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 The Expert System’s Champion by Adrian Tchaikovsky

Adrian Tchaikovsky is an award-winning British writer, best known as author of the Shadows of the Apt fantasy series and the Children of Time series. This is Book #2 of the series, following The Expert System’s Brother. It was published by Tordotcom on January 26, 2021, and runs 194 pages. This review contains spoilers.

Ten years after his accidental Severance, Handry and his sister Melory are now the leaders of Sharskin’s cult of outcasts, rebranded as the Bandage Men. The group is based at the Ship of the Ancients and circulates between villages, carrying communications and helping to defend against problems in the environment. Something new is happening, though. A hunter named Erma has brought a tale of shelled monsters invading the area and pushing the local wildlife into the villages. One has been wiped out already. The shelled monsters look to be undefeatable and there is nothing in the Wisdom of the Ancients about how to deal with them. Can Handry, Melory and their little band solve the problem and save the villages?

The most interesting thing about this series is the world building that imagines a totally alien world where humans can’t actually survive without modification. The system set up by the Ancients uses the local fauna to inoculate the population with a vaccine that allows them to eat food produced from the soil and Severance is a potion that removes this protection and leaves the person an outcast. The state leaves the person under attack by the environment, but also allows them a true human perspective. The plot, characters and description are all good enough to do the job.

The worst thing about this is that it’s pretty horrific. The original set up was bad enough, where the “ghosts” of expert systems warp and consume their hosts, but the hellish bargain the shelled creatures have created really tops it off. This is likely excellent for lovers of horror, but I’m not a fan of the genre. Also on the less positive side, Tchaikovsky isn’t that great at handling his characters. The leads were well developed in the first book, but there’s no intimacy here, and Handry tells the tale with a lot of distance. Maybe that’s good considering of the quality of the horror, but it leaves the characters flat. I didn’t identify with any of them. Also, I’m wondering how the technology manages to maintain itself so long after the Ancients have disappeared. There’s still no explanation of how it was developed.

Three 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 A Desolation Called Peace by Arkady Martine

This is the second book in the series, following the Hugo Award-winning A Memory Called Empire. The novel was released March 2, 2021, by Tor Books and runs 496 pages. It’s billed as Space Opera that “reinvents” the genre, and was a Dragon Award finalist this year. Arkady Martine is the pen name of AnnaLinden Weller, a historian and city planner. This review contains spoilers.

The story picks up a short while after A Memory Called Empire leaves off. The old Emperor of the Teixcalaanli Empire has passed away, causing a political upheaval, and leaving a new Emperor in place and an 11 year-old clone heir. The Empire is beset by dangers, as mysterious aliens are lurking at the borders, slaughtering humans and destroying outposts. The Emperor has dispatched Admiral Nine Hibiscus with a fleet to deal with the problem. The encounters are not going well, so Nine Hibiscus tries a different tack, requesting an expert on first contact from the Information Ministry. Three Seagrass volunteers to take the mission and searches out Mahit Dzmare, Lsel Station’s Ambassador to the Empire, for help. Dzmare has returned to the Station, where she faces death threats from Councilors in the government because of her survival of their sabotage attempt on her imago memory line and her performance as Ambassador. Mahit takes Three Seagrass’ offer in order to escape and the two join the Fleet to help analyze sounds recorded by one of the ships. Armed with the results, they manage to establish a contact with the aliens. Is there any way to negotiate a peace treaty?

Like A Memory Called Empire, this story is a leisurely, slow-moving narrative, but it remains gripping because of all the threats. Themes include colonialism, genocide, and collective consciousness. The world-building is already pretty much done, and Martine doesn’t add a whole lot more, putting all the work into intrigues and developing new characters. The situation was fairly desperate at the end of the first installment, so we start off in a pretty dire place. Mahit is looking at an unfortunate “medical error” that would kill her in an investigation of her “defective” imago, which is a technology developed on Lsel Station to record and save memory so skills can be transferred. Three Seagrass is Dzmare’s former liaison from her stint as Ambassador to Palace Earth where the Emperor passed away, and Mahit is sent off with demands from her government that she sabotage the Fleet and its task. Lsel Station is way too close to the alien encroachment; Nine Hibiscus’ assignment looks like it’s planned to be a suicide mission, and Eight Anecdote, the young heir, is treading on dangerous ground. Various people step up to be heroes and everything ends fairly well, with Dzmare looking at opportunities outside Lsel Station.

