Microreview [book]: Infinity's End, by Jonathan Strahan (editor)

Infinity's End is a fitting and excellent way to close the book on a solid anthology series.

I asked the writers creating new stories for this book to try to open up the solar system, to look again at its vastness, its incredible scale, and at how humanity in different ways might fit successfully and happily into its nooks and crannies. - Jonathan Strahan, "Introduction"

One thing that helps to center my reading of one of Jonathan Strahan's Infinity anthologies is what he has to say in the introduction. I take the stories as they come and as they are, but that introduction discussing the central idea of the anthology and the intended perspective Strahan was looking to achieve is vital to how I view the overall success of the anthology.

As with previous volumes in Strahan's Infinity Project, Infinity's End is a fine anthology of science fictional short stories with a couple of standouts, one or two that just don't work for me for whatever reason, and the rest are just good stories that collectively build a solid anthology that may not be fully spectacular but still consistently enjoyable.

Before getting into the stuff that I liked, I'd like to quickly hit on the two stories that didn't work for me. Or, quite possibly, I didn't work for the stories. Lavie Tidhar is a renowned writer, critically acclaimed. I've come to realize that for not any particular flaw in the fiction or the writing of Lavie Tidhar, that I'm just not the right reader for Tidhar's work. I just so consistently bounce off of Tidhar's work that there's nothing really that "Talking to Ghosts at the Edge of the World" can do for me as a reader. It's an interesting thing, though, to come to the realization that I'm just not the audience rather than it's the story.

Likewise, "A Portrait of Salai" was not to my taste. Hannu Rajaneimi definitely stretches the idea of getting into the nooks and crannies of the universe - it's an odd story that talks about "earth like planets" and dyson spheres, but almost seems to be taking place on a super small scale (or, alternately, on a super large scale that dwarfs imagination. Honestly, I can't tell). There's a symphony built from throwing comets at a planet. "A Portrait of Salai" most effectively hits the scope of what Strahan is looking for while simultaneously not being one of the strongest stories in the anthology. Unlike with Lavie Tidhar, I'm not familiar with the work of Hannu Rajaneimi -  I'm aware of it and recognize the acclaim his novels have received, but I haven't read him before.

Much more positively, one of my favorite stories in Infinity's End is Seanan McGuire's "Swear Not by the Moon". It's the dual story of the rise of a woman named Wendy May, a woman so wealthy that she bought a moon with the goal of terraforming it into something habitable and a tourist attraction, along with the story of a family visiting Titan. The success of the story isn't so much the pushing forward of the "present" as it is the somewhat more didactic Wendy May sections. It's just so fascinating and scratched an itch that I didn't realize I had.

Other stories feature such oddities of a velociraptor investigating a murder (Justina Robson's "Foxy and Tiggs" and trust me, this is a futuristic story), one set so far in the future the solar system is being used for tourism and humans are so long lived they are functionally immortal - this one is the sort of story I used to love and now comes across as more travelogue than story ("Death's Door, by Alastair Reynolds). There's a Quiet War story from Paul McAuley. Generally, I appreciated and enjoyed most of the stories in this anthology.

From Kristine Kathryn Rusch I'd like more stories of Colette, a super smart kid solving problems before the authorities. I'm always happy to read anything from Stephen Baxter and "Last Small Step" does not disappoint.

"Intervention" from Kelly Robson is all heart. It features a woman who self exiled herself from her Lunar base home because of the Lunar prejudices against children and especially creche born and those who want to care for them. Jules dedicated her life to raising children, being a creche mother. Generation after generation. "Intervention" is a deeply moving, powerful, and personal story. As meaningful as the work Jules has done for decades has been, the resentment and borderline hatred she feels for Luna still seeps through at the barest mention of the moon. It's great and I highly recommend it.

My absolute favorite story from Infinity's End is Linda Nagata's "Longing for Earth". It is simply a beautiful story of Hitoshi, one of the oldest humans in the universe, taking his one thousandth journey, a trek on another artificial world. "Longing for Earth" is not a travelogue, per se, but it is a gentle and peaceful story of one man's hopes and dreams and the peace of travel and exploration. It's a beautiful story and is one of my favorite stories in this anthology. I appreciated the internal conflict between family who has chosen to upload themselves to a Virtual Layer with those family members who have stayed behind in "The Temporal Layer", which is what we might consider "the real world" - except that both existences are equally real, they're just different. "Longing for Earth" is a true standout and the highlight of an already strong anthology.

I'm sad that Infinity's End is the purported final volume in Jonathan Strahan's Infinity Project of anthologies. The theme has always been loose, no matter what Strahan has stated in the introduction (and I'm not sure he'd truly disagree with me here). He's just looking for science fiction which stretches the bounds of humanity living in the wider universe. The success is that Strahan has a great idea for good stories and each of the Infinity Project anthologies hits the mark for top notch stories. While I hope that Strahan will revisit the Infinity brand again several years from now (and if so, the anthology should maybe be titled Infinity's Rebirth), Infinity's End is a fitting and excellent way to close the book on a solid anthology series. Reading each volume and reading Infinity's End has been a delight.


