The Potency of Ungovernable Impulses Malka Older

I am really enjoying this series! I first started reading this series of novellas when the first one was nominated for a Hugo Award. I really enjoyed it and checked the second one out of the library shortly after I finished it and liked that a lot too! I’m all for a Holmes/Watson framework for a mystery, and I have loved SF mysteries since I discovered the Caves of Steel in junior high. I was excited when I got an eARC of this third volume from Tor and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. 

The mystery in this book is not quite as fun as in the first two - frankly, by the time of the solution I had forgotten who several of the suspects were. I love the world building and the setting of these books, and the characters are the reason I keep coming back. I understand why the narrator is infatuated with Mossa- I love Mossa as a character- but Mossa is a terrible person to be in a relationship with and it shows (as, presumably, Sherlock Holmes would be a dreadful boyfriend).  I enjoyed how academic research was key to solving the mystery. And I enjoyed just how terrible an investigator/interviewer the narrator was (I was also taking a science-based interviewing course for law enforcement while reading this book).  

Bottom line - I will happily keep reading these as long as the author keeps writing them. 

The River Has Roots by Amal El-Mohtar

This was an excellent book but possibly the worst audiobook I have ever encountered. 

I really enjoyed This is How You Lose the Time War (I read it when it came out, years before Bigolas Dickolas) so I was excited when I heard that Amal El-Mohtar had her first solo book coming out. I didn’t get an eARC from the publisher but I did get an audio ARC. I love audiobooks - I’ve had an audible membership since before Amazon bought them - and I listen to audiobooks all the time. I almost never listen to music. I want to listen to a book. What I don’t want is to listen to music when I’m trying to focus on a story. What I want even less is to listen to running water when I’m listening to an audiobook. Do you get where I’m going here?

This is a delightful, if slight, story. (The hardcover is less than 150 pages - I’m read longer novellas so I don’t know why it’s being advertised as a novel). It’s a tale of 2 sisters in a fantasy realm where people can cross over to sort of a fae realm but the villian ( a needy incel) is sadly much more based in reality. 

I enjoyed the sisters and their story. But the audiobook production was atrocious! You could barely hear the narrator some times due to the music or the running water sounds. They were just dreadful. And the producers obviously didn’t think about what listening at higher speeds would do to their sound effects. Like many people, I listen to audiobooks at around 2X speed. I find many narrators are too slow and this way I can enjoy more books. But at an increased speed, the sound effects and the singing, and the music were just intolerable.

Do yourself a favor, get this book in hardcover or e-book formats. It was an excellent story and I will happily read anything else this author writes. Don’t get the audiobook. 

When The Moon Hits Your Eye by John Scalzi

Finally! A return to form by one of my favorite authors. I’m a big fan of Mr. Scalzi’s work since I found Redshirts on the new books shelf at my local library years ago, and Ive been reading his website regularly for a long time. But his last few novels have been weaker than some of his earlier work, and I think it was due to his habit of rushing through writing them to make his deadlines (as he has eloquently described on his blog). 

But I knew when I got the new John Scalzi book from NetGalley and Tor in exchange for an honest review that I would enjoy it - because I already read it!! I was at NYCC in October and got an ARC from the Tor booth and I got it signed by John Scalzi there. He was surprised because he hadn’t realized they would have hard copies available, and he said that my copy was the very first he had signed for this book!

The premise for this book is fun - suddenly without warning the entire moon - and all of the moon rocks on earth - turn to cheese. The book then has some vignettes and snapshots of how different people around the country are dealing with this. 

In some of Scalzi’s more recent books, the protagonists have been glib and unpleasant ciphers, but not in this book. The characters feel like real people! 

The format of the book is both a strength and a weakness. You don’t get to spend a lot of time with interesting characters before a new chapter starts and we leave them behind (often forever, though some recur in later segments). But a bigger flaw is the ending.  With a high concept SF book like this, a lot of the value comes from the ultimate answers to the question of how did the big weird thing happen. Remember Stephen King’s Under the Dome? Remember how the ending cheapened the whole book and undercut everything? SPOILER ALERT: this isn’t as bad as in Under the Dome, but it’s close. There is no answer. The moon cheese just reverts back to moon rock. Nothing is ever explained. It’s left as a big mystery. This makes the book feel much more fantastical than science fictional, if that makes sense. 

But, problems with the structure and ending aside, I really enjoyed this book. It was a total page turner and very readable. Best Scalzi book I’ve read in years. 

Demon Daughter by Lois McMaster Bujold

As I have mentioned before on the blog, I was late to the Lois McMaster Bujold party and only discovered her when she was nominated for Best Series for the Vorkosigan saga. I think it was the Baen book covers that turned me off. But I’m on board now! 

