More Books
I am still scaling Mount TBR. It seems to be growing taller even as I climb it, but so it goes.
All the Birds in the Sky, by Charlie Jane Anders
I love this book. It is a thoroughly modern fairy tale. It has both kinds of witches: country and western. It has super-scientists. It has ninja assassins. People you would recognize (or fail to recognize, in the case of the assassins) walking around in the Mission District. And it has a compelling question: As the side-effects of industrialization are rendering our planet uninhabitable, what are we to do about it, especially those with magical or scientific super-powers? Is there a solution that doesn't involve destroying the planet in order to save it? Can a young witch and mad scientist bridge the differences between their traditions and find hope?
I've heard that some readers were not all that happy with the ending. To which I say, if you want a happy ending, let's stop putting so much CO2 into the atmosphere, now. If we don't do that, the next best thing is to hope that maybe there really are witches and super-scientists who can save us.
Too Like the Lightning, by Ada Palmer
This is the first half of a huge and ambitious science fiction novel of ideas. Too Like the Lightning is set a few centuries in the future. The problems of industrialization have been solved with better technology. People have more prosperity, more freedom of movement, freedom of thought, and freedom of expression than ever before. And yet society is still divided between different ideals. What should be valued most? Progress? Equality? Liberty? Enterprise? Justice? Compassion? It is a hopeful future but it feels very fragile. Since these are the driving ideals of the enlightenment, the novel is told in an 18th century literary style. The narrator is massively unreliable and is definitely messing with us. As a result, reading Too Like the Lightning is both wonderful and frustrating. At its best, it is a dazzling vision of a better future and a collection of love letters to enlightenment philosophers. But it also is a good example of how political writing about sexual liberation is not actually very sexy. And while the plot is very intriguing, I am going to have to read the second book to see how it turns out.
The Viper of Portello, by James C. Glass
I read it so you don't have to. This is from a small press that publishes many wonderful and special books. This is not one of them. It is a thriller set on a three different worlds, each of which seems to be a country in Latin America. It would have been better without the space opera trappings. Latin America has a long history of violent and brutal political conflict. If this story had been set back on Earth, it would not be a nice story. But it might have had more believable characters and action.
Nine Fox Gambit, by Yoon Ha Lee
A fresh and original space opera with a new big idea: That the alignment of things in space and time could have powerful effects. It is essentially porting the concept of sorcery into science fiction. The result is an interstellar empire that expands by imposing its feng shui and calendar on its neighbors. Heretical calendars and geometrical formations are existential threats, so the Hexarchate is in a constant state of war and ruthlessly suppresses any possibility of dissent. It's dark, but it's inventive and the characters are engaging. I am looking forward to the next book.
The Nightmare Stacks, by Charles Stross
I think this is book 7 of the Laundry Files, not counting the novellas. If you have been following the series, like me, you probably have already it. If not, you really want to start at the beginning. In the recent books in the series, Charlie has been deconstructing fantasy tropes. This one is elves, with a manic pixie dream girl for good measure. Stir in the recurring themes of Lovecraftian horror, modern technology and British bureaucracy, and it works quite well. I'm really liking the characters. Alex the vampire is the main character. There is a fantastically awkward "don't you all come out at once" scene with his parents. And we get to see more of Pinky and Brains, two of my favorite people in the whole series. And I'm getting a feeling that "Pete" is based on the Rev. Lionel Fanthorpe. If I'm going to wonder where are we going and why are we all in this handbasket, these are the people I'd want to be with.
Radiance, by Catherynne M. Valente
A planetary romance, combined with the romance of acting and filmmaking. It's 1944. Every planet and moon in the solar system has been colonized. Luna is the center of the movie industry. Documentary filmmaker Severin Unck, daughter of the famous director Percival Unck, disappears mysteriously while making a film on Venus. Fifteen years later Percival starts production of a film to explain his daughter's disappearance and presumed death. The story is told through excerpts from Severin's earlier films and the surviving footage of her final documentary, memoirs from her mothers, and news articles, radio shows and commercials. And through multiple revisions of the script, as Percival tries to explain the inexplicable as a detective story, film noir, cinema verite, and through musical production numbers, cartoons, and fantasy. None of it works, as the mystery is unsolved. And yet all of it works, because the stories are told, in every way they could be.
The Red by Linda Negate
Linda Nagata wrote some of the most original and ambitious SF of the '90s, writing novels that went from atomic to interstellar scales. It's great to see new novels from her in print. The Red is a near-future high-tech military thriller. It is disturbingly plausible. Well, except that they have really good battery technology, something like 100x better than what we have now. Which would be wonderful, I'm just not sure if and when we'll get it. But I digress. As a thriller it is disturbingly plausible.
Defense contractors (DC's) profit when the world is insecure, and not surprisingly, there is always a war on somewhere. Lieutenant James Shelley doesn't like it, but he doesn't have much choice, and he's good at it. His Linked Combat Squad has all the latest tech. And occasionally he gets a feeling. He's learned to trust his hunches, because they keeping saving his life and the lives of soldiers in his squad. But they're not hunches. They're messages, from something on the internet. Something that has taken an interest in him, for some unknown reason. Something the DC's don't control. But they really will want to control it, when they find out.
Shelley is a flawed but believable hero. The story is enlivened by a large cast of vividly sketched characters with outsize personalities. There is strong camaraderie and plenty of lively banter. Add a background of political corruption and the wild card of some kind of rogue intelligence on the internet, and it is a hell of a story. The other two books of the trilogy are already out. I expect I will be reading them soon.
