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. 

Tiger Chair by Max Brooks

I first remember finding out about Max Brooks when I found a copy of his Zombie Survival Guide at the Borders in Columbus Circle many years ago. I loved it and World War Z, and I also enjoyed Devolution. I was very happy to get an eARC of Tiger Chair in exchange for an honest review. 

My only complaint about this was that it was too short! This short story (or maybe a novelette?) take the form of a long letter home from a Chinese soldier in occupied Los Angeles after an invasion of the US by China. Written in Mr. Brooks’s trademark style of first person info dumping, this story was hard to put down. I’m looking forward to whatever he writes next. 

Buried Deep and Other Stories by Naomi Novik

I had heard the name Naomi Novik for years, and had picked up Spinning Silver and Uprooted when they were on sale on audible, but I had never read any of her books until the Scholomance trilogy was nominated for the best series Hugo. I gave it a try and immediately got sucked in and read them all in a rush one after another after another. I loved her writing style and her characterization, and I was thrilled when I got to meet her at New York Comic-Con last year and tell her how much I enjoyed the series. I also really enjoyed Uprooted and Spinning Silver, so I was delighted to get an eARC of her short story collection Buried Deep and Other Stories in exchange for an honest review. 

I usually love single author short story collections, and this was no exception! This book is a wonderful place to see the depth and breath of Ms. Novick’s talent. I especially enjoyed the story set in the Scholomance that took place after the end of the trilogy, the story about the pirates, and the stories set in her Napoleonic dragons universe - I will have to check out that series next!  This was an excellent book, well worth your time. 

the mercy of gods by James SA Corey

 

Goodness was this book grim!!

I still remember when I first read a book by James S. A. Corey - I remember sitting in a park in Brooklyn reading a copy of Leviathan Wakes I borrowed from the library. I already loved space opera and it hit me right in the right spot. I continued to enjoy the series, although I didn’t love the time jump and the final book feel flat to me. 

So I was really excited when I got an eARC of the first book of their new space opera trilogy from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. 

This was a good, well written book. Sometimes, when two authors collaborate, it works seamlessly and one would never know it was a joint effort by two different minds - and that is how I feel about this book, and all books by James SA Corey. I enjoyed the world building, even though I find some of the set up to be a little hard to swallow. 

But this book is grim. Humanity of conquered cruelly and brutally and the main characters spend most of the book grieving and hurt and broken. The authors do a good job of depicting their mental states realistically, but that results in too-realistic depictions of trauma. Finishing this book was a slog because of that. 

I’ll still read the next one though, because I need to find out what happens next. 

The Bright Sword by Lev Grossman

 

Lev Grossman is not the twin whose books I love more - his brother Austin Grossman’s novel Soon I Will Be Invincible is a masterpiece. But I also really enjoyed Lev Grossman’s Magicians trilogy, as well as his first book, Warped, which shows his love of TNG. For a long time I wondered what he was up to. Now I know - he was writing The Bright Sword, a chonker of a doorstooper fantasy Arthurian novel. 

This book was wonderful! Way too long, but wonderful. If you told me it was originally going to be a trilogy and then got smushed into one volume I wouldn’t be surprised. This book is a King Arthur tale focused on everyone except Arthur and the other well known round table members. They all get an incredibly long backstory chapter or two which could’ve been their own novellas. This book was a great joy to read and I highly recommend it.

Service Model by Adrian Tchaikovsky

 I used to think I didn’t like Adrian Tchaikovsky’s books. I mean, I was told that I SHOULD like them since I’m a big fan of Peter F. Hamilton’s space opera doorstoppers. But when I tried to read one of his books a few years ago I rage-quit it like 12% of the way through. 

But then when his novella Elder Race was nominated for a Hugo, I read it and enjoyed it. I also read Ogres when it was nominated, and it wasn’t half bad. So when I read the description of Service Model on NetGalley, I thought it sounded good so I requested it in exchange for an honest review. 

It wasn’t bad. 

There was a lot about it I liked. The first several chapters were wonderful and I really enjoyed the protagonist’s POV - it felt like a very relatable robotic perspective.  

Two things, however, kept this book from being amazing in my eyes. First of all, there were too many pop culture references that really took me out of the story. Secondly, the world building fell apart, especially in the Farm section. I just couldn’t see how it made sense with everything that came before and after, vis a vis the existence of living humans. 

Other than that, it was enjoyable. I’ll definitely check out this author’s next book. 

The Dead Cat Tail Assassins by P. Djèlí Clark

 

I really enjoyed the Dead Djinn in Cairo series, and I was excited to be able to meet and get a book signed by P. Djèlí Clark one year at NYCC, so I was really looking forward to reading the Dead Cat Tail Assassins when I got an eARC from the publisher and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. I had high hopes for it but in the end I liked it “just okay”.

