Microreview [film]: The Invisible Boy

Oh...boy. Just, yep. I'm gonna leave the pun right there.

Forbidden Planet is an undisputed classic of sci-fi film. At the time it was produced, it was a tremendously expensive film, and a disproportionate amount of that budget went to pay for a single prop: Robby the Robot. That sure must've seemed like a good investment when the breakout star of the film was not sexpot Anne Francis, or strapping, not-yet-gray Leslie Nielsen, or even venerable actor-with-gravitas Walter Pidgeon. Nope, the breakout star was Robby the Robot.

And with good reason. Robby is amazing. Robby is better than Gort, and I love Gort. I don't even care. We can fight. So given the success of Forbidden Planet and Robby, the studio wanted a sequel, naturally. That sequel was The Invisible Boy. Now, The Invisible Boy is bonkers, so rather than write a straight review, I wanted to try something different. Here, then, is An Imagined Conversation Between Screenwriter Cyril Hume and the Producers of Forbidden Planet and The Invisible Boy.

The scene is a small, executive office on the MGM lot. A PRODUCER sits behind a mahogany desk. It's nice. Swanky digs, sure, but it's second-class fancy, for Golden Age Hollywood. The really nice offices start a floor up. But this producer's doing ok. We'll give him a cigar. Because 1956.

In walks CYRIL HUME, screenwriter. He's in a suit, also because 1956, but you can tell. It's the 1956-everybody-wears-suits equivalent of a Foo Fighters concert-T. Still, this has been the biggest year of his professional life — three hits. Ransom!, with Glenn Ford (big star), Forbidden Planet, and Bigger Than Life directed by Nicholas Ray right after Rebel Without a Cause.

PRODUCER: Cyril, baby. Have a seat. Have a seat! You want a cigar?

CYRIL HUME: Scotch and soda? Just, Scotch with a ray of sunlight that passed through a bottle of Schweppes.

PROD: That's a writer for you! I'll have my girl mix it right up for you.

He pushes a button on the intercom.

PROD: Stella, mix up a, er? Is it "Stella"?

VOICE ON INTERCOM: Sheila, sir. But keep trying.

PROD: Great. Listen, baby. I need a Scotch and soda for our writer friend, and that's Scotch with a...what was it?

CH: It's just Scotch and soda. Just...really?

PROD: That's just Scotch and soda, Shirley. In a glass. With ice, maybe.

(ANNOYED CLICK FROM INTERCOM)

CH: So...?

PROD: Right. Listen, baby. This Forbidden Planet, it's a humdinger. It's doing gangbusters. We need a sequel, ready to shoot, right away.

CH: I told you a science fiction version of Shakespeare's Tempest would work.

PROD: Whatever, whatever. This Shakespeare guy, friend of yours? If he's got other ideas, great. But listen, we need another movie with Robby the Robot, right now. Like, yesterday. Something real...science fiction-y. For the, uh, for the geeks and stuff.

CH: Yeah, that's great. Making a film on such a huge canvas was fantastic. We could explore other worlds...maybe on their way back to Earth...

PROD: You kidding me? No, they're on Earth. Jesus, that fake planet cost me a fortune. And black-and-white. Color film was a nightmare. I chewed through three pillows in my sleep just from seeing the lab bills.

CH: So...a black-and-white sequel, on Earth, to a Technicolor space tragedy that takes place 300 years in the future?

PROD: On the nose, baby! And present-day. No space cities, or future science, or none of that. Just put the robot in it.

CH: The robot won't be invented for 300 years.

PROD: Then make it come back with time travel or something. That's a thing, right? People from the future? All that?

CH: Wow, yeah. There's never really been a serious time travel film. This could be pretty amazing.

PROD: Yes! There you go! But don't spend too much time on that part. We don't want to have to build any fancy time machines, or go to other times, where the costuming...oh the costume costs, just give me an antacid. So it's now, but there's a robot from the future. Go! Oh, no wait! Listen, I got this cousin...or, second cousin? I don't know. But they got this kid, he wants to be in pictures, he's, whatever, he's kid-aged. Like, we'll say 10. Put him in it.

CH: Look, not to tell you your business, but "dogs and kids," you know? Never work with them?

PROD: He doesn't have to be in the whole thing. Just, I don't know, make him invisible halfway through and then forget about him.

Sheila enters, gives the screenwriter his Scotch and soda. It disappears in a single toss of the head.

CH: Two more, please.

Sheila cocks an eyebrow, then looks at her boss. Gets it totally. She leaves.

CH: So it's a black-and-white picture about a time-traveling robot and a little kid who turns invisible halfway through?

PROD: Solid gold. We'll call it...The See-Thru Kid! Or, something like that. As long as it's eight reels long.

CH: What if, and I'm just thinking out loud, what if the sequel to the fantastic, futuristic space picture took place in space. In the future? We could re-use the ship from the first movie, we could --

PROD: Cyril, baby. We already sold the ship to CBS, and they're going to use it in a bunch of TV shows this cat Rod Serling is making. The ship is gone. Damn, sailed. The ship has sailed. Let's pretend I didn't flub that joke, ok? Where were we?

CH: You had just put my career in a time machine and sent it backwards twenty-something years to when I was writing Tarzan movies.

PROD: Right, right. You know what else is hip these days, is computers, and aliens. I have definitely seen those words on the covers of magazines.

CH: So you want eight reels about a kid who plays with a space robot from the future, but then turns invisible halfway through, with a computer that may or may not be from another planet?

PROD: Perfect. You're a genius.

Sheila appears with two more Scotch and sodas.

And...scene.

Let me just say that our hero, screenwriter Cyril Hume, accomplished everything that was asked of him in this imagined meeting. If you think that sounds like it'll make a good movie, than The Invisible Boy is right up your alley. I will say, and this is no B.S., the movie has one of my most favorite lines of dialogue ever from any movie. I will sometimes put this movie on at home just to watch that moment. And if that's not a cult film punching above its weight, I don't know what is.

Posted by Vance K — cult film reviewer and co-editor of nerds of a feather, flock together since 2012, Emmy-winning producer, and also folk singer.

Microreview [video game]: Doom by id Software

Hella Good

It's a little funny that this is the fourth canonical Doom game, yet the second to bear the simple name of Doom. Doom has been in the works as far back as 2008, though it reportedly was scrapped at least once and remade from scratch. Id also lost one of its principal founders, John Carmack, during Doom's development, along with several other key team members. Another warning sign was that there was a poorly received multiplayer beta, and review copies of the game were not made available until the release date. These types of circumstances often lead to Duke Nukem Forever levels of bad video game, so I was absolutely skeptical of Doom. My skepticism was for nothing. Doom is fantastic.

Mars and Hell look pretty good.

Believe it or not, Doom has a story, and it's exactly enough story and of an appropriate tone for a Doom game in 2016. You are Doom Marine (yes, that's one of your names), and you wake up chained to a table in research base on Mars and surrounded by zombie-like monsters. After you bust out of your restraints and kill the demons, you find your armor looking like it's been excavated out of a block of stone. You then learn that Mars is suffering from a demonic invasion and you're the only solution. Kill the forces of Hell and stop the invasion. 

