Genre: science fiction

#AudioBookReview: The President’s Brain is Missing by John Scalzi

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | audio reviews> audiobooks> B Reviews> book reviews> Short Story Review
#AudioBookReview: The President’s Brain is Missing by John ScalziThe President's Brain Is Missing by John Scalzi
Narrator: P.J. Ochlan
Format: audiobook, ebook
Source: purchased from Amazon, purchased from Audible
Formats available: ebook, audiobook
Genres: humorous science fiction, science fiction, short stories
Pages: 29
Length: 47 minutes
Published by Macmillan Audio, Tor Books on July 12, 2010
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Better World Books
Goodreads

The question is, how can you tell the President's brain is missing? And are we sure we need it back?

My Review:

My brain is toast today which is what caused me to pull this book and audio out of the virtually towering TBR pile. I was looking for a bit of a laugh, something lighthearted that wouldn’t tax my own poor missing brain too much – and this certainly delivered!

It starts out with a simple but confounding idea. What if the brain of the President of the United States went missing? I don’t mean surgically removed or shot out or anything even remotely logical. But what if the President woke up one morning, felt a bit lightheaded, and his doctor did all the obvious tests and a few less obvious tests and determined that there was a void in his cranium where his brain matter was supposed to be.

And that he was otherwise healthy and as operational as he ever was.

It’s a crisis – and it’s a conundrum. There are plenty of jokes about whether anyone will notice that this particular president no longer has a brain. Likewise, plenty of people would notice if the president dropped dead because his brain had gone walkabout. Just because he seems to be fine – at the moment – doesn’t mean he will continue to be fine under the circumstances.

The human body is not meant to function without something up there.

So one poor low-level staffer is assigned to figure out what happened before they have to tell the president what happened. Because he’s not going to take it well – AT ALL. Who would?

That assignment that leads from the White House to an old high school buddy to Area 51 to white panel vans to, well, back to the White House. After the dust has settled and the crisis hasn’t so much been resolved as expanded and made totally moot – at the same time.

Escape Rating B: This turned out to be exactly what I was looking for. It was light, short and fun. It also, surprisingly, is NOT a commentary on any of the parties in the recent election – or the one before that or the one before that. The President’s Brain is Missing was originally published in 2010. It took me a while to remember which president this particular lack of braininess would have been lampooning at THAT time – but once I did it worked even better than it had initially.

And it most certainly did work.

It did remind me more than a bit of the author’s When the Moon Hits Your Eye in the sense that the crisis is just so completely off the wall and comes out of absolute nowhere. Although this story about the President’s missing brain did a much better job at, at least, nodding towards causality than Moon did and I liked it more for that.

Part of what made this so much fun is that it took me back both to a more innocent time – as strange as that seems – and it reminded me of a whole lot of wonderfully strange and geeky science fiction into the fun bargain.

There’s the obvious take off on the Star Trek: The Original Series episode Spock’s Brain – which was a terrible episode. At least Spock’s missing brain was considerably more apparent, as, after all, Spock USES his.

In addition to the multiple nods to Trek, and the beautifully played reference to the extremely applicable Clarke’s Law (Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic,) I also got some whiffs of nostalgia about the X-Files and even a touch of Stargate. The X-Files were specifically mentioned, but so was Area 51 where Stargate Command had a base that dealt with alien technology.

The President’s brain may, or may not, have been missing – or maybe it’s Schrodinger’s Brain after all – but the author’s deft touch with science fiction humor was certainly present. And this story turned out to be the perfect listen for my own missing brain to wrap up the week.

A- #AudioBookReview: Constituent Service by John Scalzi

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A- Reviews> book reviews
A- #AudioBookReview: Constituent Service by John ScalziConstituent Service: A Third District Story by John Scalzi
Narrator: Amber Benson
Format: audiobook
Source: purchased from Audible
Formats available: audiobook
Genres: humorous science fiction, science fiction
Length: 2 hours and 30 minutes
Published by Audible Studios on October 3, 2024
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon
Goodreads

The aliens are here . . . and they want municipal services!

Ashley Perrin is fresh out of college and starting a job as a community liaison for the Third District—the city’s only sector with more alien residents than humans. Ashley’s barely found where the paper clips are kept when she’s beset with constituent complaints–from too much noise at the Annual Lupidian Celebration Parade to a trip-and-fall chicken to a very particular type of alien hornet that threatens the very city itself.

And if that’s not terrifying enough, Ashley is next up at the office karaoke night.

It's Parks and Recreation meets the Federation of Planets in this fast and funny audio exclusive by Hugo Award winner and Audible best seller John Scalzi.

My Review:

Constituent Service is a story about going the extra SEVERAL miles in order to do a great job – while being chased by KILLER HORNETS every step of the way.

But it doesn’t start there. It starts with Ashley Perrin’s first day on the job as the Third District Council Office’s latest community liaison. Ashley’s first day, first week, first month, first everything is just a bit more interesting than most people’s early work experience, which can absolutely be put down to the circumstances in which the job exists – as well as a lot to Ashley’s own personality – rather than to the parameters of the job itself.

Because this is a near-future Earth, and we (humans) KNOW we’re not alone. Not in the galaxy, and certainly not on this planet.

To be fair, most of Earth’s population still seems to be human, just as other planets where humans have gone are still mostly made up of their own native populations. Many intelligent species are quite adaptable, but not every planet’s environment conditions are survivable by every species, so this makes complete sense – or at least as much sense as some of this author’s wilder stories ever manage to do.

The Third District is different because it’s one of the few human-minority districts in the (unnamed) city. 90% of the district’s population is made up of a myriad of non-human species – a fact which is absolutely represented by the staff of the Third District Council Member’s constituent office.

That the Council Member managed to get his human self elected to the office in a district where his species is definitely in the minority is frequently remarked upon. That Ashley is only the second human to ever serve as the community liaison for the Third District office is also noteworthy. That previous human lasted less than a week – a record that Ashley is determined to beat – and certainly does.

The story in Constituent Service is the story of Ashley getting thrown into the deep end of the wild, weird and wacky work of constituent service in an office and a world where she has to sink or swim in a pool of utterly alien but marvelously supportive colleagues. While at the same time absolutely going over and above the line of duty to solve the surprisingly and potentially earth-shattering mystery of exactly what is bollixing up the sewer system under the district – and is on the verge of exploding. Explosively. With murder hornets.

Escape Rating A-: I absolutely did escape to the Third District, to the point where I wasn’t ready to come back at the end. In spite of the murder hornets, but because of Ashley’s horrifying but original solution to THAT problem – as well as the many, many other issues she faces during her first months on the job.

Even if Ashley and her colleagues never do manage to get back to karaoke. Or maybe because of THAT too, or just the idea that her alien colleagues have bonded over such a thing.

The story works, and works marvelously well, because it’s told entirely from Ashley’s first person perspective. We’re inside her head and it’s a fascinating – and really quirky – place to be. It also works because this mostly alien situation is totally grounded in the real and remains so, no matter how weird things get. Any reader who gets into Ashley’s humor and perspective and can do even its weird attitude is going to enjoy this book a LOT. (I certainly did!)

Because it’s not really about the aliens – not that they aren’t a marvelous feature. It’s really about the trials and tribulations and wacky humor and terrible jokes of being in any sort of customer service position dealing with supposedly sentient and sapient beings when they are in the midst of being pissed off about something they think someone else is supposed to fix.

