Book Review – The Echo Wife

03 Sep 2024 Leave a comment

by Clare in Books, Reviews Tags: , , , , , , , ,

I have previously read Magic For Liars by Sarah Gailey and really enjoyed it (but I didn’t post a review here). I had been meaning to get to another of her novels and finally found time to read The Echo Wife for a recent book club discussion (paid links).

I read the e-book edition.

Here is the blurb:

I’m embarrassed, still, by how long it took me to notice. Everything was right there in the open, right there in front of me, but it still took me so long to see the person I had married.

It took me so long to hate him.

Martine is a genetically cloned replica made from Evelyn Caldwell’s award-winning research. She’s patient and gentle and obedient. She’s everything Evelyn swore she’d never be.

And she’s having an affair with Evelyn’s husband.

Now, the cheating bastard is dead, and both Caldwell wives have a mess to clean up.

Good thing Evelyn Caldwell is used to getting her hands dirty.

I think that this book held a lot of promise with the subject matter, but in some ways, it failed to deliver on all of the ideas that it initiated. The blurb doesn’t explain the premise in this book well, but at its heart, it’s about the science of cloning and the ethics behind the use of those clones. If you create a human clone in a lab and use it for research, is it murder when you need to end your experiment and practically dispose of the materials? What if that clone has a personality and a life of its own? Is that situation any different?

In this book, the researcher’s husband creates a clone of her, but with modifications that fit his idea of a perfect spouse. Of course, the experiment goes horribly wrong, and that is the focus of this story. Oddly, it occurs in a vacuum, with little concern for the rest of the world that might notice something wrong in the cloning laboratory. This story could have easily turned into an action-packed thriller with police investigations and car chases, but that isn’t the focus here.

I don’t think I agreed with the characters’ decisions in the end, but I also don’t have a clone of myself hanging around, so it’s truly hard to know if I’d make a different decision or not. I enjoyed the book, even if I felt rather underwhelmed by the treatment of the topic.

Have you read any books by Sarah Gailey? Do you have any books on the ethics of cloning that you would recommend? Let me know in the comments (above).

Find more of my reviews here.

August 2024 Reading Wrap Up

31 Aug 2024 Leave a comment

by Clare in Books Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

It feels like I just did one of these posts with my belated June and July 2024 Reading Wrap Up. But it’s already the end of August, so I’m going to look back on how my reading went for this month.

My reading plans often stray…

In August, I finished reading The Echo Wife by Sarah Gailey and then randomly picked up and quickly finished the frequently banned book, A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J. Maas (reviews coming next week). I am still working on Moon Shot: The Inside Story of America’s Race to the Moon by Alan Shepard and Deke Slayton and Drums of Autumn by Diana Gabaldon (in audiobook format). Since I’ve been catching up on the most recent two seasons of The Boys (on Amazon Prime), I also started to read the first omnibus collection of this comic (paid links).

What else am I looking forward to in September other than less humidity, sweatshirts, and fall colors? Here are some books I might pick up next month:

Of course, that’s 9 books, which I should know by now is not realistic for me. We’ll see where the month leads!

How has your reading been going for the year? What have your favorite books been so far? Are there any books that have autumn themes that you would recommend?

June & July 2024 Reading Wrap Up

20 Aug 2024 1 Comment

by Clare in Books Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

For some reason, my blog always suffers a slump in the middle of the year. I think that I become overly distracted by the variety of summer activities. My reading also suffers, with my Goodreads reading challenge showing that I’m 37 books behind schedule (not that I ever set a realistic goal, but that’s a separate issue).

For June and July, I continued to read some long books, finishing these below:

The House in the Cerulean Sea was the shortest of the group at 394 pages. The others came in at 1011 pages for Lord of Chaos (The Wheel of Time #6), 640 pages for Iron Flame (The Empyrean #2), and 43 hours and 46 minutes for the audiobook edition of Voyager (Outlander #3) (paid links). I should be putting reviews up soon.

