Book Review: Pride’s Children: Netherworld by Alicia Butcher Ehrhardt (five stars)

Book Review: Pride’s Children: Netherworld (Book #2) by Alicia Butcher Ehrhardt (five stars)

Time to act like a grownup. Time to be an adult. Depressing thought.

Growing up is hard, especially when you’re an adult. And a success. Visibly so. Complex, believable inner dialogue. Who needs saving and how do they get it? Three point of view characters, folded timeline, occasional flashes back and forward. Insights into writing, movies, friends, family, and agents. Very cerebral, dare I say literary?

You can start rumors, but you can’t control them.

Talk about in media res. The book opens a third of the way into the story, literally. Being a single story cut in thirds by the publisher, this second installment tosses the reader into the flow with no character introduction or background. Read Pride’s Children: Purgatory first. The closing, by no means the end, is sufficiently satisfying to keep readers hooked until the conclusion is published. A really big train wreck assured.

This is what writers did: they had imaginary conversations in their heads where they played all the parts.

Notes: One character’s accent borders on caricature, while everyone else has none. Both female characters are surrounded by support while the male is alone against the world. Even his agent hates him. Too many epigrams opening each chapter.

“It’s always hard to balance reality with what people think they know.”

Book Review: Storm of Locusts by Rebecca Roanhorse (four stars)

Book Review: Storm of Locusts (The Sixth World, #2) by Rebecca Roanhorse (four stars)

“Godslayer, huh.” His mouth bleeds into a half smile. “I always knew you were the crazy one in the girl gang.”

Excellent story; excellent storytelling. Roanhorse continues her saga woven with Navajo language, culture, and lore in a post-apocalyptic Dinétah, approximately a hundred years in the future. The geography is based on the American Southwest after the Big Water, a series of cataclysms including California sliding into the Pacific. People live as best they can on the remnants, using their clan powers to aid or oppose each other and spiritual deities, including the Diyin Dine’e.

I open my mouth to remind him of her clan powers, but I shut it when I see the look on his face. Why ruin his familial pride with a few pesky supernatural facts?

Maggie is totally believable in a speculative fiction way, which is way over the top. The genesis and inner dynamics of her gang of girls adds to her and their depth. Gratuitous profanity cost Ronan a star. Yes, that’s who Maggie and company are, but beyond establishing character, it dulls the edge which it presumably was meant to whet.

“You know, I grew up in the church, but I’m not sure I believe in all that sin stuff.”
“I have to believe, because if I don’t, then there’s no chance of forgiveness. It’s the only hope I have.”

Mechanics: Roanhorse reveals that she wrote Storm before publishing Trail of Lightning. Assures continuity. Pace and timing propel the reader onward. Kudos to Tommy Arnold for the cover illustration.

“I’ve got issues, if you haven’t notice.” “Oh, I noticed.” “Thanks.”

Book Review: The Expert System’s Champion by Adrian Tchaikovsky (four stars)

Book Review: The Expert System’s Champion (Expert System #2) by Adrian Tchaikovsky (four stars)

We, who can do things no other human can, and all we paid for the privilege was everything we had and ever were.

Engaging and imaginative science fiction about “second contact.” Tchaikovsky veers in a new direction for his second story on this world. Parallel narratives precede and follow The Expert System’s Brother. Excellent development.

We were the lords of the unnatural. We had made ourselves the ambassadors between the people of the villages and that other unseen world the ancestors had come from.

Really unique aliens. So often, like online games and SF movies, the aliens are just humans with strange masks. Prepare to have your Eweh sense disturbed.

Hope was most of the little we had. The remainder, which was to say, my plan, was despair.

Book Review: Light of the Jedi by Charles Soule (three star)

Book Review: Light of the Jedi (Star Wars: The High Republic) by Charles Soule (three star)

The galaxy didn’t care what you thought couldn’t be broken. It would break things just to show you it could. 

The cover says it all: amateurish. Not as good as Zahn, Traviss, Anderson or Stackpole or other of the ninety Expanded Universe novels I’ve read. Wordy. Needs another edit to tighten the storytelling. Benefits by not being subjected to a cast of the Usual Suspects.

