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Yzabel / August 29, 2015

Review: Classic Human Anatomy in Motion

Classic Human Anatomy in Motion: The Artist’s Guide to the Dynamics of Figure Drawing by Valerie L. Winslow

My rating: [rating=5]

Blurb:

This highly illustrated reference book provides artists and art students with an understanding of human anatomy and different types of motion, inspiring more realistic and energetic figurative art.

Fine-art instruction books do not usually focus on anatomy as it relates to movement, despite its great artistic significance. Written by a long-time expert on drawing and painting human anatomy, Classic Human Anatomy in Motion offers artists everything they need to realistically draw the human figure as it is affected by movement. Written in a friendly style, the book is illustrated with hundreds of life drawing studies (both quick poses and long studies), along with charts and diagrams showing the various anatomical and structural components. This comprehensive manual features five distinct sections, each focusing on a different aspect of the human figure: bones and joint movement, muscle groups, surface form and soft tissue characteristics, structure, and movement. Each chapter builds an artistic understanding of how motion transforms the human figure and can create a sense of expressive vibrancy in one’s art.

Review:

[I received a copy of this book through NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.]

This book took me more than a month to finish, not because it was boring, though: because there’s so much to get out of it, and a couple of sittings just isn’t enough. Incidentally, it is definitely worth having a paper copy, as a PDF is not the most convenient format to use it to its full extent.

The author goes methodically through anatomical fundamentals, along with plenty of illustrations to show how bones, muscle and sinews “translate” into once put on paper. While this can be read from front cover to back, I think it’s not the best way to approach this book, and it will probably be much more interesting to start with a specific chapter, learn from it, and/or observe first the drawings and then read the anatomical “lessons” related to them. I had quite a lot of fun observing myself, trying to make a note on every detail (where a bone is apparent, etc.) and then compare with the written information (“so that’s why there’s this little justting parth ere: it’s [bone X]”).

Another interesting element is how some of the illustrations likens the body to objects (for instance, the condyles of the femur to a pair of casters): it provides another kind of reference, especially useful for people with a visual mind and who are more likely to learn from visual cues in general, as they can recall such references in order to draw those very parts later. Additional tidbits are provided, among which the reasons why this or that body part was named in such a way, something that in itself I always find good to know.

Last but not least, it one needs to understand processes to learn better, then this book goes exactly into that: if you understand how limbs are articulated, how muscles are tied to bones and then work together, how the vertebrae allow the spine to bend… then after a while, you can draw pretty much any position. And this, to me, is something I neglected for far to long, and wish I had realised sooner: to base one’s drawings on realistic information and then only find one’s style, instead of doing the contrary and learning from bases that aren’t necessarily strong enough.

In other words, I recommend this book to anyone who wants to learn seriously about how to draw the human body and be able to draw it later without using (many) models and references.

Yzabel / August 28, 2015

Review: Suspended in Dusk

Suspended In Dusk by Simon Dewar

My rating: [rating=4]

Blurb:

DUSK
A time between times.

A whore hides something monstrous and finds something special.
A homeless man discovers the razor blade inside the apple.
Unlikely love is found in the strangest of places.
Secrets and dreams are kept… forever.

Or was it all just a trick of the light?

Suspended in Dusk brings together 19 stories by some of the finest minds in Dark Fiction:

Ramsey Campbell, John Everson, Rayne Hall, Shane McKenzie, Angela Slatter, Alan Baxter, S.G Larner, Wendy Hammer, Sarah Read, Karen Runge, Toby Bennett, Benjamin Knox, Brett Rex Bruton, Icy Sedgwick, Tom Dullemond, Armand Rosamilia, Chris Limb, Anna Reith, J.C. Michael.

Introduction by Bram Stoker Award Winner and World Horror Convention Grand Master, Jack Ketchum.

Review:

[I received a copy of this book through NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.]

Not as horrific a I expected it to be, or maybe I’m just hard to scare, at least when it comes to what tends to spook a lot of people? This said, while none of the works here jumped at me as being absolutely striking, none was abysmal either, and it was still an interesting collection of stories—some closer to “traditional” horror (zombies, vampires…), and some mixing their scary revelations with elements appearing out of tales at first. Only at first.

