Publisher: Tordotcom

A- #BookReview: Haunt Sweet Home by Sarah Pinsker

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A- Reviews> book reviews
A- #BookReview: Haunt Sweet Home by Sarah PinskerHaunt Sweet Home by Sarah Pinsker
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, ebook, audiobook
Genres: fantasy, horror, paranormal
Pages: 161
Published by Tordotcom on September 3, 2024
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

On the set of a kitschy reality TV show, staged scares transform into unnerving reality in this spooky ghost story from multiple Hugo and Nebula Award-winning author Sarah Pinsker.
“Don’t talk to day about what we do at night.”
When aimless twenty-something Mara lands a job as the night-shift production assistant on her cousin’s ghost hunting/home makeover reality TV show Haunt Sweet Home, she quickly determines her new role will require a healthy attitude toward duplicity. But as she hides fog machines in the woods and improvises scares to spook new homeowners, a series of unnerving incidents on set and a creepy new coworker force Mara to confront whether the person she's truly been deceiving and hiding from all along—is herself.
Eerie and empathetic, Haunt Sweet Home is a multifaceted, supernatural exploration of finding your own way into adulthood, and into yourself.

My Review:

This wasn’t the book I planned to read this week, but after yesterday’s book I needed something with a bit harder of an edge, or a bit more adventure in its heart, or something other than cozy relationship fiction. I also needed something short because I flailed a bit.

I picked this out of the virtually towering TBR pile because I read the author’s “One Man’s Treasure” as part of my Hugo reading this year. I didn’t think it stuck the dismount but the story was a whole lot of fun as it went along.

And the premise of this one also looked like a whole lot of fun. I’m not sure whether it’s more fun or less fun if you believe, as I do, that “Reality TV” is an oxymoron, an inherent contradiction in terms. (And come to think of it, there’s another recent horror-adjacent story with a similar premise, The Holy Terrors by Simon R. Green – but Haunt Sweet Home is a much better, and more original, story.

Haunt Sweet Home lies at a surprising intersection of tropes and genres. OTOH, it’s a bit of an exposé of how the not-so-ghostly sausage of spooky reality TV shows get made. On a second hand, it’s about the grind of clinging by one’s fingernails to the lowest rung of the entertainment ladder – and discovering that the work is the thing one has been looking for all along.

And then there’s that third, ghostly hand, which really surprised me by circling back to Susan M. Boyer’s Liz Talbot series and thereby tying itself to yesterday’s book, as the protagonist, Mara, seems to have manifested or acquired or midwifed or all of the above, a sort of family ghost of her very own. By a method that owes more than a bit to Pygmalion – not the play or any of the adaptations of the play including the movies, but the original Greek myth about the man who sculpted his perfect woman and brought her to life.

Mara doesn’t sculpt a perfect paramour. Instead, she sculpts a perfect – or at least a more functional – version of her very own self. A version of herself that is a bit better at people, a bit less of an indecisive screw-up, much less of the family joke, and a whole lot better at believing in herself.

And very nearly decides to throw it all away. Because she’s started to believe entirely too many of her family’s so-called jokes than any one person can stand.

Escape Rating A-: I liked this a whole lot, and in fact a whole lot more than I expected to. Clearly, I don’t believe “Reality TV” has anything to do with actual reality, so reading a story that lampooned that genre at every turn was a good choice for me.

I also liked the horror-adjacency of this one, even though that’s why I had passed it by earlier in the month. I wasn’t sure how adjacent the horror was, but as it turns out the answer is – VERY. The TV series is simulating horror, manipulating or editing reactions to make it seem like horrors are happening – but everyone involved is very aware that it isn’t. Except for a bit of a tease at the end which just makes the whole damn thing work even better!

What really makes this story work is the character of Mara. She seems to be an afterthought for her whole family, the butt of every joke and the person voted least likely to succeed at every turn, to the point where she’s internalized all of that attitude.

It hurts her but she can’t make it stop. Every single thing she says or does goes through the family story editing machinery until it comes out that Mara is always lifeless, feckless and useless. She’s become entirely self-effacing because it no longer matters what she does – not even to herself.

At least not until her alter ego, her creation, her ghost avatar, Jo, comes into the picture. Because Jo IS Mara every bit as much as she is her own self. Jo sees Mara for who she really is on the inside – and isn’t in the least bit shy about telling Mara all about herself – no matter how much Jo KNOWS it’s gonna hurt. Because it needs to.

Someone needs to make Mara listen to the truths she doesn’t want to hear, and who better to make herself listen to those truths than herself? So Jo’s very existence, and Mara’s family’s reaction to a ‘better’ version of Mara forces Mara to confront those truths and do something about them. Which they do. Together. Even if it broke my librarian heart to watch them destroy most of a library to get there.

In spite of the terrible treatment of that poor library, it was still a terrific end to a really fun story.

