Alvin Ng

3.5 stars

The premise of this story was super compelling: once the world hits a population of 8 billion, each human gets their own individual genie to grant them a single wish. Simple, yet compelling, right? I definitely thought so, and I was totally addicted to the story that came out of this. I wanted to know what these various characters would wish for. Plus, the creators clearly wanted to give it more thought than the cliche of having people's wishes backfire because they mis-worded them, or get twisted into payback for their innate greed. Instead, we get to see a world where people immediately get to transform reality all around them, and the conflicting wishes would cause catastrophic problems. I love it when writers really try to think through fantastical concepts. In this story, they even imagined a kind of dystopian path that the world would take, where after the world was kind of messed up by the effect of too many crazy wishes, various safe havens and enclaves would form. Sadly, that's when the story kind of lost my initial fervour. The wishes themselves kind of lost their meaning. They became commodities and objects of power in another post-apocalyptic story. It was nice to read about the characters that we'd followed since the beginning, but the timescale also started to speed up (felt like they were just trying to get to the end) and reach the final wish. At that end point I found things got a bit preachy and unfortunately I didn't find the ending very satisfying. I realize that everyone prefers a story arc, rather than jumping around vignettes of various characters exploring their wishes, but I wish (no pun intended) that this particular story had gone wider that way instead. Maybe that would have been too much also, but in the end I think this story tried to take its core concept in too many different directions and didn't quite succeed in tying them all together. Nevertheless, the genies looked cute.

3 stars

I had high expectations for Mexican-Canadian author Silvia Moreno-Garcia's acclaimed novel, but was pretty let down. Given the book's title, yes, there was everything classically gothic, but very little Mexican, aside from the geographic setting (and the occasional Spanish word). This tale of a rich city girl going out to a country mansion to rescue her married cousin after receiving a disturbing letter about her seeing ghosts and being unwell could have been set anywhere. I thought there'd be something connected to the Mexican indigenous culture, or maybe the some local mythology or folklore, but none of that was in the story. On the contrary, there was a decaying gothic mansion; rich aristocrats from England who are creepy, mean and strict; ghostly and strange nightmares; misty countryside (even in Mexico); and sickly, bedridden characters with mysterious ailments. Into that classic template, drop Noemí Taboada even though she's not a very traditional Mexican. She's a chic modern rich girl who enjoys her nightlife even more than her graduate education in anthropology.

When Noemí goes to High Place to rescue her cousin, Catalina, the story unfolds fairly predictably. There is almost no surprise. Will Noemi find something strange and creepy with the Doyle family? Will Noemí find that there is something to her cousin's delusions about ghosts? Will the Doyle family have unnecessarily strict rules about what Noemi can and cannot do? Will Noemi try to break those rules? Will something dark be secretly lurking at High Place? Will this family turn out to be more bizarre and twisted than they seem? I don't need to answer a single one of those questions for you. You can answer them yourself already.

Noemi was not a standout character. I don't think we knew her very well, despite hearing about her backstory a bit, and constantly hearing her thoughts. Being a pretty debutante, I expected her to play against trope, not be shallow, but actually possess a lot of buried strength and depth. Sadly she didn't really feel like that. Don't get me wrong, Moreno-Garcia's writing isn't bad. She was able to provide fairly vivid descriptions and painted every scene with an appropriately decaying sense of beauty, but I also don't feel she really flexed any extraordinary amount of imagination in word or idea.

The narrator was also mixed. Her performance in the characters's voices was pretty expressive, given how serious most of the characters were. Unfortunately, her English accent needed work. Plus, whenever she went into her narrator voice, she got kind of stilted and pronounced everything with an extremely even tone, I even suspected to be AI a couple of times. That really kind of flattened the mood (and in a gothic tale, the mood is half the story).

As I mentioned at the start, this novel was overall quite disappointing. I like my creepy Lovecraftian horror and my gothic tales, but this one was middling.

