Book Nanoreviews: Matryoshka; Boy, With Accidental Dinosaur; The Rainseekers

These are three novellas from quite different corners of science fiction that I read over January. One, Matryoshka, is a backlist title that's been on my shelf for some time, while the other two are new releases.

The odd thing is you will see I've given all 3 the same score (give or take a few decimal points; I do think Matryoshka is probably by a small margin the strongest), but that flattens just how diverse in their strengths (and their flaws) these three works are. Suffice to say that I think if any of these is in a niche that is to your taste, you will find it enjoyable and engaging.

Matryoshka by Ricardo Pinto

This is, as far as I can tell, Pinto's only longer-form work outside his very good and underappreciated Stone Dance of the Chameleon series of early 2000s grimdark doorstoppers, and it is a very different beast to those. A slim novella clocking in at under 90 generously spaced pages, it opens with our point of view character, Cherenkov, hooking up with a complete stranger in post-World War 2 Venice and then following her through a portal to another world, called Eboreus. So far, so portal fantasy. What follows, though, is something considerably more abstract and more surreal.

Cherenkov and the woman he followed to Eboreus, Septima, are quickly set on a mission across a trackless sea and towards an increasingly fierce white light to find an old man who is probably a Neanderthal. It turns out that the closer one gets to that white light, the slower time moves. By the time the two return (with a third person, who had been lost in time), years have passed in Eboreus and decades in the real world. The plot, such as it is, plays out the consequences of this time dilation.

Matryoshka is probably best described as science fantasy. The story is played out like a fairy tale, but the time dilation at the plot's core seems pretty clearly to be a matter of physics (if not understood as such by most of the characters) rather than magic. The plot is sketched lightly and its logic deliberately surreal and disorientating. Through this choice of narrative voice, the themes Pinto seeks to explore—dislocation in the face of the Holocaust and in the face of modernity more generally—are also sheeted onto the reader trying to make sense of the action. This is in general very effective and quite clearly deliberate, but in a few places the generally elegant prose clunks or is missing just one more plot breadcrumb to pull the reader along. Those quibbles aside, this is a bold and creative work by an author whose work deserves more attention. Recommended if you enjoy surrealist approaches to speculative fiction.

Nerd Coefficient: 7/10, a mostly enjoyable experience.

Boy, With Accidental Dinosaur by Ian McDonald

McDonald is a science fiction luminary, with works across a wide range of subgenres to great effect, from the sweep of centuries on Mars in Desolation Road to near-future brilliance in The Dervish House and River of Gods to cartel wars on the moon in the Luna trilogy. Boy, with Accidental Dinosaur explores yet another corner of the genre in a near-future post-political-collapse America. The point of departure from our timeline to the one of the book is the existence of the B2T2: "A place where two times lay up against each other, close as kittens, separated only by the finest layer of space-time fur, that could be stroked, and parted." This hole in time caused religious and political upheaval and, related to the anomaly or not, significant civil war within the former United States. It also allows for the rise of a truly idiosyncratic new form of entertaiment across these shattered states: dinosaur rodeo.

McDonald's masterstroke is to tell the story of this world from the perspective of someone deeply shaped by its differences from ours but with no understand of, or agency over, it. Tif is an orphan in his (late, as I read it) teens, his parents killed in early exchanges in the early battles which shaped the geopolitical present of the book. From a young age he is obsessed with dinosaur rodeo and aroused by the buckaroos; he's gay with little drama about that fact (and Arabic with a fair bit more drama in the Christian theocracy of the future USA). He runs away from the orphanage he ended up at after his parents' death and begs, borrows, and blowjobs his way across the American southwest to get a job mucking out stalls at a dinosaur rodeo. The book opens with him being fired from that job for letting a dinosaur escape. Shortly after, he acquires the titular accidental dinosaur, and the rest of the book is a road trip where Tif attempts to find a home and send his dinosaur back to the past (mandatory under time travel rules to minimise the risk of paradox).

There is a lot to like about this book. McDonald has frequently brilliant turns of phrase, tuned precisely to the register of the under-educated, dinosaur-obsessed, working class teenager who is our point of view character ("Tif folds himself into the big chair and all the sleep that hid in the night creeps up and settles in his lap"). The character work, if briefly sketched (appropriate for a novella), is well done and convincing. As an idiosyncratic, working class view of trying to make a life in a pretty grim future, it is generally successful. The thing that holds a good book back from being great is that it seems to have precisely the wrong amount of plot for a novella. There's too much plot and too wide a sweep for a short story, but it includes so much that it feels overcooked for a novella. The plot races at breakneck pace when it feels like it should proceed more sedately, and some scenes are over almost before they begin. The overall impression is that the story could have done with another 10 or 15,000 words of breathing room. As it stands, Boy, with Accidental Dinosaur feels just a little bit more like a genuinely excellent penultimate draft than a fully realised finished article.

