism and post-modern blahs; "The Thursday Plan", a story of an alternate history in which Apartheid never ended in South Africa; "The Gig of the Magi", a satirical take on finding love while grinding it out day to day in the gig economy; and "Chasing the Sun", which continues the spiritual quest begun in "Five Days Until Sunset".
Chasing New Suns is science fiction with heart.

My Review: 

I first read this author’s short story, “Five Days Until Sunset”, in Writers of the Future, Volume 40, and as you will see from my review of that story below, I loved it. It turned out to be one of my favorites in a collection of mostly excellent stories.

So when the author contacted me about reviewing this new collection of stories, a collection that included a sorta/kinda followup to “Five Days”, I was all in. And as you will also see from my reviews of the rest of the stories in the book, I’m very glad I said “YES!” to the whole thing.

“Five Days Until Sunset” (originally published in L. Ron Hubbard Presents Writers of the Future, Volume 40)
In spite of what a whole lot of SF would have one believe, the likelihood is that early colony ships will be a fairly iffy proposition. Which means that this reminds me a bit of Mickey7 but definitely without the humorous bits. Although in this case, it’s not that the planet is barely habitable, but rather that it’s not habitable in the way that the colonists dreamed of. It’s a story about adapting your dreams to your circumstances instead of attempting to force the circumstances to match your dreams. Grade A because the story is good and so complete in its very short length and it even manages to deal well with religion in the future which is really, really hard even in the present.

“The Thursday Plan”
What if? What if history went down a different leg of the trousers of time? What if you could see what is, what was, what might be, and what might have been, all at the same time? What if you could jump between them? That is the dilemma and the opportunity faced by James Mfaxa in a timeline where Apartheid did not end in 1994, but instead continued and became even more repressive with the help of invasive technology that bears a much too sharp resemblance to slave collars – or to an enforcement mechanism of thought police. But that technology – and the jammers used to combat it – give Mfaxa a chance to envision a different world. Not a perfect one – in fact far from it – but a world better than the one he has. If he is willing to take a chance of making his world, perhaps not right but at least right-ER.

I found this to be an A- story in ways that I think are a “me” problem rather than an actual issue with the story. I just didn’t know enough about the history involved for the story to have as big of an impact as it would have for someone who did. And even then it still landed with a thought-provoking bang.

“Problem Solving”
This turned out to be a surprisingly funny story with more than a bit of a sting in its tail. From one perspective, it’s all a bit of a farce, as D.K. discovers that his lifelong run of bad luck isn’t so much bad luck as terrible timing. D.K.’s discovery of this, accompanied as it is by the presence of alien representatives of an intergalactic alliance that give off the whiff of being serious scam artists adds to the fun of the whole thing. The way that D.K. finally manages to take advantage of his combination gift and curse pays off the whole story beautifully. This one isn’t deep – unlike the rest of the collection, and offers a nice change of pace.  Grade B

“Communion”
As I read this one, it reminded me of another story, which I eventually figured out was the story “Nonzero” by Tom Vandermolen in that same Writers of the Future collection that included “Five Days Until Sunset”. Both are stories about humans who have become ‘lost in space’, untethered from whatever ship or habitat they were originally living in. The difference between the two stories is the difference between hope – however tiny – and resignation. Personally, I enjoyed “Nonzero” a bit more because it had that hint of hope – and because the protagonist’s relationship with her AI was considerably more supportive than the one between Matt, Barb, Ismail and Liem in “Communion” as the four honestly don’t like each other much and they are each more alone at their end than the unnamed protagonist of “Nonzero” is with her AI companion.

Pessimists – or perhaps realists – will probably enjoy “Communion” more than “Nonzero”. Readers who do not believe in no-win scenarios will prefer “Nonzero”. This one is a Grade B for me because I prefer that glimmer of hope.

“The Gig of the Magi”
This story is an homage to the O.Henry classic, “The Gift of the Magi”. A story which, in spite of being over a century old at this point, still lands with a beautiful punch – especially during the holiday season. (If you have never had the pleasure of reading the original work, it is still worth a read, and is out of copyright and available free in ebook from multiple sources, while public libraries are certain to have it in their collections.) The story here, “The Gig of the Magi”, updates all of the settings and circumstances, while still delivering the same lovely message as the original. Grade A-.

“Money, Wealth, and Soil”
This is a terrific climate fiction story that manages to both showcase the pervasiveness of human greed and make it the engine of a possibly better tomorrow – even as agents of that greek do their damndest to game a very complicated system. Because that’s what people do. It’s also a story about payback without that payback actually being a bloody revenge, but rather something righteously delivered that hurts absolutely no one who doesn’t deserve it.

This was my favorite in the collection. I loved the way that it made the forces that normally break a system become part of the system, that it counted on human greed rather than pretending it doesn’t exist, and that it created something good out of it instead. And that the right people finally got what they deserved for all the different ways that can be parsed. Grade A+

“Chasing the Sun”
This story is a bit of a quasi-sequel to “Five Days Until Sunset”, and it’s the story I originally picked up this collection FOR. And I was not disappointed. You don’t have to read the earlier story first – although if you read the collection in the order in which it’s presented, of course you will anyway.

By the nature of the worldbuilding, while the people of this world seem to be the descendants of the surprised colonists in “Five Days”, they don’t have much in the way of even ancestral memory of those long ago – by their standards – events. And as a result of the ways their planet interacts with its sun, they can’t put down permanent roots and maintain archives. They MUST carry all their possessions on their backs nearly every single day.

But one of the things that made that original story interesting, and that continue into this later one, is that the original did an excellent job of presenting the multiplicity of possibilities of human religious beliefs in a way that actually worked – and its the descendants of those belief systems that fuel the interaction in this later story – even if some of those beliefs work less well for them in their present circumstances.

At the same time, it’s also a story about pride going before a very big fall, and of the way that clinging to the beliefs and methods of the past prevents people, even an entire people, from adapting to a changed present. And that even the stubbornest of people can learn with the right incentive.

As with the original story, this was also a Grade A story – even though, or perhaps especially because – it is a vastly different kind of story than the one that came before.

Escape Rating A: Overall, as should be obvious from my ratings of the individual stories, I really enjoyed this collection. I will be looking forward to whatever this author comes up with next AND I’ll be looking forward to next year’s Writers of the Future collection in the hope that it will be as good as the one this sprang from.

A- #BookReview: A Dark and Drowning Tide by Allison Saft

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A- Reviews> book reviews
A- #BookReview: A Dark and Drowning Tide by Allison SaftA Dark and Drowning Tide by Allison Saft
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: dark academia, epic fantasy, fantasy mystery, fantasy romance, romantasy, gaslamp
Pages: 384
Published by Del Rey on September 17, 2024
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

A sharp-tongued folklorist must pair up with her academic rival to solve their mentor's murder in this lush and enthralling sapphic fantasy romance from the New York Times bestselling author of A Far Wilder Magic.
Lorelei Kaskel, a folklorist with a quick temper and an even quicker wit, is on an expedition with six eccentric nobles in search of a fabled spring. The magical spring promises untold power, which the king wants to harness to secure his reign of the embattled country of Brunnestaad. Lorelei is determined to use this opportunity to prove herself and make her wildest, most impossible dream come to become a naturalist, able to travel freely to lands she’s only ever read about.
The expedition gets off to a harrowing start when its leader—Lorelei’s beloved mentor—is murdered in her quarters aboard their ship. The suspects are her five remaining expedition mates, each with their own motive. The only person Lorelei knows must be innocent is her longtime academic rival, the insufferably gallant and maddeningly beautiful Sylvia von Wolff. Now in charge of the expedition, Lorelei must find the spring before the murderer strikes again—and a coup begins in earnest.
But there are other dangers lurking in the forests that rearrange themselves at night, rivers with slumbering dragons waiting beneath the water, and shapeshifting beasts out for blood.
As Lorelei and Sylvia grudgingly work together to uncover the truth—and resist their growing feelings for one another—they discover that their professor had secrets of her own. Secrets that make Lorelei question whether justice is worth pursuing, or if this kingdom is worth saving at all.

