Ryan
Six loosely-intertwined stories, arranged like a Matryoshka doll, and spanning a period of centuries. The gimmick (which Mitchell has one of his characters call out as gimmicky!) is admittedly clever, but the complete lack of interesting, relatable characters or engaging plot starts to drag after the first few chapters.
This wasn't what I was expecting, in that the titular Fionn is barely in it - he's born, but as a newborn he plays a very small role in the defence of Rath Bladma.
What it was, though, was a simple, gritty story with small amounts of the fantastic and an engaging tale about a group of unlikely warriors as they attempt to fight off a band of murderous warriors.
O'Sullivan is a very engaging author - the stakes in this story would otherwise be small, but he makes them large through interesting characters and the looming legend of the baby born among them.
Historical fiction at its finest (assuming, of course, that it's fair to call the events of 60 years ago “history”). Chabon mines the real-life origins of comic books to craft a story of two young men trying to rise up out of the Bronx and to leave a mark on the world around them. If you're familiar with the biographies of Siegel and Shuster, Simon and Kirby, Will Eisner, or Stan Lee, a lot of the events of this book will feel familiar, but Chabon mixes them with enough artistry and flourish that they take on a life of their own, and the ways in which the creators' lives are reflected in the heroes they create give a gravitas to their four-colour creations that wouldn't be seen in actual comic heroes for decades after the time this is set.
This was an incredibly mixed bag, which is probably not helped by the inconsistency in the creative teams throughout the book. There's an interesting core idea here of an alien warrior sent to be an infiltrator and sabateur, who ends up wanting to be a superhero - but it's so trapped in Silver Age tropes about what a superhero book ought to be that it never realizes its potential.
This was a nice, short little read that takes several classic elements of Celtic folklore and presents them in a more modern context. It was a highly enjoyable read, and O'Sullivan adds explanations of the traditional legends associated with each story, which makes it a highly accessible one as well.
Loved loved loved this one, even more than I did the first. It's quite different tonally from the first - I think the most apt comparison would be to think about the changes in the first two movies of the Alien film series. Despite those differences, it still keeps the intriguing storyline of the protomolecule, the interplanetary politics get deeper and more interesting, and the newly introduced characters are fun and exciting.
What I thought was interesting about this, as well, was that the point of view characters are all connected by recent experiences of trauma, and their attempts to deal with and overcome that trauma. Reactions to post-traumatic stress is a topic that rarely gets mentioned in the sci-fi realm, especially when looking at episodic/series-based fiction, and it was nice to read a novel that took a realistic and humanistic approach towards it.
This was a fascinating read. I had a nebulous understanding of Mann's basic thesis (that pre-European contact American societies were larger and more complex than are usually taught) but seeing it all laid out in a systematic fashion was greatly appreciated. This is especially true for situations were Mann makes direct comparisons between aboriginal cultures and where European cultures were developmentally at the same time; for someone with a Eurocentric education it helped me put everything in context.
This was a fitting end to the series, and I'm sad to see it go. The ending was a bit telegraphed from the description of the very first book (if you're telling a story about dragons during the Napoleonic War, eventually the war has to end, no?), but Ms. Novik still managed to fill it with enough emotion and character that readers would be left surprised.
Overall, this series was a delight. Plenty of big widescreen-type action sequences, married with small, personal character moments. I'm so glad I read it.
This absolutely hit the spot. The Miller storyline was pulpy in the way any classic detective story should be, and the Holden plot line told a story that was simultaneously epic and deeply personal, claustrophobic and expansive. I loved the characters and the world that James Corey built here, and can't wait to read the rest of the series.
The first two-thirds of this book are absolutely fantastic - it's a character-driven heist story with a group of witty, likable characters that truly are gentlemen as much as they are bastards. The book takes a sharp turn after that, though - enough of one that I would classify the rest as a completely different genre - and it never quite regains the energy it had in the first part. Overall, though, it provides a nice story set in a fantasy world that manages to avoid the trappings of a “fantasy novel”.
This was brilliantly cool on multiple different levels:
1) The voice. Stross wrote the novel in second-person, and I think it's the only time I've read a second-person novel. It's much more naturalistic and easy to read than your English lit teachers told you it would be.
2) The plot. Bank robberies that happen in the middle of an MMORPG are a fascinating cyberpunk twist on a classic genre and the blending of real-world political implications with game dynamics makes for a really cool story.