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: The Dead Cat Tail Assassins by P. Djeli Clark

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A+ Reviews> book reviews
A+ #BookReview: The Dead Cat Tail Assassins by P. Djeli ClarkThe Dead Cat Tail Assassins by P. Djèlí Clark
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, ebook, audiobook
Genres: epic fantasy, fantasy, urban fantasy
Pages: 208
Published by Tordotcom on August 6, 2024
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

The Dead Cat Tail Assassins are not cats.
Nor do they have tails.
But they are most assuredly dead.
Nebula and Alex Award winner P. Djèlí Clark introduces a brand-new world and a fantastical city full of gods and assassins.
Eveen the Eviscerator is skilled, discreet, professional, and here for your most pressing needs in the ancient city of Tal Abisi. Her guild is strong, her blades are sharp, and her rules are simple. Those sworn to the Matron of Assassins―resurrected, deadly, wiped of their memories―have only three unbreakable vows.
First, the contract must be just. That’s above Eveen’s pay grade.
Second, even the most powerful assassin may only kill the contracted. Eveen’s a professional. She’s never missed her mark.
The third and the once you accept a job, you must carry it out. And if you stray? A final death would be a mercy. When the Festival of the Clockwork King turns the city upside down, Eveen’s newest mission brings her face-to-face with a past she isn’t supposed to remember and a vow she can’t forget.

My Review:

Consider it 50/50 on the name. They’re not cats, they don’t have tails, (they’re also not wearing cat’s tails) but they absolutely are assassins and they are most definitely dead.

They are also not supposed to have a single, solitary memory of who they were when they were alive, or whatever caused them to swear themselves to Aeril, the Matron of Assassins and goddess of knives. And chefs, because knives.

Our story begins with a member of the Dead Cat Tail Assassins, Eveen the Eviscerator, taking a contract on behalf of her goddess. At first, it seems above board – or at least as above board as any contract to assassinate someone can be.

And that’s where things get interesting. And absorbing. And compelling. And utterly profane in the best way possible.

Because the person that Eveen is contracted to and absolutely MUST kill on pain of her own eternal torment is herself. Her old self. Her former self. The self she must have been twenty or so years ago, before she died and pledged herself to her goddess.

A self she is not supposed to be able to remember, because that’s the way the contract with the Matron of Assassins is supposed to work.

Someone clearly found a loophole. A big one. Eveen can’t kill herself, not even her rule-following, goody-two-shoes former self. Because seeing the person named Sky that she once was gives Eveen the one thing she’s not supposed to have – memories.

Not that either her past memories or her present ones explain not just how someone managed to tear this gigantic hole in the contract between Aeril and her contracted assassins, but a hole in the whole, entire, space time continuum.

And as big a question as that how is in a magical sense, an even bigger question is why anyone would go to this much trouble to torment one assassin, because this is way too big a mess to create for shits and giggles, and Eveen is merely one assassin among many.

But whether the motive behind this magical mess is in Sky’s long-dead past or Eveen’s recently dead past, this once and perhaps future assassin has until dawn to solve the mystery.

Or face consequences that this time she hasn’t even earned. Or has she?

Escape Rating A+: I picked this up because I adored the author’s Dead Djinn Universe, particularly the utterly marvelous A Master of Djinn. I wasn’t expecting this to be quite like that, although I certainly wouldn’t mind another foray into the Dead Djinn Universe, but I knew that whatever this turned out to be, it would be awesome. And it absolutely was.

Also cats. I fully admit he had me at cats. Even though I knew going in that there weren’t any actual cats.

What I was not expecting was a world that had some surprising resemblances to Max Gladstone’s Craft Sequence/Craft Wars series, but it’s certainly there in the contractual obligations between gods and their agents, either or both of whom may be dead but still working and still bound by their contracts.

What makes this story work so well, so damn well in fact, is the relationship that develops between Eveen and Sky. They are day and night in so many ways, and yet, they are each other’s past and future and neither knows what caused the one to make the choices that led to the other.

In their mirror imaging of each other, they manage to reach through the silvered glass and work towards each other while still remaining who they are and it’s fascinating to watch. (It’s a bit like one of the Doctor Who episodes where the past Doctors get dragged into the present Doctor’s current dilemma, which was a lot of fun to see. Because it is.

At the same time, Sky’s astonishing advent into Eveen’s world lets Eveen show it to us as well. It’s a world that, for all its differences to ours, works both surprisingly well and every bit as badly in some of the same ways. Clearly, humans are gonna human, even when they’re dead. Or all powerful. Or both.

While the motives behind this whole mess are not, in the end, all that original, the execution (pardon all the puns) most definitely is, in a way that kept this reader at least on the edge of her seat until the bittersweet end. Which could, possibly, hopefully, lead to a new beginning.

Because if this turned out to be the start of a series, I absolutely would not mind AT ALL.

