Jessica

From Unseen Fire is the first instalment of a series set in an alt-history version of Ancient Rome. Set in the first century BCE, it shows us a version of Rome where magic exists, but the city is called “Aven” for some reason I'm not clear on. Nonetheless, the setting is interesting, including the magic system in place – I liked the way that other peoples (like the Lusetanians in Iberia) have their own magical systems with entirely different foundations from the one the Aventans have.

The book is definitely on the slower side. There are a lot of different minor characters and a lot of world-building that it takes its time to establish before the action finally ramps up in the last 100 pages or so. There's nothing wrong with that per se, but for my tastes this book unfolded more slowly than I'd like.

There are two major political plotlines that the book covers. Firstly, there are the upcoming elections in Aven, where the contest primarily comes down to charismatic “man of the people” Sempronius Tarren, and a bunch of unpleasant, conservative old fogeys. Then there is a war developing in Iberia, where a local chieftain, Ekialde, is prepared to resort to dark magic in his determination to get the Aventans out. On top of that, you also have a number of character-driven storylines: Latona Vitellia is probably the book's most central character, with access to extremely strong magic in the elements of Fire and Spirit, but forbidden (by her father) to demonstrate her power and stuck in a loveless marriage to some boring sod. When she meets Sempronius, there's an instant spark of attraction and he begins encouraging her not to allow herself to be clamped down.

When the storylines were in motion, I felt really engaged by this book. It did feel, though, like there was a lot of downtime between significant events. I also think some of the characters were more interesting than others. A lot of the antagonists, in particular, didn't seem to have anything much going for them which might make you enjoy the pages they were on. I did enjoy reading about Sempronius (well, mostly the romance between him and Latona), but I do guiltily have to agree with another review which pointed out there wasn't much depth to him either... (and while I'm at it, I might add that I agree with a ton of what's in that review, even though I think I enjoyed the book more overall than that reviewer did.)

Three stars because I did enjoy this book, particularly the way it came together at the end, even though there were some slower times where I was tempted to rate it two. The sequel doesn't seem to be coming out any time in the near future, but it could be an improvement on this book, if it can trust that we know the world-building by now and deserve to be thrown a bit more action.

Storm at Dawn is the follow-up to the hard sci-fi thriller, [b:We Are Mars 39948264 We Are Mars (The Rubicon Saga #1) Cheryl Lawson https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1525719179l/39948264.SY75.jpg 61849275], that I read and really enjoyed earlier this year. Here, the people of the run-down Martian settlement, Rubicon, have to face off against further efforts to shut down and dismantle their home. Joining them are a fair few characters from Earth, who've been catapaulted in to play various roles in the conflict, but have to decide for themselves which side they want to stand on.The book is slower-paced than its predecessor, but still an interesting read. It has a pretty large cast of characters but it's one of the rare indie books that does it well: the characters are introduced progressively and all have clear, distinct roles in the story. The characters' various interpersonal relationships (and conflicts) provide for a fair bit of depth in the storyline. I do think some of it is written a little clumsily (like in the first book, there's a lot of “telling” us what different characters are like and how they feel), but the rest of the setting and story is interesting enough that this is easily overlooked. Like the first book, it ends on something of a cliffhanger as one threat is eliminated only for a new and more formidable one to emerge.This is probably a 3½ star book for me, and since Goodreads doesn't allow half-stars I've rounded up. I find it really stimulating to read this kind of tale about the challenges humanity will realistically face if we try to settle other worlds. There's no faster-than-light travel or Earth-like temperate climates here, just hardship and life-sustaining engineering that's barely holding together and the disinterest of an Earth that's got bored of its Martian experiment. And yet, at the same time, Cheryl Lawson does a wonderful job conveying the passion and general affection the residents of Rubicon have for their planet – the way they look out onto the hostile landscape and see beauty and “home”, and are so resolved not to let corrupt politicians on Earth rip that away from them. Looking forward to the next instalment!

This sequel to [b:Ack-Ack Macaque 13547332 Ack-Ack Macaque (Ack-Ack Macaque, #1) Gareth L. Powell https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1344396179l/13547332.SY75.jpg 19128070] was more or less exactly what I needed right now: a short, fun, easy read that made a nice break from the more difficult books I've been reading lately. It picks up where Ack-Ack Macaque left off, with Victoria Valois captaining the ship her uncle left her, Ack-Ack Macaque working for her but at a loose end, and Victoria's dead husband Paul continuing his life-after-life, this time as a computer simulation who can be projected as a hologram.The plot this time involves parallel universes and a creepy cult called the Gestalt, whose goal is to assimilate everyone in every parallel universe into the same hive mind. Again, it's very reminiscent of Doctor Who, but Powell tamps down the ridiculousness just enough this time to emerge with a more believable, and thus more engaging, book. To be clear, a book with a grizzled and foul-mouthed warplane-flying talking monkey still does require a fair amount of suspension of disbelief, but at least the Prince of Wales was not a major character this time, and the villains' motivations seemed more in the realm of what cult leaders really would do if they had access to the same technology.On the surface I've given this book the same three stars as I gave Ack-Ack Macaque, but I feel like this time I'm rounding down, while with that one I rounded up. These are not the most deeply moving books I've ever read, but at least I had fun with this one.

For me, the best thing about reading this book has been learning about a part of the world and a period of history that I didn't know that much about – Jeju Island, under the Japanese occupation and then the brutal, bloodthirsty dictatorship that emerged in South Korea after WW2. Fairly isolated from the mainland, Jeju people developed a distinct culture, more egalitarian and “matrifocal”, and it was interesting to read all about this.The plot itself follows one woman, Young-sook, from girlhood right through to old age. As a girl, her best friend is a girl named Mi-ja, reviled by much of the village for being the daughter of a Japanese collaborator (although he's now dead), but Young-sook and her mother don't believe Mi-ja can be defined purely by her parentage. The girls' friendship becomes strained after their arranged marriages – while Young-sook's husband, a local schoolteacher, is kind and noble-hearted, Mi-ja is saddled with a cruel, abusive man who is another Japanese collaborator (and swiftly moves to serve the right-wing dictatorship once the Japanese are expelled). After a particularly gut-wrenching moment during the Jeju Uprising, their friendship is severed forever, although Mi-ja's family later return to Jeju to try to make peace with Young-sook, as told over a series of flash-forwards over the book.I did like this book, but I don't know... perhaps it wasn't the kind of book I should have been reading right now. Lately I've been shocked by the traditionalist, sexist attitudes some of my partner's close relatives have turned out to harbour, and so the parts of this book that described sexist traditions on Jeju Island were painful reminders of that (even though Jeju women rebelled against them in many ways). In particular the part towards the end of the book where Young-sook throws a temper tantrum over her daughter's impending wedding reminded me very specifically of my would-be mother-in-law. I also felt like the core plotline – the close friendship turned bitter resentment between Young-sook and Mi-ja – was quite similar to the one in another book by Lisa See, [b:Shanghai Girls 5960325 Shanghai Girls (Shanghai Girls #1) Lisa See https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1327968416l/5960325.SY75.jpg 5991850], and not really as gripping as the historical detail. It's a good book (and so was Shanghai Girls for that matter), but I just feel like I'd have connected with it more if I'd read it at another time.

