Review of Sun-Daughters, Sea-Daughters by Aimee Ogden

This science fiction novella is a finalist for the 2022 Nebula Awards. Ogden has worked as science teacher and software tester and she is the co-editor of Translunar Travelers Lounge. This is her debut novella. It was published by Tor.com in February of 2021 and runs 112 pages. This review contains spoilers.

Atuale is the daughter of a Sea-Clan lord and has had her body altered so she can live on land with her husband and true love Saareval. However, a plague is killing the people of the clan and now her husband is deathly ill. Atuale has one hope left, a black market mercenary known as the World Witch, who is also her old friend and lover Yanja. She needs to use Yanja’s starship to travel off planet and find a cure for the plague, but their world is locked down because of the sickness. Can the two of them succeed in finding a cure?

This is an exotic, well-imagined setting where the various worlds are connected by jump gates and the occupants are adapted by gene-editing in order to live in particular environments. Most of the narrative is related to the quest plot and the interactions between Atuale and Yanja, who has had their body altered from female to male since they last saw one another. Yanja has something of an attitude about being jilted for Saareval, but they work it out. There’s a certain amount of imagery in the descriptions, and all ends well as Atuale returns with the cure for the plague. It gets extra points for attempting a romantic quets/adventure plot and a science fiction setting.

On the less positive side, I got the feeling I was missing a lot of the backstory here. I ended up with a lot of questions. Maybe these are characters Ogden has developed in other stories? There’s very little description of the living conditions on Atuale’s home world, which seems to be fairly primitive. This brings up the question of why the back market space-going mercenary Yanja is living there. The characterizations don’t feel quite right, as these are highly exotic people, but they interact like ordinary humans–there is no difference it culture. The community of worlds through the jump gates seems to function like a local community in the pandemic when I would expect a little more distance. Atuale violates all the rules, but there are no real consequences—she is just rescued by someone who rewards her persistence with the cure. And, where did Atuale get her body mods done? On her world? Then why don’t they have the technology to find a cure? There are also a couple of elements to this story that seem tailored to what must be publishing requirements at Tor. The first is Yanja’s trans sexuality, and the other is a comment out of nowhere that Saareval’s clan practices equity. Then why is Atuale still so proud of her heritage as the Sea lord’s daughter? Is she on board with the equity or not?

Three and a half stars.

Review of Elder Race by Adrian Tchaikovsky

Adrian Tchaikovsky is an award-winning British writer and best known as author of the Shadows of the Apt fantasy series and the Children of Time series. In an alternate life he is a lawyer, gamer and amateur entomologist. This novella was published by Tordotcom on November 16, 2021 and runs 204 pages.

Lynesse is the queen’s Fourth Daughter and has never measured up to the standards of a royal princess. Instead of maturing into a settled administrator, she continues to favor childish epic stories and swordplay. She is especially taken by the stories about her great-grandmother Astresse Once Regent and the Wizard of the Elder Race in their war against the evil warlord Ulmoth. So, when a demon begins to terrorize the neighboring province of Ordwood and the people ask the queen for help, Lynesse knows she needs to call on her family’s pact with the sorcerer and ask him to banish the demon. On the other hand, Nyr is really only a junior anthropologist left to maintain an outpost on this world when his team was recalled. Still, he knows this isn’t really a demon. Can the two of them do anything to save their world?

The most interesting thing about this story is the collision of worldviews between Lynesse and her epic fantasy with Nyr and his science background. The novella has a tongue-in-cheek feel and tends to social commentary. The world building is excellent. These are all transhumans, with Lyn and her friend Esha both engineered to live on this colony world, and Nyr also non-standard, outfitted with inbuilt systems that connect him to an orbiting satellite through antenna horns. He has slept the 300 years since his activities with Astresse, which he considers a failure of his employment directive, which is non-interference with the local culture. He justified it at the time because Ulmoth was using Elder technology, but he has no like justification to help Lynesse, except that the world is threatened.

On the less positive side, the characters are a little thin, feeling like cardboard facases that represent their particular world views instead of real people. There’s also a lot of drama inherent in this setup that has not been fully developed. Nyr seems to suffer from depression, and he’s been left there alone for hundreds of years. It’s pretty clear no one is coming back for him. Plus, he’s apparently lost the love of his life in Astresse. Where’s that story? Because of his systems, he can suppress his emotion and act impartially, but when he turns this off for a reset, we still don’t get a feel for the agony he should feel about this.

This was almost a romantic adventure story, and I’d love to have this idea better developed.