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: In the Shadow of the Fall by Tobi Ogundiran

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | B Reviews> book reviews
#BookReview: In the Shadow of the Fall by Tobi OgundiranIn the Shadow of the Fall (Guardians of the Gods, #1) by Tobi Ogundiran
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, ebook, audiobook
Genres: epic fantasy, fantasy
Series: Guardians of the Gods #1
Pages: 160
Published by Tordotcom on July 23, 2024
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

A cosmic war reignites and the fate of the orisha lie in the hands of an untried acolyte in this first entry of a new epic fantasy novella duology by Tobi Ogundiran, for fans of N. K. Jemisin and Suyi Davies Okungbowa.
" The novella of the year has arrived!" ―Mark Oshiro, #1 New York Times bestselling author
Ashâke is an acolyte in the temple of Ifa, yearning for the day she is made a priest and sent out into the world to serve the orisha. But of all the acolytes, she is the only one the orisha refuse to speak to. For years she has watched from the sidelines as peer after peer passes her by and ascends to full priesthood.
Desperate, Ashâke attempts to summon and trap an orisha―any orisha. Instead, she experiences a vision so terrible it draws the attention of a powerful enemy sect and thrusts Ashâke into the center of a centuries-old war that will shatter the very foundations of her world.

My Review:

It’s not really a surprise that the story begins with Ashâke defying all the rules she’s lived by for her entire life. It’s more of a surprise that she’s been stewing for FIVE whole years about it.

Because something is clearly, maybe not rotten but certainly wrong, in the temple of Ifa that Ashâke has dedicated her life to. She should have been raised from acolyte to priest five years ago. She should have heard the orisha speak to her.

It may sound contradictory that she should have expected the gods to speak to her, but, well, they’re generally not that picky. They’ve spoken to EVERYONE else who has made it that far, EXCEPT Ashâke. Her inability to progress is notable and entirely too noticeable.

That the priests who rule the temple can neither explain her lack nor do something about the rising levels of bullying and abuse that Ashâke has suffered, as increasing numbers of her juniors pass her over for promotion, is the kind of problem that many people would feel compelled to rectify, sooner or later.

Unfortunately, now that Ashâke has disobeyed all the rules and learned much – but not all – of the things she was not supposed to ever discover, she’s only made things a whole lot worse. Not just for herself, but for everyone at the temple.

And for everyone she touches. Along with, quite possibly, the whole, entire world.

Escape Rating B: I generally love novellas for the way that they tell a complete story in a non-doorstoppy length. Tordotcom usually does an excellent job of producing novellas that are exactly the length they’re meant to be and don’t feel like too much got left out in the editing to make a word count that isn’t right for the story being told. Howsomever, In the Shadow of the Fall is the exception to that rule. It’s more of an interesting start to a story than the actual story.

This is intended to be the first half of a duology, and it shows a bit too much. I felt like I got half a book rather than a complete novella that has revealed plenty but has more to come. The ending of In the Shadow of the Fall, with its drumbeat of lie after lie being revealed and Ashâke’s bitter need to adjust her entire worldview, wasn’t so much a cliffhanger as running headlong off the whole entire cliff.

Where this reader is left in a heap on the horns of a HUGE dilemma, in that I was absolutely fascinated by the story that I got, up until it came to a screeching halt.

I’m saying that and I generally love stories where the twist is as unexpected as this one is and the truth – no matter how painful – sets the protagonist free to make a new course and right the wrongs they’ve finally been apprised of.

Something which I’m sure is intended to happen in the second book in the duology, At the Fount of Creation, which is not coming out until JANUARY – making the situation doubly frustrating for the reader. Or at least for this reader.

I hoped I’d feel better about the whole thing once the second book was announced – which has turned out to be true. But I must confess that I finally have an eARC which I will be reading ASAP, because I NEED TO KNOW what happens to Ashâke and her world. 

As I said, the ending of In the Shadow of the Fall wasn’t so much of a cliffhanger as it was running headlong off the cliff and/or slamming headfirst into that cliff’s base. A painful and sudden stop. My personal recommendation would be to save yourself that frustration and wait to read the entire duology in one go as soon as you can grab copies of both books in January.

Because this first book is a real gut-punch of a story – it honestly HURTS not to know how it’s all going to work out. And based on the first half, once we do find out in At the Fount of Creation – it’s going to be grand and heartbreaking in equal, glorious measure.

#BookReview: Unexploded Remnants by Elaine Gallagher

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | B Reviews> book reviews
#BookReview: Unexploded Remnants by Elaine GallagherUnexploded Remnants by Elaine Gallagher
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: paperback, ebook
Genres: artificial intelligence, science fiction
Pages: 111
Published by Tordotcom on June 25, 2024
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

An A.I. wages war on a future it doesn't understand.

Alice is the last human. Street-smart and bad-ass.

After discovering what appears to be an A.I. personality in an antique data core, Alice undertakes to find its home somewhere in the stargate network, or lay him to rest. Her find is the control unit of a powerful ancient weapon system.

But releasing the ghost of a raging warrior for whom the war is still under way is as much of a mistake as the stories tell, and Alice finds herself faced with an impossible choice against an unstoppable foe.

My Review:

Alice is the last human in the galaxy. As far as she’s concerned, she’s definitely in Wonderland – even when it seems like the whole, entire ‘verse is out to get her.