The ones I liked best:

“Shadows of the Lonely Dead”, in which a hospice nurse can feel the impending death of her patients and take this darkness into herself, looking for a reason to this strange power of hers.

“Burning”: a store burns at night, but the people of the town do not seem eager to do anything about it, nor to worry too much about the people who live there. Not a traditional horror story, but one that plays on different horrors, unfortunately so close to our world that they’re made even more terrible.

“Ministry of Outrage”: a secret government body engineers situations to keep the masses in control. Made scarier by the fact it’s not even so far-fetched, in a conspiracy-theory kind of way.

“Digging Deep”: being buried alive is probably an atavistic terror for most of us. But being rescued may be even more terrible…

“Hope Is Here”: when a group taking care of homeless people also takes matters in hand, making sure that they have all the right candidates for their program.

“Negatives”: creepy abandoned theme park is creepy. Twins go to a derelict place to take pictures, and find out what’s on the other side of the mirror—and that dreams can so easily turn into nightmares.

“A Keeper of Secrets”: when a little girl meets a fae child in the attic, and starts whispering secrets to keep her new friend strong and alive.

“The Way of All Flesh”: this story about a man who comes into a small rural town has two elements that tend to fascinate me—small towns with not so innocent inhabitants, and a flesh-eating killer.

Other stories worth mentioning, even though they may not be the ones I’ll remember in the long term: “Fit Camp”, “Maid of Bones”, “At Dusk They Come”. Overall this anthology is a good pick, especially if you scare more easily than I do. 3.5 stars, rounded to 4.

Yzabel / August 27, 2015

Review: The Veil

The Veil by Chloe Neill

My rating: [rating=3]

Blurb:

Seven years ago, the Veil that separates humanity from what lies beyond was torn apart, and New Orleans was engulfed in a supernatural war. Now, those with paranormal powers have been confined in a walled community that humans call the District. Those who live there call it Devil’s Isle.

Claire Connolly is a good girl with a dangerous secret: she’s a Sensitive, a human endowed with magic that seeped through the Veil. Claire knows that revealing her skills would mean being confined to Devil’s Isle. Unfortunately, hiding her power has left her untrained and unfocused.

Liam Quinn knows from experience that magic makes monsters of the weak, and he has no time for a Sensitive with no control of her own strength. But when he sees Claire using her powers to save a human under attack—in full view of the French Quarter—Liam decides to bring her to Devil’s Isle and the teacher she needs, even though getting her out of his way isn’t the same as keeping her out of his head.

But when the Veil threatens to shatter completely, Claire and Liam must work together to stop it, or else New Orleans will burn…

Review:

[I received a copy of this book through NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.]

I’ve only read the beginning of Neill’s Chicagoland Vampires series, so I’m far from beginning an expert when it comes to her writing. Nevertheless, I definitely wanted to lay my hand on the beginning of this new series, as the premise clearly looked interesting.

And it is, both when it comes to what’s going on in New Orleans itself as to what’s happening behind, let’s say, other scenes as well. On the one side, the humans, trying to eke out a living in a city they don’t want to give up on and leave because, well, it’s *their* city, Veil or not. Containment as well as a couple of private contractors and other bounty hunters do their best to keep in check the resident Paranormals, stranded here after the Veil between their respective worlds closed during the war a few years ago. But are the “Paras”, as they’re nicknamed, so evil and threatening, or simply beings who mourn the loss of their own home?

I liked that things weren’t so black and white as they seemed at first. The Devil’s Isle is both a prison and a refuge, a temporary (or maybe not so much temporary) home, where angels, demons, fae and other creatures have to remain, cut from their magic and forbidden to use what’s left of it. As for Containment, it’s a very ambiguous organisation in its own rights: protecting humans, sure, but perhaps not doing as much as they could and should do regarding certain things. These things being notably the wraiths, humans sensitive to magic, whose powers were awakened by the ripping of the Veil, and who turn into mindless killing monsters after a while because of that very energy they were never supposed to touch in the first place. So once captured, they get locked up in Devil’s Isle… just as normal, still-human Sensitives are as well. And since they’re not allowed to do magic, they can’t expel what’s in them, and so they turn to wraiths, and… Not good, not good.

