Dan
Kim Stanley Robinson has stealthily become one of our leading SF writers over the past few decades, and this latest book explores the idea of a moon colonised by the Chinese. There's lots of interesting stuff here, like economic warfare between the US and China, an emerging alternative currency, lunar espionage, power struggles within the Chinese political elite and a popular uprising. Most of it happens in the background of this book though, as KSR keeps tightly focused on a few core characters (one of whom is definitely a descendant of Freds Fredericks from Escape From Kathmandu in my personal headcanon). It's solid stuff and an enjoyable read but it does feel like minor Robinson, a break between more substantial projects. Look at that list of stuff in my second sentence and you could easily imagine Neal Stephenson churning out a thousand pages on the same ideas, whereas KSR is happy to leave it underdeveloped in the background.
Ian MacDonald's Luna series is shaping up to be the definitive moon colonization story of our times, and this isn't in that league. Which isn't to say it's rubbish, just a bit...slight.
For the first half of this book I was convinced I was reading a nailed on five star hit. Unfortunately the second half drifted terribly. It's smart and well thought through, but in the end relies too much on telling rather than showing. There's also a marked lack of drama. Incidents in the novel proceed serenely one after another, with no sense of jeopardy or any feeling that the outcome could go another way. Almost a great book, but only almost.
Simon Stelfox is back! Back! BACK!
The former A&R man is now hugely rich thanks to his involvement with a TV show that is in no way modelled on America's Got Talent, uh huh, no sirree. One of his former acquaintances in the music business needs help. One of his musical superstars, a tremendous singer and dancer of uncertain skin tone, is being blackmailed over his paedophilia, on the eve of a series of prestigious comeback shows. I cannot think who this might be based on. Stelfox takes on the case, looking as always to turn it to his best advantage, and we are off on a rollercoaster of drugs, money, hitmen, conspiracy theories, white trash, fake news, luxury parties and Donald Trump. It's a riproaring ride, fast paced and outrageous / outraged.
This is not a restrained book. It is funny, scabrous, cynical and Michael Jackson's lawyers may well take an interest. Fans of Kill Your Friends will lap it up.
A young hero emerging into adulthood, a band of plucky adventurers uniting against an oppressive Empire, a talismanic weapon, an enormous page count....Chris Wooding's latest is a throwback to the classic fantasy I devoured in the 80s, your Belgariads and your Riftwars. But that's not to say it's deaf to the changes in the genre since then. There's an element of grimdark fierceness and a willingness to embrace shades of grey rather than a straightahead good/evil divide, but at its core this is good old fashioned epic fantasy. It's not difficult to spot the influences and antecedents (one lengthy scene is almost a rewrite of Moria), but Wooding makes it work with energy and brio, and his story is engaging and engrossing. It's a big book that doesn't feel like a big book, and it makes for great comfort reading. It's not challenging or groundbreaking, but it is a lot of fun.
(I am docking it a star for being too eager to use the woman as nagging shrew trope, mind you. We can do better than that these days)
I was attracted to this by the Chris Brookymre connection. It's very different from those novels (there's a lot less swearing, for a start), but it's still a good read. It's a very atmospheric book. The historical setting is well evoked, and it switches easily between the class divisions rampant in society at this time. The medical element of the story comes across as very authentic (not that surprising seeing as the other author, Marisa Haetzman, has a Masters in the history of medicine), and some of the descriptions of nineteenth century labour and associated problems are genuinely horrific. The actual crime element is maybe backgrounded a little too much and wrapped up a tad too easily, but it's a price I'm willing to pay for the atmosphere and characterisation. More volumes are promised and the central three characters could become a great series team.
As a memoir this is at best elusive - I didn't come away feeling I knew anything substantial about the author that I didn't going in - and at worst disingenuous, as when she talks about how great it was to play with Janet Weiss again when S-K reformed, without mentioning that she and Janet had recorded and toured in another band together during the S-K hiatus. A missed opportunity.
This second volume in the Aftermath series is self contained, although I'd recommend reading Dave Hutchison's first volume to help with the background.
