I met the author at a convention and he seemed like a nice guy and boy, did he have a lot of books. He's self-published and has built up a considerablI met the author at a convention and he seemed like a nice guy and boy, did he have a lot of books. He's self-published and has built up a considerable backlog: his EarthCent Ambassador series is up to 22, and this book, Freelance on the Galactic Tunnel Network, is apparently the first of a 6-book spinoff series, but it's meant to be stand-alone.
This is optimistic, family-friendly SF without war or space battles. (In the author's own words, it's the kind of future he'd like to live in.) It's almost "sci-fi cozy." There is some drama and skullduggery, but no violence, no sex aside from some light flirting, and no swearing. All the characters are basically decent. Which is why, alas, while I can see the appeal and there is definitely a target audience, I'm not it. I mean, I don't particularly prefer grimdark or tons of sex and violence, but this book (and all his books, from my brief skim) presents dilemmas that are mostly solved by a little ingenuity and a lot of talking. It's Star Trek at its lightest and most Disneyfied.
The premise is that an advanced alien race called the Stryx contacted Earth decades ago and connected humanity to the galactic tunnel network, opening the galaxy to them. Fortunately for Earth, the Stryx are benevolent aliens with no desire to conquer or even control much, and the entire tunnel network is a peaceful trading network. Nobody fights wars. Humans try to replicate their capitalistic nation-states as they go off trading and adventuring across the galaxy, but find that these dinosaur entities don't work well in a universe full of aliens who don't care much about governments. Being a "primitive" race, humans really want to join the big kids by securing their own FTL colony ship, but the cost is, so far prohibitive for a planet that still isn't able to unify on such a goal.
That's the background. All the books Foner writes seem to be about diplomatic and trading hijinks and slice-of-life with ordinary people. (There are literally books about retirementcommunities on a colony ship.) Freelance on the Galactic Tunnel Network features a free trader having trouble making ends meet, and a freelance journalist who suspects a project to buy a colony ship for Earth might be a big scam and/or cult. They do some investigation, uncover a network of fraudsters, deal with a lot of aliens and other traders, and pick up a pet alien gryphon who cheats at poker.
It's very gentle SF, and I can recommend these books as comfort reads for someone who just wants a bit of slice-of-life space opera, but honestly, I found myself skimming to the end. I guess I prefer a space battle or two in my SF....more
Oh how I wanted to like this book. A first contact novel, supposedly hard SF (it's not), with a linguist as the protagonist. It's getting buzz and accOh how I wanted to like this book. A first contact novel, supposedly hard SF (it's not), with a linguist as the protagonist. It's getting buzz and acclaim everywhere and a huge number of 5-star reviews. And yes, it has a gorgeous cover.
After reading it (50 pages in, I already knew I wasn't going to like it; at 100 pages, I had to force myself to keep going), all I can say to those 5-star reviewers is "Are you freaking kidding me? This is what you consider great science fiction?"
First of all, the writing is just not good. This was a self-published novel, and as much of a cliche as it is to say this - it shows.
Her heart galloped in her chest. In minutes she’d be stepping up to do her thing with no idea whatsoever of precisely what or whom she’d be facing. Dr. Jane Holloway would be Earth’s ambassador. Why her? Because some accident of birth, some odd mutant gene, some quirk of brain chemistry, gave her the ability to learn new languages as easily as she breathed. Did that mean anything once she’d left the safe embrace of planet Earth? She was about to find out.
She noticed the fingers of one hand trembling and gripped the armrests with determined ferocity. She’d maintained her dignity this long—she wasn’t about to let go of it now.
The unending, stifling journey was over. The nightmare of sameness, of maddening confinement, of desperate loneliness and unrelenting, forced togetherness, done. They’d finally climb out of this fragile, aluminum/lithium-alloy sardine-can that had kept them safe from the vacuum of space for ten months. They’d actually made it there alive.
The capsule vibrated violently. Jane glanced at Bergen for reassurance. His hand hovered at the clip that would free him from his harness and he grinned wolfishly through his ragged, blond beard. He was the closest she could come to calling a friend on this journey—and that label seemed a bit of a stretch.
The crew thrummed with the tension of tightly controlled excitement. It was a far healthier kind of tension than what had often prevailed over the last ten months. There’d been many a heated argument over issues as immaterial as who was eating disproportionately more of the chocolate before it all suddenly disappeared.
After being hit with cliche after cliche (hearts galloping in chests, trembling fingers) and adverbs and adjectives swarming every sentence, I found myself thinking "fan fiction." This reads like fan fiction. And in fact, the author's other major work appears to be a Stargate fan fiction novel.
Problem two is that the characters behave like idiots, and frequently in highly unrealistic and unprofessional ways, just because the author wants to write something clever or amusing.
Dr. Jane Holloway is a character right out of a teenager's fan fiction story. Thanks to "some accident of birth, some odd mutant gene, some quirk of brain chemistry" she can "learn new languages as easily as she breathes." This makes her of interest to NASA, which is about to launch a mission to Mars. Except, it turns out, the mission isn't really to Mars - it's to a big alien spaceship sitting in the asteroid belt, which they've known about since the 1960s, but just now have the technology to go investigate. They figure Dr. Holloway might help them talk to the aliens.
Who have not responded to any radio signals and whose ship has done nothing for the last 50 years. So why exactly do they think there are even aliens to talk to?
Not content to make Dr. Holloway some sort of super-linguist, she also turns out to have a backstory involving her parents' tragic death in Australia, and Dr. Holloway then having an adventure in the Amazon in which she singlehandedly saved her team from hostile tribesmen while suffering from malaria okay are you fucking kidding me?!
That wasn’t the reaction he expected. “You’re wrong. I had a chance to look over the other files. You’re the only person for this job. You’re the only one with the kind of stamina, talent, and sheer guts it will take to do this.”
Her expression was skeptical. “I’m sure it looks like that on paper—”
He let his frustration bleed through. “Look, they’ve spent months looking at linguists—we’ve been working with plenty of linguists already, on another, similar project—and none of them can match your level of natural ability and experience. Come on! You’re a goddamn living legend in your field—and you’re what? 35? Do you know what we’ve been calling you at NASA? We call you Indiana Jane.”
The smile snuck back, just for a second.
“Well, ok—I call you that—but it’s fucking true.”
She snorted softly and looked away.
He rolled his eyes. They’d warned him not to curse. “Sorry. You were right when you guessed I don’t spend much time around women.”
Dr. Alan Bergen, the scientist/astronaut who "doesn't spend much time around women," is this romance/sci-fi novel's safely tameable semi-alpha male, informing us in the above passage just how awesome "Indiana Jane" Holloway is.
So of course they go on the mission, and find that there is alien intelligence on board the big unmoving ship.
There was some serviceable sci-fi in this novel, as when Jane makes contact with the surviving "crew," and starts to learn about its mission. There are perils aboard the ship, though most of the action is forced by arbitrary authorial fiat or by characters behaving like idiots.
