In the near future, America’s favorite pastime — mass shootings — has become a ratings juggernMy review of Vigilance can be found at High Fever Books.
In the near future, America’s favorite pastime — mass shootings — has become a ratings juggernaut. Under the supervision of executive producer John McDean, ONT (Our Nation’s Truth) irregularly broadcasts Vigilance, a reality TV game show that turns local malls, schools, train stations, restaurants, and other randomly chosen public arenas into grotesque scenes of mass gun violence for the entertainment of its home viewers.
although America doesn’t manufacture much anymore, it sure as hell makes a lot of dead kids
Vigilance by Robert Jackson Bennett paints a frightening and wholly plausible picture of near-future America. Personally, I suspect it’s only a matter of time before we see a show like Vigilance on American airwaves or streaming platforms. Far-right broadcasters like Alex Jones, Sean Hannity, and Bill O’Reilly have already made their denialism of America’s gun epidemic into vital cash cows (at least before the firings and lawsuits hit them in the only place that matters to them), painting outspoken school children and grieving parents as nothing more than “crisis actors” and (ironically) fraudsters. I expect it will be sooner rather than later that these immoral and irresponsible scumfucks decide to see how much further they can push the envelope in order to make a buck, pushing for far more literal interpretations of TV’s Survivor.
Bennett shows us an America at absolute rock-bottom, an America that has suffered the full effects of a Trump presidency, Fox News brainwashing, climate change, right wing science denialism, toxic masculinity, and resurgent Naziism, and is now a nation in its death throes. The entire world has left the insular and frightened United States behind, with China becoming the center of the world’s scientific and industrial progress.
More than anyone alive, John McDean knows America isn’t a place you live in—not anymore. It’s a place you survive. And such a place is highly monetizable for Our Nation’s Truth.
All America has left is greed, entitlement, an insane amount of fear toward The Other, a dwindling population of old timers glued to their TV, and guns, guns, guns! As the latest episode of Vigilance airs, ratings go through the roof. People are obsessed with this show, rooting for the killers as much as they root for the Good Guy With A Gun to put an end to it, hedging their Las Vegas bets appropriately.
Bennett takes all of America’s idiotic obsession with guns and violence and distills it all into a savage, dark, complex, and frightening novella. The tone of Vigilance is fucking pitch-black, blacker than the the night, blacker, even, than Trump’s rotting, soulless, barely-beating, fatty fast-food “hamberder” obstructed heart. Like the murderous contestants of this book’s game show, Bennett is playing for keeps, and he goes all-in on the violence. Despite the reality show’s glamorization of guns and mass shootings, Bennett’s action scenes never feel titillating. Rather, they are raw and potent, showing the devastation of a bullet’s trajectory, the harm guns can cause in the hands of the untrained and unskilled. He willfully eschews the fetishization of guns, showing gun culture for what it really is — a culture of fear, built by cowards who can only hope to be powerful once in their lives, exploited by the wealthy in an endless cycle of parasitism cleverly disguised as patriotism. There is no mythological Good Guy With A Gun here. There are only killers and the killed, and the endless cycle that consumes them and profits off their corpses.
What an easy thing it is, to make Americans destroy ourselves…. You just have to make a spectacle out of it.
In other words, Vigilance is one hell of a reflection on current American values, the state of our society in this early part of the 21st Century, and the peril of where our national nihilism will be taking us as we struggle to cope with all the damage we’ve willingly inflicted upon ourselves. Vigilance is brutal, at times sickening, but oh so very, very necessary. This is a vital read. Highly recommended.
In the near future, America’s favorite pastime — mass shootings — has become a ratings juggernaut. Under the supervision of executive producer John McDean, ONT (Our Nation’s Truth) irregularly broadcasts Vigilance, a reality TV game show that turns local malls, schools, train stations, restaurants, and other randomly chosen public arenas into grotesque scenes of mass gun violence for the entertainment of its home viewers.
although America doesn’t manufacture much anymore, it sure as hell makes a lot of dead kids
Vigilance by Robert Jackson Bennett paints a frightening and wholly plausible picture of near-future America. Personally, I suspect it’s only a matter of time before we see a show like Vigilance on American airwaves or streaming platforms. Far-right broadcasters like Alex Jones, Sean Hannity, and Bill O’Reilly have already made their denialism of America’s gun epidemic into vital cash cows (at least before the firings and lawsuits hit them in the only place that matters to them), painting outspoken school children and grieving parents as nothing more than “crisis actors” and (ironically) fraudsters. I expect it will be sooner rather than later that these immoral and irresponsible scumfucks decide to see how much further they can push the envelope in order to make a buck, pushing for far more literal interpretations of TV’s Survivor.
Bennett shows us an America at absolute rock-bottom, an America that has suffered the full effects of a Trump presidency, Fox News brainwashing, climate change, right wing science denialism, toxic masculinity, and resurgent Naziism, and is now a nation in its death throes. The entire world has left the insular and frightened United States behind, with China becoming the center of the world’s scientific and industrial progress.
More than anyone alive, John McDean knows America isn’t a place you live in—not anymore. It’s a place you survive. And such a place is highly monetizable for Our Nation’s Truth.