There's a lot conveyed in the first 10 minutes of Doom that set the pace and tone of the entire game. Doom 3 started with upwards of 30 minutes of tension building and place setting. In Doom, you're immediately surrounded by enemies, handed a pistol, and forced to fight. Before the talking head finishes telling you about the demonic invasion, Doom Marine violently shoves the LCD monitor away, breaking it. Then you fight a handful of demons in an enclosed area where you learn about Glory Kills. Glory Kills let you execute a weakened enemy to regain health. You ten find the shotgun, the talking head tells you that everything leading up to the demonic invasion was for the good of humanity while you look down on a mutilated corpse, and then title screen hits. 

Even in 2016, there is no lack of Satanic imagery in Doom.

Like the classic Doom games, Doom is about skilled movement and aggressive action. It is not Call of Duty. Doom Marine can take a lot of punishment and easily dodge around enemy fire. If you're low on health, hiding in a corner will do you no good; there are no regenerating health mechanics. You have to get back in the fight, and violently murder demons with Glory Kills to regain health in combat. Doom also gives a good reason to use the chainsaw in combat. Killing enemies with the chainsaw causes them to pop like a pinata full of ammunition. This is a core gameplay loop of Doom; kill demons to reduce their numbers, Glory Kill them to refill health, chainsaw them to refill ammo. 

It's a little blurry, but yes, I am punching the jaw off of this imp.

It's not perfect, but the problems are fixable. It has bugs. I've experienced more than a couple of crashes to desktop. If you're playing with keyboard and mouse (as you should on PC), you'll find that some of the really good flavor text is unreadable because there's no way to scroll through it. The scroll wheel, which you'd expect to do that, doesn't. It has a multiplayer mode that's fast and fun enough, even if it isn't particularly interesting.

As a single player game though, Doom is incredible. It does what may have seemed impossible; it takes the classic games and gives them a 2016 upgrade. It's undeniably Doom from beginning to end. Where Wolfenstein: The New Order was great for reimagining what Wolfenstein could be in 2014, Doom largely keeps the original's formula and adds some smart modern improvements without harming what made the original games great to begin with. 

The Math

Baseline Assessment: 9/10

Bonuses: +1 fast, brutal action like few games can pull off

Penalties: -1 some minor bugs mar an otherwise great experience

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: id Software. Doom [Bethesda Softworks, 2016] 

Microreview [book]: A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller, Jr.

A disheartening look at humanity, and the perfect Cold War zeitgeist book

Published in 1960, A Canticle for Leibowitz is one of the books credited with forcing the mainstream press to begin taking speculative fiction seriously. Upon publication, even if it wasn't reviewed terribly positively, it was at least reviewed in some heavyweight publications that normally wouldn't touch sci-fi with a ten-meter cattle prod. In the five-plus decades since, it has continued to make appearances on prominent lists of the Greatest Sci-Fi Books ever.

To cut to the chase, reading it with fresh eyes today, it's not the pinnacle of the genre. It is, however, an engaging cornerstone of Cold War science fiction.

Over the last year, and for no particular reason apart from random chance, my reading list has included On the Beach by Nevil Shute and The Man Who Fell to Earth by Walter Tevis. I realized in reading A Canticle for Leibowitz, however, that these three books together give a profound, eerie, and usually moving picture of the Cold War-era zeitgeist. Tevis' book is about an alien that comes to Earth in an effort to save his own people, but falls victim to crushing alcoholism due in part to his realization that the planet cannot help but do itself in with its rapidly proliferating nuclear weapons. On the Beach is a haunting, unshakable portrait of the post-war world, where the few Australian survivors of the nuclear wars wait for the fallout clouds to come far enough South to poison and eventually kill them all.

Walter Miller's book begins several hundred years after the wars. Or, "The Flame Deluge," as the book's inhabitants refer to it. After the wars, there were few unaffected humans left, but those that remained rebelled against all knowledge, as too much knowledge had caused their destruction. The cities were all flattened, the books burned, literacy made verboten, and the outlands became dotted with tribes of murderous mutants. Seemingly the only thing that survived the transition from industrialized, nuclear-capable society to the new dark ages was the Catholic church. A Canticle for Leibowitz, like a medieval painting, presents a triptych of tales that cover some 1800 years of future history.

The first story concerns a young novice who stumbles across a fallout shelter that likely belonged to "the blessed Leibowitz." The cosmic joke here is that Leibowitz was probably a low-level electrical technician in Bell Labs or General Electric who probably worked on government contracts (and happened to be Jewish, to boot), but after 600 years he is on the doorstep of beatification. The second story takes place in essentially the second Middle Ages, when mankind has only just rediscovered science, and the monks of the Order of Leibowitz, who have been keeping the sacred documents (basic science texts and blueprints) for 1200 years, unwittingly hold the keys to scientific knowledge that predates The Flame Deluge. The final story, set some 1800 years after the nuclear decimation of the Earth, presents a futuristic setting that finds mankind capable of space travel, but on the verge of another nuclear conflict. History repeating, no less.

As grim as it may be to think that we'd annihilate the entire human race out of hubris and then do it again (...and again...and again...and again...), Miller's reminder is a prescient one. When the United States is currently locked into a presidential race that is echoing the worst rhetoric of the last 100 years of institutionalized mistakes, it is a chilling, and motivating, reminder about where we were as a nation just a half century ago. This is the best of what science fiction does. Through the lens of a fantastic world, it shines a light on our own. Walter Miller's book did that in 1960, and it continues to do it today.

Some of the prose, and some of the insights, are truly eloquent. That said, the book comes across as pretty solidly dated. There are, by my count, three women in the book. One of the things that the efforts of so many writers over the last few generations have shown us is that if we limit our storytelling to one group of people, or one gender, we're necessarily missing part of the story. So when I read the book today, I felt like there were a lot of good ideas that went into the world-building, and that the book presented a lot of philosophically and historically interesting notions, but I keenly felt aware that I was only getting part of the story. As much as I admired the noble intentions of the Brothers of Leibowitz, I found myself wondering often about the sisters outside of the abbey walls, and how they were navigating this post-apocalyptic future. And why did we return to a solid patriarchy? If we burned the books and plans and literacy that nearly wiped us out the first time, why did we not burn the patriarchy? The answer is probably because Walter Miller took it for granted. That's not intended as a knock on him, given the time he was writing and all that, but as a reader I was keenly aware of the fact that I was looking at "history" through the eyes of a bunch of white guys, and that there was a lot more going on in this world that I simply wasn't hearing about because those people's experiences were just out of frame.

On the whole, the book was keenly observed, and a solid, early example of thoughtful world-building, but not as emotionally resonant as the other two books I now consider the Cold War Zeitgeist Trilogy, and by virtue of the things it left out, it simply couldn't be, today, as pointed an examination of the human condition as it seemed evident it was intended to be.

The Math

Bonuses: +1 for managing the hand-off between three different tales in an emotionally continuous way; +1 for being such a precise barometer of the Cold War zeitgeist

Penalties: -1 for feeling dated in the very essence in the story it was telling

Nerd Coefficient: 7/10. It's still pretty good, but don't necessarily defer to every Best Sci-Fi poll you read online.