There's so much about this book that's fascinating and really unique, so I have to give it four stars even if the wheels came off towards the end and the book got weird and disturbing and there was no dramatic climax of any kind. By that point I was already reading it more as a short story collection than as a novel, so I just shrugged that off as the last few chapters not really hitting the mark.

The People of Forever are not Afraid is a book that follows three teenage girls from the same desolate northern Israeli town as they're thrust from their mundane, boring schoolkid lives into the military machine, and then their struggle to readjust to civilian life afterwards.

Shani Boianjiu's depictions of young adult life in Israel are unflinching and unsympathetic. Before I started, I'd been concerned that this book might offer a highly romanticised glimpse of what it's like to serve in the IDF, and I was relieved that it doesn't at all. Boianjiu's concern is not justifying anything the IDF does (and nor is it to condemn them, either); what she sets out to do is just depict what it's like to be an 18 or 19-year-old girl engulfed by this massive institution, and that's what makes this such an interesting book.

The book's trio of protagonists – Yael, Avishag and Lea – begin the book in the final year of high school. Yael narrates this first chapter, and introduces the other two girls. Avishag, her best friend, had a brother who killed himself shortly after completing his military service. Lea used to be another friend of theirs, but then ditched them to become “popular”. It's a curious mix of familiar teen drama tropes and the Israeli reality of militarism and death.

Naturally, the girls are assigned to different sections of the IDF. Avishag joins the IDF's only all-female combat division, which is stationed at the long-peaceful Egyptian border. Yael becomes a weapons instructor at a military base near Hebron. Lea is – much to her disgust – made to join the military police and sent to man a checkpoint in the West Bank, before a traumatic incident there prompts her to sign up for officer school instead.

The book takes the form of a series of vignettes, some of which are told from the perspectives of one-off characters outside the main trio. In general, the earlier ones are more focused and powerful while the coherency drops of dramatically towards the end. They explore many aspects of military life as well as the multitude of social issues Israel faces. Some examples that stick out in my memory would include:

· Yael describing with amusement how the Palestinian boys from the local village keep stealing small things from her base – a helmet here, a tin of moisturiser there, or some signs – in acts of harmless, petty resistance and then how Boris, who couldn't even shoot until she taught him, killing one of these Palestinian boys in what Yael feels is an act of cold blood
· Avishag's job, for a while, being to sit for hours at a time staring at a computer monitor showing a small stretch of the border fence with Egypt, in case anyone approaches
· Israel's hostility to asylum seekers – to the point that while the IDF is too morally pure to shoot them dead before they can cross the border into Israel, they will happily alert the Egyptians to make sure it's done
· how thoroughly the IDF scrutinises the Palestinians who wish to cross into Israeli-controlled territory for work, searching for any minor excuse in their paperwork to deny entry... but at the same time, how little they care to stop the smuggling of trafficked women into Israel over the Egyptian border
· the intense ethnic stratification of Israel, even within the Jewish population: for example, Avishag's parents met when they arrived in Israel, and were forced to stand around naked while Israeli authorities hosed them down with DDT, convinced that these “dirty” immigrants from the Arab world had bodies crawling with diseases; or there's Lea, who acts like she's better than the other girls in their small town because unlike them, she looks European; or there's the fact that the “cushier” positions in the IDF tend to be reserved for Ashkenazim, with Mizrahim given the grunt work of combat roles and checkpoints
· how utterly boring most days in the IDF are – so many days filled with smoking, gossiping and sex – until, occasionally, a war comes and people die. More than once in this book, a onetime lover of one of the girls is killed in combat, and they just have to shrug that off and keep moving. There's a point where one of the girls is contemptuous of people who allow themselves the indulgence of mourning someone's death for years and years, because as far as she's concerned that's a luxury she's never had.

The protagonists aren't exactly the most likeable people, either as schoolgirls (where they amuse themselves playing mean-spirited games) or after their service, which they emerge from damaged in various ways (resulting in some highly disturbing late chapters). A refrain of the book is don't judge us, which really applies to Israel and the IDF as much as it does to the girls at the narrative's centre. The thing is, they can plea to not be judged... but it's you as the reader who has to decide whether that's reasonable or not.

As I said at the beginning, the book does kind of fall apart in the last few chapters, which covers the girls in their (mostly) post-military lives. There are still some interesting tidbits there, mostly about how the girls had no solid sense of identity before serving and have ended up almost stunted, unable to form real senses of self, afterwards. But there are also long boring passages that seem pointless and other passages that are extremely messed up, but also confusing and they don't even seem to go anywhere. There's a late chapter where the girls are called up as reservists in the next war, and end up simply being held hostage on base by a group of younger male soldiers, which is particularly baffling in this sense.

But overall, I have to give this book four stars for being such an interesting, insightful description of the military machine in Israel. If you are at all interested in this topic, then despite its messiness and flaws this is a really rewarding read.

I was really unimpressed with this book, to be honest.

I'm not the kind of person who wants to read pages and pages of description of the appearance of one tree, but I've discovered that I do have a limit for how little description is too little, and this book (at least for the first half) has too little. The book starts with the protagonist, Yelena, being brutally tortured then given a deal to live then immediately starting her training on how to identify different poisons... and aside from the gruesomeness of the torture and the flavours of the poisons there was no description of anything!! Where the hell are we, aside from “generic dungeon”? I know the country's called Ixia, but what is it like? What is its climate? What does the landscape look like? How does Yelena feel about it? Why is the only description given of the castle that it's “geometric”? What does that even mean – aren't all shapes geometric by definition?

So, the description was lacking, and the world-building kind of generic, and the level of gruesomeness a bit too high right at the beginning of the story without working up to it, but surely, surely, you might think, given the trend of other reviews, the characterisation might save it?

And the answer is... partially. Yelena herself is an interesting character. She's survived a lot of horrific events, and while she struggles with trauma from that, she's not crippled by it: she actually adapts pretty quickly to the palace scheming and plotting, and finds ways of keeping herself afloat. Then there's Valek, who starts as an apparently cold-hearted, nasty character before acquiring more human layers. I did actually feel that some of those layers were eye-rollingly cheesy (ahem, having sex with Yelena once and calling her “my love” forever after and giving soppy speeches), but mostly it was compelling reading, seeing how he softened.

Most of the other characters lacked depth, though. Like Margg, the housekeeper, is just some mean old lady who hates Yelena for no reason. Yelena encounters a few different evil creepy men who just like raping and torturing all day because of how evil they are. There are also some guards who Yelena befriends who are just kind of generically nice/helpful. Now obviously you can't have every minor character in a novel facing epic conflicts and experiencing transformative character growth, but like... I would have liked a little more depth.