I’ve also been working on some writing projects over the summer. I’ll have a flash fiction story appearing in a holiday issue of Abyss & Apex in December. I have a couple of short stories that I need to revise and submit to magazines. The larger project is that I’ve been outlining a 5-book epic fantasy series that’s been in my head for a long time. I have a rough outline of the first book for some of the characters, but I can’t start writing until I have done more of the planning. I’m also toying with writing a proposal for a non-fiction academic book (in case I don’t have enough to keep me busy).

Going forward with my reading plans, I just finished reading The Echo Wife by Sarah Gailey. I’m currently reading Drums of Autumn by Diana Gabaldon (Outlander book #4) as an audiobook and Moon Shot: The Inside Story of America’s Race to the Moon by Alan Shepard and Deke Slayton on my Kindle (paid links).

After that, these are some of the books that I might read next:

How have your reading plans been going for the summer? Do you have any must-read books that you would suggest? Let me know in the comments (above).

Who Helps You Write?

13 Jun 2024 Leave a comment

by Clare in Writing Tags: , , , , , , , ,

Since I’m still slowly reading a couple of long novels, I don’t have a book review ready so I thought I’d take a minute to revisit some topics on writing. For this post, I wanted to spend a moment thinking about how writing can change from lonely hours spent sitting at a keyboard or scribbling in a notebook to something that involves the help of other writers, friends, felines, or other beings.

Marcus as a kitten.

While most of my writing work is done solo, the most common helper that I have is a cat. My desk is generally off-limits to my cats, but I occasionally let one in to visit. The most curious of my clowder is Marcus, a 4-year-old who I adopted through work at the beginning of the pandemic. I might have one of the other cats visit, but they are also more nervous to be in the forbidden room.

Marcus last week.

At home, my husband also may weigh in on what I’ve written. I recently asked for his input on a short fiction piece that I’m starting to revise and I’ll show him the finished version once I get it done. We have also toyed with the idea of collaborating on a story, but haven’t seriously worked on this yet.

The other input that is helpful with my writing is to seek out critiques from other writers. I am active in two groups right now. One is exclusively online – Other Worlds Writers’ Workshop (OWWW). The acronym is close to OWW – but that is a different group. Other Worlds is a small but dedicated collection of writers who strive to give honest and helpful critiques of anything in the realm of science fiction and fantasy. We work on both short stories and novels, and the group is run through groups.io. Several members have gone on to be successful in publishing – winning awards and becoming bestselling authors.

The second group where I both submit and critique writing is the Writers of the Weird, part of the Science Fiction Association of Bergen County. This group is local to me and has specific critique sessions. We often meet on Zoom since the pandemic, but some of the sessions are in person. The SFABC offers a lot of activities and information for all fans of science fiction and fantasy, not just writers.

For other writers out there, who helps you write? Are there other groups you think I should check out? Let me know in the comments (above).

May 2024 Reading Wrap Up

05 Jun 2024 Leave a comment

by Clare in Books Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

May was not a great reading month for me. I had a lot of other things going on, as well as some travel. You’d think that I’d have more time to read while traveling, but it doesn’t always work out that way. I lose focus while reading on a plane and then at my destination, I’m often too tired to stay up reading. And while I bring my headphones, I find that I never put on my audiobook in these situations.

The month of May didn’t quite go according to plan. I only finished one book, The Fires of Heaven (Book 5 in The Wheel of Time) by Robert Jordan. I’ll have a review of this one up soon (paid links).

I read two short stories for one of my book clubs. We have pivoted to a short story format for a few months to see if we can get more people attending the discussions. These are the two stories that we recently read, and you can find them for free at these links:

I’m still listening to the audiobook of Voyager (Outlander #3) by Diana Gabaldon, and I should finish this in the next two weeks (14 hours to go). I also started to read Iron Flame by Rebecca Yarros, the second book in the Empyrean series. You can find my review of the first book, Fourth Wing, here. Since I was traveling and had my Kindle with me, I started on the 6th Wheel of Time book immediately after finishing the 5th with Lord of Chaos (paid links).

