science fiction Archives - Page 10 of 16

Yzabel / August 15, 2015

Review: The Fold

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 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.

Yzabel / July 15, 2015

Review: Dark Run

Dark Run by Mike Brooks

My rating: [rating=4]

Blurb:

The Keiko is a ship of smugglers, soldiers of fortune and adventurers, travelling Earth’s colony planets searching for the next job. And nobody talks about their past.

But when a face from Captain Ichabod Drift’s former life send them on a run to Old Earth, all the rules change.

Trust will be broken, and blood will be spilled.

Review:

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

This was a nicely-paced and fun read, in the vein of space cowboys/pirates/smugglers branch of sci-fi. More plot- and ambiance- than character-driven, but what I wanted to read when I requested this book was a romp in space with action, blazing guns, spaceships, fishy cargoes, crazy pilots and mercenaries… and this is exactly what I got.

The crew members of the Keiko find themselves embroiled into a mission for someone they don’t know. Only Captain Drift knows, and he didn’t accept so willingly, as the one who made the offer was obviously not a friend. While the motto on the ship is “nobody asks about your past”, some pasts are harder to forget and hide than others, and when everything turns to quagmire—because it always does, it always must, in such stories—and old secrets start surfacing back, everything gets tenser and tenser. What is more important, in the end: getting mad at the captain… or getting even when it comes to the mysterious employer?

While I wrote that this novel wasn’t exactly character-driven, it’s not completely true. I’d have to say that the characters are more of archetypal varieties that fit well into such stories. Think à la Firefly. The smooth-talking captain whose skill with words makes him an asset just as much as it causes him trouble. The stone-faced sniper/gunwoman who picked quite a few extra skills in her past. The mercenary going where the money is, but also wondering if it wouldn’t be time to retire. The pilot bailed out of jail and now earning her keep by flying the ship through maneuvers so hard nobody else would try them. The ex-gang member trying to keep his temper in check after it destroyed his life. And so on.

On the one hand, it made them somewhat flat, in that they had too much to do to fully reveal a lot about themselves. On the other hand, interspersed within the various plot points were still bits of information about who they were and/or had done. Even Jenna’s past, which is barely brushed upon, held a couple of hints. It may or may not be interesting, depending on what one would expect; however, for the kind of story I wanted to read when I picked the book, these characters still worked well. I also quite liked that they all reacted differently to Drift’s secret being exposed, yet still considered the biggest picture.

The setting itself was fun as well: again, archetypal, yet in a good way, with shady stations on asteroids, as well as more exotic planets pitched against Old Earth and its European and US “blocks” and air space crammed full of shuttles. Mostly the places the characters had to go to had a “feeling” of their own, with a gritty side for some, and a more noble one for others.

I admit I still would have wanted to know more about the characters, and to get to see a little further than the epilogue, as the gambit the crew took was really dangerous, and could have been exposed at any moment. In that regard, events were maybe just a bit too convenient for them, even though Jenna’s skills as a hacker did help a lot in planting information where it was needed to minimise the risks. This may very well warrant a second story of its own, where the crew would have to deal with the aftermath.

But, all in all, this book was a fun read, and this is what I’ll remember of it.

3.5 to 4 stars.

Yzabel / July 4, 2015

Review: City

City by Clifford D. Simak

My rating: [rating=3]

Blurb:

Intelligent canines in a far-future city preserve the legends and lore of their absent human masters.

Thousands of years have passed since humankind abandoned the city—first for the countryside, then for the stars, and ultimately for oblivion—leaving their most loyal animal companions alone on Earth. Granted the power of speech centuries earlier by the revered Bruce Webster, the intelligent, pacifist dogs are the last keepers of human history, raising their pups with bedtime stories, passed down through generations, of the lost “websters” who gave them so much but will never return. With the aid of Jenkins, an ageless service robot, the dogs live in a world of harmony and peace. But they now face serious threats from their own and other dimensions, perhaps the most dangerous of all being the reawakened remnants of a warlike race called “Man.”

In the Golden Age of Asimov and Heinlein, Clifford D. Simak’s writing blazed as brightly as anyone’s in the science fiction firmament. Winner of the International Fantasy Award, City is a magnificent literary metropolis filled with an astonishing array of interlinked stories and structures—at once dystopian, transcendent, compassionate, and visionary.

