Reviews and Comments

It's clear that John Scalzi enjoyed writing Starter Villain as much as I enjoyed reading it. Like his other shorter recent novels (notably The Kaiju Preservation Society), you really get a sense that he just was having fun and putting that fun down on the page. And that fun really comes through.

Nothing in Starter Villain is very serious, from sentient cats to ridiculous cabals that were literally the inspiration for Bond villains. It starts quickly and engages you both with humor and a tightness of prose that doesn't include anything it doesn't need. But throughout all that he still manages to capture some real character development and invest you in the outcome.

While I loved Starter Villain, I will say that I don't think he perfectly nailed the landing, at least not like he has in other books of the same vein. But even with that, the book is short and ends well enough that I still set it down satisfied with the experience. It's a perfect holiday or airplane read and you won't regret picking it up.

I requested that my library get a copy of Suncatcher by Alia Gee after it showed up on a list of solarpunk fiction books. My overall take on it is that it was interesting and mostly engaging but honestly it felt like it was self-published and in desperate need of a talented editor. I think with someone doing both some more proof-reading and helping to call out parts of the book that were clunky, under and overexposed, or just felt rushed or unfinished then it could have been fantastic and reached a far wider audience.

The bones of the book, story, characters, and world-building are all very good. The casual approach to the dystopian future it's set in serves to make it a bit more jarring and I really liked the representation of such a setting being not lawless and anarchic but instead corporate and bureaucratic. I also liked the concept of the fact that the aether – the in-universe virtual world – was based in raw data and each user experienced it differently leading to interesting confusion and interpretations of the goings on inside. I loved the concept of the armada of solar harvesters the protagonist finds herself among and how that collective and positive community was such a radical departure from the rest of the country, but I would have liked to hear more about that social conflict, other societies, and how they all fit together.

It struck me that Gee was on the verge of getting at something really deep and poignant in the relationship of the main character with her sister, but missed the mark just a bit in telling the right amount of back story to frame their history, with some of the exposition needing to be earlier in the book to better grasp their dynamics.

I also felt like there were a few too many stories trying to be told at once. In many ways the story of Radicand's father could have served as the backdrop to the Toby/Ezekiel one and turned into its own book in a sequel. The second final showdown also felt very unnecessarily tacked on and should have been fleshed out more as a third act in a longer telling of one of the story lines.

All told I really liked what Suncatcher could have been but was less enthused with where it ended up. I suspect that a lot of books start out in exactly its state before getting dialed in and cleaned up in a professional editing process. It looks like this may have been one of Gee's only books, released in 2014 and nothing since, and that makes me sad. She clearly has some good ideas and a lot of promise as a storyteller. I wish she could have found the additional support she needed to build Suncatcher into the saga it deserved to be.

My brief review of Splinter in the Sky by Kemi Ashing-Giwa is that it's a good, engaging space opera and fans of the genre (especially ones who prefer sci-fi novels that don't feature lots of non-human characters) will enjoy. Because of the linear narrative and single point of view character, it took me a few chapters to get into the story and familiar with the setting, but once I did I had trouble putting it down.

My only complaint is that early on a lot was made of the linguistic element of the colonialism that was the main theme of the book but with no clear idea of who was speaking what languages and when it became difficult to relate that back to the overall story, and the whole concept faded out as the action picked up. It would have been nice to see something like a different font or italics used for some of the dialog or a deeper dive into language challenges later in the book.

But ultimately that's a minor nitpick and I think you should read Splinter in the Sky. I'm excited to see what else is in store from Ashing-Giwa.

If This Book Exists, You're in the Wrong Universe is the last (latest?) book in the John Dies at the End universe by Jason Pargin (earlier titles published under the pseudonym David Wong). I've enjoyed all four books and hope that there will be more. The books are all weird and funny and somewhat philosophical but more in the stoner philosophy than the heavier and more important stuff. If you make it through the first few chapters of any of these books and find them engaging then you'll probably like the whole series.

Since I haven't talked about previous books as I read them this comment is covering the whole series but the books are so much alike in both themes and style that my feelings apply to them all.