All America has left is greed, entitlement, an insane amount of fear toward The Other, a dwindling population of old timers glued to their TV, and guns, guns, guns! As the latest episode of Vigilance airs, ratings go through the roof. People are obsessed with this show, rooting for the killers as much as they root for the Good Guy With A Gun to put an end to it, hedging their Las Vegas bets appropriately.
Bennett takes all of America’s idiotic obsession with guns and violence and distills it all into a savage, dark, complex, and frightening novella. The tone of Vigilance is fucking pitch-black, blacker than the the night, blacker, even, than Trump’s rotting, soulless, barely-beating, fatty fast-food “hamberder” obstructed heart. Like the murderous contestants of this book’s game show, Bennett is playing for keeps, and he goes all-in on the violence. Despite the reality show’s glamorization of guns and mass shootings, Bennett’s action scenes never feel titillating. Rather, they are raw and potent, showing the devastation of a bullet’s trajectory, the harm guns can cause in the hands of the untrained and unskilled. He willfully eschews the fetishization of guns, showing gun culture for what it really is — a culture of fear, built by cowards who can only hope to be powerful once in their lives, exploited by the wealthy in an endless cycle of parasitism cleverly disguised as patriotism. There is no mythological Good Guy With A Gun here. There are only killers and the killed, and the endless cycle that consumes them and profits off their corpses.
What an easy thing it is, to make Americans destroy ourselves…. You just have to make a spectacle out of it.
In other words, Vigilance is one hell of a reflection on current American values, the state of our society in this early part of the 21st Century, and the peril of where our national nihilism will be taking us as we struggle to cope with all the damage we’ve willingly inflicted upon ourselves. Vigilance is brutal, at times sickening, but oh so very, very necessary. This is a vital read. Highly recommended....more
In order their save their world (big W), Zan and her wife, Jayd, need a metal arm and an object known as the world (small W). Only problem is, Zan hasIn order their save their world (big W), Zan and her wife, Jayd, need a metal arm and an object known as the world (small W). Only problem is, Zan has no memory, their plan has been tried several times previously and resulted in failure, and their dying world ain't the only one in the Legion, which provides plenty of spark for conflict.
Kameron Hurley's The Stars Are Legion is a thick piece of science fiction with a hefty dose of fantasy swirled in. I'm not typically big on the fantasy genre, so it's not much of a surprise that I was more drawn in by the sci-fi elements of space-based shenangians and inter-world politicking. The story is divvied up between the two central women, with chapters alternating their first-person narrations as the plot drives them apart. For me, the story began to drag once Zan was thrust into the underworld of her planet and the book took on plenty of fantasy-genre overtones, becoming a Lord of the Rings-styled walking tour through the world's various domains. More intriguing were Jayd's experiences with a brutal Lord on a rival planet. The Bhavaja Lord is even more manipulative than Jayd (certainly no slouch in manipulation her own self), and their dodge-and-parry dynamic is some of the more interesting elements in this book.
Zan, though, is certainly a cool character in her own regard. Her memory loss and slow recovery make for captivating reading, particularly as she begins to understand who she was and what she could become, thanks to her interactions with a motley crew of monster- and mutant-fighting bottomworlders who make up her quest party. Hurley gives her plenty of time to shine and does a great job formulating Zan as a character. Zan's arc, in fact, was a strong highlight of the book for me, and the finale packs an emotional wallop thanks to the strong character development of both Zan and Jayd.
The world-building, though, is where The Stars Are Legion really shines. Hurley takes the literary technique of world-building up a notch by making actual world building a strong element of the plot itself. We have dying organic world-ships, populated entirely by females -- in fact there's not a single man in existence; this is a space epic in which women rule entirely and completely, an awesome feat in its own right! -- who the world uses to birth whatever the world needs - spare parts, children, and even, yes, new worlds.
It's a wonderfully feminist view, written by a wonderful female author, with strong women galore at every inch of these worlds. The women here are life-bearers, engineers, warriors, and rulers, each of them carrying the responsibility of their society, and their world as a whole, on their backs and deep within themselves. They live, they fight, they die. And through it all, Hurley brings to table plenty of solid action, a nice bit of gore, and some intriguing Big Ideas.
[Note: I received an advanced copy of this title from the publisher via NetGalley.]
Merged review:
In order their save their world (big W), Zan and her wife, Jayd, need a metal arm and an object known as the world (small W). Only problem is, Zan has no memory, their plan has been tried several times previously and resulted in failure, and their dying world ain't the only one in the Legion, which provides plenty of spark for conflict.
Kameron Hurley's The Stars Are Legion is a thick piece of science fiction with a hefty dose of fantasy swirled in. I'm not typically big on the fantasy genre, so it's not much of a surprise that I was more drawn in by the sci-fi elements of space-based shenangians and inter-world politicking. The story is divvied up between the two central women, with chapters alternating their first-person narrations as the plot drives them apart. For me, the story began to drag once Zan was thrust into the underworld of her planet and the book took on plenty of fantasy-genre overtones, becoming a Lord of the Rings-styled walking tour through the world's various domains. More intriguing were Jayd's experiences with a brutal Lord on a rival planet. The Bhavaja Lord is even more manipulative than Jayd (certainly no slouch in manipulation her own self), and their dodge-and-parry dynamic is some of the more interesting elements in this book.