Pretty interesting for me, with the promise of hidden agendas, potential turncoats, unveiling of secrets, more knowledge about what’s going on behind the Veil, and so on.

However, what didn’t make this a better read for me were the characters: they’re merely “OK”, with a budding romance between Liam and Claire that felt somehow… typical of a lot of urban fantasy novels, without the added chemistry that would make it more palatable. These characters in general aren’t bad, just mostly sketched out rather than filled in, and as a result, I didn’t care that much about them. No special repartee and witty dialogue, no one particularly rising above the lot, so to speak.

The novel also felt more like an introduction than a real story, with a lot of it devoted to setting up the backdrop. It was good for world-building, but less good when it came to the plot itself, whose resolution came too fast after a few chapters I generally found less interesting.

I rate this book between “it’s OK” and “I like it”. I’d kind of like to know what happens next, yet more because of what briefly appeared behind the Veil, of what’s going to happen with Containment, than because of the characters themselves. 2.5 stars, rounded up to 3 for now.

Yzabel / August 18, 2015

Review: Aurora

Aurora by Kim Stanley Robinson

My rating: [rating=1]

Blurb:

Our voyage from Earth began generations ago.

Now, we approach our destination.

A new home.

Aurora.

Review:

[I received a copy of this book through NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.]

I haven’t read anything by Kim Stanley Robinson since 2003 or so, back when I read (and loved!) his Mars trilogy. So I was really excited and hopeful when it came to this one, and… unfortunately, it didn’t work for me. At all.

Excellent concepts, ideas and research. The generation ship. All the details its engineers didn’t foresee, and how the descendants of the original crew had to contend with those shortcomings. Genetic degeneration in spite of their efforts. Arriving to the “Promised Land”, only to find a paradise so hostile it basically kills all its denizens save for one. The choices the survivors had to make, the conflicts they bred. The conundrum—stay and potentially die, go back and potentially die just as well. The underlying despair. And, last but not least, Ship, the quantum computer turned AI, who for several chapters narrated this story as best as “she” could.

But. There are also quite a few buts in here.

I couldn’t find the excitement and—dare I say—magic that suffused the Mars trilogy. Not only due to the lengthy prose, which could easily have been shortened in place: also for the sheer lack of characters to get interested in. I couldn’t help but feel remote from their trials, perhaps because the narrative was rather detached from them: not an omniscient narrator, yet not “in their minds” either, so in the end, I felt unsatisfied on both accounts. The closest to caring I care was in the beginning, with Freya and Euan and what Aurora brought them; that quickly ended, though.

Moreover, the narrative was often bogged down by lengthy musings and descriptions that didn’t add much, and whose very length weakened the power they may have had otherwise. The discovery of Aurora by the first people to set foot on it; the AI caring for her passengers; the ship struggling to remain a home; the travellers trying to keep going an ecosystem that had never be meant to last for that long; then another discovery, the poetry of endless blue skies instead of the domes of biomes inside the ship… All of this could have been more impressive with some editing in places.

The explanations behind the expedition left me cold as well. With the risk of being cliché, the story would easily lead anyone to think that the shop left because of troubles on Earth, because it was one of the last hopes, because humanity needed to get out of here fast (especially when combined with Devi’s lamenting how badly the original engineers had cobbled all this up together). And I guess this would’ve been an interesting story to tell. Instead, what was left on Earth was… flat, also cliché, and not so interesting. Basically, “let’s do that because we can”.

Conclusion: a disappointing read, that I basically finished because I wanted to review it more than out of real interest for it.

Yzabel / August 15, 2015

Review: The Fold

The Fold by Peter Clines

My rating: [rating=3]

Blurb:

STEP INTO THE FOLD.
IT’S PERFECTLY SAFE.

The folks in Mike Erikson’s small New England town would say he’s just your average, everyday guy. And that’s exactly how Mike likes it. Sure, the life he’s chosen isn’t much of a challenge to someone with his unique gifts, but he’s content with his quiet and peaceful existence.

