Adrian Collins's Blog, page 180

REVIEW: Shadowless by Randall McNally

Grim and fascinating, Shadowless is a masterpiece told in shades of gray. It is a fantasy of the epic variety, one with incredible world building.

Every now and then, in the Northern Realms, a child will be born without a shadow. These children are half-human/half-gods, a concept that is very reminiscent of Greek mythology. They each have a bit of their godly father’s power. Where the book goes from here, though, is completely unique. See, a god’s offspring can be used as a vessel to gather more power, which the gods harvest in the most brutal of ways. These Shadowless are hunted. Their killers are soldiers, priests, even the gods themselves. How do you survive when even the gods want you dead?

Shadowless unfolds in a very unusual way: each chapter follows a different character and is almost a short story. Eventually these individual threads form a tapestry, rich in detail and creativity. The Shadowless are gathered together by a mysterious figure, with a common goal: ensure their safety by any means necessary.

Each character is fully formed and developed, adding their own one-of-a-kind perspective. In fact, every character’s story could easily be made into a separate novel, complete and incredibly interesting. Rarely is there that much detail in a book with multiple points of view. It was impressive, to say the least.

Another point in the book’s favor is that the reader doesn’t have to wait long to understand what being Shadowless means: an explanation is given in the very first part. It helped to know a little bit more early on, as there were so many characters that trying to figure things out without much detail would have detracted from the story.

I loved each character (oh-and did I mention that here there be dragons?). However, where author Randall McNally truly shines is in his ability to paint vivid pictures of a grim world, one filled with darkness, but not quite hopeless. That tiny shred of hope–call it a refusal to lay down and give up–lends extra layers to a book that is already extremely nuanced.

This is a longer book, but I flew through it, sucked into both the story and the world. Shadowless is a perfect book for fans of large, sweeping fantasies. Any book that contains complex histories, secrets to be discovered, and meddling gods is one that I’ll happily disappear into.

Shadowless by Randall McNally

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REVIEW: Dragon Mage by M.L. Spencer

Dragon Mage by M.L Spencer is a nine hundred page book that is a return to old school fantasy. It reminds me very much of classics like Dragonlance that I used to read religiously as a teenager. I was a big fan of Spencer’s Rhenwars Saga and was interested in seeing what sort of new world the author would introduce us to. I also have a huge fondness for dragon-riding fantasy. In addition to Dragonlance and the Dragonriders of Pern, I myself wrote the Wraith Knight series where those play a crucial role in the story. I was totally on Daenerys’ side during the War of Kings because, well, dragons.

As for the premise, Aram Raythe is a young boy in a village that dreams of becoming a sailot. Like many high fantasy protagonists, he has a special destiny and an important lineage. However, unlike most Campbellian protagonists, he’s a boy with autism. As someone on the spectrum myself, I appreciated both the inclusion of someone similar to myself as well as the care she’s put into making Aram a believable example of a neuroatypical person. His condition is a bit exaggerated in some places but not so much as to be disrespectful. Alongside Aram is his childhood friend, Markus, who simply wishes to escape the abusive human he grew up with.

Those familiar with typical high fantasy will find Dragon Mage like wearing a well-worn pair of shoes. It is similar to many classic stories of the genre but zigs as often as it zags. Hometowns are destroyed, mentors are killed, and destinies are fulfilled but often in ways you never expect. The book is ultimately a really uplifting and enjoyable storyline that manages to be both a throwback as well as a refreshing change of pace.

As mentioned, it uses many classic tropes but benefits from the strong characterization and the awareness that the audience knows these tropes just as well as the author. To make an example, imagine if Luke Skywalker were to get off Tatooine before he met Obi-Wan Kenobi and ended up being trained by Vader for awhile. This is the kind of zig-zagging that I appreciate and I shall not talk about the story for a desire to avoid spoilers. It’s a heroic story, not at all grimdark but not in any way cheesy, and I think that’s enough to talk about it.

Aram is a likable enough protagonist even if he is utterly hopeless at social cues. It’s frustrating, too, because he’s well aware he’s just not picking up on them and doesn’t know how to deal with it. He’s a guy who ever pushes forward, though, and does benefit from his capacity to monofocus on the task at hand. Several characters underestimate him because of his condition and quirks but they miss that he has a will of iron.