For June, here are some of the books that I’m planning to read after I finish the ones above.

Let’s see how much I can read as the summer starts!

What are you planning to read next? Let me know in the comments (above).

Musing on the Hugo, Nebula, World Fantasy, and Locus Awards

16 May 2024 2 Comments

by Clare in Books Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

With the announcement of the finalists for the Locus Awards earlier this month, I thought I’d take some time to muse on why we pick out certain stories for recognition and to also relate some information on the awards that I follow (Hugo, Nebula, World Fantasy, Locus).

I recently read some of the nominees for the Nebula Awards so that I could vote for these (my pick for short story was The Sound of Children Screaming, which can be found here). I’ve also been reading some of the short stories that won Hugos and/or Nebulas in the past couple of years (Rabbit Test, If You Find Yourself Speaking to God, Address God with the Informal You).

So what’s with all these awards? What does each one mean? Who votes for them? And why does anyone care?

First of all, I think that it is important to provide recognition for outstanding talent and achievements in any field. The nomination and awards process also highlights a set of work and helps readers find stories that they might not have been otherwise aware of. Let’s go through each of these major awards and talk about the nomination process, categories, and other information about each one.

Hugo Awards.org media download site, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=60413579

Hugo Awards

The Hugo Awards have been awarded since 1953 and are named for Hugo Gernsback, the founder of the first classic magazine of science fiction, Amazing Stories. The current categories awarded include Best Novel (>40,000 words), Best Novella (17,500 to 40,000 words), Best Novelette (7,500 to 17,500 words), Best Short Story (<7500 words), Best Series, Best Related Work, Best Graphic Story, Best Dramatic Presentation (long and short forms), Best Semiprozine, Best Fanzine, Best Professional Editor, Best Professional Artist, Best Fan Artist, Best Fan Writer, Best Fancast, and Best Game or Interactive Work.

The Hugos are one of the most prestigious awards for the science fiction and fantasy genre. A list of nominees and winners can be found here. The Hugo Awards are presided over by the World Science Fiction Society. Attending and supporting members of the World Science Fiction Convention can nominate and vote on the awards. Even if you can’t attend the convention physically, you can purchase a supporting membership for voting privileges. The physical awards are announced and presented at that year’s World Science Fiction Convention (Worldcon), which is held generally around September and moves to a different city each year (2024 = Glasgow).

The Hugo Awards have been associated with some recent controversies. The Sad Puppies ran a campaign to nominate slates of works in reaction to the recent success of BIPOC authors and overall diversification in the genre. This led to several nominated authors declining to have their works considered (when included on the Sad Puppy slate), and No Award being selected in several categories where the Sad Puppy nominees dominated. The World Science Fiction Society made changes to the nomination and voting process in 2017.

More recently, the 2023 Hugo Awards became the source of another controversy when the voting statistics from the recent Worldcon held in Chengdu, China were released (scroll down to page 20 on the linked .pdf). Authors whose work may have been considered too political for Chinese censorship laws had received nominating votes, but were declared ineligible. Other votes from Chinese citizens were thrown out because they were considered to be following a slate suggested by a magazine (despite the rules not permitting this). Going forward, the Hugo administration has vowed to improve transparency in the process. You can find more details about what happened here.

The logo is from the following website: http://www.sfwa.org/ Nebula Awards official website, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=35826707

Nebula Awards

The Nebula Awards follow a similar process, with the main difference being that those who nominate and vote for these awards must be members of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association (SFWA). This is the professional organization for authors, artists, and editors in the science fiction and fantasy genres.

Categories for the Nebula Awards currently include Best Novel, Best Novella, Best Novelette, Best Short Story, and Best Game Writing (same word count requirements as for the Hugos). Other awards that are not technically Nebula Awards are also included in the Nebula process. These recently have included the Andre Norton Award for Outstanding Young Adult Science Fiction of Fantasy Book, the Ray Bradbury Award for Outstanding Dramatic Presentation, the Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master Award (for lifetime achievement), Author Emeritus (awarded posthumously for lifetime achievement), the Kevin O’Donnell Award for service to SFWA, and the Kate Wilhelm Solstice Award for significant impact on speculative fiction.

