Microreview [video game]: RAGE 2 by Avalanche Studios and id Software (developers)

No One Asked For This

 
I’m terribly disappointed in RAGE 2 so before I go on and on about why I think it sucks, here’s what I liked, in bullet point form:

• Enemy heads have a huge hitbox and pop in a satisfying manner
• The ground punch attack feels great
• It looks good and there’s no loading once you’re in the world
• The cars sound meaty
• Exploring the world can be fun even if a lot of the map markers are just boring “kill everything” activities

The game starts off okay, with The Authority (the primary antagonist in RAGE) razing your fledgling community. After this tutorial (and honestly, who needs a tutorial in a FPS anymore?), you’re given a car and an open map and set to work. The work is meeting three characters that will help you overthrow The Authority. You gain their support by completing open world activities.

Minus the grinding to build support, the game is more or less just 7 story missions. It’s amazing how short the story is. There was just so little in the narrative to keep me interested. The open world activities are mostly just “kill everything”. There’s one ally whose support is gained through search and recovery missions, which I found to be not only the most interesting but the most rewarding. There are arks scattered across the world, where the game dispenses either a new weapon or a new ability. Since they’re so rewarding, they’re well worth searching out and they build your support with one ally. I finished the game with that ally’s support maxed out and all the others only half full because their missions are just slogs through enemy nests that give you resources to buy things. 

The problem with dispensing abilities and weapons through open world activities is that if you never find that ark, you miss out on something that makes the game more fun. When I finished, the map revealed the rest of the arks I hadn’t found and I finished the game without three weapons and two abilities. Considering I found use for almost every weapon and ability I did have, it’s baffling that the game was perfectly happy with letting me finish it and not give me the tools to make the game more enjoyable. I specifically sought out arks because they give gameplay-affecting tools, but I guess that was my bad because I could’ve finished it with just a pistol, an assault rifle, and a shotgun. I’m really curious what the bare minimum of this game you have to play before hitting the credits.

Beyond taking away the things that make the game fun and hiding them on an enormous open world map, the travel between points was worse than boring, it’s a waste of time. Driving from one area to another in an open world wasteland should be more dangerous, but I was rarely attacked, and everything that attacked me was easily shrugged off or ran away from. At one point I unlocked a flying motorcycle that just hovered high enough above the ground to make all ground obstacles pointless and I couldn’t be attacked, so I was making straight line flights from one point to another. I may as well have had fast travel.

So most missions are a grind, exploring isn’t necessary, and travel is a waste of time, but how’s the shooting? It’s okay. Nothing has the id Software signature feel to it. Enemies are mostly bullet sponges unless you aim for the head, which is comically easy to hit. It’s like bullets are magnetically attracted to their skulls. I found that most fights boiled down to whether I shoot them in the head at a distance with the assault rifle, or run up to shotgun them in the torso. I had a rocket launcher that was useful for big enemies, and a pistol that shot rounds that would catch on fire that I didn’t find particularly useful, but, again, I didn’t find three of the weapons in this game. Maybe they were super cool. I’ll never know!

The worst part of RAGE 2, the unforgivable part of it, is the bugs. Holy hell. One location never flagged as 100% complete because I opened a chest, died, and the chest remained opened but the counter locked it at unopened. There were a handful of times when the game just hard locked. Once the game crashed my OS. One time I beat a boss but died at the same time. It played the “you beat the boss” cutscene, but I came back dead and had to quit to restart it.

I didn’t think RAGE would ever get a sequel, and I question what this is doing for anyone. The original wasn’t a great game by any stretch but it was better than this one in almost every measure. There’s a lot more to do in RAGE 2 and the open world aspect might appeal to some people, where RAGE was more of linear game, but more to do isn’t a benefit when what you’re doing isn’t fun to begin with.