I also don't understand why the publisher decided to crowbar this book into the YA category. It's brutal and bloodthirsty with a lot of rapist villains... but all the YA classification means is that the only consensual sex scene in the whole book got replaced with some gibbering mush about how transcendental it is for two lovers' minds to intertwine, becoming one, and blah blah blah. Not to mention that the lovers in question stink like shit and are hiding in a pile of straw in a dungeon at the time. Transcendental.

Man... I don't want to make out like this is the worst book I've ever read, because it's definitely not; the plot is structured fairly well and some of the characters (Yelena, Valek, Rand) and themes (tests of loyalty, the dependency between Yelena and Valek, defeating demons from your past, etc.) are interesting. But I didn't like the torture scene at the start of the book (I think if you want a torture scene to be emotionally impactful and not just a turn-off, you need to get the reader invested in the character first), I didn't like the shallowness of the description or half the characters, and I thought the climax was kind of meh. I'm glad I'm not obliged to read any of the others in the series, because most of the reviews are along the lines that the first book is great but then the quality drops sharply off a cliff, and I mean... I don't want to see what “dropped sharply off a cliff” means in relation to this.

A disappointing read. Two stars.

I really enjoyed this book; I thought it was a perfect example of a character-driven tale in an immersively detailed SF setting. To be sure, it's not a cheerful book, and the descriptions inside really play up the deprivations and bleakness of the future it imagines rather than painting a picture of an enchanting world you'd like to visit. That is the whole point, though, and the result is an awesome book.

The City in the Middle of the Night is set on a world which doesn't rotate on its axis. The side facing the sun is permanently scorched by temperatures of hundreds of degrees; the side facing away is locked in permanent night, covered in ice, hundreds of degrees below zero. Only the thin sliver of the planet located in permanent twilight is survivable for humanity, so that's where they all live.

Humanity arrived on this world many generations before this story starts, and life has been so hard since then that they live amidst technology that they no longer understand, desperately patching them with dwindling supplies of resources to keep themselves afloat. There are two major city-states – Xiosphant and Argelo – whose divisions go back to their early years on-world and even before, to major conflicts aboard the Mothership. Both are fleshed out in thorough, but not overwhelming detail.

Also on this planet are its native inhabitants – a tentacled species most humans pejoratively call crocodiles, but which Sophie – who becomes their ally – calls the Gelet. The Gelet have found ways to carve a sustainable existence for themselves out of the harsh environment, and they realise that the humans thus far have failed. A major theme of the story is the way humans continue to consume all their energy fighting each other, ignoring the looming catastrophe, and whether or not they can be convinced to change direction.

The main characters are two young women – Sophie, a university student turned outlaw, and Mouth, the last survivor of a band of nomads who's joined a smuggling crew. Each of them have a female friend with whom they're intimately close – Bianca and Alyssa, respectively. This core group of four are one of the definite strengths of the novel – in many ways none of them are super likeable (and they end up in conflict with each other at least as much as they're ever allied), but they're all empathetic characters whose personal failings cause trouble for themselves, again and again.

If I was dissatisfied with anything about this novel, it's the ambiguous ending. I think Anders intended for it to be positive – that humanity will find their way, but only incrementally over tens of generations, such that it can't really be made clear in the novel. But at the same time, there's no real evidence in the book that Sophie succeeds in her mission either – that all of the reasons why none of the previous attempts at change have worked are magically fixed now. What the ending does do is give a clear resolution to the conflicts between Sophie and Bianca, and Mouth and Alyssa, so in that sense at least it's successful.

There's so much I could talk about in relation to this book – the obsessive time-keeping of Xiosphant, designed to fluster people if they sense a single minute they could have spent better working; Mouth's pain over the loss of her people and misguided efforts to find her place in the world; the colonial arrogance of humanity towards the Gelet; Bianca and how her genuine eagerness to do good leads to quite the opposite, because of her self-centredness... there truly is so much packed in here and for lovers of character-driven, social science fiction I would whole-heartedly recommend this.

I feel super harsh giving this one three stars, but I still feel like it's where the book deserves to land. Like its predecessor, [b:Six of Crows 23437156 Six of Crows (Six of Crows, #1) Leigh Bardugo https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1459349344l/23437156.SY75.jpg 42077459], it's essentially a tale about a medley crew of petty criminals pulling off an audacious heist. The problem is that what made the first book so great – the delving into the backgrounds of its characters – was not really done so well here.To be fair, this book focuses on some different characters. Where Six of Crows was very heavy on Nina and Matthias, this one focuses on Jesper and Wylan (with Inej and Kaz getting roughly the same focus in both books). I guess I found this disappointing because I really liked Nina and Matthias and they took such a backseat here. Nina's major conflict basically petered out without being resolved, and Matthias didn't even really have one in this book and then he randomly died for no reason.Jesper and Wylan were interesting to read about; their relationships to their dad were central to the story (with, indeed, Wylan's dad being the main antagonist), and their romance was sweet (although I wasn't keen on the spanner that briefly got thrown in the works before they inevitably worked it out). But they weren't as interesting as Nina and Matthias had been.The exploration of different types of magic that was so present in the last book didn't come into things much here (even though the first chapter makes it seem like it will be a big ongoing plot thread). Some questions go unanswered. That was a shame.Overall, the main focus is about the team's complicated scheme to outwit Jan Van Eck (and Pekka Rollins while they're at it), with all other plot threads falling by the wayside in comparison to this. The scheme is fine and all – I did enjoy it – but it wasn't really my favourite aspect of the first book. It also seemed a bit ridiculous how easily Kaz was able to double-bluff his enemies and predict how the complicated chains of events he'd set in motion would unfold. Their plans did go awry sometimes, but it seemed a really low failure rate given how convoluted some of their schemes were.So to sum up, this is a good book, but not quite the book I was hoping for after the first one. Still worth reading, if you did enjoy the first.

There are so many interesting ideas in this book that I feel like I should have enjoyed it more than I did.

The story follows Ryan, a paraplegic in a nearish-future setting who decides to go through a mind migration – that is, his consciousness will be transplanted into a new, lab-grown, non-disabled body. Once the migration has been conducted, though, he is plagued by a series of vivid dreams (and eventually hallucinations) that appear to reveal to him the life of a completely different person: a military veteran turned accomplice of organised crime named Charlie.

The mystery is interesting albeit not entirely resolved because it seems certain details had to be reserved to justify a sequel, and a lot of the world-building is interesting. The world we see here is one where capitalism has been allowed to squeeze the ordinary person even harder than we see today, and there are plenty of things going on – the US has intervened in an India-Pakistan war, a disease called spotted lung has spread nastily through the population, and the unnamed city in which the story takes place has seen widespread ethnic cleansing (which weirdly only gets a brief mention late in the book) and a long period of dominance by criminal gangs.

