Tag: SF/F

Review – The Annual Migration of Clouds

Posted March 6, 2022 by Nicky in Reviews / 2 Comments

The Annual Migration of Clouds, Premee Mohamed

Premee Mohamed’s writing is beautiful, as I found when reading The Apple-Tree Throne, and I think this novella punches above its weight in terms of the page count. She builds up a whole post-apocalyptic world — a world ruined by climate change, epidemics, and one particular pandemic, a nerve-invading, mind-controlling fungus which can affect its host in a bunch of different ways (from screaming in pain as it invades every organ, to preventing them from taking risks by causing all their muscles to lock, and all sorts of things in between).

It’s very much a book of the last year or two, one that takes a lot of our current worries and preoccupations and reactions and makes a world that reflects them back and elaborates them. The anger at the people who lived so decadently, so freely; the fear of a disease that is not fully understood, cannot be fought; but also the way that some people do manage to live together, work together, make the New Normal work.

It’s both a sad and a hopeful story, and Reid is a pretty ordinary messed up human who loves her mother and says awful things to her, loves her best friend and also gets really mad about his flaws and then immediately turns to him when she’s in trouble. She’s also in the grips of a disease that limits her, which she rages against, and sometimes (sometimes) manages to overcome.

I loved the relationships between Henryk and Reid, and between Reid and her mother, and the delicate web of relationships you see around them — everyone relying on everyone else, because the world’s against them now. And I really liked the ending, which felt hard-won.

Rating: 4/5

Tags: book reviews, books, Premee Mohamed, SF/F

Review – The Gilded Wolves

Posted March 2, 2022 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

The Gilded Wolves, Roshani Chokshi

When I finished this, I felt kind of positive about it, but then I read some other reviews and thought about it more and kind of lost it? Like, it was fun as long as I didn’t think too much about it and let the quippy quirky banter carry me along, but a lot of the details are fading from my mind and I find I don’t really know what to say — which is not really a good sign. If it only works when I’m speeding through it, then that’s not great, and I’d already thought that I wasn’t planning to get the next book unless it’s at the library.

There are definitely fun characters here, particularly Hypnos, and I got rather a soft spot for poor, damaged Tristan. Other readers mentioned not following the world-building, which I found okay actually: nothing astonishing, but okay.

What is disappointing is the amateur nature of the heists, for me. That moment in a fictional heist where it looks like it’s all going wrong… but the mark has actually played into the gang’s hands. I kept waiting for it, because when that works out and feels clever (doesn’t have to be super believable, in my opinion; we can buy that a fantasy heist is super ridiculously clever) then it’s super, super satisfying. But instead, Séverin and his expert gang seem to bungle every single thing they touch. We know they have done successful heists, because we’re told so, but… we don’t get to see it. Why should I believe Séverin is a mastermind when we literally never see him succeed?

I also felt that we lacked a feeling of how the group functions together, why there’s such affection there. It’s not like the cracks started to show under pressure — they were always there. So what makes them an effective team in the first place? Séverin is not, in fact, a genius… so what keeps the group together?

So yeah, fun enough, but felt surprisingly shallow once I thought about it.

Rating: 2/5

Tags: book reviews, books, Roshani Chokshi, SF/F

Review – Hench

Posted February 16, 2022 by Nicky in Reviews / 2 Comments

Hench, Natalie Zina Walschots

Hench is set in a world where heroes and villains exist; where groups of heroes team up, while younger heroes are sidekicks, and where villains hire help from temp agencies. Anna does data entry, strictly not fieldwork, but as she begins to take a few risks and agree to do a little more, she has the misfortune to cross paths with Supercollider, a hero who leaves more than a little collateral damage in his wake. As she recovers, her leg shattered, she begins to run the numbers: how many people do the heroes kill or seriously wound? How much property damage do they do? What, exactly, do they cost the world?

And of course, her work draws more than a few eyes. Including those of Leviathan, a supervillain with a pretty epic set of resources. Under his tutelage, she becomes the Auditor, and begins to find ways to pick the heroes apart…

It’s strange spending a book rooting for the villains when they are still villainous. Not that Supercollider’s great, either — the things Anna finds out about his cost to the world are true, and he’s a ball of rage in the shape of a man, no hero but a man who hungers for the conflict, the violence, and the adulation he received in response. A man who eats up those around him. If this were an AITA post on Reddit, the answer would be firmly ESH.

Nonetheless, I found myself rooting for Anna, while hating it and criticising her. I think part of the problem is the fairly simplistic world that’s set up here — nuance struggles to find a place in the black and white, and we end up with a book where the heroine does absolutely awful things (the last 50 pages are full of extreme body horror), while we’re still kinda meant to be rooting for her.

I did enjoy the bond that grows between Anna and Leviathan, without ever resorting to being simplistically about romantic love. There’s a very queerplatonic vibe about it at times. There are some great relationships between other characters here too, and lots of snappy dialogue and quippy banter.