That is, until an old friend presents him with an irresistible mystery, one that Mike is uniquely qualified to solve: far out in the California desert, a team of DARPA scientists has invented a device they affectionately call the Albuquerque Door. Using a cryptic computer equation and magnetic fields to “fold” dimensions, it shrinks distances so that a traveler can travel hundreds of feet with a single step.

The invention promises to make mankind’s dreams of teleportation a reality. And, the scientists insist, traveling through the Door is completely safe.

Yet evidence is mounting that this miraculous machine isn’t quite what it seems—and that its creators are harboring a dangerous secret.

As his investigations draw him deeper into the puzzle, Mike begins to fear there’s only one answer that makes sense. And if he’s right, it may only be a matter of time before the project destroys…everything.

Review:

[I received a copy of this book through Edelweiss, in exchange for an honest review.]

Excellent idea and premise, although I wasn’t really convinced by the ending.

I liked the main character’s ability (eidetic memory): although convenient, alright, it’s also interesting. Mike’s take on it, on life the way he wanted to lead it, may have seemed silly at first, yet kind of made sense at the same time: somewhat resenting being “special”, because it set him apart, made people react to him differently, perhaps even more because he “wasn’t trying”… but also pushing him to want to know more about that odd and potentially twisted government project his old friend Reggie sends him on. Both a blessing and a curse, so to speak.

As for the project itself, “teleportation” in general is one of those ideas that have always fascinated me (and not only because long commutes are getting old fairly quickly). Space-folding is definitely a subset of this, with all the questions, the “hows” and the “what ifs…” it raises; the main theme behind the Albuquerque Door project grabbed my attention from the beginning, and I eagerly kept reading to see what would unfold (no pun intended), what the catch was, how the characters would react… I suppose Mike should’ve guessed sooner, perhaps? I don’t know. Everybody was behaving in shifty ways and sending mixed signals, which in retrospect was totally normal, so probably anyone, even a genius, would be confused at some point. These strange relationships between, on the one hand, scientists and engineers who all had their quirks, and Mike with his own quirks too on the other hand, were intriguing. Much like Reggie himself, as a reader, I could feel that something was wrong, yet without being able to put my finger on what exactly.

The Big Reveal didn’t disappoint: extremely logical yet unexpected enough, as there could have been several other explanations behind the science of the Door and what happened every time it was opened. This part of the novel had a Fringe-quality for me (the TV series, I mean), and was intriguing as well as horrifying, considering what it involved and implied for the characters. That was clearly a world-shattering revelation.

My main issue with this story was its last third, when the horror was given a face, so to speak. The ontological implications of the Door, the secret behind it, were more horrifying for me than what happened afterwards. By comparison, the “regulation system” (for want of a non-spoilerish term) seemed banal and a bit cliché. The way the characters chose to solve the issue was unfortunately a cliché as well, and I wasn’t really sold on the romance part either. (The latter was both really important, as it allowed to unveil the mystery, and enough on the side to keep me from rolling my eyes—too often, in many novels, characters are busy frolicking instead of attending more pressing matters such as saving the world.)

Conclusion: An interesting novel, with a fascinating theme that raises a lot of questions, prompting a lasting malaise in turn. However, the ending felt disappointing when pitched against the rest. 3.5 stars.

Yzabel / August 11, 2015

Review: The Suffering

The Suffering by Rin Chupeco

My rating: [rating=3]

Blurb:

The darkness will find you.

Seventeen-year-old Tark knows what it is to be powerless. But Okiku changed that. A restless spirit who ended life as a victim and started death as an avenger, she’s groomed Tark to destroy the wicked. But when darkness pulls them deep into Aokigahara, known as Japan’s suicide forest, Okiku’s justice becomes blurred, and Tark is the one who will pay the price…

Review:

[I received an ARC of this book through NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.]

Like the first novel in this series, I find this one hard to rate, as I liked quite a few things in it, while sighing at others. Probably my main issue with it was that it introduced plot lines, but didn’t really follow them. All the while, the main story *was* a grabbing read nonetheless.

This time, the whole narrative is in Tark’s voice, which probably was for the best: I liked the weird prose in the first book, but I’m still not too convinced by 1st-to-3rd person shifts in general, so I tend to prefer when a story sticks to one or the other. Bonus point here. (I’ve written this in more than one review: having one narrator in 1st person and the others in 3rd seems to be The Trend these past years… and I still don’t get why.)