I mentioned the influence of Richard Cowper in my review of the first one, specifically the Corlay books, and that echo is even stronger in this volume with its tale of a young boy who is believed to possess some mystical significance. There is a remarkable similarity of tone between the two volumes, and they complement each other well. One annoyance is that, unless I'm missing something, one plot strand seems to disappear. It may be something that's picked up in future books, but it seemed a little abrupt here.
I'm a sucker for English catastrophes (I blame it on being frightened by a John Wyndham book in my pram), so I am easy pickings for these books, but I like them anyway. Here's to the next volume.
over to my ten year old daughter for this one....
I loved Beauty and Bernice SOOOOOO much! The book is about a girl called Bernice who loves skateboarding. Her life is going great until annoying pink ‘princess' Odelia moves in across the road. At first, Bernice pays no attention to her - she grew out of princesses years ago. But there's more to Odelia than meets the eye.....
I loved this book because I, like Bernice, love skateboarding. I found this book hilarious in some parts, but moving and gripping in others. I would recommend this book to anyone who loves skateboarding, princesses and mysteries that leave you on the edge of your seat. I rate this book a definite five stars.
Robert Jackson Bennett has quietly built up a reputation as one of the best genre authors currently working. The City Of Stairs books were excellent and imaginative takes on the fantasy genre, while previous works like The Troupe and American Elsewhere were some of the strongest dark fantasy of recent years. This new novel is the opening in a new series, and at first glance appears to be set in his most traditional milieu yet, analgous to post-Renaissance Western Europe society creeping towards industrialisation. It's the cause of that industrialisation that is at the core of the novel, and I'm happy to report that it's a cracking idea, one of the best magic systems I've seen in a long time. I say magic, but it's closer to science, taking ideas from coding and quantum entanglement and refracting them through the prism of a pre-scientific society. The story around them is perhaps Bennett's most straightforward, and veers close to YA at times, with the lead character being a young girl who discovers her own amazing powers. It doesn't have the complexity of the Bulikov books, but there is enough charm and power to the writing, let alone originality of approach, to overcome this potentially hackneyed material, and we end up with probably one of the fantasy novels of the year. Can't wait for the next one.
It is good to see Jasper Fforde back after a break. This quirky dystopia is full of his trademark silliness and invention, and on a sentence and paragraph level it sparkles with wit and sharp ideas. Unfortunately it doesn't hold together so well as a sustained novel. The plot is somewhat sketchy, and Fforde tries to obfuscate this by having it swing and reverse and change directions every fifty pages or so, but it just ends up as a bit of a confusing and insubstantial mess. The pleasure of spending time in his world just about outweighs this, but I wouldn't recommend this as the first Fforde you should read.
I enjoyed this one a lot. It's set in southern England several generations after an apocalypse bought about by an asteroid strike. The picture of a society slowly putting itself back together with quasi-medieval subsistence farming communities strongly reminded me of Richard Cowper's excellent Corlay books. But it's not all some bucolic idyll. A chance meeting and brief scuffle have terrible consequences, as a whole region is dragged into conflict between two families. The resulting downward spiral into violence is expertly plotted. Nobody wants it, but nobody is able to stop it.
Throw a spy, an emerging serial killer and a would be despot into the mix, and it's clear it's not going to end well.
It's all very good fun, exciting, and somehow very English - it put me in mind of a John Wyndham novel, although it is substantially less cosy than his middle class catastrophes.. There are further books to come in this setting, written by other authors, and this has more than whetted my appetite for them. Also, a special appreciation for making my hometown of Plymouth the centre of rebuilding civilisation, although I am not convinced janners are the best candidates for that job....we can but hope Cap'n Jaspers and Ivor Dewdney's survived the apocalypse.