It’s easy to drop into the situation right beside Ashley because her colleagues are wonderful, but also because the setup feels like something straight out of Alien Nation or Men in Black. If aliens did live openly among us, the reader can’t help but think that it would be just like this – right down to the importation of illegal pets, noise complaints about parades, and sewer problems bubbling up at the worst possible times.

That it also turns out to be a gigantic, not quite as alien as one might think, riff on the children’s book Everybody Poops! is, well, fun, stinky, scatological humor on an epic scale that is guaranteed to make the reader laugh out loud at just how shitty the whole situation turns out to be.

And now for the small bits of merde that kept this from being an A or A+ listen. They’re really small bits, think of them as, well, cling-ons. Or Klingons, as the case might be as the humor does descend to that level just often enough.

The subtitle labels Constituent Service as “A Third District Story”, implying that there are or will be others. Wherever they are, I want them. I at least want to know what and where they are if they already exist. Really, really badly because this was a ton of fun.

Second, and I recognize this is a me thing, because this is an Audible exclusive it will be audio only for a while until that exclusivity period runs out. It means that there’s no text. While on the one hand I absolutely believe that Amber Benson’s excellent narration will always be the better option for getting into this story considering it’s first person perspective, on the other hand, in the process of writing this review I would just about kill – or at least set a few murder hornets on someone – to get a cheat sheet of the dramatis personae and how the hell all their names are spelled. I’ve stuck to referring to Ashley because she’s the only name mentioned in the blurb so I know I’m spelling it right.

Last but not least, Constituent Service is very much in the vein of the author’s recent books, The Kaiju Preservation Society, Starter Villain, and the upcoming When the Moon Hits Your Eye, in that it’s a story where very weird things, huge ‘what if?’ scenarios, are happening to perfectly ordinary people and the extraordinary is treated, not just with off-the-wall humor, but as if it’s all in a day’s work and the story just runs with it without ever remarking on the weirdness of the weird bits AT ALL. I love those sorts of stories. Readers who love this author’s work generally do. But if it’s not your cuppa, or if he’s not your cuppa, this probably won’t be either.

I had a blast all the way through, with a delightful crunchy sprinkle of murder hornets on top!

A- #BookReview: In the Shadow of the Ship by Aliette de Bodard

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A- Reviews> book reviews
A- #BookReview: In the Shadow of the Ship by Aliette de BodardIn the Shadow of the Ship by Aliette de Bodard
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: hardcover, ebook
Genres: alternate history, science fiction
Series: Universe of Xuya
Pages: 96
Published by Subterranean Press on September 30, 2024
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

Nightjar, sentient ship and family matriarch, looms large in Khuyên’s past. Disappearances drove teenage Khuyên from it, but death will steer her back.
Now an adult and a magistrate, Khuyên came for her maternal grandmother’s funeral but finds herself unwittingly reliving her past on the decaying Nightjar. Children are still disappearing as her childhood friends once did; and worse, her beloved Cousin Anh vanishes after pleading for her help.
Khuyên sets out to save Anh alongside Thảo, a beautiful and mysterious woman who seems to know more than she should about Khuyên and the ship. But saving Anh requires doing what Khuyên couldn’t do before: face her family, face the ship, face her own hopes and fears for the future—a future that might well include Thảo, but only if Khuyên can stop listening to the critical voice in her head.
A voice that sounds an awful lot like Nightjar’s...

My Review:

The Universe of Xuya isn’t so much a series as it is a sprawl of alternate history that extends from the early 15th century – the point where the butterfly flapped its wings differently from the history we know – all the way out to an undetermined point VERY far in the future.

It’s a vast, sprawling canvas of a universe that hinges on a single year in history (1411) where two events turned left instead of right. An internal political struggle at the Imperial court of Ming-dynasty China sent the Empire looking outward instead of in (as it did in our history) and a fleet of Imperial ships that planned to head east along the coast was struck by typhoons and found itself drifting north, across the Bering Strait to Alaska, resulting in an earlier “discovery” of North America, from Asia instead of from Europe.

And with those two almighty flaps of the butterfly’s wings, history goes down the other leg of the trousers of time (to thoroughly mix my metaphors) and results in the universe of this series, where China and eventually an independent Việt empire become the dominant influences in the world instead of the West – not that, by the time of this particular entry in the sprawl, the West hasn’t established its own hegemonies in the greater galaxy.

The past is another country, they do things differently there. And if they did things differently than what we know, the future would be an even more different country that it will be on history’s current trajectory.

But the thing about the Xuya Universe is that even though the author has a broad outline of what brought it about and some stories set in the historical past that illustrate some of the points, most of it is set in the future. The galaxy is big, the history and future history is potentially very long indeed, and there’s plenty of scope for pretty much anything to happen pretty much anywhere.

Which leads back to the Universe of Xuya being more of a sprawl than the way we usually think of ‘series’. Each story set in the Xuya Universe is intended to be standalone, and while it might link thematically with other stories, that doesn’t mean it will feature any of the same characters as previous or future entries. There’s obviously a publication order for the series, but the internal chronology is ever changing, and considerably more fluid than is usually the case.

I fell into this series, somewhere in the middle, with The Tea Master and the Detective, because it’s a Sherlock Holmes pastiche and that was an entry point that worked for me – as it usually does. (Also, Tea Master is one of the longer works in the series so it has time and space to get a new reader stuck into the world that’s already been built.) I’ve read around Xuya, but not thoroughly – at least not yet – ever since. Although I’ve just had the light dawn that several of the short stories that were in various SFF magazines are also available as podcasts and that’s an avenue to be explored.

I know I haven’t talked about this particular entry in the series yet, and that’s a bit by design as I have mixed feelings about whether this story is a good place to start. I found it fascinating but I don’t think it’s a good entry point. The author has an excellent precis of the history of Xuya, with a list of stories that give both a loose chronology and some suggestions of stories that might make good places to start on her website – so if you’re looking for an entry point or have visited Xuya and are wondering how it all fits together, take a look.

The story of In the Shadow of the Ship is deceptively small and at first seems simple. It’s the story of a young woman who left a conservative and restrictive home because she didn’t fit in. The life that was mapped out for her, even before her birth, was one she had no interest in or desire to follow. That it seemed like she never had a chance to earn her mother’s love or acceptance made it that much easier to leave the world of her birth behind.

She’s been successful, if lonely, in the intervening years. But when she learns of the death of her grandmother, duty and respect call her home. But home is not a planet, or even a station. Home is a decaying mindship, a refugee from the galactic war that destroyed so much and left so many refugees, ship-bound and planet-dwellers alike. A war that her home, her ship, her family, was on the losing side of.

A home that wants her back – even if her mother still does not.

As an adult, Khuyên has knowingly kept the secret of her family’s status from the empire she serves, even though she knows they are war criminals and that she is guilty by association – and silence. She can’t make herself turn them in, and she can’t bear losing her job and her purpose in the universe she’s made her own.

At the same time, as an adult, when she returns for the funeral, she is able to see that the ship is manipulating her and everyone around her, and that the terrible things she was told to ignore when she was a child are no longer ignorable – or honorable. And that they are wrong.

And that there is no second escape. This time, the only way out is through – no matter the cost.

