Nanoreviews: The Rosewater Redemption, Peter Watts is an Angry Sentient Tumor, Call of Cthulhu

Thompson, Tade. The Rosewater Redemption [Orbit, 2019]

Spoiler warning for the previous two Rosewater novels.

It had to come to this, right? After the fight between Nigeria and the city-state of Rosewater, we now have aliens living in human bodies (corpses, really). They live among the people of Rosewater, and they’re more or less undetectable. But the aliens need bodies, and the troublemakers don’t die when the host corpse dies; they just get downloaded back into a new body. When some aliens start to take up mass murder to get the bodies they need, a human resistance forms. It’s comprised of strange bedfellows, but they’ve got one mission: to stop the extinction of the human race.

Redemption is a fitting conclusion to the trilogy. As with the previous novels, Thompson writes fully formed characters, and then sticks them in this dirty, strange world to see what happens. Some questions lingering in your brain from the previous two novels will get addressed, but Redemption does take some odd detours that haven’t really added up in hindsight. Regardless, so many authors don’t know how to end something, and Thompson, thankfully, does. There’s a minimal amount of deus ex machina, but it works. If you’ve made it this far, and you should because these books are good, see the conclusion.

Score: 8/10

Watts, Peter. Peter Watts Is An Angry Sentient Tumor: Revenge Fantasies and Essays [Tachyon Publications, 2019]

You’ve seen this before, right? The novelist maintains a blog, someone has the brilliant idea to turn that blog into an essay collection, so the author and an editor spend an afternoon collating, winnowing, and editing to produce a new book from old material. If you like Peter Watts, here’s a chance to see his blog posts in paper form. But this isn’t really the kind of thing you want to read in one go, right? It’s kind of a pick-up, put-down. You’re getting a firehose of Peter Watts’ brain in machine gun fashion, so you can take the rapid fire blasts right in the face, but I chose to get a taste and shelve it. You wouldn’t read a blog from beginning to end, so doing the same here is a bad idea. Watts is an easy read (in this form, at least), and the essays are generally entertaining. If you want to know what Watts thinks about enough to put hands to keyboard for a blog post, but you want it to be slightly more edited and selected for quality, here it is. Just don’t read it in one go.

Score: 6/10

Cyanide Studio. Call of Cthulhu [Focus Home Interactive, 2018]

Call of Cthulhu is a first person role-playing video game set in the world of the pen-and-paper role-playing game, Call of Cthulhu, deeply inspired by the works of H.P. Lovecraft. You play a detective sent to the isle of Darkwater to investigate the strange circumstances surrounding the death of a local family. Along the way you find cultists, a mad scientist, elder signs, and deep old ones. Call of Cthulhu starts off very strong as you arrive in Darkwater and start to piece together what the situation is, but it soon deteriorates into a series of linear game levels that demand very little and give very little back in return. It’s like you’re at a theme park and you get to spend the beginning milling about the park, but eventually you get to the roller coaster and then you’re just strapped in for the ride. It’s far from bad, but it does boil out a lot of the flavor and freedom of the pen-and-paper game. Your player stats don’t seem to mean much beyond those first couple hours. It’s also ugly, and not stylistically ugly. It just looks like it was made 5 years ago, put on a shelf, and dusted off to release last year. I played through it all over a weekend, which is about the perfect use for it. A good weekend game, but no need to ever play it again or give it much more thought.

Score: 5/10 

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

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? Is there something we should consider spotlighting in the future? Let us know in the comments!

Cornell, Paul. The Lights Go Out in Lychford [Tor.com Publishing]
Publisher's Description

Be careful what you wish for... 

Paul Cornell's The Lights Go Out in Lychford continues the award-nominated Witches of Lychford series, described by Seanan McGuire as "Beautifully written, perfectly cruel and ultimately kind." 

