Genre: dystopian

Guest Review: H2O by Irving Belateche

Posted on by Amy Daltry | Author : | B+ Reviews> book reviews> Guest Review
Guest Review: H2O by Irving BelatecheH2O by Irving Belateche
Format: ebook
Source: purchased from Amazon
Formats available: paperback, ebook
Genres: dystopian, post apocalyptic, science fiction, thriller
Pages: 198
Published by Laurel Canyon Press on November 8, 2012
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Amazon, Bookshop.org
Goodreads

Roy Walker is curious. But in a world where knowledge has disappeared, curiosity will get you killed.

Generations ago, the Passim Virus wiped out most of humanity. The survivors banded together to form the Territory and, now, decades later, no one questions why knowledge has disappeared. Why should they? They're lucky to be alive.

But Roy doesn't feel so lucky. He's haunted by the murder of his father and he's ostracized by everyone in town. He asks way too many questions, especially about the water pumped out by the town's desalination plant.

Then Roy finds a tantalizing clue that leads him down the coast of what used to be the state of Oregon. He's stunned at what he discovers. Everything in the Territory is a lie and everything around him is a front. But to uncover the dark secret behind this front, Roy must venture deeper into the wilderness where marauders and the deadly Passim Virus wait to kill.

It's there, outside the Territory, where he discovers the truth about his father's murder and where he meets his unexpected destiny -- To free humanity from the bondage of a powerful enemy.

Guest review by Amy:

Curiosity killed the cat, the old saying goes, though Roy Walker probably never has known that, since quite a lot of the vast body of human knowledge has been lost. Once the Passim Virus wiped out vast swaths of humanity, the survivors didn’t have time to… wait.

They didn’t have time to keep up a lot of the tools and technology that actually would have made surviving easier? Something doesn’t add up here.

Escape Rating: B+: I’m normally excited about post-apocalyptic adventure/thrillers; to me, it’s interesting to see how the author constructs their world. Does it look kind of like ours? What technologies develop in the ad hoc world after whatever-it-was-that-happened? What technology and culture falls by the wayside? Action, adventure, romance, all those things being in there are all a big plus to the central theme of “modern” humans trying to survive.

Author Irving Belateche has given us a slice of our own world, on the US West Coast, and quite a lot of it looks familiar. Houses, people, vehicles, even the desalination plant that our protagonist maintains, all look more-or-less normal. There are just lots of empty houses, and no one knows, really, what’s outside “the Territory,” and everyone’s scared to find out, because of the Virus.

To me, right from that point, this story has a problem for me. Humankind likes to connect, to explore, to get out there in the wild blue yonder and find things out. It’s what we do, and it’s made us the apex life form on this planet over the last several thousand years, and even gotten us into space.

To see a huge area of the United States cut itself off and be content with that strikes me as odd, right out of the gate. And a question in my mind from the get-go was “what happened to the libraries?” There are quite a few great big ‘uns along the Washington-Oregon-California coast; surely someone would have thought to go look for a computer repair manual in one of them? Or a copy of Programming Perl? Instead, we’re led to believe that writing software and maintaining computers are some magical voodoo that few can do–and, indeed, people are punished for doing so. As a software developer on my day job, and having worked with developers for thirty years, I’m just not buying this. Life, and software, always finds a way, to borrow loosely from Jurassic Park, but Belateche somehow wants us to believe that that’s not the case. Humanity’s vast banks of knowledge – libraries – are thoroughly ignored, not even mentioned once in the book.

I’ll let that go, for a moment, and suspend the big disbelief that threw me off-kilter here. The story itself has a lot of interesting points. There’s the worry about catching the Virus, the traveling without the “Fibs” (law enforcement) finding them, even a whiff of what could have eventually turned into some kind of love interest. Roy Walker is curious where all the water goes, naturally, since he maintains the water plant, and he knows it makes more than his local community could be using. That drives him to do something he shouldn’t (“finally! Someone acting like a real human,” Amy says to herself) and he goes to find out where all the water is going. At first, he thinks it’s corruption or some other criminal activity, but of course we’re given a deeper reason, and that is, in fact, why the Virus happened in the first place. There’s a decent adventure story under the hood here, and once Roy figures out what’s really going on, a straightforward redeem-humanity plot emerges from the earlier confusion. Our accidental hero is quite heroic, our villain suitably nasty, and the final confrontation satisfying.

Other people have liked this book a lot more than I did, from the reviews. My problem, as I noted above, is that it required a little more suspension of disbelief a little more than I was willing to give it. If that doesn’t present a problem for you, and you like post-apocalyptic stories, this one might be one you’d enjoy. It wasn’t my favorite, but it wasn’t a stinker, either.

