Rachel (Kalanadi) > Books: netgalley‎ (21)

In the introduction, Swanwick says that this is his first collection that feels like every story is written by the same author. I agree with this, though I would emphasize that the stories have enough variety to never bore, switching settings, genre, protagonists, and so on. There are definitely enough similarities in style and setting to clearly be from the same author. I appreciate collections that feel cohesive, as a chunk of an author's work that represents their style.

Swanwick has really honed his craft and studied the short story format. From the very first story, "The Man in Grey", I felt the stories were strong and taut, and efficiently and effectively conveyed in brief but rich sentences and passages, and often humorously.

Some of the stories I enjoyed the most were:

“The Dala Horse”, a “Red Riding Hood” SF dystopia type of story about a young girl traveling to her grandmother’s house and waylaid by a troll.

“The Scarecrow’s Boy”, which surprised me at every single turn. This is the one story that I went back to reread parts of it to untangle the progression. It’s about a robot scarecrow rescuing a diplomat’s child. There’s a revelation at the end that you could almost miss.

"The Woman Who Shook the World-Tree" has burst of energetic scientific activity that you know must eventually end in disaster, but results in a pretty touching romantic moment.

“From Babel's Fall'n Glory We Fled..." was my favorite science fiction story, about human settlers who want to be granted a home on an alien planet. The aliens look like millipedes/centipedes. Their economy is a capitalism of trust; the humans' is based on information. When an enemy faction destroys one of the alien cities, an alien survivor goes with a human to take all his people's knowledge to another city to restart it. And like a lot of Swanwick’s stories in this collection, it did not end in the way that I thought it would.

The Surplus and Darger story, “Tawny Petticoats”. I think Swanwick has written a lot of stories and at least one novel about Surplus and Darger. They’re kind of con men… and in this story, they recruit a woman to help them with a black money scheme in a fantasy New Orleans.

I didn’t like a handful of stories, mostly because of their content. For example, I’m not super fond of stories in general that feature lots of sex and drinking and debauchery on the eve of disaster, like “3 A.M. in the Mesozoic Bar”. Some stories like “Libertarian Russia”, had darker, more depressing Russian moody setting that don’t appeal to me personally either. However, I can easily see other people loving these!

This will not be my last Michael Swanwick collection. I absolutely want to read his other short stories and hopefully get my hands on a few of his novels.

Watch the video version of this review!

I received this book as an ARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review

Central Station is a "fix-up" novel of previously published short stories by Lavie Tidhar — stories which were always intended to be drawn together in

Central Station is a "fix-up" novel of previously published short stories by Lavie Tidhar — stories which were always intended to be drawn together into a whole novel. It hints at huge changes and shifts for humanity while intimately focusing on the individuals; it's about a transformed human experience in the solar system, but stays in a single city. And it harks back to the feel of a golden age of SF with a distinctly retro vibe that is rich and imaginative. It manages to evoke the past and the future simultaneously, making me feel a sense of longing and familiarity with a history of pulp SF I've not even read! (And just look at that cover art from Tachyon — it's perfect!)

This is the first work I've read by Lavie Tidhar, and I can't wait to read more. I was so happy to come to Central Station without any expectations, encouraged by only a few brief anticipatory remarks from others. I not only thoroughly enjoyed Central Station, I also enjoyed going in blind and letting its atmosphere sink in.

So what is Central Station about? It's a series of stories about the people who live in Tel Aviv, near the space port Central Station. There are the street vendors, the artist birthing and killing a god while the locals gather to watch, a data vampire who came down the gravity well and set up house with a book collector, an Oracle who speaks to the Others, and and not-entirely-human children from the birthing centers... They're all here for a reason — gathered, returned, those who never left — in the shadow of Central Station, where people come and go from the stars.

"I don't want to go to the stars,' Vlad said. 'Going away seldom changes who we are."

(How's that for a quote that condenses the oft-repeated story of humans exploring the stars and themselves?!)

These stories can stand on their own, but meld together into an overall bigger narrative that works seamlessly. The chapters were originally published as short stories from 2011 to 2015 (and then "substantively" edited to combine them) and then a few chapters are original to final work.

In each chapter you experience a part of the story from a different character's viewpoint. Every person is a secondary character in someone else's story. I love this structure! It gave me chills and reminded me of reading Charles de Lint or Angelica Gorodischer for the first time. I mean, yes, it's totally different from works by those authors, but I just had the sense I was reading something different and impressive. The way the story was told pulled me in just as much as the story and characters itself.