Nerd Coefficient: 7/10, a mostly enjoyable experience.

The Rainseekers by Matthew Kressel

The Rainseekers is The Canterbury Tales on Mars, or (perhaps a more genre-appropriate comparison) a condensed Hyperion in mundane SF mode. Terraforming on Mars has proceeded far enough that there has been snow for some years, and the book focuses on a group of 40-odd people trekking out from the safety of Martian dome cities in an attempt to be the first to experience rain. Our narrator, Sakunja Salazar, is a former future!Tiktok star who since making more money than she knows what to do with in that career has turned to photography and journalism and is along for the ride. The book is about equally split between her frame narrative and the stories told to her by several of her fellow pilgrims (it's barely expressed as such; the trek is definitely a pilgrimmage) about their lives and what brought them to be out here, seeking Martian rain.

These pilgrims come from a wide range of backgrounds, from the descendant of the genius scientist who designed the orbital mirrors which have over decades warmed Mars and melted ice to the talented engineer brought low by trauma and addiction. Kressel has a deft touch with these nested stories, bringing depth to their subjects in a short word count. We get Sakunja's story as well, both through the narration of the frame story and her own background as narrated to one of the other pilgrims, and the emotional beats are equally well done.

I have two quibbles with the novella, one structural and one genre-related. Structurally, the balance of frame narrative to nested stories seems off. There is more to the frame narrative than an excuse for the stories, but there isn't quite enough to it to stand alone either. And for a party of 40-odd pilgrims, it feels weird that the story only gives us the stories of a handful of them. The balance is just slightly off in a way that means you finish the book feeling like you've missed something. In terms of genre complaints, there is a fair bit of "as you know, we realised [x thing happening in the 2020s] was bad" backfilling of the timeline between now and the novel's setting, and some of this is quite clumsy. The pilgrims and the Mars they inhabit are believably and authentically sketched; the history of the Earth they left behind to come there, not so much. It detracts only slightly from the narrative, but I do think it's worth noting when some of the SFnal elements of a SF narrative are one of the story's weaknesses.

Overall these are quibbles, though, and this is a nuanced, emotionally resonant set of stories that I think a lot of readers will enjoy.

Nerd Coefficient: 7/10, a mostly enjoyable experience.

Nanoreviews: Live Long and Evolve; The Extractionist; The Frame-Up

Live Long and Evolve: What Star Trek Can Teach Us about Evolution, Genetics, and Life on Other Worlds, by Mohammed A. F. Noor

I bought this book through Princeton University Press’s yearly book sale, which makes available an enormous selection of PUP books at, like, silly prices. I think I paid £3 for this one, and it was worth every penny.

This book is about using the science of evolutionary biology to make predictions about—or at the very least guide our search for—life on other planets. This is itself a fasincating question, but what makes this book charming is the way it integrates a deep knowledge of Star Trek lore into the discussion in plausible and entertaining ways. Mohammed A. F. Noor is not some kook arguing that Star Trek was ahead of its time or 'right' (except accidentally); and he’s not some buzzkill doing a take-down of all the things Star Trek got wrong (although he does note them). He’s simply drawing connections between his two passions in life, which are interested in the same thing—life on other planets—from very different angles.

The book is split up into six chapters. In the first, Noor discusses what conditions must be necessary for something recognizable as life to develop on a planet. For example: what is it about carbon, in particular, that makes it such a good building block? Must the life be carbon based, or could some other element serve the same function? This leads naturally into a discussion of the feasibility of species like the Horta (TOS: The Devil in the Dark), which is silicon-based, alongside real-world experiments showing that some bacteria can form molecules with silicon-carbon bonds. Other sections of this chapter discuss the necessity of liquid water, which is a useful solvent for bringing together chemical reagents, but  not necessarily the only one.  Ammonia, for example, might do the job. Noor also considers requirid temperature ranges, which are typically best when they allow water to exist in its liquid form—but if water is not the key solvent, then things might work out differently. Tolerance of extreme temperatuers is also a concern, but not a huge one. On earth alone we have extremophiles—creatures that tolerate or even prefer extreme temperatures, either hot or cold—and such entities appear in numerous Star Trek episodes, from the tardigrade-like animal Ripper in the first season of Discovery, to the silver-blooded inhabitants of the ‘demon planet’ from the Voyager episode Demon. (Althouh Noor does not mention it, I cannot let reference to the silver blood people pass without also reminding readers that they show up in the heartbreakingly excellent episode Course: Oblivion, albeit not in their extremophile forms.)