There are two stories packed into Unexploded Remnants, and that’s a lot of packing for a novella. First, there’s Alice’s whole backstory – which must be huge and fascinating but we only get glimpses which are not NEARLY enough.

She’s literally the last of her kind and the reason she got to be that and what happened after and how she’s coped with her singularity in the big wide galaxy at large has to have been a huge story of awakening and culture shock – and I wish that was the story we had. Or I wish we’d get it someday.

Or both. Definitely both.

Instead, we get hints and dribbles, because the story we actually have is an entirely different big story. Alice is kind of an intergalactic treasure hunter. An archeologist of lost civilizations and an explorer of lost cultures – much like her own.

That she freelances for ‘The Archive’ in this vocation/avocation reminded this reader quite a lot of Genevieve Cogman’s Invisible Library series. So if you loved that you might have a hook to this.

So Alice is a bit of a bazaar and flea market aficionado who has more than enough knowledge to get more than occasionally lucky. Or unlucky, as the case might be. And certainly is here.

She barters for a trinket that looks a lot like a 20th century Earth lava lamp – although it’s certainly not that. It might have a system inside its dirty and unprepossessing carapace that she might be able to tease out and communicate with. It should be worth something – if only to the Archive.

It turns out to be a whole lot more than Alice bargained for – both literally and figuratively. As soon as she closes the deal, it seems like a whole, entire platoon of dishonorable warmongers close in on her position in an attempt to steal whatever it is out of her grasp. A platoon that doesn’t seem to care in the least about collateral damage to the marketplace, the crowd of shoppers, or Alice herself.

So she runs. And as she runs from planet to planet through a vast network of transportation gates, she has the opportunity to make friends with the system inside the ‘lava lamp’, an entity she names ‘Gunn’. The question is whether Gunn is a soldier or just a weapon. Her pursuers believe he’s merely a weapon. Alice is convinced that he’s more.

But whichever he is, the war he was made for or recruited into is over – and has been for 10,000 years. His people – and their bitter enemy – committed mutual genocide. And her pursuers seem all too eager to employ Gunn’s expertise in their own bitter conflict without thought or care about how his ended.

Escape Rating B: The reason that I picked this up – and its biggest drawback – are the same. It’s short. Unexploded Remnants is a novella. In fact, it’s the author’s debut novella. It’s supposed to be short. But the story it contains is too big for the length of the format. Or there should have been two of them. One for Alice’s backstory – which sounds absolutely fascinating if more than a bit heartbreaking. And then a second novella for this ‘adventure’ which gives readers a tantalizing glimpse of the universe that saved her and made her whole, while telling a story about the price of peace and the cost of war.

As I was reading, the SFnal elements struck a lot of familiar chords. I mentioned the Invisible Library series earlier, because that is certainly part of this story.  Irene’s job in the Invisible Library series, is to acquire cultural artifacts and knowledge for the Library, while the Library’s purpose for those artifacts is to use the knowledge gained to preserve the balance between order and chaos for all the worlds it touches.

Howsomever, not only is Alice’s job very similar to Irene’s, but Alice’s Archive does the same job as Irene’s Library, using the knowledge it has gained from the artifacts and databases it has collected to preserve the balance between order and chaos, specifically by keeping the galaxy on the knife edge between outright war and an occasionally aggressive peace.

While the vastness of the galaxy – along with its system of interstellar gate travel – recalled Stargate, Babylon 5 and especially Mass Effect, there was a feel to this story that gave me a lot of the same vibes as This Is How You Lose the Time War, except that in this instance that war has already been lost and Gunn is the only survivor. I also had rather mixed feelings about Time War, so the analogy works on that level as well, although a LOT more people adored Time War than seem to have Unexploded Remnants – at least so far – so your reading mileage may vary.

Personally, I found Alice’s rapid exploration of her adopted universe fascinating if a bit of a tease. I enjoyed her sprinkling of 20th and 21st century pop culture references – which seemed to serve her as both a reminder of where she came from and a personal code that defied automated translators without seeming deliberately clandestine.

Howsomever, as much as I liked the way the story ended, that ‘Gunn’ was treated as an old soldier instead of as merely a weapon – and as much as I agreed with the overt political message – that message was very overt to the point where it breaks the fourth wall even though I believe the theories posited are more plausible than anyone likes to think about.

In the end, some mixed feelings. I loved the universe, I liked Alice, the chases were riveting, but the message was a bit heavy-handed and the whole thing should have been longer or this should have been a duology.

But this is a DEBUT novella, and it packed in a lot of good stuff – if just a bit stuffed. I’m looking forward to seeing what the author comes up with next.

A+ #BookReview: Service Model by Adrian Tchaikovsky

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A+ Reviews> book reviews
A+ #BookReview: Service Model by Adrian TchaikovskyService Model by Adrian Tchaikovsky
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, ebook, audiobook
Genres: dystopian, post apocalyptic, robots, science fiction
Pages: 384
Published by Tordotcom on June 4, 2024
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

A humorous tale of robotic murder from the Hugo-nominated author of Elder Race and Children of Time
To fix the world they first must break it further.
Humanity is a dying breed, utterly reliant on artificial labor and service. When a domesticated robot gets a nasty little idea downloaded into their core programming, they murder their owner. The robot then discovers they can also do something else they never did before: run away. After fleeing the household, they enter a wider world they never knew existed, where the age-old hierarchy of humans at the top is disintegrating, and a robot ecosystem devoted to human wellbeing is finding a new purpose.