The Nebula Awards go through a similar round of nominations followed by voting, with the announcement and presentation of the winners at the SFWA Nebula Conference. This is usually in the spring and is held in the United States (2024 = Pasadena, California).

World Fantasy Awards

By Statuette design: Vincent Villafranca – Original publication: http://www.arctera.com/wfa/wfadmin-award-announcement.htmImmediate source: http://www.arctera.com/wfa/wfadmin-award-announcement.htm, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=53804878

The World Fantasy Awards are a favorite of mine, I think because I lean more toward fantasy in my reading overall. These are administered by the World Fantasy Convention, which occurs annually in a different location around the world (2024 = Niagara Falls, New York). While the World Science Fiction Convention is a larger event with plenty for fans of the genre, the World Fantasy Convention is a professional event for authors, artists, editors, agents, and publishers. It can be a great place to meet people in the field for an upcoming author.

The World Fantasy Award nominees are partly selected by the attendees of the World Fantasy Convention, but also by a panel of judges who are professionals in the field. The categories for awards are Best Novel (>40,000 words), Best Novella (10,000 to 40,000 words), Best Short Fiction (<10,000 words), Best Collection (single author), Best Anthology (multiple authors), Best Artist, Special Award–Professional, Special Award–Non-Professional, Convention Award, and Life Achievement Award.

Controversy about the physical award arose in recent years. It had formerly been a bust of H.P. Lovecraft who has been criticized for his outspoken racism. The new award was changed to the one pictured in 2016.

Locus Awards

Designed by Francesca Myman, with art by Shaun Tan and presented by Locus Magazine. Source: Locus. – Original publication: Locus Magazine Immediate source: https://locusmag.com/2020/06/locus-awards-winners-2020/, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=68857244

The Locus Awards are put together by Locus Magazine, which is a monthly trade publication for the science fiction and fantasy genre. The awards are open for nomination by the public and the votes of subscribers to the magazine count twice. You can find the recent top 10 nominees here.

Categories for the Locus Awards include Best Science Fiction Novel, Best Fantasy Novel, Best Horror Novel, Best Young Adult Novel, Best First Novel, Best Novella, Best Novelette, Best Short Story, Best Anthology, Best Collection, Best Magazine, Best Publisher, Best Editor, Best Artist, Best Non-Fiction, and Best Illustrated and Art Book.

The winners are announced during an awards presentation that is associated with a weekend of readings and panels held in Oakland, California this year.

This has turned out to be a longer post than I thought it would be, but I hope it was helpful to explain some of the honors awarded in the science fiction and fantasy genres.

Have you voted for any of the awards? Which books have you read that won one of these awards? Let me know in the comments (above).

April 2024 Reading Wrap Up

01 May 2024 Leave a comment

by Clare in Books, Reviews Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

I thought that I was over my reading slump from March, but then I only managed to read 3 more books in April. However, for this month I felt like I made more steady progress. When I looked at some of the details, it turns out that I read 2,409 pages for the month, making this my second highest page count per month so far in 2024!

These are the books that I finished in April:

I reviewed The Skull Throne here and Dragonfly in Amber here. I only finished reading The Core, the final book in Peter V. Brett’s Demon Cycle yesterday, but I should have a review up later this week (paid links).

I also read some of the shorter works nominated for the Nebula Awards, so that took more time. However, I’m glad that I did delve back into reading some short fiction, and I have more of that planned in the upcoming months.

I am part of the way into the third book in the Outlander series, Voyager, and I also started book 5 of The Wheel of Time, The Fires of Heaven (paid links).

For the upcoming month of May, I’m hoping to finish a couple of books that I started, but that were larger projects than I originally envisioned. These would be The Anatomy of Story and the Utopia Science Fiction Magazine Five Year Anthology. I need to find a day where I have few distractions so that I can focus more on these kinds of books.