Other chapters tackle evolution, genetics, and reproduction. Noor fills this last chapter with fascinating examples of Earth species, such as the Amazon molly, which is entirely female, and reproduces by mating with males of other species. Fertilization triggers the process, but the eventual offspring contain no trace of DNA from the other species male fish. Thus the Amazon molly species remains distinct from whatever species the dildo-dad belonged to. 

Of course, when both parties in a cross-species night out are represented in the offspring, we have hybridization. This is a frequent phenomenon in Star Trek, most famously embodied in the TOS character of Spock, a Vulcan-human hybrid, but there are a variety of other hybrid characters that Noor analyses quite thoroughly. My favourite part of this chapter is his discussion of Haldane’s rule, which captures the (Earthbound) phenomenon whereby female hybrids are more likely to survive than male hybrids, and are more likely to prove fertile, contrary to the trend of sterility among hyrids. As a table on pg 128 reveals, of all the hybrids in Star Trek (up through the first couple of seasons of Discovery at least), more are female than male, and of the hybrid characters who are known to have produced offspring, all but one was female. As Noor concludes, ‘If we speculate that this depiction reflects a difference in hybrid fertility, meaning at least some of the hybrid males were sterile, then we may be observing some signal of Haldane’s Rule just lie among species on earth. I do not think that the Star Trek writers did this intentionally, but the coincidence is amusing.’

I myself suspect that this trend actually reflects a tendency of filmmakers to assign parental roles to female characters than to male characters, but I'm happy to take it as evidence of a galactic Haldane rule. Sometimes it's more fun to look for the science, even if incidentally, than to fume at sociocultural trends among filmmaking.

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

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The Extractionist, by Kimberly Unger

Eliza McKay works as an extractionist in a futuristic extrapolation of our increasingly plugged in society. Extractionist is one of those jobs that doesn’t yet exist, but becomes necessary in a world where Elon Musk’s Neuralink vision actually works, and not only works, but has become the equivalent of cell phones in today’s culture. Everyone’s got an implant of one version or another, some of them state-of-the art super-fancy versions that are only accesssible if you’ve got military-grade connections, some of them super-cheap retail level chips that are perfectly fine for daily use but not up to more demanding tasks. These implants allow to directly experience cybernetic realities—sort of like the Metaverse, but, y'know, functional. Occasionally, however, people get trapped too deep, and their consciousness must be retrieved and reintegrated with their bodies. This is where Eliza McKay comes in.

So, as plot, she is hired by some secretive black-ops person to extract a member of the team who has gone too deep and knows some crucial information about Stuff. Naturally, the Stuff turns out to be much more large scale and elaborate than Eliza planned for, and heisty cybershenanigans ensue.

I cannot overemphasize the quantity of cyberstuff in this book. Everything is cyber; everything is tech; everything AI (but, y'know, functional). It’s clear that Unger has spent a great deal of time thinking about how this futuristic world will look, how the various technological advances will interface with each other, how the economics of version control and upgrades will affect people’s ability to do certain jobs or interact with different types of equipment. I quite appreciate the way the world she's created echoes the messiness of incompatible operating systems and forced reboots that plague our current digital lives. Just because you’ve got a chip in your brain that's, y'know, functional, doesn’t mean that an inconvenient software update won’t ruin your day.

Unfortunately, for all the thoughtful cyberworldbuilding, the cyberplot and cybercharacters and overall cyberexperience were underwhelming. It’s kind of funny, actually, because when I think about each individual component, I can’t identify any particular flaw beyond a mildly tortured reasoning to justify the circumstances under which extraction is necessary. The characters were fine; their motivations were present; their relationships with each other were developed. The plot proceeded reasonably pacily. I was just deeply bored throughout the entire book. Maybe it’s me. Maybe I’m not cyber enough to cyberappreciate what Unger is cyberdoing. 

Nerd Coefficient: 6/10, still enjoyable, but the flaws are hard to ignore

The Frame-up, by Gwenda Bond

Dani used to be one of the team—a team of magic-using art thieves, to be precise—but she got snookered into betraying her mother and her team by a persuasive FBI agent, and has been something of a pariah in the magic scene ever since. Mom’s in jail, now, and none of the old team are speaking to her. However, her mother’s former patron finds Dani and commissions her to steal a very big painting, with a very big pay-out, so she has to get her quite reluctant ex-team back together and steal a magical painting, while simultaneously evading that same FBI agent and negotiating her remembered feelings for an old flame on her team, which are interfering somewhat with some nascent feelings developing for the painting’s current owner.

This books is a very straightforward heisty heist, with twists and turns exactly where you expect them to be. There are mommy issues to be worked out, old relationships to smooth over, new partnerships to build with surprisingly understanding and unbothered-by-crime painting-owners, and a very convenient diary explaining that a demon whose power is only kept in check by a magical painting must under no circumstances be allowed to regain possession of the picture.