I mean, how likely is it they'd send a first contact team, aboard a thin metal can surrounded by vacuum, to go meet an advanced alien race carrying 9mm pistols? Really? I guess about as likely as the U.S. Air Force deciding that the thing to do with a crashed alien space ship is to start vivisecting the aliens alive. Because no one in the Air Force has ever read a science fiction novel or thought through the ramifications, I guess.
I also found it amusing that the Indian-American scientist has to tell Jane that she's not familiar with Hansel and Gretel because she wasn't raised on Western fairy tales, but then she's the one who explains to a NASA astronaut what "Terran" means.
There's a really purple sex scene, a lot of overwritten dialog with the alien, an unconvincing romance mashed with Dr. Halloway becoming ever more awesome, and finally a To Be Continued. Because they don't even get off the damn ship by the end of the book.
I'd have forgiven the bad writing if the story was great, and I'd have forgiven a story that stretches my suspension of disbelief if the writing was great. But it's amateurish writing and a story with huge plot holes and frequent unbelievable character actions. I didn't quite hate this book, but I did not like it, and it was bad. Will not be reading the sequel.
Also, the author knows jack about linguistics. Googling "monogenesis" and "polygenesis" is not research.
Merged review:
Oh how I wanted to like this book. A first contact novel, supposedly hard SF (it's not), with a linguist as the protagonist. It's getting buzz and acclaim everywhere and a huge number of 5-star reviews. And yes, it has a gorgeous cover.
After reading it (50 pages in, I already knew I wasn't going to like it; at 100 pages, I had to force myself to keep going), all I can say to those 5-star reviewers is "Are you freaking kidding me? This is what you consider great science fiction?"
First of all, the writing is just not good. This was a self-published novel, and as much of a cliche as it is to say this - it shows.
Her heart galloped in her chest. In minutes she’d be stepping up to do her thing with no idea whatsoever of precisely what or whom she’d be facing. Dr. Jane Holloway would be Earth’s ambassador. Why her? Because some accident of birth, some odd mutant gene, some quirk of brain chemistry, gave her the ability to learn new languages as easily as she breathed. Did that mean anything once she’d left the safe embrace of planet Earth? She was about to find out.
She noticed the fingers of one hand trembling and gripped the armrests with determined ferocity. She’d maintained her dignity this long—she wasn’t about to let go of it now.
The unending, stifling journey was over. The nightmare of sameness, of maddening confinement, of desperate loneliness and unrelenting, forced togetherness, done. They’d finally climb out of this fragile, aluminum/lithium-alloy sardine-can that had kept them safe from the vacuum of space for ten months. They’d actually made it there alive.
The capsule vibrated violently. Jane glanced at Bergen for reassurance. His hand hovered at the clip that would free him from his harness and he grinned wolfishly through his ragged, blond beard. He was the closest she could come to calling a friend on this journey—and that label seemed a bit of a stretch.
The crew thrummed with the tension of tightly controlled excitement. It was a far healthier kind of tension than what had often prevailed over the last ten months. There’d been many a heated argument over issues as immaterial as who was eating disproportionately more of the chocolate before it all suddenly disappeared.
After being hit with cliche after cliche (hearts galloping in chests, trembling fingers) and adverbs and adjectives swarming every sentence, I found myself thinking "fan fiction." This reads like fan fiction. And in fact, the author's other major work appears to be a Stargate fan fiction novel.
Problem two is that the characters behave like idiots, and frequently in highly unrealistic and unprofessional ways, just because the author wants to write something clever or amusing.
Dr. Jane Holloway is a character right out of a teenager's fan fiction story. Thanks to "some accident of birth, some odd mutant gene, some quirk of brain chemistry" she can "learn new languages as easily as she breathes." This makes her of interest to NASA, which is about to launch a mission to Mars. Except, it turns out, the mission isn't really to Mars - it's to a big alien spaceship sitting in the asteroid belt, which they've known about since the 1960s, but just now have the technology to go investigate. They figure Dr. Holloway might help them talk to the aliens.
Who have not responded to any radio signals and whose ship has done nothing for the last 50 years. So why exactly do they think there are even aliens to talk to?
Not content to make Dr. Holloway some sort of super-linguist, she also turns out to have a backstory involving her parents' tragic death in Australia, and Dr. Holloway then having an adventure in the Amazon in which she singlehandedly saved her team from hostile tribesmen while suffering from malaria okay are you fucking kidding me?!
That wasn’t the reaction he expected. “You’re wrong. I had a chance to look over the other files. You’re the only person for this job. You’re the only one with the kind of stamina, talent, and sheer guts it will take to do this.”
Her expression was skeptical. “I’m sure it looks like that on paper—”
He let his frustration bleed through. “Look, they’ve spent months looking at linguists—we’ve been working with plenty of linguists already, on another, similar project—and none of them can match your level of natural ability and experience. Come on! You’re a goddamn living legend in your field—and you’re what? 35? Do you know what we’ve been calling you at NASA? We call you Indiana Jane.”
The smile snuck back, just for a second.
“Well, ok—I call you that—but it’s fucking true.”
She snorted softly and looked away.
He rolled his eyes. They’d warned him not to curse. “Sorry. You were right when you guessed I don’t spend much time around women.”
Dr. Alan Bergen, the scientist/astronaut who "doesn't spend much time around women," is this romance/sci-fi novel's safely tameable semi-alpha male, informing us in the above passage just how awesome "Indiana Jane" Holloway is.
So of course they go on the mission, and find that there is alien intelligence on board the big unmoving ship.
There was some serviceable sci-fi in this novel, as when Jane makes contact with the surviving "crew," and starts to learn about its mission. There are perils aboard the ship, though most of the action is forced by arbitrary authorial fiat or by characters behaving like idiots.
I mean, how likely is it they'd send a first contact team, aboard a thin metal can surrounded by vacuum, to go meet an advanced alien race carrying 9mm pistols? Really? I guess about as likely as the U.S. Air Force deciding that the thing to do with a crashed alien space ship is to start vivisecting the aliens alive. Because no one in the Air Force has ever read a science fiction novel or thought through the ramifications, I guess.
I also found it amusing that the Indian-American scientist has to tell Jane that she's not familiar with Hansel and Gretel because she wasn't raised on Western fairy tales, but then she's the one who explains to a NASA astronaut what "Terran" means.
There's a really purple sex scene, a lot of overwritten dialog with the alien, an unconvincing romance mashed with Dr. Halloway becoming ever more awesome, and finally a To Be Continued. Because they don't even get off the damn ship by the end of the book.
I'd have forgiven the bad writing if the story was great, and I'd have forgiven a story that stretches my suspension of disbelief if the writing was great. But it's amateurish writing and a story with huge plot holes and frequent unbelievable character actions. I didn't quite hate this book, but I did not like it, and it was bad. Will not be reading the sequel.
Also, the author knows jack about linguistics. Googling "monogenesis" and "polygenesis" is not research....more
I enjoyed Marko Kloos's Frontlines series, but it went on too long. Set in a future where Earth has become an impoverished shithole and the only way oI enjoyed Marko Kloos's Frontlines series, but it went on too long. Set in a future where Earth has become an impoverished shithole and the only way out is through enlistment in the space marines, humanity finds itself fighting "Lankies," an alien race of gigantic kaiju who do not communicate or negotiate, but simply try to stomp humans on whatever world they find them, and xenoform the planets. The Frontlines novels were good military SF that got a bit repetitive, and I was kind of glad when Kloos wrapped up the series.
