Genre: science fiction

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!

A- #BookReview: Full Speed to a Crash Landing by Beth Revis

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A- Reviews> book reviews
A- #BookReview: Full Speed to a Crash Landing by Beth RevisFull Speed to a Crash Landing by Beth Revis
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: hardcover, ebook, audiobook
Genres: science fiction, science fiction romance, space opera
Series: Chaotic Orbits #1
Pages: 192
Published by DAW on August 6, 2024
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

A high octane sexy space heist from New York Times-bestselling author Beth Revis, the first in a novella trilogy.
Ada Lamarr may have gotten to the spaceship wreck first, but looter’s rights won’t get her far when she’s got a hole in the side of her ship and her spacesuit is almost out of air. Fortunately for her, help arrives in the form of a government salvage crew—and while they reluctantly rescue her from certain death, they are not pleased to have an unexpected passenger along on their classified mission.
But Ada doesn’t care—all that matters to her is enjoying their fine food and sweet, sweet oxygen—until Rian White, the government agent in charge, starts to suspect that there’s more to Ada than meets the eye. He’s not wrong—but he’s so pretty that Ada is perfectly happy to keep him paying attention to her—at least until she can complete the job she was sent to pull off. But as quick as Ada is, Rian might be quicker—and she may not be entirely sure who’s manipulating who until it’s too late…
A phenomenally fun novella that kicks off a trilogy of sexy space heists and romantic tension, Full Speed to a Crash Landing is packed with great characters and full of twists and turns that will keep you guessing until the end.

My Review:

It’s pretty clear – at least to the reader – from the opening pages of Full Speed to a Crash Landing that Ada Lamarr’s ‘Mayday’ isn’t exactly on the up and up. Even if her little spaceship does have a real, honest-to-larceny hole blown in its side – taking her airlock not merely offline but blown out into little bitsies in the surrounding black of space.

That hole is unequivocally real and true – although every other single thing about Ada’s story sounds like a fake and a lie – even the parts that aren’t either of those things. The government agent in charge of the Halifax, the much bigger and better funded ship that has dawdled to her rescue is certain that Ada has got something going on on the down low that necessitated her ship’s presence in this particular sector in orbit over this particular tectonically active (extremely active) baby planet.

He’s sure that both Ada and his ship are after the same quarry, the cargo ship that crash landed, very badly and in multiple pieces, on that earthquake-ridden and volcano prone little planetoid.

Agent Rian White knows what his crew is after, but he’s less than certain about Ada’s stake in this particular game. Only that he’s absolutely positive that she has one.

But he’s so bewitched, bothered and bewildered by the seemingly open but utterly devious smuggler that he doesn’t figure out that she’s already stolen everything she planned on until after she warps away with the contents of a much-sought-after and destructively secured datadrive, the key to opening it – and, quite possibly, his heart.

Unfortunately for Ada, she’s all too aware that he has hers – and that it’s the one thing she never expected to lose – let alone to a government agent who is too good and too good-looking for his own – or certainly her own – good.

Escape Rating A-: This one is pure, sheer, unadulterated fun. It just hits on so many levels in a way that keeps both the reader and the characters delightfully guessing every step of the way. Because we know from the beginning that Ada Lamarr is, as that old saying goes, no better than she ought to be. We know she’s an unreliable narrator because she teases us – along with government agent Rian White, with her secrets and plans and wheels-within-wheels plot even as she’s running out of oxygen and wondering if perhaps she went just a bit too far with her opening gambit.

At least until it works – and gives her one up on the stick up her ass captain of the Halifax. Who is NOT really in charge and is absolutely not Rian White – whose ass is delectable and absolutely does not have a stick up it. (And I’ll leave the rest of the possible salacious jokes and puns right here no matter how tempting they are. Ada has several thoughts in that direction but absolutely does not go there in this first book in the Chaotic Orbits trilogy – no matter how much she wants to.)

On the surface, this is very much a wheels-within-wheels long game kind of caper plot. Ada clearly has a hidden agenda from the off – even if she doesn’t reveal the full extent of it even inside the privacy of her own head. Rian sees the wheels spinning, even if he can’t see what they’re spinning around and about, Ada sees his wheels spinning and is attracted by his obvious intelligence. They’re both clearly playing with each other on multiple levels and that’s already fun.

Which gives the story a bit of lightness that brightens the world creation – because it’s equally clear that the way this particular SF world is set up is not all that light. And it’s a bit murky, at least at this early stage, whether Ada is on the side of the angels or on the side of the biggest paycheck. She’s undoubtedly morally gray, but one of the questions that we’re left with at the end is whether Rian White is even grayer, or not.

That the grayness revolves around a very interesting question adds a bit of depth to that world creation. Because this isn’t a case where the established government is evil in one way or another, the question is whether or not it can possibly be effective at fixing what’s been broken. Not a question of whether or not it’s on the side of the angels, but whether or not it has enough angels on its side to get the shit that needs to get done, done.