What else is ahead in May? I’ve bumped a couple of the books I had planned for April into this next month, but pushed others back further. I’m still planning to read the 5th book in the Dune series, Heretics of Dune. I’m continuing with several series with The Sandman: Book 3 by Neil Gaiman, Iron Flame by Rebecca Yarros, and Jud by Michael Breen (paid links).

I also picked up a new book by one of my recent favorite authors – The Familiar by Leigh Bardugo. Then I have Deep Freeze by Michael C. Grumley planned for a book club (paid links).

How is your reading going for the year? What book are you most excited to read next? Let me know in the comments (above).

Book Review – Elder Race

19 Apr 2024 Leave a comment

by Clare in Books, Reviews Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

Elder Race is a short novel (or novella) and was the first fiction by Adrian Tchaikovsky that I have read (paid link). It was nominated for the 2022 Hugo Award for Best Novella. Read on below to see what I thought.

I read the e-book edition.

Here is the blurb:

In Adrian Tchaikovsky’s Elder Race, a junior anthropologist on a distant planet must help the locals he has sworn to study to save a planet from an unbeatable foe.

Lynesse is the lowly Fourth Daughter of the queen, and always getting in the way.

But a demon is terrorizing the land, and now she’s an adult (albeit barely) with responsibilities (she tells herself). Although she still gets in the way, she understands that the only way to save her people is to invoke the pact between her family and the Elder sorcerer who has inhabited the local tower for as long as her people have lived here (though none in living memory has approached it).

But Elder Nyr isn’t a sorcerer, and he is forbidden to help, and his knowledge of science tells him the threat cannot possibly be a demon…

This story is told through alternating perspectives, switching between Nyr, a depressed anthropologist, and Lynesse, a princess looking to prove herself. It is the tale of a lost colony of Earth, and Nyr’s failed mission to study the people there. At the core of the story is the juxtaposition between Nyr’s science fictional view of the world and Lynesse’s fantastical view of technology that she has no way to understand. The story’s genre depends on which perspective we take.

In the end, it is a work of science fiction, but one that encompasses the difficulty in determining genre in some stories. My favorite example of this is Anne McCaffrey’s Dragonriders of Pern series, in which McCaffrey always presented the stories as science fiction (paid link). However, in my own reading of those books, they always felt like fantasy, since the specifics of the technology don’t matter until the books at the end of the timeline.

In Elder Race, another aspect that surprised me was how the story depicted Nyr’s mental health challenges. He uses his technology to suppress the effects of depression for a time, but he also knows that this is not a solution for his condition. We see a lot of heroes that either ignore their trauma and do what needs to be done or experience intense emotion without suffering more specifically. In this story, Nyr can only put the effects off for so long, and this adds a unique factor to this tale.

I rated this book as one of my top reads for 2023 and put another series by this author on my to-be-read list. Have you read anything by Adrian Tchaikovsky? Let me know in the comments (above).

Find more of my reviews here.

Book Review – How High We Go In the Dark

17 Apr 2024 Leave a comment

by Clare in Books, Reviews Tags: , , , , , , ,

I don’t remember where I came across this book, but it ended up being a selection for one of my book clubs last year. How High We Go in the Dark by Sequoia Nagamatsu is a novel told through interconnected short stories (paid link). Read on below to see what I thought.

I read this as an e-book.

Here is the blurb:

A debut that follows a cast of intricately linked characters over hundreds of years as humanity struggles to rebuild itself in the aftermath of a climate plague.

Beginning in 2030, a grieving archeologist arrives in the Arctic Circle to continue the work of his recently deceased daughter at the Batagaika crater, where researchers are studying long-buried secrets now revealed in melting permafrost, including the perfectly preserved remains of a girl who appears to have died of an ancient virus.

