Genre: science fiction

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.

#BookReview: Crypt of the Moon Spider by Nathan Ballingrud

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | B Reviews> book reviews
#BookReview: Crypt of the Moon Spider by Nathan BallingrudCrypt of the Moon Spider (Lunar Gothic Trilogy, #1) by Nathan Ballingrud
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: hardcover, paperback, ebook
Genres: Gothic, horror, science fiction
Series: Lunar Gothic Trilogy #1
Pages: 112
Published by Tor Nightfire on August 27, 2024
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

Crypt of the Moon Spider is a dark and dreamy tale of horror, corruption, and identity spun into the stickiest of webs.
Years ago, in a cave beneath the dense forests and streams on the surface of the moon, a gargantuan spider once lived. Its silk granted its first worshippers immense faculties of power and awe.
It’s now 1923 and Veronica Brinkley is touching down on the moon for her intake at the Barrowfield Home for Treatment of the Melancholy. A renowned facility, Dr. Barrington Cull’s invasive and highly successful treatments have been lauded by many. And they’re so simple! All it takes is a little spider silk in the amygdala, maybe a strand or two in the prefrontal cortex, and perhaps an inch in the hippocampus for near evisceration of those troublesome thoughts and ideas.
But trouble lurks in many a mind at this facility and although the spider’s been dead for years, its denizens are not. Someone or something is up to no good, and Veronica just might be the cause.

My Review:

When we first meet Veronica Brinkley as she’s on her way to the Barrowfield Home for Treatment of the Melancholy, we already know that this is not going to be a pretty story because the sense of creeping dread is there from the very first page.

At first, in spite of the story’s setting, that creeping dread is of the mundane but still extremely chilling variety. It’s clear that it’s set at in a period where it was entirely too easy for a woman to be labeled “mad” or “melancholy” or “hysterical” by doctors in cooperation with their husbands and fathers as a way of getting rid of an inconvenient child or spouse by locking them up in an asylum and waiting to receive word of their inevitable demise.

Veronica is well aware that her husband doesn’t expect her “black spells” to ever be cured. She’s never expected to return to their Boston home. The most terrible part of the opening of the story is that she feels she’s earned her place at Barrowfield – that it’s what she deserves for being weak, useless and self-absorbed. For failing in her duties as a wife.

And her treatment is horrific enough – and would be even if it was confined to the historically available treatments of its 1920s setting. But this is a version of our world – and our solar system – that owes a lot to the science fiction of H.G. Wells and Jules Verne.

Barrowfield is on the moon, a moon that once housed an indigenous species of giant spiders that would have the power to make even the mighty Shelob quake in her lair.

But those giant spiders left behind vast webs in the lunar forests, and a surprising number of more-or-less human priests and worshippers who seem to be passing the gifts of the moon spiders on to the staff at Barrowfield, where the patients are treated by scooping out parts of their brains and replacing their supposedly diseased brain matter with moon spider silk.

It sounds barbaric – only because it is. It’s clear that Barrowfield’s medical chief has an agenda for his experimentation that he never reveals to the wealthy clients who commit their wives and daughters to his care. He knows they don’t, wouldn’t and won’t care about any supposed ‘treatment’ he might possibly think to administer.

But the acolytes of the moon spiders have an agenda of their own. And in Veronica Brinkley, they’ve found the perfect receptacle for their hopes, dreams and plans. All they have to do is wait, and watch, and let the doctor do his work – up to the point where they can finally do their own.

Escape Rating B: I was absolutely fascinated and utterly creeped out by this story, all at the same time. If it had stayed with historical treatments it would have been creepy enough, because damn but they were.

Howsomever, the elements of Verne and Wells and the moon spiders absolutely kicked the whole thing onto another level entirely. Not in the way that the acolytes took control of Barrowfield, because that was both expected and honestly hoped for in a peculiar way.

But the implications that the reader is left with at the end definitely embody next-level chill.

Which is where the issue I had with this book absolutely kicked in with a vengeance. Not that the vengeance aspects of the story bothered me at all because all the men involved with this story were a despicable and deserving bunch of fellows.

The SFnal aspects of the story were enough to carry me over – or perhaps through – the horror aspects of the thing, except for the image of Veronica left in my mind at the end. For anyone who has ever played Dragon Age: Awakening, the expansion for Dragon Age: Origins, well, in my head Veronica ends up as a saner, more self-aware version of The Mother from that game, and the idea of a saner version is seriously both frightening and stomach-churning. (The picture at left is actually one of the less horrific images.)

Circling back around, the thing that is keeping this from an A-, because I was certainly riveted, chilled and downright appalled at points more than enough for that, is that the story feels incomplete – and not just in the sense that it’s labeled as book 1 in a trilogy.

I’m left on the horns of a reading dilemma that it feels like I didn’t get enough of this story – even though it contains plenty of things that I wouldn’t want in any more detail. It’s more that I turned the final page feeling like I didn’t know nearly enough of how this world got to this point and that I was piecing together bits in my mind much the same way that Veronica’s mind got pieced together and I feel the missing bits every bit as much.

Which means I’ll be waiting with the proverbial bated breath for book 2, Cathedral of the Drowned, in the creeped out hope that I’ll get more of that connective spider silk in the next part of the story this time next year!

