Microreview [book]: Truth of the Divine by Lindsay Ellis

Trauma For the People

Reviewer's note: As usual, it is difficult to review the second book in a series without revealing sensitive details of the first book. Therefore, this review will not avoid spoilers for Axiom's End. If, for some reason, you wish to avoid spoilers for that book but still want to read a review for this book, here is your spoiler free review: Going beyond "what if aliens came to Earth?", Truth asks the question "are aliens people?" Answers are given, and so is some solid character development, but with a plot that's a little less clear than Axiom's. 7/10

Following shortly after the events of Axiom's End, Truth of the Divine has to grapple with different questions. Now that aliens are on Earth, do they have rights? Do aliens have the same rights as human beings? But it also has to deal with more personal questions. After being ripped apart by Obelus and stitched back together by Ampersand, how does Cora cope with that trauma? What does being bonded to an alien mean? Some of these questions get thorough explanation and others do not, but the end result is a better book than the first.

My chief complaint with Axiom's End was that Cora did not get near as much character development as Ampersand, and Ampersand, through his many lies and manipulations, was not a likeable protagonist. Truth delivers on building up Cora, and new secondary protagonist Kaveh to a lesser degree. Instead of just being a walking camera for the reader's POV, Cora grows from simply existing to having a purpose. Kaveh, introduced with a purpose, grows in what motivates him. The aliens fair a little worse off. Truth quickly sets aside most of them to put a laser focus on two. The "dynamic fusion bond" we learned about in Axiom's is explored in more detail here, and relationships between aliens and humans are central to this plot. 

The plot, however, is where Truth suffers in contrast to Axiom's. It is never quite clear which way we are going and then ends without resolving many conflicts it put into focus throughout the rest of the novel. We start with the questions about the legal rights of aliens, Truth explores those questions in detail, but we do not quite get to any resolution. While exploring this central topic, Truth introduces some side threads that likewise go unresolved, until one of them becomes the dramatic climax. It was good to see it close the loop, but it was not the loop I expected to see end with this novel.

Truth of the Divine is a better book than Axiom's End, but it is an exchange of qualities. We get better characters and a less satisfying plot. Still, I found myself glued to it for the duration. It may be the curse of the middle volume, but it makes me look forward to the conclusion in a way that I was not quite bought into after Axiom's End.

The Math

Baseline Assessment: 7/10

Bonuses: +1 we get to see Cora happy and sad

Penalties: -1 not a twisty plot, just a slightly muddy one

 

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

***

POSTED BY: brian - bound in human flesh, filled with human blood

Reference: Ellis, Lindsay. Truth of the Divine [St. Martin's Press, 2021]

Nanoreviews: Axiom's End, Angel of the Overpass, Murder by Other Means

Ellis, Lindsday. Axiom's End [St. Martin's Press]

It's interesting (to me) how a reader can know absolutely nothing about a book and avoid any sort of plot description and still be so very wrong about what the book is. It's a remarkable skill. With that said - Axiom's End deals with the idea that the United States has, in fact, made First Contact with an extraterrestial and, naturally, has covered it up. Nils Ortega is part of a group attempting to expose the government's lies and, it seems, gain as much publicity in the process. - but this isn't the story of Nils. This is the story of his daughter, Cora, who wants absolutely nothing to do with Nils, government conspiracies, and the unwanted attention it has brought to her life. Unfortunately for her, the truth about the cover up gets closer to her life than she wanted and she's in the middle of more conspiracy and truth about aliens than she ever would have imagined.

Despite featuring aliens and mind control and massive government conspiracies, Axiom's End is a fairly grounded novel because it's relatively tight to Cora's perspective and the reluctant hero works well here. One odd aspect to Axiom's End is that it's not set five minutes in the future, it's set five minutes in the past. Axiom's End is set in 2007, so during the second Bush administration. In some ways, it works better than actively being set during the Obama or Trump years or than making up a fictitious president. In other ways, it's just weird. The Bush / Cheney / Rumsfeld of it all feels like a different America and makes Axiom's End more dated than perhaps it should - though I do wonder what reading this in another ten years would be like. Either way, it's a solid science fiction novel. 
Score: 6/10

McGuire, Seanan. Angel of the Overpass [DAW]

Angel of the Overpass is the third of the Ghost Roads novels focusing on Rose Marshall, a ghost with a very full afterlife. The nature of her death (being hit and killed on the side of the road on the way to her high school prom) helped make her a ghost with a particular type of haunting (she's a phantom hitchhiker) but it's also made her a target over the decades from her murderer, a man (named Bobby Cross) who made a deal at the crossroads for eternal life. As with any of Seanan McGuire's novels, Angel of the Overpass is not about just one thing but if it was, it would be about Rose's potentially final fight against Bobby Cross and his attempts to end her life (again).

