Summer Reading List 2020: The G

It's that time of year again (which of course you already know since we've been running these all week long). But ever since 2012, when I started our annual Summer Reading tradition, it's been the post series I've most looked forward to. After all, what's summer for if not sitting outside in the warm sun, beverage of choice in hand, and the pure joy of getting lost in other lives and worlds. So without further ado, here is my list of books for 2020 - a year that needs every last bit of joy there is.   

1. Hothouse, Brian Aldiss.

Aldiss wrote one of my favorite SF novels, Non-Stop, and one of my favorite short stories, "Supertoys Last All Summer Long." Hothouse is a far-future novel where a growing (i.e. dying) sun has triggered a massive vegetative bloom and humans are among the last fauna left. Hothouse promises to be very weird and unnerving. (Spoiler alert, as I'm 3/4 of the way through: it's very weird and unnerving.)

2. Children of Ruin, Adrian Tchaikovsky

Children of Time is one of the best SF books I've read in years - the kind of "hard SF" novel that used to win Hugo Awards, just without the dreary libertarianism. Children of Ruin is the sequel, which if reports are to be believed, picks up exactly where the first one left off.

3. The Mothman Prophecies, John Keel.

Do I believe in UFO visitations? No. Not really. Do I like the idea of UFOs, alien visitations and all that fun stuff? Hells yes. Also, this book will apparently melt your brain, so there's that too.

5. Your House Will Pay, Steph Cha.

Korean-American author Cha is one of the hottest names in crime fiction - I read Follow Her Home and found it to be a fresh new spin on the hardboiled detective formula. Your House Will Pay is much more ambitious, taking on the riots and racial tensions of 1990s Los Angeles.

5. The Vanished Birds, Simon Jimenez.

Paul DiFilippo recently called this a "touching, bold, surprising, gorgeous debut novel—a certain manner of postmodern space opera." I like everything about that description, so count me ready to blast off into the far future.

6. Pedal Crush: Stompbox Effects for Creative Music Making, Kim Bjørn.

My nerdliness stretches into many a domain, and the latest obsession is the wonderful world of boutique guitar pedals. These boxes, often handmade, can transform any sound in all kinds of wonderful ways. Plus they are just fun to look at. Cue a future We Rank 'Em that only Vance and I (and NOAF alum Philippe) will want to read...

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POSTED BY: The G--purveyor of nerdliness, genre fanatic and Nerds of a
Feather founder/administrator, since 2012. 

Microreview [Book]: Annhilation Aria by Mike Underwood

Mike Underwood’s Annihilation Aria melds the author’s deep and abiding knowledge of tropes and science fiction with an entertaining and rollicking adventure well suited to our time and moment.

Max has a big problem. He’s an archaeologist  on the wrong side of the universe from Earth, amongst a variety of aliens,  having gotten there in an accident he hasn’t figured out how to reverse. Lahra has a big problem, too. She’s a out-of-bubblegum kickarse warrior of a species whose world was devastated by the top dog species in this galaxy, and is seeking retribution for what was done to her people. Both seem insurmountable problems, but this married couple have a potent and abiding ally in each other. They’ll;need each other, too, as Max’s latest archaeological find plunges them into intrigue, adventure and conflict that just might be the solution to their problems--or get them killed.

This is the matter of Annihilation Aria, by Mike Underwood.

Mike Underwood’s academic and writing background are very wedded and deep into genre theory and the use of tropes in literature. His Genrenauts universe is a set of stories about a group of researchers who quite literally walk into worlds governed by the laws of story, in order to improve life here on Earth. Thus, when the author comes up with a novel and starts using tropes and story constructions, I pay attention and look at what he is doing and how he is using the tools of tropes and genre to tell his story, because his use is careful, measured and deliberate.

Thus, Annihilation Aria has resonances, deliberate ones, with a lot of genre properties. Guardians of the Galaxy and Farscape are the two major influences one can see right away-- ordinary Earthling is on the far side of the universe with no good way to get back. Said Earthling does have some significant skills but the main thrust of people do not even know he’s from Earth or know what Earth is, and in some ways, he’s way in over his head. The way that the Earthling got to the far side of the universe is very plot relevant, now. He’s also genre-savvy and as an audience point of view provides an entry point into the verse we can relate with.

