While everyone else was working from home and social distancing during COVID, fantasy author Brandon Sanderson was writing at a superhuman pace. In fact, he was so cut off from his regular appearances and activities, that he wrote four new stand-alone novels, announcing them in this Kickstarter that broke records for the platform.
Even though I’m only a sometimes fan of Sanderson, it was hard not to take notice of this feat. Of course I contributed to the Kickstarter. This review is for the first of those books, Tress of the Emerald Sea (paid link).
I read the Kickstarter e-book edition.
Here is the blurb:
The only life Tress has known on her island home in an emerald-green ocean has been a simple one, with the simple pleasures of collecting cups brought by sailors from faraway lands and listening to stories told by her friend Charlie. But when his father takes him on a voyage to find a bride and disaster strikes, Tress must stow away on a ship and seek the Sorceress of the deadly Midnight Sea. Amid the spore oceans where pirates abound, can Tress leave her simple life behind and make her own place sailing a sea where a single drop of water can mean instant death?
This book had a promising start with a sympathetic protagonist who is forbidden to leave her homeland. When Tress’s friend, Charlie, doesn’t return from his voyage, she dares to break the rules and go in search of him. The set up was wonderful and I was instantly engaged with the story.
Once Tress leaves home, we learn more about the unique worldbuilding (a noted feature of Sanderson’s work). The Emerald Sea of the title isn’t green water, but a vast expanse of spores that react when they contact moisture. The world has several different seas, each with different species of spores and different effects. The book treats these effects partly as magic since the results of adding moisture to spores are often dangerous, unpredictable, and feared by laypersons. At the same time, it is actually a science that follows rules and those who understand it can use the spores to create weapons, engineering feats, and spy tools.
The Kickstarter e-book edition contained some illustrations which fit perfectly with the vision of the scenes that I had in my head.
I wish that the ending has been more satisfying. It felt too much like a deus ex machina and also seemed rushed to me. I don’t want to say more to avoid spoilers. Overall I did enjoy this book and I’d love to read more stories set in this corner of Sanderson’s Cosmere.
Did you contribute to the Kickstarter? Have you read any of the books? Which one should I read next? Let me know in the comments (above).
The Terraformers is a stand-alone science fiction novel by Annalee Newitz. This is a book that I read last year. I have previously read and enjoyed one of this author’s other books, The Future of Another Timeline, but did not review it here (paid links). Read on below to see what I thought.
I read the e-book edition of this book.
Here is the blurb:
Destry is a top network analyst with the Environmental Rescue Team, an ancient organization devoted to preventing ecosystem collapse. On the planet Sask-E, her mission is to terraform an Earthlike world, with the help of her taciturn moose, Whistle. But then she discovers a city that isn’t supposed to exist, hidden inside a massive volcano. Torn between loyalty to the ERT and the truth of the planet’s history, Destry makes a decision that echoes down the generations.
Centuries later, Destry’s protege, Misha, is building a planetwide transit system when his worldview is turned upside-down by Sulfur, a brilliant engineer from the volcano city. Together, they uncover a dark secret about the real estate company that’s buying up huge swaths of the planet―a secret that could destroy the lives of everyone who isn’t Homo sapiens. Working with a team of robots, naked mole rats, and a very angry cyborg cow, they quietly sow seeds of subversion. But when they’re threatened with violent diaspora, Misha and Sulfur’s very unusual child faces a stark choice: deploy a planet-altering weapon, or watch their people lose everything they’ve built on Sask-E.
This book was structured as several interconnected stories, each one set further into the future on the planet of Sask-E. I definitely gravitated toward certain characters more than others and found that Destry in the opening section was my favorite.
The terraforming technology was used to make the planet hospitable and it was designed to mimic a paleolithic Earth. The main character at the beginning, Destry, is part of the Environmental Rescue Team, ironically tasked with protecting this artificial environment that humans have painstakingly created. She discovers a hidden society of the original terraformers, thought long dead as a result of the changes to the planet and deals with the crisis that arises as a result. However, when the book cuts to the next section, I was disappointed that I didn’t get to keep reading about Destry.