Review: If This Goes On edited by Cat Rambo

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | B+ Reviews> book reviews
Review: If This Goes On edited by Cat RamboIf This Goes On by Cat Rambo, E. Lily Yu, Aimee Ogden, Rachel Chimits, Cyd Athens, Scott Edelman, Jack Lothian, Gregory Jeffers, Conor Powers-Smith, Priya Sridhar, Andy Duncan, Lynette Mejía, Hal Y. Zhang, Nick Mamatas, Steven Barnes, Kitty-Lydia Dye, Tiffany E. Wilson, Nisi Shawl, Kathy Schilbach, Zandra Renwick, Chris Kluwe, Sarah Pinsker, Calie Voorhis, Marie Vibbert, James Wood, Jamie Lackey, Paul Crenshaw, Langley Hyde, Judy Helfrich, Beth Dawkins, Sylvia Spruck Wrigley
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: paperback, ebook
Genres: anthologies, dystopian, post apocalyptic, science fiction, short stories
Pages: 304
Published by Parvus Press LLC on March 5, 2019
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Kobo, Bookshop.org
Goodreads

A bold new anthology born of rage and sorrow and hope. 30 writers look at what today's politics and policies will do to shape our world a generation from now. Some of today's most visionary writers of science fiction project us forward to the world of the future; a world shaped by nationalism, isolationism, and a growing divide between the haves and have nots. This anthology sits at the intersection of politics, speculative fiction, and American identity. The choices we make today, the policies of our governments and the values that we, as people, embrace are going to shape our world for decades to come. Or break it. Edited by Cat Rambo, the current President of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, the stories of If This Goes On invite you to worlds very like this one-- but just a little different.

Table of contents:Green Glass: A Love Story by E. Lily YuTwelve Histories Scrawled in the Sky by Aimee OgdenDead Wings by Rachel ChimitsWelcome to Gray by Cyd AthensThe Stranded Time Traveler Embraces the Inevitable by Scott EdelmanGood Pupils by Jack LothianAll the Good Dogs Have Been Eaten by Gregory JeffersThe Sinking Tide by Conor Powers-SmithMustard Seeds and the Elephant’s Foot by Priya SridharMr. Percy’s Shortcut by Andy DuncanA Gardener’s Guide to the Apocalypse by Lynette MejíaBut for Grace by Hal Y. ZhangHurrah! Another Year, Surely This One Will Be Better Than The Last; The Inexorable March of Progress Will Lead Us All to Happiness by Nick MamatasThe Last Adventure of Jack Laff: The Dayveil Gambit by Steven BarnesThree Data Units by Kitty-Lydia DyeOne Shot by Tiffany E. WilsonKing Harvest (Will Surely Come) by Nisi ShawlCounting the Days by Kathy SchilbachMaking Happy by Zandra RenwickThe Machine by Chris KluweThat Our Flag Was Still There by Sarah PinskerThe Editor’s Eyes by Calie VoorhisFree WiFi by Marie VibbertDiscobolos by James WoodFine by Jamie LackeyBulletproof Tattoos by Paul CrenshawCall and Answer by Langley HydeA Pocketful of Dolphins by Judy HelfrichTasting Bleach and Decay in the City of Dust by Beth DawkinsThe Choices You Make by Sylvia Spruck Wrigley

My Review:

I picked this up around the same time I received Cory Doctorow’s Radicalized to review for Library Journal. Just from the descriptions, it seemed that these two books either springboarded off the same event, were in dialog with each other, or both. (This is also a giant hint that if this book interests you that one will too!)

They’re not exactly in dialog with each other, but they certainly arose out of the same event – the 2016 election. Both are wrapped around the question about what the state of the US – and by extension the world – will be in the future if the hateful politics and policies that were given voice and force by the election of 45 continue into the future relatively unchecked.

That premise is explicit in If This Goes On, and implicit in Radicalized, but it is definitely there in both books.

They are very different collections, however. Radicalized consists of four novellas by a single author, where If This Goes On is a collection in the broader sense, of relatively short stories by 30+ authors around the single theme.

A theme that the collection is screaming about – loudly and with metaphorical expletives. As far as the authors and editor are concerned (and this reader) the policies of those elected in that mess are undoing much of the good that the US has done and are making both the country and the world into a worse place than it was.

None of the writers want the situation to continue – and have done science fiction’s usual excellent job of extending the present out into the possible, even plausible, end point of the contemporary mess in order to show just how awful things can be.

In the hopes that we will band together and do something about it before it is too late.

Escape Rating B+: My feels are all over the place on this one.

First, because it bothered the hell out of me and presumably will other people, the title of the collection sounds familiar because it is. If This Goes On— is the title of a novella by Robert A. Heinlein, a novella which would itself feel at home in this collection.

Whether the title of the collection is in homage or not, there is still plenty of resonance between the two.

This is not a collection to be read late at night, particularly with only the light of one’s screen to push back the darkness. Because there’s plenty of darkness in these stories. While some of them border on horror in the traditional sense, most of the stories give the reader the sense that they are looking at something horrible. And I was appropriately – and shudderingly – horrified.

There is some humor in some of the stories, but it is primarily humor of the “gallows” persuasion. These futures are all bleak in one way or another. While the stories themselves are excellent, the overall tone is fairly dark.

Each story is followed by an editor’s note that tends to hit that dark tone over the head with a baseball bat. The stories generally speak for themselves so that repeated emphasis felt a bit like being bludgeoned with the point of the collection – over and over again. I was already metaphorically bleeding so this was a case where the beatings didn’t need to continue until morale improved because it wasn’t going to happen. But there’s something about the reference to that t-shirt saying that seems appropriate just the same – possibly because hearing the news these days does feel a bit like that proverbial beating.

As much as I agreed with the authors’ and the editor’s perspectives, I’ll admit to getting tired of having it beaten into my head over and over again. YMMV.

These stories stand on their own. Sometimes swaying in the wind from the apocalypse, but they do stand. And the collection is well worth reading. If you read nothing else from this collection, look for Mustard Seeds and the Elephant’s Foot by Priya Sridhar – it’s lovely.

As the saying goes, in reference to the collection as a whole, “Read ‘em and weep.”

