Sarah Chorn's Blog, page 98

Jaran – Kate Elliott

About the Book

The first book of Kate Elliott’s epic Novels of the Jaran, set in an alien-controlled galaxy where a young woman seeks to find her own life and love, but is tied to her brother’s revolutionary fate

In the future, Earth is just one of the planets ruled by the vast Chapalii empire. The volatility of these alien overlords is something with which Tess Soerensen is all too familiar. Her brother, Charles, rebelled against them at one time and was rewarded by being elevated into their interstellar system—yet there is reason to believe they murdered his and Tess’s parents.

Struggling to find her place in the world and still mending a broken heart, Tess sneaks aboard a shuttle bound for Rhui, one of her brother’s planets. On the ground, she joins up with the native jaran people, becoming immersed in their nomadic society and customs while also attempting to get to the bottom of a smuggling scheme she encountered on her journey there. As she grows ever closer to the charismatic jaran ruler, Ilya—who is inflamed by an urgent mission of his own—Tess must choose between her feelings for him and her loyalty to her brother.

Jaran is the first volume of the Novels of the Jaran, which continues with An Earthly Crown, His Conquering Sword, and The Law of Becoming.

494 pages (ebook)

Published on July 30, 2013

Published by Open Road Media

Author’s webpage

This book was provided for me to review by the publisher.

(Note: This review was written while I was incredibly tired and unable to edit it properly. I will edit it once I am fully rested and awake. Until then, enjoy all my glorious typos.)

—–

When I think of Kate Elliott, I think of fantasy (or steampunk). I do not think of SciFi. Therefore, when I saw that she wrote a SciFi book, I knew I had to read it. I’m always fascinated with authors who take a detour from their typical style to try out something new. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t, but it’s always fun for me to see what an author is capable of once they leave their literary comfort zones.

Kate Elliott is best known as an epic fantasy writer. Her books are powerful, and sprawling. Her characters are well developed and emotionally intense. Her writing pulls it all together so perfectly. She’s an author that, no matter what flaws I might find with her books, I always tend to enjoy them to one extent or another. Jaran really is no different. It’s not a perfect novel, but it’s mighty enjoyable, despite that.

Jaran is billed as a SciFi, but it’s really an epic fantasy book with hints of SciFi thrown in to make things interesting. Jaran starts with Tess in a futuristic galaxy and she ends up on a very behind-the-technological-times planet. She’s highly placed in the governmental order of things, as her brother is an important Duke who has been fighting for human rights against the alien Chapalii. Tess stands to inherit all of that, but her discomfort with the position and her overwhelming feeling that she is a poor fit for the job drives her off to find her own way and maybe discover who she is as she goes.

In truth, Jaran is as much a coming of age novel as anything else. While Tess is an adult, she is rather emotionally broken having come from a defunct engagement, and she’s rather naive despite all of her education. In many ways, Jaran reminds me a bit of Pride and Prejudice. The protagonist is a well-educated woman who is caged by the expectations of society and the need of her family. As the book progresses, Tess grows and develops becoming her own woman as she is forced to live with the locals and experience a wider version of life. The similarities don’t end there. Jaran isn’t an incredibly unique novel, and it can be quite predictable, but Elliott manages to keep it interesting despite that.

I can’t really discuss Jaran without discussing the romance. Like Pride and Prejudice, this is a coming of age story (as I just discussed) but it’s also a love story. Most of the book is spent with Tess circling her love interest and both of them coming to terms with their feelings for each other and what that means, as their backgrounds are so vastly different. This also puts her in the center of a simmering war between two mighty cultures, the people who live in villages verses the people who live on the plains.

Typically I don’t enjoy romance, but Kate Elliott has a way with spinning a story that managed to pull me in despite my anti-romance sentiments. While the romance is a huge part of the plot, there’s also a fair amount of discovery and world building that takes place. The world where Tess finds herself is replete with political tensions which add tension throughout the book. The world building is well done. Elliott manages to make the plains and the culture feel vivid and real. The well thought out culture of the plains people fits their habitat perfectly.

That being said, while Jaran is incredibly readable and engaging, nothing is perfect. The action scenes tend to have convenient resolutions, which makes them less than believable. This also has an additional backlash of making certain characters seem a little too badass to be real. The romance is well done, but there comes a point where the tension between various characters feels overdone and needlessly prolonged. The budding relationship, while sweet, can overpower the plot and world building. Furthermore, occasionally the point of view switches to Tess’s brother’s assistant. Those sections are actually rather boring and they left me chomping at the bit to get back to Tess. They have a very speed-bumpish feel to them that could be frustrating.

I never expected to say this about a book so heavily focused on romance, but Jaran truly is a truly charming tale. It’s less SciFi than fantasy, but Elliott shows her skills with deft world building, and intensely emotional characters that are mostly well developed. It’s easy to become attached to her cast. When Tess loses a loved one toward the end of the book, the reader feels it acutely, and that’s saying something impressive for Elliott. Plus, there is enough information dropped about the wider universe, that I’m sure Elliott will expand the world and its complexities in future books. Elliott not only writes a sweet story, but she writes an absorbing one. Despite its flaws, Jaran is a book that, while it might not please everyone, it’s sure to find a soft spot in many.

 

3/5 stars

Thinking Through Type | Cover Art Cliche Triggers

As a reviewer, I see the book cover cliche discussion regurgitated and discussed over and over and over again. I usually try not to enter those frays. There are a few reasons for that:

First, art tends to be subjective, and there’s nothing wrong with one person liking what another person hates. No one is right or wrong, it’s just different ways to perceive things and I see no reason to pee in that pool. Monet painted more water lilies than I thought any one human possibly could, but people love his art anyway. Just because there is a lot of something, doesn’t always make it bad.

Secondly, cliches tend to be cliches because they work. The book covers that people pick on (example: the guy wearing a cloak on a cover) tend to be so common because they do effectively pull people in and make them wonder about said cloaked dude on the cover of whatever book. Harp on these overused covers if you will, but they are overused because some marketing guru out there realized that, no matter what bloggers think, these covers are effective.