The borders of Lychford are crumbling. Other realities threaten to seep into the otherwise quiet village, and the resident wise woman is struggling to remain wise. The local magic shop owner and the local priest are having troubles of their own.

And a mysterious stranger is on hand to offer a solution to everyone's problems. No cost, no strings (she says).

But as everyone knows, free wishes from strangers rarely come without a price . . . 

Why We Want It: The first three novellas in Paul Cornell's Lychford were delightful and I'm thrilled to see a fourth.

Morgenstern, Erin. The Starless Sea [Random House]
Publisher's Description

From the New York Times bestselling author of The Night Circus, a timeless love story set in a secret underground world—a place of pirates, painters, lovers, liars, and ships that sail upon a starless sea. 

Zachary Ezra Rawlins is a graduate student in Vermont when he discovers a mysterious book hidden in the stacks. As he turns the pages, entranced by tales of lovelorn prisoners, key collectors, and nameless acolytes, he reads something strange: a story from his own childhood. Bewildered by this inexplicable book and desperate to make sense of how his own life came to be recorded, Zachary uncovers a series of clues—a bee, a key, and a sword—that lead him to a masquerade party in New York, to a secret club, and through a doorway to an ancient library hidden far below the surface of the earth.

What Zachary finds in this curious place is more than just a buried home for books and their guardians—it is a place of lost cities and seas, lovers who pass notes under doors and across time, and of stories whispered by the dead. Zachary learns of those who have sacrificed much to protect this realm, relinquishing their sight and their tongues to preserve this archive, and also of those who are intent on its destruction. Together with Mirabel, a fierce, pink-haired protector of the place, and Dorian, a handsome, barefoot man with shifting alliances, Zachary travels the twisting tunnels, darkened stairwells, crowded ballrooms, and sweetly soaked shores of this magical world, discovering his purpose—in both the mysterious book and in his own life. 

Why We Want It: The Night Circus was a fantastic debut and we were eager for another book from Erin Morgenstern. We didn't expect having to wait eight years, but we don't have to wait any longer. If The Starless Sea is even half as good as The Night Circus, we're in for a treat.

Roanhorse, Rebecca. Star Wars: Resistance Reborn [Del Rey]
Publisher's Description

In this pivotal prequel to Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, the heroes of the Resistance—Poe Dameron, General Leia Organa, Rey, and Finn—must fight back from the edge of oblivion.

The Resistance is in ruins. In the wake of their harrowing escape from Crait, what was once an army has been reduced to a handful of wounded heroes. Finn, Poe, Rey, Rose, Chewbacca, Leia Organa—their names are famous among the oppressed worlds they fight to liberate. But names can only get you so far, and Leia’s last desperate call for aid has gone unanswered.

From the jungles of Ryloth to the shipyards of Corellia, the shadow of the First Order looms large, and those with the bravery to face the darkness are scattered and isolated. If hope is to survive, the Resistance must journey throughout the galaxy, seeking out more leaders—including those who, in days gone by, helped a nascent rebellion topple an empire. Battles will be fought, alliances will be forged, and the Resistance will be reborn.

Why We Want It: Did you know that Rebecca Roanhorse was writing a Star Wars novel? I sure didn't! I've been behind on reading Star Wars novels ever since the Expanded Universe was scrapped and I just haven't managed to come back. Rebecca Roanhorse will get me back.

Roberson, Jennifer. Life and Limb [DAW]
Publisher's Description

A biker and a cowboy must stop the apocalypse in the first book of the Blood and Bone modern western fantasy series. 

His voice was rich, a much loved baritone, as he handed his seven-year-old grandson a gun. 

“It’s time we had a talk, you and I. You won’t remember it, but you need to know it, and one day, when it’s time, I’ll call it up in you. You’ll know who you are, and what you’re intended to do. You’ll be a soldier, boy. Sealed to it. Life and limb, blood and bone. Not a soldier like others are, for it’s not the kind of war most people fight on earth. But because we’re not ‘most people,’ you and I, it will be far more important. The fate of the world will hinge upon it.” 