The book is fine. The wheels work, the twists twist. But I found the romantic subplots rather tedious, largely because I don’t think jealousy is an appealing characteristic in potential love interests. And although I don’t read too many heists, and so am not used to keeping track of so many moving parts, I still think some of those convolutions were a bit unearned. For example, at one point Dani’s mother causes extreme complications for her plans for no other reason than that she thinks Dani’s got it too easy, and needs to learn how to deal with jobs when they’re hard. Which doesn’t follow, since Dani’s mother is invested in this heist as much (or more) than any of them, and certainly more invested in it than she is in Dani’s professional development. But then, since (as I said earlier), the painting’s owner seems to have no interest in actually retaining possession of the painting, and is perfectly willing to hire Dani to manage the security of his art gallery, it is undeniably true that Dani seems to be playing the game on easy. Gwenda Bond had to insert complications somewhere, and I guess she chose Dani's mother to do it.

In sum, this was fine. Perfectly good to occupy you while waiting for your laundry to be done, or to read on the bus while keeping one eye out for your stop. But it’s not a book I’m going to stay up late finishing, no matter how twistily the twists twist.

Nerd Coefficient: 6/10, still enjoyable, but the flaws are hard to ignore

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References

Live Long and Evolve: What Star Trek Can Teach Us about Evolution, Genetics, and Life on Other Worlds. Mohammed A. F. Noor. [Princeton University Press, 2018].

The Extractionist. Kimberly Unger. [Tachyon 2022].

The Frame-Up. Gwenda Bond. [Headline, 2024].

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CLARA COHEN lives in Scotland in a creaky old building with pipes for gas lighting still lurking under her floorboards. She is an experimental linguist by profession, and calligrapher and Islamic geometric artist by vocation. During figure skating season she does blather on a bit about figure skating. She is on Mastodon at wandering.shop/@ergative.

Nanoreviews: The Witness for the Dead, The Worst of All Possible Worlds, The Liar of Red Valley

Addison, Katherine. The Witness for the Dead [Tor Books (US)/Solaris (UK), 2021]

The long awaited continuation of The Goblin Emperor takes place far away from Maia's court and almost all of the characters of the first book, taking place mostly in the distant small city of Amalo where Thara Celahar - the witness for the dead who uncovered the truth of the previous Emperor's death in the first book - has ended up working. Thara's situation, already challenging during the events of The Goblin Emperor, got even worse over the course of the book, but he has maintained his attitude towards upholding his profession. It's his Witnessing that leads him to take on a series of tasks in Amalo and its surrounding areas - most prominently, the death of an opera singer in mysterious circumstances - and through that, take us on an adventure as an audience through more of this intricate, fascinating world.

The Witness for the Dead is a very different book to its predecessor, although much of the DNA carries over. While Amalo is a significantly more provincial setting, the fundamental worldbuilding quirks - this is a world full of elves and goblins (who are apparently different races of the same species rather than completely different species) who express emotions through their ear position, have "good hair" if it's white and accepts intricate braids, and in the parts where the series has been set, look down on goblins as less than elves in a much closer corollary to human racism than most fantasy worlds create. Thara, too, is a similarity, as a protagonist fundamentally interested in doing the right thing, although his professional calling and the way it is portrayed, particularly when it comes to making difficult decisions, feels different to Maia. There are small details in the development Amalo, too, which make it feel convincingly like a provincial capital whose political elites are far enough from the centre for it to affect the way their political ambitions play out, without being fully disconnected from the emperor's reach.

With intricate worldbuilding and cinnamon roll protagonist in place, The Witness for the Dead has an easy recipe for success, and it uses those elements to solid effect. My favourite parts of the book by far are those involving the mystery at the opera company, as Thara uncovers the mystery behind the death of Arvenean Shelsin, a mid-soprano whose behaviour quickly turns up plenty of reasons for someone to dislike her. Thara's scenes at the opera, and particularly his dynamic with Pel-Thenhior, its composer, feel tight and engaging. So too do the other cases Thara takes on - a disputed inheritance, a ghoul sighting in a neighbouring town, a marital poisoning that threatens to be the latest in a series - although none bring the vibrancy of supporting characters that the opera does. Where Witness for the Dead struggles is in interweaving all of these strands together into something that maintains tension and engagement throughout. The mid section, in particular, I found it harder to stay engaged (because there's no opera bits, are you seeing a theme here). In a book that didn't have such a high bar to live up to, this might not have been worthy of note, but it is worth setting expectations that Witness for the Dead doesn't quite hit the same magic as its predecessor, nor did it leave me with quite the same feeling of warm, fuzzy, heartwarming hope as I got from the end of The Goblin Emperor. For what it does do, though, this is a really enjoyable book, in a world that I'd read more from in a heartbeat.

