Category: speculative fiction

The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches by Sangu Mandanna (Speculative Fiction)

This book is Delightful — light, funny, and well written. It’s sometimes startling what the quality of writing brings to a book. This story about the isolation, loneliness, and fear of prejudice of … Witches — could have wandered into trashy territory but instead it becomes meaningful, heart warming, and happy-making in Mandanna’s skilled hands.

Mika Moon is a Witch. Through an old curse (we learn more about this later) all Witches find themselves orphaned early in life, and Mika has been raised (by a series of nannies) to hide what she is out of fear. When she finds herself in a quirky (to say the least) group of people, hired to tutor not one but three young Witches, she struggles with understanding what it means to become part of real family. Just reading this story will relieve the reader of any remnants of loneliness s/he might feel — at least for the time it takes to get through the story.

Translation State by Ann Leckie (Science Fiction)

Translation State is a standalone story in the (beloved) universe of the Ancillary Justice series. You don’t need to have read those first, but they are wonderful, so if you haven’t — do so now! Leckie’s universe is populated by any number of richly delineated alien species along with numerous human based cultures, far flung across the universe. In this story, three completely unrelated characters are drawn together through a bizarre set of circumstances and manage to have an impact on the way things have always been done. Enae — the reluctant diplomat tasked with tracking down a fugitive from 200 years ago; Reet, an adopted mechanic who struggles with intense (and definitely unacceptable) urges that he doesn’t understand; and Qven, a juvenile form of a manufactured species designed to translate between humans and the mysterious Presgers — absolutely necessary to preserving the fragile peace between the two races.

I love the way Leckie writes rich interior (alien) lives while simultaneously illustrating the complexity of multiple, variegated, worlds. I loved her description of the process for “raising” the translators — as alien as you can get and described from Qven’s very nuanced and real perspective. This story includes a fully fleshed out description of how to challenge cultural expectations when some aspects of the problem are (currently) immutable while others are simply rigidly accepted ways of doing things. The teasing apart of the situation and dawning awareness of what solutions are possible is brilliant and a skill that I wish would be more developed in us all.

As an aside, Leckie has a great time playing with pronouns. While occasionally single characters are referred to as “they” (which I hate), there are several other labels (sie, e, he, she) which I admit I couldn’t always differentiate but were meaningful to the characters — more importantly though, there was a wide range of pronouns which people sometimes had to correct but never got strident about.

Ann Leckie may well be my favorite current science fiction writer — in addition to writing engaging stories populated with realistic and diverse characters, she doesn’t insist on dwelling in constant dystopia and darkness as so many of today’s SF writers do.

Thank you to Orbit Books and NetGalley for providing an advance copy of this book in exchange for my honest review. The book will be published on June 6th, 2023

White Cat, Black Dog by Kelly Link (Spec Fiction / Stories)

A set of modern fairy tales with an urban twist. Grimm style — brothers on quests, rescue missions to the underworld, etc. — but with more contemporary elements — a talking white cat who manages a Colorado marijuana farm, a faithful and persistent gay lover who tracks his husband to Hell, a post apocalyptic world where corpses provide protection against the terrorizing creepies. Well-written and surprisingly classic in nature. A lot of recent books seem to be modernizing existing fairytales but this one is absolutely adding new items to the Canon.

Thank you to Random House and NetGalley for providing an advance copy of this book in exchange for my honest review. The book will be published on March 28th, 2023

The Atlas Six by Olivie Blake (Speculative Fiction — Audio Book)

Writing: 3/5 Characters: 3/5 Plot: 4/5

Mixed feelings about this one. A kind of combination of Hunger Games and Divergent. Six very powerful magicians (Medeans) — each with their own very particular kind of magic — are recruited to join the Alexandrian Society with power and secret knowledge offered to those who manage to be initiated. With one small hitch — one out of six will not be allowed to make it.

Pros: Some very interesting world building that blends philosophy, psychology, and a version of physics which embeds magic at its core. Really interesting description of reality and how it is perceived. Each of the six, with their own backstory and strength, adds a nice twisted spin to the way we think about things.

Cons: I found the characters and dialog pretty adolescent. Plenty of arrogance, and amused smirking, and competition as to who can adopt the most superior tone. Blah, blah, blah. Most are greedy for power for their own sake while I greatly prefer reading about people who are motivated by achievement and / or relationships.

And the biggest “con” of all: a complete cliff hanger at the end which I loathe.