The Math

Baseline Assessment: 6/10

Bonuses: +1 the bullet pointed list adds up to one bonus point

Penalties: -1 baffling weapon/ability scavenger hunt, -1 grinding for rep is the bulk of the game, -1 BUGS

Nerd Coefficient: 4/10 (not very good)

***





Reference: Avalanche Studios and id Software. RAGE 2 (Bethesda Softworks, 2019)

POSTED BY: brian, sci-fi/fantasy/video game dork and contributor since 2014

6 Books with Alexandra Rowland

Alexandra Rowland is the author of A CONSPIRACY OF TRUTHS (2018) and A CHOIR OF LIES (forthcoming, September 2019) and, occasionally, a bespoke seamstress under the stern supervision of their feline quality control manager. They hold a degree in world literature, mythology, and folklore from Truman State University, and they host two podcasts, Be the Serpent and Worldbuilding for Masochists. Find them at www.alexandrarowland.net, and on Twitter and Patreon as @_alexrowland.

Todsy they share their Six Books with us...

1. What book are you currently reading? 
Oh man, so much of my TBR pile these days is taken up with homework for my podcast! Right now I'm reading one of the fanfics that we're planning on talking about on an upcoming episode (can't tell you which one, no spoilers! ;D), and I'm making my way very slowly through a book of the collected poems of Pablo Neruda, which are of course unspeakably beautiful. Next up on my list is a nonfiction book, Uncommon Grounds: The History of Coffee and How It Transformed Our World by Mark Pendergrast and This is How You Lose the Time War, by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone.

2. What upcoming book are you really excited about?
The Unspoken Name by AK Larkwood, which comes out next year! It has a super fascinating female main character who starts out as the sacrificial bride of a creepy death god -- I'm only a couple chapters into it, but the descriptions are lush and vibrant, and I'm already really invested in the characters. I've heard it gets super queer :D

3. Is there a book you’re currently itching to re-read?
Good Omens. The miniseries gave me buckets and buckets of nostalgia, and the fandom has really exploded into a Renaissance. The book itself was super formative for me when I was about fifteen, and I really want to revisit it. My copy is battered and dog-eared and very very well-loved, and 15-year-old-me left a couple nearly-faded margin notes in pencil that are now totally indecipherable because I was trying to be as gentle with the book as possible, and that meant extreme brevity. (Self, why did you feel compelled to write merely "!!" beside that paragraph? What was going on in your head??? You could have said more!)

4. How about a book you’ve changed your mind about – either positively or negatively?
I first read The Lost Years of Merlin (TA Barron) when I was about fourteen and I adored it. I tried rereading it again when I was about twenty and was enormously dismayed to find out that it wasn't nearly as good as I remembered. I try not to think about the reread--I want to remember it as that great book from my childhood!

5. What’s one book, which you read as a child or a young adult, that has had a lasting influence on your writing?
Oooh, I don't know if I can pick just one! No matter what, the first and best influence has to be by Diana Wynne Jones. I get a lot of my sensibilities about voice and character from her -- all her secondary characters kind of have their own thing going on, their own complex inner lives, and that's something I think makes a book really rich and interesting. (And, an easter egg: the Chants in my books are named after Christopher Chant from her Chrestomanci series!)

I began reading Terry Pratchett when I was about fifteen (after Good Omens introduced me to his work, as mentioned above) and from him I got philosophy and a good hard look at The Way Humans Are, and an idea of how you can write about both those things in a really forthright way. Pratchett put the idea into my head that characters--even protagonists--can be deeply flawed humans, not always kind, not always brave, not always smart, and that none of those things matter as long as you plant your feet firmly on the side of Doing Good and refuse to budge.

6. And speaking of that, what’s your latest book, and why is it awesome? 
WELL. Speaking of characters, voice, philosophy, and doing good, let me tell you about my upcoming book, A Choir of Lies! :D Choir is the sequel-but-you-can-read-them-in-either-order to my debut novel from last year, A Conspiracy of Truths. Conspiracy was a fantasy novel about fake news and the destructive power of stories; Choir is about fantasy tulip mania and the constructive, healing power of stories. It's about trauma and grief and recovery, and it's extremely queer.

