2025-12-14: Review: Brigands & Breadknives
Review: Brigands & Breadknives, by Travis Baldree
| Series |
Legends & Lattes #3 |
| Publisher |
Tor |
| Copyright |
2025 |
| ISBN |
1-250-33489-6 |
| Format |
Kindle |
| Pages |
325 |
Brigands & Breadknives is a secondary-world sword-and-sorcery
fantasy and a sequel to both Legends &
Lattes and Bookshops & Bonedust. It
takes place shortly after Legends & Lattes chronologically, but
Fern, the protagonist, was introduced in the Bookshops & Bonedust
prequel.
You may have noticed I didn't describe this as cozy fantasy. That is
intentional.
When we left Fern at the end of Bookshops & Bonedust, the rattkin
was running a bookshop in the town of Murk. As Brigands &
Breadknives opens, Fern is moving, for complicated and hard-to-describe
personal reasons, to Thune where Viv has her coffee shop. Her plan is to
open a new bookstore next door to Legends and Lattes. This is exactly the
sort of plot one might expect from this series, and the first few chapters
feel like yet another version of the first two novels. Then Fern makes an
impulsive and rather inexplicable (even to herself) decision and the plot
goes delightfully sideways.
Brigands & Breadknives is not, as Baldree puts it in the afterword,
a book about fantasy small-business ownership as the answer to all of
life's woes. It is, instead, a sword and sorcery story about a possibly
immortal elven bounty hunter, her utterly baffling goblin prisoner, and a
rattkin bookseller who becomes their unexpected travel companion for
reasons she can't explain. It's a story about a mid-life crisis in a world
and with supporting characters that I can only describe as inspired by a
T. Kingfisher novel.
Baldree is not Ursula Vernon, of course. This book does not contain
paladins or a romance, possibly to the relief of some readers. It's
slower, a bit more introspective, and doesn't have as sharp of edges or
the casual eerie unsettlingness. But there is a religious order that
worships a tentacled space horror for entirely unexpected reasons, pompous
and oleaginous talking swords with verbose opinions about everything, a
mischievously chaotic orange-haired goblin who quickly became one of my
favorite fantasy characters and then kept getting better, and a whole lot
of heart. You may see why Kingfisher was my first thought for a comparison
point.
Unlike Baldree's previous novels, there is a lot of combat and injury. I
think some people will still describe this book as cozy, and I'm not going
to argue too strongly because the conflicts are a bit lighter than the
sort of rape and murder one would see in a Mercedes Lackey novel. But to me this felt like sword and sorcery in a
Dungeons and Dragons universe made more interesting by letting the
world-building go feral and a little bit sarcastic. Most of the book is
spent traveling, there are a lot of random encounters that build into a
connected plot, and some scenes (particularly the defense of the forest
village) felt like they could have sold to the
Swords and Sorceress anthology series.
Also, this was really good! I liked both Legends & Lattes and
Bookshops & Bonedust, maybe a bit more than the prevailing opinion
among reviewers since the anachronisms never bothered me, but I wasn't
sure whether to dive directly into this book because I was expecting more
of the same. This is not more of the same. I think it's clearly better
writing and world-building than either of the previous books. It helps
that Fern is the protagonist; as much as I like Viv, I think Fern is a
more interesting character, and I am glad she got a book of her own.
Baldree takes a big risk on the emotional arc of this book. Fern starts
the story in a bad state and makes some decisions to kick off the plot
that are difficult to defend. She beats herself up for those decisions for
most of the book, deservedly, and parts of that emotional turmoil are
difficult to read. Baldree resists the urge to smooth everything over and
instead provides a rather raw sense of depression, avoidance, and social
anxiety that some readers are going to have to brace themselves for.
I respect the decision to not write the easy series book people probably
expected, but I'm not sure Fern's emotional arc quite worked. Baldree is
hinting at something that's hard to describe logically, and I'm not sure
he was able to draw a clear enough map of Fern's thought process for the
reader to understand her catharsis. The "follow your passion" self-help
mindset has formed a gravitational singularity in the vicinity of this
book's theme, it takes some skillful piloting to avoid being sucked into
its event horizon, and I don't think Baldree quite managed to escape it.
He made a valiant attempt, though, and it created a far more interesting
book than one about safer emotions.
I wanted more of an emotional payoff than I got, but the journey, even
with the moments of guilt and anxiety, was so worth it. The world-building
is funnier and more interesting than the previous books of the series, and
the supporting cast is fantastic. If you bailed on the series but you like
sword and sorcery and T. Kingfisher novels, consider returning. You do
probably need to read Bookshops & Bonedust first, if you haven't
already, since it helps to know the start of Fern's story.
Recommended, and shortcomings aside, much better than I had expected.
Content notes: Bloody sword fights, major injury, some very raw emotions
about letting down friends and destroying friendships.
Rating: 8 out of 10
2025-11-30: Review: Forever and a Day
Review: Forever and a Day, by Haley Cass
| Series |
Those Who Wait #1.5 |
| Publisher |
Haley Cass |
| Copyright |
2020 |
| ISBN |
979-8-5902-5966-3 |
| Format |
Kindle |
| Pages |
101 |
Forever and a Day is a coda to Haley Cass's self-published sapphic
romance novel Those Who Wait. There is
no point in reading it unless you have already read and enjoyed the full
book and wanted more of a denouement.
Given that Those Who Wait is a romance novel, it is definitionally
not a spoiler to reveal that Sutton and Charlotte ended up together. This
novella is seven scenes sketching out the next few years of their lives,
interspersed with press clippings and social media commentary. These tie
up loose ends, give the characters a bit more time together, throw in one
more conflict and resolution, add one more sex scene, and stick a few
exclamation points after the happily ever after.
I am the sort of person who likes long denouements in stories, so I'm the
target audience for this sort of sequel that's essentially additional
chapters to the book. (The funniest version of this I've read is
Jacqueline Carey's Saints Astray.) They
are usually not great literature, since there are good reasons for not
including these chapters in the book. That is exactly what this is: a few
more chapters of the characters being happy, entirely forgettable, and of
interest only to people who want that.
Cass does try to introduce a bit of a plot via some light family conflict,
which was sweet and mostly worked, and some conflict over having children,
which was very stereotyped and which I did not enjoy as much. I thought
the earlier chapters of this novella were the stronger ones, although I do
have to give the characters credit in the later chapters for working
through conflict in a mature and fairly reasonable way. It does help,
though, when the conflict is entirely resolved by one character being
right and the other character being happily wrong. That's character
conflict on easy mode.
I was happy to see that Sutton got a career, although as in the novel I
wish Cass had put some more effort into describing Sutton's efforts in
building that career. The details are maddeningly vague, which admittedly
matches the maddeningly vague description of Charlotte's politics but
which left me unsatisfied.
Charlotte's political career continues to be pure wish fulfillment in the
most utterly superficial and trivialized way, and it bothered me even more
in the novella than it did in the novel. We still have absolutely no idea
what she stands for, what she wants to accomplish, and why anyone would
vote for her, and yet we get endless soft-focus paeans to how wonderful
she will be for the country. Her opponents are similarly vague to the
point that the stereotypes Cass uses to signal their inferiority to
Charlotte are a little suspect.
I'm more critical of this in 2025 than I would have been in 2015 because
the last ten years have made clear the amount of damage an absolute
refusal to stand for anything except hazy bromides causes, and I probably
shouldn't be this annoyed that Cass chose to vaguely gesture towards
progressive liberalism without muddying her romance denouement with a
concrete political debate. But, just, gah. I found the last chapter
intensely annoying, in part because the narrative of that chapter was too
cliched and trite to sufficiently distract me from the bad taste of the
cotton-candy politics.
Other than that, this was minor, sweet, and forgettable. If you want
another few chapters of an already long novel, this delivers exactly what
you would expect. If the novel was plenty, nothing about this novella is
going to change your mind and you can safely skip it. I really liked the
scene between Charlotte and Sutton's mom, though, and I'm glad I read the
novella just for that.
Rating: 6 out of 10
2025-11-29: Review: The Last Soul Among Wolves
Review: The Last Soul Among Wolves, by Melissa Caruso
| Series |
The Echo Archives #2 |
| Publisher |
Orbit |
| Copyright |
August 2025 |
| ISBN |
0-316-30404-2 |
| Format |
Kindle |
| Pages |
355 |
The Last Soul Among Wolves is urban high fantasy with strong
mystery vibes. It is a direct sequel to The Last Hour Between Worlds. You need the previous book for some
character setup (and this book would spoil it badly), but you don't have
to remember the first book in detail. Only the main plot outcomes are
directly relevant and the characters will remind you of those.
Kembrel Thorne is a Hound, the equivalent of a police detective in the
medieval-inspired city setting of this series, but this book does not open
with an official assignment. Instead, she has been dragged by her
childhood friend Jaycel Morningrey as company for a reading of the will of
old lady Lovegrace, reclusive owner of a gothic mansion on an island
connected to the city by an intermittent sandbar. A surprise reunion with
her gang of childhood friends ensues, followed by the revelation that they
are all in serious trouble.
Shortly after Kem left the group to become a Hound, the remaining four,
plus several other apparently random people, got entangled with a powerful
Echo artifact. Now that Lovegrace has died, one of them will inherit the
artifact and the ability to make a wish, but only one. The rest will be
killed at decreasing intervals until only the winner is left alive.
The Last Hour Between Worlds was fae fantasy built around a problem
that was more of a puzzle than a mystery. The Last Soul Among
Wolves is closer to a classic mystery: A cast of characters are brought
together and semi-isolated in a rural house, they start dying, and it's up
to the detective to solve the mystery of their death before it's too late.
In this case, the initial mechanism of death is supernatural and not in
doubt — the challenge instead is how to stop it from happening again — but
Kem's problems quickly become more complicated.
As mystery plots go, this is more thriller than classical despite the
setting. There are a few scenes of analyzing clues, but Kem is more likely
to use the time-honored protagonist technique of throwing herself into
danger and learning what's going on via the villain monologues. As readers
of the previous book would expect, Rika Nonesuch is here too, hired by
another of Kem's old friends, and the two navigate their personal feelings
and the rivalry between their guilds in much the way that they did in
the Last Hour Between Worlds. As in the first book, there is a
sapphic romance subplot, but it's a very slow burn asexual romance.
The best part of this series continues to be the world-building. The
previous book introduced the idea of the Echoes and sent the characters
exploring into stranger and stranger depths. This book fleshes out the
rules in more detail, creating something that feels partly like a fae
realm and partly like high fantasy involving gods, but diverges from both
into a logic of its own. The ending satisfyingly passes my test of fantasy
mysteries: Resolving the mystery requires understanding and applying the
rules of the setting, which are sufficiently strange to create interesting
outcomes but coherent enough that the reader doesn't feel like the author
is cheating.