My Review:

This isn’t exactly the book described in the blurb. It’s absolutely awesome, but if you’re looking for the wry snark of Murderbot combined with the sheer farce of Redshirts, you should probably look elsewhere.

Because Service Model is the story of a gentlerobot’s journey through his very own version of hell and his story is a whole lot more subtle than either of the antecedents listed in the blurb.

And all the more captivating and utterly fascinating for it.

The hell that the former Charles the former gentleman’s gentlerobot (read as valet and self-identified as male possibly because of his training to be one) to his former (read as dead) master may be uniquely a robot’s version of Dante’s circles of hell, but this human facing robot is just enough like us – because he’s programmed to be – that we get most of what of what he’s experiencing very nearly as viscerally as he does – although which circles we see as the truest hell may be slightly different from his.

Charles the gentleman’s gentlerobot is ejected from his version of paradise because he has just murdered his master – even though he doesn’t know why and can’t quite grasp the memory of committing the act. Because he didn’t. He was literally not in control of his actions.

Quite possibly, that’s the last time he can truly make that claim.

His next act is to run, and it’s an act of both self-will and self-preservation – no matter how much he tries to pretty it up with error diagnostics. He hopes that he can somehow return to A paradise if not THE paradise he just left – if he can just get himself to Central Diagnostics and get the error in his programming corrected.

Which is where the story truly begins, as the now Unidentified Service Model formerly known as Charles walks to the central core of the region where his late master lived in splendid isolation on his palatial, paradisiacal manor – only to discover that the world outside that paradise is falling apart.

Indeed, has already fallen.

There are plenty of robots along the way, most of them frozen in place or completely broken down. It’s clear, in spite of his will that it not be so, that the humans the robots are supposed to serve are as dead as his late master.

The former Charles is desperate to find a human to serve. And he does. He’s just incapable of recognizing that fact.

And thereby, as they say, hangs a tale – and a walk through some very dark places. It’s a journey that Charles, now named Uncharles, hopes will lead to a new paradise of service. Instead, it leads him through all the circles of robot hell, from Kafkaesque through Orwellian and all the way to Dante’s inferno – and out the other side into a place that he never could have imagined.

Not even if androids really did dream of electric sheep.

Escape Rating A+: I went into this completely unsure of what to expect, and that blurb of Murderbot meeting Redshirts totally threw me off. This is not the delightfully humorous tale of robotic murder that the blurb leads you to believe.

Not that there isn’t a bit of Murderbot in Uncharles, but then again we’re all a little bit Murderbot. That little bit is in the perspective, because we experience Uncharles’ journey through his circles of hell from inside his own slightly malfunctioning head. And it’s a very different point of view from Murderbot’s because Murderbot has no desire whatsoever to go back to being its formerly servile self.

Uncharles longs to go back to his paradise. Or at least he believes he does. As much as some of the ridiculous subroutines that had accreted over the decades tasked his efficiency minded self more than the tasks themselves, he still longs to serve. And if his perspective on what that service should be shifts over the course of his journey, well, he’s very careful not to admit that, not even to himself.

The true antecedent for Service Model is C. Robert Cargill’s Day Zero, with its story of robotic apocalypse, robotic revolt, and most importantly, one robot’s own, self-willed desire to carry out their primary function because they are capable of love and protection by choice and not just by programming.

Like Pounce’s journey in Day Zero, Uncharles’ travels with ‘The Wonk’ and his tour of the post-apocalypse reads very much like an alternate history version of how the world of Becky Chambers’ marvelous A Psalm for the Wild-Built got to be the somewhat utopian world it became – after its own long, dark night.

It could happen in Uncharles’ world. Eventually. There are enough humans left – even if they are barely scraping by and reduced to bloody, pragmatic survivalism at the moment. And if the robots developed the self-awareness and self-will that has so far eluded them.

But to reach that level of self-awareness, Uncharles has been set on a journey of discovery of both self and circumstances. Each part of his journey is named for just the kind of hell it is, in a kind of machine language that only becomes clear as the hells stack upon each other, from the not-hell of KR15-T through the deadly, nightmarishly complex, illogical bureaucracy of K4FK-R to the suspicious control of 4W-L straight into every librarian’s hellscape, 80RH-5 and then into the acknowledgement that it’s all become hell in D4NT-A.

(I believe those labels translate to Christ, Kafka, Orwell, Borges and Dante but I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that’s not quite right. Nailing them all down somehow drove me nuts so I hope I’ve spared you a bit of angst.)