Posted by Vance K -- cult film reviewer, Cold War aficionado, occasional book reviewer, and co-editor of nerds of a feather, flock together, since 2012.

Reference: Miller, Walter M. A Canticle for Leibowitz [EOS, 1996 (Reprint)].

Microreview: The Honey Mummy, E. Catherine Tobler

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The Honey Mummy, by E. Catherine Tobler


It's probably not fair, exactly, to review one's favorite author, or someone at least in the top five. I'm going to do it anyway, though, because Tobler's spot on my favorite authors list is well-deserved, and her latest entry does not disappoint, and in many ways, takes her work to new heights.

I love layers, I love things which are more than they are, more than the sum of their parts, and The Honey Mummy is exactly that. The third entry in the Folley & Mallory series (Edited to say I can't count: Book 1, Rings of Anubis, Book 2: the Glass Falcon) is complex, detailed, and moving.

It is a mystery, and boy, do I love a mystery and an adventure. From the word go, it invites you to turn the page and find out what happens (and, in the case of this series, what has happened, and why). It's like Miss Fischer's meets Indiana Jones.

If that's not enough, the characters, which were good enough in previous installments, but probably the weakest link, are much more fleshed out and detailed here. I cared more for Folley, Mallory (as well as the rest of the cast) more than I did previously. The romance never feels forced, but natural and right. In so many mediums romance is misplayed- characters are shoved together by the quote-unquote need for there to be romance, or they wait too long and misplay it entirely. That doesn't happen here-  the romance never takes from the action or the mystery, but adds depth to it, and vice versa.

Top to bottom, Tobler's writing is outstanding, and this is her best work yet. The writing is gorgeous, the characters and wonderful, the adventure is gripping. If you like anything in the vein of mystery, adventure or just plain steampunk, this is a must-read.


 The Math:

Baseline: 8/10: well worth your time and attention

Bonuses:

+1 for being a perfectly balanced book

Penalties:

I got nothin'. I read it in one sitting, and that says it all.

Conclusion: 9/10: very high quality/standout in its category

Hold up, hold up, hold up, you say. That's two books in a row you gave her a nine, and this is an improvement over Falcon? Doesn't that make it a 10, Mister Engineer person, you ask? To which I reply, one would think so. But, given the quality- and the steady increase in it, and her other work, there is something to come from Tobler that is transcendent. And when I write that review, after she writes that book, I want that 10 in my back pocket. So my recommendation is to start reading her now so you can be super hipster when that day comes, and be all "I read her back when". 

Microreview [video game]: Firewatch by Campo Santo

Controlled Burn

I was going to buy Firewatch no matter what it turned out to be. I've been a listener of the Idle Thumbs podcast since shortly after it started, following Chris Remo from when he was an editor at Shacknews. I love the insightful discussions the Idle Thumbs crew has every week. When the bulk of them joined together to form Campo Santo, I was instantly onboard for whatever game they would make together. "What is Firewatch?" was never a relevant question to me. I'm glad to report that, now that I know what Firewatch is, it's rather good, if a little pedestrian.

You play Firewatch as Henry, a volunteer fire lookout in Wyoming in 1988. You're in Shoshone National Park to look out for fires (obviously), and get away from your life for an indeterminate amount of time. Your boss, Delilah, is in the next tower over, and you communicate with her through your walkie-talkie over the course of the game.

Let's get this out of the way first: Firewatch is a first-person, narrative-driven adventure game. A "walking simulator", if you must, comparable to Gone Home, but set outdoors with more walking to do, but not necessarily more to see. The game is to listen to and talk to Delilah, "solve" a mystery, and get lost in the woods. You have a map, so getting lost is on you, and the mystery is revealed in whole by the time you get far enough in the game, so the bulk of the game rests on Henry and Delilah.

What it does best is that interaction between Henry and Delilah. Over the course of the game, you learn a lot about each other and it's wonderfully voice acted and well written. As Henry, you have a little bit of control over your voice. Many of your responses to Delilah are multiple choice, some with wildly different tones. There's a multiple choice prologue that sort of acts as a mad libs for your own Henry, but your choices don't necessarily change the story in radical ways. Some dialog might be a little snark-heavy, but that's also a choice of the player. Delilah and Henry are great, and Firewatch is non-existent without them

Though it's a short game (3.5 hours by my count), it's difficult to put down once you start. I didn't intend on playing through it all on release day, but as soon as I stopped, I would think about getting right back in to see what the next day brings. The game parts are a little anemic, and the ending abrupt, but the storytelling, character building, and the environments are all fantastic. It's a game that will give you something to think about for at least as long as it takes to play.

The Math

Baseline Assessment: 8/10

Bonuses: +1 Henry and Delilah's complex relationship

Penalties: -1 don't expect a lot of puzzle solving or action

Nerd Coefficient: 8/10 (well worth your time and attention)

***

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

Reference: Campo Santo. Firewatch [Panic Inc, 2016] 

Microreview [book]: Shadowshaper by Daniel José Older

An incredibly fun giant middle finger to cultural appropriation.

I think that YA science fiction and fantasy occupies a strange place within the larger SFF landscape. At the same time that it is often ignored by "purists" and readers of "adult" SFF, it doesn't exactly need or ask for those readers to approve or validate it. Markets being what they are, YA typically outsells more "mature" books, which I'm sure irks the fuck out of certain people and leads to very asinine and damaging discussions of what is "really" SFF and what, well, isn't. Now I have my own opinions on genre in general, but I can't deny that there is something that makes a book more solidly YA. Kind of. At least, I believe that there are elements that make a book more solidly YA regardless of how they are marketed (Because really, The Wheel of Time isn't YA? Because the books are a thousand pages long or something? Really? Really?).

And Shadowshaper is the embodiment of what YA science fiction and fantasy can be, a novel that explores family and culture and art and generational change. What makes the story YA? I'd argue that it's the focus and the celebration of the power of young people to redress wrongs, to bring justice out of injustice, and to create a better world. There is such a feel of possibility in the story, that the young people are not children waiting for guidance from adults, are not idiots or pawns or chosen ones. They are people first, not as old or experienced as they will be but there is also power there, that they have new ways of thinking, new ways of conceptualizing a future where they can have agency and where they can escape the cycles of oppression that seek to maintain the status quo.

But I suppose I should speak a bit about the plot? Is that how book reviews work? Hmm. Well, the story does an amazing job with its cast of characters, focusing on Sierra, a young woman who, unbeknownst to her, is from a family in the middle of a supernatural struggle that's been simmering for generations. The Shadowshapers are individuals capable of channeling spirits through their art. Spoken word, music, or, in Sierra's case, visual art. Of course, her heritage has been hidden from her and there's quite the tangled web surrounding why, family dramas and expectations and prejudices. The novel does an excellent job of showing the ways that parents damage their children, the ways that children rebel and, in some instances, only succeed in passing on new traumas. But Sierra is sharp and indomitable, with a keen eye for justice and a great group of friends. There's some light romance, as well, which is pulled off well, never eclipsing Sierra's character while allowing to explore her attractions and giving her someone her own age to explore her powers with.