Between the caper aspects, the questions about which side is the righteous one in a universe going mad, and the possibility of romance – or at least eventual sexytimes – between its deceitful heroine and its play-mostly-by-the-rules hero, Full Speed to a Crash Landing fits right into the marvelous moment that science fiction romance is currently having.

So if you’ve fallen hard for Valerie Valdes’ Chilling Effect, Rachel Bach’s Fortune’s Pawn, Cat Rambo’s You Sexy Thing and/or Constance Fay’s marvelous Fiasco and Calamity, you’ll be as pleased as I am to know that the second book in the Chaotic Orbits trilogy, How to Steal a Galaxy, will be speeding our way in December. Rian White will be staking out an auction hoping it will attract Ada – while Ada plans to convince him to join her on the dark side – where the cookies are – by kidnapping him into her own questionably legal plans.

It should be a BLAST!

A- #BookReview: Navigational Entanglements by Aliette de Bodard

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A- Reviews> book reviews
A- #BookReview: Navigational Entanglements by Aliette de BodardNavigational Entanglements by Aliette de Bodard
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, ebook
Genres: science fiction, science fiction mystery, space opera
Pages: 176
Published by Tordotcom on July 30, 2024
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

Award-winning author Aliette de Bodard presents yet another innovative space opera that broadens the definition of the this time bringing xianxia-style martial arts to the stars.

Using the power of Shadows generated from their own bodies’ vitality, Navigators guide space ships safely across the a realm of unreality populated by unfathomable, dangerous creatures called Tanglers. In return for their service, the navigator clans get wealth and power―but they get the blame, too. So when a Tangler escapes the Hollows and goes missing, the empire calls on the jockeying clans to take responsibility and deal with the problem.

Việt Nhi is not good with people. Or politics. Which is rather unfortunate because, as a junior apprentice in the Rooster clan, when her elders send her on a joint-clan mission to locate the first escaped Tangler in living memory, she can’t exactly say no.

Hạc Cúc of the Snake clan usually likes people. It says so on her “information gathering”―right after “poisoning” and “stabbing.” So she’s pretty sure she’s got the measure of this they’re the screw-ups, the spares; there isn’t a single sharp tool in this shed.

But when their imperial envoy is found dead by clan poison, this crew of expendable apprentices will have to learn to work together―fast―before they end up cooling their heels in a jail cell while the invisible Tangler wreaks havoc on a civilian city and the reputation of all four clans.

My Review:

The ‘navigational entanglements’ of the title aren’t just a bit of clever phrasing – not that it isn’t a clever and evocative phrase! In the case of this novella, it’s also a literal description of the whole story – in more ways than one.

This SF mystery, shot through with political shenanigans and a tart but gooey center of sapphic romance, begins its entanglement with its solution for the faster-than-light travel conundrum with actual creatures called Tanglers who live in the realm of unreality that makes faster than light travel and the galaxy-spanning empires it makes possible, well, possible.

As is often the case in stories that use this method of FTL travel, navigating the Hollows requires highly skilled navigators who are born with special gifts. In this particular universe, the power of Shadows generated from their own bodies’ life force.

It could be considered magic, at least magic of the Clarke’s Law variety that “Any technology, sufficiently advanced, is indistinguishable from.’ However one thinks of it, it takes special training and special talent and is especially valuable. Particularly to the clans who have a near monopoly on intergalactic shipping because of their success in nurturing navigators.

A hegemony that is under threat when this story begins. Which is why this story begins. The exact nature of the threat, and the clans’ decision on how to meet that threat, is the exact thing that Hạc Cúc of the Snake clan is pretty sure she’s not supposed to figure out.

The clans, or at least her own clan, should have known better. Because if there is one thing that Hạc Cúc can’t resist, it’s a secret. Especially not the kind of secret that is intended to get her killed whether she figures it out or not.

Escape Rating A-: I grabbed this book because I’ve been picking my way through the author’s vast, sprawling, Xuya Universe series and figured that this would be similar without being an actual part of THAT tangled mess.

Two things at the top, Navigational Entanglements is NOT part of Xuya. I’m not saying there aren’t similarities in style and in the way that the culture and history work, but this is a standalone. So if you’re looking to sample the author’s work, this is a good place to start.

Howsomever, one of the characteristics of Xuya is that the publication order and the chronological order don’t have even a nodding acquaintance. Each story in the series is intended to be read without prior knowledge and starts a bit in medias res of the whole series. As in the reader is thrust into the middle of a story that they may or may not have read the background of, or the background may or may not yet exist, and is supposed to sink or swim with what they have in front of them.

Navigational Entanglements is written in that same manner, even though there aren’t any previous or succeeding stories – at least not yet. (If we get more stories in this universe this reader at least would be very happy because the politics are just so fascinatingly messy.)