So … entertaining for the most part, some cringeworthy and tedious introspection and sparring, and an irritating cliffhanger at the end. The second book just came out a couple of months ago, so if you’re interested, you won’t have to wait for the cliffhanger to be resolved. While I didn’t love it, this is a VERY popular title!

I listened to the audio book which had different (and good) readers for each of the six main characters as aligned with the chapter which centered on them.

Poster Girl by Veronica Roth (Speculative Fiction)

Writing: 5/5 Plot: 4.5/5 Characters: 4.5/5

This concise description of the plot comes from Goodreads: Poster Girl is an adult dystopian and mystery novel about the imprisoned former face of a strict government regime and the task she’s given to buy her freedom. I’ll add to this that I don’t really think it is any more dystopian than our modern life is today and I wouldn’t call it a typical mystery per se, but the plot summary is accurate if not inspiring. Just read the book — it’s good!

Roth seems to have been born a skilled writer — she penned her first novel (Divergent) at 22 over her senior year winter break and in addition to be a runaway best seller, it was actually good (I read it)! Poster Girl is — as expected — completely gripping from start to finish. No tangents, no filler, perfectly structured plot. What I really liked was the major shift in the reader’s understanding of the situation that paralleled the (equally major) shift in the main character’s understanding. And in this particular case, that shift brings up an essential (to me) issue: at what point in someone’s life do they reach an understanding of their own sense of morality? And when should they be held accountable for that? We all go through a kind of conditioning (or brainwashing) when we are young — it’s called being raised and your parents, schools, and community all take part. What does it take to question and possibly overcome your conditioning? Why is it easier for some people than others?

A fast, engaging read with plenty of thought provocation and no long battle or chase scenes (those are so tedious!)

In the Lives of Puppets by TJ Klune (Speculative Fiction)

Writing: 4/5 Characters: 5/5 Plot: 3.5/5
A small and definitely diverse family (consisting as it does of three robots and a small human) lives happily in a dense forrest finding discarded electronic treasures in the local (and wildly gigantic) scrap heap and refurbishing them. Two successful refurbishments are now part of the family: Rambo — the ultra-loquacious, ultra-needy, and anxiety plagued vacuum robot; and the truly twisted and psychopathic Nurse Ratched (Registered Automaton To Care, Heal, Educate and Drill) — possessed of a dry wit and an “Empathy Protocol” she engages to hysterical effect.

When they find a damaged (and very handsome) robot in the scrap and manage to bring him back to “life,” it unleashes the force of the Robot Authority — the same group that wiped out all humans because they were busily destroying each other and the Earth. A rescue mission into the City of Electric Dreams with the “help” of a wild cast of characters along the way and a gay, interspecies romance (if you count advanced robots as a species) round out the tale.

I liked the characters and the humor — laughed out loud many times. I really liked the ongoing philosophical discussions and thoughts — plenty of existential considerations and an exploration of what it means to human, sentient, and / or conscious. Guilt, forgiveness, grief, and joy and what it means to experience those emotions. A scrutiny of Morality in a wide gamut of situations. And lastly, what does it means for a species to evolve? I also loved the well-integrated cultural references, especially to one of my all time favorite movies (Top Hat — yes!). The adventure sequences went on a bit too long for my taste, though I admit they included some pretty creative beings and mechanisms and I’m not really into ANY adventure sequences, so …

Thank you to Tor Books and NetGalley for providing an advance copy of this book in exchange for my honest review. The book will be published on April 25th, 2023

Holmes Coming by Kenneth Johnson (Audio book)

Writing: 4/5 Characters: 4/5 Plot: 3.5/5

Pretty entertaining audio book with a fantastic radio-style cast of readers (including the author) who make it a very entertaining background for driving or long, solo walks. Part speculative fiction, part crime novel, and part literary novel, the premise is that Hubert Holmes (the real man behind Sherlock) put himself into a cryogenic hibernation and woke up a few years early in 2022 in a Marin based manor home maintained faithfully through the years by successive generations of Hudsons. With the help of Dr. Winslow (a female pediatrician who happened to be visiting the house when Holmes “woke up”), Holmes discovers not only a fresh but a world with decidedly different moral tenets, attitudes towards women, and delightful sources of data (think — Internet).

