The Orb of Cairado by Katherine Addison

 

Wohoo! Unexpected novella in a universe I cannot get enough of!

Like many people, I first encountered Katherine Addison when I found the Goblin Emperor on a bunch of awards ballots and was immediately enchanted. Within six months of reading it, I doubled back and listened to the audiobook  - that novel was charming and delightful and wonderful.  (I also adored her unrelated book, the Angel of the Crows, and I think more people need to read that.) I was thrilled beyond belief when Tor and NetGalley gave me an eARC for The Witness For the Dead, a related book in the same universe as The Goblin Emperor.  That book was a book of my heart -  It was the most enjoyable reading experience I had in months when I read it the first time.  I was even more exited two years ago when Tor and NetGalley gave me an eARC for The Grief of Stones, the direct sequel to the Witness for the Dead which I described at the time as “perfection itself” - a description I still stand by. 

In anticipation of the long awaited, third book in the Cemeteries of Amalo trilogy, I recently re-listened to audiobooks of the other books in this universe, so I have been soaking in it for weeks now. Which is why I was so surprised when Subterranean Press announced a standalone novella in the same universe! I was ecstatic when Subterranean Press and NetGalley gave me an eARC in exchange for an honest review. 

This book was absolutely fantastic. It introduced a whole new set of characters in a whole new place in another tale set into motion by the destruction of the emperor’s airship - the same explosion that began the story in the Goblin Emperor.  The protagonist was a scholar accused of stealing an artifact believed to be the key to an even greater treasure, but he knows he is innocent. The story eventually solves the mystery of who is the real thief and, in the process, tells us about scholarship, love, duty, and betrayal. It is hard to describe without spoiling the story. I heartily recommend this to anyone who likes Katherine Addison and to anyone who hasn’t read anything by her yet. This book is wonderful. 

Motheater by Linda H. Codega

 

As someone who loves D&D and who has been a passionate reader of io9 since before Charlie Jane Anders left, I was very impressed by the writing of Linda H. Codega. I really enjoyed their articles about the OGL fiasco and I thought their reporting was top notch and their writing style was clear and enjoyable. 

So I was very excited when their first novel was previewed in io9 and even more excited when I got an eARC from NetGalley and the publisher. 

This novel was interesting. Like I’ve said about the novels of Chuck Tingle and Stephen King, I think I would very much enjoy a novel by Linda Codega that didn’t have genre elements. 

The book starts with Bennie, a woman who moved to a mining town in Appalachia with her boyfriend, got a job at the mining company, and made a best friend there with whom she was looking into suspicious mining deaths. But then her friend was killed in some sort of mining incident and in the aftermath she then broke up with her boyfriend and was living on the fringe of poverty while trying to figure out a way to take the mining company down. At this point the story begins when she finds Motheater, a witch who had been trapped in the mountain for 150+ years. This fascinating setup is undermined by alternating chapters with Motheater’s perspective from before she was stuck into the mountain. I was bored by these flashback chapters and I felt they added very little to the overall narrative. Furthermore, the book doesn’t really mine the time traveling culture shock or the realization that magic is real very well. There are token attempts but they feel halfhearted at best. 

In addition, I was disappointed that Bennie never got justice for her best friend or all of the other dead miners and that part of the driving of the plot was abandoned without much explanation. Furthermore, the explicit  tying in of the magic to Christianity was quite offputting to me (and presumably will be to many other non-Christian readers).

 But when this book worked, it worked. The language was often lyrical. The blue jay familiar was a joy. I look forward to Linda Codega’s next book. 

The Martian Contingency by Mary Robinette Kowal

 

I have been eagerly awaiting this book for years! I have loved Mary Robinette Kowal ever since I devoured the Calculating Stars. (Actually, I fell in love with her writing before that - she wrote a blog post on tor dot com before that book came out about her visit to NASA’s Neutral Buoyancy Lab that was just amazing and has stuck with me for years.) I loved the Fated Sky even more than the Calculating Stars, and I was a little frustrated when the book ended when they reached Mars and we didn’t get anything of the trip home. I loved the Relentless Moon and I was so excited to get an eARC from Tor and NetGalley of this newest book in the Lady Astronaut series. 

I really enjoy this world Kowal has created and her world building skills and this book did NOT disappoint. It was everything I was hoping for! It advanced Elma’s story and the story of the settlement of Mars, inching closer to the future seen in the story that started it all. Her descriptions of the habitat and spacewalks and Mars walks make it all feel so real!

However, the character of Elma sometimes grates a little. She’s not nearly as irritating as Tesla Crane from the Spare Man, but she’s blinded by privilege and little too often. Also, while I appreciate the author making Elma and her husband Jewish, the author is not Jewish herself and some of her characterization felt off to me. Kowal seems to have missed the fact that Jews do not remove mezzuzahs when they move but instead leave it in place and get a new one.  Also, I feel like Elma faces far less antisemitism than was common in her time period. She would not have nearly as easy a time as the books portray. I’m glad she didn’t, but it felt lacking in verisimilitude. These are minor quibbles, however. I loved this book. I devoured it in under a week and cannot wait to purchase the audiobook of it when it comes out. 

Exodus: The Archimedes Engine by Peter F. Hamilton

 I love the books of Peter F Hamilton! I love the Commonwealth books so much! I still remember the first time I read Pandora’s Star - specifically the chilling and alien sections from MorningLightMountain’s point of view - and I wish I could go back and read it again for the first time. 