Rating: 7/10

White, Alex. The Worst of All Possible Worlds [Orbit, 2021]

One of the best parts of long-haul storytelling, something that book series and TV shows have the opportunity to do that their more self-contained counterparts often don't, is the ability to play out character relationships over the long haul. Sometimes that's a relatively static process, trying to maintain a roughly consistent dynamic within a set of characters while balancing the stories on top of it. Sometimes, it makes space for lots of big reversals and redemptions and splinter arcs which keep the drama levels high while enabling the characters to react to events as they happen. And sometimes, you get a crew or a found family that just gets cosier and more enjoyable to spend time with the longer a series goes on. That's how I feel about Alex White's trilogy-ending The Worst of All Possible Worlds, which brings the adventures of Nilah, Boots, Orna and the crew of the Capricious to a close in an adventure that's fast paced, high stakes and full of character moments that I really enjoyed (the wedding being a particular highlight, because who doesn't enjoy a good spaceship wedding?)

The other great thing about this series - covered in my longer reviews of its two predecessors - is how seamlessly it blends magic into a fighty shooty space opera. Almost everyone in the Salvagers universe has some kind of magic power (and not having magic is a significant disability in a world where a lot of technology is built around it, as Boots can attest) but the way these range from small abilities like being able to keep things clean, right up to control over space and time, makes the things involving people who can do the latter legitimately terrifying and unpleasant for everyone whose powers are more modest. Even more than its predecessors, The Worst of All Possible Worlds seems to lean in to an "age of arcanum gone to space" feel, particularly given the quest objective in this one (which I won't spoil if you haven't picked up the series yet).

The Salvagers series might not be as flashily extraordinary as some of its peers on the space opera shelf, but it more than holds its own as an adventure that blends space opera with fantasy tropes. The Worst of All Possible Worlds really sticks the landing for these characters too, and I'm very glad I stuck it out for the full trilogy.

Rating: 7/10

Goodwater, Walter. The Liar of Red Valley [Solaris, 2021]

Is the American Gothic genre supposed to be this much fun to read? I feel weird saying it, and yet that's the first thing I think about Walter Goodwater's fast-paced small-town novel, in which the residents of Red Valley apparently maintain the most petty, small-town mindset in the face of bizarre rules and events which govern their home. After the sudden death of her mother, Sadie inherits the title of the Liar of Red Valley, a woman responsible for keeping people's darkest secrets so that they don't have to live with their reality (for a price, of course). The only problem is that Sadie's mother never really prepared her for her role, or taught her what it means to be part of the magical fabric that keeps Red Valley - and its mysterious King - in balance.

The Liar of Red Valley is effective in its creepiness - the recurring presence of the Laughing Boys, young men who invite demons to live in their skulls for the high it brings, is a particular highlight - but because Sadie is such a resourceful protagonist (albeit one with an isolated, complicated past), it never feels like it wallows in that creepiness. Instead, the story is pacey and fast-moving, introducing us to a range of weird and wonderful characters on the fringes of Red Valley's society and putting her on a path to figure out, you know, the town's whole deal, and whether the folk who don't fit in to the population's narrow view of respectability can do anything to build a community there. The result is - oh no, I'm going to say it again - a great deal of fun, which seems odd for a "chilling" Gothic but I enjoyed the hell out of reading this book and that's what's important here.

Rating: 8/10

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

Nanoreviews: The Scapegracers, Fortuna, The Impossible Contract

The Scapegracers by Hannah Abigail Clarke [Erewhon Books, 2020]

CW: Sexual assault, magical consent violations

Eloise "Sideways" Pike is an out lesbian, and a practising witch, in a high school where both of those things put her at the bottom of the social heap. That is, until Jing, Yates and Daisy - the coolest girls in school - invite her to perform a magic ritual at one of their parties. What starts out as a one-off party trick almost immediately gets transformed into a friendship, with Sideways and her new friends discovering they all have magical affinity - and that there are plenty of people out there who would happily take that from them, and mould it into a form that they can control. Balancing the sudden change in her social circle, the pressures of sudden covenhood and the challenges of trying to pick up the hot queer girl, Madeleine, who she also met at the party.

The Scapegracers is an odd book in some ways, throwing its audience right into dead deer, kidnappings and magical book heists and only then deigning to sprinkle a bit of high school note-passing and generic teenage drama into the mix. Its external threats are present, and the first half of the book had me pretty concerned for Sideways' safety during one sequence in particular, but the second half of the book almost puts them on hold to instead escalate the tension on the teenage cliques side of things instead, before bringing back the supernatural threats at the very last moment. This feels particularly odd as a tension structure because of something I otherwise enjoyed very much: Sideways' relationship with Jing, Yates and Daisy, while full of quirks and development, is not really a source of conflict as much as it is a challenge of emotional growth for a girl who has been totally used to only looking out for herself. Sure, there's plenty to remind us that the trio aren't objectively wonderful people who deserve power and status more than other kids, but Clarke kicks any potential mean girls tropes to the curb. Instead, he offers up a group of girls who are on top because they're willing to fight for each other, and the friendship they offer to Sideways is genuine. That's underpinned by several other positive relationships, and while there is one significant betrayal, there's a lot more characters with whom Sideways and her crew end on solid (and very queer) ground.