There are some hissable villains here, but my favorite part of this book
was the way Caruso added a lot of nuance and poignancy to the Echoes
rather than showing them only as an uncanny threat. That choice made the
world feel deeper and richer. It's not yet clear whether that element is
setup for a longer-term series plot, but I hope Caruso will develop the
story in that direction.
It felt to me like Caruso is aiming for an ongoing series rather than a
multi-volume story with a definite ending. She avoids a full episodic
reset — Rika, in particular, gets considerable character development and
new complications that bode well for future volumes — but it doesn't feel
like the series is building towards an imminent climax. This is not a
complaint. I enjoy these characters and this world and will happily keep
devouring each new series entry.
If you liked The Last Hour Between Worlds, I think you will like
this. It doesn't have the same delight of initial discovery of the great
world-building, but the plot is satisfying and a bit more complex and the
supporting characters are even better than those in the first book. Once
again, Caruso kept me turning the pages, and I'm now looking forward to a
third volume. Recommended.
The third book in the series has not yet been announced, but there are
indications on social media that it is coming.
Rating: 7 out of 10
2025-11-26: Review: A Matter of Execution
Review: A Matter of Execution, by Nicholas & Olivia Atwater
| Series |
Tales of the Iron Rose #0 |
| Publisher |
Starwatch Press |
| Copyright |
2024 |
| ISBN |
1-998257-08-8 |
| Format |
Kindle |
| Pages |
131 |
A Matter of Execution is the introductory novella that kicked off
the Tales of the Iron Rose series. It is steampunk fantasy with airships.
I previously read and reviewed the subsequent novel,
Echoes of the Imperium.
As noted in that review, I read the novel first. That was a mistake; this
is a much better place to start. A Matter of Execution was clearly
intended as the introduction of all of these characters. More importantly,
I think reading the novella first would have given me enough affinity with
the characters to not mind the worst part of Echoes of the
Imperium: the extremely slow first half that seemed filled with the
protagonist's impostor syndrome.
A Matter of Execution opens, fittingly, with Captain William Blair,
a goblin, former Imperial soldier, Oathbreaker, and series first-person
protagonist being carted to his execution. He is not alone; in the same
prison wagon is an arrogant (and racist) man named Strahl, the killer of
one of the rulers of Lyonesse.
Strahl is rather contemptuous of Blair's claim to be a captain, given that
he's both a goblin and an Oathbreaker. Strahl quickly revises that opinion
when Blair's crew, somewhat predictably given that he is the series
protagonist, creates a daring escape for both of them. The heat of action
gives both a chance to gain some respect for the other, which explains why
Blair is not only willing to invite Strahl to join his crew, but to go
back for Strahl's companion.
Breaking out Strahl's companion will be a more difficult, and surprising,
problem.
Nicholas Atwater is a role-playing game GM, something that you will learn
in the "about the author" section at the end of this novella but probably
will have guessed by then. Even more than Echoes of the Imperium,
this novella feels like a (good) write-up of an RPG adventure. A wildly
varied cast of characters come together and form a party with a
well-defined objective that has some surrounding mysteries and surprises.
Each of those characters get their individual moments to show off their
specific skills. Readers with a certain gaming background will know
exactly where to insert the Borderlands-style title card with a
slightly demented description of each character.
This is not a complaint. You may be able to see the bones of the setup
adventure for a long-running campaign, but I like this style of character
introduction and the story moves right along. There are a ton of varied
characters, some interesting villains and maybe-villains, a rather
satisfying heist setup, and some good chemistry and a bit of banter. This
is not a deep story — it's clearly an introductory episode for both the
characters and the world background — but it's a fun way to spend a few
hours.
I think the best part of this series is the world-building. If you have
read my review of Echoes of the Imperium, you have unfortunately
been mildly spoiled for the revelation in this novella. I don't think it
hurt the story that much; you will be able to predict what obvious gaps in
the novel backstory the novella is going to fill in, but it's just as
enjoyable to see how that happens. But the Atwaters aren't going to drop
any of the big world-building bombs in the introductory novella, of
course. Instead, you get a gradual introduction to the nature of magic in
this world, some of the political setup of the recent war, and a quick
introduction to the capabilities of Strahl's mysterious companion.
If you've not yet read this series, I recommend starting here. It's a
quick investment to see if you'll be interested. The novel is heavier and
slower, and the pacing of the first half isn't great, but the
world-building is even better.
If you've already read the novel, this is still worth reading as long as
you enjoyed it. You'll have a few moments of "oh, that's how that
happened," and it's a fun and fast-moving way to spend a bit more time
with the characters.
Followed by Echoes of the Imperium. The
back matter of the novella says that The Winds of Fortune is
supposedly forthcoming.
Rating: 7 out of 10
2025-11-15: Cumulative haul
I haven't posted a book haul in forever, so lots of stuff stacked up,
including a new translation of Bambi that I really should get
around to reading.
Nicholas & Olivia Atwater — A Matter of Execution (sff)
Nicholas & Olivia Atwater — Echoes of the Imperium (sff)
Travis Baldree — Brigands & Breadknives (sff)
Elizabeth Bear — The Folded Sky (sff)
Melissa Caruso — The Last Hour Between Worlds (sff)
Melissa Caruso — The Last Soul Among Wolves (sff)
Haley Cass — Forever and a Day (romance)
C.L. Clark — Ambessa: Chosen of the Wolf (sff)
C.L. Clark — Fate's Bane (sff)
C.L. Clark — The Sovereign (sff)
August Clarke — Metal from Heaven (sff)
Erin Elkin — A Little Vice (sff)
Audrey Faye — Alpha (sff)
Emanuele Galletto, et al. — Fabula Ultima: Core Rulebook (rpg)
Emanuele Galletto, et al. — Fabula Ultima: Atlas High Fantasy
(rpg)
Emanuele Galletto, et al. — Fabula Ultima: Atlas Techno Fantasy
(rpg)
Alix E. Harrow — The Everlasting (sff)
Alix E. Harrow — Starling House (sff)
Antonia Hodgson — The Raven Scholar (sff)
Bel Kaufman — Up the Down Staircase (mainstream)
Guy Gavriel Kay — All the Seas of the World (sff)
N.K. Jemisin & Jamal Campbell — Far Sector (graphic novel)
Mary Robinette Kowal — The Martian Conspiracy (sff)
Matthew Kressel — Space Trucker Jess (sff)
Mark Lawrence — The Book That Held Her Heart (sff)
Yoon Ha Lee — Moonstorm (sff)
Michael Lewis (ed.) — Who Is Government? (non-fiction)
Aidan Moher — Fight, Magic, Items (non-fiction)
Saleha Mohsin — Paper Soldiers (non-fiction)
Ada Palmer — Inventing the Renaissance (non-fiction)
Suzanne Palmer — Driving the Deep (sff)
Suzanne Palmer — The Scavenger Door (sff)
Suzanne Palmer — Ghostdrift (sff)
Terry Pratchett — Where's My Cow (graphic novel)
Felix Salten & Jack Zipes (trans.) — The Original Bambi (classic)
L.M. Sagas — Cascade Failure (sff)
Jenny Schwartz — The House That Walked Between Worlds (sff)
Jenny Schwartz — House in Hiding (sff)
Jenny Schwartz — The House That Fought (sff)
N.D. Stevenson — Scarlet Morning (sff)
Rory Stewart — Politics on the Edge (non-fiction)
Emily Tesh — The Incandescent (sff)
Brian K. Vaughan & Fiona Staples — Saga #1 (graphic novel)
Scott Warren — The Dragon's Banker (sff)
Sarah Wynn-Williams — Careless People (non-fiction)
As usual, I have already read and reviewed a whole bunch of these. More
than I had expected, actually, given that I've not had a great reading
year this year so far.
I am, finally, almost caught up with reviews, with just one book read and
not yet reviewed. And hopefully I'll have lots of time to read for the
last month and a half of the year.
2025-11-02: Review: The Raven Scholar
Review: The Raven Scholar, by Antonia Hodgson
| Series |
Eternal Path Trilogy #1 |
| Publisher |
Orbit |
| Copyright |
April 2025 |
| ISBN |
0-316-57723-5 |
| Format |
Kindle |
| Pages |
651 |
The Raven Scholar is an epic fantasy and the first book of a
projected trilogy. It is Antonia Hodgson's first published fantasy novel;
her previous published novels are historical mystery. I would classify
this as adult fantasy — the main character is thirty-four with a stable
court position — but it has strong YA vibes because of the generational
turnover feel of the main plot.
Eight years before the start of this book, Andren Valit attempted to
assassinate the emperor and failed. Since then, his widow and three
children — twins Yana and Ruko and infant Nisthala — have been living in
disgrace in a cramped apartment, subject to constant inspections and
suspicion. As the story opens, they have been summoned to appear before
the emperor, escorted by a young and earnest Hound (essentially the state
security services) named Shal Worthy. The resulting interrogation is full
of dangerous traps. Not all of them will be avoided.
The formalization of the consequences of that imperial summons falls to an
unpopular Junior Archivist (Third Class) whose one notable skill is her
penmanship. A meeting that was disasterous for the Valits becomes
unexpectedly fortunate for the archivist, albeit with a poisonous core.
Eight years later, Neema Kraa is High Scholar, and Emperor Bersun's
twenty-four years of permitted reign is coming to an end. The Festival is
about to begin. One representative from each of the empire's eight anats
(religious schools) will compete in seven days of Trials, save for the
Dragons who do not want the throne and will send a proxy. The victor
according to the Trials scoring system will become emperor and reign
unquestioned for twenty-four years or until resignation. This is the
system that put an end to the era of chaos and has been in place for over
a thousand years.
On the eve of the Trials, the Raven contender is found murdered. Neema is
immediately a suspect; she even has reasons to suspect herself. She
volunteers to lead the investigation because she has to know what
happened. She is also volunteered to be the replacement Raven contender.
There is no chance that she will become emperor; she doesn't even know how
to fight. But agnostic Neema has a rather unexpected ally.
As the last chime fades we drop neatly on to the balcony's rusting
hand rail, folding our wings with a soft shuffle. Noon, on the ninth
day of the eighth month, 1531. Neema Kraa's lodgings. We are here,
exactly where we should be, at exactly the right moment, because we
are the Raven, and we are magnificent.
The Raven Scholar is a rather good epic fantasy, with some caveats
that I'll get to in a moment, but I found it even more fascinating as a
genre artifact.
I've read my share of epic fantasy over the years, although most of my
familiarity of the current wave of new adult fairy epics comes from
reviews rather than personal experience. The Raven Scholar is epic
fantasy, through and through. There is court intrigue, a main character
who is a court functionary unexpectedly thrown into the middle of some
problem, civilization-wide stakes, dramatic political alliances, detailed
magic and mythological systems, and gods. There were moments that reminded
me of a Guy Gavriel Kay novel, although Hodgson's characters tend more
towards disarming moments of humanization instead of Kay's operatic scenes
of emotional intensity.