Three years ago, Ylfing watched his master-Chant tear a nation apart with nothing but the words on his tongue. Now he's all alone somewhere new, brokenhearted and grieving, but a Chant in his own right. He finds employment as a translator to Sterre de Waeyer, a wealthy merchant of luxury goods, while he struggles to come to terms with what his master did, with the audiences he's been alienated from, and with the stories he can no longer trust himself to tell.

That is, until Ylfing's employer finds out what he is, what he does, and what he knows. At Sterre's command, he begins telling stories once more, fanning the city into a mania for a few shipments of an exotic flower. The prices skyrocket, but when disaster looms—a disaster that only the two of them recognize—Ylfing has to face what he has done and decide who he wants to be: A man who walks away and lets the city shatter, as his master did? Or... something else?

A story can be powerful enough to bring a nation to its knees, certainly. But in the right hands, a story can rebuild a broken dam, keep the floodwaters back, and save a life—or ten thousand lives.

Thursday Morning Superhero

Kids are starting to go back to school and my first assignment is to read The Boyz.  I learned that the first four volumes are on ComiXology Unlimited and are also currently on sale on ComiXology for around a dollar an issue. Hopefully I can plow through the books and start binging the series on Amazon by Sunday.

Pick of the Week:
Gideon Falls #16 - Andrea Sorrentino produces some of the most stunning two-page spreads that really immerse you in this creepy and surreal universe that he created with Jeff Lemire. The ending of this issue sets the scene for a showdown that is likely going to leave a lot of people changed. We learn a big secret about Norton Sinclair that has me asking more questions. It turns out that his real name is Daniel and he was taken from his family to Gideon Falls when he was only nine. His dad also investigated the existence of the Black Barn and it is going to see the two of them shed some light on what happened back in the day. This book, from the colors by Dave Stewart, letters by Steve Wands, art from Sorrentino, and story from Lemire is truly a masterpiece and a book that I need to re-read with the most recent development. I always have more questions than answers, but it is a good thing that drives my interest in this series.

The Rest:
Silver Surfer: The Prodigal Sun #1 - Prah'd'gul recalls the story of what caused his exile many years ago. He is a character that reminds me a lot of Star Lord, as he is brash and has powers beyond what you would expect. We learn about an encounter he had with Silver Surfer and Galactus that didn't go as he planned. Surfer hinted that his father was someone other than himself, before besting him and sending him to a different planet to allow Galactus to feast on the world he just landed on. Vowing revenge, Prah'd'gul is saved from his exile by Surfer and is seeking revenge on his brother with the help of Surfer. I have not read a lot of Surfer books in my day, but this was one of the more entertaining I have read.

Star Wars: Target Vader #2 - Since we are in the middle of back to school season this title evokes a much different feeling in my brain.  I have thoughts of tax free weekends, rows of folders, and a savings of 5% with a Red Card.  In this series, the Hidden Hand has put out a hit on Vader and he is well within his power to put an end to it. Beliert Valance, a cyborg, is heading up the team against Vader and he is almost as insane as Vader himself and has no concerns with the collateral damage that occurs when you draw Vader out from the shadows. This has been an entertaining side story, but I am starting to feel that Marvel is watering down the watch Vader kill people who are trying to kill him.



POSTED BY MIKE N. aka Victor Domashev -- comic guy, proudly raising nerdy kids, and Nerds of a Feather contributor since 2012.

The Dragon Prince Re-Read

One of the most formative reading experiences I had as a teenager was my discovery and devouring of Melanie Rawn's Dragon Prince. I had favorite novels before Dragon Prince and I certainly have had favorites since, but Dragon Prince has maintained a preeminent place in my imagination and in my heart and my love and appreciation for these novels have not waned. This has been so much the case that when Netflix developed a show titled The Dragon Prince, I was confused that it wasn't based on Melanie Rawn's novels but rather a new series from the creators of Avatar: The Last Airbender. Now that I've seen both seasons of the Netflix show, I'm still somewhat confused and surprised every time that this isn't a show about Rohan and Sioned and Roelstra and because of that, I wanted to revisit Melanie Rawn's novels.