That’s Max. By comparison, Lahra is a “proud warrior race” character, in the mold of Aeryn Sun or Gamora (her skin is blue, so the Gamora resonance is strong). She has a complicated relationship with the rest of her kind. Her abilities contrast very well with the rest of the team, she’s the muscle, and also is bemused at best by the Earthling. Mike changes things up, from having her just be the possibly overdone “dour” type for warriors of all sorts. Keying into the title of the novel, Lahra has abilities that Max reads as a form of magic, the ability to buff her abilities by means of particular songs. “Sahvro’s Embrace” for example, boosts a Sergeant and her squad’s strength and resilience. Showing a keen sense of character, Max, it turns out, is about as unmusical as they come.

Showing his humor, there is a third member of the crew, a cybernetic augmented pilot who is cunningly named Wheel. While they seem like a “third wheel” at first, and they do run the ship (being the “Wheels” of the team)  they do have a personal plot and a background of their own that, in the course of novel, gets revealed. I don’t think Wheel, or some of the other characters in the novel quite rise to the level of Max and Lahra, but the author has clearly crafted Wheel and his characters to have depth and range and surprises.

The next genre reference shows Underwood’s craft. He could easily have set this early as a meet-cute, having Lahra and Max just getting to know each other, feeling each other out, animosity, sparks flying. Instead, Underwood goes for not the Mummy, but the Mummy Returns. Lahra and Max are already married, have been married for a time when the novel opens and they have a well developed but yet still evolving relationship. Underwood leverages the tropes of a married devoted couple who are seemingly mismatched in terms of skills and interest, but do work very effectively together. An early establishing scene shows just how well they do their thing in exploring ancient ruins, which stands in good stead for a shorthand and a model for subsequent similar events in the novel. The author is a fan of “explain how it’s done, summarize the next is done a similar way, and then show when carefully laid plans go pear-shaped, and now.

The inventiveness of Underwood’s worlds are another highlight of his writing, and once again, Underwood is leveraging the funof the novel’s inspirations and making them his own and his own twists on them. From the Wreck, the homebase of Max (which has resonances to Knowhere), to giant space whales/turtles, to ancient ruins,  secret resistance bases, and the dangerous Vsenk all show the author’s effectively envisioned imagination. For it being a full on space opera with some fantastical elements, the novel I read most recently that has a similar sort of vibe in the worldbuilding is Joseph Brassey’s Skyfarer, which if readers read and enjoy Annihilation Aria, might turn to reading afterwards for a more fantastical take on some of the elements of this novel.

So with all of these tropes and worldbuilding, what IS the story, and does it work? The author’s understanding of the mechanics of story is comparable to his knowledge of tropes. There are surprises, and unexpected turns, but the clockwork execution of the story and its beats is a joy to read. Max and Lahra start off in desperate straits, financially strapped, friends of theirs under threat by her as well. This squeezes the two of them and their cybernetic pilot, Wheel (think Pilot from Farscape but with a technological not a biological connection to their ship) to take riskier than usual missions in a set of  xenoarchaeological sites to try and come up with sellable items to get out from under Jesvin’s wings. This leads them to a site being monitored by the Vsenk (and an introduction to an antagonist point of view) and the novel launches into chase sequence mode, as Max works to try and find out what they have found and why it is so important, Lahra works to protect him, and Wheel has plans of their own. It’s an excellent engine for conflict and moving the plot along and the novel hums. It keeps the relatively light and fun tones of its genre inspirations in telling its story. Even as Max, Lahra and Wheel get deeper and deeper into trouble, the fun and lightness and character beats keep the pages turning. Max and Lahra have a supportive but not perfect relationship, and there are challenges to that relationship, and Max in particular worries  about its future, but it is not a constant downbeat through the narrative.