Review: A Study in Honor by Claire O’Dell

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A- Reviews> book reviews
Review: A Study in Honor by Claire O’DellA Study in Honor (The Janet Watson Chronicles #1) by Claire O'Dell, Beth Bernobich
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: dystopian, mystery, science fiction
Series: Janet Watson Chronicles #1
Pages: 304
Published by Harper Voyager on July 31, 2018
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org
Goodreads

Dr. Janet Watson knows firsthand the horrifying cost of a divided nation. While treating broken soldiers on the battlefields of the New Civil War, a sniper’s bullet shattered her arm and ended her career. Honorably discharged and struggling with the semi-functional mechanical arm that replaced the limb she lost, she returns to the nation’s capital, a bleak, edgy city in the throes of a fraught presidential election. Homeless and jobless, Watson is uncertain of the future when she meets another black and queer woman, Sara Holmes, a mysterious yet playfully challenging covert agent who offers the doctor a place to stay.

Watson’s readjustment to civilian life is complicated by the infuriating antics of her strange new roommate. But the tensions between them dissolve when Watson discovers that soldiers from the New Civil War have begun dying one by one—and that the deaths may be the tip of something far more dangerous, involving the pharmaceutical industry and even the looming election. Joining forces, Watson and Holmes embark on a thrilling investigation to solve the mystery—and secure justice for these fallen soldiers.

My Review:

This was a wow. Even better, it was a wow in ways that I wasn’t expecting, so excellent all the way around.

Admittedly, I bounced off A Study in Honor the first time I started it. I was expecting a Sherlock Holmes pastiche, which it sorta/kinda is, but that’s not really apparent at the beginning. At the beginning, we’re following Dr. Janet Watson as she gets the shaft from the VA after losing her arm in combat.

Dr. Watson is a surgeon, and to go back to that job in civilian life, she needs two good hands. And the combat-damaged prosthetic that was supposed to be a temporary fix, well, it isn’t even good enough for much in civilian life – it certainly isn’t good enough for surgery.

But the war isn’t going well, is extremely unpopular, and the VA is sucking hind tit in the federal budget. Some things never change.

Other things do.

This war, unlike the perpetual war in Afghanistan that injured both the original Dr. John Watson and his 21st century incarnation in Sherlock, is a civil war. In what has become the not-so-United States.

The very frightening thing about this war is that it is so close we can see it from here. And entirely possible for all that. It’s a variation on the civil war in the darkly awesome book American War by Omar El Akkad, where the “reactionary” forces of the Old South have picked up the guns they are always afraid are going to be taken away from them and started a shooting war with what they see as the liberal-leftist North and Left-Coast West.

Unlike in American War, in this version, the so-called “Conservative” forces seem to be winning, if not all of the battles, at least the battle for hearts and minds in the North. It’s as though they made Robert E. Lee’s strategy work – just keep going long enough for the North to get too tired to fight.

This is also a scary close near future in that in 2016 Trump did get elected. Then after his administration overthrew as many of the civil rights of minorities as they could possibly manage, got replaced by the backlash of a progressive female Democratic president. After spending part of her first term turning back as much of the damage as possible, the folks who want their idealized 1950s back began the war in Oklahoma.

But this isn’t quite a dystopia, although it’s certainly getting there. Back home in Washington DC, away from the fronts in the states surrounding Oklahoma, the world seems to be going on as normal.

Unless you’re a wounded veteran trying to get the benefits you’re entitled to out of a VA that only cares about its bottom line.

Just as in the original stories, and in most of the remixes and pastiches, Watson is living off her military pension and needs a job. Holmes, in this case Sara Holmes, wants a roommate for the apartment she needs but claims to not be able to quite afford without said roommate.

But this Holmes is not what she seems. She’s every bit as brilliant (and enigmatic) as her original, but unlike the original Sherlock Holmes, Sara Holmes is not an independent agent.

As Janet Watson eventually discovers.

Escape Rating A-: I’ve written a lot about the setup of this story, because a lot of this book is setup. While this world unfortunately feels like a logical extension of current events, it is not current events and needs to get us fixed firmly into its vision of the future.

Which does not mean it isn’t a vision of the future that doesn’t include a whole lot of the present. Unfortunately for our protagonists, the parts of the present that carry over are quite frequently the worst bits. I said this isn’t a dystopia, but a better description would be that it isn’t a dystopia yet.

Those roots in the contemporary present form a good part of the terrible case that Janet unearths and that Sara helps her resolve. Part of what makes this book an A- rather than a A is that the case was fairly obvious. All too plausible, but also all too easy to figure out from the very first clue.

What makes this story, this version of Holmes and Watson, so fascinating are the characters of the two women. Instead of two white men in Victorian England (or 21st century England, for that matter), the Holmes and Watson in A Study in Honor are two black women at a time and place where the hope for true equality that shone during the Obama era has receded into the past and is dying under the lash of “conservative” dog-whistles that are pitched so any human can hear.

Which also means that in addition to the many indignities visited upon Janet Watson because she’s a wounded veteran, even more are heaped upon her because she’s black and because she dared to aspire to a profession that some people still believe should have been reserved for whites. And where the lesbianism of both of the protagonists just adds yet another layer of potential for prejudice.

A Study in Honor is a dark and gritty portrait of a world going to hell in a handcart, as seen from the perspective of someone who has visited that hell, and sometimes seems to have only left it in body but not in spirit. And investigates a mystery that plows right into the hell of that war and the dark heart of the people and governments that are waging it.