Review:

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

A hard one to rate, for sure. 3.5 stars?

On the one hand, it’s one of the classics of “old science fiction” I’ve always wanted to read—I only recently linked its English title to the French one. And, like many stories written several decades ago, it retains a quaint charm. Science that was prominent in minds at the time (atomic power…). Themes of a better world, of Man evolving into better beings, renouncing the old ways of killing, even of living in cities. Openings towards strange, new dimensions, even though reaching for those would involve a complete change of perception. But also sadness: the end of a world, of several worlds, humanity devolving into solitary creatures, then nothing, leaving Earth into the “hands” or dogs and robots. A sort of paradise, untainted by the concepts haunting human beings… yet here, too, a solitary one, for while the dogs developed their own society, they, too, were haunted by the idea of Man, kept alive by Jenkins, the faithful robot who served the Webster family.

On the other hand, I have to admit that a lot of those were painfully outdated for a 21st-century person. I’d probably have appreciated these stories more if I had read them when I was much younger—in other words, especially when it came to all those “atomic” thingies, back when I still had recollections (although heavily filtered through my child’s eyes) of Chernobyl, and a vague fear of the Cold War. I would’ve missed other themes, for sure, but maybe some of the “scientific” ones wouldn’t have struck me as so wobbly. Granted, this was unavoidable; a lot of SF classics would suffer the same fate. It did bother me to an extent, and that was really too bad.

The biological side of science here didn’t make much sense either: mutants; people turning themselves into creatures adapted to life on Jupiter; ants developing a kind of clockwork/steam power; dogs being given words and voice while still forced to rely on robots for want of hands (why would surgery on vocal chords translate into heavy genetic changes in just a few generations?). And generally speaking, the Earth described in “City” was just too big, too empty, to justify the maintainenance of robots as a whole (no factories were mentioned, for instance), with the passage of thousands of years emphasising the “how did they manage to last for so long?” question.

And yet, I cannot deny these stories, as well as the way they are linked, a certain power. Not in the writing itself, not in the obsolete or weird science, but in how they conveyed strong feelings. The despair of one man, whose fears doomed humanity to lose an important philosophical theory that could’ve changed the world forever. The end of a city, abandoned by people who preferred to live in the country, an echo of the suburbian dream. Men left behind and choosing to dive into endless sleep in the last surviving city, forever enclosed within countermeasures long forgotten, for there was no point to staying awake anymore and kill their boredom with hobbies become meaningless. Robots performing tasks even after their owners had died and gone. Dogs keeping a promise, passed down from a long-dead ancestor, a promise the meaning of which had been somewhat lost. Man, both the god-creator and a legend in which dogs only half believed.

It *is* definitely strange, for the human characters were not particularly striking. I guess the book managed to tell what it had to tell through other means, among which the dogs and Jenkins?

So I could not wrap my mind around the nonsensical science… but the feelings were here, and kept coming back at me, along with reflections on what it means to be human, on what humans could d/evolve into. And although this wasn’t my favourite read of the year, it will stay with me for some time no matter what, and I would still recommend it.

Yzabel / June 20, 2015

Review: Crashing Heaven

Crashing Heaven by Al Robertson

My rating: [rating=4]

Blurb:

A diamond-hard, visionary new SF thriller. Nailed-down cyberpunk ala William Gibson for the 21st century meets the vivid dark futures of Al Reynolds in this extraordinary debut novel.

With Earth abandoned, humanity resides on Station, an industrialised asteroid run by the sentient corporations of the Pantheon. Under their leadership a war has been raging against the Totality – ex-Pantheon AIs gone rogue.

With the war over, Jack Forster and his sidekick Hugo Fist, a virtual ventriloquist’s dummy tied to Jack’s mind and created to destroy the Totality, have returned home.

Labelled a traitor for surrendering to the Totality, all Jack wants is to clear his name but when he discovers two old friends have died under suspicious circumstances he also wants answers. Soon he and Fist are embroiled in a conspiracy that threatens not only their future but all of humanity’s. But with Fist’s software licence about to expire, taking Jack’s life with it, can they bring down the real traitors before their time runs out?