No, I don’t like every cover I see, and yes, I do occasionally judge a book on its cover (I got one in the mail this week that I probably won’t ever read in public because the cover is too damn embarrassing. I won’t say what the book is, but the cover is tragically bad.). That being said, there was a post on Buzzfeed about nineteen cover art cliches that has made the rounds over the past little bit. I’ve seen bloggers/authors cheering this post on, and I’ve seen bloggers/authors get upset and say that considering any one cover as part of a cliche is shortsighted.

I’m not here to argue what is cliche and what isn’t, or to discuss if cover cliches exist. I’m here to examine the point that whether or not you think cliches exist, we are all (probably) attracted to a cover cliche. I’ll admit, I do think that cover art cliches do exist and I will also admit that they don’t tend to bug me. I am one of those marketing statistics. There is a certain cover “type” that I see all over, all the time and I always pick up those books to see what they are about and, more often than not, I’ll read them.

So what is my cover-art-cliche trigger? 

The guy in the cloak, or the guy in the cloak holding weapons. I think I must have a secret infatuation with that type of cover. Even though I do think it’s a bit overused, I am in the statistic of people it attracts. I like that guy. Here’s an example of how bad it is. I don’t video game at all and I’m less than interested in any games (I just don’t care, period). However, if my husband starts playing Assassin’s Creed, I stop everything I’m doing to watch. Why? Because the guy wears a hooded cloak and I like that. There’s an air of mystery about him that I enjoy.

What am I leading to? 

I’m wondering what cover cliche everyone else is attracted to? I find it interesting that we complain about cover art cliches so often, but we rarely discuss the reasons why a cliche is a cliche, nor do we discuss what kinds of cover art cliches we are attracted to. I bet most of us tend to vacillate toward one form of cover art or another. So what is your poison? And do cover art cliches bother you or not? Why? What makes a cliche and cliche? And are cliches always bad?

A Challenge – Bringing Back our Roots

Yesterday I went to the library (twice). I had my kid with me on the second trip. She’s two (on the 15th) and absolutely obsessed with the moon. We were wandering through the isles (while she was yelling, “WHAT’S THAT?!” at the top of her lungs). I was just looking to see what the library had when she happened upon the book pictured here, The Mad Scientists Daughter. I didn’t even notice it for about five minutes but she has superhero eyesight when she sees moons or dogs. I picked it up, having never heard of it, and decided to give it a read. Why? Because it has a moon on the cover and that excites my kid, and I’m not out anything if I don’t like it.

The thing about reviewing is that sometimes it’s a doubled edged sword. So often I’m buried under piles of what I “should” be reading that I have no time to just randomly pick up a book and feel the joy of discovery. I predict everything and I analyze everything in ways I never did before I started this website. Don’t get me wrong, I wouldn’t trade any of it for the world, but sometimes I miss that simple act of literary discovery and adventure that I rarely feel anymore. Now days, if a blog that I frequently read hasn’t talked about it, or a publisher/author hasn’t sent it to me, chances are I have no idea the book even exists. I rarely just wander and pick out books for the hell of it. That’s kind of sad.

Discovery is part of what is so incredible about reading. It’s the discovery and wonder that pulls me in and makes reading so addicting. While I do feel that to one extent or another every time I pick up a book, it’s never quite acute as it was yesterday when I randomly picked up a book because my kid was obsessed with the moon on the cover.

I gave it some thought, and I figured that I’m probably not the only person who feels this way. I’m not a huge “challenge” person (honestly, I think reading challenges are stupid, and yes, I realize that is the pot calling the kettle black). That being said, I’m having a lot of fun with my random-picking-up-of-books experiment, and it’s invigorating me in ways I haven’t felt invigorated in a long time. I’m deciding to spread the wealth and challenge all of my readers to go to the library/book store/friends house/wherever and pick up a book you’ve never heard of for the hell of it, and read it. Don’t analyze it. Don’t look it up on fourteen different websites to see what other people thought about it. Just pick up a book you’ve never heard of, open it, and read it. That’s it. Those are the rules.

Let me know what you end up picking up and why. Once you read it, let me know what you thought of it. Let’s get back to our reading roots from the pre-internet days before we all had blogs and Amazon and Goodreads where we could check book reviews and etc. That’s what this whole “challenge” is about – getting back to the good ol’ days and re-discovering the unbiased joy of literary discovery.

I’ll readdress this “challenge” at the end of August and I’ll let you guys know all the books I randomly picked up and started reading, and if it’s impacted my reading style at all. I hope others participate so we can have a discussion… or something.

So there you go. Will you participate? What do you think?

Books I’m Eyeing

Books I’m Eyeing is a (hopefully) weekly series wherein I show you the books that have intrigued me, and the blogs and reviews we can all blame that on. My goal is to make my library hate me because of all the holds I have placed. This feature will show you just how I’m accomplishing that.

Do any of these books interest you? Or are there some that I’ve missed but should check out? Let me know!

—–

NOS4A2 – Joe Hill

Discovery blamed on: Rob B of SFFWorld

About the Book

DON’T SLOW DOWN

Victoria McQueen has an uncanny knack for finding things: a misplaced bracelet, a missing photograph, answers to unanswerable questions. When she rides her bicycle over the rickety old covered bridge in the woods near her house, she always emerges in the places she needs to be. Vic doesn’t tell anyone about her unusual ability, because she knows no one will believe her. She has trouble understanding it herself.

Charles Talent Manx has a gift of his own. He likes to take children for rides in his 1938 Rolls-Royce Wraith with the vanity plate NOS4A2. In the Wraith, he and his innocent guests can slip out of the everyday world and onto hidden roads that lead to an astonishing playground of amusements he calls Christmasland. Mile by mile, the journey across the highway of Charlie’s twisted imagination transforms his precious passengers, leaving them as terrifying and unstoppable as their benefactor.

And then comes the day when Vic goes looking for trouble… and finds her way, inevitably, to Charlie.

That was a lifetime ago. Now, the only kid ever to escape Charlie’s unmitigated evil is all grown up and desperate to forget.

But Charlie Manx hasn’t stopped thinking about the exceptional Victoria McQueen. On the road again, he won’t slow down until he’s taken his revenge. He’s after something very special – something Vic can never replace.