Annihilation Aria, then is for readers looking for a light and fun space opera with a strong genre-savvy vibe to it, a set of characters who interact in ways both familiar and interesting, and a clockwork plot that combined with the characters and tone, keeps the pages turning. The novel is clearly the first in a series, but the story as depicted in the pages is a complete one, down to the last paragraphs which draw a curtain around this tale for readers who do not want to continue on the adventure. I value offramps in first books of series, since in this age of so many works clamoring for attention, I want the option for “one and done” to be there. I for one, however, want to continue to follow the adventures of the crew of the Kettle and see more of the world and the characters Underwood creates.

The Math

Baseline Assessment: 7/10.

Bonuses: +1  Strong use and understanding of tropes and genre conventions 
+1 for clockwork plotting and page-turning layout of events

Penalties: -1 the characters other than Max and Lahra are not quite as strong as the incandescent pair at the center of the story.

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

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

Reference: Underwood, Michael. Annihilation Aria [Parvus, 2020]

Summer Reading List 2020: Adri

This is set to be an interesting summer for reading: on the one hand, there are going to be no holiday breaks or long plane journeys to really pack in the pages , but on the other, there's plenty of reasons to want to escape and not going halfway round the world has the added advantage of being within touching distance of my entire TBR at all times. I've got several conflicting reading tasks on my mind right now, including finishing off awards shortlists, recommitting to non fiction reading, catching up on my never-ending short fiction backlist, and trying to get the physical TBR back under control - all while still getting to the new stuff I'm most excited about in 2020. And all of this at a time when I've also rediscovered the many and varied joys of fanfiction (specifically of the Fire Emblem: Three Houses variety, no I shall not be letting this game out of my heart any time soon) - in short, things are feeling pretty busy, and I'm hoping to be as targeted as possible about what I'm picking up at the moment.

Looking back on my list from last year, I'm pleased to say that I've read all six of the books I intended to, although this did not by any stretch all happen in the summer of 2019. I'm hoping I can replicate that success with this set of bangers:

1. Phoenix Extravagant by Yoon Ha Lee

New Yoon Ha Lee fantasy! I heard a reading of this while at Worldcon last year, and when the cover was revealed to be something out of the coolest video game ever, it became pretty clear this was going to be a Big Deal for my reading calendar. With a non-binary protagonist caught up in political intrigue when all they want to do is make art, in an empire whose military force includes giant mecha powered by mystical sigils. Have I mentioned I'm excited? I could literally not be more excited. Why am I not reading this right now instead of writing an article?

2. Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

I've been a Moreno-Garcia fangirl for a while now, and one of my favourite things about following her writing is how it takes me into a different genre with every book. Plus, gothic literature is an old teenage fixation of mine, so when it comes to this feminist reimagining, I need very little persuasion in the first place. This story, about a woman who receives a letter asking for help from her cousin following her marriage and move to a mysterious gothic mansion, looks like it's going to be claustrophobic


3. Ancient, Ancient by Kinii Ibura Salaam.


What would a summer reading list be without a collection of poetic science fiction short stories from a feminist press? I've had my eye on this volume for a while and I finally got my hands on it a couple of months ago, it went right up near the top of my reading list. I don't believe I've read a story by Salaam before so, with the exception of a few very promising reviews, I'm going into this with little expectation beyond being very intrigued by what it has in store.


4. Insurgent Empire: Anticolonial Resistance and British Dissent by Priyamvada Gopal.

I once spent an otherwise normal train journey sat opposite two other commuting strangers, one of whom was reading Saul Alinsky and the other who was reading this intriguingly titled history book. (I was reading Palestine +100, and I like to think we all got some book recommendations off each other that day). I made a mental note to remember the book title, but on getting off the train it went out of my head again... until a couple of months later when I rediscovered it at Housman's bookshop in London. Of course I then had to have it, and this summer seems like an excellent time to read it.


5. Exhalation by Ted Chiang


Standing in for all the remaining award-nominated fiction I need to get to in the next month and a bit, Exhalation is on my list for the two original stories on the Hugo finalist list, but also because its Ted Chiang and of course I'm going to read the whole thing from start to finish and hopefully love every moment of it. Like the Salaam, I think I've avoided previously reading any of these stories, and I have no expectations about their content except "very good".

