science fiction Archives - Page 11 of 16

Yzabel / May 11, 2015

Review: The Deep Beneath

My rating: [rating=1]

Blurb:

H.A.L.F. 9 has taken his first breath of desert air and his first steps in the human world. Created to be a weapon, he proved too powerful for his makers and has lived a sedated life hidden from humans. But H.A.L.F. 9 has escaped the underground lab he called home, and the sedation has worn off. He has never been more alive. More powerful. Or more deadly.

Erika Holt longs to ride her motorcycle east until pavement meets shore. She bides her time until graduation when she’ll say adios to the trailer she shares with her alcoholic mother and memories of her dead father. But a typical night in the desert with friends thrusts Erika into a situation more dangerous than she ever imagined.

Circumstances push the two together, and each must make a fateful choice. Will Erika help H.A.L.F. 9 despite her “don’t get involved” rule? And will H.A.L.F. 9 let Erika live even though he was trained to kill?

The two may need to forget their rules and training if either is to survive the dangers of the deep beneath them.

Review:

(I got a copy of this book from the publisher through NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.)

I can’t say I liked this novel. Although the premise grabbed my attention, the story turned out to be too overdone to my liking. It partly had to do with the source of H.A.L.F. 9’s non-human side. It reminded me of what I’d call “Cold War era stories”: books, movies, comics tackling matters that were relevant a few decades ago (the way the Cold War provided an excellent building-ground for tense stories), but aren’t so much anymore. As a result, making them interesting rather than “it’s just another version of…” has become more difficult. Unfortunately, in my opinion, The Deep Beneath didn’t manage to get off the ground, whether in theme or in execution.

The characters remained too flat for me to warm up to them. I expected Erika to be more of a free mind—a proud, independant young woman riding her motorcycle through the desert—and not so obsessed with her love interest that she didn’t want to love because it would impede her freedom, but wait, she still keeps daydreaming about him and sniffing his scent. What could have been a good subplot, filled with questions about whether loving someone will set you back or allow you to soar, whether it will only shackle a person or not, got lost in the flow of teenage hormones. And when she opened her mouth, when she stood her ground, it was too often at the wrong moment, using the wrong words (at the 70% mark, I filed her as Too Stupid To Live).

Both Ian and Jack seemed to exist as background elements only, and never developed into actual characters with actual personalities. Sturgis had too much of a gloating villain edge, both cruel at times yet inexplicably powerless at others (in the way of the Villain Decay trope). Alecto’s budding thoughts and dilemma regarding H.A.L.F. 9’got lost somewhere along the road, when it could’ve been such an interesting thread to develop. As for H9, I guess he was alright, in the way he discovered the outside world and grew to care for the humans he had met, but here comes the third breaking part for me: the writing.

The writing was of the “tell, not show” varity, which quickly made the story feel as dry as the desert it was set in. I can definitely say that had H9’s growth been tackled in a different way, instead of that somewhat clinically detached tone, I would’ve appreciated it much more. Being detached made sense when it came to his stilted dialogue, since he had never been given the chance to communicate much with human beings; however, it wasn’t palatable when all his thoughts and actions were described that way.

Conclusion: a story that had potential to provide food for thought, yet didn’t in the end. 1.5 stars.

Yzabel / February 22, 2015

Review: Something Coming Through

Something Coming Through by Paul J. McAuley

My rating: [rating=4]

Summary:

The aliens are here. And they want to help. The extraordinary new project from one of the country’s most acclaimed and consistently brilliantly SF novelists of the last 30 years.

Something Coming Through and its sequel Into Everywhere will extend, explore and complete the near future shared by the popular and highly acclaimed short stories in the Jackaroo sequence, including ‘The Choice’, which won the 2012 Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award. They present new perspectives on one of the central ideas of science and science-fiction – are we alone in the universe? – through two separate narratives.

Something Coming Through is set in a recognisable but significantly different near future London: half-ruined by a nuclear explosion, flooding and climate change; altered by the arrival of aliens who call themselves the Jackaroo.

Into Everywhere moves from a desert world littered with the ruins and enigmatic artifacts of a dozen former clients of the Jackaroo, through a quest across a brutally pragmatic interstellar empire, to a world almost as old as the universe.

Review:

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

3.5 to 4 stars.

