Book Review: Infinity Gate by M R Carey (four stars)

Book Review: Infinity Gate (Pandominion #1) by M. R. Carey (four stars)

[Redacted] saw Armageddon coming from a long way off. At first she was fairly philosophical about the whole thing.

Excellent interdimensional travel science fiction. Plot progresses through shifting point of view of leading characters. Differing age, status, and personality color how each views the developing train wreck.

“Life is a movement that makes itself within the great unmaking that is the entropic universe.”

Manages reflective reflection amid the accelerating crisis. Argument for humanity of sentient non-organics grows naturally amid the action. Slavery is assessed as potentially a universal human sin.

“If slavery is wrong, then it’s wrong for all selves, not just for constructs.” “I follow the logic.”

Disapointments: Though character-appropriate for hardened, career soldiers, profanity is excessive and unnecessary. Tells us over and over that gabber is prohibited but available. Ending is just that; the story breaks off rather than concludes. Whole story is an intro to next book.

Both sides had made exactly the same mistake. They looked at something radically different from themselves and saw it as something less.

Book Review: How to Stop Time by Matt Haig (three stars)

Book Review: How to Stop Time by Matt Haig (three stars)

The past resides inside the present, repeating, hiccupping, reminding you of all the stuff that no longer is.

Engaging story of almost-immortals living among us. Timeline has more folds than an accordion, but adequate tagging and foreshadowing keep the reader on track. Inner voice of protagonist advances narrative as well as showing growth. As well as reflections on life and meaning.

“Every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world.” Schopenhauer

Because Haig rewrites history to fit his model on a few known events, the reader’s confidence—not to mention verisimilitude—is damaged. So many epigrams that the flow of the story is occasionally disrupted by tags and heaping quotes. Lost a star for gratuitous and excessive profanity toward the end.

The future is you.

Book Review: Yumi and the Nightmare Painter by Brandon Sanderson. (five stars)

Book Review: Yumi and the Nightmare Painter by Brandon Sanderson. (five stars)

Kilahito was a safe city, nightmares excluded. Nothing like rampaging semisapient voids of darkness to drive down crime. 

The best story Sanderson has ever written. I’m embarrassed because I said the same thing about his last book I read. (Pattern?) Forget about Stormlight, Mistborn, and The Wheel of Time, his creativity flows here. Make no mistake, this is not epic fantasy. It is a narrowly-focused story about two people, who … uh, I can’t say. Spoiler. Read it for yourself.

Some facial expressions, like miso, require aging to hit their potency. 

Excellent tale told from two points of view. Character and world building starts slowly and accelerates. The narrator comments and explains the way authors injected themselves into stories a hundred years ago. Done well as here, it pulls the reader closer. Some humor, lots of angst. Set in Sanderson’s Cosmere but first-time readers need not fear.

“You all right?” “That was the worst thing I’ve ever done! It was wonderful!” “Girl, you really need to get out more.” “I’m trying!” 

Amazing atmospheric illustrations by Aliya Chen. Would have added a star had this not already earned five.

“Do you remember … what you said about sad stories …” “No.” 

Book Review: The Book of Dragons, Johnathon Strahan, editor. (four stars)

Book Review: The Book of Dragons, Johnathon Strahan, editor. (four stars)

She felt a dragon-shaped hole in the center of . . . well, everything. The universe. The house. Her very being. She would not be whole until she had her dragon.

Anthology of short stories featuring dragons. There are dragons, and there are dragons. Quirky, eclectic collection approaching the subject from every angle you can imagine. And a few you can’t.

One’s legs may go first, as they say, but vanity definitely goes last.

Perhaps not a pure four star, but I rounded up because so many anthologies are so disappointing. Best anthology of anything I’ve read in years. Most are re-cycled cast-offs of famous names cashing in.

“When Kidenses wrote the play, she chose to change the actual events.”
“No, I mean, the play is the thing. Who remembers the history?”

Quality wanes mid-volume as prominence of award nominations in biographies swells, perhaps reflecting the popularity-contest nature of current SFF awards.

“You’re a certain sort of brave and a certain sort of foolish, and I’m in the market for both qualities.”