Watson and Holmes’ adventures continue in The Hound of Justice. I can’t wait.

Reviewer’s Note: Claire O’Dell is a pseudonym for author Beth Bernobich.

Guest Review: The Gender Game by Bella Forrest

Posted on by Amy Daltry | Author : | B+ Reviews> book reviews> Guest Review
Guest Review: The Gender Game by Bella ForrestThe Gender Game by Bella Forrest
Formats available: hardcover, paperback, ebook, audiobook
Series: Gender Game #1
Pages: 418
Published by Nightlight Press on November 24, 2017
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org
Goodreads

A toxic river divides nineteen-year-old Violet Bates's world by gender. Women rule the East. Men rule the West.

Welcome to the lands of Matrus and Patrus.

Ever since the disappearance of her beloved younger brother, Violet's life has been consumed by an anger she struggles to control. Already a prisoner to her own nation, now she has been sentenced to death for her crimes.

But one decision could save her life.

To enter the kingdom of Patrus, where men rule and women submit.

Everything about the patriarchy is dangerous for a rebellious girl like Violet. She cannot break the rules if she wishes to stay alive. But abiding by rules has never been her strong suit, and when she is thrust into more danger than she could have ever predicted, Violet is forced to sacrifice many things in the forbidden kingdom ... including forbidden love.

In a world divided by gender, only the strongest survive...

Guest Review by Amy:

Our story opens with young Violet Bates trying to smuggle her brother across a toxic river in the dead of the night. They’re caught, and Violet’s life is forever changed. Some time in our future, in the devastation of our world, men and women move apart, and try two different ways of running a society. In Patrus, the men rule; in Matrus, the women are in charge. There are some folks who go back and forth, of course, and a few who have stayed on the “wrong” side of the river, for an assortment of reasons.

After much of her youth is spent in prisons, Matrian youngster Violet is recruited for a dangerous mission–go to Patrus, and steal something back that belongs to the Queen!

Escape Rating: B+. Dystopian fiction interests me. There’s a lot of it that is pretty consistent meat-and-taters: downfall of society for some reason or another, utter lawlessness, the fight for survival, the whole Mad Max vibe, you know? But once in a while, an author gives us a new spin, and here we have one. Some of the reviewers have compared this to The Hunger Games, but I don’t think the comparison does either tale justice, really; this story pokes rather firmly at things that most adults have pretty firmly settled in their mind: gender, and how the genders behave.

In The Gender Game, we’re introduced to a society split along gender lines. In Patrus, women are essentially enslaved to their fathers and husbands, and have almost no rights. In Matrus, men are carefully watched for aggressive tendencies, and sent to the mines or killed as soon as they don’t toe the line drawn by the women who run things.

Violet’s story is interesting, growing up jailed, and how she learned to survive in a system that just could not embrace her, after her failure to crack down on her own brother. When she’s whisked away from all that, and offered a deal that she can’t refuse, we’ve got a whole new story to digest.

As I read through The Gender Game, I looked at my e-book reader and saw I was near the end. I thought about not finishing it, because it seemed kind of predictable in the early pages – Violet trains up for the heist, she and her Patrian ally decide who to frame, she interacts with the scapegoat – I don’t really need to go on, do I? But I’m glad I read all the way to the end! We get a plot twist right in the final pages that sets up the second story in this series, The Gender Secret, where (presumably) we’ll explore more of this world that Bella Forrest has created.

It’s that plot twist, in this reviewer’s mind, that saves this book from a lower rating. I liked the story well enough, and Violet was a good enough heroine, with a very realistic set of struggles to go along with the big plot problem, but it just didn’t excite me early on. The strangeness of the Matrus/Patrus setting took a little explaining, so it took a while to ramp up the character development and conflict. It made for a little bit of slow going at first, but this series is now standing at seven books, so I would presume that there’s a bit less exposition about this curious setting in later volumes.

Another problem that I have is…well, let me remind you that I’m a transgender woman. Gender is not binary, not A or B, but a spectrum of in-betweens and even a few folks who eschew it altogether. The Gender Games utterly ignores this, firmly asserting a very heterosexual, very traditional binary gender system. Living in a world like we do, where we are somewhat more liberal-thinking than that, this story feels like a step backward to me, because of that glaring discrepancy.

It’s a good story, though, and I’m strongly considering picking up more of the series, just to see if our heroine manages to be the catalyst for change in this strange society she lives in. If you like dystopian fiction, and want a piece that is outside the norm, it’s certainly worth a look.

 

 

Review: Hell Squad: Theron by Anna Hackett

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | B+ Reviews> book reviews
Review: Hell Squad: Theron by Anna HackettTheron (Hell Squad #12) Formats available: ebook
Series: Hell Squad #12
Pages: 223
on April 30th 2017
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Amazon
Goodreads

Squad mates, best friends, and fighting to survive in the middle of an alien invasion. Can she make one stubborn alpha male soldier see her as something else?

Sienna Rossi has always been a mix of contradictions. She loves ice cream, likes cooking, and is skilled at taking down aliens with her squad. Sweet and tough, soldier and woman, most people can't seem to make sense of her...even the loving family she lost in the invasion and especially men. One man accepts her as she is, her best friend Theron. But the big, silent, muscled soldier has her firmly in the 'friends' zone...except that Sienna knows he wants her, and she's determined to claim the stubborn man as hers.