My Review:

While it’s true that “academic politics are so vicious because the stakes are so small”, that insight is merely the start of this epic sapphic romantasy. Lorelei Kaskel and Sylvia von Wolff have been rival proteges of Professor Ingrid Ziegler for years, vying for their mentor’s time, attention and praise even as they follow slightly different academic paths to the same goal.

A goal that is about to be realized, only for that realization to fall into another familiar saying, that “having a thing is not so pleasurable as wanting”. Both women should have been careful what they wished for, because this particular “ring” comes with a very large and deadly curse.

The kingdom of Brunnestaad has just, seriously just, extremely recently and still somewhat resentfully, been united under its young ruler into a slightly shaky and somewhat fractious union of formerly independent kingdoms that, for the most part, would much rather go back to being independent and all too frequently at war with one another.

King Wilhelm needs a project that will rally all those factions under his banner. Alternatively, he needs a common enemy to accomplish the same thing. A royally sponsored, scientific/magical expedition to find a legendary source of magic and power SHOULD do the trick – and make him unstoppable after all that power is, naturally and of course, delivered to him on a silver platter by the members of the expedition.

All of whom are his best friends, the aristocratic children he grew up with, who all banded together against their feuding, warring parents. He trusts them and he is counting on their personal loyalty even more than their oaths to his unsteady crown.

“Back in the days when wishes still held power”, this story’s lyrical equivalent of “once upon a time”, all of his friends would have been utterly loyal, all of the members of the expedition would have been completely trustworthy, and the fabled Ursprung would have been found easily and without delay and its power would have been granted to him immediately and its presence alone would have been more than enough to solve all of his kingdom’s problems without need for war or bloodshed.

But wishes no longer have such power – not even a king’s.

Howsomever, two members of the expedition are not even among the king’s trusted intimates. The expedition leader Ziegler, who Wilhelm has pretty much held hostage in the capital for years of planning – and her protegee Lorelei Kaskel, a prodigious and prickly scholar who Ziegler plucked from the ghetto her people have been forced to live in for centuries. Kaskel herself is is the ultimate outsider, her people are hated, feared and reviled at every turn, their status is the backbone of nearly every bit of the folklore that she studies, and no one ever lets Kaskel forget it.

In other words, Kaskel is a Jew – although her people are never quite called by that name – this world is in the equivalent of the Middle Ages in its pervasive anti-Semitism, and Kaskel is never allowed to forget that she is at the university on sufferance and is a ready scapegoat for anything that might go wrong.

Only it won’t just be Kaskel who will pay for her mistakes. Her friends, her family, her entire community can be put to the torch if she fails or falls. It’s happened before, and it will inevitably happen again.

When Ziegler is murdered on the very first evening of travel, all the responsibility and all the consequences fall hard on Kaskel’s shoulders. She knows the murderer was one of their company. She knows she’ll be executed if the expedition fails, and she knows that every single person has multiple motives for the crime and that they will all seek to undermine her authority and her decisions at every turn.

She has one hope – and it comes from a source that she isn’t sure she can trust with anything except the sure and certain knowledge that neither of them killed their mentor. Her only ally is her academic rival, Sylvia von Wolff. Together they will find both the source of magic AND the murderer.

All they have to do is stick together – a task that is both much easier and much, much harder than even their long-standing and bitter rivalry would ever have led them to expect.

Escape Rating A-: This book is a lot – and a lot of it is very, very good. Like staying up half the night to finish good. But there were just enough things that drove me crazy to keep it from tripping over the line from A- to A.

Which is going to require more than a bit of explanation.

Both what made this work, and what didn’t, was in the characters. On that one famous hand, we have Lorelei Kaskel and her rival turned frenemy and eventual lover, Sylvia von Wolff. We see the story from inside Kaskel’s head, and we get to see what makes her tick – as well as what ticks her off – from the opening of the story.

But the more we learn from her and of her, the deeper both she, and the story, get. It was clear to this reader that Kaskel’s Yevani people were this fantasy world’s equivalent of the Jews. It’s in the in-world history, in the treatment of her people at this point in world time, it’s in the pervasiveness of anti-Yevani (read as anti-Semitic) folklore. And the language they speak in the ghetto is definitely Yiddish.

In other words, these are my people and it was easy for me to see Kaskel’s perspective and even share it.

That she sees the ease with which Sylvia von Wolff, not merely an aristocrat but the descendant of actual kings, moves through the world, the way that opportunities are handed to Sylvia on a platter and seemingly all her transgressions are swept away, and that it all makes her downright angry is totally understandable. That she believes that everyone looks down on her all the time and that it makes her encase herself in ice as the only defense mechanism she has feels all too real, because they all DO look down on her and her ability to fight back is very much limited by her circumstances.

Which is exactly what makes the romance between Lorelei and Sylvia so much of an opposites attract, wrong side of the tracks affair and makes it so hard for Lorelei to believe is even possible. It has that darkly delicious air of the forbidden and taboo with actually being either of those things in any moral sense.

On that infamous other hand, the thing that made this story not quite hit that “A” mark was the other characters. The story is so focused on Lorelei’s and Sylvia’s dance of romance and hate that the other characters don’t get enough “air time” to be anything more than archetypes – and generally hateful ones at that.

This story is, among its many other parts, a fantasy mystery, and we don’t get enough of any of the other characters to even care whodunnit and why as long as we get to watch Lorelei and Sylvia play “come here go away” games.

At the end, the solution to the mystery felt a bit anticlimactic, while the solution to the political shenanigans didn’t have quite as much depth as it might have because we just don’t have enough outside of the romance.

So if you’re here for the sapphic romantasy aspects of the story – this is one that will keep you up half the night just to see if they manage to get past the obstacles in their way. If you’re here for either the mystery or the epic fantasy, you’ll still be glad to know whodunnit and why, but the romance is definitely the more satisfying side of the story.

A- #BookReview: This World is Not Yours by Kemi Ashing-Giwa

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A- Reviews> book reviews
A- #BookReview: This World is Not Yours by Kemi Ashing-GiwaThis World Is Not Yours by Kemi Ashing-Giwa
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: horror, science fantasy
Pages: 176
Published by Tor Nightfire on September 10, 2024
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

This World is Not Yours by USA Today bestseller Kemi Ashing-Giwa is the perfect blend of S.A. Barnes' space horror and Cassandra Khaw's beautiful but macabre worlds. An action-packed, inventive novella about a toxic polycule consumed by jealousy and their attempts to survive on a hostile planet.
After fleeing her controlling and murderous family with her fiancée Vinh, Amara embarks on a colonization project, New Belaforme, along with her childhood friend, Jesse.
The planet, beautiful and lethal, produces the Gray, a “self-cleaning” mechanism that New Belaforme’s scientists are certain only attacks invasive organisms, consuming them. Humans have been careful to do nothing to call attention to themselves until a rival colony wakes the Gray.
As Amara, Vinh, and Jesse work to carve out a new life together, each is haunted by past betrayals that surface, expounded by the need to survive the rival colony and the planet itself.
There’s more than one way to be eaten alive.

My Review:

This one seemingly begins in the middle, and it kind of does, but also kind of doesn’t. Yes, that’s a bit cryptic but sometimes so is this story – in a good, creepy and utterly chilling way.