As a life-and-death battle of wills builds - her magic pitted against his - Vic McQueen prepares to destroy Charlie once and for all… or die trying…

Joe Hill’s acclaimed works of fiction, Horns, Heart-Shaped Box, and 20th Century Ghosts, have already earned him international acclaim. WithNOS4A2, this outstanding novelist – “one of America’s finest horror writers” (Time magazine); “a major player in 21st-century fantastic fiction” (Washington Post) – crafts his finest work yet. Disturbing, mesmerizing, and full of twisting thrills, Hill’s phantasmagoric, devilishly playful masterpiece is a terrifying high-octane ride.

—–

Apocalypse Now Now – Charlie Human

Discovery blamed on: Civilian Reader - double damn since it’s not out in the US yet.

About the Book

Neil Gaiman meets Tarantino in this madcap, wildly entertaining journey into Cape Town’s supernatural underworld.

‘I don’t even know how to describe reading this book, so just look at my wide eyes and my silently mumbling mouth and take my shell-shock as a good sign that you need to read this book right now.’ Chuck Wendig.

I LOVE THE SMELL OF PARALLEL DIMENSIONS IN THE MORNING

Baxter Zevcenko’s life is pretty sweet. As the 16-year-old kingpin of the Spider, his smut-peddling schoolyard syndicate, he’s making a name for himself as an up-and-coming entrepreneur. Profits are on the rise, the other gangs are staying out of his business, and he’s going out with Esme, the girl of his dreams.

But when Esme gets kidnapped, and all the clues point towards strange forces at work, things start to get seriously weird. The only man drunk enough to help is a bearded, booze-soaked, supernatural bounty hunter that goes by the name of Jackson ‘Jackie’ Ronin.

Plunged into the increasingly bizarre landscape of Cape Town’s supernatural underworld, Baxter and Ronin team up to save Esme. On a journey that takes them through the realms of impossibility, they must face every conceivable nightmare to get her back, including the odd brush with the Apocalypse.

—–

God’s War – Kameron Hurley

Discovery blamed on: Staffer’s Book Review

About the Book

Nyx had already been to hell. One prayer more or less wouldn’t make any difference…

On a ravaged, contaminated world, a centuries-old holy war rages, fought by a bloody mix of mercenaries, magicians, and conscripted soldiers. Though the origins of the war are shady and complex, there’s one thing everybody agrees on…

There’s not a chance in hell of ending it.

Nyx is a former government assassin who makes a living cutting off heads for cash. But when a dubious deal between her government and an alien gene pirate goes bad, Nyx’s ugly past makes her the top pick for a covert recovery. The head they want her to bring home could end the war–but at what price?

The world is about to find out.

 

—–

Under the Dome – Stephen King

Discovery blamed on: The TV series, and the fact that I think it kind of sucks (I’m not a TV person…).

About the Book

On an entirely normal, beautiful fall day in Chester’s Mill, Maine, the town is inexplicably and suddenly sealed off from the rest of the world by an invisible force field. Planes crash into it and fall from the sky in flaming wreckage, a gardener’s hand is severed as “the dome” comes down on it, people running errands in the neighboring town are divided from their families, and cars explode on impact. No one can fathom what this barrier is, where it came from, and when — or if — it will go away.

Dale Barbara, Iraq vet and now a short-order cook, finds himself teamed with a few intrepid citizens — town newspaper owner Julia Shumway, a physician’s assistant at the hospital, a select-woman, and three brave kids. Against them stands Big Jim Rennie, a politician who will stop at nothing — even murder — to hold the reins of power, and his son, who is keeping a horrible secret in a dark pantry. But their main adversary is the Dome itself. Because time isn’t just short. It’s running out.

—–

Boy Nobody – Allen Zadoff

About the Book

Boy Nobody is the perennial new kid in school, the one few notice and nobody thinks much about. He shows up in a new high school, in a new town, under a new name, makes few friends and doesn’t stay long. Just long enough for someone in his new friend’s family to die — of “natural causes.” Mission accomplished, Boy Nobody disappears, and moves on to the next target.

When his own parents died of not-so-natural causes at the age of eleven, Boy Nobody found himself under the control o f The Program, a shadowy government organization that uses brainwashed kids as counter-espionage operatives. But somewhere, deep inside Boy Nobody, is somebody: the boy he once was, the boy who wants normal things (like a real home, his parents back), a boy who wants out. And he just might want those things badly enough to sabotage The Program’s next mission.

Published June 11, 2013

Published by Little Brown & Co

Author’s webpage

I borrowed this book from my local library.

—–

I am not a huge fan of young adult books. I can never seem to get into them. There’s something about the style of writing that just doesn’t work for me. I always feel so divided from the story that I end up not caring at all. That’s horrible to admit, but it’s the truth. I tend to avoid anything YA because I have this predisposition to unfairly judge it, so I approached Boy Nobody with trepidation. On the one hand I knew I probably wouldn’t like it. On the other hand, the premise was so interesting that I seriously hoped I would.

Boy Nobody is an adult book in YA clothes. The main character is a sixteen-year-old kid, but his lifestyle has made him far older than his years. In that respect, he has some similarities with Jorg in Mark Lawrence’s awesome series. These are both protagonists who are far older than their ages show them to be and their harrowing, hard lifestyles are the things that have aged them. There is a sort of disassociation there. Usually if I read a book about a sixteen-year-old, I expect predictable sexual tension and some supernatural aspects for an added thrill. Not here. The protagonist is unlike any character I’ve ever read before.

One reason for this is because he really doesn’t have an identity. The reader never really learns his real name. In fact, you aren’t given a name to call him by until he’s given the mission that the plot focuses on, and that name isn’t real. This kid is given his identity, hobbies, associations, name, and whatever else, every time he gets a new mission. He was brought into The Program at the age of twelve, and at that time he was taught how to lock who he was behind some seriously thick doors in the back of his mind. He’s been trained to forget and become whatever he needs to be to get things done. Zadoff really portrays this in an emotional, riveting, and realistic way. Boy Nobody has nothing, and he is nobody, and the lack of a first name serves to show readers how incredibly anonymous he truly is. His disassociation with the “normal” world is just highlighted through certain moments, like his observation of a daughter and father talking about their day at dinner and his understanding that, “this is what normal people must do all the time.” Or when he’s talking to someone, and he has to analyze their posture and expressions to tell whether they are being friendly, and how many different ways (and how quickly) he could kill that person if they aren’t just being friendly. These moments are sort of casually dropped into the text, but they are all the more powerful for it.

