Review: Loka

Loka by S.B. Divya
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is the second book in the Alloy Era series, the first of which, Meru, I read and reviewed here. This story takes a time jump of seventeen years, and focuses on Akshaya, the daughter of the first book's protagonists, the human Jayanthi and the genetically engineered post-human (and 120-meter-long star-traveling space mermaid) Vaha. Akshaya is coming of age and starting to break away from her parents. She has been raised on the construct Chedi, a sort of independent AI generation ship that travels a regular route between outlying star systems and Earth. Akshaya wants to visit Earth, the home of one of her parents and a place she has never seen, before their exile--as told in the first book--ends and they can return to Meru, a habitable planet two hundred light years away. Akshaya has been genetically engineered to live on Meru, but she is not sure she wants to do so. She wishes to visit Earth and complete the Anthro Challenge, a circumnavigation of the planet within a specified time period, utilizing present human technology and not relying on the alloys.

This is kind of a stand-alone story, as enough background information is provided (without being overwhelming) that you can follow it without having read the first book. However, I would recommend doing so, as reading the first book will make your experience of this story that much richer.

In this story, Akshaya uses her time on Earth to figure out who she is and what she wants. The Anthro Challenge is more difficult than she anticipated, as she soon discovers that her health really does not permit her to thrive on Earth, and there are other setbacks, mainly with the weather. The Challenge is also being recorded as a kind of far-future reality show, turning Akshaya and her parents into something of a political cudgel to relax some of the restrictions on alloys in the Compact (the document governing Earth in this future, as there aren't any countries or governments as we know them today, and this is a post-capitalist society). Unfortunately, along the way the fact that Akshaya has some alloy genes leaks out and turns many humans against her. She manages to finish the Challenge, but she realize that the life she wants to live can only be found on Meru.

We don't have a story of high stakes here. Oh, the stakes are important enough, but they aren't of the planet-busting or universe-ending variety. They are deeply personal to Akshaya and her family. That doesn't lessen the suspense one bit. There is also a great deal of philosophy and ethic conundrums built into this story, as there was in Meru. As with the first book, this is a thoughtful, deliberately paced tale that is not to be rushed through. Take your time with it and savor the ideas and nuances. You will be rewarded.

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Review: The Relentless Legion

The Relentless Legion by J.S. Dewes
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I was disappointed by another space opera series I finished this year (the Devoured Worlds trilogy) but this series did not disappoint. In fact, it stuck the landing with a bang.

Unfortunately, this book won't make much sense unless you've read the other two, as it picks right up after the ending of the second book, The Exiled Fleet, without so much as a "the story so far" recap. (I can imagine the trilogy being re-released in a giant omnibus edition in a few years, but it would be about six inches thick.) However, the first two books are absolutely worth your time. This one, in addition to tying up all the outstanding plot and character threads, expands our POV characters--Adequin Rake and Cavalon Mercer, up to this point--to include a crucial third: Jackin North. Jackin traded himself to the series' villain, Augustus Mercer, at the end of the last book to enable Adequin's and Cavalon's escape, and this book shows us the full ramifications of that. Jackin is tortured and eventually broken, and is used as a Trojan horse to foil Adequin's and Cavalon's revolution.

All this is in addition to the overarching storyling of the universe collapsing, and Adequin and her Sentinels working with the alien Viators to halt the oncoming collapse at the borders of our galaxy. Cavalon is also attempting to undo the effects of the Viator mutagen of five hundred years before that threatens to make humanity extinct. This particular plot thread culminates in a trip to a parallel universe (which is mercifully a brief part of the story as a whole, as a multiverse setting is getting a bit overused by this point). At the climax, Adequin, Jackin and Cavalon team up to take Augustus down. The series ends with Cavalon taking up Augustus' rulership of the Mercer family in the Core worlds, and Adequin and Jackin returning to their Sentinel duties at the galactic border--with a new understanding and a new relationship unfolding between them.