3.25 out of 5

While I love Mike Mignola's art style, it is also often hard for me to follow what is being depicted. Still, the creepy mystical haunted vibe is everything. Even though this is not set in the Hellboy universe, it feels remarkably similar (which is a good thing), and the quasi-Lovecraftian world-building, and the slavic folklore callbacks are always welcome. Unfortunately the stories mostly didn't work for me. There was a bit more humour than usual, and more 4th-wall breaking, that threw me off. Plus a number of the stories seemed to end in a way where I could feel like there was some kind of punchline that just eluded me. Still, didn't hate it, but wanted to love this book and didn't do that either.

4.5 stars
This is not the first comic with the premise of superheroic events taking place over real time (i.e. decades pass and characters actually age) and are set against a real historical backdrop. However, this one was really well written. I think the Fantastic Four were a great choice to be the characters we follow because they are also a family and that makes it a lot easier to follow their realistic personal relationship ups and downs over the course of the story as well. Throughout most of the story, there is the looming and pending arrival of Galactus to Earth. I think that was also a clever storytelling device. It made for a good theme concept for Reed Richards and the other FF to live their lives in reaction to over the course of decades, rather than the typical super-crisis events we find in comic book stories. It was interesting to see that life continues and is lived in parallel to these types of crises. The storytelling also had the nice touch of being narrated alternatively by one FF member after another. This really foregrounded the character stories, growth and development. The art was also really well done (for the most part): expressive faces, and dynamic action scenes. It was the perfect style for a life story format. Unfortunately, the climax was a bit of a let down (after so many issues of buildup) and there were kind of several endings (some were more satisfying than others). Thankfully the somewhat sentimental final ending was heartwarming and uplifting, leaving me with a good feeling (as it should).

I'm no expert on fantasy tropes or the subverting of tropes, but I know that I don't want that to be the focus of any story. This is more than the story of a courageous knight (who happens to be a woman) and her failed mage of a squire (who happens to be a man) taking on a dragon. The story fits very well within familiar fantasy conventions (the dragon that they pursue is ancient and has a legendary treasure within her hoard), but is told in a way that lives up to those traditions yet feels fresh, imaginative and surprising. For one thing, author Charlotte Bond adds some new horror elements to the classic story. Sir Maddileh and Petras are haunted by nightmares and hallucinations in the dragon's cave. They encounter “dragon dead” (the ghosts of dragon victims who stalk the cave like zombies) and “soot drakes” (deadly pests who infect unsuspecting travellers with toxic soot that will destroy their bodies) as they make their way deeper in. There are also many interesting magical objects, spells, and legendary tales of various mages of old woven into the story, which are a lot of fun to read about.

Even with a low page count, there are interesting backstories for all the characters — even some of the characters within the backstories have backstories. The titular Fireborne Blade definitely has its story and, by the end, Bond manages to bring many of these stories together in a clever and unique way, crafting them into an even bigger story. I love twists; and this novella contained so many surprises which I didn't expect that it kept me delighted and surprised the whole time.

The writing and the narration are also both very well done. The language is descriptive, pleasant and elegant without being flowery or pretentious. There's a good variety of voices and tones, including some guide-book-style chapters which nicely deliver world-building exposition in an engaging way. It is impressive how much of a world is built around a fairly straightforward story and a single core event. It doesn't feel only like the dragon's cave is the entire world. In fact, there is so much going on outside (described mostly in the flashbacks) that when we reach the climax, it doesn't feel like we're seeing sunlight for the first time. The narration by Helen McAlpine is great. She gives each character a varied tone, and her voice is mature enough to avoid the petulance and juvenile air that makes many female narrators skew a little bit “young adult”.

Overall, I loved this story. It was all well-crafted, very fun and satisfying. Even though I don't feel it needs to be any longer, I would love to read more from this world and this author.