Theron Wade lives to fight aliens. They killed his parents, his foster siblings, and his fellow Rangers. Now he has a new team--the tough, mostly-female Squad Nine. But one certain female haunts his dreams and stars in his darkest fantasies. Sienna is his sunshine in the darkness. He wants to her to be happy...and he knows that would never be with a man like him. A man with darker, rougher tastes that would shock her.

As Squad Nine works to track and destroy a dangerous alien device, best friends collide. Theron introduces Sienna to a world of rough, edgy passion that she craves. But as a mission goes off track, the two of them will risk everything for love, for their lives, and to save the world.

My Review:

I absolutely adore this series. I open each entry with the sure and certain knowledge that I’m in for a good time. But I think it’s time for the series to end.

Which doesn’t mean that I didn’t have a rip-roaring good time with Theron and Sienna, because I most certainly did.

The Hell Squad series, which begins with a roar and a bang and a whole lot of gunfire in Marcus, is post-apocalyptic science fiction romance. The apocalypse that these events are post of is the invasion of the alien Gizzida and their ongoing attempt to bomb Earth back to the Stone Age while capturing and converting as many humans as possible into Gizzida.

Think Borg, but with more individual free will. Which often translates to even more cruelty and ambition, and even less conscience. And I never thought I’d say that anything had less conscience than the Borg. But individual Borg aren’t aware of the horror of their actions, and individual Gizzida are.

Each story in this series pushes the human agenda of getting the Gizzida off our planet just a tiny bit further, while featuring a romance between two of the many characters who are fighting back against the invaders with everything they have.

In Theron, the alien invasion part of the story revolves around a daring raid on the Australian Gizzida headquarters, with the first order of business to destroy the alien mind control device they are building, and the second order to investigate the rumored superweapon that the Gizzida are developing. The scary thing is that the giant mind control weapon is not the superweapon.

The romance is between Theron and Sienna, two members of Squad Nine. The Squads are the military arm of the resistance, and Theron and Sienna are two of their best. They are also partners in the squad, best friends, and always have each other’s backs in a fight.

And they not-so-secretly want to bang each other’s brains out. I’d say they were also secretly in love with each other, but part of the secret is that neither of them is willing to explore those feelings. They are both suffering from a whole lot of survivor’s’ guilt like pretty much everyone in the Enclave, and they are rightfully afraid that attempting to be anything more to each other will mess up their friendship.

There’s a betting pool on whether and when they will finally give in to each other. Can someone manage to win the pot before it’s too late for them all?

Escape Rating B+: I enjoy each outing in this series, but I can kind of see the patterns coming. Theron and Sienna’s story is a combination of the romances in Marcus and Shaw. Marcus thinks he’s too big and bad-assed for former society princess Elle, and Shaw and Frost are squad partners and friends who are afraid to mess up what they already have for something that might not work out.

Theron is sure he’s too rough for Sienna, and they are both afraid of messing up their partnership for a relationship that might not work out. While I’ve enjoyed each individual relationship, the predictability of the patterns is getting to me. I’m glad there was a few months break between Devlin and Theron.

So it’s the science fiction aspects of this SFR series that keep me going. I really, really, really want to see the Gizzida get kicked off of Earth. And I read each book in the series for the clues about how that longed-for event is finally going to happen.

But there’s something about the Gizzida that made me think. I compared them to the Borg, because that’s who they initially reminded me of. Both species conquer planets purely so they can mine those planets’ resources, and in both species those resources include any desirable DNA characteristics they can add to their own species to upgrade it. In both cases their process is to turn the conquered people into themselves. Borg make more Borg by turning other species into Borg, and Gizzida do the same thing.

Science fiction has managed to discover what feels like a literal “fate worse than death”. Not to be killed, or to suffer a terrible trauma that changes you forever, but to have your entire selfhood erased and converted to the enemy. I’m playing Mass Effect Andromeda right now, and it also explores this same theme, as did the original Mass Effect Trilogy. The worst fate in the universe is not to die, but to be permanently and irrevocably converted into the enemy.

The Gizzida are part of a fine and frightening trend in SF, and I want them kicked off Earth ASAP. But I suspect that our heroes are going to have to suffer through even more awful revelations before that glorious day.

Review: Hell Squad: Devlin by Anna Hackett

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | book reviews
Review: Hell Squad: Devlin by Anna HackettDevlin (Hell Squad #11) by Anna Hackett
Formats available: ebook
Series: Hell Squad #11
Pages: 145
Published by Anna Hackett on December 18th 2016
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Amazon
Goodreads

In the aftermath of a deadly alien invasion, a spy and a soldier find themselves locked in an alien cage and told…mate or die.

A covert mission gone horribly wrong. Cool, composed spy, Devlin Gray is used to bad situations, but locked in the bowels of an alien facility with tough, sexy soldier Taylor and told to mate is bad. Very bad. During his career, he’s had to lie and kill, he’s been betrayed, and he knows he works best on his own. Now he is forced to depend on Taylor, and together they have to find a way to escape before it’s too late…

Taylor Cates has already been to hell once before. She lives to fight for others, just like her mother once fought for her, and Taylor vows to do whatever it takes to escape the aliens. As she works with the sexy, suave Devlin, she starts to see glimpses of the man beneath the cool exterior. An exterior she soon finds she wants to melt.

In the worst of circumstances, a passion is born. But on the run for their lives, Devlin and Taylor soon discover far worse things in the alien facility: human prisoners and a weapon that could be the very downfall of the human race. A weapon that will threaten their friends, their home, and everything they hold dear.

