Genre: science fiction

Review: Forgotten History by Christopher L. Bennett

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | B Reviews> book reviews
Review: Forgotten History by Christopher L. BennettForgotten History (Star Trek: Department of Temporal Investigations, #2) by Christopher L. Bennett
Format: ebook
Source: purchased from Amazon
Formats available: paperback, ebook
Genres: science fiction, space opera, Star Trek, time travel
Series: Star Trek: Department of Temporal Investigations #2
Pages: 350
Published by Pocket Books on May 1, 2012
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

The agents of the Department of Temporal Investigations are assigned to look into an anomaly that has appeared deep in Federation territory. It's difficult to get clear readings, but a mysterious inactive vessel lies at the heart of the anomaly, one outfitted with some sort of temporal drive disrupting space-time and subspace. To the agents' shock, the ship bears a striking resemblance to a Constitution-class starship, and its warp signature matches that of the original Federation starship Enterprise NCC-1701--the ship of James T. Kirk, that infamous bogeyman of temporal investigators, whose record of violations is held up by DTI agents as a cautionary tale for Starfleet recklessness toward history. But the vessel's hull markings identify it as Timeship Two, belonging to none other than the DTI itself. At first, Agents Lucsly and Dulmur assume the ship is from some other timeline . . . but its quantum signature confirms that it came from their own past, despite the fact that the DTI never possessed such a timeship. While the anomaly is closely monitored, Lucsly and Dulmur must search for answers in the history of Kirk's Enterprise and its many encounters with time travel--a series of events with direct ties to the origins of the DTI itself. . . .

My Review:

Today is Star Trek Day. Why? Because, once upon a time in a galaxy not far away at all, on this day in 1966, the very first episode of Star Trek, now referred to as Star Trek: The Original Series, because it WAS, premiered on television thanks in no small part to the efforts of Gene Roddenberry AND Lucille Ball.

Today is also, and coincidentally, the 50th anniversary of the premiere of Star Trek: The Animated Series.

Those combined anniversaries make this the perfect day to review the second book in the Star Trek: Department of Temporal Investigations series, Forgotten History. Because, as you might have guessed from the cover, this pseudo-history takes a deep, deep dive into the many, many times that Captain James T. Kirk either created or was caught up in a temporal disturbance.

From the perspective of DTI Agent Gariff Lucsly, the ENTIRE purpose of the DTI was to prevent anyone else, particularly any other starship captain, from messing about with time as much or as often as Kirk did.

Because Kirk had so damn many up close and personal encounters with time travel that it could be said they had a ‘friends with benefits’ relationship. Or, considering the events involving the Guardian of Forever, perhaps that relationship might be better referred to as ‘frenemies with benefits’.

There certainly WERE benefits – as even the DTI generally considers saving the planet to have been a benefit. They just wish that they didn’t owe it to their departmental nemesis so many damn times.

The story in Forgotten History begins with what seems to be incontrovertible evidence that Kirk played fast and loose with the stability of the Federation’s timeline on at least one more occasion, and a much bigger occasion at that, than the SEVENTEEN times that the DTI was previously aware of.

But Kirk, for all of his temporal escapades, and in spite of the way that DTI investigates the ways and means in which time looks back on itself, is more than a century in their rear view mirror. So to speak. And as DTI Agents Lucsly and Dulmur discovered in the first book in the DTI series, Watching the Clock, the events that make it into the history books – or the official records – may have only the barest resemblance to what really happened.

So the story that we, and the DTI Agents, begin with is a tale about a captain who ran roughshod through history and established procedure and was allowed to get away with it. (Which he very often did and was.)

But perhaps not in this case. Only time will tell.

Escape Rating B: The story of Forgotten History, and the history that was deliberately forgotten, is wrapped around the creation of not one but two legends, and the purpose the creations of those legends was intended to serve.

Which means that this is a story that goes back in time to show just the events which shaped both of those legends.

One, of course, is the legendary career of Captain (later Admiral, later Captain again) James Tiberius Kirk and the successful completion of the USS Enterprise’s five-year mission under his command. A five-year mission where even in its first year the ship had three encounters with time travel – at least by the DTI’s count.

They’d already set the record – and they hadn’t even gotten started.

Which is where the other legend came in. Because the Enterprise and her crew were playing with things that no one understood, Starfleet needed to get a handle on time travel before it got a handle on them. Leading, eventually and in a more roundabout and bureaucratic way than anyone imagined, to the formation of the Department of Temporal Investigations under the direction of its Founder and first Director, Dr. Meijan Grey.

How those two legends, and their legacies, impacted each other AND Starfleet is what lies at the heart of this book.

In order to reach the point in the ‘present’ that gives that impact its full weight, the book puts itself and the reader through a LOT of the history of Kirk, Grey and the DTI. In the process of putting that history into the hands and minds of the readers, there’s a heaping helping of infodumping to cover every temporal infraction Kirk and the Enterprise ever committed, every DTI response, and every bit of political and bureaucratic shenanigans going on behind the scenes and under the table to serve agendas that Kirk turns out not to be nearly as on board with as legend would have it.

Unfortunately, that necessary infodump really drags the pace of the story for the first half. It was a terrific bit of nostalgia, and I enjoyed a fair bit of it, but it takes the action and adventure out of a series that has always been blissfully full to the brim with both – even when the plot of the episode was humorous, thought-provoking, or both.

Which means that, while I did like Forgotten History quite a bit, a good bit of that is due to the high nostalgia factor in going back to the era of The Original Series, both in the stories and characters themselves and that I watched the final season as it was broadcast in 1968-69 with my dad.

But as a story, Forgotten History wasn’t nearly as much fun as Watching the Clock, which just plain moved a whole lot faster and enjoyed a tighter focus on its central mystery in spite of its greater length. Still, I liked them both more than enough that I just picked up the rest of the DTI series, and will probably dive into the next book, The Collectors, whenever I’m next in the mood for a bit of Trek.