Now no longer that wide-eyed child, Gabe is fresh out of prison, a leather-clad biker answering Grandaddy’s peremptory summons to, of all places, a cowboy bar in Northern Arizona. He is about to find out just how different he is from “most people”—and to meet the stranger with whom he will be sealed: life and limb, blood and bone, conscripted to fight an unholy war unlike any other.

For the greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist.

When he does.

And Gabe, thrown into the unlikely company of a country-music-loving rodeo cowboy from West Texas, an ancient Celtic goddess of war, an African Orisha who sings volcanoes awake, a Chinese goddess of mercy, Nephilim, and Grigori, finds himself fighting a battle he was bred for, but wants no part of.

Why We Want It: I loved Roberson's Cheysuli novels, not to mention her collaboration with Kate Elliott and Melanie Rawn (The Golden Key), but after I bounced off of the first Karavans novels I've been looking for a new entry point back into Roberson. I think Life and Limb just might be it.

Solomon, Rivers. The Deep [Saga]
Publisher's Description

The water-breathing descendants of African slave women tossed overboard have built their own underwater society—and must reclaim the memories of their past to shape their future in this brilliantly imaginative novella inspired by the Hugo Award–nominated song “The Deep” from Daveed Diggs’s rap group clipping 

Yetu holds the memories for her people—water-dwelling descendants of pregnant African slave women thrown overboard by slave owners—who live idyllic lives in the deep. Their past, too traumatic to be remembered regularly, is forgotten by everyone, save one—the historian. This demanding role has been bestowed on Yetu.

Yetu remembers for everyone, and the memories, painful and wonderful, traumatic and terrible and miraculous, are destroying her. And so, she flees to the surface, escaping the memories, the expectations, and the responsibilities—and discovers a world her people left behind long ago.

Yetu will learn more than she ever expected to about her own past—and about the future of her people. If they are all to survive, they’ll need to reclaim the memories, reclaim their identity—and own who they really are.

Inspired by a song produced by the rap group Clipping for the This American Life episode “We Are In The Future,” The Deep is vividly original and uniquely affecting. 

Why We Want It: This is a major, important novella. After An Unkindness of Ghosts, whatever Rivers Solomon decided to write next was something to take notice of. Their adaptation of Clipping's Hugo Award finalist song has been at the top of our list as soon as it was announced and it lives up to the hype.

Watts, Peter. Peter Watts Is an Angry Sentient Tumor [Tachyon]
Publisher's Description

Which of the following is true?

• Peter Watts is banned from the U.S. 

• Watts almost died from flesh-eating bacteria. 

• A schizophrenic man living in Watts’s backyard almost set the house on fire. 

• Watts was raised by Baptists who really sucked at giving presents. 

• Peter Watts said to read this book. Or else.

In these unpredictable essays and revenge fantasies, Peter Watts — Hugo Award-winning author, former marine biologist, and angry sentient tumor — is the savage dystopian optimist whom you can’t look away from. Even when you probably should. 

Why We Want It: The title. It's really just the title.



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

Microreview [book]: The Freeze-Frame Revolution by Peter Watts

Pictures of Home

It starts with a gremlin. The Eriophora is a space ship built inside an asteroid packed with 30,000 crew members and one mission: to build gates that will allow humanity to quickly travel among the stars. But they’re taking the long route and it takes millennia of travel time between builds, and they’ve built far too many gates. Eriophora is built for this, but a “gremlin” grazing the ship after a gate build spooks the crew and some of them want to overthrow the Chimp, the AI driving the mission. There’s just one problem; how do you overthrow an AI if you’re only awake for days in the span of millennia?

Off the bat, let me bring up that this is the latest in a series of short stories, though this one is novella+ size. I have not read the Sunflowers series of which this belongs beforehand, and I was not lost in the plot or setting. Discussion around the novel seemed to indicate that having read the previous stories may make some of the plot elements more obvious or pre-determined, but I didn’t have that experience.