Review:

(I received a copy through NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.)

3.5/4 stars. This book is definitely of the bleak cyberpunk varity. People escaping their lives through augmented reality. Being able to bring the dead ones to life by using the memories they left imprinted into servers, which in turns makes them puppets, as the living can do a roll-back to specific moments of their former lives whenever they want. “Gods” that may or may not be AIs, revealing the inner despair of those who worship them, as they don’t seem to be anything else left to clutch to—and ironically contrasting (or not?) with the Totality, openly proclaimed AIs. The world the story’s set in is mainly a decadent solar system. Earth isn’t such a nice place anymore. Humans live on Station, and formerly on Mars and the moon, before the Soft War destroyed this, and the peace is fragile at best.

Jack Forster, the protagonist, an accountant unwillingly turned soldier, has spent years in prison after having surrendered to the Totality and being branded a traitor. When he’s finally set free, it’s only to face dire prospects: almost completely cut from the weave (augmented reality internet), thus unable to see the world as everybody else does; closely monitored by Internal Security as a parolee; haunted by the very case that prompted caused him to be sent to the front; and, last but not least, soon to be wiped off, personality-wise, by Hugo Fist, a combat-AI shaped as a puppet and installed within him.

Jack could just take it easy, live his last weeks quietly before his mind is obliterated by Fist’s, make peace with his loved ones (what’s left of them: his friends all turned their backs on him after his surrender). And yet, he keeps wanting to do something, to make things right, to reopen that old case and discover who had him and the other people involved disappear in various ways—even though this means being pitched against those who have so much more power than him. It’s somewhat useless, futile, but still heroic in its own way.

The writing was a bit rough on the edges at times, with bursts of short sentences that, even though they fit the pace, felt somewhat awkward. As we’re thrust into the world of Station, we have to piece things together, which wasn’t always easy (but to be honest, I prefer to have to do such “work” rather than be fed pages of info-dumping). There were some predictable turns of events, too, especially at the end. However, the action made them interesting, and mostly I managed to ignore what bothered me in terms of style, and to remain focused on the story.

I couldn’t help but see Hugo Fist as the puppet in that Buffy episode, “The Puppet Show”: creepy, aggressive, and foul-mouthed. He and his fellow combat-AIs were shaped as puppets in order to be more appealing to children, as their birth directly followed a terrorist attack on the moon, one that killed hundreds of kids… And this was just frightening and wrong, because Fist and the other puppets would likely have been terrifying for most children. There’s such a dicrepancy here, which is part of those twisted themes I enjoyed in the book: toys turned killing machines (the Totality’s minds *are* minds, not mere rotes unable to evolve or have ideas of their own), the lines getting blurred between what’s right and wrong, people lost in their worship to the point of ignoring their own dreams (Corazon) or clutching at the past (Lestak and Issie)…

I liked the relationship between Jack and Hugo, in any case. Fist kept nagging him about what he’d do once he’d inherit his body, urging him not to do anything dangerous in order not to damage it, and Jack managed to face this in quite a stoic way. It’s not even like Fist was threatening him: none of them had a say in it, in fact, as it was all a matter of lease and contract in a world ruled by corporate entities and automated such contracts.

The puppet also evolved throughout the story, as any properly-devised AI should, and was definitely more of the jerk with a heart of cold kind, rather than remaining a murderer of artificial minds (or worse). I couldn’t help but to smile at his gleeful antics, the “fun” he took in getting into the action after Jack decided to see things through, the way he went about manipulating data and breaking into servers, reflecting a change he wasn’t even aware of.

Conclusion: A bit rough in parts due to the style, and not always too easy to follow, but I thoroughly enjoyed the themes developed here, as well as the main characters.

Yzabel / June 17, 2015

Review: The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year, Volume Nine

The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year, Volume Nine by Jonathan Strahan

My rating: [rating=5]

(I received a copy through NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.)

4.5 stars. Usually, collections of short stories are hard for me to rate, as they always contain the good, the bad and the ugly, so to speak. This time, I can say this was a different experience. There’s no story in here I didn’t like at all: at worst, I was slightly indifferent, and only to a few of them. This anthology’s definitely worth the read (unless you don’t like horror stories being mixed with SF/F, which is a point of view I can understand).