6. Rhodes Must Fall: The Struggle to Decolonise the Racist Heart of Empire by Rhodes Must Fall, Oxford

A few years before Edward Colston took a dip in the Avon, the Rhodes Must Fall movement in South Africa successfully campaigned for the removal of a statue of Cecil Rhodes at the University of Cape Town; the movement sparked similar calls around the world, including in Oxford, where a statue of Rhodes (at the time of writing) still stands outside Oriel College, on the High Street. This volume combines the history and analysis of that movement, and reflections from sister movements in the UK, with pieces about the broader need to decolonise the curriculum and teaching at British universities. I've had the book on my shelves for a year and I'm excited to finally read it, especially since it might soon need a new afterword...

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]: Burn by Patrick Ness

Dragons flying through the sky during the Cold War just scratches the surface of this novel's mind-blowing oddities.

Imagine a fire that’s spread throughout an entire town. The conflagration is hellbent on continuing, no matter what heroic attempts are made. People are scrambling, buildings are charred abominations, the sky is covered in smoke. It’s a mess--not so different from this book. But there is warmth in the fire, and beauty in the sparks, like one last firework show during doomsday. Despite how overreaching the fire (or the book) is, there is a sort of beauty to its scorch. It’s in no way ideal, but with the right mindset and taste for that type of sight, it’s appreciable.

It’s been a while since I’ve seen a book as ambitious as Burn. With too many game-changing twists to count, a plot that moves at light speed, and enough story beats to fill a dictionary, it’s certainly something I won’t forget.

I’m going to be very careful in synopsizing the story without spoilers, because the fun of this book mainly lies in its unpredictability. It is 1957, and the Cold War rages on, not unlike our past--but this book’s world has a significant fantastical element that’s not in our history: there are dragons. Humans and dragons are generally distant, although there is a human cult which worships dragons as if they’re flaming breath is the light at the end of the tunnel. But generally, there is a non-violent remove between the species, in which they go about their lives independent from each other. That is, until Sarah Dewhurst, a seemingly average teenage girl finds out her father has ordered a dragon to help work at his farm. And this dragon tells her that she is part of an earth-shattering prophecy. This springboards an exploration of magic, superhuman assassins, and hints that the peace between the humans and dragons might be at its end.

Patrick Ness is a fascinating author, particularly because he’s not beholden to tropes and isn’t afraid to get a little inventive, sometimes at the expense of believability and sturdy story structures. He doesn’t disappoint on that front here, but I feel the elasticity of his believability and construction of his plot finally broke and collapsed in Burn. Not only does the book’s plot move at such a fast pace in its second half, that it’s bereft of sufficient worldbuilding and opportunity to get your bearings, but looking back, it’s hard to think of a way for even a mind like Ness' to make some of the story deliver with even twice the word count.

Despite the lightning-speed plot developments, Ness once again showcases his great characterizations, which is doubly impressive here, as a lesser author would lose the human element in this maelstrom of ideas. Even though some of the fantastical ideas are hand-waved for the expedience of plot, I never felt like I lost a handle on how these characters were feeling, nor did I feel their actions contradicted their personalities. Whether it’s the blooming and then disintegration of a romance, philosophizing about the vicissitudes of the universe, or rageful spats, there was never a tinge of emotional inauthenticity.

The book switches between about ten perspectives, but is always readable. Never once did I wonder where the character was oriented in the story, despite the many point of views. Having a single original voice in a story is one thing, but Burn manages to infuse all its perspectives with flavor. If you somehow do get lost upon reading the story, you can easily locate which character you’re following based on how they’re written.

Burn won’t be the novel that Patrick Ness is remembered for. He’s written novels that don’t founder under their weight and imbue more emotional satisfaction. But this is ambition that’s rarely seen in a novel of relatively scant word count. Reaching for the stars by itself is impossible. But taking flight high on a dragon, with a person as ingenious as Ness at the helm, comes close enough to admire its effort.

The Math

Baseline Score: 6/10

Bonuses: +1 For setting up a heartfelt romance, then stabbing you in the heart, bandaging the wound, and repeating the process without annoyances.
+1 For blowing my mind with engaging, insane plot twists.