Zan, though, is certainly a cool character in her own regard. Her memory loss and slow recovery make for captivating reading, particularly as she begins to understand who she was and what she could become, thanks to her interactions with a motley crew of monster- and mutant-fighting bottomworlders who make up her quest party. Hurley gives her plenty of time to shine and does a great job formulating Zan as a character. Zan's arc, in fact, was a strong highlight of the book for me, and the finale packs an emotional wallop thanks to the strong character development of both Zan and Jayd.
The world-building, though, is where The Stars Are Legion really shines. Hurley takes the literary technique of world-building up a notch by making actual world building a strong element of the plot itself. We have dying organic world-ships, populated entirely by females -- in fact there's not a single man in existence; this is a space epic in which women rule entirely and completely, an awesome feat in its own right! -- who the world uses to birth whatever the world needs - spare parts, children, and even, yes, new worlds.
It's a wonderfully feminist view, written by a wonderful female author, with strong women galore at every inch of these worlds. The women here are life-bearers, engineers, warriors, and rulers, each of them carrying the responsibility of their society, and their world as a whole, on their backs and deep within themselves. They live, they fight, they die. And through it all, Hurley brings to table plenty of solid action, a nice bit of gore, and some intriguing Big Ideas.
[Note: I received an advanced copy of this title from the publisher via NetGalley.]...more
I had to verify a few times over the course of my brief reading of This World Is Not Yours that I was, in fact, reading the right book. OveDNF at 40%.
I had to verify a few times over the course of my brief reading of This World Is Not Yours that I was, in fact, reading the right book. Over the last few days, I've been inundated with sponsored posts on my Facebook feed advertising this book as "nonstop action." The book's synopsis even describes this work as "action-packed" and promises the threat of an alien goo on a hostile world. Well, dear readers, at 40% in, I am still waiting for the action -- any action at all -- and the alien goo, the Gray, which exists to cleanse the world of invasive organisms, has only been briefly mentioned. The one big action set piece that has been introduced thus far, involving a raid on one colony by another hostile colony, has occurred entirely off-page and described only through exposition.
So, no action, and little to no alien goo thus far, and we're just shy of the half-way mark. The author, Kemi Ashing-Giwa, focuses instead on relationship drama between a dysfunctional polycule that has been mandated by the colony's government and torn apart a lesbian relationship to force our central protagonists into breeding with men. The central concern is whether or not Vinh and Amara's marriage can be saved, set against the lasting memory that Vinh has left Amara once before. I suppose, if one were to view this in a particularly skewed and slanted way, one might consider this a type of action, in much the sense that opening or closing a door is an action, just not a particularly exciting one. I, however, consider the handling of all this to be dull melodrama and boring relationship stuff.
I can't help but feel like there's been a bait-and-switch here between the book I thought I was getting when I requested this review copy, versus the book I actually got. But, one must review a work based on what it is and how well it goes about being that, rather than what one wanted or hoped it to be instead. Yes, I had hoped that This World Is Not Yours would be the next big work of alien horror, but the more I've read of it, up to this point, the more it has resisted and defied those expectations. What it is, then, based only on this book's roughly first half, is a toxic relationship drama that's presented to readers in the most deliberate and least interesting ways possible, despite offering a scenario still brimming with potential within this persistently at-odds and forced-upon dynamic. It's a book that's easy to set down and forget about, and that's exactly what I'm going to do now. I do like the cover, though, but even that promises more interest than the book can deliver....more
When we first meet August Kitko he's contemplating throwing himself off a Monaco bridge. He has no family left thanks to the massive alien mechas, knoWhen we first meet August Kitko he's contemplating throwing himself off a Monaco bridge. He has no family left thanks to the massive alien mechas, known as Vanguards, that have been wiping out humanity's settlements amongst the stars, and his bandmates have all left him. Suicide seems like the natural next step for a life in such disarray. But then one of the aforementioned Vanguards splashes down in the bay, here to destroy Earth. A second mech follows, and that's when Gus's life changes forever. Instead of exterminating mankind, this second mech, Greymalkin, attacks its sister-machine and saves Gus, turning him into its conduit, which is basically a fancy way of saying Gus has just been drafted into an interstellar war to pilot this robot behemoth.
Joined by his nonbinary rockstar lover, Ardent Violet, August Kitko and the Mechas from Space is a big, gay, splashy, pop-rock scifi ballad. It's the kind of book you wish the publishers had gone the extra mile to create a soundtrack for, given that so much of the spine of this story is shaped by music. It's got the jazzy riff of Cowboy Bebop and a dash of Taylor Swift, a heaping of anime influences and widescreen action scenes that recall Pacific Rim or Transformers, and plenty of pulp fiction sensibilities.
In a word, it's fun. Seriously fun. And now I've listened to this first entry in Alex White's The Starmetal Symphony, smartly narrated by Hayden Bishop, I'm more than ready to dive into Ardent Violet and the Infinite Eye!...more
John Scalzi delivers a fun and vulgar riff on Despicable Me in Starter Villain, minus the yellow squeak-box Minions.
Divorced, laid-off journalist turJohn Scalzi delivers a fun and vulgar riff on Despicable Me in Starter Villain, minus the yellow squeak-box Minions.
