Kill the Queen, Jennifer Estep

Jennifer Estep’s Kill the Queen is joyfully tropetastic: after Lady Everleigh witnesses the massacre of everyone who stands near to the throne before her, except one traitor, she escapes due to her hidden magic and plans to disappear, becoming just plain old Evie, despite her promise to the previous queen to take back the throne. She falls in with a group of gladiators and ends up training as a gladiator herself, not noticing the parallel with the fact that the first queen of her bloodline rose to the throne via combat as a gladiator. Throughout the book, she discovers that skills she learned as the seventeenth in line to the throne are useful — things that dealt with certain customs that nobody more important had the time to cater to, like baking a particular kind of pie and learning fiendishly complex dance steps.

It continues in that vein throughout: it’s readable, and fairly well-paced, and it has all the obligatory spices like a fairly obvious deeper plot, and a hate-to-love romance. It’s basically brain candy, and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. I didn’t love it, and I’m not sure if I’m going to bother reading the second book or not, but it was fun.

Rating: 3/5

Stars Uncharted, S.K. Dunstall

Stars Uncharted features a ragtag crew getting into trouble, slowly becoming a found family, dodging around the universe to avoid bad guys of various stripes. If that sounds somewhat familiar, then you’re right. It has a very Firefly-ish, Expanse-ish, Long-Way-To-A-Small-Angry-Planet-ish, Dark Run-ish feel… which didn’t hold any surprises for me or stand out in its little sub-genre, but did scratch an itch… and make me want to read more like it again. (Firefly is such a comfort thing for me!)

It does have its different features, such as the body modding plotline that is such an important part of the plot and understanding various characters: everyone is infinitely plastic in appearance, and a good modder can do anything — changing you right down at the molecular level if necessary. This is woven into the plot pretty inextricably, featuring in several characters’ secrets and motivations, holding up the action at times, and enabling the next twist in others. It’s used pretty well, honestly, and the skills of the two modder characters help to steer the story in a slightly different direction, avoiding it being mere chase scene after fight scene after chase scene.

I did find that I’d figured out Roystan’s secret well, well before any of the characters had cottoned on at all, which was a little frustrating. Not sure if the authors plan to write another book and make it a series, but I suspect I’d read it if they did. And I thought that the hints of romance between two of the characters were a little… well, it felt like a cut and paste job. I did understand why those two characters, but it all felt a bit cookie-cutter predictable, like it wasn’t quite about those two people in particular, but just about adding a bit of extra spice along the way.

(My kingdom for a story with strong bonds without romance being required — oh right, my wish has already been granted: I’m thinking of The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet.)

It’s fun enough, and I’ll probably read future books by these authors or in a series with this book, if I come across them… but I probably won’t be in a hurry.

Rating: 3/5

Rosewater, Tade Thompson

I struggled with this book so much. I’d read such glowing reviews from a whole range of people, but I just couldn’t get into it. Probably part of that is my own fault for reading it on the treadmill (though that normally isn’t a problem) and in little bits, but a lot of it was the narrator’s obsession with sex. I don’t know how many orgasms he had during the book, some of them spontaneous, let alone the number of erections he talks about (seriously), but everything for him seemed to revolve around sex. That’s what women mostly seemed to be for, for the narrator: the first question through his mind always seemed to be a variant on “can I fuck her?”

I especially did not enjoy him in gryphon form fucking a butterfly-winged stranger on what amounts to the astral plane. Just… no thank you.

There is some fascinating stuff here with the setting (Nigeria), the isolation of the US, the xenoforms, Wormwood… but for me it was buried under the general unpleasantness of Kaaro. He’s not particularly ashamed of using his talents to become a thief, and he’s definitely not ashamed of his objectification of women and his complete shallowness. There was an awesome potential whole different book here about Oyin Da, or Aminat, or Femi, but instead they’re sidelined and putting up with Kaaro’s shit.

I don’t know. I don’t get it, guys. I appreciate some aspects of it — SF set somewhere other than the US (or to a lesser extent, the UK/Europe)! The concept of a network of fungal infection allowing mindreading in sensitive people! Awesome! But.

I don’t think I’ll read the rest of the series.

Rating: 2/5