Once unleashed, the Arctic Plague will reshape life on earth for generations to come, quickly traversing the globe, forcing humanity to devise a myriad of moving and inventive ways to embrace possibility in the face of tragedy. In a theme park designed for terminally ill children, a cynical employee falls in love with a mother desperate to hold on to her infected son. A heartbroken scientist searching for a cure finds a second chance at fatherhood when one of his test subjects—a pig—develops the capacity for human speech. A widowed painter and her teenaged granddaughter embark on a cosmic quest to locate a new home planet.

From funerary skyscrapers to hotels for the dead to interstellar starships, Sequoia Nagamatsu takes readers on a journey spanning continents, centuries, and even celestial bodies to tell a story about the resiliency of the human spirit, our infinite capacity to dream, and the connective threads that tie us all together in the universe.

This book drew fairly polarized responses from the book club. I did enjoy it, but I could see how it is not for everyone. This book starts out at the beginning of a pandemic and ultimately is about how we deal with death.

Being someone who deals with life and death situations and humane euthanasia every day as a veterinarian, I found that the situations in this book took a thoughtful look at death and grief, but in ways that went beyond our current cultural norms. My favorite example of this is an amusement park for terminally ill children. Their parents bring them to the park to enjoy all the thrills and excitement, and then for the last ride of the day, they embark on a rollercoaster that breaks their necks to end their suffering. The parents know the purpose of the park, but the children don’t.

The disease that results from the pandemic was also fascinating to me. It caused the organs of those afflicted with it to slowly change to a different organ. At one point it only affected children, then later on it spreads to everyone. This book isn’t about the science behind the virus or the epidemiology of the pandemic, but rather follows how society changes as a result.

This is also a science fiction tale that takes some odd tangents into a possible afterlife and interstellar travel, although those aren’t exactly the main plot. Overall, I thought that How High We Go in the Dark brought a unique perspective to how we think about preparations for and rituals about the end of life.

Have you read any of Sequoia Nagamatsu’s short stories? Let me know in the comments (above).

Find more of my reviews here.

Book Review – Upgrade

13 Apr 2024 Leave a comment

by Clare in Books, Reviews Tags: , , , , , , , ,

I read Upgrade by Blake Crouch sometime last year. This is the second book by the author that I’ve read, with the first being another stand-alone novel, Dark Matter (paid links). You can find my review of that book here.

I read this book in e-book format.

Here is the blurb:

At first, Logan Ramsay isn’t sure if anything’s different. He just feels a little . . . sharper. Better able to concentrate. Better at multitasking. Reading a bit faster, memorizing better, needing less sleep.

But before long, he can’t deny it: Something’s happening to his brain. To his body. He’s starting to see the world, and those around him—even those he loves most—in whole new ways.

The truth is, Logan’s genome has been hacked. And there’s a reason he’s been targeted for this upgrade. A reason that goes back decades to the darkest part of his past, and a horrific family legacy.

Worse still, what’s happening to him is just the first step in a much larger plan, one that will inflict the same changes on humanity at large—at a terrifying cost.

Because of his new abilities, Logan’s the one person in the world capable of stopping what’s been set in motion. But to have a chance at winning this war, he’ll have to become something other than himself. Maybe even something other than human.

And even as he’s fighting, he can’t help wondering: what if humanity’s only hope for a future really does lie in engineering our own evolution?

Intimate in scale yet epic in scope, Upgrade is an intricately plotted, lightning-fast tale that charts one man’s thrilling transformation, even as it asks us to ponder the limits of our humanity—and our boundless potential.

This book looked at the consequences of rapid advancement in genetic modification and created a fast-paced story with plenty of action. At the same time, Logan had to examine his own humanity and come to terms with his family’s dark past. It took me some time to get invested in the story, but once I pushed through the first few chapters, I couldn’t put it down.

The plot almost moved too fast at times, leaving me less time to think about the implications of the technology depicted in this story. But it was still a rush to read and I’m going to look out for more books by this author. This one was nominated for a Goodreads Choice Award in 2022.

Have you read any science fiction that looked at the consequences of genetic engineering? Let me know in the comments (above).

Find more of my reviews here.

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