Markus, by contrast, is our more typical protagonist who has his own special abilities but mostly just wants to protect his friend. I like that Markus is a lot more practical than his companions and just wants to live, even if it means occassionally doing bad things to survive another day. It’s a nice change from the typical idealistic heroes of high fantasy tales. Markus definitely shoots Greedo first.

The world-building is excellent with the World Above, World Between, and the various competing empires. The action is amazing with dragons battling it out in the sky, fantastic displays of sorcery, and short but brutal sword fights. Dragon Mage is definitely the kind of book you can enjoy as an exciting action movie for a couple of weeks. I also think the characterization is top notch even if some of the supporting cast is a bit underdeveloped and the villains are bit too boo hiss. Either way, I’ll definitely be picking up the sequel.

Read Dragon Mage by M.L. Spencer

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REVIEW: The Mold Farmer by Rick Claypool

Earth has been invaded by aliens. The Mold Farmer is not the story of a cunning insurrection, or how we fought back. This isn’t even the story of survivors banding together to persevere or escape. This is the story of workers, in the aftermath of such a loss, because what else is humanity for if not work? It’s a science fiction and cosmic horror hybrid focused on subsistence living, and it’s fantastic.

Thorner Tenter is, well, a tenter—he makes tents out of the discarded scraps of the alien invader’s pets. Working in such a way with these alien animals discolours his hands, but it is generally an honest, free living. We see Thorner grow up, meet a woman, fall in love, and have a child, and do well enough at the tenting trade. The nature of his job gives him pride, and though he and his wife are always poor, they’re never desperate.

The calamity that strikes is a simple one. His sister was killed, and her children also come to stay with him. The money earned from making and selling tents is no longer enough to feed all five mouths. He and his wife decide he will go work directly for the aliens, as one of the eponymous mold farmers, for a few months.

Of course, nothing is so simple in The Mold Farmer. He is not given an option to work for a few months and then quit. The minimum amount of time is five years, but by the time he’s found this out, he’s even further in debt and more desperate. Worse, the aliens will only hire people who have undergone a procedure which further dehumanizes him. And they don’t even hire consistently—he has to wait outside the mold farms every day and wait to see if he’s chosen.

Through The Mold Farmer we aren’t given much in the history of the war or the invasion of these creatures. We don’t know what their real aims are. They need extreme amounts of mold, hence Tenter’s job, and that’s all we really learn of their aims. There are some unsettling descriptions of their appearance, and they seem are clearly intent on using humanity, but their motives and powers always remain oblique.

Rather more important to the aims of the author, we see their effect on humanity. A constant theme of The Mold Farmer is the willingness of humans to sacrifice themselves for their kin, and not by dying for them but by working in ways they do not want to—in particular, subjugating their humanity to the aliens for money–if it will help their kin. Time and again, we see humans trading their biological humanity for money to help others, self-sacrificing oneself to save the whole. The only truly unsympathetic characters are ones working for the aliens for their own benefit.

In many ways, The Mold Farmer seems comparable to Roadside Picnic by the Strugatsky Brothers, a classic SF novel about dehumanized workers dealing with the remains of what aliens had left behind.

The fact that The Mold Farmer is as short as it is works against it, however. This isn’t simply because I liked it and wanted more, though that is also true. It’s that we, as the audience, are in and out of Thorner Tenter’s point of view relatively fast. While making it a longer book might have felt like padding, it might have contextualized Tenter’s life and work a bit more thoroughly as well. A novel about the slow grinding of mundane work feels as if it should include a bit more of that mundanity. However, making it such a short book also meant that every section was filled with weight, tension, and humanity.

The Mold Farmer is a bleak, unsettling novella, and one of the strangest yet most compelling books I’ve read in a long time.

5/5

Read The Mold Farmer by Rick Claypool

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REVIEW: Nanoshock by K.C. Alexander

Nanoshock is the second volume of the SINless series by K.C. Alexander. The series is set around an arcology where humanity’s survivors have been packed together like sardines. Every person has a SIN code that marks them as part of the corporate-run system except the Saints (or SINless) that exist as mercenaries off the grid. After a disastrous mission that kills her girlfriend, saint Riko, is left friendless and with zero credibility in the underworld.