The Ghost Roads are a side series to McGuire's Incryptid novels - Rose Marshall is a minor side character there, but up until Angel of the Overpass there was minimal crossing over back to Rose's story. That changes here because the inciting incident takes place in the eighth Incryptid novel (That Ain't Witchcraft) - which presents a small barrier to entry - less so if you've at least read The Girl in the Green Silk Gown and Sparrow Hill Road, but this isn't a start novel it's the culmination of a journey.

Angel of the Overpass lives on the last third of the novel - if you've read enough of Seanan McGuire you'll be perfectly at home throughout the this novel but McGuire sets up that last act so well that even if you're "only" enjoying the ride you'll be strapping yourself in for that ending. Seanan McGuire escalates so well (spoilers, I guess, but there's a ghost dinosaur and it *works* for reasons). As a general rule, I enjoy the Ghost Roads but I don't love them like I do her Incryptid novels - but that ending - oh, that ending. It was glorious and wrenching. Seanan McGuire knows glorious and wrenching.
Score: 7/10

Scalzi, John. The Dispatcher: Murder by Other Means [Subterranean / Audible]

I dug The Dispatcher (my nanoreview) when I read it back in 2017 and I expected to equally enjoy a second Dispatcher novella should John Scalzi decide to write one. He did, and I did, and here we are. Murder by Other Means, like The Dispatcher was written as an Audible original - which means it was published (and presumably written) with being an audio book first and a print book second. I don't know quite what that means in terms of what the best way to enjoy this particular story because I don't listen to audiobooks for reasons so I only encounter the work via print. With that said, John Scalzi's writing in general and with Murder by Other Means in particular is smooth, breezy, accessible and straight up fun to read. That's what Scalzi does and that's what he does here.

Murder by Other Means is set in our world, except inexplicably 99.9% of all murder victims are brought back to life wherever they feel safe. Accidental death = death. Murder, well, you're probably coming back. It doesn't need to make sense. Accept it and roll with it. What that means is that if you *want* to commit a murder you've got to be a bit more creative about that and people around Tony Valdez start dying in pretty suspicious ways. There's a plot afoot and it's told with the wit and panache readers have come to expect from John Scalzi. I think Murder by Other means works better by following The Dispatcher rather than standing alone but it works fairly well on its own. Scalzi still makes sure everything is explained and the dots can be connected - which is actually what makes Murder by Other Means as much fun as it is, when Scalzi starts connecting the dots and bringing things together it's a bit of a murderous romp.
Score: 7/10


Joe Sherry - Co-editor of Nerds of a Feather, 5x Hugo Award Finalist for Best Fanzine. Minnesotan. He / Him

New Books Spotlight

Welcome to another edition of the New Books Spotlight, where each month or so we curate a selection of 6 new and forthcoming books we find notable, interesting, and intriguing. It gives us the opportunity to shine a brief spotlight on some stuff we're itching to get our hands on.

What are you looking forward to? Anything you want to argue with us about? 

Bennett, Robert Jackson. In the Shadows of Men [Subterranean]
Publisher's Description

In the desolate flats of west Texas, two brothers purchase an old motel with the intent of renovating it and making a fortune off the population surge brought about by the fracking boom. Though each man is lured there by the promise of wealth, they are also fleeing something: a history of trauma, of failure, of family abuse, and shame.

But the motel proves to have a history of its own. Once the business of a distant relative of theirs, Corbin Pugh, the brothers begin to discover signs that it might have been more than just a motel back during the wildcatter days of the last oil boom.

As they live and labor in its dusty halls, fighting the crawling feeling that they are not alone here, they begin to wonder: what kind of a man was Corbin Pugh? What happened in the rooms he owned, so many decades ago? And is the motel changing them, warping them to become more ruthlessly ambitious and brutal—or is this what men must become in order to survive on the edge of civilization?

Why We Want It: Genre readers today are more familiar these days with Bennett's Divine Cities trilogy and the Foundryside novels, but they won't want to miss the realistically bleak In the Shadows of Men. Check out our review.

Ellis, Lindsay. Axiom's End [St. Martin's]
Publisher's Description

The alternate history first contact adventure Axiom's End is an extraordinary debut from Hugo finalist and video essayist Lindsay Ellis.

Truth is a human right.