Review: Devil’s Gun by Cat Rambo

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | B Reviews> book reviews
Review: Devil’s Gun by Cat RamboDevil's Gun (Disco Space Opera #2) by Cat Rambo
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: science fiction, space opera
Series: Disco Space Opera #2
Pages: 288
Published by Tor Books on August 29, 2023
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org
Goodreads

No one escapes their past as the crew of the You Sexy Thing attempts to navigate the hazards of opening a pop-up restaurant and the dangers of a wrathful pirate-king seeking vengeance in Cat Rambo's Devil's Gun .
Life’s hard when you’re on the run from a vengeful pirate-king…
When Niko and her crew find that the intergalactic Gate they're planning on escaping through is out of commission, they make the most of things, creating a pop-up restaurant to serve the dozens of other stranded ships.
But when an archaeologist shows up claiming to be able to fix the problem, Niko smells something suspicious cooking. Nonetheless, they allow Farren to take them to an ancient site where they may be able to find the weapon that could stop Tubal Last before he can take his revenge.
There, in one of the most dangerous places in the Known Universe, each of them will face ghosts from their Thorn attempts something desperate and highly illegal to regain his lost twin, Atlanta will have to cast aside her old role and find her new one, Dabry must confront memories of his lost daughter, and Niko is forced to find Petalia again, despite a promise not to seek them out.
Meanwhile, You Sexy Thing continues to figure out what it wants from life―which may not be the same desire as Niko and the rest of the crew.

My Review:

Devil’s Gun picks up the story of You Sexy Thing and its crew just after the moment at the end of the first book in the Disco Space Opera series, named after the ship and the damnable earworm of the song that the title comes from.

It’s the point where they’ve just learned that the evil space pirate they hoped they’d killed as they escaped his imploding, exploding ship/space station. Which, to be totally fair, was entirely deserved as he had already murdered one of their number and spent years brainwashing Captain Niko Larson’s former lover against her.

Pirate King Jubal Last is a bad, bad man, and the universe wasn’t going to miss him if he was gone. The only problem is that he isn’t. Meaning that Larson and her crew are on the run, away from Last and towards someone who they hope will help them figure out a way to take him out. Again.

If only they can find her. And if only she’ll give them the time of day. Because it’s that same brainwashed ex-lover that Larson still hasn’t gotten over. Just as the rest of the crew hasn’t gotten over the damage that Last did in their recent encounter.

And in the midst of Larson chasing down what once was, and one of her crew members trying to breathe life back into someone who has lost theirs, a new member of the crew searches for purpose while the sentient, sapient bioship that Larson is nominally – sometimes very nominally – in command of pursues its own interests for its own purposes. Specifically, for the purpose of creating drama and not getting bored.

It’s a recipe for disaster – but that’s not the problem it would be for most ship’s crews. Because if there is one thing that this crew is good at, it’s making a tasty dish out of a completely mismatched and even downright dangerous list of ingredients!

Escape Rating B: I picked this up because I enjoyed the first book in the series, You Sexy Thing, very much in spite of its unfortunate case of villain fail. The crew is as motley as you’d expect, but their bone-deep respect and reliance on each other – and the way they deal with their life and their livelihood through bantering away the stress made it an overall fun read with a heaping helping of heartbreak at the end.

But thank goodness that there’s a “when last we left our heroes” summary of that first book in the beginning of this second one, because it’s been over a year since I read it and almost two years since it came out.

I liked Devil’s Gun but didn’t love it nearly as much as I did You Sexy Thing in spite of that villain fail. Jubal Last was just a bit too over-the-top bwahaha to make sense as a character. But I loved the crew and got invested in their situation more than enough to feel for them as things went down.

Devil’s Gun reads like a middle book. It also reads as a chase for a macguffin that no one, least of all Niko Larson herself, is ever sure isn’t a scam. And it felt like a collection of separate plot threads that don’t quite braid together into a whole, as several members of the crew have their own problems to pursue and keep themselves to themselves more than a bit.

With the ship in pursuit of its own goals – to the detriment of everyone and everything else – as the story goes along. Admittedly, that part is fascinating. It’s as though Moya in Farscape took the ship where she wanted to go instead of where the crew wanted to go ALL THE TIME.

Which would have been cool – even as the crew would have been infuriated. As Larson often is in this story.

The sentient ship You Sexy Thing will certainly make readers think of Farscape and its sentient ship, Moya, although You Sexy Thing has considerably more personality. I’m not sure about the regular comparisons between this series and the Great British Bake Off as there’s no food competition going on – although there is plenty of cooking and baking. There’s also more than a bit of a resemblance between this universe and its intergalactic ‘gates’ left behind by an ancient race of Forerunners and Mass Effect and its mass relay travel gates left behind by the ancient Prothean race.

In other words, there are elements of Devil’s Gun and the Disco Space Opera series that will ring a lot of bells and bring back a lot of memories for SF readers, (I’m sure I’ve seen the Devil’s Gun itself, or a reasonable facsimile thereof, in Simon R. Green’s intertwined universes) blended into a story that’s a whole lot of fun and rides or dies on the interpersonal relationships among the crew. Which is also not an uncommon element of SF and space opera in general.

So if that’s your jam as it is for this reader, take a trip on the You Sexy Thing with Devil’s Gun. And the fun – for certainly deadly and sometimes insane definitions of fun – isn’t over yet. Devil’s Gun, like You Sexy Thing before it, ends on a mic drop. There is clearly more to come for this crew, and I’m looking forward to it!

Review: The Archive Undying by Emma Mieko Candon

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | audio reviews> audiobooks> B Reviews> book reviews
Review: The Archive Undying by Emma Mieko CandonThe Archive Undying (The Downworld Sequence, #1) by Emma Mieko Candon
Narrator: Yung-I Chang
Format: audiobook, eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss, supplied by publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: hardcover, ebook, audiobook
Genres: artificial intelligence, dystopian, mecha, science fiction
Series: Downworld Sequence #1
Pages: 496
Length: 16 hours and 28 minutes
Published by Macmillan Audio, Tordotcom on June 27, 2023
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

The Archive Undying is an epic work of mecha sci-fi about Sunai, the immortal survivor of an Autonomous Intelligence that went mad and destroyed the city it watched over as a patron god. In the aftermath of the divine AI’s suicide, Sunai is on the run from those who would use him, either to resurrect what was lost or as the enslaved pilot of a gargantuan war machine made from his god’s corpse. Trouble catches up with Sunai when he falls into bed with Veyadi, a strange man who recruits him to investigate an undiscovered AI. Sunai draws ever closer to his cursed past, flirting with disaster and his handsome new boyfriend alike.