Escape Rating A-: I enjoyed In the Shadow of the Ship, although it is a very shadowed story indeed and probably needs to be read with the lights on. There’s an underlying creepiness that is totally justified but isn’t revealed until past the halfway point.

Although there’s also a lovely sapphic romance that redeems that darkness – it just takes a while to get there.

That two of the characters of this story were mindships felt like the one, solid link to the Xuya Universe, at least so far as I’ve read into it. A reader who has come at this series from different angles might find more linkages, but it was fine as it was.

The story that it did remind me of, however, was the author’s “The Mausoleum’s Children”, one of this year’s Hugo nominees for Best Short Story. (BTW the award was won by “Better Living Through Algorithms” by Naomi Kritzer, which I read and loved.)

In my review of “The Mausoleum’s Children”, I said that the themes were a bit too big for the package, that it would have worked better in a longer format. Those themes; survivor’s guilt, living with trauma, returning to the place that broke you in the hopes of saving others, and more, received that longer treatment here In the Shadow of the Ship, which made me like both stories just that much better.

Grade A #BookReview: Darkside by Michael Mammay

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A Reviews> book reviews
Grade A #BookReview: Darkside by Michael MammayDarkside (Planetside, #4) by Michael Mammay
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: military science fiction, science fiction, space opera
Series: Planetside #4
Pages: 336
Published by Harper Voyager on September 24, 2024
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

In this thrilling, action-packed fourth installment in the Planetside series from acclaimed science fiction author Michael Mammay, retired Colonel Carl Butler gears up for another military investigation, full of danger, corporate intrigue, and tech people would kill for—perfect for fans of John Scalzi and Craig Alanson.
Colonel Butler has paid his dues and just wants to enjoy his retirement on a remote planet. But the galaxy has had other plans. He has been roped into searching for a politician’s missing son and an industry magnate’s missing daughter. He has been kidnapped, violated numerous laws, and caused the destruction of colonial facilities. He’s famous—or infamous, depending on who you ask—praised and reviled in equal measure across the galaxy for his exploits.
And he is determined to never let the government drag him into another investigation.
But when a runaway twelve-year-old girl whose father has gone missing asks him for help, well…it’s a lot harder to say no.
The girl’s father, Jorge Ramiro, was supposed to have been on Taug, a moon orbiting the gas giant Ridia 5, working on a dig with a famous archaeologist. But now there’s no sign of him and no record of him being there. Mining operations on the moon are run by two different consortiums, Caliber and Omicron—both of which have tried to kill Butler in the past. Butler doesn’t believe in coincidence.
Landing on Taug with his right-hand man Mac, computer genius Ganos, and an elite security squad, Butler soon finds that they’ve charged back into the crosshairs—because Ramiro is not the only who has disappeared, and the perpetual darkside of this moon is hiding more than the truth about a missing archeologist…

My Review:

Carl Butler has the worst best luck in universe. Or the other way around. He always gets his team out of whatever FUBAR situation he’s gotten them into. Then again, it’s a FUBAR situation that they’re in because FUBAR follows him around like a lost puppy that doesn’t seem to realize it’s already found a forever home.

Or, to put it the way that Butler’s ace hacker Ganos put it, “This is a Carl Butler operation. When is it not the worst-case scenario?”

Carl and company put themselves into this particular mess because an almost literal lost puppy – or at least a young girl with puppy dog eyes – has shown up on his rather remote doorstep.

He’s retired and he’s enjoying it. Dammit. At least that’s what Butler says, anyway.

But he can’t resist Eliza Ramiro and her crowdfunded campaign to hire him to find out what happened to her missing father. Based on her story, he’s pretty sure it’s going to be bad news. At 12, she’s old enough to know that as well.

Still, she needs to KNOW and not just assume. And he gets that. And he’s probably a bit bored – even if he’s trying to tell himself that he’s not.

His team knows he’s going as soon as Eliza tells her story. It just takes Carl a while to catch up. Which is fine because they are way ahead of him on planning this trip he says he doesn’t want to take – when they all know that he really does.

The problem that Butler discovers when he reaches the last place Jorge Ramiro was seen is that everyone on Taug is way, way ahead of him as well. Including not one but two interstellar mining corporations who have each done their damndest to kill Butler in the past – and are unlikely to have compunctions about doing so in the present.

Especially on a remote little moon where each corporation is sure that they control all the shots on the surface and all the lawyers and spin doctors they could possibly need to make sure that what happens on the darkside stays buried there forever.

Escape Rating A: I got caught up in Carl Butler’s (mis)adventures back in the first book in this series, Planetside, and I’ve been just as captivated by each of the subsequent “clusterf–ks” the man has somehow managed to get himself into, Spaceside and Colonyside. And now here we are on Darkside, literally the darkside of a moon. And it looks like Butler is going to leave this moon as the scapegoat for everything that happens – even the stuff that happened before he arrived – again.

Which seems to be his role in the universe. I wouldn’t say he’s exactly “OK” with that role, but he’s willing to accept it as long as the job gets done and he and his people get out more or less in the same number of pieces they started in. He’s honestly less invested in whether he, himself, gets out intact – but his team is VERY invested in THAT, in spite of himself.

What makes this book, and this whole series, work, is that it rides or dies – and does it ever ride – on the universe-weary voice of its protagonist, Colonel Carl Butler (ret.) Butler had and still has a reputation for getting the job done. At the same time, he had more than enough rank in the military to have gotten a good picture of how the universe’s sausage gets made. He’s pragmatic about pretty much everything except the fate of his team, and will bend ALL the rules to the point of breakage to take care of business.

He’s experienced enough and smart enough – when he lets himself take the time to BE smart – to understand how the levers of power get pulled – and to make sure that a realistic number of them get pulled in his favor whenever possible.

Above all, he’s loyal to his team – and they’re loyal to him. And that loyalty inspires others to be loyal as well. One of the things that he does very well, that shines as part of his personality, is the way that he does his best to bring out the best in everyone he works with.

He’s a good man who does some very bad things – but tries to mitigate the damage whenever he realistically can. Which doesn’t mean he isn’t perfectly willing to ream EVERYNONE involved in this CLUSTERF*** a new one. Then again, they deserve it. And we’re right there with him hoping that they all get exactly what they deserve.

At the top, I said that Carl Butler has the worst best luck in the universe. He’s actually not alone in that distinction. I was listening to Ghostdrift, coincidentally also the fourth book but in the Finder Chronicles, as I read Darkside, and Fergus Ferguson has pretty much the same kind of luck that Butler does. He’s a walking avatar for Murphy’s Law, he gets into the worst situations at the drop of a hat, everyone’s plans go straight to hell in his vicinity, but he somehow manages to survive and bring his team out intact. The two stories are both told in the first-person, and both characters have similar universe-weary voices which they each came by honestly although from different directions. Meaning that if you like one you’ll like the other. I certainly do.

Which means that I was thrilled to read in the author’s blog that he’s working on book 5 in this series and has started planning book 6. Wherever those stories take Butler and his team, I’ll be along for the ride.