What makes Shadowshaper so compelling to me, though, is how it gives Sierra and her friends the choice and the power of where to go next. They are fighting not only against an incursion from a white dude trying to steal the power of their culture to further himself (a nice commentary on the line between anthropology and appropriation), but also against the problems within that culture, the misogyny and roles that stifle, that prevent people from being happy and empowered. And Sierra is very effective at cutting through the bullshit and making some very difficult decisions. She's faced not only with protecting herself and her family and her culture, but also looking at all of it with a critical eye. What results is the great triumph of the novel as YA, which is that it allows the characters to figure it out on their own.

Which I think is what I like most about the novel, that even faced with beings ancient and powerful, Sierra doesn't give up her agency. She refuses to accept the old prophecies and the old systems and instead sets about making a new one with her friends, one where everyone is welcome and where everyone has a chance to thrive. And it's that hope and that strength that is free of jaded resentment of "kids these days" that makes this book important not just for kids (though this is exactly the kind of story I'd recommend for young readers) but for adults as well (because it gives some much needed perspective and hope). The novel is rich and empowering and uplifting and fun, and it's also complex and expertly constructed. It's YA, both in its accessibility and its message, but that doesn't mean that adults couldn't learn a thing or two from it as well.

The Math:

Baseline Assessment: 8/10 

Bonuses: +1 for holy crap is that final battle intense and ALL THE YES!!!

Negatives: nope. nothing here. move along.

Nerd Coefficient: 9/10 "why can't this get fourteen books?" see our full rating system here.

--

POSTED BY: Charles, avid reader, reviewer, and sometimes writer of speculative fiction. Contributor to Nerds of a Feather since 2014.

REFERENCE: Older, Daniel José. Shadowshaper [Arthur A. Levine, 2015]

Microreview [Novella] Rupert Wong, Cannibal Chef by Cassandra Khaw

Don't worry, there are kittens at the end of this review...

The Meat:

In Kuala Lumpur the gods from a number of different pantheons are vying for power. And Rupert Wong, remarkable really only for his ability to render delicacies for his ghoulish masters and for his bloody past, is thrust into the middle of a situation that could lead to a war between them all. If that's not a great hook, I don't know what is. And if the novella was only about Rupert flailing against the momentum of war, trying to save what he can, which mostly means his own skin, it would be an entertaining tale worth checking out. But this story...does something a bit more than that, something subversive and subtle that makes it even better, that layers meaning and intent into a powerful tale about corruption and the responsibility of one person against a rotten system.

Stories featuring pantheons at war are not exactly new to urban fantasy. The Greek gods fighting the Norse fighting the native gods of the Americas, at times it feels like you can't turn around without bumping into one or another. What is unique and compelling here is that the mythology takes place in a non-Western context that complicates the more common tropes it conjures. Rupert Wong is an easy character to understand. In many ways he is exactly the Western hero, the everyman, the poor sod just trying to get by. His voice is wry and sarcastic, his life a series of unfortunate events. He's trying to do right by those he cares about. To a point, at least. He's a man with a dark past who got a glimpse of what to expect when he died, an eternity of the deepest hells, and determined to try and turn over a new leaf. Not by being a good person suddenly, but by working for those hells he was bound for in order to commute his sentence.

And here's where the work gets deliciously complex. Because the story can be read as just a man trying to do the "right thing." Rupert does always seem to be at the bad end of a beating, or a possession, or a plot to spark off a war. He's a sympathetic character in many ways, because his actions always seem reasonable, even clever at times. He's the main character, the hero, and while he might not always be heroic, isn't that what's expected? In the landscape of grit and grimdark, isn't that what people expect from their heroes? What they want, because what's the fun of a hero who's nice, who's good? Isn't "good" an illusion in the face of the ugliness that Rupert sees, that he is forced to participate in? Isn't Rupert doing the best he can, and shouldn't we applaud him for that, because things will work out in the end?

The answer is, of course, no. And it's a no that the novella weaves expertly, revealing again and again the extent to which Rupert is not a good person, is not a hero. The extent to which believing that "good" is an illusion allows evil to prosper, to continue. In accepting the belief that Rupert is doing the only thing he can, the reader (and the character himself) become a part of the corruption that makes victims of everyone. It is no surprise that those most victimized by the story, by the setting, are not the able men. It is the children who pay. It is women who pay. It is the poor who pay. And Rupert, for all that he's the everyman, is in reality one of the privileged class, can escape his damning as long as he supports the system. As long as he passes on the injustice, he can protect himself from it. But he also becomes a part of it.

More and more I'm finding myself both drawn in and repulsed by stories like this. They are, by necessity, sometimes ugly stories. Violence is rampant, even to Rupert but more horrifically to those around him. Children are brutalized, women are objects. The story really does sell his pain and his choice, but it also shows what focusing on that pain means. There's a strong (for me, at least) urge to identify with Rupert. He's the main character. The Hero. He's funny and entertaining. He's clever and wily. He's the underdog being used by the gods. He sees the corruption of the system and he hates it. Except he uses that corruption to benefit himself and those he cares for. He consciously decides to become culpable, to privilege his own comfort over stopping a war. And in that moment he confronts the reader with their own role in corruption, in their own guilt for falling into the narrative that this is about Rupert. For all that he is the main character, this is not his story. This is the story of the people that Rupert fails, those that go largely unseen. It is the weight of their stories that make this project work.

In the end, the novella works as both an entertaining romp and as something much darker and much deeper. It becomes one of a growing number of stories to complicate the everyman character, the lovable loser. To show just how dangerous that narrative can be. It grows right out of the conventions and tropes in SFF, grittier than grimdark and much more hitting. It is fun and funny and charming, but it is also subversive as hell and exquisitely pointed. It left me numb. Luckily, thanks to my previous review of Making Wolf, I came prepared this time. Behold, adorable kittens to aid in recovery!

The Math:

Baseline Assessment: 7/10 

Bonuses: +1 for a fresh, fun voice and interesting character in Rupert, +1 for really complicating morality and complicity

Negatives: -1 for wow some of that was really fucking dark and difficult to read

Nerd Coefficient: 8/10 "mind officially blown" see our full rating system here.

--

POSTED BY: Charles, avid reader, reviewer, and sometimes writer of speculative fiction. Contributor to Nerds of a Feather since 2014.

REFERENCE: Khaw, Cassandra. Rupert Wong, Cannibal Chef [Abaddon Books, 2015]

Microre-review [book]: Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie

Another Perspective on One Esk

Reading the title of this post, you may be asking yourself a few questions. Isn't a little late to review Ancillary Justice? Didn't The G already review Ancillary Justice when it was timely? What would be the point of issuing another review? All valid questions! The G absolutely did review Ancillary Justice when it was fresh, but he wasn't particularly impressed and passed on Ancillary Sword last year. However, (not to get too under the hood here) he offered up Ancillary Mercy and I happily accepted, but under the conditions that I could catch up first. We decided it wouldn't be a bad idea for me to re-review Ancillary Justice and issue a review for Ancillary Sword before we get to our review of Ancillary Mercy. So that's where we are today.