The books are primarily from the point of view of David Wong, a bit of a loser who through chance and being friends with questionable characters finds himself wrapped up with the town's oddly prevalent supernatural side. Over the course of the four books, we follow David and his friends as they ineptly battle with cosmic forces that exist outside our universe and on a scale inconceivable to our meat brains. Some of the themes are genuinely scary and can trigger a bit of existential dread while other bits tend so far into absurdity as to be a bit comical (but that's part of the point).

Ultimately, these books are a meta comedy horror series sort of like the book version of Cabin in the Woods. They're easy to read and fast-paced, never needing to work hard to keep your attention and draw you into the next chapter. I had a few genuine chuckles at moments and found myself rooting for and invested in the characters as we see the them mature (a little) and develop (slowly and by baby steps).

Grab the first of these and give it a shot. If you don't take it too seriously, it's a really enjoyable series.

I really enjoyed @pluralistic@mamot.fr‘s latest #solarpunk book, The Lost Cause. I think one of the things Doctorow does well is to imagine a near future that is entirely plausible and doesn’t rely on new magical technology. This book, set a generation into the future, feels like a very plausible path from here to there and that makes it much more engaging than some similar works.

Like his other near-future novels that I’ve read, Doctorow is realistic about political changes and simply extrapolates out the trends that we’re currently seeing. In his vision of the next generation facing the climate emergency there are still hyper-capitalists trying to “fix” everything by sticking their heads in the sand and assuming technology will save us, arch conservatives who want to undo all the progress and close the doors to their increasingly fragile sanctuaries, idealistic progressives going to the front lines to apply real solutions to fix things, and lots of folks who care but are mostly comfortable and willing to let others do the heavy lifting.

The book follows one of those idealistic youths as he navigates reckoning with trauma, family on the other side of the aisle, and figuring out how to truly make a difference in everything from the broader climate crisis to hyper-local political divisions and even violence. It’s a slightly narrow view that only includes the single perspective, but we move along with the protagonist as he tries to understand the people he works with and works against. Because of that we get a lot of reflection on his own trauma and how it shaped him as well as some empathy for those facing the same challenges but from a different perspective.

The Lost Cause is a quick, engaging read. It’s full of more food descriptions than a George R. R. Martin book, highlighting the shifting palates of a generation raised focusing on lower-carbon food sources and diverse communities, so be prepared for it to make you hungry. If you like solarpunk and other near-future fiction that offers a hopeful vision for how we get to and through the looming crises, then The Lost Cause should be on your reading list.

The God of Lost Words was the final installment in A.J. Hackwith's Hell's Library trilogy. I loved the first book and much of what I liked in the first carried through to the rest of the series. Even though I continued enjoying the overall story, I found myself getting a little tired by the end. There was a lot of purple prose and parts of it felt somewhat preachy and self-important. I thought that those elements were more balanced in the first book but the second and third began to feel like a soapbox extolling the value of stories and libraries where the case was being made by cramming the text full of deep and profound statements in almost every paragraph.

It's somewhat ironic that in an attempt to speak to the importance of stories, these books stopped focusing on the story and instead spent so much effort on the language.

That said, I still enjoyed the world building and story arc. I also felt like Hackwith did a good job of building very real character development and found myself deeply invested in the main characters (although I felt Brevity was a bit shortchanged and her development was a little shallow).

I'm not sure I can recommend the entire series with the enthusiasm I gave just the first book, but if you loved the first I think you'll be satisfied with the rest.

I just finished reading the last book of @susankayequinn@wandering.shop's solarpunk/hopepunk Nothing is Promised series. I posted a brief review after the first book in the series, but you have to read all four books to get the full arc as the story doesn't resolve between installments. (Aside: I think the divisions of the books make sense, especially since they tend to follow different POV characters in each as the plot plays out, but the books resolve more like chapters of a larger book and don't stand alone. Think LOTR, not Harry Potter. You're taking a breather from the action, not tying things up while setting up a sequel).

Anyway, on with the review. The stories were all very engaging. I found myself eager to keep reading and very eager to pick up the next volume. Quinn did a really good job of drawing you into the POV characters' back stories and how they played into the main plot without it feeling superfluous. I cared about them and the glimpses into their lives outside the core events but it wasn't too much that it felt like a distraction. It was also a really good way to do the world building of showing us how society has changed without just being a wikipedia page about chosen families or the pandemics or whatever.