Divorced, laid-off journalist turned substitute teacher, Charlie, is just about destitute and dreaming of owning a bar when he's able to finally live out the true American Dream -- inheriting a shitload of wealth from a relative he never even knew! In the wake of his estranged uncle's death, Charlie finds himself insanely wealthy, but it comes with a catch. His house is blown-up and he's framed for the murder of a government operative, leaving him no choice but to embrace the conditions of his uncle's bequeathment by taking over the parking magnate's secret business as a villain, replete with volcano lair, hired goons, and a fleet of ships named after a trio of Hollywood Jennifers, like Lopez and Lawrence, and who wouldn't want to catch a ride aboard either of those?
It's not all smooth sailing, despite the trillions of dollars Charlie suddenly finds himself in possession of. For one thing, the dolphins are on strike. Then there's the cabal of villains made up of a number of the globe's insanely wealthy elite, who are demanding Charlie's presence at their forthcoming convocation or else. Oh, and there's the fact that Charlie has absolutely no freaking idea how to be a villain or what to do with all these crazy resources suddenly at his disposal.
Scalzi keeps the proceedings light and breezy, despite the heavier intonations of murder, bombings, and attempted assassinations, never letting the darker elements outweigh the brightly silly escapades he's so clearly having a ton of fun with here. And what's a Scalzi book without Wil Wheaton narrating? These two are a perfect match, their sensibilities perfectly simpatico with one another. Wheaton fully captures the wit, irony, and sarcasm inherent in Scalzi's style and keeps the story moving fast with his quick-fire reading. Between the two of them, Starter Villain is a laugh-out-loud escapist delight....more
Kagen the Damned returns for a third, and seemingly final, quest to stop the Haakian Witch-King once and for all in Jonathan Maberry's absolutely epicKagen the Damned returns for a third, and seemingly final, quest to stop the Haakian Witch-King once and for all in Jonathan Maberry's absolutely epic The Dragon in Winter.
If you dug the previous entries in this series, Maberry gives you plenty more where that came from and then some in this positively sprawling conclusion that stretches from Argon and on up through to the arctic wastelands of the Winterwilds and all the lands and oceans in between. Kagen Vale and his comrades in arms, the mercenary war-woman Filia and her balls-obsessed lover, cutthroat killer Tuke, gather their forces of Unbladed warriors into a growing army to unite what remains of the destroyed Silver Empire to launch an all-out war against the Haakian invaders. There's land battles, naval battles, one-on-one attacks, castle sieges, and a whole lot of magic and monsters as the world grows more twisted under the influence of the Witch-King and his ancient cosmic god, Hastur.
That last name in particular should ring a few alarm bells for fans of H.P. Lovecraft, and the combination of cosmic horror with good, old-fashioned sword and sorcery make for natural bedfellows here. It's an element that initially drew me to deeply into this world. I've never been a big fantasy fan and, more often than not, my attempts at approaching the genre usually ended in failure and boredom. Maberry himself was the key element that made me pick up Kagen the Damned a few years ago, having become a fan of his work and official Joe Ledger obsessive, and that book cut right to the chase with an immaculate and wonderfully violent extended opening recounting the utter collapse of the Silver Empire in a single night. I wrote in my review then that, if ever there was an author that could get me to try another fantasy book after so much disappointment, it was Maberry. And, well, goddamn if he didn't turn my attitude right around. Joe Ledger obsessive, meet Kagen the Damned obsessive.
What makes this series work so well for me is it's balls to the wall, everything including the kitchen sink approach. It's dark and violent to be sure, but Maberry also uses it to platform every single bit of pulpy goodness that both he and I love. There's Lovecraftian Elder Gods, cosmic horror, monster horror, witches, vampires, werewolves, elves, goblins, tarnished heroes, seriously wicked bad guys, and buckets and buckets of blood. And, unlike most of the fantasy books I've tried and tossed in the DNF pile, none of this stuff gets bogged down in hundreds and hundreds of pages of dry infodump to tell you all about the last ten thousand years of world history and Biblical-like lineages of who begat who that led to the modern day. Yet it's clear there is a hell of a lot of history in this world, and rather than spelling it all out Maberry teases us with it, which all by itself adds another interesting wrinkle to the proceedings.
Maberry has crafted here a large and expansive world, one that's still filled with a lot of mystery and plenty more potential to be mined. The Dragon in Winter effectively closes out this trilogy of Kagen the Damned novels, but Maberry smartly leaves the door wide open for further adventures. And by the hairy balls of the god of returning characters, I certainly hope we get to travel with Kagen again someday soon. He's too cool a character, and his world too vast, to be left by the wayside for long....more
With the recent release of Yorgos Lanthimos's film, Poor Things, and two other Frankenstein movies slated for 2025 release - one from Guillermo Del ToWith the recent release of Yorgos Lanthimos's film, Poor Things, and two other Frankenstein movies slated for 2025 release - one from Guillermo Del Toro for Netflix, and another in Maggie Gyllenhaal’s theatrical The Bride - Mary Shelley's shadow continues to loom large as a source of inspiration for modern-day horror talents. Enter into this fray, Crypt of the Moon Spider, Nathan Ballingrud's latest novella and first in the Lunar Gothic trilogy for Tor Nightfire.