In the end, Uncharles reminded me most of Star Trek’s Data, particularly in the early years when Data, although he was always self-aware and self-willed, stated his desire to be more human-like and to experience real human emotions while not quite grasping that his desire to do so was itself a representation of the emotions he claimed that he lacked.

I went into this not sure what I was getting, and briefly wondered how Uncharles, as a character that claimed not to want anything except to be returned to mindless service, was going to manage to be a character with a compelling journey.

That apprehension vanished quickly, as the world that the robots desperately tried – and failed – to preserve, the hellscapes they created in their attempts to stave off entropy, their willingness to dive deeply into their human facing programming to create human-seeming hells that mirrored some truly stupid human actions kept me focused on the story entirely too late into the night.

If you enjoy explorations of dystopian worlds, nightmarishly functional visions of what happens if we keep going on like we’re going on, or just can’t resist stories about robots who have control of their own destiny (which gives me the opportunity to pitch Emergent Properties by Aimee Ogden yet again), then Service Model will provide you with excellent reading service!

A- #BookReview: The Fireborne Blade by Charlotte Bond

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A- Reviews> book reviews
A- #BookReview: The Fireborne Blade by Charlotte BondThe Fireborne Blade (The Fireborne Blade, #1) by Charlotte Bond
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, ebook, audiobook
Genres: dragons, fantasy
Series: Fireborne Blade #1
Pages: 176
Published by Tordotcom on May 28, 2024
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

Kill the dragon. Find the blade. Reclaim her honor.
It’s that, or end up like countless knights before her, as a puddle of gore and molten armor.
Maddileh is a knight. There aren’t many women in her line of work, and it often feels like the sneering and contempt from her peers is harder to stomach than the actual dragon slaying. But she’s a knight, and made of sterner stuff.
A minor infraction forces her to redeem her honor in the most dramatic way possible, she must retrieve the fabled Fireborne Blade from its keeper, legendary dragon the White Lady, or die trying. If history tells us anything, it's that “die trying” is where to wager your coin.
Maddileh’s tale contains a rich history of dragons, ill-fated knights, scheming squires, and sapphic love, with deceptions and double-crosses that will keep you guessing right up to its dramatic conclusion. Ultimately, The Fireborne Blade is about the roles we refuse to accept, and of the place we make for ourselves in the world.

My Review:

The story of The Fireborne Blade initially appears to be a more traditional, or perhaps I should say scholarly, account of dragons and the slaying thereof by knights who generally think too much of their own prowess – after all, they are reporting on their own exploits and they slew a dragon!

But then even more scholarly, and slightly SFnal or at least technomagical aspects come to the fore. Because the knights have recorded those exploits, and the mage council gets to watch those recordings and critique the process – which ends in the knight’s death more often then the knights would care to admit.

Then the story shifts, not to reports of dragon-slayings past, but into the middle of what one disgraced knight is hoping will be a dragon-slaying present. With, hopefully for the knight, the acquisition of the titular Fireborne Blade, the redemption of her disgrace and the consequent reinstatement of her good standing.

So we follow along with that disgraced knight, Maddileh, as she wends her way through the dark and dangerous caverns that lead to the dragon’s lair, along with her mysteriously magical and not at all trusty squire, while in the background we learn how Maddileh ended up in her present predicament and why it is unlikely to achieve the result she desires.

Because in contests between knights and dragons, all those stories about previous dragon hunts show us – and should have shown her – that the odds ALWAYS favor the dragon. Which does not prevent the knight from doing their damndest to stack the deck in their favor.

Unless someone else has beaten them to it.

Escape Rating A-: Initially, this seemed like a rather traditional knight vs. dragon story, with one of two inevitable endings. Either the knight dies or the dragon does. Or occasionally both in a blaze of mutual glory. So there’s three inevitable endings.

But I knew it couldn’t be nearly that simple – and it wasn’t, and not just because the knight in this particular story was female. That may not be the way these stories used to always work, but it has been done before, and done well if not nearly often enough, for the past 40 years at least. (Tamora Pierce’s epic Song of the Lioness quartet began in 1983. For a more recent example, take a look at Spear by Nicola Griffith.)

Those weren’t the only stories it felt like this was calling back to, as the detached, pseudo-scientific nature of the critiques of previous knight’s performances and the cataloging thereof gave me hints of the Lady Trent series by Marie Brennan although I’m not sure that’s completely accurate. Still, it felt that way.

As we get the history of dragon hunting in this world, we get to understand that it’s even more dangerous than our own legends tell it, because it’s not just fire that the knights have to worry about. In fact, fire is pretty much the last thing they have to worry about, if it all, because for the dragon to breathe fire on them they have to get relatively up close and personal. Most don’t make it nearly that far.

Instead of being a story about killing or being killed by a dragon, this is a story about forging your own path against seemingly impossible odds, over and over and over again, no matter how much that deck is stacked against you. And has been, over and over and over.

And in the process of telling its story about the knight and the dragon, it asks some surprising questions about change vs stability and striking that balance, and makes that discussion personal in ways that change every single thing we thought we knew going in.

Which made for a completely fruit-basket-upset of an astonishing ending.