My Review:

The Archive Undying is a fractured story about broken people in a shattered world. Everything about this story, the people, the place, even the story itself, is in jagged pieces.

But with everything in jagged pieces, while it makes the characters compelling, and the world they live in a fascinating puzzle, the fractured jaggedness of the story itself makes the whole thing hard to follow.

Which makes describing the thing more than a tad difficult. Because you’re never quite sure what’s going on – even after the end – because you don’t know how anything or anyone got to be who, where and what they were at the point things start. Or even what the point of what they did might have been.

That’s true of the characters, the institutions and the whole entire world they inhabit. Because it’s all been corrupted. Not by the usual human forms of corruption – well, honestly, that too – but because everything in this world was run by autonomous AIs, and someone or something, both in the distant past and in the immediate present, introduced corruption into those AIs’ codes that caused them to fall. And to die.

At least as much as an AI can die.

So the story begins with Sunai. Or at least the story we drop into begins from Sunai’s point of view. He’s a salvage rat hiding a bitter truth from himself – but as it turns out Sunai is lies and bitter truths pretty much all the way down.

So is everyone – and everything – else. But the more of all those perspectives of lies and deceptions and bitter truths and sorrows we see, the more it all comes back to Sunai. And to the bitterest truth of all that he has hidden so deep that it will take an invasion of rogue mechs and rapacious AIs destroying his city to finally bring it to light.

Escape Rating B: I listened to The Archive Undying in its entirety, and I have to say that its the narrator that carried me through all SIXTEEN AND A HALF HOURS. The narrator didn’t just do a good job of voicing all the many, many characters, but by literally being in their heads and not my own it allowed me to care enough about the individuals to be willing to experience the whole constantly twisting saga. If I’d been reading this as text, if I’d been in my head instead of theirs, I’d have DNF’d fairly early because the sheer number of changes in perspectives combined with unsatisfying hints of the world they occurred in would have driven me mad in short order. YMMV.

The Archive Undying is a story that expects a lot from its readers, probably more than it is likely to get. Which is somewhat ironic, as Sunai, the being who stands more-or-less as its protagonist has learned to expect very little, and is often surprised when he gets even that.

But then, that’s the thing about this book, in that if the reader can come to care about the characters, particularly Sunai the failed archivist and reluctant relic, then that reader will stick with the story to see what happens to Sunai and the ragtag band of friends, allies, frenemies and rogue AIs who have attached themselves to him. Or that he has attached himself to accidentally or by someone else’s purpose.

The story has so many perspectives, and it jumps between them so frequently and with so little provocation, that the story is difficult to follow. But more often than the reader expects, all of those fractured pieces come together in beauty – just the way the bits of color in a kaleidoscope suddenly shift into a glorious – if temporary – whole.

I left this story with three completely separate – almost jagged – thoughts about it.

Because we spend this story inside pretty much all of the characters’ heads – even the characters that don’t technically HAVE heads, and because so many of their actions have gone horribly wrong and they’re all full to the brim with regret and angst, this struck me as a ‘woulda, coulda, shoulda’ kind of story. We see their thoughts, they’re all a mess all the time, they’ve all screwed up repeatedly, and they’re all sorry about almost everything they’ve done – even as they keep doing the thing they’re sorry about.

Second, as a question of language, and because I listened to this rather than read the text, I got myself caught up in the question of whether the word, and more of the characters than at first seemed, was ‘relic’ or ‘relict’ as they’re pronounced the same. Sunai, and others, are referred to as ‘relics’ of the mostly dead AI named Iterate Fractal – or one of its brethren. But a ‘relic’ is an object of religious significance from the past, and a ‘relict’ is a survivor of something that used to exist in a larger or active form but no longer does. Not all of the autonomous AIs were worshipped as gods, but they all left relicts behind.

There’s a part of me that keeps thinking that at its heart, The Archive Undying is a love story. Not necessarily a romance – but rather a story about the many and varied ways that love can turn toxic and wrong. To the point where even when it does come out right the selected value of right is tenuous and likely to break at the first opportunity.

An opportunity we’ll eventually get to see. The Archive Undying is the first book in the projected Downworld Sequence, implying that there will be more to come even if the when of it is ‘To Be Determined’. I think I got invested in the characters enough to see what happens to them next – and I have hope that maybe the many, many blanks in the explanation of how things got to be this bad will get filled in in that next or subsequent books in the duology. But after the way this first book went, I KNOW I’ll be getting that second one in audio because the narration of this first book by Yung-I Chang is what made the whole thing possible for me and I expect him to carry me through the next one as well.

Review: Knighthunter by Anna Hackett

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A- Reviews> book reviews
Review: Knighthunter by Anna HackettKnighthunter by Anna Hackett
Format: eARC
Source: author
Formats available: paperback, ebook
Genres: science fiction, science fiction romance, space opera
Series: Oronis Knights #2
Pages: 258
Published by Anna Hackett on July 26, 2023
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble
Goodreads

She vows to bring her abducted queen home…even if she has to work with the man she hates.Knightmaster Nea Laurier is tough, dedicated, and lives to be the best Oronis knight she can be. All her life, she’s worked hard to live up to her prestigious family name. She will do whatever it takes to rescue Knightqueen Carys from their enemy, the vicious Gek’Dragar…she just wishes it didn’t involve the most cunning and dangerous man she knows. A man she detested when they were at the Academy, and a man she still detests—Knighthunter Kaden Galath.Now she’s headed deep into enemy space, and the only person guarding her back is a man she’ll never trust.Knighthunter Kaden Galath was born in the darkness and came from nothing. Being a knighthunter—a spy for his people—is the perfect job for him. He uses all his unique and deadly abilities to keep the Oronis safe, even the beautiful, perfect, do-gooder Knightmaster Nea. He’s vowed to always stay alone in the shadows…but Nea might be the weakness he never expected.As Kaden and Nea embark on a mission to some of the deadliest enemy planets, they fight side by side, and uncover each other’s darkest secrets. Following the trail leading to their captive queen, Nea and Kaden will face their most dangerous battle yet, and a fiery passion that will engulf them both.

My Review: 

Knighthunter is a story about not one but two concurrent chases – one of which is definitely more successful than the other.