This re-read is perhaps somewhat unique in other re-reads I have done in that when it is complete it will have taken place over a period of ten years. The first four essays here are adapted from previously published essays that I began writing in 2010 and chipped away at over the years. The adaptation is something that may otherwise have been invisible to readers here, but it is worthwhile to be up front about. The foundational essay for this series can be found here.

When I began re-reading Dragon Prince and writing about the series, I wondered if the novel would hold up to the esteem time and memory have given it. I wondered if I would still be inclined to read the other five novels set in this world.

The short answer is yes.

Oh, and the cover art? That cover is the reason I pay attention to cover art and who the artist is. Michael Whelan’s cover is striking and it made the younger me take notice of his work. I also remember Whelan’s work with Meat Loaf’s Bat Out of Hell II album. They are inextricably linked in my memory. This is the iconic fantasy cover of my history.

One thing to note: there is an excellent chance of spoilers in the below conversation. This is my re-read and not whatever I might consider to be a “proper” review. If you are looking to avoid being spoiled for certain events of the novel AND the series (though I’ll try to limit series spoilers on a per novel basis), please just know that I think Dragon Price is a fantastic novel and that it remains one of my favorites of the genre, and that you should probably go read it now.

So. Shall we?

Melanie Rawn is not a writer afraid to do terrible things to her characters; her heroes in particular. Let’s just get this out of the way from the start: bad things happen to the characters we care about, and sometimes they do bad things themselves. Dragon Prince opens with concepts of black and white and gradually shades greyer and greyer as the novel progresses. It isn’t so much that the concepts of “Right” and “Wrong” are in question, but that the question of whether it is sometimes necessary to do what is wrong to accomplish a greater good arises. This is made stark late in the novel when, despite all of his dreams and visions for a better future, Rohan is confronted with his capacity for barbarism while still holding to a dream of a more civilized world.

Much of Dragon Prince is a political dance as, through the first half of the novel, Rohan plays the simpleton to gain concessions from the High Prince Roelstra and cleverly builds advantage for the Desert.

Roelstra, it must be said, is one of the great villains of fantasy literature. His primary concern is power, whether it is exercising it over vassals, coercing others, or acquiring more by devious means, Roelstra is about power and he is not a benevolent ruler. This puts Roelstra in stark contrast with Rohan. Rohan wishes to build peace by law and ultimately change the political power structure of the land, but every step Rohan needs to make he knows that Roelstra will oppose.

This conflict is one of the two primary conflicts of the novel. The second is Rohan’s internal conflict of his desire to be a good man and his growing realization of what he will do to make his world a better place.

One of the more impressive aspects of the novel, besides the parts in between the front and back covers, is the magic system Melanie Rawn developed here. Now, I am not normally one to talk about magic and how it works and how it plays into the novel, but this is fairly inventive. It isn’t called “magic”, but the people with special talents are called Sunrunners. They are able to weave part of their consciousness on the sunlight, communicate over long distances, and use the light of the sun in a variety of other ways. The faradhi are specially trained emissaries to each Princedom and work and serve all over the continent. They report back to Lady Andrade at the Goddess Keep, and with a network of faradhi who can communicate by sunlight, Andrade attempts to manipulate Princes and protect her people and her family.

Dragon Prince is a very strong, powerful, and thrilling debut novel from Melanie Rawn. There is battle, but the beauty of Dragon Prince is in the political scheming at the Rialla and in the goals of Prince Rohan. Power and how it is used is a central concept to Dragon Prince and Melanie Rawn explores it well. This should be considered a must read novel for all fans of fantasy.

One final thing to note is that the trade paper edition of Dragon Prince seems to have done away with the genealogies and extra information I remember fondly from the mass market edition of my youth. I mourn the loss.


POSTED BY: Joe Sherry - Co-editor of Nerds of a Feather, 3x Hugo Award Finalist for Best Fanzine. Minnesotan.