The Math

Baseline Assessment: 7/10

Bonuses: +1 for the soaring heights of Linda Nagata's "Longing for Earth"

Penalties: -1 for the weirdness of "Kindred" (Peter Watts). You really need to know your Philip K. Dick to appreciate this one.

Nerd Coefficient: 7/10, "a mostly enjoyable experience" See more about our scoring system here.


POSTED BY: Joe Sherry - Co-editor of Nerds of a Feather, 2017 & 2018 Hugo Award Finalist for Best Fanzine. Minnesotan.

Microreview [Book]: The Phoenix Empress by K. Arsenault Rivera

Their Bright Ascendancy continues with a slower volume that focuses on its queer women protagonists to the near-exclusion of everything else.

I've been looking forward to The Phoenix Empress, second in the "Their Bright Ascendancy" series by K. Arsenault Rivera, for a while: as a sequel to The Tiger's Daughter, a book that I very much enjoyed despite its flaws, I was intrigued to see where the author would take both the plot and the form of this queer romance-heavy fantasy trilogy. Structurally, The Tiger's Daughter is an odd book, told mostly in the form of a second-person letter from Qorin warrior Barsalai Shefali to her wife, Hokkaran O-Shizuka (better known by the time the letter is written as Empress Yui). Shefali effectively retells the story of her childhood with Shizuka, moving between the steppes on which the Qorin people live and the royal Hokkaran palaces, their cross-cultural friendship enabled by the close relationship their own mothers had at the time of their birth. Shefali and Shizuka fall in love in a society where same-sex relationships are more or less taboo, particularly in Hokkaran culture, and their battles include the fight for acceptance as well as some actual battles with a plague of black-blooded contagious zombies from north of Hokkaro. Spoilers for The Tiger's Daughter will follow, so if you're not caught up, and you want to try a slow-burning epic fantasy with a same-sex relationship between women at its heart, this is the book for you.

The Phoenix Empress pick up almost exactly where its predecessor leaves off, and while the "present" takes up more of the narrative in this volume, there's still a substantial story-within-a-story as Shizuka fills Shefali in on the events that led to her becoming empress, not to mention developing an alcohol addiction and a severe phobia of water. Shefali has returned from her own travels even more changed, following events in that have led to her being contaminated by black blood but not succumbing to the usual progress of the illness, and now expects to die on her next birthday in four months' time. A great deal of the book is therefore based on learning each others' secrets and renewing their relationship, as well as working out what the wider implications of Shefali's return are for the future of Hokkaro and the black- blood plague.

I suspect that the unusual structure of these novels is playing an important trope-subverting role as well as being a narrative choice. It allows Rivera to incorporate a long, traumatic separation into Shizuka and Shefali's story without turning the relationship itself into a tragedy, particularly during the ending of The Tiger's Daughter (Shefali's letter ends with the separation of the two lovers; the plot of the frame narrative, eight years later, with their being reunited). By averting a "bury your gays" moment, Rivera definitely wins my trust as a reader on one level, but it does also change my relationship to the tensions in the novel. Despite Shizuka's trauma and Shefali's impending doom, part of me is convinced from a meta-narrative sense that we are reading a story where the pair will triumph in the end, and all that matters is how. Unfortunately, there's not much in The Phoenix Empress that really invests me in that question, and I suspect this is largely due to the happy couple themselves.

Shizuka and Shefali are entirely consumed by each other, and while in The Tiger's Daughter that made for an interesting romance plot, by The Phoenix Empress, this feels more like family drama than the trials of star-crossed lovers. Their relationship blazes so bright that a lot of other story elements are obscured or left blank, with worldbuilding and characterisation outside of the pair often feeling sketchy and two-dimensional. It's worth noting that some concerns were raised about cultural appropriation in the Tiger's Daughter, and while I'm not personally sure how fair that claim is - this is a secondary world fantasy, after all - I don't think there is any change in The Phoenix Empress that will mitigate that concern, and there's a lack of overall depth to the world Shefali and Shizuka inhabit in this volume which is likely to frustrate readers invested in these aspects. Insofar as Hokkaro, Xian (a former territory of Hokkaro recently given independence) and Qorin are undergoing their own political transformations, this all seems to happen off-screen, or in the time between Shizuka's past and Shefali's present. There's also almost no queerness represented in The Phoenix Empress beyond the main pair: our elite battle wives find themselves in a world that's otherwise oppressively heteronormative at every level. In addition, some elements of Shefali and Shizuka themselves - like, say, the fact that they are both superpowered Gods - is taken bizarrely at face value by the narrative.