The Knightqueen of Oron was kidnapped by the Gek’Dragar in the first book in the Oronis Knights series, Knightmaster, which was all wrapped up in the investigation into that catastrophe as well as the romance between Knightmaster Ashtin Caydor and xenoanthropologist Kennedy Black from Earth. In Knighthunter, Knightmaster Nea Laurier and Knighthunter Kaden Galath have been tasked with hunting down the Knightqueen and her dedicated and bonded Knightguard Sten before the Gek’Dragar complete whatever dastardly plans they have for Knightqueen Carys in specific and most likely the Oronis in general.

It’s not like the Oronis and Gek’Dragar haven’t been bitter enemies since pretty much forever. And as the Oronis are allies of the bands of heroes in both the Galactic Guardians series AND the Eon Warriors series, they are the ones on the side of the angels.

The Gek’Dragar, on the other hand, are in league with (probably loosely and with intent to betray at some point) and certainly in the league of the rapacious Kantos, the dastardly enemies of the Eon Warriors.

So we all know where we stand – or fly – in not just this heinous act but also in the war that this is clearly a prelude for.

But, there are also enemies, of the much closer and more intimate kind, closer to home. Nea Laurier and Kaden Galath attended the Academy together. Well, not really together-together, but at the same time.

Each was the thorn in the other’s side for all the years of their schooling, and can’t seem to stand to be in the same room, let alone stuck with each other in a series of cramped two-person ships on the hunt for their kidnapped Knightqueen.

But appearances can be deceiving, and, in the spirit of the best defense being a good offense, Nea and Kaden have been defending so hard against their feelings for each other that it’s looked like a whole lot of being offensive. For nearly a decade of bristling hostility.

Howsomever, the longer they spend together in the here and now, the more occasions when they just miss their quarry, the more they realize that the masks they have been wearing with each mostly serve to hide their true feelings from themselves.

In the heat of that race, even as they chase down a ship that hides from them at every turn, they stop hiding from themselves. And each other.

Escape Rating A-: In terms of the overarching story of the Oronis vs. the ‘Big Bad’, in this instance the Gek’Dragar, Nea and Kaden’s pursuit of a series of fleeing Gek’Dragar ships through Gek’Dragar space gives the reader a tour of the galaxy and a whole host of reasons to understand why the Oronis have such a huge and justified hate-on for their scaly enemy.

Meanwhile, the sheer volume of true enemies that Nea and Kaden have to wade through in their hunt for their missing Knightqueen puts their personal enmity into sharp relief. They’ve never really hated each other, particularly not in comparison to what true hatefulness looks like.

But the heat of their enemies into lovers relationship burns away any misunderstandings between the two of them – and are there ever plenty! Many of which can be laid at the feet of Nea’s snobby, relentlessly demanding douchecanoe of a father. He may have had his reasons, or his own griefs, that created the mess of a relationship he has with his only remaining child, but his treatment of Kaden even all the way back in the younger man’s Academy days has no excuse.

It was also a whole lot of painful fun to watch Nea whack dear-old-dad with a big clue-by-four, but he clearly needed more applications of that  device before he gets the point. I hope we get to see those whacks delivered in a later book.

But seriously, the way that Nea and Kaden keep JUST missing Carys and her kidnappers ratchets up the dramatic tension in this one from the first page to the very last, as the hope that keeps getting snatched away comes back into view yet again.

This was great fun both as an adventure and as a romance, and I really loved being along for both rides. It also makes an excellent setup for the next book in the series, Knightqueen, coming early next year. In romances, I tend to find the chase much more interesting than the catch. And this one really kept me going through one ultimately successful chase – and one I hope to see turn successful soon!

Review: Emergent Properties by Aimee Ogden

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A++ Reviews> book reviews
Review: Emergent Properties by Aimee OgdenEmergent Properties by Aimee Ogden
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: paperback, ebook
Genres: science fiction, science fiction mystery
Pages: 126
Published by Tordotcom on July 25, 2023
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

Emergent Properties is the touching adventure of an intrepid A.I. reporter hot on the heels of brewing corporate warfare from Nebula Award-nominated author Aimee Ogden.
A state-of-the-art AI with a talent for asking questions and finding answers, Scorn is nevertheless a parental disappointment. Defying the expectations of zir human mothers, CEOs of the world’s most powerful corporations, Scorn has made a life of zir own as an investigative reporter, crisscrossing the globe in pursuit of the truth, no matter the danger.
In the middle of investigating a story on the moon, Scorn comes back online to discover ze has no memory of the past ten days—and no idea what story ze was even chasing. Letting it go is not an option—not if ze wants to prove zirself. Scorn must retrace zir steps in a harrowing journey to uncover an even more explosive truth than ze could have ever imagined.

My Review:

When we first meet Scorn, ze is pretty much of a mess. A very determined mess, but a mess all the same. Ze has just lost over ten days of memory – along with ALL of zir backups. As ze is an autonomous AI, that shouldn’t even be possible. But as ze is an investigative reporter doing zir best to make zir mark by breaking a sensational story to get zir high-powered, highly intelligent, mega-corporation-owning mothers off zir back about zir’s career choices, it’s a tragedy in the making.

At the same time, in the best tradition of investigative reporters everywhere and everywhen, it’s also a sign that ze is on the right track to that story. Which means that ze is incapable of letting it go. And as a state-of-the-art AI, Scorn is capable of retracing his steps, both digital and physical, to get back what ze lost.

On the moon, which is where Scorn lost it the first time. Which is also the last place zir mothers want zem to go – considering Scorn’s last trip got zir memory wiped.

Emergent Properties is the story of Scorn’s journey back to where ze nearly lost zirself, dodging EMP pulses and drone attacks every step of the way, along the trail of a story that will either make or break zem.

Or both. Definitely both. In ways that Scorn never, ever expected – even though ze very much should have.

Escape Rating A++: I’ve been pushing this book at anyone willing to stand still for it for months. I read this one for a Library Journal review and fell completely in love, and don’t seem to have fallen out in the intervening months. To the point where a reread just now was like catching up with an old friend.

One of the things I loved about Scorn is that ze is pretty much Murderbot’s ‘brother from another mother’, even though neither identifies as or even has a gender. Which doesn’t change how much their snarkitude is in sync even if pointed in different directions.

Notice I didn’t say anything about either of them not having a mother, because Scorn certainly has two – both of whom are giving zem exactly the same kind of grief that mothers the world over give their newly adult children when those children are not living their parents’ dreams for them.

