Review

Review: ALL THE BIRDS IN THE SKY by Charlie Jane Anders (Titan/Tor)

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AndersCJ-AllTheBirdsInTheSkyUKOne of the most anticipated novels of the year… fizzles

Patricia is a witch who can communicate with birds. Laurence is a mad scientist and inventor of the two-second time machine. As teenagers they gravitate towards one another, sharing in the horrors of growing up weird.

When they later reconnect as adults, Laurence is an engineering genius living in near-future San Francisco, trying to stop the planet failing apart through technological intervention. Meanwhile, Patricia is a graduate of Eltisley Maze, the hidden academy for the magically gifted, and works with her fellow magicians to secretly repair the earth’s ever growing ailments.

As they each take sides in a cataclysmic war between science and magic, All the Birds in the Sky sees Laurence and Patricia try to make sense of life, sex and adulthood on the brink of the apocalypse.

This novel is perhaps one of the most anticipated of the year — with glowing reviews proliferating around the internet, and praise coming in from such luminaries as Michael Chabon, expectations have been high pretty much since it was announced. Anders writes quite beautifully, at times, and there’s little doubt that she is an author of talent. I know a lot of people who have loved this novel. Unfortunately, however, All the Birds in the Sky failed to ever take off for me. Continue reading →

Mini-Review: KILLCHAIN by Adam Baker (Infected Books)

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BakerA-KillchainWould you complete a mission if the world was collapsing around you?

Elize arrives in Mogadishu with instructions to assassinate a Russian embassy official. She has tactical command of a US kill-team, CIA operatives, rookies and veterans of a dozen war zones. It should be a straightforward hit but her luck is about to run out. She will soon find herself trapped in a city gone to hell, struggling to complete her mission in the face of betrayal, a spreading pandemic and a population hungry for flesh…

Killchain is a short story that takes place in Adam Baker’s post-zombie apocalypse setting, as featured in his superb series that began with Outpost. The world is being overrun by an interstellar virus that turns victims into strange, metallic-mineral-based zombies.

This short story is set in Mogadishu, and focuses on a CIA operation that is unfolding as the outbreak is occurring. It’s a tense, fast-paced tale. Despite the minimal length, though, Baker does a fantastic job of writing three-dimensional, realistic characters — whether the operatives or their coerced local recruits. They are determined to complete their mission, despite the likely irrelevance of the outcome — as they guide an operative to a planned assassination, the neighbourhood in which they’re hiding out is overrun by ravenous zombies…

This is a great, short and tense story. If you’re a fan of Baker’s series, then I would certainly recommend you give this a read. It should hold you over until the next in the series (hopefully) comes out.

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Killchain is published by Infected Books, as part of their Year of the Zombie initiative.

Baker’s series includes: Outpost, Juggernaut, Terminus, and Impact — all published by Hodder in the UK.

Also on CR: Interview with Adam Baker (2012); Guest Post on “Trauma”; Reviews of Terminus and Impact

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Review: Recent HORUS HERESY Short Fiction

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HorusHeresy-2016eBooks

It’s been a while since I read anything set in Black Library’s ongoing Horus Heresy series — even longer when you just consider novels (I’m now two behind). I’m also having a rather long, frustrating bout of reader’s block. Over the past week or so, BL released a handful of new eBooks, and I thought the familiarity of the series and the slim length of the stories might help knock me back into a reading rhythm. Some of these stories were published before in other formats (as audio-dramas, for example).

Featuring: John French, Graham McNeill, James Swallow, Gav Thorpe, Chris Wraight Continue reading →

Quick Review: FOREST OF MEMORY by Mary Robinette Kowal (Tor.com)

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Kowal-MR-ForestOfMemoryAn intriguing, thought-provoking near-future story

Katya deals in Authenticities and Captures, trading on nostalgia for a past long gone. Her clients are rich and they demand items and experiences with only the finest verifiable provenance. Other people’s lives have value, after all.

But when her A.I. suddenly stops whispering in her ear she finds herself cut off from the grid and loses communication with the rest of the world.

The man who stepped out of the trees while hunting deer cut her off from the cloud, took her A.I. and made her his unwilling guest.

There are no Authenticities or Captures to prove Katya’s story of what happened in the forest. You’ll just have to believe her.

This is the first thing by Mary Robinette Kowal that I’ve ever read. I wasn’t sure what to expect, but I really liked what I found. This won’t be the last thing of Kowal’s that I read.