This novel, while predictable in parts (in a more traditional, “cop-oriented” way), raised some interesting points in terms of what to expect in a near-future, or a parallel present, shaped by the presence of aliens. Namely the mysterious Jackaroo, who showed up some thirteen years prior to the beginning of the story with shuttles and fifteen wormholes leading to just as many new worlds for humans to colonise. Worlds ertswhile inahbited by creatures long gone and forgotten, leaving only behind strange, “Elder Culture” artefacts. Meanwhile, Earth is falling prey to memes, ideas birthed into the mind of people who have been touched by ~~the Vorlons~~ some of those artefacts. And who knows how exactly the Jackaroo were responsible for this? Or their unscrutable associates, the !Cha, story-lovers who use plots to gather information used in turn to woo their mates?

Intersting, because the Jackaroo never revealed their true purpose, and because their gift was definitely a double-edged sword. Sure, it allowed humanity to recover from ongoing problems (crime, pollution), but others developed in turn, and the fifteen worlds turned into mirrors of Earth, with McDonald’s and Starbuck joints popping up on Mangala and, no doubt, other places. Crime developed there just as it did on Earth, and a lot of things and events made it clear that humans basically did to these colonies what they had done to their motherworld—perhaps worse, even, due to the fact they hadn’t had to “work hard” to get to these new places, served on a silver platter. The “benevolent” Jackaroo, in other words, might just be trying to repeat an experiment they did with other planets and will do again, some kind of sick experiment to see what the “lesser” races would do when gifted with space travel they didn’t have to develop themselves.

The name itself is also reminiscent of the Australian word “jackaroo” and its potential etmology: wandering people, watching over cattle. At least, this is how it felt to me, and what I believe the author wanted to achieve: making readers question the purpose behind the Jackaroo’s actions, all the while swathing them under layers of a thriller-and-chase plot mixed with a more typical seasoned-cop-and-rookie-partner murder investigation.

The more typical parts, as I wrote above, were a little predictable, especially Vic’s, whose background is fairly unoriginal in that kind of story. However, I liked how they entwined after a while, and how you have to pay attention to the dates at the beginning of each chapter. This type of narrative can be frustrating, as you keep jumping from Chloe to Vic to Chloe to Vic again, and are left on semi-cliffhangers most of the time… but it’s a style I love, and so I wasn’t disappointed.

On the downside, the characters weren’t that much developed. Vic is moulded on a fairly standard TV-show cop-type (divorced guy, been working for the force for years, somewhat jaded but still trying to make a difference…), Nevers and Harris are also somewhat predictable, and I would have liked to know more about Fahad and his family. Chloe’s background was definitely interesting, yet it also made her somewhat aloof and distanciated—something that stood to logics, considering what happened to her mother, only it made it harder to feel involved in her quest, as she was more carried by the plot than truly active at times. (In her defence, she wasn’t a dumb heroine, and was definitely aware of who was trying to manipulate her, and who intended to off her anyway once she wouldn’t be useful anymore.)

Nevertheless, barring the somewhat weak characterisation, I found the world described here—drop here by drop there, with some info-dumping, but never too much to my liking—intriguing, and I wouldn’t mind knowing more about it in a sequel (or in a prequel).

Yzabel / February 19, 2015

Review: Please Don’t Tell My Parents I Blew Up The Moon

Please Don’t Tell My Parents I Blew Up The Moon, by Richard Roberts

Genre: middle-grade, science-fiction, superhero action-adventure
Publisher: Curiosity Quills Press
Date of Publication: January 29, 2015
Cover Artist: Ricky Gunawan

About Please Don’t Tell My Parents I Blew Up The Moon:

Supervillains do not merely play hooky.
True, coming back to school after a month spent fighting – and defeating – adult superheroes is a bit of a comedown for the Inscrutable Machine. When offered the chance to skip school in the most dramatic way possible, Penelope Akk can’t resist. With the help of a giant spider and mysterious red goo, she builds a spaceship and flies to Jupiter.
Mutant goats.
Secret human colonies.
A war between three alien races with humanity as the prize.
Robot overlords and evil plots.
Penny and her friends find all this and more on Jupiter’s moons, but what they don’t find are any heroes to save the day. Fortunately, they have an angry eleven year old and a whole lot of mad science…

Find Please Don’t Tell My Parents I Blew Up The Moon Online:

Goodreads | Amazon US | Amazon UK

Review:

My rating: [rating=3]

I read the first installment of this series, Please Don’t Tell My Parents I’m A Supervillain, last year, and thought it was a pretty good novel. So, of course, I couldn’t pass up on the invitation to read the second one.