The chapter numbers count down and not up, and it’s a countdown. I knew from the beginning it wasn’t counting down to anything good, as that first chapter makes it seem like the situation has already gone to hell in a handcart. The second chapter initially made it seem as if the story might be counting backwards, as the people who definitely broke apart in that first chapter are together – or back together – in the second.

It’s only as I read further that I figured out that the chapter numbers were a countdown to something terrible that hadn’t yet happened. As though a bomb was going to explode when the count reached zero – which it sorta/kinda did, but not in the way that I was expecting.

So consider that countdown a shadow of things to come, that whatever it’s counting down towards is going to be destruction, or annihilation, or both. Definitely both.

There’s a saying that “Mother Nature always bats last, and she always bats 1.000.” On the colony world of New Belaforme, it’s at least her third time at bat, and this time she has actual hands to hold that otherwise metaphorical weapon.

And this time around she’s aiming past the metaphorical bleachers all the way around the world and out into the stars.

Escape Rating A-: There are multiple ways to approach this story, just as there are multiple ways that it approaches its ultimate designation as SF horror. Expect to be increasingly creeped out as the story creeps its way into that ending.

But in the beginning, it’s the story of a triad relationship that’s teetering on the edge of self-destruction before it gets tipped all the way over into utter annihilation. Jesse, Vinh and Amara absolutely do love each other, but it’s not a good or healthy kind of love because it’s riddled with lies. Lots and lots of lies.

All of which are based on each thinking they’re not “good” enough for the others – although each has very different definitions of good. They’re all putting up a front, they’re all pretending that everything is hunky-dory, that Jesse is their best friend and Vinh and Amara have a happy marriage – in spite of Amara’s family’s violent disapproval of her marriage to a woman who has no money, no connections and seemingly no prospects.

They cling to each other because none of them have anyone else, and they cling to their still-struggling colony planet because they think they can make a go of it out of the reach of Amara’s family’s vast influence.

It all works, barely, until their colony is invaded by their on-planet rivals, and the resulting rules and restrictions claimed to be necessary for survival and success tear their little world apart by adding an additional player to their game.

And in those myriad upsets of their own private status quo, the planet steps in and uses them for its own purposes. Because it’s had just about enough of its human pests and it’s time to start over. Again.

I have to admit that I was expecting to discover that Amara’s family were actually the “big bad” in this scenario, that they had engineered the invasion in the expectation that their wayward child would return to the suffocating family fold. It’s not like that story hasn’t been told before, after all.

Instead, this is a story where this planet’s equivalent of Gaia manifests as an actual persona, and she has a mission and an agenda to keep the planet in ecological balance at ALL costs. Once she’s decided that the humans are incapable of being anything other than what they are – greedy and rapacious – well, a planet’s gotta do what a planet’s gotta do.

Which is where the horror comes in. It’s very much the SFnal kind of horror, like S.A. Barnes’ Dead Silence and Ghost Station, or Ness Brown’s The Scourge Between Stars, but because this is set on a planet and not in the black of space, the results are different, but just as chilling because the planet gets a say in who she’ll allow to live on her and humans have just not made the cut. And that’s where the horror intersects a bit with the weird and eldritch worlds that Cassandra Khaw plays with our minds in.

Consider this compelling story in the scary borderland between SF horror and fantasy horror, between magical realism and spaceships consumed by monsters out of the black and make sure you read it with the lights on.

But if you had a good, creepy, chilling reading time with any of the above, This World Is Not Yours will creep you right out in the very best way..

Grade A #AudioBookReview: Junkyard Roadhouse by Faith Hunter

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A Reviews> audio reviews> audiobooks> book reviews
Grade A #AudioBookReview: Junkyard Roadhouse by Faith HunterJunkyard Roadhouse (Shining Smith #4) by Faith Hunter
Narrator: Khristine Hvam
Format: audiobook, ebook
Source: purchased from Amazon, purchased from Audible
Formats available: paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: dystopian, post apocalyptic, urban fantasy
Series: Shining Smith #4
Pages: 153
Length: 4 hours and 36 minutes
Published by Audible Studios, Lore Seekers Press on July 2, 2024
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble
Goodreads

Shining Smith stands on the brink of achieving her goals, and yet now she could lose everything.

The presidents of four motorcycle clubs are coming to claim blood sacrifice and to ink her with motorcycle club tats. Her new roadhouse and its charter have to meet their approval or the roadhouse has no future, and neither does Shining.

An injured kid shows up at Smith’s Junk and Scrap, but collapses before he can speak.

A note arrives containing a warning and a plea for help, addressed by someone who knows Shining’s most intimate secrets—her history, her plans, and the names of her friends. The sender claims his daughter has been kidnapped by Shining’s enemies. To keep her secrets, he wants Shining to get his daughter back.

In order to rescue the hostage and keep her junkyard, her roadhouse, her people, and the cats alive, Shining Smith will have to suffer, fight, and bargain her way out of danger. All without accidently transitioning anyone—creating an accidental thrall—no matter how much her nanobots want her to.

Lock and load. It’s going to be a bumpy ride.

My Review:

When I finished the previous audiobook in this utterly awesome, completely riveting, absolutely compelling series that began with Junkyard Cats four years ago, that story, Junkyard War, felt like a slam-bang ending.

And it kind of was. But as things turned out – thankfully, blissfully and painfully – it wasn’t the end of Shining’s story at all – merely the end of the beginning. Because Junkyard Roadhouse is clearly – and OMG this listener/reader is so, so glad – the opening of a whole new chapter in Shining Smith’s quest to keep her people safe – no matter how much of her world she has to take under her protection in order to make that happen.

It’s a much, MUCH bigger world than we saw in the first book in the series, Junkyard Cats. In that opening story, the world came to Shining in the junkyard she inherited from her ‘Pops’. And it came to take her out and take over everything she had and everyone she had come to love – no matter how reluctantly.

But the enemy that came for her, Clarice Warhammer, is dead. Dead at the hands, and guns of Shining, her friends and allies, and the clowder of sentient battle-cats who are probably the true masters of Shining’s junkyard. Just ask them.

Shining’s reward for taking out Warhammer is three-fold. Warhammer and her nest have been eliminated – with extreme prejudice. So that’s one enemy in the ground. Shining took all of Warhammer’s intel as part of the spoils of war – a vast increase in Shining’s knowledge and insight into the world around her and the enemies that were backing Warhammer and will absolutely see Shining and her allies as a threat.

Because they absolutely are.

But first, Shining gets to collect her reward – a reward for which she has already paid in blood and will again. It’s not really a reward for herself – or at least she doesn’t see it that way. What she sees is the increased responsibility for keeping her people – whether two-legged or four – as safe and secure as she can make them.

So, with the posturing and permission of the motorcycle clubs that control the region, that were her allies in the battle with Warhammer, Shining Smith officially opens the Junkyard Roadhouse, a club chapter house that includes a restaurant and rooms to rent, trading post, and neutral ground – owned, operated and administered in all of its somewhat safe and mostly secure glory by Shining Smith herself and her own entirely independent motorcycle club.

It’s all hers – if she can manage to keep it.

After all, Warhammer was just the tip of a very dirty iceberg filled with powerful enemies – and Shining Smith is already in their sights. What none of them, not the military, not the Gov, not the Hand of the Law, recognize is that they are already in hers – and that hers are considerably more than they ever imagined.

Junkyard Roadhouse marks the beginning of THEIR end – they just don’t know it yet.

Escape Rating A: This is the story I felt compelled to finish last Friday, to the point where, as much as IMHO Khristine Hvam thoroughly embodies the voice of Shining Smith, I switched to the text – grateful that the text was already available for a change – in order to see how Shining got herself and her people out of the pickle she was in, turned it to her advantage, AND set the stage for the next book in the series.