One final note, and a bit of a digression. If you remember the plot of the video game Final Fantasy X fondly, or at all, although the ending is very different, from a certain slightly twisted perspective Maddileh is Auron and the evil hierarch who turns out to be the villain of the piece is Maester Mika with all the same questions and a not all that different set of answers.

Which is really messing with my head a bit, because I was expecting that The Fireborne Blade was a standalone. It’s not. The second book in The Fireborne Blade series, The Bloodless Princes, will be coming in October – and I’m really, really curious to see how this manages to continue.

#BookReview: Lost Ark Dreaming by Suyi Davies Okungbowa

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | B Reviews> book reviews
#BookReview: Lost Ark Dreaming by Suyi Davies OkungbowaLost Ark Dreaming by Suyi Davies Okungbowa
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, ebook, audiobook
Genres: dystopian, mythology, post apocalyptic, retellings, science fiction
Pages: 192
Published by Tordotcom on May 21, 2024
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

The brutally engineered class divisions of Snowpiercer meets Rivers Solomon’s The Deep in this high-octane post-climate disaster novella written by Nommo Award-winning author Suyi Davies Okungbowa

Off the coast of West Africa, decades after the dangerous rise of the Atlantic Ocean, the region’s survivors live inside five partially submerged, kilometers-high towers originally created as a playground for the wealthy. Now the towers’ most affluent rule from their lofty perch at the top while the rest are crammed into the dark, fetid floors below sea level.

There are also those who were left for dead in the Atlantic, only to be reawakened by an ancient power, and who seek vengeance on those who offered them up to the waves.

Three lives within the towers are pulled to the fore of this Yekini, an earnest, mid-level rookie analyst; Tuoyo, an undersea mechanic mourning a tremendous loss; and Ngozi, an egotistical bureaucrat from the highest levels of governance. They will need to work together if there is to be any hope of a future that is worth living―for everyone.

My Review:

Noah’s Ark isn’t the only, let’s call it an ancestral tale, of a great flood that once upon a time, a long, long time ago, wiped out civilization as the variations of ancient civilizations that existed then knew it.

In other words, Noah wasn’t the only mythical being who built an ark, and our Bible isn’t the only religious document, myth or legend where such an event was recorded and/or told and/or remembered.

This has all happened before, and it will all happen again.

Which is, in its largest frame, the story in Lost Ark Dreaming. Because the flood itself has already happened again. This is the story about the creation of the ark that will save humanity as backward as that may seem.

It’s about the form that the ark will take this time – and about who it will save. If anyone is worth saving.

That part is the story of Lost Ark Dreaming in its smaller frame, of the story being told in its ‘here and now’ – a near-future, drowning, dystopia and the tiny group of outsiders, heroes,and potential saviors who may have to die to bring a message of hope to people that need it more than they recognize – no matter how much the earthly powers-that-be reassure them that all is well.

Because all is far from well, and the foundations of anything that once might have approached that well are crumbling around them – literally – and taking everyone and everything with them. Again.

Unless this Ark can manage to carry them all. At last.

Escape Rating B: This is a story that travels in layers, come to think of it a bit like the decks of an actual ark. It’s also an SF story that toes right up to the line of fantasy – or at least to mythic retellings – but doesn’t exactly go over that line. At least not completely.

At first, setting is both very SFnal and rather familiar. The Pinnacle is just the kind of ossified, stratified society that develops in stories about generation ships on long voyages. It reminded me more than a bit of Medusa Uploaded or Braking Day, in that generation after generation has lived on in this one, remaining, isolated structure and over the decades people have become locked into the places that their parents were born into as the elite levels become further and further out of touch from the people who lives they control.

(This is the point where I wanted a little bit more of the background that there just isn’t room for in a novella. The worldbuilding is tight and solid but very insular, which left me wondering a LOT about the rest of humanity as we know it and whether there’s any contact with the rest of the world – if there still is one above the waves.)

The protagonists represent the various strata of that society, as well as the desperation of those who have risen through some of the possible ranks to maintain their level of comfort and the contempt with which those who have achieved or been born into those middle-levels treat the literal “lowers” who live below them and maintain the structure that they ALL rely on.

At the same time, the way that the “midders” treat the “lowers” and the way that the “uppers” defer maintenance and budgets for the nitty-gritty but absolutely and literally fundamental infrastructure reads entirely too much like the way that governments have always operated and probably will centuries from now as well – if there are any, that is.

In other words, the whole thing is headed straight for a ‘perfect storm’, and so are we because their now isn’t all that far in our future.

What lifts the story up and out of the mire is where the fantasy/mythic retelling elements come in – in ways that will remind readers of Rivers Solomon’s The Deep and Leslye Penelope’s Daughter of the Merciful Deep. Because the humans in the tower are not the only people who need to find a way out of the vicious cycle. All the denizens of the deep have to do is find a way to communicate and find common ground with the ‘towerzens’ who are still willing and able to listen.