Grade A #BookReview: Chasing New Suns by Lance Robinson

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A Reviews> book reviews
Grade A #BookReview: Chasing New Suns by Lance RobinsonChasing New Suns: Collected Stories by Lance Robinson
Format: ebook
Source: author
Formats available: paperback, ebook
Genres: science fiction, short stories
Pages: 202
Published by Lance Robinson on September 12, 2024
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

Seven tales of mind, heart, and spirit from award winning science fiction author Lance Robinson.
From Apartheid era South Africa to humanity's first foray beyond the solar system, from precarious ecosystems in northern Alberta to the shiny glam of time-adept neocolonialists between the stars, these are stories of possibility.
This thought-provoking collection includes: the Writers of the Future Award first place winning story "Five Days Until Sunset"; "Communion", a haunting story of guilt, empathy, and human connection; "Money, Wealth, and Soil", which explores the relationship between greed and nobler human motivations, as a collective humanity attempts to incentivize the restoration of the world's ecosystems; "Problem Solving", a witty satire on neocolonialism and post-modern blahs; "The Thursday Plan", a story of an alternate history in which Apartheid never ended in South Africa; "The Gig of the Magi", a satirical take on finding love while grinding it out day to day in the gig economy; and "Chasing the Sun", which continues the spiritual quest begun in "Five Days Until Sunset".
Chasing New Suns is science fiction with heart.

My Review: 

I first read this author’s short story, “Five Days Until Sunset”, in Writers of the Future, Volume 40, and as you will see from my review of that story below, I loved it. It turned out to be one of my favorites in a collection of mostly excellent stories.

So when the author contacted me about reviewing this new collection of stories, a collection that included a sorta/kinda followup to “Five Days”, I was all in. And as you will also see from my reviews of the rest of the stories in the book, I’m very glad I said “YES!” to the whole thing.

“Five Days Until Sunset” (originally published in L. Ron Hubbard Presents Writers of the Future, Volume 40)
In spite of what a whole lot of SF would have one believe, the likelihood is that early colony ships will be a fairly iffy proposition. Which means that this reminds me a bit of Mickey7 but definitely without the humorous bits. Although in this case, it’s not that the planet is barely habitable, but rather that it’s not habitable in the way that the colonists dreamed of. It’s a story about adapting your dreams to your circumstances instead of attempting to force the circumstances to match your dreams. Grade A because the story is good and so complete in its very short length and it even manages to deal well with religion in the future which is really, really hard even in the present.

“The Thursday Plan”
What if? What if history went down a different leg of the trousers of time? What if you could see what is, what was, what might be, and what might have been, all at the same time? What if you could jump between them? That is the dilemma and the opportunity faced by James Mfaxa in a timeline where Apartheid did not end in 1994, but instead continued and became even more repressive with the help of invasive technology that bears a much too sharp resemblance to slave collars – or to an enforcement mechanism of thought police. But that technology – and the jammers used to combat it – give Mfaxa a chance to envision a different world. Not a perfect one – in fact far from it – but a world better than the one he has. If he is willing to take a chance of making his world, perhaps not right but at least right-ER.

I found this to be an A- story in ways that I think are a “me” problem rather than an actual issue with the story. I just didn’t know enough about the history involved for the story to have as big of an impact as it would have for someone who did. And even then it still landed with a thought-provoking bang.

“Problem Solving”
This turned out to be a surprisingly funny story with more than a bit of a sting in its tail. From one perspective, it’s all a bit of a farce, as D.K. discovers that his lifelong run of bad luck isn’t so much bad luck as terrible timing. D.K.’s discovery of this, accompanied as it is by the presence of alien representatives of an intergalactic alliance that give off the whiff of being serious scam artists adds to the fun of the whole thing. The way that D.K. finally manages to take advantage of his combination gift and curse pays off the whole story beautifully. This one isn’t deep – unlike the rest of the collection, and offers a nice change of pace.  Grade B

“Communion”
As I read this one, it reminded me of another story, which I eventually figured out was the story “Nonzero” by Tom Vandermolen in that same Writers of the Future collection that included “Five Days Until Sunset”. Both are stories about humans who have become ‘lost in space’, untethered from whatever ship or habitat they were originally living in. The difference between the two stories is the difference between hope – however tiny – and resignation. Personally, I enjoyed “Nonzero” a bit more because it had that hint of hope – and because the protagonist’s relationship with her AI was considerably more supportive than the one between Matt, Barb, Ismail and Liem in “Communion” as the four honestly don’t like each other much and they are each more alone at their end than the unnamed protagonist of “Nonzero” is with her AI companion.

Pessimists – or perhaps realists – will probably enjoy “Communion” more than “Nonzero”. Readers who do not believe in no-win scenarios will prefer “Nonzero”. This one is a Grade B for me because I prefer that glimmer of hope.

“The Gig of the Magi”
This story is an homage to the O.Henry classic, “The Gift of the Magi”. A story which, in spite of being over a century old at this point, still lands with a beautiful punch – especially during the holiday season. (If you have never had the pleasure of reading the original work, it is still worth a read, and is out of copyright and available free in ebook from multiple sources, while public libraries are certain to have it in their collections.) The story here, “The Gig of the Magi”, updates all of the settings and circumstances, while still delivering the same lovely message as the original. Grade A-.

“Money, Wealth, and Soil”
This is a terrific climate fiction story that manages to both showcase the pervasiveness of human greed and make it the engine of a possibly better tomorrow – even as agents of that greek do their damndest to game a very complicated system. Because that’s what people do. It’s also a story about payback without that payback actually being a bloody revenge, but rather something righteously delivered that hurts absolutely no one who doesn’t deserve it.

This was my favorite in the collection. I loved the way that it made the forces that normally break a system become part of the system, that it counted on human greed rather than pretending it doesn’t exist, and that it created something good out of it instead. And that the right people finally got what they deserved for all the different ways that can be parsed. Grade A+

“Chasing the Sun”
This story is a bit of a quasi-sequel to “Five Days Until Sunset”, and it’s the story I originally picked up this collection FOR. And I was not disappointed. You don’t have to read the earlier story first – although if you read the collection in the order in which it’s presented, of course you will anyway.

By the nature of the worldbuilding, while the people of this world seem to be the descendants of the surprised colonists in “Five Days”, they don’t have much in the way of even ancestral memory of those long ago – by their standards – events. And as a result of the ways their planet interacts with its sun, they can’t put down permanent roots and maintain archives. They MUST carry all their possessions on their backs nearly every single day.

But one of the things that made that original story interesting, and that continue into this later one, is that the original did an excellent job of presenting the multiplicity of possibilities of human religious beliefs in a way that actually worked – and its the descendants of those belief systems that fuel the interaction in this later story – even if some of those beliefs work less well for them in their present circumstances.

At the same time, it’s also a story about pride going before a very big fall, and of the way that clinging to the beliefs and methods of the past prevents people, even an entire people, from adapting to a changed present. And that even the stubbornest of people can learn with the right incentive.

As with the original story, this was also a Grade A story – even though, or perhaps especially because – it is a vastly different kind of story than the one that came before.

Escape Rating A: Overall, as should be obvious from my ratings of the individual stories, I really enjoyed this collection. I will be looking forward to whatever this author comes up with next AND I’ll be looking forward to next year’s Writers of the Future collection in the hope that it will be as good as the one this sprang from.