Negatives: -1 For making me scratch my head with less engaging, insane plot twists

Nerd Coefficient: 7/10

Reference: Ness, Patrick. Burn [Walker Books]

POSTED BY: Sean Dowie - Screenwriter, stand-up comedian, lover of all books that make him nod his head and say, "Neat!

Summer Reading List 2020: Spacefaring Kitten

I don't like summer, specifically, but usually reading makes it more bearable. Here's my summer reading list for 2020.

The Texas-Israeli War: 1999 by Jake Saunders and Howard Waldrop

What, according to Foreign Policy, constitutes "one of the most bizarre SF books ever written"? In a world pretty much demolished after Ireland spiced up the UK water supplies with LSD, causing spaced out British politicians to invoke nuclear armageddon, Texas has declared independence and kidnapped the president of the United States. The novel, AFAIK, tells about an Israeli squadron of tanks with nuclear reactors going in to save the president. Foreign policy promises punchy prose and a fair bit of sex and I hope that is what I'll get!

I've long been fascinated by works of Howard Waldrop, the short-fiction author best known for his Nebula and World Fantasy Award winning "Ugly Chickens" — I suppose that is why I happen to have this book on my shelf. Until sitting down to write this summer reading list, I had absolutely no idea who Jake Saunders was. But what do you know? Turns out he is the comic shop owner who famously campaigned against superhero comics featuring too subversive and unwholesome stuff, his key grievance being the realistically rendered childbirth in Alan Moore and Rick Veitch's Miracleman #9 in 1986 (not, for example, silly spandex violence).

Books of Blood by Clive Barker

Summer is the season of bodies and flesh, so what would be a better time to read some horror stories about them? Books of Blood is Barker's series of collections of visceral horror tales that first made him famous. I have vague memories of reading "The Midnight Meat Train" here and "Pig Blood Blues" there as I have come across them in some anthologies, but I have never exposed myself to an actual Book of Blood in its entirety. About time!

Pretty Monsters by Kelly Link

Compensating for Barker's gorefest, a book with monsters who are a little prettier might be a good idea. I've read a bunch of fascinating stories by Kelly Link but haven't yet got to this beautiful book with black-edge paper, cool graphic design and illustrations by Shaun Tan. I believe it's a YA collection that repackages some stories printed in earlier Link collections Stranger Things Happen and Magic for Beginners as well as some that were not in them.

Moxyland by Lauren Beukes

Zoo City and Invisible Girls by Beukes are two of my favorite books I have read in a long time, and I'm literally itching to get my hands on her debut novel Moxyland. I expect it to be shorter, meaner, grungier and more cyberpunk-ish take on near-future South Africa with corporate wars, future tech and teenage riot. Hope I won't be disappointed.

October by China Miéville

Due to an academic project, I've been diving quite deep into the early years of the Soviet Russia and the later Stalinist purges. The October Revolution (which happened in November but they had a shitty calendar) is a colossal moment for the history of the 20th century, and I cannot think of a better person to reconstruct the eery, revolutionary world filled with great promise, brutal violence and intense future shock than fantasy author China Miéville. Even though his October is strictly speaking nonfiction, there's bound to be some genre atmosphere in here somewhere.

Xenogenesis Trilogy by Octavia Butler

Getting my hand dirty with Octavia Butler's works is something I have been planning to do for some time. It took some time and effort to hunt copies of the translations of Dawn, Adulthood Rites and Imago from used books stores — they are the only Butler books translated around this part of the world and they were published 30 years ago. Summer is a nice time for flexing some other language muscles as well.

Booky summer, everybody!

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POSTED BY: Spacefaring Kitten, an extradimensional enthusiast of speculative fiction, comics, and general weirdness. Contributor since 2018.