What frustrates me most is the treatment of Shizuka's past arc, which involves her precipitating a major un-natural disaster after a narrow escape from a river spirit whose agreement she breaks. On its own, the tragedy of this story doesn't prevent us from being sympathetic to Shizuka, who is horrified and traumatised by what has happened and was only trying to do her best to protect her people from the black-bloods. However, the narrative treats this as if the most important thing for Shizuka to gain is Shefali's forgiveness, and through that, her own peace of mind. I couldn't help but compare the way this element was treated to the atrocities which take place in R.F. Kuang's The Poppy War, where the first-person protagonist reacts to war crimes in a way that is personal but centres the crimes and the death themselves - a distinction which is even more important because Kuang is writing about fictionalised versions of real historical events. In The Phoenix Empress, the tragedy isn't really allowed to stand on its own: it's all about how Shizuka and Shefali's reconciliation might be affected by its aftermath.

At this stage, it feels uncomfortably like I have been railing at a book for not being what I wanted, rather than not being "good". I have to acknowledge that, while I love a queer romantic subplot, the slow burning soap opera at the heart of The Phoenix Empress was always going to be a hard sell for me. However, if that is a selling point for you, there is definitely an accomplished and unusual story here, and Their Bright Ascendancy is still a valuable addition to a still-too-small canon of wlw fantasy novels. There's an intriguing quest set up in the last chapters of The Phoenix Empress and while the jury's still out on whether I'll be along for the ride, I'm very glad that Shefali and Shizuka will be setting out on their final adventure together regardless.

The Math

Baseline Score: 6/10

Bonuses: +1 The world needs more books like this; +1 Pulls off an interesting story-within-a-story structure without diminishing my interest in either tale

Penalties: -1 Everything that isn't Shefali or Shizuka is washed out by the intensity of focus on the pair.

Nerd Coefficient: 7/10.

POSTED BY: Adri 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.

Reference: Rivera, K. Arsenault. The Phoenix Empress [Tor, 2018]

Mircoreview [book]: Ironclads, by Adrian Tchaikovsky

Ironclads provides a smart, sharp look at warfare in a near future that may not be, but feels like a funhouse mirror of the present that, like all good mirrors, shows us our present.

Sergeant Ted Regan has been given a problem. In a futuristic battlefield where corporations and the rich war for fun and the poor participate just to survive, he has been given a task to solve an impossible situation. One of those rich, Jerome, one of the Scions, and his advanced mecha suit, an Ironclad, has gone missing in the wilds of Sweden. This is unprecedented and rather disconcerting to the powers that be. What can stop a Scion and their ironclad? Worse, for Regan, how can he and a motley group of his squad hope to find him and face something that take can apparently take out the best of the best? That is their impossible mission.

This is the central plot problem of Adrian Tchaikovsky’s novella Ironclads, a story of a band of brothers in a future war run for profit and greed,, dodging enemy ironclads, mysterious agendas, betrayals, untrustworthy allies, and the fortunes of war.

One of the signature things that I come to expect in a Adrian Tchaikovsky story is here only vestigally and that is unusual insects, mechanical or otherwise. Unusual mechanical insects are here, never fear, for fans of the author who come to expect insects in some capacity, but those insects are very much not the point here.

Instead, the main technological and sociological focus in this novel is on the ironclads and it is here that Tchaikovsky unleashes his creativity. In the same way that, for example, Myke Cole’s medieval mecha or the magical mecha of the Exalted RPG verse expand mecha beyond their Robotech origins, so too, does Tchaikovsky in his own exploration of the concept of Ironclads. The idea of rich and powerful people getting to engage in war by means of being protected far more than average grunts like Sergeant Regan is explicitly, in the text, tied to dark age and medieval ideas of knights versus peasants The ironclad- using Scions are explicitly the new high class of warrior on the battlefield, showing how when war is a game for the rich, those who are not rich have to suffer and survive as best they can, outclassed from the start both in offensive firepower and defensive protection.

The action beats and descriptions of surviving and travering in a blasted and dangerous landscape  during wartime is expertly described. The titular Ironclads are not on screen as much as one might think, the author uses their presence with care. This is a story about the grunts, the common soldiers who have to survive in a war and do an impossible task with at best, unreliable allies with agendas all of their own.Regan and his team, a unit that has long standing set of relationships provide the core and a common shared set of relationships that get tested during the mission.

There’s plenty of social and political commentary in the book. It’s a future world gone insanely corporate oriented, even as climate change has ravaged the globe. There are plenty of little jokes and references, the author clearly enjoyed  his bon mots at taking trends and our present world and magnifying them into the future. The Prosperity Gospel of today, for example, gets turned into the ‘Church of Christ Libertarian’ in the novella. The funhouse mirror of his future corporate dominated world bitingly shows our present.

And then there is Finland.