But The Raven Scholar is also a murder mystery, complete with a
crime scene, clues, suspects, evidence, an investigation, a possibly
compromised detective, and a morass of possible motives and red herrings.
I'm not much of a mystery reader, but this didn't feel like sort of
ancillary mystery that might crop up in the course of a typical epic
fantasy. It felt like a full-fledged investigation with an amateur
detective; one can tell that Hodgson's previous four books were historical
mysteries.
And then there's the Trials, which are the centerpiece of the book.
This book helped me notice that people (okay, me, I'm the people) have
been sleeping on the influence of The
Hunger Games, Battle Royale, and reality TV (specifically
Survivor) on genre fiction, possibly because the more obvious riffs
on the idea (Powerless, The Selection) have been young adult
or new adult. Once I started looking, I realized this idea is everywhere
now: Throne of Glass, Fourth Wing, even The Night
Circus to some extent. Competitions with consequences are having a
moment.
I suspect having a competition to decide the next emperor is going to
strike some traditional fantasy readers as sufficiently absurd and
unbelievable that it will kick them out of the book. I had a moment of
"okay, this is weird, why would anyone stick with this system for so long"
myself. But I would encourage such readers to interrogate whether that's
only a response from unfamiliarity; after all, strange women lying in
ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government either.
This is hardly the most unrealistic epic fantasy trope, and it has the
advantage of being a hell of a plot generator when handled well.
Hodgson handles it well. Society in this novel is structured around the
anats and the eight Guardians, gods who, according to myth, had returned
seven times previously to save the world, but who will destroy the world
when they return again. Each Guardian represents a group of
characteristics and useful societal functions: the Ox is trustworthy,
competent and hard-working; the Fox is a trickster and a rule-bender; the
Raven is shrewd and careful and is the Guardian of scholars and lawyers.
Each Trial is organized by one of the anats and tests the contenders for
the skills most valued by that Guardian, often in subtle and rather
ingenious ways. There are flaws here that you could poke at if you wanted
to, but I was charmed and thoroughly entertained by how well Hodgson
weaves the story around the Trials and uses the conflicting values to
create character conflict, unexpected alliances, and engrossing plot.
Most importantly for a book of this sort, I liked Neema. She has a
charming combination of competence, quirks (she is almost physically
unable to not correct people's factual errors), insecurity, imposter
syndrome, and determination. She is way out of her depth and knows it, but
she has an ethical core and an insatiable curiosity that won't let her
leave the central mysteries of the book alone. And the character dynamics
are great; there are a lot of characters, including the competition
problem of having to juggle eight contenders and give them all sufficient
characterization to be meaningful, but this book uses its length to give
each character some room to breathe. This is a long book, well over 600
pages, but it felt packed with events and plot twists. After every chapter
I had to fight the urge to read just one more.
The biggest drawback of this book is that it is very much the first book
of a trilogy, none of the other volumes are out yet, and the ending is
rather nasty. This is the sort of trilogy that opens with a whole lot of
bad things happening, and while I am thoroughly hooked and will purchase
the next volume as soon as it's available, I wish Hodgson had found a way
to end the book on a somewhat more positive or hopeful note. The middle of
the book was great; the end was a bit of an emotional slog, alas. The
writing is good enough here that I'm fairly sure the depression will be
worth it, but if you need your endings to be triumphant (and who could
blame you in this moment in history), you may want to wait on this one
until more volumes are out.
Apart from that, though, this was a lot of fun. The Guardians felt like
they came from a different strand of fantasy than you usually see in epic,
more of a traditional folk tale vibe, which adds an intriguing twist to
the epic fantasy setting. The characters all work, and Hodgson even pulls
off some Game of Thrones–style twists that make you sympathetic to
characters you previously hated. The magic system apart from the Guardians
felt underbaked, but the politics had more depth than a lot of fantasy
novels. If you want the truly complex and twisty politics you would get
from one of Guy Gavriel Kay's historical rewrites, you will come away
disappointed, but it was good enough for me. And I did enjoy the Raven.
Respect, that's all we demand. Recognition of our magnificence.
Offerings. Love. Fear. Trembling awe. Worship. Shiny things. Blood
sacrifice, some of us very much enjoy blood sacrifice. Truly, we ask
for so little.
Followed by an as-yet untitled sequel that I hope will materialize.
Rating: 7 out of 10
2025-10-27: Review: Those Who Wait
Review: Those Who Wait, by Haley Cass
| Publisher |
Haley Cass |
| Copyright |
2020 |
| ISBN |
979-8-9884929-1-7 |
| Format |
Kindle |
| Pages |
556 |
Those Who Wait is a stand-alone self-published sapphic romance
novel. Given the lack of connection between political figures named in
this book and our reality, it's also technically an alternate history, but
it will be entirely unsatisfying to anyone who reads it in that genre.
Sutton Spencer is an English grad student in New York City. As the story
opens, she has recently realized that she's bisexual rather than straight.
She certainly has not done anything about that revelation; the very
thought makes her blush. Her friend and roommate Regan, not known for
either her patience or her impulse control, decides to force the issue by
stealing Sutton's phone, creating a profile on a lesbian dating app, and
messaging the first woman Sutton admits being attracted to.
Charlotte Thompson is a highly ambitious politician, current deputy mayor
of New York City for health and human services, and granddaughter of the
first female president of the United States. She fully intends to become
president of the United States herself. The next step on that path is an
open special election for a seat in the House of Representatives. With her
family political connections and the firm support of the mayor of New York
City (who is also dating her brother), she thinks she has an excellent
shot of winning.
Charlotte is also a lesbian, something she's known since she was a
teenager and which still poses serious problems for a political career.
She is therefore out to her family and a few close friends, but otherwise
in the closet. Compared to her political ambitions, Charlotte considers
her love life almost irrelevant, and therefore has a strict policy of
limiting herself to anonymous one-night stands arranged on dating apps.
Even that is about to become impossible given her upcoming campaign, but
she indulges in one last glance at SapphicSpark before she deletes her
account.
Sutton is as far as possible from the sort of person who does one-night
stands, which is a shame as far as Charlotte is concerned. It would have
been a fun last night out. Despite that, both of them find the other
unexpectedly enjoyable to chat with. (There are a lot of text message
bubbles in this book.) This is when Sutton has her brilliant idea:
Charlotte is charming, experienced, and also kind and understanding of
Sutton's anxiety, at least in app messages. Maybe Charlotte can be her
mentor? Tell her how to approach women, give her some guidance, point her
in the right directions.
Given the genre, you can guess how this (eventually) turns out.
I'm going to say a lot of good things about this book, so let me get the
complaints over with first.
As you might guess from that introduction, Charlotte's political career
and the danger of being outed are central to this story. This is a bit
unfortunate because you should not, under any circumstances, attempt to
think deeply about the politics in this book.
In 550 pages, Charlotte does not mention or expound a single meaningful
political position. You come away from this book as ignorant about what
Charlotte wants to accomplish as a politician as you entered. Apparently
she wants to be president because her grandmother was president and she
thinks she'd be good at it. The closest the story comes to a position is
something unbelievably vague about homeless services and Charlotte's
internal assertion that she wants to help people and make real change.
There are even transcripts of media interviews, later in the book, and
they somehow manage to be more vacuous than US political talk shows, which
is saying something. I also can't remember a single mention of fundraising
anywhere in this book, which in US politics is absurd (although I will be
generous and say this is due to Cass's alternate history).
I assume this was a deliberate choice and Cass didn't want politics to
distract from the romance, but as someone with a lot of opinions about
concrete political issues, the resulting vague soft-liberal squishiness
was actively off-putting. In an actual politician, this would be an entire
clothesline of red flags. Thankfully, it's ignorable for the same reason;
this is so obviously not the focus of the book that one can mostly perform
the same sort of mental trick that one does when ignoring the backdrop in
a cheap theater.
My second complaint is that I don't know what Sutton does outside
of the romance. Yes, she's an English grad student, and she does some
grading and some vaguely-described work and is later referred to a
prestigious internship, but this is as devoid of detail as Charlotte's
political positions. It's not quite as jarring because Cass does
eventually show Sutton helping concretely with her mother's work (about
which I have some other issues that I won't get into), but it deprives
Sutton of an opportunity to be visibly expert in something. The romance
setup casts Charlotte as the experienced one to Sutton's naivete, and I
think it would have been a better balance to give Sutton something
concrete and tangible that she was clearly better at than Charlotte.
Those complaints aside, I quite enjoyed this. It was a recommendation from
the same
BookTuber who recommended Delilah Green
Doesn't Care, so her recommendations are quickly accumulating more
weight. The chemistry between Sutton and Charlotte is quite believable;
the dialogue sparkles, the descriptions of the subtle cues they pick up
from each other are excellent, and it's just fun to read about how they
navigate a whole lot of small (and sometimes large) misunderstandings and
mismatches in personality and world view.
Normally, misunderstandings are my least favorite part of a romance novel,
but Sutton and Charlotte come from such different perspectives that their
misunderstandings feel more justified than is typical. The characters are
also fairly mature about working through them: Main characters who track
the other character down and insist on talking when something happens they
don't understand! Can you imagine! Only with the third-act breakup is the
reader dragged through multiple chapters of both characters being
miserable, and while I also usually hate third-act breakups, this one is
so obviously coming and so clearly advertised from the initial setup that
I couldn't really be mad. I did wish the payoff make-up scene at the end
of the book had a bit more oomph, though; I thought Sutton's side of it
didn't have quite the emotional catharsis that it could have had.
I particularly enjoyed the reasons why the two characters fall in love,
and how different they are. Charlotte is delighted by Sutton because she's
awkward and shy but also straightforward and frequently surprisingly
blunt, which fits perfectly with how much Charlotte is otherwise living in
a world of polished politicians in constant control of their personas.
Sutton's perspective is more physical, but the part I liked was the way
that she treats Charlotte like a puzzle. Rather than trying to change how
Charlotte expresses herself, she instead discovers that she's remarkably
good at reading Charlotte if she trusts her instincts. There was something
about Sutton's growing perceptiveness that I found quietly delightful.
It's the sort of non-sexual intimacy that often gets lost among the big
emotions in romance novels.
The supporting cast was also great. Both characters have deep support
networks of friends and family who are unambiguously on their side. Regan
is pure chaos, and I would not be friends with her, but Cass shows her
deep loyalty in a way that makes her dynamic with Sutton make sense. Both
characters have thoughtful and loving families who support them but don't
make decisions for them, which is a nice change of pace from the usually
more mixed family situations of romance novel protagonists. There's a lot
of emotional turbulence in the main relationship, and I think that only
worked for me because of how rock-solid and kind the supporting cast is.