I found it weaker, though I still liked it. It contains a lot of good ideas and concepts, and it’s perfect if looking for a wild adventure in space, with alien technology and bio-weapons, lost space stations hidden on asteroids, and a steampunkish flavour to boot. Those parts were highly amusing, in terms of Weird Science, and Penny’s power developed in a way that clearly forced her to rethink a few things and decide whether she wanted to go (too) far or stop while it was still time. Archimedes, for instance, was both fascinating and creepy in its uses and in the possibilities it introduced.

Remmy’s character, too, was an interesting counterpoint to Penny: two girls with similar powers, with a basis for strong friendship, but also for jealousy and competition. I could se where Remmy came from, why she eacted the way she did, out of stubborness more thananything else, probably… but then, she’s also only eleven. I’d certainly like to see her appear again later in the series, if only for a chance to see how that relationship could develop if given more time and more distance.

On the other hand, the fast-paced plot sometimes left me dangling, as I wondered “wait, when did this character walk into the room?” or “why aren’t they paying more attention to the fct that [character X] has basically done a huge mistake?” It made me feel like the story carried the characters where they needed to be, but not always with a clear reason.

Two things I regret:

– The somewhat lackluster presence of Claire and Ray. Their antics are funny, and they make good sidekicks. However, at the end of the first novel, we had been given more to see about Ray, in particular, and I had hoped this arc, among others, would be explored. However, apart from playing sidekicks, those two didn’t really get much development.

– The very feeble involvement of Penny’s parents and other adults (although I laughed at the Audit’s interpretation of the situation, because… it did make sense, in a “I’m a parent who cannot imagine my daughter is evil, so I’ll unconsciously find another solution”). In the first book, I really liked the “please don’t tell my parents…” concept, and how the Inscrutable Machine had to go to various ends to hide their identity, make people think they weren’t Penelope, Claire and Ray. Here, since most of the story unfolds in space, the pressure of not being discovered was much less a problem (even though Penny’s realisation at the end—how to make a Hero appear—gives me good hopes for the next installment’s potential plot).

In general, it is still a pleasant story to read, though its predecessor will remain higher on my list.

About Richard Roberts:

Richard Roberts has fit into only one category in his entire life, and that is ‘writer’, but as a writer he’d throw himself out of his own books for being a cliche.
He’s had the classic wandering employment history – degree in entomology, worked in health care, been an administrator and labored for years in the front lines of fast food. He’s had the appropriate really weird jobs, like breeding tarantulas and translating English to English for Japanese television. He wears all black, all the time, is manic-depressive, and has a creepy laugh.
He’s also followed the classic writer’s path, the pink slips, the anthology submissions, the desperate scrounging to learn how an ever-changing system works. He’s been writing from childhood, and had the appropriate horrible relationships that damaged his self-confidence for years. Then out of nowhere Curiosity Quills Press demanded he give them his books, and here he is.
As for what he writes, Richard loves children and the gothic aesthetic. Most everything he writes will involve one or the other, and occasionally both. His fantasy is heavily influenced by folk tales, fairy tales, and mythology, and he likes to make the old new again. In particular, he loves to pull his readers into strange characters with strange lives, and his heroes are rarely heroic.

Find Richard Roberts Online:

Website | Facebook | Twitter | Goodreads

Yzabel / February 19, 2015

Review: Silverwood

Silverwood by Betsy Streeter

My rating: [rating=1]

Summary:

The Silverwoods are a clan with a messy history and an uncertain future, responsible to protect humanity from the shape-shifting Tromindox. Helen Silverwood, fourteen, is beginning to realize that she will never lead a normal life. There have been clues: Her mother’s unusual work habits, her father’s absence, her brother’s strange abilities with a pencil and paper, and her own recurring dreams and hacker tendencies. And, the family’s constant moves from place to place.

Things are about to get much more complicated, and it all leads to the remote town of Brokeneck, California. Can the Silverwoods keep from losing each other in space and time, while unraveling a dangerous mystery?

Review:

(I got a copy from NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.)

As of now, I am not sure yet whether I should give this book 1 star or 2. I can’t say that I didn’t like it at all, because several ideas and themes were definitely interesting, and made me want to know more. But… This is one of those “good ideas, but…” novels, too.

