Don’t judge my choice of Thanksgiving cover. Anyway, another cruise through the Kindle, coinciding with a few days off and the first real bite of winter for 2022.
Finished
The Do-It-Yourself Guide to Fighting the Big M*therf*cking Sad, Adam Gnade, 2013.
“Life isn’t dark if you don’t want it to be.” This pretty much sums up Gnade’s earthy, highly personal guide to what he’s learned over an adult lifetime of struggling with recurrent depression, aka “the big m*therf*cking sad.” Gnade writes pithily and clearly, and the authenticity of his thoughts shines through. I enjoyed -- and related to -- most of what he had to say, and would suggest it to anyone wanting to double-check that they’re not alone in what they’re going through at the hands of the “BMFS”.
Nonfiction, 6.5/10
My Best Race: 50 Runners and the Finish Line They’ll Never Forget, Chris Cooper, 2013.
Profiles of major or famous runners. I knew of a handful before reading this, mostly stars like Kara Goucher (#1), Jeff Galloway (#2), and Bart Yasso (#50) -- but the heart of the book was reading about the largely normal stories of the other 47 and how they got to their personal critical finish lines.
Nonfiction, 5.5/10
Afghan Post, Adrian Bronenberger, 2014
Afghan Post charts the course of the author’s course through his time in the US Army and the post-9/11 wars. Adrian’s letters to his family and friends chart the trajectory of joining, training, deploying, fighting -- culminating in disenchantment. It’s a sobering picture of youthful enthusiasm dented by war. I appreciated that we get to see ego and wisdom, successes and failure and an often-raw vulnerability. In a world of carefully-cultivated personas, we get the good, bad and ugly here and I found myself admiring that. Unpolished, honest writing.
Nonfiction, 6.75/10 (Quarter-point deducted for 31 references to Yale.)
Once again, I’m apparently not exactly the target demographic…
Rogue, Jessie Kwak, 2018
A short story filling in how Willem Jaantzen meets the parents of his goddaughter -- a key player in the Bulari Saga -- the now-notorious pirates Lasadi and Raj Dasai. Entertaining and fun, I wished this was longer.
Smirk factor: All clear: 2 pts
Immersion factor: Waist-high: 1 pt
Writing quality: Above-average: 1.5 pts
Character/plot development: Above-average: 1.5 pts
Innovative/interesting: Above-average: 1.5 pts
Total: 7.5/10
Triana Moore, Space Janitor: The Complete Series, Julia Huni.
The Vacuum Of Space, 2018
The Dust of Kaku, 2018
The Trouble With Tinsel, 2022
Glitter In The Stars, 2019
Sweeping S’Ride, 2019
Orbital Operations (prequel), 2020
“In space, no one can hear you clean”
A funny, breezy series highlighting the adventures of space station cleaning employee Triana Moore and a growing crew of her friends as they grapple with the villainous Bobby Putin. When one of her cleaning robots finds a body, Triana is thrust into an interstellar web of intrigue, deception, murder and the quest for good snacks. This is SF lite, with PG-13 romance and a twisty and fun plot. High on entertainment value and humor, this is solid escapism and although probably aimed at a younger audience, I zipped through it.
Tales Of A Former Space Janitor: Books 1-3, Julia Huni.
The Rings of Grissom, Jan. 2021
Planetary Spin Cycle, Jun. 2021
Waxing The Moon Of Lewei, Feb. 2022
The adventure continues. Now an ex-space janitor, Triana Moore grapples with how to find her own identity and life now that her past has been exposed. Off to visit her boyfriend’s home planet for a wedding, she’s shocked to find herself deported straight into another set of imaginative and well-crafted hi-jinks which will take her to a creepy and oppressive planetary dictatorship and, if she plays her cards right, the wedding she’s always wanted.
So, okay -- I can’t believe I typed that second part about the wedding with a straight face. So no, I’m probably still not the target audience for this series. And yes, Huni’s writing could be sharper (using “smirk” 74 times across the nine stories/novels suggests there’s an adjective/adverb shortage somewhere -- or a shortage of editors.) Who cares, though? This continues the first set of books’ trend line straight into good clean fun, albeit of a slightly YA-adjacent kind that’s an odd bedfellow to all the grimdark SF sitting next to it in my Kindle. Time well spent.