This is, as you might guess from the title, a very slow burn, although the
slow burn is for the emotional relationship rather than the physical one
(for reasons that would be spoilers). As usual, I have no calibration for
spiciness level, but I'd say that this was roughly on par with the later
books in the Bright Falls series.
If you know something about politics (or political history) and try to
take that part of this book seriously, it will drive you to drink, but if
you can put that aside and can deal with misunderstandings and emotional
turmoil, this was both fun and satisfying. I liked both of the characters,
I liked the timing of the alternating viewpoints, and I believed in the
relationship and chemistry, as improbable and chaotic as some of the setup
was. It's not the greatest thing I ever read, and I wish the ending was a
smidgen stronger, but it was an enjoyable way to spend a few reading days.
Recommended.
Rating: 7 out of 10
2025-10-26: Review: On Vicious Worlds
Review: On Vicious Worlds, by Bethany Jacobs
| Series |
Kindom Trilogy #2 |
| Publisher |
Orbit |
| Copyright |
October 2024 |
| ISBN |
0-316-46362-0 |
| Format |
Kindle |
| Pages |
444 |
On Vicious Worlds is a science fiction thriller with bits of
cyberpunk and a direct sequel to These
Burning Stars. This is one of those series where each book has massive
spoilers for the previous book and builds on characters and situations
from that book. I would not read it out of order. It is Bethany Jacobs's
second novel.
Whooboy, how to review this without spoilers. There are so many major
twists in the first book with lingering consequences that it's nearly
impossible.
I said at the end of my review of These Burning Stars that I was
impressed with the ending for reasons that I can't reveal. One thread of
this book follows the aftermath: What do you do after the plan? If you
have honed yourself for one purpose, can you repurpose yourself?
The other thread of the book is a murder mystery. The protectors of the
community are being picked off, one by one. The culprit might be a hacker
so good that they are causing Jun, the expert hacker of the first book,
serious problems. Meanwhile, the political fault lines of the community
are cracking open under pressure, and the leaders are untested, exhausted,
and navigating difficult emotional terrain.
These two story threads alternate, and interspersed are yet more
flashbacks. As with the first book, the flashbacks fill in the backstory
of Chono and and Esek. This time, though, we get Six's viewpoint.
The good news is that On Vicious Worlds tones down the sociopathy
considerably without letting up on the political twists. This is the book
where Chono comes into her own. She has much more freedom of action,
despite being at the center of complicated and cut-throat politics, and I
thoroughly enjoyed her principled solidity. She gets a chance to transcend
her previous role as an abuse victim, and it's worth the wait.
The bad news is that this is very much a middle book of a trilogy. While
there are a lot of bloody battles, emotional drama, political betrayals,
and plot twists, the series plot has not advanced much by the end of the
book. I would not say the characters were left in the same position they
started — the character development is real and the perils have changed —
but neither would I say that any of the open questions from These
Burning Stars have resolved.
The last book I read used science-fiction
world-building to tell a story about moral philosophy that was somewhat
less drama-filled than one might have expected. That is so not the case
here. On Vicious Worlds is, if anything, even more dramatic than
the first book of the series. In Chono's thread, the slow burn attempt to
understand Six's motives has been replaced with almost non-stop melodrama,
full of betrayals, reversals, risky attempts, and emotional roller
coasters. Jun's part of the story is a bit more sedate at first, but there
too the interpersonal drama setting is headed towards 10. This is the
novel equivalent of an action movie.
Jun, and her part of the story, are fine. I like the new viewpoint
character, I find their system of governance somewhat interesting
(although highly optimized for small groups), and I think the climax
worked. But I'm invested in this series for Chono and Six. Both of them,
but particularly Six, are absurdly over the top, ten people's worth of
drama stuffed into one character, unable to communicate in anything less
than dramatic gestures and absurd plans, but I find them magnetically
fascinating. I'm not sure if written characters can have charisma, but if
so, they have it.
I liked this entry in the series, but then I also liked the first book.
It's trauma-filled and dramatic and involved a bit too much bloody maiming
for my tastes, but this whole series is about revolutions and what happens
when you decide to fight, and sometimes I'm in the mood for complicated
and damaged action heroes who loathe oppression and want to kill some
people.
This is the sort of series book that will neither be the reason you read
the series nor the reason why you stop reading. If you enjoyed These
Burning Stars, this is more of the same, with arguably better character
development but less plot catharsis. If you didn't like These
Burning Stars, this probably won't change your mind, although if you
hated it specifically because of Esek's sociopathy, I think you would find
this book more congenial. But maybe not; Jacobs is still the same author,
and most of the characters in this series are made of sharp edges.
I'm still in; I have already pre-ordered the next book.
Followed by This Brutal Moon, due out in December of 2025 and
advertised as the conclusion.
Rating: 7 out of 10
2025-10-25: Review: Ancestral Night
Review: Ancestral Night, by Elizabeth Bear
| Series |
White Space #1 |
| Publisher |
Saga Press |
| Copyright |
2019 |
| ISBN |
1-5344-0300-0 |
| Format |
Kindle |
| Pages |
501 |
Ancestral Night is a far-future space opera novel and the first of
a series. It shares a universe with Bear's earier
Jacob's Ladder trilogy, and there is a passing
reference to the events of Grail that
would be a spoiler if you put the pieces together, but it's easy to miss.
You do not need to read the earlier series to read this book (although
it's a good series and you might enjoy it).
Halmey Dz is a member of the vast interstellar federation called the
Synarche, which has put an end to war and other large-scale anti-social
behavior through a process called rightminding. Every person has a neural
implant that can serve as supplemental memory, off-load some thought
processes, and, crucially, regulate neurotransmitters and hormones to help
people stay on an even keel. It works, mostly.
One could argue Halmey is an exception. Raised in a clade that took
rightminding to an extreme of suppression of individual personality into a
sort of hive mind, she became involved with a terrorist during her legally
mandated time outside of her all-consuming family before she could make an
adult decision to stay with them (essentially a rumspringa). The
result was a tragedy that Halmey doesn't like to think about, one that's
left deep emotional scars. But Halmey herself would argue she's not an
exception: She's put her history behind her, found partners that she
trusts, and is a well-adjusted member of the Synarche.
Eventually, I realized that I was wasting my time, and if I wanted to
hide from humanity in a bottle, I was better off making it a titanium
one with a warp drive and a couple of carefully selected companions.
Halmey does salvage: finding ships lost in white space and retrieving
them. One of her partners is Connla, a pilot originally from a somewhat
atavistic world called Spartacus. The other is their salvage tug.
The boat didn't have a name.
He wasn't deemed significant enough to need a name by the
authorities and registries that govern such things. He had a
registration number — 657-2929-04, Human/Terra — and he had a class,
salvage tug, but he didn't have a name.
Officially.
We called him Singer. If Singer had an opinion on the issue,
he'd never registered it — but he never complained. Singer was the
shipmind as well as the ship — or at least, he inhabited the ship's
virtual spaces the same way we inhabited the physical ones — but my
partner Connla and I didn't own him. You can't own a sentience in
civilized space.
As Ancestral Night opens, the three of them are investigating a tip
of a white space anomoly well off the beaten path. They thought it might
be a lost ship that failed a transition. What they find instead is a dead
Ativahika and a mysterious ship equipped with artificial gravity.
The Ativahikas are a presumed sentient race of living ships that are on
the most alien outskirts of the Synarche confederation. They don't
communicate, at least so far as Halmey is aware. She also wasn't aware
they died, but this one is thoroughly dead, next to an apparently
abandoned ship of unknown origin with a piece of technology beyond the
capabilities of the Synarche.
The three salvagers get very little time to absorb this scene before they
are attacked by pirates.
I have always liked Bear's science fiction better than her fantasy, and
this is no exception. This was great stuff. Halmey is a talkative,
opinionated infodumper, which is a great first-person protagonist to have
in a fictional universe this rich with delightful corners. There are some
Big Dumb Object vibes (one of my favorite parts of salvage stories), solid
character work, a mysterious past that has some satisfying heft once it's
revealed, and a whole lot more moral philosophy than I was expecting from
the setup. All of it is woven together with experienced skill,
unsurprising given Bear's long and prolific career. And it's full of
delightful world-building bits: Halmey's afthands (a surgical adaptation
for zero gravity work) and grumpiness at the sheer amount of
gravity she has to deal with over the course of this book, the
Culture-style ship names, and a faster-than-light travel system that of
course won't pass physics muster but provides a satisfying quantity of
hooky bits for plot to attach to.
The backbone of this book is an ancient artifact mystery crossed with a
murder investigation. Who killed the Ativahika? Where did the gravity
generator come from? Those are good questions with interesting answers.
But the heart of the book is a philosophical conflict: What are the
boundaries between identity and society? How much power should society
have to reshape who we are? If you deny parts of yourself to fit in with
society, is this necessarily a form of oppression?
I wrote a couple of paragraphs of elaboration, and then deleted them; on
further thought, I don't want to give any more details about what Bear is
doing in this book. I will only say that I was not expecting this level of
thoughtfulness about a notoriously complex and tricky philosophical topic
in a full-throated adventure science fiction novel. I think some people
may find the ending strange and disappointing. I loved it, and weeks after
finishing this book I'm still thinking about it.
Ancestral Night has some pacing problems. There is a long stretch
in the middle of the book that felt repetitive and strained, where Bear
holds the reader at a high level of alert and dread for long enough that I
found it enervating. There are also a few political cheap shots where Bear
picks the weakest form of an opposing argument instead of the strongest.
(Some of the cheap shots are rather satisfying, though.) The dramatic arc
of the book is... odd, in a way that I think was entirely intentional
given how well it works with the thematic message, but which is also
unsettling. You may not get the catharsis that you're expecting.
But all of this serves a purpose, and I thought that purpose was
interesting. Ancestral Night is one of those books that I
liked more a week after I finished it than I did when I finished it.
Epiphanies are wonderful. I’m really grateful that our brains do so
much processing outside the line of sight of our consciousnesses. Can
you imagine how downright boring thinking would be if you had to go
through all that stuff line by line?
Also, for once, I think Bear hit on exactly the right level of description
rather than leaving me trying to piece together clues and hope I
understood the plot. It helps that Halmey loves to explain things, so
there are a lot of miniature infodumps, but I found them interesting and a
satisfying throwback to an earlier style of science fiction that focused
more on world-building than on interpersonal drama. There is drama,
but most of it is internal, and I thought the balance was about right.
This is solid, well-crafted work and a good addition to the genre. I am
looking forward to the rest of the series.
Followed by Machine, which shifts to a different protagonist.