The synopsis above really tells you everything you need to know about the story — it’s not only short enough that any more detail would spoil everything, but Kowal’s world-building within the text is sparse and sometimes vague. At times, I really wanted to learn more; but for the purposes of the story, it’s actually unnecessary. For example, we never learn any specifics about Katya’s employers, or the motivations of a person she stumbles across in the forest. If we had, then the story might have felt a little bit more substantial, true, but it’s still a satisfying read.

The novella is presented as a typed account by Katya (typos and all), and she has an interesting voice. If you take the purposeful typos out of the equation, this is very well-written, and Kowal’s prose is excellent. Unwittingly, Katya’s writing highlights the complete dependence her society has developed on mobile and networked technology. It’s a nicely-composed critique, perhaps, of today’s ever-increasing addiction to cell phones, tablets, the internet and, especially, social media. There are references to “captures” and feeds, painting a picture of willful, conscious abdication of privacy. The subject is well-presented, and lacks the heavy-handedness of, for example, David Eggers’s The Circle — a novel that practically bludgeons the reader with a critique that borders on technophobia. I’d be interested in reading more fiction in this setting.

If you like your near-future sci-fi thoughtful and thought-provoking, then Forest of Memory is for you. Recommended.

*

Forest of Memory is published by Tor.com next month. For more, check out the author’s website, and follow her on Twitter, Facebook and Goodreads. The author’s next novel is Ghost Talkers, due to be published by Tor Books in July 2016.

Review: THE MAGICIAN’S LAND by Lev Grossman (Penguin/Arrow)

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GrossmanL-M3-MagiciansLandUSA most satisfying conclusion to The Magicians trilogy

Quentin Coldwater has been cast out of Fillory, the secret magical land of his childhood dreams. With nothing left to lose he returns to where his story began, the Brakebills Preparatory College of Magic. But he can’t hide from his past, and it’s not long before it comes looking for him.

Along with Plum, a brilliant young undergraduate with a dark secret of her own, Quentin sets out on a crooked path through a magical demimonde of gray magic and desperate characters. But all roads lead back to Fillory, and his new life takes him to old haunts, like Antarctica, and to buried secrets and old friends he thought were lost forever. He uncovers the key to a sorcery masterwork, a spell that could create magical utopia, a new Fillory — but casting it will set in motion a chain of events that will bring Earth and Fillory crashing together. To save them he will have to risk sacrificing everything.

The Magician’s Land is an intricate thriller, a fantastical epic, and an epic of love and redemption that brings the Magicians trilogy to a magnificent conclusion, confirming it as one of the great achievements in modern fantasy. It’s the story of a boy becoming a man, an apprentice becoming a master, and a broken land finally becoming whole.

I left this for far longer than I intended: I thoroughly enjoyed both of the previous books in the series, The Magicians and The Magician King. The Magician’s Land is a great, gripping conclusion, and exceeded my high expectations. This is a must-read trilogy for all fans of fantasy. Continue reading →

Review: GIRLS ON FIRE by Robin Wasserman (Harper/Little Brown)

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WassermanR-GirlsOnFireUSA powerful, twisty tale of passion, obsession and growing up…

On Halloween, 1991, a popular high school basketball star ventures into the woods near Battle Creek, Pennsylvania, and disappears. Three days later, he’s found with a bullet in his head and a gun in his hand — a discovery that sends tremors through this conservative community, already unnerved by growing rumors of Satanic worship in the region.

In the wake of this incident, bright but lonely Hannah Dexter is befriended by Lacey Champlain, a dark-eyed, Cobain-worshiping bad influence in lip gloss and Doc Martens. The charismatic, seductive Lacey forges a fast, intimate bond with the impressionable Dex, making her over in her own image and unleashing a fierce defiance that neither girl expected. But as Lacey gradually lures Dex away from her safe life into a feverish spiral of obsession, rebellion, and ever greater risk, an unwelcome figure appears on the horizon — and Lacey’s secret history collides with Dex’s worst nightmare.

This is Robin Wasserman’s first novel for adults, and it’s a powerful one. I wasn’t sure what to expect, but I’m very glad I gave it a try. This is a powerful, gripping novel about a friendship between two polar-opposite girls with secrets and insecurities. It’s atmospheric, realistic and extremely satisfying.
Continue reading →

Review: IF I FORGET YOU by Thomas Christopher Greene (Thomas Dunne)

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GreeneTC-IfIForgetYouUSA beautifully written, engaging novel

Twenty-one years after they were driven apart by circumstances beyond their control, two former lovers have a chance encounter on a Manhattan street. What follows is a tense, suspenseful exploration of the many facets of enduring love.

