I Want a Flying Saucer
Review: Parallax: Origin by Matt Conant and Lauren Cipollo
Humanity has spread out to the stars. Finding only empty worlds with no complex life forms, they have speciated using genetic engineering to occupy those worlds…”splices” as they are called have differing abilities, including flight, the ability to live underwater, etc, but are all considered human.
(Yes, there’s splicism). Unfortunately, the authors have essentially used splices to replace human ethnicities, which leaves us with the “future with no Black people” problem. This is a major flaw, but the book itself is decently written.
The Expanse is a clear influence here, but this book also has strong cyberpunk tendencies, and yes, it does include the punk part, but not as much dealing with identity as I like.
The major political divide is between the pro planetary protection Reds and pro terraforming Greens. I have to think that particular color choice harks back to Kim Stanley Robinson. Red Mars, Green Mars.
It’s…an interesting story with interesting characters. I have copies of the entire trilogy and am definitely curious to see what happens next. Especially, I want to know what happens to poor Hemlocke. That’s not a nice thing his wife did to him. At all.
And Volara is adorable.
It’s not fantastic, but it’s fun. We’ll see if the series gets better.
Review: Parallax: Adaptation by Matt Conant and Lauren Cipollo
The second book is more of the same, although with some space to develop our characters. Including poor Hemlocke.
I’m finding the genetic engineering a little hard to buy as the story continues. I could buy doing that with nanotech, but genetic engineering on a mature organism? Hit my suspension of disbelief a little bit where it hurts, that did.
It’s starting to look like the slow terraforming may be enemy action…
Review: Parallax: Evolution by Matt Conant and Lauren Cipollo
…and it is. Definite shades of the Expanse. Messing with the termites seems only mildly more smart than messing with the protomolecule.
It’s human nature to mess with these things and risk a gray goo scenario, though. It really is. I’m completely not surprised people are messing with the termites.
It feels like there should be more of this. I thought it was just three books, but that’s definitely not an ending. Maybe there will be more!
Review: Juris Ex Machina by John W. Maly
This is at its heart a typical cyberpunk cautionary tale. In this case, the crappy development is AI taking over justice. Generative AI, that is. Ugh.
The results are quite predictable, but the story a bit less so. It involves a prison with no guards, a lot of hacking, and some very determined lawyers…no, the AI hasn’t replaced the lawyers.
It’s replaced the jury. Shudder. Would be unconstitutional…or would it?
(Now I want a story where the world’s first sentient AI commits a crime and demands a jury of their peers…)
A competent book that’s probably of interest to people who thrive on interesting and different dystopias, although automated justice has definitely been done before, Maly has some fun characters to put through the wringer…and boy does he put his characters through the wringer.
Review: Mark of the Pteranodon: Rise of the Chosen One by Mitzi Scotten, illus. Gabriel Sorondo
Sorondo’s illustrations are the best part of this book…they are truly lovely.
Unfortunately, they are the best part by a long way. Scotten writes a fairly standard YA fantasy in the tradition of things like Avatar: The Last Airbender. With dinosaurs. Okay, I’m there for…Pteranodons aren’t technically dinosaurs, but I’m there for them.
I’m also there for Hawaiian mythology. Scotten has also been donating profits to the rebuilding on Maui, for which I give her a lot of points. Unfortunately, as far as I can tell, she’s not Hawaiian. Which wouldn’t necessarily be a problem, but I found it hard to trust her after she makes the very basic error of confusing service dogs and therapy dogs.
Kids aren’t a forgiving audience. They will notice these things.
Honestly, it’s a fun romp, I just found the errors destroyed my suspension of disbelief. I’m also averse to chosen one narratives right now and when you actually go around calling your protagonist the Chosen One, it just feels…heavy handed.
But again, a fun romp, and it does have Pteranodons in it.
Review: Mythos Unbound by Shayla Morgansen
Classic monster hunter urban fantasy. Well, the monsters might not be as evil as you think. Or they might be. Are they evil or simply acting in self defense?
Our protagonists are a pair of adopted siblings, neither of whom appear to actually be human. Finn is a hereditary monster hunter with bloodline gifts and we don’t know what Evie is. Evie doesn’t know what Evie is, other than an FBI agent.
Finn is a grad student. He wears tweed and fights monsters. We all know what that is a homage to.
The story twines monster hunting with the difficult relationship between the siblings. Dear Finn, your kid sister has grown up. Stop treating her like a damsel. Dear Evie, your older brother can look after himself.
It’s actually very well written of its type. If you’re in the mood for a monster hunting yarn that doesn’t have a romance between the leads, pick this one up.
Recommended for urban fantasy fans.
Review: Aiko’s Dive by Chase Gamwell
Aiko is a strange child growing up in an orphanage, at risk of being sold to the powerful Kaisin. If she can just survive long enough to come of age she and her friend will be free.
This is obviously not going to happen, but Aiko is purchased by somebody who isn’t Kaisin…somebody a lot like her.
Another human.
Things get very interesting from here. While this is a fairly simple space opera type story, I rather like Aiko…she’s both adorable and badass. I would have liked her even more when I was the target age for this book (the protagonist is 15, but in many ways this reads more like MG than YA).
The “dive” in the title is an expedition to a sunken ship on a water world. There’s some horror elements here, although they’re relatively light (I have read YA horror far more intense than this, but the sequences on the ship delightfully remind me of Alien).
This is a fun book that has a twist the reader will likely see coming well before the characters do, but it might be more opaque to people not familiar with certain SF tropes.
And again, Aiko is adorable. Give this one to your kids.
Review: Not Forever, But For Now by Chuck Palahniuk
CW: Animal death, rape, lots of child abuse. Oh, and incest. And…okay, just all the content warnings.
Ugh, yeah. Read the author’s note first. It’s at the back. Read it first.
I’m going to spoiler.
This book is an addiction metaphor. Once you know that, you hopefully stop not wanting to be alone in an elevator with the author, because omg…this book… The dog doesn’t just die, the dog dies badly. He’s the author behind Fight Club, by the way.
I can’t even really say any more except this book is dark, transgressional, extremely queer in ways that make it something only a queer person could get away with writing.
Honestly, I don’t know where I land on this one. Palahniuk is a brilliant writer, but I kept thinking “Did you have to go there?” throughout this book.
Knowing the point makes it more readable, but it never landed anywhere good for me. Sorry, Chuck.
Oh, no wonder. It’s supposed to be funny and satirical, and missed my funny bone completely. Very sorry, Chuck.
Review: The Strange by Nathan Ballingrud
Science fiction? Horror? The Strange actually falls pretty solidly into neopulp. Ballingrud’s Mars is much closer to Barsoom than to what we now know of the Red Planet and this is a world in which Mars is colonized…in the 19th century.
In, of course, flying saucers.
But after Earth goes silent, the Martian colonists are on their own, running out of parts, running out of food they can’t grow in greenhouses. Our young protagonist lives on Mars with her father. Her mother is presumably on Earth. If anyone’s on Earth. Her father runs a diner…but as food runs out, people think it’s too much of a luxury. And her only friend is Watson, a highly sophisticated automaton.
These automatons, called Engines, need a Martian substance called the Strange to function. Which is where the horror elements come in. The Strange is scary and it does scary things to people. And to Engines, for that matter.
The book ends with solid sequel bait, but does manage to be reasonably satisfying. And a shameless pulp Mars is always fun to visit every now and then.
I want a flying saucer, dang it. Get me off this rock…