4.75 stars

This story of a young trainer of rocs (y'know, those giant eagles from tales of Sinbad and Arabian Nights) was not bad. Fonda Lee is a pretty good writer and can set the scene with evocative details and description. There are a number of fast-paced action scenes as well, which are pretty thrilling. However, overall the story was a bit on the ordinary side (as tales of magical creatures fighting other magical creatures go). The story spent a lot of time either with the training/bonding aspect of the protagonist (Ester) with her bird (Zahra), or with her experience growing up and making her way as a ruhker. There was definitely a “young adult” flavour to this story not only because it spent a little time on crushes and love triangles, but mainly because the point of view was a young woman who was growing in life experience throughout the story (and naturally makes some juvenile choices along the way). I wish that there had been less time spent on the technical, falconry-adjacent, aspects of being a ruhker, in favour of more world-building beyond that profession and their manticore-hunting mandate. Even though it was clearly a familiar, Arabian-inspired world, expanding on that world in imaginative ways could have made the story a lot more interesting. Or, we could also have spent more time in mind of Ester. She experienced a lot of trauma in her backstory so it probably would have been pretty engaging to explore how she's been coping and growing all these years. How did she manage to become a successful ruhker after all the disadvantages of a troubled past? I guess the most disappointing aspect of this novella was that by the end of it, I had no real desire to revisit that world or for this story to have kept exploring deeper.

The Electric State tells the story of a runaway teenager, Michelle, and her drone robot buddy, Skip, driving across an eerie, abandoned alternate USA in 1997, where ruins of the previously thriving consumer culture can still be seen alongside massive derelict war vehicles left over from a cybernetic conflict. It's a post-apocalyptic wasteland where the zombies aren't a result of dark magic or contagion, but some kind of “neuronic” technology that linked peoples' minds and stole their souls.

The art book is filled with beautifully haunting paintings of scenes encountered by the pair on their journey towards the west coast. It's amazing how Stålenhag can make such mundane images of American highways, cars, ordinary buildings look so sad and creepy – even when monuments of high technology are injected in between. The masterful part is how the visuals and the text come together. Accompanied by the visuals, the narrative is a well-written, tragic character story. Everything that Michelle has already gone through, as told in flashbacks, is sad. But it also feels like her life was the norm and that the shiny plastic veneer of this society was easily scratched away. Despite the setup for a road trip adventure, the plot involves almost no action apart from driving from stop to stop. Stålenhag's writing is excellent at evoking a mood of decay and abandonment, and he gives Michelle's voice a feeling of weariness, even though she also feels determined against the backdrop of the rest of the world that has given up, dissipated and disappeared.

A challenge in reading this book is that it doesn't really hold your hand. The writing is subtle about when the voice or timeframe has changed (though there are typographical cues – which makes me feel bad for the audiobook readers, and they're also missing out on the visuals, which are the best part). Michelle's narration often switches between past and present without warning. Plus, the backstory of this alternate world requires some puzzling together of various snapshots (along with visual clues from the illustrations). The book is never a sunny funny read, but it also stops short of being depressing. It stirs up all kinds of feelings, especially if the reader manages to engage with Michelle and Skip's story (including the finale told only in images – which I confess I loved, but am not sure I understood completely). This is that kind of book. (4 out of 5)

I wasn't quite sure what to expect from this book, but with a title like "The Malevolent Seven", I knew it was going to be fun. Though its got mages and spells and a quest to stop evil other-dimensional beings from taking over the world, it's not your typical epic fantasy nor is it a satire of one. I want to think of it as the story of a magical X-Men, but it's actually more of a magical Suicide Squad. The main character (the whole story is narrated from his point of view) is a mercenary war mage named Cade Ombra. We join him as he is fulfilling his contract to help a particularly nasty ruler defeat his enemies with the help of a small army of mages, including Cade's best friend, Corrigan. When Cade and Corrigan are ordered to brutally slaughter the enemy forces (even after they've surrendered), the duo decide they have had enough and make tracks to pursue another commission, recruiting other wonderists (that's what they call mages in this world) along the way. As expected, things really don't go as expected and the story builds from a couple of self-serving mercenary mages to something with good vs. evil, world-threatening stakes. Nevertheless, none of the characters are snowy white good (even the ones who literally appear to be on the side of the angels -- they call them "aurorals" in this book), and ultimately, it's fun to watch an armageddon of anti-heroes.