She definitely deserved the best series Hugo award for the Vorkosigan Books, and also deserved it equally for the World of the Five Gods series. I have still not read any of the novels in that series yet, but once I started reading the Penric and Desdemona novellas, I couldn’t stop. I was hooked instantly and binged my way through the series. Thankfully, Ms. Bujold is still writing more Penric stories. 

I was thrilled to get a copy of this new Penric novella - Thank you, Subterranean Press, for the eARC in exchange for an honest review. As usual for a subterranean press edition, there is a new cover with gorgeous cover art. 

This book was a joy, like all the Penric stories are, although it wasn’t an altogether fun romp. Penric and his wife are hurting after some miscarriages when they encounter a young girl who gets a demon and thinks that she has killed get father and all of her shipmates. A little heavier stuff than some other Penric tales.  But it is all handled with skill and grace. 

It would not be the best place to start with the series, but if you’ve read any of the others before, you will really enjoy this one. Can’t wait for the next one!

The Fourth Consort by Edward Ashton

I’m so glad I took a chance on this book! Ever since I joined NetGalley, I dreamed of the day when I would just be auto-approved for all of my favorite authors.  So a few months back, when I got an email from NetGalley telling me I was auto-approved for a bunch of books by authors I had never heard of, I decided to say “what the heck!” And I downloaded all of them, thinking maybe I’d find something good, maybe I wouldn’t. So I was very pleased to be sucked right into The Fourth Consort by Edward Ashton. I didn’t know anything about this book going in,  it I quickly learned that it was a first contact style book.  Humanity is linked up with a conglomeration of other species (although they are way down in the pecking order) and the protagonist is part of a first contact team for a low tech species of alien bug type people (I kept picturing them as mantis-like).  There is a rival alliance of aliens who get into a shooting match in orbit with this conglomeration resulting in our protagonist stranded on this planet with one other human and a rival alien from a stronger, more violent and honor based culture.  The book was a really fun page turner, hampered just a bit by the protagonist being a great guy who was pretty great at everything he tried. He read like a super-competent cis white guy Andy Weir- style main character and was the least interesting person in the story.  But other than his bland super-competence, the book was a lot of fun! I would totally read something else by this author and I hope he continues these characters’ stories. 

Back After This by Linda Holmes

My internet is not the same internet as my wife’s internet. I asked her the other day if she knew who Linda Holmes was and she said “of course!”  I didn’t know that Linda Holmes was on NPR and used to write for Television Without Pity. I just knew her as a guest and fan of the Flophouse, a bad movie podcast I love. She was really funny on her guest appearance and I learned that she had a book coming out, so I requested and received an eARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. I’m so glad I did!

This book was like a romantic comedy movie in book form - and I mean that in the best possible way. A busy woman focused on her career in podcast production becomes the host of a dating podcast under the tutelage of a relationship influencer. There is a great dog, a meet cute, and many complications. The characters felt well rounded and I kept being surprised in all the good ways by this novel. Highly recommend!!

Overgrowth by Mira Grant

I have loved Mira Grant before I ever heard of Seanan McGuire. I was first introduced to her work when her book Parasite, written as Mira Grant, was nominated for a Hugo Award - that year, the person in charge of ebook buying for my local library got copies of all of the Hugo nominated works and that one was by far my favorite. I loved it and quickly devoured the Newsflesh series before I realized that Mira Grant and Seanan McGuire were the same person. 

I started reading her works under her own name, starting with Sparrow Hill Road, which is amazing, but I picked it because I was intimidated by her long running October Daye series. I eventually fell in love with October and the Incryptid series, and her Velveteen Vs. series holds a very special place in my heart. 

But science fiction has always been my first love with fantasy coming in second place, so I have always gravitated towards the Mira Grant books. After Tor got the rights to publish more October Daye and Incryptid books from Astra (formerly known as DAW) I was wondering if they would also be putting out more Mira Grant titles. I’m so glad to be right!

I remembered reading the initial description of this book in 2023 on Ms. McGuire’s social media and thinking to myself “ oh, hey, she wrote an autobiography”. You see, I remembered reading an interview years ago where Ms. McGuire said that she firmly believed that she was the vanguard of an invasion of alien plant people - she came out of the woods as a child and told that to her family.  She has mentioned this on her old live journal and elsewhere over the years.  (I always personally wondered if this was a response to a childhood trauma but it is folly to try to armchair psychoanalyze someone you don’t know based on what they say online). But I was quite intrigued when Tor and NetGalley gave me an eARC of Overgrowth in exchange for an honest review. 

This book is excellent. The sense of creeping dread is palpable. I was enjoying this book but I kept having to put it down at different points to savor the impending doom - it is not a book to rush through. 

The characters feel very real in what slowly becomes a very unreal scenario.  I had a few quibbles with the government reactions at different points in the novel but all of it was very minor. The author described it as a “cozy apocalypse” novel, not meaning that the end of the world is relaxing , but that it has a very tight focus on the characters. That is a really good description. 

I really enjoyed this book and I cannot wait for the next Mira Grant novel. 