The novel looks at some interesting ideas – about what makes an organism sentient, how humans change the environment, and who gets to make the decisions about the world they live in. I also loved the idea of the sentient train in the later portion of this book. Overall though, this book was a bit of a let down and didn’t quite come together to me. I enjoyed The Future of Another Timeline more.
Have you read any of the author’s books? Let me know in the comments (above).
Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros is a book that I had not heard of until a few months ago. Thanks to TikTok, it was propelled to prominence and became a best-seller as part of the newly coined “romantasy” genre. It had a pretty cover and also featured dragons, so I had to check it out. Fourth Wing is the first book in the Empyrean series (paid links). Read on below to see what I thought.
I read the hardcover edition of this.
Here is the blurb:
Twenty-year-old Violet Sorrengail was supposed to enter the Scribe Quadrant, living a quiet life among books and history. Now, the commanding general—also known as her tough-as-talons mother—has ordered Violet to join the hundreds of candidates striving to become the elite of Navarre: dragon riders.
But when you’re smaller than everyone else and your body is brittle, death is only a heartbeat away…because dragons don’t bond to “fragile” humans. They incinerate them.
With fewer dragons willing to bond than cadets, most would kill Violet to better their own chances of success. The rest would kill her just for being her mother’s daughter—like Xaden Riorson, the most powerful and ruthless wingleader in the Riders Quadrant.
She’ll need every edge her wits can give her just to see the next sunrise.
Yet, with every day that passes, the war outside grows more deadly, the kingdom’s protective wards are failing, and the death toll continues to rise. Even worse, Violet begins to suspect leadership is hiding a terrible secret.
Friends, enemies, lovers. Everyone at Basgiath War College has an agenda—because once you enter, there are only two ways out: graduate or die.
As someone with a disability that results in frequent injury, Violet was a sympathetic character. I’ve heard that she has Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, although her condition isn’t specifically named in the book. No one expects her to be able to survive the harsh training or the assessment of the dragons in Basgiath War College. However, one of her advantages is that she is used to dealing with pain.
This is also a romance and Fourth Wing features an initial rivalry between Violet’s best friend from home and the bad boy who might want to kill her or kiss her. When the relationship heats up, it gets quite spicy.
I enjoyed the twists in the plot and the sense that more was going on behind the scenes than the people and even the dragonriders have been told. I guessed one aspect of the ending a few pages before it was revealed, and I have some other guesses about where the story is going. I’m planning to start book 2, Iron Flame soon (paid link).
Have you read Fourth Wing yet? What did you think about the ending? Let me know in the comments (above).
I have been meaning to read the Outlander series by Diana Gabaldon for many years, but it is daunting to start such a long series and I kept putting it off. My mother has read the whole thing (more than once) and I think she’s going to disown me if I don’t read it, so that was the final impetus for starting it. The first book is simply titled Outlander (paid links). I listened to the audiobook edition, narrated by Davina Porter.
The series has also inspired a show, and I’ve actually watched part of the first season. So going into this first book, I already had an idea of how the opening would go. Read on to see what I thought of the whole book.
I listened to the audiobook edition.
Here is the blurb:
The year is 1945. Claire Randall, a former combat nurse, is just back from the war and reunited with her husband on a second honeymoon when she walks through a standing stone in one of the ancient circles that dot the British Isles. Suddenly she is a Sassenach—an “outlander”—in a Scotland torn by war and raiding border clans in the year of Our Lord…1743.
Hurled back in time by forces she cannot understand, Claire is catapulted into the intrigues of lairds and spies that may threaten her life, and shatter her heart. For here James Fraser, a gallant young Scots warrior, shows her a love so absolute that Claire becomes a woman torn between fidelity and desire—and between two vastly different men in two irreconcilable lives.
I was surprised at how closely the beginning of the book followed what I already knew from the show. Of course, there are more details in the book, and this is certainly not a short novel. My own knowledge of English and Scottish history isn’t great at all, but I felt like I could follow along with the politics and intrigues. The author gives just enough historical knowledge to provide context for the story without becoming overwhelming.
The interplay between Jaime and Claire was interesting–the cultural differences between their two times cause a good amount of conflict. Claire is opinionated and headstrong while Jaime is a product of his time and tries to treat Claire accordingly. Their romance was well done though, moving from an arranged marriage to a place of mutual respect and then love. I’m curious to see how the author will keep their relationship fresh with at least nine more books left to go.