I picked up Scorpio because it's either a stand-alone novel or a new series set in the same universe. But it really felt like a YA side-novel that was an excuse for Kloos to make a dog the secondary character.
Alex Archer was child colonist on the planet Scorpio when the Lankies arrived. Her parents died in the initial attack, and the remaining colonists managed to survive for eight years, hiding underground and occasionally emerging to try to salvage in the ruins of their former colony. They only have about 150 people, but the handful of surviving space marines still try to maintain military regs. Alex has been trained as a dog handler, and accompanies the grunts on their salvage mission with Ash, a black shepherd who warns them of approaching Lankies.
Unfortunately, I felt like this book spent a lot of time with not much happening, and ultimately it didn't have much to say. Alex is roaming around with Ash and the grunts, there are a few terrifying encounters with Lankies, and then there is a second act which seemed pointless except that it sets her up for future novels. "A girl and her dog" seems to be the main draw here.
The tone was a little YAish (because the story is seen through the eyes of a young adult whose entire teen years have been spent on this colony). Scorpio was okay, but felt like an excuse to return to the Frontlines universe with a new character, without really adding anything new....more
Like most SF fans, I was a big fan of The Expanse, so I was looking forward to writing team James S.A. Corey's newest, which they claim will only be aLike most SF fans, I was a big fan of The Expanse, so I was looking forward to writing team James S.A. Corey's newest, which they claim will only be a trilogy because they "don't feel like writing another nine book series."
The Mercy of Gods is structured unusually. While the first book just gets the story going, we already know from the page 1 prologue that the main character, Dafyd Alkhor, is going to lead an insurrection against the alien Carryx that will destroy their empire and burn a thousand worlds. The authors admit that this is a kind of trick to pull the reader along with promises of things to come, plus reassurance that the entire series will not be humans having a boot stomping on their faces forever, because that's all that happens in book one.
The story starts on the planet Anjiin, which is another unusual choice: humans know they aren't native to the planet, but their arrival is lost in the mists of prehistory, and while they now have an advanced technological civilization, they are not yet spacefaring and have had no contact outside their solar system. (Will the big twist be that this is the same universe as The Expanse, thousands of years in the future? That would seem like a cheap gimmick, but it's not impossible.) The first few chapters are about a bunch of scientists playing academic status games, which we know don't matter because an alien empire is about to arrive and crush them.
The Carryx invasion is brutal and short, and it's quickly established that these are give-no-fucks aliens who commit genocide before breakfast. They have been spreading across the galaxy conquering and exterminating everything in their path for thousands of years, and humanity is just another acquisition. They wipe out an eighth of the population of Anjiin just to make a point, and then the main characters are among a select group of humans abducted to be taken to a Carryx homeworld, where they are put in a vast multi-species arcology, given obscure instructions and a scientific task by their alien overlords, and then more or less left alone in what becomes evident is some sort of survival contest, not just for themselves but for their species.
The Mercy of Gods has very familiar beats. The writing shows the same stylistic ticks as The Expanse, with dialog like:
"You said there was another way." "I did."
And lines like:
"It was. And then it wasn't."
As with the Expanse, the focus, despite the high stakes and the foreshadowing of a grand, epic scale, is on a small group of flawed human characters, especially Dafyd Alkhor, who was just a minor research assistant with some connections back on Anjiin, but starts putting pieces of the Carryx puzzle together faster than his companions and (per the prologue and multiple chapter preludes) is eventually going to put his boot on the Carryx. The humans have quarrels and rivalries and love affairs because they can't quite stop being petty backbiting academics even while enslaved by genocidal aliens, and while we're probably supposed to become attached to some of them, it's hard because only Dafyd is really interesting (and he isn't very), and all the rest are clearly in danger of dying at any time, George R.R. Martin style.
Mercy of Gods was like sliding into an almost-familiar series with a new storyline. I wish the authors had stretched themselves a little more, but I am looking forward to the next book....more
The Final Architecture series (a trilogy so far) is one of Adrian Tchaikovsky's big epic space operas. Yes, one of them. The man churns out multi-voluThe Final Architecture series (a trilogy so far) is one of Adrian Tchaikovsky's big epic space operas. Yes, one of them. The man churns out multi-volume series like a machine, and yet every one reads like another author's primary work.
In this space opera, moon-sized constructs called the Architects destroyed Earth, as they have destroyed the homeworlds of many other races throughout the galaxy. Humanity and several other races fought a war of survival against the Architects decades ago, before the Architects abruptly withdrew, for reasons known only to a few.
Now they are back, and Idris Telemmier, one of the few survivors of the first war, is also the only one who knows the truth: the Architects are not the real enemy. They are merely the servants of some other entity.
The first book in the series, Shards of Earth, introduced us to the Final Architecture setting, to Idris Telemmier, and to all our other characters aboard the crew of the free trader and salvage vessel Vulture God. With a motley cast of space buccaneers and a bunch of different factions, it was fun and grand in scale while still keeping a tight, Firefly vibe.
Eyes of the Void is the second book of a (so far) trilogy, and while I enjoyed it a lot, it mostly just... continued the story and felt very much like the series mid-point it is. Idris is a hot property that multiple space empires want to acquire-ahem, employ, to reproduce the brutal, low-survival-rate "Intermediary" program that created Intermediaries like him who can guide spaceships faster than light through Unspace. Idris is unhappy with his role despite knowing that the survival of billions probably depends on his efforts.
Despite the looming threat of the Architects, humanity of course cannot get its shit together. The Parthenon - an empire of genetically-engineered warrior women - are on the verge of war with the Council of Human Interests. The rival space empire the Hegemony, ruled by a race of clam-like beings who consider themselves gods, is no better at unity or cooperation. Idris falls in with a group of mad scientists trying to plumb the secrets of Unspace, and winds up being somewhat unwillingly "rescued" by the crew of the Vulture God.
There is a lot going on here, with a story told from multiple POVs. My favorites of course are the family-like crew of the Vulture God, including Olli, the cantankerous cripple who doesn't like anyone, Myrmidon Executor Solace, a Parthenon warrior who is slowly releasing the genetically engineered stick up her butt, Kris, a lawyer from a world where "legal cases" are fought with knife duels, and Kit, a hivemind accountant whose flat one-liners are the funniest of all.
There were no big revelations in this book, nor really, any huge moments where the entire war turns. Idris is unraveling the secrets of the Originators a bit at a time, and being his usual neurotic self, while the rest of the galaxy tries to get its act together as the Architects return. Tchaikovsky's strength is really characters; while he creates big, sprawling interesting settings with a dozen different races suitable for RPGing (yet less RPG-like than another author I could name coughBrandon Sandersoncough), it's the characters who make you come back to see how they will PC their way through the plot.
