REVIEW SUMMARY: Wesley’s Chu’s debut novel is fast-paced, clever, and leaves you longing for the next installment.

MY RATING: 

When out-of-shape IT technician Roen Tan woke up and started hearing voices in his head, he naturally assumed he was losing it.

He wasn’t.

Wesley Chu’s debut novel follows tubby everyman Roen Tan on his quest to become something more than a single, overweight, low-level code monkey. What’s special about this story is that Tan’s evolution isn’t voluntary. He may end up saving the world, but he’ll have to be dragged into it. You see, there are these aliens, and they’re using our bodies as vessels to carry them around while they engage in a civil war…
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REVIEW SUMMARY: The sequel trilogy to the best seller, Wool Omnibus, which takes a leap back in time to show how the chaos started.

BRIEF SYNOPSIS: A silo architect finds out too late what he’s been building, loses track of his wife and memories, and must uncover the secret behind the silo in order to make everything right.

MY RATING:

MY REVIEW
PROS: Strong beginning; empathy for major characters; challenging philosophical themes about war and sacrifice to survive as a human race.
CONS: Third Shift (Book Three) slowed the story way down with minor revelations and sparse action.
BOTTOM LINE: While the first half gave hope that this sequel could surpass Wool Omnibus, the story went downhill from there. Shift is still recommended for Wool fans, and it will not kill interest in reading the concluding volume although but it did not meet expectations.

(Spoiler Warning: This review will have spoilers for people who have not read Wool, and only general spoilers for those who have yet to read Shift. Reviews for First Shift: Legacy and Second Shift: Order can be seen at the reviewer’s home page.)
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MY RATING:

BRIEF SYNOPSIS: A rogue-ish hero and his intelligent sword hire onto a quest. Their employers are looking for a lost relic, and our pair are looking for gold any way they can find it.

MY REVIEW:
PROS: A charming and convincing partnership based on mutual respect and a healthy dose of witty banter.
CONS: Nothing earth-shattering or overly ambitious here.
BOTTOM LINE: This is the sort of Fafhrd-and-Grey-Mouser-style sword and sorcery adventure that I love and would like to see more of in RPG novels.

The Pathfinder line of RPG novels is doing a lot of things right. They’ve been publishing intelligent adventure novels that showcase their gaming system and their campaign setting in lush detail. They’ve hired a variety of solid, professional authors, and they’ve spread their tales among a wide variety of heroes instead of following one party for multiple books. The one thing that they had been missing–until now–was the particular brand of charming that I have recently come to love in Fritz Leiber’s Fafhrd and Grey Mouser series. Tim Pratt has done an excellent job of capturing that spirit in this Pathfinder outing.

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REVIEW SUMMARY: An enchanting novel from Emma Newman, an urban fantasy that has no sign of tattooed women in leather pants.

MY RATING:

BRIEF SYNOPSIS: A headstrong scion and an investigator discover dark doings in the outwardly genteel world of Bath’s secret mirror city.

MY REVIEW:
PROS: A wide variety of interesting characters; intersecting stories: the wonderful feel of a larger world only partially glimpsed.
CONS: The ending of the book leaves perhaps too many dangling threads; ecology of the Split Worlds has some problems.
BOTTOM LINE: Accept the invitation to attend the season in Aquae Sulis.

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REVIEW SUMMARY: Vivid, varied, and violent. At once beautiful and terrible to behold.

MY RATING:

BRIEF SYNOPSIS:  On the planet of Jeroun god exists, and he is far from benevolent. Adrash looks down upon the world, prepared to unleash final annihilation. Men in suits of black and white do battle in his name, some wish to submit to him and others wish to defy him. Vedas, a Blacksuit of the Thirteenth Order embarks on a journey to a great fighting tournament that may well decide the fate of Jeroun.

MY REVIEW:
PROS: Stunning imagery, absorbing setting, diverse cultures, intriguing characters, cool ideas.
CONS: Not enough exploration of some of the settings and ideas. Climax was a little weak.
BOTTOM LINE: Ambitious, impressive, and bold. This is not your run of the mill fantasy.

No Return is an excellent start to the new reading year. This is the sort of novel that stands in the shadow of two super genres, for it is neither science fiction nor fantasy. It is instead a beautiful twining of both. It is epic in the in the more traditional sense of the word, though not a narrative poem. No Return features heroic deeds, strange cultures, dark violence, and consequences. It has the trappings on a new age legend, set on an extraordinary world.