#AudioBookReview: The Hermit Next Door by Kevin Hearne

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | audio reviews> audiobooks> B Reviews> book reviews
#AudioBookReview: The Hermit Next Door by Kevin HearneThe Hermit Next Door by Kevin Hearne
Narrator: Annalee Scott
Format: audiobook, ebook
Source: purchased from Amazon, purchased from Audible
Formats available: hardcover, ebook, audiobook
Genres: science fiction, urban fantasy
Pages: 96
Length: 2 hours and 43 minutes
Published by Audible Audio, Subterranean Press on June 30, 2024
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

Kevin Hearne, author of the acclaimed Iron Druid Chronicles, returns with an otherworldly new novella!
 
Newly widowed and trying to cope with her grief, Winnie Mae Chisholm moves from Tennessee with her teenage son, Pax, to Oregon, hoping the change will let them both heal and move on. She’s warned when buying their new home that the next door neighbor, Mr. Fisher, is a famous recluse and no one has seen him in years, but that’s fine with her—she’s looking for quiet.
 
She’s not going to get it, however, because when Pax meets the neighbor, he discovers that the reason Mr. Fisher hides from the world is that he isn’t actually from this world. He’s been stranded for decades and he’s trying to get home, and he could really use some help.
 
Abruptly part of the best-kept secret on the planet, Winnie Mae and Pax have to protect Mr. Fisher from a nosy neighbor who would ruin his work and doom him to die among aliens, but they also have to ask How far would they go to escape their grief? Would another world be far enough?

My Review:

I picked this back up after starting it before we left on vacation because I really wanted to review a book I read while we were away – and I will – but Kevin Hearne’s Candle & Crow won’t be out until October 1 and it’s just too soon to post that now – no matter how much I want to.

But I was still in the mood for his style, and, well, even the audiobook for The Hermit Next Door is blissfully short. I’m also still a bit jet-lagged, and the result is the review you are about to read.

The idea of this story has been done before – that the recluse next door is either really creepy, from REALLY far away or a bit of both. What made this a bit different was the way that Winnie Mae Chisholm and her son Pax came to this little bend in the Willamette River and not just what they found there.

The story begins as an escape – and Winnie Mae and Pax just keep right on escaping – getting themselves farther away than the ever imagined from the tragic death of Winnie Mae’s husband and Pax’s dad, Benny Chisholm, back home in Tennessee.

Too many memories, and too many grief casseroles drove them out of their former home. The settlement money from the accident and the sale of their previous house got them to Oregon.

At first, nobody’s happy. Winnie Mae because happiness is the last thing she expects to find again, and Pax because he’s still grieving, he wasn’t given any choice in the matter, and he’s a teenager. Which of those three things is at the biggest weight on his heart and soul changes every day but they’re all part of it, all the time, and the situation isn’t looking like it’s going to get any better any time soon.

Because grief doesn’t – and neither does being a teenager.

The house is lovely, the river is quiet and peaceful, and the neighbors are, honestly, a lot. Winnie Mae can identify the types, knows just what she has to do to give her invasive, intrusive, gossipy across the street neighbor just enough and no more to not think she and Pax are TOO weird while still getting them to leave the Chisholms as alone as the woman’s nature is capable of managing.

But the situation changes entirely and completely – actually, all the situations take a sharp left turn into the weird, wacky and wonderful – when Pax meets their reclusive next-door-neighbor Mr. Fisher.

Who is, quite literally, out of this world. And wants to get back home – if he can just get a little bit of help from Pax and his very reluctant, somewhat creeped out, not quite totally losing her shit, depressed and disaster-projecting and spiraling mother, Winnie Mae.

A woman who, in spite of having lost pretty much all of her faith in things ever getting better ever again is going to have to take an absolutely ginormous leap of faith over the chasm of her disbelief in order to keep her son safe and maybe, just maybe, find a bit of peace and even happiness in a place she never once imagined she could even imagine.

Escape Rating B: I finished this book with a lot more mixed feelings than I expected. I thought I would just love it (spoiler: I did love Candle & Crow). In the end, I did like The Hermit Next Door, but I middled in directions I just didn’t expect to go.

Your reading and listening mileage may both vary.

The idea of Mr. Fisher and his journey reminded me a LOT of Simon R. Green’s Ishmael Jones series, and that was not a place I expected to be at all. Ishmael Jones is more creepy horror adjacent mixed with twisted country house mystery, while Mr. Fisher is more like an E.T. who needs to phone home, but they both start from the same place, a being from another world who is stranded on this Earth and is having a difficult time going home and has to make some equally difficult decisions about dealing with that particular dilemma.

Howsomever, Ishmael Jones at least looks human. Mr. Fisher is a giant otter from an Earth that took a different evolutionary path down the “trousers of time”.

One of the things that I personally found a bit off-putting was that the narrator for the audiobook, Annalee Scott, sounds an awful lot like Khristine Hvam, the narrator for the Junkyard Cats series. And that was a bit of a mind-screw, as Shining Smith in the Junkyard Cats series kicks ass and takes names with wild abandon and lots of gunfire, while Winnie Mae Chisholm goes into panicked disaster spirals at every turn. The characters are just VERY far apart but the similarity in the narrators’ voices made my mind try to equate them which simply isn’t possible. At all. Ever. In ANY way.

Very much on my other hand – or ear – I did love the SFnal ending. I was fully expecting it, but that doesn’t mean it still wasn’t fun. I’ll admit that I particularly liked the idea that the nosey neighbor might have gotten exactly what she deserved. She certainly had the option to save herself, but I can’t help but get a bit of glee out of the thought that she probably couldn’t resist doing what she was explicitly told not to. We’ll never know but a girl can dream.

What made the story work in the end was that Winnie Mae and Pax find happiness in a way that they were not expecting – and in a way that doesn’t attempt to pass over or by the depths of the grief that sent them on this journey in the first place.