Four stars.  

Review of “Shang Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings”

Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings is a 2021 film based on the Marvel Comics character Shang-Chi. The film was produced by Marvel Studios and distributed by Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures. It is the 25th film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), directed by Destin Daniel Cretton from a screenplay he created with Dave Callaham and Andrew Lanham. The film stars Simu Liu as Shang-Chi and Awkwafina as Katy, with Meng’er Zhang, Fala Chen, Florian Munteanu, Benedict Wong, Michelle Yeoh, Ben Kingsley, and Tony Leung. This review contains spoilers.

Shang-Chi was trained by his tyrannical father Xu Wenwu, the holder of the powerful Ten Rings, as an assassin to avenge his mother Ying Li’s death at the hands of the Iron Gang. Shang-Chi has managed to escape his father and is happily working as a car valet in San Francisco and bar hopping at night with his friend Katy. The two of them are attacked on a bus by minions of the Ten Rings organization, and after a battle with Shang-Chi, they escape with a pendant given to him by his mother. Knowing this will be a problem, Shang-Chi is determined to find his sister Xialing who has the matching pendant. Katy insists on going along, and they find Xialing at an underground fight club she has founded in Macau. Shang-Chi is drafted to fight, but while they are there, the club is attacked by the Ten Rings and Wenwu captures Shang-Chi, Katy and Xialing, along with her pendant. He reveals that he has been hearing Ying Li’s voice calling him to save her from the magical village of Ta Lo, and uses the pendants to reveal a map to the village. The others are imprisoned with the Mandarin impersonator Trevor Slattery, who helps them break out and head for the village. They arrive before the Ten Rings and find the voice is an evil dragon trying to break through the gates that the village guards. Ten Rings arrives, ready for battle. Can Shang-Chi and his friends save the day?

I don’t know where Marvel finds all their talent. This is a really dense, out-of-date kind of story, but the writers, director and stars have managed to make it fun, lively and entertaining. This has to do with a script that modernizes the main characters and then sends them on a mystical journey into the realms of magic. Sima Liu and Awkafina (stage name for rapper Nora Lum) are especially entertaining as the all-American couple yukking it up at karaoke bars and out to dinner with friends. Simu Liu is rumored to be a student of Taekwondo and Wing-Chun kung fu, and got his start in films as a stuntman, so looks great in the fight scenes. There’s also a tribute to the film Speed when Katy ends up trying to steer the out-of-control bus through the steep streets of San Francisco.

It’s hard to come up with less positives in this. Slattery is something of a weak point. He introduces himself and gives a quick history, but for people unfamiliar with the Mandarin character, this is pretty much meaningless, and he has very little role in the film. The special effects were also a bit on the weak side compared to the kind of property damage we normally see in Marvel films, but they did look very traditionally Chinese.

Recommended for adventure fans. Four and a half stars.

Fugitive Telemetry: Do popular writers hire ghostwriters?

I posted reviews on Amazon and Goodreads for Fugitive Telemetry, and went on to read some of the comments other readers had left. This is always interesting reading. Skip past all the glowing, emotive 5 star ratings that sound like kids hyperventilating and you’ll find some comments by people who were looking for something they didn’t get. There were some complaints about this installment not having the “heart” that the other novellas did, some confusion about the timeline, a couple of comments about missing the adventure factor, and one comment that Wells had lost interest and this book reads like a ghostwriter has written it. Hm.

So, the first two are interesting comments that suggest why this is such a profitable series. It’s been appealing to adventure fiction readers, suggesting a broad readership. Murderbot has had some bad experiences so is shy of humans, but it’s clearly attracted, especially to people who need protecting. In past installments of the story, it bonds with a person or group of people that it’s hired to protect, and really goes the extra mile because it likes them. This is the “heart” the reviewer was referring to, and I agree that it’s not very present in Fugitive Telemetry. We know it likes Mensah, but it didn’t really bond with the security people here or the refugees, either one. Instead, a lot of the space in the story is taken up with background, as we started with the dead human and had to be filled in on things that had happened before that since MB got to Preservation Station.

The adventure fiction readers put their finger right on the missing factor for them, which is that we normally get to ride along with MB as it navigates through dangerous environments and fights off wild fauna, evil humans and crazy bots, making tight escapes and eluding capture by pretending to be a human. I’m an adventure fan, so I missed this, too. MB is fairly safe at Preservation, but there are still threats and challenges, and these were definitely soft pedaled in favor of a somewhat forced plot. Interestingly, none of these adventure readers complained about the somewhat “woke” politics that Wells has been offering, which suggests nobody cares as long as the readers’ other requirements are met.