Boy Nobody works to put the reader in the shoes of a child soldier, and Zadoff does this masterfully. The lack of a first name for the protagonist is one aspect of how he does this. The other way is through his writing style, which is first person present tense. This allows the reader to unravel and understand along with the character. We discover as he does. This style of writing makes the story far more fascinating and emotionally engaging than it otherwise would be. It’s a completely different matter when you are looking at the world through the emotionless, trained-killer eyes of a teenager. It’s made doubly powerful by reading this as an adult, when you know how confusing the teen years can be, and how absolutely altered this kid is on some incredibly fundamental levels.

The protagonist slowly reveals the important aspects of his past as the story progresses in short flashbacks often laden with an internal monologue. Usually memories can bog down a plot, but Zadoff uses them as an important tool to give readers a sense of who Boy Nobody currently is and where he came from. This just intensifies the reader’s emotional bond to the protagonist and makes him even more compelling. It’s during the flashbacks that readers will realize how incredibly psychological this novel truly is. Boy Nobody is a lot of things, but I doubt there are very many other realistic and believable (also creative) portrayals into the life and mentality of a child soldier.

The plot of Boy Nobody is an interesting mix of action, intrigue, and personal development. The protagonist, for the first time in years, is thrust into a situation that is incredibly high stakes (not new to him), but also forces him to open up those closed off memories and really start to question who he has become and why. These emotions, any emotions, are completely new to him. He shouldn’t feel, and the cracks that develop in his façade are just as intense and suspenseful as the action packed moments that are peppered throughout the book. The intrigue itself is well done and believable, if a bit predictable. However, Zadoff mixes all of this together to create a fascinating homogenization of action/intrigue and emotional depth that I have never seen before in a young adult book. This is probably why Boy Nothing seems like less of a young adult book and more crossover/adult. It has a depth and maturity about it that is just staggering. It’s fast moving, and surprising. Often the speed of the plot is hidden behind the protagonist’s own personal discoveries and internal musings, but it’s rip roaring.

There’s also plenty of action, which can be bloodier than I’d expect in a young adult book. That being said, it’s never over-the-top. Zadoff uses the action to bring realism to the situations and the protagonist, but he never glorifies the blood or action, and he never seems to use the action to further the plot. He does it right. It can get bloody, but it’s a well done, classy, believable bloody that just makes everything seem so much more real.

As for the fantasy aspects of this book, there really aren’t any. There’s The Program, which is a secret arm of the government, which has a sort of SF feel about it. Then, the protagonist occasionally talks about “projecting energy” or “softening energy” which has a sort of fantasy ring to it. However, both of these aspects are incredibly easy to overlook. Basically what I’m saying is, this book is sort of genre bending. It’s fiction, but it’s not. It’s adult, but its not. It’s psychological, but it’s not. Boy Nobody is a little bit of everything. It can appeal equally to adults or teens, fans of SF and fans of fiction alike.

Boy Nobody is a book that absolutely floored me. It’s full of action and intrigue, but the true story really lies in the journey of a child soldier, a boy who really had no choice, who has been basically erased and turned into a sort fleshy robot. It’s heartbreaking and emotionally jarring. Zadoff’s writing is deceptively simple, but it packs a punch. Everything is properly paced and used as a tool to emotionally engage the reader. The plot is absorbing, the action is well done, the intrigue is a touch predictable but believable. Zadoff wrote a masterpiece. It’s probably the first young adult book that I’ve ever finished and said, “This is one of the best books I’ve ever read.” The good news? It’s the first book in a series.

Bring it on, Zadoff.

Bring. It. On.

 

5/5 stars

Love Minus Eighty – Will McIntosh

About the Book

Years in the future, dead women in cryogenic dating farms await rich, lonely suitors to resurrect them and take them home. LOVE MINUS EIGHTY follows interconnected lives touched by these dating farms. There’s Rob, who accidentally kills a jogger, then sells everything to visit her, seeking her forgiveness but instead falling in love. Veronika, a socially-awkward dating coach, finds herself responsible for the happiness of a man whose life she saved against his will. And Mira, a gay woman accidentally placed in the heterosexual dating center near its inception, desperately seeks a way to reunite with her frozen partner as the centuries pass. In this daring and big-hearted novel based on the Hugo-winning short story, the lovelorn navigate a world in which technology has reached the outer limits of morality and romance.

432 pages (paperback)

Published on July 11, 2013

Published by Orbit

Author’s webpage

I borrowed this book from my local library.

—– 

Love Minus Eighty is one of those books I probably never would have read based on its synopsis. It just didn’t look the least bit interesting to me, especially considering that I really don’t get along that well with romance. Then I wandered onto Goodreads and saw that pretty much everyone I follow who reviews books and has read this one loved it. A challenge was set. I had to find out what the fuss was about, and I’m so glad I did. In complete honesty, I ended up loving this book so much that I’m absolutely confounded in regards to how to write an adequate review of it.

Note: This review has minor spoilers. Read at your own risk. 

Love Minus Eighty is a social SciFi book, meaning there is no interplanetary travel, but there’s advanced technology and a futuristic society. Our world has progressed by leaps and bounds. Society has altered and things have changed. Love Minus Eighty spends a lot of time analyzing these changes and figuring out how they affect the interwoven stories that McIntosh presents the reader with.

The amount of world building that McIntosh packs into this tightly woven novel is, hands down, amazing. The author doesn’t just present readers with the future version of New York City; he brings you there. He presents it in Technicolor, makes the sights, smells, frustrations, and norms easy to grasp and understand, while also making his futuristic version of the Big Apple believable when compared to the world we live in today. The sprawl of the city and the various individuals that inhabit it, plus the large scope of the virtual world gives Love Minus Eighty almost an epic world feel. New York City feels less like a city and more like a living, breathing, and sprawling universe. There are hints of outside places where “raw lifers” live, but the entirety of the book takes place in a few basic places that are developed so well they never seem small.