A very good book that really just whets your appetite for the conclusion....more
I'm sorry, I tried. I am a stubborn reader. I'll keep reading books that aren't grabbing me, I'll keep reading books that I don't like. But this one jI'm sorry, I tried. I am a stubborn reader. I'll keep reading books that aren't grabbing me, I'll keep reading books that I don't like. But this one just bored me until I was trying to force myself to pick it up again and every time I read a few more pages I kept thinking about how I wished I were reading something else, anything else, and finally I decided I don't actually have to keep reading something that is doing absolutely nothing for me.
This is some sort of slow-burn literary novel that apparently is a sci-fi rewrite of Daphne du Maurier's Jamaica Inn (which I haven't read). There's a human/alien couple who runs the Skyward Inn. The aliens got conquered without a fight by Earthlings and now this couple runs an inn in rural England which feels very Daphne du Maurier, even though they talk about warp gates to other star systems. The aliens are never exactly described, but nobody does anything and there's some subplot about the main character's son and I just didn't get far enough to figure out what is supposed to be happening or what this story is about. Something something metaphor for colonialism, I guess.
Lots of people seem to review this book highly and think it's literary and shizz, and I like literary and SF, but this wasn't for me because I felt like I was just reading words, words, words, that didn't go anywhere....more
I was expecting a furry space opera. Instead I got furry BDSM foe-yay with rape dragons.
I don't share the widespread fandom hatred of furries per se, I was expecting a furry space opera. Instead I got furry BDSM foe-yay with rape dragons.
I don't share the widespread fandom hatred of furries per se, and on a writing level, I thought Even the Wingless was fine. Hogarth's universe obviously comes with a lot of deep lore and history, and this book might not have been the best entry point if you're mostly interested in SF and you don't mind furries in your space opera.
That said, this book was not space opera. It was endless pages of interspecies BDSM foe-yay slashfic.
Even the Wingless is set in MCA Hogarth's "Pelted" universe, which apparently consists of a large number of books with different subseries, the premise of which is that humans genetically uplifted Earth animals, creating a variety of furriesanthropomorphic animal races. Now it's centuries later, there is an Alliance consisting of humans and their furkin, and also a race of empathic space elves called the Eldritch. Then there are the Chatcaava rape dragons.
The Chatcaava are shape-changing humanoid dragonkin, although we're told they are actually mammals (which is why their females have boobs). They have a super-misogynistic society where all females are chattel and males constantly fight dominance games which include raping each other (which they do to establish hierarchy and trust, as opposed to raping females, which they do for fun). They also capture and enslave aliens, including humans and Pelted, and rape them too.
There are many, many pages devoted to elaborate S&M, bondage, and rape. Like, seriously, if you took John Norman's Slave Girls of Gor and made them all dragonkin furries, that's the Chatcaava.
Lisinthir Nase Galare is an Eldritch prince who's been sent as an Alliance ambassador to the Chatcaavan Empire. All previous Alliance ambassadors have returned insane or dead, because the Chatcaava apparently treat alien ambassadors the same way they treat any other aliens (i.e., they fuck with them, first figuratively and then literally). Even though the Alliance supposedly has a peace treaty with the Chatcaava, the Chatcaava are not above piracy and enslaving Alliance citizens. Lisinthir is supposed to try to do something about that, as well as negotiating things like trade tariffs and finding out if the Empire is planning to go to war with the Alliance.
As background for an interstellar political intrigue, a whole bunch of things did not make sense to me. Like the Alliance's willingness to let the Chatcaava keep committing acts of war against them, or the Chatcaava supposedly being an advanced spacefaring race when the entire book is set in the Emperor's castle, where they all play medieval courtly status games with poison and killing each other with their claws and teeth. That's in between the prolonged BDSM sessions.
Lisinthir needs to find a way to win the Emperor's respect, because the Chatcaava regard all aliens as "female." It turns out that the way to be regarded as a male is to, uh, get raped and fight back, and then get raped some more. So Lisinthir spends most of the book getting raped by the rape dragon Emperor, and then they have sultry post-coital banter. Lisinthir, despite being a fragile space elf from a low-G world whose people suffer from touch-empathy, eventually becomes a bad-ass who's killing other Chatcaava with his bare hands. He also befriends the Slave Queen, the Chatcaavan Emperor's favorite sex slave, so eventually the three of them have a little S&M threesome party.
While there is a lot of psychological depth to the book, as we explore the viewpoints of Lisinthir, the Emperor, and the Slave Queen, all of whom undergo significant character development over the course of the story, I could not stop thinking that this is a book for women who love reading about hot totally straight dudes violently fucking each other. Who might also have some bondage and furry fetishes and other kinks. Ya know, not that there's anything wrong with that, but your kink, Dear Author, is not my kink.
The book is not pornographic in its detail, but it is explicit enough. Space opera with rape dragons I could handle, but foe-yay slashfic pretending to be space opera just kind of annoyed me, because the writing, worldbuilding, and character development was good enough that I probably would have enjoyed the story if it had more space opera and less biting of pillows. ...more
This is the third book in the Children of Time series, Adrian Tchaikovsky's space opera about uplifted species and terraformed worlds.
Since Children oThis is the third book in the Children of Time series, Adrian Tchaikovsky's space opera about uplifted species and terraformed worlds.
Since Children of Time, a recurring character has been Avrana Kern, the scientist who began the original arc project to seed distant worlds with life and terraform them as an escape from a ruined, polluted Earth. Kern appears again, now in multiple manifestations as an uploaded consciousness. So do the uplifted spiders and octopi of the first two books, joined in Children of Memory by giant, super-genius corvids.
The scale of the conflict is smaller this time, as a multispecies crew of explorers, including an AI copy of the ever-acerbic Kern with her ongoing God-complex, arrives at a colony world called Imir that was terraformed centuries ago but now is barely hanging on. The inhabitants hardly remember their interstellar origins, and have been trying to eke out an existence on an inhospitable world, and over time, have begun blaming everything that goes wrong on mysteries "Seccers" who live out in the woods, just over the horizon, raiding and stealing and poisoning crops and basically taking on the role of witches or faeries.
The main viewpoint character, Liff, is a curious young girl, 26 in Imir years, about 12 in Earth years, who's smart and curious and discovers a witch in the woods. Then she notices things about the new teacher, Miranda, who's from some outlying farm no one has heard of, and who lives with an odd group of housemates who likewise don't fit in.
A straightforward lost colony story becomes a lot more complicated, because Tchaikovsky likes throwing speculative twists. There are explorations of the nature of sentience. The two corvids Gothi and Gethli are bound to be reader favorites. Their dialogs are both hilarious and deep, as they debate between themselves whether they are in fact sentient or merely stochastic parrots. It's a debate that is startlingly current; a few years ago, most readers might have taken this speculation with a grain of salt ("They're talking and contemplating their own self-awareness - and making jokes about it - of course they're sentient!"). But if you've played with ChatGPT 4 recently, well, Earth AI today is almost at the conversational level of Gothi and Gethli.
Avrana Kern herself, the AI with a god-complex, has to confront similar questions about her own existence. In a lot of reviews people compare this book to Peter Watts's Blindsight, another fantastic SF story that raised intriguing and scary questions about what constitutes "sentience" and whether we can even tell the difference between a true sapient being and something that's just really good at passing whatever Turing Test you throw at it.