Because Shining CLEARLY isn’t remotely done with the black ops of the military, their supporters in the Gov OR the corrupt Hands of the Law – all of which seem to be legion, planning something big and nefarious and aiming straight for her.

But that’s for later – and this reader is oh-so-happy that there will be a later, because Shining’s story could easily have ended with her victory at the end of Junkyard War.

Whether you experience this series in text or in the marvelous audio rendition, the series and whether or not you will like it rides or dies on the voice of its protagonist Shining Smith. If her blend of bravado and snark, her ability to take charge but her internal doubts about her ability to lead, her impostor syndrome combined with the utter certainty that if she doesn’t do it the job won’t get done – in other words, all the things that made ‘Little Girl’ survive the mamabot to become Shining Smith – if that voice and attitude trips your reading trigger you’ll love Shining.

As her friends and especially her enemies would attest, however, Shining Smith is a bit of an acquired taste – and there are parts of her world that are depressing as hell. The conditions that she has survived certainly depress the hell out of her frequently and often. She just puts on her ‘big girl panties’, gets on her bike and rides out to meet those conditions whenever and wherever necessary and that’s what I love about her and her story.

This particular entry in the series is a bit of a bridge between those initial three books and what’s coming next – and it starts with an excruciating rebirth that sometimes felt like it got lingered over a bit too long. Your mileage may vary but the change from Shining Smith, member of the OMW to Shining Smith, president of the independent Junkyard Roadhouse motorcycle club is both bloody and painful to the point where if I hadn’t already been all in on this series I might have turned off – or at least switched to text which wouldn’t have been quite so… visceral.

Meaning that this is not the place to start your experience of Shining’s truly fucked up future Earth. Start with Junkyard Cats – you’ll be glad you did. I was then, I am now and I can’t wait for more.

One final note on the audio, well, sorta/kinda on the audio. I’ve enjoyed Shining’s voice so much, especially as portrayed by Khristine Hvam, that I can’t believe it’s taken me this long to check out whether she is also the voice of Jane Yellowrock in the author’s signature series of the same name. She is, which just threw 15 more books, and counting, onto the top of my TBL (that’s To Be Listened) pile. Which I absolutely did not need but am still incredibly happy about because it will give me something (else) to dive into while I wait for Shining’s next adventure/confrontation/full-scale war.

A- #BookReview: Out of the Drowning Deep by A.C. Wise

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A- Reviews> book reviews
A- #BookReview: Out of the Drowning Deep by A.C. WiseOut of the Drowning Deep by A.C. Wise
Format: ebook
Source: supplied by publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: hardcover, ebook
Genres: fantasy mystery, horror, mystery, science fiction mystery
Pages: 176
Published by Titan Books on September 3, 2024
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

In the distant future, when mortals mingle with the gods in deep space, an out-of-date automaton, a recovering addict, and an angel race to solve the Pope’s murder in an abandoned corner of the galaxy.
Scribe IV is an obsolete automaton, peacefully whiling away his years on the Bastion, a secluded monastery in an abandoned corner of the galaxy. But when the visiting Pope is found murdered, Scribe IV knows he has very little time before the terrifying Sisters of the Drowned Deep rise up to punish the Bastion’s residents for their crime.
Quin, a recovering drug addict turned private investigator, picks up a scrambled signal from the Bastion and agrees to take the case. Traumatized by a bizarre experience in his childhood, Quin repeatedly feeds his memories to his lover, the angel Murmuration. But fragmented glimpses of an otherworldly horror he calls the crawling dark continue to haunt his dreams.
Meanwhile in Heaven, an angel named Angel hears Scribe IV’s prayer. Intrigued by the idea of solving a crime with mortals, xe descends to offer xer divine assistance (whether those mortals want it or not). With the Drowned Sisters closing in around the Bastion, Scribe IV, Quin, and Angel race to find out who really murdered the Pope, and why. Quin’s missing memories may hold the key to the case—but is remembering worth the price?
Haunting, dreamy and beautifully written, Out of the Drowning Deep is perfect for fans of Becky Chambers, Martha Wells, and This Is How You Lose the Time War.

My Review:

I’m not quite sure what I was expecting with this one – but I’m certainly that I wasn’t expecting the ginormous size of the book blender that would be needed to encompass the many, many, many bookish influences that I caught glimpses of along its merely – I say again – MERELY 176 pages of mysterious, fantastical, science fictional surprises, delights and horrors.

Definitely the horrors. This is one of those cases where judging the book at least a bit by its cover is utterly justified. Because Out of the Drowning Deep absolutely does go to some truly creepy places – and that cover doesn’t just merely reflect that fact but stares it down with myriad, haunting and haunted, eyes.

We start with a mystery. In this far-future universe, in an ancient monastery long decayed from its glory days, the visiting Pope has just been murdered.

Scribe IV, the AI-driven “automaton” in charge of “The Bastion” is already regretting his wish for a bit of mystery in his routine existence. The mystery that has just fallen at his feet has the potential to bring about the end of the home and sanctuary of every member of the Bastion’s remaining staff, including himself.

It might also mean the literal end of all of them AND as well as the place itself, as it seems that Scribe IV’s acknowledgement of the identity of the body has triggered an immediate response from the dreaded Drowned Sisters.

As if their name wasn’t ominous enough, the Sisters have the power to lock down the Bastion, take over the investigation of the Pope’s death, and act as judge, jury and executioner on the whole tragic and/or terrible mess.

The Sisters are not known for their mercy. They are however known for their headlong rush to punitive judgment and the swiftness of their actions tells Scribe that they have passed that judgment long before the murder took place – to the point where they might have been instrumental in it or were merely waiting in the depths to pounce on any conceivable opening to swoop down upon the Bastion and Drown the old temple with its population still inside.

Scribe has one hope – and yes, the automaton has taken on the possibility of hope, and even prayer, along with a host of other human characteristics over the years of his service transcribing prayers and serving as majordomo of the Bastion.

He managed to get an SOS out before the Sisters locked the Bastion down. Scribe called for any independent investigator to answer his call. And he was answered by not one but two investigators; a man with his own terrible experiences of gods, monsters and the creatures who exist between the two, and an angel who the Sisters may not believe in but whom they also cannot control.

Even if this whole sordid mess is part of their attempt to control someone even more powerful – the god they claim to serve.

Escape Rating A-: About that gigantic book blender I mentioned earlier… This was a book that persisted in making me think of other books although I still got completely wrapped up in the story that it was telling. Then again, I really do love the current run of SF and Fantasy mysteries and this is absolutely part of that wave – pardon the pun.

So the overarching vehicle for this is solving that mystery, the who and how and why of the dead Pope lying on the Bastion’s floor. (Whether the Pope in this far-flung future is a direct spiritual or organizational descendant of the current Pope isn’t detailed and doesn’t need to be.)

Which led directly to one of the books this one reminded me of, albeit in opposition, and that was Lavie Tidhar’s short story “The Old Dispensation” in the recent New Adventures in Space Opera collection. Because that story, which also dealt with terrible acts of a far-future religious organization, used entirely Jewish references for its religious iconography and the unadorned, unexplained use of ‘The Pope’ as a person of religious authority was a reminder that Christian-styled reference in both SF and Fantasy can pass without definition or explanation.

Scribe’s desire to investigate the mystery and find the truth instead of swallowing the uncomfortable lie that he knows the Sisters are about to proclaim struck sparks of the independent investigative journalist AI Scorn from Aimee Ogden’s Emergent Properties.

The truth of this universe relies on a bit of the premise that underscores American Gods, that man makes actual gods in his own image and can literally make himself into one under the right conditions. This particular chain of thought also looped in a bit of Max Gladstone’s Three Parts Dead.