Microreview [Comic]: Doomsday Clock by Geoff Johns and Gary Frank

Hey-look-at-me-I'm-doing-Watchmen comic with some nice touches, impossible ambitions and silly morals

DC Comics did a fine job in resisting the urge to do a Watchmen sequel. It took them 30 years to pull the trigger and come up with a story that continues from where Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons left off in 1987 — a notable feat for an entertainment corporate giant. The topic is not as hot as it once was, though. I remember Watchmen fans vowing to never again read anything by any comics creator who dared to contribute to the Before Watchmen project which comprised several miniseries interpreting the pre-Watchmen activities of the characters in 2012—2013. Brian Azzarello, J. Michael Straczynski and others were criticized quite harshly but this time around writer Geoff Johns and artist Gary Frank survived doing their own take on Watchmen pretty much unscathed as far as I can tell. The first issue come out at the end of 2017 and it took them two years to complete their 12-issue miniseries Doomsday Clock, but now the whole thing has been released as a graphic novel.

So, is there still somebody who watches the watchmen after 30 plus years?

The original Watchmen by Moore and Gibbons defined the feel of revisionary superhero narratives for decades and is probably to blame for establishing the whole nihilistic subgenre in mid-80's along with Frank Miller's Dark Knight Returns. It has since been adapted and supplemented by a Zack Snyder blockbuster movie in 2009, the multiple prologue miniseries of Before Watchmen by a Azzarello, Straczynski et al and a TV series by Damon Lindelof that was aired on HBO last year. Each of these works took Watchmen in their own direction. Whereas Snyder made it into heavy-handed spectacle that ramped up violence, faithfully replicated much of the plot and missed all the themes, HBO's Watchmen is a fresh take on racial politics in the US. That is something that Englishmen Moore and Gibbons completely left aside and there is not a single black costumed adventurer in Watchmen, which the new Watchmen series takes issue with. On the comics front, Before Watchmen was an uneven collection of prequel tales, some quite good and others more forgettable. It's a huge thing page-wise but in its scope nothing compared to what Johns and Frank are aspiring to.

Doomsday Clock is the culmination of New 52 and Rebirth story arcs which relaunched the whole DC universe, and it seeks to combine the separate worlds of Watchmen and the DC heroes, pitting the blue quantum-powered overman Dr. Manhattan against Superman. In the story, Ozymandias dimension-hops with a new substitute Rorschach (because Moore and Gibbons blew the original up) and two super criminals into the DC universe to search for Dr. Manhattan. The world of Watchmen is again on the brink of nuclear disaster, desperately needing a divine intervention, but Dr. Manhattan has left. In fact, he has jumped into DCU to cause troubles for its heroes and rewrite their timelines for… who knows why? The weakest part of the set-up is that some of the stuff just does not make very much sense, but the plot rolls forward nicely and soon the reader gets plenty of other story threads to worry about.

Johns and Frank's main addition to the Watchmen lore is the criminal duo of Marionette and Mime who are actually based on old Charlton comics characters, just as all the original Watchmen cast. As the new Rorschach, they have recruited a supporting character from the original graphic novel, and that works quite well too. All in all, there are a lot of enjoyable and intelligent elements which, sadly, just do not come together well enough to make it a very memorable. There are just way too many characters, as practically everyone who is somebody in the DCU makes an appearance and the story is even peppered with some real-world personalities like Vladimir Putin and a US president whose name is not mentioned but who likes short sentences and superlatives. At least the most prominent players Batman, Joker, Lex Luthor and Superman are interesting, but the major backdrop of the story dealing with a sort of a cold war of superhumans of different nations is just a mess.

Visually and narratively, Doomsday Clock is trying very hard to be like Watchmen. It's a 12-issue limited series employing a 3×3 panel layout, with the last pages of each issue reserved for extracts from different documents originating in the storyworld — newspaper clippings, government files et cetera. Panels of the main storyline and a story-within-a-story (this time a noir detective movie) overlap and comment on each other, and the title of each chapter is lifted from a quote that is revealed in the last black panel next to the shape of a yellow doomsday clock clicking closer to midnight issue by issue.

At the end of the day, however, it's just a new DC superhero crossover epic with a happy end. It sets up some interesting dichotomies between two superpersons: Dr. Manhattan is so far beyond any of his fellow humans that he is losing his humanity altogether, whereas Superman who is not a human at all but an illegal alien who embodies superhero morality and compassion for humankind. It admittedly tries very hard, but I'm not convinced that Doomsday Clock will be something that anybody is going to be celebrating in ten years, let alone 30. In addition to copying so much of the stylistic stuff from Watchmen, having some of its moral ambiguity and open-endedness would have served Doomsday Clock well. That is not what Johns and Frank were after, however, and at the end of the book we learn how everyone gets what they deserve and how everything ends. Sigh. A Watchmen sequel where absolutely nothing is morally gray and everyone's either a good guy or a bad guy just doesn't cut it.