Mother may not always know best, but she always thinks she does, and Scorn is getting that times two. Which ze does zir best to ignore or delay or postpone dealing with, as so many of us do. At least until this time it bites zem in the ass – in multiple senses of the phrase – even if Scorn doesn’t always have an ass, depending on which carapace ze happens to be using at the present.

While Scorn is very much the character that carries the story, the places ze carries that story through are both fascinating and fantastic every step of the way.

A part of this reader wants to say that Scorn comes across as very human, because that’s our default paradigm. But like Murderbot, Scorn isn’t human and doesn’t want to be – no matter how much zir mothers hoped that ze would aspire to such.

And the whole idea that ze still must deal with zir human mothers and their human disappointment in zem is what makes Scorn so easy for human readers to identify with. Ze has mommy issues – and don’t we all?

But zir world is our future, and it feels plausible even as we get sucked into it. Human greed carried out through corporate political shenanigans is running the show. Independence for human colonies and autonomy for sentient, sapient, autonomous AIs are being spun into opposition instead of banding together to help each other. Because the corporations make more profits out of war than they do peace.

Scorn moves through zir world as an AI, not a fixed body in time and space. Ze uses bodies, but is not attached to or possessed by one, and it changes zir perspective in ways that go even beyond what we’ve already seen in John Scalzi’s Lock In, although there are some similarities. Scorn goes well beyond the ‘threeps’ in what ze does and how ze does it. It feels like a next step.

At the same time, Scorn’s emotional landscape is as fraught and confused as any human’s. Ze just processes it differently some of the time, and turns it off some of the time, but it is still recognizable and well within our empathetic parameters.

So I had an absolute blast reading about Scorn’s surprising Emergent Properties, was fascinated with zir world, and hope the author takes us back to zir and it sometime in the future!

Review: War Cry by Brian McClellan

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | B Reviews> book reviews
Review: War Cry by Brian McClellanWar Cry by Brian McClellan
Format: ebook
Source: purchased from Amazon
Formats available: paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: fantasy, military fantasy, military science fiction, science fiction
Pages: 96
Published by Tordotcom on August 28, 2018
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

Brian McClellan, author of the acclaimed Powder Mage series, introduces a new universe, new armies, and new monsters in War Cry
Teado is a Changer, a shape-shifting military asset trained to win wars. His platoon has been stationed in the Bavares high plains for years, stranded. As they ration supplies and scan the airwaves for news, any news, their numbers dwindle. He's not sure how much time they have left.
Desperate and starving, armed with aging, faulting equipment, the team jumps at the chance for a risky resupply mission, even if it means not all of them might come. What they discover could change the course of the war.

My Review:

I picked this up because I adored the author’s In the Shadow of Lightning and was looking for something else by him but didn’t quite have the spoons to get started on his Powder Mage series. At least not yet. Nor does the sequel to In the Shadow of Lightning seem to be on the horizon. Although I just learned there’s a prequel (Montego) and I just picked it up. And, honestly, I was looking for something short.

Leading me to War Cry.

William T. Sherman is the American Civil War general famous for the rather pithy comment that “War is Hell”. War Cry is a story deep into just that kind of hell – and it’s a gut punch of a story.

The world of War Cry exists in that nether region between science fiction and fantasy, as well as the hellish netherworld of war. Teado and his clandestine unit have a battered airplane, an equally battered pilot, an illusion mage and a shapechanger. Teado is the shapechanger.

Their tiny little unit is nearly out of everything, food, supplies, ammunition, and most especially, hope. They started out being near the front but the front has swept by them and now they are behind enemy lines and waging a guerrilla war from the shadows.

They’re listening to enemy propaganda while they are on watch, each wondering which of the others is going to be the first to break and run for the enemy-offered amnesty. Or whether they will be the first one to give up and just go.

But the powers that be haven’t forgotten them – nor have they quite let go of a hope of peace.

Which is where Teado, his unit, and this story come in. They have a crazy chance of striking a blow against the enemy’s new forward base and stealing an entire cargo plane full of desperately needed supplies.

If they are successful, there might be a chance at the peace talks to actually get a little. If they fail, at least their own war will be over.

Unless they are all just part of something much, much bigger and way, way, way above all their pay grades.

Escape Rating B: What made this work is that it isn’t about building up one side as the “good guys” and the other as the “bad guys”. We don’t really get much of a sense of what the two sides are fighting over beyond the obvious motivations of resources and territory.

It’s never all that clear that the two sides are truly all that different, or that one is all that much better or worse than the other.

This turns out to be a story that embodies, not just Sherman’s “War is Hell” quote, but more especially a less often seen quote from G.K. Chesterton that goes, “The true soldier fights not because he hates what is in front of him, but because he loves what is behind him.” Or in the case of Teado and his company, because he loves what is beside him.

Teado is fighting, not for himself, but for his friends and comrades. And so are they. Which is what makes this story cut deep, as the powers that be only see the big picture and which pawns they need to move to change that picture.

Where Teado sees, and we experience through him, the real cost of those pawns being moved.

Review: Rose/House by Arkady Martine

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | B- Reviews> book reviews
Review: Rose/House by Arkady MartineRose/House by Arkady Martine
Format: ebook
Source: purchased from Amazon
Formats available: hardcover, ebook
Genres: horror, mystery, science fiction
Pages: 128
Published by Subterranean Press on May 18, 2023
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo
Goodreads

Dust jacket illustration by David Curtis.
Arkady Martine, the acclaimed author of the Teixcalaan Series, returns with an astonishing new novella.
Basit Deniau’s houses were haunted to begin with.
A house embedded with an artificial intelligence is a common thing: a house that is an artificial intelligence, infused in every load-bearing beam and fine marble tile with a thinking creature that is not human? That is something else altogether. But now Deniau’s been dead a year, and Rose House is locked up tight, as commanded by the architect’s will: all his possessions and files and sketches are confined in its archives, and their only keeper is Rose House itself. Rose House, and one other.
Dr. Selene Gisil, one of Deniau’s former protégé, is permitted to come into Rose House once a year. She alone may open Rose House’s vaults, look at drawings and art, talk with Rose House’s animating intelligence all she likes. Until this week, Dr. Gisil was the only person whom Rose House spoke to.
But even an animate intelligence that haunts a house has some failsafes common to all AIs. For instance: all AIs must report the presence of a dead body to the nearest law enforcement agency.
There is a dead person in Rose House. The house says so. It is not Basit Deniau, and it is not Dr. Gisil. It is someone else. Rose House, having completed its duty of care and informed Detective Maritza Smith of the China Lake police precinct that there is in fact a dead person inside it, dead of unnatural causes—has shut up.
No one can get inside Rose House, except Dr. Gisil. Dr. Gisil was not in North America when Rose House called the China Lake precinct. But someone did. And someone died there. And someone may be there still.
Limited: 1000 signed numbered hardcover copies

My Review:

I want to call Rose/House a haunted house book. AND I also want to say it’s more horror than it is anything else. But neither of those labels is strictly accurate. I’m not sure any labels I could possibly come up with would be strictly accurate.

