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Tag Archives: sci-fi

The Surviving Sky: A Review

Earth has been uninhabitable for hundreds of years due to the earthrages, massive earthquake-storm hybrids that literally reshape the face of the planet. Luckily for humanity, individuals known as architects learned how to traject, manipulating plants to do their will. Before the earthrages wiped the surface clean, cities made of plants were guided into the air, and the architects expended their energy to keep them aloft until the storms passed. Now all of mankind that remains lives in these ashrams, where the architects can guide the lives of everyone aboard, only landing during lulls in the storms so that the architects can rest.

Not all citizens are architects, however, and no one is more upset about that than Ahilya. She’s an archaeologist, and the only one in Nakshar. She has studied the surface in between rages, and staunchly believes that there might be something out there that is surviving through the storms somehow. But to gather the proof that she needs, she’ll need an architect’s assistance and approval from Nakshar’s council to even leave the ashram the next time it lands. Complicating things for her is her husband Iravan. He’s not just an architect, but a senior architect, and a member of the council. After a fight they had a few months ago, he’s not so sure that her research expedition is necessary. Is he just trying to keep her safe, or is he trying to maintain the status quo and help the architects keep their stranglehold on power?

When Iravan decides at the last minute to replace the junior architect who had been assigned to accompany Ahilya and her young assistant, all of the plans for the expedition are thrown into disarray. Both of them are hiding secrets from the other, and trajecting is getting more and more difficult. What they find in the jungle could change everything about their world and their marriage, if it doesn’t kill them both first.

The Surviving Sky is a tense, brilliant piece of sci-fi/fantasy. Kritika Rao has built (or maybe trajected) a phenomenal new world hovering just above danger at all times. The characters are well-rounded, and the tension between Ahilya and her husband is palpable. Class warfare is interwoven throughout, with the long-running conflict between architects and non-architects showing beautifully in the strain on Ahilya and Iravan’s marriage. It’s available as of yesterday, and I highly recommend you check it out at your earliest convenience. My utmost thanks to Titan Books and NetGalley for an eARC in exchange for a fair review.

Rubicon: A Review

J.S. Dewes’ latest science fiction novel, Rubicon, opens with a bang as our protagonist is forced to kill her three squad mates and then herself. Specialist Adriene Valero wakes up almost immediately afterward, her consciousness having been automatically downloaded into a new body back at headquarters.

Rezoning, as the process is called, has been standard procedure for soldiers fighting on the front lines against the Mechan forces. It allows humanity to avoid being captured and utilized as a host for a Mechan unit, a process called hybridization. If you’re under imminent threat of capture, zone out. Better to die by your own hand (or a fellow soldier’s) than to play host to an alien robot consciousness until your body gives out.

After rezoning into her 96th “husk” since the beginning of her service, Adriene is ready for it to all end. Anything for a chance to be mortal again. But instead of being sent back to the front lines with the rest of her squad, she’s pulled out of her company, promoted, and shipped off to a new unit. She’s been deemed a good fit for an elite crew of soldiers outfitted with special Virtual Intelligence implants called Rubicons, and assigned to be the pathfinder of one of their advance recon squads.

After a quick training on the use of the Rubicon implant in her brain, Adriene has to adjust to the idea of someone else sharing her head, privy to her thoughts whenever the unit is active. On the squad’s first mission out together, they’re ambushed by Mechan drones. With yet another rezone on the line, Adriene taps into an unknown function of her Rubicon implant, accessing functions that shouldn’t be possible.

With the knowledge that her Rubicon implant may be unique, Adriene is soon forced to face a choice. On the line: her chance to finally end her rezone cycle and the fate of all that remains of humanity under the unsleeping eye of the Mechans. Then again, Adriene may have more in common with the Mechans than anyone has ever realized.

Rubicon is a phenomenal piece of military science fiction that’s perfect for fans of Halo, Starship Troopers (Robert Heinlein), Old Man’s War (John Scalzi), The Light Brigade (Kameron Hurley), or Edge of Tomorrow. It’s out on shelves today, and you should most definitely check it out. Dewes has done a great job of hooking me with her writing, and I’m eager for more.

My utmost thanks to NetGalley and Tor Books for providing an eARC in exchange for a fair review.

Seeds for the Swarm: A Review

I’ve followed Sim Kern on Twitter for a while, and so when they put an open call out for ARCs of Seeds for the Swarm last year, I jumped at the chance. What a perfect companion piece to Annalee Newitz’s The Terraformers. Climate change fiction (or cli-fi), is a hot topic, and Sim handles it marvelously.