There were also a couple of references to some interesting SFnal stories that shouldn’t have gotten near this one but did anyway in surprising and delightful ways. There’s just a touch of John Scalzi’s Kaiju Preservation Society that I was not expecting at all, as well as a hint of Edward Ashton’s Fourth Consort that goes in a completely different direction from The Hermit Next Door but has some unexpected but fascinating similarities along its way.

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

#BookReview: She Who Knows: Firespitter by Nnedi Okorafor

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | B+ Reviews> book reviews
#BookReview: She Who Knows: Firespitter by Nnedi OkoraforShe Who Knows by Nnedi Okorafor
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: hardcover, paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: African Futurism, science fantasy, science fiction
Series: She Who Knows #1
Pages: 176
Published by DAW on August 20, 2024
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

Part science fiction, part fantasy, and entirely infused with West African culture and spirituality, this novella offers an intimate glimpse into the life of a teenager whose coming of age will herald a new age for her world. Set in the universe Africanfuturist luminary Nnedi Okorafor first introduced in the World Fantasy Award-winning Who Fears Death, Firespitter is the first in the She Who Knows trilogy
When there is a call, there is often a response.
Najeeba knows.
She has had The Call. But how can a 13-year-old girl have the Call? Only men and boys experience the annual call to the Salt Roads. What’s just happened to Najeeba has never happened in the history of her village. But it’s not a terrible thing, just strange. So when she leaves with her father and brothers to mine salt at the Dead Lake, there’s neither fanfare nor protest. For Najeeba, it’s a dream come travel by camel, open skies, and a chance to see a spectacular place she’s only heard about. However, there must have been something to the rule, because Najeeba’s presence on the road changes everything and her family will never be the same.
Small, intimate, up close, and deceptively quiet, this is the beginning of the Kponyungo Sorceress.

My Review:

The story begins, as so many of this author’s stories do, with a young African woman on the cusp of change in a world that has already changed and been changed from the one we know now.

In the case of this particular story and this particular young woman and this particular version of the future, Najeeba is thirteen when the story begins, and is about to go on a journey. A journey that members of her family take every year – but a journey that females are not supposed to undertake at all.

Not that there are laws against it, but there are rules – rules enforced by a social contract that have ossified into restrictions that no one challenges. Not until Najeeba comes in and tells her parents that she feels the call of the ancestral salt road every bit as much – if not a bit more and a bit sooner – than her father and her brothers.

In the desert, salt is life. Finding the best salt, the purest AND prettiest blocks of it, and selling them for the best price in distant markets, keeps her family and her village alive and prosperous. Most of the time.

Because her people have historically been considered unclean, untouchable outcasts. A judgment that Najeeba’s inclusion in the annual salt harvest is guaranteed to make worse AND more violent – even as it confers upon Najeeba the kind of power that is guaranteed to bring down retribution – both human and divine.

And gives birth, literally and figuratively, to a woman who will change the world.

Escape Rating B+: She Who Knows is the first book in a prequel trilogy of novellas to the author’s award-winning novel Who Fears Death. In a way that story literally gives birth to this one as this one gives birth to that, as Najeeba, “she who knows”, is the mother of Onyesonwu, “who fears death”.

I haven’t read Who Fears Death, although I have a copy in both text and audio and plan to listen to it. While it has certainly climbed up the virtually towering TBR pile after finishing She Who Knows, I don’t feel like I missed anything by reading this book first. After all, it IS a prequel and not a sequel. It sets the stage for Who Fears Death without giving anything away or providing spoilers.

What it does remind me of, a lot, is the author’s Desert Magician’s Duology, particularly Shadow Speaker. Not only do Najeeba’s and Eiji’s stories start from a similar place, as both begin their stories as girls on the cusp of womanhood, gifted or cursed (depending on one’s perspective) with magical powers, but both choose difficult paths that their birth cultures reserve for men and they also find themselves telling – and being told – their stories by and to strange desert sorcerers.

They are not products of the same Afrocentric future world, but their worlds are similar nonetheless. Meaning that if you like one, or if you have enjoyed ANY of the author’s previous and/or successive works such as the Binti Trilogy, there’s a very good chance you’ll fall right into She Who Knows as well.

In the end – and also as a beginning – this is a great introduction to Who Fears Death AND The Book of Phoenix, which is a much earlier prequel chronologically to Onye’s story. Not only is this a great story in its own right, but it’s also short which means that it provides an introduction in an easily consumed little package. And if that consumption leaves you with a taste for more – as it very much did this reader – this is, oh-so-thankfully, the first novella in the projected trilogy of equally short and undoubtedly equally salty and delicious stories.

I am definitely looking forward to the rest of Najeeba’s story, which will be continued in next year’s One Way Witch. In the meantime I can’t wait to see how the mother’s experiences in this book and the rest of the trilogy are reflected in the child in Who Fears Death.

 

A- #BookReview: Time’s Agent by Brenda Peynado

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A- Reviews> book reviews
A- #BookReview: Time’s Agent by Brenda PeynadoTime's Agent by Brenda Peynado
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: paperback, ebook
Genres: climate fiction, science fiction, time travel
Pages: 160
Published by Tordotcom, Tordotcom Publishing on August 13, 2024
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

“What would you do, given another universe, a do-over?”
Forty years ago, archeologist Raquel and her biologist wife Marlena once dreamed of the mysteries they would unlock in their respective fields using pocket universes— geographically small, hidden offshoots of reality, each with its own fast or slow time dilation relative to Earth time—and the future they would open up for their daughter.
But that was then.
Forty years later, Raquel is in disgrace, Marlena lives in a pocket universe Raquel wears around her neck and no longer speaks to her, what’s left of their daughter’s consciousness resides in a robotic dog, and time is a commodity controlled by corporations squeezing out every last penny they can.
So when a new pocket universe appears, one that might hold the key to her failed calling, Raquel seizes one last chance to redeem herself to her wife, live up to her own failed ideals, and confront what it means to save something—or someone—from time.