My Review:

marcus by anna hackett“Aliens made them do it” is a classic trope in fanfiction. It is also the opening gambit in Devlin, book 11 in the Hell Squad series. It’s hard to believe that we are 11 books into this series and that it’s only been a little over a year and a half since Marcus first walked into Elle’s heart (and ours) in the early days of the Gizzida invasion of Earth.

A lot has happened in those intervening books (and months). The desperate fighting squads of Blue Mountain Base, and the civilians they protect, managed to find their way to the hidden human Enclave, just barely ahead of the Gizzida. Now that the humans have gotten back together in Australia, and made a daring and successful attempt to re-establish communications with human outposts around the globe, it is time to take the fight to the Gizzida and throw them off our planet.

There’s an Independence Day vibe (the original, not the blasted sequel) to the whole thing. Along with a little bit of Borg thrown in for spice. And bodies.

But we’re not there yet. In this entry of the series, super-spy Devlin Gray finds himself locked in a Gizzida interrogation cell with Taylor Cates of Squad Nine. The aliens want to watch them mate. And as much as Devlin and Taylor suddenly realize that it might be more than fun under other circumstances, what they are currently in is neither the time nor the place. In the best tradition under these circumstances, they put on a show. Admittedly, not quite as hilarious a show as the one that Ivanova puts on in the Babylon 5 episode “Acts of Sacrifice”.

I said this trope had a long tradition.

But as so often happens when the aliens make two team mates “do it”, or even pretend to, the act makes the two partners realize that there is more between them than merely comradeship.

And that’s the case here. As Devlin and Taylor make their harrowing escape from the Gizzida factory, they discover both a horrific new weapon and their growing desire for each other. The weapon is a pain in the ass to even capture, let alone find a way to defeat.

What they feel for each other? There is no way to defeat love. Not even the hero’s stupid attempt at being a complete asshat. Whatever the future brings, they are both all in.

Escape Rating B+: I love this series. If you enjoy science fiction romance and/or alien apocalypse stories and or dystopian romance, Hell Squad is a winner. Every book is a terrific combination of post-apocalyptic action with steamy hot romance. Each story contains both an individual HFN and moves the fight that forms the basis of the series arc forward a few notches.

I say HFN rather than HEA not because there is any doubt about or between any of the couples, but because the overarching question in the series is whether any humans have any chance at any kind of “ever after”. At all.

But as much as I love the series, and as much as I enjoy each outing, for this reader it feels like time to arc toward kicking the Gizzida’s asses off our planet. The patterns of the romances are starting to feel a bit too familiar each time, and the overall situation can’t remain in stasis. The Gizzida want to wipe out the human race, and have made entirely too much progress towards that goal. They have nearly overwhelming force, and it’s going to take a miracle or a giant deus ex machina to blow them off. But it feels like time for that to happen.

In Devlin, the human survivors both make progress towards that goal and discover a new roadblock, which seems to be a pattern as well. I want to see this world get its HEA.

Guest Review: Mindkiller by Spider Robinson

Posted on by Amy Daltry | Author : | A Reviews> book reviews> Guest Review
Guest Review: Mindkiller by Spider RobinsonMindkiller by Spider Robinson
Formats available: hardcover, paperback
Pages: 246
Published by Berkley on November 1st 1983
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org
Goodreads

From the Hugo and Nebula Award-winning author of Time Pressure comes a pulse-pounding tale of action and suspense as two men and a woman search for--and find--the ultimate frontier of experience. "The new Robert Heinlein . . ".--New York Times.

Guest Review by Amy:

Norman Kent has had enough of life; his experiences in the war, his failed marriage, his dead-end career…and in the opening words of this tale, he’s ready to end it all. But an unfriendly stranger gets in the way of his plan, and he returns to his apartment, only to find his sister there, whom he’d not seen in years and years. Shortly, she disappears abruptly, without a trace.

Hop forward a few years, and a clever, tech-savvy burglar who doesn’t know his own name finds a woman with a wire in her skull, trying to kill herself with pleasure. He pulls her back from the brink, only to go on a crusade with her against the forces that created the pleasure addiction of “wireheads.”

Spider Robinson’s brain just doesn’t work like the rest of ours, I don’t think; if you’ve ever read any of his Callahan’s stories, you’ll understand; in those books he deals in puns and wild stories, while giving the reader a peek into a community of people where “shared joy is increased, shared pain is lessened,” a notion that has created substantial communities of fans here and there around the digital world (full disclosure: I am a member of one such community). The New York Times’ review of this book pinned the label “the new Robert Heinlein” on Robinson, but as a Heinlein fan, I’m not quite going to agree to that; Heinlein fans will enjoy this tale, and feel right at home with Spider Robinson’s style, but it’s…different, in ways I can’t quite put my finger on.

Something I missed early on in this book was that time was jumping back and forth; we begin Norman’s story in 1994-1995, and are jumping to 1999 for the story of the burglar and the wirehead. Once I caught onto that, things started to make a little more sense for me, and I raptly followed both plots, wondering when and how they would converge, and when an antagonist would appear. Once a name was mentioned in both plots, things kind of clicked into place–no other explanation fits the facts at hand, so if you’re watching for it, you’ll figure it out before our protagonists do. Naturally, if you miss it, Robinson helpfully provides an intrusion between the story lines, in the form of Norman’s ex-wife Lois, to help you pull it all together. The apparent climax is not-unexpected, but even here, when you think you’ve got it figured out, the author gives us a lovely new twist, right at the end. Jarring, yes, but utterly necessary, and provided a way to tidy up several loose ends still dangling.