As with Ballingrud's previous release, The Strange, the author presents us with a fantastical alternate history and a voyage to the stars more in keeping with the imaginings of Jules Verne and Edgar Rice Burroughs than Neil deGrasse Tyson. In Crypt, it is 1923 and Veronica Brinkley has been entrusted by her husband into the care of Dr. Cull of Barrowfield Home for Treatment of the Melancholy on Earth's moon. The clinic has been built upon a tomb that once housed the legendary moon spider, and although this species is no more its webs still cling to the treetops of the moon's forest surrounding Barrowfield Home.
Veronica is a waifish sort, the type of person upon whom events occur to and are heaped upon with little care or who lack any awareness of their own power for agency. Her victimhood is learned, instilled upon her by her own mother as a child in their Nebraska farmhouse who taught her that her life is not her own and that women exist only in the wake of men. Mother's is an old-fashioned viewpoint in lockstep with the times -- the suffrage movement, if it existed at all in this askew historical, would not yet have led to the ratification of the 19th Amendment, which itself would only be a couple of years old in Veronica's adulthood. Women are second-class citizen, and Veronica's institutionalization has little to do with her own wants or desires so much as her husband's, who has consigned her away off-planet in an effort to wash his hands of her entirely. She's passed from one man to another in a series of victimizations that culminate, but do not end, in an unorthodox medical procedure involving moon spider silk and intracranial surgery.
With both Crypt of the Moon Spidery and The Strange, I've found an awful lot to love about Ballingrud's alternate histories and star-flung exploits. What they lack in scientific rigor they make up for with fun and spectacle. He clearly has a vision with these tales, and he does a fantastic job realizing them. The modern technologies and antiquated world views of the 1920s setting provide intriguing dichotomies against the fantastical lore, and its impact on the sciences, upon which these worlds are built. Ballingrud presents us with imagery that alternates between the marvelous and the terrifying in equal measure, granting us visions that are both awe-inspiring and chill inducing in their terrestrial and extraterrestrial horrors, and the mishmash of ideas and concepts he weaves together are keenly unlike anything else you're likely to read. Or, as Tyson might more eloquently put it, with Ballingrud, we got a bad-ass over here....more
The entire solar system is watching as Asphodel Station conducts its first official use of the WarpLine gun (think the transporter array from Star TreThe entire solar system is watching as Asphodel Station conducts its first official use of the WarpLine gun (think the transporter array from Star Trek but not) ... and then disappears. Flung far away, to the other side of the cosmos, the personnel aboard the station find themselves caught up in an ancient war against Lovecraftian monstrosities that serve the destructive Outer Gods. And their only hope of surviving is an alien technology that resurrects the dead and harvests their souls.
So, maybe it goes without saying that Jonathan Maberry's NecroTek is kind of dark, and at times feels stiflingly oppressive, with even those slim shards of hope offered with a seriously aching catch. This all fits in wonderfully, of course, with the ethos of cosmic horror, wherein the universe and the immortal deities as old as time itself (if not older) that are dwelling amongst the stars are cold and uncaring, and oftentimes violently so.
Maberry certainly doesn't skimp on the violence. Asphodel Station's reappearance amidst an impossible stellar constellation is shockingly horrific as the space station and its denizens reestablish their dimensional bearings. Maberry's descriptions of the effects of the WarpLine gun recall the urban legends of the Philadelphia Experiment, with bodies becoming fused to the bulkheads, or skeletons and internal organs being transported away from beneath skin and muscle to leave the tragic victim little more than a puddle of collapsed, oozing flesh. To say that this first use of the WarpLine gun goes awry is to seriously undersell the negative effects suffered by the unfortunates aboard Asphodel. Maberry takes the transporter accident from Star Trek: The Motion Picture and magnifies it, thinking, "OK, now, how can I make it a thousand times worse?" Take, for instance, the young couple skipping the celebrations of the WarpLine gun's ribbon cutting for a romp in the metaphorical hay, only to find themselves coitus interruptus by way of vivisection and parts of their bodies shot into space. Even Asphodel's AI is not immune to the tragic malfunction of the WarpLine gun and begins suffering from schizophrenic breakdowns, at times sounding like it's transmitting straight from Matthew Bartlett's nightmarish version of Leeds, MA. You know you're in a bad way when the computer starts reciting funereal prayers unprompted.
Faster than you can say conflict escalation, the station and its military contingent find themselves under assault by a fleet of Shoggoths, the erstwhile amorphous, protoplasmic monsters from H.P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos. They've already destroyed all sentient life in the system Asphodel Station has materialized in, and they'll be damned if they're gonna allow the puny humans that now find themselves stuck there a chance to catch their breath. Maberry feels much the same about his readers, driving the plot forward with countless action beats both aboard the station and amongst the aerial hot-dogs taking the fight to the stars, pushing the crew of the Lost Souls naval contingent to the titular alien NecroTek technology that will either save them or damn them, or a little bit of both.