Rating: 8 out of 10
2025-10-22: Review: Politics on the Edge
Review: Politics on the Edge, by Rory Stewart
| Publisher |
Penguin Books |
| Copyright |
2023, 2025 |
| Printing |
2025 |
| ISBN |
979-8-217-06167-9 |
| Format |
Kindle |
| Pages |
429 |
Rory Stewart is a former British diplomat, non-profit executive, member of
Parliament, and cabinet minister. Politics on the Edge is a memoir
of his time in the UK Parliament from 2010 to 2019 as a Tory
(Conservative) representing the Penrith and The Border constituency in
northern England. It ends with his failed run against Boris Johnson for
leader of the Conservative Party and Prime Minister.
This book provoked many thoughts, only some of which are about the book.
You may want to get a beverage; this review will be long.
Since this is a memoir told in chronological order, a timeline may be
useful. After Stewart's time as a regional governor in occupied Iraq
(see The Prince of the Marshes), he
moved to Kabul to found and run an NGO to preserve traditional Afghani
arts and buildings (the
Turquoise Mountain Foundation, about which I know nothing except what
Stewart wrote in this book). By his telling, he found that work deeply
rewarding but thought the same politicians who turned Iraq into a mess
were going to do the same to Afghanistan. He started looking for ways to
influence the politics more directly, which led him first to Harvard and
then to stand for Parliament.
The bulk of this book covers Stewart's time as MP for Penrith and The
Border. The choice of constituency struck me as symbolic of Stewart's
entire career: He was not a resident and had no real connection to the
district, which he chose for political reasons and because it was the
nearest viable constituency to his actual home in Scotland. But once he
decided to run, he moved to the district and seems sincerely earnest in
his desire to understand it and become part of its community. After five
years as a backbencher, he joined David Cameron's government in a minor
role as Minister of State in the Department for Environment, Food, and
Rural Affairs. He then bounced through several minor cabinet positions
(more on this later) before being elevated to Secretary of State for
International Development under Theresa May. When May's government
collapsed during the fight over the Brexit agreement, he launched a
quixotic challenge to Boris Johnson for leader of the Conservative Party.
I have enjoyed Rory Stewart's writing ever since The Places in Between. This book is no exception. Whatever one's
other feelings about Stewart's politics (about which I'll have a great
deal more to say), he's a talented memoir writer with an understated and
contemplative style and a deft ability to shift from concrete description
to philosophical debate without bogging down a story. Politics on
the Edge is compelling reading at the prose level. I spent several
afternoons happily engrossed in this book and had great difficulty putting
it down.
I find Stewart intriguing since, despite being a political conservative,
he's neither a neoliberal nor any part of the new right. He is instead an
apparently-sincere throwback to a conservatism based on epistemic
humility, a veneration of rural life and long-standing traditions, and a
deep commitment to the concept of public service. Some of his principles
are baffling to me, and I think some of his political views are obvious
nonsense, but there were several things that struck me throughout this
book that I found admirable and depressingly rare in politics.
First, Stewart seems to learn from his mistakes. This goes beyond
admitting when he was wrong and appears to include a willingness to
rethink entire philosophical positions based on new experience.
I had entered Iraq supporting the war on the grounds that we could at
least produce a better society than Saddam Hussein's. It was one of
the greatest mistakes in my life. We attempted to impose programmes
made up by Washington think tanks, and reheated in air-conditioned
palaces in Baghdad — a new taxation system modelled on Hong Kong; a
system of ministers borrowed from Singapore; and free ports, modelled
on Dubai. But we did it ultimately at the point of a gun, and our
resources, our abstract jargon and optimistic platitudes could not
conceal how much Iraqis resented us, how much we were failing, and how
humiliating and degrading our work had become. Our mission was a
grotesque satire of every liberal aspiration for peace, growth and
democracy.
This quote comes from the beginning of this book and is a sentiment
Stewart already expressed in The Prince of the Marshes, but he
appears to have taken this so seriously that it becomes a theme of his
political career. He not only realized how wrong he was on Iraq, he
abandoned the entire neoliberal nation-building project without abandoning
his belief in the moral obligation of international aid. And he, I think
correctly, identified a key source of the error: an ignorant,
condescending superiority that dismissed the importance of deep expertise.
Neither they, nor indeed any of the 12,000 peacekeepers and policemen
who had been posted to South Sudan from sixty nations, had spent a
single night in a rural house, or could complete a sentence in Dinka,
Nuer, Azande or Bande. And the international development strategy —
written jointly between the donor nations — resembled a fading mission
statement found in a new space colony, whose occupants had all been
killed in an alien attack.
Second, Stewart sincerely likes ordinary people. This shone through
The Places in Between and recurs here in his descriptions of his
constituents. He has a profound appreciation for individual people who
have spent their life learning some trade or skill, expresses thoughtful
and observant appreciation for aspects of local culture, and appears to
deeply appreciate time spent around people from wildly different social
classes and cultures than his own. Every successful politician can at
least fake gregariousness, and perhaps that's all Stewart is doing, but
there is something specific and attentive about his descriptions of other
people, including long before he decided to enter politics, that makes me
think it goes deeper than political savvy.
Third, Stewart has a visceral hatred of incompetence. I think this is the
strongest through-line of his politics in this book: Jobs in government
are serious, important work; they should be done competently and well; and
if one is not capable of doing that, one should not be in government.
Stewart himself strikes me as an insecure overachiever: fiercely
ambitious, self-critical, a bit of a micromanager (I suspect he would be
difficult to work for), but holding himself to high standards and appalled
when others do not do the same. This book is scathing towards multiple
politicians, particularly Boris Johnson whom Stewart clearly despises, but
no one comes off worse than Liz Truss.
David Cameron, I was beginning to realise, had put in charge of
environment, food and rural affairs a Secretary of State who openly
rejected the idea of rural affairs and who had little interest in
landscape, farmers or the environment. I was beginning to wonder
whether he could have given her any role she was less suited to —
apart perhaps from making her Foreign Secretary. Still, I could also
sense why Cameron was mesmerised by her. Her genius lay in exaggerated
simplicity. Governing might be about critical thinking; but the new
style of politics, of which she was a leading exponent, was not. If
critical thinking required humility, this politics demanded absolute
confidence: in place of reality, it offered untethered hope; instead
of accuracy, vagueness. While critical thinking required scepticism,
open-mindedness and an instinct for complexity, the new politics
demanded loyalty, partisanship and slogans: not truth and reason but
power and manipulation. If Liz Truss worried about the consequences of
any of this for the way that government would work, she didn't reveal
it.
And finally, Stewart has a deeply-held belief in state capacity and
capability. He and I may disagree on the appropriate size and role of the
government in society, but no one would be more disgusted by an
intentional project to cripple government in order to shrink it than
Stewart.
One of his most-repeated criticisms of the UK political system in this
book is the way the cabinet is formed. All ministers and secretaries come
from members of Parliament and therefore branches of government are led by
people with no relevant expertise. This is made worse by constant cabinet
reshuffles that invalidate whatever small amounts of knowledge a minister
was able to gain in nine months or a year in post. The center portion of
this book records Stewart's time being shuffled from rural affairs to
international development to Africa to prisons, with each move
representing a complete reset of the political office and no transfer of
knowledge whatsoever.
A month earlier, they had been anticipating every nuance of Minister
Rogerson's diary, supporting him on shifts twenty-four hours a day,
seven days a week. But it was already clear that there would be no
pretence of a handover — no explanation of my predecessor's strategy,
and uncompleted initiatives. The arrival of a new minister was
Groundhog Day. Dan Rogerson was not a ghost haunting my office, he was
an absence, whose former existence was suggested only by the black
plastic comb.
After each reshuffle, Stewart writes of trying to absorb briefings, do
research, and learn enough about his new responsibilities to have the hope
of making good decisions, while growing increasingly frustrated with the
system and the lack of interest by most of his colleagues in doing the
same. He wants government programs to be successful and believes success
requires expertise and careful management by the politicians, not only by
the civil servants, a position that to me both feels obviously correct and
entirely at odds with politics as currently practiced.
I found this a fascinating book to read during the accelerating collapse
of neoliberalism in the US and, to judge by current polling results, the
UK. I have a theory that the political press are so devoted to a
simplistic left-right political axis based on seating arrangements during
the French Revolution that they are missing a significant minority whose
primary political motivation is contempt for arrogant incompetence. They
could be convinced to vote for Sanders or Trump, for Polanski or Farage,
but will never vote for Biden, Starmer, Romney, or Sunak.
Such voters are incomprehensible to those who closely follow and debate
policies because their hostile reaction to the center is not about
policies. It's about lack of trust and a nebulous desire for justice.
They've been promised technocratic competence and the invisible hand of
market forces for most of their lives, and all of it looks like lies.
Everyday living is more precarious, more frustrating, more abusive and
dehumanizing, and more anxious, despite (or because of) this wholehearted
embrace of economic "freedom." They're sick of every complaint about the
increasing difficulty of life being met with accusations about their
ability and work ethic, and of being forced to endure another round of
austerity by people who then catch a helicopter ride to a party on some
billionaire's yacht.
Some of this is inherent in the deep structural weaknesses in neoliberal
ideology, but this is worse than an ideological failure. The degree to
which neoliberalism started as a project of sincere political thinkers is
arguable, but that is clearly not true today. The elite class in politics
and business is now thoroughly captured by people whose primary skill is
the marginal manipulation of complex systems for their own power and
benefit. They are less libertarian ideologues than narcissistic
mediocrities. We are governed by management consultants. They are firmly
convinced their organizational expertise is universal, and consider the
specific business of the company, or government department, irrelevant.
Given that context, I found Stewart's instinctive revulsion towards David
Cameron quite revealing. Stewart, later in the book, tries to give Cameron
some credit by citing several policy accomplishments and comparing him
favorably to Boris Johnson (which, true, is a bar Cameron probably flops
over). But I think Stewart's baffled astonishment at Cameron's vapidity
says a great deal about how we have ended up where we are. This last quote
is long, but I think it provides a good feel for Stewart's argument in
this book.
But Cameron, who was rumoured to be sceptical about nation-building
projects, only nodded, and then looking confidently up and down the
table said, "Well, at least we all agree on one extremely
straightforward and simple point, which is that our troops are doing
very difficult and important work and we should all support them."
It was an odd statement to make to civilians running humanitarian
operations on the ground. I felt I should speak. "No, with respect, we
do not agree with that. Insofar as we have focused on the troops, we
have just been explaining that what the troops are doing is often
futile, and in many cases making things worse." Two small red dots
appeared on his cheeks. Then his face formed back into a smile. He
thanked us, told us he was out of time, shook all our hands, and left
the room.
Later, I saw him repeat the same line in interviews: "the purpose of
this visit is straightforward... it is to show support for what our
troops are doing in Afghanistan". The line had been written, in
London, I assumed, and tested on focus groups. But he wanted to
convince himself it was also a position of principle.
"David has decided," one of his aides explained, when I met him later,
"that one cannot criticise a war when there are troops on the ground."
"Why?"