Escape Rating: A. Unlike Heinlein, who aggressively pursued a world that got better over time, and where characters pushed for that, Spider Robinson gives us a world that has clearly spiralled downward; our heroes show no particular desire to turn it around; they’re just trying to deal with it. There is no ultra-rich Howard Family pulling the strings to make things better, just avarice and dog-eat-dog individualism, easily recognizable in our own world at times. Our heroes are hard-boiled pragmatists, jaded by the world around them; so much so that when the burglar Joe heard young Karen talking about her crusade to go after the inventors of the wirehead technology, he thought she was crazy. But Karen had lived rough herself, and was willing to play hardball to do what must be done, and for reasons he doesn’t quite grasp, Joe joins her, because–for the first time he can remember–he actually cares about someone!

Our cast of characters is well-developed, every one of them with clear motivations, and rich description. Once I got past the time-hopping confusion of the first couple of chapters, I was able to track what was happening, and the story moved along crisply, without a lot of needless embellishment. A little bit of a thriller and a little bit of dystopian sci-fi, mixed in just the right proportions with engaging characters, made this a real page-turner for me. If you’re looking for a classic dystopian novel with a great thriller thrown in the mix, I heartily recommend Mindkiller.

Review: Hell Squad: Niko by Anna Hackett

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | B Reviews> book reviews
Review: Hell Squad: Niko by Anna HackettHell Squad: Niko by Anna Hackett
Formats available: ebook
Series: Hell Squad #9
Pages: 132
on June 26th 2016
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Amazon
Goodreads

In the aftermath of a deadly alien invasion, a band of survivors fights on…

Mackenna Carides is tough, strong, and excellent at her job as second-in-command of Squad Nine. She often works side by side with Hell Squad on some of the toughest missions to fight back against the alien raptors. Now she’s helping the survivors of Blue Mountain Base settle into their new home at the Enclave. And that means working with the Enclave’s sexy civilian leader, Nikolai Ivanov, an artist who watches her with an intensity that is hard to ignore. A man she’s seen in the field and who she knows is hiding a mysterious past.

Niko is dedicated to the people of the Enclave and to his art. Once, his life was all about death and destruction, now it’s about life and creation—even in the middle of an alien apocalypse. As he welcomes the Enclave’s new members, there is one newcomer he wants to get closer to…but Mackenna is fighting their attraction. As something starts attacking their drones—vital technology for keeping them all safe—Niko realizes that in order to battle this new danger, he’ll have to return to the darkness of his past…and risk Mackenna never looking at him the same way again.

On a dangerous mission to save their drones from the aliens, Niko will need all of his lethal skills and will wade into the fight with Mac by his side. They will be tested to the brink, where nothing is black or white, and they will have to expose themselves and trust each other to fight, live, and love.

My Review:

I love this series. But as much as I love it, I think it may be time for it to wind to a close. I’m saying that partly because I want these plucky survivors to finally kick the Gizzida off our planet, and partly because it feels like the two romantic patterns used in the series have played out their variations.

Of course, if the author manages to surprise me with something new and different in the next book in the series, I will be pleasantly and joyously surprised.

noah by anna hackettNiko’s romance first appears to be following the pattern set by Noah, where the guy is some type of civilian and the woman is a soldier. (Marcus started this pattern in general, where one party is a soldier and the other is a civilian, but in the case of Marcus, Gabe and others, the guy is the soldier and the female is the civilian).

However, it turns out that Niko, the leader of the Enclave group of survivors, is actually a former Russian assassin, so the story turns out to be one of the ones where both parties, as in Cruz and Shaw, are soldiers of one stripe or another.

Because the heroine of Niko, Mackenna Carides, is definitely a soldier. She’s the second in command of Roth’s Squad Nine. She’s also a woman who was taught by her strict soldier-father that emotions made a soldier weak. To Mackenna, love is the ultimate distraction, and she refuses to even acknowledge the heat between Niko and her unwilling self.

But Niko isn’t willing to let Mackenna go. She’s the first woman who has made him feel much of anything at all in the months since the Gizzida landed, and he’s not willing to turn aside from something that makes life worth living and worth fighting for.

So when the Gizzida start knocking out the survivors’ crucial drone force, Niko attaches himself to the strike teams. It’s the only way he can keep Mackenna safe without questioning her abilities.

He’s already made that mistake once, and it cost him dearly. He’s afraid that letting the deadly assassin that he used to be out of its cage will make Mackenna retreat from him yet again. But those skills that he once put to use targeting his country’s enemies may be the only things that can save his friends now.

Escape Rating B: It’s time to kick Gizzida ass off our Earth. After 9 books that show just how dystopian things have gotten after the alien apocalypse landed, it just plain feels like time for the overall plot to get resolved.

Things can’t keep going the way they are. The Gizzida are much more powerful than the remaining Earth forces, they have all the tech and intel that they could possibly need, and every human that they capture is another potential Borg. Whoops, I meant Gizzida.

They also have no interest in peace or compromise. They are basically intelligent (very intelligent) Borg locusts. If this war of attrition continues, they will “attrit” the human race out of existence.

So since I just can’t bear the thought of a book where the last two humans die in each other’s arms, somehow the human resistance has to kick the Gizzida out. And because the two romance patterns in the series feel like they’ve explored all their possible options, my personal opinion is that this needs to head towards a wrap up.