Love Minus Eighty focuses heavily on how the evolution and advancement of technology affects lives, privacy, and relationships. Love seems to be the underlying and more human, emotional theme that brings the three main (and intricately interwoven) stories together. McIntosh was smart to use such a powerful emotion as the binding ingredient of his book. It’s actually quite fascinating to see how he balances his high speed, rushed, interconnected, technological world with such a mundane and age-old feeling. The way the author uses technology and love to balance each other brings Love Minus Eighty a sense of that SciFi wonder I love so much, but also a raw, emotional feel that really made the book seem genuine and absolutely absorbing in every sense.

Love Minus Eighty has three major narrators, each of which are touched on in the About the Book section of this review. Each character has an incredibly unique and powerful voice. Mira purposefully gets less time in the spotlight than Rob or Veronika, but her story is probably the most powerful and really serves to give readers a unique and emotionally jarring view into the life of a bridesicle – their absolute loss of privacy and personal power is provocative. Her chapters are short, but their length is humbling and serves to bring intense thought to many of the deeper themes the author toys with. In fact, Mira herself is probably one of the fundamental reasons Love Minus Eighty is such a deep, compelling novel.

Rob and Veronika are both absorbing and well developed characters. They each have their own struggles. Rob is trying to right a horrible wrong by basically taking on a vow of poverty in an age where such a thing is absolutely unheard of. Veronika works as a well-paid behind-the-scenes manipulator of people’s lives (also known as a “coach”) who is balanced by her surprisingly awkward social behaviors. Her looks that are beautiful, but not the standard. She doesn’t fit in any mold, and she pays for it. Both characters are catastrophes in different ways, and readers will inevitably like one more than the other depending on their preferences. Each character seems so realistic and believable in the context of our world, but when they are placed in their advanced society, their struggles and the reason they are so overpowering are so obvious. Then, you couple their own interpersonal struggles with the context of technology and the fundamental human drive to love and be loved, and you have two pretty mundane characters that are absolutely unforgettable.

This isn’t one of those action packed books. The plot focuses mostly in inner journeys. The world is fascinating and amazingly well developed with a very real feel that is so rare to find in books, but the real focus is inward. I was told when I was diagnosed with cancer that cancer isn’t a disease that one person suffers from. The whole family is diagnosed with cancer, and that’s the absolute truth. That’s also a huge theme McIntosh plays with here. We all cause ripples in our various ponds, and those ripples flow out and spread until they affect more and more people. Rob’s accident is unfortunate, but the domino effect is evident. Love Minus Eighty starts with an overreaction, and ends with a powerful finale where a huge number of people are all somehow affected.

Alongside this is the fascinating technology that McIntosh introduces us to. Readers will see the our technology (like Facebook) in the influence of McIntosh’s future world. Screens follow the interesting and/or famous around, depending on their privacy settings. Instead of television, the world is open for live viewer consumption. Rubberneckers pop up on screens to watch people commit suicide. Some people live their lives entirely for the benefit of whoever wants to view them. At one point Rob goes to a dating bar. He isn’t allowed to enter until he creates a public profile for anyone to see, and he walks past a certain scanner which automatically adds his weight and BMI to his profile. This might seem ridiculous to us now, but think about how the internet and Facebook have virtually stripped us of our privacy. People are only as private as they allow themselves to be these days, and McIntosh powerfully plays on that with his SciFi future.

Obviously I can’t end this review without talking about the bridescicles. I guess McIntosh wrote a short story called Bridescicle, which inspired this book. Mira and Rob really bring the bridescicle story to life. Their stories, and then later on to a lesser extent, Veronika’s story add a new dimension to the deeper themes I’ve mentioned above, like the idea of death. Death isn’t the end in McIntosh’s world, the ability to reboot a life has a huge impact on so many people. Someone tries to commit suicide, only to be brought back to life by the company they work for because they are irreplaceable. A  woman at an 8.4 or above on the beauty scale can be brought into these cryogenic dating centers. Death isn’t final anymore; it’s just a point where technology has allowed people to lose even more power over their own lives.

Love Minus Eighty is one of my absolute favorite books I’ve read so far this year. It’s deep, emotional, passionate, balanced and incredibly absorbing. While it’s not full of wham-bam action, it’s a study of human nature, a discourse on technology (does it empower us, or take power away from us?), the nature of privacy (does it even exist?), and how one person’s actions have the power to affect an entire world. It’s thought provoking, layered, and shockingly well developed. Honestly, I can’t say enough good about this book. Love Minus Eighty is everything I want a book to be, all packed into 432 incredibly well written pages.

 

5/5 stars

Thieves’ Quarry – D.B. Jackson

About the Book

Boston, Province of Massachusetts Bay, September 28, 1768

Autumn has come to New England, and with it a new threat to the city of Boston. British naval ships have sailed into Boston Harbor bearing over a thousand of His Majesty King George III’s soldiers. After a summer of rioting and political unrest, the city is to be occupied.

Ethan Kaille, thieftaker and conjurer, is awakened early in the morning by a staggeringly powerful spell, a dark conjuring of unknown origin. Before long, he is approached by representatives of the Crown. It seems that every man aboard the HMS Graystone has died, though no one knows how or why. They know only that there is no sign of violence or illness. Ethan soon discovers that one soldier — a man who is known to have worked with Ethan’s beautiful and dangerous rival, Sephira Pryce — has escaped the fate of his comrades and is not among the Graystone’s dead. Is he the killer, or is there another conjurer loose in the city, possessed of power sufficient to kill so many with a single dark casting?

Ethan, the missing soldier, and Sephira Pryce and her henchmen all scour the city in search of a stolen treasure which seems to lie at the root of all that is happening. At the same time, though, Boston’s conjurers are under assault from the royal government as well as from the mysterious conjurer. Men are dying. Ethan is beaten, imprisoned, and attacked with dark spells.

And if he fails to unravel the mystery of what befell the Graystone, every conjurer in Boston will be hanged as a witch. Including him.

320 pages (Hardcover)

Published on July 2, 2013

Published by Tor

Author’s webpage

This book was given for me to review by the publisher.

—–

Thieves Quarry is the second book in Jackson’s Thieftaker Chronicles series. It was also a very anticipated release for me. Jackson’s unique blending of fantasy and history rife with details captivated me with Thieftaker. This time Jackson dumps readers into a world rife with personal and political tensions, and it’s those tensions and relationships that will serve to pull readers in and hook them.