As in the previous two books, the sometimes breakneck pacing is leavened by slower and deeper character moments, particularly for Jackin and Cavalon. The reason I appreciated this series more than the other one I mentioned (despite the first two books of the Devoured Worlds trilogy being excellent) is that this book does not introduce another high-level threat out of basically nowhere. The deadly and extinction-level obstacles were laid out in the first book and followed all the way through to the end, with no unlikely and unnecessary surprises.

I really liked all three of these books, and recommend them highly. If you are a space opera fan, I think you will enjoy them as well.



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Review: Clarkesworld Magazine, Issue 216, September 2024

Clarkesworld Magazine, Issue 216, September 2024 by Neil Clarke
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This issue is a bit below Clarkesworld's usual quality, but there are two outstanding stories here. The first, "Broken," by Laura Williams McCaffrey, is a creepy and uniquely structured tale of Flyer 247-3, who we gradually realize is a human so caught up in her virtual-reality universe that she refers to it as the "real world" and other people as "shadows." After her helmet breaks, she must journey across a flooded and climate-change-ravaged city to get it repaired, and we see in this future, robots are running what remains of the world. The different structure of the story is that it is actually reading backwards, ending at the moment of her helmet failing. I had to read it twice to get the full impact, but it was worth going through again.

The second story, "A World of Milk and Promises" by R H Wesley, tells us the tale of a pregnant woman stranded on an alien planet after her space station breaks up and all her crewmates die, who then has to survive and raise her daughter alone. She gradually realizes this planet's ecosystem is based on cooperation and symbiosis instead of prey and predation, with the planet's organisms feeding each other. She and her daughter are gradually adopted into the alien ecosystem, until her daughter abruptly dies--but the child's bones keep on growing, creating a giant skull and ribcage that shelters her mother. The nameless woman also dies at the end, waiting to fully merge with the planet and perhaps meet her daughter again. This story is dense and layered in its exploration of a mother's love, and is amazingly Wesley's first published story, according to the author notes.

I didn't particularly care for the other stories in the issue, but these two are worth your time.

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Review: A Haunted Girl

A Haunted Girl by Ethan Sacks
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This slender graphic novel packs a lot of elements into a surprising and very effective story. The author's afterward reveals it was co-written by his daughter, who at one time suffered a major depressive episode that led to her being hospitalized. This story obviously incorporates that real-life experience, opening with the protagonist, Japanese-American Cleo Newman, at the end of her own two-month hospitalization. She is released into the custody of her father, but not before seeing a horrific visage in her hospital room that she thinks she imagined.

Turns out she didn't. Cleo can see ghosts, in particular a Japanese death goddess named Izanami who is trying to tear down the barrier between the living and the dead, and loose vengeful ghosts to eradicate human life on Earth. Cleo is the last of the bloodline who can see and fight those ghosts and save humanity. This is the story of her efforts to get past her own disbelief and her depression, and find the strength to save those she loves.

The aspects of depression and suicidal ideation are dealt with realistically and sensitively, and it's apparent that the author's daughter has contributed greatly to this, making the story more grounded. Cleo doesn't defeat the death goddess alone--her best friend Flor, her father Gus, and even Cleo's therapist Marcy come to her aid in the end (as well as the ghost of her elder brother Hiro, who was taken by Izanami fifteen years before). Hiro was originally sent to fool Cleo and lead her into the death goddess's clutches, and Cleo nearly succumbs. But at the end, in a glorious three-page spread showing Cleo's life and loved ones, she declares, "I want to LIVE! I am going to LIVE! I'm done being made to feel powerless. I will not be beaten. Not by you, not by principal jerkface, not by stuck-up bullies. And not by my damn depression."

It's enough to make you stand up and cheer.

The story features a near-perfect balance between the horror aspects and the mental-health aspects, and also emphasizes the power of friendship and people working together to triumph. It's a striking example of how a graphic novel can be far more than just a "comic book."

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Review: A Fire in the Sky

A Fire in the Sky by Sophie Jordan
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

The recent "romantasy" craze is a mixed bag, for me. The eight-hundred-pound elephant in that room is of course Rebecca Yarros, author of Fourth Wing and Iron Flame . Her 600-page bricks books combine explicit sex scenes with some fairly inventive worldbuilding, although by the time of the second book the relationship between the two leads is beginning to drag the story down (I mean, when you've read one "thrusting cock" and "wet sex" you've read them all, really).