Frankly, I do think it's strange that the publisher's description only names Boris, when other characters and women like Miriam ("Mama Jones") and Carmel (the data vampire) are just as important as him. And don't forget the robo-priest, R. Brother Patch-It, or the alte-zachen man! There's a plethora of fantastic types of people and places and things in Central Station. The world was solid; its depth was established with only brief mentions and small infodumps when necessary. Sometimes hints are better than long treatises, because half the fun is for the reader to fill in the blanks in their own mind and to use that imagination muscle to envision the bustling, colorful Tel Aviv transformed in the future with a space port looming above!

The lushness, the alien-ness, but organic feel of the setting of Tel Aviv, with the gamespace and the Conversation flickering in and around, reminded me of Hyperion by Dan Simmons. The idea that this is on Earth but felt actually alien to me was fantastic and refreshing: this is a futuristic imagining of a part of the world that is already unknown to me, but remained human and real.

The truth is I loved reading this book so much but it's hard to explain why, because it was so personal. It triggered some wonderful memories of other books and reading experiences and this intangible thing I seem to be pursuing in my own personal reading journey. Is it possible to feel nostalgia for a book while reading it for the first time? Because that's what it felt like. I also appreciated the subtle nature of the story itself: there may not be a decisive-enough conclusion to the tale for some readers, but I didn't need one. There are hints and implications and I saw where the story could go... it was the journey itself and the characters that I devoured.

(Originally published on my blog, www.koenix.org)

I think the publisher’s description expresses the opening of this story very well – and the rest becomes increasingly intricate with every chapter, every new character, and every sly reveal. I really do not want to give too much away!

This is a story with many threads that will take time to untangle. If I had to summarize Too Like the Lightning, I would say I understood it as a tale about how sudden forces and plots begin to destabilize a utopia-like political system. It’s philosophical, intellectual, political – like a love letter to ancient philosophy and the Enlightenment, transported to the 25th century, in a bizarre but fantastic way.

Mycroft Canner (one of the direst criminals in this world now serving out his sentence in public servitude) is tasked to write this history of seven days* in which the world’s political system of non-geographical Hives (or “party-nations”?) slides towards collapse. Mycroft narrates parts that he is present for, as well as situations where he is not physically in attendance, but hearing what is going on through other people’s trackers. In a few interludes, another character investigating one of the mysteries, Martin Guildbreaker, is asked to insert their own interviews with others where Mycroft was not present.

Interestingly, the “Reader” speaks back to Mycroft in the familiar form, countering his statements or actions or the fashion in which he tells the story – such as alluding to characters’ gender, either biological or in the way that Mycroft wants to “code” them for the Reader. At one point, Mycroft even “debates” with the Reader about who the protagonist of the book is! You’d conclude perhaps that it’s Mycroft, because he is narrator and actor, but he assures us that it is the child Bridger with the supernatural power whom we should be watching:

“I am the window through which you watch the coming storm. He is the lightning.”

One of the most deliciously convoluted aspects of this world is the gender politics and how Mycroft slides back and forth between the socially acceptable neutral “they”, the real biological sex of characters, and “his” own choices for coding people’s gender depending on how he wants to present them. It is not socially acceptable in this futuristic world to display gendered traits, such as clothing. Everyone dresses in “wraps”, hiding their physical biological characteristics as much as possible. To outright “gender” a person with pronouns is shocking and taboo. But Mycroft shifts around all the time and shows us that even in a world where gender isn't supposed to matter anymore... people still seem to care.

The pronouns used to refer to any one character can range across all possibilities in a single scene, from the preferred “they”, to “he”, to “she”! It was dizzying and torturous to figure out and exhilarating, as I felt at times that I was truly reading about characters whose gender didn’t matter or where everything was so topsy-turvy that you simply could not make assumptions.

Too Like the Lightning began very slowly. It is, as Ada Palmer has stated, “written in the style of an Eighteenth-Century memoir or philosophical novel, like Candide.” This style was hard to adjust to and slowed down my reading through the first half of the book. However, my appreciation for the depth of the world, the unreliability of the characters and narrator, and the mature depiction of incestuous world-level politics grew dramatically throughout. This story and its telling are unique and don’t fit into any mold I’ve read before.