On the less positive side, the leisurely pace got to feeling like padding about three-quarters of the way through as it really started to slow down the action. The investigation of experience, background, thought-processes and feelings is helpful to develop characters, but eventually it got out of hand, especially in the insecurities department. This would have been a much more entertaining read if it were about 25-50 pages shorter and cut some of that out. Next, I ended up uncertain who the main protagonist is in this installment of the story. Dzmare was clearly it in the first book, but the profusion of characters here and the shifting viewpoints confuses the issue, leaving this more of an ensemble performance–I’m actually tempted to say Eight Anecdote should be the main character. I was led astray by the introduction of kittens living in the ships’ air ducts; I was sure these were baby aliens, and maybe they will eventually turn out that way. Still, it’s a loose end. And last, the Emperor’s heir seems to have gotten away totally scot free on what is certainly major lesé-majesty, or maybe treason. Assigned by the Emperor to be her spy, he eventually makes decisions counter to hers, sabotages her communications with the Fleet and substitutes his own orders instead. This seems a little much for an 11 year-old, and it should set up a succession battle, imprisonment, execution, exile, but…nothing happens. This is another of those misleading, permissive fantasies where there are no consequences to behavior, no matter how transgressive, as long as it’s done for the “right” reasons.

Four stars.

Review of “Just Right?” by Mary Lawton

This is a flash fiction piece from Daily Science Fiction, which posts short fiction online and also sends it out by email for busy people through a subscription service. Mary Lawton is a PhD candidate in English and an Agatha Christie fan. The story runs 238 words and this review contains spoilers. 

The probe returned with data this was a habitable zone in Proxima Centauri, but it’s not. The team found there was no liquid water and that the radiation levels were lethal. They’re all dead but Collins, and he’s going to die soon. Still, he’s thinking this is a beautiful place, and maybe there’s hope for the future.

This is a really brief story, intertwined with references to the children’s tale of “Goldilocks and the Three Bears.” It references Goldilocks; the robotic sample collector is called BEAR; the world, like porridge, is supposed to be neither too hot nor too cold; and Collins hopes the future will be just right. There’s also a nice image of dust obscuring his footprints, already erasing him from the planet.

On the less positive side, this seems a bit contrived. The Goldilocks story appears to have nothing at all to do with the situation on the planet so it’s entertaining, but doesn’t add anything to the subtext of the story. It’s also unclear why a manned mission went all that way on just the results of one probe, especially when it’s clear the data was erroneous. And last, I’m not clear what Goldilocks is that the story says is dead. The planet? The expedition? One of the team members? I do like the part about hope, though.

Three 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 Fugitive Telemetry by Martha Wells

This science fiction novella is part of the Murderbot Diaries series and falls between Exit Strategy and Network Effect. It was published in April of 2021 by Tor.com and runs 172 pages. Wells has been very successful with this series and is currently in the list of nominations for both the Nebula and Hugo Awards for Network Effect. Wells has signed a contract with for 3 more Murderbot books, plus three from a new series. This review contains spoilers.

After rescuing its owner Dr. Mensah from GrayCris, Murderbot ends up stuck on Preservation Station. The events on TranRollinHyfa have stirred up a legal hornet’s nest, and Dr. Mensah is concerned about safety while the various lawsuits are working out. At first it seems okay to be on the station, but Mensah tells the council that MB is actually a rogue SecUnit, which causes a lot of outcry and some uncomfortable restrictions. Then someone posts a current photo of it to the newsfeed, which is also very annoying, as MB has tried really hard to keep that from happening. Meanwhile, there’s a dead human on Preservation station, clearly murdered, which is something that rarely happens there. Mensah suggests MB help with the investigation as a way to get on better terms with Station Security. It’s prevented from searching through the station databases, but there are other ways to investigate. It seems the man was involved with human smuggling of some kind. Can MB solve the mystery and rescue the people the man was trying to help?

This story includes Wells’ trademark style and Murderbot’s entertaining, cynical narrative. This universe is pretty well established by now, and the story moves right along. Security is MB’s thing, after all, and after rough start with the abrasive Security people, it goes off on its own to investigate the murder, touching base with the station’s bots and the bot pilots docked in the port. It’s the long way around, but it ferrets out the plot and, with Security’s help, moves to rescue the refugees. We never find out who leaked the photo, so maybe that will turn up in another novella.