Necrotech was one of my favorite cyberpunk reads from the moment it came out. The sequel is a bit more of a mixed bag as it attempts to shock the reader from the moment the first sentence is spoken to the shocking ending that leaves us trapped with a cliffhanger since 2017. Sometimes this shock value helps the story along and other times it feels like the author is just being edgy for the sake of edgy. However, that doesn’t mean I disliked the book. Far from it, few authors are capable of writing genuine cyberPUNK like K.C. Alexander and my biggest regret is I don’t have a sequel to read right now.

Riko has lost almost every single bit of respect she’d previously gained as a saint. Everyone believes she not only sold out her fellow saints to corporation MetaCore but that she sold out her own gilrlfriend, Nanji. Her mentor, Lucky, leaving has caused her even more distress. Her only friend, Indigo, also has suspicions that she really did kill his sister. It’s left her angry and violent, well angrier and more violent, with her untreated PTSD only making things worse.

Part of what makes this book good is it seriously handles Riko’s trauma. Riko doesn’t just get over her violation and suffering at the hands of MetaCore. It increases her already deep issues and forces away those few people that she has left. The book actually gets genuinely uncomfortable at times with Riko’s obvious issues that are not played laughs or cured by friendship. Indeed, the one person who Riko really gets close to is, well, I won’t spoil that for you.

Nanoshock is full of action and excellent world-building. Every single scene is full of new characters, groups, and details about the hellish environment our heroine has to survive in. Poverty, crime, and greed are exaggerated to a Judge Dredd-esque level that makes our heroines’ actions relatable if not right. Riko believes in nothing but being the best saint possible but that is no longer possible. She will never be the best and has no ambitions beyond that, even revenge.

Unfortunately, I do have some complaints about the book. The book spends much of its plot trying to get Riko to recover a missing video of her betraying saints to MetaCore. However, that plot is never really resolved nor is there any progress made on her overall quest to discover the truth. It’s the equivalent of the Empire Strikes Back having Luke not fight the Empire or learn anything about being a Jedi. Its a fine plot but I was hoping for more progress, especially with the ending.

In conclusion, Nanoshock is a book that is sometimes a bit too ugly to be fun. However, it is a solid sequel to Necrotech and a story that I was glad to have read. I am very sad that we haven’t had a third book in the series because I really hated being left hanging by the climax but life goes on. I still think it was worth reading.

Read Nanoshock by K.C. Alexander

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REVIEW: The Sandman (Audible) by Neil Gaiman and Dirk Maggs

Neil Gaiman is one of today’s most beloved and well-known fantasy authors, with good reason. Dirk Maggs is a force in the industry too, having developed many popular properties from comics and prose and movie universe tie-ins into successful audiobooks. Bring these two creators together for The Sandman, and you’ve got a recipe for a successful and entertaining few hours of listening.

The Sandman audiobook is the first in a developing series of adaptations of the famous Sandman DC comic series, as written by Neil Gaiman. It’s one of the most successful “graphic novel” series out there, serving as a benchmark for dark fantasy comics ever since. It was also the series that launched Gaiman into a highly prolific career as an author in multiple formats. The series is currently in development over at Netflix, so this audio serves as a wonderful bridge between comics and the small screen.

The Sandman covers the stories as featured in the graphic novel series from Preludes and Nocturnes, through The Doll’s House and Dream Country. This is not a word for word reading of those comics, as the narrative needed to be modified from the visual to the audial while maintaining the imagery created in the original version. I will say that this was a highly ambitious undertaking, but that it was achieved with tremendous success.

As an added bonus, Neil Gaiman himself leads a wonderful cast of readers for the story, acting as the narrator throughout the reading to set the stage and carry the narrative from one dream to another and sometimes back to reality. I can’t think of a more perfect reader for this job, as Gaiman has been nearly as brilliant as a narrator of his own work as he has the author.

The central protagonist of this tale is the immortal being known as Dream, or Morpheus. He is the Lord of the world of Dream, which covers quite a large scale of territory. This story begins with his capture, by a small cult of sorcerers near the beginning of the twentieth century. Problem was, they were actually attempting to abduct his sister Death, and steal her power of immortality.

“Well? Have you no excuse? No explanation? Some reason I should not take reprisal?”

“…uh, we didn’t want you. It was all a mistake. We weren’t trying to capture you, we wanted to capture…Death.”

“You wanted Death?”

“Ummhmmm..”

“Then count yourself lucky for the sake of your species and your petty planet that you did not succeed. That instead you snared Death’s younger brother. You’ll never know how lucky you were.”

