I am sorry to say that nothing about this book really grabbed me. The concept was cool – in an alternate future Nigeria, a dome is built by aliens for mysterious reasons, which keep themselves in and humans out. The dome opens every now and then and makes changes in humans who happen to be nearby, seemingly at random. Some are healed of lifelong ailments, while others are changed into mindless beasts. Meanwhile some other humans, like narrator Kaaro, have developed various extrasensory abilities; some work on behalf of the government, some against, and some are just out for themselves. This book was dense with ideas but the telling was a little too wordy, losing me among the rambling paragraphs, and the occasional interludes of grimdark or body horror were extra jarring in contrast. The timeline is also confusing, jumping back and forth between Kaaro’s past and his present. The big reveal, when it came at the end, would have been far more effective had I managed to care even slightly about the characters, or if there had been any kind of logic underpinning their actions.
Tag: genre-scifi
Gideon the Ninth, by Tamsyn Muir
I’ve reread this multiple times. I still love it. It is the most rollicking crazy amazing book you’ll ever read about lesbian necromancer/warriors trapped in a deadly scavenger hunt through a haunted gothic mansion on a mysterious planet. (It’s also the first book of an ongoing series and it does end on an argh note, but it’s totally worth the ride to read standalone.) The narrative voice of Gideon, which manages to be simultaneously irreverent, oblivious, and incredibly evocative, is everything I ever wanted.
The Three Body Problem, by Liu Cixin
Reread for book club (again! But different book club!) which I welcomed since I rushed through the ending before. I loved this book the first time I read it and haven’t changed my opinion in the slightest; it presents uber nerdy space physics problems (with bonus computation engines!) alongside aftershocks from the Cultural Revolution. It’s also an alien encounter story, but like the best alien encounter stories, it’s really more about the humans and how they react to the aliens. I love the depth and ambition of the ideas in this book, but the characterization definitely suffers from lack of attention, and although the plot feels like it tries to be serious, the action occasionally borders on ridiculousness.
Angelmaker, by Nick Harkaway
This guy has enough ideas crammed in here to write ten different books. He’s like Neal Stephenson, except that instead of having a hard SF premise underneath the shiny, this is shiny all the way down. Steampunk clockmaker, check. Fearless spy who’s retained her skills into old age, check. Zombie engineer clones, check. Literal world ending machinery masquerading as a hive of bees, check. The writing is slick and lovely and carries you along despite the extremely unlikely nature of, well, everything that is happening.
The Space Between Worlds, by Micaiah Johnson
The Space Between Worlds, by Micaiah Johnson: Travel to alternate worlds is possible, but only if your doppelganger in the alternate world is dead; as a consequence, a corps of world-travelers is recruited from the poor and downtrodden, whose lives are constantly threatened by tragedy and whose life expectancy is poor. The class conflict between the travelers and their handlers is immediate and ongoing; the central character’s fight for relevance and growing sense of moral outrage provides a good backbone for the story.
American War, by Omar El Akkad
Post-apocalyptic Civil War, in which Southern states including Texas refuse to give up their fossil fuels, and a fragmented Union fights them with drones and soldiers recruited from a working class desperate for opportunity. Meanwhile from across the ocean, the Red Crescent and the Chinese send charity aid and administer refugee camps. It’s told from the post-war future so you know how things end, but not how they got there; the main character, Sarat, travels an all-too-believable arc from child refugee to violent insurgent. Super intense book and quite frightening, particularly when you consider the tribalism that seems to be increasing today.
New Suns: Original Speculative Fiction by People of Color, by Nisi Shawl, ed.
Really great anthology. There was no unified theme to the stories, except that the main character’s viewpoint was not that of a white Western person, which was incredibly refreshing. They were all good, no duds, and I think the one that might stay with me the longest was Anil Menon’s “The Robots of Eden” – the tone is almost boring to start, but the subtle wrongnesses add up to creeping horror at the end – really well done.
Hench, by Natalie Zina Walschotts
This. Was. Amazing. In a world of superheroes and supervillains, Anna Tromedlov is a down-on-her-luck henchman, just working temp desk jobs to pay the rent, when she finds herself caught in the middle of a hero/villain confrontation. The violent aftermath leaves her with lifelong injuries, as well as an obsession with forcing heroes (and their worshippers) to face the actual financial, mental, and physical costs of superhero action. The book just kept getting better, uncovering layers upon layers of conspiracy and dark history. Super enjoyable read. (I put this on the to-read list because it was one of the Canada Reads books, championed by Paul Sun-Hyung Lee of Kim’s Convenience. It didn’t win Canada Reads, but it should have!)
The Bone Season and The Mime Order, by Samantha Shannon
I kind of feel like these would have been better books without all the invented vocabulary, but I did like the quasi-Victorian? Cockneyish? language of the street dwellers. In an alternate future dystopian London, people with extrasensory abilities (clairvoyants, or “voyants”) are hunted down by the government; because their very existence is illegal, voyants band together in street gangs and mobs to survive. Our heroine Paige has powers that put her pretty high up in her gang; however, when she is captured by the government, she finds out that captured voyants actually become enslaved in a crazy medieval prison (it’s the old Oxford campus) run by – wait for it – aliens! The aliens are using the psychic energy of the voyants to fight a war on another plane of existence entirely, with the government’s cooperation. The insanity just keeps ratcheting up. The first book has plenty of action but honestly feels mostly like setup, introducing mad amounts of vocabulary alongside crowds of characters and doing its best to convince you of the multiple layers of weird that comprise this world; the second book was a little more focused. Two books in I’m still honestly not sure I completely buy the premise, but at least Shannon’s writing is smooth and the characters are well-crafted.
The Doors of Eden, by Adrian Tchaikovsky
The Doors of Eden / Adrian Tchaikovsky
I expect this of Tchaikovsky by now, but no one condenses centuries of hypothetical evolutionary development like this guy. Interspersed with totally plausible and yet very different ways life could have evolved and thrived (or not) on Earth, we follow some really well-crafted characters through events that get really strange. Really ambitious book, great journey, though the ending felt weak and didn’t quite live up to the development.