But the two books that I felt most keenly related to Out of the Drowning Deep were, on the one hand, We Shall Sing a Song Into the Deep by Andrew Kelly Stewart and The Angel of the Crows by Katherine Addison.

Those are two books that probably shouldn’t have anything to do with one another – and yet they are blended together in Out of the Drowning Deep.

Like We Shall Sing a Song Into the Deep, Out of the Drowning Deep (and yes, the similarity of the titles does echo more than a bit) there’s that shifting foundation of the way that the isolated religious worshippers – the Sisters here and the Brothers there and I just picked up that bit of irony – have wrenched their original worship of their deity and their service to its commandments into an even darker message that they intend to inflict on their world at any cost and by any means necessary. Once they served their gods faithfully – now they intend their gods to serve them.

As dark as that part of the story is, and as often as Angels appear in fantasy and even SF as overbearing, overzealous, self-righteous destroyers, in Out of the Drowning Deep, while that’s the reputation the Angels certainly have, that’s not all that they are, and that’s absolutely not who the two Angels who become involved in this mystery, Murmuration and especially the investigating angel who befriends Scribe, the one who calls xemself just Angel, both feel more human and take on more human characteristics, both good and bad, than Scribe initially expects, much like in The Angel of the Crows.

Which leads the automaton Scribe IV, who has taken on more human attributes than he likes to admit to, to consider the possibility of a much different future, a future of his own choosing, than he ever imagined possible. With a friend he never expected at all.

There’s more here. In fact, there’s lots more here. For a novella, Out of the Drowning Deep went to a lot of fascinating and surprising places, and I was as delighted to go there with Scribe IV as I was creeped out by all those eyes.

Grade A #BookReview: The Kill List by Nadine Matheson

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A Reviews> book reviews
Grade A #BookReview: The Kill List by Nadine MathesonThe Kill List (Inspector Anjelica Henley, #3) by Nadine Matheson
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, ebook, audiobook
Series: Inspector Anjelica Henley #3
Pages: 448
Published by Hanover Square Press on August 6, 2024
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

While an innocent man sits behind bars, a serial killer with a gruesome signature has started killing again. And only Anjelica Henley can stop him.
After twenty-five years behind bars, Andrew Kenan has just been exonerated. Newly discovered DNA evidence proves that he was not the cold-blooded serial killer the world thought he was, the one who sewed his victims' eyes shut before burying them alive. Before Kenan can taste freedom, however, he is found dead in his prison cell. And Inspector Anjelica Henley, who worked the original investigation, is left in shock.
Henley never thought she'd have to revisit one of the most horrifying cases of her career. But now, after evading justice for twenty-five years, the true killer is back, and so is their gruesome signature. Can Henley stop them once and for all? Or has the Serial Crimes Unit finally met its match?
Drawing on her experiences as a criminal attorney, and exploring themes of race, class and justice, Nadine Matheson's newest entry in the Anjelica Henley series is her darkest, most adrenaline-fueled mystery yet.

My Review:

I picked this up because I was utterly riveted by the first two books in the Inspector Anjelica Henley series, The Jigsaw Man and The Binding Room. It’s taken me nearly a month after the publication date to brace myself to read the book, because this is a series where the word “enjoy” doesn’t actually apply to the reading of it.

Riveted, on the other hand, certainly does. Compelled, also. Certainly glued to the edge of my seat for nearly four hours, unable to put the thing down out of fascination and fear that something else even more terrible was about to happen.

Which, to be fair, it generally was.

Detective Inspector Anjelica Henley is a member of the (London) Metropolitan Police Serial Crimes Unit. It’s a unit that didn’t exist in 1995, when the serial killer the press dubbed “The Burier” began his spree of kidnapping young women, torturing them, raping them, burying them until they died of asphyxiation, then digging up their bodies and staging the discoveries of their corpses.

Then 15-year-old Anjelica Henley’s best friend Melissa was the first – but certainly not the last – of The Burier’s victims.

The Burier’s spree came to an end in 1996, when Andrew Streeter was convicted of all five monstrous killings. While Streeter protested his innocence repeatedly at his trial, at his conviction, and frequently and often over the twenty plus years since, the fact that the killings stopped convinced even the doubters that they had the right man – even if there might have been a few – or even more than a few – irregularities in the way the police handled the case.

But those irregularities have come back to haunt Anj, the entire SCU, and every single person who ever had anything to do with that old case. Because Andrew Streeter, the man everyone simply knew was guilty, had gotten the attention of a high-profile “Innocence Project” that successfully convinced a review board that those irregularities were the result of a police cover up and corruption that stitched him up for reasons that had nothing whatsoever to do with his actual guilt or innocence of the crime for which he was convicted.

He was merely convenient. Or in someone’s way. Or both. Almost certainly both.

And now that he’s about to be released from prison, the hunt for The Burier is starting all over again. Unless he starts hunting for them, first.

Escape Rating A: I’m not joking about the utterly mesmerizing four hours it took me to read this from beginning to end. I think the only times I moved were to adjust my legs to accommodate whichever cat had nestled into my lap and frankly I was glad of the comfort.

A comfort I desperately needed, because comfort is absolutely the last word I would use to describe this book OR the series from which it sprang. Compelling, yes. Fascinating, also yes. Riveting, absolutely. But comforting, no, not even in the ending which is not so much cathartic or relieving as merely a sigh and a pause between this story and the fresh hell that its unanswered questions inevitably lead to.

This is a hard book, and that’s made it difficult to get my thoughts into order and pour them out through my keyboard.

Why?

Because there are at least three elements to the taut suspense of this thriller, and each one is more of everything than the last. Surprisingly, the case of The Burier, with all of its chilling and even visceral horror, isn’t the worst of what the characters face.

Except for Henley, none of the current members of the SCU were involved in the original case. And Henley’s involvement was as a witness and victim-by-association. Whatever guilt she may feel – however much she might second guess her behavior then – she wasn’t actually responsible for any of the events – and neither are any of the other current members of the team.

It didn’t happen on their watch – although they are being held accountable for cleaning up the rather obvious black eye that has materialized on the face of the Met as a result of it.

Which is where the story veers into the worse, because it’s not just that Streeter was framed then. It’s that their deceased boss, their mentor, is being framed now, that his handling of the case then is responsible for this miscarriage of justice.

Unless, he wasn’t the bent copper who focused the case on Streeter, manipulated evidence and witnesses and knowingly put the wrong man in jail. A possibility that seems even more obvious as the way that the present case has been dumped in their collective laps has made it crystal clear that the Serial Crime Unit has an enemy within the Met who absolutely is out to get them all.

The question of who, what, when, where and why of that fact, while less terrible in the blood and guts sense, is a bigger and worser question for a unit that sees each other as family – whether that’s healthy or not – and sees that they are all falling over the edge in one way or another. Watching each other fall apart, knowing that someone has a figurative knife in their backs even as they investigate a killer who literally stabs his victims before he does the rest of his terrible work ratchets up the tension of this case even as it powers the story straight into the next book – which we’ll probably have to wait a nail-biting two years for.

A fact which makes this reader want to curse even more than the characters in the story do.

A- #BookReview: Hell Bay by Will Thomas

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A- Reviews> book reviews
A- #BookReview: Hell Bay by Will ThomasHell Bay (Barker & Llewelyn, #8) by Will Thomas
Format: ebook
Source: purchased from Amazon
Formats available: hardcover, paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: historical fiction, historical mystery
Series: Barker & Llewelyn #8
Pages: 304
Published by Minotaur Books on October 25, 2016
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Better World Books
Goodreads

When two people are murdered during a secret government conference on a secluded island estate, private enquiry agent Cyrus Barker must find the killer among the guests before it’s too late.
At the request of Her Majesty’s government, private enquiry agent Cyrus Barker agrees to take on his least favorite kind of assignment—he’s to provide security for a secret conference with the French government. The conference is to take place on the private estate of Lord Hargrave on a remote island off the coast of Cornwall. The goal of the conference is the negotiation of a new treaty with France. The cover story for the gathering is a house party—an attempt to introduce Lord Hargrave’s two unmarried sons to potential mates.
But shortly after the parties land at the island, Lord Hargrave is killed by a sniper shot, and the French ambassador’s head of security is found stabbed to death. The only means of egress from the island—a boat—has been sent away, and the means of signaling for help has been destroyed. Trapped in a manor house with no way of escape, Cyrus Barker and his assistant, Thomas Llewelyn, must uncover which among them is the killer before the next victim falls.