#BookReview: Crypt of the Moon Spider by Nathan Ballingrud

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | B Reviews> book reviews
#BookReview: Crypt of the Moon Spider by Nathan BallingrudCrypt of the Moon Spider (Lunar Gothic Trilogy, #1) by Nathan Ballingrud
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: hardcover, paperback, ebook
Genres: Gothic, horror, science fiction
Series: Lunar Gothic Trilogy #1
Pages: 112
Published by Tor Nightfire on August 27, 2024
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

Crypt of the Moon Spider is a dark and dreamy tale of horror, corruption, and identity spun into the stickiest of webs.
Years ago, in a cave beneath the dense forests and streams on the surface of the moon, a gargantuan spider once lived. Its silk granted its first worshippers immense faculties of power and awe.
It’s now 1923 and Veronica Brinkley is touching down on the moon for her intake at the Barrowfield Home for Treatment of the Melancholy. A renowned facility, Dr. Barrington Cull’s invasive and highly successful treatments have been lauded by many. And they’re so simple! All it takes is a little spider silk in the amygdala, maybe a strand or two in the prefrontal cortex, and perhaps an inch in the hippocampus for near evisceration of those troublesome thoughts and ideas.
But trouble lurks in many a mind at this facility and although the spider’s been dead for years, its denizens are not. Someone or something is up to no good, and Veronica just might be the cause.

My Review:

When we first meet Veronica Brinkley as she’s on her way to the Barrowfield Home for Treatment of the Melancholy, we already know that this is not going to be a pretty story because the sense of creeping dread is there from the very first page.

At first, in spite of the story’s setting, that creeping dread is of the mundane but still extremely chilling variety. It’s clear that it’s set at in a period where it was entirely too easy for a woman to be labeled “mad” or “melancholy” or “hysterical” by doctors in cooperation with their husbands and fathers as a way of getting rid of an inconvenient child or spouse by locking them up in an asylum and waiting to receive word of their inevitable demise.

Veronica is well aware that her husband doesn’t expect her “black spells” to ever be cured. She’s never expected to return to their Boston home. The most terrible part of the opening of the story is that she feels she’s earned her place at Barrowfield – that it’s what she deserves for being weak, useless and self-absorbed. For failing in her duties as a wife.

And her treatment is horrific enough – and would be even if it was confined to the historically available treatments of its 1920s setting. But this is a version of our world – and our solar system – that owes a lot to the science fiction of H.G. Wells and Jules Verne.

Barrowfield is on the moon, a moon that once housed an indigenous species of giant spiders that would have the power to make even the mighty Shelob quake in her lair.

But those giant spiders left behind vast webs in the lunar forests, and a surprising number of more-or-less human priests and worshippers who seem to be passing the gifts of the moon spiders on to the staff at Barrowfield, where the patients are treated by scooping out parts of their brains and replacing their supposedly diseased brain matter with moon spider silk.

It sounds barbaric – only because it is. It’s clear that Barrowfield’s medical chief has an agenda for his experimentation that he never reveals to the wealthy clients who commit their wives and daughters to his care. He knows they don’t, wouldn’t and won’t care about any supposed ‘treatment’ he might possibly think to administer.

But the acolytes of the moon spiders have an agenda of their own. And in Veronica Brinkley, they’ve found the perfect receptacle for their hopes, dreams and plans. All they have to do is wait, and watch, and let the doctor do his work – up to the point where they can finally do their own.

Escape Rating B: I was absolutely fascinated and utterly creeped out by this story, all at the same time. If it had stayed with historical treatments it would have been creepy enough, because damn but they were.

Howsomever, the elements of Verne and Wells and the moon spiders absolutely kicked the whole thing onto another level entirely. Not in the way that the acolytes took control of Barrowfield, because that was both expected and honestly hoped for in a peculiar way.

But the implications that the reader is left with at the end definitely embody next-level chill.

Which is where the issue I had with this book absolutely kicked in with a vengeance. Not that the vengeance aspects of the story bothered me at all because all the men involved with this story were a despicable and deserving bunch of fellows.

The SFnal aspects of the story were enough to carry me over – or perhaps through – the horror aspects of the thing, except for the image of Veronica left in my mind at the end. For anyone who has ever played Dragon Age: Awakening, the expansion for Dragon Age: Origins, well, in my head Veronica ends up as a saner, more self-aware version of The Mother from that game, and the idea of a saner version is seriously both frightening and stomach-churning. (The picture at left is actually one of the less horrific images.)

Circling back around, the thing that is keeping this from an A-, because I was certainly riveted, chilled and downright appalled at points more than enough for that, is that the story feels incomplete – and not just in the sense that it’s labeled as book 1 in a trilogy.

I’m left on the horns of a reading dilemma that it feels like I didn’t get enough of this story – even though it contains plenty of things that I wouldn’t want in any more detail. It’s more that I turned the final page feeling like I didn’t know nearly enough of how this world got to this point and that I was piecing together bits in my mind much the same way that Veronica’s mind got pieced together and I feel the missing bits every bit as much.

Which means I’ll be waiting with the proverbial bated breath for book 2, Cathedral of the Drowned, in the creeped out hope that I’ll get more of that connective spider silk in the next part of the story this time next year!

#AudioBookReview: The Hermit Next Door by Kevin Hearne

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | audio reviews> audiobooks> B Reviews> book reviews
#AudioBookReview: The Hermit Next Door by Kevin HearneThe Hermit Next Door by Kevin Hearne
Narrator: Annalee Scott
Format: audiobook, ebook
Source: purchased from Amazon, purchased from Audible
Formats available: hardcover, ebook, audiobook
Genres: science fiction, urban fantasy
Pages: 96
Length: 2 hours and 43 minutes
Published by Audible Audio, Subterranean Press on June 30, 2024
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

Kevin Hearne, author of the acclaimed Iron Druid Chronicles, returns with an otherworldly new novella!
 
Newly widowed and trying to cope with her grief, Winnie Mae Chisholm moves from Tennessee with her teenage son, Pax, to Oregon, hoping the change will let them both heal and move on. She’s warned when buying their new home that the next door neighbor, Mr. Fisher, is a famous recluse and no one has seen him in years, but that’s fine with her—she’s looking for quiet.
 
She’s not going to get it, however, because when Pax meets the neighbor, he discovers that the reason Mr. Fisher hides from the world is that he isn’t actually from this world. He’s been stranded for decades and he’s trying to get home, and he could really use some help.
 
Abruptly part of the best-kept secret on the planet, Winnie Mae and Pax have to protect Mr. Fisher from a nosy neighbor who would ruin his work and doom him to die among aliens, but they also have to ask How far would they go to escape their grief? Would another world be far enough?

My Review:

I picked this back up after starting it before we left on vacation because I really wanted to review a book I read while we were away – and I will – but Kevin Hearne’s Candle & Crow won’t be out until October 1 and it’s just too soon to post that now – no matter how much I want to.

But I was still in the mood for his style, and, well, even the audiobook for The Hermit Next Door is blissfully short. I’m also still a bit jet-lagged, and the result is the review you are about to read.

The idea of this story has been done before – that the recluse next door is either really creepy, from REALLY far away or a bit of both. What made this a bit different was the way that Winnie Mae Chisholm and her son Pax came to this little bend in the Willamette River and not just what they found there.

The story begins as an escape – and Winnie Mae and Pax just keep right on escaping – getting themselves farther away than the ever imagined from the tragic death of Winnie Mae’s husband and Pax’s dad, Benny Chisholm, back home in Tennessee.

Too many memories, and too many grief casseroles drove them out of their former home. The settlement money from the accident and the sale of their previous house got them to Oregon.

