Book Reviews: A preponderance of good books!
I love working in a library. Books! For free! PaperbackSwap.com has also proved to be a treasure trove of (really good!) books I've wanted to read for ages but haven't been able to find.
Some titles with brief reviews under the cuts.
A Door into Ocean
Joan Slonczewski
Twin planets Valedon and Shora have had little contact other than Valedonian traders visiting Shora for the last forty years. Now several Sharers, as the inhabitants of Shora call themselves, are visiting Valedon to determine whether the inhabitants are human or not. Two of them, lovesharers Merwen and Usha, have set up under a tree in the town Chrysoport, weaving something amazing out of seasilk... and now they've offered to apprentice/adopt Spinel, a teenage boy from Chrysoport. Since he has no prospects otherwise, his parents push him to go. He's in for rather a lot of culture shock. Shora is entirely covered in ocean, and the Sharers live on living rafts. They have webbed fingers and toes, and are also purple due to symbiotic microbes in their skin that store extra oxygen. (Needless to say, the Valedonians look a lot more human to readers.) Oh, and they are all female...
They're also completely opposed to violence. Which Spinel comes to think is a problem, since unfair trade practices aren't the only problems Valedon is bringing - they'd also quite like to annex Shora altogether. Meanwhile, Lady Berenice of Valedon, who spent much of her childhood on Shora, tries to negotiate between the sides--which often means trying to mediate between her second family and her fiancee.
This book shows so many sides of colonization. Dedicated passive resisters, people who want everyone to shut up and obey to avoid trouble, people who want to break down and use violence against the colonizers, people who totally believe in oppressing these uncivilized "catfish" who probably aren't even human, people who don't know much about those natives but are sure they're dangerous, people who don't think their superiors' orders are at all good but are afraid to disobey, people who disobey orders, people who join the resisters, people caught between cultures... And as the author's website says, there's also ecological awareness and gender binary deconstruction and other cool things. But the book still manages not to be a political tract, but a gripping story! I kept wondering if Character X would escape from prison, or if this sit-in would lead to the rafts getting blasted, or if Character Y would betray someone, or if the shockwraiths would kill an unlucky swimmer, or what was over that next wave... Cool worldbuilding, cool characters, cool plot, and cool ideas = awesome book.
The Silver Ship and the Sea
Brenda Cooper
Settlers came to the planet Fremont to form a community free of genetically-modified members. After two hundred years of struggling to survive, two ships full of altered humans arrive. Twelve years after the resulting war, the only altered on the planet are six children left behind when their surviving parents fled. Oh, and Jenna, an elderly (but still tougher than everyone!) altered who lives in the wild and can't be caught.
Chelo, her brother Joseph, and their friends are getting along despite the community's distrust of their abilities--until the community leaders are killed in an earthquake, leaving less tolerant members in charge, and one of their fellow altered is accused of murder. Now they must face the instability their official status as prisoners of war brings their lives, prove they shouldn't be locked up or otherwise neutralized, save the colony, and figure out just what Jenna wants of them.
This book was great fun, and didn't make it easy for the kids to choose between their communities. Despite being altered, they haven't grown up in the altered community, and some of them have wonderful, loving parents. This makes it hard for them to even contemplate packing up and leaving (even if they could survive on their own) even as their lives grow intolerable. You can sympathize with the girl who wants to fight for their rights, and for the ones who want to prove themselves and negotiate, and for the ones who don't care what happens so long as they get away... Also, two of the characters can link into the local wireless network with their minds. Which the colonists find helpful, but scary. Awesome!
Lilith's Brood
Octavia E. Butler
This is an omnibus volume of the trilogy containing Dawn, Adulthood Rites, and Imago. In the first, Lilith Iyapo wakes up after the nuclear holocaust in an alien spaceship. The aliens are here to help the survivors... but first, they're going to destroy our remaining civilization, assimilate our genetic material, and impregnate us with hybrid human-alien babies. For our own good, of course. Because they know what's best for us. Lilith resists, but she's in a bind because there really is no practical way to escape the Oankali. They control everything from food supply to reproduction to humanity's very genes. And some of them are actually pretty nice... and they do have some nifty stuff... Other humans aren't as torn (especially the men who complain that the Oankali are treating them as if they were women, of all the outrageous insults). As you can imagine, things get messy.