In other words, this is a story that requires the reader to figure things out as they go. Not that these characters don’t turn out to be doing exactly that, but going with their flow means that the reader has to jump in feet first and that’s not every reader’s comfort zone.

Part of what makes the story work, however, is that this is very much an SF mystery from the top and at the top. It’s just unusual in that the team was purposely created to fail, because they all hate each other. It’s only that Hạc Cúc’s love of secrets allows her to stand outside of the group’s bickering, see it for what it is, and redirect their weaknesses and their enmity into a productive, if not always harmonious, team.

Which allows friendship, love and trust to all blossom – rather like a cactus flower complete with spikes! – and provides this novella with its surprising – especially to the protagonists – happy for now with the possibility (hopefully) of more political and investigative shenanigans to come.

#BookReview: Lost to Eternity by Greg Cox

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | B Reviews> book reviews
#BookReview: Lost to Eternity by Greg CoxLost to Eternity by Greg Cox
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: science fiction, space opera, Star Trek
Series: Star Trek: The Original Series
Pages: 400
Published by Pocket Books/Star Trek on July 23, 2024
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

A thrilling new Star Trek “movie era” novel from New York Times bestselling author Greg Cox!
Three Eras. Three Mysteries. One Ancient Enemy?
2024: Almost forty years ago, marine biologist Gillian Taylor stormed away from her dream job at Sausalito’s Cetacean Institute—and was never seen or heard from again. Now a new true crime podcast has reopened that cold case, but investigator Melinda Silver has no idea that her search for the truth about Gillian’s disappearance will ultimately stretch across time and space—and attract the attention of a ruthless obsessive with his own secret agenda.
2268: The USS Enterprise ’s five-year mission is interrupted when Captain James T. Kirk and his crew set out to recover an abducted Federation scientist whose classified secrets are being sought by the Klingons as well. The trail leads to a barbaric world off limits to both Starfleet and the Klingon Empire—and an ageless mastermind on a quest for eternity.
2292: The Osori, an ancient alien species, has finally agreed to establish relations with its much younger the Federation, the Klingons, and the Romulans. A joint mission involving ships from all three powers, including the Enterprise -A , turns explosive when one of the Osori envoys is apparently killed. Each side blames the others, but the truth lies buried deep, nearly three hundred years in the past…

My Review:

Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (the one with the whales), was one of the great movies of the Original Series movie era, alongside The Wrath of Khan. Voyage Home had something for everyone, in that it told a great story, had lots of sweet moments of nostalgia for fans, addresses important and still relevant issues of its day with its tale of species extinction, had oodles of funny scenes and memorable, quotable lines – and ends with a heartwarming scene of the ‘band getting back together’ in a crowning moment of awesome.

It also presents a heaping helping of wish fulfillment for legions of fans then and now as the 20th century cetacean biologist, Dr. Gillian Taylor, time travels with the crew of the Enterprise and the whales George and Gracie from her time to their 23rd century.

It was the stuff that both dreams and fanfic were made of.

But it left a mystery in Taylor’s time that, nearly forty years later, is still unsolved. That mystery serves as the inspiration for a true-crime podcast – because of course it would. And thereby, as the saying goes, hangs this tale that spans from intrepid podcasters in 2024 to a medical researcher’s abduction in 2268 and onward to a planned peace conference with an advanced species in 2292.

What do those three widely separated incidents have in common? None other than Captain James T. Kirk, the crew of the U.S.S. Enterprise – with or without their equally famous ship – and an enemy that no one saw coming.

Escape Rating B: Like most media novelizations, Lost to Eternity is absolutely a story for the fans – and not just because of its homage to the fanservice of Dr. Gillian Taylor’s fate in Star Trek IV.

There are three separate stories in this one, set in 2024, 2268 and 2292. At first, with the focus on the podcasters in 2024, the story is thoroughly grounded in our here and now. It’s easy to get caught up in Melinda Silver’s need to find out what happened to Taylor, and the way that it devolves into conspiracy theories and men in black even as it picks up the remaining threads of Voyage Home as seen through the eyes of the people those events left behind in puzzlement was absolutely riveting.

If you’ve ever wanted the X-Files to cross with Star Trek, that part of this story is pretty much that story.

But the story unwinds across all three eras in turn, so the 2024 chapter is followed by a 2268 chapter and then a 2292 chapter. It all makes sense in the end – but as it goes along it takes a long time and a lot of pages to get a glimmer of just what makes these three stories connect up.

At the same time, the stories in each of the timelines and the way that they are interwoven with previous (from a certain point of view) events in the Star Trek timeline as a whole allows for a whole lot of loose ends from an amazing number of stories to get referenced and eventually closed – which goes back to this being a story for the fans because the more of those loose ends that one recognizes the more familiar – and fun – the story feels.