Eventually, there is an inevitable confrontation between Miranda and her companions and the suspicious, increasingly paranoid Imirians. This leads to some non-linear back-and-forths in time, in which Liff's perspective, in particular, becomes confusing and inconsistent. Eventually this is explained with a big twist that I kind of saw coming. The question of sentience is never completely answered, but I really hope Gothi and Gethli return.
Children of Memory was a good third book in the series. I loved the first book, Children of Time, because I have always liked uplift stories (David Brin's Uplift series is one of my favorite SF series of all time) and the spiders were awesome. The second and third books have not been quite as awesome, but they're still pretty good, and Tchaikovsky's ability to churn out lengthy series that are never a let-down continues to impress me. Children of Memory is very much a sci-fi story even though parts of it have a more mythic, almost fantasy feel, and each book in the series has expanded this universe in a surprisingly hopeful manner. Humans, H-umans, spiders, octopi, bacterial hive-minds, all coexisting peacefully if sometimes uneasily....more
In the seventh book in the Frontlines series, I bemoaned that the twist - Major Grayson's ship gets pulled into a Lanky warp tunnel and transported thIn the seventh book in the Frontlines series, I bemoaned that the twist - Major Grayson's ship gets pulled into a Lanky warp tunnel and transported thousands of light years away, with no way to get home - seemed like a way to milk a series that's been coasting a while for several more books.
Well, I was worried for nothing, because in book eight, it appears Kloos has finally wrapped up the series. There is no final resolution of the Lanky War, we just gets lots of battle scenes, some interpersonal drama, Grayson reflecting repeatedly on his career path from junior enlisted signing up for the military to escape Earth's ghettos to a field officer on a starship, with a wife serving on another ship... and then, boom, help arrives, he goes home, and the end.
The Frontlines series overall is pretty good if you like MilSF. The first book, Terms of Enlistment, read like a slightly updated version of Starship Troopers, complete with alien bug-monsters (though they come as a surprise at the end, and they're actually space kaiju). As humanity fought its war against the Lankies (and occasionally each other), complete with an invasion of Mars, and later expanding out to other star systems, the series began to get repetitive. Each book I would say "Okay, that was fun, but where is this going? Are we just going to keep reading about ground and space battles for book after book?"
Mostly, yes. So when Centers of Gravity abruptly brings Grayson back to Earth, evidently to retire to a pastoral life that seemed impossible for the average person in the first book, I wasn't so much disappointed as just... that's it?
Like all the books in the series, this one is named after a military term that really doesn't have much to do with the book.
I enjoyed the run of this series, but even though there is probably space for more installments (maybe with a "retired" Major Grayson training the next generation of starship troopers and combat controllers), I think it's just as well that the series ends here....more
Nice to see a first contact story that isn't just "aliens invade!" Instead there is a lot of talking.
A lot of talkBleh. This will probably win a Hugo.
Nice to see a first contact story that isn't just "aliens invade!" Instead there is a lot of talking.
A lot of talking.
So much talking.
Talk, talk, talk, talk, talk.
Also a lot of nursing.
Like, the main character's breasts are practically secondary characters. We are never left wondering about the current state of her milkers. Full, aching, sore, pert, droopy, they are definitely there and lactating.
So the first person POV protagonist works for the Chesapeake Watershed in 2083, an eco-coop that is one of many worldwide who are trying to restore the Earth's ecology and climate. She's going out to check some equipment one evening, and brings her baby along. They discover an alien spaceship has just landed on the shore. An alien emerges with her own brood. The author definitely makes a point of putting nursing mothers in key roles, including the alien ones.
The Tree-Folk and the Plains-Folk are here to save humanity from ourselves. They have detected what a mess we've made of our environment, and they want to take us into space, where we can thrive and grow beyond the limits of an Earth-bound existence, like they have.
The problem is, humanity isn't quite ready to abandon Earth just yet, and the aliens don't want to take no for an answer.
This could have been an interesting novel of hopeful ecological sci-fi, alien diplomacy, and the ethics of trying to "help" people without denying them their agency.
It's not interesting, because the only thing that ever happens is that people (including aliens) argue, about everything from ecological doomsday scenarios to pronouns. We get lots of neurotic internal monologues and external conflicts that read like hormonal fits (look, the author is the one who keeps talking about hormones) and are always resolved by more talking.
This is the most female SF novel I have ever read, which is kind of funny for a story that makes a big deal out of giving everyone xir own unique pronouns and humanity teaching alien pillbugs and spiders not to be gender essentialists.
There's definitely an audience for this book. There's an audience for Gor novels too, and while A Half-Built Garden's fetishes may be more wholesome, it's still not my kink....more
I complain about the guy an awful lot considering how often I read his books. I mean, he's reliably enteBrandon Sanderson, you exasperate me at times.
I complain about the guy an awful lot considering how often I read his books. I mean, he's reliably entertaining. His writing hits all the pleasure centers of the nerd brain without ever really challenging you. Superheroes! Epic fantasy! Space opera! He can write it all, and he will write with familiar, well-worn tropes and lovable characters full of balanced advantages and flaws, complex magical/psychic/super/ultratech systems with secrets to uncover and tricks and power-ups for the protagonist to discover, and worldbuilding full of deep hidden secrets with a shake-up every other book or so...
And really I'm at the point where regardless of how long his series go on (and they do go on and on and on), I think each one is good for about two or three books and then I'm out.
I like teens in space. I like YA space opera. Skyward was fun, Starsight expanded the universe, and Cytonic ups the stakes, levels up Spensa, our adorable hot mess of a teen girl starfighter pilot, explains the Big Bads... and ends with another To Be Continued that left me feeling profoundly unenthused.
So, Spensa has escaped her home, the human colony of Detritus, and is now a starfighter facing the Superiority, a galactic alliance that's currently trying to wage a genocidal war against humanity. Which would make them unambiguously the bad guys except, uh, it turns out humans have tried to conquer the galaxy three times, so they kind of have a point about humans being dangerous...
Rather than being about a galactic war, though, Cytonic is mostly about Spensa playing pirate. Literally, she's imprisoned on a prison world where everyone plays pirate, raiding each other and counting coup in "pirate clans," and engages in mock pirate battles and as soon as I heard "Pirate tournament" mentioned I groaned. Yeah, yeah, Spensa fights in the pirate tournament and makes friends and proves herself the baddest human starfighter around, and then she helps break out and some of her companions make heroic sacrifices and she learns about the sinister Delvers who are these eldritch alien things who seem to be behind a lot of the trouble.... and Spensa is a "Cytonic" and it turns out Cytonics have specialties, though every Cytonic can theoretically learn every other Cytonic talent - stop me if you've heard this before. If you've ever read another Brandon Sanderson novel, you have.
Cytonic was fun but after three books this series has lost its charm for me, and knowing Sanderson he can easily go on for another four, plus a secondary series and a prequel and a side story or two.