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REVIEW SUMMARY: 8 standout stories + 24 good stories – 3 stories mediocre or worse = a collection on par with previous editions.

MY RATING:

BRIEF SYNOPSIS: Editor Gardner Dozois’ picks for the thirty-five best stories of 2011.

MY REVIEW:
PROS: 30 stories worth reading, 7 of which were outstanding. Being exposed to new writers and a rapid-fire stream of ideas as compared with novel-length stories.
CONS: 3 stories didn’t strike me as qualifying for “best”.
BOTTOM LINE: A valuable anthology providing a snapshot of the year 2011 in sf.

Why, yes, I am way behind in my short fiction reading, thank you!

The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Twenty-Ninth Annual Collection is the 2012 edition showcasing editor Gardner Dozois’ picks for the thirty-five best sf stories of 2011. The newest edition (See also my reviews of previous editions: #19, #20, #21, #22, #23, #24, #25, #26, #27 and #28) is about on par with previous editions, which is to say that some stories are more enjoyable than others. But the benefit of short fiction goes deeper than overall quality; it is the exposure to new ideas, new writers, and new writing styles coming at the reader faster than happens at novel length that is the true power of short fiction. But some stories have to stand out for any reader. For me they were:
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REVIEW SUMMARY: Ramez Naam presents an interesting world and characters 30 years hence strongly grounded in the real life research and speculation he was hitherto best known for.

MY RATING:

BRIEF SYNOPSIS: In the mid 21st century, a powerful combination of nanotech, software and drugs threatens to catapult its creator into forbidden realms of transhumanism.

MY REVIEW:
PROS: Interesting premise and extrapolation of technology and social developments of same.
CONS: Some of the thriller elements feel a bit over-the-top. Some first novel clunkiness in narrative.
BOTTOM LINE: An interesting and intriguing fiction debut from a non fiction pioneer in bio-technological issues.
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BRIEF SYNOPSIS: Dan Carteret is determined to solve the mystery of his father’s identity. But he discovers a lot more than that when his pursuit takes him to his mother’s secret-riddled hometown.

MY RATING:

MY REVIEW:
PROS: Makes the familiar strange and the strange inseparable from the familiar; weaves multiple perspectives and narratives together powerfully with wonderful variations of texture and access to characters; full of insights great and small about the human condition.
CONS: Slow start; occasional fumbles in the narrative.
BOTTOM LINE: Pushes genre AND literary conventions aside and digs deeply into the wonderful and petty compulsions and practices that make us human.

“The Fort Jude way is a little miracle of denial.”

I am a great admirer of Kit Reed’s short fiction, and I was eager to dig into her latest novel Son of Destruction. As I began to read, however, I became a little discouraged; the opening was slower and less pointed than I had come to expect from her, and its framing of what was to come felt a little banal. What I realized as I got deeper into the novel was that this was a subtler start than I usually find in her short fiction because it sets the reader up for the textual jabs and haymakers that would soon rain down, sometimes unpredictably, on the imagination. If that seems an odd characterization, it is because Son of Destruction is more complicated, knowing, and sometimes weird because of that mixture. What Reed produces is in the novel is simultaneously a tangle of human lives and a desperate orchestration of those lives as individuals struggle with loneliness, disappointment, and the ongoing costs of keeping secrets both terrible and trivial to maintain a veneer of neighborliness and belonging.

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REVIEW SUMMARY: Space Opera for fans of Kevin J. Anderson and Brian Herbert’s Dune prequels, introducing a new universe with creatively inventive worlds, aliens, intergalactic travel, and an epic war to come.

BRIEF SYNOPSIS: A failed revolution against the tyrannical Constellation government places exiled leader, General Adolphus on a planet at the outer reaches of a new frontier, where geological instability has earned it the name, Hellhole.  General Adolphus proves more resilient than the Constellation’s Diadem presupposed, and with the help of a new alien species, prepares to free the galaxy from its tyrannical government.

MY RATING:

MY REVIEW:
PROS: Symbiotic nature of alien life creates interesting relationship with humans; sympathetic characters invest readers in epic war to come.
CONS: Telegraphed plot lacks surprises needed to exhilarate reader, including cliffhanger ending.
BOTTOM LINE: Nostalgic readers of Dune prequels will enjoy similar story telling style in Hellhole, but will be disappointed by a cliffhanger ending predicted hundreds of pages before.