I had a good time with this story – as I always do when I pick one of these up. I love slipping back into this familiar and beloved universe, and that carried me over the points late in each timeline’s story where I just wanted to see all the dots get connected – and to see if the connections that my brain was making were the ones the author intended to make.

In the end, I enjoyed all three of the individual stories, liked the way they merged, had fun with the way they tied up different loose ends, and loved spending time with these characters. I also thought the author did a great job of making sure that the stories got told from different perspectives – that it wasn’t all Kirk and Spock saving the day no matter how much I do love those stories.

But I found the villain just a bit flat. He read a lot like Arne Darvin, the villain of the episodes The Trouble with Tribbles (TOS) and Trials and Tribble-ations (DS9)combined with the motive but not the scenery chewing of the villains in Star Trek: Insurrection. The villain of Lost to Eternity unfortunately got all of his character from Darvin – who was fairly colorless. A little bit of scenery chewing might have improved him a bit – for select definitions of the word ‘improvement’. Perhaps it would be better to say that a little bit of scenery chewing might have made him a bit more colorful – and interesting.

Still, a good reading time was absolutely had by this reader and I loved the way that it did exactly what Voyage Home did – it connected our present with Star Trek’s future and dreamed a dream of getting from here – to there.

A- #AudioBookReview: Earthlight by J. Michael Straczynski

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A- Reviews> audio reviews> audiobooks> book reviews
A- #AudioBookReview: Earthlight by J. Michael StraczynskiEarthlight by J. Michael Straczynski
Narrator: Erik Braa, Pete Bradbury, Jonathan Davis, William DeMeritt, Robert Fass, Jeff Gurner, Ryan Haugen, David Lee Huynh, Mars Lipowski, Saskia Maarleveld, Kathleen McInerney, Brandon McInnis, Sean Kenin Elias Reyes, Stefan Rudnicki, Salli Saffioti, Kristen Sieh, Christopher Smith, Marc Thompson, Will Watt, Michael Ann Young, Beka Sikharulidza, Stephanie Walters Montgomery, Robin Atkin Downes
Format: audiobook
Source: supplied by publisher via Libro.fm
Formats available: audiobook
Genres: military science fiction, political thriller, science fiction
Length: 2 hours and 54 minutes
Published by Penguin Random House Audiobook Original on July 9, 2024
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo
Goodreads

International tension is rising as the Russian military forms an Eastern Alliance to create a new age of Russian supremacy. The rest of the world is scrambling for a united response.
Enter Project Earthlight.
Earthlight is a NATO operation under U.S. command based in the ultimate military high ground: space. A group of the best fighter pilots is handpicked from around the world to fly the first generation of advanced planes capable of maneuvering in the vacuum of space and inside the atmosphere.
Learning how to fly experimental planes while learning to trust their new squadron, our pilots are plunged into a high-stakes life-and-death mission with everything at risk. Can Commanding Officer Colonel Scott Dane get the other pilots on the same page in time to prevent World War III?
With cutting-edge soundscapes and an action-packed plot, EARTHLIGHT will keep listeners on the edge of their seats from start to finish.

My Review:

Even when there is something that pretends to be peace on Earth – there’s brinkmanship and stepping up to the terrible line that leads to World War III. So far, we’ve always stepped back – but someday we won’t.

The story in Earthlight posits a near future – possibly too damn near – when the U.S. and its NATO allies step up to that line because a post-Putin Russia is already there. What makes Earthlight just a bit different from similar stories by Tom Clancy and M.L. Buchman is that the brinkmanship takes place – not somewhere on Earth, or at least not exclusively somewhere on the planet – but in space.

Not “outer space” but somewhere a LOT closer to home. Specifically Low Earth orbit – or LEO. Far enough out to see an entire hemisphere of the planet – and close enough to strike anywhere on it – especially from planes that can go faster than MACH 20.

Those planes have the advantage – the literal high ground – as long as they don’t overshoot their targets.

Project Earthlight is a secret – because of course it is. And of course it’s been leaked – because big secret projects are incapable of staying secret for very long – especially once they go into production.

And Project Earthlight – and its space-borne aircraft carrier, the Alexander – is very much in production, on-line, and waiting for its first mission and its first squadron of pilots. Which is where this story begins, as Colonel Scott Dane of the U.S. Air Force is on a recruiting mission to sign the best, the brightest, and the most out-of-the-box thinkers from ALL of the NATO forces to fly the first planes assigned to the Alexander.

He hopes they’ve got time for all the training they’ll need – but he knows they don’t. Because those plans did leak, and the Russians have a space carrier of their own – the Gagarin. And they have a bunch of fanatics in the Kremlin – all promising a return to Russia’s glory days.

The path to which leads straight through a NATO allied Eastern Europe, and to a head to head dogfight with the Alexander for the highest stakes of all.

Escape Rating A-: There’s a whole lot of SQUEE in this review because WOW what a ride.