I also really enjoyed  the Void trilogy, and I adore Great North Road.  I thought the Salvation Sequence was hit and miss, but i loved A Hole in the Sky and its follow-ups. 

So when I found out he had a new novel coming out I was excited. Then I found it it was a tie in to an RPG and I got more excited. Then I realized it wasn’t a tie in to a tabletop RPG and I got a little deflated. Then I got an eARC from NetGalley and the publisher in exchange for an honest review. 

One of my favorite things about Mr. Hamilton’s books is the world building - it is always intricate and detailed and it always hangs together. (It usually also involves portals and/or trains which are both fun.) The world building in this book has no trains, no portals, and doesn’t make a lot of sense. There are humans and celestials, which are post humans, but also uranic humans, and some people have high levels of tech and others seem like they’re barely ahead of us. And why do the humans need to grow crops on one planet to export to other planets where they have more advanced tech but still have to travel at relativistic speeds? It doesn’t make much sense. 

Also, none of the characters are fun or memorable. There’s a screw-up who literally falls into good fortune, but he’s so boring. There’s a sleazy cop. There are squabbling space royalties and rich families and I can barely remember anything about them. 

 I am very much looking forward to everything else Mr. Hamilton chooses to write, but I don’t think this video game’s world building did him any favors. 

Late Star Trek by Adam Kotsko

 

There is a saying in computing: Garbage In, Garbage out - meaning if you start with bad data you can’t trust the results. That makes sense, right? If your initial principles are wrong or flawed, how can we trust the results?

I really wanted to enjoy this work. I usually like nonfiction about topics I enjoy. But from the very beginning this author showed me he didn’t REALLY know what he was talking about. When he writes in his intro that “Star Trek virtually invented contemporary fan culture, including practices like conventions” he is ignoring the many years of science fiction conventions that predate Trek. Conventions have taken place since at least the 1930s! Worldcons have been held since 1939. So when a book begins which such an obvious falsity in such a basic fact, it is hard to imagine that the author will actually be able to draw any valid conclusions since his research rests on a flawed foundation. 

He continues to make bizarre mistakes about basic things. At one point, the author mistakenly defines “retcon” as “retrospective continuity“, not “retroactive continuity.”

So while I very much enjoyed the author’s recapping of the streaming Trek era, and I agreed with all of his takes on Star Trek: Picard, this book really felt a lot like an irritating thread on Reddit (also this author mentions his participation in a particular Trek subreddit way too much!).  Also, could the title have been more boring?

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an eARC in exchange for an honest review. 

Star Trek: Sons of Star Trek by Morgan Hampton

 

My first ever comics were Star Trek comics. I loved superheroes when I was a kid, of course, still do, but what I knew of them came from Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends and the Superfriends and the Super Powers action figures (which did have mini-comics, (as did He-Man figures, but I digress in this double paranthetical)).  When I fell in love with Star Trek in 1988, I couldn’t get enough of it. So in addition to watching the show and reading the novels, I picked up Star Trek comics at a convention and eventually subscribed to get the TNG comic from DC in the mail. 

Although I fell off reading Trek comics for a while, I recently have started reading more of the IDW Star Trek comics (I enjoyed Godshock and I LOVED Ryan North’s Lower Decks miniseries and his new graphic novel Warp Your Own Way) so I was happy to get an eARC of Sons of Star Trek by Morgan Hampton from IDW and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Although I wasn’t up on everything that had happened in the Trek ongoing since the Godshock trade, there was a decent recap at the beginning to get me up to speed. I didn’t need to know much, since most of this story was an alternate universe tale with Jake Sisko, Nog, Alexander Rozhenko, and Q Junior. I really enjoyed seeing the alternate universe versions of Mariner and Dunst, and this was a fine story. I thought both Jake’s and Alexander’s stories got short shrift on DS9 so I appreciated some further development for them. Other than Nog’s forced conflict that seemed to regress his development in the show, I really enjoyed this book. 

Tidal Creatures by Seanan McGuire

I really enjoyed Middlegame when it came out and voted for it as best novel on the Hugo Awards at the time. The writing there was lyrical and a little dreamlike in a way that was a little different from most everything else of Seanan McGuire’s (but reminded me of her Parisitology books a little). 

I remember going to a comic book store in October 2019 when I got her to sign some Ghost Spider and Nightcrawler comics (she was amazing, BTW, and was so kind to my then 7-year-old daughter, who was wearing a ghost spider hooded sweatshirt) and asking her if there would be a follow up to Middlegame. I was extra excited when Seasonal Fears was finally announced, and I was even more thrilled when I found out that more books were coming in this series. 

So I was overjoyed when The publisher and NetGalley awarded me an audio eARC of Tidal Crestures (I had already preordered a kindle copy beforehand) in exchange for an honest review. This was, in many ways, the book that I wanted Seasonal Fears to be. I loved the moon deities, I loved the return of Rodger and Dodger, and I adored Kelpie so much. 

Since I follow Seanan McGuire on social media, I know that Kelpie is based on one of her D&D characters, a tiefling who thought she was a mutated alligator at first and didn’t realize who she was in the world and that her entire life and backstory was false. This clearly crept into the characterization of Kelpie in this novel and it really enriched my enjoyment of the text. 

This is one of the most wonderful books I read all year, and Amber Benson is growing on me as a narrator. I cannot recommend this highly enough.