There’s not much to be said about the timeline confusion. This novella takes place before the novel Network Effect, and as a reader, I was careful to look for when it took place, but apparently some people didn’t and expected this to pick up where Network Effect left off. Since there were loose ends here, I expect that Wells plans to write more about MB on Preservation before the events of Network Effect and avoid having to deal with where she left things with the novel.

So I was sort of surprised by the comment about a ghost writer. Sudden quality drop-offs in a series aren’t unusual in my experience, as writers get distracted, lose touch with their characters over time, or get caught in deadlines so they can’t develop the story like they need to. Actually, this novella sounded like Wells’ style to me, but I actually wondered something like this about Network Effect because it was such a huge departure from her technique in the novellas. I thought the difference was most likely due to having a different editor, but I checked, and the Tor.com editor for both All Systems Red and Network Effect is the same, so that’s not a workable theory. What else could make a difference? The resource persons she calls on to help with advice and the beta readers? She does credit some of those for Network Effect.

But finally, I wondered if there is such a thing as hiring ghost writers to continue a popular series. It’s clear that the Star Wars series uses different authors, as they’re credited. However, I read a young adult novel for the Dragons last year that pretty clearly used uncredited writers, likely as work-for-hire. So I checked. Surprise, surprise, here’s a source that says up to 50% of bestseller books use the services of a ghostwriter. Who would have thought?

Review of “The Eight-Thousanders,” by Jason Sanford

This fantasy short story is a finalist for the 2020 Nebula Award and published by Asimov’s in the 9-10, 2020 issue. Jason Sanford is mainly a short story writer, but has published some longer fiction. He’s had a number of award nominations in the past. Sanford is also an essayist and literary critic, somewhat prone to online controversies where some readers might have encountered him before. This review contains spoilers.

Keller is part of an expedition to climb Everest, led by their venture capitalist and TED speaker boss Ronnie. Among the detritus of fallen climbers, they find a man near death, but Ronnie says they can’t help him. They need to move on if they’re going to make the summit. A woman in a red coat volunteers to stay with the man, and the Sherpa Nyima hurries Keller away. As they leaves, Keller notices her pale skin and fangs and how she holds the dying man in her arms. Ronni and Keller make the summit but they’ve fallen behind, and it turns out a storm was predicted. The hard-driving Ronnie felt they could make the summit in time, but now they’re caught by the storm on the way down. Keller thinks they’re lost, but the woman in red shows them where to go. They find Nyima’s camp where they rest for a few days, but the storm doesn’t abate. Out of supplies and growing weaker, they have to make the descent in the terrible conditions. Nyima ropes Keller and Ronnie together for safety, and Keller starts to consider their relationship with Ronnie. The woman in red is still with them. What should they do?

This is a classic person-against-the-elements plot, framing the abstracts of drive, ambition and obsession. It’s very well set up, with Keller driven by memories of their dead brother who wanted to climb Everest and Ronnie who is so obsessed that he ignores both risks and good sense to prove his dominance over the mountain. Ronnie has dragged his employees along with him like this is a team-building exercise, and the vampire haunts the expedition, recognized by Nyima, and happy to take the weak and fallen. This background is all built into the story gradually. The plot is simple, just getting up to the summit and back down the mountain with the single stop. That means the main body of the story is made up of description and experience. There’s some fairly sharp imagery in the description, and that rope between Keller and Ronnie is symbolic. The decisions about life and death are dramatic and slightly unsettling.

On the less positive side, the vampire didn’t quite click for me. Clearly she is a symbol of death, and preys on the fallen, but her role remains unclear. Does she represent the mountain that gradually sucks the life out of the climbers? Or is she the drive to dominate that gradually sucks life away? Both? This bit of ambiguity has a postmodern feel, and I always prefer a little more certainty about the message, myself. I’ve used “they/their” as pronouns, as this is written in first person without indication of sex or gender, but it feels like a very strongly masculine theme.

Five stars.

Review of How to Rule an Empire by K.J. Parker

This novel is a sequel to Sixteen Ways to Defend a Walled City and takes place in the same setting, just a few years later. It was published by Orbit in August of 2020, and runs 401 pages. This review contains major spoilers.