Mostly I was constantly annoyed with the feeling that I was reading a first draft, instead of an edited copy. (Of course, as an Advanced Reader Copy, it was still liable to change; however, I still think an ARC is meant to be as close as possible to a ready-to-be-published version, not to a draft.) Sometimes the story dragged in places, sometimes it went much too fast, leaving gaps in the narrative that were difficult to fill. In the end, too many elements still remained shrouded in mystery—and not the kind of mystery that is justified, since it stemmed, in my opinion, from aforementioned gaps. Keeping revelations for a second installment is nice, but not when it makes a jumble of the first.

As a result, I had a hard time caring for the characters and for their predicament, as well as for the antagonists. The former’s decisions often didn’t seem to make a lot of sense, and too many secondary characters didn’t have enough screen time for their role to be understandable (Chris, Rosie, Eleanor…). The latter’s motives were unclear, their moves too sudden to know where they came from (puzzling the heroes is good; puzzling the reader, not so much). Adding time travel, portals, a jail, a Council, alien-like creatures, and a strange little town whose importance wasn’t properly stressed… Well, let’s just say the mix was too confusing.

The third person present tense style was the second thing that alienated me, so to speak. It is a tricky style to deal with, and while it works in some stories, here it didn’t do anything for me, and made me cringe more than once.

This is really too bad, because I did want to like this story, and it did seem like the kind of time travel-filled plot I would normally enjoy…

Yzabel / February 11, 2015

Review: Unhappenings

Unhappenings by Edward Aubry

My rating: [rating=4]

Summary:

When Nigel Walden is fourteen, the UNHAPPENINGS begin. His first girlfriend disappears the day after their first kiss with no indication she ever existed. This retroactive change is the first of many only he seems to notice.

Several years later, when Nigel is visited by two people from his future, he hopes they can explain why the past keeps rewriting itself around him. But the enigmatic young guide shares very little, and the haggard, incoherent, elderly version of himself is even less reliable. His search for answers takes him fifty-two years forward in time, where he finds himself stranded and alone.

And then he meets Helen.

Brilliant, hilarious and beautiful, she captivates him. But Nigel’s relationships always unhappen, and if they get close it could be fatal for her. Worse, according to the young guide, just by entering Helen’s life, Nigel has already set into motion events that will have catastrophic consequences. In his efforts to reverse this, and to find a way to remain with Helen, he discovers the disturbing truth about the unhappenings, and the role he and his future self have played all along.

Equal parts time-travel adventure and tragic love story, Unhappenings is a tale of gravely bad choices, and Nigel’s struggle not to become what he sees in the preview of his worst self.

Review:

(I got a copy from the publisher, in exchange for an honest review.)

3.5 stars, rounded to 4. I quite enjoyed it overall.

This novel is a tale of choices gone wrong, of moments that could’ve been but had to be sacrificed, of events that still left a sad taste even though they weren’t that bad at first sight. It’s a tale of time travellers that are doomed to meet each other coming from different directions, one gradually gaining insight he wouldn’t have had if the other hadn’t allowed him to grasp them first, and conversely. It’s also a tale of love both doomed and stronger than everything. A rather odd mix, but one that I found intriguing and entertaining.

Time travel here isn’t exactly the main focus, although it’s the main means. Some of the motivators could be easily seen as self-centered and selfish—and it isn’t lost on the characters, who admit it themselves at one point or another. One of the interesting sides of the novel, apart from the science fiction aspect, is that it challenges human nature in several occasions, and you easily find yourself wondering: “What decision would -I- have made, in such circumstances? Can I really blame this character for wanting that?” The scientific concepts behind time travel are never really explored in depth, but somehow, it doesn’t really matter. At least, it didn’t matter that much to me, because more important than that were the people, the decisions they would make, and how they would manage to cheat the space-time continuum in order to get what they wanted—or had to do to prevent something really bad from happening.

(Granted, when I say that scientifically, time travel wasn’t explored a lot, it’s not exactly true. We don’t get explanations about how the modules work, but the reasoning behind the travels, behind echoes of people being left in the timeline, seemed believable and interesting.)

Another nice part of the book is how it appears as a puzzle, and as a reader, you have to piece things together. Something mentioned in the very first chapters will make full sense only 150 pages later, yet when it finally does, you realise you were right in paying attention.

On the downside, the explanation behind the unhappenings was perhaps a little too simple to my taste, in that I actually wanted to see more of, let’s say, what was causing them. Due to the first person point of view, that “adversary” was painted in more dark shades than light ones, and I’m left wondering if things were supposed to unfold the way they did, or if there wouldn’t have been yet another way, less dark. I also thought that a few things went too fast towards the end (a certain person breaking down, for instance, as this felt just… bizarre), and that the whole Project might have deserved being mentioned more than just in passing.