So why this didn't fully click for me, I don't really know. I guess the characters just lacked a certain something to really grab me (and the romantic subplot was particularly ehhhh). Some of the writing in certain parts seemed a bit unpolished, although that might just have been my lack of engagement at some parts. If the concept sounds interesting to you I'd certainly encourage you to give it a chance, because there is some good stuff here. It just didn't grip me as much as I'd hoped it would.

I really enjoyed this book, although that's not to say it's perfect (the ending in particular was rather anti-climactic). What it does do is pose a topical hypothetical – what if a genuinely progressive politician were to ever become the British prime minister? – and expose in exquisite detail all the forces that would work hard to wreck them.

There are a ton of naïve people out there who believe that an elected government has the authority to do more-or-less whatever they want, and it's a sheer coincidence that all major political parties end up with identical policies on 99.9% of issues (like gleeful participation in American wars, the prioritisation of corporate profits well ahead of wages or pensions...). This book shows well what would happen if a government really tried to cast off all that shit and instead implement common-sense social democratic policies. In venues like the exclusive Athenaeum club and luxurious country estates, the upper-class men who run the secret service, the civil service, the newspapers, the television news bureaux and who represent US diplomatic interests all conspire to ruin the new government before they can have literally any of their privileges taken away.

In Australia, of course, we had a similar thing happen to a leader who was not even nearly as progressive as the central figure of this book: Gough Whitlam was no progressive himself, but he came to power at a moment when the working class was powerful, militant and prepared to punish any Labor leader who did not try to fulfil the aspirations of the membership. During his time as prime minister a number of important reforms passed, but conservatives worked hard to wreck him and ultimately succeeded in the 1975 crisis. An important factor in the success of that effort was that the Americans extracted agreement from “a leading trade union figure” that there would be no industrial action to force Whitlam's reinstatement after removal – and thus, when unionised workers began walking out on impromptu general strikes in 1975, ACTU boss Bob Hawke – who later became the Labor PM who brought neoliberalism to Australia, prompting a mass exodus of the party's membership which leaves the party a hollowed-out husk today – insisted that they all go back to work.

A Very British Coup has its own class traitor union boss – Reg Smith, representing the power workers, who leads a massive industrial action causing rolling blackouts as he insists on a 50% pay rise. Newspapers and TV stations which have never supported an industrial action in their entire histories fall over themselves to support this one, just so they can wedge the government and put them in an impossible position which they hope will lead to their demise.

There are a number of other crises in this book – foreign currency traders working to make the pound crash, conflict with the US as the new government insists on nuclear disarmament and a withdrawal of the US military from its territory, and a scandal over a poorly-built nuclear power plant causing a narrowly-averted disaster.

One thing that is dissatisfying about this book is that it never really feels like Perkins' government are defeated. Instead, it feels like they grow tired and give up. There is a part where one of the government's best ministers is “forced” to resign because he's been exposed as having a mistress, even though two days earlier it was agreed that he wouldn't have to resign and nothing had really changed since then. Similarly, the scandal that finally finishes the government off doesn't really feel any bigger or more impossible to resolve than previous scandals. It just feels like they've grown tired of fighting, which is not very satisfying narratively.

The novel also doesn't really talk about who's supporting Perkins' government, aside from a handful of individuals. It doesn't talk about the party membership, or the trade unions that aren't arcing up like Reg Smith's power workers. It doesn't talk about how you could work against the dishonesty of the mainstream newspapers and TV channels – how even in the 80s you could create alternative newspapers for example (except for one character criticising the far-left's alternatives as “high on paranoia, low on facts” or something like it – which is like, at least they've made more than zero effort to put their analysis out there, you know?). Revolutions have succeeded in far more hostile environments, and this book doesn't really explain why this government has opted not to take any inspiration from their strategies.

Then again, another disappointing aspect of this book is that we never really see the government introducing any progressive policies. The early section of the book talks about some of their proposals, but they don't make any headway with any of them, even the ones that would be a lot easier than “force the US military to extricate themselves from our country”. Again, we don't even see them really try.

The book is fairly short, and while in some ways that's a good thing, I do think it would have been enriched by being a bit longer. It would have been nice to see this government achieve some successes, and have the opposition's victory come as a result of a long war of attrition as opposed to the government never successfully doing much and then giving up. Or even if they could have shown us how the timidity of social democracy seals its demise; something to suggest to the reader that progressive change is not just so impossible that there's no point even trying. What can left-wingers do that might actually work?

I feel like this review is more of a messy jumble of thoughts than a review, but long story short I did find this a very interesting book. It also seems like a rare gift to be able to describe currency fluctuations and other economic happenings in such a way that they're actually interesting, so well done there. If the topic sounds interesting to you, I would definitely recommend the read.

Very much enjoyed this novel, which is basically an elaborate heist story with six intriguing POV characters in a detailed fantasy world.

This fantasy world, I know, was introduced in Bardugo's Shadow and Bone trilogy but that just didn't look as interesting to me as this did. And honestly, I don't regret that choice; while it's obvious that things have happened in the world before this story starts, it never feels like there's anything “missing”. This book stands on its own two feet.

That said, the major flaw to this book probably is the slow and confusing beginning. I could easily imagine Bardugo having drawn up a detailed city map of Ketterdam, with every building labelled, and being unable to resist the temptation to put all that information into the story. So many names of different gambling dens, brothels, gangsters, gangs and neighbourhoods just get thrown at you in a very short space of time. I'm glad I've never had something like a “read the first hundred pages, then decide if you want to keep going” rule because this book would've been thrown on the backburner so fast and then I'd have missed out on something that becomes a really great story, once it gets going.

The core cast consists of six characters, all of whom are interesting if (inevitably) to different degrees. My two favourites were Nina and Matthias, who have a complicated history with each other. They fought on opposing sides of a devastating war, and have a relationship full of mistrust but mutual attraction. I just devoured every page with them – and it helps that Nina herself is a fun character, flirty and hedonistic but extremely clever and a dedicated spy.

Kaz Brekker, I did not like so much at first. He's set up as this seventeen-year-old criminal mastermind, the kind of character who's cold-hearted and arrogant but the reader's supposed to like him anyway, just because. More depth is added to him over the course of the novel, so I did warm up to him a bit. He gets paired up with Inej, whose background involves being captured by slave traders, sold into a brothel, and then purchased by Kaz's boss because Kaz was impressed with her sneaking skills. Her major skill is climbing. Then, bringing up the rear, we have Jesper – another member of Kaz's gang – and Wylan, the runaway son of a powerful merchant. These two also get a great rapport going.

Once we actually get into it (and that takes a third of the book), the heist plotline moves swiftly, full of tension and excitement. Unsurprisingly, there is a twist at the end, laying the ground for the next book. The real strength of this book, though, has been the major characters, and it's out of interest in them that I'll be reading the next one.