My Review:

In this eighth entry in the Barker & Llewelyn series, after the private enquiry agents’ immersion in the deepest of London’s hells in pursuit of Jack the Ripper in Anatomy of Evil, Cyrus Barker finds himself far outside his usual stomping and stalking grounds, caught literally between Scylla and Charybdis, at the furthermost west point of the Scilly Isles maneuvered into a case he’d really rather not have taken.

But Scylla in the person of the woman who holds his heart, Mrs. Philippa Ashleigh, has conspired with her dear friend Lady Hargrave to invite Barker – with Llewelyn as his aide-de-camp, assistant, general factotum and whatever other jobs Barker needs him to turn his hand to – in tow. Mrs. Ashleigh has been attempting, for months if not longer, to drag Barker to a country house party in spite of how little he desires to attend such a thing.

Mrs. Ashleigh’s manipulations, however, have dovetailed all too neatly with those of the government, the monstrous Charybdis of this analogy. Lord Hargrave has planned a secret meeting with his old friend – and his daughter’s godfather – the French ambassador, at a house party on his estate in the Scilly Isles. Hargrave commissions Barker and Llewelyn to provide security for the clandestine meeting. While Barker protests, and rightfully so, that this is not the sort of work at which his agency excels, because two men simply are not enough to get the job done, the combined machinations of his government and his lady have forced his hand.

At first, Barker dreads the prospect of endless boredom and terrible attempts to make – or avoid – small talk with the other guests. His hopes (or fears) of that boredom are dashed before the end of the first evening, when his host is killed by a sniper, the French ambassador’s head of security is stabbed to death and the only means of leaving the remote island are destroyed.

The country house party swiftly changes from a pleasure trip to a siege, as the guests and staff are picked off one by one in a multitude of methods that seem deadly and/or devastating by capricious turns.

The killer clearly has an agenda, and its up to Barker and Llewelyn – in spite of the distrust they face from ALL of the guests – to figure out who has meticulously planned to eliminate every single person on Godolphin Island until there are none left.

Escape Rating A-: First, it may seem like I picked this one up much too soon after Anatomy of Evil – and it’s true that this one does suffer a bit in comparison. But in truth I read the earlier book on the plane home from San Diego last month, and took my trip to Hell Bay on the plane home from London last week.

At least it wasn’t a boat on MY return trip.

I did enjoy Hell Bay for its character development, but it did suffer a bit in comparison to Anatomy of Evil, which, with its deep dive into London’s Whitechapel district and its nail-biting hunt for Jack the Ripper – as well as its plausible solution to that historical conundrum – was an absolutely compelling read.

Hell Bay, which provided some fantastic insights into the relationship between Cyrus Barker and Mrs. Philippa Ashleigh – and do I ever wonder where that’s going after this book – was quite a departure for the detective duo.

And not in the best way, as this story takes Barker & Llewelyn out of their London setting and puts them in a place that is not suited to them or their methods. These particular fish, in spite of being in the middle of the ocean, are very much out of water.

The place they were out of that water, storywise, was all too similar to Erik Larson’s No One Goes Alone, and of course Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None – even if the means and motives for both of those stories turned out to be different. Also, I was a bit disappointed with No One Goes Alone so the resemblance between the stories did not serve as a pleasant harbinger for my read of this one.

One of the things that I did like about this one – and it’s something that has been true with other stories in this series where Barker is on the case – is the way that the crimes and their motives turned out not to be the seemingly obvious ones, but those more obvious possibilities turned into rather tasty red herrings for the detectives.

And, as stated earlier, while we still don’t know as much as Thomas Llewelyn would like about Cyrus Barker’s background, he did observe a great deal about the relationship between his ‘Guv’ and Mrs. Ashleigh and it’s clear that she is going to be having, perhaps not exactly second thoughts but certainly some serious rethinking about that relationship and where she thinks its going vs. where Barker will ever be willing to go – and not just because I seriously doubt the man will EVER be willing to attend another country house party.

We’ll certainly see in the books to come, as my catch up read of the Barker & Llewelyn series continues with the short story An Awkward Way to Die and the following full-length novel, Old Scores, the next times I need a book that is guaranteed to pull me in and sweep me away – as this series always does – even if, on this particular occasion, it also swept me a bit out to sea.

A- #BookReview: The Naturalist’s Daughter by Tea Cooper

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A- Reviews> blog tours> book reviews
A- #BookReview: The Naturalist’s Daughter by Tea CooperThe Naturalist's Daughter by Tea Cooper
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: historical fiction, historical mystery
Pages: 368
Published by Harper Muse on August 20, 2024
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

1808 Agnes Banks, NSW
Rose Winton wants nothing more than to work with her father, eminent naturalist Charles Winton, on his groundbreaking study of the platypus. Not only does she love him with all her heart, but the discoveries they have made could turn the scientific world on its head. When Charles is unable to make the long sea journey to present his findings to the prestigious Royal Society in England, Rosie must venture forth in his stead. What she discovers there will change the lives of future generations.
1908 Sydney, NSW
Tamsin Alleyn has been given a mission: travel to the Hunter Valley and retrieve an old sketchbook of debatable value, gifted to the Public Library by a recluse. But when she gets there, she finds there is more to the book than meets the eye, and more than one interested party. Shaw Everdene, a young antiquarian bookseller and lawyer seems to have his own agenda when it comes to the book – and Tamsin. In an attempt to discover the book's true provenance Tamsin decides to work with him.
The deeper they delve, the more intricate the mystery becomes. As the lives of two women a century apart converge, discoveries rise up from the past and reach into the future, with irrevocable consequences...

My Review:

There have been plenty of hoax animals and artifacts in the histories of archaeological and biological discoveries. But the platypus was not one of them – no matter how skeptical scientists initially were about the creature found – and only found – on the wet eastern riverlands of Australia.

But it’s easy to understand why scientists in Britain, presented with a preserved specimen of an animal that had fur like a mammal, a bill like a duck, a poison spur like a reptile, that laid eggs like a bird but nursed its young as mammals do treated the specimen with a HUGE dose of skepticism.

Even the platypus’ early scientific name, ornithorhynchus paradoxus – paradoxical bird-snout – makes the confusion of all who observed the animal exceedingly clear.

This illustration by Frederick Polydore Nodder is the first published illustration of a platypus. It accompanied George Shaw’s 1799 description of the animal in the Naturalist’s Miscellany, or Coloured figures of natural objects”. London:Nodder & Co.

The story in The Naturalist’s Daughter is wrapped tightly around the paradox of the platypus, both its discovery across two centuries – about the history of its first introduction to the preeminent 19th century naturalist Sir Joseph Banks and then the early 20th century discovery that perhaps the attribution for that first discovery had been misplaced in the midst of a series of tragic family secrets and devastating lies.

It’s a story that goes full circle, from young Rose Winton, a budding naturalist in her own right – or at least she would have been if she had been born either male or in a later century – and the origin story that had been hidden from her – to Tamsin Alleyn a century later, an independent young woman determined to chart her own course – a course that leads her back to a family and a history she never knew was hers.