In the subsequent books, the survivors and their hybrid children have set up back on Earth under Oankali protection. Except for the ones who've run off to try to form a "pure" human community, which is a little hard seeing as they're now sterile unless the Oankali help them out. This community ends up with a kidnapped hybrid child, who ends up trying to mediate between the communities. Later, some of the hybrids start to come into their own, which freaks everyone out--including the Oankali. (They were ahead of schedule, you see.) There's tension and the possibility of major conflict. At stake is, well, humanity. One of the questions being "what constitutes humanity, anyway?"
His Dark Materials
Philip Pullman
I'd read The Golden Compass and The Subtle Knife waaaay back and forgotten how much I liked them. Then I saw the movie version of The Golden Compass (fun!) and had to revisit it. So I re-read them and then went on to The Amber Spyglass. Lyra in the first book is TOTALLY AWESOME. Actually, the first book in general is totally awesome. It seamlessly integrates a critique of totalitarian theocracy into an adventure about a girl trying to rescue her kidnapped friend from a government research institution that severs souls. It has gorgeous imagery, like ice-bears loping across the frozen north, witches in black silk riding branches of cloud pine through the skies, and of course the Aurora borealis. And it ends with one hell of a cliffhanger.
The second book is also a fun adventure, but is much heavier on the critiquing aspect. But tolerably so for me - it still seems like a story. The abandoned city full of specters and feral children is wonderfully creepy, the knife that cuts between parallel worlds is cool (and extracts a suitable price for gaining it), and I loved the ex-nun physicist Mary Malone. Unfortunately, Lyra started playing second fiddle to Will for no apparent reason. I mean, she liked Roger well enough, but she didn't pledge to use some useful talent only if it benefited him, did she? Where's the sense in that? Not prying, yes, but not using it at all? Bah.
I was much less crazy about The Amber Spyglass. For starters, Lyra spends the first third in a coma and needs rescuing. And Mrs. Coulter is apparently saved through The Power of Maternal Love. (This does not happen to any fathers, needless to say.) And the separation at the end was obviously contrived - what, there's enough Dust to allow for one door to stay open, but not two? Even with all the extra Dust now coming in from Hell? Right. I also don't think the story ever properly explored the implications of the good side's leader being a total jerk and a murderer to boot. But there were some lovely bits, like Lyra telling the shades of Hell what it feels like to be alive, and the golden Dust streaming into the Abyss while Lyra and the shades walk along a narrow precipice alongside, and that whole alien world Mary Malone is in, and the image of your soul atoms rejoining the rest of the universe and being part of everything else when you die... I also liked the theme of childhood innocence being great in some ways, but growing up and knowing being even better. I just wish the story had held up better under the message.
Snake Agent
Liz Williams
Mystery set in near-future China. Detective Inspector Chen's colleagues are wary of him, since he deals with the supernatural cases. (You'd probably be wary of someone who disabled security systems by slicing his palm open and chanting too. Especially if that guy had been to Hell nine times as part of his duties.) When a distraught mother brings in a photograph showing her deceased daughter is not in Heaven as she should be but caught somewhere in a bad part of town as a ghost, Chen soon discovers he has more than illegal ghost trafficking on his hands. There's a conspiracy afoot in Hell...
This was fun. Not one I plan to keep on my shelves, but still fun. Although the bureaucratic intrigue in Hell, while suitably twisty, got a little tiring after a while. Yeah, yeah, the paperwork is hell and everyone's a backstabber. Heaven doesn't like to interfere because... well, because then the book would be over. And certain of the demons never seemed, well, evil enough. I did very much like that the Hell was not the Christian Hell (neither was the rosary). My favorite parts were actually the sight-seeing in Hell, especially the trip into the lower levels.