Tark was also much less annoying here. Two years have gone by, he’s matured, he’s been taking things into his own hands, and while aware of his inherent darkness (since he helps Okiku hunting down paedophile killers and rapists), he also accepts it as part of how their relationship has evolved. Of course, everything isn’t perfect, they have their disagreements, and Tark’s starting to wonder where the line is to be drawn—is punishing killers enough, or does one have to start killing them before they actually start killing, as a preventive move?

The thing is, I would’ve liked to see this explored more in the story, as it was a great moral theme. It wasn’t, or not more than just for a couple of scenes. Too bad.

Instead, “The Suffering” goes in another direction. Not necessarily a bad one, just… different. It had its share of darkness and scary scenes as well, playing more on abilities Tark developed over the past two years, exorcising ghosts through dolls. Creepy dolls in America. Wedding dolls in Japan, as he and one of the miko from “The Girl From The Well” find themselves trapped in a nightmarish village where a ritual is waiting to be completed. It doesn’t help that Tark gets swallowed by this place while there are dozens of people around him, and nobody even notices. That kind of scene tends to both creep me and grab my attention (must be my old addiction for anything Silent Hill-like). And the village didn’t lack on the horror side, full of rotting houses, skeletons, old Japanese magic, tragic love stories gone wrong, and murdered girls intent on making trespassers suffer the way they did.

In that regard, this theme was an interesting echo and reflection on what Okiku herself used to be, after her death and her coming back as a vengeful spirit. In this second book, she was calmer, more composed, more attuned to Tark and to what had once made her human. On the one hand, it was good. On the other, she somewhat felt like a side character, in spite of Tark’s longing for her presence even after they had fought (also, this time the dynamics was changed, and he had to be strong as well, because the spirits they faced were of an element against which water—Okiku’s—was weakest). However, again, what could’ve been a thematic mirror wasn’t explored enough to my taste.

And that’s why I can’t bring myself to give 4 full stars her: while reading, I kept balancing between “this is great” and “I wish this had been developed more”. Add to this secondary characters that were nice to look at, but nothing more, especially Callie, who came along to Japan yet wasn’t really involved in anything except for the search & rescue party in the forest. Kendele was an addition I can’t really decide about: a good person, genuinely interested in Tark, yet also a plot device for him to realise what Okiku truly meant to him.

Overall, as a ghost story full of old rituals and beliefs, evil ghosts that all had their reasons to be like that, strange forest with a somber reputation, and traipsing along caves in search of the foul source of all that evil, “The Suffering” was a good read. Nevertheless, I think it missed the mark on a few but important elements.

3 to 3.5 stars.

Yzabel / August 9, 2015

Review: The Contrary Tale of the Butterfly Girl

The Contrary Tale of the Butterfly Girl: From the Peculiar Adventures of John Lovehart, Esq., Volume 2 by Ishbelle Bee

My rating: [rating=3]

Blurb:

A dark and twisted Victorian melodrama, like Alice in Wonderland goes to Hell, from the author of The Singular & Extraordinary Tale of Mirror & Goliath.

Two orphans, Pedrock and Boo Boo, are sent to live in the sinister village of Darkwound. There they meet and befriend the magical and dangerous Mr Loveheart and his neighbour, Professor Hummingbird, a recluse who collects rare butterflies. Little do they know that Professor Hummingbird has attracted the wrath of a demon named Mr Angelcakes.

One night, Mr Angelcakes visits Boo Boo and carves a butterfly onto her back. Boo Boo starts to metamorphose into a butterfly/human hybrid, and is kidnapped by Professor Hummingbird. When Mr Loveheart attempts to rescue her with the aid of Detective White and Constable Walnut, they too are turned into butterflies.

Caught between Professor Hummingbird and the demon Angelcakes, Loveheart finds himself entangled in a web much wider and darker than he could have imagined, and a plot that leads him right to the Prime Minister and even Queen Victoria herself…

Review:

[I received an ARC of this book through NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.]

Like the first novel in this series, I had trouble rating this one. Some aspects I really found delightful, while others left me cold.