I’m torn on how to rate this, in the end: I liked it a lot, for the most part, but on reflection, I felt the last 50 pages went too far.

Rating: 3/5

Tags: book reviews, books, Natalie Zina Walschots, SF/F

Review – The Apple-Tree Throne

Posted February 13, 2022 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

The Apple-Tree Throne, Premee Mohamed

This is a strange little ghost story: Braddock returns from war after his commanding officer got most of his unit killed, and was himself killed. Braddock isn’t sure why he survived, what purpose he has now, or where to go: being drafted saved him, gave him purpose, and without that he’s drifting. He speaks at his commanding officer’s funeral and is almost adopted by his parents, slowly being sucked into his place — attending church with them, courting his fiancée…

And all this while, his commanding officer is haunting him. Sometimes angry, sometimes kind, sometimes incoherent, but always there. The ghost of his commanding officer, and the awful pain in his leg (which seems to have already healed).

All of this is set in an alternate history which we only get little glimpses of, and which I’d be curious to explore more of.

It was difficult to see where this is going, and I almost expected it to become way creepier, and to think way less of Braddock than I eventually did. The last page or so sounds a very wistful, bittersweet note. I found it a really interesting setup, beautifully written, and I’m definitely curious to read more of Premee Mohamed’s work.

Rating: 4/5

Tags: book reviews, books, Premee Mohamed, SF/F

Review – Wylding Hall

Posted February 7, 2022 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Wylding Hall, Elizabeth Hand

Wylding Hall uses Fairport Convention’s real history as a starting point: the tragedy (a suicide in this book, two deaths in a car crash in real life), the music and style, and the time spent at an old house in the countryside (Wylding Hall in the book; Farley Chamberlayne for Fairport Convention)… and then Hand takes it off into imagination. It’s not really about Fairport Convention, just using them as a jumping-off point, but if you’re into their music you can’t help but think of them while you read. (Though this time I was thinking about Siobhan Owen’s version of “Scarborough Fair”, as well. There’s something wistful and otherworldly about her voice that makes a good accompaniment to this book.)

The format is of interviews with the remaining members of the band and some other people who got involved in the story — as if it’s a documentary, long after the fact. Slowly, each character contributes what they saw, heard and felt, building up a picture of something eerie and chilling, but indeterminate. Hand is very careful not to reveal the horror until near the end.

I think the Neolithic barrow with Julian’s watch in it and the final photo of the girl are probably actually a bridge too far — it takes the book from being haunting and eerie, lightly touched by something ancient and unknowable, and gives it a moment of horror that doesn’t quite sit with it. It doesn’t spoil the book, but it’s a slightly discordant note. Then again, without that finality, it’d feel like the story just tails off. So maybe that’s the best ending, after all.

The book was a reread for me; not something I’d have predicted myself rereading, but the book does have something special, that restless strangeness at its heart that doesn’t have a satisfying answer. It came back to me all of a sudden when someone was talking about a different book written in interview format, and I suddenly had to read it again!

Rating: 4/5

Tags: book reviews, books, Elizabeth Hand, horror, SF/F

Review – The Councillor

Posted January 31, 2022 by Nicky in Reviews / 2 Comments

The Councillor, E.J. Beaton

I really enjoyed this book. Reviews that mention it being slow aren’t wrong, but that was part of the appeal: it took a while for me to get into the world, to understand Lysande’s place in it and how to interpret everything that was happening, and once I did understand that, I was immersed. I’d regularly pick it up to read a couple of pages and emerge again half an hour later unaware that time had passed.

The characters are all flawed in their own ways, despicable in their own ways, like real humans. Lysande has her addiction and her ambition; Luca Fontaine is a cold-blooded snake; everyone in Axium is wedded to an “everything has a place” motto that means “the poor stay in their place”… and Sarelin Brey, the queen who is murdered (this isn’t a spoiler, it’s in the blurb), is the most flawed of all: a good warrior, a victorious leader with the gift of making people love her, and a poor queen for those who won’t stay in their place, or who happen to have been born with magic. I think the book does a great job of exploring that, of how you can be both flawed and great.

The relationships between Lysande and Derset, and Lysande and Luca, are pretty amazing — the power plays between them, done subtly, without explicit detail, but leaving it very clear what everyone wants.

I have one frustration, and that’s the fact there were two plot points that I grasped a long time before Lysande, despite her supposed intelligence. Partly that’s because she got blinkered by looking in the wrong place, which is very human, but it’s still a bit frustrating. They felt very obvious to me, and it felt a touch clumsy that she didn’t get it.

I wish there was more right now.

Rating: 4/5

Tags: book reviews, books, queer fic, SF/F

Review – The Absolute Book

Posted January 30, 2022 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

The Absolute Book, Elizabeth Knox

I don’t really know what to say about this book. I finished it, because there were many things that intrigued me, and which I wanted to see through to the end. The mixture of mythology — which includes an interesting use of the Arthurian legends — was interesting, but at the same time it meant I was never quite sure of which rules we were following. In fairytales, there are always rules that govern the story, but the rules which govern this story aren’t clear (even though they are present).