Smirk factor: Borderline: 0.5 pts (74 smirks in 1812 pages, or a smirk per 24.5 pages -- enough to distract from otherwise entertaining writing)
Immersion factor: Chest-high: 1.5 pts (Varied wildly from one plot line to another)
Writing quality: Above-average: 1.5 pts
Character/plot development: Above-average: 1.5 pts (Plots better developed than most characters, but still...)
Innovative/interesting: Above-average: 1.5 pts
Total: 6.5/10
Discovering Your Neighbor (The Neighbor You Don’t Know Series Prequel), Shane Shepherd, 2021
The TSS Cartographer is setting sail across the void to visit a neighboring planet which looks almost perfectly suited to support human life. Maybe too perfect. “Win” Tavares and his crew mates discover they’re not the first to visit the planet. If they’re not careful, they may be the last humans to do so. Introductory short volume to a longer series this has potential buried under generally poor writing.
Smirk factor: Acceptable-plus: 1.5 pts (No smirks; half point off for generally wooden language.)
Immersion factor: Damp: 0.5 pts (Had to fight to stay engaged)
Writing quality: Below-average: 0.5 pts
Character/plot development: Below-average: 0.5 pts
Innovative/interesting: Average: 1 pt
Total: 4/10
The Blackmail Job (The Chronicles of Jason Rokku #0.5), Shane Shepherd, 2022
Jason “Key” Rokku has just been released from prison after 10 years. Like many ex-cons, he finds reintegrating hard, until a dead-end job in a fast-food restaurant leads to a position as a bodyguard for a wealthy businessman. A fun, conventional plot doesn’t get much support in terms of character development Overall, this was an unexceptional opening volume in a longer series. Still, a marked improvement over Discovering Your Neighbor -- good to see.
Smirk factor: More than acceptable: 1.5 pts (No smirking, word use improved.)
Immersion factor: Damp: 0.5 pts
Writing quality: Average: 1 pt
Character/plot development: Average: 1 pt (Plot was fun and unexpected; the main character just okay.)
Innovative/interesting: Average: 1 pt
Total: 5/10
Utero, Kevin Alan, 2022 (?)
This is an introduction to the ICHO Wars series. Alan sets up a tale of a cyborg mercenary just trying to get by in a confused, dystopian future. The action scenes are king here, although we get a sense of the protagonist’s back story. The plot develops unevenly, without much of a clear motive for our cyborg hero’s actions.
Smirk factor: More than acceptable: 1.5 pts (No smirking; generally good word use.)
Immersion factor: Shallow: 1 pt
Writing quality: Average: 1 pt
Character/plot development: Average: 1 pt
Innovative/interesting: Average: 1 pt
Total: 5.5/10
Steel In The Blood, N.T. Narbutovskih, Dec. 2021.
Tight, elaborately-plotted space opera about a human polity inexplicably governed by inbred oligarchic families united under the tyrannical but very stable rule of the Empress. Narbutovskih’s writing is strong, and he sketches out a world that’s almost baroque in its complexity. There are no heroes in this opening volume, which is consumed with the leading members of the family learning how precarious and out of touch they really are. Strong, makes me want to read more.
Smirk factor: All-clear: 2 pts (2 smirks)
Immersion factor: Knee-high: 1 pt
Writing quality: Above-average: 1.5 pts
Character/plot development: Above-average: 1.5 pts
Innovative/interesting: Average: 1 pt
Total: 7/10
Do not make her stick you with that thing. She will.
Second Spear, Kerstin Hall, 2022
The sequel to The Border Keeper (reviewed here), this is also impressive but a very different novel than its predecessor. The story here is more lively and immediate, with fewer baroque or opaque notes. The story centers on Tyn and Vehn, members of the warrior tribe sworn to the service of the ruler of their world. Tyn’s sense of identity is challenged throughout, ultimately leading to a stark choice about who and what Tyn wants to be. Expertly crafted, this was an easier read but still engaging.