For the next seventy years or so, the world had to adapt to the realm of Dream having no leader. Nightmares were free to wander and get into mischief and many people had uneasy sleep, or none at all. Or in some cases, that’s literally all they did, slipping into deep comas.

The Sandman takes us from these beginnings to a time where Morpheus is able to escape his captors. Then the story shifts to his quest to reclaim his realm, his talismans of power, and his influence. He has to recapture some of the loose nightmares that got out, and these make for some rather disturbing and entertaining adventures.

With The Sandman, the story is great. But the audiobook brings it to another level, and serves as (I hope) a fantastic introduction to what will be a phenomenal Netflix series. The cast is top notch throughout, and only starts with Gaiman as the Narrator. James McAvoy plays Morpheus, and I cannot think of a better voice and personality to handle this central character. There are other fantastic voices as well to cover the main characters: Kat Dennings is Death, Simon Vance is Lucien, Taron Egerton is John Constantine, Michael Sheen is Lucifer, Riz Ahmed is The Corinthian, Andy Serkis is Matthew the Raven, and Bebe Neuwirth stars as Chantal.

These are fantastic stories all throughout the larger narrative, but I’ll finish by mentioning my personal favorite, “Collectors”. This is the story of Morpheus tracking down some of his escaped Nightmares, most notably The Corinthian, who is one of the most dangerous and cunning of them all. “Collectors” is a coming together of a few overall threads in the story, were a special girl with powers in Dream, Rose Walker stays at a hotel which just happens to be hosting a convention for famous serial killers. This was a highlight of the Sandman comic series, and it doesn’t disappoint in audio form.

When I learned that Netflix was developing a series for The Sandman, I was excited to hear this. It has been my favorite comic series for many years, and I’ve always wanted to see something more done with it. This audiobook telling of the first three graphic novels got me excited all over again for the series, and even has me tempted to go back and re-read the original comic series.

“Time moves no faster for my kind that it does for humanity. In that prison, it crawled at a snail’s pace. I was. I am…the Lord of this realm of Dream and Nightmare.”

Listen to The Sandman (Audible) by Neil Gaiman and Dirk Maggs

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EXCLUSIVE: She Dreams in Blood by Michael R. Fletcher

Felix Ortiz is a beast.

Back in 2019, which seems like a thousand years ago, I was hunting for an artist to do the cover for Smoke and Stone, the first book in the City of Sacrifice series. Felix, a complete unknown to me at the time, reached out and suggested I hire him. He then sent me a rough sketch of what he had in mind.

Boom. Done. I was blown away.

Felix nailed the feeling and atmosphere.

Three hundred years later, somewhere in early 2020, I approached him with my idea for the Black Stone Heart (Obsidian Path #1) cover. He took my two paragraphs of ranting insanity and absolutely killed it. A few months after that I sent him a scene of narcotic fuelled madness and he came back with the cover for Ash and Bones (City of Sacrifice #2).

This time, I couldn’t decide which scene I wanted on the cover. I sent Felix two possibilities. One, he said, was completely insane and too busy to be a book cover. The other he got excited about. As an aside, one of the things I love about working with Felix is the fire-and-forget aspect.  I told him what I wanted and when I needed it finished. After that, I didn’t think about it again until he sent me the first rough draft. Over the next two weeks he sent better and better versions, tweaking colours, fleshing (or in this case flaying) details.

I am unbelievably happy to get to finally share the art for She Dreams in Blood (Obsidian Path #2).

And as always, a huge thank-you to Adrian and all the folks at Grimdark Magazine for being so kind to this deranged little writer!

Cover reveal: She Dreams in Blood

Pre-order She Dreams in Blood by Michael R. Fletcher

Click on the first cover image to go through to the US pre-order, and the second cover image to go to the UK pre-order.

 

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REVIEW: B.P.R.D.: Plague of Frogs Vol. 3 by Mike Mignola

There is a tendency in these retrospectives of BPRD: Plague of Frogs to keep saying ‘Now it gets serious.’ The Plague of Frogs begins at the end of Volume One; Now it gets serious. Lincoln, Nebraska is destroyed in The Black Flame; Now it gets serious. Well, Plague of Frogs Vol. 3 opens and ….. Now it gets serious.