While these characters were good and engaging, I did find myself wanting to hear a bit of perspective from the less privileged living in this world. Because of how the plot plays out, most of the people you meet and follow are in positions of power or at least stability and education. The world of Nothing is Promised is chock full of climate refugees and others who probably have very interesting stories to tell, even if they weren't drivers of the primary action. There's a brief glimpse of some folks who live in rural Nigeria and I think it might have been nice to check in with them and others in similar situations as events play out. Most of it wouldn't touch them directly, but hearing how the high-level machinations and politics of the main story trickle down or drift in and out of their awareness would have added some richness.

My only other complaint with the series was the big heists that drove the plot forward. It strikes me that both the spoils from those events as well the consequences on the lead characters could have arisen without the trope of assembling a crack team that happens to tap the convenience of a close-at-hand master hacker, a master robotics engineer, and all the other experts you need to pull off the implausible.

These gripes are minor and I'd recommend the series without hesitation. I think it's telling that what I wanted was more depth into more characters or more of the problem-solving by out-witting and exploiting hubris that made the rest of the books so good.

I think solarpunk is a very important genre as we move into a world dominated by the effects of climate change and late stage capitalism. We're used to the dystopias and post-collapse stories that all seem to cover picking up the pieces of broken civilizations. Those stories can tell us how we can rebuild and there's value in that, but what's missing from so much of that is how to face the destabilizing forces and what we might be able to do to prevent the collapse. Stories like Nothing is Promised give us a way to look at the abuses of power and see paths to fight back so that when we see parallels in the here and now we can be inspired to do something about them.

Let's keep embracing this type of book and this type of author to tell stories of hope and positive social change so we have front-of-mind the ideas of what we can actually accomplish and how to do it.

When You Had Power was just the first book in @susankayequinn@wandering.shop ‘s series Nothing is Promised and the novels are clearly meant to be read together so I can’t really comment on the story as a whole but only first impressions. With that said, I enjoyed what I’ve read so far. The world Quinn describes is intriguing and I’m excited to learn more about it in coming books.

I also enjoyed the characters even though I don’t feel like I know any of them very well yet. The book is short and leaves you wanting to get to know the people better and I’m looking forward to going a little deeper in the rest of the series. What you do see, however, is some interesting insight into the effects of multiple pandemics and displacement and what that does to a person’s sense of home and family. It’s only lightly explored in most near-future fiction and I really appreciated Quinn’s thoughts on the topic.

All-in-all I’d recommend When You Had Power as a good, easy read but make sure you’ve got the rest of the series ready because you’ll want to dive right in. I either need to wait for the next books to arrive or try to figure out where I left my Kindle.

I think it makes sense to review Parable of the Talents along side Parable of the Sower, especially since Butler says she originally intended them as a single book.

That said, I really enjoyed these. I really think that women authors are far better equipped to write certain genres and topics. One of those is the horrors of life in a dystopian world. The key thing is that they seem better equipped to discuss the trauma and emotional impact of violence without fetishizing it. It makes everything flow better and focuses on the right things.

These books were very engaging and I found myself quickly engrossed. The journal style was reminiscent of The Martian and it makes me wonder if there’s something about that format that I’m drawn to. My only complaint with it is that I often found myself flipping back to find out how much time had passed between entries as I read.

I found a lot of her commentary on society and social movements depressingly prophetic and I think that makes this an important set of books for the current moment. I do wish Butler had had a chance to continue this story before she died because in some ways it left me unsatisfied and like certain things were pending. That said, it’s can be refreshing to face that realism because things don’t always get wrapped up with a nice little bow.

I don’t know that it makes sense to recommend these books from the perspective of whether I liked them. I did. I thought they were amazing. But my feeling on it doesn’t really mean anything because I think these books stand on their own so very independent of me. It’s almost like they weren’t written for the reader, but for the author. That may just be an effect of reading fiction presented as someone’s personal journal, but either way I really appreciated getting to know the author through it.