Thieves Quarry ups the historical ante. Jackson makes the world, the history, and the setting seem so much more alive and vivid to the reader than it seemed in the first book. There were occasions where I felt like I was getting the impromptu Highlights tour of the history, but by and large, Jackson makes his world even more vivid and realistic than he presented it in Thieftaker. It’s easy to picture the dusty, tense, politically confusing world that Ethan lives in, and it’s even easier to feel a sort of kinship and emotional involvement in his plight and the chaos that surrounds him.

Ethan’s character seems better rounded and better developed in Thieves Quarry. He has some interesting relationships on both the love and hate side of the coin which help balance him. Ethan’s relationship to Sephira is complex, but adds a nice zip to the book that is necessary. Sephira is a worthy adversary who seems to have everything that Ethan doesn’t. She has money, contacts, jobs, prospects… everything, while Ethan struggles in her wake. She seems to be a step ahead. It’s easy to hate her, but Jackson uses her well to up the tension and make things incredibly interesting throughout the book. Added to Sephira, Ethan has strained relationships with authority figures as well as others. There are a fair number of people that Jackson uses to up the tension and antagonize Ethan, and he uses them all well within the structure of the novel.

On the other side of the coin, Ethan has a few trusted sources, some that one might even consider friends, and a lover. While these relationships are less powerful than his interactions with his various adversaries, they still serve as a buffer of sorts. They add some tension and levity to what Ethan is going through, and they help show his softer, more humorous sides. In this respect, Jackson doesn’t only improve and evolve Ethan’s character, but he also shows various dimensions of the man himself through his relationships. Readers get to understand and feel right along with Ethan. The way Jackson uses Ethan’s relationships as a tool to help empower the plot, and strengthen character development is nothing short of wonderful.

Ethan himself is an interesting character to follow, even without his various relationships. He’s an older protagonist than I’m used to reading about. He’s already lived his life, and Jackson seamlessly inserts Ethan’s life experiences into the development of his character. Jackson could have easily made Ethan a political rebel, but his initial sympathies are with the British, which makes sense, considering his history. His evolution as the political struggles become more and more intense, and his mounting concerns are well done and realistic. Hats off to Jackson for that. Having Ethan side with the colonies right off and become some revolutionary hero would have been the easy, predictable road. Instead, he took the harder, but more believable road, and it pays off.

The plot is fast moving, and the mystery and various events that transpire are attention grabbing, but they aren’t what makes this book shine. It’s Ethan, and Jackson’s historical details that really makes Thieves Quarry stand out. Despite the fact that the plot is interesting, it lacks the depth that I pointed out previously. Furthermore, some points Jackson used Ethan’s magic to make the conclusions to events a little too easy, or unbelievable. With a book that is otherwise so colorful and full of vibrant dimension, the lackluster plot and liberal use of magic to solve problems was somewhat disappointing.

Thieves Quarry is a great addition to a very powerful and memorable series. Jackson’s development of characters, interpersonal and political relationships is fantastic, and his use of them to develop the plot, atmosphere and those very characters is remarkable. His use of history makes this book not only fun to read, but also a constant learning experience. Jackson has created something truly unique. He should be very proud.

 

4/5 stars

An Aside | Books I’m Eyeing

I have recently rebooted my RSS feed, which is totally and absolutely making Mount TBR explode. I saw this feature over at Book Smugglers and it inspired me to do a similar feature of my own. Occasionally I’ll post the books that are looking at me. Maybe you guys can add to my list and make my library (my hold list is impressive) hate me even more.

So, without further ado, here are the books I’m eyeing this week.

—

Love Minus Eighty – Will McIntosh

(To be fair, this one arrived at the library yesterday and I’m already halfway through it, but I’m still eyeing it so it’s getting stuck here)

Discovery blamed on: Mad Hatter’s Bookshelf

About the Book

Years in the future, dead women in cryogenic dating farms await rich, lonely suitors to resurrect them and take them home. LOVE MINUS EIGHTY follows interconnected lives touched by these dating farms. There’s Rob, who accidentally kills a jogger, then sells everything to visit her, seeking her forgiveness but instead falling in love. Veronika, a socially-awkward dating coach, finds herself responsible for the happiness of a man whose life she saved against his will. And Mira, a gay woman accidentally placed in the heterosexual dating center near its inception, desperately seeks a way to reunite with her frozen partner as the centuries pass. In this daring and big-hearted novel based on the Hugo-winning short story, the lovelorn navigate a world in which technology has reached the outer limits of morality and romance.

—

Boy Nobody – Allen Zadoff

Discovery blamed on: Fantasy Book Critic

About the Book

Boy Nobody is the perennial new kid in school, the one few notice and nobody thinks much about. He shows up in a new high school, in a new town, under a new name, makes few friends and doesn’t stay long. Just long enough for someone in his new friend’s family to die — of “natural causes.” Mission accomplished, Boy Nobody disappears, and moves on to the next target.

When his own parents died of not-so-natural causes at the age of eleven, Boy Nobody found himself under the control of The Program, a shadowy government organization that uses brainwashed kids as counter-espionage operatives. But somewhere, deep inside Boy Nobody, is somebody: the boy he once was, the boy who wants normal things (like a real home, his parents back), a boy who wants out. And he just might want those things badly enough to sabotage The Program’s next mission.

—

The Curiosity – Stephen P. Keirnan

Discovery blamed on: Civilian Reader

About the Book

Michael Crichton meets The Time Traveler’s Wife in this powerful debut novel in which a man, frozen in the Arctic ice for more than a century, awakens in the present day.

Dr. Kate Philo and her scientific exploration team make a breathtaking discovery in the Arctic: the body of a man buried deep in the ice. As a scientist in a groundbreaking project run by the egocentric and paranoid Erastus Carthage, Kate has brought small creatures-plankton, krill, shrimp-”back to life.” Never have the team’s methods been attempted on a large life form.