At first, nobody’s happy. Winnie Mae because happiness is the last thing she expects to find again, and Pax because he’s still grieving, he wasn’t given any choice in the matter, and he’s a teenager. Which of those three things is at the biggest weight on his heart and soul changes every day but they’re all part of it, all the time, and the situation isn’t looking like it’s going to get any better any time soon.

Because grief doesn’t – and neither does being a teenager.

The house is lovely, the river is quiet and peaceful, and the neighbors are, honestly, a lot. Winnie Mae can identify the types, knows just what she has to do to give her invasive, intrusive, gossipy across the street neighbor just enough and no more to not think she and Pax are TOO weird while still getting them to leave the Chisholms as alone as the woman’s nature is capable of managing.

But the situation changes entirely and completely – actually, all the situations take a sharp left turn into the weird, wacky and wonderful – when Pax meets their reclusive next-door-neighbor Mr. Fisher.

Who is, quite literally, out of this world. And wants to get back home – if he can just get a little bit of help from Pax and his very reluctant, somewhat creeped out, not quite totally losing her shit, depressed and disaster-projecting and spiraling mother, Winnie Mae.

A woman who, in spite of having lost pretty much all of her faith in things ever getting better ever again is going to have to take an absolutely ginormous leap of faith over the chasm of her disbelief in order to keep her son safe and maybe, just maybe, find a bit of peace and even happiness in a place she never once imagined she could even imagine.

Escape Rating B: I finished this book with a lot more mixed feelings than I expected. I thought I would just love it (spoiler: I did love Candle & Crow). In the end, I did like The Hermit Next Door, but I middled in directions I just didn’t expect to go.

Your reading and listening mileage may both vary.

The idea of Mr. Fisher and his journey reminded me a LOT of Simon R. Green’s Ishmael Jones series, and that was not a place I expected to be at all. Ishmael Jones is more creepy horror adjacent mixed with twisted country house mystery, while Mr. Fisher is more like an E.T. who needs to phone home, but they both start from the same place, a being from another world who is stranded on this Earth and is having a difficult time going home and has to make some equally difficult decisions about dealing with that particular dilemma.

Howsomever, Ishmael Jones at least looks human. Mr. Fisher is a giant otter from an Earth that took a different evolutionary path down the “trousers of time”.

One of the things that I personally found a bit off-putting was that the narrator for the audiobook, Annalee Scott, sounds an awful lot like Khristine Hvam, the narrator for the Junkyard Cats series. And that was a bit of a mind-screw, as Shining Smith in the Junkyard Cats series kicks ass and takes names with wild abandon and lots of gunfire, while Winnie Mae Chisholm goes into panicked disaster spirals at every turn. The characters are just VERY far apart but the similarity in the narrators’ voices made my mind try to equate them which simply isn’t possible. At all. Ever. In ANY way.

Very much on my other hand – or ear – I did love the SFnal ending. I was fully expecting it, but that doesn’t mean it still wasn’t fun. I’ll admit that I particularly liked the idea that the nosey neighbor might have gotten exactly what she deserved. She certainly had the option to save herself, but I can’t help but get a bit of glee out of the thought that she probably couldn’t resist doing what she was explicitly told not to. We’ll never know but a girl can dream.

What made the story work in the end was that Winnie Mae and Pax find happiness in a way that they were not expecting – and in a way that doesn’t attempt to pass over or by the depths of the grief that sent them on this journey in the first place.

There were also a couple of references to some interesting SFnal stories that shouldn’t have gotten near this one but did anyway in surprising and delightful ways. There’s just a touch of John Scalzi’s Kaiju Preservation Society that I was not expecting at all, as well as a hint of Edward Ashton’s Fourth Consort that goes in a completely different direction from The Hermit Next Door but has some unexpected but fascinating similarities along its way.

Grade A #BookReview: New Adventures in Space Opera edited by Jonathan Strahan

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A Reviews> book reviews
Grade A #BookReview: New Adventures in Space Opera edited by Jonathan StrahanNew Adventures in Space Opera by Jonathan Strahan
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: paperback, ebook
Genres: science fiction, short stories, space opera
Pages: 338
Published by Tachyon Publications on August 13, 2024
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

Have you ever wanted a faster-than-light trip to the future? Are you tired of reading science fiction novels that feel like they’re taking literal eons to finish? These fifteen award-winning and bestselling science fiction authors, including Charlie Jane Anders, Alastair Reynolds, Yoon Ha Lee, Becky Chambers, Tobias S. Buckell, Ann Leckie, and Sam J. Miller, and more, are here as your speedy guides to infinity and beyond.
In “Zen and the Art of Starship Maintenance,” a cloud-based contractor finds a human war criminal clinging to the hull of the ship. The clones of “All the Colours You Thought Were Kings,” about to attend their coming-of-age ceremony, are plotting treason. During “A Temporary Embarrassment in Spacetime,” two outlaws go on the run after stealing a device from a space cult.
Here are the new, adventurous―and most efficient―takes on interstellar battles, sentient spaceships, and political intrigue on a galactic scale. Discover where memories live and die, and where memes rise and fall in moments. Remember, the future is sooner than you think, and there’s only so much time for visiting it.

My Review:

These space opera stories aren’t exactly new as they’ve all been published before in a variety of not necessarily widely available sources. But all are from the last decade and every single story represents an author who is at the top of their game. And, for the most part, they are marvelous.

I’m usually hit or miss with short story collections, sometimes they work, occasionally they don’t, and often there are a couple of stories that go ‘clunk’ and not in a good way and/or one or two where I can see why people liked them but I’m just not the right reader for them.

This particular collection only had three stories that weren’t absolutely stellar – all puns intended. Which means that I read through the whole thing and had at least a bit to say about each, leading to an overall Escape Rating of A.

“Zen and the Art of Starship Maintenance” by Tobias S. Buckell
What is the difference between having free will but not having any real choices and being bound by contracts and programming – but having time to work one’s way around both? What does it REALLY mean to be human? And how much time and freedom does one need to find ALL the loopholes – and exploit the hell out of them? Escape Rating A for an absolutely beautiful asskicking of an ending.

“Extracurricular Activities” by Yoon Ha Lee (2018 Hugo nominee in the Novelette category)
Well, this just moved Ninefox Gambit up the virtually towering TBR pile, because I think this story is set in that universe and features one of the same characters, Shuos Jedai. Obviously one does not need to have read the series to get into this story because clearly I haven’t but just as clearly I most definitely did. Translating this to Trek a bit, because that’s what I was doing in my head, this story is what you’d get if Starfleet sent Section 31 to deal with the Tribbles, used Harry Mudd’s ship as cover – along with a much better looking version of Mudd – and it all worked out anyway in spite of all the reasons the entire operation should go terribly, horribly wrong. This is a story that shouldn’t be nearly as light as it turns out to be – but it is and it does and it was a LOT of fun along the way. Shuos Jedai fails up REALLY HARD in this story and it really works. Escape Rating A

“All the Colors You Thought Were Kings” by Arkady Martine
A different empire, different memories thereof. Three teens about to become cogs in the empire, except that they’ve chosen to take it over instead. A plot, a plan, a triangle of either siblinghood or romance or both, and a million to one shot that comes through but probably won’t change things half as much as they hoped. Escape Rating A