Hellhole begins with an emotional conclusion to the revolution against the tyrannical Constellation government, which serves to create strong empathy for the main character, General Adolphus, and a starting point for the moral dilemma of sacrificing innocents as a means to an end.  What follows sets General Adolphus up as a leader on an outcast planet, Hellhole, and his discovery of ways to free a cast of sympathetic characters from various forms of oppression. The chaotic environment on Hellhole entertains while developing characters like his love interest, her daughter, and a heroic love interest for her.

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REVIEW SUMMARY: A new tale of knights and daring deeds worthy of a place amongst some of our most cherished chivalric legends.

MY RATING:

BRIEF SYNOPSIS: The Red Knight and his merry band of mercenaries take a commission to rid an Abbey of a monster problem. It turns out that the monster problem is more complex than any could have imagined and the whole kingdom of Alba is in danger of being overrun.

MY REVIEW
PROS: Highly descriptive, furious combat, huge array of colorful characters, intricate plotting, great pacing, pervading sense of chivalry.
CONS: Minor clarity issues with the magic system, so many characters that some of them are left underdeveloped, over-extended falling action.
BOTTOM LINE: I feel greatly honored to have read an ARC of The Red Knight. This is more than a genre novel, it’s a contemporary myth. I can’t wait for the next entry in The Traitor Son Cycle.

When I returned to reading fantasy after years of focusing on science fiction, there was an emphasis on dark and gritty that I found immediately appealing.  There was one thing I found lacking, and I didn’t even realize it until recently; a sense of chivalry. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve read about great heroes in the past few years, but they rarely display the knightliness (for lack of a better word), of stories from my childhood. Of course I didn’t even notice this deficiency until I read Miles Cameron’s The Red Knight.

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REVIEW SUMMARY: Andromeda’s Fall is an exciting place for readers to experience the bestselling military science fiction of author William C. Dietz.

MY RATING:

BRIEF SYNOPSIS: When a hostile takeover of Earth’s rulership results in the wholesale killing of her family, Lady Catherine Carletto goes into hiding in the one place sure to teach her how to exact revenge: the Legion.

MY REVIEW:
PROS: Balanced portrayal of the “strong female” character type; intense battle scenes; clever examination of the benefits of and fears surrounding artificial intelligence; great jumping on point for readers who haven’t read the Legion of the Damned series.
CONS: Feels rushed until protagonist exits basic training; protagonist benefits from convenient circumstances.
BOTTOM LINE: Military SF accessible to those not familiar with the subgenre featuring a likeable protagonist, a ruthless villain, and enough surprises and pounding action to propel the reader forward.

Here the question arises; whether it is better to be loved than feared or feared than loved.  The answer is that it would be desirable to be both but, since that is difficult, it is much better to be feared…

~Niccolo Machiavelli (The Prince)

Author William C. Dietz takes readers back to the early days of his bestselling Legion of the Damned series to present one woman’s great fall and the hero’s journey she embarks upon to rise again and exact her revenge. When Princess Ophelia Ordanus decides to murder her brother, Earth’s ruling Emperor, her plans include the elimination of all of the Emperor’s close allies. This includes the Carletto family whose company has been instrumental in the field of cybernetics. Catherine “Cat” Carletto is a smart, beautiful young woman with her own education in the family business who has chosen a more vapid existence as a party-going socialite. Her life of privileged disaffection comes crashing down around her as she is informed of her parents’ demise and her own very imminent death. When synthetic assassins arrive at the site of the latest upper crust gathering, she realizes she must use her wits and do the unexpected in order to stay alive. It just so happens the Legion recruiting office is open and with no where else to turn, Cat Carletto dies and Legionnaire Andromeda McKee is born.

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REVIEW SUMMARY: A great follow up to Control Point.

MY RATING:

BRIEF SYNOPSIS: Following the events of Control Point, Col. Alan Bookbinder finds himself reassigned to FOB Frontier after finding that he’s a Latent. Once there, the base comes under attack, and he must lead the entire base to safety, aided by the man who put the base in danger in the first place.

PROS: A solid improvement from Control Point, with a fantastic set of new characters.
CONS: Pacing.

Myke Cole’s debut novel was a fun story, a blend of magic in the real world, and the military’s response to a justifiably complicated problem. Where Control Point took on the coming of age / learning to control one’s powers style of story (See Harry Potter, The Magicians, Name of the Wind, Circle of Magic, etc), the second novel in the Shadow Ops series takes on the Quest story that’s so popular in fantasy, and completely succeeds. Fortress Frontier is a second novel, and shows that Cole hasn’t experienced a sophomore slump.