My Review:

On the one hand, Time’s Agent is a familiar story about human greed and corporate rapaciousness, set in a near-future version of our world where climate change is proceeding apace, badly and past the point of no return, and the resulting dystopian society is running amuck right along with it.

And on the other hand, the way it tells that familiar story is through messing with time – even though Time’s Agent is explicitly not a time travel story – at least not unless Rip van Winkle’s story is a time travel story. Instead, this is a story about the “true” theory of the relativity of time. Not Einstein’s version, but rather Zall’s Second Law, the one that goes, “How long a minute is, depends on which side of the bathroom door you’re on.”

The so-called “pocket worlds” that are discovered, explored and protected by their Institute represent vast, exploitable resources to the megacorporations that are well on their way to taking over the world. Some PW’s are fast relative to Earth standard time, and some are slow, and there are ways to monetize and use them up.

The Institute stands in the way of all that, at least until Raquel makes a terrible mistake and accidentally falls into a fast-time PW that spits her out forty Earth standard years later. Her disappearance – along with the disappearance of her wife who was inhabiting a slow-time PW around Raquel’s neck – turned out to be the catalyst for terrible changes, both for them personally and for the world in general.

Like Rip van Winkle, the place that Raquel and Marlena return to is nearly unrecognizable to the two “time travelers”. In the 40 years that they missed, their daughter died, their Institute was gutted, corporates control EVERYTHING, and the World War III that occurred in the interim pushed the entire Earth further and faster down the road to destruction.

The only hope that Earth has is to find a pocket world that is much more than a pocket. A world that is big enough to start both species and civilization over again. Raquel and Marlena’s only hope is to get there first and close the door behind them.

Escape Rating A-: Time’s Agent is a story where the whole is definitely greater than the sum of its parts, but the parts are what we have in our hands to read. In other words, this is a mixed feelings kind of review because well, my feelings about the whole thing are mixed.

What adds to my extreme mixed feelings is that the overall feeling of the story is profound grief. Forty years into a terrible future, Raquel is grieving pretty much everything, her marriage is fractured, their daughter is dead, her friends are scattered, her once-shining hopes have fallen into disillusionment, the Institute she believed was both her family and her calling has been suborned and her world is dying.

Raquel’s grief permeates the entire story, to the point where she’s justifiably wallowing for much of its length – and the story wallows with it. It makes sense from her equal parts depressed and horrified perspective but it makes for a difficult and sometimes low, slow and even ponderous read as she tries to get her shit together in a world where she doesn’t know if the place she left it last still exists.

The SFnal parts of this one reminded me of a whole bunch of things, not all of which are themselves SF. The combination of the way that the pocket worlds work, that you can go in to a slow time PW, stay a long time and come out at the same minute you left, physically unchanged but mentally quite different echoes the Star Trek Next Generation episode The Inner Light, while the differences caused by Raquel and Marlena’s absence from the world and the way in which that absence occurred recalled Yesterday’s Enterprise and the profound changes wrought by the Enterprise C’s presence or lack thereof at Khitomer.

The exploitation of both the pocket worlds and the people who used and abused those worlds and/or were abused by them calls to mind Charlie Stross’ Merchant Princes series and especially Kage Baker’s books about the rapacious, time-traveling and looting Company. Consider all of the above readalikes or watchalikes for Time’s Agent, albeit in different ways.

One of the fascinating things about this story, and that puts it over the hump from B+ to A-, is the way that the story is both set in and steeped in the author’s Dominican culture, and the way that the setting emphasizes the evils AND the pervasiveness of both colonization and colonialism, using that setting to point out that the fate of the pocket worlds and THEIR exploitation has all happened before, is happening now, and will all happen again. At the same time, the characters’ perspectives on their world before Raquel’s fall into fast time and her return provides a fascinating contrast by showing both Raquel and the reader just how easy it was for her to ignore the already worsening state of the world as a whole as long as her personal little corner of it was doing just fine.

And at the same time, while I don’t want to call this a solution because it isn’t a solution overall but is one for Raquel and Marlena, is rooted in the nearly forgotten and utterly subjugated history of their own people, and it’s answer that could only have come from the survivors of colonization and not its perpetrators, and that is utterly right and woven into this story from the outset.

In the end, I still have, as I said, some mixed feelings about this one. Admittedly, my most mixed feeling is that this would have been better at a longer length, with a bit more of Raquel’s and, as it turns out, Marlena’s, planning made a bit more manifest a bit earlier on. Because there’s a lot to unpack in this story and this reader at least ended up relying on resemblances to the above readalikes/watchalikes to vault over some of those hidden bits, as well as using those vaults to carry me past the depths of the protagonist’s wallow.

All of that being said, this is the author’s DEBUT novel. Considering that this is her first novel, the number of wild but mostly realized ideas combined with the heartbreaking poignancy of the portrayal of the protagonist’s grief and desperation have absolutely put this author on my reading radar and I can’t wait to see what she comes up with next!