Long ago, when reading Poul Anderson’s Boat of a Million Years, I was introduced to the idea of how many outsiders thought about Finland. One of the viewpoint characters, showing off his unusual skills to a dark age Dane, is constantly asked if he had learned the strange arts from the Finns. I grasped the idea that Finland to outsiders was a strange, unusual place with people speaking a very different language and customs. The term Scandinavia, for instance, most definitely *excludes* Finland from it’s purview.

The strangeness and wonder of Finland infuses this slim volume. Even as the protagonists fight across the landscape of Sweden to complete their mission, the Finns they encounter (and the hints of the Finland they come from) are treated like an alien land with technology and power that’s a bit off, a bit different than everything else they are used to. There is more than a hint of a Faerieland quality to Finland and the Finns that the author leverages wonderfully into the novel. It complicates and enriches the worldbuilding and adds a new facet to the already storyline and economic and sociological questions that his future world poses. The unusual technology of the Finns vis a vis everyone else reminded me a bit of the technology one sees at work in Paul McAuley’s Fairyland.

My only real criticism of the novella is a relatively minor one. Given the sheer invention and effusive worldbuilding, the excellent action beats, the social and political criticism and point of view that the novella explores, all of that does overshadow the characters a bit. This is not to say that Regan and his comrades are cardboard cutouts or just pieces on the chessboard of the great game, but their personalities and arcs are more than a bit overshadowed by all the other things going on here.  It also should be said that readers who are not interested in Centrist and Left leaning (politically) Military Science Fiction, even one with biting social and political commentary such as this, will likely bounce off of this novella.

Overall, though, that minor consideration is overshadowed by all the novella has to offer. Ironclads shows the power of Tchaikovsky’s writing, and continues to show his ever expanding range of interests and subgenres.

---
The Math
Baseline Assessment 8/10

Bonuses : +1 for  inventive worldbuilding that leaps off of the page. +1 for biting and often funny social and political commentary

Penalties : -1 for some weakness in character development and execution versus the other elements. -1 for some limitations of target audience for readers.

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


Reference:  Tchaikovsky, Adrian  Ironclads [Solaris Books, 2017]


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

Thursday Morning Superhero

Pick of the Week:
Paper Girls #25 - This was one helluva an issue and one that is going to make it a lot harder to wait until March of 2019 to see what happens to the girls. There is a lot to process as I wrap my head around in my attempts not to spoil anything, but what a cliffhanger and what a poignant final panel. We recently learned that the girls are risking a rare form of cancer associated with time travel, but we now learn that they are also putting the entire year of 1988 into jeopardy due to the rifts they are creating. It appears that a version of Erin from the past has been leaving clues for the girls in order to help guide them home and it all ends on the roof of a skyscraper. I don't think it's fair for Brian K.Vaughan, Cliff Chiang, Matt Wilson and Jared K. Fletcher to drop an issue like this and inform us that the comic is ending next year. Not sure what to think other than the fact that I have plenty of time to give this series a proper re-read before March.

The Rest:
Dead Rabbit #1 - Dead Rabbit is a masked vigilante that terrorized the greater Boston area in the 90's, making off with millions of dollars.  He hasn't been seen in 10 years and his legend has grown over time. Cut to the present where we learn that the Dead Rabbit is currently taking care of his wife and working as a greeter at the local supermarket since his "retirement" fund have all but vanished. This debut issue from Gerry Guggan, John McCrea and Mike Spicer was extremely entertaining and the design and sheer brutality of the Dead Rabbit is masterful. His mask and demeanor remind me of Rorschach and when you spend a large portion of your past robbing individuals you are bound to make some enemies. After noticing something suspicious at work the Dead Rabbit dawns the mask and there are some powerful beings that are very interested to learn that he has been spotted in the wild after all of this time.

Asgardians of the Galaxy #2 - After giving this series penned by Cullen Bunn a whirl I am happy to report that it is a lot of fun, despite this issue taking more of a serious tone. Fortunately we have Throg, the Thor-like frog, to chime in when things get a bit dark. Bunn does a great job bringing the horror element that is in his wheelhouse and sprinkling in some bits of humor that really work well with Asgard and the interesting characters that are affiliated with it. It isn't looking good for the Asgardians of the Galaxy as Nebula is only getting stronger as she commands her army of dead gods in her quest to bring Ragnarok.

Star Wars #55 - Leia's plan to help the rebel ships escape Vader and his Star Destroyer was able to save the ambassadors, but the fleet sustained major damage and is currently scattered and unable to connect with one another.  I have enjoyed the way that Kieron Gillen has taken advantage of this series to provide fans unique moments that are a lot of fun. Han decked out in X-Wing attire leading the Rogue Squadron wasn't something I thought I needed to see, but watching him and R2D2 squabble as they take on Tie Fighters is a lot of fun. Curious to see what members of the rebellion we will follow in the next arc as they are scattered, but also interested in seeing what consequences Vader faces for not delivering the final blow to the rebellion. He chalked this one up as a victory, but the Emperor isn't as confident that it did the trick.