Microreview [book]: The Heart of the Circle by Keren Landsman, translated by Daniella Zamir

Emotionally driven queer romance set against a backdrop of magically-driven political unrest in alternate Tel Aviv

Cover design by Francesca Corsini

The Heart of the Circle, by Keren Landsman, was originally published in Hebrew last year, but this month it's coming out in an English translation from Angry Robot. Finding english-language urban fantasy that takes place outside of American or British locales is pretty unusual, and with its promise of an unusual social role for magic coupled with the Tel Aviv setting, this was a book I was intrigued to pick up.

The main character, Reed is an empath, also known as a "moody": a type of sorcerer living in a world where magic powers are regularly manifested but treated with different levels of discrimination. Living in Tel Aviv, in a society that's apparently known for being more tolerant of sorcerers while still forcing segregation and exclusion on most aspects of their lives, he's torn between the increasing political unrest affecting the city, and wanting to live his life along with his (mostly sorcerous) friends and ("normie") family. Tension in the city is ramping up as sorcerers become the target of murders by the Sons of Simeon, an extremist group, and Reed becomes increasingly embroiled in their plot. Complicating the whole thing are the presence of "damuses" - seers - on both sides, with the Sons of Simeon attempting to manipulate the streams of his future and force him into sacrificing himself and the movement for the sake of his friends. Living with all this, and trying to care for his damus best friend Daphne, would be hard enough if Reed's ex hadn't shown up with an attractive single "moody" ex of his own in tow, who comes with his own extensive baggage about the treatment of sorcerers in this world's equivalent of the USA, and misgivings about starting a relationship with a doomed man.

It's that romance between Reed and Lee which forms front and centre of the plot of The Heart of the Circle, and if the fact that its a doomed relationship between two empaths didn't clue you in, let me explicitly note that there are quite a lot of feelings involved from start to finish. There's the trauma of long-term oppression and their short term situation; complex webs of guilt around their respective powers and, in Lee's case, socialisation around not sharing emotions in general; pre-emptive grief over the Reed's impending doom and the predictions about what it will do to Lee's own life; and obviously all the giddy romantic stuff you could ever possibly want. Because Reed and Lee can feel each other's feelings - and Reed can directly manipulate emotions in others, although this comes with its own taboos - everything gets amplified and dissected and the emotional impact of their situation is generally at the very core of everyone's response. It makes for difficult, slow reading at points, particularly towards the end, but it also feels like an interesting take on its subject matter, placing the character's emotional arcs front and centre while still maintaining the fantasy aspects as a core part of the experience.


Because its told through a narrator who is completely wrapped up his own feelings and direct situation, worldbuilding is delivered in a way that's often painfully subtle. Offhand remarks, meaningless to the characters, clue us in to the existence of a "Confederacy" in North America, or the craters across the entirety of Europe, or the fact that sorcerer's can't vote in Israel despite its reputation as a "safe" city for them - which show how commonplace they are to him, while coming as a complete surprise and shakeup to a reader in our world. The general effect is of a world that's even more wartorn, unstable and unequal than our own, but it's deliberately left in the background, brought up by a character who doesn't find these elements particularly remarkable. The lack of focus on areas of worldbuilding which are commonplace to Reed but novel to the audience also stretches to the magic of this world, which is split into elemental sorcerers (not super explored but in control of air, water, fire and earth respectively) and psychic empaths and seers. Psychics in particular seem to have a lot of weapons at their disposal for altering reality and there's some fairly complex scenes where powers end up weaponised either for practice or in a real life-and-death scenario. Although Reed and Lee's different backgrounds allow for some time exploring different talents and introducing some of the verbal and gestural slang used by the sorcerer community, the mechanics of a lot of what they do is left deliberately vague. Of cousre, there's a sense that this is true for the characters as well as the audience: the use and development of magic powers has been greatly constrained by society's prejudice and fear, so while Reed can hone his abilities to project emotions onto the printed word, there's clearly a great deal of untapped potential which sorcerers are unable to openly share despite the support mechanisms in their communities.