Nicely convoluted plot, some very good characters, fantastic readers (loved all of the accents), and some fun and thought tweaking contrasts between the world of 1899 and 2022 as seen through the eyes of someone who “popped” quickly from one to the other. Personally, I had a little trouble with the superior attitude of Dr. Winslow who continually pointed out Holmes’ inferior empathy / emotional engagement attributes (but oddly enough I had no problems with his superior attitude towards … everything else. Go figure!). She was actually my least favorite character but perhaps that says more about me than the book. I happen to love know-it-alls (men or women) who actually do know-it-all and don’t always like others putting them in their place for not “playing well with others.” As I said … more about me than the book!

The Terraformers by Annalee Newitz (Speculative Fiction)

A new world with only 1,000 more years of terraforming left before becoming a human paradise;  a set of (remarkably long lived) “rangers” whose job is to terraform and protect the fragile environment; a money hungry (is there any other kind?) mega-corporation intent on capitalizing their investment a little early; and some “people” who were created to survive in the original (non human breathable) environment but shunted aside once the world could support “standard” human life.  This is the setting in which Newitz can explore just about every PC hot button that exists:  rich vs poor, a**hole right wingers vs right thinking lefties, eco sustainability, and the (more interesting)  sapient beings of all forms who have been decanted (created) in richly formatted  types — full sensory remote beings, flying moose who can text but not speak, and humanoid beings who can live in harsh (ie no breathable atmosphere) climates without technical support.  Plenty of gender/sexual preference diversity as well.

It’s well imagined, with lengthy descriptions of the world and diverse cultures that I really enjoyed.  Quite a lot of action and a little heavy on the (obviously) good guys vs (more obviously) bad guys front, and a little long winded on the battle / intrigue / angst for my taste, but overall some very interesting commentary and exploration of what it means to be human — especially when you have been “created” for specific (and not your own) purposes…

Thank you to Tor Books and NetGalley for providing an advance copy of this book in exchange for my honest review. The book will be published on January 31st, 2023.

Babel: Or the Necessity of Violence by R F Kuang (speculative / historical fiction)

Writing: 4.5/5 Characters: 4/5 Plot: 3.5/5

An alternate / speculative history version of the British Empire in the 1830s where the wheels of commerce are driven by magic, imbued to bars of silver through the machinations of Translators. Robin Swift is plucked from Canton in the midst of a cholera epidemic by a Professor at the Royal Institute of Translation in Oxford. Robin’s gift of languages has made him valuable to the empire, and he goes from an impoverished childhood to one of plenty: plenty of material goods and plenty of work. I absolutely loved the first part of the book which built a world based on the impossibility of accurate and precise translation and the extractable magic embedded in the difference. The author is Oxford and Yale educated, specializing in Contemporary Chinese Studies and East Asian Languages, and I thoroughly enjoyed the linguistic forays and the consistency of the model she built.

From there — unfortunately from my perspective — the story veered into the politics of oppression, injustice, and racism. Robin and a group of (also foreign and dark skinned) classmates become enraged at the impending war Parliament is likely to launch on the Chinese who have declared Britain’s Opium contraband and burned the lot. Embracing violence — with all the complications that entails — comprises the plot of the rest of the book (in case you missed it, the subtitle is “On the necessity of violence.”) I didn’t like this part and was not convinced (at all) by the argument.

The story is very well-written, the characters have depth, and the history is accurate. While I said it was an “alternate” or “speculative” history, that only applied to the “magical” components — the rest followed real history accurately until the very end. I enjoyed the philosophical discussions of morality, ethical behavior, and fairness, though I wish she had not made the representatives of empire so absolutely nasty and clearly wrong (I always think there is more subtlety to any individual than is apportioned to novelistic portrayals).

Not surprisingly, I learned a few new words:

  • synecdoche — a figure of speech in which a part is made to represent the whole or vice versa.
  • discursive — digressing from subject to subject (too many people write and talk this way!)
  • rhotic — of, relating to, or denoting a dialect or variety of English

Some quotes:

“That’s just what translation is, I think. That’s all speaking is. Listening to the other and trying to see past your own biases to glimpse what they’re trying to say.”

“English did not just borrow words from other languages; it was stuffed to the brim with foreign influences, a Frankenstein vernacular.”

“Their minds, enriched with new sounds and words, were like sleek muscles waiting to be stretched.”

“The poet runs untrammeled across the meadow. The translator dances in shackles.”

“It was like tunneling into the crevasses of his own mind, peeling things apart to see how they worked, and it both intrigued and unsettled him.”

“What was a word? What was the smallest possible unit of meaning, and why was that different from a word? Was a word different from a character? In what ways was Chinese speech different from Chinese writing?”

“Every language is complex in its own way. Latin just happens to work its complexity into the shape of the word. Its morphological richness is an asset, no an obstacle.”