Sassparylla “Rylla” McCracken lives in The Dust, a dried-out portion of the United States devastated by manmade climate disasters. Specifically, Rylla and her mom live in a trailer house in Texas, near what remains of the Guadalupe River outside of Austin. Rylla is a high school senior, attending virtual classes and spending her free time studying the insects and other wildlife that are managing to survive in the harsh, dry climate. When she learns that a new piece of corporate legislation is aiming to dam up what’s left of the river, Rylla begs her brother Tyler for a ride to the state capitol, where she delivers an impassioned speech to the apathetic legislature.

Thanks to a video edit of her speech at the capitol going viral, Rylla is approached by representatives from Wingates University, a school located deep in the Lush States where water and other resources are still abundant. Before she knows it, Rylla is whisked away to Michigan, where she is quickly overwhelmed by how different of a world her classmates come from. Rylla is placed in the Humanities department at Wingates, where she is tasked with studying the behaviors that lead to the current state of the world. She also befriends a group of engineering students working on different types of new technologies that they believe can save the planet and the human race.

After a trip through the campus transport system goes wrong, the existence of a secret series of laboratories deep beneath Wingates is uncovered. Soon, Rylla and her classmates finds themselves caught up in a conspiracy of nanotechnology, bioengineering, and political intrigue that could very readily lead to a new civil war, with Rylla’s mother and brother stranded in The Dust. As if just going to college and juggling a social life and homework wasn’t stressful enough…

Seeds for the Swarm is a brilliant piece of climate-focused science fiction, taking an unflinching look at what our world could look like in a few short decades. Rylla is a delightfully and frustratingly human protagonist, reminding me of many of my own college friends (though we didn’t have world-ending tech at our fingertips). Her struggles to fit in among her fellows at school are fantastically well-rendered and realistic. Kern’s vision of the near-future manages to still stay hopeful, even in the face of overwhelming odds.

Seeds for the Swarm is available from Stelliform Books on Wednesday, March 1st. Get it from your library or bookstore of choice, and enjoy.

My utmost thanks to Sim and to Ren Hutchings at Stelliform Books for an eARC in exchange for a fair review.

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.

And On the Third Day, He Reviewed Again: Tamsyn Muir’s Nona The Ninth

Last July, fans of Tamsyn Muir’s delightful Locked Tomb books were informed that they wouldn’t be getting Alecto the Ninth in the fall of 2021 as they had previously expected. Instead, the Locked Tomb trilogy was going to be expanded into four books, with Alecto still set as the final entry, and Nona the Ninth filling in a gap in 2022.

So we waited, albeit not particularly patiently, for an extra year and a half. Three days ago, that wait came to an end, and last night I finished my preliminary time with Nona. Y’all.

Let’s get one thing out of the way first, okay? This is the 3rd book in a series, and as such, some spoilers for books one and two (Gideon the Ninth and Harrow the Ninth, respectively) are unavoidable. You have been warned.

SPOILERS FOR GIDEON THE NINTH AND HARROW THE NINTH MAY FOLLOW BELOW:


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Okay. Ready? Here we go.

Nona is an unexpected character, headlining an unexpected, but long-awaited book. The book opens a few months after the end of Harrow the Ninth and the destruction of the Mithraeum. John “God” Gaius has vanished following His betrayal by two of His Lyctors. Gideon the First has been lost to a Resurrection Beast, and his cavalier, Pyrrha Dve is now the sole inhabitant of his body. Camilla Hect has been trading time in control of her body, swapping with the soul of her necromancer, Palamades Sextus (last seen possessing his own skull, which was transformed into a hand by Harrow in Book 2). Together, Pyrrha, Camilla, and Palamades watch over Nona and try to avoid direct conflict with Blood of Eden, a group that stands in opposition to God and the Nine Houses. But who exactly is Nona?

On the outside, Nona is Harrowhark Nonagesimus, whose body was last seen alongside Pyrrha Dve as Augustine the First threw the entirety of the Mithraeum into the River in an attempt to kill God. But the River is full of lost souls, and something happened to the soul of Gideon Nav, who was piloting Harrow’s body. While Harrow’s own soul appeared to have made its way through the River to the Locked Tomb back in the Ninth House at the conclusion of Harrow the Ninth, her body didn’t go along for the ride. Now the body, Nona, has woken up on the world of New Rho. She and her guardians/teachers are busy trying to figure out just which soul (or souls) reside within her. Is she a necromancer? Is she a cavalier? Is she neither or both?