Probably 4.5, really. I liked Blackwing, but with some reservations, so I'm happy to report that this is a much better book than the first in the series. The characters are better, more roundly drawn than the hard and nasty grimdark cliches the first book fell into, and the crazy bad trip psychedelic wasteland of the Misery, way underused last time around, is explored a lot more. The book still struggles a little to escape the grimdark cliches, but there is more inventive and original stuff here. I was a little ho-hum after Blackwing, but having read this one, I'm definitely on board for the third in the series (moreso because it's not immediately apparent where the story goes next - Galharrow vs Crowfoot is my bet for the climax....).
Blurb ↓
In front of her followers, Daphne is a hilarious, on-the-rise vlog star. But at school Daphne is the ever-skeptical Annabelle Louis, seventh-grade super geek and perennial new kid. To cope with her mom's upcoming military assignment in Afghanistan and her start at a brand new middle school, Annabelle's parents send her to a therapist. Dr. Varma insists Annabelle try stepping out of her comfort zone, hoping it will give her the confidence to make friends, which she'll definitely need once Mom is gone. Luckily there is one part of the assignment Annabelle DOES enjoy–her vlog, Daphne Doesn't, in which she appears undercover and gives hilarious takes on activities she thinks are a waste of time. She is great at entertaining her online fans, yet her classmates don't know she exists. Can Annabelle keep up the double life forever?
By my daughter, Age 10 ↓
I really liked this book because of its gripping cliffhangers, exciting writing style that kept you on your toes and the hilarious jokes and puns slipped in. This book is one of my favourites because one day I would love to be an internet vlogging sensation just like Annabelle/Daphne. I felt so sorry for Annabelle when she had to move away from her BFF and start at an American middle school, where she knew no-one. I think I would recommend this to anybody who wants to be a vlogger (i.e. me), people who like drama and people who like gripping secrets. The end is heartwarming and I wouldn't recommend the book to anyone who doesn't like fun!
Mattie is an ex-suffragette, one who is looking for new battles to fight. She is a captivating creation, a force of nature but one perilously close to being spent. This is the story of how she finds a new purpose, and everything that falls out from that. It's funny and engaging, pointed and angry. A very good read (and if you want more of Mattie, you can find her a decade or so later in Lissa Evans's previous book, Crooked Heart)
There's a lot to like in this debut novel. It captures some of the caper style of Harry Harrison's Stainless Steel Rat books, as well as the deep space gothic of Alastair Reynolds' Revenger, which are all Good Things round here. It starts with a simple con job, and soon escalates to inter species space conflict and the threat of planetary annihilation. It's a fun space romp to begin with, with gradually increasing amounts of grimdark fantasy style violence before ending with a genuinely exciting atmospheric climax. The characterisation is serviceable, and I did find myself rooting for the super-resourceful Orry, while the worldbuilding is interesting, with plenty of tantalising background details dropped in.
Somehow though, it just didn't quite click for me. Ultimately, it's the fast pace which is the book's undoing. It's a big book, and it is so relentlessly slam-bang that it just left me feeling exhausted. Orry spins from one crisis to the next with barely a moment to draw breath. At half the length I would have loved it, or maybe even longer if the author had taken advantage of the extra space to build in some downtime, but as it stands it's a bit too wearing. I'll read the next one, but I'll probably have to have a nice sit down afterwards.
Review courtesy of my ten year old....
HAHAHA!! What a wonderful book by a wonderful author! I loved Mabel Jones so I was excited about this. From the first page, this awesome book had me enthralled by the mysterious goings-on. The intriguing storyline didn't go the way I expected - it had an unexpected plot twist! This book has it all, including so-awful-they're-funny puns, cryptic characters and mysteries that annoyed me so much I had to keep reading to find out the ending! I can't wait for the next book! 😄📚
Over to my ten year old for her review...
Oh, what a marvellously breathtaking book to be acting as the sequel to one of my favourite books. I love how the author brings Silke to life by describing her past as though it was yesterday. It has unexpected plot twists, including one when I felt like pulling my hair out and screaming, “WHY DID I NOT THINK OF THAT??!!”
It is a great book and I feel very lucky to have an advanced copy. I think that everyone in the world ought to have this book! ❤️📚😻