Of course, since the very beginning in Hellboy: Seed of Destruction, there has been an impending apocalypse. So our heroes have that to look forward to. But there are still ways in which there is an increased focus on the potential devastation, or particularly deep wounds to endure. A sense of focus is found in the authors of this Volume: it is all Mike Mignola and John Arcudi. There are no anthology segments, no short stories. Everything is fairly directly linked. It is solely drawn by Guy Davis and coloured by Dave Stewart.

The first part, The Universal Machine is almost a coda to The Black Flame. This is not to imply that it is a shorter work, but it does deal with the consequences of that story. The main strand of the plot involves Kate Corrigen’s visit to a book dealer in rural France; meanwhile her colleagues at the Bureau tell a series of tales about their experiences of death. It’s naturally a less intense or action-heavy story than The Black Flame, but responds neatly to he way the characters have been shaken by the destruction around them – as well as setting up a few plot seeds for later reference. Kate Corrigen gets a chance to show her mettle in an atmosphere of warped scholarship and urbane menace; this is a more individual effort than previous works.

Garden of Souls is a more definite sidestep for Plague of Frogs Vol. 3. The arresting figure of Abraham Sapien (a character of similar vintage to Hellboy) gets to play out the consequences of his slowly delineated past. Him and Benjamin Daimio are drawn into an intrigue in Indonesia involving old acquaintances (of a kind) of Sapien. There’s a globe-trotting element to this story, and the Chimeric creatures that appear give it a Dr Moreau feel. However, the arcane conspiracy at work is sufficiently threatening and sufficiently crazy to offer a sense of weight. Some of the designs involved – Victorian diving suits with fragile forms within – are particularly impressive, going from comic to strange to threatening in impressive succession. The pace of Garden of Souls is perhaps a little too quick, and it could do with a few more pages at the end to give it room to breathe, but it is still enjoyable.

Again we see a contrast. Garden of Souls was lighter, set further afield. Killing Ground is set in and around the new BPRD headquarters in Colorado (far colder than Indonesia!). I’ve praised Guy Davis’s work before, but the change of environment between the two stories is well-executed. A number of underlying plot elements, particularly those involving Daimio are brought to completion here – and while genre aficionados may spot some of the signs quite early on, the execution is still very impressive. More than the blood on display however, this acts as a sort of ‘loss of innocence’ for the Bureau. Now of course, there has been failure and the manifestation of a very clear evil in the form of the titular Plague of Frogs. But Killing Ground has the characters we know not only fail but fail as a consequence of something we might term sin. Corrosive and dangerous secrets we might expect from secret agents, but other parts – self-indulgence, apathy, wrath, flailing attempts at desperate measures – we haven’t quite seen this before. Whatever the damage to the Bureau, the very personal has been struck at. Personal agendas begin to manifest, even as a path ahead is indicated by Liz Sherman’s dreams. Killing Ground comes as a significant low point in Plague of Frogs Vol. 3, and it is a suitably raw and stark read.

Read Plague of Frogs Vol. 3 by Mike Mignola

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REVIEW: The Expanse Series 5 Episode 9 – Winnipesaukee

Welcome to our next installment in the episode-by-episode series review of The Expanse Season five. Today I’ll be talking about Episode 9, Winnipesaukee, so if you’re not up to where we’re up to, fire your adjusters, hit the juice, and burn hard in the other direction, now.

We start on board the Free Navy as news is received of an engagement between allied Belters and some MCRN and UN ships. Karal reports to Marco that the signal from the Chetzemoka was changed and then stopped. He’s not happy.

Alex and Bobbie are en route to the Chetzemoka in the Screaming Firehawk and Alex wonders aloud if the change in the signal really seems like random comms interference. A similar conversation is happening between Holden, Bull, and Monica on the Rocinante.

On the Chetzemoka, Naomi is making dangerous runs into the atmosphereless part of the ship to get a few drops of water from the crippled ship’s systems. When she returns to the bridge, she collapses but from her position on the floor, sees a break in one of the wires connecting the ship-wide bomb together.

Amos, Clarissa, and Eric, accompanied by some toughs from Baltimore make it to one of the big houses on Winnipesaukee island (which is in New Hampshire, so a fair distance from Baltimore) on a copter and look to steal the spaceship there. They meet the winter staff in the hanger, who’d assumed any raiders would go to the house. They know Clarissa from her previous life. It turns out the ship’s reactor isn’t working so Amos goes to investigate.