The Bones Beneath My Skin by T J Klune

 

When I saw TJ Klune at NY Comic-Con in October, I remembered how cool I thought he was and how much I liked his style and sensibilities. I really enjoyed his Extraordinaries trilogy (although his strong pro- and anti- police stands in different volumes gave me whiplash), but I didn’t really vibe with Under the Whispering Door. I enjoyed the sentiments of House on a Cerulean Sea but felt the world building was weak in a way that took me out of the book., and I felt the sequel had a deus ex machina that felt cheap. I enjoy his takes on love and joy even when I don’t enjoy the stories they are in. 

So I decided to request I from NetGalley and Tor an eARC of the reprint of his self published The Bones Beneath My Skin in exchange for honest reviews.

I enjoyed this book. It was much more Science Fiction than fantasy, though the “science” is a little handwavey. A reporter who lost his job for unethical practices, goes to his dead parents summer cabin and finds an escaped alien and her former military minder and together they form a family. These are some of the most interesting characters that I can remember seeing in a book by this author, and I really enjoyed this story. I wish the unethical behavior of the protagonist had not been such a violation of his journalistic ethics, because it made him inherently unlikable, and he never really got a redemption park, but otherwise this was an enjoyable book. 

Velveteen Vs. The Early Adventures by Seanan McGuire

 

I love Seanan McGuire’s body of work.  (Note: I review a bunch of her books so I am copying part of some of my other reviews here to save time.). She has quickly become my favorite living writer and I feel very lucky that she is so prolific. I was first introduced to her work when her book Parasite, written as Mira Grant, was nominated for a Hugo Award. I loved it and quickly devoured the Newsflesh series before I realized that Mira Grant and Seanan McGuire were the same person. 

I started reading her works under her own name, starting with Sparrow Hill Road, which is amazing, but I picked it because I was intimidated by her long running October Daye series. But the Velveteen Vs. series holds a very special place in my heart. 

When I was very sad and in a very rough place I needed a new audiobook to listen to, something to distract me from everything. And I found the first two Velveteen books on audible. They were perfect. They were exactly what I needed at exactly the right time. I loved the world Ms. McGuire had created where superheroes were a mix between reality tv stars and child actors. These were wonderfully developed characters that came alive and the fact that they had powers and domino masks didn’t make them feel any less real. 

I was overjoyed when Subterranean Press and NetGalley awarded me an eARC of this volume (I had already preordered my hardcover edition). I am thrilled that more people will get to read and enjoy Vel’s story. And I am beyond ecstatic that another volume is coming and that Vel’s story will come to a natural endpoint, even as I hope beyond hope that there will be more stories beyond the currently in-progress long awaited fourth book. 

This book is a gift. Enjoy it. 

Red Sonja Consumed by Gail Simone

  

Gail Simone is a treasure. I have loved her writing for years - whenever I saw her name on a comic book cover I knew I was in for a good time. I adored her run on the Secret Six and her take on Barbara Gordon is the definitive one for me. So when I found out she was coming out with her first prose novel I was excited! But when I realized it was a Red Sonja novel I was a little apprehensive. Red Sonja was never a character I had read or wanted to read. Although I love D&D and sword & sorcery stories, I had never been a fan of the scantily-clad-warrior-in-a-chainmail-bikini subgenre and I had never read or seen any Red Sonja in any medium. But I trusted Gail, so I requested an eARC from NetGalley and the publisher, and received one in exchange for an honest review. 

I was glad I trusted Gail. I enjoyed this book - I especially liked her way of starting every chapter with an excerpt of something, often scholarly work, that treated Sonja as a character out of myth or historical legend. 

Now, although I enjoyed the book, I didn’t particularly like the character of Sonja herself - the book starts out with her stealing from and betraying a lover, actions I was unable to forgive her for throughout the book. That colored my overall enjoyment. Some of the secondary villains felt unnecessary to the story and some late plot twists seemed unnecessary or poorly telegraphed. But these are minor quibbles. I will be happy to read the next Red Sonja novel Ms. Simone writes, or anything at all she comes up with. 

Murder by Memory by Olivia Waite

Generation ship? Cozy mystery? Auntie detective who knits? Sold!

I am a big fan of generation ship stories, so I was intrigued when I saw Murder by Memory by Olivia Waite on NetGalley and I was very happy to be granted an advanced reader copy by the publisher. This book was a lot of fun, but suffered for its short length. The world building was very interesting – unlike many generation ships, the technology on this ship allowed people to be reborn into newly created bodies, so each generation could be comprised of the same individuals. In addition, if someone wanted to take a “rest” from existing, their mind maps could be stored in a library until they felt like coming back. There are so many things built into these concepts that didn’t have room to breathe because this was just a Novella. I thought the drunk computer concept at the beginning was a little weak, but otherwise I thoroughly enjoyed this book and hope that this author writes more in this setting.