3) On a personal level, I was reading this in the immediate post-Brexit aftermath, so the idea of Scotland being independent from England and being in the EU in 2018 was no longer necessarily anachronistic :o) (Seriously, though: internet crime is by nature international, and the difficulty in managing that while working within a nation-state paradigm made for a really interesting plot element)
This reimagining* of Sherlock Holmes as a modern YA novel with kids at a boarding school was a fun enough read. If you're someone who's not well-versed in the Sherlock canon you might not get as much enjoyment out of it, as there are plenty of allusions and references to Doyle's original work. If you are a Holmes fan it does a great job of scratching that Holmes itch.
*Less a reboot and more a “descendants of the original characters” thing.
This was full of fun moments, and the outright joy with which it approached literature, and literary culture, was absolutely delightful. Those moments, however, didn't always feel like they connected into a fully-developed world. I was reminded a bit of those attempts to take Saturday Night Live characters and spin them off into movies that were ultimately unsatisfactory (although the humour of The Eyre Affair is decidedly more Pythonesque than SNL).
Overall I'd say it's worth a read.
Politics are something that are usually given short shrift in a lot of science fiction, so I really enjoyed that this book focused on them. The plot pretty straightforward, so enjoyment of this novel would hinge on how much you enjoy Lorenzo, a stuffy, our-of-work actor who's suddenly offered the role of a lifetime when the Prime Minister of Earth is kidnapped.
This was really interesting. I'm not someone who knows a whole lot about hip-hop beyond the basics, so seeing how Parker explains the interplay between music, gang violence, and inner-city life was pretty interesting. It was also interesting as a memoir for him as a member of the black community working for NYPD, and some of the challenges he faced while in that role. His writing voice is bombastic and at times braggadocious, but I found it fit the subject material well.
This was a fairly fun read, with the caveat that Hiassen novels tend to be something of the same read- crooked Florida politicians with cockamamie schemes, idiot comic relief crooks, the young women both groups have done wrong, and working-class men willing to fight the good fight. It's a fun mix, though, as always, and perfectly enjoyable if you pace them out, like pina coladas drunk on a beach on a hot, humid day.
This was heartbreaking. Bujold (understandably) side-stepped Aral's death in the last novel, but here, with the focus on Cordelia, it's unavoidable, but here it, and Cordelia's processing of it, take centre stage. Cordelia and Jole's attempts to rebuild their lives after his death is noble, and challenging, and allows the strength of their characters to be revealed. Some of the revelations, including those that require us to revisit old character relationships, might be a bit shocking to some readers, but they do fit with what our previous understanding of these characters were.
With its smaller scope and the fact that it eschews the action/adventure plotlines Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen works well on its own as a meditation on loss, mourning, and self-discovery, while also fitting perfectly in with the rest of the series in a manner that feels like an epilogue as much as a next chapter.
With Driven, Kelley Armstrong returns to her Women of the Otherworld series for the first time in four years. This entry in the series focuses on Elena, adjusting to her roles both of mother and of Alpha to a werewolf Pack, as she leads an investigation into a serial murderer that's started to attack other lycanthropes. The Elena we see here is a far cry from the reluctant werewolf that Elena was when the series started, and it was really enjoyable to see her slide into these roles and perform them in a way that readers wouldn't have expected from previous characters that have held that role.
Another family-related element of the story that was really striking was the interaction between Clay and Malcolm, the man who in many ways was a father to him. Malcolm's shadow has hung over Clay since the series began, and seeing him come to terms with that made for a very interesting evolution of his character.
Beyond the family elements, the rest of the main plot was a little underwhelming. The Cain clan, the main victims of the killer, have appeared before in the series, but have always been a bit forgettable as antagonists. Ideally, they could have been – they're organized in such a way that they almost form a dark mirror to the Pack, but none of the individuals in the family stand out as being as interesting as the Pack they seem to try to emulate. Because of this, it was a little hard to have regard for them as victims, which in turn made it difficult to see the killer as an actual threat to the Pack members.
Despite this, for fans of Armstrong's long-running Women of the Otherworld series, this book will be an absolute delight – it provides for a chance to check in with their favourite wolf pack, and provides a good luck at how much the Pack has evolved since Bitten was released in 2004. If you're new to the Otherworld book series (even if you've come to the characters through the Bitten TV show), you might be better served by jumping in at an earlier point – a new reader would be able to understand the plot of Driven well enough, but a lot of the interactions between Malcolm, Clay, and Elena would lack a lot of the emotional impact that it deserves. Then, once you have, come back for this one, because you'll love it.
(review originally published at http://northerntomorrows.wordpress.com. Thanks to Subterranean Press for making a copy of this book available for review)