"Well... we have had that debate. But he feels it is a principle of
British government."
"But Churchill criticised the conduct of the Boer War; Pitt the war
with America. Why can't he criticise wars?"
"British soldiers are losing their lives in this war, and we can't
suggest they have died in vain."
"But more will die, if no one speaks up..."
"It is a principle thing. And he has made his decision. For him and
the party."
"Does this apply to Iraq too?"
"Yes. Again he understands what you are saying, but he voted to
support the Iraq War, and troops are on the ground."
"But surely he can say he's changed his mind?"
The aide didn't answer, but instead concentrated on his food. "It is
so difficult," he resumed, "to get any coverage of our trip." He
paused again. "If David writes a column about Afghanistan, we will
struggle to get it published."
"But what would he say in an article anyway?" I asked.
"We can talk about that later. But how do you get your articles on
Afghanistan published?"
I remembered how the US politicians and officials had shown their
mastery of strategy and detail. I remembered the earnestness of Gordon
Brown when I had briefed him on Iraq. Cameron seemed somehow less
serious. I wrote as much in a column in the New York Times,
saying that I was afraid the party of Churchill was becoming the party
of Bertie Wooster.
I don't know Stewart's reputation in Britain, or in the constituency that
he represented. I know he's been accused of being a self-aggrandizing
publicity hound, and to some extent this is probably true. It's hard to
find an ambitious politician who does not have that instinct. But whatever
Stewart's flaws, he can, at least, defend his politics with more substance
than a corporate motto. One gets the impression that he would respond
favorably to demonstrated competence linked to a careful argument, even if
he disagreed. Perhaps this is an illusion created by his writing, but even
if so, it's a step in the right direction.
When people become angry enough at a failing status quo, any option that
promises radical change and punishment for the current incompetents will
sound appealing. The default collapse is towards demagogues who are
skilled at expressing anger and disgust and are willing to promise simple
cures because they are indifferent to honesty. Much of the political
establishment in the US, and possibly (to the small degree that I can
analyze it from an occasional news article) in the UK, can identify the
peril of the demagogue, but they have no solution other than a return to
"politics as usual," represented by the amoral mediocrity of a McKinsey
consultant. The rare politicians who seem to believe in something, who
will argue for personal expertise and humility, who are disgusted by
incompetence and have no patience for facile platitudes, are a breath of
fresh air.
There are a lot of policies on which Stewart and I would disagree, and
perhaps some of his apparent humility is an affectation from the
rhetorical world of the 1800s that he clearly wishes he were inhabiting,
but he gives the strong impression of someone who would shoulder a
responsibility and attempt to execute it with competence and attention to
detail. He views government as a job, where coworkers should cooperate to
achieve defined goals, rather than a reality TV show. The arc of this
book, like the arc of current politics, is the victory of the reality TV
show over the workplace, and the story of Stewart's run against Boris
Johnson is hard reading because of it, but there's a portrayal here of a
different attitude towards politics that I found deeply rewarding.
If you liked Stewart's previous work, or if you want an inside look at
parliamentary politics, highly recommended. I will be thinking about this
book for a long time.
Rating: 9 out of 10
2025-10-20: Review: Space Trucker Jess
Review: Space Trucker Jess, by Matthew Kressel
| Publisher |
Fairwood Press |
| Copyright |
July 2025 |
| ISBN |
1-958880-27-2 |
| Format |
Kindle |
| Pages |
472 |
Space Trucker Jess is a stand-alone far-future space fantasy novel.
Jess is a sixteen-year-old mechanic working grey-market jobs on Chadeisson
Station with a couple of younger kids. She's there because her charming
and utterly unreliable father got caught running a crypto scam and is
sitting in detention. This was only the latest in a long series of scams,
con jobs, and misadventures she's been dragged through since her mother
disappeared without a word. Jess is cynical, world-weary, and infuriated
by her own sputtering loyalty to her good-for-nothing dad.
What Jess wants most in the universe is to own a CCM 6454 Spark
Megahauler, the absolute best cargo ship in the universe according to
Jess. She should know; she's worked on nearly every type of ship in
existence. With her own ship, she could make a living hauling cargo,
repairing her own ship, and going anywhere she wants, free of her father
and his endless schemes. (A romantic relationship with her friend Leurie
would be a nice bonus.)
Then her father is taken off the station on a ship leaving the galactic
plane, no one will tell her why, and all the records of the ship appear to
have been erased.
Jess thinks her father is an asshole, but that doesn't mean she can sit
idly by when he disappears. That's how she ends up getting in serious
trouble with station security due to some risky in-person sleuthing,
followed by an expensive flight off the station with a dodgy guy and a kid
in a stolen spaceship.
The setup for this book was so great. Kressel felt the need to make up a
futuristic slang for Jess and her friends to speak, which rarely works as
well as the author expects and does not work here, but apart from that I
was hooked. Jess is sarcastic, blustery, and a bit of a con artist
herself, but with the idealistic sincerity of someone who knows that her
life is been kind of broken and understands the value of friends. She's
profoundly cynical in the heartbreakingly defensive way of a
sixteen-year-old with a rough life. I have a soft spot in my heart for
working-class science fiction (there isn't nearly enough of it), and there
are few things I enjoy more than reading about the kind of protagonist who
has Opinions about starship models and a dislike of shoddy work. I think
this is the only book I've bought solely on the basis of one of the
Big Idea blog posts John Scalzi hosts.
I really wish this book had stuck with the setup instead of morphing into
a weird drug-enabled mystical space fantasy, to which Jess's family is
bizarrely central.
SPOILERS below because I can't figure out how to rant about what
annoyed me without them. Search for the next occurrence of spoilers to skip
past them.
There are three places where this book lost me. The first was when Jess,
after agreeing to help another kid find his father, ends up on a world
obsessed with a religious cult involving using hallucinatory drugs to
commune with alien gods. Jess immediately flags this as unbelievable
bullshit and I was enjoying her well-founded cynicism until Kressel pulls
the rug out from under both Jess and the reader by establishing that this
new-age claptrap is essentially true.
Kressel does try to put a bit of a science fiction gloss on it, but sadly
I think that effort was unsuccessful. Sometimes absurdly powerful advanced
aliens with near-telepathic powers are part of the fun of a good space
opera, but I want the author to make an effort to connect the aliens to
plausibility or, failing that, at least avoid sounding indistinguishable
from psychic self-help grifters or religious fantasy about spiritual
warfare. Stargate SG-1 and Babylon 5 failed on the first
part but at least held the second line. Kressel gets depressingly close to
Seth territory,
although at least Jess is allowed to retain some cynicism about motives.
The second, related problem is that Jess ends up being a sort of Chosen
One, which I found intensely annoying. This may be a fault of reader
expectations more than authorial skill, but one of the things I like to
see in working-class science fiction is for the protagonist to not
be absurdly central to the future of the galaxy, or to at least force
themselves into that position through their own ethics and hard work. This
book turns into a sort of quest story with epic fantasy stakes, which I
thought was much less interesting than the story the start of the book
promised and which made Jess a less interesting character.
Finally, this is one of those books where Jess's family troubles and the
plot she stumbles across turn into the same plot. Space Trucker
Jess is far from alone in having that plot structure, and that's the
problem. I'm not universally opposed to this story shape, but Jess felt
like the wrong character for it. She starts the story with a lot of
self-awareness about how messed up her family dynamics were, and I was
rooting for her to find some space to construct her own identity separate
from her family. To have her family turn out to be central not only to
this story but to the entire galaxy felt like it undermined that human
core of the story, although I admit it's a good analogy to the type of
drama escalation that dysfunctional families throw at anyone attempting to
separate from them.
Spoilers end here.
I rather enjoyed the first third of this book, despite being a bit annoyed
at the constructed slang, and then started rolling my eyes and muttering
things about the story going off the rails. Jess is a compelling enough
character (and I'm stubborn enough) that I did finish the book, so I can
say that I liked the very end. Kressel does finally arrive at the sort of
story that I wanted to read all along. Unfortunately, I didn't enjoy the
path he took to get there.
I think much of my problem was that I wanted Jess to be a more defiant
character earlier in the novel, and I wanted her family problems to
influence her character growth but not be central to her story. Both of
these may be matters of opinion and an artifact of coming into the book
with the wrong assumptions. If you are interested in a flawed and
backsliding effort to untangle one's identity from a dysfunctional family
and don't mind some barely-SF space mysticism and chosen one vibes, it's
possible this book will click with you. It's not one that I can recommend,
though.
I still want the book that I hoped I was getting from that Big Idea piece.
Rating: 4 out of 10
2025-09-29: Review: Deep Black
Review: Deep Black, by Miles Cameron
| Series |
Arcana Imperii #2 |
| Publisher |
Gollancz |
| Copyright |
2024 |
| ISBN |
1-3996-1506-8 |
| Format |
Kindle |
| Pages |
509 |
Deep Black is a far-future science fiction novel and the direct
sequel to Artifact Space. You do not
want to start here. I regretted not reading the novels closer together and
had to refresh my memory of what happened in the first book.
The shorter fiction in Beyond the Fringe
takes place between the two series novels and leads into some of the
events in this book, although reading it is optional.
Artifact Space left Marca Nbaro at the farthest point of the voyage
of the Greatship Athens, an unexpected heroine and now
well-integrated into the crew. On a merchant ship, however, there's always
more work to be done after a heroic performance. Deep Black opens
with that work: repairs from the events of the first book, the
never-ending litany of tasks required to keep the ship running smoothly,
and of course the trade with aliens that drew them so far out into the
Deep Black.
We knew early in the first book that this wouldn't be the simple, if long,
trading voyage that most of the crew of the Athens was expecting,
but now they have to worry about an unsettling second group of aliens on
top of a potential major war between human factions. They don't yet have
the cargo they came for, they have to reconstruct their trading post, and
they're a very long way from home. Marca also knows, at this point in the
story, that this voyage had additional goals from the start. She will
slowly gain a more complete picture of those goals during this novel.
Artifact Space was built around one of the most satisfying plots in
military science fiction (at least to me): a protagonist who benefits
immensely from the leveling effect and institutional inclusiveness of the
military slowly discovering that, when working at its best, the military
can be a true meritocracy. (The merchant marine of the Athens is
not military, precisely, since it's modeled on the trading ships of
Venice, but it's close enough for the purposes of this plot.) That's not a
plot that lasts into a sequel, though, so Cameron had to find a new spine
for the second half of the story. He chose first contact (of a sort) and
space battle.
The space battle parts are fine. I read a ton of children's World War II
military fiction when I was a boy, and I always preferred the naval
battles to the land battles. This part of Deep Black reminded me of
those naval battles, particularly a book whose title escapes me about the
Arctic convoys to the Soviet Union. I'm more interested in character than
military adventure these days, but every once in a while I enjoy reading
about a good space battle. This was not an exemplary specimen of the
genre, but it delivered on all the required elements.