When compared with Lindelof's TV series, the other Watchmen sequel that came out during the same time, Doomsday Clock is not doing very well. Watchmen, just as the original Watchmen, does something unexpected, challenges its predecessors and says something important about the social and political reality that surrounds it. Doomsday Clock offers some familiar ticking, but the reader can rest assured that it will never get to midnight.

The Math

Baseline Assessment: 8/10

Bonuses: +1 for ambitious effort

Penalties: -2 for playing too safe

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


SPACEFARING KITTEN, an extradimensional enthusiast of speculative fiction, comics, and general weirdness. Contributor since 2018.

Reference: Doomsday Clock Part 1-2 by Geoff Johns & Gary Frank [DC Comics, 2019 & 2020]

Summer Reading List 2020: Paul

While winter is for reading and trying to stay warm in the Great White North when the Ice Giants and the White Dragons roam the wastelands of Minnesota, summer is for getting out there and enjoying the all too brief warm weather. In this age of the Pandemic, however, the transitory nature of summer is even more poignant, since long trips for adventures are currently not in the cards. My journeys this year may well be almost exclusively  to places between the covers of books.

 So here, find a list of six of the books I am looking forward to getting to before Summer turns to Fall, and green shifts to hues of red, gold, and orange before a clattering change to brown.

On my 2019 list I read five out of the six books . And so on to 2020!


1. Prime Deceptions, Valerie Valdes.

Chilling Effect was a superb first novel of found family and space adventure, including Psychic cats, that had a deep and intense story that was belied by its fluffy cover. I am really interested in the newest adventure of Captain Eva Innocente and the found family crew of La Sirena Nigra.







2. Of Dragons, Feasts and Murders: A Dominion of the Fallen Story by Aliette de Bodard.

 Ever since the first Fallen novel, House of Shattered Wings, I have been #teamasmodeus, truly enjoying the antagonist that has stomped through all of the novels and stories De Bodard like a striding giant. In this latest tale, Thuan, Asmodeus’ Dragon husband, brings Asmodeus home for Lunar New Year. This is a family reunion I don’t want to miss.







3. Seven Devils, Laura Lam and Elizabeth May

Seven Devils is billed as a feminist space opera where seven resistance fighters are taking on the tyrannical  Tholoisian Empire. I am all aboard for a retelling of the classic formula of “Seven against Thebes”, except in Spaaace! Recasting classical history and mythology into Space seems to be a thing this year (c.f. Unconquerable Sun) so I am looking forward to seeing how Seven Devils tackles it.





4. Or What you Will, Jo Walton

Stories about self-aware characters who have knowledge of their own nature, and seeking to change it is a tricky metagenre to try and work on. But the author of works like Tooth and Claw, Among Others (a novel all about reading and the importance of reading and books) and the Just City trilogy is an author I trust to tell the story of a character idea seeking to transcend the mortality of his creator, and perhaps, her own as well.





5. Chaos Vector, Megan O’Keefe

I really enjoyed O’Keefe’s first  Soace Opera novel, Velocity Weapon, a twisty and complicated story grounded in the story of two siblings in a far future solar system, and an AI with a definite Agenda. Now with having released the AI and its ship, it looks like Sanda and Tomas are on the run, with a secret inside of Sanda’s head the reason why they are on the run. It sounds like more shenanigans, more twists, and more excellent space opera action beats.






6. Ashes of the Sun, Django Wexler

A story about building a new empire in the ruins of a fallen empire? Two siblings on opposite sides of a war? Mysterious magic and artifacts?  Crunchy Crunchy Worldbuilding? This start of a new series from Wexler sounds like it is pressing all of my favorite Epic Fantasy buttons. Wexler has just about gotten into my coveted autobuy list on the strength of his previous series. This new novel could catapult him into that status.






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