POSTED BY MIKE N. aka Victor Domashev -- comic guy, proudly raising nerdy kids, and Nerds of a Feather contributor since 2012.

Microreview [Book]: Lovecraft Country, by Matt Ruff

"Stories are like people, Atticus. Loving them doesn't make them perfect," The Safe Negro Travel Guide publisher George Berry tells his nephew Atticus Turner in the beginning of Matt Ruff's Lovecraft Country.

Berry is sort of an old wise man character in the novel, always there delivering helpful truths and constructive advice when needed. Here he is unraveling Atticus's – and his own – conflicted feelings towards science fiction and fantasy literature. They are both in love with genre classics such as Edgar Rice Burroughs and H.P. Lovecraft but at the same time register that the authors and their works are deeply problematic, especially from the viewpoint of black readers which is what both men are.

The novel takes place in 1950s, but this discussion is a flashback. It is possible that they are supposedly discussing racist undertones of Lovecraft's fiction during the same decade when Moore's Ford lynchings and other infamous killings and home burnings happened, not to mention less lethal forms of systematic oppression in Jim Crow America. I'm not completely convinced that a person who publishes a guidebook dedicated to keeping traveling black Americans safe and alive would really be as generous as uncle George here, but this lingering doubt of the plausibility of the characterization is about the only negative thing I have to say about the novel.

Come to think of it, I'm also not quite sure whether Lovecraft's racism would really have been a talking point among fans in 1940s. Fantasy fandom was happy to give his busts around for 40 years during much, much more modern times, after all, stopping only occasionally to contemplate whether the bust was flattering enough to its source. Ruff's characters and their concerns may seem a bit contemporary at times, but I don't think that it spoils any of the fun, frankly.

Lovecraft Country is formed of consecutive paranormal tales which foreground different members of the novel's cast. The cast is all-black and that is the point – even (or especially) the story which begins with a mysterious metamorphosis of one of the characters into a white-skinned version of herself really draws its power from the discussion of race: how black Americans of the not-so-distant past were second-class citizens in an unbelievable variety of ways. "Nevermind the paranormal stuff – isn't that just horrific?" is to me the question that the book is asking its reader.

Actually, the horror fantasy content of the novel is so un-horrific that it is extremely unlikely to scare anybody. Ruff's light-hearted tone makes it clear from the beginning that nothing too brutal is going to happen to any of the novel's main characters. There is a sinister white shadow looming over all the cheerful action, however, and the mix of registers is interesting. It's a happy book about awful stuff.

In the novel, familiar horror and science fiction tropes are contrasted with the deep-rooted racism and bigotry of the era, and the latter is what the reader will probably consider otherworldly. Moving in to a haunted house is nothing compared to the neighbors who try to spook and vandalize the new home owners to move out of a previously white-only block. What's more, buying a property in the first place was a bureaucratic nightmare for people of color, and Ruff has the infodumps to prove it.

So, there might be a Shoggoth or two running loose in the bushes, and Cthulhu cults scheming to open gateways to alien dimensions, but neither are as dangerous as white sheriffs.

Ruff's book started out as a TV series pitch – it was meant to be an X-Files style show in which the excuse for weekly paranormal adventures was that the characters were collecting data for The Safe Negro Travel Guide. Even though the original pitch was unsuccessful, we are in fact going to see what the people putting together this twisted Hitchikers' Guide to the Galaxy are going to look like on the screen, because now there is a TV show in the works.

I recommend reading the book first, though, because Ruff's prose has levels that the camera probably won't capture.


***

The Math

Base Score: 7/10

Bonuses: +1 for combining unimaginable horrors with truly unimaginable horrors, +1 for winks to readers versed in pulp classics of the genre.

Penalties: -2 for cardboard cut-out characters (-1 in case you are not as severely allergic as I)

Nerd Coefficient: 7/10 – "A mostly enjoyable experience"

Reference: Ruff, Matt. Lovecraft Country [HarperCollins 2016]

***

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

Vintage Review: Crown of Stars Series by Kate Elliott

Adventures in Medieval Space and Time

I started on Kate Elliott's seven book Crown of Stars series in summer last year, for a couple of reasons: I (partly) wanted to read more Kate Elliott, having only experienced her Spiritwalker trilogy so far and (mostly) was trying to increase my "score" on Lady Business' "60 essential reads" list from 2 years ago. This may not have been the best idea, because Elliott has lots of newer books that I'm equally, if not more, interested in (Court of Fives and Black Wolves are sitting on my Kindle and my physical TBR shelf respectively, judging my choices). For a while, getting through this septology of dense, expansive high fantasy felt like an impossible task - a reading feeling which is reflected in the flashes of writing experience we get in the preface notes, where a trilogy becomes five, and then six, and then, finally (and fittingly) seven. Unlike certain other fantasy series that have taken up more space in popular imagination, though, Crown of Stars does end, presenting a reader with a huge but ultimately achievable and satisfying experience to get there.