A- #BookReview: Full Speed to a Crash Landing by Beth Revis

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | book reviews
A- #BookReview: Full Speed to a Crash Landing by Beth RevisFull Speed to a Crash Landing by Beth Revis
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: hardcover, ebook, audiobook
Genres: science fiction, science fiction romance, space opera
Series: Chaotic Orbits #1
Pages: 192
Published by DAW on August 6, 2024
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

A high octane sexy space heist from New York Times-bestselling author Beth Revis, the first in a novella trilogy.
Ada Lamarr may have gotten to the spaceship wreck first, but looter’s rights won’t get her far when she’s got a hole in the side of her ship and her spacesuit is almost out of air. Fortunately for her, help arrives in the form of a government salvage crew—and while they reluctantly rescue her from certain death, they are not pleased to have an unexpected passenger along on their classified mission.
But Ada doesn’t care—all that matters to her is enjoying their fine food and sweet, sweet oxygen—until Rian White, the government agent in charge, starts to suspect that there’s more to Ada than meets the eye. He’s not wrong—but he’s so pretty that Ada is perfectly happy to keep him paying attention to her—at least until she can complete the job she was sent to pull off. But as quick as Ada is, Rian might be quicker—and she may not be entirely sure who’s manipulating who until it’s too late…
A phenomenally fun novella that kicks off a trilogy of sexy space heists and romantic tension, Full Speed to a Crash Landing is packed with great characters and full of twists and turns that will keep you guessing until the end.

My Review:

It’s pretty clear – at least to the reader – from the opening pages of Full Speed to a Crash Landing that Ada Lamarr’s ‘Mayday’ isn’t exactly on the up and up. Even if her little spaceship does have a real, honest-to-larceny hole blown in its side – taking her airlock not merely offline but blown out into little bitsies in the surrounding black of space.

That hole is unequivocally real and true – although every other single thing about Ada’s story sounds like a fake and a lie – even the parts that aren’t either of those things. The government agent in charge of the Halifax, the much bigger and better funded ship that has dawdled to her rescue is certain that Ada has got something going on on the down low that necessitated her ship’s presence in this particular sector in orbit over this particular tectonically active (extremely active) baby planet.

He’s sure that both Ada and his ship are after the same quarry, the cargo ship that crash landed, very badly and in multiple pieces, on that earthquake-ridden and volcano prone little planetoid.

Agent Rian White knows what his crew is after, but he’s less than certain about Ada’s stake in this particular game. Only that he’s absolutely positive that she has one.

But he’s so bewitched, bothered and bewildered by the seemingly open but utterly devious smuggler that he doesn’t figure out that she’s already stolen everything she planned on until after she warps away with the contents of a much-sought-after and destructively secured datadrive, the key to opening it – and, quite possibly, his heart.

Unfortunately for Ada, she’s all too aware that he has hers – and that it’s the one thing she never expected to lose – let alone to a government agent who is too good and too good-looking for his own – or certainly her own – good.

Escape Rating A-: This one is pure, sheer, unadulterated fun. It just hits on so many levels in a way that keeps both the reader and the characters delightfully guessing every step of the way. Because we know from the beginning that Ada Lamarr is, as that old saying goes, no better than she ought to be. We know she’s an unreliable narrator because she teases us – along with government agent Rian White, with her secrets and plans and wheels-within-wheels plot even as she’s running out of oxygen and wondering if perhaps she went just a bit too far with her opening gambit.

At least until it works – and gives her one up on the stick up her ass captain of the Halifax. Who is NOT really in charge and is absolutely not Rian White – whose ass is delectable and absolutely does not have a stick up it. (And I’ll leave the rest of the possible salacious jokes and puns right here no matter how tempting they are. Ada has several thoughts in that direction but absolutely does not go there in this first book in the Chaotic Orbits trilogy – no matter how much she wants to.)

On the surface, this is very much a wheels-within-wheels long game kind of caper plot. Ada clearly has a hidden agenda from the off – even if she doesn’t reveal the full extent of it even inside the privacy of her own head. Rian sees the wheels spinning, even if he can’t see what they’re spinning around and about, Ada sees his wheels spinning and is attracted by his obvious intelligence. They’re both clearly playing with each other on multiple levels and that’s already fun.

Which gives the story a bit of lightness that brightens the world creation – because it’s equally clear that the way this particular SF world is set up is not all that light. And it’s a bit murky, at least at this early stage, whether Ada is on the side of the angels or on the side of the biggest paycheck. She’s undoubtedly morally gray, but one of the questions that we’re left with at the end is whether Rian White is even grayer, or not.

That the grayness revolves around a very interesting question adds a bit of depth to that world creation. Because this isn’t a case where the established government is evil in one way or another, the question is whether or not it can possibly be effective at fixing what’s been broken. Not a question of whether or not it’s on the side of the angels, but whether or not it has enough angels on its side to get the shit that needs to get done, done.

Between the caper aspects, the questions about which side is the righteous one in a universe going mad, and the possibility of romance – or at least eventual sexytimes – between its deceitful heroine and its play-mostly-by-the-rules hero, Full Speed to a Crash Landing fits right into the marvelous moment that science fiction romance is currently having.

So if you’ve fallen hard for Valerie Valdes’ Chilling Effect, Rachel Bach’s Fortune’s Pawn, Cat Rambo’s You Sexy Thing and/or Constance Fay’s marvelous Fiasco and Calamity, you’ll be as pleased as I am to know that the second book in the Chaotic Orbits trilogy, How to Steal a Galaxy, will be speeding our way in December. Rian White will be staking out an auction hoping it will attract Ada – while Ada plans to convince him to join her on the dark side – where the cookies are – by kidnapping him into her own questionably legal plans.