Heedless of the consequences, Carthage orders that the frozen man be brought back to the lab in Boston, and reanimated. As the man begins to regain his memories, the team learns that he was-is-a judge, Jeremiah Rice, and the last thing he remembers is falling overboard into the Arctic Ocean in 1906. When news of the Lazarus Project and Jeremiah Rice breaks, it ignites a media firestorm and massive protests by religious fundamentalists.

Thrown together by circumstances beyond their control, Kate and Jeremiah grow closer. But the clock is ticking and Jeremiah’s new life is slipping away. With Carthage planning to exploit Jeremiah while he can, Kate must decide how far she is willing to go to protect the man she has come to love.

A gripping, poignant, and thoroughly original thriller, Stephen Kiernan’s provocative debut novel raises disturbing questions about the very nature of life and humanity-man as a scientific subject, as a tabloid plaything, as a living being: A curiosity.

—

Lexicon – Max Barry

Discovery blamed on: Mad Hatter’s Bookshelf

About the Book

At an exclusive school somewhere outside of Arlington, Virginia, students aren’t taught history, geography, or mathematics—they are taught to persuade. Students learn to use language to manipulate minds, wielding words as weapons. The very best graduate as �poets,” and enter a nameless organization of unknown purpose.

Whip-smart runaway Emily Ruff is making a living from three-card Monte on the streets of San Francisco when she attracts the attention of the organization’s recruiters. Drawn in to their strage world, which is populated by people named Brontë and Eliot, she learns their key rule: That every person can be classified by personality type, his mind segmented and ultimately unlocked by the skilful application of words. For this reason, she must never allow another person to truly know her, lest she herself be coerced. Adapting quickly, Emily becomes the school’s most talented prodigy, until she makes a catastrophic mistake: She falls in love.

Meanwhile, a seemingly innocent man named Wil Parke is brutally ambushed by two men in an airport bathroom. They claim he is the key to a secret war he knows nothing about, that he is an �outlier,” immune to segmentation. Attempting to stay one step ahead of the organization and its mind-bending poets, Wil and his captors seek salvation in the toxically decimated town of Broken Hill, Australia, which, if ancient stories are true, sits above an ancient glyph of frightening power.

A brilliant thriller that traverses very modern questions of privacy, identity, and the rising obsession of data-collection, connecting them to centuries-old ideas about the power of language and coercion, Lexicon is Max Barry’s most ambitious and spellbinding novel yet.

—

Pure – Julianna Baggott

Discovery blamed on: Inadvertently on the beautiful cover art for the second book of the series as posted by Civilian Reader. I’m not big on YA, or dystopian, so we shall see how this goes, but the cover art impressed me enough to make me want to give it a shot.

About the Book

We know you are here, our brothers and sisters . . .

Pressia barely remembers the Detonations or much about life during the Before. In her sleeping cabinet behind the rubble of an old barbershop where she lives with her grandfather, she thinks about what is lost-how the world went from amusement parks, movie theaters, birthday parties, fathers and mothers . . . to ash and dust, scars, permanent burns, and fused, damaged bodies. And now, at an age when everyone is required to turn themselves over to the militia to either be trained as a soldier or, if they are too damaged and weak, to be used as live targets, Pressia can no longer pretend to be small. Pressia is on the run.

Burn a Pure and Breathe the Ash . . .

There are those who escaped the apocalypse unmarked. Pures. They are tucked safely inside the Dome that protects their healthy, superior bodies. Yet Partridge, whose father is one of the most influential men in the Dome, feels isolated and lonely. Different. He thinks about loss-maybe just because his family is broken; his father is emotionally distant; his brother killed himself; and his mother never made it inside their shelter. Or maybe it’s his claustrophobia: his feeling that this Dome has become a swaddling of intensely rigid order. So when a slipped phrase suggests his mother might still be alive, Partridge risks his life to leave the Dome to find her.

When Pressia meets Partridge, their worlds shatter all over again.

—

The Shining Girls – Lauren Beukes

Discovery based on: My serious enjoyment of all things Lauren Beukes writes.

About the Book

THE GIRL WHO WOULDN’T DIE HUNTS THE KILLER WHO SHOULDN’T EXIST.

The future is not as loud as war, but it is relentless. It has a terrible fury all its own.” 

Harper Curtis is a killer who stepped out of the past. Kirby Mazrachi is the girl who was never meant to have a future.

Kirby is the last shining girl, one of the bright young women, burning with potential, whose lives Harper is destined to snuff out after he stumbles on a House in Depression-era Chicago that opens on to other times.

At the urging of the House, Harper inserts himself into the lives of the shining girls, waiting for the perfect moment to strike. He’s the ultimate hunter, vanishing into another time after each murder, untraceable-until one of his victims survives.

Determined to bring her would-be killer to justice, Kirby joins the Chicago Sun-Times to work with the ex-homicide reporter, Dan Velasquez, who covered her case. Soon Kirby finds herself closing in on the impossible truth.

—

So do any of these books interest you? Or are there any that I’ve missed that I should be eyeing?

London Falling – Paul Cornell

About the Book

The dark is rising . . . Detective Inspector James Quill is about to complete the drugs bust of his career. Then his prize suspect Rob Toshack is murdered in custody. Furious, Quill pursues the investigation, co-opting intelligence analyst Lisa Ross and undercover cops Costain and Sefton. But nothing about Toshack’s murder is normal. Toshack had struck a bargain with a vindictive entity, whose occult powers kept Toshack one step ahead of the law – until his luck ran out. Now, the team must find a ‘suspect’ who can bend space and time and alter memory itself. And they will kill again. As the group starts to see London’s sinister magic for themselves, they have two choices: panic or use their new abilities. Then they must hunt a terrifying supernatural force the only way they know how: using police methods, equipment and tactics. But they must all learn the rules of this new game – and quickly. More than their lives will depend on it.

402 pages (hardcover)

Published on April 16, 2013

Published by Tor

Author’s webpage

This book was sent for me to review by the publisher.

—–

I’m not a huge fan of police procedural novels. I’ll read them, but I don’t tend to really get into them or enjoy them much. My one exception from that rule is evidently police procedural novels that take place in London because, well, lets face it. London is a fantastic city and there are plenty of interesting things that people can write/read about taking place there. Plus, it’s England and I like England.