The first contact part was more original, in part because Cameron chose an
interesting medium ground between total incomprehensibility and universal
translators. He stuck with the frustrations of communication for
considerably longer than most SF authors are willing to write, and it
worked for me. This is the first book I've read in a while where
superficial alien fluency with the mere words of a human language masks
continuing profound mutual incomprehension. The communication difficulties
are neither malicious nor a setup for catastrophic misunderstanding, but
an intrinsic part of learning about a truly alien species. I liked this,
even though it makes for slower and more frustrating progress. It felt
more believable than a lot of first contact, and it forced the characters
to take risks and act on hunches and then live with the consequences.
One of the other things that Cameron does well is maintain the steady
rhythm of life on a working ship as a background anchor to the story. I've
read a lot of science fiction that shows the day-to-day routine only until
something more interesting and plot-focused starts happening and then
seems to forget about it entirely. Not here. Marca goes through intense
and adrenaline-filled moments requiring risk and fast reactions, and then
has to handle promotion write-ups, routine watches, and studying for
advancement. Cameron knows that real battles involve long periods of
stressful waiting and incorporates them into the book without making them
too boring, which requires a lot of writing skill.
I prefer the emotional magic of finding a place where one belongs, so I
was not as taken with Deep Black as I was with Artifact
Space, but that's the inevitable result of plot progression and not
really a problem with this book. Marca is absurdly central to the story in
ways that have a whiff of "chosen one" dynamics, but if one can suspend
one's disbelief about that, the rest of the book is solid. This is,
fundamentally, a book about large space battles, so save it when you're in
the mood for that sort of story, but it was a satisfying continuation of
the series. I will definitely keep reading.
Recommended if you enjoyed Artifact Space. If you didn't,
Deep Black isn't going to change your mind.
Followed by Whalesong, which is not yet released (and is currently
in some sort of limbo for pre-orders in the US, which I hope will clear
up).
Rating: 7 out of 10
2025-09-28: Review: The Incandescent
Review: The Incandescent, by Emily Tesh
| Publisher |
Tor |
| Copyright |
2025 |
| ISBN |
1-250-83502-X |
| Format |
Kindle |
| Pages |
417 |
The Incandescent is a stand-alone magical boarding school fantasy.
Your students forgot you. It was natural for them to forget you. You
were a brief cameo in their lives, a walk-on character from the
prologue. For every sentimental my teacher changed my life
story you heard, there were dozens of my teacher made me
moderately bored a few times a week and then I got through the year
and moved on with my life and never thought about them again.
They forgot you. But you did not forget them.
Doctor Saffy Walden is Director of Magic at Chetwood, an elite boarding
school for prospective British magicians. She has a collection of
impressive degrees in academic magic, a specialization in demonic
invocation, and a history of vague but lucrative government job offers
that go with that specialty. She turned them down to be a teacher, and
although she's now in a mostly administrative position, she's a good
teacher, with the usual crop of promising, lazy, irritating, and nervous
students.
As the story opens, Walden's primary problem is Nikki Conway. Or, rather,
Walden's primary problem is protecting Nikki Conway from the Marshals, and
the infuriating Laura Kenning in particular.
When Nikki was seven, she summoned a demon who killed her entire family
and left her a ward of the school. To Laura Kenning, that makes her a risk
who should ideally be kept far away from invocation. To Walden, that makes
Nikki a prodigious natural talent who is developing into a brilliant
student and who needs careful, professional training before she's tempted
into trying to learn on her own.
Most novels with this setup would become Nikki's story. This one does not.
The Incandescent is Walden's story.
There have been a lot of young-adult magical boarding school novels since
Harry Potter became a mass phenomenon, but most of them focus on
the students and the inevitable coming-of-age story. This is a story about
the teachers: the paperwork, the faculty meetings, the funding challenges,
the students who repeat in endless variations, and the frustrations and
joys of attempting to grab the interest of a young mind. It's also about
the temptation of higher-paying, higher-status, and less ethical work,
which however firmly dismissed still nibbles around the edges.
Even if you didn't know Emily Tesh is herself a teacher, you would guess
that before you get far into this novel. There is a vividness and a depth
of characterization that comes from being deeply immersed in the nuance
and tedium of the life that your characters are living. Walden's
exasperated fondness for her students was the emotional backbone of this
book for me. She likes teenagers without idealizing the process of
being a teenager, which I think is harder to pull off in a novel than it
sounds.
It was hard to quantify the difference between a merely very
intelligent student and a brilliant one. It didn't show up in a list
of exam results. Sometimes, in fact, brilliance could be a
disadvantage — when all you needed to do was neatly jump the hoop of
an examiner's grading rubric without ever asking why. It was the
teachers who knew, the teachers who could feel the difference. A few
times in your career, you would have the privilege of teaching someone
truly remarkable; someone who was hard work to teach because they made
you work harder, who asked you questions that had never
occurred to you before, who stretched you to the very edge of your own
abilities. If you were lucky — as Walden, this time, had been lucky —
your remarkable student's chief interest was in your discipline: and
then you could have the extraordinary, humbling experience of teaching
a child whom you knew would one day totally surpass you.
I also loved the world-building, and I say this as someone who is
generally not a fan of demons. The demons themselves are a bit of a
disappointment and mostly hew to one of the stock demon conventions, but
the rest of the magic system is deep enough to have practitioners who
approach it from different angles and meaty enough to have some satisfying
layered complexity. This is magic, not magical science, so don't expect a
fully fleshed-out set of laws, but the magical system felt substantial and
satisfying to me.
Tesh's first novel, Some Desperate
Glory, was by far my favorite science fiction novel of 2023. This is a
much different book, which says good things about Tesh's range and the
potential of her work yet to come: adult rather than YA, fantasy rather
than science fiction, restrained and subtle in places where Some
Desperate Glory was forceful and pointed. One thing the books do have in
common, though, is some structure, particularly the false climax near the
midpoint of the book. I like the feeling of uncertainty and possibility
that gives both books, but in the case of The Incandescent, I was
not quite in the mood for the second half of the story.
My problem with this book is more of a reader preference than an objective
critique: I was in the mood for a story about a confident, capable
protagonist who was being underestimated, and Tesh was writing a novel
with a more complicated and fraught emotional arc. (I'm being
intentionally vague to avoid spoilers.) There's nothing wrong with the
story that Tesh wanted to tell, and I admire the skill with which she did
it, but I got a tight feeling in my stomach when I realized where she was
going. There is a satisfying ending, and I'm still very happy I read this
book, but be warned that this might not be the novel to read if you're in
the mood for a purer competence porn experience.
Recommended, and I am once again eagerly awaiting the next thing Emily
Tesh writes (and reminding myself to go back and read her novellas).
Content warnings: Grievous physical harm, mind control, and some body
horror.
Rating: 8 out of 10
2025-09-27: Review: Echoes of the Imperium
Review: Echoes of the Imperium, by Nicholas & Olivia Atwater
| Series |
Tales of the Iron Rose #1 |
| Publisher |
Starwatch Press |
| Copyright |
2024 |
| ISBN |
1-998257-04-5 |
| Format |
Kindle |
| Pages |
547 |
Echoes of the Imperium is a steampunk fantasy adventure novel, the
first of a projected series. There is another novella in the series,
A Matter of Execution, that takes place
chronologically before this novel, but which I am told that you should
read afterwards. (In retrospect, that was a mistake; you should read
A Matter of Execution first.) If Olivia Atwater's name sounds
familiar, it's probably for the romantic fantasy Half a Soul.
Nicholas Atwater is her husband.
William Blair, a goblin, was a child sailor on the airship HMS
Caliban during the final battle that ended the Imperium, and an
eyewitness to the destruction of the capital. Like every imperial solider,
that loss made him an Oathbreaker; the fae Oath that he swore to defend
the Imperium did not care that nothing a twelve-year-old boy could have
done would have changed the result of the battle. He failed to kill
himself with most of the rest of the crew, and thus was taken captive by
the Coalition.
Twenty years later, William Blair is the goblin captain of the airship
Iron Rose. It's an independent transport ship that takes various
somewhat-dodgy contracts and has to avoid or fight through pirates. The
crew comes from both sides of the war and has built their own working
truce. Blair himself is a somewhat manic but earnest captain who doesn't
entirely believe he deserves that role, one who tends more towards wildly
risky plans and improvisation than considered and sober decisions. The
rest of the crew are the sort of wild mix of larger-than-life personality
quirks that populate swashbuckling adventure books but leave me dubious
that stuffing that many high-maintenance people into one ship would go as
well as it does.
I did appreciate the gunnery knitting circle, though.
Echoes of the Imperium is told in the first person from Blair's
perspective in two timelines. One follows Blair in the immediate aftermath
of the war, tracing his path to becoming an airship captain and meeting
some of the people who will later be part of his crew. The other is the
current timeline, in which Blair gets deeper and deeper into danger by
accepting a risky contract with unexpected complications.
Neither of these timelines are in any great hurry to arrive at some
destination, and that's the largest problem with this book. Echoes
of the Imperium is long, sprawling, and unwilling to get anywhere near
any sort of a point until the reader is deeply familiar with the horrific
aftermath of the war, the mountains of guilt and trauma many of the
characters carry around, and Blair's impostor syndrome and feelings of
inadequacy. For the first half of this book, I was so bored. I almost
bailed out; only a few flashes of interesting character interactions and
hints of world-building helped me drag myself through all of the tedious
setup.
What saves this book is that the world-building is a delight. Once the
characters finally started engaging with it in earnest, I could not
put it down. Present-time Blair is no longer an Oathbreaker because he was
forgiven by a fairy; this will become important later. The sites of great
battles are haunted by ghostly echoes of the last moments of the lives of
those who died (hence the title); this will become very important later.
Blair has a policy of asking no questions about people's pasts if they're
willing to commit to working with the rest of the crew; this, also, will
become important later. All of these tidbits the authors drop into the
story and then ignore for hundreds of pages do have a payoff if you're
willing to wait for it.
As the reader (too) slowly discovers, the Atwaters' world is set in a war
of containment by light fae against dark fae. Instead of being inscrutable
and separate, the fae use humans and human empires as tools in that war.
The fallen Imperium was a bastion of fae defense, and the war that led to
the fall of that Imperium was triggered by the price its citizens paid for
that defense, one that the fae could not possibly care less about. The
creatures may be out of epic fantasy and the technology from the imagined
future of Victorian steampunk, but the politics are that of the Cold War
and containment strategies. This book has a lot to say about colonialism
and empire, but it says those things subtly and from a fantasy slant, in a
world with magical Oaths and direct contact with powers that are both far
beyond the capabilities of the main characters and woefully deficient in
humanity and empathy. It has a bit of the feel of Greek mythology if the
gods believed in an icy realpolitik rather than embodying the
excesses of human emotion.