The narrator for the audiobook does a great job–both with the accents and with giving each character a distinctive voice.
My only criticism is that I felt that the ending of their time in Scotland was unsatisfying. Without giving too many specifics away, I wish that the final events of Jaime’s escape didn’t happen off-screen, only to have Claire hear about what happened later, particularly because I thought that it was weird for cows to be used in such a way.
I’m going to continue on with the series and am hoping to get through one book per month. Look for my review of book 2, Dragonfly in Amber, in March (paid link)!
Are you a fan of the Outlander books or the show? How far along in the books should I be before I start the show again? Let me know in the comments (above).
I’m going to spend at least one of my posts each week catching up on my backlog of book reviews for things I read last year. This is one of those posts.
Medusa’s Web is the first book by Tim Powers that I’ve read. I came across this author when I heard him speak as a guest-of-honor at a local science fiction convention several years ago (paid links). This was also a selection for one of my book clubs. I listened to the audiobook edition of this, narrated by Chris Sorenson. Read on below to see what I thought.
I listened to the audiobook edition of this book.
Here is the blurb:
In the wake of their Aunt Amity’s suicide, Scott and Madeline Madden are summoned to Caveat, the eerie, decaying mansion in the Hollywood hills in which they were raised. But their decadent and reclusive cousins, the malicious wheelchair-bound Claimayne and his sister, Ariel, do not welcome Scott and Madeline’s return to the childhood home they once shared.
While Scott desperately wants to go back to their shabby South-of-Sunset lives, he cannot pry his sister away from this haunted “House of Usher in the Hollywood Hills” that is a conduit for the supernatural. Decorated by bits salvaged from old hotels and movie sets, Caveat hides a dark family secret that stretches back to the golden days of Rudolph Valentino and the silent film stars.
A collection of hypnotic eight-limbed abstract images inked on paper allows the Maddens to briefly fragment and flatten time—to transport themselves into the past and future in visions that are both puzzling and terrifying. Though their cousins know little about these ancient “spiders” which provoke unpredictable temporal dislocations, Ariel and Claimayne have been using for years—an addiction that has brought Claimayne to the brink of selfish destruction.
As Madeline falls more completely under Caveat’s spell, Scott discovers that to protect her, he must use the perilous spiders himself. But will he unravel the mystery of the Madden family’s past and finally free them. . . or be pulled deeper into their deadly web?
This is a novel that I would categorize as horror or gothic fiction, and this isn’t a genre I typically enjoy. However, being part of a book club pushes me out of my comfort zone and gets me to read novels that I wouldn’t otherwise consider. However, this book ended up being a disappointment to me.
I didn’t like any of the characters in this story. Scott and his sister didn’t do anything terrible, but I never cared about what happened to them. The “spider” images functioned like a hallucinogenic drug but also let the user’s awareness travel into someone else’s body, I think. This was confusing and I had a hard time keeping track of who was who and when everything occurred.
This book does use a time travel aspect and that was interesting to me. However, it touched on film history and Hollywood references that I didn’t understand, so I suspect that I missed some of the author’s intent. In the end, I probably wasn’t the right audience for this book, but I’d consider reading something else (non-horror) by this author.
Have you read anything by Tim Powers? What other books by him would you recommend? Let me know in the comments (above).
This book was a step outside my typical genre reads, but I had heard so much about Yellowface by R.F. Kuang that I needed to pick it up. I loved the author’s recent alternate history fantasy novel, Babel, and you can read my review of that here (paid links).
I read a physical copy of this book.
Here is the blurb:
Athena Liu is a literary darling and June Hayward is literally nobody.
White lies When Athena dies in a freak accident, June steals her unpublished manuscript and publishes it as her own under the ambiguous name Juniper Song.
Dark humour But as evidence threatens June’s stolen success, she will discover exactly how far she will go to keep what she thinks she deserves.
Deadly consequences… What happens next is entirely everyone else’s fault.
With its totally immersive first-person voice, Yellowface grapples with questions of diversity, racism, and cultural appropriation, as well as the terrifying alienation of social media. R.F. Kuang’s novel is timely, razor-sharp, and eminently readable.