Nigel at times seemed somewhat callous—not an unexpected nor unforgiveable trait considering all the unhappenings; only a few events were brushed over (e.g. his feelings regarding his parents), and it was sometimes hard to decide whether he did things out of love and forced himself not to think of the impact on himself, or had just lost the ability to “feel”. I guess it’s not exactly a defect, as the context justifies it, but at some moments I appreciated it, and at others I didn’t. Same at the very end with Helen, whose decision was… I don’t know, both understandable and “why on Earth did we do all that for if it was for things to come to -this-?”

However, as said at the beginning of my review, I enjoyed the story nonetheless. It probably also deserves to be revisited to see if I haven’t missed anything between the lines.

Yzabel / January 30, 2015

Review: Mind The Gap

Mind the Gap by Tim Richards

My rating: [rating=2]

Summary:

Darius Ibrahim is not having a good week.

He’s been threatened by a knife-wielding maniac on a London train, interrogated by a mysterious warrior woman beneath the city’s streets, pursued by a military death squad in Melbourne, had his new girlfriend kidnapped and held hostage in Prague, and been captured and taken to another world.

And it’s barely been three days since his life started to fall to pieces.

On top of all this, he’s developed a bizarre ability that allows him to teleport in quite unusual circumstances – an ability that several deadly enemies will do anything to gain control of.

In a desperate struggle involving alternate worlds, Egyptian mythology, ancient prophecy, malevolent felines, underground railway stations and the power of dreams, can Darius long survive the arrival of his newfound power?

Review:

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

2.5 stars. It wasn’t bad, but it didn’t enthrall me as much as the blurb led me to expect. It contained its lot of good ideas (I’ve always had a fond spot for teleportation as a power, as well as for the Tube and underground trains, for some reason), while others felt muddled and confusing.

There’s a prophecy, and several parties competing around it to seize the “Chosen One” in the middle of all this; but after a while I started to realise I didn’t really know much about their motives, except for the most obvious ones, and it made for a plot that was at once complex yet underdeveloped. (One of the parties wanted to conquer, the other was striving for a certain being to come back to earth, the third and fourth one… I’m not exactly sure, in fact.) A few things were strange, too, such as the “bad guys” calling Darius “the boy”—he’s a grown man, not a teenager, so “the young man”, at the least, would have felt more justified. “Boy” just didn’t cut it for me.

The characters in general would have deserved to be fleshed out more. And though the relationship between Darius and Viv was somewhat amusing (in a good way), thanks to their interactions, it developed a bit too fast to justify the whole “will go to every length to find you again”. One event particularly put one character in extreme danger, as said character dove into a totally unknown situation with only a very basic plan, a.k.a “I’ll let them capture me and we’ll be together again”.

I liked seing Egyptian mythology included, and alternate worlds. However the world-building never went far enough for me, remaining on a stereotypical level, whether it was Mas-Ra, the lands controlled by the Horus Alliance, the place where the third party came from, or even our own Earth, as the characters move so fast from one location to the other. In a way, the story was long without being long enough. Very, very strange.

The ending happened too fast, with a lot of people/beings appearing, then vanishing, all piling on the rest. The epilogue also felt out of place somehow. It’s clearly here to introduce a second book, when this one seemed to be self-sufficient plot-wise.

Yzabel / January 25, 2015

Review: Zombies – More Recent Dead

Zombies: More Recent Dead by Paula Guran

My rating: [rating=4]

Summary:

The living dead are more alive than ever! Zombies have become more than an iconic monster for the twenty-first century: they are now a phenomenon constantly revealing as much about ourselves – and our fascination with death, resurrection, and survival – as our love for the supernatural or post-apocalyptic speculation. Our most imaginative literary minds have been devoured by these incredible creatures and produced exciting, insightful, and unflinching new works of zombie fiction. We’ve again dug up the best stories published in the last few years and compiled them into an anthology to feed your insatiable hunger…

Review:

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

Anthologies are always difficult for me to rate—so many different stories, so many authors, and you know you’re bound to find very good pieces, and some you don’t like at all. As far as collections go, this one about zombies was a fairly good one, all in all, that I would rate a 3.5 to 4 stars.