NecroTek is both captivating and exhausting in equal measure, but it's exhausting in a good way. Maberry has crafted here a marathon read, one that keeps the adrenaline pumping rapidly as both his characters and readers are thrust into one high-octane confrontation after another. At times it does feel a bit much, and I found myself wishing there were a quicker way through, but that, I suppose, is war. And make no mistake, NecroTek is first and foremost a war story, albeit one with monsters, ghosts, and gigantic, loud, boisterous alien technology that wouldn't be out of place in a Transformers movie, if only the Autobots found themselves fighting tentacled kaiju on a dead alien world. In short, it's a Jonathan Maberry book -- whatever delineations exist between genres are broken down in a brash everything including the kitchen sink approach, and then pureed in a blender until smooth and yummy. I mean, where the hell else are you going to find giant robots fighting even bigger monstrosities in a galaxy far, far away, all wrapped up in a horrifyingly bloody cocoon of cosmic horror? And this is just book one, for Cthulhu's sake! I can't even imagine what might be coming our way in the sequel. ...more
A bit over a year ago, I called David Wellington's Paradise-1 "a fine example of just how fresh and enjoyable sci-fi horror can be when an author fullA bit over a year ago, I called David Wellington's Paradise-1 "a fine example of just how fresh and enjoyable sci-fi horror can be when an author fully commits to an original premise." I wish I could say the same of its sequel, Revenant-X, which is largely content to play it safe as an overly familiar and overstuffed zombie book on an alien planet.
Picking up right where Paradise-1 left off, Petrova and her small group of companions and formidable survivors are stranded on the empty world. She has a psychic alien monstrosity, which she calls a basilisk, living in her head. Her lover, Sam Parker, is essentially a computerized ghost given shape and form by hard light. Zhang, the group's doctor, is kept habitually medicated by the device on his wrist lest he spiral out of control and kill himself. And then there's the appropriately named, anti-human robot, Rapscallion, who has deliberately built himself out of the most offensive toxic green-colored plastic a 3-D printer can produce.
The colony that once kept Paradise thrumming is a ghost town, as is the secret mining town that never made it ways into the official reports Petrova had access to when launched on this journey in the prior book. The entire settlement is dead. Or, more accurately, undead, thanks to all the colonists having been turned into ravenous hordes of monsters that exist only to kill. Lucky for them, they have four new candidates on the chopping block!
As the second in a trilogy, Revenant-X suffers from middle book syndrome. Whereas Paradise-1 felt fresh and exciting, with Wellington setting up a number of unique and horrifying set-pieces as if it were a haunted corn maze in outer space, Revenant-X is simply tiresome. Wellington wears out his welcome quickly with an over-reliance on rinse-and-repeat scenarios and lack of meaningful consequences (save for one instance particularly, but with Book 3 still on the docket, we'll just have to file that one under TBD). For a book about being stuck on a massive, dead world, this second Red Space title feels just as large and empty.
Petrova and company explore a facility and get attacked by revenants. They manage to escape and run elsewhere, where they get attacked by revenants. Rapscallion gets damaged and has to print off new body parts. They try to get to a communications tower to reestablish contact with Petrova's higher-ups at Firewatch and get attacked by revenants. Rapscallion gets damaged and has to print off new body parts. They craft a makeshift boat to sail down a river to get to the mining town, where they, of course, are attacked by revenants. Rapscallion gets damaged and has to print off new body parts. There's only a few small ideas tucked away within these 5oo-plus pages, and Wellington returns to them over and over and over with too little new to say about any of them. By the time we get some nuggets of fresh information to move the overarching plot of this series along, the book is just about over, with little in the way of either closure or fanfare because there's still a whole other book to wait for. We, along with Wellington, have simply been spinning our wheels this whole time.
Revenant-X didn't excite me the way Paradise-1 did, and although Paradise-1 was significantly longer than its follow-up, Revenant-X feels bulkier and longer by far. The repetition of ideas and scenarios make this book feel more cumbersome than it is, giving it a sluggish and tiresome pace. Instead of varied, threatening encounters, we're left feeling little more than, "Oh, this again?" Little of consequence occurs within these pages, despite the frequency of all its happenings. To his credit, Wellington does keep the action coming, even if it feels more like being beat over the head than anything approaching suspense or tension in the narrative.
With a bit more authorial self-control or firmer editorial oversight, Revenant-X could easily lose a few hundred pages and remain largely unchanged. As it stands now, it's more like the literary equivalent of those "this meeting could have been an e-mail" memes....more
I never did get around to checking out The Expanse series, in either book or television form, but that certainly didn't stop me from becominDNF at 39%
I never did get around to checking out The Expanse series, in either book or television form, but that certainly didn't stop me from becoming very familiar with James S.A. Corey, pen name for the writing duo of Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck, thanks to word of mouth and a whole lot of publicity. I thought this first installment of their new The Captive's War series, The Mercy of Gods, would be the perfect jumping on point, and all I can say now is, "This is what I've been missing?!.
Leaden prose. Shallow characters that are so unmemorable and paper-thin that to even call them one-dimensional is giving these authors too much credit. Absolutely glacial pacing. The astounding ability to turn what should be momentous events, like an alien invasion and the absolute annihilation of a civilization, into mundane, forgettable, dull instances that occur with nary a shrug. At least the authors almost try to make central protagonist Dafyd somewhat interesting by making him a complete asshole whose sole reason for existing is to manipulate others as he tries to bed fellow research scientist Else. The latter is smart and beautiful, or so we're told, repeatedly, which about all Corey can muster up in an attempt to define her, and is more depth than they can be bothered to give any of the other women in this book's largely interchangeable cast of Man 1, Man 2, Woman 1, Woman 2, etc. etc. etc. Yes, these other characters do indeed have names, but that's about the only sort of differentiation Corey can muster. Readers will be hard-pressed to tell one apart from another, though.