Some titles with brief reviews under the cuts.
A Door into Ocean
Joan Slonczewski
Twin planets Valedon and Shora have had little contact other than Valedonian traders visiting Shora for the last forty years. Now several Sharers, as the inhabitants of Shora call themselves, are visiting Valedon to determine whether the inhabitants are human or not. Two of them, lovesharers Merwen and Usha, have set up under a tree in the town Chrysoport, weaving something amazing out of seasilk... and now they've offered to apprentice/adopt Spinel, a teenage boy from Chrysoport. Since he has no prospects otherwise, his parents push him to go. He's in for rather a lot of culture shock. Shora is entirely covered in ocean, and the Sharers live on living rafts. They have webbed fingers and toes, and are also purple due to symbiotic microbes in their skin that store extra oxygen. (Needless to say, the Valedonians look a lot more human to readers.) Oh, and they are all female...
They're also completely opposed to violence. Which Spinel comes to think is a problem, since unfair trade practices aren't the only problems Valedon is bringing - they'd also quite like to annex Shora altogether. Meanwhile, Lady Berenice of Valedon, who spent much of her childhood on Shora, tries to negotiate between the sides--which often means trying to mediate between her second family and her fiancee.
This book shows so many sides of colonization. Dedicated passive resisters, people who want everyone to shut up and obey to avoid trouble, people who want to break down and use violence against the colonizers, people who totally believe in oppressing these uncivilized "catfish" who probably aren't even human, people who don't know much about those natives but are sure they're dangerous, people who don't think their superiors' orders are at all good but are afraid to disobey, people who disobey orders, people who join the resisters, people caught between cultures... And as the author's website says, there's also ecological awareness and gender binary deconstruction and other cool things. But the book still manages not to be a political tract, but a gripping story! I kept wondering if Character X would escape from prison, or if this sit-in would lead to the rafts getting blasted, or if Character Y would betray someone, or if the shockwraiths would kill an unlucky swimmer, or what was over that next wave... Cool worldbuilding, cool characters, cool plot, and cool ideas = awesome book.
The Silver Ship and the Sea
Brenda Cooper
Settlers came to the planet Fremont to form a community free of genetically-modified members. After two hundred years of struggling to survive, two ships full of altered humans arrive. Twelve years after the resulting war, the only altered on the planet are six children left behind when their surviving parents fled. Oh, and Jenna, an elderly (but still tougher than everyone!) altered who lives in the wild and can't be caught.
Chelo, her brother Joseph, and their friends are getting along despite the community's distrust of their abilities--until the community leaders are killed in an earthquake, leaving less tolerant members in charge, and one of their fellow altered is accused of murder. Now they must face the instability their official status as prisoners of war brings their lives, prove they shouldn't be locked up or otherwise neutralized, save the colony, and figure out just what Jenna wants of them.
This book was great fun, and didn't make it easy for the kids to choose between their communities. Despite being altered, they haven't grown up in the altered community, and some of them have wonderful, loving parents. This makes it hard for them to even contemplate packing up and leaving (even if they could survive on their own) even as their lives grow intolerable. You can sympathize with the girl who wants to fight for their rights, and for the ones who want to prove themselves and negotiate, and for the ones who don't care what happens so long as they get away... Also, two of the characters can link into the local wireless network with their minds. Which the colonists find helpful, but scary. Awesome!
Lilith's Brood
Octavia E. Butler
This is an omnibus volume of the trilogy containing Dawn, Adulthood Rites, and Imago. In the first, Lilith Iyapo wakes up after the nuclear holocaust in an alien spaceship. The aliens are here to help the survivors... but first, they're going to destroy our remaining civilization, assimilate our genetic material, and impregnate us with hybrid human-alien babies. For our own good, of course. Because they know what's best for us. Lilith resists, but she's in a bind because there really is no practical way to escape the Oankali. They control everything from food supply to reproduction to humanity's very genes. And some of them are actually pretty nice... and they do have some nifty stuff... Other humans aren't as torn (especially the men who complain that the Oankali are treating them as if they were women, of all the outrageous insults). As you can imagine, things get messy.