My favourites:

* Moriabe’s Children: in which a parallel is drawn between deep-sea monsters and all-too-human monsters dwelling on the shore.

* Ten Rules for Being an Intergalactic Smuggler: Even though the world developed here isn’t particularly original, I found this story pretty entertaining and fun to read.

* Tough Times All Over: A romp in a city full of thieves, smugglers, mercenaries and various other shady types, all running after a mysterious parcel that keep eluding them and passing to yet the next person in the chain.

* Cold Wind: Predators and preys from long ago, in a modern city that has forgotten who they once were.

* Interstate Love Song (Murder Ballad No.8): Psychopaths on a road trip, and the way they perceive their journey and the people they meet. Not the easiest story to get into at first, due to its writing style, yet this style then contributed to keeping me me enthralled all the way.

* I Met a Man Who Wasn’t There: In which con-artists and magic collide, told from a somewhat jaded yet mischievous point of view.

* Grand Jeté (The Great Leap): A widower about to lose his daughter too decides to invest into forbidden technology to create what could amount to a golem. However, his own child isn’t dead yet… and accepting the one who’s going to “replace” her isn’t so easy.

* Shay Corsham Worsted: A retired secret services agent tries to prevent an old weapon from becoming a problem… but the secret’s been so well-kept that nobody seems to know what it was about anymore.

* Tawny Petticoats: Another story of con-artists in a fantasy world, where nothing goes as planned and everybody’s trying to outwit the other parties. Fairly enjoyable.

* The Fifth Dragon: A story of love, friendship, choices and loss, as the moon’s being colonised and gravity-related physical issues start getting in the way.

* Four Days of Christmas: Very short but to the point. The story of Santa toys, from their manufacturing to how they get rediscovered much later, their harshness-denouncing journey made creepier due to these being “jolly” toys.

* Covenant: A good twist on the theme of serial killers, repentance and irony of fate.

* Cimmeria: From the Journal of Imaginary Anthropology: A group of academics expand on the theme of “what if Cimmeria was real, and how it would have evolved in our contemporary world.” A story where imagination becomes real, giving birth to a whole nation completely escaping its creators.

* The Scrivener: This story meshes fairy tales with subverted themes of writing and literary criticism.

* Amicae Aeternum: A girl has to leave, and wishes to spend her last night with her best friend, saying goodbye to all the things she’ll never see or have again. Both very nostalgic and full of hope for the future.

In-between:

* The Long Haul from the Annals of Transportation, The Pacific Monthly, May 2009: Marriage dynamics in an alternate world where the Hindenburg disaster never happened, and where airship became a norm in contemporary times.

* The Insects of Love: Mysterious and hinting at memory/time slippage. I would’ve liked it to be a little clearer on this latter part, though.

* Shadow Flock: A heist story, enjoyable but a little wanting in terms of a conclusion.

* Mothers, Lock Up Your Daughters Because They Are Terrifying: Adopted teenagers girl gather and perform black magic in their quest for identity. The apparently ineffective spell gives them what they want… at first.

* Kheldyu: Action, stealthy infiltrators, interesting techological evolutions, and an “ecological” plot.

* Calligo Lane: Fascinating space-bending magic based on origami. However, the plot wasn’t really defined.

* The Truth About Owls: A tale about a young girl exiled from her country, having to adapt to a new life but also unable to fully embrace her own roots.

* Collateral: (Already read in Upgraded) In which an enhanced soldier has to face the consequences of her choices and training, and come to conclusions after sifting through what’s right and what’s wrong.

The ones I liked the least:

* The Vaporization Enthalpy of a Peculiar Pakistani Family: Interesting, especially for the theme it wields, but it wasn’t rooted enough in sci-fi or fantastical elements for me. (Not a bad story.)

* The Devil in America: The mix of slavery and ancient magic could’ve been interesting, but it was so disjointed that it made it hard to follow.

* Someday: I kept thinking “why not” when it came to this society’s depiction of mating and having children, but in the end I couldn’t decide what was actually the point.