The efforts that took place in Sixteen Ways to Defend a Walled City have held off the angry Ogus, who has conquered the rest of the Robur Empire, but he remains camped with his army outside the Capital City, making periodic attempts to undermine the walls and otherwise get at the defenders. Notkor is a struggling actor and playwright who works in theater when he can and otherwise fills in with gigs as a comedian and impressionist. He’s headed to a gig at a private party when the venue is crushed by a trebuchet stone, so he brushes off the dust and goes home instead. Very soon, he is kidnapped by government officials who plan to force him into an impersonation. The comatose Emperor has finally died, and the plan was to install Lysimachus, hero of war and the arena, as the new Emperor, but he was killed by the stone that fell on the party. Threatened with execution if he doesn’t comply, Notkor is installed as the new Emperor with his theater associate Hodda as the new Empress. The two of them make desperate plans to escape, but Notkor finds he has opinions on how the City and the siege both are being run. Is there anything he can really do about it?

This is written from Notkor’s point of view in first person. It gets off to a slow start, but it moves on to a fairly entertaining tale as Notkor starts to find his feet in the new role he’s been forced into. It’s strongly plotted, with a lot if ingenuity going into the plots and counterplots to take and defend the city, plus a certain amount of intrigue in Notkor’s dealing with the Council, the Senate, and the Themes, which are the heavy-handed guilds and/or criminal gangs that actually run the city. Dealings with Hodda are also prickly and sometimes entertaining. You’d think there was no solution to the pickle they’re all in, but Notkor, who actually has a background in the Themes, gives the situation his best shot. All Parker’s works seem contain social commentary. The standout here is about how history is so quickly rewritten. Turn your back for a moment, Notkor says, and it’s all changed.

On the less positive side, the interesting plot is cluttered with a lot of reminiscing about the theater and ruminating about unrelated things. This means there’s very little in the way of actual drama or excitement, and something that could be a great adventure novel just ends up feeling disorganized and unfocused. There’s a nice opportunity for romance with Hodda, but she turns out to be a shrew and a bigamist, and absolutely not interested in sleeping in the same bed. There are a lot of lost opportunities here, and the ending isn’t enough to make it any fun.

Three and a half stars.

Review of Finna by Nino Cipri

This science fiction novella was released by Tor.com on 25 February 2020. It has a slightly young adult feel and runs 144 pages. This review contains spoilers.

Ava and Jules work for LitenVärld, a Swedish big box furniture store, and their romantic relationship is currently on the rocks. While they’re trying to avoid one another, an elderly store customer slips through a portal in the Bachelor Cube showroom into another dimension. Of course, minimum-wage employees Ava and Jules are equipped with a guide box and sent after her. On the other side of the portal, the two find the customer has been eaten by carnivorous furniture, but they locate a reasonable facsimile. What will it take to successfully retrieve her into their own reality?

This is humor, of course, and very creative. Nothing hugely momentous happens, but it’s an entertaining ride. Ava and the non-binary Jules struggle with their relationship and end up somewhat finding themselves on the journey. They manage to make life better for their facsimile of Ursula Nouri and her anxious granddaughter, and also gain the courage to explore new worlds themselves.

On the less positive side, most of the emphasis is on the dry humor and the narrative. Character development and world-building is adequate, but not spectacular, and imagery seemed a little skimpy. I didn’t end up with much of a vision of anything but LitenVärld as a typical big-box furniture store with a maze of different showrooms. Finally, this is something of a cliffhanger, and I’m wondering if we’ll see more adventures from the daring duo.

Three and a half stars.

Review of Harbors of the Sun by Martha Wells

This novel is volume 5 of the Books of the Raksura. It was originally published in 2017 by Nightshade Books and runs 416 pages. The series remains a popular read and seems to have a dedicated fan base, compendiums, etc. In 2018 it received a Hugo nomination for Best Series. This review contains spoilers.

The Raksura expedition to help the Kish investigate rumors of powerful weapons in an ancient city has been betrayed, and now it’s hard to know if they can trust anyone. Different factions seem to be working for their own agendas and the Raksura have lost control of the ancient weapon. Some of the Raksura are held hostage on the flying boat, and Moon and Stone, scouting for it, find they’re being followed by a Fell kethel. It has been sent by the Fell-born queen Consolation to look after them. This is annoying, but they can’t just kill it. Eventually they find the hostages and stop use of the weapon, but now the Fell are massed to invade the Reaches. Can the Raksura save their ancestral home?