Well... this is definitely the weakest book in the Patternmaster series.Its main problem is an even worse version of the one that afflicted [b:Mind of My Mind 116254 Mind of My Mind (Patternmaster, #2) Octavia E. Butler https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1389676159l/116254.SY75.jpg 111957]: it has too many characters getting too much page time who just aren't very engaging. But where Mind of My Mind at least has Mary and Doro, whose epic struggle carries the whole book, Clay's Ark has a bunch of weaker characters who are mostly just struggling against themselves – or at least, against an alien organism becoming symbiotically intertwined with their bodies.Not only are the characters unengaging, but this is also a very gruesome, violent book – especially the last part, but not only there. There are so many rapes and beatings and gunshots blowing out half someone's head and decapitations and throat-slittings and on and on... I won't say the other books are all sunshine and rainbows but this one is orders of magnitude more gory than the others, and it didn't feel purposeful.So the setting for this book is southern California, around 2021. Technologically, there are parts of this era that Butler predicted correctly (“screenphones”, cars with GPS navigation) and parts that she has not (faster-than-light travel to Alpha Centauri). It is also a vision of 2021 where there are small pockets of safety (i.e. gated communities) in the midst of vast swathes of lawless, ultraviolent country. The story starts with the Maslin family foolishly taking a cross-country drive, despite all the roads being ridiculously unsafe, and getting abducted and taken to a secluded ranch by a strange extended family.This family are all suffering from a disease, an alien disease brought to them by the only survivor of the Alpha Centauri mission, Eli. The disease basically makes them catlike in various ways: sharpened senses, eternally hungry, insatiably horny, and they only like unseasoned food now, preferably raw. They have an uncontrollable urge to spread their infection, but enough awareness to know they should probably not start a worldwide epidemic, so instead they periodically abduct people off the highway and induct them to life as an infected person on the ranch.Also, when they have kids, those kids are even more cat-like (described as sphinxes); if you've read [b:Patternmaster 116256 Patternmaster (Patternmaster, #4) Octavia E. Butler https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1389456750l/116256.SY75.jpg 1119636], they will be recognisable as the antecedents of the Clayarks in that book.Indeed, the only relevance of Clay's Ark to the overall series is that it provides an origin story for the Clayarks in Patternmaster. There is also a brief reference to a very minor character from Mind of My Mind, and to the psychic powers people exhibit in the other three books, but no one in this book actually has any psychic powers and that story thread is not built on at all. You could posit that the security situation being so bad is a natural extension of the situation in Mind of My Mind, except the cause in that book (incompletely psychic “latents”) doesn't seem to be the cause here, so it'd be a bit of a stretch. Overall, the connection to the other books is weak.Honestly, nearly everything about this book is weak. The only character I could really get interested in was Eli; everyone else just acted against their own best interests all the time (the Maslins) or were just bland (the other ranchers) or one-dimensional ultraviolent maniacs (the “car rats”). It was kind of interesting to read about how infected people's sensory perceptions changed, but it was sandwiched between so much blargh stuff. I think I'd have preferred to read a book set a little later, with a Clayark society at least somewhat established, which could have given the important parts of this book as mere background information. This series could actually have done with one, because Patternmaster is told entirely from the Patternists' perspective and they have no real understanding of the Clayarks. I know there is one more book from this series – [b:Survivor 256890 Survivor Octavia E. Butler https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1186985614l/256890.SY75.jpg 3346577], which Butler disowned – and that it's set after this one, but I don't believe it fleshes out the Clayarks the way I'd really like to see. Such a shame.

Ack-Ack Macaque is a fast-paced romp which reminds me a bit of the kind of plotlines you see in Doctor Who. It's set in the future of an alternate universe where Britain and France united in the 1960s, and features nuclear-powered zeppelins, brain implants enabling computer-augmented existences as well as back-ups of people's consciousness, and a world-famous elite VR video game (the eponymous Ack-Ack Macaque).

The book is more grown-up than your average episode of Doctor Who, but most of its happenings would not be out of place in a two-parter of that show (and honestly, the harebrained scheme of the main antagonists – which involves creating an army of robots with the uploaded consciousnesses of real people, hijacking the British monarchy, and starting a nuclear conflict of China to wipe out the human race – sounds like it totally could've come from an abandoned Doctor Who episode). Its cast would not be out of place, either – a brain-augmented journalist, the back-up of her murdered ex-husband, the Prince of Wales, the “digital rights activist” (heavily modelled on real-world vegan activists) who's the Prince of Wales' secret girlfriend, an expert gamer and hacker named K8... and of course Ack-Ack Macaque himself, a monkey augmented to make him a grizzled, cigar-smoking, superhuman fighting machine.

Anyway... the book as a whole is enjoyable enough, hence the three stars. The main problem I had with it, I think, is that I really struggled to suspend my disbelief enough to get invested in what was happening. The villains' motivations were not very believable and I couldn't take them seriously, which meant I didn't feel the stakes. Sort of like how in Doctor Who, the Doctor and his companions get into all kinds of potentially universe-destroying danger every week, but unless there's been a season-long running theme of ominous warnings, you can count on nothing going seriously wrong.

If not for the fact that I'd bought the whole trilogy as an omnibus for cheap, I'd be pretty content to leave the series here (unlike Powell's other series, Embers of War, which is excellent!). Because I have bought the omnibus though, I probably will return in the future to read the further adventures of Ack-Ack Macaque. Probably as palate cleansers after books that are more emotionally taxing.

Part-Time Gods is a follow-up to [b:Minimum Wage Magic 42385018 Minimum Wage Magic (DFZ #1) Rachel Aaron https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1539872062l/42385018.SY75.jpg 66054725], which I reviewed here. This book continues on where that one left off: namely, Opal Yong-ae is trying to find ways to outwit the bad luck curse that she now knows afflicts her, so she can pay off her debt to her controlling father.My opinion of this book is much the same as my opinion of the last one. The best thing about it is its ridiculously awesome setting, the Detroit Free Zone, a lawless high-tech society with dragons and an actively interventionist god. I still think it's the kind of place I'd love to see brought to life on screen; even reading about it in print, you know it'd be visually impressive. More than that, though, is how rich it is with opportunities for social critique, for example the natural tendency of capitalism to lead to dystopia (e.g. an ambulance that won't come to a particularly poor part of the DFZ without a hefty non-refundable security deposit being paid, or even conflict between different schools of thought about magic because one is more easily lent to neoliberal commoditisation than the other!). The high-tech, fantasy, and sociopolitical elements of this setting are all blended extremely well and I just adore it.The story itself is a bit more mixed in quality. I do really like the core plotline, of Opal struggling her hardest to escape her overbearing, rigidly controlling father and to become the master of her own life. What did get irritating over time was how childish Opal is in many ways – and it's not like this was inconsistent or unreasonable for someone who'd grown up so heavily sheltered, it just got annoying. For example, Opal is so determined to rule her own life that she spurns perfectly reasonable offers of help multiple times during this book. For a university graduate (and one who talks casually about past boyfriends), her approach to the romance subplot seems embarrassingly juvenile. She also pushes her body way beyond its limits (minimal sleep, too much coffee, not enough food) more than seems manageable... although the fact that she treats her magic the same way becomes a major plot point, so I can't say this goes unacknowledged. It was just... you could really feel her ever-present AI Sybil's frustration sometimes.In the other reviews I did see some criticism of the ending, but I didn't really have a problem with it. The main thing is that it does feel like it's ramping up for an epic, final third instalment, when after the first book it had seemed like this could have been a longer-running series. I guess I don't really mind though... especially since there can always be other series set in the DFZ! It's just not what I was initially expecting. Overall, like the last book, this one probably gets three stars from me for plot/characters and five stars for setting, leaving it at a thoroughly respectable four. If the next book can show Opal growing into herself into more of a confident, self-possessed adult, which it sure seems to be on the road to doing, then it'll probably be my favourite of the lot.