Ancillary Justice has been out for a couple years, and The G gave an excellent summary, so I won't retread that ground. Read The G's review. I did enjoy Ancillary Justice more than he did. It's a complex story in a big world, which we don't get enough of. It's got class struggle, xenophobia, questions of conscience and sentience, planet hopping, alien species, war, occupation, and more. It's all handled remarkably well, particularly for an author's debut.

There were very few moments when I felt like I should have a pen and diagrams to keep everything straight, because the characters and their actions spoke for themselves. I could recognize characters by what they did or how they spoke, which is something that many authors fail to pull off. There is a point maybe 1/3 into the story where two characters are having a discussion about an object of interest. This is where I was really hooked. It was a perfectly balanced suspenseful moment in which I wasn't sure what the outcome would be, but I couldn't stop reading until there was some resolution. All of this from a simple two character discussion.

There are mysteries in this world that don't get answered, but I can tell that there are answers somewhere. Maybe they're later in the series, or maybe they just don't get written down, but they exist. This is what makes the very abrupt and anti-climatic ending a big letdown. The conflict at the core of the novel is resolved (to a point), but it happens so fast and with a lot of hand-waving. It doesn't come as a surprise, because endings are hard for even seasoned authors to pull off, but it could've been better.

Ancillary Justice is a big, ambitious debut and Leckie made it all work, almost. It suffers a poor ending, but the preceding 3/4ths of the story are excellent sci-fi.

The Math

Baseline Assessment: 8/10

Bonuses: +1 making a space opera that feels properly big

Penalties: -1 couldn't stick the ending

Nerd Coefficient: 8/10 (well worth your time and attention)

***

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

Reference: Leckie, Ann. Ancillary Justice [Orbit, 2013] 

Microreview [film]: The Manitou

For a one-star movie, not too bad

The Manitou shows up regularly on Turner Classic Movies' "TCM Underground" series, and has a reputation for being a uniquely bizarre film, along with a one-star rating on the cable guide. But for the first half of the movie, the strangest thing about it is that Hollywood legend Tony Curtis plays the lead.

Curtis plays Harry Erskine, a charlatan psychic to chiefly old women with deep pockets. But Harry's girlfriend Karen (played by Susan Strasberg, daughter of acting coach Lee), suddenly develops a rapidly metastasizing tumor on her shoulder that doctors soon discover is a fetus. What follows are a series of familiar scenes: strange happening when doctors attempt to operate, the possessed old woman who begins speaking a strange language, a seance (which is actually super cool), and consulting with an expert on this particular form of occult weirdness — played with relish by Burgess Meredith. These scenes all put me in mind of films like Rosemary's Baby and the more recent Drag Me to Hell. While those films certainly did this stuff better, The Manitou dies it well enough to keep things fun.

Harry and his expanding team of helpers discover that the growth on Karen's shoulder is the reincarnation of an ancient Native American medicine man, so they enlist the help of a current medicine man, who can't work fast enough to keep the weird little devil from being born — which is certainly a hell of a memorable scene. Then they've got a fight on their hands.

Is it an odd movie? Sure, is the dwarf playing the reincarnated medicine man more goofy than scary? Sure. But there are some genuinely memorable visuals in the film, and the saddest takeaway from the whole thing is that we may have missed out on some truly great horror films when the film's writer/director, William Gridler, was killed scouting locations for his next film, at only the age of 30.

The Math

Baseline Assessment: 5/10

Bonuses: +1 for Susan Strasberg's totally creepy screaming; +1 for a cast that did their best to commit, even though they were clearly slumming it; +1 for some compelling visuals (especially the ice-covered hospital wing)

Penalties: -1 for your standard wooden dialogue and bizarre logical leaps; -1 for the final confrontation, which is just silly

Cult Film Coefficient: 6/10. Better than it probably should've been

Posted by Vance K — co-editor and cult film fake psychic at nerds of a feather, flock together since 2012

AiIP Microreview: The Glass Falcon, by E. Catherine Tobler

The Meat: I love adventures. Mary Shelley, Robert Lewis Stevenson, Mark Twain, so many others- I love stories that simply carry you away. So it is probably little surprise that I am quite fond of this story, but there are far more reasons than the fact that it is simply an adventure story, through and through.

Tobler has what I would term a gift for words. The Glass Falcon is a novella- fairly short, a mere 89 pages. But her vocabulary, and use of ornate, precise and detailed language makes it seem much longer, or rather, deeper. In a world of epic fantasies that drag on forever (lookin' at you, George R.R.), I really appreciate a story - author - who knows what details to include, which ones to omit, and how to express them in a rich way.

I also enjoy the way very diverse elements blend together - on one hand, it is a steampunk adventure, a sort of love letter to Paris that doesn't precisely exist - But also deals with shapeshifters, Egyptian gods and ancient history, and the mystery which lies at the heart of this story. It's a lot to pack into 89 pages, and it is done without moving too swiftly or getting bogged down in clunky exposition.

Potential spoiler alert here, but I have to comment on it, because it was masterfully handled, and central to the story and its ending: the perspective of the gods. Every bloody YA/NA (which this is not), paranormal, etc book out there right now has gods and immortals by the bucketload, and they are all perfectly relatable to humans. This is catastrophically stupid. These infinite beings fall in love with normal humans, schoolgirls, etc, with no problem at all. Instead, Tobler gives us a treat with how it really would be- these beings of extreme power and wisdom don't actually relate to our world very well at all. Not in how they talk, not in how they act, or even how they think.

My only complaint has to do with the characters. While this story stands alone, reading its predecessor (Rings of Anubis) is helpful. I like Folley quite a lot- she is a well-developed, strong character, but I didn't feel she progressed much though the story. She enters the story, reeling one might say, from the events and revelations of Rings, rightly so, but for a character of her strength and depth, by the end of Falcon, I really think she would/could/should be much more in control of things - in fact, there is one scene where she is quite in control (not like that, you perverts). More of that, please. Likewise, Mallory acts more as a sounding board than he did in the Rings, where we saw him much more strong-willed and determined.

The Math:

Baseline Assessment: 8/10

Bonuses:
+1 for being a well-balanced, complex story that is not over-long
+1 for the spoiler alert thing above

Penalties:
-1 for having the human characters remain stagnant

Conclusion: 9: very high quality/standout in its category

Grab it here, and pick up Rings of Anubis while you're at it.

Microreview [book]: So You've Been Publicly Shamed by Jon Ronson

This book should be the official Twitter user manual

To be honest, Jon Ronson's new book isn't right in line with the nerd/geek-theme of this site, but we nerds aren't exactly known for our calm, rational, measured responses to news or new releases in our particular fandoms that we don't immediately like. We drove Joss Whedon off of Twitter when Avengers: Age of Ultron wasn't everything we hoped it would be, after all. So even though I feel like the internet's dad and we're having to have The Talk, here goes:

In this book, Ronson chronicles the re-emergence of public shaming as a punishment. Used to be, back before the mid-19th century, people convicted of certain crimes would be made to stand in the stocks, or pillory, or publicly whipped, or otherwise publicly made an example of. It was deemed, however, that these were effectively cruel and unusual punishments with lasting, sometimes catastrophic psychological consequences. Let me stress again, people in the 1830s found public shaming excessive punishment. Well, nobody loves anything as much as a public hanging, it seems, so we've now resurrected the public shaming for the digital age.