“Belladonna Nights” by Alastair Reynolds
What is the quality of mercy, and what does it mean to remember? Neither of which questions feel remotely like they should go together. I was expecting something about political shenanigans and jockeying for position and/or a bit of a star-crossed lovers romance, and what I got instead was something beautiful and sad and surprisingly elegiac. Which is exactly what the story is, an elegy for a people long dead, as seen through the eyes of the one person willing to remember them. Escape Rating A-

“Metal Like Blood in the Dark” by T. Kingfisher (2021 Hugo winner in the  Novelette category)
Not all learning organisms are human, and not all learning is on the side of the angels. But when your opponent is definitely working from the dark side of the Force, even a machine has to learn to fight fire with fire. Reminiscent of T.J. Klune’s In the Lives of Puppets in its story of machines being required to learn the worst lessons from humans – because some of them already have. Escape Rating A+

“A Temporary Embarrassment in Spacetime” by Charlie Jane Anders
This was just so deliciously, delightfully and dementedly over the top that it’s rolling on the floor laughing its ass off on the other side. A belly laugh of a tale, with a sensibility and a naming convention reminiscent of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Escape Rating A-

“Immersion” by Aliette de Bodard (2013 Hugo nominee in the Short Story category)
The weapons of conquest are not necessarily the kind that kill. Sometimes they just do their damndest to kill the culture instead and let the people conquer themselves. And sometimes the culture being appropriated manages to fight back in ways that aren’t exactly deadly weapons, but can be deadly all the same. Escape Rating A

“Morrigan in the Sunglare” by Seth Dickinson
Don’t read this one when you already have a sad because trust me, it won’t help at all. However, in its heartbreaking sadness it’s a beautiful story about what is, what was, what might have been, what it means to be human vs. what it means to have what it takes to defend those who are, what we owe to the people we love vs. what we owe to the people that love us AND it’s about saving what can be saved – even if that means we have to lose it. I have all the words and none of them convey this story properly because it’s beautiful and sad and HARD. Escape Rating A

“The Old Dispensation” Lavie Tidhar
My thoughts about this one went on two completely separate tracks. There are a TON of religious references in this far-future SFnal story, but what made all of that interesting was that every single one of those references, including place names and names of ships, originated in Judaism instead of any of the usual suspects. Very much on my other hand, however, the story doesn’t quite gel. The idea that the agent of the Exilarch was essentially dismembered and mind-raped was plenty creepy, and the whole idea of what the conflict was at its heart was kind of fascinating, but it didn’t pull together in the end and lost its way more than a few times in the middle. Escape Rating C

“The Good Heretic” by Becky Chambers
This was a heartbreaker in the best way, a story about friendship, and being true to yourself, and daring to be different no matter what it costs, and discovering that difference doesn’t have to mean bad or evil no matter what everyone else tells you. It’s part of the author’s Wayfarers universe but can absolutely be read as a standalone – I haven’t read Wayfarers yet but its moving up the TBR pile as I write. Escape Rating A++

“A Voyage to Queensthroat” by Anya Johanna DeNiro
There’s something in this one that reminds me of The Empress of Salt and Fortune by Nghi Vo, although I can’t totally put my finger on why. Part of it is the way that both stories are memoirs of secondary characters telling the story of someone famous and even legendary from a previously untold point of view, and that both have a gut-punch of an ending. I’m on the fence – with both stories actually – about whether the length was just right or whether there should have been just a bit more. Escape Rating A-

“The Justified” by Ann Leckie
The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few or of the one – even when the one is supposedly the ruler of all they survey. And sometimes the only way to obey an order is to disobey the person who gave it. I think I needed more background than I had, or something like that, because this one only sorta/kinda worked for me and I was expecting it to be a wow. Escape Rating B

“Planetstuck” by Sam J. Miller
This was a story that works and works heartbreaking well because it’s completely invested in and riding on its characters. So even though we don’t have nearly enough about how this particular universe works, it doesn’t matter because what we care about – and deeply – are the desperate feelings of its protagonist and its lesson that you really can’t go home again – no matter how badly you want to, because some gifts really do come at much too high a price. Escape Rating A+

“The Last Voyage of Skidbladnir” by Karin Tidbeck
A beautiful ending to a terrific collection. It’s a bit steampunk-ish, not in setting but in the feel of the way the world is set up, but the story it reminds me of most is Floating Hotel by Grace Curtis, in that this is also about the last voyage of a cruise ship that is much bigger than it appears from the outside. Escape Rating B

#BookReview: She Who Knows: Firespitter by Nnedi Okorafor

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | B+ Reviews> book reviews
#BookReview: She Who Knows: Firespitter by Nnedi OkoraforShe Who Knows by Nnedi Okorafor
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: hardcover, paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: African Futurism, science fantasy, science fiction
Series: She Who Knows #1
Pages: 176
Published by DAW on August 20, 2024
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

Part science fiction, part fantasy, and entirely infused with West African culture and spirituality, this novella offers an intimate glimpse into the life of a teenager whose coming of age will herald a new age for her world. Set in the universe Africanfuturist luminary Nnedi Okorafor first introduced in the World Fantasy Award-winning Who Fears Death, Firespitter is the first in the She Who Knows trilogy
When there is a call, there is often a response.
Najeeba knows.
She has had The Call. But how can a 13-year-old girl have the Call? Only men and boys experience the annual call to the Salt Roads. What’s just happened to Najeeba has never happened in the history of her village. But it’s not a terrible thing, just strange. So when she leaves with her father and brothers to mine salt at the Dead Lake, there’s neither fanfare nor protest. For Najeeba, it’s a dream come travel by camel, open skies, and a chance to see a spectacular place she’s only heard about. However, there must have been something to the rule, because Najeeba’s presence on the road changes everything and her family will never be the same.
Small, intimate, up close, and deceptively quiet, this is the beginning of the Kponyungo Sorceress.

My Review:

The story begins, as so many of this author’s stories do, with a young African woman on the cusp of change in a world that has already changed and been changed from the one we know now.

In the case of this particular story and this particular young woman and this particular version of the future, Najeeba is thirteen when the story begins, and is about to go on a journey. A journey that members of her family take every year – but a journey that females are not supposed to undertake at all.

Not that there are laws against it, but there are rules – rules enforced by a social contract that have ossified into restrictions that no one challenges. Not until Najeeba comes in and tells her parents that she feels the call of the ancestral salt road every bit as much – if not a bit more and a bit sooner – than her father and her brothers.

In the desert, salt is life. Finding the best salt, the purest AND prettiest blocks of it, and selling them for the best price in distant markets, keeps her family and her village alive and prosperous. Most of the time.

Because her people have historically been considered unclean, untouchable outcasts. A judgment that Najeeba’s inclusion in the annual salt harvest is guaranteed to make worse AND more violent – even as it confers upon Najeeba the kind of power that is guaranteed to bring down retribution – both human and divine.

And gives birth, literally and figuratively, to a woman who will change the world.

Escape Rating B+: She Who Knows is the first book in a prequel trilogy of novellas to the author’s award-winning novel Who Fears Death. In a way that story literally gives birth to this one as this one gives birth to that, as Najeeba, “she who knows”, is the mother of Onyesonwu, “who fears death”.

I haven’t read Who Fears Death, although I have a copy in both text and audio and plan to listen to it. While it has certainly climbed up the virtually towering TBR pile after finishing She Who Knows, I don’t feel like I missed anything by reading this book first. After all, it IS a prequel and not a sequel. It sets the stage for Who Fears Death without giving anything away or providing spoilers.