(Also, the time I spend reading a book is usually a good indicator of my interest in it, but in this case, it doesn’t apply. I was reading a couple of other zombie-themed books in the meantime, and I preferred to go slow, rather than eat too much of the same thing at once. pun totally intended, of course.)

My favourites:
– “Iphigenia in Aulis”: the story that spun “The Girl With All The Gifts”, so no surprise here. Reading this “first draft” was interesting, even though I liked the novel better (since it was more developed).
– “The Naturalist”: nasty and vicious undertones here.
– “What Maisie Knew”: a dark and twisted take on what use zombies can be. Somehow it also made me think of “Lolita”, probably because of the way the narrator views himself?
– “The Day the Music Died”: a manager trying to cover up that his money-making rock-star is actually dead. This one had a twisted, funny side that spoke to me. Don’t ask me why.
– “The Death and Life of Bob”: how zombies are not necessarily what you expect… and how dark and narrow-minded humans can be, too.
– “Jack and Jill”: parallels between the zombies and a child who’s sick with cancer and already a “living dead”, in that he knows he probably won’t stay in remission for long. (The fact that *I* actually enjoyed a story with cancer in it is mind-boggling, and speaks of how it managed to make me forget my own fears in that regard.)
– “The Gravedigger of Konstan Spring”: a remote little town where people don’t seem to stay dead for long. Disturbing, strange, quirky, and full of moments when I wondered to which extent the inhabitants would go to keep their gravedigger.
– “Chew”: disturbing not for its take on zombies, but for what actual human beings can do to other human beings.
– “What We Once Feared”: another story bent on revealing how bleak human nature can be, and how dire situations can reveal the worst in people.
– “Aftermath”: the title says it all. How people manage and how life gets back on track slowly after the cure to the zombie-virus has been found. Disturbing aspects about what killing those “zombies” actually meant.
– “Love, Resurrected”: a dark fantasy tale of sorcery, necromancy, and of a woman who has to keep battling even after the flesh has left her bones.
– “Present”: sad and touching in a terrible way.
– “Bit Rot”: when a zombie story collides with science-fiction of the space-travelling kind. The reason behind the “bit rot” was a nice change for me.

OK stories:
– “The Afflicted”: I liked the idea behind it (the elderly ones only falling ill… alas, everybody’s doom to grow old), but it deflated a bit after a while.
– “Becca at the End of the World”: the last hour of a teenager. However, it was a little too short to be as powerful as it could be IMHO.
– “Delice”: not one I’ll remember for long, but nice to read
– “Trail of Dead”: good concept, but I’m not too sure of the apprentice’s part in that (it seemed unfocused).
– “Stemming the Tide”: a little weird, though also poetic in its own way.
– “Those Beneath the Bog”: the curse on a lake, and how old folk tales shouldn’t be discarded. Perhaps a wee bit too long, though.
– “What Still Abides”: very, very weird, in that it tries to emulate Old English grammar. I can’t make up my mind about it, but overall, it still felt strange in a sort of good way for me.
– “In The Dreamtime of Lady Resurrection”: beautiful and dreamy. Not exactly a zombie story, though.
– “‘Til Death Do Us Part”: not exactly original, still enjoyable. A wife comes back from the grave, and her family tries to keep her with them.
– “The Harrowers”: the narrator’s name kind of tiped me about the ending, however it remained interesting.
– “Resurgam”: a good idea that unfortunately ended up in two storylines not meshing up together well. I still liked the Victorian narrative, though.
– “A Shepherd of the Valley”: a bit predictable.
– “The Hunt: Before and The Aftermath”: I wasn’t sure at first where this one was going, but it had interesting insights into revenge in general.

The ones I didn’t like:
– “Dead Song”: I didn’t care for the actor-narrating-story approach. Another one might have worked better, because there was a good idea behind it.
– “Pollution”: I like Japanese culture, but the tropes were too heavy-handed here.
– “Kitty’s Zombie New Year”: forgettable, I didn’t really see the point to this story.
– “Selected Sources for the Babylonian Plague of the Dead”: the narrative style didn’t do it for me at all here. Which is really too bad, because the different setting made for quite interesting grounds.
– “Rocket Man”: I don’t know if it was meant to be comical or not. It didn’t leave much of an impression (but then, I’m not too interested in base-ball for starters, which doesn’t help).
– “I Waltzed with a Zombie”: I couldn’t push myself to get interested in it, I don’t know why. I neither adore nor terribly dislike Hollywood B-movie settings in general, so maybe it was the narrative that didn’t grab me.