Along the way, the story of the platypus spurs its poison and lays its eggs, from the manipulations of a wealthy family that abused, transported, lied and cheated Rose’ mother to descendants that hid her heritage and did their damndest to do it all again.

Only for the truth, at last, to make so many injustices finally come ‘round right and correct the mistakes of history in a story that combines the thrill of scientific discovery with the sins of avarice, the desperation to escape not one but two legacies that are too difficult to bear and a romance weighed down with secrets on all sides.

Escape Rating A-: Before I get to the story, I have to say that to this reader, at least, the original Australian cover (pictured at left) does a much better job of conveying the heart of this story – which lies in the land that gave birth to the platypus – than the US cover. Beauty may be in the eye of the beholder, etc., etc., etc., but the well-dressed somewhat generic figure on the US cover doesn’t ring true for either Rose or Tamsin – but the land and its creatures are definitely the heart of the thing.

The Naturalist’s Daughter, like several of the author’s other works, is a dual timeline story. In the 1808 timeline, we have Rose Winton, the titular naturalist’s daughter, as her father teaches her his craft even though she has no chance of being a professional or respected scientist. When he is struck down, she finds herself taking up as much of his mantle as the society of the time will allow.

In the 1908 portion of the story, we have Tamsin Alleyn, a young librarian and archivist who has come into contact with a sketchbook that once belonged to Charles Winton. A sketchbook of somewhat mysterious provenance – and an even more uncertain fate – that contains some sketches that the reader is already aware were drawn by Rose and not her father.

For much of the story, it seems that the sketchbook is the connecting link, but as Tamsin continues to investigate the path that the sketchbook has taken through the intervening century, it becomes clear that there is more to connect the two women than it first seemed.

Readers may find one or the other character easier to empathize with. Rose faces more danger, but Tamsin has more freedom of action. Rose is closer to the beginning of the mystery, but Tamsin is the agent who uncovers the whole of it.

Personally I found Tamsin’s story the more satisfying approach, but Rose’s story certainly has its own appeal.

The way that the two stories turn out to be the same story after all turned into a fascinating web built out of secrets and lies, told by multiple less than reliable narrators, which made it that much more fascinating and difficult to suss out the truth before the final – and imminently satisfying – conclusion.

A+ #BookReview: Anatomy of Evil by Will Thomas

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A+ Reviews> book reviews
A+ #BookReview: Anatomy of Evil by Will ThomasAnatomy of Evil (Barker & Llewelyn, #7) by Will Thomas
Format: eARC
Source: purchased from Amazon, supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: historical fiction, historical mystery
Series: Barker & Llewelyn #7
Pages: 327
Published by Minotaur Books on May 12, 2015
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

In London of 1888, Private Enquiry Agent Cyrus Barker takes on his biggest case ever—the attempt to find and stop the killer terrorizing Whitechapel: Jack the Ripper
Cyrus Barker is undoubtedly England’s premiere private enquiry agent. With the help of his assistant Thomas Llewelyn, he’s developed an enviable reputation for discreetly solving some of the toughest, most consequential cases in recent history. But one evening in 1888, Robert Anderson, the head of Scotland Yard’s Criminal Investigation Department (CID), appears at Barker’s office with an offer. A series of murders in the Whitechapel area of London are turning the city upside down, with tremendous pressure being brought to bear on Scotland Yard and the government itself.
Barker is to be named temporary envoy to the Royal Family with regard to the case while surreptitiously bringing his investigative skill to the case. With various elements of society, high and low, bringing their own agenda to increasingly shocking murders, Barker and Llewellyn must find and hunt down the century’s most notorious killer. The Whitechapel Killer has managed to elude the finest minds of Scotland Yard—and beyond—he’s never faced a mind as nimble and a man as skilled as Cyrus Barker. But even Barker’s prodigious skills may not be enough to track down a killer in time.

My Review:

Private Inquiry Agents Cyrus Barker and Thomas Llewelyn have been on a collision course with this particular date with destiny since the very first book in this series, Some Danger Involved, opened in 1884 with Barker taking Llewellyn on as his apprentice.

This seventh book in the utterly riveting series of their adventures has reached the ominous year of 1888, the year that “Jack the Ripper” terrorized the streets of London’s most desperate and notorious neighborhood, Whitechapel.

Every single police agency – and there were plenty of competing jurisdictions and agencies in London in the autumn of 1888 – wanted the glory that would come from catching the killer – and zealously guarded their patch and every single scrap of evidence they managed to acquire.

In this compelling take on the investigation into the Whitechapel Murders, Scotland Yard, reluctantly and with a ridiculous number of caveats and restrictions, deputized Cyrus Barker and his apprentice-turned-assistant Thomas Llewellyn into the Metropolitan Police Department in order to avail themselves of Barker’s much vaunted expertise in investigation and manhunting.

And, in all probability, if all else failed, to have him on hand to use as a scapegoat if they couldn’t manage to close the case.

Which, or so history tells us, they didn’t. Unless one of the many conspiracy theories had it right after all, and the truth would have lit a powder keg that Scotland Yard was incapable of putting out.

Escape Rating A+: I picked this book when I did because I was on a long flight and needed something that was guaranteed to take me away from my current circumstances. I was one hundred percent certain that Barker & Llewelyn were the men for the job.

Which they absolutely were.

The fascinating thing about this particular entry in this long-running series is that its focus isn’t on the lurid details of the crimes, but rather on the intricate details of the investigation – including the interdepartmental rivalries, the political shenanigans, the conflicting social mores of the time and the various factions that needed protection – or demanded it – as well as the potential consequences of any of the various possible resolutions.

Barker and Llewelyn find themselves in the one place neither of them ever expected to be. They’re not just in the thick of the investigation, but they are embedded firmly into the Metropolitan Police. Barker prefers to be his own boss and run his own show, and Llewelyn is an ex-con. While neither of them expected to be welcomed in the Met with open arms, they’re continually astonished that they are there at all.

At the same time, the experience fosters respect on both sides that honestly neither side believed was possible. It will be interesting to see how and even whether that continues in future stories.

But the Ripper killings took place at the dawn of forensic science – and many of the techniques were still being hotly debated – even as “Jack” cut a bloody swath through Whitechapel and left damned few clues behind him – while the gutter press did their damndest to gin up readership with sensationalism.

The story runs at a compelling, page-turning pace as Barker and Llewelyn gather and discard clues and theories even as they walk the streets of Whitechapel night after night in an attempt to learn the territory so they can spot anything out of place – while they observe the day-to-day and night-to-night life of this district that most well-heeled Londoners would just as soon forget with understanding and empathy instead of the judgment and derision exhibited by their current colleagues and their usual clientele.

In the end, Barker gets his man – with Llewelyn’s able assistance – just as he always does. That the solution seems plausible even though justice can’t truly be served feels right, true to the circumstances, and even surprisingly satisfactory – in spite of the lack of historical closure.

Saying that I had a “good” reading time with Barker & Llewelyn this time around feels wrong – because the whole Ripper case is awful. I appreciated the way that the story dealt with the evidence of the actual killings without sensationalizing them more than has already been done elsewhere and plenty. The in-depth details, very much on the other hand, of the investigative processes of the police and the sheer amount of manpower they devoted to the case were fascinating.

And of course, I love these characters, so taking them out of their familiar haunts and watching them still get the job done added new layers to them, their association and their story. Which means that I will definitely continue my journey with Barker & Llewelyn with the next book in the series, Hell Bay, the next time I need to be swept away to Victorian London.