What an amazing book! The heart of Wild Seed is the entrancing dynamic between Anyanwu and Doro, two immortal people who meet in western Africa around 1690 before Doro brings Anyanwu across to New York. Anyanwu is a powerful healer and shapeshifter, but Doro – as we might remember from [b:Mind of My Mind 116254 Mind of My Mind (Patternmaster, #2) Octavia E. Butler https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1389676159l/116254.SY75.jpg 111957] – has the power to leap from body to body, killing the person inside. As they gain familiarity with one another their relationship evolves: sometimes lovers, and sometimes mortal enemies, but always with the overriding tension that the more powerful Doro considers himself the rightful “master” of people with supernatural abilities like Anyanwu, and what Anyanwu wants for herself and her descendants is to be free.I did feel like (much like the other Patternmaster books) the novel took a little while to build momentum, but once it did it was unstoppable. Wild Seed felt more focused and cohesive than Mind of My Mind; in fact, I'm glad I read this one after that, because I think Mind of My Mind would have been disappointing in comparison (with the Doro/Mary conflict retreading much of the same ground as the better conflict between Doro and Anyanwu here, and with Anyanwu in that book – now renamed Emma – being an underwhelming character to say the least). I did find it interesting that Doro here seems less sure about what it is he's hoping to create through his breeding program – instead he's working on gut feelings about “potential” – whereas by Mind of My Mind he seems much clearer that he's trying to establish a race of telepaths.Overall, this book shows why Octavia E. Butler deserves her place as one of the greats of the science fiction genre. I'm sure the relationship between Anyanwu and Doro will stick in my mind for a long time to come, especially the way their characters developed in the superb third part of the book. Although [b:Patternmaster 116256 Patternmaster (Patternmaster, #4) Octavia E. Butler https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1389456750l/116256.SY75.jpg 1119636] does come close, this is probably the best instalment in the series yet.

More of a 2.5 star book for me. I feel like the quality of the prose was quite good, there was some interesting detail there, but the book unfolded at such a painfully protracted pace and the characters never quite came alive. Werner Pfennig is a tragic orphan who joins the Hitler Youth to escape poverty; Marie-Laure is a blind girl who's only lost one parent by the start of the story but soon enough loses a second; and the villain could easily have come from a children's movie: he is a Nazi who wants to track down a jewel that, according to legend, will make the beholder live forever.

Of the three, Werner is probably the character with the most potential to be interesting: he joins the Hitler Youth for reasons which are fundamentally apolitical, and witnesses a lot of nastiness from those compatriots of his who are more convinced of the Nazi ideology. Nonetheless, he feels he cannot do anything to resist this system he's become a part of, so even as things get worse and worse he continues filling the role he believes he's been assigned. Predictably, a clichéd sequence of events causes him to change his mind at the end of the book, and then apparently Doerr didn't know what to do with him after that, because the character randomly dies when he feverishly walks into a minefield. Much more interesting ends up being the minor character of his sister, Jutta, who was critical of the Nazis all along... but she only plays a small part in the story.

Probably the main aspect of this book that was good was the way it conveyed the everyday experience of life during the war: the German occupation of northern France, the low-level operations of the French resistance, the horror of loved ones going missing and you never finding out their fate, life as a soldier. None of this was particularly groundbreaking, but it maintained my interest through stretches.

There was also an ongoing theme about Marie-Laure's eccentric family: her great-uncle who never leaves the house after he was traumatised in WW1, her locksmith father who continually devises puzzle boxes for her and creates scale models of the places she lives so she'll be able to navigate them independently... and places like like the tall, tall house in Saint-Malo and the attic with a radio broadcaster capable of reaching Germany. That was all right, too.

Overall, despite some good aspects, I felt like this book was overly long, with simplistic/cliché and (for me) unengaging major characters. There are far worse things you could read, but I'm sure there are better, too.

I felt that this book was a bit messier than [b:Patternmaster 116256 Patternmaster (Patternmaster, #4) Octavia E. Butler https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1389456750i/116256.SY75.jpg 1119636], and I enjoyed it slightly less despite still finding it a gripping, fascinating book.Mind of My Mind is set a long time before Patternmaster, in contemporary southern California. If you're reading in publication order, you're introduced to Doro, a shadowy and sinister man who can switch bodies by killing the former occupant of the body he's switching to. Seemingly immortal, he has spent generations “breeding” people. The purpose of this is initially unclear, although it is apparent that most of the products of this breeding program are mentally unstable – they hear voices, and are prone to sudden violent outbursts.Then the reader is introduced to Mary. She's one of the products of this breeding program, but she's different – stronger – than all the others have been. As the book goes on, Mary's role becomes clear: she is to be the first-ever Patternmaster, a position that will be familiar to publication-order readers from the first book.This book deals with many of the same themes as the first: power, control, submission, freedom. There is a recurring argument in both books about whether or not it's worthwhile to sacrifice a little bit of your autonomy – to allow someone else some level of veto power over your own mind – in exchange for guaranteed happiness and all your material needs (and dreams) being met, with Butler's protagonists always coming resolutely down on the side of “hell no”. Power imbalances between the sexes are looked at here as well.The central conflict between Mary and Doro is extremely well-written, and probably the most compelling thing about this entire book for me. Heading into the climax I really wasn't sure what was going to happen, and I zipped through the pages in my impatience to find out.The rest of the characterisation, though, felt weaker than in Patternmaster. There are a lot more characters, and most of them aren't fleshed out enough. This book is really about Mary and Doro, and every page that follows a different character (except for Karl, I guess) feels like it's more about advancing the setting/worldbuilding than it is about developing the core story. That's fine, but it did mean the story lacked the tightly cohesive quality of its predecessor.Overall, this is a really good book, and a worthy instalment of the Patternmaster series. I think I'll read a palate cleanser or two before tackling the reputedly excellent [b:Wild Seed 52318 Wild Seed (Patternmaster, #1) Octavia E. Butler https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1388462753i/52318.SY75.jpg 1330000], but I will definitely move onto it soon.