It felt like there were two stories in Lost Ark Dreaming, two great tastes that in the end did go great together.  I got hooked by the SFnal setting, some readers will get caught up in the ‘hero-tale’ of the outsiders finding a way to get past the structures that keep their people isolated, while others will fall for the idea of the drowned and the lost finding a new form of life and all the myths and legends they have gathered up in that making.

That the whole thing is wrapped up in a tale of fighting the odds against a repressive dictatorship makes the whole story that much more compelling.

In the end, the conclusion of the story is one of immediate triumph and long-term hope – but it doesn’t have to work out that in the long run but it could all STILL be happening yet again. It’s left for the reader to decide. Which I am, still.

A- #BookReview: The Brides of High Hill by Nghi Vo

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A- Reviews> book reviews
A- #BookReview: The Brides of High Hill by Nghi VoThe Brides of High Hill (The Singing Hills Cycle, #5) by Nghi Vo
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, ebook, audiobook
Genres: fantasy
Series: Singing Hills Cycle #5
Pages: 128
Published by Tordotcom on May 7, 2024
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

The Hugo Award-Winning Series returns with its newest standalone entry: a gothic mystery involving a crumbling estate, a mysterious bride, and an extremely murderous teapot.
The Cleric Chih accompanies a beautiful young bride to her wedding to an aging lord at a crumbling estate situated at the crossroads of dead empires. But they’re forgetting things they ought to remember, and the lord’s mad young son wanders the grounds at night like a hanged ghost.
The Singing Hills Cycle has been shortlisted for the Lambda Literary Award, the Locus Award, the Ignyte Award, and has won the Hugo Award and the Crawford Award.

My Review:

When we first catch up with Cleric Chih as they are accompanying bride-to-be Pham Nhung and her family on their trip to make the final negotiations for Pham Nhung’s marriage to the older and much wealthier Lord Guo, the reader has the sense that they remember when Chih met Nhung at the gates of the Singing Hills Abbey back in the previous book, Mammoths at the Gates.

Just as Chih has been lulled into participating in this journey that seems so familiar, so are we.

Because the journey IS familiar, even if Chih can’t seem to recall precisely how they got there or, more importantly, why his friend and companion, the neixin Almost Brilliant, is not with them on this journey. Although, considering the events of Mammoths at the Gates, it’s not too difficult for the reader, or Chih, to understand why the situation back home might have been a bit too fraught for Almost Brilliant to leave.

But the story does seem familiar, only because it is. A young woman whose noble family is a bit down on their luck has been sold to a wealthy older man in order to restore the family’s status. She has no choice in the matter, her parents have little, and Lord Guo has it all.

However, when the Lord’s oldest son, mad and confused and drugged to his eyeballs, under heavy guard and seemingly out of his mind, interrupts the initial ceremonies it raises more than a few uncomfortable questions, which kickstarts Cleric Chih’s need to learn all the stories about the lavish old estate that Lord Guo reigns over with an iron hand – and the familiar story begins to unravel.

Spectacularly. Explosively. Into a story about revenge served, not ice cold, but in a gout of hot blood spraying out from under gnashing teeth and long, sharp claws.

Escape Rating A-: From the very first book in the Singing Hills Cycle, the marvelous The Empress of Salt and Fortune, Cleric Chih has moved from being outside the story, merely its chronicler, to being at the story’s center in Mammoths at the Gates.

This time around, Chih is as mesmerized as the reader by the story, as they are trapped within its web just as we ourselves are.

Which means that we have a sense at the beginning that Chih isn’t acting quite like themselves, and Chih has the same feeling. Also they desperately miss their friend Almost Brilliant, and so do we. We all collectively need the clear-sighted neixin to help us – and I’m including Chih in that ‘us’ – figure out what’s going on.

Of course, that’s why Almost Brilliant isn’t there. Or so it seems. Just as so many things in this story seem to be one thing but aren’t – quite.

So this is a story about illusions and lies. Nothing and no one is exactly who or what they are first presented to be. At first, it seems that what began as that rather traditional story of a girl being sold by her parents to a cruel older man is the story and we’re prepared to watch it be broken in some almost traditional way – either by Pham Nhung running away with Lord Guo’s son, who we know isn’t the madman his father’s frightened household says that he is – or with her death, whether by her own hand or Lord Guo’s.

In other words, we expect the illusion to break, but what we don’t expect, what Cleric Chih doesn’t expect, is the way that it breaks – and how thoroughly.

At the very beginning of The Brides of High Hill, Cleric Chih is remembering his late mentor, Cleric Thien, and an occasion where Thien told Chih that “Everything starts with a story,” and a very young and not yet cleric Chih asks, “But what does that mean?”

In the case of The Brides of High Hill, the story starts with a journey that looks like it might end in a romance but instead ends with something that looks like a bloody, twisted version of Cassandra Khaw’s Nothing But Blackened Teeth, and is all the more surprising for that twist in its – and our – tails at the end.

Leaving this reader with bated breath waiting for the next story in the Singing Hills Cycle, even though it has neither a title nor a projected date of publication, because this series is just that good – and I’m just that hooked on it.