Part of it was the subject matter - I have never found the stories of professional assassins to be my thing. I enjoyed alot of the world building here, and some of the magic was interesting, but I find the trope of skinny characters having to eat massive amounts to be off putting. In fact, I found a lot about the protagonist to be off putting. She callously kills a pigeon-equivalent bird very early on in the story for no good reason and I just lost all possibility of caring for her fate. I didn’t see the twist coming, and I enjoyed the surprise, but the ending felt a little too contrived and jokey to fit into the tone of the rest of the book. I’ll read his next book for sure, because it is well written, but this one wasn’t doing it for me. 

The Seventh Veil of Salome by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

 

Last year, I got a eARC of Silver Nitrate by Silvia Moreno-Garcia and I really enjoyed it! Before that, I’d seen her name around on best of lists and upcoming books to look forward to, but it wasn’t until the Hugo nomination for the Daughter of Dr. Moureau that I decided it was time to put her to the top of my to-read pile. I enjoyed it and also really enjoyed Silver Nitrate. 

When I reviewed it, I wrote that it reminded me of how I felt when I read 11/22/63 by Steven King - I really enjoyed both books, and for both books I really would have liked to see how the author would have written the story without anything supernatural going on. 

Well, I feel like I got my wish! The Seventh Veil of Salome is not a horror novel - except for the horrors of racism and sexism. It is historical fiction set in old Hollywood during the filming of a movie version of the biblical story of Salome, while alternating sections retelling the author’s version of that tale. Not being familiar with the story, I found this novel fascinating and engrossing. The characters feel real and the story has a sad but realistic feeling ending. I couldn’t have enjoyed it more. Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an eARC in exchange for an honest review. 

Adrift in Currents Clean and Clear by Seanan McGuire

I was already a big fan of Ms. McGuire’s when the first wayward children book, Every Heart a Doorway, came out, and I loved it! As a kid who grew up loving the Oz series and resenting the Christian imagery in Narnia, it was right up my alley. It is a wonderful book and this is an excellent series, definitely deserving of its Best Series Hugo win.  In this series, the odd numbered books are the main timeline, and the even numbered books tell stories outside the main timeline - sometimes introducing us to new characters when they travel through their Doors, and other times showing up backstory of preexisting characters. 

I was overjoyed when tordotcom and NetGalley awarded me an eARC of Adrift in Currents Clean and Clear . I hope for eARCs of the wayward children books every year and once again this year I was finally lucky enough to get one!

This story is an even numbered book, so it is not advancing the main story forward - it more of a character study of Nadya. We met Nadya way back when the gang went on a journey to resurrect Sumi. We hadn’t learned that much of her story except that her Door led to a world of water with turtles in it, and that she eventually made it back there. 

This story is heartbreaking - we learned that Nadya was abandoned at a Russian orphanage by a teenager who was planning on giving her up even before she saw that she was born with a missing arm. The orphanage part isn’t the heartbreaking part - it is the way Nadya is treated by the right wing religious couple who adopt her as an act of charity, not love. Nadya’s time in her world is wonderful but too brief, and I was so sad when she was ripped away at the end of the novella, heartened only by my memory of her ultimate happier ending. 

I tried to savor this book but failed, rushing through to the end because I couldn’t put it down. 

I cannot wait to devour the next one!

The Bound Worlds by Megan E. OKeefe

Oooof. 

When I reviewed book 2 of this trilogy, I wrote “Honestly, I’m not sure if I’m going to read the third book when it comes out - I don’t know if I care enough about these characters or this world to slog through another doorstop of a novel.”

Well, gentle readers, I did slog through the final book. 

And I kind of wish I didn’t? 

It was long. It was boring. And the author seemed like she was trying to rehabilitate the controlling and violent ex boyfriend character. 

The story took several unexpected twists and turns that didn’t make alot of sense. I was, ultimately, disappointed. 

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

Bury Your Gays by Chuck Tingle

Who here doesn’t know about Chuck Tingle? Author of dinosaur erotica, unwitting target of the Rabid Puppies who turned their own hate against them, he is a neurodivergent pink-masked beacon of hope who preaches that love is love. I excitedly read Camp Damascus, his first traditionally published novel last year, and really enjoyed it! It was a tad rough in spots but the story and the message outweighed any minor issues. So I was very excited when NetGalley and the publisher gave me an ARC of his new book, Bury Your Gays, in audiobook format in exchange for an honest review. 