Note: A couple of stories are actually in poetic form, which makes them harder to rate (yes, including Neil Gaiman’s one).

Yzabel / December 16, 2014

Review: Soulminder

Soulminder by Timothy Zahn

My rating: [rating=3]

Summary:

For Dr. Adrian Sommers, a split second of driving while distracted leads to tragedy—and obsession. His family destroyed, he devotes his entire being to developing Soulminder, a technology that might have saved his son as he wavered on the edge of death. Sommers’s vision is to capture a dying person’s life essence and hold it safely in stasis while physicians heal the body from injury or disease. Years of experimentation finally end in success—but those who recognize Soulminder’s possibilities almost immediately corrupt its original concept to pursue dangerous new frontiers: body-swapping, obstruction of justice, extortion, and perhaps even immortality.

Review:

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

3.5 stars.

Mostly I liked the dilemmas that the Soulminder invention itself presented: a tool born from a dream, from a ruined family, in the hopes of helping other people, but whose use quickly gets perverted for recreational or even oppressive means. The aime behind the Soulminder project was almost too innocent, so much that I could only see it getting twisted at some point or other.

The novel explores some of those aspects (there would be more) through a series of “chapters” that read more like connected short stories. Soulminder and its creators, especially Sommer, remain a connecting thread, but they’re not necessarily the main protagonists. This structure was surprising at first, but I quickly got used to it, as it allowed me to see the whole project through different sets of eyes: its scientists’, its doctors’, its patients’, those of people trying to abuse it, too…

The downside was that a lot of characters felt flat, not developed enough. Perhaps understandable for minor characters who did not appear a lot; less forgiveable when it was Sommer and Sands themselves, as red threads, who did not manage to make me more invested. At times, their duo may have read too much like a convenient device, one unknowingly opening doors to abuse so that the other could point out what could go wrong (and was proved invariably right). On the other hand, I took quite a liking to Frank Everly, whose take on security matters and efficient, though jaded views made more vivid in my opinion.

Soulminder is also one of those weird kinds of books that you quickly get tired of, in that you don’t feel like reading more than a few pages at once… and then you find yourself getting back to it half an hour later, wanting to read more no matter what. I have no idea what this is called, or if it even has a name, but it’s how it felt for me.

This said, I still enjoyed it as a whole.

Yzabel / November 21, 2014

Review: The Blood Cell

Doctor Who: The Blood Cell by James Goss

My rating: [rating=3]

Summary:

“Release the Doctor – or the killing will start.”

An asteroid in the furthest reaches of space – the most secure prison for the most dangerous of criminals. The Governor is responsible for the worst fraudsters and the cruellest murderers. So he’s certainly not impressed by the arrival of the man they’re calling the most dangerous criminal in the quadrant. Or, as he prefers to be known, the Doctor.

What does impress the Governor is the way the new prisoner immediately sets about trying to escape. And keeps trying. Finally, he sends for the Doctor and asks him why? But the answer surprises even the Governor. And then there’s the threat – unless the Governor listens to the Doctor, a lot of people will die.

Who is the Doctor and what’s he really doing here? Why does he want to help the Governor? And who is the young woman who comes every day to visit him, only to be turned away by the guards?

When the killing finally starts, the Governor begins to get his answers…

Review:

(I got a copy courtesy of NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.)

Third 12th Doctor novel I read, and this one was quite surprising, in a way I hadn’t expected.

It’s narrated from the point of view of a secondary character, and not in the usual third person POV I’ve seen used in the other DW novels I read (granted, they don’t amount to a lot, as previously mentioned). It was a bit disconcerting, and for some time I questioned that choice; however, after a while, I decided it wasn’t so bad. On the one hand, the Doctor and Clara aren’t so much the focus which can be seen as a problem. On the other hand, it allowed for a Doctor as seen by other people around him: how they perceived him, how he might come off to those who had no idea who he was, what kind of lasting impression he may leave on them. Because no matter what, the Doctor comes and go, and once he’s gone, well, what’s left behind? How is he going to be remembered?

Somehow, this novel provided the beginning of an insight into that, in a different way from what the new series has made me used to. It’s not distinctly Whovian, which isn’t exactly great, but somehow, it still kept me interested. I also liked Clara better here than I usually do, with her happy petitioning and picketing and her own antics (the cake, her pupils…).

The plot itself was OK: not the best I’ve seen, but not the worst either. It had more of a political bend, something I don’t see that often in DW, so here, too, the change can be seen as refreshing, or as annoying. It’ll all depend on the reader.