Although I have to admit that for a good chunk of the story, as much as I was totally caught up in it I was desperately worried that it was all a tease. There just didn’t seem like enough time left in the recording to come to anything like a satisfactory ending. (I was half-heartedly looking for the reading equivalent of ‘coitus interruptus’ because it sure seemed like the story was heading that way.)

But fear not, Earthlight does come to a satisfactory conclusion – although it is still more than a bit of a tease as most listeners will want to know what happens afterwards. At least the story certainly does make clear that there IS an afterwards and that’s a gigantic relief.

The elements that make up the story are familiar to readers of military SF. There’s a recruitment phase, a training phase, a getting-to-know-each-other phase, and there’s the inevitable potential romance that runs into the military frat regs (shades of Stargate).

The process of the squad pulling itself together is jam-packed and doesn’t give all the characters the time needed for readers – or their squadmates – to really get to know them. And of course the characters who are mostly reduced to (admittedly well done) accents are the ones that get lost early.

But in spite of that necessity, we do get a good feel for the leaders, and we do feel like “we are there” because we’re not just reading this story – we’re in the thick of it by listening to their distinct voices.

Laid on top of the military side, there’s also the side that gives us the historical and political side. The part that’s going to remind lots of listeners of Tom Clancy or M.L. Buchman because the shenanigans, including the brinkmanship, the short-sightedness, the glory-seeking to the exclusion of common sense and the epic levels of paranoia are all out of the political thriller playbook.

That part of the story works, even with a bit of necessary shorthand for the length, because we’ve seen them before – even in real life. That part of the story feels entirely too plausible.

This listening experience is edge-of-the-seat, you-are-absolutely-there, nail-biting compulsion filled with a surprising number of crowning moments of awesome. There were plenty of moments when my heart was literally in my throat even though I knew the worst-case scenario couldn’t possibly be the ending.

So the story of Earthlight, taken as a whole, is a fantastic experience even if many of the elements that make it so compelling are also just a bit familiar. It’s a great three hours of listening – I just wish there were a hell of a lot more.

But OMG I wish there was a text for this thing.

I NEED a text so I can hunt for quotes AND have a full list of characters, how their names are spelled and who played them in the audio. Because the cast was outstanding – every single one.

It is a pet peeve of mine that full cast or even multicast audio productions don’t generally tell the listener exactly who played whom – and I always want to know. But in this particular case, that lack of a list led to a bit of serendipity. To my ear, the political officer aboard the Russian ship sounded a LOT like the Romulan officer Tomalak in a couple of Star Trek: Next Gen episodes. When I checked out who portrayed Tomalak, I discovered that the character was played by the late Andreas Katsulas – who embodied Ambassador G’Kar on the author’s beloved TV series Babylon 5.

One reviewer opined that Earthlight could be seen as a very, very, very early prequel to B5 if one squinted a LOT. And it’s possible. Certainly it captured something of its spirit – without squinting at all. If it turns out that that spirit continues into another chapter of Earthlight – this listener/reader would be thrilled to be aboard for another mission.

A- #BookReview: This Great Hemisphere by Mateo Askaripour

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A- Reviews> book reviews
A- #BookReview: This Great Hemisphere by Mateo AskaripourThis Great Hemisphere by Mateo Askaripour
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, paperback, large print, ebook, audiobook
Genres: dystopian, science fiction, speculative fiction, political thriller
Pages: 432
Published by Dutton Books on July 9, 2024
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

From the award-winning and bestselling author of Black Buck : A speculative novel about a young woman—invisible by birth and relegated to second-class citizenship—who sets off on a mission to find her older brother, whom she had presumed dead but who is now the primary suspect in a high-profile political murder.
Despite the odds, Sweetmint, a young invisible woman, has done everything right her entire life—school, university, and now a highly sought-after apprenticeship with one of the Northwestern Hemisphere’s premier inventors, a non-invisible man belonging to the dominant population who is as eccentric as he is enigmatic. But the world she has fought so hard to build after the disappearance of her older brother comes crashing down when authorities claim that not only is he well and alive, he’s also the main suspect in the murder of the Chief Executive of the Northwestern Hemisphere. 
A manhunt ensues, and Sweetmint, armed with courage, intellect, and unwavering love for her brother, sets off on a mission to find him before it’s too late. With five days until the hemisphere’s big election, Sweetmint must dodge a relentless law officer who’s determined to maintain order and an ambitious politician with sights set on becoming the next Chief Executive by any means necessary.
With the awe-inspiring defiance of The Power and the ever-shifting machinations of House of Cards , This Great Hemisphere is a novel that brilliantly illustrates the degree to which reality can be shaped by non-truths and vicious manipulations, while shining a light on our ability to surprise ourselves when we stop giving in to the narratives others have written for us.