“London had accumulated the lion’s share of both the world’s silver ore and the world’s languages, and the result was a city that was bigger, heavier, faster, and brighter than nature allowed.”

“Robin saw immediately that London was, like Canton, a city of contradictions and multitudes, as was any city that acted as a mouth to the world.”

Thank you to Avon and Harper Voyager and NetGalley for providing an advance copy of this book in exchange for my honest review. The book will be published on August 23rd, 2022.

Vigil Harbor by Julia Glass (Literary Fiction)

Writing: 5/5 Plot: 4/5 Characters: 5/5

Vigil Harbor — an historic town on the Atlantic Seaboard — is a kind of safe harbor for many of its residents. It feels protected from the ever increasing calamities of the broader world — rising oceans, increased acts of terrorism, epidemics. When a spate of divorces and a couple of strangers arrive —each with a hidden agenda — suddenly the problems of the world seem to hit a little closer to home.

Only ten years into the future, many of the characters are understandably living in a constant state of fear, anxiety, and despair. In the world (too well) portrayed by the author, Survival Studies has become a college major, climate change has diminished songbirds and summer fruit almost to extinction, coastal towns have been triaged into oblivion, various groups are hunkering down in survivalist bunkers, and eco-terrorism is on the rise with frequent and deadly bombings. One character suggests that humankind is busy “unbuilding the ark.” Other characters are stubbornly optimistic or simply moving on with their lives, adapting to a constantly changing reality as we humans have been doing for millennia.

A set of deeply drawn characters — a despairing biologist who believes he works in “marine hospice”; a retired English high school teacher bent on revenge; an optimistic architect who considers himself “an architect for the future, not the apocalypse”; a college drop out back home after a narrow escape; a brilliant landscaper still terrified of possible deportation after 40 years in the country; and others — all wind around each other while living, reflecting, worrying, and hoping. They are having children and consciously considering what it means to parent in a rapidly deteriorating landscape. They are creating art, appreciating beauty, and finding people and places to love. They are finding ways to define and follow their passions to try to make the world a better place (for some definition of better and some definition of place).

Julia Glass is one of my favorite writers — as in the actual use of words to describe, set a mood, bring to life. Her vocabulary is both large and up-to-date (it’s possible that she made up several of the more modern slang words). She creates these amazing turns of phrase — the words literally turning / tumbling around in the phrase — and so many of her sentences are gorgeous little nuggets that I grew tired of underlining. She does a pretty interesting job of describing nature, pieces of art, and different architectures. I say “interesting” because I typically don’t enjoy descriptions — I don’t visualize from words well — but her descriptions touch on more than just the visual, and I find myself reading slowly, rapt. Her depiction of technology evolution and the resulting shifts in human behavior over the next ten years was seamlessly and utterly believably done.

I valued the personal reflections, discussions, and general interactions between characters — each with sometimes wildly different perceptions of reality — what was happening, what was important, what could be done, who to blame. I appreciated the sometimes subtle differences between generations, culminating in a last few pages describing the thought processes of a young (middle school age) boy whose worldview had obviously been molded by the events of his short life.

Overall, a book that made me think, made me understand other people a little better, and gave me a set of characters that I would enjoy knowing better. I did stick to reading during the day because I am easily anxietified (my word) and wanted to be able to sleep.

Some good quotes:
“The slivers of grief in your flesh dissolve or work their way out. One day they’re gone, even if they leave you with tiny, whisper-thin scars.”

“Celestino is not a man who thinks that thorough knowledge of a person’s history, much less his or her emotional “journey,” equates with greater trust or deeper love.”

“The art she made was the obsession reaching for a language.”

“Did all intelligent, creative people need to be tangled up in thickets of neurosis, their psyches riddled with the stigmata of previous heartache?”

“She was living on less than a shoestring; she was living on a filament of fishing line.”

“I am a living redundancy. I realize: the wife not so much replaced as deleted, just as I might take my green pen … and blithely score through a student’s unnecessary adverb when the verb can stand on its philandering own.”

“Time will tell,” said Margo. “As it alway does, the fucker.”

“Is this the beginning of old age, this irrepressible pull of futility? My own father lapsed into a storm cloud of silence once he retired.”

“But that was one of my worst faults: fretting over past choices when they have been chiseled into history.”

“His step father refers to his generation as Generation F: failure, fuckup, fatalist; take your pick.”

This book will be published on May 3, 2022. Many thanks to the author for giving me an early reader copy