The series begins with King's Dragon, a volume which initially invests us in three storylines. Liathano, a young, highly educated woman living in relative seclusion with her father, has her life thrown into disarray when her father is murdered and a deeply unpleasant presbyter named Hugh takes an interest in his materials and in Liath herself. Alain, a boy whose adoptive family have sent him for a monastic life he doesn't want, is visited by the Lady of Battles and ends up instead at the court of Count Lavastine and his selectively loyal dogs immediately before an invasion from the north. And, in the court of King Henry, questions are being asked about the line of succession: Henry has three legitimate children from whom his heir ought to be come, but has always instead favoured his oldest, bastard son Sanglant, born to a mother who is quite literally not from this world. To make matters worse, Henry is also facing internal dissent from his sister and her rival faction for the throne at the same time as said northern invasion should be occupying his attentions.

On their own, the adventures of Liath, Alain and Sanglant could easily fill multiple volumes of high fantasy, with the Eika - alien, stonelike creatures whose invasion of the north involves widespread killing and slavery - as an antagonist group whose motives slowly become more complex (ideally to an extent that questions the problematic elements of having a racially-delineated antagonist group). We'd also expect some plot-relevant repeat appearances from the Aoi (read: fae-elven) people from whom Sanglant is part descended. And we do get all of this this, but it comes alongside so much more: religious heresies and rebellions; a near-unstoppable invasion of nomadic raiders from the east and questionable alliance building with the Queen in the south; discovery and rediscovery of ancient bloodlines through ancient cultish conspiracies; magical trips thousands of years back in time, into the realms of the outer spheres, and through territory deep underground; a cataclysmic natural disaster borne of an ancient magical mistake; spirit summoning; pyromancy; griffins and centaurs; unnaturally ageing children; a cast of minor characters which, in my copy of In the Ruins (book 6, the only one to contain a character list) spans 20 pages, and constant exclamations of "Ai! Lady!" which only stopped being annoying around Volume 5. Only the well-realised medieval-ish setting prevents there from being a kitchen sink thrown in there somewhere: there's literally every plot element you could want from an epic fantasy series somewhere in here, along with a few I'd be happy never to read about again (i.e. rape. Sigh.)

What makes the Crown of Stars series so interesting is that it incorporates all these elements while also being very consistent about the concept of distance, and the amount of time which this continent-spanning, world-changing quest would require in a setting with inconsistent magic and low technology. From the moment the characters start spinning off into different plots, there's a sense of overwhelming division between them, and regular detached references are made to the fact that years are passing within these books, although the narrative only focuses on plot relevant moments with very little in the way of "downtime" (I dread to think how many volumes this story would have taken if it included the static character banter of Stormlight Archives). These distances also make the limited capabilities of even the elite characters very clear: around the mid-point of the series, Henry makes the choice to travel to neighbouring Aosta in order to support a deposed queen and pursue marriage alliances, rather than addressing any of the other threats to his regnancy, and this choice literally cuts off his communication with his own land with enormous consequences. When magical sight comes into play, we have characters watching pivotal moments with no chance of influencing what is happening, and the powerlessness this creates even amongst the series' most powerful individuals is very well conveyed.

Committing to the realities of this distance, and the information gaps this creates, also means Crown of Stars presents quite a high difficulty setting for its readers when it comes to remembering the happenings of the series' characters. Unless someone has literally been there to witness an event, information can take entire books to reach them, and the shifting limited third person voice means that their mistaken assumptions are regularly presented as fact by the narrative. I find myself hoping some benevolent tech genius will fall in love with this series and create some kind of "character networking app" that breaks down, section by section, where everyone is and what they're doing, so if I ever reread this series I can consult an omniscient guide to remind me what's actually happening and what misinformation the characters are working from. Elliott makes other style choices that also compound the difficulty for readers with imperfect recall. Each book is divided into sections and then subdivided into (sometimes short) numbered chapters, but each section can contain multiple alternating points of view, and Elliott has a consistent habit of not name checking the character the narration has switched to until several paragraphs into the chapter. It's honestly just too much to keep straight at times, and the plot is complex enough that some help from the author or editor on these small elements (e.g. chapters named by POV, or character-specific glyphs in the chapter headers as in Stormlight Archives or Shattered Sands) would have greatly enhanced my comprehension without detracting from the text or style.