Crisjen is walking through the UN offices on Luna when she sees a news report that Pallas station has been attacked. She calls out Delgado who defends his advise to the Secretary-General. They come into a security council meeting where strikes against Belter connected bases on Callisto and Tycho are being discussed – despite them being a Martian facility and Earther-owned. David Pastor says he’s expanding the ‘Pallas initiative’ and Crisjen says they should be concentrating on spinning the attack as a legitimate military response and they are not ‘at war with the belt.’

Delgado says that Inaros attacked civilian targets, so why shouldn’t they and Crisjen responds that Inaros is not a role model and his claims that the Belters are a nation are false and they can exploit that by allying with anti-Inaros factions.

Pastor shuts her down and says their–his–job is to make their people safer and reduce the enemy’s ability to hurt them. Crisjen is totally heartsick but appeals to the council that she wants, dreams about punishing Inaros for murdering her husband but connects her grief to that of those who are now grieving losses from Pallas station. Every partisan killed makes ten more.

Pastor says they can’t make emotional decisions and have to be rational (you patronising son of a bitch.) Delgado suggests hitting Ceres as it’s the major base in the belt and would force Inaros to the outer planets to resupply. Crisjen appeals tp the sheer number of people, of children on Ceres but she is talked over, so she resigns. Fully half the council follows her in walking out.

Karal and Oksana are discussing what to do regarding the Chetzemoka and Karal says they will not tell Drummer and will obey Marco’s orders when they are received. Tense.

Amos, Clarissa, and the Baltimore crew are having a good feed in the big house, but without the reactor working they’re going to get cold and not go anywhere. Eric is a bit negative but Amos points out that he and Clarissa can handle any mechanical or electronic fault, but Eric’s software skills would be useful.

A bunch of refugees from other houses arrive thinking they are relief services. Eric just wants them to go away and Amos is, quite practically sorry that they can’t help. Clarissa however, offers them a ride up to Luna. Amos eventually decides to agree with Clarissa but tells the islanders that they’re not waiting.

Marco sends a message to Drummer’s fleet telling them to engage and destroy the Rocinante. They meet this with a less than enthusiastic response, causing Karal to dress them down and Drummer to debate the sense of the order. Karal asks if they’re breaking their oath to Marco and Drummer shares a long look with some of her crew before saying no, they’ll do what needs to be done.

Karal goes to speak to Marco and Oksana coms up behind Drummer and asks for her gun. Drummer says there is no need, but Oksana says then there is no need not to.

Crisjen puts her husband’s name onto the memorial at the core of the UN facility on Luna. An officer comes up and offers her condolences, then advises Avasarala that three more cabinet ministers have resigned and a vote of no confidence has been lodged against Pastor. Will Avasarala be willing to serve again?

She asks Delgado to be in her cabinet because he’s experienced and he’s not afraid of her. He says he’s transferring to a strike cruiser. She asks him to finish his joke about the Earther, Martian and Belter in a bar. It ends up not being funny and he says it used to be funnier, looking thoughtful.

Back on Winnipesaukee and private security have come up to the house, saying they are collating all the food on the island to a central location. Eric says “this is the most pathetic shakedown I’ve ever seen. You must be new at this.”

This escalates into a standoff and Clarissa tries to talk the men with guns down. Amos tells them to walk away. Eric and the Baltimore crew were more minded to have the shoot out and be done with it, but Amos says let’s get this done before they come back.

Drummer confronts Oksana because she feels that she’s keeping secrets. Oksana asks her if the polyamorous crew of their fleet are as important to her as Naomi was. Drummer says yes. Oksana tells her that Naomi *might* be alive on the Chetzemoka. However, she says Drummer can’t save Naomi and that going up against Marco would see them all dead and appeals to her to respect that.

Eric and Clarissa discuss that their parts of the ship are now functional and she asks why he calls Amos ‘Timmy’ and he says best not to ask.

Amos has a small heart-to-heart with one of his old Baltimore pals and works out why the ship isn’t working.

Eric and Clarissa have a neat discussion about their varying views, expanding on Amos’ idea of tribes from a few episodes ago. Eric finishes with ‘where did Amos find you’ and Clarissa admits that it was ‘in jail for multiple homicides.’

Amos tells them he’s fixed the issue, the reactor is online and Eric puts a 15-minute warning out for departure.

As they start to get the various refugees from the island inside, the private security attack from the tree-line.