Reed and Lee's romantic relationship is backed up with a nuanced though occasionally uneven group of characters forming that wider community, including said awkward ex Blaze, his new girlfriend River, and a group of younger sorcerers who Reed volunteers as a mentor for, as well as more distant Providing a counterweight to much of the group is Reed's non sorcerous brother Matthew and Sherry, a police officer he's (possibly) in the early stages of dating, and who happens to be a "pebble" or earth sorcerer. Both offer a link to the more "mainstream" - Matthew because of his status as a "normie", Sherry because she has successfully broken in to a more mainstream job despite being a sorcerer - and the book does a reasonable job of showing, almost entirely through sympathetic characters like Matthew and Reed's colleague Daniel, why the prejudice and fear against sorcerers exist in the first place.

Treating magic as a stand-in for other marginalisations is not a politically neutral act, and I suspect The Heart of the Circle is going to raise some eyebrows in translation over its treatment of segregation (introduced in the form of bus seats, which to an English speaking audience is about as real-world-US-South-racism-coded as it gets) in a narrative which otherwise doesn't have anything to say about race. Some sorcerers share talents with their family members, but others, like Reed, have "normies" for relatives and are even more reliant on the "found family" of the sorcerer community. There's no stigma attached to Reed an Lee's same-sex relationship either, meaning that the fantasy angle is carrying the full weight of the oppression storylines here - not to mention the religious discrimination angle which the Sons of Simeon bring to the table. To unpick what this means would go beyond the scope of this review, but it's a narrative choice I feel many readers might want a heads up on beforehand. Of course, as a translated work, The Heart of the Circle was not written with English-speaking readers or context in mind, and that's very much worth noting too.

Ultimately, I don't know that I enjoyed reading The Heart of the Circle. It's a hard story, and fraught romantic feelings tend not to be my personal jam. That said, it's a book that's absolutely stayed with me afterwards in its portrayal of everyday life under oppression and trauma. As a reader, what you take out of The Heart of the Circle is going to very much depend on the extent to which you care about the things Reed cares about - his romantic life, his close friends and family, taking care of himself in an oppressive society that has wrung him out while still being invested and trying to help with the future of the next generation. Despite his absorption in his own life and future, its hard not to sympathise with his position and that of the wider community, and it makes for an intriguing, emotionally-driven fantasy of the kind I'd like to see more of.

The Math

Baseline Assessment: 8/10

Bonuses: +1 Effortless creation of an alternate, urban fantasy Tel Aviv

Penalties: -1 Feelings on feelings on feelings can get a bit much; -1 Some of the secondary characters deserved more

Nerd Coefficient: 7/10

POSTED BY: Adri is a semi-aquatic migratory mammal most often found in the UK. She has many opinions about SFF books, and is also partial to gaming, baking, interacting with dogs, and Asian-style karaoke. Find her on Twitter at @adrijjy.

Reference: Landsman, Keren tr. Daniella Zamir. The Heart of the Circle [Angry Robot, 2019]

Second Opinion: The Quantum Magician by Derek Kunsken

Derek Künsken’s The Quantum Magician is a highly entertaining far future heist novel with excellent worldbuilding and character voices that make for an entertaining read.

It’s the 25th century and Humanity has spread out to the stars. Thanks to some often highly suspect genetic experiments, Homo sapiens is not the only branch of humanity extant. One branch, the Homo Quantus, has an ability to process information and see things on a quantum level, which makes them fascinated with the search for knowledge and unlocking information. Belisarius, or Bel as he usually is referenced throughout the novel, is atypical for a Homo Quantus. For him, an ivory tower life of research is not suited to him. No, he’d rather be pulling off cons, and he has a whopper of a one involving a fleet, a fantastic space drive, several others of the branches of humanity, and of course a plan within a plan for his heist.

This is the story of Derek Künsken’s The Quantum Magician.

The novel’s strength lies strongly with the world that the author presents. It’s a world very much in the model of novels like the works of Hannu Rajaniemi, there is a high density of new concepts, worlds, polities, future history, technologies and ideas packed in a relatively slim novel. There is a very international feel to humanity in the 25th century that isn’t just “America in space” that a lot of authors  fall into the trap of. Francophone polities feature strongly in the novel, for instance, and there is a multilingual feel to the depicted future that I really appreciated and really liked.