With a cast of 20 pages, there's inevitably going to be some characters you care about more than others. For me, it's Liath by quite a wide margin, with Alain in distant second for the first half of the series, while other characters are more or less compelling depending on their distance from Liath. Despite being thrown directly into the middle of world-changing political events, Liath keeps her interest and her personal motivations fixed on the cosmological quest of understanding. While Sanglant saves the Regnancy, Liath is in the business of saving the world, and when she does find herself forced to play the political game, she inevitably gets outplayed by everyone else. On the antagonist side, mothers play a huge, ambiguous role, both in the literal and, through religious elites, metaphorical sense (the church is female-led), and there's a lot of powerful, complex women whose interests align more or less with the heroes at any given point. Unfortunately, because of the challenges outlined above, most of the extended cast fell very much into "meh" territory for me: I just couldn't muster much interest in the fate of characters like Blessing, or Heribert, or Wolfhere, or anyone in the Eika plotline, despite the pivotal roles these secondary characters play in the emotions of the main cast, because I couldn't keep straight where they were supposed to be and what was happening to them at any given time.

If you can keep your head around all the character comings and goings, however, Crown of Stars is worth sticking with to the end. With political complications and plot developments piling up all the way through the sixth book and into Crown of Stars, the final volume, it's initially hard to see how this series could come to anything approaching a satisfying end, but by halfway through it becomes clear exactly what sort of story this is going to be: there's no chance of a huge, multilateral political settlement that would tie together all of the geopolitical threads in one easy bow, because that's not how geopolitics works, but there's a satisfying "beat" to most of these, including a development for the Regnancy of Wendar and Varre that I had wanted to see since King's Dragon. However, the sense of closure in the end of Crown of Stars really comes through the way the characters' journeys come to an end, and - in a neat twist I didn't even realise I wanted until it started happening - who among this enormous, scattered cast finds each other again. It's such a neat way of tapering things off, and feels very true to the series as a whole that, ultimately, satisfaction is found not in political victory but in coming back to those you love, perhaps with a better understanding of why that love is so important.

In a story that, as noted above, contains everything except the kitchen sink, it's an enormous storytelling feat to stick an ending that relies so much on the small things. If this huge, messy, tricky series is an example of Elliott's relatively early work, I'm extremely excited to move on to the more recent books and see what those worlds have in store. Crown of Stars is expansive, frustrating, and will test your ability to remember character names to its absolute limit, but it's well worth the experience in the end.

Score: 7/10

POSTED BY: Adri 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.

New Books Spotlight

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

What are you looking forward to? Anything you want to argue with us about? Is there something we should consider spotlighting in the future? Let us know in the comments!

Dickinson, Seth. The Monster Baru Cormorant [Tor]
Publisher's Description

A breathtaking geopolitical epic fantasy, The Monster Baru Cormorant is the sequel to Seth Dickinson's "fascinating tale" (The Washington Post), The Traitor Baru Cormorant.

Her world was shattered by the Empire of Masks.
For the power to shatter the Masquerade,
She betrayed everyone she loved.

The traitor Baru Cormorant is now the cryptarch Agonist—a secret lord of the empire she's vowed to destroy.

Hunted by a mutinous admiral, haunted by the wound which has split her mind in two, Baru leads her dearest foes on an expedition for the secret of immortality. It's her chance to trigger a war that will consume the Masquerade.

But Baru's heart is broken, and she fears she can no longer tell justice from revenge...or her own desires from the will of the man who remade her.

Why We Want It: The Traitor Baru Cormorant was a bad ass novel of a woman trying to get her revenge on an empire from the inside, and the moral compromises she has to make to rise high enough to effect that change. Monster Baru is the sequel and I need this in my life.

Rivera, K. Arsenault. The Phoenix Empress [Tor]
Publisher's Description

Once they were the heirs to a prophecy that predicted two women would save an empire.

Now Shefali is dying—and her wife is unaware of the coming tragedy. Shizuka is too busy trying to reunite a fractured empire and right the wrongs of her ancestors.

As the Imperial Army gathers against a demonic invasion, Shizuka must do all she can with an empire on the brink of civil war.

Why We Want It:  I have not read The Tiger's Daughter but I've been inundated with the praise that novel has received. It has been enough to push that novel much farther up my reading queue and to get my attention firmly planted on its follow up, The Phoenix Empress.

Robinson, Kim Stanley. Red Moon [Orbit]
Publisher's Description

Red Moon is a magnificent novel of space exploration and political revolution from New York Times bestselling author Kim Stanley Robinson.

It is thirty years from now, and we have colonized the moon.

American Fred Fredericks is making his first trip, his purpose to install a communications system for China’s Lunar Science Foundation. But hours after his arrival he witnesses a murder and is forced into hiding.

It is also the first visit for celebrity travel reporter Ta Shu. He has contacts and influence, but he too will find that the moon can be a perilous place for any traveler.

Finally, there is Chan Qi. She is the daughter of the Minister of Finance, andwithout doubt a person of interest to those in power. She is on the moon for reasons of her own, but when she attempts to return to China, in secret, the events that unfold will change everything – on the moon, and on Earth.