It should be a BLAST!

A- #BookReview: Navigational Entanglements by Aliette de Bodard

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A- Reviews> book reviews
A- #BookReview: Navigational Entanglements by Aliette de BodardNavigational Entanglements by Aliette de Bodard
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, ebook
Genres: science fiction, science fiction mystery, space opera
Pages: 176
Published by Tordotcom on July 30, 2024
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

Award-winning author Aliette de Bodard presents yet another innovative space opera that broadens the definition of the this time bringing xianxia-style martial arts to the stars.

Using the power of Shadows generated from their own bodies’ vitality, Navigators guide space ships safely across the a realm of unreality populated by unfathomable, dangerous creatures called Tanglers. In return for their service, the navigator clans get wealth and power―but they get the blame, too. So when a Tangler escapes the Hollows and goes missing, the empire calls on the jockeying clans to take responsibility and deal with the problem.

Việt Nhi is not good with people. Or politics. Which is rather unfortunate because, as a junior apprentice in the Rooster clan, when her elders send her on a joint-clan mission to locate the first escaped Tangler in living memory, she can’t exactly say no.

Hạc Cúc of the Snake clan usually likes people. It says so on her “information gathering”―right after “poisoning” and “stabbing.” So she’s pretty sure she’s got the measure of this they’re the screw-ups, the spares; there isn’t a single sharp tool in this shed.

But when their imperial envoy is found dead by clan poison, this crew of expendable apprentices will have to learn to work together―fast―before they end up cooling their heels in a jail cell while the invisible Tangler wreaks havoc on a civilian city and the reputation of all four clans.

My Review:

The ‘navigational entanglements’ of the title aren’t just a bit of clever phrasing – not that it isn’t a clever and evocative phrase! In the case of this novella, it’s also a literal description of the whole story – in more ways than one.

This SF mystery, shot through with political shenanigans and a tart but gooey center of sapphic romance, begins its entanglement with its solution for the faster-than-light travel conundrum with actual creatures called Tanglers who live in the realm of unreality that makes faster than light travel and the galaxy-spanning empires it makes possible, well, possible.

As is often the case in stories that use this method of FTL travel, navigating the Hollows requires highly skilled navigators who are born with special gifts. In this particular universe, the power of Shadows generated from their own bodies’ life force.

It could be considered magic, at least magic of the Clarke’s Law variety that “Any technology, sufficiently advanced, is indistinguishable from.’ However one thinks of it, it takes special training and special talent and is especially valuable. Particularly to the clans who have a near monopoly on intergalactic shipping because of their success in nurturing navigators.

A hegemony that is under threat when this story begins. Which is why this story begins. The exact nature of the threat, and the clans’ decision on how to meet that threat, is the exact thing that Hạc Cúc of the Snake clan is pretty sure she’s not supposed to figure out.

The clans, or at least her own clan, should have known better. Because if there is one thing that Hạc Cúc can’t resist, it’s a secret. Especially not the kind of secret that is intended to get her killed whether she figures it out or not.

Escape Rating A-: I grabbed this book because I’ve been picking my way through the author’s vast, sprawling, Xuya Universe series and figured that this would be similar without being an actual part of THAT tangled mess.

Two things at the top, Navigational Entanglements is NOT part of Xuya. I’m not saying there aren’t similarities in style and in the way that the culture and history work, but this is a standalone. So if you’re looking to sample the author’s work, this is a good place to start.

Howsomever, one of the characteristics of Xuya is that the publication order and the chronological order don’t have even a nodding acquaintance. Each story in the series is intended to be read without prior knowledge and starts a bit in medias res of the whole series. As in the reader is thrust into the middle of a story that they may or may not have read the background of, or the background may or may not yet exist, and is supposed to sink or swim with what they have in front of them.

Navigational Entanglements is written in that same manner, even though there aren’t any previous or succeeding stories – at least not yet. (If we get more stories in this universe this reader at least would be very happy because the politics are just so fascinatingly messy.)

In other words, this is a story that requires the reader to figure things out as they go. Not that these characters don’t turn out to be doing exactly that, but going with their flow means that the reader has to jump in feet first and that’s not every reader’s comfort zone.

Part of what makes the story work, however, is that this is very much an SF mystery from the top and at the top. It’s just unusual in that the team was purposely created to fail, because they all hate each other. It’s only that Hạc Cúc’s love of secrets allows her to stand outside of the group’s bickering, see it for what it is, and redirect their weaknesses and their enmity into a productive, if not always harmonious, team.

Which allows friendship, love and trust to all blossom – rather like a cactus flower complete with spikes! – and provides this novella with its surprising – especially to the protagonists – happy for now with the possibility (hopefully) of more political and investigative shenanigans to come.