Ronson starts off by tracing the trajectory of pop-science writer Jonah Lehrer's career. Until 2012, Lehrer was a best-selling author and in-demand public speaker. He then committed some journalistic sins (which are pretty minor, as far as journalistic sins go), and was made to endure an almost unimaginable public crucifixion via Twitter when he attempted to apologize at a media conference. Ronson also follows the stories of Justine Sacco, who was terrible at making jokes about white privilege, Lindsey Stone, who didn't understand Facebook privacy settings when sharing an intentionally disrespectful photo with a friend as a joke, and "Hank," who made the same joke everybody who's ever heard the word "dongle" has made, but this time it cost him his livelihood, and the security of his children. And that's nothing compared to what it did to the woman who set those events in motion.

Ronson also ventures into the worlds of extreme porn, prisons, courts, and online reputation management, and he unearths some obscured facts about the Stanford Prison Experiment that may be kind of important. But overall, this is a book that explores the human costs of hundreds of thousands of us taking ten seconds out of our day to say something casually awful about another human being in a place where the entire world can see it. By and large, Ronson lets these events, the people involved in them, and their repercussions speak for themselves. But I'll go a little farther and say a little about something he only touches on, namely the arbitrary nature of our pile-ons and our own complicity.

Take, for instance, the story of Mike Daisey. You may remember Mike Daisey as the journalist whose story on This American Life about working conditions in China for Apple's suppliers almost turned the world's wealthiest tech company on its head. This is, until This American Life had him back on to corner him about certain misrepresentations in Daisey's original broadcast. Remember? I do. I didn't go on Twitter to talk about what a piece of shit Mike Daisey was, but thousands of others did. But here's the thing: Mike Daisey isn't a journalist. Never really was. He was a stage performer, and did a one-man show about working conditions in China. Ira Glass, the ruler of the This American Life kingdom, saw Daisey's show and invited him onto the air to give his performance for all of This American Life's listeners. But then the fact-checking process revealed some problems with Daisey's account of his trip -- not the facts he was discussing, just his personal exposure to them. So Ira Glass had him back on to ambush him and get him to admit his duplicity. But the way I see it, this isn't Mike Daisey's fault. I don't assume everything Louis C.K. says in his shows literally happened, because he's a stage performer, not a journalist. But Ira Glass made different assumptions than I would have, and opened the door for a public shaming of Mike Daisey that almost drove Daisey to suicide. But now Daisey's pretty much okay, and Jonah Lehrer, who did much the same thing, has yet to publish again or get back on his feet.

Jimmy Kimmel handles it as a joke in his series "Celebrities Read Mean Tweets," and that's one thing. Celebrities are at least accustomed to casual vitriol. But we do this -- repeatedly -- to regular people with a few dozen Twitter followers who happen to say something that can be taken out of context or divorced of its original intention, and as a result, we all chuckle for a bit at somebody's callousness and then these people watch as their lives literally disintegrate. There are actual racists on Twitter. There are entire partisan "news" outlets who only exist to twist and misrepresent things that happen in the world. This is a world where a board member of the NRA blamed the South Carolina shootings on one of the victims because that person voted in the state legislature against a concealed-carry law. But instead of these genuinely awful people, we pick easy targets, weak targets, and straw men. And we destroy them casually.

And when asked about it later, we say, "I'm sure they're fine." Thankfully Jon Ronson went and tracked those people down to let us know that they're not fine, and that our actions online have real-world consequences.

The Math

Baseline Assessment: 8/10 for telling human stories that have deep emotional resonance

Bonuses: +2 for holding up a mirror in a timely, meaningful way and telling us truths that we'd probably rather ignore

Nerd Coefficient: 10/10. This isn't the best book you'll read by a longshot, but it's a message we all need to hear as social media races toward its adolescence. 

Posted by -- Vance K, who doesn't want to be publicly shamed, and is proactively watching his ass.

Reference: Ronson, Jon. So You've Been Publicly Shamed [Riverhead Books, 2015].

Microreview [book]: The Disaster Artist by Greg Sestero & Tom Bissell

Rises above this reviewer's ambivalence about the movie it chronicles

There is, apparently, a cottage industry of people affiliated with godawful-terrible movies telling the story of their experience making them. Michael Stephenson got in on the game a few years ago with his documentary Best Worst Movie about his involvement with Troll 2, and now Greg Sestero has gotten the story of his involvement in The Room out there. Sestero's story is set to form the basis of a film adaptation starring James Franco. Thankfully, I don't believe anybody is planning a tell-all about Birdemic yet. Despite the claims of people selling the stories of their own particular worst movies, Birdemic, for my money, remains the worst movie. But I've already harvested those fields.

I am deeply ambivalent about The Room, and to be honest, I'm pretty ambivalent about most of Sestero's account of his involvement with it. It has been a real struggle for me to separate my feelings about this particular work from my feelings about this field in general. See, I myself have been involved with some terrible, incompetent productions. I have been through the grind of acting workshops and castings and hunting for an agent and the stop-start pull of trying to get traction for a career in movies. Fully one-third of The Disaster Artist chronicles these activities in the young Greg Sestero's life, as he takes acting workshops in his Bay Area hometown, contemplates a move to LA, finally does move, gets an agent, takes more classes, auditions, questions himself, wonders if his mom's nay-saying was right, and struggles with the reality of having to get a day job that still accommodates increasingly infrequent auditions. To me, this was laborious stuff to get through, because I lived it. There are a million and a half people living it right now within a thirty-mile zone around where I type this, and there have been a million and a half people doing it here every day since Clara Bow put stars in the eyes of would-be it-girls and it-boys all around the country. It is a story that is profoundly unexceptional.

What makes Sestero's story different, though, is a peripheral character who evolves into a central one — the riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an accent that is Tommy Wiseau. Greg meets Tommy in an acting class in San Francisco, as Tommy murders a scene from A Streetcar Named Desire. Tommy's performance is so bizarre and incoherent that Greg asks Tommy to be his scene partner just to try to figure out what makes this odd man tick. It's unclear if Greg has yet, to this day, figured it out, but he's come closer than anybody else. If you don't already know, here's the mystery of The Room: In 2003, Hollywood witnessed the independent theatrical release of an evident ego-service project written, produced, directed, and starring an unknown, unkempt, and vaguely foreign cat named Tommy Wiseau. Wiseau's odd, heavy-lidded face stood twenty feet high, looming over motorists on scenic, heavily trafficked Highland Blvd from a billboard. That billboard stayed there for years and years. So too, the film played at midnight at the Laemmle Sunset 5 theater (across from LA's best deli, Greenblatt's. This point is not open for debate.) for years, and began to attract crowds drawn by word-of-mouth about how awful and bizarre this movie was, and the question of who was this ego-manaical oddball at the center of the whole thing?