Right now, Nona is a girl looking forward to her first birthday party; a toddler’s attitude in a teen’s body, new to the world and learning quickly about how complicated her life actually is. She’s working as a teacher’s aide at her school, trying to make friends and to fit in with the students. She walks the science teacher’s six-legged dog, Noodle. She loves Noodle. She’s unbothered by the blue light in the sky that seems to be wreaking havoc on any necromancers who wander outside, and she heals almost instantly from any wound, but she shows no aptitude for any other necromancy. She practices with a sword, but has none of a cavalier’s familiarity with the weapon.

Meanwhile, Camilla, Palamades, and Pyrrha are trying to find the rest of the Sixth House, who fled from their former home in an attempt to evade God’s wrath and are now being held captive somewhere on New Rho. Blood of Eden is threatening to destroy a Cohort facility and kill the soldiers and necromancers of the Nine Houses who have taken shelter there. Tensions are rising, and time is running out. Solving the mystery of Nona’s identity is the key to everything, but no one is making it easy. Will God return to New Rho? Will the Resurrection Beast lurking nearby destroy the planet? What other characters will get cameo appearances this time around? Will Nona get to celebrate her first birthday? Is Noodle a good boy? So many questions, so little time.

Nona the Ninth is beautiful and heartbreaking. It’s a perfect addition to The Locked Tomb series. Tamsyn Muir continues to weave plotlines, juggle bodies and souls, and blend humor and horror in a way that boggles my mind. While the finale is still (hopefully only) a year away, Nona is a wonderful treat for readers. Plenty of twists and turns will keep everyone guessing right up until the end, and then the wild theories can begin again! I can’t wait for Alecto, but I’m so glad to have Nona to keep me company between now and then.

I’m going to go read it again.

The Kaiju Preservation Society: A Review

I was in middle school the first time I saw the word “kaiju” in print. I was on a Godzilla kick, because I was in middle school, and Godzilla books had been readily available for a few years at that point, thanks mostly (I guess) to Roland Emmerich’s 1998 film. I had been to my parents’ bookstore and found a couple of mass market paperbacks of other Godzilla titles, and started to learn my way around the other residents of Monster Island. A love of the giant creatures was born that has persisted to this day, across films like Pacific Rim and the films and comics within the Godzilla franchise. Now imagine my joy when one of my favorite sci-fi writers announced an upcoming novel titled The Kaiju Preservation Society.

John Scalzi is a remarkably fun writer to read, and since it’s been a while since the last time I read one of his books, I’d forgotten that. TKPS is a ridiculously fun ride. When Jamie Gray loses his job in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic, he turns to delivering food around New York in an attempt to keep up with his bills. This brings him into contact with Tom, an old college friend who tells Jamie that he has a job opportunity for him with a group that does preservation work for large animals. What Jamie was not expecting was for that job to be on the other side of a dimensional barrier separating our Earth from an alternate one populated by nuclear-powered creatures the size of apartment buildings.

Jamie emerges on the other side of the barrier to find a small scientific research base, where he will serve as a gofer for the numerous scientists studying the kaiju that inhabit this parallel world. He quickly makes friends and becomes acclimated to the bizarre biology of the local populace, learning what a threat virtually everything on that side of the barrier is (in short, everything will either kill you or try really hard to do so). Rapidly changing circumstances lead Jamie to understand, however, that not everyone associated with The Kaiju Preservation Society is as well-intentioned as he is, as an impending disaster threatens everyone and everything on both sides of the rift.

This was a fast-paced, very fun novel, that reads like a mashup of Pacific Rim and Jurassic Park. My only complaint is that we don’t get to spend a lot of time in the world, and I would love to see Scalzi release a sequel at some point down the line. The Kaiju Preservation Society is out in stores tomorrow, March 15th. Go get yourself a copy asap. My utmost thanks to Macmillan/Tor and NetGalley for an eARC in exchange for an honest review.

Rainbow in the Dark: A Review

Okay, y’all. This was one weird book, and I absolutely loved it.

When Rainbow wakes up, she doesn’t remember anything. She doesn’t know who she is, where she is, or how she got there. She finds herself in a video game-like world, with memories slowly being returned to her. In order to fully regain her memories and (maybe) return home, she has to complete a quest. Chad01, the warrior assigned to escort her, is tremendously upset about being paired up with a Nobody, a character without an assigned class. They reluctantly set out across a bizarre world full of nightmarish creatures and magic that no one seems to fully understand.

Rainbow manages to retrieve some more of her memories along the journey, leading her to remember her time with her brother CJ and her struggles with her own mental health and suicidal ideation. The quest to find herself may be more destructive to her than she initially would have expected.