What I love about this novel is the same thing I love about all of Watts’ novels. It’s an excellent blend of “feels like it could be real” science and then driving it all the way out to “this asteroid flying through space is millions of years past our timeline”. Their reasonable explanation for how this ship has survived so long is the perfect combination of magic and reality. It touches philosophical topics around artificial life and what it means to possibly be the last humans. I really don’t have a lot of fault it on. I clamor for more, but I can have more by reading the short stories. There’s even a short story hidden in this novel! The end, as usual for Watts, left me agape. I will be re-reading this.

The Math

Baseline Assessment: 8/10

Bonuses: +1 end-to-end hard SF that doesn’t bore for a single second

Penalties: None

Nerd Coefficient: 9/10 (very high quality/standout in its category)

***

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

Microreview [book]: Echopraxia by Peter Watts

The Predator and the Prey

Echopraxia sounds like it's the start of a bad sci-fi TV series. What happens when you put hibernating monotheistic monks, an acolyte, a pilot, a military officer, a biologist, a vampire, and a small army of zombies on a space ship heading for the sun? Not wacky hijinks, as TV would tell us, but something much, much better.

Echopraxia follows Daniel Brüks, a so-called baseline human for being non-augmented in a time where everyone is augmented, in the role of the main character and the biologist in this crew. Daniel gets swept up in an attack on a Bicameral Order monastery and winds up on the Crown of Thorns, a Bicam ship headed for a platform close to the sun. How he ended up on the ship, what his role is, and what their mission was to begin with is all revealed in a more or less break-neck pace.

The story moves rather fast but not at the expense of approaching some topics of excellent discussion. The Bicameral Order practice science with faith. They're posthumans trying to find God. Heaven is also a place, and you can talk to people there. Brüks is a skeptic, and his discussions with the acolyte Lianna touch on the importance of faith and the role of God in a posthuman world. The pilot seemingly hates him, and the colonel takes him under his wing, but both of them are on the ship with their own motives.

And then there's Valerie. Valerie, the vampire. You see, science resurrected vampires, and they're even more lethal than most stories portray. They're so dangerous that they're normally kept contained and separate from each other because of the threat they pose to everyone else. She's got the classic vulnerability to crosses, but she's leaner, smarter, faster, and stronger than anyone else on the ship. She's rivaled only by her zombie bodyguards. They're not the shambling type, but the mindless, strong, hard to kill type. She's obviously the wild card of the crew and she's the most intriguing character among them.

The mystery of how the crew was assembled and what their mission is is the central conceit, and it's fantastic. Everyone has their own motives for being there, except Brüks, but even he has a purpose. The way Watts pulls the crew together and then jams wedges between them is excellent. There is a constant feeling of building tension as the crew learn more about each other, and it's extremely satisfying when everything pops.

If I have one complaint, and it's incredibly minor if you're a fan of hard sci-fi, it is that it is sprinkled with technical jargon. However, even if you don't grasp it all (I'm no biologist, so I didn't), it conveys enough to get the gist. It doesn't necessarily detract from the story, but it will give cause to slow down a it.

Slowing down, though, is hard. Echopraxia moves swiftly and doesn't let up once it gets started. It's very hard to put down because of the intricate relationships of the crew. Though it's the second part of a series, it doesn't suffer from "middle of a story" problems, but it did make me want to go back the first part. It's the kind of story that asks a lot of questions, answers most of them, but left me thinking about it long after I finished it. It's excellent.

The Math

Baseline Assessment: 9/10

Bonuses: +1 great use of unknown motives to build tension

Penalties: -1 might be jargon heavy for some readers

Nerd Coefficient: 9/10 (very high quality/standout in its category)

***

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

Reference: Watts, Peter. Echopraxia [Tor Books, 2014]