I loved the “mad” characters’ narratives—Loveheart’s and Heap’s. The way they tell of the events from their point of view, their disjointed thoughts, the apparently random use of capital letters, how they go about killing or maiming while wishing for custard and pursuing so many different musings, all these quite nicely reflected the fact they were all but human. Heap made for a glorious villain, while Loveheart was his lovely psychopathic self. I couldn’t help cheering for him, even though he was basically just as much a monster as his nemesis. Only he didn’t kill on such a large scale. Or did he? With him, you can never tell.

I also liked seeing White and Walnut back in action. They made for a funny duo, from their fumbling steps with the cursed jewel that sent them to Wales, to how they always ended up in dire straits due to being somewhat silly. In other circumstances, I’d file them as Too Stupid To Live; however, the tone here being clearly humorous and tongue-in-cheek, it left room for that, and it was alright.

On the other hand, a lot of the other characters were either quickly dispatched or barely etched, and very little development happened in that regard (though Mrs Charm and her medieval horror novels were amusing—I’d definitely read those if they existed, I mean, come on, “The Cannibal Bishop of Edinburgh” is a winning title, isn’t it?). I would’ve wanted Boo Boo, more specifically, to be more fleshed, as she was an intriguing girl, considering how and where she was brought up.

The action felt disjointed in some parts, which was fitting when it came to Loveheart, but caused the story to be stuck at times on killing and severed heads flying in the room, but little else. The ending dragged a little, too, the very last chapter opening towards a third novel, yet the ones in between taking maybe just wee bit too long to close up the remaining characters’ storylines.

Overall, a somewhat over-the-top novel that manages to make light of dark situations, with a charming twist of language, even though its rhythm itself was uneven. 3.5 stars.

Yzabel / August 3, 2015

Review: Way Down Dark

Way Down Dark: Australia Book 1 by James Smythe

My rating: [rating=3]

Blurb:

There’s one truth on Australia.

You fight or you die.

Usually both.

Imagine a nightmare from which there is no escape.

Seventeen-year-old Chan’s ancestors left a dying Earth hundreds of years ago, in search of a new home. They never found one.

This is a hell where no one can hide.

The only life that Chan’s ever known is one of violence, of fighting. Of trying to survive.

This is a ship of death, of murderers and cults and gangs.

But there might be a way to escape. In order to find it, Chan must head way down into the darkness – a place of buried secrets, long-forgotten lies, and the abandoned bodies of the dead.

This is Australia.

Seventeen-year-old Chan, fiercely independent and self-sufficient, keeps her head down and lives quietly, careful not to draw attention to herself amidst the violence and disorder. Until the day she makes an extraordinary discovery – a way to return the Australia to Earth. But doing so would bring her to the attention of the fanatics and the murderers who control life aboard the ship, putting her and everyone she loves in terrible danger.

And a safe return to Earth is by no means certain.

Review:

[I received a copy through NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.]

Life on the Australia spaceship is hard: the Earth is gone, only handfuls of survivors were sent on such ships through space, in the hopes that someday they’d find a new place to live… but aren’t these travellers way too entrenched in destructive ways to even reach that someday? This is what I found deeply intriguing and nagging in this novel: a strong dichotomy between the goal, the Promised Earth, and how the ship’s people were getting to it. Telling myths and stories about their origins… yet living almost day to day only, as if not hoping in anything else anymore. Some of them taking care of their arboretum and their few other sources of goods… yet others bent on destroying, conquering, killing, razing down whatever they could, just because they could. Trying to survive by scrapping out metal and other bits of the ship. And all the while, those colonists remained trapped in their own microcosm, unable—or unwilling—to do more than that, their world torn between various gangs.

This is when you know that the society Chan’s living in is completly upside down, and that something has gone terribly wrong. And the twist, although there are several hints and it’s not so difficult to guess, pretty much fits.

