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Monthly Archives: January 2023

The Terraformers: A Review

Dear readers, I have done myself a disservice by not reading Annalee Newitz’s work before now. I had picked up a copy of Autonomous from my library back in 2017, but I never managed to get around to it. Now, I know that I have to come back. Newitz is a phenomenal world builder, and in their latest book, The Terraformers, they do it literally.

The Terraformers tells the story of Destry, a sort of forest ranger of the future. Destry lives on the planet Sask-E (or Sasky, as most of the locals have taken to blending the name), and along with her partner, a moose named Whistle, she has spent centuries carefully guiding the ecosystems into an Earth-like state. Destry and Whistle are members of the Environmental Rescue Team, or ERT, and on Sasky, they work under the corporate authority of Verdance, a real-estate company that deals in planets.

Destry and Whistle are used to working on a slow scale, shaping a world in a way that maintains its harmony. Neither of them is expecting the sudden shift in Sasky politics when a city full of older ERT rangers is found, hidden away from Verdance’s knowledge. Soon, the two are caught up in a storm of corporate ideology, civil rights, and what it means to be a person on a planet that’s isolated from the rest of the universe. After all, terraforming is long series of violent actions, forcing a world into the condition you desire. The tools that are used can be deadly in the wrong hands.

The Terraformers is a deep dive into politics and relationships the likes of which I haven’t read since Ursula K. LeGuin’s The Left Hand of Darkness. It’s the story of a planet that spans centuries and generations. It’s dense, queer, sad, and beautiful. My utmost thanks to the folks over at NetGalley and Macmillan-Tor/Forge for providing me with an eARC in exchange for a fair review. It’s out today. Go check it out.

The Keeper’s Six: A Review

The Beyond is ever-shifting, a fluctuating space of deadly light and impassible dark, filled with dangerous creatures. An adventuring party must consist of six members in order to venture across the Beyond. One Gate (to open the way and find the paths in the shifting wilderness), one Ghost (who becomes a silent, intangible scout once in the Beyond), one Shotgun (the party’s primary combatant), one Voice (the polyglot communications specialist), one Lantern (to light the way), and one Keeper (who remains behind at the group’s Keep, maintaining a stable entry platform that bridges the Beyond and the solid reality of the Realms. These six members make a Hex. Why six? Something about the magic that the dragons use to travel through the Beyond on their own can only be replicated by a group of six. Too many more than that, and the Beyond can destabilize even further. Too few, and you can’t be protected from the various monsters that call that nightmare place home.

Esther is a Lantern, but she’s semi-retired. Her Hex was suspended from operating a year ago, leaving the rest of her closest friends out of work. One night, a mysterious phone call wakes Esther, a single word from David, her son and the Keeper of the Hex. Immediately, she springs into action to gather the other members of the Hex and rally at the Keep to gather information. David, it seems, has been kidnapped, leaving his spouse Kai and their children behind in the unguarded Keep. Someone has captured him, and Esther must journey across the Beyond to find the party responsible. While Marianne, Gus, Lydia, and Faye all answer Esther’s summons, not all of the Hex is happy to see her again, especially since their suspension means that they’re not technically supposed to be operating in the Beyond at all.

So begins a covert mission to find David and bring him safely home. After all, what wouldn’t a parent do to protect their child?

Kate Elliott has crafted a phenomenal sci-fi novella with group mechanics reminiscent of a Dungeons and Dragons party. I’m fascinated by both the Beyond and the many Realms that it links, and I’m honestly sorry that this is my first time tackling one of her stories. I hope that she revisits this world again soon.

The Keeper’s Six is out today. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

My utmost thanks to Tordotcom for providing an eARC of this novella in exchange for a fair review.

2023

Okay. New year’s here again.

I got a decent amount of stuff done last year. Read a lot of books, wrote a decent number of reviews. V and I sold our first house and bought a bigger one to have room for all of us. I showed off my home bartender skills (twice!). We reconnected with some folks in my home town, and took some of the kids out there for their first ever visit to my parents’ house. I lost some friends, and made others.

And now, here we are in 2023.

I’m hoping to get more writing done this year. It’s been way too long since I let myself just dive into a creative project, even just quick poetry. While I’m looking forward to a lot of book reviews, I want to actually tell a story again. On a related note, I want to do more drawing this year too. I know that part of the difficulty I’ve had with creative ventures is the fact that I’ve had to split my attention with work and school and parenting and other work and other hobbies. Most of my original work in the last six months was dedicated to crafting cocktails for amateur bartending competitions. That was fun, and I hope to participate in one again this year, but it shouldn’t be my only outlet. It’s an expensive hobby, after all.

I’m planning to continue in my current position with the library, although I won’t say no if the right opportunity for advancement comes along. Last year, I participated in a leadership training program my employer provides, and so I’m feeling a little more prepared for that than I was before. The combination of that and my MLS makes me more valuable, I guess, depending on what openings are available.

As things currently stand, I’ll be returning to my position at the Colorado Renaissance Festival again this year as well. I’m looking forward to another summer of piracy and not sleeping enough. I may see about using some of my vacation time in the middle of the season this time around, though, rather than just working 7 days a week for 2 months. I think that V and the kids would be grateful. Honestly, so would I. I love doing the whole thing, working the festival, but it’s exhausting and stressful for the whole family.

There’s a lot of books to look forward to this year. As it stands, I’m most excited for the following:

1.) Lost in the Moment and Found by Seanan McGuire. Every January, I’m 100% here for the next book in the Wayward Children series. These novellas are beautiful and heartbreaking, and I can’t wait for this one. It’s out next week.

2.) Don’t Fear the Reaper by Stephen Graham Jones. This one is a sequel to 2021’s phenomenal My Heart is a Chainsaw, and a slasher spectacular in its own right. It drops on February 7th, and is shaping up to be the exceptional middle child in a horror trilogy.

3.) The Witch King by Martha Wells. I’ve read all of the Murderbot Diaries, but I’ve not tackled any of Martha Wells’ fantasy titles before. This one comes out in May.

4.) Alecto the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir. We don’t have an official release date for this one yet, but I’m hoping that it will still publish on schedule around September. I need to know how The Locked Tomb Series ends, and I need to fall in love and get stabbed in the back by Muir’s prose at least twice along the way.

5.) The Archive Undying by Emma Mieko Candon. I’m absolutely hooked by the concept of this one. AI deities and dead cities and Evangelion references, oh my! Look for it at the end of June.

I’m pretty pumped for a lot of movies this year too. John Wick comes back to theatres, we swing back across the Spider-Verse, and Nicolas Cage plays Dracula. I’ll probably stick to DVD/streaming releases for most things, but the timing of John Wick 4 might just be enough to tempt me (albeit masked) back to the theatre.

Then there’s the video game side of things. The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom comes out just in time for my birthday, so you can bet that I’ll be revisiting Breath of the Wild between now and then.

Anyway, I’m coming up on twelve years of posting here, so thanks to those of you who have been around the whole time, and welcome to those who are just starting to pay attention to my ramblings. I’ll have book reviews starting soon. See you then.