What it does remind me of, a lot, is the author’s Desert Magician’s Duology, particularly Shadow Speaker. Not only do Najeeba’s and Eiji’s stories start from a similar place, as both begin their stories as girls on the cusp of womanhood, gifted or cursed (depending on one’s perspective) with magical powers, but both choose difficult paths that their birth cultures reserve for men and they also find themselves telling – and being told – their stories by and to strange desert sorcerers.

They are not products of the same Afrocentric future world, but their worlds are similar nonetheless. Meaning that if you like one, or if you have enjoyed ANY of the author’s previous and/or successive works such as the Binti Trilogy, there’s a very good chance you’ll fall right into She Who Knows as well.

In the end – and also as a beginning – this is a great introduction to Who Fears Death AND The Book of Phoenix, which is a much earlier prequel chronologically to Onye’s story. Not only is this a great story in its own right, but it’s also short which means that it provides an introduction in an easily consumed little package. And if that consumption leaves you with a taste for more – as it very much did this reader – this is, oh-so-thankfully, the first novella in the projected trilogy of equally short and undoubtedly equally salty and delicious stories.

I am definitely looking forward to the rest of Najeeba’s story, which will be continued in next year’s One Way Witch. In the meantime I can’t wait to see how the mother’s experiences in this book and the rest of the trilogy are reflected in the child in Who Fears Death.

 

A- #BookReview: Time’s Agent by Brenda Peynado

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A- Reviews> book reviews
A- #BookReview: Time’s Agent by Brenda PeynadoTime's Agent by Brenda Peynado
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: paperback, ebook
Genres: climate fiction, science fiction, time travel
Pages: 160
Published by Tordotcom, Tordotcom Publishing on August 13, 2024
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

“What would you do, given another universe, a do-over?”
Forty years ago, archeologist Raquel and her biologist wife Marlena once dreamed of the mysteries they would unlock in their respective fields using pocket universes— geographically small, hidden offshoots of reality, each with its own fast or slow time dilation relative to Earth time—and the future they would open up for their daughter.
But that was then.
Forty years later, Raquel is in disgrace, Marlena lives in a pocket universe Raquel wears around her neck and no longer speaks to her, what’s left of their daughter’s consciousness resides in a robotic dog, and time is a commodity controlled by corporations squeezing out every last penny they can.
So when a new pocket universe appears, one that might hold the key to her failed calling, Raquel seizes one last chance to redeem herself to her wife, live up to her own failed ideals, and confront what it means to save something—or someone—from time.

My Review:

On the one hand, Time’s Agent is a familiar story about human greed and corporate rapaciousness, set in a near-future version of our world where climate change is proceeding apace, badly and past the point of no return, and the resulting dystopian society is running amuck right along with it.

And on the other hand, the way it tells that familiar story is through messing with time – even though Time’s Agent is explicitly not a time travel story – at least not unless Rip van Winkle’s story is a time travel story. Instead, this is a story about the “true” theory of the relativity of time. Not Einstein’s version, but rather Zall’s Second Law, the one that goes, “How long a minute is, depends on which side of the bathroom door you’re on.”

The so-called “pocket worlds” that are discovered, explored and protected by their Institute represent vast, exploitable resources to the megacorporations that are well on their way to taking over the world. Some PW’s are fast relative to Earth standard time, and some are slow, and there are ways to monetize and use them up.

The Institute stands in the way of all that, at least until Raquel makes a terrible mistake and accidentally falls into a fast-time PW that spits her out forty Earth standard years later. Her disappearance – along with the disappearance of her wife who was inhabiting a slow-time PW around Raquel’s neck – turned out to be the catalyst for terrible changes, both for them personally and for the world in general.

Like Rip van Winkle, the place that Raquel and Marlena return to is nearly unrecognizable to the two “time travelers”. In the 40 years that they missed, their daughter died, their Institute was gutted, corporates control EVERYTHING, and the World War III that occurred in the interim pushed the entire Earth further and faster down the road to destruction.

The only hope that Earth has is to find a pocket world that is much more than a pocket. A world that is big enough to start both species and civilization over again. Raquel and Marlena’s only hope is to get there first and close the door behind them.

Escape Rating A-: Time’s Agent is a story where the whole is definitely greater than the sum of its parts, but the parts are what we have in our hands to read. In other words, this is a mixed feelings kind of review because well, my feelings about the whole thing are mixed.

What adds to my extreme mixed feelings is that the overall feeling of the story is profound grief. Forty years into a terrible future, Raquel is grieving pretty much everything, her marriage is fractured, their daughter is dead, her friends are scattered, her once-shining hopes have fallen into disillusionment, the Institute she believed was both her family and her calling has been suborned and her world is dying.

Raquel’s grief permeates the entire story, to the point where she’s justifiably wallowing for much of its length – and the story wallows with it. It makes sense from her equal parts depressed and horrified perspective but it makes for a difficult and sometimes low, slow and even ponderous read as she tries to get her shit together in a world where she doesn’t know if the place she left it last still exists.

The SFnal parts of this one reminded me of a whole bunch of things, not all of which are themselves SF. The combination of the way that the pocket worlds work, that you can go in to a slow time PW, stay a long time and come out at the same minute you left, physically unchanged but mentally quite different echoes the Star Trek Next Generation episode The Inner Light, while the differences caused by Raquel and Marlena’s absence from the world and the way in which that absence occurred recalled Yesterday’s Enterprise and the profound changes wrought by the Enterprise C’s presence or lack thereof at Khitomer.

The exploitation of both the pocket worlds and the people who used and abused those worlds and/or were abused by them calls to mind Charlie Stross’ Merchant Princes series and especially Kage Baker’s books about the rapacious, time-traveling and looting Company. Consider all of the above readalikes or watchalikes for Time’s Agent, albeit in different ways.

One of the fascinating things about this story, and that puts it over the hump from B+ to A-, is the way that the story is both set in and steeped in the author’s Dominican culture, and the way that the setting emphasizes the evils AND the pervasiveness of both colonization and colonialism, using that setting to point out that the fate of the pocket worlds and THEIR exploitation has all happened before, is happening now, and will all happen again. At the same time, the characters’ perspectives on their world before Raquel’s fall into fast time and her return provides a fascinating contrast by showing both Raquel and the reader just how easy it was for her to ignore the already worsening state of the world as a whole as long as her personal little corner of it was doing just fine.

And at the same time, while I don’t want to call this a solution because it isn’t a solution overall but is one for Raquel and Marlena, is rooted in the nearly forgotten and utterly subjugated history of their own people, and it’s answer that could only have come from the survivors of colonization and not its perpetrators, and that is utterly right and woven into this story from the outset.

In the end, I still have, as I said, some mixed feelings about this one. Admittedly, my most mixed feeling is that this would have been better at a longer length, with a bit more of Raquel’s and, as it turns out, Marlena’s, planning made a bit more manifest a bit earlier on. Because there’s a lot to unpack in this story and this reader at least ended up relying on resemblances to the above readalikes/watchalikes to vault over some of those hidden bits, as well as using those vaults to carry me past the depths of the protagonist’s wallow.

All of that being said, this is the author’s DEBUT novel. Considering that this is her first novel, the number of wild but mostly realized ideas combined with the heartbreaking poignancy of the portrayal of the protagonist’s grief and desperation have absolutely put this author on my reading radar and I can’t wait to see what she comes up with next!