Tag: SF/F

Review – Emergent Properties

Posted June 7, 2023 by Nicky in Reviews / 1 Comment

Cover of Emergent Properties by Aimee OgdenEmergent Properties, Aimee Ogden

Received to review via Netgalley

I quite enjoyed Emergent Properties while I was reading it, but I don’t think it quite came together for me — I’m reviewing this a few days after finishing, and I confess, I’m not entirely sure what to say. I wouldn’t compare it too much to the Murderbot books, which have a very distinctive voice and attitude — this book has some similar themes, and even some similarities of voice, but is a little less… mature-feeling, I guess?

I did enjoy the setup of the mystery, and having to try and figure out what exactly is going on, without giving the game away. However, I kind of lost the thread of it between the body swaps and the random (-seeming) attacks on Scorn, and also the interlude in the black box bar.

There’s a lot of interesting stuff going on — the part in the black box bar actually intrigued me a lot since it imagined how AIs and others might interact, and how something akin to the internet (but older) might be. I think the Aura thing felt cribbed from Black Mirror, though (or at least, that’s where I know that whole social score thing from — even though I don’t myself watch Black Mirror!).

All in all, I had fun, it just didn’t quite come together for me. I’d read more by the author, and even more with this character or this world.

Rating: 3/5

Tags: , , ,

Divider

Review – Translation State

Posted June 5, 2023 by Nicky in Reviews / 4 Comments

Cover of Translation State by Ann LeckieTranslation State, Ann Leckie

Received to review via Netgalley

I’ve been a big fan of Ann Leckie for a while: even though Ancillary Justice didn’t work for me immediately, it found a huge place in my heart anyway. So I was pretty excited to get a chance to read this early and review it, and dived in as soon as I could! Like Provenance, it’s in the same world as Ancillary Justice, but it focuses on another group of characters, including a Presger translator. It’s an opportunity to learn a bit more about the Presger, and perhaps about the Radchaii interactions with them, that I was really excited about.

There were certain elements of this story (the cannibalism) that really felt weird for me and icked me out a bit; I definitely wasn’t expecting them, so that’s something to be aware of before you pick it up if you’re a bit squeamish. There is a point behind it all, all the same, and of course Leckie takes another dive into the issues of gender and identity and personhood, from a different angle again from in the Breq books or in Provenance.

I think overall this isn’t my favourite of the bunch, though I appreciate it a lot, and the glimpse it gives of things everyone’s bound to be curious about (the Presger, but also other parts of non-Radchaii space, and some of the other races). I was excited by a couple of the appearances of characters from the other books, about which I shan’t say too much.

Well worth it, of course — and I’m sure it’ll grow on me, to be honest.

Rating: 4/5

Tags: , , ,

Divider

Review – Nothing But The Rain

Posted June 3, 2023 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Cover of Nothing but the Rain by Naomi SalmanNothing but the Rain, Naomi Salman

Received to review via Netgalley

If you like to know the whys and wherefores, Nothing but the Rain is not going to be for you. It explains nothing about its central premise, which is that all of a sudden, water (not just rain, but water coming out of the taps as well) induces amnesia in people in a certain town. A droplet of water might take away a few seconds of memory; a sudden inundation might wipe out a person’s entire memory and leave them empty of everything.

And we never find out why! Which I know will be deeply infuriating to some folks, so I mention it first here because it’s important to know. Instead, the story is more about how people might act in this situation, and how one particular person — the narrator — makes her way.

There were a few things other than the basic premise that I feel weren’t thought through. For example, at one point a character does something to the narrator that she should’ve been suspicious about — she has 24 hours of her memory removed, not weeks, so she should notice a particular thing is amiss. (I don’t want to say too much; when this gets posted on my blog [breathesbooks.com], I’ll happily elaborate in comments if anyone else who has read it wants me to point to the thing that bugged me.)

It’s overall an interesting idea and execution, and I don’t actually mind that we don’t know why the situation is happening, but I do mind when things like that don’t connect up. The ending has a nice sting in the tail.