Smirk factor: All clear: 2 pts (1 smirk, appropriately used)
Immersion factor: Chest-high: 1.5pts
Writing quality: High: 2 pts
Character/plot development: Average: 1 pt
Innovative/interesting: Average: 1 pt
Total: 7.5/10
Best of Planet Stories: Eric John Stark, Leigh Brackett, ?
This consists of three more or less novella-length stories originally published in “Planet Stories” magazine: Queen of the Martian Catacombs (summer 1949), Enchantress of Venus (fall 1949) and Black Amazon of Mars (March 1951). This graduated from the stalled pile from Spring 2022, and while a long haul it was ultimately fun and worthwhile to get through these classic stories. Of note, the quality of this “pulp” writing is notably higher than a lot of higher-brow things I’ve read recently. Simple plots, simple characters, a worthy throw-back to a vanished age.
Smirk factor: All-clear: 2 pts (Minimal smirking; generally excellent use of words)
Immersion factor: Damp: 0.5 pts (Kept putting it down, although I came back)
Writing quality: Above-average: 1.5 pts
Character/plot development: Average: 1 pt (Simple and unchanging)
Innovative/interesting: Average: 1 pt
Total: 6/10
Future Adventures, Various, 2019
The collection features eight novels totaling 2200 pages. The wide variation in their styles, target audience and approach to story telling speaks to the challenge faced by the curator of any collection. All are apparently independent or self-published, and the quality -- or at least my experience and perception of (trying) to read them -- varied pretty widely. I thought Ares Weapon was a 5 star read; Few Are Chosen, 3.5 rounded up to 4; Watchers’ Web, Generation and Exodus, 3 stars; Europa, Truth Beyond The Sky, and The Girl Who Twisted Fate’s Arm rounded out the pack at 2 stars each, averaging out to 3 stars out of 5 for the collection as a whole.
Some of these were pretty old when published in the collection and I’m interested in revisiting all of the authors to see how their later work compares. I did find it definitely worthwhile to peruse the collection for the exposure to authors who I hadn't read before.
Watcher’s Web (Return of the Aghyrians #1), Patty Jansen, 2011. Awkward Outback Australian with odd powers unexpectedly becomes an awkward exile in a strange almost-Earth. I made it about 30-35% through this, then skipped to the end. 15 chapters in I still wasn’t sure who the Aghyrians were or why they were returning. Neat premise and decent writing, but it dragged and had some odd plot choices. Goodreads: 3 stars (avg. 3.42 from 788 ratings)
Europa (Taxyon Space #1), Aurora Springer, 2017. Semi-hard SF crossed with romance, with Europa’s icy seas as a backdrop. Slow to get going and a slightly turgid plot killed my interest fairly quickly, although the premise sounded promising. I read about 20-25% in, then skipped to the last few chapters and found little sense of a dramatic denouement. Goodreads: 2 stars (avg. 3.77 from 102 ratings)
Few Are Chosen (K'Barthan #1), M.T. McGuire, 2010. I took two shots at this, coming back to it after rolling my eyes about five chapters in -- and was glad I did. Mostly. This is funny, packed with (maybe over-packed with) touches of the absurd and leavened with just a little bit of romance and some completely comic book-worthy main characters. The second best of the collection, after The Ares Weapon. Goodreads: 3.5 stars, rounded up to 4. (Avg. 3.94 from 229 ratings)
The Truth Beyond The Sky (The Epic of Aravinda #1), Andrew M. Crusoe, 2012. Zahn is haunted by his mother’s mysterious disappearance. 12 years later is contacted by an alien, and after that...I'm sorry to report I lost interest. Not much “epic” here: the writing, characters and plot were all muted. I gave up at what should have been an intense moment of drama that was rendered in flat beige midway through chapter 8 of 38. Goodreads: 2 stars (avg. 3.81 from 198 ratings)
Generation (Shadows of the Void #1), J.J. Green, 2016. Life is tough for interstellar prospectors, and gets tougher when a greedy captain doesn’t listen to his security officer’s misgivings. Unpleasantness follows on various levels. This fell in the middle of the collection: readable and well-edited, reasonable characters and a conventional plot that was interesting but not ground-breaking. Goodreads: 3 stars (avg. 3.77 from 522 ratings)