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REVIEW SUMMARY: Two fine short Fantastic Victoriana stories from Daniel Abraham.

MY RATING:

BRIEF SYNOPSIS: Balfour and Meriwether, special agents to the British crown, deal with extraordinary and fantastical threats to their monarch, and the world.

MY REVIEW:
PROS: Light, fun atmosphere, breezy dialogue, clever action and appealing protagonists in a fine Secret Fantastic Victorian Era.
CONS: The stories are a bit short, and feel a bit constrained in word length.
BOTTOM LINE: Two fun stories that show yet another side to one of Genre’s best and facile writers today.

Balfour and Meriwether in Two Adventures, published by a new digital publisher called SnackReads, collects two Victoriana stories by Daniel Abraham, one of the most facile and flexible writers today.  The title characters are agents for the British Crown in the late 19th century. The two stories deliberately obscure in time, and are told from the perspective of Mr. Meriwether looking back on the adventure from a journal written after the first world war. The stories have a fantastic Victorian feel, but with the twist of it being a secret history. Ordinary people have no idea the extraordinary threats and dangers Belfour and Meriwether face.

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REVIEW SUMMARY: An excellent edition to The Hollows urban fantasy series, and Rachel Morgan is as tough and driven as ever! Will certainly provide big rewards for series fans.

MY RATING:

BRIEF SYNOPSIS: A Perfect Blood, the 10th book in the Rachel Morgan urban fantasy series, joins Rachel as she follows the trail of an evil, insidious group bent on using her blood for their nefarious means, while navigating the ins and outs of her new identity as a demon.

MY REVIEW:
PROS: The magic world of The Hollows is fully realized and intricate, and as always, Kim Harrison’s characterizations are rich and engaging.
CONS: There were a few instances where the prose meanders and you might find yourself wanting to get back to the action.
BOTTOM LINE: A Perfect Blood delivers top notch urban fantasy with plenty of action and intrigue, and characters that you’d want to be friends with yourself! Although it isn’t recommended new readers begin the series here, Harrison manages to wrap up the main story line without leaving you wanting, and her writing is in top form.

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REVIEW SUMMARY: An appealing, character-driven adventure in a future history that is both fun and inventive.

MY RATING:

BRIEF SYNOPSIS:  Nineteen year-old Ellie Quin spends her days planting tubweeds on an oxygen farm anxious for the day that she can escape rural life and move to the domed city of New Haven.  The normal longings of an adolescent girl prove to be anything but normal in this gene-enhanced future.  The day arrives and Ellie puts her plans into motion, unaware that she and her small agricultural planet are on a collision course with forces that could unravel the entire course of humanity, with Ellie being the key to their undoing.

MY REVIEW
PROS: Engaging protagonist; imaginative world-building; strong pacing with a steadily building tension.
CONS: It is not a self-contained story; ends abruptly to continue in second volume.
BOTTOM LINE: The Legend of Ellie Quin delivers a sense-of-wonder exploration of the future reminiscent of Heinlein’s juvenile novels coupled with the accessibility of contemporary storytelling techniques.  It reveals an imaginative future in which humanity thrives in a sprawling universe seen through the eyes of a down-to-earth, likeable character.

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SYNOPSIS: War threatens the solar system as forces react and move in a world rocked by the events detailed in Leviathan Wakes.

MY RATING:

MY REVIEW
PROS: strong classic Space Opera; excellent set pieces; intriguing new characters.
CONS: The characterization beats of longstanding characters continues; they are eclipsed by the new characters.
VERDICT: Another solidly entertaining space opera from the team of Abraham and Franck.

Caliban’s War takes off some months after the events of Leviathan Wakes, and ups the ante. In the wake of the heroic (and drastic) actions taken to avert a total catastrophe for humans, the powers in the Solar System have not been idle. In point of fact, metaphors about fighting in a burning house might be extremely appropriate.

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REVIEW SUMMARY: This book keeps you engaged and interested from page one.

MY RATING:

BRIEF SYNOPSIS: A journalist joins a team of astronauts on an expedition to the farthest point in space humans have ever traveled. The mystery that awaits is more dangerous than trying to reach it alone.