Rating: 3/5

Tags: , , ,

Divider

Review – The Lies of the Ajungo

Posted May 27, 2023 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Cover of The Lies of the Ajungo by Moses Ose UtomiThe Lies of the Ajungo, Moses Ose Utomi

Received to review via Netgalley

The Lies of the Ajungo is very short, shorter than I’d expected, and follows the journey of one boy from the City of Lies. Slowly, he begins to meet people from other cities, begins to learn their stories, and perhaps to have the tools to unravel the problems they all turn out to share. I didn’t find the eventual secret too surprising, but I did enjoy the journey, the accumulation of evidence that finally made the whys and wherefores clear. 

I’m surprised to read that this is actually going to have a sequel/companion, because it felt very self-contained. I can see where you could fill in the gaps in the world, but at the same time, I’m not sure why you’d want to. It feels like a fully-formed thing of its own, and almost with a moral to it, like a story plucked from the middle of a set of stories from One Thousand and One Nights (or The Decameron, or the Canterbury Tales, if they hadn’t been such very white European stories).

I enjoyed the reading experience well enough without getting deeply absorbed or very involved with it. I’d be curious to read more, but I’m not in a hurry for it and if I don’t read more, I’ll be alright with that.

Rating: 3/5

Tags: , , ,

Divider

Review – Cibola Burn

Posted May 20, 2023 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Cover of Cibola Burn by James S.A. CoreyCibola Burn, James S.A. Corey

[This review never got posted back when I read the book, and has been waiting in buffer since then! Don’t worry, I didn’t read the later books before this one…]

This one’s complicated. I read this enormously fast, and only once bogged down and got stuck on not quite wanting to pick it up again. Getting bogged down and getting stuck might sound bad, but it mostly happens when I get anxious for the characters, which was happening in spades, and getting unstuck depends on the pace — if it lingers too long, I might never get through it.

But… I found aspects of the ending very similar to the first book (with elements of the third), and it felt like for all the high drama and death and flashing lights, it didn’t get us anywhere. Other people have mentioned that it is important later, but it doesn’t feel like it at the end of the book: it feels like we get right back to the status quo in many ways, especially for the crew of the Rocinante.

A lot of the characters are sucky people, as well. Murtry, for instance, just doesn’t feel real because he is a complete cartoon corporate villain, and I wouldn’t have been terribly surprised for him to do some insane maniacal laughter. It makes no sense that nobody seemed to see him for what he was before Ilus.

Also, not enough of Naomi doing stuff. And Amos didn’t get to shoot enough people.

So yeah, a bit frustrating and not my favourite, despite being a very grippy read.

Rating: 3/5

Tags: , , ,

Divider

Review – The Keeper’s Six

Posted May 15, 2023 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Cover of The Keeper's Six by Kate ElliottThe Keeper’s Six, Kate Elliott

Received to review via Netgalley

On the surface, this sounded fascinating, and the snippets of detail we get about the world in the opening were intriguing, but somehow it took me so long to get into it: it took me weeks to plod through the first half, which is fatal in such a short book. After that, I sped through it, and found the payoff quite satisfying — which makes the setup even more frustrating, honestly.

Assessing it from this vantage point, what did I think? Well, Esther is the most clearly drawn character — Esther, and Marianne, who is antagonistic toward her and whose motives we never fully understand. The world is fascinating, the way the Hex is formed and the roles they play, the dangers of the between-worlds that they need to traverse to reach other worlds. The worldbuilding felt like setup for a novel, but the characters didn’t: I mostly remember the names of the characters, since I finished it yesterday, but I don’t have real opinions on any of them except Esther and Marianne.

It feels like there was a lot of potential that just didn’t work out for me. I’m curious to read Elliott’s longer-form work to see if that gives the right payoff for that kind of detail: sometimes people just aren’t good at working in miniature, and there was a lot here that did interest me.

Rating: 2/5

Tags: , , ,

Divider

Review – Untethered Sky

Posted May 14, 2023 by Nicky in Reviews / 2 Comments

Cover of Untethered Sky by Fonda LeeUntethered Sky, Fonda Lee

Received to review via Netgalley

Untethered Sky ends up feeling like quite an intense story, a story of obsession and single-minded dedication to something that doesn’t love you back. Ester is a ruhker, trained to hunt with and manage a roc in order to hunt monsters, obsessed with her bird and everything about her. Her only friends are ruhkers as well, and she’s barely in contact with her family — everything is about the rocs, and especially her own bird.