Patternmaster forms part of a series of books, of which it was the first to be published. Later on, the books were renumbered and the suggested reading order changed to match the chronological order of the stories, in which case this book would be read last. However, judging by many reviews this looks to have been a mistake; people complain that the chronological first in the series, [b:Wild Seed 52318 Wild Seed (Patternmaster, #1) Octavia E. Butler https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1388462753i/52318.SY75.jpg 1330000], is by far the best and that Patternmaster makes for an anticlimactic end to the storyline. These reviewers reckoned that publication order was the best one to read the series in, and clearly so far I have to agree – going in with few expectations, I really enjoyed Patternmaster.The novel takes place on a world at war – the Patternists, humans who are all connected to one another through a psychic network called the Pattern, are fighting the Clayarks, a sphinx-like species who fight with guns and can transmit the dreaded Clayark Disease. There are also non-psychic humans, who are treated by most Patternists as little better than livestock (clearly evoking institutional slavery). The Patternists' society, despite existing in our distant future, has reverted to a feudal structure with an all-powerful king-like figure (the Patternmaster), with powerful feudal lords (Housemasters) owning vast swathes of territory and many of the people on them. All of this is introduced clearly without great swathes of exposition, and the characters' use of the Pattern is written to feel natural.The story's protagonist is Teray, who at the beginning is embarking on an apprenticeship with Housemaster Joachim and marriage with Iray. However, before he can really make a start with either, he is (illegally) sold into the custody of a more powerful Housemaster, Coransee. It turns out that Teray and Coransee are brothers, and both sons of Patternmaster Rayal, and Coransee wants to ensure that Teray won't challenge him for the the crown. Teray has no intention of doing so, but cannot stomach the deal Coransee offers him to guarantee it, so the two are drawn into an inescapable conflict.This book is incredibly strong on characterisation. Everyone is flawed, but nearly all are sympathetic, and the one who isn't makes for an interesting villain. Although I'd thought the beginning of the book was a little dry, I quickly became entranced by all the inner conflicts of the major characters and just had to keep reading to find out what they would do. There are also some interesting moral dilemmas posed: whether Teray was right to turn down Coransee's deal, for example. We also get a strong hint – when Teray talks to one in the first half of the book – that the Clayarks are higher-order beings than the Patternists make out, but this doesn't stop massacres occurring later on. This is a short, fast-paced book (at least once it gets going), but my investment in the characters built up as if over a much longer book. It's also no surprise to me that, having finished this book, Butler did feel the need to write prequels to it – there's so much to this setting that I've yet to see explored.The book reminds me a little of [b:The Left Hand of Darkness 18423 The Left Hand of Darkness (Hainish Cycle #4) Ursula K. Le Guin https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1488213612i/18423.SY75.jpg 817527], but it is much faster-paced (“fixing” the only reservation I really had about that book, which is also brilliant). Both are character-centric explorations of far-future human societies with traits from our history (feudalism) as well as pointed differences (ambisexuality in The Left Hand of Darkness, the Pattern here). Just as I would unhesitatingly recommend that, I would just as much recommend this... and how exciting that the series reportedly gets even better!

3.5 stars, truthfully, but I've rounded up. I'm not sure that this was the intent of the author, but it strikes me that this would have been a fantastic middle-grade book. It tells a tale full of spooky things like liches, wraiths and minions, all set in a town of necromancers called Tombtown (located in a crypt). The tone is very light-hearted, with characters that I think many middle-grade readers would enjoy: the shambling, dim-witted minion Larry, the pompous and eternally optimistic Smythe, the self-important yet begrudgingly helpful snitch Usther, and of course the protagonist Ree, who has to shrug off the overbearing pressure of her parents to try to find her own way in life.

The story is pretty good, too. I think an argument could be made that a few too many things happen in the story, but it all moves fairly quickly to a dramatic, exciting end.

I think if you wanted to judge this book strictly as a “grown-up book”, you might find it a bit lacking. The characters could do with more depth, and more questions could be raised about the morality of everything going on in the town – there are references to things like cannibalism and bathing in blood which go well beyond “we dig up corpses to perform magic on them”. It is stated that the town has a bit of a laissez-faire, “just don't make a big spectacle out of it” approach to killing, as well as suggesting that it's OK to kill “upworlders” because most of them are adventurers who hate Tombtonians and want to loot all their artefacts anyway, but I feel like these are the kinds of explanations that suit a younger audience.

Overall, don't expect a sophisticated horror/fantasy novel for adults out of this one, but for middle-grade readers (or “middle grade at heart” readers!) with high enthusiasm for everything Halloween, this would be a really good read.

Some Goodreads librarian hijacked the original main entry for this book and made it about some late-nineties adaptation by some rando, so here I am re-adding this book that I last read in year 7. Fun fun.

Two stars for being painful to read, not for being poor-quality (which it isn't).I'd previously read one other book by Doris Lessing, [b:The Good Terrorist 707060 The Good Terrorist Doris Lessing https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1358325562s/707060.jpg 2769827], and despite being written 35 years apart they share the same writing style. Both are unrelentingly bleak, with miserable and pathetic characters who nonetheless feel extremely believable in their hopelessness. You get the sense that Lessing might not have been the kind of person you'd want to befriend, with an eagerness to identify people's every personal failing and crucify them at length for it. She has a talent for it, of course, and in the case of The Grass is Singing the end result is a sharp criticism of the racist, nasty society of Southern Rhodesia. It's still not pleasant to read.The central characters of this book are Mary Turner and her husband, Dick. After a miserable rural childhood, Mary spent her young adult years “in town”, making good money in an office and filling her free time with parties, sports, social engagements, and so on. However, as she reached her mid-thirties she realised that her “friends” were all mocking her behind her back for her dress sense and lack of romantic entanglements, and so she cast about for a husband, any husband. She happened upon Dick, a poverty-stricken farmer, and after the most dire courtship of all time they married and she moved to his farm.There, Mary goes stir-crazy in a ramshackle house that offers little protection from the heat and too far away to enable much social interaction with other white people – just their neighbours, the Slatters, who Mary snubs at every opportunity because she's embarrassed by her poverty. Of course, she's also ashamed of her husband, who she sees as a failure, and vicious towards all their African workers, because she's convinced of their inferiority in relation to her and wants to make sure they know it.This book reminds me a lot of [b:Coonardoo 1961207 Coonardoo Katharine Susannah Prichard https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/book/50x75-a91bf249278a81aabab721ef782c4a74.png 1964276], which was also written by a white, female socialist from a brutally racist settler-colonial society (in the case of Coonardoo, it takes place on a remote station in outback West Australia). In particular, both books share the same major flaw: despite the fact that they were written as rebukes of racism, the black characters are all so poorly and weakly depicted. They are not given clear motivations and complicated inner lives the way that all the white characters are; they're left as vague ciphers, ready to morph into plot devices whenever the author requires it. I know that these books were written decades ago, and were important works in their time. However, if you were to ask me whether these works are still relevant today, my answer would have to be probably not. There have to be so many better critiques of colonialism and racism, ones that don't fall into racist tropes themselves (and probably ones written by those who actually experience racism, although I do think it's important for the racially privileged to criticise it as well). Like, The Grass is Singing is bookended by a murder which never has its motive explained – apparently we're just supposed to assume Africans do things like that, sometimes, randomly, because they resent their oppression. It's the kind of ridiculous leap of logic that we'd never be expected to make for a white character.So overall, I dunno. While I can see why Lessing is so heralded as an author, I don't think her work is to my tastes and this book in particular made me uneasy. I also think it's weird that the blurb describes it as set in South Africa when it's not – was the publishing house really that ignorant, or did they assume their customers were? It's true that Ian Smith's illegitimate regime was very similar to South Africa's apartheid government, and critics of one tended to find themselves banned from the other as well (as happened to Lessing herself in 1956). They still weren't actually the same country, though. But regardless... significant as this book may be, it is flawed and not particularly enjoyable, so while you can read it if you want, I wouldn't suggest making it a high priority.