There were moments where I thought the novel had become weird, or heavy, or too dry – and then suddenly cool in the most nerdy of ways. There is an entire chapter where all the dialogue is in Latin! No, not just the translation because you’re told the scene is Latin, but the actual Latin is on the page, with the translation interspersed. The fourteen-year-old in me (who was obsessed with the idea of writing stories with translated dialogue) went nuts over that.

People who love philosophy, historical fiction (particularly ancient Greece, Rome, and the Enlightenment), political intrigue, and science fiction will all find something to enjoy in this novel. By the end, all I wanted was the next book and more, more, more!

 *Too Like the Lightning is only the first half; the final few days will be concluded in Seven Surrenders, coming out in December 2016. I’m not sure how many books will be in this series, but Too Like the Lightning and Seven Surrenders are absolutely the first and second halves of a single book, just split into two volumes.

It's with some sadness and regret that I have to say upfront... I very much anticipated Everfair, but it ultimately did not reach the potential I thou

It's with some sadness and regret that I have to say upfront... I very much anticipated Everfair, but it ultimately did not reach the potential I thought it had. It has great qualities and some weaknesses, which I will tackle in turn.

In Everfair, Shawl excellently uses steampunk in a new and exciting way. She explores how history might have been different for the Congo if the native people had had access to steam-powered technology, to give them an advantage against the brutal, horrific rule of Leopold II. Going into this book, I didn't know about this time period: from 1885 to 1908, King Leopold II of Belgium decimated the Congo Free State in Africa, enslaving, mutilating, and killing the people there to obtain the area's natural resources. I can't believe I had never learned about this part of history before. And in Everfair, Shawl asks how might life have been for the indigenous people, if they had had more advanced technology and if a few other historical events had gone a little differently.

The Everfair of the title is a country in the Congo. It is founded by a diverse group of people, some white and some black, who are seeking freedom (of ideology, religion, race, etc.). Everfair becomes not just an experimental colony, but also a haven for people escaping Leopold's cruelty. The book focuses on three wars: Everfair's fight against Leopold, their involvement in World War I, and then their own internal crisis.

Where Everfair shines is in its concept. It is strongest in the ideas it wants to express about colonialism, race, gender, religion, sexuality, and technology. As a tiny example, one of the things I liked the most, one of those many "what ifs?" peppered throughout, is the prosthetic hands. A number of characters lose one of their hands (Leopold II and white colonialists were real bastards). An Everfair resident invents steam-powered prosthetic replacements. How these prosthetic hands are used and described was really great. This is absolutely what I expected to see in this book: steampunk melding with the real history of this place.

But then I have to come to what this book doesn't do so well. I was interested as the characters were introduced and Everfair was founded... but then it didn't quite proceed as I hoped after the setup. And it's this: I don't think Shawl has successfully told a story in this book.

If this is intended to be the story of Everfair as a state, then it doesn't hit the mark. It reads like a timeline of events. Which may be appropriate for a history textbook, but it isn't a smooth story. The chapters are short; they read like snippets or vignettes cut from a much bigger (more interesting) narrative. The jumps between chapters are huge - from a couple of months to a couple of years. Most major events, from political deals to interpersonal crises, happen off screen. They are infodumped or hazily referred to in the next chapter... leaving me frequently asking, 'What just happened?"

If this book is the story of its characters, then it also stumbles. There's a very large cast, many of whom have points of view. Most of them don't get that much page time. Everfair spans 25 years in the lives of at least a dozen people, but you're never in any one person's head for long enough to get deep under their skin. I was seriously in doubt for most of the book about characters' feelings and motivations. Many of their choices don't stand up under scrutiny because they exist in an information vacuum.

Any single one of these characters could have had an entire book devoted to only their story, and it would have been fascinating! A book only focusing on Lisette and Daisy's strained love affair. Or only on Tink, exploring his enslavement, his escape, his inventions, his love, his family back in Macao. Or Josina, the king's wife, and how she helps manipulate the political and social landcape of Everfair. Or the King Mwenda himself, as he struggles with war, consolidating power, balancing the many issues of his kingdom. Or Fwendi, the spy! She was my favorite character!

Clearly, at least, the characters are interesting, which is why the lack of development is so disappointing. I get excited just thinking about what could have been. But instead Everfair only gives you a small taste of each character. And tied together as the history of Everfair, it feels choppy and disjointed.

I wanted a lot more from this book. I will emphasize its good points though: it has an imaginative premise that is well-worth reading for. It tackles important subjects. It achieves a wonderful, deft use of steampunk . And the language, the writing, is very good. I only wish there had been more of it.