The Mercy of Gods has to be among the most lackluster "big-budget" sci-fi efforts I've read in a while, and even after the destruction of their world and their abduction by a mysterious alien race the greatest threat these characters face is the reader's ability to bother turning from one page to the next our of sheer boredom. Everything about this book positively reeks of "been there, done that," and has been done better virtually everywhere else. Either this fiasco is a complete misfire from the authors Corey or my tastes have once again deviated greatly from the mainstream tastemakers. Dropping this book nearly halfway through may be an act of preserving what little sanity and patience I have left, but skipping it altogether would have been a far greater mercy. ...more
While the marketing copy makes Out of the Dark sound something like Independence Day by way of The Walking Dead — and god, how I wish that had been soWhile the marketing copy makes Out of the Dark sound something like Independence Day by way of The Walking Dead — and god, how I wish that had been so — David Weber’s novel offers little more than gun porn musings, few and far between thrills, and an enormous cast of cardboard cutouts.
Mankind learns it is not alone in this great big universe when an alien race of dog-like bipedal warmongers called the Shongairi launch a surprise invasion and obliterate the Earth in a swift and shocking invasion that leaves billions dead in a matter of minutes. The Shongairi’s aim is to enslave the rest of the populace, but as one might expect things do not go according to plan and the shambles of humanity violently resist.
Weber’s story unravels along four major fronts of the war — we get the Shongairi perspective, the resistance effort along the Carolinas, a team of Marines stranded in Romania, and a Ukranian resistance fighter. On the human front, there’s little to distinguish these characters aside from their nationalities. Each are paper-thin, one-dimensional representations of human beings with equally fibrous dialogue to match. The leader of the US Marines in Romania and the Ukranian fighter are both husbands and fathers who have lost everything in the invasion. One is Black, the other Caucasian, and that’s about as much depth as Weber attributes to either of them. The North Carolina good ‘ol boy is a gun-nut prepper — lucky for him and his family — who Weber describes as “politically somewhere to the right of Attila the Hun, although possibly still to the left of Genghis Khan.” He also blames Carl Sagan for the invasion. Yes, really. Thankfully, Weber spares us any of this guy’s twisted political views since we’re supposed to be rooting for this guy, dreadful as one might suppose him to be. You can tell this is fiction, because only in fiction is this type of person the good guy despite all of reality informing us otherwise.
Rather than give any of these characters any kind of development, dimensionality, or personality, Weber instead focuses on weapons and tactics. Although the Shongairi possess the technical know-how to traverse interstellar space enslaving weaker races and can reduce the vast majority of Earth’s city centers and military installations to rubble through a series of kinetic energy weapons attacks, they’re largely clueless and inept. Weber tries to draw a parallel to Vietnam with a militarily superior force losing out to more primitive guerrilla tactics, but it never quite rises beyond one-note American jingoism given the focus on mostly US characters saving the day with America in the Vietnam role. Even then, they don’t really save the day because of their cunning or savvy, but because the Shongairi are woefully unprepared and so accustomed to destroying races much weaker than themselves that they never bothered to develop things like radar or durable armor (I’m sure that helps make navigating space so much easier). And although they can destroy whole cities with the flick of a switch, humanity never really feels like it’s on been caught wrong-footed because of how easy it is to fight back against this extraterrestrial threat. And then there’s the late-game supernatural angle that Weber shoehorns into the plot, which the less said about the better. I won’t spoil the surprise here, but plenty of other reviewers have spoken out about it and I can assure you it’s just as silly and nonsensical as they say.
Speaking of that which the less said about the better, I suspect that if one were to carve out all the unnecessary words Weber spends on guns, ammo, bullet grains, pounds per foot of stopping power, and comparisons between US armaments and Russian armaments and one gun manufacturer from another, Out of the Dark would lose at least a third of its page count. At least. Weber never turns down a chance to wax philosophical about guns or to write an impromptu essay about the weapons employed herein regardless of how badly it drags the story down. And good lord does it ever drag things down. Explorations of gun and gun culture are also used as a substitute for anything resembling character development or relationships. Take for instance one would-be touching moment between a husband and wife sharing what could very well be their last goodbye. What might have been a touching moment is instead derailed by the man reminiscing not for his wife, but for her gun! Weber spends four whole pages (on my Kindle Fire, at least) on what amounts to a gratuitous advertisement for a firearm in lieu of any actual human emotion. Between this kind of nonsense and all the technical jargon and gun-nut acronyms, I’m sure the ammosexuals may find a lot to get off on here, but for me so much of it was just gobbledygook that hampered any forward momentum of an already foolish and threadbare story.
And nonsense is ultimately the kindest way to describe Out of the Dark. Weber’s story requires an inordinate amount of willful suspension of disbelief that it never quite earns or rewards, all of which is balanced by the inevitable question of whether or not Weber is getting paid by weapons manufacturers for all his various endorsements and advertisements herein. Because if he’s not, this is really kind of embarrassing....more
Gary Whitta's Gundog offered a lot of promise, but failed to deliver. It revolves around an alien invasion, and in the book's opener we getDNF at 30%.