Structural quirks aside (and perhaps for people closer to high school, there's far more tension in these scenes than I originally picked up!), if you're on board for a soap opera-esque ride with a messy but interesting and very backable group of young women, The Scapegracers is well worth sticking with. It does end with things up in the air for a sequel, and I'm very intrigued to see where the next one goes.

Rating: 8/10

Fortuna by Kristyn Merbeth [Orbit, 2019]

Fortuna is an interplanetary action adventure set in a system whose five habitable planets have all stopped cooperating with each other, introducing strict restrictions and xenophobic policies that make travel between them all but impossible. That's a problem if you want to be a successful smuggling family like the Kaisers, and particularly if, like Scorpia Kaiser, you were born between planets and have no citizenship anywhere. Scorpia and her family - all, thanks to the machinations of her scheming mother, born on different planets with the free movement rights that arrangement confers - run the Fortuna, a largely illegal smuggling operation which Scorpia is desperate to inherit, notwithstanding her problems with alcohol and general reliability and the claim of her older brother Corvus, who has been enlisted into a war on his own home planet for the last three years. Unfortunately, the moment she picks to make her move is the moment the system starts sliding into all-out war, and the Kaisers end up in the crossfire of something much bigger than any one of them.

Fortuna has lots of fun space tropes: a motley crew of smugglers whose hearts eventually end up in the right place, planets that are all a single unique biosphere with different global governments and cultures, a smattering of mysterious alien tech that nobody knows anything about, gun battles, space battles, breakneck runs back to the ship as the ramp lifts, a thief with a heart of gold falling for a princess, and all the mysterious cargo crates you could possibly ask for. It's not afraid to show that the stakes are high for the Kaisers, with a high bodycount and plenty of peril for the main team. There's nothing especially deep here, and Scorpia in particular is too self-destructive to be a particularly endearing protagonist, although when we start to see her from a third person perspective I found my view of her at least became more nuanced. Corvus is far from the relevant action for much of the book, but when he does dock into the main plot, things really start kicking off.  Despite this, Fortuna is a fun, tropey read that kept me entertained throughout and promises some interesting further adventures in its world.

Rating: 7/10

The Impossible Contract by K.A. Doore

The second in the Chronicles of Ghalid trilogy, set around a desert city where water is a precious, rationed currency and a family guild of assassins help to keep the peace by removing morally inconvenient folks from the equation, picks up soon after the first book leaves off, although it could easily stand alone if you don't mind endstate spoilers for the previous book, The Perfect Assassin. It follows a new protagonist, Thana, as she takes on a contract to kill a man who has come from the powerful empire across the desert, claiming that said empire now has jurisdiction over the city. Working for an expansionist foreign power is bad enough, but Heru also appears to be in control of some very dodgy dark magic, and he's also very rude to serving staff; unfortunately, when Thana's first attempt to kill him goes wrong, she ends up having to travel with him and with a very lovely healer called Mo back to the Empire's heart, where she becomes integral in unravelling the mystery of a rival dark mage who might be out to kill them all.

Perhaps it shouldn't have surprised me given the previous volume in the series, but The Impossible Contract relies on its reader accepting the morality of its assassin characters: that there might be something valuable to society in having a secret group of people who can accept contracts to kill, and that society as a whole is capable of regulating how that mechanism is used for something other than political gain of the wealthy. The narrative doesn't present this as entirely unproblematic (for example, Thana tries to keep this a secret from her love interest Mo, because a healer probably wouldn't approve of killing, you know?) but it's never explicitly challenged either, and Thana never has any doubts about whether killing Heru would be the right thing to do until the circumstances of her contract change rather radically in the third act. On the other hand, Thana is perfectly willing to judge Heru for his use of magic to reanimate the dead or bind people to his will by controlling their jaan (spirit), and without giving too much away there are plenty of deaths that are certainly not seen as necessary for societal order. The result is a book whose premise itches, like a contact lens with a grain of dust underneath it, and I couldn't help but read everything with constant calculations in the back of my mind about how I was supposed to feel about all of this, because what was happening and the presentation of the book just weren't lining up. It's a shame, because it's a fun world and queer fantasy is always worth looking out for. The Impossible Contract might have a lot to offer the right reader but I couldn't get it to work out for me.