Conclusion: a novel I quite liked, though I could reproach it not to be “Whovian” enough.

Yzabel / November 12, 2014

Review: The Body Electric

The Body Electric by Beth Revis

My rating: [rating=3]

Summary:

The future world is at peace.

Ella Shepherd has dedicated her life to using her unique gift–the ability to enter people’s dreams and memories using technology developed by her mother–to help others relive their happy memories.

But not all is at it seems.

Ella starts seeing impossible things–images of her dead father, warnings of who she cannot trust. Her government recruits her to spy on a rebel group, using her ability to experience–and influence–the memories of traitors. But the leader of the rebels claims they used to be in love–even though Ella’s never met him before in her life. Which can only mean one thing…

Someone’s altered her memory.

Ella’s gift is enough to overthrow a corrupt government or crush a growing rebel group. She is the key to stopping a war she didn’t even know was happening. But if someone else has been inside Ella’s head, she cannot trust her own memories, thoughts, or feelings.

So who can she trust?

Review:

(I got a copy of this book through NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.)

I had planned on reading Across the Universe ages ago, yet never got to it. Instead, I got to this one—which, from what I understand, very loosely alludes to the former. I can confirm, in any case, that not having read Beth Revis’s trilogy won’t be a problem here: the present novel is a standalone, and previous knowledge isn’t mandatory to follow its plot. Although I guess that, like me, you’ll miss a few Easter Eggs.

The story follows Ella, a girl from Malta, who struggles daily to come to terms with how sick her mother is, struck with a degenerative disease for which there is no cure. The only “cure” so far has been developed by Ella’s father; unfortunately, his death put a stop to any improvement in that regard. As a way of relieving some of her pain, Ella’s mother (a scientist as well) has created the Reverie, a system that allows people to relive their best, happiest memories in a dream-like state. But what’s been used so far as a recreational machine only has the potential to be so much more, especially after Ella realises she can link to a “dreamer”, and enter his/her Reverie to spy on and/or manipulate it.

We’re given to see the world through Ella’s prism, which is at times a narrow one, focused, as mentioned above, on what’s left of her family, and also her best friend Akilah (when they manage to communicate with each other, because the other girl is currently serving in the army). Information and world-building are thus done little by little; it’s a method I tend to prefer to large info-dumps, so depending on a reader’s preferences here, it may be a very good thing, or a problem. What I can say: I didn’t feel it difficult to get the bigger idea, even though there were moments I would have want to learn just a little more about the rest of the world, most specificically the “secessionist”, possibly “terrorism-infested” countries. This aspect made the novel feel like your average YA dystopia, but somewhat seemed both exploited and left on the side of the road at the same time.

I found Ella’s quest in general interesting, raising many questions regarding who you can trust, how can you be sure you can trust them, who is who, whether conscience resides in the brain or in the body or is yet something even more impossible to grasp. There were a few nice twists in the book about that. I just regretted the scientific aspect behind those, behind the technologies developed, wasn’t given more of an explanation—I’m not particularly a hardcore fan of hard-science SF, but I like having a little more meat on the bones, so to speak.

Another good thing about Ella: she wasn’t the average girl-falls-for-boy YA heroine. When an unknown, handsome but somehow dangerous-looking guy grasps her wrist to “warn” her about something, she doesn’t fall for his looks, she doesn’t immediately trust him: no, she punches him, which is a reaction far healthier than a lot of crap I’ve read in novels with similar characters. She looks for him for answers, but she does so knowing she may have to betray him afterwards; she’s ready to use him, not because she’s deeply manipulative, but because she’s wary, and aware that if she doesn’t do it, she might fall into a trap. After all, she doesn’t know him, while he keeps claiming the contrary: isn’t that fishy? Those reactions don’t necessarily make for a very likeable character at first, but they seemed to me definitely more believable than girl-falls-in-love-in-five-minutes. (Also there are tinges of insta-love, but they make sense… only explaining why would mean revealing too much.)

About the writing: the author delivers compelling chapters, and avoids the typical pit traps of weird metaphors (I’ve seen my share of those in YA lately…) and purple prose. This works pretty well in a no-nonsense way, and fits with the science fiction aspect.

The last chapters play a little too much on convenient happenings, which spoilt a little my enjoyment of the book. But overall, while not exceptional, I liked it. I’d deem it a 3.5*.