My Review:

Shakespeare said it best, but the Bard said an awful lot of things very, very well, which is why we keep quoting him. In The Merchant of Venice (Act 1, Scene 3), there’s a famous proverb that says that, “The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose.” It’s something the reader is forced to reckon with in This Great Hemisphere – even if the characters for the most part don’t have the education to recognize the phenomenon.

They’re not supposed to. That’s part of the story. In fact, a more accurate paraphrase of that quote as it applies to This Great Hemisphere would be that “the devil can WRITE Scripture for his purpose.” because that is exactly what has happened during the five centuries between our now and the future experienced by Sweetmint and her people.

As Sweetmint discovers over the course of this story, there’s another quote that applies even more, from a part of the Bible that the powers-that-be of the Northwestern Hemisphere have undoubtedly excised as part of their thoroughgoing revision of Scripture to suit their purposes. It’s the one from Ecclesiastes (1:9) that goes: “What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.” Or as it was put more succinctly in Battlestar Galactica, “This has all happened before. All of this will happen again.”

But Sweetmint and her friends do not know any of this when her story begins. It may have all happened before – in fact it has all happened before – but it hasn’t happened before TO HER and her perspective is what carries the story from hope and compliance to desperation, rebellion and tragedy. And maybe, just maybe, back to hope – or at least a brief approximation thereof.

But what is it that has happened before? Sweetmint’s story – or the story that takes place around her and through her, is just the kind of metaphor that science fiction does well when it takes an issue that is real and present – and generally terrible – and shifts it in time and space, alters just a few of the parameters – and forces the reader to see an obscured truth for what it really is.

This Great Hemisphere is set on Earth, five centuries into a future where a portion of the human population is born invisible. Because humans are gonna human, and governments always need a common enemy to class as less than human to keep everyone else in line, invisibles have been cast as a threat and dehumanized in every way possible. They are denied higher education, voting rights, land ownership, good jobs, good housing, etc., etc., etc. Denied all of those things by law and forced to live in remote villages so that the dominant population can never really know them so that they can be more easily demonized.

Sweetmint is supposed to be a “model Invisible” and has earned a place as an intern – not a servant, but an actual intern – with one of the men responsible for the creation of this system. He’s using her for the next step in his “great plan”.

But we see this broken society through Sweetmint’s eyes as the scales are removed from them. She learns that nothing she believes bears much of any resemblance to any objective truth and that the system is rotten from within – always has been and intends to always be so.

What makes the story so compelling is that even as we watch it unravel, we’re still riveted by her attempts to force a new way through. That even though it may be hopeless in the long run, there can be a reprieve in the short run – and possibly more. And we’re there for her and for it – even if the specific future she hoped for is not.

Escape Rating A-: I obviously had a lot of thoughts about this as I was reading it, and I have more. It’s that kind of book.

It does absolutely fly by. The author has done an excellent job of creating a world that is firmly rooted in the history we know and yet manages to shine a light on it from a different corner. Using invisibility as a metaphor for race allows the reader to be firmly grounded in our own historical perspective and yet provides a vector by which anyone can imagine themselves as Sweetmint because there are circumstances in which anyone can be rendered invisible.

I’m all over the map on what I thought and felt about this book, and it’s making writing it up all kinds of difficult. On the one hand, as I said, it’s compelling to read. On a second hand, I felt like the social issues part was a bit heavy-handed – but at the same time, I recognize that my own background makes me more familiar with some of the issues – albeit from a slightly different angle, and as someone whose read a lot of history the repetitive patterns are not exactly news.

From the point of view of someone who reads a lot of science fiction, this very much fits into the spec fic, SFnal tradition of exploring an all too real past and present issue by setting it in either a time or place away from the here and now. Something that even the original Star Trek series did both well and badly – sometimes at the same time – and there’s an episode that’s particularly on point in this regard, Let That Be Your Last Battlefield.

In other words, in yet another attempt to make a long story short and probably fail at it again, This Great Hemisphere is a compelling story, both because of Sweetmint’s originally naive perspective and because the actual political machinations going and increasing enmeshment in the consequences of them – sometimes intentionally but often not. And the ending – oh that was a stunner in a way that just capped off the whole thing while still leaving just a glimmer of possibility – if not necessarily a good one – for the world in which it happens.