Why We Want It: Would you believe the only Kim Stanley Robinson I've read is last year's Hugo finalist novel New York 2140? I've meant to read more, I've got at least two of his novels that I can think of on my bookshelf downstairs, but I'm overdue to read more. The title has obvious echoes of Robinson's classic Red Mars and the novel itself deals with the colonization of the Moon by China, which is a solid and plausible future. I mostly enjoyed New York 2140 and this should be another major novel from Kim Stanley Robinson.

Scalzi, John. The Consuming Fire [Tor]
Publisher's Description

The Consuming Fire—the sequel to the 2018 Hugo Award Best Novel finalist and 2018 Locus Award-winning The Collapsing Empire—an epic space-opera novel in the bestselling Interdependency series, from the Hugo Award-winning and New York Times bestselling author John Scalzi

The Interdependency, humanity’s interstellar empire, is on the verge of collapse. The Flow, the extra-dimensional conduit that makes travel between the stars possible, is disappearing, leaving entire star systems stranded. When it goes, human civilization may go with it—unless desperate measures can be taken.

Emperox Grayland II, the leader of the Interdependency, is ready to take those measures to help ensure the survival of billions. But nothing is ever that easy. Arrayed before her are those who believe the collapse of the Flow is a myth—or at the very least, an opportunity that can allow them to ascend to power.

While Grayland prepares for disaster, others are preparing for a civil war, a war that will take place in the halls of power, the markets of business and the altars of worship as much as it will take place between spaceships and battlefields. The Emperox and her allies are smart and resourceful, but then so are her enemies. Nothing about this power struggle will be simple or easy... and all of humanity will be caught in its widening gyre.

Why We Want It: I delighted in The Collapsing Empire, to the point that I was reading in the car on the way to the airport so I could finish it before we left for a week's vacation (side note, I generally don't take hardcover books with me on trips, more often I'll bring a paperback to leave someplace for some random stranger to find a book and be delighted by it - the Scalzi is a keeper). The Collapsing Empire was fantastic, but it was also so very clearly the first part in a longer story. The Consuming Fire is that second part and I am so excited to read it.

Stearns, R.E. Mutiny at Vesta [Saga]
Publisher's Description

Adda and Iridian have survived the murderous AI that tried to kill them in Barbary Station...but now they'll need all of their ingenuity to escape the evil megacorporation that wants to own them, in this second space adventure in the Shieldrunner Pirates trilogy.

Adda Karpe and Iridian Nassir have escaped the murderous AI that was trapping them on Barbary Station, and earned themselves a place on Captain Sloane’s fabled pirate crew. And now that they’ve arrived at Vesta, Sloane’s home base, they can finally start making a living stealing from well-off megacorporations.

Unfortunately, the political situation has deteriorated in Captain Sloane’s absence. Adda and Iridian find themselves trapped in a contract with Oxia Corp., one of the very megacorporations they'd hoped to prey on, forced to rob and intimidate targets they'd never have chosen on their own. If they're ever going to have the independent life together that they've always wanted, they'll have to free themselves from Oxia Corp. first. Meanwhile, the inhuman allies who followed Adda and Iridian from Barbary Station have plans of their own, which may be more dangerous than the humans involved could imagine. It will take not one but five heists, and every bit of ingenuity Adda and Iridian have to escape from Oxia and find the life they’ve always dreamed of…if they can survive.

Why We Want It: I'm a bit behind and haven't read Barbary Station yet, but I'm still sold on Navah Wolfe's description of that first book as "lesbian women of color space pirates versus a murderous AI". This is my reminder that I need to get on that because Mutiny at Vesta is coming up!

Wells, Martha. Exit Strategy [Tor.com Publishing]
Publisher's Description

Martha Wells's Murderbot Diaries, a wildfire science fiction phenomenon about an antisocial AI learning to care, comes to a thrilling conclusion with Exit Strategy. 

Murderbot wasn’t programmed to care. So, its decision to help the only human who ever showed it respect must be a system glitch, right?

Having traveled the width of the galaxy to unearth details of its own murderous transgressions, as well as those of the GrayCris Corporation, Murderbot is heading home to help Dr. Mensah—its former owner (protector? friend?)—submit evidence that could prevent GrayCris from destroying more colonists in its never-ending quest for profit.

But who’s going to believe a SecUnit gone rogue? 

And what will become of it when it’s caught?

Why We Want It: What? You don't know about Murderbot? The first novella, All Systems Red, only won the Hugo, Nebula, and Locus Award for Best Novella. The next two are just as delightful as the first. Exit Strategy is the fourth and final Murderbot novella, though a full length novel was recently announced.


POSTED BY: Joe Sherry - Co-editor of Nerds of a Feather, 2017 & 2018 Hugo Award Finalist for Best Fanzine. Minnesotan.