Here, then, is the mystery of Tommy Wiseau: How did a man of totally indeterminate age and origin amass a fortune that allowed him to spend millions of dollars making and promoting a totally incomprehensible vanity project with characters, stories, and diseases that magically come and go, never to reappear again? Why did he make the baffling decisions on display in the film? Just, why? Wiseau has always been publicly circumspect regarding the answers to these questions, so The Disaster Artist is as close as we're likely to get to any answers. Where the book excels is in conveying the utter lunacy of the actual production, and the revolving door of cast and crew members trying to get this thing in the can. It also, in spite of everything, makes you feel sympathy for the inscrutable Wiseau.

As the RiffTrax for The Room points out (co-written by past NoaF interviewee Sean Thomason), the water in a fountain featured prominently in one shot is full of the tears of talented filmmakers whose films will never see the light of day as we all ironically watch The Room. In the end, the success of The Room, which is only reinforced by the narrative of The Disaster Artist, is both a testament to and an indictment of the way America awards success to individuals.

The Math

Baseline Assessment: 5/10

Bounses: +1 for the book's alternating narrative structure, which I credit to co-writer Tom Bissell; +1 for Sestero's narration in the audiobook, chiefly his impersonation of Wiseau; +1 for Tommy Wiseau as a character, even if key mysteries remain unanswered

Penalties: -1 for the Sunset Blvd and The Talented Mr. Ripley quotes that kick off each chapter — we get it, we get it, ok?;

Nerd Coefficient: 7/10 (audiobook) (a mostly enjoyable experience); 6/10 (in print) (still enjoyable, but the flaws are hard to ignore)

***
Posted by Vance K — nerds of a feather co-editor and cult film (and attendant baggage) reviewer, and LA-denizen since before the billboard for The Room disappeared from Highland Boulevard.

Reference: Bissell, Tom and Greg Sestero. The Disaster Artist [Simon & Schuster, 2013].

Microreview [book]: On the Beach by Nevil Shute

On the Beach had been on my bookshelf for years, and I had always looked forward to reading it since the author, Nevil Shute, also penned the novel one of my favorite Jimmy Stewart movies (No Highway in the Sky) was based on. On the Beach was an entirely different experience. On the one hand, it is possibly the most interesting take on the end of the world I've ever read. On the other hand, I kept finding myself questioning the authenticity of the characters' actions and outlooks.

The 1957 novel was written in the early Cold War-era and explores the outcome of mutually assured self-destruction from a profoundly interesting vantage point: Australia. Two years after a nuclear holocaust between Russia, China, the United States, and other, smaller and less-accountable nuclear powers wiped out all of humanity in the Northern Hemisphere in six days, this book begins as the southernmost inhabitants of the planet wait for the global winds to bring the lethal radiation to them. Everyone will die. There is no escape. This is the end of humanity, and there's nothing to do but wait for it. To quote T.S. Eliot, as Shute does, "This is the way the world ends / This is the way the world ends / This is the way the world ends / Not with a bang, but a whimper."

The novel follows Lieutenant Peter Holmes, a newlywed and new father in the Australian Navy, as he is assigned to one of the only two remaining American naval vessels, a submarine that was submerged when the war happened, and surfaced to find it had nowhere to go but Australia. It's no spoiler to say we then read about Peter, his family, and his friends, both on the submarine and on the mainland, living out their – and all of humanity's – last days on Earth. The characters are well-drawn and each is endearingly noble. It's sad to see them go. But the thing that irked me about the novel was how normally everyone acted. There was no looting, no particular lawlessness, and only a couple of people who were even habitually drinking too much. Believe me, if somebody told Americans there were only six months left for all of us, we'd be beyond Thunderdome in no time. Maybe it's the British stuff-upper-lip-and-all-that influence, but almost everyone in the novel just goes about their business, making plans for next year, and generally acting as though the world were normal. I get it, it's a coping mechanism, but I never believed everybody would use the same one.

That said, this novel really got under my skin, so much so that I dreamed one night that I was in the same spot the characters were in, having a goodbye party at my office to say "we'll meet again" to all my coworkers, and all we'd ever known, and life on this planet. It is an unrelentingly bleak book, like the movie Fail-Safe, but a nevertheless moving testament to the bullet we all collectively dodged, and should hope to never encounter again, and all that should be lost if we are not so lucky.

The Math

Baseline Assessment: 6/10

Penalties: -1 for what seems to be a far-too-civilized take on the end of civilization

Bonuses: +1 for fundamentally decent characters who, while far-fetched, are admirably noble; +1 for being a far more human look at the end of the world than most others in the genre; +1 for a slow, but inexorable pace that actually heightens the impact of what's to come

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

Posted by — Vance K, Nerds of a Feather contributor since 2012, and singer-songwriter for the band Sci-Fi Romance, whose debut album cover bears an eerie similarity to the 1960 Signet edition of On the Beach seen above

AiIP MicroReview: Darkness Concealed by D. Emery Bunn

Synopsis: 50 years ago, the dawn did not come. Again. Everyone in Telthan knew it would happen. Monsters roamed the land, killing virtually everyone in their path, laying waste to anything in their way. Only a precious few survived to rebuild the wreckage of civilization, just like last time. No one questions the Darkening. Not even the children.

That is, until four strangers set off in search of answers, braving a forbidden city, a forgotten library, and foreboding mountains for the truth that has to exist. But the past does not give up its secrets easily, and the truth is far darker than the blackest night.

The Meat: There is a lot to like here. It is very 'readable', though I stop short of saying 'page-turner'. While that is probably a fine distinction, what I mean is it is comfortable to read, yet not oh my god, I have to find out what happens next exciting to read. 

The characters are well-defined and likeable. The dialogue is well-written and engaging.  The pertinent details are well described, yet... That's the problem I have with it. I have been struggling with what seems to be missing, and pertinent is the word. I hesitate to knock it because, by and large, it is very well done- but narrow.

The four main characters, the things that relate to them, the world itself are very rich. It has a lot of fantasy tropes (which is one of the reasons I don't read a whole lot of fantasy; those tropes are pretty much unavoidable), but 'The Darkness' has good, gritty feel to it- yet we don't get to know the world in its present state quite well enough to know it well. While the dialogue/action is described very well, there is little that makes me feel as if I am in a small town, big city or in the mountains.

The other area I go back and forth on is Caleb, who stutters. His stuttering is written in phonetically, and it doesn't work for me- but I think it's great for the character. The really annoying part is not how it's done, I'm just not sure how you communicate it. I almost wrote 'it interrupts the flow of dialogue', but... that's what stuttering does. So either it's perfect and amazing, or falls flat, but I'm not quite sure which.

The Math: So. Can we talk? Like outside this little review space, for a second? Just, about books. Because I have been staring at the cursor for a good five minutes, not sure what I should write here. I should write something, give it the six or seven it deserves and move on. But that's what's bugging me. You see, every book I have read lately has been a six or seven. Part of it is me. I grew up on a steady diet of classics, and am a whore for them. And I want some of these contemporary authors who I am not reading to be them, or at least reach out and grab their genres by the balls and own them. There has been a lot of good stuff lately, to be sure, but I want something outstanding.