It’s fall 2007. A well-timed leak has revealed that the US government might have engaged in first contact. Cora Sabino is doing everything she can to avoid the whole mess, since the force driving the controversy is her whistleblower father. Even though Cora hasn’t spoken to him in years, his celebrity has caught the attention of the press, the Internet, the paparazzi, and the government—and with him in hiding, that attention is on her. She neither knows nor cares whether her father’s leaks are a hoax, and wants nothing to do with him—until she learns just how deeply entrenched her family is in the cover-up, and that an extraterrestrial presence has been on Earth for decades.

Realizing the extent to which both she and the public have been lied to, she sets out to gather as much information as she can, and finds that the best way for her to uncover the truth is not as a whistleblower, but as an intermediary. The alien presence has been completely uncommunicative until she convinces one of them that she can act as their interpreter, becoming the first and only human vessel of communication. Their otherworldly connection will change everything she thought she knew about being human—and could unleash a force more sinister than she ever imagined.

Why We Want It: I'm as suspectible to pre-publication hype as anyone else, but Axiom's End was just about as far from my personal radar as possible. I didn't connect the Hugo Award finalist Lindsay Ellis for Related Work with one of the buzzier debuts of the year, but the more I read and hear about Axiom's End the more I'm here for it.

Osborne, Karen. The Architects of Memory [Tor]
Publisher's Description

Millions died after the first contact. An alien weapon holds the key to redemption—or annihilation. Experience Karen Osborne's unforgettable science fiction debut, Architects of Memory.

Terminally ill salvage pilot Ash Jackson lost everything in the war with the alien Vai, but she'll be damned if she loses her future. Her plan: to buy, beg, or lie her way out of corporate indenture and find a cure. When her crew salvages a genocidal weapon from a ravaged starship above a dead colony, Ash uncovers a conspiracy of corporate intrigue and betrayal that threatens to turn her into a living weapon.

Why We Want It: Along with Axiom's End, The Architects of Memory is one of the more significant science fiction debuts of the year. I'm fairly certain I met Karen Osborne a number of years ago at a Fourth Street Fantasy Convention, which has nothing to do with the novel itself, but I remember enjoying speaking with her then and I'm very happy to see Osborne's debut (I'm also 100 pages into the novel as I write this and it is excellent so far)

Muir, Tamsyn. Harrow the Ninth [Tor.com Publishing]
Publisher's Description

She answered the Emperor's call.

She arrived with her arts, her wits, and her only friend.

In victory, her world has turned to ash.

After rocking the cosmos with her deathly debut, Tamsyn Muir continues the story of the penumbral Ninth House in Harrow the Ninth, a mind-twisting puzzle box of mystery, murder, magic, and mayhem. Nothing is as it seems in the halls of the Emperor, and the fate of the galaxy rests on one woman's shoulders.

Harrowhark Nonagesimus, last necromancer of the Ninth House, has been drafted by her Emperor to fight an unwinnable war. Side-by-side with a detested rival, Harrow must perfect her skills and become an angel of undeath — but her health is failing, her sword makes her nauseous, and even her mind is threatening to betray her.

Sealed in the gothic gloom of the Emperor's Mithraeum with three unfriendly teachers, hunted by the mad ghost of a murdered planet, Harrow must confront two unwelcome questions: is somebody trying to kill her? And if they succeeded, would the universe be better off?

Why We Want It: From where I stand (or sit, as the case may be), Harrow the Ninth may be the most anticipated sequel of the year after Gideon the Ninth blew the doors off the genre last year. I've read it. Adri's read it. Whatever you are expecting Harrow the Ninth to be, it is not that. Harrow is perhaps the most unexpected sequel I've read, but it is as spectacular as you might hope - but it is a baffling, wonderful, everything-bending read.

 

VanderMeer, Ann and Jeff VanderMeer. The Big Book of Modern Fantasy [Vintage]
Publisher's Description

From Ann and Jeff VanderMeer comes The Big Book of Modern Fantasy: a true horde of tales sure to delight fans, scholars — even the greediest of dragons. A VINTAGE ORIGINAL.

Step through a shimmering portal . . . a worn wardrobe door . . . a schism in sky . . . into a bold new age of fantasy. When worlds beyond worlds became a genre unto itself. From the swinging sixties to the strange, strange seventies, the over-the-top eighties to the gnarly nineties–and beyond, into the twenty-first century–the VanderMeers have found the stories and the writers from around the world that reinvented and revitalized the fantasy genre after World War II. The stories in this collection represent twenty-two different countries, including Russia, Argentina, Nigeria, Columbia, Pakistan, Turkey, Finland, Sweden, China, the Philippines, and the Czech Republic. Five have never before been translated into English.