De Castell's writing is nice and clever. Cade's attitude is dry and cheeky, and Corrigan is brazen and sarcastic. Even when the situations seem serious enough to deserve a grim tone, our heroes laugh in the face of calamity and danger. There's a scene when Corrigan (who is a thunderist, i.e. fires bolts of lightning magic) runs into another like him, he blasts her unprovoked, claiming justification because of her over-the-top name (Elena Scourge). Everyone then calls hypocrite on him, since his name (Corrigan Blight) is just as bad. The facetious tone is a little bit like something from a Terry Pratchett novel, except it's not quite as ornately clever, mostly tongue-in-cheek. Though the tone can be humourous, the subject matter is still often quite adult and dark. It is probably closer to the Dungeon Crawler Carl series (even though the plots and settings are nothing alike).

My favourite part of this story is the fantasy world-building, specifically the character designs and the variety of magic. Aside from thunderists (who wield “tempestral” magic), Cade is an infernal mage (who trade pieces of their souls to demonic beings for spells). Then almost every other mage is a different type, with different powers, coming from a different realm of magic. These “attunements” have an extremely wide variety: everything from blood magic, to auroral (i.e. angelic), to floronic (who manipulate plants and nature), to rats, bats, keys, knots, torture, to my favourite: cosmists, whose bodies are portals to a cosmic dimension. They look like a starfield, or night sky, in the shape of a person (and apparently like to wear orange striped clothing). Everyone from the main characters to each little side character, whether mage or some other kind, has an interesting profile sheet (this story might make an enjoyable video game now that I think of it). In fact, the characters are all pretty well drawn out for such a short storyline and how much happens. The main focus is on Cade, so we dive a lot deeper into his backstory, but the cast is a wonderful mix and virtually no two characters are alike.

So if you enjoy fantasy but you're interested in something other than your typical Tolkien-inspired epic, and you want to read something that is colourful, clever, facetious, and fun, this book is very much worth your time (and apparently a sequel is coming out soon. So let's get ready for The Malevolent Eight!) (4 out of 5)

It's essentially the story of a science professor whose life gets turned upside down when the multiverse of alternate realities intrudes on his idyllic family life. Think Everything Everywhere All At Once (only worse).

I didn't love the writing, which I thought tried to make everything intense by using overwrought, superlative-laden, movie poster language (Come on, protagonist, was that really the longest shower of your life?)

Also, the science in the sci-fi was pretty weak (which is only exacerbated by the fact that the protagonist was supposed to be this super-genius level scientist who is constantly trying to explain the multiverse to us, and the other characters). It would be less bad if they didn't keep reminding us that every possible thing that can happen causes branching realities to an infinite degree, and then make it so that they (and other characters) can relatively easily navigate between realities (or are really fixated on specific versions of reality).

Bottom line is that I could barely finish the book. It was pretty frustrating. Comparing Dark Matter to Project Hail Mary (which is also popcorn sci-fi), the latter was a million times better! (see, I can use superlatives too!)