In the subsequent books, the survivors and their hybrid children have set up back on Earth under Oankali protection. Except for the ones who've run off to try to form a "pure" human community, which is a little hard seeing as they're now sterile unless the Oankali help them out. This community ends up with a kidnapped hybrid child, who ends up trying to mediate between the communities. Later, some of the hybrids start to come into their own, which freaks everyone out--including the Oankali. (They were ahead of schedule, you see.) There's tension and the possibility of major conflict. At stake is, well, humanity. One of the questions being "what constitutes humanity, anyway?"
His Dark Materials
Philip Pullman
I'd read The Golden Compass and The Subtle Knife waaaay back and forgotten how much I liked them. Then I saw the movie version of The Golden Compass (fun!) and had to revisit it. So I re-read them and then went on to The Amber Spyglass. Lyra in the first book is TOTALLY AWESOME. Actually, the first book in general is totally awesome. It seamlessly integrates a critique of totalitarian theocracy into an adventure about a girl trying to rescue her kidnapped friend from a government research institution that severs souls. It has gorgeous imagery, like ice-bears loping across the frozen north, witches in black silk riding branches of cloud pine through the skies, and of course the Aurora borealis. And it ends with one hell of a cliffhanger.
The second book is also a fun adventure, but is much heavier on the critiquing aspect. But tolerably so for me - it still seems like a story. The abandoned city full of specters and feral children is wonderfully creepy, the knife that cuts between parallel worlds is cool (and extracts a suitable price for gaining it), and I loved the ex-nun physicist Mary Malone. Unfortunately, Lyra started playing second fiddle to Will for no apparent reason. I mean, she liked Roger well enough, but she didn't pledge to use some useful talent only if it benefited him, did she? Where's the sense in that? Not prying, yes, but not using it at all? Bah.
I was much less crazy about The Amber Spyglass. For starters, Lyra spends the first third in a coma and needs rescuing. And Mrs. Coulter is apparently saved through The Power of Maternal Love. (This does not happen to any fathers, needless to say.) And the separation at the end was obviously contrived - what, there's enough Dust to allow for one door to stay open, but not two? Even with all the extra Dust now coming in from Hell? Right. I also don't think the story ever properly explored the implications of the good side's leader being a total jerk and a murderer to boot. But there were some lovely bits, like Lyra telling the shades of Hell what it feels like to be alive, and the golden Dust streaming into the Abyss while Lyra and the shades walk along a narrow precipice alongside, and that whole alien world Mary Malone is in, and the image of your soul atoms rejoining the rest of the universe and being part of everything else when you die... I also liked the theme of childhood innocence being great in some ways, but growing up and knowing being even better. I just wish the story had held up better under the message.
Snake Agent
Liz Williams
Mystery set in near-future China. Detective Inspector Chen's colleagues are wary of him, since he deals with the supernatural cases. (You'd probably be wary of someone who disabled security systems by slicing his palm open and chanting too. Especially if that guy had been to Hell nine times as part of his duties.) When a distraught mother brings in a photograph showing her deceased daughter is not in Heaven as she should be but caught somewhere in a bad part of town as a ghost, Chen soon discovers he has more than illegal ghost trafficking on his hands. There's a conspiracy afoot in Hell...
This was fun. Not one I plan to keep on my shelves, but still fun. Although the bureaucratic intrigue in Hell, while suitably twisty, got a little tiring after a while. Yeah, yeah, the paperwork is hell and everyone's a backstabber. Heaven doesn't like to interfere because... well, because then the book would be over. And certain of the demons never seemed, well, evil enough. I did very much like that the Hell was not the Christian Hell (neither was the rosary). My favorite parts were actually the sight-seeing in Hell, especially the trip into the lower levels.