This entry was originally posted at http://voidampersand.dreamwidth.org/26097.html.
All the Birds in the Sky, by Charlie Jane Anders
I love this book. It is a thoroughly modern fairy tale. It has both kinds of witches: country and western. It has super-scientists. It has ninja assassins. People you would recognize (or fail to recognize, in the case of the assassins) walking around in the Mission District. And it has a compelling question: As the side-effects of industrialization are rendering our planet uninhabitable, what are we to do about it, especially those with magical or scientific super-powers? Is there a solution that doesn't involve destroying the planet in order to save it? Can a young witch and mad scientist bridge the differences between their traditions and find hope?
I've heard that some readers were not all that happy with the ending. To which I say, if you want a happy ending, let's stop putting so much CO2 into the atmosphere, now. If we don't do that, the next best thing is to hope that maybe there really are witches and super-scientists who can save us.
Too Like the Lightning, by Ada Palmer
This is the first half of a huge and ambitious science fiction novel of ideas. Too Like the Lightning is set a few centuries in the future. The problems of industrialization have been solved with better technology. People have more prosperity, more freedom of movement, freedom of thought, and freedom of expression than ever before. And yet society is still divided between different ideals. What should be valued most? Progress? Equality? Liberty? Enterprise? Justice? Compassion? It is a hopeful future but it feels very fragile. Since these are the driving ideals of the enlightenment, the novel is told in an 18th century literary style. The narrator is massively unreliable and is definitely messing with us. As a result, reading Too Like the Lightning is both wonderful and frustrating. At its best, it is a dazzling vision of a better future and a collection of love letters to enlightenment philosophers. But it also is a good example of how political writing about sexual liberation is not actually very sexy. And while the plot is very intriguing, I am going to have to read the second book to see how it turns out.
The Viper of Portello, by James C. Glass
I read it so you don't have to. This is from a small press that publishes many wonderful and special books. This is not one of them. It is a thriller set on a three different worlds, each of which seems to be a country in Latin America. It would have been better without the space opera trappings. Latin America has a long history of violent and brutal political conflict. If this story had been set back on Earth, it would not be a nice story. But it might have had more believable characters and action.
Nine Fox Gambit, by Yoon Ha Lee
A fresh and original space opera with a new big idea: That the alignment of things in space and time could have powerful effects. It is essentially porting the concept of sorcery into science fiction. The result is an interstellar empire that expands by imposing its feng shui and calendar on its neighbors. Heretical calendars and geometrical formations are existential threats, so the Hexarchate is in a constant state of war and ruthlessly suppresses any possibility of dissent. It's dark, but it's inventive and the characters are engaging. I am looking forward to the next book.
The Nightmare Stacks, by Charles Stross
I think this is book 7 of the Laundry Files, not counting the novellas. If you have been following the series, like me, you probably have already it. If not, you really want to start at the beginning. In the recent books in the series, Charlie has been deconstructing fantasy tropes. This one is elves, with a manic pixie dream girl for good measure. Stir in the recurring themes of Lovecraftian horror, modern technology and British bureaucracy, and it works quite well. I'm really liking the characters. Alex the vampire is the main character. There is a fantastically awkward "don't you all come out at once" scene with his parents. And we get to see more of Pinky and Brains, two of my favorite people in the whole series. And I'm getting a feeling that "Pete" is based on the Rev. Lionel Fanthorpe. If I'm going to wonder where are we going and why are we all in this handbasket, these are the people I'd want to be with.
Radiance, by Catherynne M. Valente
A planetary romance, combined with the romance of acting and filmmaking. It's 1944. Every planet and moon in the solar system has been colonized. Luna is the center of the movie industry. Documentary filmmaker Severin Unck, daughter of the famous director Percival Unck, disappears mysteriously while making a film on Venus. Fifteen years later Percival starts production of a film to explain his daughter's disappearance and presumed death. The story is told through excerpts from Severin's earlier films and the surviving footage of her final documentary, memoirs from her mothers, and news articles, radio shows and commercials. And through multiple revisions of the script, as Percival tries to explain the inexplicable as a detective story, film noir, cinema verite, and through musical production numbers, cartoons, and fantasy. None of it works, as the mystery is unsolved. And yet all of it works, because the stories are told, in every way they could be.
The Red by Linda Negate
Linda Nagata wrote some of the most original and ambitious SF of the '90s, writing novels that went from atomic to interstellar scales. It's great to see new novels from her in print. The Red is a near-future high-tech military thriller. It is disturbingly plausible. Well, except that they have really good battery technology, something like 100x better than what we have now. Which would be wonderful, I'm just not sure if and when we'll get it. But I digress. As a thriller it is disturbingly plausible.
Defense contractors (DC's) profit when the world is insecure, and not surprisingly, there is always a war on somewhere. Lieutenant James Shelley doesn't like it, but he doesn't have much choice, and he's good at it. His Linked Combat Squad has all the latest tech. And occasionally he gets a feeling. He's learned to trust his hunches, because they keeping saving his life and the lives of soldiers in his squad. But they're not hunches. They're messages, from something on the internet. Something that has taken an interest in him, for some unknown reason. Something the DC's don't control. But they really will want to control it, when they find out.
Shelley is a flawed but believable hero. The story is enlivened by a large cast of vividly sketched characters with outsize personalities. There is strong camaraderie and plenty of lively banter. Add a background of political corruption and the wild card of some kind of rogue intelligence on the internet, and it is a hell of a story. The other two books of the trilogy are already out. I expect I will be reading them soon.
This entry was originally posted at http://voidampersand.dreamwidth.org/26097.html.