I also felt like the quality was not as great. It was almost like Brandon Sanderson is writing Brandon Sanderson fanfiction. (In his author's afterword, he cites dozens of beta-readers, and a bunch of "gamma readers," whatever the hell those are.)
I will look at whatever Sanderson comes up with next, but having already kind of burned out on The Stormlight Archive, the next Skyward book will have to promise some kind of resolution if I'm going to read it....more
Spoilers for the first two books in the Themis Files trilogy.
In the first book of this trilogy, Sleeping Giants, humans discovered pieces of an giant Spoilers for the first two books in the Themis Files trilogy.
In the first book of this trilogy, Sleeping Giants, humans discovered pieces of an giant alien robot and assembled it into a functional mecha, and discovered it was a really powerful weapon.
In book two, Waking Gods, the aliens arrived. Over a dozen giant robots in cities around the world. Soon they unleashed poison gas that killed hundreds of millions. We eventually learned that the aliens were actually trying to exterminate their own people, who had interbred with humanity thousands of years ago. They regarded this as a crime against humankind, but to their horror, they found that humans with alien DNA now outnumbered "pure" humans, and what had been intended as a modest culling was nearly a genocide.
The only people in the world capable of piloting Themis managed to defeat an alien robot, but then got transported to the alien homeworld, and the book ended on a cliffhanger.
The third book, Only Human, continues the "recovered footage/recorded interviews" style of the first two books. It's a less effective gimmick here, as while it worked for the first book (and to a lesser extent, the second) as the world watched giant robots battle, here we're just eavesdropping on all the characters' conversations.
It's been nine years. We learn that Rose, Vincent, and their adopted daughter Eva, have been living on the alien homeworld, and learned their language. The aliens have a sort of participatory democracy that takes years to decide anything. They are horrified by the crime they committed against Earth, but can't decide what to do about the humans amongst them. Eva grows up on the alien world, makes friends, and learns that they have their own oppressed underclass. She joins the resistance.
This is revealed in flashback segments. In the "present," nine years later, Rose, Vincent, and Eva have managed to return to Earth, where they discover that the world is in shambles after the world's biggest cities were destroyed, millions of people were killed, and most of the human race turned out to be part "alien." People with alien DNA are being put in camps, while the United States, in possession of the only functional teleporting giant alien robot, has turned its Imperialism dial up to 11, and is now bringing Freedom and Democracy ™ to the entire world, or else its giant robot will stomp on your capital. The only countries standing against the USA are Russia and China, with their nuclear arsenals. It's back to the Cold War and MAD. And then Rose and Vincent and Eva arrived back on Earth in Russian-occupied Estonia, and suddenly the Russians have a giant robot too.
The book is a combination of a slow reveal about what happened back on the alien world, and a progression towards the climax we know is coming, where the American giant alien robot faces off against the Russian giant alien robot... with Vincent in one and Eva in the other. Contrived and a little trite, but this is nothing if not an action movie of a series, and if not much deeper than a Michael Bay movie, it's plotted better....more
Adrian Tchaikovsky has rapidly become one of my favorite authors. He hasn't struck out with me yet. And as much as I like his fantasies, his science fAdrian Tchaikovsky has rapidly become one of my favorite authors. He hasn't struck out with me yet. And as much as I like his fantasies, his science fiction really knocks it out of the park. The Children of Time series is up there with David Brin's Uplift and Vernor Vinge's Zones of Thought series as one of my all time favorites, and now that I've started the Final Architecture series, I think it will join them.
Shards of Earth is set in a far future in which Earth has been destroyed (again - Tchaikovsky seems to like destroying Earth in his space operas) by giant moon-sized constructs called Architects. The Architects appeared out of nowhere and attack planets - and only inhabited planets - with unstoppable weapons that reshape them at an atomic level. Entire space fleets have gone to battle against the Architects, and been twisted, disassembled, and turned into bizarre space debris. The Architects are unstoppable planet-killers with unfathomable motives, like Fred Saberhagen's Berserkers.
Then Idris, a "navigator" who is one of the few humans capable of guiding spaceships in and out of "unspace" to skip light years at a jump, faced the Architects in a final battle 50 years ago and... somehow attracted their notice. And once they noticed him, they left.
The Architects have been gone for 50 years. Idris, unaging and unsleeping, is now a member of a motley crew of salvagers. When their ship, the Vulture God, comes across a wreck in deep space that has been twisted into horribly familiar patterns, it seems the Architects are back. This is enough to throw the entire galaxy into a panic... and to make space empires want to either capture or silence Idris and his companions.
I thought from the opening of Shards of Earth that this would be an epic scale novel about space empires and Big Dumb Objects in space. And it is! But it's also about a Firefly-like spacer crew having Adventures. Besides Idris, the psychic space navigator with PTSD, there is a jovial buccaneer captain, a cheerfully mercenary AI, an even more mercenary crab-like alien, a pilot with a body stunted by birth who makes up for it by walking about in her own hacked-together mecha, and later they are joined by Solace, a beautiful "warrior angel" from a race of genetically-engineered superwomen. The setting is full of bizarre and interesting aliens, AIs, and humans of various pedigree, as well as multiple space empires and factions, space gangsters, space secret police, and space cults.
Space opera is my original true love since childhood and sometimes it breaks my heart when it's dumb or stupid, but Tchaikovsky writes rippin' space opera with characters who are interesting, brave, and sometimes funny, and stakes that are worthy of a good space opera. (Moon-sized genocidal planet-killers!) And of course there are big twists and more books to come.
Take me out to the black Tell 'em I ain't coming back Burn the land, boil the sea You can't take the sky from me
Waking Gods, like the preceding book, Sleeping Giants, is told in "captured footage" narrative style, though the circumstances in which some of these Waking Gods, like the preceding book, Sleeping Giants, is told in "captured footage" narrative style, though the circumstances in which some of these conversations are allegedly recorded, for later retrieval, make the device sound rather contrived at times.
In book one, humans discovered and pieced together a giant alien robot that had been left here, in pieces scattered across the planet, thousands of years ago. They also discovered clues as to why: it's meant to help humans defend themselves. What would we need a giant super-advanced robot to defend ourselves from? Yeah, that question shakes up a few governments.
In Waking Gods, the robot-builders arrive. And they're not friendly. 13 even bigger robots appear around the globe, standing in capital cities. At first they are motionless, and impervious. Eventually, humans just can't resist poking at them, with an army. The result is a titanic battle between Earth's robot, Themis, manned by the only two people in the world who know how to pilot it, and the robot threatening London.
Themis wins, and all the other robots start releasing a toxic gas that kills 99.9% of the population within 20 miles. Oops.
Waking Gods, unlike the previous book, has an immediate threat and a ramping sense of tension as the alien robots seem bent on exterminating mankind, for reasons no one can determine. They refuse all attempts at communication. There are scientists and government agents chasing clues, while the pilots of a now-disabled Themis are chasing their own MacGuffins. Eventually we get the big reveals that tell us some of the whats and whys and hows, and then there is the inevitable second robot battle in New York's Central Park.