The Girl Who Twisted Fate’s Arm, George Saoulidis, 2016. Cyberpunk dystopia with a Greek mythological twist. The best part of this was the “Warning” section at the beginning, catering for those triggered by the metric system, Greek mythology reboots, and a variety of other “sins”. The actual start is an assault by a girl gang on motorcycles on a small schoolbus, but it fades quickly into teen angst and the promised (slash threatened) coming of age story. Not bad, and an interesting premise, but Aura’s struggle to connect to better/worse role models after her operatic career doesn’t work out was not my thing. Goodreads: 2 stars (avg. 3.33 from 33 ratings)
The Ares Weapon (Mars Ascendant #1), D.M. Pruden, 2016. For my money, the best in the collection. Melanie Destin has a history that is...complex, but nothing has prepared her for the danger she falls into when her job disappears and a long-lost friend offers her a gig which seems a little too good to be true -- and won’t take ‘no’ for an answer. This is an intricate, well-plotted and fast-paced story loaded with intrigue and adventure. It grabbed and kept my attention from the beginning, and I enjoyed it all the way through. Goodreads: 5 stars (avg. 4.02 from 202 ratings)
Exodus (Dead Planet #1) by Drew Avera, 2013. The story follows the career of an assassin in a dystopian Mars of the far future, whose career intersects violently with the hidden threat that will end all life on the planet. I wasn’t enamored by the book, finding it hard to maintain my interest and immersion and so skipped quite a bit. This may not have been just me -- looking around on Goodreads, I found a much shorter version or excerpt from 2014 called The Policeman, clocking in at 27 pages and a 3.97 star average -- a third of a star higher than the 198 page version I didn’t completely read. Goodreads: 3 stars (avg. 3.66 from 178 ratings)
Overall rating:
Smirk factor: Above acceptable: 1.5 pts (13 smirks of widely-varying quality, but 8 authors and books, so...)
Immersion factor: Shallow: 1 pt (Girl lost me 12 pages in, Ares Weapon had me reaching for the rest of the series the second I finished. Everything else was somewhere in the middle.)
Writing quality: Average: 1 pt (Again, averaging from a very wide spread.)
Character/plot development: Average: 1 pt
Innovative/interesting: Above-average: 1.5 pts (It was all interesting. How well it all was written...YMMV)
Total: 6/10
Goodreads: 3 stars (avg 3.93 from 226 ratings)
Alternate covers:
Crooked, V.1, Jessie Kwak, Ed. 2021
Crooked, V.2, Jessie Kwak, Ed. 2022
Two volumes curated by the amazingly talented Kwak. The unifying theme is SF crime. Eight solid stories in V.1, followed by another 18 -- some from repeat authors from the first volume, but including a wide selection of new ones -- in the second volume. Picking favorites is an excruciating exercise; these are all good stories. Nonetheless, from the first collection Greg Dragon’s The Smuggler stood out for the compelling bleakness of its end, while Full Core from Wade Peterson shows that loyalty has many meanings. From V.2, Mark Niemann-Ross’ Do-Ye0n Performs a Cost-Benefit Analysis on a Career Based on Questionable Activities’ bleak view of a dystopian job market, um, well, resonated. Just a little. Ace in the Hole by Kate Sheeran Swed is a close second, escalating quickly and in an unexpected direction.
Smirk factor: All-clear: 2 pts (7 smirks in 26 stories: no complaints here.)
Immersion factor: Chest-high: 1.5 pts
Writing quality: Above-average: 1.5 pts
Character/plot development: Average: 1 pt
Innovative/interesting: Above-average: 1.5 pts
Total: 7.5/10
Tech Ghost, Ben Wolf, 2021-22.
I previously read/reviewed The Ghost Mine in mid-2021. At the time, I said “This is a decent sci-fi adventure. It’s not the most vivid writing, but the beginning and end are very strong and there are a couple of pleasing twists.” That remains more or less the verdict on the second and third books in the trilogy.