Chan was a likeable enough protagonist: headstrong, wanting to help others, but not immune to bits of selfishness and cowardice, as she was trying to keep her promise to her mother (“don’t die”). Not a perfect girl, not a special girl, but one who knew from the beginning she wasn’t a special snowflake and that her only way of ensuring her survival was to bank on her mother’s reputation and make it her own, using tricks and carefulness. The choices she made could’ve been made by many, many people: can you decide who to save when you do have some power (fighting…), only it’s obvious you’ll just never have enough? However naive some of her choices seemed to be, Chan tried to do what she felt was right by her fellow dwellers on the ship. She had a nice balance of good and bad sides, bringing humanity into chaos and madness. She could easily have let herself become a Rex, but she really tried not to. And she didn’t spend most of the story swooning over some guy(s), which is always a nice change.

I liked the violent, brutal society depicted here, even though as far as world building goes, it was stretched rather thin. However, this was partly justified by how many decades, centuries had passed since the ship had left Earth: history decayed into gritty myth, and without much guidance, the minds of the people themselves started “decaying” as well. Though it may be seen as simplistic, it was also logical, all things considered, and was a good way of illustrating how narrow the world of the survivors had become.

On the other hand, the pacing of the story was a really problematic element for me. While it was necessary to illustrate how harsh life was on the Australia, the various events in Chan’s life became redundant: be careful, try to work, barter, climb the gantries, escape the Lows, hide, climb up and down, hide some more, fight, get wounded, hide again, fight and get wounded again… After a while, it felt like filling between the strong starting point (Riadne’s death) and the “big reveal”—and in a book that isn’t so long, it’s kind of annoying. This is why I’m not giving it a full 4 stars.

The end, too, brings closure to this first part of the trilogy (yay), but its cliffhanger was annoying nonetheless.

A pleasant read, one that kept me coming back to it, and that I liked overall. In the long run, I don’t know if it’s going to be that much more original than a lot of other dystopian YA stories out there. The ending seems to open towards something very different… or maybe not so? We’ll see, we’ll see.

3.5 stars.

Yzabel / July 30, 2015

Review: Time Salvager

Time Salvager by Wesley Chu

My rating: [rating=2]

Blurb:

In a future when Earth is a toxic, abandoned world and humanity has spread into the outer solar system to survive, the tightly controlled use of time travel holds the key maintaining a fragile existence among the other planets and their moons. James Griffin-Mars is a chronman–a convicted criminal recruited for his unique psychological makeup to undertake the most dangerous job there is: missions into Earth’s past to recover resources and treasure without altering the timeline. Most chronmen never reach old age, and James is reaching his breaking point.

On a final mission that is to secure his retirement, James meets an intriguing woman from a previous century, scientist Elise Kim, who is fated to die during the destruction of an oceanic rig. Against his training and his common sense, James brings her back to the future with him, saving her life, but turning them both into fugitives. Remaining free means losing themselves in the wild and poisonous wastes of Earth, and discovering what hope may yet remain for humanity’s home world.

Review:

[I received a copy through NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.]

There were quite a few good concepts in there. The psychological and physical side-effects of time travel, that basically placed a lot of people in ChronoCom not exactly on the right side of sanity. The use ChronoCom was put to, with the “salvages” quickly starting to look more like pillaging than anything else. The different phases humanity went through, from the exuberant utopian mindset of Nutris to the Technological Isolationists to the Big Brother-ish Publicae Age.
The novel also had room for character development: James and his growing sense of guilt, Elise’s adaptation to her new world, Smitt’s and Levin’s choices… And bonus points for Grace Priestly, the snarky old lady, badass in her own ways, who made me smile from the start.

Unfortunately, although interesting at first — it definitely grabbed me during the first 10-15% or so — the story quickly lost its momentum, and ended up feeling more like a series of events, sometimes even fillers, than like an actual plot. A lot of what looked like good ideas veered a little too much towards clichés (the villainish Corporations, the “nice savages”…), and I was baffled, too, that ChronoCom in general didn’t manage to track James more quickly: granted, he had tools and a stealthy ship, but I would’ve expected their means were more efficient than his, considering the help they had.

The characters in general didn’t exactly develop much past a certain point, or made strange choices. (Levin, I’m looking at you — OK, maybe not so strange, but terribly counter-productive, unless there’s a plan in the making for book 2 here?) The dialogues were sometimes repetitive and annoying, and the writing style tended to tell a lot more than it showed. This made a lot of scenes and character interactions rather dry, action scenes included.