Every prominent Jedi in the galaxy was aboard the station, even Yoda, which surprised some. Ordinarily, the ancient master avoided non-essential social gatherings with determined glee.

Quibbles: At the time of this story, Yoda is not yet ancient. Solar systems are largely empty space: fire a shotgun, even at the elliptic, and you’ll miss everything. The timing is hopeless. “Near the speed of light” means much greater than half. Catch up to an object flying almost the speed of light without hyperdrive? Climb from the center of mass of a Moon-sized asteroid to the surface in fifteen minutes?

“We’re all the Republic.” “We’re all dead if we don’t finish searching the station.” 

Even given the fortuitous availability of a team of Jedi (what the Force does), these folks spend too much time talking.

“The Force doesn’t feel the need to announce its actions. It just acts.”

Book Review: Time and Tide by Shirley Mckay (four stars)

Book Review: Time and Tide (Hew Cullan Mystery #3) by Shirley Mckay (four stars)

‘Giles seeks to tell the truth, yet truth itself at times is not the most efficient strategy, for it is often not what people wish to hear.’

Excellent late medieval mystery set in St. Andrews, Scotland. Third in series. Suggest new readers start with Huw and Cry.

‘You are, I think, impertinent, which may require correction.’ ‘I bow to your direction, sir,’ Hew retorted dryly. ‘It’s clear that you do not. And that is why I want you.’

Good character development and plotting. The reader need only relax and enjoy the ride.

‘Though, I prefer to be pragmatical . . .’ ‘You prefer to be equivocal,’

Like Edith Parteger, Mckay projects a fairly modern protagonist into a late Middle Ages setting. Echoes of the Cadfael-Huw Beringer relationship. Many Parallels to the Cadfael Chronicles, but not a rip-off.

‘But to take the law in your hands . . .’ ‘Nor law, but justice, [redacted], for law would little serve her in this case.’ ‘Be careful, [redacted]’. ‘For law belongs to man, and justice comes from God.’ ‘To whom [redacted] will devote herself.

Book Review: A Desolation Called Peace by Arkady Martine (three stars)

Book Review: A Desolation Called Peace (Teixcalaan #2) by Arkady Martine (three stars)

Let’s see if interested means “would like me safely dead,” as usual.

Continues Martine’s inventive space opera with allies one can’t trust adding first contact with an unknowable foe. Multiple points of view intrigue and baffle unwary readers. As with A Memory Called Empire, the improbable outcome everyone expects morphs into the impossible outcome no one desires. Well done.

“Who wouldn’t want to be involved in a first-contact scenario?”
“Nearly everyone who has ever been near an alien.”

New characters mix with holdovers from Memory to expand the horizons of the story. The stakes are appropriately higher.

“If he does it … and he’s right, and he lives—then he’ll have achieved a kind of first-contact negotiation no Teixcalaanlitzlim has ever managed.” “… Are you jealous?” “I’m not brave enough to be jealous.”

Lost at least a star for one gratuitous, graphic sex scene. Unnecessary to either plot or character development, it cheapens the story into rank pornography. The scene in question could have stopped after the initial kiss and ruminations by the point of view character then restarted in next chapter’s post-coital tangle of limbs with no loss. Overuse of the f-word too.

She didn’t exactly want him to be careful. Didn’t want, herself, to be careful. Only to win. She wished she knew what winning would look like.

Book Review: Regent by Brian Rathbone (Three Stars)

Book Review: Regent (The Balance of Power #1) by Brian Rathbone (Three Stars)

“Perhaps in that the old prophecies had been right. Perhaps she had no choice but to become an avatar of death. Is a sword only used to kill?”

Dragons and magic, what can go wrong? Lots. Both in the plot and in the storytelling. Lots of emoting and adults acting like teens.

“Forgotten are those who fail to achieve. Doomed are those afraid to fail.”

Though the first of a new series, Regent assumes readers have read the previous series. Late in the second half, “new” characters appear from previous books. Doesn’t end with a cliffhanger; ends falling off the cliff. Not ending, per se.