The entire book has a real War of the Worlds vibe to it. H.G. Wells's Martians were a metaphor for British imperialism. Sylvain Neuvel's unknown aliens who send invincible giant robots to terrorize Earth are a metaphor for... I am not sure exactly, but there are hints of colonialism, racial segregation, utilitarian ethics, and a twist on the old Star Trek "Prime Directive." I'm not saying it's a deep book, but there are some interesting ideas raised as some of the characters learn more about the aliens.
This is still a cheesy SF story told in WWZ docu-drama style, but if giant robots don't make you roll your eyes, it's quick and action-packed. However (boo) it ends with an egregious cliffhanger for the next book....more
The final compendium in the Invincible series, containing the end of the series with many resolutions.
I've really enjoyed Invincible, a long-running sThe final compendium in the Invincible series, containing the end of the series with many resolutions.
I've really enjoyed Invincible, a long-running superhero series written by a single creator who maintained creative control over the entire arc, allowing him to take Mark Grayson from his comical high school pre-superpowered years to an epilogue that shows him, many years in the future, with his space family. Along the way, there have been wars, alien invasions, evil alternate universe selves, heroes and villains changing sides, births, deaths, and occasionally some logic-defying absurdities, but it's quite a ride and should be enjoyable to anyone who likes superhero stories. Especially if you would like to see something new and fresh and not just the umpteenth reboot of the X-Men.
Be warned that while I tagged this "young adult" because it's a superhero comic primarily for teens, it's very violent. One of the things Kirkman does not hold back on is character deaths, and mass casualties, and he often seems to instruct the artist to use a very red palette....more
Collecting issues 48-96, the second massive Compendium takes us through several major storylines, including the resolution of the Viltrumite War.
InvinCollecting issues 48-96, the second massive Compendium takes us through several major storylines, including the resolution of the Viltrumite War.
Invincible is what happens when an independent writer gets to create his own superhero universe and maintain complete control over the storyline across its entire arc. Still unabashedly a four-color comic book, Invincible shows all the strengths and weaknesses of the genre. The realism is very much on the four-color comic end of the scale. Time and distance, in particular, is quite... fungible. But among its strengths, Kirkman writes his characters as people with people problems. Along with over-the-top, world-threatening problems.
In the first arc, Invincible's relationship with Cecil Stedman, the Pentagon's super-secret top Man In Black, collapses after Invincible finds out that Cecil has been using the work of a mad scientist who used to vivisect college students and homeless people to create zombie cyborgs. Invincible is understandably outraged. One of the themes repeated throughout the series' many arcs is ideals vs. pragmatism: repeatedly, the characters are confronted with choices about getting things done, saving lives, and stopping the bad guys, using means that are morally abhorrent. The interesting thing is that while Mark remains mostly idealistic (with a slow maturing of perspective as he grows out of his teen years), the story seems to mostly validate utilitarian solutions. Invincible makes a rather strange decision to team up with Dinosaurus, a mad genius who literally destroyed Las Vegas as part of a scheme that was allegedly for the greater good of mankind.
Invincible is not The Boys, but it is firmly PG-13, with a fair amount of blood and gore. When superheroes punch each other in the face, there is blood and sometimes splattered bits of brain.
There's a Martian invasion, an extra-dimensional alien invasion (actually, a couple of them), and one of Invincible's arch-enemies brings a small army of evil parallel-universe Invincibles to Earth who pretty much lay waste to it. This is another thing that happens a lot, and as in the Marvel and DC universes, the Earth seems to go surprisingly unchanged despite getting invaded and wrecked on a semi-regular basis.
The final arc in this volume involves Monster Girl and Rex Robot having their own very long adventure in another dimension, with a dark and chilling epilogue.
This series won't do anything for you if you are not a superhero fan, but if you are, it's the best recommendation I can make for a "mainstream" superhero comic that is not from Marvel or DC....more
I've been with Marko Kloos from the beginning and I faithfully read each new installment in his MilSF series Frontlines, but I've been harping for theI've been with Marko Kloos from the beginning and I faithfully read each new installment in his MilSF series Frontlines, but I've been harping for the last few installments that it was time for him to wrap it up.
When we first met Andrew Grayson, he was a green recruit fighting against other Earth nations in this semi-dystopian future. Book two introduced the big bads of the series, the alien "Lankies," giant monsters who never communicate or really give any indication of sentience, aside from the fact that, y'know, they build starships.
At first the Lankies and their giant Seedships were almost indestructible. Over the course of the series, Earth has learned to fight them, and now rather like the Aliens franchise, we've gone from a single monster that's Holy Fuck!Scary to disposable legions of them. And for the last few books, the war just ground on and on.
So I was hoping Kloos would wrap it up, finally. In Orders of Battle, the seventh book, we learn that no Lanky ships have been seen in Earth's system for five years, and while they're still digging the monsters out of their subterranean tunnels in Mars, that planet has basically been reclaimed by humanity.
Grayson is now a Major, and he's asked to go on a shady recon mission with a new crew. All the while telling himself he hates this shit and doesn't want to be separated from his wife, they both know that they are lifers and they actually love this shit, so he goes. The supposed mission is to scout out a Lanky homeworld and take the war to them.
Predictably, things go wrong. What goes wrong is a bit of a spoiler, but basically, this series is not apparently ending anytime soon, and we now have a Star Trek: Voyager situation.
Sigh. Okay, I'll keep reading because it was still good decent MilSF, but I hope this latest twist doesn't also get worn out for another five books....more
I remember groaning a little when I finished the first book in this series, Columbus Day, and realized that there are about nine more books in the serI remember groaning a little when I finished the first book in this series, Columbus Day, and realized that there are about nine more books in the series so far, plus prequels, side stories, and other miscellaneous padding.
The second book was indeed an entire novel that could probably have made one episode of a TV series, or a few chapters of a full-length space opera.
This is a ripping MiLSF yarn which you will enjoy if you like ripping MilSF space yarns, but it's basically more of the same from the first book. Having saved Earth from the lizard-like Kristang, and discovered that the galaxy is full of patron-client relationships with increasingly advanced (and usually increasingly tyrannical) races at the top of the hierarchy, and humans being the new kids with the shit end of the stick, former Sergeant Joe Bishop has to take a UN-crewed captured starship back out into space on a quest to find remnants of the Elders, and the a network of super-advanced Elder AIs that their friend "Skippy" still believes is out there.
"Skippy" of course is the talking beer can who's actually a millions-of-years-old unbelievably advanced Artificial Intelligence, who can peruse all collected human knowledge in the space between breaths, as he never tires of reminding people.
And really, I got tired of Skippy. He was funny in the first book. His relationship with Joe (who's now a Colonel, and captain of a ship full of multinational SpecOps troopers) is supposed to be a sort of sci-fi bromance. They razz each other constantly, Skippy complains about how humans are so primitive there's a barely a difference from his point of view between talking to humans and talking to monkeys, and then Joe will come up with an idea to get the ship out of their current predicament, and Skippy will whine for a while about how much he hates his life because a "monkey" had a good idea. This happens like half a dozen times in this book, and frankly, for a super-advanced AI who should be capable of playing 50 trillion games of go at once and still piloting a starship, Skippy is frequently petty, forgetful, and clueless. There's an obvious plot-related reason for this, as having the super-AI solve all their problems would make for a crappy story, but he can do magic tricks with space/time when it's convenient and then he's just a smart-ass talking beer can when it's not.