On the less positive side, this seems short and has pacing issues. The plot feels forced, with some unexplained events and no visible bad guys, so we end up with an anticlimax at the end. Plus there are some spots where people don’t necessarily react as they should. It’s late to be a beta reader, but because I really like MB, I’m going to pick it apart. Definite spoilers ahead.

1) MB has to rescue Security Officer Aylan and Port Authority Rep Gamila from a ship with five armed smugglers. This is the first time they have seen it in action. Given the hype that’s been going around, this performance should cause concerns, but everyone seems to take it for granted—except the smugglers, of course, who complain about being manhandled by a SecUnit.

2) Then the smugglers explain their operation: labor contracts run so long that the contractees have children who become slaves. Okay, so that’s a loaded word, but how does this work? Are they forced into labor contracts? Forced to work without a contract? Sold to someone else? Isn’t human slavery against the law without a contract? Do kids stay in the barracks with their moms? Does anyone provide school or training? Why doesn’t the contracting company force contraceptives to prevent this burden on their labor force? And why is BreharWallHan, in this case, paying bounty hunters to bring them back? Why not just consider it a loss?

3) Why doesn’t the issue of human trafficking go right to the station council? Station security should be more alarmed about this than they are. Sure, maybe they support helping slaves escape, but allowing the station to be used as a nexus point for smugglers encourages the kind of operation we’re seeing here. Someone got murdered, a bunch of people got kidnapped and there are a bunch of armed smugglers waving their guns around in the port. Is this a forecast of what’s coming if they let this continue?

4) MB has located the smugglers and goes on to identify the bounty hunters who kidnapped the refugees because their ships use jammers to garble their feeds. Why is this necessary? It’s a sure sign something is wrong, and it seems like the Port Authority would have picked up the problem way before now.

5) When Security starts to search the port, MB gets into an argument about whether it will do any manual work like moving heavy objects around. Presumably it means to establish boundaries, but the argument gets cut off and we never learn whether it moves the shipping containers or not.

6) MB goes to a lot of trouble to rescue the refugees from the ship where they’re being held captive, and once they’re on the station, one of the refugees grabs a weapon and shoots MB because they’ve recognized it as a SecUnit. Who was that careless with their weapon? And how did the captives identify MB? If they’ve worked on a labor contract, they’ve never seen a SecUnit out of armor, and MB doesn’t have the standard behavior patterns. Then everybody just lets this drop, too. MB doesn’t even complain about stupid humans and how erratic they are. The smugglers identified it as a SecUnit, too, but even with MB’s unusual effectiveness, it shouldn’t be that obvious. It’s in low key mode here. Have they seen the photo on the newsfeed? What?

7) MB is using a projectile weapon here, but it just sort of appears by magic. Is this the same one from TranRollingHyfa? If so, how did it get here? If not, where did it come from? Security? Given their earlier concerns, souldn’t they be concerned about this?

8) Last, Balin the Port Authority robot is identified as the inside agent responsible for the murder. It turns out to be a refitted Combat Bot, and starts to battle MB, but when faced with an array of other port bots, it backs off and just shuts down instead. So this is the anticlimax, and it doesn’t hold water. The response of the port bots suggests they’re sentient, organized, and look out for their own. There’s been NO hint of this kind of behavior before, and actually MB has taken control of them in previous installations, giving us the impression they’re not that bright. So now suddenly they’re high functioning? And Balin looks like an expensive way to stop the rescues and murder the guy directing the refugee operation, so the slave trade must be worth the cost? And last, why does Balin just shut down? Where are its orders coming from? MB is right that it can’t fight the whole contingent of port bots, but from their previous actions, I’m under the impression Combat Bots don’t really care about that kind of thing. It makes more sense that its operators have shut it down to reduce the amount of trouble they’re in.

Regardless of the nitpicking, this was a fairly entertaining read, though readers will have to decide if it advances the storyline enough to pay the full novel price for a novella. This has been a great series that hopefully will continue for a while.

Three and a half stars.

New releases!

I’m going to break into the reviews to announce (support your local author) a couple of new releases. The first is a poem titled “Deadwood Dick Meets the Ghost of his Dad,” appearing in issue #40 of Eye to the Telescope. It’s online, so please click to go to the site and have a look!