Your warp speed, of course, may vary.

As much as I enjoy this series, part of my sense that it is time to wrap it up may come from my reactions to Niko and Mackenna themselves. Niko’s baggage dealt with his time as a Russian assassin, but did not get nearly as much into how he felt about discovering that he was fooled by their late and unlamented leader (see Roth for details on those events) Mackenna’s baggage was dropped on her shoulders by her cold and strict father. We only get hints about what makes Mackenna tick, and it didn’t feel like enough. Also, it is hard to have the baggage go back to pre-Gizzida Earth, when there is more than enough post-Gizzida trauma to give anyone nightmares.

For this reader, it just feels like it’s time to kick Gizzida butt.

Review: All the Birds in the Sky by Charlie Jane Anders

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | book reviews> D Reviews
Review: All the Birds in the Sky by Charlie Jane AndersAll the Birds in the Sky by Charlie Jane Anders
Formats available: hardcover, paperback, ebook, audiobook
Pages: 320
Published by Tor Books on January 26th 2016
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org
Goodreads

From the editor-in-chief of io9.com, a stunning novel about the end of the world--and the beginning of our future
Childhood friends Patricia Delfine and Laurence Armstead didn't expect to see each other again, after parting ways under mysterious circumstances during high school. After all, the development of magical powers and the invention of a two-second time machine could hardly fail to alarm one's peers and families.
But now they're both adults, living in the hipster mecca San Francisco, and the planet is falling apart around them. Laurence is an engineering genius who's working with a group that aims to avert catastrophic breakdown through technological intervention into the changing global climate. Patricia is a graduate of Eltisley Maze, the hidden academy for the world's magically gifted, and works with a small band of other magicians to secretly repair the world's ever-growing ailments. Little do they realize that something bigger than either of them, something begun years ago in their youth, is determined to bring them together--to either save the world, or plunge it into a new dark ages.
A deeply magical, darkly funny examination of life, love, and the apocalypse.

My Review:

This doesn’t often happen, but this is a book that I finished because I was stubborn, and for no other reason. Also, it wasn’t THAT long and by the time I decided I should probably bail, I didn’t have enough time left to read something else for today, unless I picked something really short. So I finished this instead.

That’s all to tell you right there that this isn’t going to be a favorable review.

I went into All the Birds in the Sky with a lot of hope. The author is one of my favorite columnists over at io9, and I expected way more from her writing than I got in this book. I’m going back to the columns.

For starters, the book reads like either Young Adult or New Adult. The story starts with our protagonists in middle school, and ends with them in their mid-20s at most, still completely confused about “the meaning of it all”. But they have sex, so probably New Adult. (There is absolutely nothing wrong with either YA or NA, but I prefer to know what I’m getting into in this regard up front. And I’d probably have avoided the whole thing if I’d known.)

This should have been a coming-of-age story, but I’m not sure that the protagonists ever do get there. They feel like more experienced apprentices than finally knowledgeable adults, or even on the road to there, at the end.

There’s a certain amount of wish-fulfillment in this story. Two kids, just a bit too weird and always outcasts at their school, bond together over their outcast status. Then the girl discovers that her weirdness is because she is a witch, and the boy discovers that he is an elite technical genius, and their paths diverge until they meet again at the end of the world.

But it felt like every plot twist had to hit every single cliche EVAR before the story moved on. Patricia and Laurence aren’t just slightly weird – their school is experimental and strange and designed to torture its occupants beyond all reason. Not that the students aren’t more than happy to torment anyone even slightly outside the norm, but their school is insane.

Their parents are all equally strange, and punish both children to the point of abuse, when they are not being criminally neglectful.

From this reader’s perspective, much too much of this part of the story felt like bullying on top of bullying, well past making the point that these kids were different. Either this was intended to feel surreal, or society had already gone so far to hell in the handbasket that this crap was normal. In which case, we needed a bit more explanation for how things got this screwed up.

The part of the story that might have been really interesting – the actual growing up years when Patricia goes to witch school and Laurence escapes his parents and ends up at MIT, are almost completely glossed over. When we meet them again, they are both in their 20s and the world is in even more serious crisis than it was.

The story then becomes the fight between science as either a redemptive or destructive force, as embodied by Laurence and his friends and colleagues, and magic as a healing force, embodied by Patricia and her fellow witches. Neither of whom, frankly, seem particularly clueful about the messes they are creating.

The two groups are racing to see which of them will bring about the end of the world as they know it first, while justifying their efforts by demonizing the other. It’s fast and furious and the end of the book doesn’t make much sense.

Escape Rating D: I did finish, which gets a D. Although that finish was sheer stubbornness on my part.

I do not like bullying stories or humiliation humor, and the first third of this book is both of those. Patricia and Laurence are bullied at every single turn, by the school, by their teachers, by their fellow students, by their parents, and Patricia by her sociopathic sister. It was relentless and depressing and went on way too long for this reader.

I hate humiliation humor. That’s where someone deliberately sets someone up for an accident or a pratfall and then laughs with their buddies because the victim’s humiliation is just so funny to them. Not funny at all. And there are better ways to make the point, if there is one, and advance the plot than repeating this behavior over and over.

In YA books, parents are often clueless, but in this one, the behavior of all the adults, especially the parents, was downright criminal.

And I figured out the big reveal long, long before the protagonists even got to the point where they figured out there should be one. The suspense was so dead by that point in the story.

In the end, there were no heroes in this book. Only victims and survivors. Including the readers.