Redshirts has got to be one of the most geek-friendly book titles I have encountered. The uninformed might guess that it's about wearing a certain colour of clothing, and they might be wondering why it's a single compound word. However, any sci-fi fan worth his salt knows that it actually refers to the laughable tendency for characters on the original Star Trek series who wore red uniforms to be entirely expendable and prone to being hurt or killed on away missions. So we know what this story is going to be about. The story of Ensign Andrew Dahl is clearly set in a copy of the Star Trek universe with its starship Intrepid and Universal Union as clear analogues to the starship Enterprise and the Federation. Nevertheless, Redshirts is not merely a spoof of Star Trek, but attempts to tell its own very “meta” story. When Dahl arrives aboard the Intrepid, it doesn't take him long to notice that certain people are dying on missions (and in gruesome, ridiculous ways such as “death by ice shark”), while others never get hurt or seem to recover miraculously when they do. The behaviour of certain crew members changes without explanation and other reality-defying incidents start to pique Dahl's interest, so he starts digging for answers — hopefully before he falls prey to whatever is happening as well. Because of the obvious Star Trek comparisons, we same sci-fi fans who are worth our salt can also predict quite easily what is going on, so thankfully, author John Scalzi doesn't keep that a “mystery” for long. Instead, partway into the story, the plot takes a huge “meta” twist and the fictional reality kind of wraps in on itself. I don't want to give too much away (maybe I already have), but this twist makes the story pretty interesting (a cool little variant on the time-travel story — another sci-fi staple). This plot change also comes right at the time when I was getting very confused by the various characters and their names. (I listened to the audiobook, which was wonderfully performed by Wesley Crusher himself, Wil Wheaton — How's that for “meta”? — but that made it even harder to keep characters straight since they all sounded similar until the story started to focus on a small away-mission crew instead.) The writing style is very light and humourous — and not particularly literary. In fact, we don't delve too deeply into the characters' minds or motives. There isn't even very much description. It's essentially all plot and dialogue (much like a TV script would be). In many ways, this story feels like an episode of Star Trek (or better yet, an epic, two-part episode — maybe even a cliffhanger season finale). Everything moves along rather briskly. After the end of the main story there are several long epilogues which add layers of emotion and character to this story, but it seems weird to relegate them to the post-script. It may have slowed down the pace of the plot, but I would have preferred if that kind of depth could have been a part of the main story all along. In the end, there's not much I can say about this book. It's fun for anyone who is familiar with and enjoys Star Trek and other similar space shows but for anyone outside the fandom I think there is probably not nearly as much here to hold their interest. Thankfully, though I am not a fan of the original Trek, I do enjoy everything that came after — and that includes this book. (4 out of 5)

Do you often feel like computers have it in for you? Do you fear that the more technology advances, the more it's going to take over our lives? I don't really share those sentiments, but after reading Daniel H. Wilson's novel Robopocalypse, I did start to look at all the gadgetry in my daily life and think about what would happen if they turned against us. In this book, the story is broken into a large number of diverse storylines and time periods all centred around the moment that a massive artificial intelligence called “Archos” takes over all the robots in the world (and in this world, civilization has advanced enough to have all kinds of different robots around). The first few chapters read like an anthology of various incidents that foreshadow the rise of the machines: from the violent attack of a domestic service robot in a frozen yogurt shop, to the creepy and threatening words of a child's electronic dolls. These early episodes set the groundwork for the rest of the novel which jumps from one character's situation to the next as humans are defeated, then rise up against the robots that threaten to destroy their entire race.

As you might imagine, there's a bit of a military overtone to a lot of the chapters. Some of the narrators are members of the military or militia, and of course the whole context of the novel is a human-robot war, so there are going to be battle scenes and battle language. Unfortunately I don't really enjoy military narration. Often writers try hard to express a military character's persona by making them very gruff, loud, or simplistic in their sense of right and wrong. There is a single, overall narrator named Cormac Wallace who comments on each of the other sub-narrators and though he wasn't originally in the military, he led the militia group who ended up defeating Archos, so his developed “roughneck”-style voice is throughout. While the other characters vary widely in demographics, one of the deficiencies of this book is that they start to sound a bit too similar in tone. The child characters don't really speak like children. Their descriptions and accounts of their remembered thoughts don't use language that necessarily fit what they're supposed to be (these narrations supposedly come from the characters either personally recounting their anecdotes or surveillance from robots who've recorded events with their sensors). The language seems like a novel, and a verbose one at that. For example, here's a gruesome account of a man being attacked by robots:

Tiberius is heaving, muscles spasming, kicking up clumps of bloodstained snow. Mist pours off his sweating 250-pound frame as the East African thrashes violently, flat on his back. He's the biggest, most fearless grunt in the squad, but none of that matters when a glinting nightmare flashes out of the swirling snow and begins eating him alive.