The second half of this book was fantastic. The found-family vibe among a
crew of high-maintenance misfits that completely failed to cohere for me
in the first half of the book, while Blair was wallowing in his feelings
and none of the events seemed to matter, came together brilliantly as soon
as the crew had a real problem and some meaty world-building and plot to
sink their teeth into. There is a delightfully competent teenager, some
satisfying competence porn that Blair finally stops undermining, and a
sharp political conflict that felt emotionally satisfying, if perhaps not
that intellectually profound. In short, it turns into the fun, adventurous
romp of larger-than-life characters that the setting promises. Even the
somewhat predictable mid-book reveal worked for me, in part because the
emotions of the characters around that reveal sold its impact.
If you're going to write a book with a bad half and a good half, it's
always better to put the good half second. I came away with very positive
feelings about Echoes of the Imperium and a tentative willingness
to watch for the sequel. (It reaches a fairly satisfying conclusion, but
there are a lot of unresolved plot hooks.) I'm a bit hesitant to recommend
it, though, because the first half was not very fun. I want to say that
about 75% of the first half of the book could have been cut and the book
would have been stronger for it. I'm not completely sure I'm right, since
the Atwaters were laying the groundwork for a lot of payoff, but I wish
that groundwork hadn't been as much of a slog.
Tentatively recommended, particularly if you're in the mood for steampunk
fae mythology, but know that this book requires some investment.
Another book in the series is apparently coming, but it has not yet been
published at the time of this review.
Rating: 8 out of 10
2025-08-31: Review: Regenesis
Review: Regenesis, by C.J. Cherryh
| Series |
Cyteen #2 |
| Publisher |
DAW |
| Copyright |
January 2009 |
| ISBN |
0-7564-0592-0 |
| Format |
Mass market |
| Pages |
682 |
The main text below is an edited version of my original review of
Regensis written on 2012-12-21. Additional
comments from my re-read are after the original review.
Regenesis is a direct sequel to Cyteen, picking up very shortly after the end of that book and
featuring all of the same characters. It would be absolutely pointless to
read this book without first reading Cyteen; all of the emotional
resonance and world-building that make Regensis work are done
there, and you will almost certainly know whether you want to read it
after reading the first book. Besides, Cyteen is one of the best SF
novels ever written and not the novel to skip.
Because this is such a direct sequel, it's impossible to provide a good
description of Regenesis without spoiling at least characters and
general plot developments from Cyteen. So stop reading here if
you've not yet read the previous book.
I've had this book for a while, and re-read Cyteen in anticipation
of reading it, but I've been nervous about it. One of the best parts of
Cyteen is that Cherryh didn't belabor the ending, and I wasn't sure
what part of the plot could be reasonably extended. Making me more nervous
was the back-cover text that framed the novel as an investigation of who
actually killed the first Ari, a question that was fairly firmly in the
past by the end of Cyteen and that neither I nor the characters had
much interest in answering. Cyteen was also a magical blend of
sympathetic characters, taut tension, complex plotting, and wonderful
catharsis, the sort of lightning in a bottle that can rarely be caught
twice.
I need not have worried. If someone had told me that Regenesis was
another 700 pages of my favorite section of Cyteen, I would have
been dubious. But that's exactly what it is. And the characters only care
about Ari's murderer because it comes up, fairly late in the novel, as a
clue in another problem.
Ari and Justin are back in the safe laboratory environment of Reseune,
safe now that politics are not trying to kill or control them. Yanni has
taken over administration. There is a general truce, and even some deeper
agreement. Everyone can take a breath and relax, albeit with the presence
of Justin's father Jordan as an ongoing irritant. But broader Union
politics are not stable: there is an election in progress for the Defense
councilor that may break the tenuous majority in favor of Reseune and the
Science Directorate, and Yanni is working out a compromise to gain more
support by turning a terraforming project loose on a remote world. As the
election and the politics heat up, interpersonal relationships abruptly
deteriorate, tensions with Jordan sharply worsen, and there may be moles
in Reseune's iron-clad security. Navigating the crisis while keeping her
chosen family safe will once again tax all of Ari's abilities.
The third section of Cyteen, where Ari finally has the tools to
take fate into her own hands and starts playing everyone off against each
other, is one of my favorite sections of any book. If it was yours as
well, Regenesis is another 700 pages of exactly that. As an
extension and revisiting, it does lose a bit of immediacy and surprise
from the original. Regenesis is also less concerned with the larger
questions of azi society, the nature of thought and personality, loyalty
and authority, and the best model for the development of human
civilization. It's more of a political thriller. But it's a political
thriller that recaptures much of the drama and tension of Cyteen
and is full of exceptionally smart and paranoid people thinking through
all angles of a problem, working fast on their feet, and successfully
navigating tricky and treacherous political landscapes.
And, like Cyteen but unlike others of Cherryh's novels I've read,
it's a novel about empowerment, about seizing control of one's
surroundings and effectively using all of the capability and leverage at
one's fingertips. That gives it a catharsis that's almost as good as
Cyteen.
It's also, like its predecessor, a surprisingly authoritarian novel. I
think it's in that, more than anything else in these books, that one sees
the impact of the azi. Regenesis makes it clear that the story is
set, not in a typical society, but inside a sort of corporation, with an
essentially hierarchical governance structure. There are other SF novels
set within corporations (Solitaire comes
to mind), but normally they follow peons or at best mid-level personnel or
field agents, or otherwise take the viewpoint of the employees or the
exploited. When they follow the corporate leaders, the focus usually isn't
down inside the organization, but out into the world, with the corporation
as silent resources on which the protagonist can draw.
Regenesis is instead about the leadership. It's about decisions
about the future of humanity that characters feel they can make
undemocratically (in part because they or their predecessors have
effectively engineered the opinions of the democratic population), but
it's also about how one manages and secures a top-down organization.
Reseune is, as in the previous novel, a paranoid's suspicions come true;
everyone is out to get everyone else, or at least might be, and the level
of omnipresent security and threat forces a close parsing of alliances and
motivations that elevates loyalty to the greatest virtue.
In Cyteen, we had long enough with Ari to see the basic shape of
her personality and her slight divergences from her predecessor, but her
actions are mostly driven by necessity. Regenesis gives us more of
a picture of what she's like when her actions aren't forced, and here I
think Cherryh manages a masterpiece of subtle characterization. Ari has
diverged substantially from her predecessor without always realizing, and
those divergences are firmly grounded in the differences she found or
created between her life and the first Ari's. She has friends, confidents,
and a community, which combined with past trauma has made her fiercely,
powerfully protective. It's that protective instinct that weaves the plot
together. So many of the events of Cyteen and Regenesis are
driven by people's varying reactions to trauma.
If you, like me, loved the last third of Cyteen, read this, because
Regenesis is more of exactly that. Cherryh finds new politics, new
challenges, and a new and original plot within the same world and with the
same characters, but it has the same feel of maneuvering, analysis, and
decisive action. You will, as with Cyteen have to be comfortable
with pages of internal monologue from people thinking through all sides of
a problem. If you didn't like that in the previous book, avoid this one;
if you loved it, here's the sequel you didn't know you were waiting for.
Original rating: 9 out of 10
Some additional thoughts after re-reading
Regenesis in 2025:
Cyteen mostly held up to a re-reading and I had fond memories of
Regenesis and hoped that it would as well. Unfortunately, it did
not. I think I can see the shape of what I enjoyed the first time I read
it, but I apparently was in precisely the right mood for this specific
type of political power fantasy.
I did at least say that you have to be comfortable with pages of internal
monologue, but on re-reading, there was considerably more of that than I
remembered and it was quite repetitive. Ari spends most of the book
chasing her tail, going over and around and beside the same theories that
she'd already considered and worrying over the nuances of every position.
The last time around, I clearly enjoyed that; this time, I found it
exhausting and not very well-written. The political maneuvering is not
that deep; Ari just shows every minutia of her analysis.
Regenesis also has more about the big questions of how to design a
society and the role of the azi than I had remembered, but I'm not sure
those discussions reach any satisfying conclusions. The book puts a great
deal of effort into trying to convince the reader that Ari is capable of
designing sociological structures that will shape Union society for
generations to come through, mostly, manipulation of azi programming (deep
sets is the term used in the book). I didn't find this entirely convincing
the first time around, and I was even less convinced in this re-read.
Human societies are a wicked problem, and I don't find Cherryh's computer projections any more
convincing than Asimov's psychohistory.
Related, I am surprised, in retrospect, that the authoritarian
underpinnings of this book didn't bother me more on my first read. They
were blatantly obvious on the second read. This felt like something
Cherryh put into these books intentionally, and I think it's left
intentionally ambiguous whether the reader is supposed to agree with Ari's
goals and decisions, but I was much less in the mood on this re-read to
read about Ari making blatantly authoritarian decisions about the future
of society simply because she's smart and thinks she, unlike others, is
acting ethically. I say this even though I like Ari and mostly
enjoyed spending time in her head. But there is a deep fantasy of being
able to reprogram society at play here that looks a lot nastier from the
perspective of 2025 than apparently it did to me in 2012.
Florian and Catlin are still my favorite characters in the series, though.
I find it oddly satisfying to read about truly competent bodyguards,
although like all of the azi they sit in an (I think intentionally)
disturbing space of ambiguity between androids and human slaves.
The somewhat too frank sexuality from Cyteen is still present in
Regenesis, but I found it a bit less off-putting, mostly because
everyone is older. The authoritarian bent is stronger, since
Regenesis is the story of Ari consolidating power rather than the
underdog power struggle of Cyteen, and I had less tolerance for it
on this re-read.
The main problem with this book on re-read was that I bogged down about
halfway through and found excuses to do other things rather than finish
it. On the first read, I was apparently in precisely the right mood to
read about Ari building a fortified home for all of her friends; this
time, it felt like endless logistics and musings on interior decorating
that didn't advance the plot. Similarly, Justin and Grant's slow
absorption into Ari's orbit felt like a satisfying slow burn friendship in
my previous reading and this time felt touchy and repetitive.
I was one of the few avid defenders of Regenesis the first time I
read it, and sadly I've joined the general reaction on a re-read: This is
not a very good book. It's too long, chases its own tail a bit too much,
introduces a lot more authoritarianism and doesn't question it as directly
as I wanted, and gets even deeper into Cherryh's invented
pseudo-psychology than Cyteen. I have a high tolerance for the
endless discussions of azi deep sets and human flux thinking, and even I
got bored this time through.
On re-read, this book was nowhere near as good as I thought it was
originally, and I would only recommend it to people who loved
Cyteen and who really wanted a continuation of Ari's story, even if
it is flabby and not as well-written. I have normally been keeping the
rating of my first read of books, but I went back and lowered this one by
two points to ensure it didn't show as high on my list of recommendations.
Re-read rating: 6 out of 10