OK, digression over. Thank you. Back to the math. I said it deserves a six or a seven, and it does. It is rarefied air for a debut to be what I described in the preceding paragraph, so I don't expect that here, but it does have that potential- despite having a ton of tropes, it is deep and enjoyable and unique enough to work.

Baseline: 6  (still enjoyable, but the flaws are hard to ignore)

Bonuses:





+1 for solid character development
+1 for world building
+1 for including magic in a way that makes sense, and not using it as a cop out all the damn time

Penalties:
-1 for pacing. Starts really fast, then slows, then picks back up.

-1 for reliance on fantasy tropes. Repeating doomsday cycle, small town protagonist, etc.

Nerd Coefficient: 7 (a mostly enjoyable experience)

While there are a few criticisms, I say grab this when it is out on the 23rd. If you like fantasy, this a solid read.

-DESR

Dean is the author of 3024AD and other stories, engineer, and geek about many things. He lives and writes in the Pacific Northwest. You can listen to him ramble on Twitter and muse on his blog.

AiIP: Five Indie Books to Read This Summer

Since I started writing-or, rather, publishing- I have met lots of cool people, and made some great and lasting friendships. It's also been a journey of self-discovery, and one of the things I have discovered is that I am really, really terrible at writing reviews. I can talk about a book for days, but for whatever reason, putting that to paper is always hard. I generally kind of go "I liked it, you should read it" or "I didn't; don't". So that's what I am going to do here- five books that do indie publishing right. Enjoy.

Augment: Human Services, Phil Elmore: This one was sent to me by Johnny Atomic, who did my cover. He had worked on this one as well, and it took me forever to get around to it, but I wish I hadn't waited. It's clever and different than a lot of the scifi out there. If you like grit and conspiracies, you'll love this.

Augments: They're the plague of the modern world, a deviant class of cyborg surgery addicts who've been herded into ghettos for the safety of those still legally human. As tensions in the tech ghetto rise, David Chalmers, an agent for Human Services, is sent behind the walls on a routine extraction. What he discovers is a helpless young woman maimed by unthinkable implant technology... and a murder, for which Chalmers is promptly framed.
Hunted by assassins and wanted by his own government, Chalmers must peel back the layers of a conspiracy without losing his own humanity to a back-alley surgeon's knife -- but first, alone and unarmed, he must survive the tech ghetto itself.

Rings of Anubis, E Catherine Tobler: A steampunk adventure in all the best ways. Adventure stories are always my favorite, and this one is suspenseful and fun. Plays with time travel, exploration of Egypt as well as real-world events (the Paris World Fair is described wonderfully).

Paris, 1889: A time when the world looks to a future of revolutionary science and extraordinary machines. Archaeologist Eleanor Folley looks back to Egypt’s ancient mysteries and her mother’s inexplicable, haunting disappearance. Agent Virgil Mallory, a man with ghosts and monsters his own, brings evidence of a crime that leads Eleanor into deepest Egypt again. Dangerous marauders and revelations from beyond the grave are part and parcel of adventures in the desert, but Eleanor doesn’t count on crossing paths with the guardian of the underworld—Anubis himself!

 Discovering Aberration, S.C. Barrus: Another steampunk adventure, although a bit more traditional- but that's the idea. Written to the tune of most major steampunk tropes, it doesn't take itself seriously at all and constantly pokes fun at the conventions that populate the world. All the while, it manages to tell a fun treasure-hunting story.

An ancient map stollen. A lost civilization discovered. A terrible secret unleashed.
Thaddeus Lumpen's archaeology career is near collapse, thanks to the machinations of rivals who would kill to claim a discovery for themselves. In desperation he turns to Freddy Fitzgerald, a rebellious writer who still maintains connections from his days as a street hooligan. For Lumpen to get ahead of his even less scrupulous competitors he must steal an ancient map and forge a path to an island where a lost civilization waits to be found. For Freddy, it's a chance to sell the story of a lifetime.
But nothing is as simple as it appears from halfway across the world. Old acquaintances become enemies, professional rivalries turn violent, and a notorious gang lord wants his map back. The island itself holds dangers that Freddy and Lumpen couldn't have prepared to face--and horrifying secrets that might be better left buried. Beset by wild beasts, cutthroat competitors, and dangers darker still, the two men fight not for glory, but their own survival... before the island pushes them past the brink of insanity. 

Insomnium, Zachary Bonelli: This is the first is a series of great reads, which I always struggle to describe properly. Think Sliders, maybe. But... better. As I've said, I love adventures, and this is an adventure though a series of artfully-crafted alternate universes, with great characters and great stories.

Nel Hanima lives in Seattle of 2089, a citizen of the newly organized Western Union. Life has stabilized since his childhood, when he lived with his parents in the Queen Anne community bunker. Government has been reestablished, and order restored. Famine and disease no longer run rampant, and the economy has stabilized. But still, the trees and grasses grow browner. The Sound continues to rise, swallowing up neighborhood after neighborhood of Nel's youth.

A faint tug drags at Nel day after day. The suspicion that his life is without purpose or meaning or hope grows ever stronger.

One night, he falls asleep in his apartment and awakens in the City of Nowhere, an impossible conundrum world of inhuman citizens, where time and space are an illusion and paradoxes run rampant.

As Nel explores the city, he meets Giniip Pana, Rev Merveille, and Drogl Belgaer, humans from alternate versions of his world's timeline. Together with his new friends, Nel works to unravel the mysteries of Nowhere, to learn how he came to be there, and discover not only a way to return to Seattle, but also the purpose and meaning his life has lacked. 

Isaac the Fortunate, A. Ka.: This is a fantasy series (The Winter is book one) that doesn't drag on forever or star some kid from a village in the middle of nowhere who is the chosen one, so it gets instant points in my book. Instead, it plays off much better scenarios, consequences and human emotion.

Beltran had humble ambitions—to farm his land, to grow his family, and to live fruitfully with his wife, Amaranta. The winter of 1553 had different plans. After a crippling famine, unbearable storms, and a devastating plague known as the Delirium, the winter had taken everything dear to him.
Then, through the backhanded kindness of a mysterious traveler and her time-obliterating potion, he got everything back.
His salvation is the beginning of his problems, as he discovers just how stubborn history can be. Greater forces are at work. The more Beltran learns about the circumstances, the less he understands—especially when it comes to the traveler and her inept husband, Isaac. In their quest to stop the Delirium, she and Isaac won’t let anything, or anyone, get in the way of their senseless plans.
Beltran fights for his simple life, his love, and his future... again, and again, and again, even when he finds nobody on his side, not even his dear Amaranta.

There you go- a few books for your summer TBR pile. I hope you enjoy them!

-DESR
 
Dean is the author of 3024AD and other stories, engineer, and geek about many things. He lives and writes in the Pacific Northwest. You can listen to him ramble on Twitter and muse on his blog.