Partly that’s because one of the key characters is a guy called Shift. He loses his memory every few hundred years so he doesn’t know all about his past, he’s hiding things about himself, he’s not human, and he’s being hidden by a spell that makes it hard to really look at him. The whole story feels like that, to be honest, and it makes sense for it to be like that… but I didn’t enjoy it so much.

I do like Shift, actually, and Jacob and Taryn as well — perhaps that’s what I stuck around for, really, to know what happens to them.

The weird thing that other readers should be aware of is the fact that the first 50-70 pages or so read like it’s going to be a thriller. When it takes a left turn into fairyland. Also, though you’d think the love of books should permeate the book, there’s very little time spent actually reading. Taryn’s an author and talks about her book… but if you’re looking for vicarious enjoyment of musty libraries and big old tomes, I don’t think the books end up being that important to the plot.

Rating: 2/5

Tags: book reviews, books, Elizabeth Knox, SF/F

Review – Strange Beasts of China

Posted January 9, 2022 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Strange Beasts of China, Yan Ge, trans. Jeremy Tiang

I was intrigued by the sound of this book when I read that it was based on a bestiary. In a way, I can see why that’s the description — the opening paragraph and closing paragraph of each chapter sound like that, though mostly it sounds like a series of articles/stories (which is actually what the frame story is: the narrator is a novelist, researching and writing stories about beasts for a column). I was also intrigued by the mention of the main character being a zoologist… but she’s mostly a novelist, and the book doesn’t really have much of a scientific outlook toward the beasts and their stories.

I’m kind of torn on what to think about it and how to rate it, honestly. I feel like I might’ve enjoyed it more if I’d had more of a sense of what it would really be like — though I also felt like it was needlessly opaque sometimes, like I’d need a diagram to understand exactly how everything was related and why the outcomes were the way they were. I don’t know if that was the translation (the “opaque” feeling is something I get with work in translation sometimes), the story itself, or me being slow-witted today, but it just didn’t quite come together for me.

I guess the final bit also felt a bit heavy-handed, like… the stuff that I didn’t need to be spelled out to me about the themes was, while I was still mentally drawing diagrams about how the different characters were related!

All that said, it was an interesting experience — one of the early comparisons to come to my mind was Ursula Le Guin’s Changing Planes; there’s something of the same tone and intent there, I think, the same consciousness that a point is being made. I loved Changing Planes, so that’s not a diss on this book, it’s just that it didn’t quite work for me here.

Rating: 2/5

Tags: book reviews. Yan Ge, books, SF/F

Review – The Darkness Outside Us

Posted January 7, 2022 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

The Darkness Outside Us, Eliot Schrefer

This is a very claustrophobic book, with a very tight group of characters. In the “present” of the book, there are three: the operating system running the ship, the spacefarer from Federation, and the spacefarer from Demokratia. There are some glimpses of other characters in the past, but the action takes place on a spaceship, with just those three, stuck together.

It’s a book that I think most people would prefer to read blind, so I’m not going to say too much — most of my comments about the book as a whole would give too much away. I will say, though, that I expected it to be more about the romance and less about the sci-fi/mystery, and instead I’d say that the sci-fi/mystery is the primary thread, with the romance… not quite taken for granted, but definitely not the primary story being told here.

I found it really readable, and actually finished big chunks at a time, though some of the tense bits triggered my anxiety for a bit and I had to put it down. There were things I found predictable, but I was curious about less the “what” or even “why” than the “how”. That paid off for me, especially from part two onwards; in part one I was kinda wondering if I’d stick with it because of that.

Rating: 4/5

Tags: book reviews, books, Eliot Schrefer, mystery, queer fic, romance, SF/F

Review – A Psalm for the Wild-Built

Posted December 29, 2021 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

A Psalm for the Wild-Built, Becky Chambers

Received to review via Netgalley

I was surprised to find that A Psalm for the Wild-Built didn’t get under my skin the way every other book of Chambers’ has: I enjoyed it, and enjoyed the discussion of figuring out your purpose (and whether that’s important or not). I enjoyed the idea of Dex’s work as a tea monk, helping people relax and unburden themselves — and I totally sympathised with the fact that Dex learned a whole profession, got good at it, and then found themselves wanting to start over and learn anew. All the same, it didn’t quite get the emotional reaction from me that I expected.

The world Chambers builds here is interesting too: utopian, and yet not without people who are dissatisfied, people who don’t know what to do with themselves, the everyday hurts and troubles that are going to be inevitable amongst people. As ever, there’s something profoundly hopeful about this story.

The robots are perhaps the most interesting part, and I’ll look forward to reading more about Mosscap and its opinions about humanity, as it begins to journey and meet people and ask questions. The story feels complete and satisfying on its own, in a way, but I won’t argue with getting more of it!

Rating: 4/5

Tags: Becky Chambers, book reviews, books, queer fic, SF/F