From Jorge Luis Borges to Ursula K. Le Guin, Michael Moorcock to Angela Carter, Terry Pratchett to Stephen King, the full range and glory of the fantastic are on display in these ninety-one stories in which dragons soar, giants stomp, and human children should still think twice about venturing alone into the dark forest.

Completing Ann and Jeff VanderMeer’s definitive The Big Book of Classic Fantasy, this companion volume to takes the genre into the twenty-first century with ninety-one astonishing, mind-bending stories.

Why We Want It: It's the Big Book of Modern Fantasy. No, really, this is a massive diverse tome with stories stretching from the end of World War II to 2010. Knowing the editors VanderMeer, this is an extraordinary anthology and it won't hit the same old "best of" stories we've read in a dozen other anthologies. They read with a breadth and a depth that is incredible.

Vaughn, Carrie. The Heirs of Locksley [Tor.com Publishing]
Publisher's Description

Carrie Vaughn follows up The Ghosts of Sherwood with the charming, fast-paced The Heirs of Locksley, continuing the story of Robin Hood's children.

"We will hold an archery contest. A simple affair, all in fun, on the tournament grounds. Tomorrow. We will see you there."

The latest civil war in England has come and gone, King John is dead, and the nobility of England gathers to see the coronation of his son, thirteen year old King Henry III.

The new king is at the center of political rivalries and power struggles, but John of Locksley—son of the legendary Robin Hood and Lady Marian—only sees a lonely boy in need of friends. John and his sisters succeed in befriending Henry, while also inadvertently uncovering a political plot, saving a man's life, and carrying out daring escapes.

All in a day's work for the Locksley children...

Why We Want It: I read The Ghosts of Sherwood earlier this year and thought it was absolutely delightful. Vaughn's take on the Robin Hood mythos set years later and centered on the children of Robin and Marion is everything I didn't know that I wanted - and The Heirs of Locksley brings me more. 

POSTED BY:  Joe Sherry - Co-editor of Nerds of a Feather, 4x Hugo Award Finalist for Best Fanzine. Minnesotan. He / Him.

Reading the Hugos: Related Work

Welcome back to Reading the Hugos. Today we continue our series on the 2019 finalists with a look at Related Work.

3.3.6: Best Related Work. Any work related to the field of science fiction, fantasy, or fandom, appearing for the first time during the previous calendar year or which has been substantially modified during the previous calendar year, and which is either non-fiction or, if fictional, is noteworthy primarily for aspects other than the fictional text, and which is not eligible in any other category

Related Work is a bit of a catch-all category. It’s for work that is primarily non fiction and that is related to science fiction and fantasy, and which is not otherwise eligible elsewhere on the ballot. This is how you can have an encyclopedia compete against a folk album against a podcast against a collection of essays about movies (this was in 2012 when the Fancast category had not yet been created. That particular lineup of finalists can’t happen today. You may also note that albums and songs have been included in Dramatic Presentation – because the two Clipping albums in question are narrative driven whereas Seanan McGuire’s Wicked Girls was not.). There may also be a single blog post competing and winning in the category. Or a series of blog posts focusing on the women of Harry Potter. In the case of this year there is a four way biography, a series of interviews, a three part documentary, a collected essay series about the Hugo Awards, a recognition of the work done by a website, and the experience of bringing together Mexicanx fans and creators to Worldcon. Related Work is an interesting cross section of another side of the genre and another side of fandom.

Let’s take a look at the finalists.



Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
Astounding: John W. Campbell, Isaac Asimov, Robert A. Heinlein, L. Ron Hubbard, and the Golden Age of Science Fiction, by Alec Nevala-Lee (Dey Street Books)
The Hobbit Duology (documentary in three parts), written and edited by Lindsay Ellis and Angelina Meehan (YouTube)
An Informal History of the Hugos: A Personal Look Back at the Hugo Awards, 1953-2000, by Jo Walton (Tor)
www.mexicanxinitiative.com: The Mexicanx Initiative Experience at Worldcon 76 (Julia Rios, Libia Brenda, Pablo Defendini, John Picacio)
Ursula K. Le Guin: Conversations on Writing, by Ursula K. Le Guin with David Naimon (Tin House Books)

Conversations on Writing: In an effort to have one more opportunity to honor Ursula K. Le Guin, it seems that the members of Worldcon will nominate anything with her name on it. Conversations on Writing is a more ancillary work to science fiction and fantasy (it occasionally mentions works of science fiction, but the real tie here is Le Guin herself), but I'm not sure this is one of the top "Related Works" of 2018.