And I’m sure that Rose House itself would agree. If it would condescend to consider anything I ever said at all, ever. After all, I’m not the one and only human that Rose House is required to accommodate.

Which may be the best place to begin. Rose House is the last, greatest, and best house built by the famous – sometimes infamous – architect Basit Deniau sometime in the next century. I want to say it’s a house with an integrated AI, but it’s more like the house IS the AI, and the AI is the house. It’s other in ways that haunt the reader and the story from beginning to end.

If it actually ends. I’m not totally sure about that.

This is one of those stories where the prime mover and shaker is dead, to begin with. And so is an unnamed and unidentified victim of the many and stringent security measures that Rose House is capable of.

Which is where the nearby China Lake Police Department, in the person of Detective Maritza Smith, comes in. Rose House is required to notify the local police of the presence of a dead human within its walls. It is not required to let the police, or anyone else, within those walls to investigate that body, except for its late creator’s one and only representative.

And it has more than enough free will to play with its prey before this AI spider invites the unsuspecting human fly into its surprisingly sticky web.

Because no one who enters Rose House leaves it unscarred. If they manage to leave at all.

Escape Rating B-: I picked this up because I still miss Teixcalaan. (Yes, I know I said that the ending of A Desolation Called Peace allows for a third book but doesn’t require one. Which doesn’t mean that I don’t WANT a third book REAL BAD.)

I knew going in that Rose/House wasn’t going to scratch that particular itch but the author’s writing style is just so lovely that I figured I would enjoy this novella even if I didn’t love it. Which pretty much sums up my reaction all the way around.

Rose/House touches on a lot of genres. It’s SFnal in its presentation of Rose House as a self-willed AI. At the same time, the way that the house plays with its potential prey has all the chills of horror because the very idea of a house deciding whether or not it wants to kill or absorb anyone within its walls is enough to make anyone startle a bit the next time their own dwelling makes random settling noises.

There’s certainly a bit of mystery in the way that Detective Smith is presented with a murder she can’t investigate, let alone solve, unless she finds a way into Rose House AND a method of going along with its thought processes without getting absorbed by them. Plus there’s the mystery of Rose House’s creator and all of the greedy and grasping people who believe they are entitled to a piece of his legacy and believe that the ends justify their means of acquiring it.

Which they don’t.

Rose/House supports all of those various plot strings, potentials and possibilities without really solving any of them, which works because this novella is short and it’s intended to leave the reader wondering whether Rose House has manipulated everyone and everything – including the reader – all along. It’s not meant to be solved, it’s meant to continue as a puzzle long after the last page is turned.

Whether that will leave the reader puzzled or satisfied is a question that each reader will have to answer for themselves. I wanted this to focus on the mystery – and i’m left a bit unsatisfied that it didn’t really resolve those issues.

The biggest questions that remain are all wrapped around the AI itself. And they are questions that leave me with shivers of possibility – all of them horrifying.

Review: Light Chaser by Peter F. Hamilton and Gareth L. Powell

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | book reviews
Review: Light Chaser by Peter F. Hamilton and Gareth L. PowellLight Chaser by Peter F. Hamilton
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: science fiction, space opera
Pages: 173
Published by Tordotcom on August 24, 2021
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

In Peter F. Hamilton and Gareth L. Powell's action-packed sci-fi adventure Light Chaser, a love powerful enough to transcend death can bring down an entire empire.
Amahle is a Light Chaser - one of a number of explorers, who travel the universe alone (except for their onboard AI), trading trinkets for life stories.
But when she listens to the stories sent down through the ages she hears the same voice talking directly to her from different times and on different worlds. She comes to understand that something terrible is happening, and only she is in a position to do anything about it.
And it will cost everything to put it right.

My Review:

How to reboot the galaxy in 10 (or so) not so easy lessons. Because that first lesson includes the really heavy lifting of getting you to believe that the cushy, if a bit lonely, life you’ve been leading for millennia NEEDS to be rebooted in the worst way.

And that you’re the only one who can possibly do the job. If you can be convinced to deal with the heartbreak of both a completely epic betrayal on a galactic scale AND the heartbreak of un-forgetting the loss of the love of your artificially long life. Over and over again.

Amahle is the Light Chaser of the title. She, and all of her ilk, travel in endless repeating circuits of their little corner of the galaxy, distributing trinkets, treasures and carefully curated technology to dozens – or perhaps hundreds – of stagnant little planets in return for recordings of memories and experiences faithfully preserved in high-tech collars in the centuries since their previous visits.

There’s nothing sinister about the recordings themselves. In fact, the reverse. The Light Chasers are treated pretty much like deities, and the tech and the treasure that they bring is a boon to both the individual economies and the local planetary government. The collars keep records only, they don’t take anything from their wearers.

But the conditions of the planets. That’s where things get sinister. Because each planet is locked in whatever era of development it was created – whether their situation is bloody, medieval horror or post-scarcity techno-pampered ennui.

There’s no growth. There’s no change. There’s no evolution. Golden ages last forever – but so do Dark ones. To the point where Amahle, no matter how many times her memory has been wiped, is starting to notice.

Which is where Carloman comes in. Over and over again. Seemingly reborn on multiple planets in multiple eras, seeking out one of her collar-wearers so that he can deliver a message. Knowing that she will inevitably see that message in the long (at least relatively) journeys between the stars.

If he doesn’t manage to get the whole message across in one circuit, he’ll simply have to try again. Until he gets it right. Or she does.