The Baltimore crew and Amos get pinned down outside the house while Clarissa hears attackers coming into the bunker. Amos leads the crew back into the hanger, losing a few of the Baltimore crew along the way and find Clarissa on her knees, having eviscerated a bunch of attackers.

They get into the shuttle, with Amos dragging his friend along after they get shot and they take off. Once they hit space, Amos finds his friend is dead and then clicks on his magnetic boots and looks out the window at Earth.

Marco goes to see Filip as he’s been keeping to himself following Cyn and Naomi’s apparent death. They both apologise, but Marco tells him that Naomi is alive and frames her leap to the Chetzemoka as a cowardly escape ‘she left us both, again.’ Marco hugs Filip as he cries.

Onboard the Chetzemoka, Naomi has attached a wire to the exposed part of the bomb wiring and now has access to a tactical screen on the helmet of her suit. It shows the Chetzemoka with a yellow ring around it marked ‘arm’ and a smaller red ring marked ‘detonate’ with the Screaming Firehawk approaching. She cries as she realises her friends are still coming, but then wipes some of the water off her arm and has an idea, then goes back into the hard vacuum in the rest of the ship.

Thoughts on Winnipesaukee

Winnipesaukee was a really intense episode even with the action jerking back and forth between several very different settings.

On the Chetzemoka, Naomi continues her desperate struggle to stay alive and save her friends from their appointed fate.

The tension on Drummer’s ships is skyrocketing as the crew loves her, but she wants to save/avenge Naomi, with Karal holding the whip hand and Oksana trying to steer the path to their survival.

On Luna, Crisjen deals with the loss of her husband while attempting to reign in the more hawkish tendencies amongst the UN cabinet, eventually resigns and ends the episode as the new Secretary-General.

Most of the action in this episode takes place on Winnipesaukee island as Clarissa leads Amos and their crew of Baltimore rogues to find a way off the planet. The exchanges between Clarissa and Eric are fantastic as their very different worldviews clash in a philosophical conflict that is arguably closer to the core of the whole series than the actual physical battle which occurs towards the close of the episode.

There is a common theme between the plotlines on Drummer’s ships, within the UN and on asteroid scarred Earth where our protagonists are left with tough choices, most of which boil down to doing the thing that makes you feel safe or the thing which is more compassionate.

The similarity of all three choices despite the wildly different circumstances leads to a very effective episode, full of great performances and high drama that yet again cranks up the tension before the final episode of the series next week.

That said, for my money, the acting award this week goes to the Shohreh Aghdashloo who displays poise and range as Avasarala goes through every emotion, trying to do the right thing in the face of personal tragedy and no small amount of patronising nonsense.

I’ve been expecting some climactic confrontation for weeks now, but it seems The Expanse showrunners were keeping everything building right to the last. While Amos now seems safely in space and Crisjen is once again in charge of the UN we have the Rocinante and Screaming Firehawk rushing to save Naomi on the Chetzemoka while Drummer and company are ordered to destroy them. I bet Marco and the Free Navy aren’t far away either.

I can’t wait to see how this all plays out.

What did you enjoy in Winnipesaukee and what are you looking forward to as the story continues?

Episodes 1-9 of Season Five and all prior seasons of The Expanse can be streamed via Amazon Prime  –  and new episodes are coming every Wednesday.

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REVIEW: Your Favorite Band Cannot Save You by Scotto Moore

Your Favorite Band Cannot Save You by Scotto Moore is intriguing and quirky. I am a connoisseur of the offbeat comedy/horror book, and this story felt right at home for me. However, putting this novella into a concrete category is difficult. There are aspects of a lot of different genres present. We have a horror for obvious reasons, plus a touch of science fiction. Plus, there is drama, and I also found it quite funny. It is a lot to unpack for such a short story but it manages to add bits and pieces of all the various genres effectively. 

“I was obliterated, really. Just sort of crushed into atoms. And then without warning, something gathered me up in a deep, luscious embrace and reassembled me. I could feel it–I could feel her consoling me, sweeping away the emptiness, signaling the absolute fact of something greater than both of us just out of sight.”

Your Favorite Band Cannot Save You starts with a music blogger, home alone. He finds a “hot new band on the scene, releasing one track a day for ten days straight.” I can empathize with the main character immediately. I feel like this when I discover a new story. I want to talk about it and share it with people. The band’s name is Beautiful Remorse, and the band is creating the most glorious music he has ever heard. It speaks to his soul, probably a little too much. It makes the listener have an obsessive fascination with the band and everything it is putting out. Turns all the obsessive fan qualities up to 11. 