This installment of the story continues directly from the previous book, and picks up where it leaves off. It’s not a page-turner, but there are great character interactions and moments of drama as the captives manage to outsmart their captors, and Moon and Stone are forced into recognizing the Fell kethel is not only endurable but also turning out to be an asset to their search. The Fell-born queen Consolation becomes instrumental in defeating the Fell invasion.

On the less positive side, this moves slowly, feeling padded the same way the last installment did. It’s also has lots of moving parts, so much so that the prime dramatic moment, when Jade has to choose between saving her consort Moon and saving the Reaches just gets lost. We skim over it; Jade assumes Moon is dead (oh, well) and then flies off to deal with other pressing issues. Wells could have played this out more with some soul searching and some anguished grief, at the very least. Also, I’m thinking maybe she got distracted about this time with a little Murderbot story, as this is the last novel in the series, and it’s left Consolation and her court hanging high and dry. There’s another dramatic story line waiting there.

Four stars.

Review of Edge of Worlds by Martha Wells

This novel is volume 4 of the Books of the Raksura. It was originally published in 2016 by Nightshade Books and runs 400 pages. The series remains a popular read and seems to have a dedicated fan base, compendiums, etc. In 2018 it received a Hugo nomination for Best Series. This review contains spoilers.

Everyone in the Indigo Cloud Court dreams of a Fell invasion. Soon afterward, a delegation from the groundling Empire of Kish arrives at the Indigo Cloud Court, asking for assistance to open an ancient city of their ancestors on the sea near the deep ocean. The Raksura mentors are concerned that this is related to the dream and that the city was actually built by their own forerunners and conceals more deadly weapons that will be attractive to the Fell. Can they refuse to deal with the problems when all the auguries point to invasion and destruction of the Reaches? And, does the weapon in the city have power of its own to affect events?

On the positive side, there’s a deepening of threat from the Fell, plus the impact of arcane ancient weapons on the current world. As an extra complication, Indigo Cloud discovers there are other half-Fell, half-Raksura clutches, including the Fell-born queen Consolation. There are factions among the groundlings, too, and betrayals that keep things interesting.

On the not so positive side, this installment feels padded at 400 pages and might have been more readable if edited down a little. There’s a lot of aimless wandering in the ancient city that comes to nothing, and the entertaining character interactions aren’t quite enough to support it. The ancient world is still pretty nebulous and inconsistent, and it still feels like Wells is making this up as she goes along. Oddly, Moon receives a homosexual overture from a groundling that he rejects. This seems awkward, and I can’t see any reason to include it, as Moon clearly has a homosexual lover within the Indigo Cloud court and has slept with groundling women. To young? Whatever, there’s no real discussion about his refusal or why this was included. Regardless of these issues, the novel is an enjoyable story.

Four stars.

Review of The Siren Depth by Martha Wells

This novel is volume 3 of the Books of the Raksura. It was originally published in 2012 by Nightshade Books and runs 290 pages. The series remains a popular read and seems to have a dedicated fan base, compendiums, etc. In 2018 it received a Hugo nomination for Best Series. This review contains spoilers.

One consequence of the Indigo Cloud colony’s move back to the Reaches is that now they are in contact with other Raksura colonies. Consorts are an important resource for the colonies, and it’s not long before someone identifies Moon’s bloodlines. He is claimed by his mother, the powerful Queen Malachite of Opal Night, who declares his status as Jade’s consort void. He has to go to Opal Night, but Jade promises to follow and present her claim. Years ago Opal Night was attacked by the Fell and Moon lost. Malachite also lost a consort to the Fell, who produced half-Fell clutches in a planned breeding program. Malachite rescued the half-Fell children, but failed to find Moon. Now the Fell are moving forward with a plan to use the hybrid children to open keys to forerunner cities and capture the weapons hidden there. Can Opal Night stop the Fell? And why hasn’t Jade appeared to make her claim on Moon?

This installment of the story ups the ante with a nefarious plot from the Fell. Opal Night’s half-Fell children are gently raised and at risk from capture and mistreatment by the Fell. Plus, the Raksura can’t afford for the Fell to gain control of powerful weapons—they’re enough of a scourge already. The strong characters and entertaining byplays continue, with the addition of new family for Moon, both a hulking, powerful mother and various clutch-mate brothers and sisters. Plus, we have Moon’s uncertainty about his personal worth and his relationship with Jade.

On the less positive side, the lack of structure in this world continues. The Raksura are really solid, but every groundling we see seems to be from a different species and the animal populations must mutate constantly, as no one seems to recognize what they are or how to deal with them. A good story regardless.

Four stars.