I loved this book! I’m not much of a horror reader, but between T Kingfisher and Chuck Tingle, I am starting to be a big fan! The protagonist of this book is a Hollywood showrunner who is being forced to kill one of his two leads rather than allow them to have a lesbian romance (hence the title). It is set in a near future where an AI generated performance is nominated for best picture. And when the protagonist balks at killing his characters, suddenly characters from some of his prior movies appear in real life and come after him. The details of his young closeted life and issues with coming out are handled deftly and realistically, and makes me wonder what a non-genre character driven work by this author would look like (Im guessing it would be amazing). 

The resolution of the horror aspects of the plot did not feel 100% earned to me, but this is a minor quibble in an excellent novel. Highly recommend!

The Wood at Midwinter by Susanna Clarke

 

I have a confession to make.  I have not yet read Jonathan Norrel and Mr. Strange.  I know, I know! 

My first encounter with Susanna Clarke’s work was when Piranesi was nominated for a Hugo Award. I read it as part of the voting packet and I loved it! It was unlike anything else I had read that year and it was so unexpected. I put Jonathan Norrel and Mr. Strange on my To Read pile but it’s too heavy to bring on the train for my daily commute. 

When I saw a new book by Ms. Clarke available on NetGalley, I excitedly requested it! And while it was disappointingly short, being only an illustrated short story, it was delightfully enchanting. 

The story is rather slight, but this piece more than makes up for it in atmosphere and style. To call it magical and enchanting is to undersell it. This story is a perfect morsel and I look forward to soon enjoying the feast of her longer work. 

Valdemar by Mercedes Lackey

I have loved Mercedes Lackey’s books for thirty years. As I said in my review of her last book, I still have the SFBC omnibus of the Last Herald Mage trilogy on my shelf and I can’t tell you how many times I read it in my youth (it was a lot). 

Until recently, I hadn’t read many of her Valdemar books in the last few years. I listened to the audiobooks of the Collegium Chronicles series, which was fun, but I felt it dragged on too long, with too many kidnappings, and the narrator’s interpretation of Mags’s accent drove me bananas. I lost touch with the series when my library stopped buying the ebooks of the Herald Spy series after Closer to Home, and I was disappointed in Spy, Spy Again, the third volume in the series focusing on Mags’s kids. 

In the last two years, I enjoyed Beyond and Into the West, the first two books of this prequel series set before the founding of Valdemar. So I was eager to read the third and final volume, titled Valdemar, when I got it from NetGalley and the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

I was irritated by a ten year time jump from the last book to this one, but otherwise, I have very few complaints. The story swept me up in its narrative. Finally, this is the book where we finally finally meet the Companions! Having been waiting for this moment for two and half books (and many decades as a fan) did the moment live up to the expectations? Mostly yes! It really felt like a classic novel of Valdemar, which is the highest praise I can bestow on this. 

Haunt Sweet Home by Sarah Pinsker

 

Sarah Pinsker became one of my new favorite authors when I read her multiversal murder mystery And Then There Was N-1. It just blew me away. I loved her debut novel, A Song For A New Day, whose near future world of social distancing following a plague and terrorist attacks seemed far fetched when it first came out and now makes me afraid to reread it for how prescient it was. Her two short story collections entranced me - she is always a must buy author for me. I was overjoyed when I got an eARC of her new book, Haunt Sweet Home, from NetGalley and the publisher in exchange for an honest review. 

This book was so excellent! I couldn’t put it down! The protagonist is a young woman who has dropped out of multiple colleges and has been working crappy retail/service jobs for years when she gets an offer from her successful cousin to do grunt work on his reality show, which is half ghost hunting, half home makeover. The author captures the protagonist’s voice perfectly and seemingly effortlessly - within a few pages, you know her so well. This story surprised me several times - I thought I knew where it was going more than once and I was wrong each time, and happier for being so. 

Are the ghosts on the show real or manufactured? I’m not going to spoil you, you’ll just have to read it yourself. Go out and get this book ASAP!

The Far Reaches: Stories to take you out of this world by James S. A. Corey, Veronica Roth, Rebecca Roanhorse, Ann Leckie, Nnedi Okorafor, & John Scalzi

 

As I have said many times before, I am not the type of person who usually seeks out anthologies- I much prefer single author short story collections. But if all anthologies were like The Far Reaches, I would have to change my tune. This collection of six short stories bundled together by Amazon by a bunch of heavy hitters did not disappoint. Ann Leckie, a favorite of mine, wrote another delightfully alien tale from the aliens’ point of view, reminiscent of her story Lake of Souls. John Scalzi was in introspective mode, rather than snarky mode, and I wish more of his recent output had been as amazing as this. I was most pleasantly surprised by the Veronica Roth story, which was a fun mystery set aboard an interstellar cruise ship. I haven’t read much by her before but I look forward to reading more of her work in the future. 

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