(And who the heck decided that the silly, incongruous descriptor "sex" is a suitable synonym for the vagina and/or pubic mound, anyway? "Clit" has a much snappier ring to it, but it's not quite the portion of the female anatomy these writers are usually going for. Not to mention that in this book, unwilling virgin bride Tamsyn had no idea such an organ existed, since she apparently didn't play with herself before her marriage.)

Unfortunately, there are a lot of fantasy romances (w/dragons) following in Yarros' wake, which means you will get generally pale, less interesting imitations. Like this one. This book tends toward the shallow and frothy side, with inadequate worldbuilding and characterization. The difference in this book is that instead of bonding with a dragon, Tamsyn is one: a human/dragon shapeshifter. She didn't know this until one of her new warlord husband's warriors, disapproving of their marriage, tries to kill her, and she shifts into her dragon form and roasts him.

(This is a misstep in the worldbuilding that knocked me out of the story, by the way. Jordan's dragons are the usual winged, four-legged and serpentine-tailed type, and immediately after Tamsyn shifts she is able to fly? In a new larger body with three extra limbs that she should have no idea how to maneuver? She should be tangling up in her wings and falling out of the sky, and no, "instinct" isn't going to cut it to help her stay aloft. It should take a great deal of time and practice to be able to do anything in her dragon form, and yet there she is swooping and diving through the air, dodging other dragons and even bearing her husband on her back, as if interspecies flight is just another day in the medieval castle. And of course her husband Fell turns out to be another dragon shifter...sigh.)

This book is half the size of the Empyrean books, but in this case, less is not more. It's the first book in a series, but I'm not inclined to continue it.

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Review: Red in Tooth and Claw

Red in Tooth and Claw by Lish McBride
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This young-adult weird Western has two parallel slow-burn threads: one of setting, and the fact that for all its boots/hats/horses/chaps y'all-come-back-saloon patter that sounds like a direct descendant of the American West, this story is taking place on a secondary world with magic that is not Earth. (Which is just as well, as that avoids the Native genocide issue.) The second thread is one of characterization, as our protagonist Faolan Kelly slowly learns to open up, trust other people, make friends, and even snag a young man, a Rover (this world's wandering clans) named Tallis. Both these threads are subtle and absorbing, and expertly paced.

We also have a horror element that slowly reveals itself to be a sort-of portal fantasy, with a demon cave cat that really isn't a demon, but a live creature unwillingly snatched from another world. (The way this cave cat is described, it kind of sounds like a white sabertoothed tiger with rosette-marked fur instead of stripes. Which made me wish an artist's representation could have been on the cover, but that would have definitely been a spoiler.) This cave cat is controlled with magic and turned into a monster by the book's villain, the cult leader His Benevolence Gideon Dillard, who runs the Settlement the underage Faolan is sent to after her grandfather dies.

I really enjoyed the characterizations in this book--Faolan has a fascinating arc, and the secondary characters are all well-drawn and believable people. Faolan is a practical, stubborn, taciturn protagonist, a young woman who has been pretending to be a boy for years so she won't get married off, and who painstakingly constructs a new found family through the course of this book. Part of her arc is that Tallis' clan of Rovers accept her for who she is and don't look askance at her short hair and chest binder.

This is an interesting blending of several different genres, and one of the more unique books I've read this year.

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Review: The Last Gifts of the Universe

The Last Gifts of the Universe by Riley August
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

This book was self-published before it was picked up by a traditional publisher, and I almost wish they had left well enough alone. Apparently it has its fans, but I wasn't overly impressed with it. It falls into the recent "cozy" trend, in this case science fiction/space opera that's very inward-looking and personal, with a focus more on emotional stakes rather than physical ones. There is an extinction-level threat to humanity in this book, but by the end the problem remains unsolved and the threat remains. The protagonist comes to terms with grief and loss, specifically the death of their mother. Obviously this is a legitimate storyline, but I wish the author had just made her book a contemporary tale and left the SF out of it.