One thing that I didn’t like and that deserves being mentioned: including small cliffhangers at the end of a chapter—and then starting the next chapter *after* the cliffhanger was resolved. Those events managed to look like small fillers *and* cop-outs at the same time, because the reader doesn’t get to see how exactly the characters managed to solve the crisis. That was… definitely annoying.

Conclusion: a fairly interesting initial idea, but in the end, I found the execution unfortunately lacking. 1.5 to 2 stars.

Yzabel / July 29, 2015

Review: Collected Fiction by Hannu Rajaniemi

Hannu Rajaniemi: Collected Fiction by Hannu Rajaniemi

My rating: [rating=5]

Blurb:

Inside the firewall the city is alive. Buildings breathe, cars attack, angels patrol, and hyper-intelligent pets rebel.

With unbridled invention and breakneck adventure, Hannu Rajaniemi is on the cutting-edge of science fiction. His post-apocalyptic, post-cyberpunk, and post-human tales are full of exhilarating energy and unpredictable optimism.

How will human nature react when the only limit to desire is creativity? When the distinction between humans and gods is as small as nanomachines—or as large as the universe? Whether the next big step in technology is 3D printing, genetic alteration, or unlimited space travel, Rajaniemi writes about what happens after.

Review:

[I received a copy through NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.]

A few months ago, I read Hannu Rajaniemi’s first two installments of “The Quantum Thief”: not so easy to follow novels, but unique in their own right, because of their fascinating blend of science and, dare I say, poetry.

These short stories are a little easier to follow, while retaining this quality, as well as first sentences that almost always manage to pique my interest, combining as they do totally different elements. Typical example: “Before the concert, we steal the master’s head.” We often hear or read that first sentences and first pages are important to grab a reader’s attention, and I think this author manages to do that very well here.

Most of those stories kept me enthralled, although not always for the same reasons. Some of them were clearly set in a distant enough future that men had become digital gods, or launched starships meant to drop servers into spaces just like one would plant seends, aiming to create a network spanning entire galaxies. Other stories felt closer to contemporary times, while toying with Finnish myths and legends (Tuoni…). Not to mention the inclusion of Edinburgh: I very often derive pleasure just from reading about a city I know well and/or live in.

Generally speaking, I would divide these stories into three (somewhat loose) categories:

– The exploring of technology, pushed back to its limits and beyond, and what it means to be a sentient being in such a world. I use the words “beings” here on purpose, since not all protagonists are human: “His Master’s Voice” features two extremely enhanced and intelligent pets, and is narrated by the dog itself. Brilliant.

The same applies to “The Server and the Dragon” (a lone server growing in space, questioning its own purpose), “Deux Ex Homine” (the story of one who briefly embraced a plague turning people into digital deities), “Elegy for a Young Elk”, or “Invisible Planets” (where the protagonist is, in fact, a ship).

“Skywalker of Earth” has its own charm, in between a contemporary alien invasion adventure and a pulp serial—considering the people who initiated the conflict in it, and when they did it (1930s pseudo-science). I also really liked the idea of going open source in order to pool all resources available and fight back.

Certainly closer to our own time period, “Topsight” deals with what’s left of people in the digital world after their death, while “The Jugaad Cathedral” explores the meaning of living in a digital world, most specifically a MMORPG, vs. embracing the “real” world, and blurs boundaries between both.

The one I didnt like so much was “Shibuya no Love”, because its portrayal of Japan and its inhabitants felt too close to caricature. It was probably on purpose, but it didn’t work for me.

– The mythical-tinged stories: “Fisher of Men” (includes Iku-Turso), “The Viper Blanket” (with its bizarre family following ancient rites), “The Oldest Game”…

– The others: “Paris, In Love”, “Ghost Dogs”, or “Satan’s Typist”. The first one was close to urban fantasy, in that the City in it really took on a life of its own. The other two are more the horror-infused type—the ghost dogs especially echoed Gaiman’s wolves in the wall for me.

Definitely a unique collection, one that I will recommend without fear of the science thrown in: maybe the concepts will be lost on some (I won’t pretend I understood absolutely everything either), but it doesn’t really matter. Context, feelings and ideas largely make up for it, allowing to mentally draw a bigger picture in every case.