Sean McGinty has crafted a unique story here, with some parallels being drawn to The Wizard of Oz as far as a quest within a questionable reality. It’s a difficult story to describe, and a difficult one to read, but it pays off pretty well. 4/5 stars. It’s out in the world as of *oops* yesterday, so go check it out.

My most sincere thanks to NetGalley and Clarion Books for an eARC of Rainbow in the Dark in exchange for a fair review.

Hard Reboot: A Review

Kas worked her ass off to get to go off-world with the Scholarium’s archaeology survey. The chance to go see old Earth and study some ancient mech programming code was a once in a lifetime opportunity for a third-wave scholar. She was expecting to be cut off from network connectivity while on Earth, thanks to the toxic malware datasphere surrounding the planet. She was expecting to spend her week there helping the first and second-wave scholars like Gneisin collect data. She was expecting to see mech pilots using the ancient combat suits they had come to study to do battle in the Drome.

She was not expecting Zhi.

Zhi caught her by surprise, tricked Kas into using the Scholarium’s credit line to place a bet on a mech battle she was competing in. The young pilot had debts to cover, and a rich-looking off-worlder was a perfect mark for her plan. Bet big, beat Custis and his shitty slow DreadCarl, and use the profits to get parts to improve her own mech. Nothing to it. It’s just that the House will force her to pilot mechs for them for the rest of her life if she loses this time.

Now Kas and Zhi’s fates are intertwined. Kas can’t afford to lose the Scholarium’s money, and Zhi can’t afford to lose her next fight. The two young women must pool their skills and knowledge, with everything hinging on a piece of technology that hasn’t functioned in hundreds of years. Winning against Custis and taking down the House will take everything they have, and they’ll not survive to get a second shot.

Hard Reboot is a fast-paced novella from Django Wexler, author of The Forbidden Library series. The worldbuilding is incredibly deep in a handful of paragraphs, with hints about what happened to the Earth in the intervening centuries. The mech battles have a weight to them that lets you feel each collision. The development of the bond between Kas and Zhi is spectacular, too, with neither of them knowing how to interact with each other at the outset. I raced through the book in a couple of hours and was left hungry for more.

Django Wexler’s Hard Reboot is available on May 25th. My utmost thanks to Netgalley and Tor.com for the eARC in exchange for a fair review.

Project Hail Mary: A Review

Dr. Ryland Grace is having a rough day.

Actually, that’s putting it mildly.

He doesn’t remember his own name, for one thing. He doesn’t know who he is, or where he is, or how he got there. But he knows some things. He knows that when he woke up, there were two dead bodies on the table-beds next to his. He knows that there’s a robot that has been taking care of him, and that refuses to let him leave the room until his memory starts to come back.

Soon, he learns that he’s alone on a spaceship, the other two members of the crew having not survived the induced coma they were put into before their voyage. He’s somewhere outside of Earth’s solar system. How does he know that he’s not in our solar system anymore? Science! Whoever he is, Dr. Grace is a hell of a scientist, and the ship he’s on is equipped for a lot of science. As he slowly recovers his memories of the time he spent on Earth prior to his journey, he pieces together a lot.

Once a prominent microbiologist, Dr. Grace left academia to become a junior high science teacher. When an alien microorganism is discovered feeding on the light and energy of the sun, he’s drafted into Project Hail Mary, an international cooperative effort to find a way to study this “astrophage” and prevent it from ending life as we know it on Earth. Chapters alternate between Dr. Grace’s flashbacks to his time as a consultant on the astrophage and the development of the ship to his present timeline somewhere in orbit around Tau Ceti. Now with no crewmates, Dr. Grace has to solve the mystery of the astrophage and find a way to get that data back to Earth. No pressure, right? And just because the other humans aboard the Hail Mary are dead doesn’t mean he’s alone…

Andy Weir is back, y’all. The author of The Martian and Artemis has a new novel out today, and damn if it isn’t a fun ride. For fans who like a little more science (okay, a lot more) in their science fiction, this one’s for you. Project Hail Mary is a fantastic bit of mystery, with an amnesiac narrator on a mission to save the world. After a bit of a stumble with his second novel (Artemis was fun too, but there was some struggle with writing a realistic female perspective), Mr. Weir has returned to the form that made me fall in love with his writing, despite the mathematics throughout. Let’s face it. I switched from studying engineering to English after 2 months for a reason.

My sincere thanks to NetGalley for the eARC of Project Hail Mary in exchange for a fair review.