Our hero, Justin Barclay, has fled from the satanic mine as it’s destroyed, and is about to meet and ultimately lose a love interest: the enigmatic, ethically challenged, morally stunted, good kissing scientist, Hallie. Along the way, he’ll need tech ghost Keontae’s help to overcome a cartoonish but deadly cast of villains, while acquiring a crew of his own. Entertaining but ultimately shallow: the PG-13 romance was cute, but Wolf lays it on a little thick with distinctly 20th/21st century ethnic stereotypes which wear very thin after a few hundred pages.
Smirk factor: 0verdone: 0 pts (65 smirks, even in 1233 pages, is too many.)
Immersion factor: Shallow: 1 pt
Writing quality: Average: 1 pt
Character/plot development: Average: 1 pt
Innovative/interesting: Average: 1 pt
Total: 4/10
Remain Calm, Naomi Ault, 2021-2.
First-person short story about the travails of a not-quite-human who’s more or less survived infection. This is a taste of a broader series which promises an epic level of bleakness. Well written and an original premise, but saying its not uplifting is an understatement.
Smirk factor: All clear: 2 pts.
Immersion factor: Chest-high: 1.5 pts
Writing quality: Average: 1 pt
Character/plot development: Above-average: 1.5 pts
Innovative/interesting: Average: 1 pt
Total: 7/10
Nightmare Magazine Issue 122, Nov. 2022, Wendy Wagner, Ed.
A compilation of fiction, poetry, non-fiction and “author spotlights.” I most liked Amanda Song’s story Only When You Laugh, which posited comedy as a deadly force and comedians’ jokes as tangible works of art. Sean Noah Noah’s very short Ant Twin brought out my inner myrmecophobe, and Gordon B. White’s Devil Take Me, offers an intense view of a troubled childhood and the grim bargain that brings. My favorite piece from the whole thing, to my mild surprise, was a non-fiction entry: The H Word: Sole Survivor, in which May Haddad explores the role of horror in her own coming of age.
Smirk factor: All clear: 2 pts (No smirks, generally very high-quality words.)
Immersion factor: Shallow: 1 pt
Writing quality: Average: 1 pt
Character/plot development: Average: 1 pt
Innovative/interesting: Above-average: 1.5 pts
Total: 6.5/10
The Dark Magazine, Issue 90, Clara Madrigano and Sean Wallace, eds., November 2022.
A monthly dedicated to “bringing you the best of dark fantasy and horror”, this issue had four intense, well-crafted stories:
· Wind Come Down The Mountain by A.C Wise shows how sometimes reality TV can be chillingly unreal, and in the dark, whispers from the past can become all to concrete.
· How The Cat Woman Became The Giant Lady, Circa 1995 by Sean Padraic Birnie explores how childhood games become adult trauma.
· Lavie Tidhar’s Sirena chronicles the grim results when vending machines go lethally bad.
· Olympus Is A Body by Angelia Liu continues the themes of predation and coming of age with a chilling and deadly story of possession and change.
All well written, carefully curated and chilling stories!
Smirk factor: More than acceptable: 1.5 pts (No smirks; wisdom of word choices varied a bit.)
Immersion factor: Shallow: 1 pt
Writing quality: Above-average: 1.5 pts
Character/plot development: High: 2 pts
Innovative/interesting: Above-average: 1.5 pts
Total: 7.5/10
The Tinderbox: Soldier of Indira, Lou Diamond Phillips, 2020.
I vaguely recall downloading this in the summer of 2021, and then immediately getting bogged down a page or two into it. This is a pleasant and layered story accompanied by charming illustrations. Too YA in style and content for me to completely bond with. Phillips, an actor who burst into public view when I was in high school, is a talented writer who I would love to see take on darker or at least more sophisticated topics.
Smirk factor: Acceptable: 1 pt (8 smirks in 308 pages)
Immersion factor: Damp: 0.5 pts (It did take a year and a half to finish)
Writing quality: Above-average: 1.5 pts
Character/plot development: Average: 1 pt (Surely the good guy has a little darkness in his soul?)
Innovative/interesting: Average: 1 pt
Total: 5/10
Read Part 2: Stalled or Abandoned Here