The Hobbit Duology: Just like the Hobbit films were originally planned to be two movies before being stretched to three, this documentary from Lindsay Ellis and Angelina Meehan is likewise a three part feature - though at least here Ellis and Meehan have a more tightly constructed plan that anyone involved in the 2012-2014 movies. Has it only been five years?

I appreciated the dive into why the three Hobbit movies were so disappointing, but it was the further investigation into how the the films came to be split into three and the legal issues tied to the production and and the filming in New Zealand. I don't admire it as much as I do some of the other works on this ballot, but it is a worthy finalist.

Archive of Our Own: I was enthused to see Archive of Our Own on the Hugo Award ballot. Related Work can be a tricky category to figure out and there is a propensity to treat the Related Work as “best non-fiction book” with limited exceptions in most other years. I’ve had Archive of Our Own on my nominating ballot for the last several years because I believe it is important to honor, celebrate, and recognize the importance of AO3 in the genre community and the only place where that is possible within the framework of the Hugo Awards is in Related Work.

Archive of Our Own is known as a significant fan fiction site, a repository for a massive amount of fan writing. The AO3 contribution in the Voter's Packet is descriptive as to what AO3 is, but a page on AO3's website is much more comprehensive for the breadth of what they do. The fan writing and the fan fiction is an important part of the genre (though one that I do not directly participate in), but how the Organization for Transformative Works operates AO3 is key for the nomination. The ease of the new filtering and tagging systems, inclusiveness, and the overall breadth of the AO3 experience is part of why it is such an importance resource. .

The Mexicanx Initiative Experience: Before the Voter's Packet was released, I was curious how The Mexicanx Initiative could possibly be represented in consideration for the Hugo Award given that what we are honoring here is the experience of the 50 selected recipients attendance at Worldcon 76 in San Diego. It wasn't a book or a film or a story or a discrete work that didn't fit into a category. We're honoring an event, which is definitely related to the field of science fiction, fantasy, or fandom, and absolutely does not fit into any other category. I attended that Worldcon, at least of the periphery, but I was not part of the Experience and while I included it on my ballot, I wasn't sure how in what way I would be able to consider it for the actual Hugo Award.

There are two major pieces of work in the Voter's Packet. The first is the closest readers are going to come to getting to the heart of what the Experience was actually about and what it might have been like for the attendees, as well as the impact it is likely to have on the field as a whole - which is a Scrapbook. The Scrapbook is a series of interviews with the attendees, essays, recipes, and more. Reading through, I got more of the real community impact of the Experience and how important it was to the attendees. The other work included in the packet is an anthology of fiction from the Mexicanx Initiative attendees, but the real consideration here is the Scrapbook and the overall experience of the attendees.

The Mexicanx Initiative was a vital part of science fiction and fantasy fandom in 2018 and I hope it is something that we will be able to look back on as a landmark moment that moved and pushed fandom.

An Informal History of the Hugos: I was already familiar with the essays collected in An Informal History of the Hugos when the book was published last year. I followed Jo Walton's essays when she originally wrote as part of an essay series for Tor.com from 2010 to 2013 and not that I'm nostalgic for the good old days (such as they are), but dipping into this collection one essay at a time is likely a more productive way to read the essays instead of mainlining them right into your head - which is what I'm doing this time around.

If you're into the history of science fiction and fantasy, and especially of the Hugo Awards and conversations about how the finalists have held up over the years and what the members of Worldcon might have missed, this is the book for you. It is a delight, it has greatly expanded my reading list, and it has me contemplating a similar project of my own. That's the delight of An Informal History of the Hugos - it is a personal history of the Hugo Awards through the lens of a writer steeped in the history of the genre.

Astounding: The names John W. Campbell, Isaac Asimov, Robert A. Heinlein, and L. Ron Hubbard are names which loom large over the history of science fiction and fantasy, but for me, for the most part, they are just names. Legends. Oh, I've read my share of Asimov and the occasional Heinlein, but these are not the formative figures of my childhood, or of the early years of my introduction to the genre. Campbell is a name of genre legend helping to usher in the "Golden Age" of science fiction and Hubbard is known as the founder of scientology and for having his 1986 novel Black Genesis illegitimately gamed onto the Hugo Awards ballot the following year. But knowing the broad strokes of something is not knowing the story.

Alec Nevala-Lee puts Campbell at the center of the story of all four men in a well researched account that neither pulls punches or let's anyone off the hook. These were heady days in the explosion of science fiction and fantasy and these are towering figures in the genre's history. Astounding is a top notch biography, one of the class of the year.



My Vote
1. Astounding
2. An Informal History of the Hugos
3. The Mexicanx Initiative Experience
4. Archive of Our Own
5. The Hobbit Duology
6. Conversations on Writing


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