A worthy sequel to the first novel in this series, [b:Embers of War 30748899 Embers of War (Embers of War, #1) Gareth L. Powell https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1502367097s/30748899.jpg 51294683] (which I reviewed here). In that book, the spaceship Trouble Dog stumbled across a vast armada of sleeping warships and gave them a mission: to prevent further wars on the scale of the Apocalypse War that had just ended. Here, the ramifications of that suggestion are seen: that armada (now known as the Fleet of Knives) decides that the only sure way to do this is to destroy all warships (including the Trouble Dog which had awakened it) and eliminate interstellar travel.All the strengths of the first book remain strong here: the characterisation is excellent, with Nod the Druff (the Trouble Dog's engineer) getting some particularly awesome, wryly humorous POV chapters. Konstanz, Clay and Preston are back, picking up the pieces after the traumatic events of the first book. Ona Sudak returns, her past experience in the Apocalypse War making her uniquely qualified for service with the Fleet of Knives. And this time, we're introduced to the crew of Lucy's Ghost, “Lucky” Johnny Schultz & co., who attempt a salvage mission on a long-abandoned vessel originating from the alien Nymtoq civilisation... before an attack by interdimensional monsters, breaking through the fabric of reality, puts them into mortal strife.Once again, if you're the kind of person who craves stories about deep space but is sick of the macho, characterisation-light approach that plagues much of the genre, this series is a must-read. There are so many wonderful character moments between the action and plot developments, and everyone feels believable and richly complicated in their inner lives. I'm looking forward to seeing what happens in the next book.

If I could, I'd give this 3.5 stars.Lost Boy provides us with an origin story for Captain Hook, one exceedingly grim and full of carnage but also one with a lot of heart and soul behind it. In this book, Peter is a cavalier and self-obsessed boy, using his incredible charisma to convince young boys to join him in the Other Place so he can have them for playmates forever and ever... at least unless they die prematurely, in which case no matter, he can always go and get some more. Jamie, the protagonist, tries his best to protect the other boys and becomes increasingly disillusioned with Peter's reign of chaos.

It is a good book. I felt, personally, that the first part of it dragged on too long: not content with showing us one or two or three awful things Peter did to cause suffering among the boys, Henry shows Peter doing tons of such things. I felt like the first half (or more) of the book was a bit of a slog as a result: I didn't particularly enjoy reading about three-year-old Charlie crying and being threatened and feeling terrified and I was so impatient to get to the part of the book where things start coming unstuck for Peter. That part did come, and I was rewarded for my persistence, but it still felt a bit unsatisfying that a book of less than 300 pages could drag.

Pacing issues aside though, if you like dark retellings and you're suspicious of everything in Peter Pan, this is a good read.

While this is a work of science fiction, in tone it is much more like a work of epic fantasy. It tells the story of Genly Ai, an emissary from a broader human alliance on a remote, wintry planet where the people and the culture are utterly alien to them. A strong cultural value of shifgrethor (which is, roughly, about keeping face) seems, to him, to impede honest communication and leads him into political trouble in two countries. Then there is Estraven, prime minister of Karhide at the story's beginning but quickly disgraced and exiled, who must save him from the dire situation he gets himself into.Like most epic fantasy, the story unfolds at a glacial place. However, rapid-fire plot developments are not why anyone reads that genre. Where this book excels is the beautiful, intimate, and intricately detailed depiction of this world, which Ai's coalition simply refers to as Winter.The book is famous, of course, for the fact that the people of this world are ambisexual: androgynous for much of the month, but for a few days they go into kemmer (i.e. into heat) and will adopt a sexed form, the opposite one of their partner. Genly Ai, hailing from a society of “normal” humans, finds this very disorienting: he wants to pigeonhole everyone he meets into filling “male” or “female” gender roles (and mostly, the former) but then feels a private disgust when people he's mentally classed as male engage in “womanly” behaviours. That in itself is a fascinating theme of this story, and yet what I hadn't expected going in is that it's also only one part of a much larger work.Like in [b:The Dispossessed 13651 The Dispossessed (Hainish Cycle #6) Ursula K. Le Guin https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1353467455s/13651.jpg 2684122], social structures and the development of societies over time make up another big theme of this novel. Given the harshness of Winter's climate, Le Guin presents a world in which technological progress has unfolded at a very slow rate, although it does unfold – societies expend so many resources keeping themselves alive that they have little “surplus” for scientific progress. The first country that the reader is introduced to, Karhide, is an absolute monarchy where hospitality is an enormous, integral part of the traditional culture. From there the action moves to Orgoreyn, which is a more modern, communalist country which has much in common with the states of the former Eastern Bloc. Genly Ai is impressed by Orgoreyn at first, with their more generous provision of heating and governmental structure that isn't totally beholden to a single, paranoid king, and yet in the end it proves not to live up to his expectations.Aside from the world-building, the other main focus of this novel is the relationship between Genly Ai and Estraven, which builds slowly but is deeply compelling and heart-touching.In line with Goodreads' description of 4 stars as “I really liked it”, this is a book I'm giving four stars. It's a book that could easily deserve 5, but such dense, slow-paced books have trouble extracting 5 stars from me, so I'll leave it at four. Just know, though, that when I say I really liked it, I mean I really liked it.

I never got around to reviewing the first book in this series, [b:Vicious 40874032 Vicious (Villains, #1) V.E. Schwab https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1532011194s/40874032.jpg 19250870]. However, the two of them together would have to be my favourite of V.E. Schwab's series, hands down.While this book had a slow beginning, man did it ever pick up. It has a ton of compelling characters – a truly vast number of characters that a less talented author would have made a bewildering mess out of – who all have complicated backgrounds and motivations, and generally not ones beyond reproach. My favourite characters were some of the new ones – Marcella was extremely enjoyable to read about, and June was intriguing. Of course, many characters from the first book, like mortal enemies Victor and Eli, as well as Sydney Clarke, were major figures in this one as well.Overall, a great, fun book if you like reading about superpowers and grey-and-grey morality.