This blurb only explains the set up of this novel. It is about the publishing industry, life as a struggling author, racism, cancel culture, and whose voices should tell which stories. This book was like watching a train wreck. I couldn’t pull myself away and I read it in three days.
June Hayward is a terrible person, but she is eminently sympathetic in this book. She steals the first draft manuscript of her dead friend, revises it, and brings it to her publisher as her own work. Her bad decisions all spiral out of this initial mistake. Yet this book makes you deeply understand why June made those choices.
This book also provides a look at the whims of the publishing industry and the process of writing, revising, marketing, and releasing a book from the author’s perspective. What makes a bestseller and why do some authors get more attention than others, and how do the race and background of the author play into this? Like this author’s earlier book, Babel, this novel is giving me a lot to think about, even after reading it. This is one of those books you should rush to read right now.
Oddly, I find myself more engaged with my owner writing as a side effect of reading this book and I’m not really sure why. In any case, I’m already certain this will be one of the best books I read in 2024. It may also be that rare book that I re-read.
Have you read Yellowface or any of R.F. Kuang’s other work? Let me know in the comments (above).
Titan by John Varley is a book that I read for a recent book club meeting. I had never read anything by this author until now. This is the first book in the Gaea trilogy. Read on to see what I thought (paid links).
I read an e-book edition of this.
I had a hard time finding a blurb for this one, but eventually located two short versions:
The first one: When Cirrocco Jones, captain of the spaceship Ringmaster, and her crew are captured by Gaea, a planet-sized creature that orbits around Saturn, they find themselves inside a bizarre world inhabited by centaurs, harpies, and constantly shifting environments.
And a second one: It begins with humankind’s exploration of a massive satellite orbiting Saturn. It culminates in a shocking discovery: the satellite is a giant alien being. Her name is Gaea. Her awesome interior is mind-boggling—because it is a mind. A mind that calls out to explorers, transforming all who enter.
Those blurbs don’t really explain much of what this book is about. In many ways, it reminded me of Ringworld by Larry Niven (which I didn’t like) (paid links). Like that book, the story in Titan follows a group of explorers as they travel across a toroid-shaped artificial world. In Titan, this party is all human, but they are scattered when they enter Gaea and have to search for each other while exploring the place.
I did like the characters in this book (definitely better than the ones in Ringworld) and was pleasantly surprised to find that the protagonist was a (mostly) well-drawn female character written by a male author in the 1970s. Not that there weren’t some missteps, but overall Cirrocco Jones was a daring, gutsy, and believable heroine.
The opening chapter with the emphasis on relating how all of the astronauts on the Ringmaster had all had sex with each other over the course of their journey to Saturn was a strange way to start the story, and I think this could have been worked in better in another way. The relationships were important to the story, but I didn’t need it spelled out up front.
This is the first book in a series, but did reach a satisfying conclusion and could be read as a stand-alone tale. The other books finish out a trilogy and are Wizard and Demon (paid links). I’m undecided about whether I’ll read them.
Have you read Titan or any other novels by John Varley? Which would you recommend? Let me know in the comments (above).
All These Bodies by Kendare Blake is a stand-alone novel that I read in 2023 (paid links). This is the first novel that I’ve read by this author. I listened to the audiobook edition, narrated by Matt Godfrey. Read on below to see what I thought.
I listened to the audiobook edition.
Here is the blurb:
Sixteen bloodless bodies. Two teenagers. One impossible explanation.
Summer 1958—a string of murders plagues the Midwest. The victims are found in their cars and in their homes—even in their beds—their bodies drained, but with no blood anywhere.
September 19- the Carlson family is slaughtered in their Minnesota farmhouse, and the case gets its first lead: 15-year-old Marie Catherine Hale is found at the scene. She is covered in blood from head to toe, and at first she’s mistaken for a survivor. But not a drop of the blood is hers.
Michael Jensen, son of the local sheriff, yearns to become a journalist and escape his small-town. He never imagined that the biggest story in the country would fall into his lap, or that he would be pulled into the investigation, when Marie decides that he is the only one she will confess to.
As Marie recounts her version of the story, it falls to Michael to find the truth: What really happened the night that the Carlsons were killed? And how did one girl wind up in the middle of all these bodies?