That's because the worldbuilding, one of the main reasons I read science fiction, is sorely lacking in this book, and what little there is feels shallow and not well thought out. The sibling protagonists, Kieran and Scout, are planet-hopping archaeologists and archivists, investigating the dead civilizations and planets found in abundance in this corner of the galaxy, bringing back artifacts and searching for information about the enemy that destroyed said civilizations. They go up agains the requisite cliched eeeevilllll corporation in the hunt for the caches of information left by those vanished peoples (Verity Co). Sometimes those dead planets are inhabited by Remnants of whatever did the original deed, which are so scantily described I couldn't get a clear picture in my head of what they even were. Are they eldritch Lovecraftian interdimensional horrors that hate life? Couldn't prove it by me, which grew more irritating as the book went on. And in the end, not only are they not defeated, there is not even a plan to defeat them. Scout just makes up their mind to honor the memories of both the billions who died and their mother by carrying on the work, and Kieran decides this isn't the life for him--he wants to stay planetside from now on. Again, these sentiments are just fine, but as part of a science fiction story, they feel like a cheat.

(There's also a cat, an orange tom named Pumpkin who has his own little spacesuit and booties, and who can apparently pick up scents through his helmet. No, the science in this book isn't great either.)

Unfortunately, I've read far better space operas than this. But if you like your stories low-key and on the cozy side, this might suit you, I guess.

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Review: The Bound Worlds

The Bound Worlds by Megan E. O'Keefe
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This is the final book in the Devoured Worlds trilogy, and unfortunately, I was a bit disappointed in it. Not because of the worldbuilding and characters. Those two aspects are still there and good, especially the latter. No, my dissatisfaction with this book is due to a somewhat out of left field plot twist that amped up the stakes and raised the suspense.

I suppose this would be a good thing normally, and it's obvious that the author thought it through. This plot turn is based on the worldbuilding and events in the previous two books, so it makes sense in that respect--although as written, it is more than a bit handwavey to me, and stretched my suspension of disbelief nearly to its breaking point. But what bugs me most about the turn this story took is that, as far as I am concerned, it was unnecessary. Yes, the stakes were raised, to the point that not only are humans threatened by the sentient fungus canus, but the entire universe is threatened as well (and not entirely by canus, but also the previously established technologies of neural maps and reprinting). (Trying to write it out just makes me see how clumsy and absurd it really is.) I just felt that the conflicts and threats established in the first two books, namely canus, the five ruling families oppressing the masses, and the general system that needs to be torn down, were more than enough to carry the way to the end of the trilogy. The books did not need this additional tacked-on threat.

Having said all this, the characters salvaged what could be salvaged. The author's touch with characterization came through in this story, as Naira and Tarquin are put through the wringer, even more so than the previous book. Fletcher Demarco, a right bastard up to this point, is not quite redeemed--he's done far too much for that--but we understand him better, and he steps up to save both Tarquin and Naira at the end. And Tarquin and Naira's refreshingly mature romantic relationship proves you do not need excessive long-drawn-out sex scenes (looking at you, Rebecca Yarros) to create an emotional bond with the reader.

I liked the first two books enough that I'll give a grudging pass to this one, and it does tie up all the plot threads. But I really wish the author had not taken this final sudden turn. This trilogy could have been an SF/space opera classic, and unfortunately now it's just...not.

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Review: Alien Clay

Alien Clay by Adrian Tchaikovsky
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Adrian Tchaikovsky is incredibly prolific; this is his second book released this year (the other I've read is Service Model ) and there's one more I have to track down. He has written some of my favorite science fiction of the past few years, including the excellent Final Architecture trilogy.

This book, following the whimsy and small-scale stakes (but still quite good) of Service Model, returns to his usual modus operandi of big stakes and world-altering ideas. If that's the kind of SF you go for, this book should be right up your alley. It's also stuffed full of fascinating alien biology, and the author's version of the so-called "Gaia hypothesis"--what if there was a world-mind (an alien one in this case, not Earth)? What would that look like, how would it have evolved, and how would it behave?