Gary Whitta's Gundog offered a lot of promise, but failed to deliver. It revolves around an alien invasion, and in the book's opener we get a two page infodump that catches us up on future history, which - in the 85 pages I read - is about as interesting as this book gets. A machine race known as the Mek (get it? Mek because they're mechanical beings? I'm not sure if they named themselves that or if it was meant as a derogatory hardy har har name invented by the humans they subjugated.) came to Earth in peace, seeking to trade their advanced technology for our natural resources, which their dying home world was in desperate need of. But, since humanity is the shitshow that it is, we decided we could just take their technology in lieu of nothing at all, and declared war, because we're a cynical, barbaric species and such is our way. Of course, the Mek's peaceful ways hid a hugely advanced military might that they used to wipe the Earth's ass with us and claim our planet for themselves. Humanity was rounded up into labor camps, which is where Gundog actually begins and any excitement that may have existed in this story goes to die.
Mechs are a hugely important part of this book. The alien race is wholly mechanical and Gundog arrives in timely fashion given current events regarding the threats posed by artificial intelligence to humanity, employment, and the arts (see the Writer's Guild of America's strike, for instance, and their demands to regulate AI in Hollywood productions). There are giant mechanized war machines the humans piloted in the war called Gundogs, and one long lost, fabled Gundog left standing as a monument by the Meks to humanity's utter failure supposedly still standing outside Bismark, ND, or so rumor has it. Whitta's writing is mechanical, too -- stiff, dull, and completely lifeless, there's no joy, urgency, or amusement to be found in these words. The book itself may as well have been outlined by AI with the prompt "The Hunger Games meets Robot Jox" it's so trope-ridden.
If you've read virtually any post-apocalyptic dystopian book with a YA woman destined for greatness thanks to her unknown especially to her legacy on a Joseph Campbell hero's journey, aided by a boy she knowns nothing about but who knows more than her about basically everything including her familial legacy, you've read far less robotic versions of Gundog already....more
This review was originally published on High Fever Books Reviews. Please consider subscribing to High Fever Books get my reviews and occasional updateThis review was originally published on High Fever Books Reviews. Please consider subscribing to High Fever Books get my reviews and occasional updates delivered straight to your inbox!
I suspect that readers who enjoy the journey more than the destination will find more to enjoy in Head Cleaner than those looking for a logical, simple, clean-cut narrative. David James Keaton doesn't provide anything simple here, let alone answers as he leaves a few threads dangling and a handful of questions lingering upon book's end, employing a not-necessarily clear finale that might leave readers racing to Google "ending explained" videos that are all the rage in film and TV land these days.
I suspect, too, that Head Cleaner is, in fact, a partial rebellion against these types of mostly useless, mostly clickbait videos that seek to explain the obvious in a wasteland of unchallenging, same old, same old art that has been focused group to hell and back solely to appeal to the lowest common denominators amongst us, who spent more time fiddling with their cell phone instead of actually watching what was being presented before them and thus need the grand finale summarized for their attention-deficient, social media-addled minds. As much as I love the MCU, who really needs the endings of any of these movies explained at length? Head Cleaner, though... To quote Benoit Blanc, "It makes no damn sense. Compels me, though."
And compels it does. Keaton has crafted a truly intriguing puzzle-box of a narrative here, the kind that inspires debate and, likely, a few arguments betwixt friends as they theorize what actually happened, who it happened to, who was behind it all, and how. Is it time travel or big corpo Facebook fuckery? Who was the woman who blasted her head off in the book's opening pages, and how does that square against what we learn later (it's certainly not flush, I might argue)? Who is or are "The Collectors"? And is Kevin Costner's Tin Cup really the sole key to unlocking this whole damn, bloody, messy affair?
I don't know. I've been pondering it all in the 12-plus hours since I finished reading Head Cleaner (OK, maybe not the Tin Cup thing) and feel none the wiser, but my curiosity keeps plugging away at the book's multiple what ifs. What does seem clear is that Keaton has sought to answer one question I'm fairly certain nobody has ever asked, and does so rather successfully: What if David Lynch had made Clerks instead of Kevin Smith? The setting is the last Blockbuster video store in the US, whereupon a trio of clerks may have accidentally discovered a last-of-its-kind VCR that can alter reality. Pop in Titanic, pause and rewind at just the right moment, and presto-chango, the ship narrowly misses the iceberg and James Cameron's box office hit is, instead, a courtroom drama about Jack's murder of a rich douchebag at sea, all of which is supported as fact by Wikipedia. It's a discovery that violently costs Jerry, Randy, and Eva their lives when the video store is assaulted by a cadre of Men In Black. At least until they wake up the next day, or maybe it's the previous day, to find a videotape of their deaths on their doorsteps.
Head Cleaner is not the kind of disposable sci-fi beach-read it may seem at first blush. It's unrelentingly quirky, but also very demanding. It requires interrogation and challenges the reader to make heads or tails of it all, possibly with a whiteboard full of notes and interpretations. It's only partly a joke that a two-tape rental copy of Oliver Stone's JFK plays a pivotal role here, given the amount of conspiracy theorizing the presidential assassination has inspired in both real life and in celluloid. Head Cleaner inspires much of the same odd-balling bewilderment. The simplest answer may not be correct, and the more outlandish it grows the closer to reality it may appear. But that's life for you. Or is that only in the movies?...more
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