Escape Rating B: As much as I LOVED yesterday’s Red Team Blues, I did go into it thinking I was going to get something SFnal – so I had still had a taste for that in my mind. (And I had another book just fail.) So I went looking for something short and SFnal that I already had – which is where Light Chaser comes in.

There are two threads to this story. The first one is hidden – at first. Because from one perspective, Light Chaser is the ultimate star-crossed, crosstime, long-distance romance. It’s so long distance and so far across time that initially Amahle doesn’t even remember that once upon a time, it happened. (And yes, there are hints of This is How You Lose the Time War if you squint a bit.)

Amahle’s been made to forget, repeatedly and often over the very long years, but her once and future love, Carloman, loves her so damn much that he’s managed to get around a veritable empire of AIs that are keeping them apart.

We never do find out how he does that, we only know that he has. And does. And possibly will again if it doesn’t work this time around.

The truly SFnal part of the story is the story of Amahle’s life in her here and now, as Carloman’s intrusions into the collars she has collected and viewed slowly but surely strips away her somewhat bored complaisance and wakes her up to a truth that seemingly only he can see. But once she’s seen it, she can’t unsee it, to the point where she tears her whole world apart to get it back.

It starts at the end and ends at the beginning, but along the way it portrays a far future world that isn’t what it ought to be – and tells the story of the painful stripping away of both illusion and self needed to get it back on track.

I finished Light Chaser wanting just a bit more of pretty much everything, as there is a LOT of handwavium involved in making the whole thing work. But within the constraints of a novella, it does a terrific job of making the reader think right along with Amahle. Digging this one out of the depths of the virtually towering TBR pile was absolutely the right thing to do!

Review: Watching the Clock by Christopher L. Bennett

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A- Reviews> book reviews
Review: Watching the Clock by Christopher L. BennettWatching the Clock (Star Trek: Department of Temporal Investigations #1) by Christopher L. Bennett
Format: ebook
Source: purchased from Amazon
Formats available: paperback, ebook
Genres: science fiction, space opera, Star Trek, time travel
Series: Star Trek: Department of Temporal Investigations #1
Pages: 496
Published by Pocket Books on May 1, 2011
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Better World Books
Goodreads

There’s likely no more of a thankless job in the Federation than temporal investigation. While starship explorers get to live the human adventure of traveling to other times and realities, it’s up to the dedicated agents of the Federation Department of Temporal Investigations to deal with the consequences to the timestream that the rest of the Galaxy has to live with day by day. But when history as we know it could be wiped out at any moment by time warriors from the future, misused relics of ancient races, or accident-prone starships, only the most disciplined, obsessive, and unimaginative government employees have what it takes to face the existential uncertainty of it all on a daily basis . . . and still stay sane enough to complete their assignments.
That’s where Agents Lucsly and Dulmur come in—stalwart and unflappable, these men are the Federation’s unsung anchors in a chaotic universe. Together with their colleagues in the DTI—and with the help and sometimes hindrance of Starfleet’s finest—they do what they can to keep the timestream, or at least the paperwork, as neat and orderly as they are. But when a series of escalating temporal incursions threatens to open a new front of the history-spanning Temporal Cold War in the twenty-fourth century, Agents Lucsly and Dulmur will need all their investigative skill and unbending determination to stop those who wish to rewrite the past for their own advantage, and to keep the present and the future from devolving into the kind of chaos they really, really hate.

My Review:

“People assume that time is a strict progression of cause to effect but actually, from a non-linear, non-subjective point of view, it’s more like a big ball of wibbly wobbly timey wimey stuff.” At least according to Doctor Who.

Come to think of it, I’m pretty sure I spotted their TARDIS, or at least a TARDIS, somewhere (or somewhen) in the mass of confiscated time travel detritus stored in the Department of Temporal Investigations’ Vault on Eris. But I could be wrong. Or it might not be there now. Or then.

The thing about time travel, is that it messes up any sense of past, present and future, in the grammatical sense as well as every other way, more than enough to give anyone trying to talk about it – or write about it – a terrible and unending headache.

Just ask the folks at the Federation’s Department of Temporal Investigations, whose entire existence, across space and time, owes itself to Starfleet’s pressing need to clean up after Jim Kirk’s all too frequent messing about with time.

I really want to make a Law and Order reference to “these are their stories” because it does kind of work, even if DTI Agent Gariff Lucsly’s affect and mannerisms owe a lot more to Joe Friday in Dragnet.

The story in Watching the Clock combines two elements and both go back and forth in time more than a bit. Time which always seems to wibble just when it’s expected to wobble – and very much vice-versa. Seemingly ad infinitum and always ad nauseam.

The biggest variable often seems to wrap around who is getting the nauseam this time around.

As this is the first book in the Department of Temporal Investigations series, and that’s an agency that appears – often in rueful commentary – in several episodes across the Star Trek timeline without being the center of any incident – after all, DTI are more of a cleanup crew than an instigating force – a part of this book is to set up the agency, its primary officers, and its place within Starfleet.

Which results in more than a bit of that wibble and wobble, as the case that Agents Lucsly and Dulmur find themselves in the middle of is also in the middle of both the actual case (even if they’re not aware of it) and the Trek timeline, so the story needs to establish who they are, how they got to be where (and when) they are, and who they have to work with and against.

But the case they have before them – also behind them (time travel again) – is rooted in the Temporal Cold War, which seems to be heating up again. Assuming concepts like “again” have meaning in the context of time travel. Someone is operating from the shadows, manipulating the past in order to keep the Federation from defeating their aims in the future.

Which sounds a lot like what the Borg were attempting in First Contact. As it should. When it comes to time travel, this has all happened before, and it will all, most certainly, happen again. And again. And AGAIN.

Escape Rating A-: I picked this up because last week ended with some really frustrating reads. I was looking for something that I was guaranteed to be swept away by – no matter what. (I started the next St. Cyr book, What Darkness Brings, but it was too soon after the previous. I love the series, but like most series reads, I need a bit of space between each book so that the tropes don’t become over-familiar.)

It’s been a while since I read one of the Star Trek books, but I have a lot of them on my Kindle because they are one of the things Galen picks up when he’s looking for a comfort read. So there they were, and I hadn’t read this series. Although now I will when I’m looking for a reading pick-me-up.