Most importantly, how would humans fit into it?

It's just how ants make decisions. Or how our brains do, on a deep neuron-to-neuron level. These are shunted up to the conscious level of our minds to become attached to justifications and rationales. It's not a hive mind, in the popular conception, because that implies some top-down direction controlling all its component parts. Ants and neurons are democracies, that old political saw the Mandate works so hard to discredit.

There's a great deal of philosophy in this book along with the science. The Mandate, mentioned above, is the political entity seemingly controlling all of Earth in this future, and the Mandate is the one who sends its rebels and revolutionaries, including the protagonist Professor Arton Daghdev, to Kiln as a one-way trip. The prisoners will explore the planet and the long-lost (or so they think) alien civilization found there, and they will never return.

"They call it Scientific Philanthropy," I say, naming the doctrinal elephant in the room, "which is nothing to do with giving to the needy and everything to do with being given to by creation. Orthodoxy says we're here to observe the universe, because the fine tuning of the universe is such that it's a perfect incubator for a human-style intellect. For humans in general. The laws of nature and the cosmos encourage conditions that give rise to life as we know it, and that life was always going to become us. Hence, we were meant. It's manifest destiny all the way down."

But on Kiln, life developed in an entirely different way: based on cooperation and symbiosis instead of competition and specialization. Life there swaps out its parts the way humans change clothes, and the various parts recombine to make all new organisms and species. And when humans join the mix, Kiln works to make them part of its web too. Not to assimilate them, like Star Trek's Borg, but to incorporate them into the whole so the whole can survive--and, as we find out, use humans' differently evolved brains like routers, to awaken the biology and ecosphere of Kiln to sentience once again.

This is not a book to rush through. It has more ideas in a few pages than most SF books have in their entirety. The characters do suffer a bit because of this, as it's obvious where the author's focus lies in this story. But if you want your science fiction to have that old-fashioned "sensawunda," I haven't read a better book for that this year.

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Review: She Who Knows

She Who Knows by Nnedi Okorafor
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

In 2011, Nnedi Okorafor's Who Fears Death won the World Fantasy Award. This novella, the first in a series, is the story of Onyesonwu's mother, the sorceress Najeeba.

This book takes place in a far-future, post-apocalyptic (and presumably post-climate-change) Africa, where magic and technology co-exist. The author doesn't go into how or why that happened; it just exists, and the characters accept it and live with it. There are witches, spirits, and the astral projection (or equivalent) that Najeeba discovers she can do, juxtaposed with solar/wireless technology and "portables" (tablets, as far as I can tell).

What hasn't changed is the oppression of one people by another. In this future, the Nuru (people of Arab descent, per the author's forward) oppress the Okeke (people of African descent). Najeeba and her family are a subset of Okeke, the outcast and lowest caste Osu-nu:

To your clan, even though we look just like you, we are to be avoided. It's forbidden to befriend or marry us. Osu-nu people are untouchable Okeke people; we are the slaves who chose to be slaves to the goddess Adoro so that we could be free.

There's a lot of far-future history here, barely touched on because a novella leaves no room for it. Some of it is told in the form of stories, such as how two Osu-nu women found the dead lake with its extensive salt deposits, and founded a business later generations came to depend on to support themselves and thrive. The journeys down the salt roads, and what happens to Najeeba there, form a major part of the plot. Najeeba is the first girl in her village to accompany her father and brothers on the salt roads, and everything changes for her afterward.

This book has a very mythic, fantasy feel, despite the subtext of technology and SF. The end reveals just who Najeeba is telling her story to, and what she will do next. That book, I think, will be explosive, but it needed the background and setup of this one. It may be a bit of an "author-completist" type of tale for fans in that I don't know how well it would land with those who have never read Okorafor before, but I think the story is strong enough to overcome that handicap. In any event, it will likely impel you to read more of her work. (Full disclosure: I have Who Fears Death but haven't read it. I need to remedy that soon.)


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