#BookReview: Better Living Through Algorithms by Naomi Kritzer

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | B+ Reviews> book reviews
#BookReview: Better Living Through Algorithms by Naomi Kritzer“Better Living Through Algorithms” by Naomi Kritzer in Clarkesworld Magazine Issue 200, May 2023) by Naomi Kritzer
Narrator: Kate Baker
Format: ebook, podcast
Source: podcast, supplied by publisher via Hugo Packet
Formats available: ebook, magazine, podcast
Genres: hopepunk, science fiction, short stories
Series: Clarkesworld Magazine Issue 200
Pages: 13
Length: 36 minutes
Published by Clarkesworld Magazine on May, 2023
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo
Goodreads

Clarkesworld Magazine, May 2023 issue (#200) contains:
- Original fiction by Naomi Kritzer ("Better Living Through Algorithms"), Harry Turtledove ("Through the Roof of the World"), Suzanne Palmer ("To Sail Beyond the Botnet"), Rich Larson ("LOL, Said the Scorpion"), Parker Ragland ("Sensation and Sensibility"), Megan Chee ("The Giants Among Us"), An Hao ("Action at a Distance"), and Jordan Chase-Young ("The Fall").
- Non-fiction includes an article by Carrie Sessarego, interviews with Premee Mohamed and Megan O'Keefe, and an editorial by Neil Clarke.

My Review:

This story was simply adorable – if both realistic and a bit sad. And sad because it was realistic and realistic because sad. With just the right tinge of hope to lift it up at the end.

It’s also surprisingly SFnal for a situation that sits in the uncanny valley where what used to be SF has become the real. It feels like it’s part of the lab-based SF tradition but there’s no actual lab. Or we’re all the lab. Or a bit of both.

Let me explain – or at least try.

Better Living Through Algorithms is set either in the RIGHT NOW or at a point in time so close that it might as well be now. It doesn’t need any aliens or space ships and there’s no computer virus running amuck.

What there is is an app. Just like now. But the app isn’t exactly like any of the usual suspects – although it’s perfectly capable of seeming like any or all of them.

Abelique combines elements of a productivity app, and a time management app, and a health monitoring app, wraps the whole thing up in a self-reflective little bow and ties it off with a bit of mystery.

When Linnea first hears about Abelique from her early-adopter friends, it sounds like a cult and she’s NOT INTERESTED. When her boss pushes her to try it – at work – he makes it sound like a productivity app. He also makes it sound like she’d better just do it.

So she does – to the point of doing the long and somewhat intrusive setup on work time – because if her boss is making references to her last and next evaluations as he’s “encouraging” her, it is. But Linnea gets hooked on Abelique the minute that it tells her it will help her lie to her boss. Because that’s clearly not the hallmark of a productivity app. At all.

And she’s in.

Through Linnea’s adoption of Abelique we see the whole life cycle of a viral app, as well as more than a bit of the nitty-gritty about how that sausage gets made. Abelique structures her day and her time – but in really good ways. It encourages her to connect with both new people and old dreams. It keeps her from becoming a drone of a worker bee.

All of which happen because she lets it invade her privacy – all for her own good. Which it actually is. At least until the inevitable end of the life-cycle comes and she stops using Abelique, gives up all of those good habits and goes back to her old routine.

But something remains, not of Abelique but of the person she leaned into while she used it. And that gives the story a much-needed little uplift at the otherwise sad but expected ending.

Escape Rating B+: I really did love this – not because the AI behind Abelique knows better than we do – but because it knows exactly what we know and just don’t pay attention to. None of the things that Abelique asks – and it’s always an ask and not a demand – are news.

People are happier when they have fewer small decisions to make. People are happier when they get outside more. People are more productive when they get enough sleep. People do feel better when they have space for a bit of creativity in their lives. Etc., etc., etc.

Abelique just puts all of those things that are already known into a package that seems cool and goes viral – for a little while. Because viral apps are only viral for a little while. It can’t last because of other predictable bits of human behavior – but it is lovely while it does.

In the end, this is a bit of hopepunk, in that some of what Linnea learns while she’s participating in Abelique remains – and not just for her – even after the app’s inevitable ending.

This was a story that I enjoyed while I was listening to it, but it wasn’t terribly deep and left me more than a bit sad at the end. As much as I liked it while I was listening, it doesn’t overtake How to Raise a Kraken in Your Bathtub on my Hugo ballot.

But reading it did leave me with a habit that I don’t plan on letting go of. I listened to this story from the Clarkesworld podcast reading. They read all the stories they publish in the magazine – as does Uncanny Magazine. I’ll definitely be looking for more of those podcasts, not just for the Hugo nominations, but for whenever I’m searching for excellent stories to listen to, even though there isn’t an app to tell me to.

#BookReview: Unexploded Remnants by Elaine Gallagher

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | B Reviews> book reviews
#BookReview: Unexploded Remnants by Elaine GallagherUnexploded Remnants by Elaine Gallagher
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: paperback, ebook
Genres: artificial intelligence, science fiction
Pages: 111
Published by Tordotcom on June 25, 2024
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

An A.I. wages war on a future it doesn't understand.

Alice is the last human. Street-smart and bad-ass.

After discovering what appears to be an A.I. personality in an antique data core, Alice undertakes to find its home somewhere in the stargate network, or lay him to rest. Her find is the control unit of a powerful ancient weapon system.

But releasing the ghost of a raging warrior for whom the war is still under way is as much of a mistake as the stories tell, and Alice finds herself faced with an impossible choice against an unstoppable foe.