While it sounds like I'm complaining (okay, I am) this was a perfectly good space opera, with a few dread secrets discovered, escalating stakes (because of course Earth has to be threatened again), and a few side characters who get very few pages compared to Joe and Skippy. There's a lot of technobabble problem solving, some space battles, and boner jokes. The Expeditionary Force series will appeal to anyone who like long series or TV science fiction.
I will probably continue the series, but it does not have that pull that makes me think I'm going to love seven more books of this....more
Columbus Day is one of what looks like an endless parade of series like this being promoted on Amazon and Audible — military SF about a Joe EveryMan wColumbus Day is one of what looks like an endless parade of series like this being promoted on Amazon and Audible — military SF about a Joe EveryMan who has to soldier up and fight aliens for Earth. If this sounds a lot like Marko Kloos's Front Lines series, it's a lot like Marko Kloos's Front Lines series. So I only picked this book up because it was an Audible Daily Deal - I was willing to give it a try.
Glad I did. Columbus Day is fun. It's well-written. The characters are fairly standard, the aliens equally so, the plot pretty much what it says on the cover. But I liked it. It's like a cheeseburger. (One of the running jokes in this book is how much the main character, Sergeant Joe Bishop, misses cheeseburgers.) You don't expect a cheeseburger to be an innovative new taste experience. You aren't expecting a culinary experience that transcends previous cheeseburgers. But a decent cheeseburger is tasty, and a good cheeseburger can be really, really good, and this is a good cheeseburger.
The plot: aliens invade Earth. Joe Bishop is a US Army Sergeant on home from leave. By chance, he leads his hometown homies in one of the only successful human military operations in the war, and captures an alien. Then another alien races arrives, liberates Earth from its invaders, and grateful humans sign up to fight for their new benefactors against the evil aliens who invaded them.
The Ruhar (or "Hamsters," because they look like six-foot hamsters, when they aren't in powered armor) are the aliens who invaded. The Kristang (or "lizards," because they look like, well, humanoid lizards) are humanity's new allies. Sgt. Bishop arrives with an international team on a former Ruhar colony world. Apparently the Kristang just captured it, and per some treaty (the Ruhar-Kristang war has been going on for a long time), the Ruhar are being allowed to evacuate on a months-long timetable. Bishop and his people will be serving garrison duty.
At this point, Bishop and the rest of the humans begin to learn that everything they thought they knew was a lie. Columbus Day has shades of David Brin's Uplift series (which is a very good thing, because Uplift is one of my favorite SF series ever). The Kristang and the Ruhar are both "client" races of more advanced patrons, and their patrons in turn have even more advanced patrons. Almost everyone in the war is just a proxy for a more advanced civilization. Humans are just a bunch of barely-civilized monkeys whose planet happened to be inconveniently in a strategic location at a critical time, and the Ruhar invaded Earth, not because they wanted it, but to deny it to the Kristang. And it turns out, the Ruhar are actually fairly civilized, while the Kristang don't take long to set humans straight on what the "patron-client" relationship means.
But this isn't just a SF military war novel. Bishop, after several reversals of fortune which leave him as a prisoner first of the Kristang and then of the Ruhar, discovers an advanced alien artifact which is actually an AI built by the long-gone "Elder Race." It's borderline omnipotent, occasionally absent-minded, regards humans as barely paramecium, and also really, really lonely. And in interacting with Joe, it absorbs the sum total of late 20th and early 21st century Earth pop culture and soon becomes the most smart-ass, annoying super-powered alien AI you've ever met.
Skippy is fun, and so is this book. Joe and a crew of Earthlings end up capturing a middle-tier alien race's starcruiser, with the help of Skippy, and then go back to Earth to liberate it from the Kristang.
Now, looking ahead, I realize that there are so far nine books in this series. Unfortunately, my experience with series like these is that if they go on for nine books, it means the author at some point starts milking it, with little forward progress in the plot. A neverending war may be realistic, but is not very satisfying as a story. So I have reservations, but I've definitely put the next few books on my wish list to be indulged in soon....more
Brandon Sanderson has a reliable storytelling schtick: a universe will be introduced to us with unanswered questions, the protagonist will gradually dBrandon Sanderson has a reliable storytelling schtick: a universe will be introduced to us with unanswered questions, the protagonist will gradually discover that How Things Really Work is not what everyone believes, and usually the protagonist will tap into some super-secret power or three to save the day. Clues will have been planted all along as to the nature of the world's cosmology, but when the truth is actually revealed, it will still read like a bit of an ass-pull.
Also, the protagonist will always be brave and true with a few adorable flaws.
I liked Skyward, Sanderson's YA space opera. Starsight is the sequel, and (spoiler) it ends on a cliffhanger, so it's obviously going to be at least a trilogy.
In the first book, we met Spensa, the daughter of a disgraced starfighter who has special gifts that allow her to rise in the ranks of the pilots who defend her homeworld against the alien Krell. At the end of the book, we learned that the Krell are basically jailers keeping humans remotely contained on their world with use of drone fighters.
Starsight begins with another spaceship "defecting" to the human colony in the middle of an attack. Conveniently, the alien who defects from the Superiority is a young female of a species close enough to human that Spensa can disguise herself as her, with the help of holograms projected by M-bot, the sassy AI of unknown origins she acquired in the previous book. Also conveniently, the alien she is going to masquerade as is badly injured in the battle and can't talk to Spensa before she takes advantage of a very narrow window of opportunity to... fly off and join the Superiority by pretending to be her, using holograms and a translator pin.
It's a very contrived set-up. Spensa's ability to pull this off, and infiltrate the Superiority, get to know the alien confederation that is keeping humans imprisoned and isolated, make friends with various species, and be courted by high-ranking Superiority officials who are actually part of rival factions, is very space operatic and a bit implausible, but fits the tone of this YA novel.
The aliens are a quirky mix of beings with extremely alien physiologies but near-human psychology. There is a samurai gerbil monarchy, a race of sentient smells that can take over spaceships, the crab-like Krell, and another elite species that reproduces by fusing halves to create a "prototype" child who's allowed to live for a few months to take their personality out for a spin, before the parents decide whether to keep her or throw her back into a vat to try again.
Also, there are humans, who it turns out were the scourge of the galaxy, and are now imprisoned on several colony worlds because supposedly they've tried to conquer the Superiority three times, including by trying to unleash "Delvers," a sort of cosmic horror from outside this universe that destroys entire planets.
Spensa continues to be a slightly adorable-in-spite-of-herself heroine written the way our milquetoast Mormon author always writes women: even when she's badass, it's in a completely moral and extremely modest way. There's a hint of romance with her frenemy from book one, the handsome, by-the-book commander of her flight, which never goes beyond a brief goodbye kiss.
I liked the story and Spensa is cute, but it is very much a juvenile novel, kind of anime with a Star Wars aesthetic. Enjoyable for fans of the genre, and I'll certainly continue with the next book....more
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