Fiction
But first, a PSA: America’s worst charities. Don’t give money to charities that spend all their money fundraising. When the cause is very small (such as a specific, rare disease), resort to professional fundraisers and a lower percentage going directly to services can be understandable and acceptable. But nothing like these, including Youth Development Fund, which sends 80% of its donations to fundraisers and uses most of the rest to pay a company owned by the “charity’s” founder and president to make scuba-diving videos starring him and then to pay to broadcast those videos. Disgusting. Check names carefully, and check online, especially for anything veteran-related.
Max Barry, Lexicon: Free NetGalley review copy. I keep wanting Barry to write Jennifer Government again, but he perversely insists on writing different books! This one is about a secret organization that uses words to hack the human brain. Don’t think too hard about the premise; the premise is that power corrupts, and that people can be taken over like hard drives recruited for a botnet. Except for one man, the sole survivor of an incident that killed three thousand people, who seems to be immune-though that really depends on what he’s forgotten, and who: Emily, aka Woolfe, who is coming to kill him (and who really should be played by Amy Acker in the movie version). Woolfe’s story is also complicated, and unreliable. It’s an engaging read, if no Jennifer Government.
Alec Nevala-Lee, The Icon Thief: A story of art theft that turns out to be connected to lore about the secret society of Rosicrucians. Though this is by a former XF fan writer whose style is much, much, much better than Dan Brown’s, the comparisons to The Da Vinci Code are obvious and not unwarranted in terms of basic plot. But again, Nevala-Lee is a better writer, and the conspiracy aspects are just part of a broader and more persuasive story about Russian and Georgian organized crime intersecting with the business of art. Not my usual thing, but I couldn’t stop reading once I started.
Diana Wynne Jones, Unexpected Magic: Mostly cozy short stories, generally about young people encountering magic (though there’s one pretty disturbing one that features dragons and mind control-based slavery and is pretty horrifying to think about, even though most of the implications were unexplored), and one early novella in which outsiders find a secret kingdom that seemed rather pointless.
Mira Grant, Parasite: Free NetGalley review copy. Sal survived a head-on crash with a truck, but without any of her procedural or historical memories; she had to learn to be a person again. That she survived at all was possibly attributable to the assistance of her genetically engineered intestinal parasite-now widespread (the book is a little unclear about what’s going on outside the US/Europe) to control and prevent numerous health conditions. Sal is a special case because her parasite seems to have saved her from brain death, so the company that produces the parasites takes a special interest in her care. Then a strange “sleeping sickness” starts to spread, turning its victims first mindless, then violent. If you’ve dabbled in the genre at all, you will know the big reveal very early on; though it is psychologically realistic for Sal to miss it, this does lead to the reader waiting on her for a big chunk of the book. It’s certainly in the vein of Feed, sorry for the mixed metaphors, though not quite as exciting; the book could’ve used fewer heavy-handed and repetitive quotes from a made-up children’s book as epigraphs for each chapter.
comments on DW | reply there. I have invites or you can use OpenID.
Max Barry, Lexicon: Free NetGalley review copy. I keep wanting Barry to write Jennifer Government again, but he perversely insists on writing different books! This one is about a secret organization that uses words to hack the human brain. Don’t think too hard about the premise; the premise is that power corrupts, and that people can be taken over like hard drives recruited for a botnet. Except for one man, the sole survivor of an incident that killed three thousand people, who seems to be immune-though that really depends on what he’s forgotten, and who: Emily, aka Woolfe, who is coming to kill him (and who really should be played by Amy Acker in the movie version). Woolfe’s story is also complicated, and unreliable. It’s an engaging read, if no Jennifer Government.
Alec Nevala-Lee, The Icon Thief: A story of art theft that turns out to be connected to lore about the secret society of Rosicrucians. Though this is by a former XF fan writer whose style is much, much, much better than Dan Brown’s, the comparisons to The Da Vinci Code are obvious and not unwarranted in terms of basic plot. But again, Nevala-Lee is a better writer, and the conspiracy aspects are just part of a broader and more persuasive story about Russian and Georgian organized crime intersecting with the business of art. Not my usual thing, but I couldn’t stop reading once I started.
Diana Wynne Jones, Unexpected Magic: Mostly cozy short stories, generally about young people encountering magic (though there’s one pretty disturbing one that features dragons and mind control-based slavery and is pretty horrifying to think about, even though most of the implications were unexplored), and one early novella in which outsiders find a secret kingdom that seemed rather pointless.
Mira Grant, Parasite: Free NetGalley review copy. Sal survived a head-on crash with a truck, but without any of her procedural or historical memories; she had to learn to be a person again. That she survived at all was possibly attributable to the assistance of her genetically engineered intestinal parasite-now widespread (the book is a little unclear about what’s going on outside the US/Europe) to control and prevent numerous health conditions. Sal is a special case because her parasite seems to have saved her from brain death, so the company that produces the parasites takes a special interest in her care. Then a strange “sleeping sickness” starts to spread, turning its victims first mindless, then violent. If you’ve dabbled in the genre at all, you will know the big reveal very early on; though it is psychologically realistic for Sal to miss it, this does lead to the reader waiting on her for a big chunk of the book. It’s certainly in the vein of Feed, sorry for the mixed metaphors, though not quite as exciting; the book could’ve used fewer heavy-handed and repetitive quotes from a made-up children’s book as epigraphs for each chapter.
comments on DW | reply there. I have invites or you can use OpenID.