The author also does a great job with the con artist himself, Bel. Making him an atypical, and sometimes labeled as a “failed” Homo Quantus means we get the best of both worlds, especiallty once Bel gets another Homo Quantus on his team. We see what a Homo Quantus should be like, and how Bel stretches as a rope between baseline humans, and the more typical members of his species. He comes across as a mostly very human character, but with his occasional descents into a fugue state, shows just how far along a new evolutionary path that he has gone. This is also true of the other human species we see, the Homo eridanus, who live in cold, pressurized environments, and the Puppets, small bodied humanoids who have been genetically engineered to worship a particular group of humans. Kunsken takes this extremely touchy and prickly idea and looks at it from an ethical point of view in a nuanced and thoughtful way.

The heist itself is best described in general and vague terms,especially the heist within the heist. Bel is approached with being asked for help in moving a fleet of advanced warships through a tightly controlled wormhole. Bel’s payoff for this would be a ship outfitted with the groundbreaking space drive that the fleet itself has. Such a craft would be worth millions, even split with a team. The author gives us a cross section of humanity in the 25th century with Bel’s team: An enthusiastic explosives expert. The aforementioned second Homo Quantus. A sweary Homo eridanus. A Puppet, and a descendant of the humans who created the Puppets (the territory that the fleet must move through is controlled by the Puppets, making them the “inside men” of the operation). An artificial intelligence of a very idiosyncratic sort.

And Bel has a plan within a plan for this gathered team to gain something even more out of the situation. And as you might expect, this being a heist novel, once the heist gets going, things do not always go smooth, and not always falling to Bel’s backup plans. Improvisation and a bit of scrambling to salvage a bad situation is a feature of even the most perfectly executed heist, and the Quantum Magician leverages that for excellent plotting.

I consumed the book in audio format, narrated by T Ryder Smith. I think he did a fantastic job as a narrator. He ably captured the different characters with distinct intonations, cadences and expressions of modulation. In some cases, like Stills, I can’t imagine how I could mentally improve on reading the Homo Eridanus’ dialogue in my mind much better than how Smith as a narrator brings him to life. The other characters, too, really are rewarded by the narrator’s audio work.  The complex jargon and ideas come across well, and I was consistently entertained throughout.

My major criticism of the novel is something that a lot of SF heist novels share and that is the need for a long ramp up before the actual heist can get itself up and running. How the author manages to show us how the team is put together and why we should care about them even as we don’t know much about the other team members takes a very deft touch. In a couple of cases, the author manages to bring us into the character’s world and personality rather quickly, but for a couple of the members of the team, they just don’t quite leap off the page. This does hurt the novel in the second half, as the heist proceeds, since it means there is a bit of unevenness in how I was invested in the various parts. of the team and the scheme.

Overall, however, The Quantum Magician is a promising debut, and it appears to be the first in a series, with The Quantum Garden coming in October. Based on this first novel. I would be happy to read it. I would be happier still to listen to it, should T Ryder Smith provide the narration again in an audio format.

***
The Math
Baseline Assessment 6/10

Bonuses : +1 for an intriguing and interesting future world. +1 for the goodness of a heist chassis for the SF novel.

Penalties : -1 for a few of the heist members and their subplots being less well imagined and presented than others.

Nerd Coefficient: 7/10. an enjoyable experience, but not without its flaws

Adri's Math: 5/10

***
Reference:  Künsken, Derek: The Quiantum Magician  [Solaris, 2018]

POSTED BY: Paul Weimer. Ubiquitous in Shadow, but I’m just this guy, you know? @princejvstin.

Microreview [book]: The Queen of Crows, by Myke Cole

Queen of Crows is an entirely successful sequel to The Armored Saint which develops both the world and compelling central character at the heart of Cole’s dark medieval mecha universe.

---

In Myke Cole’s The Armored Saint, he introduced Heloise, a  young woman in a medieval fantasy setting who strikes a blow against tyranny by taking control of a war machine, a medieval, magical mecha. Fighting both a devil and the oppressive government that put her on the path of resistance, Heloise, at great physical and personal costs, struck a blow for freedom for her and for the people of her village.