I really enjoyed it, because it felt like Fonda Lee really sank into the character and how she’d view the world. There’s a lot we don’t know about it, because Ester only cares about rocs and the monsters they hunt, and that makes complete sense for the character. Her love for her bird, her feelings about her friends, it’s all perfectly thought out, and Lee does beautifully with making it feel real.

I love as well that it doesn’t take the easy way out: the ending is more than a little heart-wrenching.

Rating: 5/5

Tags: , , ,

Divider

Review – Knight’s Wyrd

Posted May 13, 2023 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Cover of Knight's Wyrd by Debra Doyle and James D. MacdonaldKnight’s Wyrd, James D. Macdonald, Debra Doyle

Received to review via Netgalley

My ears pricked up as soon as Sherwood Smith’s introduction mentioned Rosemary Sutcliff. I loved Sutcliff’s books as a kid, and anything that had the same flavour sounded great to me — and the good news is that there was some of that realism, some of that taste and smell of another era (even though this is also fantasy).

I hadn’t heard of it before, so it was all new to me… sort of. It feels familiar and mythic in its structure, in the way that Will’s destiny plays out, but with a touch of that earthiness that I associate with Sutcliff, grounded in small details of everyday life. Will’s a likable protagonist, someone who generally wants to do the right thing even though he is not, in himself, particularly heroic. He sees something he can do, should do, and he does it — but not without thinking about the inconvenience of whatever it is.

It’s not a super-complex story, but there’s a virtue in the simplicity of it and the straight-forwardness of its protagonist. I enjoyed it very much.

Rating: 4/5

Tags: , , , ,

Divider

Review – The Last Heir to Blackwood Library

Posted May 12, 2023 by Nicky in Reviews / 1 Comment

Cover of The Last Heir to Blackwood Library by Hester FoxThe Last Heir to Blackwood Library, Hester Fox

A book about a mysterious library — it might as well come stamped with “Nicky, buy me!”.

The book starts when Ivy inherits Blackwood Abbey, a mysterious and isolated stately home that she had no idea she was the heir to. Without knowing much about the area, or what her new role might be, she travels with hope to take up her position as the new Lady Hayworth. Mysterious things begin to happen as soon as she arrives in the place, but she’s reassured when she finds the library, hoping to find her solace and excitement there.

I’ll try not to say too much, for fear of spoiling the surprise. Suffice it to say: the library isn’t a particularly ordinary library, and Ivy’s role as Lady Hayworth is nothing like she imagined.

For the most part, I enjoyed reading this, but it had a few weaknesses. The main one is difficult to get to grips with, given the plot: a particular character has to both experience things and then totally forget about them, and the book deals unevenly with showing that to the reader. Certain events are never described, and yet the relationship/character-building within those scenes would be essential to really feel satisfied by the ending, to my mind — while it would give the game away too soon to include them. It made certain things feel a bit rushed.

Still, I did enjoy this, and the “click” as certain things came together.

Rating: 3/5

Tags: , , , ,

Divider

Review – Babylon’s Ashes

Posted May 11, 2023 by Nicky in Reviews / 2 Comments

Cover of Babylon's Ashes by James S.A. CoreyBabylon’s Ashes, James S.A. Corey

I don’t know if it’s in part the way I read it (quite spread out, not all at once), or just the sprawling nature of the series by this point, but this one did not come together well for me. It feels dark and uncompromising: people are awful to each other, and I have to be in the head of characters who do and think violent, dreadful things. Everything is bad, and there’s not much hope. That made this a very difficult read for me.

Part of the problem is the sprawling cast. There are ways it could be made tighter and still have the scope, like dropping some of the more-or-less unnecessary POV characters (whose names I barely remembered between appearances). On the one hand, putting Holden in the centre gives him too much credit and the book pushes against making him the Main Character for all of humanity… but this is a book, and sometimes that kind of thing can tighten things up and make it feel easier to get into.

I also have a question about something weird where I’m not sure if I missed something, or whether something actually weird happened, that I should really look back and find out…

The book brings us to an interesting place, it’s just also a pretty wretched place. Everyone is suffering, and even the Rocinante isn’t a safe home to return to where no harm will touch. And that makes sense, it’s realistic, but for me it was all maybe a little too grim.

Rating: 3/5

Tags: , , ,

Divider