Conclusion: A recommended read. A few of the stories lacked a properly defined plot and punchline, but this is something that was much more pronounced in other anthologies than this one.

NB. When I write “punchline”, I don’t mean “the most original one in the world”… just an ending. Leaving things too open-ended in short stories always seems weird to me.

Yzabel / June 14, 2015

Review: The Mirror

The Mirror by Marlys Millhiser

My rating: [rating=3]

Blurb:

The night before her wedding, Shay Garrett has no idea that a glimpse into her grandmother’s antique Chinese mirror will completely transform her seemingly ordinary life. But after a bizarre blackout, she wakes up to find herself in the same house—in the year 1900. Even stranger, she realizes she is now living in the body of her grandmother, Brandy McCabe, as a young woman. Meanwhile, Brandy, having looked into the same mirror, awakens in Shay’s body in the present day to discover herself pregnant. Did Shay die and get reincarnated as young Brandy, who is about to get married herself? The answer is far more complex and bizarre than either woman can imagine.

Shay’s mother, Rachael, weaves back and forth between the two time periods in this riveting story of three headstrong women grappling with identity, love, and family drama. From courageous, compassionate Shay, who suddenly finds herself fighting against the confines of a society decades away from women’s liberation, to Brandy, struggling to adapt to a more modern world, Millhiser’s strong characters are up to the task presented by this imaginative yet humorous adventure.

Review:

(I received a copy through NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.)

This reprint (manner of speaking) of a 1978 novel was definitely interesting to read, although I confess not having paid enough attention at first when it came to the original publishing date… and was confused in the beginning. But that’s not fault of the book’s, only mine.

The story weaves the lives of Shay and Brandy, the first being the latter’s granddaughter. A mysterious mirrors switches their minds in time, forcing Shay to live as Brandy in 1900, and Brandy as Shay in 1978. Of course, each of them has to face a world they don’t understand: Shay as a “proper” bride-to-be whose mind and manners are way too open for the people around her, and Brandy as a young woman in a society way too liberated, compared to what she used to know. As daily challenges pile one after the other, managing their families not being the least of them, both react and adapt differently.

I admit I was more interested in Shay’s role, narrated in parts 1 and 2. Brandy seemed more passive—in keeping with her education, probably, but it made her walk in Shay’s shadow almost all the time, so to speak. Compared to her granddaughter, she had more trouble adjusting. On the other hand, Shay had history to rely on, to help prove the people around her that she wasn’t just crazy and indeed knew of some future events. I wasn’t convinced the first time she admitted being another person in Brandy’s body, thinking “is she stupid? She’s going to get committed in no time!” However, it also made me wonder how would anyone react in such a situation. Trying to act the part can only take you so far, after all.

Other ideas are explored as well, especially the chicken-and-egg matter of not knowing if you have to simply reenact a past already “written” in order to end up existing, or if your very presence if this past is now threatening everything, and you don’t know what actions are going to make it work, or on the other hand destroy everything. Shay had to use the little knowledge she had of her family (her parents had her a little late in life, and she hadn’t known some of the characters she then encounters as Brandy) in order to piece everything together—and it wasn’t always easy, for instance when she realised the guy she had to marry wasn’t her grandfather, thus wondering what it’d lead to, and how/if history would right itself.

Another point raised here: Shay’s control over her family’s life. It made her appear as overbearing, always knowing what would happen, who the children would marry, etc., prompting them in turn to do things differently just to prove her wrong… yet history still righted itself at some point. It was hard to tell whether Shay was trying to control everything, or saying what she knew because, well, she knew it, and it escaped her lips from time to time. Keeping such a secret for so long sure must be hard.

It’s a bit too bad that Brandy’s part felt definitely weaker. From the way young Brandy was presented at first, in the accounts of the McCabes, she seemed more resourceful and rebellious (for a 1900 girl, that is); but the Brandy shown in the third part of the novel was too often silent, retreating into herself, and I couldn’t find here the person who was supposed to be curious. Although that was the culture shock speaking, I thought she could’ve made more of an effort, instead of waiting on Shay to solve the problem on her end. Her story was also more removed from that of her family’s, so while Shay’s part appeared as more involved, Brandy’s left less room to focus on the dynamics among the Garretts. Too bad, as the novel explores parents/children relationships as well as time travel.