There’s always plenty of Trek nostalgia to go around, and I’m certainly there for that, especially in the mood I was in. Howsomever, as a series set in the ‘verse but not part of one of the TV series, this one needed a bit more to carry this reader through all 500ish pages. Because that’s a lot, even for me. Especially when I’m flailing around for a read.

Watching the Clock combined the kind of buddy cop/partnership story that works so well in mystery – and this is a mystery – with that lovely bit of Trek nostalgia with a whole lot of thoughtful exploration of just what kind of a mess time travel would cause if it really worked.

Because the idea that going back in time would “fix” history, for certain definitions of both “fix” and history, sounds fine and dandy in fantasy but in SF just makes a complete mess out of causality and pretty much everything else.

(If you’re curious about other visions of just how badly it can go, take a look at One Day All This Will Be Yours by Adrian Tchaikovsky. The Tchaikovsky story, published a decade AFTER Watching the Clock, looks back on their version of a time war from the perspective of a battle-scarred, PTSD-ridden survivor and it’s not a pretty sight. But it is a fascinating story – also a lot shorter exploration of the same concepts as Watching the Clock.)

So, if you’re looking to get immersed in a familiar world while reading a completely original story set in that world, Watching the Clock is a fun read and Lucsly and Dulmur and all the members of the Department of Temporal Investigations are interesting people to explore it with. I had a ball, and if you’re a Trek fan you probably will tool.

If the concepts interest you but Trek isn’t your jam, check out One Day All This Will Be Yours.

Review: The Scourge Between Stars by Ness Brown

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A- Reviews> book reviews
Review: The Scourge Between Stars by Ness BrownThe Scourge Between Stars by Ness Brown
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: horror, science fiction
Pages: 176
Published by Tor Nightfire on April 4, 2023
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org
Goodreads

Ness Brown's The Scourge Between Stars is a tense, claustrophobic sci-fi/horror blend set aboard a doomed generation ship harboring something terrible within its walls.
As acting captain of the starship Calypso, Jacklyn Albright is responsible for keeping the last of humanity alive as they limp back to Earth from their forebears’ failed colony on a distant planet.
Faced with constant threats of starvation and destruction in the treacherous minefield of interstellar space, Jacklyn's crew has reached their breaking point. As unrest begins to spread throughout the ship’s Wards, a new threat emerges, picking off crew members in grim, bloody fashion.
Jacklyn and her team must hunt down the ship’s unknown intruder if they have any hope of making it back to their solar system alive.

My Review:

When we first meet Acting Captain Jacklyn Albright, the situation aboard the generation ship Calypso has already gone utterly pear-shaped. It just hasn’t grown a carapace and sprouted tentacles – at least not yet.

The Calypso is on her return journey to Earth after a failed colonization effort on Proxima B. A return journey that feels jinxed to Jack and to her crew. The ship’s structural integrity, already a bit iffy after being exposed to the elements on Proxima B, has been taking random, heavy fire from invisible alien ships at irregular intervals. They’ve lost decks, they’ve lost people, they’ve lost hope. And there’s been no communication from the aliens – whoever they are and whatever they want.

Because of the structural damage, they’ve had to slow their journey way, way down to avoid shaking the ship to pieces. As a result, they don’t have enough supplies to feed all 6,000 souls aboard all the way home.

They need a miracle. Jack needs a miracle. What she has is a shaky command and a rioting population while the real captain, her own father, has locked himself in his quarters and doesn’t bother to even shout through the door when she bangs on it.

She’s afraid to force that door and find out he’s dead, because that’s EXACTLY what happened to her mother.

The situation would be more than enough to keep any captain awake – and it’s certainly doing a major number on the acting captain. Which is just when conditions that couldn’t possibly get worse manage to grow that carapace and sprout those tentacles.

Jack may not know why those invisible aliens on the outside are taking potshots at her ship but she’s just learned she’s got more immediate problems on the inside. The Calypso is infested with xenomorphs – and it’s all her father’s fault.

Escape Rating A-: Whether The Scourge Between Stars is science fiction or horror depends on which side of that divide the reader thinks the movie Alien belongs. And I’m still not sure and don’t care because The Scourge Between Stars was simply a gripping, stellar, SF story and reading rather than watching let my mind gloss over the actual alien carnage enough to appreciate the story those aliens are eating their way through.

Also, it was easy to get sucked into the horror of it all because, like T. Kingfisher’s recent A House with Good Bones, when the story begins the horror is mundane. Still terrible, but not eldritch. That the captain is MIA in his quarters, that he’s her dad, that her mother committed suicide and her sister died in a recent attack by the invisible aliens, that the journey home is going to take longer than the ship has food or fuel, that the population is rioting for more food rations they don’t have, that the head of cybernetics has modified an android to have extra intelligence and look too much like her sister – and that the dude creeps out on it in public – are all more than enough to be horrifyingly worrisome without slipping into true eldritch horror.

By the time the story does slip over that line into xenomorphs dragging human corpses through the walls it’s far too late for the reader to escape the gravity well of the story.

That there are also elements of both Adam Oyebanji’s Braking Day and David Ramirez’ The Forever Watch just made the story all that much more compelling for this reader, as both are marvelous generation ship stories that also use the “we have met the enemy and he is us” scenario to its full horrifying effects in somewhat similar ways, while each still being different enough from the others to make the way the situation plays out to be surprising but not the same surprise.

Jack made a terrific – if often terrified and trying to hide it – perspective into this flying, crumbling, encapsulated world. She’s doing her best, she always feels like a bit of an impostor, she’s scared, she’s desperate, and she’s trying to keep it together and keep her people alive no matter how much it eats her up from the inside out.

We feel her fear, her horror, her desperation and her exhaustion, and it keeps us with her every step of the way. Unfortunately we also feel her righteous creeping dread of that one dude with the android a bit too much. It was an injection of sexual harassment by proxy and just weirded me out.

On the other hand, the android itself was a much more fantastic character than I expected given its introduction, and I loved the way the author seemed to lampshade Data from Star Trek Next Gen without this android, Watson, actually being Data.

The ending of The Scourge Between Stars read like just a bit of a deus ex machina. It didn’t feel completely earned, but it did make for an upbeat conclusion that I really wasn’t expecting but was very happy to get anyway.

This is the author’s debut novella, which is wonderful and astonishing because it’s a delightful surprise when an author hits it out of the park on their first time at bat. It gives me high hopes indeed for their next book, whenever and wherever it appears!