Told from altering points of view through time, If I Forget You tells the story of Henry Gold, a poet whose rise from poverty embodies the American dream, and Margot Fuller, the daughter of a prominent, wealthy family, and their unlikely, star-crossed love affair, complete with the secrets they carry when they find each other for the second time.

Thomas Christopher Greene‘s previous novel, The Headmaster’s Wife, was a sleeper hit when it came out. I picked it up shortly after, but haven’t had the chance to read it, yet. I spotted If I Forget You on NetGalley, though, and started reading it as soon as I got a review copy. I had high expectations, and they were mostly met. Greene’s prose is exceptionally good, often lyrical. Continue reading →

Quick Review: THE DEVIL YOU KNOW by K.J. Parker (Tor.com)

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ParkerKJ-DevilYouKnowA superb, must-read novella

The greatest philosopher of all time is offering to sell his soul to the Devil. All he wants is twenty more years to complete his life’s work. After that, he really doesn’t care.

But the assistant demon assigned to the case has his suspicions, because the philosopher is Saloninus – the greatest philosopher, yes, but also the greatest liar, trickster and cheat the world has yet known; the sort of man even the Father of Lies can’t trust.

He’s almost certainly up to something; but what?

I’ve had a very mixed relationship with Parker’s fiction. I’ve loved some of it, and I’ve found some to be painfully slow. The Devil You Know is… well, pretty much perfect. Parker’s writing is superb, the story excellently paced, and the characters fully fleshed out and realistic, despite the slim length of the novella. Read The Devil You Know, and it’s clear why Parker is so respected and beloved. This is a fantastic, must-read novella. Continue reading →

Quick Review: A SONG FOR NO MAN’S LAND by Andy Remic (Tor.com)

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RemicA-WWI1-ASongForNoMansLandA weird, imaginative World War I urban fantasy tale

He signed up to fight with visions of honour and glory, of fighting for king and country, of making his family proud at long last.

But on a battlefield during the Great War, Robert Jones is shot, and wonders how it all went so very wrong, and how things could possibly get any worse.

He’ll soon find out. When the attacking enemy starts to shapeshift into a nightmarish demonic force, Jones finds himself fighting an impossible war against an enemy that shouldn’t exist.

This novella is the first in a projected series by Andy Remic. It is a really interesting, creepy take on the First World War. Told from the perspective of a volunteer, alternating between narrative and diary entries (for the main). The novella recounts the difficulties and horrors of the Front, the and the intense confusion warfare.

Add to this, though, a touch of horror and fantasy myth, and Remic has come up with an original take on war fiction. There were a few times when the story felt a little confusing, but I think that was intentional — our hero doesn’t always know what is actually going on, and the creatures he believes he keeps seeing are monstrous. Is his mind just creating a lie to explain the nature of war? Or is he really faced with monsters from childhood myth and nightmare?

A Song for No Man’s Land is a really interesting start to a new series. This novella is very much setting up the world and premise for the series to come, and ends on quite a tantalizing moment. I think this should have pretty broad appeal. Recommended.

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Also on CR: Interview with Andy Remic

A Song for No Man’s Land is published by Tor.com next month. The next two novellas in the series — Return of Souls and Iron Beast — will also be published by Tor.com. Here are the covers (provisional, I think):

RemicA-WWISeries1to3

Review: 13 MINUTES by Sarah Pinborough (Gollancz)

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PinboroughS-13MinutesUKAn excellent new thriller from one of Britain’s best authors

Natasha was dead for 13 minutes. And it changed her world completely…

I was dead for 13 minutes.

I don’t remember how I ended up in the icy water but I do know this — it wasn’t an accident and I wasn’t suicidal.

They say you should keep your friends close and your enemies closer, but when you’re a teenage girl, it’s hard to tell them apart. My friends love me, I’m sure of it. But that doesn’t mean they didn’t try to kill me. Does it?

13 MINUTES by Sarah Pinborough is a gripping psychological thriller about people, fears, manuiplation and the power of the truth. A stunning read, it questions our relationships — and what we really know about the people closest to us…

Sarah Pinborough’s latest thriller is both an excellent thriller and an insightful examination of what it means to be a teenager in the social media age. It blends these two facets together perfectly, creating one of the first must-read novels of the year. Continue reading →