Another thing I regretted not reading more about: the mirror itself. Part 3 of the novel introduces a theft, yet nothing was really resolved there. For the whole book, it’s presented as some kind of cursed artifact, and it would’ve been nice

I liked the depictions of daily life in 1900, as Shay tries to adapt. However, the writing itself was too often descriptive as well, telling more than showing what happened.

Overall, a good enough time travel story (that didn’t forget to play on the theme of paradox in its own way, a.k.a. the stroke and death), yet one that seemed to lose interest for itself towards the end (Brandy’s part). 3.5 stars.

Yzabel / May 18, 2015

Review: Modern Rituals

Modern Rituals by J.S. Leonard

My rating: [rating=2]

Blurb:

“A failed ritual annihilates modern life.”

Manhattan, NY: The E-Train slams into James Bixby, a strapping young artist on the rise, after a life-saving rescue attempt goes awry. Belfast, Ireland: A bullet severs Olivia Young’s spinal cord while she defends a doctor colleague–the second bullet pierces her heart.

Then they awaken–unharmed.

“Selected” and thrust into a deadly ritual, James’ and Olivia’s lives–along with the lives of five others–will decide humanity’s fate: surrender to the old Gods’ rule or live on in blissful ignorance. Follow their frantic struggle as Magnus–a secret organization of enormous reach and scientific prowess–directs the ritual to its gruesome end.

Dubbed as a Cabin in the Woods “remix,” Modern Rituals celebrates the movie’s ritual motif and compels readers with a rich universe propped upon science fiction and mythology. If you loved the fierce pace of Battle Royale and the fight to survive in Hunger Games, then Modern Rituals: The Wayward Three will quicken your heartbeat and leave your eyes red and bleary! Pick it up and strap in–once this story leaps off the page there’s no turning back.

Review:

I got a copy through NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.

This book is so difficult to rate: because I enjoyed the story, I really did (I have a fondness for tropes when they’re openly exploited as such). However, it’s also so terribly close to The Cabin in the Woods in its concept and execution, and without any acknowledgment of the movie (or, even further, of the other book that the movie supposedly plagiarised) that everything is a muddled cluster here. I’m not talking “it’s about a boy who goes to a school of wizardry, so it’s like Harry Potter” inspiration. I’m talking something even more blatant than this.

I liked the use of technology, computers and science to fulfill the needs of elder gods, assuage them and put them back to sleep. I liked how the people behind the rituals had to resort to archetypes/tropes: the Knight, the Succubus, the Virgin, the Fool, and so on. It cast the characters into specific moulds, forced them to play roles they wouldn’t have played otherwise. Besides, the blend of magic and technology is something that’s always fascinated me—perhaps because both seem to be the antithesis of each other, yet, in the words of A. C. Clarke, isn’t any sufficiently advanced technology indistinguishable from magic?

On the other hand, the tropes didn’t go far enough to my liking, in that in the end, mostly the characters did stay in those roles, and didn’t subvert them, when it would have been the perfect opportunity to do so.

I liked the twists, how the characters who were supposed to die got given a second chance, how the one who wasn’t supposed to join them actually did more than one would have thought, how the one who was supposed to die didn’t. However, there were a few but glaring holes in that, including how exactly the seven were transported into the school grounds, and the survival of… let’s say characters that shouldn’t have been able to fake their injuries or death. I mean, Olivia’s a nurse: nothing should escape her in that regard. If she pronounces someone dead, then that person is definitely dead, or at least so close to it that no recovery should be possible in such a short time.

I also wondered about the parts the characters were supposed to play, not only within the ritual itself, but in a meta way. I thought Olivia would be on par with James, as the female main protagonist, yet she was quickly overshadowed. A shame.

And… I still can’t overlook the similarities I pointed to at the beginning of my review. There are too many of them. I don’t know if I’ve missed something; I looked in the first and last pages of the novel to see if this was addressed at some point, and it just wasn’t (although one of the character clearly mentions the rituals having different settings throughout the world, “even a cabin in the woods”). I honestly don’t know what came first. Basically, I’m not even sure I should touch that with a ten-foot pole. You just… don’t do that. Is all.