#BookReview: Lost to Eternity by Greg Cox

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | B Reviews> book reviews
#BookReview: Lost to Eternity by Greg CoxLost to Eternity by Greg Cox
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: science fiction, space opera, Star Trek
Series: Star Trek: The Original Series
Pages: 400
Published by Pocket Books/Star Trek on July 23, 2024
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

A thrilling new Star Trek “movie era” novel from New York Times bestselling author Greg Cox!
Three Eras. Three Mysteries. One Ancient Enemy?
2024: Almost forty years ago, marine biologist Gillian Taylor stormed away from her dream job at Sausalito’s Cetacean Institute—and was never seen or heard from again. Now a new true crime podcast has reopened that cold case, but investigator Melinda Silver has no idea that her search for the truth about Gillian’s disappearance will ultimately stretch across time and space—and attract the attention of a ruthless obsessive with his own secret agenda.
2268: The USS Enterprise ’s five-year mission is interrupted when Captain James T. Kirk and his crew set out to recover an abducted Federation scientist whose classified secrets are being sought by the Klingons as well. The trail leads to a barbaric world off limits to both Starfleet and the Klingon Empire—and an ageless mastermind on a quest for eternity.
2292: The Osori, an ancient alien species, has finally agreed to establish relations with its much younger the Federation, the Klingons, and the Romulans. A joint mission involving ships from all three powers, including the Enterprise -A , turns explosive when one of the Osori envoys is apparently killed. Each side blames the others, but the truth lies buried deep, nearly three hundred years in the past…

My Review:

Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (the one with the whales), was one of the great movies of the Original Series movie era, alongside The Wrath of Khan. Voyage Home had something for everyone, in that it told a great story, had lots of sweet moments of nostalgia for fans, addresses important and still relevant issues of its day with its tale of species extinction, had oodles of funny scenes and memorable, quotable lines – and ends with a heartwarming scene of the ‘band getting back together’ in a crowning moment of awesome.

It also presents a heaping helping of wish fulfillment for legions of fans then and now as the 20th century cetacean biologist, Dr. Gillian Taylor, time travels with the crew of the Enterprise and the whales George and Gracie from her time to their 23rd century.

It was the stuff that both dreams and fanfic were made of.

But it left a mystery in Taylor’s time that, nearly forty years later, is still unsolved. That mystery serves as the inspiration for a true-crime podcast – because of course it would. And thereby, as the saying goes, hangs this tale that spans from intrepid podcasters in 2024 to a medical researcher’s abduction in 2268 and onward to a planned peace conference with an advanced species in 2292.

What do those three widely separated incidents have in common? None other than Captain James T. Kirk, the crew of the U.S.S. Enterprise – with or without their equally famous ship – and an enemy that no one saw coming.

Escape Rating B: Like most media novelizations, Lost to Eternity is absolutely a story for the fans – and not just because of its homage to the fanservice of Dr. Gillian Taylor’s fate in Star Trek IV.

There are three separate stories in this one, set in 2024, 2268 and 2292. At first, with the focus on the podcasters in 2024, the story is thoroughly grounded in our here and now. It’s easy to get caught up in Melinda Silver’s need to find out what happened to Taylor, and the way that it devolves into conspiracy theories and men in black even as it picks up the remaining threads of Voyage Home as seen through the eyes of the people those events left behind in puzzlement was absolutely riveting.

If you’ve ever wanted the X-Files to cross with Star Trek, that part of this story is pretty much that story.

But the story unwinds across all three eras in turn, so the 2024 chapter is followed by a 2268 chapter and then a 2292 chapter. It all makes sense in the end – but as it goes along it takes a long time and a lot of pages to get a glimmer of just what makes these three stories connect up.

At the same time, the stories in each of the timelines and the way that they are interwoven with previous (from a certain point of view) events in the Star Trek timeline as a whole allows for a whole lot of loose ends from an amazing number of stories to get referenced and eventually closed – which goes back to this being a story for the fans because the more of those loose ends that one recognizes the more familiar – and fun – the story feels.

I had a good time with this story – as I always do when I pick one of these up. I love slipping back into this familiar and beloved universe, and that carried me over the points late in each timeline’s story where I just wanted to see all the dots get connected – and to see if the connections that my brain was making were the ones the author intended to make.

In the end, I enjoyed all three of the individual stories, liked the way they merged, had fun with the way they tied up different loose ends, and loved spending time with these characters. I also thought the author did a great job of making sure that the stories got told from different perspectives – that it wasn’t all Kirk and Spock saving the day no matter how much I do love those stories.

But I found the villain just a bit flat. He read a lot like Arne Darvin, the villain of the episodes The Trouble with Tribbles (TOS) and Trials and Tribble-ations (DS9)combined with the motive but not the scenery chewing of the villains in Star Trek: Insurrection. The villain of Lost to Eternity unfortunately got all of his character from Darvin – who was fairly colorless. A little bit of scenery chewing might have improved him a bit – for select definitions of the word ‘improvement’. Perhaps it would be better to say that a little bit of scenery chewing might have made him a bit more colorful – and interesting.

Still, a good reading time was absolutely had by this reader and I loved the way that it did exactly what Voyage Home did – it connected our present with Star Trek’s future and dreamed a dream of getting from here – to there.

A- #AudioBookReview: Earthlight by J. Michael Straczynski

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A- Reviews> audio reviews> audiobooks> book reviews
A- #AudioBookReview: Earthlight by J. Michael StraczynskiEarthlight by J. Michael Straczynski
Narrator: Erik Braa, Pete Bradbury, Jonathan Davis, William DeMeritt, Robert Fass, Jeff Gurner, Ryan Haugen, David Lee Huynh, Mars Lipowski, Saskia Maarleveld, Kathleen McInerney, Brandon McInnis, Sean Kenin Elias Reyes, Stefan Rudnicki, Salli Saffioti, Kristen Sieh, Christopher Smith, Marc Thompson, Will Watt, Michael Ann Young, Beka Sikharulidza, Stephanie Walters Montgomery, Robin Atkin Downes
Format: audiobook
Source: supplied by publisher via Libro.fm
Formats available: audiobook
Genres: military science fiction, political thriller, science fiction
Length: 2 hours and 54 minutes
Published by Penguin Random House Audiobook Original on July 9, 2024
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo
Goodreads

International tension is rising as the Russian military forms an Eastern Alliance to create a new age of Russian supremacy. The rest of the world is scrambling for a united response.
Enter Project Earthlight.
Earthlight is a NATO operation under U.S. command based in the ultimate military high ground: space. A group of the best fighter pilots is handpicked from around the world to fly the first generation of advanced planes capable of maneuvering in the vacuum of space and inside the atmosphere.
Learning how to fly experimental planes while learning to trust their new squadron, our pilots are plunged into a high-stakes life-and-death mission with everything at risk. Can Commanding Officer Colonel Scott Dane get the other pilots on the same page in time to prevent World War III?
With cutting-edge soundscapes and an action-packed plot, EARTHLIGHT will keep listeners on the edge of their seats from start to finish.