MY REVIEW:
PROS: Fascinating story; empathetic and beautiful struggle of an explorer separated from his family; epic, outer space anomaly leaves the reader burning for more
CONS: The mystery is not completely resolved.
BOTTOM LINE: The Explorer earns a “can’t miss” recommendation for its mind-bending, heart-wrenching, avalanche of a reading experience.

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REVIEW SUMMARY: A first novel from Morehouse that still holds up years later.

MY RATING:

BRIEF SYNOPSIS: In a theologically oriented 21st Century, an excommunicated NYC cop learns that Angels are more, and less real, than commonly believed

MY REVIEW:
PROS: A fascinating 21st century world. The scene-stealing and book-stealing characters of Mouse. The original book’s gorgeous cover art wonderfully re-used.
CONS: Some of the book feels a bit dated. Deidre is not quite as interesting as the cast of characters around her.
BOTTOM LINE: A first novel from Morehouse that still holds up, and has a chance to be read by a wider audience.

Back in 2001, on the far side of 9/11, I became aware of, thanks to a “Maiden Voyage award” from Barnes and Noble and mention in a quarterly publication of theirs highlighting upcoming books, a debut novelist named Lyda Morehouse. On the boundaries of SF and Fantasy, with a big helping of theology, I decided to give this book set in a 21st century New York a try, and ended up reading it and its sequels in short order.

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REVIEW SUMMARY: A unique and interesting resource when looking at history.

MY RATING:

BRIEF SYNOPSIS: Science Fiction tends to be closely linked with contemporary history in more ways than one would expect. In this collection of papers, historians examine the parallels between real-world history and the Star Wars franchise.

MY REVIEW:
PROS: A neat and interesting way of looking at history.
CONS: Oversteps its bounds at points.
BOTTOM LINE: Know a Star Wars fan who’s having trouble with history? This volume might be the best way to get them interested.

When I was in grade school, I had trouble reading early on: the books that I had for my classes weren’t doing it for me, and it wasn’t until my parents gave me a couple of youth mystery novels (Encyclopedia Brown and the Hardy Boys), that my appetite for reading was realized, and I began consuming books with an ever increasing pace. I bring this up because this was the first thing that sprang to mind while reading through this history text: this is THE book for any kid in high school who’s struggling with the basics of history, and simply needs to look at it in a different light.

Star Wars and History examines various types of real-world history by comparing it to the events in the Star Wars franchise, and for the most part it works. As a fan of George Lucas’s franchise and as a professional historian, the mere existence of this book is exciting, because it combines two passions. On the face of it, it looks like a bit of a strange mash up much like those Victorian era novels juxtaposed with zombies or androids. But, the book reaffirms my belief that science fiction is an inherently political and relevant genre at the time of it’s creation: Star Wars being no exception. Cobbled together from a variety of source material, this book links a number of connections between the franchise and the real world. The topics are pretty far reaching, too: subjects such as insurgency and rebellion are covered, women in warfare, the American Civil War, leaders and power, trade and a whole host of others.

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REVIEW SUMMARY: A subversive, sometimes lunatic series of incursions that raid the intersections of desire, fear, and resilience to reflect on what makes us human and inhuman, and why the lines sometimes blur between those distinctions.

MY RATING:

BRIEF SYNOPSIS: In three interlinked stories Doubinsky creates a labyrinth, in the best sense of the term. We explore, reflect upon, and are sometimes stymied by these tales of war, crime, and poetry in a city that is mythical and reimagined, one full of people that we both recognize and do not want to look at. Stylistically and structurally intricate and intense, this book challenges the reader at every turn as it conjures a world that is strange yet resonant.

MY REVIEW:
PROS: Aggressive, audacious prose; innovative structure and style keeps the reader off-balance and engaged; fearless exploration of characters’ inner lives; ideas and questions that linger long after the reading is done.
CONS:  A few of the characters felt flat to me.
BOTTOM LINE: A great book that is demanding, disturbing, and mesmerizing.

The best books are often the hardest ones to review; it’s easy to heap superlatives on a novel and praise it so much that you lose sight of what makes it so good. But Seb Doubinsky’s Goodbye Babylon is a work that demands more than that; to just call it “excellent” or “powerful” makes it sound like any book that gets a glowing review. It is an excellent novel, and is a powerful artistic work, but there is much more to it than those adjectives can encompass. It is philosophically intricate, viscerally evocative, and unsettling as it melds pulp sensibilities, Beat echoes, and textual legerdemain to create a maze of words and sensations for the reader to get lost in, so that they may figure out their own path.

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