Rating: 4/10

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

Microreview [Book]: Mazes of Power by Juliette Wade

Mazes of Power is a thought provoking and immersive  work of sociological science fiction in the tradition of genre luminaries like Ursula K. Le Guin, Doris Lessing, Jack Vance, and Eleanor Arnason.

In a world where humanity developed along some very different lines, and now, in a spiral of slowly decaying technology lives almost entirely in underground cities, such as Pelismara. The surface world is dangerous, alien, not to be visited if at all possible. In a stratified world riven by class and social status, the conflict over the succession to high office envelops the Grobal Caste, the nobles of this world. Disease, intrigue and assassination are thread to those scions might ascend to that role, as well as the young man who has pledged himself as a servant to that family. The entirety of the Varin, aqll the seven castes, not just the Grobal, not just the servant Imbati, all of them, are on the edge of a knife, and the actions of Tagaret, Nekantor and Aloran will decide which way they will fall.

This is the story of Juliette Wade’s debut as a novelist, Mazes of Power.

Sociological science fiction is a tricky business, especially when you are building a world from scratch with no connection to our own. Building up a unique human society in such a way in a novel, and keep the story moving at the same time, is no mean feat. Wade’s training and previous work is at short story length, and I found those skills served her well here, as she uses careful writing and information density to try and convey the important, plot and character relevant aspects of her world to the reader. The dense reading makes this a slow novel to read, to unfold everything that the author is sharing. Skimming this novel is a good way to miss the richness of the book, or worse, be confused as to what’s going one. This starts at the very first sentence. The very first line of the novel gives us a character beat and tells us something physically fundamental about the world and how it is different than ours. The novel as a whole uses this strategy.

And what a world. A class and race-riven society in a slowly decaying world underground, where the ruling caste struggles from power within, and keeps in mind those who are without. A disease, deadly to the vulnerable ruling class, a horror of contagion and sickness that is positively Victorian. A deep look at social relations, with servants bonded to their masters, and houses and even the city aligned in terms of social roles and standing. The novel’s world feels like Jack Vance decided to team up with Ursula K LeGuin and the result is wonderful. And I didn’t even mention the ornate and clever use of language in the novel. There is an invented language in the novel and the use of language, between social classes and within social classes, also blends into the world that Wade creates here.

There is a lot more than the world here to love. There are the characters and the story. The story centers around two brothers, the reticent seventeen year old Tagaret, who really doesn’t want to get involved in the family’s game of politics. He contrasts with his antagonist and brother Nekantor, younger, more ambitious and definitely interested in promoting the First Family’s bid to become Heir to the Throne. They are a study in contrasts, strengths, weaknesses, and flaws, especially Nekantor. I felt for Nekantor, given Wade’s very careful revelation of his disability and how it is handled is nuanced and skillfully done.

The third of the major characters is the Imbati Aloran, who in a way provides us with the closest thing we have to being the newbie point of view role to help explicate the world. This is only to a limited extent, since its to help build and develop the family and its social circle. Even so, he is far more than just a straight up exposition piece, as his relationship with Tamelera (mother to the brother) is an extremely interesting one. It is here that Wade seems to have the most fun in developing how a different society would work and the nuances, expectations and defied expectations of that society.

Given the iceberg rule, I can’t imagine just how much of the world Wade has that is only inferred and infused into the work indirectly and supports the stuff above the surface and it feeds into these three characters. The characters are passionate, driven and significantly larger than life, and in a good way, one can call them operatic in that full vividness in how they love, hate, strive and act. Readers worried that they will be buried underneath the seas of the world building will find that the character beats not only keep them afloat, they zoom across those seas until the novel’s conclusion. The novel is the start of a series, but it does end at an important pivot point with a resolution that if you wanted to one and done the series, you could. I for one most certainly do not and want to see more with the characters and the world Juliette has created.

The novel’s themes of class and social stratification, and society under stress and what the characters within can or should do resonate very well indeed. If all SF is really about the present instead of the future it depicts, this novel definitely delivers in that regard. It is easier to see our own riven  society, with power and wealth being concentrated into ever fewer hands, with the Varin and their society which formalizes and reifies that sort of thinking and society. Reflected in the world of Aloran, Tagaret and Nekantor...is our own world.

Mazes of Power is a powerful work of sociological science fiction that looks at us, through the lens of a society that is alien, and different, and yet the characters are unmistakably human.


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The Math

Baseline Assessment: 7/10.

Bonuses: +1 for worldbuilding firmly in the wheelhouse of an author known for worldbuilding classes and interviews, +1 for passionate, almost operatic characters

Penalties: -1 for a little bit of roughness in the plotting

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


Reference:  Wade, Juliette. Mazes of Power [DAW, 2020]


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

Microreview [book]: Inverted Frontier: Silver, by Linda Nagata

Linda Nagata’s Inverted Frontier: Silver wraps up a  duology while tying back to yet another of early works, and providing plenty of canvas and room for future books in the universe.