In Queen of Crows, author Myke Cole explores the burning question: Now what? A blow for freedom has been struck, yes, but the Sacred Throne, and in particular, the Inquisition-like Order is not going to take this lying down. Heloise may well be a saintly figure, possibly even a holy  Palatinate, but her actions are not an unalloyed good. The Empire will, indeed, Strike Back, and it is only a question of time before overwhelming force is brought to bear on Heloise and the people she has sworn to protect. This leads to Heloise and her people going on the road, meeting others who have not done well under the Empire’s tyranny, and asking hard questions about oppression, revolt, tyranny, resistance, prejudice, and at the same time providing solid medieval fantastic action.

The novella’s heart is when it is engaging those hard questions. Cole introduces the Kipti, The Traveling People, a group of people very much like medieval Romany, and uses them to probe and ponder questions of prejudice, fear, freedom and tyranny. It won’t be a surprise and not much of a spoiler to reveal that Heloise’s goals and actions do align with the Kipti, but it’s not a simple matter of the Kipti giving up their own identity and becoming subsumed by Heloise. Instead, we get to see a side of the Empire from the position of the truly oppressed, showing that even with Heloise’s rebellion aside, even given the disgruntlement on far flung portions of the Empire, there are plenty of people, often ignored when not actively despised, who suffer under the tyranny of the Empire, here and now. The costs of tyranny and the costs of acting against it openly versus just shouldering the burden and getting along are deeply explored, and the Kipti are a major part of the exploration of those questions in the novel.

The novella’s soul, though is when it is engaging in its action beats. Cole has cut his teeth on military fantasy and military matters in general, and his set piece encounters are excellent. The highlight of the book is an  extended multichapter sequence where Heloise and her villagers are confined within a walled town that they have captured. The Empire’s forces have caught them there, and the manpower to mount a strong defense, even with Heloise and her war machine, is dangerously weak. It is another example of engaging in those hard questions, but also gives us the action beats that Cole’s work is known for. The novella could be sumed up as “Come for the action with a medieval mecha, stay for the exploration of social questions that elevate the novel from a straight up medieval fantasy action into something that speaks to our time and situation.

The novella, like its predecessor is dark and perhaps even more so. The title, The Queen of Crows, is very well earned indeed (and possibly meant to evoke GRRM's A Feast for Crows). The costs of war, physically, emotionally, socially are not shirked from. This is not grimdark in the sense that there are morally grey characters and there is really no one to root for. As flawed as she is, Heloise tries to work for the side of right and light. But her journey is not a light read, and the subjects that the novella engages in and the world that Cole builds is not a pleasant one. It’s realistically so--this is not a “dirt covered peasants” sort of nonsense, but the realities of a medieval land at war are depicted and even in a fantasy medieval world, they are rather unpleasant, and some readers may understandably want to shy away from it.

The Queen of Crows is about 20% longer than The Armored Saint, and I found that extra wordcount was put to good use. The Armored Saint was almost a bit too brisk and short for its own good for what it was trying to do. The Queen of Crows’ extra wordcount allows the writer, I feel, to explore these questions, build a world, explore Heloise and her role and place, and still hit those action beats. In that way, I think it is better than its predecessor. Bring on The Killing Light! I am very eager to see how Cole resolves the conflicts, external and internal, physical, emotional and diplomatic that make The Sacred Throne Trilogy

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The Math
Baseline Assessment 7/10

Bonuses : +1 for deep exploration of social questions, lifting a medieval fantasy action novella into a work that speaks to our times.

Penalties : -1 for maybe being a bit too dark. Realistically so, but even so, the author’s ruthlessness is perhaps not for all readers.

Nerd Coefficient: 8/10. Well worth your time and attention

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Reference:  Cole, Myke: The Queen of Crows [Tor Dot Com Publishing, 2018]

POSTED BY: Paul Weimer. Ubiquitous in Shadow, but I’m just this guy, you know? @princejvstin.