“I cannot kill you because I have seen that future as well, and the only thing worse than a future without dragons is a future without dragons and humans. Now there is no other way. You must choose.”

Quibble: “Piling the dark-shelled muscles onto the indented slab…” Eating muscles? No, mussels.

“Not that one.” Durin’s sick feeling intensified as a low grinding noise filled the halls and the stone beneath their feet trembled.

Book Review: Regent by Brian Rathbone (Three Stars)

Book Review: Regent (The Balance of Power #1) by Brian Rathbone (Three Stars)

“Perhaps in that the old prophecies had been right. Perhaps she had no choice but to become an avatar of death. Is a sword only used to kill?”

Dragons and magic, what can go wrong? Lots. Both in the plot and in the storytelling. Lots of emoting and adults acting like teens.

“Forgotten are those who fail to achieve. Doomed are those afraid to fail.”

Though the first of a new series, Regent assumes readers have read the previous series. Late in the second half, “new” characters appear from previous books. Doesn’t end with a cliffhanger; ends falling off the cliff. Not ending, per se.

“I cannot kill you because I have seen that future as well, and the only thing worse than a future without dragons is a future without dragons and humans. Now there is no other way. You must choose.”

Quibble: “Piling the dark-shelled muscles onto the indented slab…” Eating muscles? No, mussels.

“Not that one.” Durin’s sick feeling intensified as a low grinding noise filled the halls and the stone beneath their feet trembled.

Book Review: Cryoburn by Lois McMaster Bujold (Four Stars)

Book Review: Cryoburn (Vorkosigan Saga #14) by Lois McMaster Bujold (Four Stars)

“Let me tell you, young man-the dirty little secret of democracy is that just because you get a vote, doesn’t mean you get your choice.”

Bujold is a master storyteller. Her Vorkosigan tales are classic escapist science fiction. Fun, with dashes of humor and snarkiness. Good reads all. Even this deep into the series, characters grow and change dragging the reader along on their hectic life tales.

“My case budget allows for a lot of discretion, you know.” “Then I wish you’d buy some,” snapped [redacted]. He shut his mouth abruptly, as if startled at what had fallen out of it.

Original 2010 review: Cute, improbable, fun, exhausting–typical Miles tale.

“You’re pretty free with that thing.” “It’s all right. I have a license to stun.” “I thought that was supposed to be a license to kill.” [Redacted] grimaced. “That, too. But you would not believe all the forms that have to be filled out, afterward.”

Book Review: Uncharted Stars by Andrea Norton (Three Stars)

Book Review: Uncharted Stars (The Zerto Stone #2) by Andrea Norton (Three Stars)

“When there is only one road left, that is the one you walk.”

Not Norton’s best work, but a fun, engaging young adult science fiction adventure. Slow start; she spends first ten pages recapping the previous story. Once again no female characters grace the pages of this story by once of the best female SF writers of her day until the last ten pages.

“My depressed spirits told me that I was already at the point where one surrendered hope and waited for the inevitable blow to fall.” “We could not be far now from the entrance, though I could hardly believe in such fortune.”

Her point of view character has plenty of angst and apparent failures, but his luck in landing in just the right place and the right time pushes credibility. (No one reads these books expecting complete realism, but the author should at least help maintain the reader’s willing suspension of unbelief.)

“Fitting the strip of reader tape in his clawed hands into a recorder.”

Published in 1969, Stars boasts all the technological gaffs one expects of what young readers may not grasp as the way it was versus bad writing.

“… set up his hold orbit to the north.” “The atmosphere was breathable without a helmet.” Ryzk turned to check the atmosphere dials. “Arth type, livable.”

Quibbles: It is impossible to orbit the north of a planet. A polar orbit transects the equator as well as the poles. Have you ever noticed how most SF worlds have breathable atmospheres? For most of its existence, even Earth didn’t have a breathable atmosphere.

“‘Agree! There is an excellent reason.’ And, in spite of myself, in spite of knowing that no excellent reason for such stupidity could exist, I found myself agreeing.”