The second is a great new science fiction adventure novel titled The Ivory Pin, released this month by That Ridge Press. The paperback should be available for order at any bookseller, and an e-book version is also available from online sellers.

Review of “Scars” by Anatoly Belilovsky

This is another flash fiction piece from Daily Science Fiction, which posts short fiction online and also sends it out by email for busy people through a subscription service. This story is on the long side at 1065 words. Belilovsky was born in what is now Ukraine, and says he learned English from Star Trek reruns. This review contains spoilers.

Frank was blinded in an nuclear accident, and but that means he’s developed sharper senses in other ways. He runs the Heart of Darkness, a venue for blind trysts on the Ring. Because it’s a small community, government officials and professionals can’t have affairs that would affect their positions or their staffs, so the make use of his service to hook up. Because of his sharper senses, Frank identifies the doctor who saved him when she comes in and her date, a member of the Ethic Board who has been asking too many questions just lately. He’s brought a hidden camera today. How can Frank deal with this?

This is traditional SF, a heart-warming tale about scars and need. The characters and relationships are very well developed and the setting and background very vivid. The hookup service also feels like an original concept, a projection from the kind of scandals going around in the last few years where even female officials lose their jobs for having affairs with staff. Frank and the doctor have a close relationship, but he doesn’t take advantage. This also has something of a sexual charge.

There’s not much to say on the less positive side, except that maybe this seems a little to pat. Doesn’t anyone ever recognize their date? I’d love to read a longer story or a novel in this setting where Frank has to deal with more in the way of intrigue and temptation.

Five stars.

Review of The Last Emperox by John Scalzi

Back in the summer I promised to review the Dragon Awards. It’s taken me a while to get through the fiction winners, but finally(!) Here they are. This novel won the 2020 Dragon Award for Best Science Fiction Novel. It is third in the Interdependency series, preceded by #1 The Collapsing Empire and #2 The Consuming Fire. All three novels have been issued by Tor. This one was released in April 2020 and runs 250 pages. This review contains spoilers.

This installment of the story picks up about where The Consuming Fire leaves off. The flow streams that connect the Interdependency habitats are collapsing and the planet End is the only place in the network where the planet is actually habitable. The noble families of the Interdependency are maneuvering for control of the planet and a way to save their houses and their business empires. Ghreni Nohamapetan has seized control of the planet End, imprisoned Count Claremont, and taken over as acting Duke, planning to hold it for his house. Cardenia Wu-Patrick, the Emperox Grayland II is researching plans with Claremont’s nephew Marce to save as many of the residents of the habitats as possible before the final stream collapse. Nadashe Nohamapetan, Ghreni’s sister, is planning a coup with the House of Wu to unseat Grayland II and take over rule of the Interdependency. Lady Kiva Lagos, currently steward of the Nohamapetan business empire, has noticed the money trail left by the plot, and notifies the Emperox. Subsequently an attempt is made on Lagos’ life and she wakes on a freighter on the way out of the system. Is there any way to stop the plot and save the people of the Interdependency?

This is a quick, entertaining read, fast paced and featuring a lot of diverse characters and down-to-earth, salty language. It’s basically an intrigue, and the best points are the strength of the characters and the convoluted plotting (a vanishing skill these days). Don’t get really attached to anybody here, because plots, uprisings and assassinations abound and a lot of people don’t survive to the end. The story moves along smartly and ends in a twist that’s fairly unexpected. Besides this, we get a couple of love affairs that play on your heartstrings, and some heroes willing to give up their lives to save their people.

On the less positive side, this doesn’t seem to have much of a theme or to make any kind of a statement. As with the other installments, the technology is fairly traditional and mostly rooted in 20^th century SF. There are a couple of bright AIs who appear as projections, but this seems to be a technology owned only by royalty. The Emperoxes have their personalities digitally recorded and stored, but again this seems to be a benefit reserved for royalty. Otherwise, there seems to be an internet that works about the same way it does now, accessed through tablets, and no one seems really connected. For example. when Nadashe wants to talk directly to Kiva, she has to have someone deliver an earpiece phone so they ca commuicate. And last, the ending was a bit bittersweet. Scalzi suggests that these people will work out their problems, but we’re left with lose ends and no real surety.

Four stars.