The music blogger sets out to find out as much as possible about the band and the mysterious lead singer named Airee MacPherson. 

Without much effort, he scores an interview with Airee, an invite to tour with the band, and help release the new tracks for Beautiful Remorse. Obviously, an offer that he couldn’t refuse. However, this all happened to easily. Pretty quick into the tour, he realizes there is something sinister going on, and not all is as it seems. 

The lead protagonist in Your Favorite Band Cannot Save You is fairly fleshed out. He embodied the geeky nerd voice of anyone talking about their absolute favorite thing; I empathized with him a lot. However, the side characters were no more than cutouts. There wasn’t much to them, which is acceptable in a book this short, 120 pages. 

As I mentioned earlier, I love offbeat books. Something that is a little weird is usually right up my alley. So this book worked for me and I enjoyed it. However, this book is certainly not for everyone. The sheer ridiculousness of the events that happen in the book can be a little offputting for some readers. It is a lot to take in, you have to suspend a whole lot of disbelief for the plot. But, for me as a reader that is what makes it so much fun. If you want to read a story with an old-fashioned grindhouse kind of flavor, Your Favorite Band Cannot Save You is great.

Read Your Favorite Band Cannot Save You by Scotto Moore

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REVIEW: Inscape by Louise Carey

I received an uncorrected proof copy of Inscape in exchange for an honest review. Thank you to Louise Carey and Gollancz.

Inscape is a high-quality cyberpunk thriller that’s set in a futuristic version of London following an event called the Meltdown. Throughout the novel’s pages, we follow Tanta, a young CorpWard, which is essentially a trainee spy for the InTech corporation. It doesn’t take long for the action to start and in the very first paragraph, we are made aware that something important is about to go down. Through her Inscape, Tanta is informed that she is acting as team leader for her first mission – a red assignment – which is the initial sign that something is seriously wrong.

The mission is a disaster, a contingency which they couldn’t pre-empt causes the deaths of two of Tanta’s colleagues, with another being gravely injured. The whole incident raises many more questions than answers, and Tanta, who barely makes it home alive herself, will do all she can to shed light on the mysteries and conspiracies that surround this tragic night.

Inscape is a gripping and thought-provoking SF debut and I can’t think of anything negative to say about it. Carey’s cyberpunk world features a cold war between two rival corporations, mind programming, mind-wiping, and Inscapes which I’d describe as being a bit like an iPhone for your mind. The Inscapes are really intelligent pieces of kit with built-in GPS, silent MindChat, Zoom-like screen share, amongst many other applications, and you can swipe notifications away that you want to ignore. What was enjoyable to read about, but also quite tragic and harrowing, is that nothing Carey presents is that far-fetched. In fact, I was picturing the events happening here as being as little as twenty years in the future, with some of Carey’s enhancements and advancements actually being very conceivable ideas.

Tanta is Inscape’s main character and I had a great time following her. In this first of a trilogy, she discovers a lot about herself and changes drastically from the first to the final page. There is a lot of self-contemplation and reflection by our lead as events cause her to question her past, present, and reality. She is the top CorpWard and she has been raised to be a weapon for InTech. She lives, breathes, and loves her corporation. She is also in a nice and loving long-term relationship with a sex worker.

In addition to Tanta, there are two other point of view characters. One is Cole, an expert programmer who has had a great amount of his past erased from his memories. Throughout a large portion of Inscape, he is acting as Tanta’s partner as they look into the mystery of what happened on that chaotic night, and even venture undercover together in rival corporation territory. The duo had great chemistry and it was excellent to read about how they get to know each other whilst also getting to know themselves. The other point of view perspective is that of Director Jen Ash. She is Tanta’s senior manager and has overlooked her training and upbringing. Tanta will do everything she can to impress her.

I’ll wrap up my review by saying that Inscape is an impressive SF action thriller. It presents a disquieting and eerie vision of what may come, made even more haunting by the fact many of the leaps Carey’s made from our now to her future don’t come across as ridiculous or far-fetched at all. Inscape is a well-written, intriguing and exciting debut that has a fine finale and works neatly as a standalone. The strengths of the story and the world-building leave lots of potential for the future of the trilogy, and I will be continuing Tanta’s dystopian tale.

Read Inscape by Louise Carey

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