Inverted Frontier: Edges started,a new sequence set in Nagata’s Nanotech Succession universe. From the world of Deception Well, a group of explorers sets out to find out what has happened to Earth and the area around it --the Hallowed Vasties. In their epic journey, they encounter an entity, Lezuri, who nearly derails the mission entirely with his power and ability.

Inverted Frontier: Silver continues the story of Edges. Lezuri has been driven off, but at cost, and parts of the expedition aren’t sure of the fate of the others. All roads, though, lead toward a strange ring shaped world in Lezuri’s past. For to let Lezuri return to his world and regain his power could result in Lezuri defeating the mission in a second encounter. This cannot be allowed to happen.

But on that ring shaped world, the inhabitants, learning to deal with a strange nanotech called Silver, have issues and problems of their own with the return of a fallen God.And so the story of Silver is the clash between those on the ring shaped world, and those coming to it, Along the way we get excellent characterization, development and plotting. And of course gobs of high technological goodness.

When I first read Edges, I did find the name of Lezuri’s strong nanotech, Silver, to be a resonant name, I did wonder at the time as to how this might be connected to Memory, a Linda Nagata novel not previously connected to the Nanotech succession novels, but set on a ring shaped world where a nanotech fog called Silver rose every night. Imagine my delight and surprise when the tenuous connect was made manifest in this novel, both in terms of setting on that world, as well as Jolly, Jubilee, and Moki, characters from Memory.

Nagata has a lot to juggle in this book and nearly hits every mark. She has the main characters from Edges, particularly Urban, coming to the ringworld of Verilotus and interacting with the strange and wonderful world there. She has the characters of Memory dealing with new problems and concerns even before Urban and his ship arrives. Lezuri and his quest to regain power and strength after his defeat...and then there is the rest of the Expedition. There’s a lot going on, and Nagata intercuts between points of view successfully and skillfully.

I think though, as strong as the stories of Jolly, Jubilee, Urban and Lezuri are, the real star of this novel is her return to Verilotus. It is indeed one of the more unique and interesting locations in SFF, and I was delighted to return to it with an outsider and a more nuanced perspective. In Memory, the reader is left with a disjunction between what they realize and what the characters realize about the world. Here, in the context of the Inverted Frontier novels, we have a different perspective to see the world, especially its nanotech Silver, in. It made sure that the return to this novel was fresh and new, and at the same time accessible to readers who have not read the earlier book (You totally SHOULD, though).

In this moment, Veritolus felt like a world that could fit in Monte J Cook’s Numenera universe quite easily. That universe has nanotech all over the place, and a world where a nanotech fog rises up every night--but could potentially be controlled and used (hence the conflict of the novel) is very much in line with the game.The post apocalyptic nanotech feel of the world is memorable and what I bring away from the novel the most, and what I keep thinking about. We learn much about Veritolus and how and why it works, deepening my appreciation of Memory all the more. Should I run a Numenera game and offer the PCs a chance to head to space--a world based on Veritolus would hold wonders and interest.  Heck, other nanotech heavy games like Eclipse Phase also resonate with Nagata’s work.

I did feel that one of the main characters in Edges, Clemantine, didn’t have so much to do in this one and the novel suffered a little bit for it. The dynamic between her and Urban was such a fascinating and interesting dynamic in Edges that, pulling them apart for most of the novel, that dynamic was missing. I think a little more on her to explain some of the actions of hers that she does take, and grounding it and backing it, would have helped shore up this, in my opinion.

That said, Silver is an outstanding followup to Edges and the two novels together as a duoology are an entirely successful and very welcome return for the author to the nanotech far future that made her name as an author. The fact that she was able to tie in Memory into this world and make it holistically seem part of the Nanotech Succession universe all alone is a not inconsiderate feat. Many an author, many a famous author at that, have tried to tie their works together into a cohesive work and the joins and seams and ungainliness of it is evident from the get go. Not so here. Well done!

I do strongly hope there will be more novels set in the Inverted Frontier, as Urban, Clemantine and their companions continue to explore and discover just what has happened to the solar systems near Earth. I am certain she has many more stories to tell, and I for one want to read them. Read Edges, and Silver, and I wager you will, too. It’s one of my favorite books of 2019.


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The Math

Baseline Assessment: 8/10.

Bonuses: +1 for an excellent wrapping of previous novels and works into a cinematic universe
+1 for an amazing setting returned to from a previous novel.

Penalties: -1 for some of the short shrift given one of the main characters in Edges

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


Reference:  Nagata, Linda  Inverted Frontier: Silver [Mythic Island Press, 2019]


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