Grade A #BookReview: New Adventures in Space Opera edited by Jonathan Strahan

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A Reviews> book reviews
Grade A #BookReview: New Adventures in Space Opera edited by Jonathan StrahanNew Adventures in Space Opera by Jonathan Strahan
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: paperback, ebook
Genres: science fiction, short stories, space opera
Pages: 338
Published by Tachyon Publications on August 13, 2024
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

Have you ever wanted a faster-than-light trip to the future? Are you tired of reading science fiction novels that feel like they’re taking literal eons to finish? These fifteen award-winning and bestselling science fiction authors, including Charlie Jane Anders, Alastair Reynolds, Yoon Ha Lee, Becky Chambers, Tobias S. Buckell, Ann Leckie, and Sam J. Miller, and more, are here as your speedy guides to infinity and beyond.
In “Zen and the Art of Starship Maintenance,” a cloud-based contractor finds a human war criminal clinging to the hull of the ship. The clones of “All the Colours You Thought Were Kings,” about to attend their coming-of-age ceremony, are plotting treason. During “A Temporary Embarrassment in Spacetime,” two outlaws go on the run after stealing a device from a space cult.
Here are the new, adventurous―and most efficient―takes on interstellar battles, sentient spaceships, and political intrigue on a galactic scale. Discover where memories live and die, and where memes rise and fall in moments. Remember, the future is sooner than you think, and there’s only so much time for visiting it.

My Review:

These space opera stories aren’t exactly new as they’ve all been published before in a variety of not necessarily widely available sources. But all are from the last decade and every single story represents an author who is at the top of their game. And, for the most part, they are marvelous.

I’m usually hit or miss with short story collections, sometimes they work, occasionally they don’t, and often there are a couple of stories that go ‘clunk’ and not in a good way and/or one or two where I can see why people liked them but I’m just not the right reader for them.

This particular collection only had three stories that weren’t absolutely stellar – all puns intended. Which means that I read through the whole thing and had at least a bit to say about each, leading to an overall Escape Rating of A.

“Zen and the Art of Starship Maintenance” by Tobias S. Buckell
What is the difference between having free will but not having any real choices and being bound by contracts and programming – but having time to work one’s way around both? What does it REALLY mean to be human? And how much time and freedom does one need to find ALL the loopholes – and exploit the hell out of them? Escape Rating A for an absolutely beautiful asskicking of an ending.

“Extracurricular Activities” by Yoon Ha Lee (2018 Hugo nominee in the Novelette category)
Well, this just moved Ninefox Gambit up the virtually towering TBR pile, because I think this story is set in that universe and features one of the same characters, Shuos Jedai. Obviously one does not need to have read the series to get into this story because clearly I haven’t but just as clearly I most definitely did. Translating this to Trek a bit, because that’s what I was doing in my head, this story is what you’d get if Starfleet sent Section 31 to deal with the Tribbles, used Harry Mudd’s ship as cover – along with a much better looking version of Mudd – and it all worked out anyway in spite of all the reasons the entire operation should go terribly, horribly wrong. This is a story that shouldn’t be nearly as light as it turns out to be – but it is and it does and it was a LOT of fun along the way. Shuos Jedai fails up REALLY HARD in this story and it really works. Escape Rating A

“All the Colors You Thought Were Kings” by Arkady Martine
A different empire, different memories thereof. Three teens about to become cogs in the empire, except that they’ve chosen to take it over instead. A plot, a plan, a triangle of either siblinghood or romance or both, and a million to one shot that comes through but probably won’t change things half as much as they hoped. Escape Rating A

“Belladonna Nights” by Alastair Reynolds
What is the quality of mercy, and what does it mean to remember? Neither of which questions feel remotely like they should go together. I was expecting something about political shenanigans and jockeying for position and/or a bit of a star-crossed lovers romance, and what I got instead was something beautiful and sad and surprisingly elegiac. Which is exactly what the story is, an elegy for a people long dead, as seen through the eyes of the one person willing to remember them. Escape Rating A-

“Metal Like Blood in the Dark” by T. Kingfisher (2021 Hugo winner in the  Novelette category)
Not all learning organisms are human, and not all learning is on the side of the angels. But when your opponent is definitely working from the dark side of the Force, even a machine has to learn to fight fire with fire. Reminiscent of T.J. Klune’s In the Lives of Puppets in its story of machines being required to learn the worst lessons from humans – because some of them already have. Escape Rating A+

“A Temporary Embarrassment in Spacetime” by Charlie Jane Anders
This was just so deliciously, delightfully and dementedly over the top that it’s rolling on the floor laughing its ass off on the other side. A belly laugh of a tale, with a sensibility and a naming convention reminiscent of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Escape Rating A-

“Immersion” by Aliette de Bodard (2013 Hugo nominee in the Short Story category)
The weapons of conquest are not necessarily the kind that kill. Sometimes they just do their damndest to kill the culture instead and let the people conquer themselves. And sometimes the culture being appropriated manages to fight back in ways that aren’t exactly deadly weapons, but can be deadly all the same. Escape Rating A

“Morrigan in the Sunglare” by Seth Dickinson
Don’t read this one when you already have a sad because trust me, it won’t help at all. However, in its heartbreaking sadness it’s a beautiful story about what is, what was, what might have been, what it means to be human vs. what it means to have what it takes to defend those who are, what we owe to the people we love vs. what we owe to the people that love us AND it’s about saving what can be saved – even if that means we have to lose it. I have all the words and none of them convey this story properly because it’s beautiful and sad and HARD. Escape Rating A

“The Old Dispensation” Lavie Tidhar
My thoughts about this one went on two completely separate tracks. There are a TON of religious references in this far-future SFnal story, but what made all of that interesting was that every single one of those references, including place names and names of ships, originated in Judaism instead of any of the usual suspects. Very much on my other hand, however, the story doesn’t quite gel. The idea that the agent of the Exilarch was essentially dismembered and mind-raped was plenty creepy, and the whole idea of what the conflict was at its heart was kind of fascinating, but it didn’t pull together in the end and lost its way more than a few times in the middle. Escape Rating C

“The Good Heretic” by Becky Chambers
This was a heartbreaker in the best way, a story about friendship, and being true to yourself, and daring to be different no matter what it costs, and discovering that difference doesn’t have to mean bad or evil no matter what everyone else tells you. It’s part of the author’s Wayfarers universe but can absolutely be read as a standalone – I haven’t read Wayfarers yet but its moving up the TBR pile as I write. Escape Rating A++

“A Voyage to Queensthroat” by Anya Johanna DeNiro
There’s something in this one that reminds me of The Empress of Salt and Fortune by Nghi Vo, although I can’t totally put my finger on why. Part of it is the way that both stories are memoirs of secondary characters telling the story of someone famous and even legendary from a previously untold point of view, and that both have a gut-punch of an ending. I’m on the fence – with both stories actually – about whether the length was just right or whether there should have been just a bit more. Escape Rating A-

“The Justified” by Ann Leckie
The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few or of the one – even when the one is supposedly the ruler of all they survey. And sometimes the only way to obey an order is to disobey the person who gave it. I think I needed more background than I had, or something like that, because this one only sorta/kinda worked for me and I was expecting it to be a wow. Escape Rating B

“Planetstuck” by Sam J. Miller
This was a story that works and works heartbreaking well because it’s completely invested in and riding on its characters. So even though we don’t have nearly enough about how this particular universe works, it doesn’t matter because what we care about – and deeply – are the desperate feelings of its protagonist and its lesson that you really can’t go home again – no matter how badly you want to, because some gifts really do come at much too high a price. Escape Rating A+

“The Last Voyage of Skidbladnir” by Karin Tidbeck
A beautiful ending to a terrific collection. It’s a bit steampunk-ish, not in setting but in the feel of the way the world is set up, but the story it reminds me of most is Floating Hotel by Grace Curtis, in that this is also about the last voyage of a cruise ship that is much bigger than it appears from the outside. Escape Rating B