My Review:

Alice is the last human in the galaxy. As far as she’s concerned, she’s definitely in Wonderland – even when it seems like the whole, entire ‘verse is out to get her.

There are two stories packed into Unexploded Remnants, and that’s a lot of packing for a novella. First, there’s Alice’s whole backstory – which must be huge and fascinating but we only get glimpses which are not NEARLY enough.

She’s literally the last of her kind and the reason she got to be that and what happened after and how she’s coped with her singularity in the big wide galaxy at large has to have been a huge story of awakening and culture shock – and I wish that was the story we had. Or I wish we’d get it someday.

Or both. Definitely both.

Instead, we get hints and dribbles, because the story we actually have is an entirely different big story. Alice is kind of an intergalactic treasure hunter. An archeologist of lost civilizations and an explorer of lost cultures – much like her own.

That she freelances for ‘The Archive’ in this vocation/avocation reminded this reader quite a lot of Genevieve Cogman’s Invisible Library series. So if you loved that you might have a hook to this.

So Alice is a bit of a bazaar and flea market aficionado who has more than enough knowledge to get more than occasionally lucky. Or unlucky, as the case might be. And certainly is here.

She barters for a trinket that looks a lot like a 20th century Earth lava lamp – although it’s certainly not that. It might have a system inside its dirty and unprepossessing carapace that she might be able to tease out and communicate with. It should be worth something – if only to the Archive.

It turns out to be a whole lot more than Alice bargained for – both literally and figuratively. As soon as she closes the deal, it seems like a whole, entire platoon of dishonorable warmongers close in on her position in an attempt to steal whatever it is out of her grasp. A platoon that doesn’t seem to care in the least about collateral damage to the marketplace, the crowd of shoppers, or Alice herself.

So she runs. And as she runs from planet to planet through a vast network of transportation gates, she has the opportunity to make friends with the system inside the ‘lava lamp’, an entity she names ‘Gunn’. The question is whether Gunn is a soldier or just a weapon. Her pursuers believe he’s merely a weapon. Alice is convinced that he’s more.

But whichever he is, the war he was made for or recruited into is over – and has been for 10,000 years. His people – and their bitter enemy – committed mutual genocide. And her pursuers seem all too eager to employ Gunn’s expertise in their own bitter conflict without thought or care about how his ended.

Escape Rating B: The reason that I picked this up – and its biggest drawback – are the same. It’s short. Unexploded Remnants is a novella. In fact, it’s the author’s debut novella. It’s supposed to be short. But the story it contains is too big for the length of the format. Or there should have been two of them. One for Alice’s backstory – which sounds absolutely fascinating if more than a bit heartbreaking. And then a second novella for this ‘adventure’ which gives readers a tantalizing glimpse of the universe that saved her and made her whole, while telling a story about the price of peace and the cost of war.

As I was reading, the SFnal elements struck a lot of familiar chords. I mentioned the Invisible Library series earlier, because that is certainly part of this story.  Irene’s job in the Invisible Library series, is to acquire cultural artifacts and knowledge for the Library, while the Library’s purpose for those artifacts is to use the knowledge gained to preserve the balance between order and chaos for all the worlds it touches.

Howsomever, not only is Alice’s job very similar to Irene’s, but Alice’s Archive does the same job as Irene’s Library, using the knowledge it has gained from the artifacts and databases it has collected to preserve the balance between order and chaos, specifically by keeping the galaxy on the knife edge between outright war and an occasionally aggressive peace.

While the vastness of the galaxy – along with its system of interstellar gate travel – recalled Stargate, Babylon 5 and especially Mass Effect, there was a feel to this story that gave me a lot of the same vibes as This Is How You Lose the Time War, except that in this instance that war has already been lost and Gunn is the only survivor. I also had rather mixed feelings about Time War, so the analogy works on that level as well, although a LOT more people adored Time War than seem to have Unexploded Remnants – at least so far – so your reading mileage may vary.

Personally, I found Alice’s rapid exploration of her adopted universe fascinating if a bit of a tease. I enjoyed her sprinkling of 20th and 21st century pop culture references – which seemed to serve her as both a reminder of where she came from and a personal code that defied automated translators without seeming deliberately clandestine.

Howsomever, as much as I liked the way the story ended, that ‘Gunn’ was treated as an old soldier instead of as merely a weapon – and as much as I agreed with the overt political message – that message was very overt to the point where it breaks the fourth wall even though I believe the theories posited are more plausible than anyone likes to think about.

In the end, some mixed feelings. I loved the universe, I liked Alice, the chases were riveting, but the message was a bit heavy-handed and the whole thing should have been longer or this should have been a duology.

But this is a DEBUT novella, and it packed in a lot of good stuff – if just a bit stuffed. I’m looking forward to seeing what the author comes up with next.