London Falling is a pretty intense and dark novel, and while it does focus on police work, surprisingly that police work isn’t as oppressive as I’m use to police work being in novels. These are tried and true cops, but as events unfold around them, they seem to be more like scared humans and less like super hardcore lawmen. That’s a huge plus for me. When I really think about what I don’t enjoy about police procedural novels, it’s usually the fact that the cops seem to be more-than-human and their lingo is gruff and unnatural to prove how hardcore they really are. There is none of that strutting bravado here. London Falling is full of real people who react in real, believable ways to the surprising situations that unfold around them.

Cornell starts the book with an intense undercover operation wherein one of the members of the undercover group is obviously compromised. It creates an intense, incredibly dark atmosphere right at the start from which Cornell just grows and develops his story. This is, perhaps, where Cornell really shows his skill. He starts his book with this undeniable gritty and dark atmosphere, and while everything seems so “normal” at first, the author subtle adds the “other” until this book is an obvious urban fantasy tale, but you aren’t really sure it graduated from good ‘ol fiction to urban fantasy.

I should probably make one point clear. One of the reasons I struggle so much with urban and contemporary fantasy is because it’s so rare that I come across one of those books that doesn’t slap you in the face with the fantasy aspects of it. I enjoy my UF to be all “real world” (which requires it to be absolutely believable) with just enough subtle fantasy touches. It seems like these days so many authors are focused more on slapping their readers in the face with their (urban) fantasy, they therefore lack the subtlety and believability that I look for in my UF. Thankfully, Cornell is not one of those authors and I knew almost instantly that I’d enjoy this book for that fact alone, if no other reason.

The four main protagonists are fairly interesting, though readers might have a hard time connecting with all of them to one degree or another. Cornell does a wonderful job at giving each viewpoint character their own unique voice and motivations. Readers won’t ever forget who they are reading about or mesh characters together into one big amorphous blob in their mind. Some characters are darker than others, and in an already dark book, the darker characters might seem a bit overwhelming to some. Each viewpoint gives Operation Toto, and the various excitements surrounding that case, a unique and interesting air, which also gives the happenings a multi-hued dimension that I found absolutely irresistible.

Operation Toto starts out as an investigation into the odd death of a drug kingpen and then quickly turns into something else, as the four primary characters gain unique abilities and subsequently realize that there’s a supernatural serial killer on the loose (who is also oddly obsessed with a specific football team). The four cops have to use their abilities and their police resources to navigate their new London and figure out how to stop the serial killer. In this respect, Cornell does a great job at mixing the right amount of “real” with the “other” that a lot of readers will find so incredibly enjoyable. His prose are confidant and flowing. He never really shows rather than tells. However, he does often switch perspectives, and some of the switches do come across a little awkward and jarring to the narrative. That being said, Cornell paces things in such a way that the reader learns as the characters learn, and thus the surprises are never ending and the twists and turns are flawlessly done.

London Falling is one of those rare police procedural books that I actually think is interesting. While it is heavy on the police procedure, Cornell keeps all of his characters so incredibly human and flawed that the procedure part of things isn’t oppressive. The novel is paced in such a way that readers will unravel, figure out, and discover along with the protagonists. Cornell depicts the fantastical elements of London in unique, rather clever ways, and describes the reasons behind certain things and events plausibly. Readers might struggle with connecting to certain characters and sometimes the perspective jumping does distract from the overall narrative, but otherwise Cornell has created a living, vibrant, believable piece of dark urban fantasy that is not to be missed. He takes the typical UF mystery/police procedural novel and tips it on its head. The ending is satisfying, but left open enough for some exciting and interesting additions to the world. I look forward to seeing what happens next.

 

4/5 stars

A Well Deserved CONGRATULATIONS

I’ve been running this website for about three and a half years. In those three and a half years I’ve had the wonderful opportunity to meet and interact with some incredible authors, publishers, agents, PR gurus, fellow reviewers, and wonderful readers. I’ve found a vibrant and incredible internet community, which keeps me endlessly entertained and has helped me through my own struggle with cancer more than any of you will ever really know. All of that being said, I’ve never really felt quite as intensely proud, pleased and vindicated (because seriously, I love his writing and I’ve always believed that he’d go incredibly far) as I do right now.

My life isn’t very exciting. I kind of plod through the days and try to keep my almost two-year-old from getting herself killed. I throw in a few good books for good measure and I work occasionally but otherwise, I’m pretty boring. I tend to live vicariously through the wonderful news that people send my way, like the news I got today, which has peeked my peckish spirits immensely.

I think Dave-Brendon De Burgh is probably one of the first people I started talking to when I began this reviewing gig. He runs this wonderful website and has spent all the time I’ve known him working on a fantasy novel, of which I’ve read part (and enjoyed). He’s been doggedly editing, re-editing, writing, and re-writing for years now and it’s finally paying off. I feel like this is a huge victory for him, and my geeky self can’t help but feel like the news he released today is some sort of huge accomplishment for reviewers, genre fans, and geeks everywhere. It also shows just what is possible when people are determined and keep on keeping on, no matter how tough life gets.

It’s been a true joy for me to talk to Dave over the years, to watch him grow and develop as an author, and to see all that effort pay off with today’s stunning news.

Congratulations, Dave. I haven’t been this genuinely happy for a fellow genre geek in…. well, years.

The press release is below. You can read the original here. According to the author, the book is scheduled to drop sometime during South Africa’s Autumn next year.

ANNOUNCING:

Betrayal’s Shadow by Dave-Brendon de Burgh.

“Brice Serholm, a general in the kingdom of Avidar’s elite Blade Knights, is faced with a difficult decision – remain true to his king and his duty, or save the lives of his men. His choice takes him into the last bastion of a forgotten deity and sets him on the path to godhood.”

Now, we can’t say too much yet. But here’s what you need to know: Dave is a South African writer. His writing has appeared in a variety of anthologies (notably AfroSF in 2012). He’s a lover of all things SFF, and he’s a brilliant Fantasy writer (if we may say so ourselves). Betrayal’s Shadow is his first novel, and is Book 1 in the series The Mahaelian Chronicle.

Keep checking in for updates, details, author interviews, and many other lovely things!

Betrayal’s Shadow will hit the shelves in autumn of 2014. We hope you’re as excited as we are.

In Dave’s words: BE EPIC!