This isn’t the type of book I’d normally pick up, since I don’t read much horror, but it was a selection for one of my book clubs. I’m always willing to give something new a chance and found All These Bodies to be a captivating story that fit somewhere between a psychological thriller and vampire story.
One of the most compelling aspects of this book was the voice of the narrator, Michael. As a teenager and aspiring journalist, he brought the perfect mixture of innocence and passion to his investigation of the case.
This book also straddled the boundary between the speculative and the mundane. While the murder scene is strange, nothing about it requires a fantastical explanation at the outset of the story. Yet the narrative hints at a sinister presence that might be a vampire. I would have like to find more of a resolution to the story in that respect, but this was the story of Marie Catherine Hale and not what else might have occurred.
Despite this being a little off genre for my usual taste, I did enjoy the book. I’d consider picking up one of this author’s other books.
Have you read anything by Kendare Blake? Which book is your favorite? Let me know in the comments (above).
The first month of 2024 is nearly over and it’s time to look back at what I read, as well as what’s coming up next. Overall, January was a strong reading month for me, mostly because I was sick and stuck on the couch for more hours than usual which resulted in extra reading time. Here are the seven books that I finished in January:
I have already written reviews on some of these, which you can find here:
I had hoped to also finish Dragonfly in Amber by Diana Gabaldon, the second book in the Outlander series (paid links). However, it took me longer to finish the first book than I had thought it would, so the second one got pushed back to February.
I started the 4th book in the Dune series, God Emperor of Dune, in January, as well as The Anatomy of Story by John Truby, but these books were too dense to rush through and finish at the end of the month (paid links).
Looking ahead at February, here is what’s up next for my reading plans:
Hopefully I can read as much as I did in January (minus the illness though). What are you currently reading? Let me know in the comments (above).
I picked up the latest novel by John Scalzi for an upcoming book club discussion. Starter Villain is a stand-alone novel, and honestly, I was sold on this one by the cat on the cover (paid link). Read on to see what I thought of the story.
I read a physical copy of this book.
Here is the blurb:
Inheriting your uncle’s supervillain business is more complicated than you might think. Particularly when you discover who’s running the place.
Charlie’s life is going nowhere fast. A divorced substitute teacher living with his cat in a house his siblings want to sell, all he wants is to open a pub downtown, if only the bank will approve his loan.
Then his long-lost uncle Jake dies and leaves his supervillain business (complete with island volcano lair) to Charlie.
But becoming a supervillain isn’t all giant laser death rays and lava pits. Jake had enemies, and now they’re coming after Charlie. His uncle might have been a stand-up, old-fashioned kind of villain, but these are the real thing: rich, soulless predators backed by multinational corporations and venture capital.
It’s up to Charlie to win the war his uncle started against a league of supervillains. But with unionized dolphins, hyperintelligent talking spy cats, and a terrifying henchperson at his side, going bad is starting to look pretty good.
In a dog-eat-dog world…be a cat.
I have only read a couple of other books by John Scalzi prior to this (Old Man’s War and Redshirts, neither of which I reviewed here), and I have followed his blog. His writing style is generally light and humorous in the works I’ve read, and this novel follows that pattern.
Starter Villain was a lot of fun and was a quick and easy novel to read. The story is exactly as described in the blurb above and follows Charlie as he fumbles his way through his newfound responsibilities. The only disagreement that I had with the description in the blurb was that his henchperson didn’t terrify me at all, but she was a terribly competent woman which might be frightening to some people.
The intelligent spy cats were great and they gave plenty of opportunities for the author to insert some humor. Given the dangerous business that Charlie has entered, the humor throughout the story is essential to making this book enjoyable.
When I first read the blurb I had wondered how innocent Charlie was going to manage this transition into evil. However, the villainy that ensues pits him against the competing supervillains rather than against civilians. Much of their activity involves making threats and using their power to keep the others from calling their bluff. This keeps Charlie from doing anything truly evil in the book, which helped to keep him a likeable character.
Overall, I really enjoyed this book and will continue to pick up John Scalzi’s novels when I have a chance. Have you read any of this other books? Which one is your favorite? Let me know in the comments (above).
Selection Error – a flash fiction story podcast by Utopia Science Fiction Magazine in December 2022