My Review:

Even when there is something that pretends to be peace on Earth – there’s brinkmanship and stepping up to the terrible line that leads to World War III. So far, we’ve always stepped back – but someday we won’t.

The story in Earthlight posits a near future – possibly too damn near – when the U.S. and its NATO allies step up to that line because a post-Putin Russia is already there. What makes Earthlight just a bit different from similar stories by Tom Clancy and M.L. Buchman is that the brinkmanship takes place – not somewhere on Earth, or at least not exclusively somewhere on the planet – but in space.

Not “outer space” but somewhere a LOT closer to home. Specifically Low Earth orbit – or LEO. Far enough out to see an entire hemisphere of the planet – and close enough to strike anywhere on it – especially from planes that can go faster than MACH 20.

Those planes have the advantage – the literal high ground – as long as they don’t overshoot their targets.

Project Earthlight is a secret – because of course it is. And of course it’s been leaked – because big secret projects are incapable of staying secret for very long – especially once they go into production.

And Project Earthlight – and its space-borne aircraft carrier, the Alexander – is very much in production, on-line, and waiting for its first mission and its first squadron of pilots. Which is where this story begins, as Colonel Scott Dane of the U.S. Air Force is on a recruiting mission to sign the best, the brightest, and the most out-of-the-box thinkers from ALL of the NATO forces to fly the first planes assigned to the Alexander.

He hopes they’ve got time for all the training they’ll need – but he knows they don’t. Because those plans did leak, and the Russians have a space carrier of their own – the Gagarin. And they have a bunch of fanatics in the Kremlin – all promising a return to Russia’s glory days.

The path to which leads straight through a NATO allied Eastern Europe, and to a head to head dogfight with the Alexander for the highest stakes of all.

Escape Rating A-: There’s a whole lot of SQUEE in this review because WOW what a ride.

Although I have to admit that for a good chunk of the story, as much as I was totally caught up in it I was desperately worried that it was all a tease. There just didn’t seem like enough time left in the recording to come to anything like a satisfactory ending. (I was half-heartedly looking for the reading equivalent of ‘coitus interruptus’ because it sure seemed like the story was heading that way.)

But fear not, Earthlight does come to a satisfactory conclusion – although it is still more than a bit of a tease as most listeners will want to know what happens afterwards. At least the story certainly does make clear that there IS an afterwards and that’s a gigantic relief.

The elements that make up the story are familiar to readers of military SF. There’s a recruitment phase, a training phase, a getting-to-know-each-other phase, and there’s the inevitable potential romance that runs into the military frat regs (shades of Stargate).

The process of the squad pulling itself together is jam-packed and doesn’t give all the characters the time needed for readers – or their squadmates – to really get to know them. And of course the characters who are mostly reduced to (admittedly well done) accents are the ones that get lost early.

But in spite of that necessity, we do get a good feel for the leaders, and we do feel like “we are there” because we’re not just reading this story – we’re in the thick of it by listening to their distinct voices.

Laid on top of the military side, there’s also the side that gives us the historical and political side. The part that’s going to remind lots of listeners of Tom Clancy or M.L. Buchman because the shenanigans, including the brinkmanship, the short-sightedness, the glory-seeking to the exclusion of common sense and the epic levels of paranoia are all out of the political thriller playbook.

That part of the story works, even with a bit of necessary shorthand for the length, because we’ve seen them before – even in real life. That part of the story feels entirely too plausible.

This listening experience is edge-of-the-seat, you-are-absolutely-there, nail-biting compulsion filled with a surprising number of crowning moments of awesome. There were plenty of moments when my heart was literally in my throat even though I knew the worst-case scenario couldn’t possibly be the ending.

So the story of Earthlight, taken as a whole, is a fantastic experience even if many of the elements that make it so compelling are also just a bit familiar. It’s a great three hours of listening – I just wish there were a hell of a lot more.

But OMG I wish there was a text for this thing.

I NEED a text so I can hunt for quotes AND have a full list of characters, how their names are spelled and who played them in the audio. Because the cast was outstanding – every single one.

It is a pet peeve of mine that full cast or even multicast audio productions don’t generally tell the listener exactly who played whom – and I always want to know. But in this particular case, that lack of a list led to a bit of serendipity. To my ear, the political officer aboard the Russian ship sounded a LOT like the Romulan officer Tomalak in a couple of Star Trek: Next Gen episodes. When I checked out who portrayed Tomalak, I discovered that the character was played by the late Andreas Katsulas – who embodied Ambassador G’Kar on the author’s beloved TV series Babylon 5.

One reviewer opined that Earthlight could be seen as a very, very, very early prequel to B5 if one squinted a LOT. And it’s possible. Certainly it captured something of its spirit – without squinting at all. If it turns out that that spirit continues into another chapter of Earthlight – this listener/reader would be thrilled to be aboard for another mission.